This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Japan, South Korea and Australia seek to change mercurial US president’s mind on exemptions for tariffs.
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Read more on this topic in Vietnamese
Vietnam’s steel industry faces a double threat from the U.S. after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a 25% tax on all steel imports from March 4. It was already being investigated by the U.S. Commerce Department for illegal subsidies and dumping. Vietnam’s aluminum exporters face a similar surcharge.
Vietnam is the fifth-largest exporter of steel to the U.S., which is Vietnam’s number three market.
It isn’t the first time Trump has imposed such sanctions. In 2018, he imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminum imported from Vietnam and several other countries.
Impact on Vietnam
On Feb. 11, Vietnam’s Doanh Nghiep & Tiep Thi newspaper quoted Do Ngoc Hung, a commercial counselor and head of the Vietnam Trade Office in the U.S. as saying Vietnamese enterprises still had many opportunities to export to the U.S. because its steel and aluminum manufacturers cannot immediately meet domestic demand. However, profit margins would narrow due to higher import charges.
The amount of Vietnamese steel exported to the U.S. in 2024 reached nearly 1.7 million tons, worth US$1.3 billion, an increase of over 50% compared with 2023 in terms of both volume and turnover, according to the Vietnam Steel Association as cited on the VietnamBiz news site.
Meanwhile, data from the Customs Department show that last year, the import value of iron and steel from other countries to Vietnam reached $19.07 billion, of which 63% was imported from China, worth $12.03 billion.
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Radio Free Asia emailed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vietnamese Trade Office in the U.S. to ask about how Trump’s executive order affects Vietnam’s exports but did not receive a response.
RFA also asked Vietnamese steel companies Hoa Phat, Hoa Sen and Pomina for comment but they did not reply.
Effect on re-exporters
Norway-based economist Nguyen Huy Vu told RFA the 25% U.S. tariff would directly affect manufacturers in Vietnam and Chinese companies that use Vietnam to export to the U.S. to avoid existing tariffs.
Vu said that the U.S. government’s new tax on aluminum and steel from other countries would cause difficulties for Vietnamese businesses.
“Trump’s imposition of such tariffs will force Vietnamese businesses to reconsider their business strategies. Certainly, businesses that want to build more steel factories will have to rethink,” he said.
“It has its good and bad points. It will affect the big Vietnamese enterprises like Hoa Phat but they will have to reshape their business strategy. Instead of exporting steel, they have to switch to increasing the technology for producing steel and have to switch to producing more valuable products.”
A man polishes steel beams at a steel factory in Que Vo district, outside Hanoi May 20, 2011. (Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters)The Nhan Dan newspaper reported on Feb. 8 that the Ministry of Transport had submitted to the government a proposal to invest in the construction of a new Lao Cai-Hanoi-Hai Phong railway line worth $8.3 billion to connect Hai Phong port with China to implement China’s “Belt and Road” initiative and Vietnam’s “Two Corridors, One Belt” cooperation plan.
According to Vu, this railway line will likely serve heavy industries including steel imported directly from China and then exported.
Given this new executive order, the Vietnamese government may have to accept the ministry’s proposal for the railway, he said.
Possible price cuts
Vu said U.S. importers may ask Vietnamese steelmakers to cut prices by up to 20% so they can still make a profit after the 25% tariffs kick in, adding that manufacturers in the United States may keep their prices the same or increase them only slightly.
“It will lead to Vietnamese companies being greatly affected and Chinese companies will not want to invest in Vietnam anymore. Surely Vietnam’s economy will face many difficulties in the coming days,” Vu said.
A man works at a steel factory in Que Vo district, outside Hanoi May 20, 2011. (Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters)Vietnam’s Ministry of Construction estimates the total annual revenue value of the construction materials, cement, and steel industries at nearly $47 billion, accounting for about 11% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product, or GDP, Vietnamplus reported.
Anti-dumping investigation
In September 2024, Vietnam’s Department of Trade Defense at the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the U.S. Department of Commerce was investigating Vietnam, along with other countries, for dumping and subsidies, with the dumping accusation having a margin of up to 160%, the highest in the world.
The investigation period is 2023 and the damage assessment period is from 2021 to 2023.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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Read more on this topic in Vietnamese
Vietnam’s steel industry faces a double threat from the U.S. after President Donald Trump signed an executive order to impose a 25% tax on all steel imports from March 4. It was already being investigated by the U.S. Commerce Department for illegal subsidies and dumping. Vietnam’s aluminum exporters face a similar surcharge.
Vietnam is the fifth-largest exporter of steel to the U.S., which is Vietnam’s number three market.
It isn’t the first time Trump has imposed such sanctions. In 2018, he imposed a 25% tariff on steel and 10% on aluminum imported from Vietnam and several other countries.
Impact on Vietnam
On Feb. 11, Vietnam’s Doanh Nghiep & Tiep Thi newspaper quoted Do Ngoc Hung, a commercial counselor and head of the Vietnam Trade Office in the U.S. as saying Vietnamese enterprises still had many opportunities to export to the U.S. because its steel and aluminum manufacturers cannot immediately meet domestic demand. However, profit margins would narrow due to higher import charges.
The amount of Vietnamese steel exported to the U.S. in 2024 reached nearly 1.7 million tons, worth US$1.3 billion, an increase of over 50% compared with 2023 in terms of both volume and turnover, according to the Vietnam Steel Association as cited on the VietnamBiz news site.
Meanwhile, data from the Customs Department show that last year, the import value of iron and steel from other countries to Vietnam reached $19.07 billion, of which 63% was imported from China, worth $12.03 billion.
RELATED STORIES
A bad month for US-Vietnam relations?
Vietnam faces Trump era with awkward trade surplus with the US
US, Vietnam raise relations to highest level
Radio Free Asia emailed the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Vietnamese Trade Office in the U.S. to ask about how Trump’s executive order affects Vietnam’s exports but did not receive a response.
RFA also asked Vietnamese steel companies Hoa Phat, Hoa Sen and Pomina for comment but they did not reply.
Effect on re-exporters
Norway-based economist Nguyen Huy Vu told RFA the 25% U.S. tariff would directly affect manufacturers in Vietnam and Chinese companies that use Vietnam to export to the U.S. to avoid existing tariffs.
Vu said that the U.S. government’s new tax on aluminum and steel from other countries would cause difficulties for Vietnamese businesses.
“Trump’s imposition of such tariffs will force Vietnamese businesses to reconsider their business strategies. Certainly, businesses that want to build more steel factories will have to rethink,” he said.
“It has its good and bad points. It will affect the big Vietnamese enterprises like Hoa Phat but they will have to reshape their business strategy. Instead of exporting steel, they have to switch to increasing the technology for producing steel and have to switch to producing more valuable products.”
A man polishes steel beams at a steel factory in Que Vo district, outside Hanoi May 20, 2011. (Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters)The Nhan Dan newspaper reported on Feb. 8 that the Ministry of Transport had submitted to the government a proposal to invest in the construction of a new Lao Cai-Hanoi-Hai Phong railway line worth $8.3 billion to connect Hai Phong port with China to implement China’s “Belt and Road” initiative and Vietnam’s “Two Corridors, One Belt” cooperation plan.
According to Vu, this railway line will likely serve heavy industries including steel imported directly from China and then exported.
Given this new executive order, the Vietnamese government may have to accept the ministry’s proposal for the railway, he said.
Possible price cuts
Vu said U.S. importers may ask Vietnamese steelmakers to cut prices by up to 20% so they can still make a profit after the 25% tariffs kick in, adding that manufacturers in the United States may keep their prices the same or increase them only slightly.
“It will lead to Vietnamese companies being greatly affected and Chinese companies will not want to invest in Vietnam anymore. Surely Vietnam’s economy will face many difficulties in the coming days,” Vu said.
A man works at a steel factory in Que Vo district, outside Hanoi May 20, 2011. (Nguyen Huy Kham/Reuters)Vietnam’s Ministry of Construction estimates the total annual revenue value of the construction materials, cement, and steel industries at nearly $47 billion, accounting for about 11% of Vietnam’s gross domestic product, or GDP, Vietnamplus reported.
Anti-dumping investigation
In September 2024, Vietnam’s Department of Trade Defense at the Ministry of Industry and Trade said that the U.S. Department of Commerce was investigating Vietnam, along with other countries, for dumping and subsidies, with the dumping accusation having a margin of up to 160%, the highest in the world.
The investigation period is 2023 and the damage assessment period is from 2021 to 2023.
Translated by RFA Vietnamese. Edited by Mike Firn.
This content originally appeared on Radio Free Asia and was authored by RFA Vietnamese.This post was originally published on Radio Free.
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California-based internet giant says the name of the body of water will depend on location of the user.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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William Lee talking about President Trump's use of tariffs to gain economic objectives
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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A non-hypothetical headline from the centrist Peterson Institute for International Economics (9/26/24).
“GDP Could Take Massive Hit as a Result of Mass Deportations.” “Mass Deportations Could Leave Many Americans Without Jobs.” “Mass Deportations Could Spur Spike in Inflation.” “Mass Deportations Could Cost Nearly $1 Trillion.”
These are hypothetical headlines of the sort you run if you want to drive home the point that mass deportations would not only be a humanitarian outrage, but an economic disaster. Which, according to economists, they very much would be.
As of 2022, undocumented immigrants constituted approximately 5% of the US workforce. Deporting all or a large number of them would substantially reduce the supply of labor in the US economy and would concurrently reduce aggregate demand by eliminating the spending of anyone deported. GDP could, as a result, drop as much as 7.4% below a baseline forecast by the end of 2028, per the Peterson Institute for International Economics.
Rather than opening up more job opportunities for American workers, past research tells us that the opposite will occur. As Michael Clemens from Peterson puts it:
The disappearance of migrant workers…dries up local demand at grocery stories, leasing offices, and other nontraded services. The resulting blow to demand for all workers overwhelms the reduction in supply of foreign workers.
The supply shock induced by mass deportations of undocumented workers would have the additional effect of spiking inflation, perhaps several points above baseline. In short, beyond being a humanitarian nightmare, mass deportations would be an economic self-own of epic proportions.
Rather than sound unfamiliar or strange, as it may to readers of corporate media, this sort of expert analysis of the economic effects of deportation could become conventional wisdom if outlets ran headlines like those above. After all, those are the type of headlines you run if you are dedicated to objectivity in reporting, to informing your audience of what the research says, no matter whether it might offend their sensibilities.
‘Warning of a fiscal crisis’
Writing about the prospect of mass deportation in New York City, the Washington Post (1/28/25) highlighted Mayor Eric Adams’ “warning of a fiscal crisis.”
They are not, of course, the headlines you run if your paper is committed to bending over backwards to avoid offending Trump and his supporters. So at the Washington Post, such headlines are hard to come by. In fact, if you look through the “Immigration,” “Economy” and “Economic Policy” sections on the Post’s website, you will find a grand total of zero articles since the start of the year with headlines directly addressing the negative economic impact of Trump’s proposed mass deportation policy.
Some articles published over this period have addressed the economic effects of mass deportations, but only in a marginal way. For instance, in an article (1/31/25) published at the end of January about an ICE raid at a workplace in Newark, New Jersey, the Post included the following quote from Newark mayor Ras Baraka:
“How do you determine…who is undocumented and who is criminal?… In this community, you might pull everybody over, because this is a city full of immigrants,” Baraka, who is running for governor of New Jersey, said in an interview. “You got everybody on edge around here. And it’s going to hurt the economy.”
What would the economic damage look like? The Post declined to elaborate.
Similarly, a piece (1/28/25) from a few days earlier about an ICE raid in New York City had little to say about the impacts of mass deportations on the economy. It did, however, take some space to highlight negative economic effects of illegal immigration on the city, explaining that “the largest influx [of migrants] since the Ellis Island era…left New York Mayor Eric Adams (D) warning of a fiscal crisis.” The only economic figure cited in the piece was the figure for the cost of the migrant influx, apparently over $5 billion since 2023.
Cautiously ‘wonky’
“So much recent political rhetoric has succeeded in portraying undocumented people as driven to crime rather than contribution,” the New York Times‘ Ginia Bellafante (1/31/25) noted.
Contrast this coverage with that of the Post’s competitor, the New York Times. At the end of January, the Times published a piece (1/31/25) headlined “What Mass Deportations Would Do to New York City’s Economy.” A far cry from the hypothetical headlines provided at the top of this article, the headline nonetheless signaled an intention to seriously analyze the economic effects of mass deportations. The first economic figure cited in the piece, coming in the third paragraph, highlighted the tax contributions of undocumented immigrants:
As a group, undocumented immigrants paid $3.1 billion in New York state and local taxes in 2022, for example, a sum equal to the city’s early education budget for the current fiscal year.
Not wanting to come off as too activist for citing data on the positive contributions of undocumented immigrants to New York City’s tax base, the Times felt obliged to clarify that this figure did not come
from a left-leaning human rights group intent on fostering sympathy for people who crossed the border illegally, but rather from the wonky Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, a nonpartisan Washington think tank.
An odd way of presenting data, but a way that evidently feels comfortable for a paper that has no intention of seriously rocking the boat, even if it is willing, on this occasion, to stand up from its seat rather than clinging to the captain’s feet for dear life.
Despite some apparent hesitancy, the piece went on to examine the loss in local and state tax revenue that could result from deportations of even a fraction of the undocumented population, and to explain the centrality of undocumented workers to key industries in the city, from food services to childcare to construction. None—I repeat, none—of this information could be gleaned from the Post’s coverage of the immigration situation in New York City.
‘Recast the US economy’
A Washington Post subhead (11/6/25) said that Trump’s deportation plans might “recast the US economy”—which turns out to mean shrinking it by as much as 6%.
In a major piece on Trump’s approach to the immigration system published just before Trump’s inauguration, the Washington Post (1/19/25) likewise failed at its basic task of informing its readers. The Post at least mentioned that mass deportations could hurt the economy—“By rounding up immigrants who fill otherwise vacant jobs, [Trump] could hurt the US economy he has pledged to supercharge”—but that’s where the analysis ended. No reference was made to research showing that mass deportations could lead to complete stagnation of GDP during Trump’s time in office, or that it could lead to a several percentage point spike in inflation.
Prior to the start of the year, the Post had published more about the economic effects of mass deportations. For instance, an article (12/27/24) from the end of December headlined “The 2025 Economy: Five Things to Watch” included “Deportations” as the second thing to watch. It nonetheless featured only a small discussion of the topic—four short paragraphs—and no hard numbers were cited regarding the effects on employment, GDP and inflation, despite these numbers existing in reputable research from a nonpartisan think tank.
A Post piece (11/6/25) from a day after the election, meanwhile, had discussed how mass deportations could “recast the US economy and labor force”—what a verb! Towards the end of the article, the reporters touched on the effects of mass deportations on inflation and GDP, citing concrete numbers for the second variable:
Many economists also say that mass deportations on the scale proposed by Trump would trigger inflation in the short term—by forcing employers dealing with labor shortfalls to raise prices. A major deportation program would also shrink the economy by 2.6% to 6.2% a year, according to a recent review of projections published by the University of New Hampshire.
This paragraph, however, was all that was given for a concrete discussion of the economic impact of mass deportations.
Amazingly, before the election, the Post editorial board (10/24/24) did take the time to weave in commentary on Trump’s mass deportation policy in yet another editorial fearmongering about Social Security. The board wrote:
Whatever you think about its merits as immigration policy, a crackdown on undocumented workers, including mass deportations, could also hurt Social Security’s finances because undocumented workers contribute payroll taxes without collecting benefits for decades—if ever.
No other economic effects of mass deportations were mentioned by the editorial board. A substantial hit to GDP, though relevant to the discussion of public finances, was not discussed. Concerns about the effects of mass deportations were merely looped into apparently more pressing concerns about the sustainability of Social Security, which the Post wants to cut (FAIR.org, 6/15/23).
‘Not about wages’
NPR (1/17/25) looked at the economic problems posed by mass deportation through the eyes of employers who depend on exploiting immigrant labor.
The Post has been particularly egregious in ignoring the topic of the economic impact of mass deportations, but it certainly hasn’t been alone in covering it poorly. NPR, for example, decided to let employer propaganda slide unchecked in a recent piece (1/17/25) about the contributions of immigrants to Nebraska’s economy.
The piece started by centering the experience, not of immigrants, but of the executive director of the Nebraska Pork Producers Association, Al Juhnke, whose main concern appears to be maximizing the availability of cheap labor for the agricultural industry in Nebraska. An early paragraph read:
Juhnke says attracting workers to Nebraska is not about wages. The average pay for a meat trimmer is close to $18 an hour—well above the state minimum of $13.50. “These are good paying jobs in the plants,” he says. “People say, ‘Well, just double or triple the pay [and] you’ll get United States citizens to work.’ No, you won’t.”
There is no follow up on this point; it is simply accepted as fact by NPR. But there’s little reason to trust an executive of an organization advocating for pork producers on this.
Responsible coverage might at the very least entail bringing in an independent researcher to comment on this claim. For instance, it could be noted that, according to the MIT Living Wage Calculator, the living wage in the county of Nebraska where much of the meat processing occurs is $18.64 per hour for a single adult with no children. For a family with one working adult and one child, it’s $32.27. Such information immediately undermines the executive’s claim that a wage of “close to $18 an hour” is a good wage, and in turn should raise eyebrows at the idea that raising the wage would have no effect on the attractiveness of employment to US citizens.
Survey results from the Manufacturing Institute and Colonial Life, furthermore, indicate that manufacturing companies have seen success in recent years in attracting workers by increasing pay and benefits. Why should we assume meat processing plants face different dynamics from other manufacturing plants?
More to the point, for an article focused on undocumented immigrants’ plight, it would be worth following up this claim, and the surrounding text discussing Nebraskan employers’ search for cheap immigrant labor, with an analysis of the exploitation of immigrant labor.
A follow-up question to the executive might be: Can employers afford to pay workers, immigrant or not, substantially more? And if so, why are they not doing that?
All that the piece gives, however, is a quote from a civil rights advocate lamenting the dehumanization of immigrants: “It’s dehumanizing—‘Let’s harness immigrant labor.’ Like an animal.” This is a powerful quote, but it’s not a substitute for basic factchecking of an empirical claim.
‘Real economic crisis’
Even while pointing out the inflation threat posed by mass deportation, Politico (1/20/25) allowed the Trump team to promote dubious numbers from an anti-immigrant hate group.
Though also better than the Post, in that it has actually prominently covered the negative economic effects of mass deportations in the “Economy” section of its website recently, Politico has similarly engaged in sloppy reporting, failing to provide skepticism where it is needed. In an article headlined “Americans Hate High Prices. Mass Deportations Could Spark New Surges,” Politico (1/20/25) did highlight how much of a disaster Trump’s deportation policy could be for the economy. But it quickly turned the issue into a both-sides debate and, crucially, left unchecked a particularly wild claim:
Some Trump allies say the doomsaying over the incoming president’s pledges to deport as many as 20 million undocumented immigrants is overblown. Karoline Leavitt, a spokesperson for Trump’s transition team, said in a statement that the “real economic crisis is the $182 billion American tax dollars spent each year to cover the costs of 20 million illegal immigrants that have flooded our communities and replaced American workers.”
This claim—that undocumented immigrants impose a $182 billion cost on American taxpayers—was not discussed further. Politico just let it sit. It appears the figure comes from an organization called the Federation for American Immigration Reform, a far-right advocacy group, which was claiming 15 years ago that undocumented immigrants cost American taxpayers over $100 billion per year.
A later estimate from 2013 by the Heritage Foundation, the conservative think tank that’s behind Project 2025, put the figure closer to $50 billion. But even that number is controversial—it includes, for example, the cost of government-provided educational services received by the children of undocumented immigrants, many of whom are US citizens. Educational services, in fact, constitute the majority of the costs associated with undocumented immigrant households in the Heritage analysis.
The amount spent on direct transfer payments to such households is only a small fraction of the estimated overall cost. Other categories of cost include spending on police, fire and public safety, as well as transportation services and administrative support.
The liberties that conservative researchers take in deciding what to count as a cost imposed by undocumented immigrants on US taxpayers make one question the utility of this accounting exercise in the first place. As one researcher has commented:
Fundamentally I think it’s the wrong question…. You’re talking about people who work for very low wages and are excluded from nearly all social services. It takes a real act of will to say they’re exploiting us.
Yet for Politico, none of this context is worth bringing into the piece. Even a basic attempt at factchecking the claim from a Trump ally is absent.
Support declines with details
When respondents were asked about worker shortages, support for mass deportation went from net 7 points positive to 5 points negative (ABC, 1/29/25).
If this sort of coverage—ignoring the issue at the Post, shying away from hard-hitting coverage at the Times, and allowing the story to be warped at NPR and Politico—is going to be the norm for coverage of the economic impact of Trump’s extremist immigration policies, there is little hope for an informed US public on this issue.
Currently, the public appears broadly supportive of mass deportations—that is, if you ask them directly and provide no further details. However, once more details are given, support for mass deportations declines.
One poll from about a month ago gauged support for the following policy: “Detain and deport millions of undocumented immigrants.” It found 52% of Americans in favor and 45% opposed. But with the addendum “even if it means businesses will face worker shortages,” the result changed to 46% in favor, 51% opposed. The effect of including other information about the negative economic effects of mass deportations was not tested, but it seems highly probable that other information—like the potential for a hit to GDP or a spike in inflation—would similarly turn Americans against mass deportation policy.
The problem is, the details about the potentially disastrous economic effects of mass deportations are likely known by only a small minority of the population. If corporate media outlets took their job seriously, they would make those details very well known. That could have major political effects, and could help turn the tides against extremist immigration policies.
Failing to inform the public likewise has major political effects. Passivity means greater leeway for Trump and his backers to shape public opinion, with their claims perhaps continuing to go unchallenged by outlets like Politico. Elon Musk, for one, is known as a prolific propagator of anti-immigrant conspiracy theories, and has frequently used X to amplify his message in the past. If corporate media fail to confront such misinformation, they effectively acquiesce to its corruption of the popular consciousness.
Ultimately, it’s up to corporate media to make a decision about what journalism means to them. They can’t escape making a decision with significant political consequences—political consequences are coming no matter what. But they can decide whether they care more about not appearing political to Trump supporters, or about protecting millions of people—and the health of the US economy.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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Trump’s threats of tariffs on Canada, China, and Mexico have wreaked havoc on US relations with its closest trade partners. While the tariffs against Canada and Mexico have been deferred by a month, lasting damage has likely been done to US relations with the only countries with which it shares land borders. The fallout of the trade spat is already remaking Canadian politics, with many wondering whether the dispute has truly ended given Trump’s repeated calls for the US to annex its northern neighbor. How will all of this shape Canada’s already tumultuous political situation, with Justin Trudeau having just announced that he was stepping down as the country’s Prime Minister, with a high-stakes national election in October looming, and with Canada taking its own rightward political turn led by Pierre Poilievre? What impact will these trade wars have on working people across North America, and how can we fuse our common struggles across borders?
Andrea Houston of Ricochet Media, Desmond Cole of The Breach, and independent journalist and founder of On The Line Media Samira Mohyeddin join The Real News for a cross-border discussion on US-Canadian relations, and the urgent need to build solidarity among US and Canadian workers in the face of Trump’s destabilizing agenda.
Studio Production: Cameron Granadino, David Hebden, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream. President Donald Trump sparked waves of panic, confusion, disbelief, betrayal, and anger this weekend after announcing on Saturday that he would be imposing 25% tariffs on imports from Mexico and Canada and a lower 10% tariff on Canadian oil, natural gas, and electricity. Trump’s announcement also included new 10% tariffs on Chinese goods. Now these are in addition to existing tariffs on Chinese products and already two thirds of all US trade with China is around under 20% tariffs, which Trump imposed during his first term. And the Biden administration actually raised tariff rates to a hundred percent on electric vehicles, 50% on solar cells, and up to 25% on select products like EV batteries, critical minerals, steel, aluminum, and face masks. Now, Canada and Mexico are the two largest trading partners of the us. China is the third.
Together they account for over 40% of all imports into the US according to data from the United States International Trade Commission. Now tariffs are taxes imposed by the government on imported goods, and those taxes are paid to the government by the American buyers of those foreign goods. And often those higher costs are passed on to the consumer either because prices for the same goods are now higher and businesses just don’t want to eat those costs themselves. Or because domestic supply of those goods decreases as a result of the tariffs and the demand in price in the domestic market increases Either way. The point is that we would feel the brunt of it. Now, Trump repeatedly waved away concerns that the cost of his tariffs would be born by regular people already hurting from punishing inflation and an ongoing cost of living crisis on Friday before announcing the new tariffs. Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that tariffs don’t cause inflation, they cause something else. Let’s take a listen.
Donald Trump:
Tariffs don’t cause inflation. They cause success. They cause big success. So we’re going to have great success. They could be some temporary short-term disruption and people will understand that.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So that short-term disruption is worth it, and these tariffs are necessary according to Trump in order to correct what he has long called an unfair trade arrangement between the United States and the rest of the world, and to supposedly force America’s neighbors and trading partners to do more to stop illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl into the United States. And the White House actually said on Saturday after announcing the tariffs, the extraordinary threat posed by illegal aliens and drugs, including deadly fentanyl, constitutes a national emergency. Under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, president Trump is taking bold action to hold Mexico, Canada, and China accountable to their promises of halting illegal immigration and stopping poisonous fentanyl and other drugs from flowing into our country. So Trump’s tariffs on all Chinese products already went into effect at midnight on Tuesday and Beijing quickly hit back as the New York Times reports, the Chinese government came back with a series of retaliatory steps including additional tariffs on liquified natural gas, coal, farm machinery, and other products from the United States.
It also said it had implemented restrictions on the export of certain critical minerals, many of which are used in the production of high-tech products. In addition, Chinese market regulators said they had launched an anti-monopoly investigation into Google. Now Canada and Mexico, on the other hand, managed to avoid the same fate as China. For now, at the 11th hour after this whole melodramatic Trumpian spectacle played out into Monday, president Trump spoke with Mexican president Claudia Scheinbaum and Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, and agreed to a 30 day pause on his tariff threat. At 5:00 PM on Monday, Trump posted to truth Social. I am pleased with this initial outcome and the tariffs announced on Saturday will be paused for a 30 day period to see whether or not a final economic deal with Canada can be structured fairness for all he wrote in all caps. So Trump’s line about reaching a final economic deal with Canada is pretty much a direct sign that this was never just about immigration and fentanyl.
And minutes before Trump’s announcement on Monday, Canadian Prime Minister Trudeau posted himself on the platform X. I just had a good call with President Trump. Canada is implementing our $1.3 billion border plan, reinforcing the border with new choppers, technology and personnel enhanced coordination with American partners and increased resources to stop the flow of fentanyl. Nearly 10,000 frontline personnel are and will be working on protecting the border. In addition, Canada is making new commitments to appoint a fentanyl czar. We will list cartels as terrorists ensure 24 7 eyes on the border launch a Canada US joint strike force to combat organized crime, fentanyl, and money laundering. I have also signed a new intelligence directive on organized crime and fentanyl and we will be backing it with $200 million. So what does this deal with Canada to avoid this week’s tariffs actually mean in practice. What deals are going to be struck and what concessions are going to be extracted in the future under Trump’s tariff threats?
What the hell is going on and what does this all look like from the Canada side? How will all of this shape? Canada’s already tumultuous political situation with Trudeau having just announced that he was stepping down as the country’s prime minister with Canada now facing its own high stakes election in October. And with the country like many around the world, taking its own hard right turn and with a very Trump like, but also very uniquely Canadian, far right figure ascending in Pierre Pev, what impact will these trade wars have on working people across North America and how can we help each other understand what’s happening with an international perspective and how can we fuse our common struggles across borders? We’re going to dig into all of this today, and I really could not be more honored and excited to have this incredible panel of journalists, media makers, colleagues, and collaborators joining us today from across the border in Canada.
And joining us today, we’ve got Samira Moine. Samira is a journalist and broadcaster and founder of On The Line Media. We’ve got Desmond Cole. Desmond is a journalist based in Toronto and he is currently working with the Breach, an independent media outlet in Canada. He is also the author of the bestselling 2020 book, the Skin. We’re in a Year of Black Resistance and Power. And last but certainly not least, we’ve got Andrea Houston, who has spent more than two decades as a journalist, human rights advocate and journalism instructor. Andrea is currently the managing editor of Ricochet Media in Canada. She is also an instructor at Toronto Metropolitan University School of Journalism where she developed and teaches Canada’s first ever queer media course. So Samira, Andrea Desmond, thank you all so much for joining me on The Real News today. It’s been a hell of a week, but I’m so grateful to have you all here. Thank you.
Andrea Houston:
Thanks for having us
Maximillian Alvarez:
As always. I wish it was under better circumstances, but I could not think of a better panel to help us dig in to all of this. And before we really dig into the real meat and potatoes of the deal that was struck this week and what this all means moving forward, I want to kind of do a quick round around the table and kind of take us back to this weekend. And I want to ask what this all looked like and felt like from where you guys are sitting because after Trump’s announcement on Saturday, like he was squeezing lighter fuel onto a barbecue, Trump escalated fears about what’s behind this massive impending trade war with Canada when he posted on Sunday on truth social, we pay hundreds of billions of dollars to subsidize Canada. Why? There is no reason Trump says we don’t need anything they have. We have unlimited energy, should make our own cars and we have more lumber than we could ever use without this massive subsidy. Canada ceases to exist as a viable country. Harsh but true. Therefore, Canada should become our cherished 51st state, much lower taxes and far better military protection for the people of Canada. And he writes in all caps, no tariffs. So Samira, Desmond, Andrea, what do you see when you see our president posting batshit stuff like this? Walk us through what this weekend was like for you. Samira, let’s start with you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean it’s just full of sound and fury signifying nothing. Canada’s not going to become the 51st state. It’s just absurd. We do just on a daily basis, there’s about $3.6 billion worth of trade coming across the borders. So America needs Canada just as much as Canada needs America. What I can say though is that what’s really interesting is seeing this Canadian nationalism because we’re not really rah rah rah, cis boonah type people here. We’re quite muted in our patriotism. So there’s a lot of bilocal happening, grocery stores, putting signs, showing you exactly what is and isn’t Canadian. These are Peruvian grapes that I’m enjoying. So that’s been really interesting to watch. I didn’t go through the weekend thinking, oh my God, the tariffs are coming. That is not is something that scares me, but I’m seeing sort of the ripple effects of the politicians here and how they’re responding. Like our premier here in Ontario manufactured hats saying Canada is not for sale and all the politicians are finding ways so that they could flex their patriotic muscles. That has been really interesting to watch for me.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, it’s like truly the Trumpian age where everything is a branding opportunity for Christ’s sake. Andrea, what about you? And then Desmond, let’s go to you.
Andrea Houston:
I think for me like Samira, I was less focused on the tariffs and more focused on some of the other announcements that were coming out that were absolutely gut wrenching and sickening and heartbreaking all at once. What we’re seeing right now is a fire hose of news. We’re just seeing constant bad announcements, bad decisions and executive orders meant to confuse and overwhelm us. So it’s really what I was really focused on was the USAID cuts and the loss of foreign aid and the impacts of that, the devastating loss of life that we’re going to see. I sit on the board of a small NGO in Uganda and L-G-B-T-Q-N-G-O in Uganda, and it’s just one of many that will likely see the impacts of this. Everything from HIV positive people not getting their meds, which could result in a generation of babies being born who are HIV positive because their mothers didn’t get the medication for even a pause.
That is the devastation that that’s can have. That is really what I was focusing on and absolutely in pain over what this is going to have on a global stage. We are seeing an unelected unaccountable non-American who is directing some of the most important political person in the world and how it impacts the lives of everyday people, not just in America but around the world. He’s even called USAID evil. This impacts 25 million people who are living with AIDS around the world, hiv aids, who are suddenly without warning, cutoff from lifesaving medications. This is nothing short of a crime against humanity. Honestly. All of this has been in many ways predicted this is all playing out very much in how at least I have been saying it’s going to play out. And many people that I’ve gone to parties with have heard me talking like We’re going to see a dictator probably rise in North America. Trump is going to come back. Trump is going to win again. To me, this is not shocking. All of this is really watching the history of especially the last 10 years, shows that this has all been written out for us. We’ve seen that the patterns of this. So it’s really surprising to me how so many Americans seem really blindsided by all of this. This is an assault on democracy by far right extremists, and I think the only way we have to fight against it is doing exactly what we’re doing right now, is talking in very frank terms about what we’re seeing. We’re seeing a dictatorship rise.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that was beautifully, powerfully put. Desmond, how about you, man? What was this weekend like for you? What are you seeing when you’re seeing all this shit?
Desmond Cole:
Thanks for the invitation Max, and it’s really great to be here with Samira and with Andrea. The circus is back in town, isn’t it? I here we are and I have been really, I think that the game of people like Donald Trump is to suck all the energy from the room is to try and force everybody to pay attention only to them. Nothing exists except what they want. Trade is no good because trade benefits two sides instead of only the United States. Me, me, the baby trying to grab every toy at the same time. It’s just, we’ve known what this is about and we’ve seen it before. I find it exhausting. So it’s not about just pretending it’s not happening and tuning it out, but I have been trying since last weekend to think about what are the things that are going to be missed in the kind of wake of this crisis?
What are we on a domestic level in Canada marginalizing while we turn so much energy and attention towards this threat of tariffs. We have a provincial election happening in Ontario right now. Our premier, Doug Ford wanted initially to have an election early. You can call your own elections here in the parliamentary system of Ontario and of Canada. So Doug Ford chose to decide to have an election earlier than the end of his term, and he wanted to run against Justin Trudeau, the Prime Minister because Justin Trudeau is very unpopular and very weak right now. And so Ford’s idea was, I’m going to have an election and I’m going to kind of campaign against this other guy in another jurisdiction who will make me look strong by comparison of then of course Justin Trudeau announced that he was resigning, so now you can’t campaign against him anymore.
What do you do? And here comes Trump, and here comes the tariff threat. And so Doug Ford says, ah, I’ll just pivot to running against the president of another country and I’ll talk about how I’m going to keep you safe from him and all of the threats that he poses to business and to our economy. And it’s working out quite well. I have to say strategically for Doug Ford, the only problem is that we have a dramatically underfunded healthcare system in Ontario that’s been devastated by Covid and no one’s talking about it. We have, I don’t even want to call it a housing crisis because the housing situation in Ontario is happening on purpose and to the benefit of landlords and developers, but against the interests of particularly tenants. We have an explosion of homeless people, of tents popping up in every town and city across the province of Ontario because people cannot afford to pay rent anymore.
These things are becoming secondary to how do we fight Trump? How do we all fight Trump even if the premier, for example, doesn’t negotiate directly with Trump on a daily basis? And that’s not his job. It’s still all kind of funneling down towards this conversation. And we’re also seeing things like Pierre Pev has been mentioned, the conservative leader who wants to take over for Justin Trudeau, and we’ll probably be having an election at the federal level shortly. That conversation has shifted as well because Pierre Pev for what two years now has been telling us that the next election in Canada was going to be about whether or not we have a carbon tax.
And he can’t do that anymore because this conversation about tariffs and protecting ourselves from America has become so dominant that it’s like if you don’t play into that paradigm now, you’re not really talking about anything. So it has changed the conversations that we’re having here politically, and I don’t think that that’s for the better because while we do have to address the issue of tariffs and our trade situation with the United States, we’ve got a lot of other things going on in this country. We can’t live or die by whether or not we buy fruits and vegetables from our country instead of America. Whether we support Galen Weston and corporate billionaires in Canada instead of supporting corporate billionaires in the United, that’s not going to really materially change things for us.
So I had some fun on Twitter on Sunday memeing about having to give up my cherry blasters and Oreos because of this intending trade war. And I do try to have a little bit of fun and lightness with it because I don’t want to talk about this shit. I want to talk about the things that I do as a journalist on a daily basis that relate to immigration, housing, policing, things that are affecting people in their local communities, the rates of welfare and disability. I want to talk about the things that allow people to live a decent life here on the day to day. And again, I’m not saying tariffs don’t factor into that, but we cannot eshoo the rest of our political responsibilities to fight the president of another country.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I think that’s a really powerful and poignant point and something that we mention
Maximillian Alvarez:
On a previous live stream with Hassan and Francesca Fiorentini and a subject that I spoke with Sarah Nelson about the international president of the Association of Flight Attendants. And Sarah, let’s not forget, became a household name during the Trump led government shutdown in 2019 when she called for a general strike to end the shutdown. And within a day the shutdown ended after 35 days, the longest shutdown in US history. And out of that example, Sarah really gave us a poignant lesson that you were articulating there, Desmond, is that we cannot define our struggle solely by how we respond to Trump. We have to have a sort of shared basis of understanding of what we are fighting for as working people, what our needs are and our methods of getting those needs met. It can’t just all be reactive. We have to be moving forward and advancing the clearly defined causes that unite working people across red states, blue states union, non-union, and even across North America and beyond.
If we don’t have that shared basic understanding of what we’re fighting for, then we’re going to be exhausted by the end of year one of the Trump administration because all we’re doing is fighting against what’s coming and there’s always more coming. So we’re going to talk about this more as the stream goes on, and I want to kind of, before we talk about the details of the trade deal and what this portends moving forward, I want to use a few minutes here to address some of what you guys were already bringing up because we have folks tuning in across the United States and even in Canada. The Real News was actually founded in Canada, so it’s all in the family here, but we know that folks in the US and Canada do not have the shared basis of understanding of what’s going on in Canadian politics right now.
And so I want to just spend a few minutes here clarifying our terms and letting folks know, especially here in the US what the basic context is. What do they need to understand right now about Canadian politics for the rest of our discussion to make sense? You mentioned Paul Ev, we mentioned the upcoming elections and how this is already changing the dynamic. Do we all have a shared understanding of what a tariff is? So let’s take just five to eight minutes here to just sort of clarify any terms that we feel need to be clarified for everything else to make sense. So Samir, let’s start again with you.
Samira Mohyeddin:
A tariff is a tax on goods coming from another country. That is what a tariff is. Actually. I’m constantly looking up what a tariff is, but this is not something that just affects Canadians. When you put a tariff on us, it affects Americans. What is so asinine and absurd is that Trump never talks about the fact that the tariff affects the domestic business that buys that product. So American business owners will be just as affected by high tariffs on Canada. That’s the absurdity of what Trump is doing. But that’s never talked about, unfortunately, when he talks about this. And then at the same time, you’re seeing very different reactions to this imposition of tariffs when if it comes from the different political parties here, poly, for instance, has taken this route that many people have talked about before, but which is to reduce the barriers that are here between sort of provincial businesses.
So we have provinces here in Canada and there are barriers that they’re pushing to have taken away. For instance, if I’m in Ontario, I can’t get wines from British Columbia because the LCBO has this sort of monopoly on what comes in and what goes out. So that’s sort of the route that Paul is taking in pushing back on this. But everyone is sort of wearing a different patriotic hat in looking at how to respond to tariffs. And then you have Mark Carney who’s this sort of showing himself as being the outsider he’s supposed to take over. He’s the new running for the liberal leadership. We have a leadership race here. Also, as you said, Trudeau has stepped down. So there is that aspect too. Carney was the running the Bank of England. He was running the Bank of Canada before. So these, everybody is sort of coming at this in a different way, but I really firmly believe that Trump is just doing this whole tariff thing to divert attention away from a really a coup that is taking place within America.
And I know that some people say, oh, he is just an idiot. I say that at times, but I firmly believe that this is dangerous. I really think that people do need to respond to what is happening and what Trump is doing. And if it’s not taking to the streets, I really think that something needs to happen in the US and I hope this is a bit of a wake up call, not only for people in the United States, but for people in Canada. I have a lot of friends in the food industry, for instance, who for years have been talking about us producing, being more self-reliant in terms of production on food products in supply chains. I firmly believe that this needs to be a bit of a wake up call for all of us.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean it’s pretty wild to be having this conversation while an unelected oligarch and the richest man in the world and his techno fascist Silicon Valley oligarchs who are cheering it all on are storming my government an hour away. But what we’re trying to do on these streams is channel our focus. Our focus is a form of resistance. As we said. If we’re all just sort of frenetically responding to the endless bad news that’s coming, we can’t stay focused on a given thing. And so of course we are focusing today on Trump’s trade war, the tariffs, the relationship between the US and Canada. But we can’t ignore the fact that that conversation is happening in a context where the corporate led is happening as we speak. So we’re trying to kind of balance those two things, of course. But yeah, I really appreciate you kind of underlying that
Samira Mohyeddin:
Point. I’m only saying that because I’m only saying that because I just keep thinking of what Andrea said about the global implications of this sort of beyond Canada and the us. I mean, she brought up USAID for instance. It’s not just Trump. I mean you saw Marco Rubio today, Elon Musk yesterday saying they’re thieves. I mean, this is very dangerous and this is how fascism starts. This little trickles keep coming at you until you’re like a massive wave and you don’t even know what to focus on, right? Because there’s so much coming at you all the time.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And with all that, it’s even easier to lose again, the sort of context we need to understand any given subject like the tariffs here. And so I guess in that vein, are there more points here that folks watching in the US need to understand about the rise of poly ev, the kind of right word turn and just the key political issues in Canada right now that we should get out on the table before we kind of dig into the deal that was struck this week?
Desmond Cole:
Well, can I try a couple of things maybe in terms of myth busting, Trump has been saying repeatedly that there is all of this fentanyl, particularly flowing from Canada into the United States. The numbers that we have here in Canada is that in 2023, sorry, between 2023, October and September, 2024, the United States seized 19 and a half kilograms of fentanyl coming across the border from Canada. Fentanyl we know is one of the most potent drugs out there. So 19 and a half kilograms of fentanyl can certainly do a lot of damage, but I could fit 19 and a half kilos of fentanyl on the desk that I’m sitting in front of. If you compare that with Mexico, US border agents seized about nine and a half thousand kilograms of fentanyl from the Mexico US border. I don’t think I could fit that on this desk. And that’s not to scapegoat Mexico, by the way, because most of the drugs coming in the United States are coming through ports and places that are just normal business areas. They’re coming on planes. The idea that this is just a strictly border issue is a complete fabrication of Trump. He has also
Maximillian Alvarez:
And smuggled in by Americans.
Desmond Cole:
Sure, of course.
But Trump also says there’s all these people pouring into the United States. He loves the specter of so-called as he wants to say, illegal people. I reject that term out of hand. We’re talking a lot about goods being able to move across borders. People ought to be able to move across borders freely as well. But again, it’s just a myth that there are all of these people entering the United States from Canada without any kind of permissions or visas or supervision. What’s actually happening and has been happening throughout the Trump administration for a long time, but particularly during Trump, is that when he does these anti-immigrant fear mongering, when he says he’s going to get ice to deport 20 million people, they actually come to Canada, they come to our country. It’s the opposite of what he’s saying. So that’s another maybe important thing for American audience to know.
And again, I’m not saying that because I want to demonize anyone crossing any borders. I’m just trying to tell people what the facts of the real conversation here are. And maybe a final thing for people to think about is that this idea of trade between two countries, Trump says that there’s a huge trade deficit between Canada and the United States, meaning that services and goods go across the border both ways, as Samira was saying. But basically the United States exports more goods to us in Canada, then it receives back the other way. And for Trump, that’s a huge problem. Like, sorry, I’m sorry, I’m getting it backwards already. See, because I’m not an economist, the trade deficit is, I had to even write notes because it’s not like I talk about this stuff every day, but basically there’s an imbalance in how much the united exports to Canada versus how much it imports. And Trump thinks that that’s really bad. The only thing is when you buy goods from another country, you get the goods. It’s a trade. That’s the whole idea. So this idea that Canada is somehow screwing over the United States, or I think in the clip that you played, max, that were being subsidized? No, that’s called business, right? I don’t have a trade deficit with the grocery store because when I go to the grocery store, they feed me and I have food in my house.
But again, to this narcissist called Trump, as long as someone else is getting an equal fair exchange, it’s a ripoff. America should get all the benefits, every benefit should come to America and no benefits should go to anyone else. Everyone should buy America’s goods, but no one should receive any benefits back the other way. So I think it’s important for people to understand trade, not as some zero sum thing the way that Trump is trying to paint it, but this is one of the greatest traders. It is the largest actually trading partnership in the world. And the idea of doing these punitive tariffs, Europe and the European Union is essentially founded in part on the premise that this destroys countries. This makes countries want to go to war with each other. This makes it so much more likely that there’s going to be political strife and instability. So when you start fucking around with tariffs and trade, you’re making other kinds of problems and conflicts between your allies by the way, far more likely.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I’ve got two more clarifying points I want to kind of throw in there, building off what Desmond said, and then Andrea, I want to kind of come to you after that and ask if we could talk a bit more about how this is already reshaping the political landscaping Canada as we head into the federal elections later this year. Sure. But two other,
Andrea Houston:
Can I, oh, sorry. Oh, please. I was just going to jump in just on something that both of them was talking about with regard to trade and that these are just taxes. And it’s actually something that the left in Canada at least many, many years ago, back when the trade deals were first being crafted, the left in Canada was talking about imposing tariffs on many of these American companies back then. And maybe we would be in a different scenario today if say American tech companies had tariffs or taxes imposed on them when they were first rising up, maybe journalism wouldn’t be on the chopping block the way it is currently. There’s a lot of industries, oil and gas immediately comes to mind that we’re not taxing them nearly enough. In fact, we give them money, we give them subsidies. So we give them billions of dollars in subsidies.
So I think you’d find a lot of people on the left in Canada and probably in the US as well, would be very much in favor of raising, dramatically raising the taxes and tariffs on some of these industries, lumber and all these other things that we do trade as countries, the harmful industries. I just want to make sure that that was put out there and especially with the Online News Act here in Canada, that we really, there’s a lot that pro tariffs that we could be doing that we can’t talk about right now because we’re inundated with terrible Trump news.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And let’s not kind of throw the baby out with the bathwater. Tariffs are a commonly used tool. It could be used for many purposes. I mean, the United Auto Workers Union President Sean Fein just came out with a statement this week like saying that the UAW is in favor of tariffs that are going to help the auto manufacturing industry. They’re not like blanket bad or blanket good one way or the other. But FE did also say that he explicitly rejects workers in America being used as political poise in this trade war to demonize immigrants and further fascist agenda. So there is more nuance here than what we’re getting in a lot of the news reports and certainly from them what we’re getting from the White House. So we want to be clear about that too. Building off what Andrea was saying. And we also got to be clear about one other thing when it comes to tariffs here, because the tariffs are not just Trump’s method of diplomatic, strong arming.
They are in fact a key policy that makes the rest of his project work going all the way back to his previous administration. Let’s not forget that the singular like achievement, the biggest achievement from the first Trump administration was a giant tax cut in 2017 that the Congressional budget office estimated at the time would cost $1.9 trillion over 10 years. And Trump has already vowed to make the 2017 cuts permanent and to even add on more tax cuts in his new term. And these are tax cuts that overwhelmingly benefit the rich and corporations. These are tax cuts that are coming on top of the Bush era tax cuts from 20 years ago. All of this is eroding the tax base that pays for the shit that our government needs or that it is spending money on. And we got to make up for that loss somehow, especially as the Trump administration, like the Biden administration before that keep shelling out money to the military industrial complex.
Trump wants to build his border walls, mobilize like law enforcement, all of that costs money and tariffs are one of Trump’s main answers. The problem of where do we get the money when we’ve been cutting all the taxes of the rich and eroding the American tax base for so long? That’s where you and I come in, as we’ve said consumers, people in these countries working, people like you and me are going to feel the brunt of these tariffs, especially if they’re not offset with increased manufacturing and all that stuff. So, and when those costs are passed on to you and me, it’s not just that we are the ones who are being hurt by the trade war, it’s that the pain that we are feeling in our wallets is paying for these goddamn tax breaks for the rich. That is also another thing to talk about here when we’re talking about tariffs and who they’re actually hurting.
That needs to be understood before we move forward. And also, as Desmond kind of pointed out, and Samir did as well, there is a distraction element here, and Trump already signaled that he claims that these tariff threats were to fight illegal immigration and the flow of fentanyl. And then on Monday when he struck this deal with Shine Baum and Trudeau immediately said that we’re going to pause for 30 days until we have this new economic plan with Canada. So it wasn’t about immigrants and it wasn’t about fentanyl or it wasn’t just about those, it’s about restructuring the relationship between these countries. And that may help explain Trump’s ish, like joking, but deadly serious sort of lines about Canada should become the 51st state. I recognize this line as I’m sure you guys do, having grown up in the same generation. Let’s not forget, as I’ve said on this stream, I grew up deeply conservative.
My conservative friends and I in the early aughts loved punching Canada as the 51st state or America’s hat, right? I mean these sort of tired, old conservative jokes are constantly recycled through Trump’s mouth. And so there is an element there that I think we also need to pay attention to when Trump makes these proclamations and invokes like that outdated sort of bullyish humor. What he is trying to do is basically take school yard dick measuring bully stuff and scale it up to the level of international diplomacy because that’s what he wants out of Canada, for Canada to become the sort of subservient sidekick held under America’s arm, getting a nogi and giving us whatever we want. And that’s what he needs the relationship between Canada and the US to be for so much of his other sort of policy goals to actually work. So like Samir said, Canada’s not actually going to become the 51st state, but in invoking that kind of line, Trump is doing this.
Schoolyard bully politics is going to have real long-term implications that are going to not just affect Canadians and Americans, but are going to ripple across the world. So with all of that, I want to turn to what this is going to mean for Canada and Canadians in the coming months, right? We’ve already sort of addressed the fact that this is kind of hitting like a bombshell in an already tumultuous time in Canada. I wanted to ask if we could dig into that a little bit more, and Andrea, I want to come to you and then Samir, then Desmond. But yeah guys, give us a little more, tell us a little more about who Pierre Pev is, what these elections represent, how the new Trump administration is changing the political dynamic in your country.
Andrea Houston:
I mean, Pierre Pollara is somebody that is a type of leader that Canadians are not used to. This is not a traditional Canadian political leader. He could be described as the most online political leader that we’ve ever seen in how he conducts himself, how he runs his campaign. It is very American to a lot of Canadians. And with regard to Polly ever and his rise in Canada, again, you can point to our history as the roadmap for this very similarly, how we can point to American history as the roadmap for Trump. While Canada has certainly done more to look back on our history and the road to reconciliation, we have a truth and reconciliation process that we have gone through, but it’s barely scratched the surface. And there’s a reason why it’s called truth and reconciliation, not truth reconciliation and accountability.
Many people in Canada, myself included, and people in my circles, I put the blame for where we are right now on the shoulders of both liberals and NDP in many ways, especially the NDP for not responding to the moment and not standing up to poly in ways that would have maybe been a clear resistance to this kind of onslaught. And I’m talking back when he first started to really rise up as the leader around the trucker protests, there was moments when we could have had a different outcome to the road that we’re currently on. The NDP had numerous opportunities to swing extremely left doing the kind of policy initiatives that Desmond talked about with housing and climate and populous policies that would’ve really launched a challenge to poly era and the kind of populism that he has put forward that is clearly popular in Canada, that especially out west, this loyalty to oil and gas, connecting the oil and gas industry to Canadian patriotism and the sort of dominion that we do see coming out of the histories of colonialism and white supremacy. It’s all connected, right? When you study these systems, it’s not surprising where we are right now in both of our countries.
Both countries have undemocratic voting systems and our leaders have done everything to maintain that status quo. Even in Canada, when we had a few elections ago, the liberals ran on changing the voting system. That was the main point of 20 fifteen’s election saying this will be the last run on first pass. The post first thing they did when they were elected is they reversed that policy and like, Nope, we’re not going to do that after all. As soon as they figured out that if they did change the voting system, then it would ensure that it wasn’t just a liberal and conservative likely majority government in power. So all of these moments of opportunism, these missed opportunities from the left have all played into this. And then of course, this fragmenting of the left, the populace has also played into this. We don’t have a solid anti-war movement to stand up against Trump. Where are, where’s the media to really highlight the left in Canada? I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen really left wing perspectives on our mainstream media. So we have only ourselves to blame for creating an environment that is fertile for a far right extremist like Pier Pra
Maximillian Alvarez:
Samir, Desmond, anything you want to add to that
Maximillian Alvarez:
Before we talk about what comes next?
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, Pierre Poly is a man for these times, and I firmly agree with Andrea that we created this monster because I don’t think people responded to him the way they should have. He has really become a figure, he’s almost like the little brother that Trump wouldn’t let in the room when they were growing up together. Pierre Pev recently did this interview with Jordan Peterson, and I think it was like 12 hours long. I couldn’t sit through the entire thing, but it was all about woke and DEI. And these are the same things that you’re hearing in the US across the administration right now in the United States. Woke is the enemy. Diversity, equity, inclusion are the reasons why planes are going down. This is what we’re actually seeing replicated in our country. And a lot of the politicians who know that it’s wrong, and I’m speaking about the liberals and the NDP are not pushing back on it the way they should be.
I know that a lot of the things that Pierre Pev says are ridiculous, but they’re also dangerous because they’re not being taken seriously. And it’s unfortunate because in a lot of ways I like to think that Canada is better than that, but we end up just replicating what our neighbors to the South are doing politically, unfortunately, because you have figures, and I don’t know if we’re going to touch on this, but I think it’s really important that Gaza, Palestine, what’s happening over there has really influenced and affected our politics here. A lot of our politicians here in Canada are using what is happening in Gaza as a platform for themselves to try and garner support in the federal election that is coming up. And a lot of them are making some big mistakes in the way they’re responding.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, yeah, say a little more about how,
Samira Mohyeddin:
I mean, you’re seeing people like we have a member of parliament here named Kevin Vong who runs as an independent in the federal politics. He has really made this his like thing. He even traveled to Israel and we had a whole bunch of our politicians, our prime minister didn’t go, but a whole bunch of these low level politicians going over to Israel and then chirping all over social media about this person is an antisemite or that person is an antisemite and they’re getting a lot of support from communities because of that, right? And we’re not seeing our more left-leaning like the NDP party rising up and speaking out against this in the way that they really should be. They are not responding in the way that they should be. You’re hearing people, say, for instance, recently the reaction to Trump saying that we’re going to own Gaza and we’re going to make a Riviera of the Middle East there, et cetera.
Paul F for instance, didn’t even respond to it. He had nothing to say, but the liberals came out and said, we believe in a two state solution. How can you say you believe in a two state solution when you don’t even recognize officially the other state, meaning Palestine, right? Canada voted at the United Nations to not recognize it. It didn’t recognize Palestine as a state. So how can you say you believe in a two state solution when you don’t even recognize one of the states that you say that you believe there’s a solution to? And the NDP Jagmeet Singh did come out and say that this is a preposterous thing that Trump is saying, but why are we only reacting when says something the same? NDP is not allowing their member of provincial parliament, Sarah Jama, to come back into the fold. So there’s a lot of talking out both sides of their mouths here. And I don’t think people are taking what is happening seriously, because a lot of people are winning on the progressive conservative side are winning writings because of their responses to what is happening in Gaza.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I want to hover on this point for a second. It reveals a lot for the larger conversation that we’re having here, and we’ve got another 30, 40 minutes here on the stream. So I want to kind of zero in on this because as you all have said, there are so many kind of mirror reflections of the political reality in the US that are being reflected in Canada. But there are also many ways in which Canada is not the United States, and so many times, especially here in the us, we just kind of assume what’s happening here. And the conditions that we have here are the same as they are up there, and that is not always the case. And for example, the latest statistics just came out showing that the United States is now in single digit union density numbers, meaning that less than 10% of workers across this country are in a union.
Canada has around 30%, which is where we used to be at our height back in the fifties and early sixties. So you can’t just talk about the labor movement in the US and Canada as if they’re the same thing. So the point I’m trying to make here is that when it comes to the role of Gaza Israel and its genocidal US and Canada supported war on Gaza and the right of Palestinians to exist, I wanted to ask in terms of how that is shaping the political scene in Canada. What factors are the same Israel’s lobbying influence relatively similar in Canada as it is here in the United States, is the crackdown from universities to the media on pro-Palestinian anti genocide voices following the same kind of playbook is the involvement of big tech. You guys have had Facebook intervening in your news feeds in a way that we haven’t in the past couple years. So I just wanted to kind of through the question of Gaza, sort of try to answer some of those other questions about how circumstances in Canada are very similar to what they are here and also how they are not.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We should start.
Yeah, who do you want to take that on? I mean, in terms of the university campuses, it’s identical. Not so much. We haven’t gotten to the place where we speaking about Zionism as a protected class of people. I think NYU and Harvard both now are seeing Zionists as a protected class like any other race, gender. So we have a political ideology being protected and that is unheard of. We haven’t done that here yet. However, I can tell you that there are numerous professors, numerous students who have been chided for speaking out against genocide, dean’s, provost bringing people in, and the students who were on the University of Toronto encampment were actually taken to court. They were part of an injunction that the university got to have the encampment disbanded. So we don’t have things here like apac, but we certainly have cja, the Center for Israeli Jewish Affairs.
They may not be doling out the same amount of money that politicians in the US get, but they’re still getting free trips to Israel and they’re still getting some funding. So there is, it’s like a little baby replication. We just don’t have that type of funding. But we haven’t gone there yet. The UFT has not adopted ira, the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism, which conflates antisemitism with critiques of Israel, but we certainly had our Canadian Broadcasting corporation use that term, use that definition when they recently gave a workshop to their journalists. So these things are happening here, just not on such a grand scale.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. Desmond, what about you, man? I see you shaking over there. You got a lot to say. It doesn’t have to necessarily be about Gaza, but yeah, hop in here. Are there other kind of aspects that are similar or distinctly different that you want to highlight or other kind of areas in which this is reshaping the political map in Canada that you want folks to pay attention to?
Andrea Houston:
Sorry, is that for me?
Maximillian Alvarez:
So I was tossing it to Desmond just because I feel like I skipped Desmond by accident.
Desmond Cole:
No, no, no. That’s okay. I mean, it’s public, so I might as well say it on this stream. I’m one of, I believe just over a hundred people in the city of Toronto anyway who have been arrested, and I’m still facing charges because I participated in a Palestine solidarity demonstration last January. We are being treated for these acts as though we are not just allegedly breaking the laws of Canada, but that we are also doing something specifically harmful to the Jewish communities in Canada. That’s the allegation, and I say that specifically because there’s been a lot of conflation, as Samir said, with this idea that if you speak out for Palestinian life and liberation in this moment, it’s because you are an antisemite because you want something specifically bad to happen, not even around Israel, but to Jews all over the world, wherever they happen to be, including in Canada, an absurd claim. So I’ve been caught up in that. I’ve been reporting on other people who have been caught up on it. Samir has been doing some of the best work in this country around that, and we salute that.
It’s been a really awful climate. Canada’s been an enabler of the United States and of Israel. Canada sent weapons to Israel in the last 15 months, but has been doing that for the partnership has decades old Canada’s policy towards Israel and Israeli aggression inside of Gaza and Palestine. They align pretty, I think directly Israel makes the decisions about what’s going to happen in that region and it’s allies, Canada, United States, Germany, France, great Britain. They say, what do you need? How can we help you to the detriment of the Palestinian people? It’s a little different here, I think because the Muslim population, the Arab population, not so much the specifically Palestinian, but the Muslim and Arab population in this country has a fair amount of influence. A growing, I would say, amount of influence in Canada, has people elected in government, has large organizations that have a voice and is part of a lot of conversations that can put a lot of pressure on the government.
And I think Canada has tried to tread a little more carefully than Joe Biden did in the United States during his time. Canada has tried to portray itself as being more even-handed, even signaling towards the formal end of this conflict that maybe it was going to start withholding some weapons in some circumstances that maybe it was going to change its votes at the UN in some circumstances in order to signal to people that it was getting frustrated with Israel’s ongoing siege. But for the most part, I think those things have been similar between the two countries. I think I actually wanted to go back to this idea of the trade and the things like this because we were talking about Pier Polley of the leader of the federal conservative party. So he just recently came out this week with a statement about what he wants to do with fentanyl.
He’s trying to appear as though he’s taking Trump’s fake claims about fentanyl very seriously and that he’s going to do something about it if he’s elected prime minister of Canada. So now he has a proposal that says if he becomes Prime Minister, he’s going to propose a legal change that if you’re caught selling 20 to 40 milligrams of fentanyl, you’ll automatically receive a 15 year sentence. So we are reviving the war on drugs that has existed in this country for decades that we’ve been trying to fight so hard to get rid of. And then he says, if you have 40 milligrams or above, then you get an automatic life sentence. This is his proposal to try and demonstrate how tough that he is. And I bring that up. I want to demonstrate that there are consequences for how people say that they’re going to kind of pursue remedies to this trade war between the United States and Canada that are going to have really, really bad harmful outcomes, not for because this policy by Paul, he’s so stupid.
He claims that that policy is to target who he calls drug kingpins, a kingpin carrying 20 milligrams of fentanyl. That’s somebody who’s probably got that amount of drugs to feed a habit, to sell a little bit to some people around them and to have some for themselves. That’s what 20 milligrams is. It’s not a kingpin of drugs, but because of the specter raised by Trump and because conservative forces in this country want to be seen to respond to that, now we have a renewed kind of front on the war on drugs when we should be going the complete opposite direction. So I just want to say that to talk about some of the impacts that it has domestically on us to have to deal with these things.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I really, really appreciate those points and I
Maximillian Alvarez:
Do in this kind of last half hour, really want to kind of channel our focus on what this is all going to mean for working people, regular people who are trying to get by in a world that is making it increasingly hard for us to do so. And now we got all this shit kind of piling on top of us, but for your average viewer, I want us to talk about what we’re facing and how we actually see our fates as necessarily intertwined. And whatever we do to resist this and get out of it is going to need to be done with a kind of cross border sense of solidarity that allows us to see beyond our own domestic sphere. So I want us to talk about that in this last half hour, but by way of getting us there, Andrea, I did want to toss it back to you in case you had any other thoughts about kind of like yeah, how this week’s bombshell is reshaping the political map, how we got the current political map in Canada that we got. Why is PEV ascending and so popular? What explains this right wing drift that maybe we haven’t covered yet? Anything like that that you wanted to get on the table too?
Andrea Houston:
Well, the short answer is white supremacy. That is the short answer. I mean it’s oil and gas I think is a big part of this. I think that the binds both of our countries, and we can see that in the groups that have been at the forefront of the Project 2025 document, the Heritage Foundation and the Atlas Foundation, and a lot of these sort of far right groups that are, some of them started in Canada, some of them started in the us but they definitely work in both countries and they’re very much interconnected in the lobbying efforts that they do. So I really think that we have to follow the money good journalists do and we follow that money through the groups that are advocating and lobbying and pushing for these wild policies, these crazy policies. I mentioned American exceptionalism before, but there’s also Canadian exceptionalism, right?
This idea that we as North American white people have a more claim to the land, more claim to policy, more claim to direct how things should happen around the world, where the money should flow and who should benefit. And I think that when we really name this, this is not just an American problem, this is a Canadian problem. And again, it’s how both of our intertwined histories of really played out. I actually do think that Canada could become the 51st state. I actually do think that there is a real possibility that Canada could be annexed, that I think our resources, particularly our water and our oil and gas and natural minerals, like the minerals that power the EVs and phones and all that other stuff, the green transition as it’s like to be sold to us, I think is extremely appealing. Whether Trump is smart enough to understand the wealth that he can glean from Canada, the people who surround him most certainly do. And I think that that is a plan for him. Whether he knows how to strategically to execute that plan, I don’t know. But I do think that that is absolutely on the table is something that could happen. And I don’t know what Canada could really do to stop it, to be honest with you,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Burn the
Andrea Houston:
White House, we’ll burn down the White House again. Again.
Maximillian Alvarez:
But is I think a really crucial point, right? Because we are in a new era. I mean, whatever it is, we know it’s not the old one. This is not neoliberalism, this is something new. This is a 21st century where the sort of inviable kind of discourse that we grew up with is very viable right now, by which I mean the very concept of national sovereignty and just people a country’s right to exist and not be invaded. I mean, we grew up sort of believing that, yeah, we don’t do that anymore, but here we are in 2025, Trump’s talking about taking Greenland, taking back the Panama Canal, annexing Canada is the 51st state. Now, of course, the tragic comic irony of all this is that indigenous people here in North America will remind us. People in the global south around the world will remind us that we have been violating other countries, national sovereignty and right to exist in perpetuity.
I mean, that is what we have been doing through our imperial exploits for decades. But that also helps explain what’s happening now because folks watching may have heard the refrain that the empire is coming home. I mean, it always comes back. And that is in many ways, sort of what’s so shocking to people right now. We could 20 years ago be perfectly fine with compromising and violating the national sovereignty of a country like Iraq, but now when we’re talking about doing it to Canada, suddenly everybody is spooked because it’s so close to home. But to Andrea’s point, I mean, I think it really does behoove us to sort of consider this as not just Trumpian bluster and not just sound in fury, though it is a lot of that too. But when Trump says he wants to take Greenland, it’s not for nothing. It’s because Greenland has all the goddamn minerals that we want and want to take for our economic future as green technologies become in higher demand to say nothing of the shipping roots and military strategic positioning of Greenland, as climate change gets worse and as the ice melts and opens up new routes that we want to have control over.
So there is a logic underlying these ridiculous claims about Trump wanting to take Greenland or even Trump wanting to take Canada, whose biggest export is crude oil, right?
Desmond Cole:
I mean, okay, can I say something though? Because yeah, maybe there’s a certain logic there, but these are allied countries. These are countries that as Trudeau was trying to remind everyone the other day have gone to war together and have died alongside of each other. These are countries who are part of the five eyes. These are countries that are part of nato. The idea that Canada is the number one threat or conquest in the eyes of the United States right now is it’s pretty fucking stupid. I’m sorry. At the end of it, we’re not the target we’re being played with so many other countries are being played with because I think that there’s a certain strategic kind of chaos that Trump is trying to sow, as has already been said here, because it also helps him domestically looking like he’s beating up on all these other countries, helps him look strong at home, and it distracts from things that are happening at home.
It’s very convenient for him to do that. We just can’t formulate a politics about worrying about whether or not we’re going to be annexed. Why would you annex your partner when they’re having such nice, Trump was the one that negotiated the Kmsa trade agreement just like five years ago with Trudeau and with Mexico. The idea that he’s not getting everything that he needs or that country isn’t, or that they’re going to upend everything. We have to remember some of these things when Trump says, I’m going to put troops in Gaza. Does the United States actually want to send people there? Does the man who campaigned on saying that all the wars were going to end and all of this nation building was going to stop? Is he really going to be able to turn on a dime and convince people, actually we just have to start putting boots on the ground and all these other parts of the world.
We’re going to be following this little toy on a string for the entire four years if it goes like this. I do think we have to be somewhat careful. And just to the other point that was being brought up before about leftist or leftish entities in Canada, like the new Democrat party, the NDP, I’m guilty of what I’m about to say. So I’m speaking as much to myself as I am to anyone out there listening. But the only way that the NDP is ever going to accept a leftist agenda is if there’s essentially a socialist takeover of that party or if they collapse and there’s a new party that comes up in their place. That’s it. The people who run that party today don’t share the socialist values that maybe some of us do. They just don’t. And they’re not going to take socialist positions out of political opportunism.
I’m saying that knowing people like Sarah Jama, who’s been brought up in this conversation, who are formerly part of the NDP, who really believe this stuff, who are actually trying to shift politics in a more socialist egalitarian direction. Those people are the minority. And the reason that I still kind of orient a lot of my thinking towards the NDPs. I know that there’s people like that in there, and it’s like y’all are trapped because you’re in an entity that wants to bring you along for the ride, but is not about to move to the left. And so when I say this, I’m thinking for Canada, and I’m thinking for Americans who had some hope in Bernie Sanders a little while back and who’ve been looking to the Democrats and being really disappointed that the Democrats don’t stand up to Republicans, we have to stop asking political entities that don’t explicitly have a socialist or leftist agenda to do so out of pragmatism. It’s just not going to happen.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that’s really, really clearly and powerfully put, brother. I think something that we all need to sit with and
Maximillian Alvarez:
Something that folks here in the states are trying to kind of work through too. Because when we say the left, I don’t know who that means here or what that means. I think a lot of folks are kind of waking up to the reality that we and others have been warning about for years, which is if Trump comes back, or even if Harris wins and the Democrats prove that they can win without the Bernie wing of the party, then where does the left live? What is the left? Are these terms even useful anymore in the kind of world that we’re living in? That’s a subject for another live stream. But these are the questions that we were kind of asking ourselves right now. But more than that, and again, sticking with the sort of theme here, we’ve got to be looking and thinking and acting bigger.
The left is not, there is no sizable left in the United States to mobilize that even if it was mobilized around a united front back in the forties, could take on the raid forces that are taking over the government right now. It does not exist. And so if you want to fight this, and if you want a world that is different from the one we’re careening towards, you need to stop trying to organize the left. You need to start trying to organize the working class. You need to get out there and talk to your neighbors, workers union, non-union, anyone and everyone that you can to bring us around kind of a shared basis of fact-based reality, like basic human rights and principles, just like the most essential shit that actually unites us. But as far as what that means on the institutional left in this country, again, even if we have an answer to that, it’s a combination of DSA nonprofits, community orgs, all of which are doing invaluable work, but none of which actually have the size and capacity to be a robust bull work against what’s happening right now. So I think we do need to really have some hard questions.
Samira Mohyeddin:
We need small acts from millions of people, and I firmly believe that that is what needs to happen. I mean, I’ll just give you an example, max. We live in a country here in Canada that has a lot of monopolies on different sectors. So for instance, I mean Desmond brought up the Western family. This is a family here who owns multiple grocery chains that really just, and they were involved in, what was that bread they were fixing? The price of
Desmond Cole:
Price fixing. Yeah,
Samira Mohyeddin:
Okay. That’s a reason to have a revolution if you’re in France, people in Canada need to understand the powers that they have. There was a whole movement, the chain is called Loblaw. There was a whole movement to boycott Loblaw right now when these tariffs, they were talking about them. There is Independent Grocers Federation here in Canada, 7,000 independent grocers. I firmly believe that people should just stop shopping at these big grocery stores and support the mom and pop shops at the corner. Trust me, their produce is amazing. They may not have certain things, but you don’t need that right now. I really think that people need to start doing these small acts of being more conscious of where they spend their money, what they do with it, and who they’re giving it to. It makes a difference. BDS, and I’ll bring this back to Gaza again. BDS makes a difference. Companies like Starbucks and McDonald’s are hurting right now, and they have been upfront that it’s hurting them. So I think people need to realize the power of their own pockets.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, I mean, I think that’s a great sort of lead into this kind of final turnaround, the table, right? I mean, I wanted to ask a, we did pose the question right about the deal that was struck between Canada and the US this week, and it feels like there’s a lot of sound in fury. There are some additional resources being committed, but a lot of the details of this new economic plan between Canada and the US have yet to be seen. We’re going to find out in the coming weeks, but I think one of the key questions that’s come out of this discussion is what other concessions will Trump be able to extract out of Canada and Mexico to align them with his own policy priorities to avoid these tariff threats in the future? And so that’s a question that we all need to be asking ourselves moving forward.
So if any of you have something to say on that, this last term would be our time to do it, but also the soul of the kind of question I wanted to ask given that we’re all in the media. We all work in independent media. We are all trying to report on the stuff that matters, and we all believe that people with good information are the stewards of democracy. They’re the ones that we’re trying to inform so that they can safeguard the society that we’re trying to build here and take care of and all that good stuff. Point being is that as media makers, as people in North America facing this shit, and as people who live in countries, that so much of what happens in the coming years here in the United States is going to depend on how Canada and the US respond to it and vice versa. So with all that in mind, how do we get ourselves, everyone watching right now, the folks that we do journalism for, how do we get people to see our fates as intertwined and to see these domestic issues through an international lens, and what opportunities does that give us to resist what’s coming? So there’s a lot there. Please take whichever question you want. Don’t answer all of them, but anything you guys want to say in this final round, Samir? I’ll start again with you and then Andrea, then Desmond,
Samira Mohyeddin:
Close us out. I’m talking too much. Start with Andrea.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right, Andrea, we’ll start with you.
Andrea Houston:
Okay. I mean, I think the left has to start with a new baseline. I think we need to recalibrate what it means to be on the left and problematic with that term as it is, obviously. But I think the baseline for any movement going forward, for us to collaborate and come together, cross borders, but also globally, we have to agree on democracy and human rights as a baseline, and that has to also be an anti-capitalist analysis. The problem with, as Des was talking about with the NDP and has been a concern for the left in both of our countries is that the left is an anti-capitalist. The Democrats in your country are not anti-capitalist. They’re very much very capitalist, which is breeding all of these issues. We can’t all agree on something when we’re talking about Gaza, whether we’re talking about housing, whether we’re talking about corporations and corporate tax rates, whether we’re talking about any of these issues, climate change, the fundamental facts of climate change, we can’t agree on because of capitalism.
We have to make concessions to corporations. We have to create these kangaroo courts that corporations can go and say, well, these climate activists are cutting into my profits and therefore they can take activists to court. Activists are going to jail because they’re standing up for human dignity, for the possibility of future generations to have a future. God forbid. I think we need to recalibrate, recalibrate what it means to be a left wing person, what it means to support democracy and human rights. We’re living in not just tumultuous times politically, but tumultuous times in our world. I don’t have to tell anybody listening or anybody on this panel the reality of the climate crisis, but it’s so much worse than what we’ve been told so much worse. We are living in a collapse, and I think we need to recalibrate how we talk about the climate crisis.
We are living in an era of collapse and everything that we’re seeing from the rise of dictators, from the shift to far right politics all around the world, to the rise of anti-gay laws, an increase in anti-gay laws in places like Uganda to everything that we’re seeing right now can really be traced back to we’re living through an era of collapse. Meta crisis is actually what it’s called by climate scientists. And so a lot of what I’m seeing is filtered through this lens, and I agree with Samira small acts, we need much more people to come out and do those small acts, take to the streets, join us in protest, stand up locally, get to know your neighbors, mutual aid, all of those things. But we also need big acts. I’m reading how to blow up a pipeline right now, and I know I’m late to the game, but I want big acts, want to see people take big swings.
I want people to really put their bodies on the line, their lies on the line. That’s what it’s going to take. I wouldn’t ask anybody to put themselves in danger, but I think that we are going to all face that in our life at some point over the next five to 10 years, whether we actually see the collapse of our democracy. I think that’s possible. I think that’s on the table, whether we’re seeing collapses of economies all around the world, we’ve already seen that more displaced people, more refugees, more economies in disarray. And so it’s really important that we recalibrate how we talk about these issues and we stop being a slave to capitalism and we stand up and say, unapologetically what this means and what is coming down the pipe. Don’t be afraid to be that annoying person at parties. I know I have been for many, many years, so I think it’s totally fine, but I do think that building the big tent of workers of different movements, L-G-B-T-Q, people, women, civil rights movements all around the world, we all have to come together under a uniform to just help humanity and human rights and democracy.
That has to be the baseline
Samira Mohyeddin:
And not be cynical about those two words too, because we’ve allowed the right to take those two words and ruin them where you see a human, the entire rules-based order and all of these things, I mean, the West went and died in Gaza. So these terms that we’re using, we have to sort of breed life into them again because they’ve been killed in such an abhorrent way. And I’m all for big X, big X, but I’m just one person. What I can say though, before I let Desmond come in here, is to support your independent local media support, the people who are talking about these things, who are covering these things. You have to pay for journalism. It’s not free. We do this work. It’s exhausting. Sometimes there’s only one or two of us. It may look like there’s a lot of us on a team, but sometimes there’s only one or two people, and we’re trying to bring these stories to you. They’re important. And when we do, don’t call us alarmist. Shit’s crumbling, and we’re just sounding the alarm. So don’t shoot the messenger.
Desmond Cole:
A couple of things. So when it comes to what’s going to happen now with the relationship between the two countries, I don’t want to make too much of a big prediction here, but I do kind of feel like Trump has played a lot of his hand when it comes to Canada and the United States. I don’t think what he’s going to be dangling the tariffs sword of Damocles over our head every month for the next 18 months or something. Like he went for it. He got some disruption. He got some really weak concessions because remember Trudeau already said he was going to do a bunch of things at the border before this threat, and when he announced the Fentanyl czar and all these things, he just announced all the things that he had already promised he was going to do. So I don’t know that Canada’s going to be reaching back into the bag to find all of these new concessions for Trump going forward.
I think he’s gotten a lot of what he’s going to get already. And like I said, I don’t think harassing Canada for the next four years is his plan. This is good for him for now. He’s getting what he needs right now. We’re in week four of this man’s administration, and I don’t even think we’re four weeks in. It’s just felt that way, right? So I think we’ve seen a lot of what we’re going to see on this, and things will hopefully start to recalibrate. I do agree with Samira that there are opportunities now that this conversation has sparked a weird kind of nationalism. It takes a lot to get Canadians fired up about living in their own country, but somehow this conversation has managed to do that. And if we’re able to take that energy, right, the breach just had an interesting podcast conversation last week with Stuart True, who’s at the Canadian Center for Policy Alternatives, and he was talking about this really feels like Green New Deal conversations.
Again, where we’re looking at, for example, we say Canada’s not for sale, and then we say, please buy our oil. Please keep buying our oil. Don’t mess with oil. You know what I mean? It’s very, very silly. But if we weren’t so oil reliant as a country between our relationship with Canada and the United States, that might make us a little secure in the future, that this wouldn’t be able to happen again in the same way we wouldn’t be able to be threatened again. So there are opportunities to do things like that. There are opportunities not simply to buy local. And by the way, there was this really funny list out there telling people to go and for example, don’t shop at Tim, it’s American. Sorry, don’t shop at Starbucks because it’s American shop at Tim Horton’s, a good Canadian brand, which has been owned by Brazilian company for several years now, right?
So we got to brush up on our nationalism. There’s a lot of phony shit going on out there right now. People don’t actually know as individuals what to do, nor should they, because it’s not your individual responsibility to stop Trump and as tariffs. But you might want to try and use this opportunity to start thinking about how do we support people to have decent jobs in Canada, not just buy some products that have a Canada flag on them, but actually supporting better labor in this country. Because what corporate interests want to do in this moment is they want to be like, you know how we should fight back against these tariffs? We should lower taxes. We should get rid of all of the regulations. We should do all of the things that corporate agenda always wants us to do, and that’ll help. But I think we need to actually be pushing backwards in the other direction and being like, wouldn’t it be great if Canada was a place where we were providing better jobs?
Wouldn’t it be great with all of these threats of deporting people in the United States? If Canada was thinking how we could support people, how are we going to support queer people, particularly trans people who are so under assault in the United States? A lot of them are going to try and leave America, and no one can blame them for doing that because of all of the legal crackdowns that are happening. I know people in this country who have been making plans before Trump got elected. How are we going to support trans people coming here and starting a new life because it’s not going to be safe for them to exist as themselves in the United States any further. These are things that we can do as we continue our work and try to continue taking advantage of this moment and what this moment is revealing to us about some of the problems of how we live.
But yes, I agree of also this idea of small acts can mean a lot. Working in our communities locally can mean a lot. It can mean a lot more than people sometimes give it credit for. We talk about a lot of big issues on conversations like this, and it might feel alienating to people, but there’s always something happening in your local community, whether that be around housing or rents that are really expensive to pay, and tenant organizations getting together to support one another, or whether that be about local food issues. There’s always something happening in your neighborhood where you can begin or continue planting these seeds, meeting people, having conversations and organizing. So it’s not all bad news and it’s not all bleak, and we wouldn’t be able to continue doing this work if we didn’t have some hope that something could change in the future.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh yeah, I think that’s a beautiful
Maximillian Alvarez:
Point to end on. And we are coming up on our time here. And before we wrap up formally one more time, I really want to thank our incredible guests, Andrea Houston of Ricochet Media, Desmond Cole from the Breach and Samira Moine of On The Line Media. And I want to personally urge all of y’all out there to please support their work and support their outlets because we need them now more than ever, but our work cannot continue without your support. And that is certainly true for us here at The Real News as well. We need you to become a real news member today. Your membership and your support directly translates to more journalism, more live streams like this, more interviews with frontline workers and people brutalized by the police, indigenous Land defenders, more documentaries from Gaza, India, Canada, the US and beyond. We’ve been publishing this stuff year after year, but we can’t keep doing it without you.
So don’t forget to subscribe to our channel. Hit the bell icon so you never miss one of our new reports. And remember, we do not get YouTube advertising money or accept corporate funds. Our survival depends on you. You keep us going, and together we can keep covering the stories that matter, the stories that others won’t cover. And as we close out today’s live stream, I got one more thing I want to say on the topic of independent media and the importance of journalism that still believes in truth and showing the truth and taking together everything that we’ve been talking about tonight and everything that’s going on around us right now. These Trump trade wars, the mass deportations, the emboldened fascists, and outright Nazis who are mobilizing online and offline right now Trump’s horrifying and publicly stated plans for Gaza. These Musk led techno fascists in Silicon Valley oligarchs carrying out a coup on what’s left of our democracy, taking over and shutting down whole government offices, accessing and potentially exposing basically all of our sensitive data and our bank accounts.
And when you add onto this, the fracturing of the digital media ecosystem that we had when Trump was last elected eight years ago with top-down decisions from big tech about injecting AI slop and misinformation into our feeds, or removing news on Canadian Facebook feeds with people fleeing platforms like X and Facebook that they feel are compromised, and with pages and accounts on those platforms getting banned left and right, and with all these pieces falling into place, setting up a free speech, smashing McCarthy, McCarthy Witch hunt on pro-Palestine, anti genocide voices, protests, media outlets, nonprofits. I honestly can’t tell you. I know what’s going to happen in the coming months and years. None of us can, but I want to close with what I do know after interviewing workers for years, I know and have seen the indelible truth upon which the entire labor movement is based, that none of us has the power to take on the bosses alone, but we do have the power to take them on together as individual subjects, as individual media outlets.
None of us can fight what’s happening and what’s coming on our own. We are simply outmatched and outgunned, and that is a fact, and that is why every move these oligarchs make every message they send through their right wing propaganda machine is specifically designed to put us in the powerless position of atomized, isolated, angry, anxious, distrustful, and fearful individuals. They need working people to be divided for all of this to work. They need us to not give a shit about Canadian or Mexican workers so that we cheer on these tariffs that are going to hurt them and us. They need us to not give a shit about immigrants or to actively see them as our enemy for these fascist immigration raids to continue and these concentration camps to be constructed, all while the billionaires, bosses, corporations, tech firms, and Wall Street vampires are robbing us blind.
They need us to not give a shit about union workers and the value that unions have for all of us so that we remain indifferent to the fact that Trump is doing corporate America’s bidding right now by smashing the National Labor Relations Board and effectively rendering most of labor, law and workers’ rights null and void in this country. You want to resist this. Start by resisting every urge that you have, every urge you’ve been conditioned to feel, resist every tempting command you get from people like Trump and Musk and Polly Ev to see your fellow workers as your enemy, Canadian workers and their families, Mexican workers, Americans, immigrant workers, trans and queer workers union and non-union workers. Workers who live in red states and who live in blue states. They want us to focus on what makes us different. So we don’t realize how much more we all have in common with each other than we do with fucking billionaires and zealots who are smashing everything and refashioning our government right now and our economy in order to keep empowering and enriching themselves at our expense.
But we need to do more than resist right now on the individual level. We need to build a real and durable infrastructure that will enable us to survive and resist long-term as a collective, an infrastructure that is welded together by solidarity and tangible commitment. We journalists and media makers across the us, Canada, and Mexico need to form a North American Free Press Alliance with the explicit goal of not only defending journalism, free speech and the people’s right to the truth, but to create a common ground where working people across our countries can find informational stability, where we can find each other and work together on a shared plane of fact-based reality and commitment to basic ass human rights. We need to harness our existing tools and assets to build the infrastructure for a network that will connect us across borders, languages, and algorithmic echo chambers, provide collective protection against censorship and provide working people in North America with news stories, context and analysis that helps us understand what’s happening in our own countries and across the continent through an internationalist lens and with an unwavering commitment to truth class, solidarity and humanity, and a livable planet.
And that network must not and cannot be existentially dependent on these oligarch controlled social media platforms. Doing this, I would argue, is not only necessary as an emergency measure to ensure our survival, but it is necessary for all of us to fulfill our duty to the public as journalists, and to carry out our missions as media making outlets that exist to inform the public with the truth and to empower people to be the change that they’re waiting for. But we won’t do any of this if we just sit and wait. I know that much. I know that competition between journalists and media outlets right now will be a death sentence. Solidarity and collaboration will be our salvation if we choose it. If we don’t stand together, if we just focus on protecting our individual organizations and our subscriber lists and followers, it will be that much easier to pick us off one by one. And for your own sake and for all of ours, don’t let them take action now. Get off the sidelines and get into the fight before it’s too late for The Real News Network and for the whole crew here who has made this live stream happen. This is Maximilian Alvarez signing off. Please take care of yourselves and take care of each other, solidarity forever.
Thank you so much for watching The Real News Network, where we lift up the voices, stories and struggles that you care about most, and we need your help to keep doing this work. So please tap your screen now, subscribe and donate to The Real News Network. Solidarity forever.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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Donald Trump’s first month in office has pummeled communities in the U.S. and across the globe with a whiplash-inducing set of illegal actions and rapid reversals. Trump’s latest about-face is on his long-promised tariffs. Shortly after announcing hefty new taxes on foreign imports, Trump placed the bulk of them on pause. For 30 days, the U.S. will delay implementing a 25 percent tariff on Mexico…
This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.
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Tech giant says in updated ethics policy that it will use AI in line with 'international law and human rights'.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Partnership will allow South Korean tech firm to use ChatGPT for its artificial intelligence services.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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From the attempt to broadly freeze federal grants and loans to high-profile firings at the National Labor Relations Board, TRNN Reporter Mel Buer and Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez break down this week’s chaotic directives from the Trump administration and what they will mean for working people and the labor movement. Mel and Max also lay out what we know about the tragic collision of a US Army Black Hawk helicopter and American Airlines regional passenger jet, Trump’s broad attacks on federal workers, including air traffic controllers and members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee, and how those attacks have been going on long before Trump. Then, from the historic union victory by Whole Foods workers in Philadelphia to Kaiser Healthcare workers on strike in California, we will highlight key labor stories taking place beyond the chaos in Washington, DC.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream. Alright, week two of the new Trump administration has been a characteristically chaotic one, but make no mistake, while this all feels kind of familiar, because we have the last Trump administration to compare it to from the avalanche of executive orders and the baffling press conferences to the spectacles filled Senate confirmation hearings, the past two weeks have brought us undoubtedly into historically unique and unfamiliar territory. And we can see that just by looking at this graph from Axios, comparing the current administration’s pace and number of executive orders to those of passed administrations, including I might add the first Trump administration. As Aaron Davis notes in his first nine days in office, president Trump unleashed a flurry of executive orders. Unlike anything in modern presidential history, Trump is reshaping the federal government with a shock and awe campaign of unilateral actions that push the limits of presidential power.
Only President Biden and President Truman issued more than 40 executive orders in their first 100 days in office. So far, Trump has signed 38 after less than two weeks, and the shock and awe effect is very real and it’s very intentional. Faced with a barrage of executive orders and administrative shakeups, some that are purely theatrical bs, others that are deadly serious and could trigger full on constitutional crises from pulling the US out of the Paris Climate Agreement, yet again to declaring a national emergency at the southern border to pardoning the January 6th insurrectionists. There’s just too much here to process at once our brains and our hearts get overwhelmed and we end up immobilized. But our goal with these live streams and with all of our real news productions is to do the exact opposite. And that’s why today my real news teammate Mel Buer and I are going to focus in on a few key stories from this week that have direct implications for workers, our lives and safety, our rights in the workplace, and for the labor movement writ large. And Mel and I are going to try to use our skills as reporters with long histories of covering labor, including on our weekly podcast, working people to answer your questions and give you the information, perspectives and analysis that you need so that you can process this, you can get mobilized and you can be empowered to act. Alright, so Mel, what are we digging into?
Mel Buer:
Okay, so we’re starting with three pretty major headlines from this week. The first is going to be last night’s horrific plane crash in dc. It’s the deadliest on US soil in over 20 years where 64 civilians and three military service members are dead. And there’s a lot we don’t know and new information is coming through at a pretty fast clip. So we’ll lay out what we do know and why that matters. Then we’re going to get into the most pressing headlines coming out of the White House as it relates to Trump’s executive orders, namely the funding freeze fiasco and what that means for workers here in the us. And then we’re going to talk about the recent shakeups at the NLRB General Counsel, a bruso firing and the abrupt termination of the NLRB chair Gwen Wilcox and what that means for the future of labor organizing in this uncertain moment. When you look at these stories together, they reveal a lot about how this administration sees government workers, contractors, and the working people around the country who depend on their services, how it’s approaching governance, using union busting and anti-worker tactics from the private sector, and how explicitly targeting the agencies and precedents that exist to enforce labor law and protect workers’ rights has become kind of a key issue for this administration.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright, so let’s dig into the most pressing story that we’re all thinking about right now. Let’s talk about what we know and what we don’t know about this horrific plane crash. And we are going live right now at 4:00 PM on Thursday as I speak, president Donald Trump is holding another press conference his second today, it’s a live briefing on kind of an FA debrief. So there’s going to be things said at that briefing that we can’t comment on now, but we will of course follow up on this story and we’re going to try to give you as much of what we know. Now, let’s start with the basics. What do we know what’s happening? The AP reports, the basics here. A mid-air collision between an Army helicopter and an American Airlines flight that was coming from Kansas killed all 67 people on board the two aircraft.
And the reasons for this crash, the causes of it are still under investigation. That is the official word. So we want to temper all of our collective expectations here and allow for the investigatory process to proceed so that we can get more information. Now, of course, we’ll comment on this in a minute that hasn’t stopped many people in the government from opining and blaming and directing blame at what they perceive to be the causes of this horrific crash. And we’re going to talk about those in a second. So AP continues in their report, which was updated this morning. At least 28 bodies have been pulled from the Potomac River already. Others are still being searched for the plane that carried 60 passengers and four crew members included a number of children who were training for to be in the Olympics and skating one day. This is a truly, truly tragic and horrific loss, and those families will never be whole again.
And we send our thoughts and prayers to them and our love and our solidarity because let’s not forget what really happened here. People lost their lives. So John Donnelly, the fire chief of the nation’s capitol, announced that they are at the point where they’re switching from a rescue operation to a recovery operation. This is very similar to what we experienced here in Baltimore of March, in March of last year when the Francis Scott Key Bridge collapsed and Trump and Republicans tried to blame that on DEI too. We’ll get to that later. But there was a harrowing number of hours where loved ones community members were hoping against hope that their loved ones who were working on that bridge, these were immigrant construction workers working in the middle of the night who as we reported here at the Real News Network, received no warning that they were about to meet their deaths in a ship that was about to crash into the bridge they were working on.
So we were in that same wait and see. Mode two we’re hoping to retrieve living people turned into trying to recover deceased people. And as per the official notice, there are no expected survivors. This is a recovery mission, not a search and rescue mission. As Mel mentioned, this is the deadliest air crash over US airspace. Since the nine 11 attacks that happened in 2001. Collectively, those attacks killed 2,996 people on the day of the attack. There’s no immediate word, as I said on the cause of the collision, but officials have said that flight conditions were clear as the jet arrived from Wichita, Kansas with US and Russian figure skaters and others on board, quote from American Airline CEO, Robert Isam, he said on final approach into Reagan National, the plane collided with a military aircraft on an otherwise normal approach. Now, a top army aviation official did say that the Black Hawk crew was very experienced and familiar with the congested flying conditions of Reagan National Airport.
For those who don’t live in and around dc this is a extremely busy airport in a densely populated part of the city that has been increasing air traffic for years. And Mel and I will talk about that more in a minute. But point being is that from the American airline side, from the military side, there appeared to be no interceding conditions like extreme weather that may have caused this crash that we know of so far. Investigators are going to be analyzing the flight data that they can retrieve from these two flights before making their final assessment. The transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, who was sworn in this week, said that there were early indicators of what happened, but he declined to elaborate on those pending a further investigation. Now I’m going to wrap up here in a sec. As I mentioned, president Trump is giving a second press briefing as we speak.
He gave another one this morning. I’m sure many of us saw it or at least saw the headlines to it because in this press conference where the leader of the country is expected to lead, Trump did what Trump does best and blame everybody else without evidence. Trump blamed the air traffic controllers, he blamed the helicopter pilots and he explicitly called out democratic policies at federal agencies. Trump claimed that the Federal Aviation Administration, the FAA, was actively recruiting workers who suffer severe intellectual disabilities, psychiatric problems and other mental and physical conditions under a diversity and inclusion hiring initiatives. So as usual, the typical boogeyman of DEI being like the thing at the root of all of our problems was the thing at the root of Trump’s press conference this morning. And MAGA Republicans have spared, have wasted no time reaffirming this line. And we’re going to talk a little more about that as the stream continues. But those are essentially the basics of what we know and what we don’t right now. This is an unfolding story, but we think it does have a lot to tell us. And so Mel, I want to kind of toss it to you and give us some of the broader context here that maybe people aren’t seeing and they’re sure as hell not hearing from the White House press briefings right now.
Mel Buer:
Well, I think it’s important to kind of note here that just like with our railroad reporting that we did in 2022, that’ll oftentimes what we’re looking at is kind of a breakdown of policy among decision makers, right? We know that the A-F-A-C-W-A and other unions that are involved in the aviation industry have been sounding the alarm about needing to have better staffing conditions at airports across the country. Those conditions have been worsening for at least since 2013. So through successive administrations, including the Trump administration where you had the chance to solve that problem and chose not to, and especially in this DC airport, Freddie Booster, Lois partially and David Soda wrote for Jacobin that lawmakers brushed off safety warnings amid mid-flight near misses and passed an industry backed measure designed to add additional flight traffic at the same DC airport where this disaster unfolded. So really, I think the point that I’m trying to make here is that while the aviation industry is trying to bring more flights into these airports, which are welcome, right?
We want to be able to kind of reduce the sort of congestion in terms of wait times for flights, having more options as consumers for traveling across this country that also needs to come with heightened safety measures in terms of better staffing in the air traffic control towers and unions in the aviation industry have been really fighting for this for the last number of years, just like with our railroad reporting, what we learned with the railroads was that lack of staffing and disregard for really tried and trusted safety measures leads to accidents. And tragically, this is what happened here. That isn’t to say that folks aren’t fighting for this. That’s the big point that I want to make. And I think that unfortunately Trump’s blaming of these various groups really is not to put it as lightly as possible, not helpful,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And it’s also not helpful. Let’s also be clear, right, falling into the partisan trap of trying to blame Trump for all of this too, right? Because as we are trying to show here, and as we show in our work at the Real News, these are longstanding problems that have had bipartisan support for many years. Trump is definitely making these problems worse, but he is not the originator of the problem. And you can see that in the question of under staffing. Now of course, a number of pundits and politicians have pointed to the fact that just last week, Donald Trump put a hiring freeze for federal employees, which would include hiring new air traffic controllers at a moment when we’ve been experiencing an extended air traffic controller shortage. And we’ll talk a bit more about that in a second. But also, of course, like Trump’s firing of high level officials, even the heads of the TSA, the FAA and members of the very commissions that are there to ensure air flight safety.
And so of course the impulse is to look at that and see like, well see Trump did this last week and now this week we have a plane crash. It’s a little more complex than that. As I speak to you now, there is a live update from the New York Times that came out just 10 minutes ago, sparse on information. But the information reads, live update control tower staffing was not normal during deadly crash. FA report says, an internal report suggested that the controller on duty the night of the accident was doing a job usually handled by two people. And so what we are trying to show y’all is that that situation did not come from nowhere, and it is not a situation that is sadly particular to air traffic controllers. This is something that Mel and I hear in the worker interviews that we do in industries around the country, the crisis of deliberate understaffing in critical industries, including those that have a direct bearing on our own public safety.
And with the railroads, Mel mentioned, to refresh your memories, a couple years ago, if we all recall, the US was approaching its first potential railroad strike in 30 years. We had been interviewing railroad workers across the industry, engineers, conductors, signalmen, Carmen dispatchers, all of whom were telling us different versions of the same story, which is that the corporate consolidation, the government deregulation, and the Wall Street takeover of the rail industry had created this sort of process that has built into a crisis over decades where the railroads have become more profitable than ever by cutting their costs year after year after year. And so what does that mean? It means cutting labor costs, cutting safety costs, making those trains longer, heavier, piled with more dangerous cargo, while having fewer and fewer workers on the trains and also fewer and fewer workers in the machine shops checking the track in the dispatch offices.
The point is, is that when these layoffs happen, when these corporate restructurings happen, like these policies are implemented in key industries like logistics industries like federal, like aviation, you are not just firing people, you are removing layers of security that are there for a reason and you’re doing so for the benefit, the short-term benefit of higher profits, while the long-term costs are born by the workers in those industries, the public that is being hurt by them and even by the customers who use those industries, rail shippers are as pissed off as rail workers are right now. So the point just being is that Mel and I hear this in education teacher shortages, more students piled on to fewer teachers leading to worse education outcomes, healthcare hospital workers who have been burnt out before covid even more so since covid, more patients piled onto fewer nurses leading to declining quality of care, treating patients more like just a kind of grist for the mill.
Get ’em in, get ’em out. This is a system-wide problem that we are seeing the effects of across the economy, and we can see it here in this tragic plane crash that has claimed the lives of nearly 70 people. In fact, this is much like the horrific train accident that occurred in East Palestinian, Ohio on February 3rd. The anniversary’s coming up, the two year anniversary of that, and the workers on the railroads warned us that something like that would happen and then it did, just like workers in the aviation industry, as Mel mentioned, have been warning us that something like this would happen and now it has. But we have been sort of dancing on the lip of this volcano for a long time. We’re just waking up to the reality now. And I just want to kind of underline this point by quoting from a really great Jacobin article that was published in 2023 by Joseph a McCarton titled The US is Facing a Growing Air Safety Crisis.
We have Ronald Reagan to thank for that. And again, this was not published this week, this was published during the Biden administration. McCarton makes the very clear point that on March 15th, 2023, the Federal Aviation Administration held a safety summit in McLean, Virginia, gathering more than 200 safety leaders from across American aviation to discuss ways to enhance flight safety. What prompted the unusual summit was by the FA a’s own admission, a quote string of recent safety incidents, several of which involved airplanes coming too close together during takeoff or landing. And McCarton also notes in that same article that a, a recent internal study by the Inspector General of the US Department of Transportation found that 20 of 26 critical facilities, 77% of them are staffed below the FA a’s 85% threshold. So again, don’t get it twisted. What Trump is doing is making the problem worse. It’s pouring gasoline on the fire, but this fire was burning before Trump came into office.
And Mel, as you said, this is something that we’ve had workers in these industries decrying for many, many years. And this is also something that we need to sort of have a long historical view on, right? Because as McCartan mentioned in that article, we do have Ronald Reagan to thank for a lot of this. And I just wanted to kind of hover on that point for a second because as we know, one of Ronald Reagan, president Ronald Reagan’s most infamous acts in his first presidential term was to fire striking air traffic controllers over a thousand of them. It was a significant massive percentage of the existing air traffic controller workforce in 1981. Not only did this sort of unleash a new age of union busting across the private sector and elsewhere, but it also is directly relevant to what we’re talking about here because when you fire that many air traffic controllers, as Reagan did, this was 11,000, approximately 70% of the controller workforce at the time that Reagan fired in 1981 and then tried to replace.
So a point that maybe we don’t think about, but that actually connects to the air traffic controller shortage now, is that when you in one year eliminate 70% of that workforce and then you replace it with new hires in the next two to three, four years, you are creating essentially a generational problem where those new hires in the 1980s are retiring in 30 years, and then the process starts again, where suddenly you have kind of a massive aging out of the existing workforce and a dire need to replace those understaffed agencies. So we are still feeling the staffing ripple effects and the safety impacts that has from Ronald Reagan’s original firing of the air traffic controllers. We have not fixed that problem. And as we’ve said a number of times, like air traffic controllers continue to be chronically understaffed, which means all of us who fly are flying at the mercy and our safety hangs on the overworked shoulders of understaffed air traffic controllers across the country right now. And I don’t know, does that make you feel safe, Mel? It doesn’t make me feel safe.
Mel Buer:
No. I take the train. I already have enough air anxiety. The reality is I think as well when you’re talking about, particularly with the PATCO strike, but in any industry where there is high turnover, there is not really a space for the sort of concentration of expertise. And PATCO is a huge example of this where you have career air traffic controllers who have amassed collectively hundreds of years of collective experience and how to work this industry and do it safely. And you’re training new hires who may or may not have the same sort of experience or you’re shuffling folks into these departments. You’re not going to get the same level standard of expertise. We see it in healthcare, we see it, and really any industry that has high turnover from the people who make your coffee drinks all the way up to the engineers who make your planes that you write on.
So this is a huge problem, and we will discuss this a little bit later when we’re talking about what’s going on in the federal government as well. But that is an important point to make that what we’re seeing with this lack of staffing is really a lack of expertise. The ability to have internally these checks and balances that create the safety conditions that we rely on in order for us to live our lives without fear of falling out of the sky literally. And so that’s a really important point here. And again, unions like the A-F-A-C-W-A and the machinists who work with Boeing are acutely aware of that and are willing and able to bolster this workforce. But you cannot attract a new generation of smart, capable, hardworking, willing people to buy into this industry and provide their expertise to this industry if you don’t have a competitive job to offer them.
And that happens a lot in healthcare as well. So it’s kind of a top-down problem. It’s not that folks don’t want to do these jobs, it’s really is this job going to be doable? Am I going to be able to pay my bills? Is my family going to be okay? Am I going to be able to get a pension? Am I going to be able to do this job to the best of my ability without working 120 hours a week and get paid nothing really functionally for it? And again, these unions are really acutely aware of this issue and are bargaining hard to solve these problems. And unfortunately in many cases, they’re coming up against an intractable management who cares more increasing profits for shareholders than actually creating a workplace that is competitive and that is also operating at a higher standard.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And let’s kind of talk a little bit while we’re sort of closing out this section. It does hook into another key sort of subject that we wanted to talk about today, which is Trump and the Trump administration’s all out attack on federal workers and the vilification of federal workers as nameless, faceless, useless, even evil bureaucrats of the deep state who need to be chucked out, fired, eliminated, disciplined. And if we’re not kind of understanding who those people are and what they do, that may sound good and people are going to cheer on Trump’s policies. But what we’re trying to say here is that we need to have a clear-eyed vision of actually who these people are, what they do, and how it directly impacts our lives. And the point being is that you cannot solve these potentially society, destroying society and periling problems if you are not correctly diagnosing the problem itself.
And that is why the sort of attacks on DEI and using the harnessing of DEI to sort of create an explanation for all of this is really, really sinister, right? Because like I said, they tried to do this when the Baltimore Bridge collapsed. They blamed it on DEI here too when the LA fires where Mel and I are from our homes are burning and have been burning for the past two weeks. And while we’re trying to sort of talk to our loved ones and find out if they’re okay, this whole media cycle is blaming the fires and the destruction on DEI and woke democratic policies. And now this plane crash happens, these people die and immediately before their bodies are retrieved from the Potomac River, Donald Trump is out there from the White House press office saying that it was DEI that caused the problem. And I don’t know how it can get any more obvious that this is political snake oil.
It is a built-in perennial excuse crafted by the very same corrupt business lobbies and politicians who are endangering our lives for profit so that they can quite literally get away with killing us and then blame it on a fictional boogeyman. We can talk about the issues with DEI, we’ve got plenty of them. But trying to explain tragedies like this through a DEI only lens is nuts. It’s stupid. It is ignoring the realities that are screaming in our faces and in the workers who are living those realities and who are telling us what the problem is. And there’s something really telling about that because this attack on DEI and this attempt to turn DEI into the catchall explanation is in fact capitalists their own fake solution to the problem that capitalists themselves have created, capitalizing on the pain that they have caused through decades of rampant union busting layoffs, disciplining of labor, focusing on only maximizing short-term profits for executives and Wall Street shareholders while putting us all at long-term risk by removing necessary safety measures and checks and balances and accountability, the onslaught of deregulation over the course of decades.
And the point being is that I want to be very clear and apparent here. I grew up conservative. I’ve said this many times, I’ve been open about it on our show, on this network. And so I have a living memory of being a Republican and championing other Republicans throughout the nineties and early aughts who kept saying, we need to break the backs of unions. We need to privatize government. We need to unleash the genius of the free market and deregulate as many industries as possible so that the genius of the market can lead us to a better society. I believed in all that stuff. I cheered it on, and it’s like no one remembers that the same Republicans Trump himself included, who cheered this on 20 years ago, the same corporations that didn’t want to take ownership over it are now trying to turn around and blame DEI for the things that they got what they wanted.
And it screwed up society the way that people were saying it was going to. And now the same people who profited from that, the same people who push that policy are turning around and trying to create a boogeyman in DEI and woke him to sort of get off scot free. And we are letting them, the corporate criminals, the Wall Street vampires, the corrupt politicians who have put us in this dangerous position, get off scot free and convince us to blame our neighbors and coworkers and policies like DEI for the problems that they’ve created. And that’s absurd. And I want to bring us to the way to fight. This is not in a conceptual policy only way, but to again, look at the ground level and understand who and what we’re actually talking about and where the problems are and where they are not. And I think that this horrific tragedy does really point us instructively to a couple of core truths and that are deeply relevant as we watch what the Trump administration is doing right now using the corporate crafted language of inefficiency and bloat and overstaffing importing these tactics from the private sector into government.
And it reveals how that kind of thinking from the private market fundamentally misunderstands what and who the government is, right? The evil bureaucrats of the deep state, they are people like the members of the Aviation Security Advisory Committee that Trump fired last week. They are the overworked air traffic controllers that are making sure that our planes don’t crash while they’re getting no sleep. They are the civil servants throughout the government who are being pushed to voluntarily resign and who are being reclassified under Schedule F so that they become at-will employees who are easier to fire. You may not like the government for many justifiable reasons, but without the people who make it work, nothing works for us. And I want to kind of show how the leaders and labor folks in labor that Mel was talking about have actually been telling us this for many years.
On the Real news here, last week I interviewed the great Sarah Nelson, the International President of the Association of Flight Attendants, C-W-A-A-F-L-C-I-O. If you recall, Sarah Nelson became a household name during the Trump LED GOP LED government shutdown of 2018 and 20 19, 6 years ago, it was the longest government shutdown in our country’s history. And Sarah Nelson steps out of the world of organized labor and into the public limelight as this shutdown, which furloughed 300,000 federal workers while keeping 400,000 federal workers working for 35 days without pay. So people like air traffic controllers working all that time while also working second jobs so that they could feed families. We were at the verge of another horrific tragedy like this back during the government shutdown in 20 18, 20 19, but Sarah Nelson and the flight attendants were the ones who were making that point because in DC it was all, oh, this is about Trump’s border wall. This is not about Trump’s border wall. It was the same kind of thing like we’re talking about DEI and woke him now, but we’re not talking about the actual goddamn problem. So let’s tee up these clips of Sarah Nelson speaking to the public in January of 2019, making that case during the longest government shutdown of the US history.
Sara Nelson:
We are here today because we are concerned about our safety, our security, and our economic stability, our jobs for years. The right has vilified federal workers as nameless, faceless bureaucrats, but the truth is they’re air traffic controllers, they’re food inspectors, they’re transportation security officers and law enforcement. They’re the people who live and work in our communities and they are being hurt. This is about our safety and security and our jobs and our entire country’s economic stability. No one will get out of this unscathed if we do not stop this shutdown leader McConnell, you can fix this today. If you don’t show the leadership to bring your caucus to a vote to open the government today, then we are calling on the conscientious members of your caucus to do it for you. There is no excuse to continue this. This is not a political game. Open the government today. We are calling on the public on February 16th, if we are in a day 36 of this shutdown for everyone to come to the airports, everyone come to the airports and demand that this Congress work for us and get politics out of our safety and security it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So I would highly recommend that everyone watching this stream live or after the fact, go watch that full interview that we did with Sarah Nelson, listen to what she says and apply it to the situation that we’re seeing now, especially those final words, that this is not about an ideological battle between Trump, MAGA and the Deep State and woke and DEI. This is about a corporate class of tyrants who are destroying the people, jobs, and agencies that our basic safety and needs depend on. And so there’s something I think really important here about the lessons that unions and labor specifically can teach us about what’s going to happen here, who’s fighting back against this. Mel, I wanted to toss it to you to just kind of give folks a few points about that before we move on to the other stories.
Mel Buer:
Well, it’s like I’ve been saying, unions across this country in small shops, in large shops, in regions, all across the country from a small coffee shop that’s taking on Nestle to the UAW getting plants reopened in Illinois, all of these struggles are sort of tapped into what I think is a really key thing that we as labor reporters pay attention to, which is to say, workers are experts in their own workplace. They know what’s working, what’s not working, because they’re there every day and they have generally pretty good ideas about how to improve these industries for the people who work in it and for the consumers and the individuals who are touched by these industries. So when you see these labor struggles where you might, oh, I don’t know, disagree with tactics or find certain things to be a little odious, or you’re not sure why a certain thing is being offered in a contract or in a bargaining session or on a picket line, you might open up a conversation with those workers if you’re there and ask them why.
It’s important, because ultimately, from the federal government all the way down to the smallest shop in your city, individuals kind of know what’s going on and their ideas might actually improve our lives. And that’s really what the A-F-A-C-W-A is trying to do is what the machinists tried to do at Boeing. I mean, we’re seeing this play out in successive industries all across this country, and even especially now in this new administration that has already sort of styled itself through its actions as being adversarial to the labor movement, it’s important. It’s important for us to pay attention to these things. So that would,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Just to underline what Mel just said there, I mean, again, as two reporters co-hosts of working people who talk to workers about this stuff every single week, if we sound like broken records, we keep hearing the same thing from all these workers and we’re trying to get people to listen to them. But that’s a really, really critical point here. If it feels like there’s no solution to these problems in DC right now, that doesn’t mean there’s no one fighting for a real solution. Over 30,000 machinists, as Mel mentioned, went on strike at Boeing earlier or late last year. Let’s not forget Boeing’s role in all of this. Let’s not forget the Boeing planes that have been falling out of the sky over the past decades and the way the same corporate Wall Street brain disease that took a once the most vaunted airline company or airline manufacturer in the world had the best reputation for its product in the world.
How it went from that to being the laughing stock of the world and the kind of plane no one wants to get on because we’re all terrified that the plane’s going to fall out of the sky. Who’s fighting for that? And how did that happen? It didn’t happen overnight, but the workers who went on strike at Boeing last year, they’re fighting to have a say in that they’re fighting to have a say in the corporate policies that have put all of us at danger, just like the railroad workers were not only fighting for pay for themselves and better time off policies for their families, but they were doing that so that they could actually do their jobs well and safely and not put us in danger when their trains are bombing past our T-ball games. So there is an inherent connection between what workers in specific industries, unions in specific jobs are fighting for that we have a vested interest in, and we should really kind of think about that, not only in terms of why we should support those struggles, but what that says about alternative pathways for solutions when it feels like the bipartisan politics in DC are presenting none.
So just wanted to really underline that great point that Mel made and let’s, we got more to talk about here, but if nothing else, we hope that you take that point away from what we’re saying here.
Mel Buer:
I think a great way to kind of move forward in this conversation is to kind of take a moment here to see what break down what’s been going on over the last week at the federal level. One of the big things, and it’s been probably the most dominant in headlines over the last five days or so, is this funding freeze fiasco that’s been going on. On Monday night. The Trump administration sent out a late night memo essentially freezing all federal grants and not allowing them to be dispersed to the states and organizations that were scheduled to receive them. Keep this in mind when we’re talking about this, as I’m sure you’ve read about over the last couple of days. But these are funds that Congress has already approved for disbursement to all 50 states. State governments use these funds for a wide variety of items, from SNAP benefits to Pell grants for students to research grants and everything in between to the tune of trillions of dollars.
These grants pay the rent for workers, they keep folks employed, they keep families fed, and in the last couple of days, representatives and governors from states all over the country have registered their alarm and outrage at the move, and they began maneuvering to try and kill the order before it had a chance to really be implemented. But I really do want to underscore something here as I would like to read a piece from this memo that was sent out and ultimately rescinded as of yesterday to kind of underscore the breadth of it and also what may have caused some pretty intense confusion. So this is a quote from the original memo that was sent from the Office of Management and Budget, and it says, financial assistance should be dedicated to advancing administration priorities, focusing taxpayer dollars to advance a stronger and safer America, eliminating the financial burden of inflation for citizens, unleashing American energy and manufacturing ending wokeness, and the weaponization of government promoting efficiency in government and making America healthy again.
The use of federal resources to advance Marxist equity, transgenderism and Green New Deal social engineering policies is a waste of taxpayer dollars that does not improve the day-to-day lives of those we serve, this memorandum requires federal agencies to identify and review all federal financial assistance programs and supporting activities consistent with the President’s policies and requirements. And to implement these orders, each agency must complete a comprehensive analysis of all of their federal financial assistance programs to identify programs, projects, and activities that may be implicated by any of the President’s executive orders. In the interim, to the extent permissible under applicable law, federal agencies must temporarily pause all activities related to obligation or disbursement of all federal financial assistance and other relevant agency activities that may be implicated by the executive orders, including but not limited to, financial assistance for foreign aid, non-governmental organizations. DEI woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal.
Now, here’s the issue with this, and this was the issue that many people have pointed out, and that is the subject of many lawsuits as well, is that this is very broad, and I’m kind of taking a little bit of a charitable reading here, but I really shouldn’t. It’s nonsense is what it is. It’s called impoundment. It’s been illegal for many, many years that the federal government, specifically the executive branch, cannot withhold these funds on the basis of political differences, which is essentially what this is when you include things like woke gender ideology, and the Green New Deal. And understandably, 23 states sued to create a temporary restraining order on this, which was a big piece of news on Tuesdays that there were moves from a variety of different places to try and stop the implementation of this directive and ultimately, the executive order as it stands, right? Why does this matter? I mean, this is what running the government a business looks like. It’s not how you run a government max. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s a absolutely ridiculous idea, and I think a lot of people agree.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, again, I’m smiling because as a younger me who used to be a full-fledged Republican loved the idea of running government like a business, and it just kind of baffles me the more that I’ve grown and learned and seen in the world, just kind of how dumb I was to believe that that was a right headed sort of way to look at things. And I’ll kind of touch on that in a second, but let’s step back and when we’re asking why does this matter, there are two key points here that Mel teed up that we really want to drive home. The first reason why this matters is because it is blatantly unconstitutional, but that on its own, sadly, doesn’t mean a whole lot to a lot of people out there today. So if we just say, oh, it’s against the constitution, what do we mean when we actually say that?
If there’s one thing that every four to 5-year-old in this country knows about our country and our national mythology, it’s that America was founded because our ancestors didn’t want to be ruled by kings anymore. They did not. They had spent generations, centuries living under top down futile style king type power structures, and it sucked, right? It was a bad way to run societies. And so we came to this new world and created a more democratic system. I say more democratic, not fully democratic. We know there are plenty of reasons in American history for why we were never a full fledged democracy, but the promise of democracy was meant as a direct refutation of the proven evils and inefficiencies of kingly rule. And so that’s why we have the damn system that we have set up as imperfect as it is, there was a point to it.
And so that’s what we mean when we say it’s unconstitutional, is it is violating that basic social contract upon which this whole country is founded, where a president should not have by definition and by principle, the unilateral authority to just govern by shooting at the hip through executive orders, and totally circumventing the power of the purse that Congress has been democratically endowed with. There is a reason why the house has the power of the purse, why Congress has that power, because it’s meant to be the most beholden to the people, the most representative of the people. And so the should in theory be the ones with that control over how this country spends its money. And so the President, by definition, by principles should not have and does not have the authority to just freeze trillions of dollars that have already been appropriated by that democratic or more democratic system and just decide that they’re going to halt that freezing.
They’re going to review stuff, and they’re going to determine who gets their funding and who doesn’t. What happens in corporations, that’s what happens in, again, king societies run by kings and queens. That’s not what’s supposed to happen in a democratic society, and there’s a reason for that. So when we say it’s unconstitutional and that matters, there’s a really deep kind of principle at work here that we should not be ruled by the whims and unilateral authority of one person. I think that’s a good thing. I mean, again, otherwise, everything that all of us have ever learned in school about our country and why it’s good is wrong. So there’s that. But then there’s also another reason why this matters that Mel mentioned, right? This just really underlines the stupidity, the inappropriateness of thinking of government, like a business thinking of things like the US Postal Service in the terms of the private market and not thinking about the essential service that a functioning postal service provides to a functioning democracy.
That is what the postal service is there to do to make sure people get their damn mail, not just the people who can afford it. And so if you’re judging things like the US Postal Service by its profit margins or its returns on investment, and you’re not including that social investment and that social benefit, that political benefit, then you’re not going to be able to assess the success of that agency or the government writ large. And so, yeah, I wanted to kind of just tee up a clip that we had poll for a previous section, but I think it’s really apt here, but it’s a clip from James Goodwin who is the policy director for the Center of Progressive Reform. Now, I actually spoke with James on when I was guest hosting an episode of Laura Flanders, a show. Shout out to the great journalist Laura Flanders and her show Laura Flanders and friends.
So Laura and I spoke with James last summer about project 2025. Its authors, its plans, but also one particular aspect of Project 2025, which is Schedule F, which is the order that Trump has already brought back in that recategorize, thousands of federal employees who have certain protections that are there for a reason, reclassifies them as at-will employees, the same way that like workers in this country, most workers in this country are, you can be fired like that without just cause. So I asked James what the effect of this was going to be if these federal workers with their worker protections were suddenly made at will employees under this regime, what effect would that have? So let’s play that clip really quick.
James Goodwin:
Yeah. So what makes the foundation of our administrative state is the people, professional, apolitical experts. This is something we started building in this country in the late 18 hundreds to replace what was known at the time as a spoil system. These jobs were essentially done by friends of the president or people in political power, and that was just a breeding ground for corruption and incompetence. This is what Schedule F would do, is it would return us to this system. And so under this proposal, we would take all these experts, these tens of thousands of scientists, engineers, attorneys, what have you, we’d fire them who they’re getting replaced with as somebody who’s somebody whose only real skill is unquestioned loyalty to the president.
Maximillian Alvarez:
All right? So we’re not on the campaign trail anymore. This is no longer a what if situation, this is happening. This is what they’re doing. Now, Russ V, one of the primary authors of Project 2025 is having his hearing right now to be in charge of the Office of Management and Budget so that he can implement the things that he has laid out, and the other authors of Project 2025 have laid out in project 2025 itself, but we don’t have to get into that. The point just being is that let’s talk about this now that it’s actually happening instead of like, is this going to happen or not? Right? The point to really make here is what James said. Again, you can have all the justifiable problems that you have that we have with the government as such with certain government agencies that are not working properly or doing enough to serve the people.
We all get that. But when you take the people who are actually making the government work as much as it is, and you turn them into an unprotected, easily fireable kind of class of employee who are, again, through this sort of memo that was sent out to over 2 million government employees asking them to voluntarily leave the government while also pushing folks back to work in person, trying to get them to leave all reclassifying workers under Schedule F so they could be more easily fired. The cumulative effect here is to purge the government of non ideologically federal workers and restock what’s left of those agencies with Trump aligned loyalists. And this sounds great when you’re thinking in 21st century terms of running government like a business, but as James rightly points out, we’ve had this before. It’s the whole reason that the civil service exists. Because in the 18th century, we had a system that’s working like how Trump and his administration wanted to work now where appointees were loyalists, friends, family members, and it was a corrupt nightmare, and nothing got done, and people were furious about it. So they spent the 20th century trying to get the government to not be that. Now we’re going back. That perspective’s important. That’s why this also matters.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, agree. I think this kind of makes a, I don’t know. It’s a rising mass of corruption that is just getting larger. The farther we get into the Trump administration, they have a very clear policy agenda that they, I think know that they might not realistically be able to slim through via legislative means, which is why the executive orders are happening in this way because they know that many of these bills that they would like to see happen will not get passed. They’ll get stopped. They’ll get sued out of existence. So the best thing they can do is do an executive order. And this is what’s happened with this particular federal funding freeze memo, right? The outcry was really big this week. We had governors going on the TV to say, this directly affects my constituents. These people rely on unemployment insurance and SNAP benefits, WIC and everything else in order to make sure that their families are fed.
I’ve been receiving phone calls from panicked constituents for two days. This is not okay. This needs, there needs to be some pushback. What ended up happening is that there are multiple lawsuits that have been filed, including one where I think 23 plus states filed a lawsuit against this directive. They’re trying to get a judge to grant a temporary restraining order on it after that lawsuit was filed. The White House rescinded that memo yesterday and the White House press secretary leave, it took to Twitter to clarify that it was just the memo itself that was rescinded and not the original order to begin to examine which federal funding could be frozen based on the investigations that they want to do into these appropriations.
Lawyers took that quite reasonably, I would say, to mean that the lawsuits they filed were still worth pursuing. Right. I know there was some confusion on social media yesterday that the memo being rescinded meant that the entire executive order was rescinded, and the press secretary’s clarification on Twitter keyed us into the fact that it was just the memo itself and that they were absolutely planning on continuing to move forward with the directives in the executive orders relating to this. So lawyers made that case to Rhode Island, US District Chief Judge John McConnell yesterday, and they quoted that tweet in their case that despite resending the memo, the plans were still in place to freeze funding at some point in the future, if not in the next week. And the judge agreed and allowed that TRO suit to proceed. So where we’re at with this right now is that the memo has been rescinded, the plaintiffs in this case, for a temporary restraining order.
The lawyers representing 23 plus states refiled their suit last night that seeks to prevent any blocking of federal financial obligations now and in the future, and also prohibits any reiss issues of the now rescinded directive. So the White House can’t, or the Office of Management and Budget cannot put out another memo under different wording. They can’t kind of wiggle their way around it by directing only some agencies to freeze their funding while this TRO is in effect. So they’ve submitted this proposal to the judge, the DOJ has 24 hours to respond, which as of right before we went live, I don’t think they have responded quite yet. And then the judge will signal that a ruling is likely going to come at some point in the next couple of days. So if he grants this TRO on this particular thing, that means that for at least 14 days, there is no federal freezing of the funds.
It means that SNAP benefits will be funded. It means that Pell Grants will be paid out. It means that federal work study will still be available to students at universities and all the way down the list. And that TRO proposal also says that if needed, they can extend that by another 14 days. So what we’re looking at is 14 to 30 days. Presumably it gives additional lawsuits, the chance to kind of move forward with this or the Trump administration can take the L and back away from this policy and rescind this executive order. I think this amongst the 38 that have been filed, and I’m sure more that will be signed today and tomorrow and the next day. This seems to be the one that really kind of kicked up a lot of dust and also kicked the opposition into gear a little bit more than what we’ve been seeing over the last two weeks to three months, because it really is confusing and broad, very, very broad and affects a lot of people.
So in terms of that litigation, hopefully it’s successful. We’ll see in the next couple of days. One thing that I do just want to end on with this specific issue is that there’s a lot of information that’s blurring past your tl, right? We’re getting headlines every other day about some absolutely obscene, harrowing directives coming out of the White House, and they’re coming at this breakneck speed. And there is a tracker that you can follow. Just security publication has a tracker specifically about executive orders that the Trump administration is putting out, and any litigation that is trying to challenge those orders in the future, including updates, they have a pretty solid team that’s doing this across the board, not just about the executive orders, but the tracker that they have is specific to that. And I know that I was looking yesterday on Blue Sky trying to find someone who is aggregating all of this, because you can only listen to so many group chats before you start getting stuck and not spiraling a little bit because the information is, ah, we will just say that there’s so much of it. So I found this tracker, I went through it, and I think it’s really great. We’ll put a link in our description, we’ll drop it in the chat for you, because if you’re like me and you want to stay informed, but you want to stay informed without doom spiraling and see how folks are actually challenging these things to varying degrees of success, then that’s a good place to start. I think I
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh, yeah. Yeah. And again, please let us know here at The Real News in the live chat now, reach out to us on social media. Email us. That is our explicit goal too. As I said at the top of this live stream, it’s more important now than ever when it is an explicit tactic of this administration. It is an explicit prerogative of the social media platforms that we use to bombard us with information so that we stay on those platforms like waiting for the next bit of information to come, but we’re not actually doing anything with that information except consuming it, fearfully reacting to it, or angrily reacting to it, and then moving on quickly to the next thing. And the more of us who are in that position, the less mobilized we are as a populace. And we here at The Real News believe that people, real people, working people across this country and around the world are the solution to the problems that we’re experiencing.
Like we are the ones who are going to work together to build the world that works for all of us. We fundamentally believe that you me, everyone watching this is part of the solution. And so we want to provide information, updates, analysis. We want to give you access to the voices. You’re not hearing the workers on the front lines, the people living in these sacrifice zones, the people brutalized by the police, the people brutalized by our broken healthcare system and our war industry that is wreaking death and destruction across the planet like we are trying to bring you in touch with those people, those voices, the movements that are trying to address them, and to get you to feel that you are part of that and to understand that you can be part of these solutions. So we want to hear from you if we’re doing a good job of that, and if there’s other kinds of information, other voices, other perspectives that you want us to provide so that you feel more empowered to act and to do something and to be part of the solution here.
So please do also reach out to us and share with us any suggestions or recommendations that you’ve got there. And we’ve got about 25 minutes left in this live stream. We also want to hear if this was helpful to you, and we are not going to be able to kind of get to some questions from the live chat itself today, but we have been sourcing questions from y’all leading up to this live stream on social media, we have a text service that you can get real news updates on through text messaging. And folks have been sending us great questions ahead of this live stream through that service, and you can learn more about how to sign up for it in the live chat right now. So we are going to end in a few minutes, kind of like Mel and I will step back a bit and sort of assess based on these questions that we got before the stream began in the final 15 minutes here. But before we get there, I know Mel, there are kind of another key story that we’ve both been really concerned about, but you really want to impress upon viewers why this is one of those headlines passing your timeline that you should actually focus on.
Mel Buer:
Yeah, so in the last week or so, there’s been a bit of a, I hesitate to use the word shakeup, but there has been some changes with the NLRB and what we’ve been seeing is that NLRB, Jennifer General Counsel Jennifer Bruso was fired. Honestly, I think most folks were kind of expecting that there was sort of a changeover. And what she does is she’s kind of the top adjudicator prosecutor investigator for the NLRB. She’s been really good at bringing forth some really important sort of policy changes and also rule changes that really kind of have helped workers organize. She’s been really tough on bosses and really holding corporations like Amazon to feet to the fire kind of expected that to happen. It happened when Biden took over in 2021. There was a shakeup there with the general counselor, if I believe correctly. And so we kind of expected that to happen.
What is surprising is that the NLRB chair G, when Wilcox was also fired, she was appointed in December, I think appointed and confirmed in December, and she is the first black member, black woman member of the NLRB. She is also supposed to keep her job through the next couple of years, and that as it stands, the NLRA and the various policies do not have provisions. These board members are not at-will members. They’re supposed to serve out their term unless there is some sort of malfeasance or a specific event that someone can point to in the administration to fire any member of the board. You can’t do it. And so it was very surprising to see G when Wilcox fired at the beginning of this week. And there is a statement here from the A-F-L-C-I-O President Liz Schuler, that I kind of want to just read a little bit here that says, president Trump’s firing of NLRB member Gwen Wilcox, the first black woman to serve on the board, is illegal and will have immediate consequences for working people by leaving only two board members in their posts.
The president has effectively shut down the National Labor Relations Board’s operation, leaving the workers at defenses on their own in the face of union busting and retaliation alongside the firing of NLRB General Counsel bruso, these moves will make it easier for bosses to violate the law and trample on workers’ legal rights on the job and fundamental freedom to organize. Now this is important and we’ll kind of talk about this just in a moment about what exactly the NLRB does on a sort of granular level. But the way that the NLRB essentially operates is that the board is the sort of adjudicators. They make decisions on union elections, they make decisions on investigations into workplaces. They make decisions on unfair labor practice charges that will bring consequences against employers when they treat their workers badly. Break the law, retaliate fire workers for union organizing, any number of things in order for the board to operate, there has to be quorum.
So of the five members, there has to be at least three appointed working members of the board. Right now, there are vacancies, which is also surprising. Normally in the normal course of things, an incoming president will use those vacancies to kind of shift making. And there were two vacancies on the board that would’ve, I think if you’re talking about the strategy here would have changed policy at the NLRB by itself. Now, there’s only two members of the board after Gwen Wilcox has been fired, which means the board doesn’t have quorum. They do not have the authority to make decisions until they have quorum. So any of the sort of things that the board could do to uphold the NLRA, which is to say the enforcement of the law that protects worker rights in this country can’t happen until a new person is appointed and confirmed or until Wilcox is reinstated, which she has indicated that she will pursue whatever legal avenues that she has to be reinstated to fight this firing.
Because again, it’s illegal. It’s illegal. What Trump did, and I’m not trying to create this doom spiral, but this is concerning. It’s very alarming and it’s important that we kind underscore that I know that there are folks among the labor movement who would love to see the sort of wild west of labor organizing return. We may actually see that at some point in the future, but at the moment, what we have with the NLRA is workable. It’s not great, but it is workable and it does keep individuals employed. It keeps individuals from getting hurt on the job. It keeps individuals from being fired for organizing. And if we don’t have an NLRB that can enforce that because it’s been hobbled by this particular thing, it’s not great Max,
Maximillian Alvarez:
No. It’s like, yeah, I forget who the quote came from. I think it was a democratic legislator, but it was like the message right now is workers are on their own. And functionally that is correct because the NLRB insufficient as it is, and we have reported on that too. We’ve reported on how understaffed, underfunded and the NLRB is and has been for years. We’ve reported over the years about how the NLRB should be more aggressive in enforcing labor law. Again, we can walk and chew gum at the same time. The NLRB cannot be perfect, but things can be a lot worse without it, right? We’re capable of having that conversation, but we need to understand also what that means in real terms. And so I want to kind of tee up a clip here from Mellon MA’s podcast working people where I spoke with workers at the National Labor Relations Board, like rank and file workers, labor lawyers, people who are doing the work of the agency and who are also both representatives in the NLRB Union.
So this was actually an interview that we did when we were approaching the threshold of a government shutdown in, I think that was September, 2023. Remember that was the kind of congressional Republicans internal fighting over more spending cuts, border security, no military aid to Ukraine. It was a high stakes fight between McCarthy and Matt Gates. So it was in that period that I spoke with Colton Puckett and Michael Billick legislative co-chairs of the NLRB Union and full-time NLRB workers about just what it is that they and other NLRB staff do and the role that that work plays in our daily working lives. So let’s listen to that clip right now
Colton Puckett:
At a high level sort of the core functions that we do that I think most folks that know about our agency know about what we do and that’s we investigate unfair labor practice charges. So someone believes that their employer or their union has violated the law in some way. They can file a charge with us and we investigate it and figure out whether or not the charge has merit. That’s a big portion of the work we do and I’ll talk a little bit more about what that means. But another big thing that we do is we run union elections essentially, right? And so when workers come together, they decide we want to form a union, we want to join a union, they’ll file a petition with us. There’s a certain process that entails. And then when it comes time to actually hold the election, we in the field go to wherever that election is taking place and we make sure that it’s done and done as fair and impartial away as is possible.
And then the last thing we do, another big thing that is sort of a part and parcel with unfair labor practice investigations is we try cases. And so if we find that there is merit to one of these unfair labor practice charges that we get, we always will try to settle a case of course, but sometimes it doesn’t work out. And so that means we actually go to trial before an administrative law judge and we litigate the case and we try and prove the violation. And it’s similar to, it’s not exactly like going to federal court, but it’s the same general idea. And so that’s another sort of big portion of the work that we do. And so that’s kind of the big three things at a very high level. But I think sometimes getting into sort of the day to day, some of that can get lost.
And so as field staff, I think Mike mentioned sort of at the top, we work in offices spread all around the country. And so we are essentially the frontline of the agency for working people all across the country. And that means that we interface directly with workers every single day, whether that’s a charging party, we’re trying to help them figure out how to e-file their evidence, for example, or figure out what they need to send to us that might be useful versus what not to, or if we’re just answering questions about where their cases in the process or what certain processes means. Because a lot of this is like legalese, right? And we don’t expect everybody to know exactly what an unfair labor practice is. That’s a big portion of the work we do. One of the things that we do, there’s in every regional office, there’s an information officer on duty every day.
And so you can call your regional office, they might not answer immediately, but leave a voicemail and you will talk to a live person that day and they will walk you through any questions that you have. If you want to file a charge, they can assist you in preparing the charge and informing you how to do that. And I don’t necessarily know that a lot of other federal agencies have that type of direct person to person interaction in that way. And so that’s a big thing that we do. We talk to folks all the time and then just try and help them understand what it is we do and what it is their rights are.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright? So that’s not nothing, that’s not evil bureaucracy, that’s real shit that real working people depend on. And in the final kind of minutes here, Mel and I just wanted to drive this point home because we could be playing clips for the next five hours of real world examples that real world workers have told us on our podcast about when they needed the NLRB to adjudicate an injustice, a violation of their rights, and how important that was to their livelihoods, how important it was to their union drive, how important it was for the labor movement itself. But that’s what we’re trying to get y’all to see is that this is not just conceptual, nameless, faceless bureaucratic stuff. That’s what they do. That’s what folks at the NLRB do. And just to give one example, that was the first field report that I did when I started here at the Real News in the middle of Covid in 2020.
Let’s not forget that early in 20 21, 1 of the biggest stories in the country was that workers in Bessemer, Alabama majority black de-industrialized Bessemer, Alabama with twice the national poverty rate that they were leading the charge to form the country’s first unionized workforce at an Amazon facility. Now we know that they ended up being unsuccessful in that union drive, but that drive sparked so many of the other labor struggles that we’ve reported on over the past few years, including it contributed to the Amazon Labor Union successful unionization drive in New York. And so that’s a real world example. I was there on the ground, Mel was talking to these workers, I’ve talked to these workers, I’ve been in their union hall. They tried to hold a union election, which is their right, that is their Democratic right to vote on whether or not they want a union, even if it is at the second largest private employer in the country and one of the biggest international behemoths in the world.
These workers had that right? And they exercised it. And the National Labor Relations Board ruled that Amazon had illegally interfered in that election by placing a US Postal Service mailbox on Amazon property right in front of the employee entrance with the Amazon cameras pointed on it. And so the NLRB said, Hey, that’s not a free and fair election. This is intimidation, this is surveillance. You guys have to have another election. They had that enforcement ability to give workers in Bessemer an another chance, a fair shot at a union election. So that’s just one example of a high stakes ruling that both shows how Amazon is a much bigger behemoth than the NLRB can take on by its own. But that ruling really mattered for workers who were really fighting for what they believed in. Mel, I know you’ve seen tons of others. Are there any few you want to highlight here real quick?
Mel Buer:
Well, I think I want to just, I could name ’em all up top of the bat. We can do Pittsburgh Post Gazette. Strike is A ULP strike, right? We can do half of the walkouts it Starbucks started with ULPs fired because bargaining wasn’t starting fast enough. We can talk about pretty much I would say a sizable chunk of a worker’s ability to withhold their work legally begins with the filing of A ULP. And the NLRB has to reach a certain place with that, right? Where you are filing this grievance and you say, we have checked our boxes and we’ve filed this ULP that says bargaining is not going well. The company’s bargaining in bad faith, which means they are not actually giving a good faith effort to sit across the table and work through this contract negotiation like we are. They have actively endangered workers, for example, at Starbucks during the LA firestorm.
They have enacted policies that are retaliatory. They have held captive audience meetings. When we are trying to form a union, all of these rulings that the NLRB rules on are designed to free and fairly investigate these complaints and then to actually offer some sort of recourse for workers, whether that means ordering a management back to the table and telling ’em to stuff it and get the job done, or whether that means enacting no captive audience meetings in workplaces, right? Whether that means allowing individuals to be on company grounds to organize off hours, to pull in people and have conversations to work on a union campaign that’s gone public. All of these things are what the NLRB helps us do. And there are dozens, dozens of people, dozens of campaigns that I’ve talked to that I’ve reported on in the last just year where the outcome in some way or another depends upon what the NLRB can do for them.
And that’s just the place that we’re in. And that’s really the recourse that we have right now. We have to kind of thread that needle and to use the law as inadequate as it is to our benefit and be able to work within that and use the NLRB as an agency for what it’s there for, which is to say often I look at the nlrbs sort of policies in the last 10 years or so. And when we have a board that is really focused on pro worker focus, a lot of things can happen. Final example I’ll give is that in 2017, the NLRB was full of pro business folks that Trump had appointed and during Trump’s administration and then the subsequent administration after, there was really this kind of watershed moment with graduate student organizing where during Trump’s administration there was restraints on which type of graduate students could organize on college campuses.
That rule changed in the last five, six years as a result of a more pro worker NLRB makeup. And there has been an explosion in new organizing on university campuses that we didn’t see before. And by some metrics, it is the fastest and most consistent organizing that has happened in this country in the last five years. So it kind of underscores the importance of what this agency can do for us as and what this agency can do for us as a worker’s movement. And so when it’s hobbled by an administration as it has been in the Trump administration, things become exponentially more difficult.
My fellow union workers at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette waited for a year and a half for a decision on the ULP that they filed. They’ve been on strike for over three years at this point, trying to get the company at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette to bargain fairly and to stop playing games with their health insurance and their livelihoods. And the NLRB is really the thing that’s driving those consequences so that they can get back to the table and get back to work. And so as much as we want to sit here and say that, oh, it’s just another bunch of feckless bureaucrats, no, it has real world implications for how we can organize in the future. And I truly believe that in terms of movement building in this country, the labor movement is an integral part to that for all its faults. And that institution needs to use the tools that it has at its disposal. So when an administration, any administration, because I’m not saying that democratic administrations in the past haven’t used the NLRB as a cudgel, haven’t deliberately underfunded it and understaffed it because they are also only worker in name, but not really in action.
It’s important for us to be able to uphold this institution because it helps us maintain some semblance of control over our workplaces, at least for now. We will see what the next 10, 15 years look like. As Hamilton Nolan has said, the Democrats squander their chance to really rebuild the labor movement. I agree. And we are now in single digits a little bit in terms of union density, but we’re not cooked by any stretch of the imagination. And if we can pay attention to and internalize the fact that some of these agencies and the work that they do is actually really useful for our movement building, then I think we have a better chance of staving off the worst impulses of this fascist government. So
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, I think that’s powerfully put melon just again, a plea to everyone watching. If you’ve been watching our reporting over these past few years or other people’s reporting on the Starbucks Union Drive, the Amazon Union Drive, but not just those, I mean healthcare workers going on strike for their patients, teachers and educators going on strike for their students, their communities like manufacturing in the auto industry and beyond. John Deere workers journalists at the Pittsburgh Post Gazette entertainers at medieval times. I mean these struggles of working people where people like you and me have realized that if they band together exercise their rights form a union and work together as a union, that they can actually change their lives, they can change their circumstances, they can even change our society circumstances like the machinists going on strike at Boeing or the railroad workers fighting for rail safety that impacts all of us like we were talking about earlier in the stream.
All of that is going to be so deeply impacted by a nonfunctional NLRB or an LRB that is functional but actively hostile to the worker’s side of the struggle and is doing the bidding of the employer class. I don’t know what the stories we report are going to be. I don’t know what the workers we interview are going to say in the coming years if that is the case, but I promise you it’s not going to be what it’s been in the past few years where workers have seen this groundswell and they’ve wanted to be part of it and they’ve seen a path to unionization with an NLRB that actually is functional enough to serve the needs of working people trying to exercise their rights. We are not in that territory anymore. And so even if you don’t give a shit about anything in dc, which I would totally forgive you for, if you give a shit about the labor movement and working people, this is going to impact that this is going to impact you.
And we don’t know what the ripple effects are going to be to the business class, to the private sector, to all the employers out there who now know that workers are on their own like they did after Reagan fired the PATCO strikers in 81. We don’t know what the cascading effect is going to be if employers decide to go more on the offensive in squashing unionization efforts, more on the offensive in rolling back workers’ rights, treating workers with shit, knowing that they’re going to have fewer options for recourse through the NLRB. So if nothing else, let’s remind ourselves that matters. And that concerns us, our neighbors, our coworkers, but also that we, as Mel said, are not cooked here. We are not powerless here. We have a vested interest in the story and we ourselves are part of the outcome. I say, I don’t know how this is going to shape out because I don’t know what you are going to do about it.
I don’t know what everyone watching this is going to do about it, but that’s going to determine what the outcome is. And so again, if anything, we want to leave y’all with that note that this is meant for you for us to figure out what we do next. And with that kind of wrapping up the 90 minutes where we’re sort of looking at these key headlines, I wanted to just have 10 minutes of bonus time here so that we could Mel take a step back and sort of breathe a bit and address these really great questions that some of our supporters and viewers sent into us that helped us think about how to frame this live stream in a way. We’ve been trying to answer the questions over the past 90 minutes, but I wanted to just toss these out there and get your thoughts.
And also what you guys in the live chat think about this. But one of the key questions that we got from Giovanni R, which was really great, which was how much do you estimate this regime will affect what’s left of workers’ benefits and safety standard? So we kind of started to addressing that now, and we’re going to talk about it a little more in a second, but that’s one key question that we’ve been trying to answer here. Another question that we got from David B, which I think is also really crucial is David asked, will labor only present a front for or a front of resistance and fight back, or is it actually going to push the limits of what we as working class people need and demand? Will labor stop seeing the Democratic party as the vehicle for that fight back and resistance? Will labor exert itself as if it understands and believes that the laboring class is the Sina quinan of production and wealth?
Great question so much that we could say about there. But yeah, I want you guys watching to think about that. And the last question that I wanted to throw up on the screen here, which helped us kind of prepare for this live stream was from Edward S. And so Edward wrote to us saying, when will the unions educate their membership about labor history and that the GOP is their foe? It’s atrocious that a huge percent of union members vote for Trump. And so Mel, I wanted to just kind of, now that we’ve gotten through the last 90 minutes, do you feel like there are any kind of other lingering answers to those questions that we didn’t get to or things that are really kind sticking in your mind?
Mel Buer:
I think I’ll start with the first one with Giovanni’s. Maybe we can just kind of do a couple of minutes for each one. But I think when we talk about how much this regime will affect what’s left of workers’ benefits and safety standards, I think one thing that I’ve learned over the course of my reporting, whether it’s been on OSHA agencies in California or in the healthcare industry on the West coast or the railroad industry in the Midwest or wherever else, is that oftentimes these agencies can be equipped with the ability to maintain safety standards, to maintain workers’ benefits. And oftentimes there’s no political will to maintain those subsequent administrations may cater to lobbyists, to understaff these agencies to re-appropriate funds away from these agencies. Just like anything else in the government, you need money to operate. And if you’re being appropriated less and less money each year, that means you’re hiring less and less OSHA inspectors each year.
That means there’s less OSHA inspectors to handle the complaints that happen that are called in, and then they start making hard decisions about which ones to investigate and which ones not to. Or it sits on a waiting list as what happens with the NLRB, where oftentimes, for example, the Pittsburgh Post Gazette complaint was essentially on a waiting list for investigation for over a year because there’s just not enough people who have been tasked with investigating these things. And so I think what we’ve kind of been talking about Max is there’s a bit of a breakdown in the system itself that perpetuates these problems. Something that happens a lot is that workers see this breakdown in an acute area like the aviation industry, like the agriculture industry, like the healthcare industry, and the fight at their disposal is, for example, I just did reporting in Southern California on the Kaiser health system and mental health professionals who are still on strike after a hundred days, who saw these breakdowns in the system that was disproportionately affecting their patients because there weren’t enough people getting hired.
And these are critically, acutely mentally ill patients who require regular treatments who aren’t getting that illegally so in the state of California. And so what they do is they view these as workers’ rights issues, patient issues or workers’ rights issues in the healthcare industry. So what do they have at their disposal? They went on strike, their contract expired, and they’re not going to get off the picket line until they get real written in stone, in paper, signed by Kaiser that these conditions will cease being as horrendous as they are because that means that they can take care of their patients better. So in that sense, subsequent administrations have done something to the effect of deregulating portions of the industry to serious, they create serious problems. The railroad strike happened, almost happened under the Biden administration and was stopped last minute. And if you talk to some railroad workers, they aren’t happy about that. They feel like they lost leverage because the Biden administration stepped in at a critical time where he could have said, actually, I don’t have to do this. So I don’t know, man, I think it’s going to get worse before it gets better are obviously we are looking down the barrel of four years at least of extreme MAGA GOP policies that have their own ideology. Obviously they have their own plan and a lot of us are going to get left out in the cold.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Or
I wanted to jump in on that point too, because when I think about what these conditions are going to be for our fellow workers, current generations and future generations, to answer Giovanni’s question, I guess what we would say is what railroad workers told me and Mel, when we first started investigating that story years ago, every single worker we talked to told us the same thing at the top. What you need to understand is this goes way back. And so if anything, that’s an argument for why all y’all out there should stop fucking watching mainstream political news or even independent news junkie stuff that only focuses on bipartisan politics and follows the news cycle of Washington DC because it rots your brain and you lose the ability to think like a real regular person. Now when you talk to other real regular working people, you get a better frame on the problems that we’re experiencing.
And so when railroad workers are saying, here’s the problem, now here’s how far back this goes, and that’s how far back our memories go because we’ve experienced it. And that is decidedly different from the political election cycle. And this is something that we’ve been bringing up on our reporting here over and over again, is that Donald Trump Biden, these last few election cycles have been characterized by a sort of like, what did the previous administration do that the next administration’s blaming them about and overturning? And why are people voting for Trump? Because they’re mad at Biden and his policies. But really what we are talking about here in the political world is that voters are responding every two to four years to a crisis that’s been building for the last 40, 50, 60 years. And so the cumulative effects of this death by a thousand deregulatory cuts, that is kind of what we’re trying to get a handle on here because that is the frame you need to have to understand how conditions have gotten this bad.
And as Mel said, they’re probably going to get worse before they get any better. I mean, from the air traffic controller staffing shortage to the pollution of industrial pollution of communities in sacrifice zones around the country from East Palestine to South Baltimore. I mean, this stuff starts happening in more and more places year after year when unsexy uninteresting legislation gets kind of passed through, doesn’t really, it’s not really a blip on people’s radars when it happens 15 years ago and then 15 years later, you end up living next to a lake that you can’t swim in that you’ve swam in your whole life. Public policy bioaccumulates, it accumulates in our bodies, it accumulates in our jobs, it accumulates in our communities. It doesn’t all happen overnight. But I guess that’s the point I’m getting at is that we are still in the process of experiencing and feeling the full weight of decisions that have already been made that were made in Trump’s last administration and Biden’s last administration and Obama’s administration in Reagan’s administration, right?
We are still finding out the repercussions of those decisions that have already been made, and we are laying the groundwork for even more impactful decisions to hurt us well into the future. And that’s why I jumped in when you said that we’ll be left out in the cold and I said, or even in the heat, because that’s another storyline that we follow here too. What are workers and workers’ rights and labor unions going to do as the climate crisis continues to spiral out of control, which it sure as hell is going to the more we do this drill, baby drill crap pull out of the Paris Climate accords while LA is burning Western North Carolina is obliterated by hurricanes. We are barreling in the exact opposite direction. But what makes me think of that example is that I remember when the Supreme Court overturned Biden’s attempt to require workplaces of over a hundred people to have covid vaccine mandates, or for folks who didn’t want to take the vaccine that they did regular testing.
The Supreme Court said that they rejected that order and it was hailed as a victory for the anti-vax crowd for the Trump MAGA crowd. But what you and I saw, Mel, and what we talked about because we actually read the ruling, was that the Supreme Court said, because COVID-19 is a general condition that it just exists in the world, no one employer can be responsible for implementing these kinds of policies to address it. And so what they were doing was laying the groundwork for employers off scot-free as the climate gets worse, as people are working in hotter conditions when they’re dying in the summer heat or they’re breathing in toxic chemicals. And basically, we have set the stage for employers to not be liable for our deaths when they’re putting us regularly at hazard in our working conditions as the climate crisis worsens. That’s what I’m trying to point to is these decisions are going to have ripple effects for generations.
So there are things we can do now, but we have to have a full kind of clear sense of the problem. And that’s what we’re going to try to keep taking apart and analyzing piecemeal in these live streams in our reports. Like I said, at the top of this live stream, our goal is to not get overwhelmed by the news cycle, but to practice focus, to use our journalistic tools to give you the information you need to act and not be immobilized and hopeless. And so that’s what we’re working on doing and doing better here. And so we really want to hear from you guys and let us know if we are doing better, if there are things that you’d like us to see do people you’d like us to have on subjects that you really need help breaking down in our team here, not just our journalists, but our incredible whole team of editors, producers, studio technicians, let us be usable to you.
Let us know what you need and we will use our skills to try to help. But ultimately, you are the solution. You are the one who is going to determine with your neighbors, your coworkers, your fellow working people, what happens in the future, what kind of future we are leaving for our children. And so our job here at The Real News is to make sure you’ve got what you need to make change, and we want to hear from you, and we want you to hold us accountable if we are not following through on that. And so please let us know what you thought of this live stream, let us know what you’d like us to cover in future Live streams, and please keep sending questions so that we can be answering them better and more directly. We’ve got so much to say on it, but ultimately what matters is that we’re saying what you are looking for and need to hear and not just listening to ourselves talk, right?
And so that’s the goal here. That’s what we at the Real News are here to do. We are a team that is here for you, and we’re a strong and mighty team. And Mel, I could not be more honored to be on this team with you guys in the back, our whole studio team, Adam, cam, Dave, Kayla, Jocelyn, James, looking at the live chat, everybody on this team is here to help and we are here for you and we really appreciate your support and we look forward to seeing y’all next Thursday when we go live again. But until then, please support our work so that we can keep bringing you important coverage and conversations like this. And more important than ever, take care of yourselves and take care of each other. Solidarity forever.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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The US president says he 'may or may not' exclude oil imports from tariffs.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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The city-state has granted authorities powers to freeze bank accounts to protect suspected scam victims from themselves.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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This story originally appeared in Common Dreams on Jan. 28, 2024. It is shared here with permission under a Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0) license.
A union that represents over 800,000 employees of the federal and District of Columbia governments on Tuesday responded with alarm to U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to pressure some workers to leave their jobs.
“The number of civil servants hasn’t meaningfully changed since 1970, but there are more Americans than ever who rely on government services,” said American Federation of Government Employees national president Everett Kelley in a statement. “Purging the federal government of dedicated career federal employees will have vast, unintended consequences that will cause chaos for the Americans who depend on a functioning federal government.”
“This offer should not be viewed as voluntary,” Kelley added, referring to a memo emailed to federal employees on Tuesday. “Between the flurry of anti-worker executive orders and policies, it is clear that the Trump administration’s goal is to turn the federal government into a toxic environment where workers cannot stay even if they want to.”
Another labor group for federal workers, the National Treasury Employees Union, filed suit last week over one of those orders, which reinstated, with some amendments, the “Schedule F” measure that Trump implemented near the end of his first term.
In response to the administration’s actions regarding the federal workforce, some critics have pointed to the Heritage Foundation-led Project 2025, from which the Republican president unsuccessfully tried to distance himself while on the campaign trail. As Common Dreams reported earlier Tuesday, a U.S. tech researcher revealed that the authors of policies published by Trump’s Office of Personnel Management (OPM) have ties to the far-right organization and its infamous initiative.
Congressman Gerry Connolly (D-Va.) said in a Tuesday night statement that “Donald Trump is trying every trick he and his Project 2025 cronies can think of to circumvent established civil service protections so they can purge the civil service of experts and replace them with political loyalists.”
“The victims here, as is always the case with Donald Trump, are the American people who will see government services and benefits allocated not by nonpartisan civil servants, but by partisan hacks,” added Connolly, ranking member of the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Connolly and Kelley’s and comments on Tuesday came after a senior Trump official told Axios that “the government-wide email being sent today is to make sure that all federal workers are on board with the new administration’s plan to have federal employees in office and adhering to higher standards. We’re five years past Covid and just 6% of federal employees work full-time in office. That is unacceptable.”
While Axios broke the news of the “acceleration in President Trump’s already unprecedented purge of the federal workforce,” other media outlets also swiftly published related reports. Government Executive called out the debunked 6% figure, noting that “more than half of federal workers cannot telework because their duties are portable, and employees who telework spent around 60% of their work hours in person, per 2024 Office of Management and Budget data.”
Many initial reports framed the message to federal workers as a “buyout” program, but after OPM posted the full memo on its website, experts including Alan Mygatt-Tauber, an adjust professor at Seattle University School of Law, emphasized that it “is absolutely NOT an early resignation offer with eight months severance pay.”
Slate journalist Mark Joseph Stern similarly stressed that “this is NOT a buyout! Those who take the offer simply get permission to telework through September, at which point they lose their jobs. Media coverage of the details has been pretty misleading.”
The OPM memo emailed to workers explains that the “reformed federal workforce” will be built around four pillars: a return to the office, performance culture, a more streamlined and flexible workforce, and enhanced standards of conduct.
The memo states:
If you choose to remain in your current position, we thank you for your renewed focus on serving the American people to the best of your abilities and look forward to working together as part of an improved federal workforce. At this time, we cannot give you full assurance regarding the certainty of your position or agency but should your position be eliminated you will be treated with dignity and will be afforded the protections in place for such positions.
If you choose not to continue in your current role in the federal workforce, we thank you for your service to your country and you will be provided with a dignified, fair departure from the federal government utilizing a deferred resignation program. This program begins effective January 28 and is available to all federal employees until February 6. If you resign under this program, you will retain all pay and benefits regardless of your daily workload and will be exempted from all applicable in-person work requirements until September 30, 2025 (or earlier if you choose to accelerate your resignation for any reason).
The offer “applies to all full-time federal employees, except for military personnel, the Postal Service, and those working in immigration enforcement or national security,” Axios detailed. The White House expects 5-10% of workers will take the deal.
As NBC News noted Tuesday:
Tech billionaire Elon Musk, who is now in charge of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, famously sent a similar email to employees shortly after he took over Twitter, which he renamed X, asking them to opt in to keep working at the company.
White House officials wouldn’t say whether he was involved in the current effort. But the subject line of the email that will be sent to federal workers is: “A fork in the road.”
Musk now has a post pinned on X of an art piece he commissioned called “A Fork in the Road.”
Although “department” is in the name of the Musk-led entity, it is actually a presidential advisory commission—and although the billionaire initially suggested that it would lead the effort to cut $2 trillion in annual spending, he has since tempered expectations.
The commission and Musk, the world’s richest person, have faced intense scrutiny from watchdog groups and progressive lawmakers, though some have also offered advice on how to pursue significant cuts without harming the lives of working people, including: ending privatized Medicare, reducing prescription drug prices, and slashing the Pentagon’s massive budget.
This post was updated after the Office of Personnel Management memo was officially released to clarify the buyout language and add comment from Congressman Gerry Connolly.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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On the campaign trail and beyond, Donald Trump and MAGA right have repeatedly presented themselves as the true representatives of America’s beleaguered working class. And yet, like the Capitol rotunda on Inauguration Day, Trump’s administration is filled with billionaires, mega-millionaires, and corporate oligarchs whose staggering wealth is increasing year after year while working people struggle to get by. How are people, voters and nonvoters alike, supposed to square this seeming contradiction? In this special post-Inauguration interview, returning guest and legendary economist Dr. Richard Wolff explains how the naked oligarchy on display in Trump’s inauguration and in his administration is not a contradiction, but a clear sign of a society hastening its own collapse under the weight of historic, unsustainable levels of inequality.
Studio Production: David Hebden, Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Post-Production: Adam Coley, Cameron Granadino
Written by: Stephen Janis
Transcript
Taya Graham: Hello, my name is Taya Graham, and welcome to our special postinaugural report, and it’s an extension of our reporting for our Inequality Watch show. And today we’ll break down what we like to call here at The Real News the Second Gilded Age, and that seems perfectly aligned with Trump’s ascent to power.
Now, the first one occurred nearly 100 years ago, and it didn’t end well. Now the chasm between the rich and poor is as extreme as it was in that era. Now, back then, wealthy industrialists like J.P. Morgan and Rockefeller ran the country while elected officials stood by. Now it’s tech bros like Tesla’s Elon Musk, Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, Sundar Pichai of Google. All of whom, mind you, had front row seats at President Trump’s inauguration. And we thought this was worth discussing in light of his inauguration, which seemed to us like peak Gilded Age.
In fact, there were so many billionaires in attendance and so many in his cabinet — I think it’s more than 10, right? — That we were wondering if it was some sort of fire code violation in the Capitol when there’s more than 50 billionaires in a room. What do you think?
Stephen Janis: Well, I think billionaires are accelerants. So yes, it’s possible that they were treated differently in terms of counting for fire code, yeah.
Taya Graham: I think you’re right. But you know what? In all seriousness, it’s pretty odd that an administration that purports to be the champion of the working class is pretty much run by union busting, employee downsizing, planet killing, and private equity hoarding vulture capitalists.
Now, the reason this seeming contradiction exists and what it means for us and how we can understand it will be the focus of our show today. We’re going to delve into the reasons why we’re witnessing this growing marriage between a boomer and a bevy of tech bros and what it means for all of us, because, as obvious as it might seem, there’s way more to this coalition of a few than meets the eye. Mechanisms that make this work that might surprise you, right, Stephen?
Stephen Janis: Yeah, yeah. No, I mean there’s mechanics to this. This is all purposeful. This is not some sort of surprise. We’ve been building towards this for years. So it’s a feature not a bug of this system, and we’re going to talk about that with Dr. Wolff.
Taya Graham: So Stephen, as we know, the upcoming Trump administration is stacked with billionaires, from Elon Musk to the former worldwide wrestling executive Linda McMahon. Media outlets estimate the cumulative net worth of this incumbent aristocracy is hovering around $460 billion.
Stephen Janis: Wow.
Taya Graham: And that’s why today we’re going to discuss what we like to call an economic imbalance and to see it for what it really is: a scam against humanity. To start, we’re actually going to borrow a phrase from President Trump’s speech, which we’ll listen to in just a moment. You’ll hear how he talks about how elites have extracted wealth and the American dream from the working class.
And that is a critical concept: extraction. Now, technically he said extracted, but we’re going to expand it a little bit. So let’s take a listen, and I think we might actually agree with this statement.
[CLIP BEGINS]
President Donald Trump: For many years, a radical and corrupt establishment has extracted power and wealth from our citizens while the pillars of our society lay broken and seemingly in complete disrepair. We now have a government that cannot manage even a simple crisis at home, while at the same time stumbling into a continuing catalog of catastrophic events abroad. It fails to protect our magnificent, law-abiding American citizens, but provides sanctuary and protection for dangerous criminals.
[CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: Now, I think it’s interesting he would use the word “extracted”, and I wouldn’t disagree with the statement that wealth has been extracted from our citizens. It’s a pretty important word when we’re talking about the assorted billionaires that will be running his administration. But it’s also crucial for another reason — Stephen, maybe you can talk a little bit about it.
Stephen Janis: Well, I think we’ve moved into an extractive economy [where] there is no value given to the people who are supposedly building this economy, who are creating this wealth, no value exchange. The idea is we’re not going to give you something, anything meaningful, anything substantive. We’re not going to give you good healthcare. We’re not going to give you the ability to afford education. We are going to extract wealth from you.
And I think that’s the only way you can have this much wealth amassing at the top in an extractive economy. You can’t have it in a balanced economy. And I know there’s some people who say, well, capitalism, whatever. But that’s the system we live in, and that system has been corrupted to the point by this massive wealth into being extractive of us.
And it creates a psychology. It creates a psychology where people actually cheer the people who are oppressing them; we love you. And they build systems that put us in conflict. So it’s important to think about psychologically what that means. We are being extracted. We are not part of an economy. We are part of an extraction system that serves the people that were up on that dais or podium.
Taya Graham: I think that’s an excellent insight.
And I know our guest needs no introduction, but I’m pleased to give him one. Professor Richard Wolff is one of the most renowned and respected economists of our time, and he is celebrated for his ability to unravel the complexities of capitalism and inequality with clarity and depth. As the author of numerous groundbreaking books, including Democracy at Work and Capitalism’s Crisis Deepens, and he’s the host of his own YouTube channel, Professor Wolff has dedicated his career to exposing the structural forces behind our economic system. And his expertise in worker-centered economics and his passion for empowering workers makes him the perfect person to help us understand the political and economic shifts we are witnessing today.
Please join me in welcoming Professor Richard Wolff. Professor Wolff, we are so happy to have you join us again.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Thank you, and I will work hard to live up to your very generous introduction.
Taya Graham: Well, thank you. Well, Professor Wolff, last time you were here, you helped us break down this extractive economy and what consequences it does have for working people. So what did you see on Monday with Trump’s billionaire-stacked inauguration? What do you think people might be missing, and what kind of concrete impact do you think this could have on our lives?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, sometimes the most impressive reality about a situation like that is not what’s present, but what’s absent. As a philosopher once said, sometimes absence is the most powerful part of what is present. And that’s how it was for me watching the inauguration. Because for me as a professional economist, the most crucial aspects of the American economy today were carefully and studiously kept away. It was like an absence, which, at least for me, was screaming louder than Mr. Trump or anybody else.
So let me briefly explain, and for that a little history is in order. Many years ago, about 75, at the end of World War II, the United States emerged as the absolutely dominant economic power in the world, a position it had never held before; Before, the British Empire dominated the world. Indeed, what became the United States was a small colony in a corner of that global empire.
In 1945, by contrast, Britain was destroyed. So were Germany and France and Britain and Japan and Russia and China. They were all either destroyed by the war or destroyed before and as a consequence of the war, leaving the United States — And we all know that. The dollar became the world currency. America spread its military bases, 700 of them now all over the world, just to let everybody know who the policeman on the corner was or is. The American economy produced so many goods and services that we could and did help Europe rebuild, et cetera, et cetera. We were dominant. We set up the World Bank, we set up the International Monetary Fund. We literally organized, managed, and ran the world economy. And we made America grow very spectacularly in the ’50s, ’60s, ’70s, ’80s, even into the ’90s. Very impressive.
But as anyone with the slightest knowledge of history would have known — And there were plenty who did — They said, this is an exceptional moment. You’re not going to have this situation of being the only one at the top. It comes out of the worst war the world has ever seen — And we don’t have that every day, thank God — And therefore it’s going to erode. It’s going to fade. Also, remember that every single empire that the world has ever seen: British, French, German, Dutch, Russian, Greek, Roman, it doesn’t matter, they all went up, and then they all went down. The American empire built up after World War II, went up. So it was only a question of when would it go down?
Here comes the first reality that was nowhere in sight on the inauguration. What are we as a nation going to do? How are we going to go through a declining empire? And lest anyone have a doubt, we are declining, the United States now, the dollar is less and less a global currency. A few years ago, central banks around the world kept 80% of their reserves in the dollar. It was considered as good as gold or maybe better. Now that number is about 40%. The dollar is still important, but nothing like it was.
Let me give you another example. These are big numbers everybody knows. The United States has a group of seven nations, of which it is one, called the G7, the Group of Seven: the United States, Canada, Japan, Britain, France, Germany, and Italy. That used to be the powerhouse core of the economy of the world. The United States as the big one in the middle, and then the other six as its allies. Well, let’s look at it today. If you add ’em all up, they together, all of them, the US and the other six, produce about 26%, 27% of the world’s output.
But there’s another group that has emerged. It’s called the BRICS, B-R-I-C-S, that stands for Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa. And the original five, they started about 15 years ago. Now they are 22 countries.
Now let me tell you very briefly about them. If you add up all the goods and services they produce in a year, the way I just did for the G7, the total portion of world output that they account for is about 35%. Let me remind you, the US and its allies account for 27% world output. BRICS, China and its allies, account for more, much more. They’re an alternative pole in the world economy. That is the more enormous reality about our economy than anything else.
Stephen Janis: But that brings up a great question, Dr. Wolff, when I was listening to you, I was thinking about this, and yet our economy is not producing as much or not growing in the way you’re talking about the other economies, but we have more billionaires than any other economy. What does that say about the way our economy operates, that even when we’re declining, there is a smaller and smaller group of people becoming wealthier and wealthier and wealthier and wealthier? How are those two…? Those seem contradictory to me. How do we reconcile that?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Not at all, not at all, because it’s exactly what happened in every other economy, every other empire, and it’s easy to understand why. When an economy is going up, the people at the top can afford to be generous. They’re making a ton of money, they’re becoming wealthy. Sure, they can pay an extra 4%, 5% a year to their workers, keep ’em happy, avoid a strike, and there’s so much money in the growth period that you can afford it.
But when the economy goes down, what the people at the top have always done — And are doing now in America — Is those at the top, the CEOs, the people who we all know who they are, they use their wealth and power, shouldn’t surprise you, to hold on. And because they have wealth and power, they can do that, they can hold on. Which means the costs of the downturn, we, the rest of us, it’s offloaded onto us. So what you’re seeing is that the inequality in the United States gets worse.
And look at the irony — I’ll give you a statistic. Earlier this week, the most important research outfit in the world — Oxfam, located in Britain, keeps track of this — Gave their annual report, and it added up the experience of the roughly 3,000 billionaires that exist in the world today. And, as you rightly said, many of them are American, not all by a long shot, but many of them. And here’s the statistic it gave: across the year 2024, just ended, the collective wealth of the 300 billionaires rose by over $6 billion per day.
Taya Graham: Oh my God, that’s incredible.
Dr. Richard Wolff: OK, so look at what I’m telling you. Capitalism as a global system is making those already super wealthy even more super wealthy.
Stephen Janis: But what’s amazing, extraordinary is that you’re saying as our economy declines, as working class people’s lives get worse, their wealth gets more concentrated and higher. That really seems, to me, a horrible prescription for people.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Unfortunately, if we had better leaders, they would be talking to us about it. What are we going to do as a nation, the road we are on of a declining empire becoming more and more unequal? Look, you don’t need rocket science to understand that’s not sustainable. That situation is going to blow up, and it’s not going to be pretty, not even in a country that didn’t have everybody with a gun. We are in a very strange [place]. That’s what our leaders should be talking about. What do we do about it?
Instead — I have to say this, in all honesty. Instead, what I’m watching at the inauguration and in the days since is a kind of lunatic theater. It’s a theater in which the lead actor, Mr. Trump, pretends to be the world’s tough guy. I’m going to take back the Panama Canal. What? [Crosstalk]
Stephen Janis: You’re saying he’s not?
Dr. Richard Wolff: I’m going to snatch Greenland for a golf course. I’m going to make Canada the 51st state, and I’m going to stick it to the Mexican — My God. Every one of those issues, whether it’s drug traffic or anything else, the war on drugs is at least 65, 70 years old. Every president has announced he’s going to fight it, and every single president has lost that fight. We are [crosstalk] with drugs today every bit as much as when I was 10 years younger, 20 years younger, 30 years younger. I’m not fooled, and I don’t think anyone in America is.
The biggest change in drugs is that we, the Sackler family, which just made a settlement, produced enough opioids to kill 700,000 people over the last few years. We don’t even need Mexico. We’ve got a drug problem in which Mexico doesn’t figure.
And as the new president of Mexico said, and she’s quite right, the drug problem is a problem of supply and demand. Part of it is the supply that comes up, in part, through Mexico, but an enormous part of it is the demand. There is no drug trade unless America, as the single largest buyer of that crap, weren’t doing it. I mean, what are you doing? He’s trying to suggest to a frightened America that the problem is over there, the bad Panamanians, the bad Canadians. This is childish. [These are] gestures of desperation.
There’s an old scene that comes to my mind to explain this. It’s in the cowboy movies we all saw when we were younger. It’s when the sheriff can’t prevent the bad guys from riding into town and robbing the bank. And there he looks. The useless sheriff didn’t stop it. So he says, with great bravado, round up the usual suspects. He wants to look like he’s tough because that’s better than looking like the failure he was.
Stephen Janis: That’s a really good point.
Dr. Richard Wolff: [Crosstalk] Trump has been the president before. Let me assure you, during his time as president, inequality in the United States, by all its measures, got worse. Now I don’t want to be unfair — They got worse under Biden too, and they got worse under Obama too, so he is not outstanding. But did he stop it? Not at all.
The tax cut that he gave in December of 2017, the first year of his office, was the worst blow to equality we could have had — Made the government bankrupt because it didn’t have all the revenue that corporations and the rich no longer had to pay. So the government had to borrow, growing the deficit. And who did it borrow from? The corporations and the rich. The money they didn’t have to pay in taxes, they turned around and lent to the government instead, which means we the people are on the hook to repay all that money plus interest because our leader, Mr. Trump, gave them that tax cut. Instead of being shamed, he goes around celebrating it. And we live in a country — And this scares me, this is what’s scares me —
Stephen Janis: It’s pretty weird. Taya, you had a question?
Dr. Richard Wolff: [Crosstalk] We live in a country of denial, and that is a very big danger we have to face
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I really appreciate that you brought up the historical context, talking about that, perhaps, we are in an age of decline. When you were last on the show, we were talking about how we might be living in a Second Gilded Age, but now what I’m hearing from you is that we are an empire in decline. Well, just like with the Gilded Age, that didn’t end well. What does it look like for America to be an empire in decline, like on the ground for us regular folks trying to hold onto our jobs? What does the decline of empire actually look like for us?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, I’m afraid it means that we are now governed by those people you saw up on the dais during the inauguration. The only dynamic center of the American capitalist system today is high tech, Silicon Valley. Those people now are the ones that are still making money. Everything else is either better done, or more cheaply done, or both, elsewhere. Indeed, the United States’s corporations have moved, ever since the 1970s, in huge numbers.
Look, half the cars produced in China now are produced by subsidiaries of American companies. The abandonment of America is something led by the corporations. Mr. Trump likes to point to the Chinese, but they didn’t do it. They couldn’t make the corporations go there. Those corporations went there because it was profitable.
Here’s my fear: The United States’s mass of working-class people are being prepared to function the way the poor of the rest of the world function. They are the backwater. They are the hinterland. They’re what you see when you leave the capital city and you go to where the mass of people are much, much poorer. Look at it. This government wants to attack social security and Medicare and Medicaid. It wants to take away the few remaining supports.
Look at us another way. When my fellow economists from around the world ask me, they ask me about the minimum wage. The federal minimum wage in this country is $7.25 per hour. It has been at that level since 2009. Every year since then, prices have gone up, some years only 1% or 2%, other years, 9% or 10%. That means for the last 16 years, 2009 to now, the poorest of the poor amongst us, people living on $7.25 an hour, have been savagely abused. Because every year with rising prices, that $7.25 buys you less. What kind of a society goes to people with $7.25 and does that to them? We are seeing levels of cruelty —
Stephen Janis: It’s interesting you bring up that policy, because one of the things that people that blame, liberals that blame, or we blame, is the idea of neoliberalism, where you have public-private partnerships, and that’s led to this bad policy. But I was wondering, are we now, because listening to you right now, what I’m thinking is, are we in the postneoliberal age? Should we just cast aside that boogeyman we use a lot of times to explain bad policies and think about this whole what we’re seeing now as something different?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Yes, it’s different. It is important that you understand over the last 40 years until 10 years ago, we lived in an age called neoliberalism, globalization. You might remember we were told over and over again that it’s good for the whole world that corporations close their shops in Cincinnati and move them to Shanghai, that we will all be better off to get these marvelous… For 30 years. And the corporations went; They had to, their competitors were going, and they would’ve been outcompeted if they didn’t go. China offered cheaper wages than Americans demanded. China offered the biggest growing market in the world because of their size. So every corporation sent its people over there.
I teach in business schools. We teach people if you want to have a successful business, go to where the wages are low and the market is growing. They listened to people like me and they went over there. That’s why this is the area that is growing. We are becoming what they were, and they are becoming what we were, and that’s very upsetting. But you don’t solve it by pretending that it isn’t there. We don’t have the empire anymore.
Let me remind folks, the war in Vietnam, which was a big turning point, was a war between the United States and the Communist Party of Vietnam. The United States lost the war. The people who have been running Vietnam since, to this moment, are the Communist Party who defeated the United States. I know this is upsetting, but you ought to face the reality. In Afghanistan, we went to war against the Taliban. That war is over. We lost. The Taliban now runs the country. In Iraq, we lost. In Ukraine, we are now losing. How many hints do you need? You are not the big cheese in the world anymore. The best rocket, the best missile in the Ukraine War to this moment is a Russian one.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I have to ask you, because you brought up something really interesting about jobs. Basically, manufacturers sending jobs and goods to where it’s cheaper. If Chinese workers can produce a good for cheaper, then they’re going to produce their goods in China. But now President Trump is coming in at least saying that he has a focus on nationalism and protectionism. That might pit the US worker against global economic corporations. So I’m just wondering, how is this going to affect worker solidarity? How is this going to affect businesses? Some of our most important union movements were international solidarity movements. What do you see happening here?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, I think you’re absolutely right. We are shifting to a nationalism. That’s because we have to protect our industries because they can’t compete with others. All will blame the Chinese, and they’re all cheating. That’s very boring and very old. It is what every country that loses in the competition says.
But the fact of the matter is, to give you one example, 15 years ago, every automobile company in the world went to work to try to develop the best, cheapest electric car because that’s the wave of the future. And we now have an unqualified winner. One country and one company produced the best, cheapest electric car. It’s called the BYD corporation. And if you’ve never heard of it, it’s because it’s Chinese.
And you know what Mr. Biden, our president, did? He took the tariff — And remember, a tariff is a tax levied by the United States government on United States people, paid to Washington — The tariff of Mr. Biden on the BYD electric car was 27%; Mr. Biden raised it to 100% percent. That means if BYD produces a $20,000 electric car and you in America want to buy it for your company as an input or for yourself as your personal vehicle, you would have to give 20 grand to China to get the car, and then another 100% percent, $20,000, to Uncle Sam as a tax, costing you $40,000, which is why you don’t see BYD cars on the roads in the United States. But if you went to Europe, as I recently did, you’ll see them all over the road.
Here’s the irony: The United States thinks it’s isolating the bad guys around the world. What the rest of the world now thinks? Their job is to isolate a rogue capitalism in the United States. We are putting tariffs on everybody. We’re slapping everyone — Take back the Panama Canal, make Canada the 51st… You know what that looks like? Exactly. We all know what it looks like. Will Americans find it heady to think of themselves as powerful? Not as they understand. That’s not an expression of power. That’s a desperate theater because they can’t face the loss of power that is our reality, and which we could handle if we were honest enough to admit it.
Stephen Janis: Well, it’s interesting you bring that up because now that the Trump administration is saying they’re withdrawing from the Paris Accords and they’re not going to be really competing to build green energy, green products, alternatives, are we just conceding the future to these countries like China? Are we saying, you know what? We’re out of this. If you want a gas guzzler, come to the US, but if you want a nice, cheap electric car, go somewhere else. Are we conceding the future to these people?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Whether we understand it or not, we are making a future in which everybody who wants a green version of whatever there is will be buying not American goods, because they’re not made that way. We are so strong and tough, we won’t do it, and we’re screwing ourselves. We’re shooting ourselves in the foot. Every company in the world that competes with an American company and that buys cars and trucks as part of its business will be buying the Chinese car because it’s the best deal any capitalist around the world can get for a car, whereas the American can’t get it because of the crazy tariff. That means, sure, we’ll have a few more jobs for autoworkers, but everybody else’s job is becoming more uncertain because their employer can’t get the competitively lower priced goods around the world that the American… It’s awful to watch.
[Crosstalk] The American people by telling them, we’re going to protect you. You’re not. You can’t. We live in an interdependent world which the United States helped to create, and now it wants to withdraw, to which the answer that history will give: way too little way too late.
Stephen Janis: Wow, Taya —
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, I have to ask you this because you made me think about something that’s actually quite personal, which is AI, and I saw that there was a $500 billion promise to create AI infrastructure for OpenAI and other companies. And it is mind boggling to me, especially because it’s not tied to any kind of regulation. And I would say there are a lot of reasons to be concerned about AI, whether you’re concerned about deepfakes being used to spread misinformation, or you’re worried about a friend becoming attached to an AI person instead of a real partner, or if you’re just worried about all the jobs that will disappear because of the chatbots because so many customer service jobs are being wiped out. And it’s even harming our industry as journalists. I know people who are graphic designers and writers that are in big trouble now. Or you could be worried that an AI bot is going to deny your healthcare just like UnitedHealthcare did.
So this seems like instead of our government protecting us, they’re throwing fuel on the fire. Professor Wolff, what are your thoughts on AI and its impact on our jobs, especially in light of this $500 billion promise?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, let me break that into two parts. First off, $500 billion, that’s just Mr. Trump bloviating. It has no meaning. And he got attacked by his buddy Elon Musk within minutes of issuing that because there’s no money to do it. It’s just I’m going to do $500 billion. Where are you going to get the $500 billion? Musk really raked him over the coals. How these guys are great buddies after this is going to be a mystery to watch — Unless neither of them listens to what the other one says, which I doubt. So this is all very early, vague speculation.
But now let’s turn to your bigger question: What about AI? My reaction to that is the same as what about computers? What about robots? What about all the big technical advances? They were always vehicles that could be used in different ways. Don’t listen when someone tells you AI or electricity or robots must be this way.
And I’m going to explain it with a simple example because it gets the idea across. Suppose there was a machine, AI, robot, doesn’t matter, that made workers twice as productive as they used to be. So instead of 10 widgets an hour, they could now make 20 widgets an hour. That typical AIG is supposed to allow one person to work the machine and get the output.
OK, here’s what happens in capitalism: The capitalist says, oh, great, he buys the machine, fires half his workers because he doesn’t need them anymore because the other half are twice as productive. What does he do with the money that he saves from the half that he fired? He keeps it; more profit for himself. He’s overjoyed. And that’s how he uses the technical breakthrough.
OK, now let me give you an alternative. Suppose there were an enterprise that looked at the new AI or whatever it is and says, wow, it’s twice as productive. Here’s what we’re going to do: We’re going to buy that equipment or that machine. We’re not going to fire anybody. We’re going to reduce the workday from eight hours to four hours. Why? Because now with the new machine, the AI in four hours can do us twice the work that it used to. We don’t need people to work four hours. We can be the same firm. Instead of firing the people, you lowered the workday.
Now let me ask you something. If you live in a democracy where the majority rule, we know which way the majority would want to go: Give me half my workday off as leisure because I can be more doubly productive. We don’t do what’s democratic, we do what’s profitable for the tiny minority of people who own the business, so they fire half the workers. That’s why we are afraid. It’s not AI that’s the problem, it’s capitalism that uses each technological advance in order to do what they say they’re going to do: maximize profit.
I have taught in business schools. That’s what businessmen and women think their job is, to maximize profit, but that helps the people who earn profit. It doesn’t help the people who live on wages, but they’re the majority. A democratic workplace would make the decisions that are best for the majority. We don’t live in such a system. Capitalism is the enemy of democracy, and it always was.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, that is so incredibly powerful what you just said, that we don’t actually need to be afraid of AI, that we need to be afraid of how capitalists might use it [crosstalk] to line their own pockets. I really appreciate your insights.
I almost feel bad that I’m going to ask you such an unserious question now in light of these important issues we’re discussing, but it’s being debated quite hotly across a lot of social media platforms, and that is, did Elon Musk give a Nazi salute? So just allow me to run a clip for you, and then I would like to hear your thoughts, and I’m also going to share with you a few of the social media posts and things people had to say.
[CLIP BEGINS]
Elon Musk: And I just want to say thank you for making it happen. Thank you [gestures]. My heart goes out to you.
[CLIP ENDS]
Taya Graham: So let me just share with you a few of the social media posts that were also made in light of that. Now, @JonathanPieNews posted, “Now, I know what you’re all thinking, but who hasn’t accidentally done a Sieg Heil on their first day in government?” Now interestingly, the Anti-Defamation League wrote that “[…] @elonmusk made an awkward gesture in a moment of enthusiasm, not a Nazi salute, but again, we appreciate that people are on edge.” And what was amazing is Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez responded to the ADL with, “Just to be clear, you are defending a Heil Hitler salute that was performed and repeated for emphasis and clarity.”
Stephen Janis: It’s interesting too, Taya, that the epitome of capitalists there would be associated with a fascist symbology. It’s interesting the way — And I don’t know if Dr. Wolff feels anything about this — But does corporatism lead to fascism when corporatism has too much power and the profit motive becomes too embedded in the political system? Does it become fascist in some sense?
Taya Graham: And what did you think of his gesture?
Dr. Richard Wolff: Well, let me deal with Elon Musk first.
Stephen Janis: OK.
Dr. Richard Wolff: The gesture could mean a variety of things. I’m not inside Elon Musk’s mind. I don’t know what he intended or didn’t, if it were there all by itself. It’s open to interpretation. But Elon Musk has also gone out of his way to make himself aligned with the most right-wing forces in the world. He is now a major supporter of the right-wing party in Germany, a party which is widely considered in Germany to be the inheritor of the Nazi Party of Adolf Hitler. If he were concerned not to have his gestures misunderstood, why in the world would he choose to endorse a political party? Which makes, by the way, everybody else in Germany who doesn’t like this right-wing party, all of the other parties, all of the other parties have made a declaration they will not work with this right-wing party because of its… He’s chosen to go along with that.
He’s also wealthy because of what his parents got out of Apartheid South Africa. You’d think a kid with that in his background — I’m not blaming him for whatever his parents did — But a kid with that in his background might want to go out of his way not to do anything that might suggest that that commitment to Apartheid, which made his family rich, didn’t live on in him. No, this man is taking many opportunities to show that he is. He’s erased tweets — I won’t repeat them — But that also point in that direction.
Given all of that, I would have to join Ocasio-Cortez in wondering what in the world agitated the Anti-Defamation League, which is supposed to be on guard against symbols like this, from bending over for Mr. Elon Musk. Isn’t it enough to see our president do that? Do we all have to mimic this sort of behavior? That would be my first response.
Stephen Janis: Are we headed towards something? As inequality keeps rising, is it inevitable to be a collapse? Is there any way to fix it politically before we get to that point? Or are we in no way able to avoid the consequences of this historic inequality in the Second Gilded Age we talked about?
Dr. Richard Wolff: I don’t predict the future. I don’t believe in it. I can’t do it. I don’t think anyone else can. So “inevitability” is a word that I don’t think, it’s not in my vocabulary.
Stephen Janis: Got it.
Dr. Richard Wolff: I don’t know. I believe it’s always possible to make interventions, to change things, and in any case, that’s what we have to try to do, otherwise we’re not really full citizens and full human beings.
But I want to make it clear: I believe the United States is heading headlong into a dead end economically, and therefore also politically and ideologically. We as a nation were remarkable in the 19th and 20th centuries. We provided roughly from 1820 to roughly 1970 rising real wages for the American working class every decade for 150 years. That made us special. No other working class in any other capitalist country got that story. That’s why millions of people came to the United States from Europe, for example, during the 19th and earlier 20th centuries, because they expected a better deal here than they could get in Europe, and they got it.
Alright, that made us think we were very special. The religious amongst us thought that God somehow smiled more on America than he or she or whatever you think it is smiled elsewhere. But the reality is it had to do with a particular position in the world at that time that we occupied.
I don’t want to take us away. We made an effort, took advantage of that situation, and we did pretty well for a while. That is now over and it’s not coming back. And the question of the world right now is will there be a new empire to replace the American the way the American replaced the British? And will that new empire be Chinese? Is that one option? You bet.
Let me remind in closing, the United States and its G7 allies together comprise somewhere around, let’s be generous, 12% to 15% of the world’s people. The BRICS today, with their 22 countries, comprise roughly 60% of the world’s people. The future is with them, not with us. We can work a deal, we can work an accommodation, we can make it work for both sides, but we have to be willing to do that. Instead, our leaders are full of bravado, and ugly bullying, and we’re going to shut you down and close you off and bomb you into the — Wow. That’s not an auspicious sign for a loser.
And I know that’s hard for Americans, but that’s the reality. But we can make it work. I believe so, and we can make it a good time for the American people, if not for the billionaires. But we have to face the situation we are in and how to make the best of it. We are not doing that, and we’re losing precious years while we go through these desperate gestures of self delusional make-believe.
Stephen Janis: Well, thank you Dr. Wolff.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, thank you so much. Those are some hard truths that I think we all need to accept and understand so that we can chart a path forward that will actually benefit the majority of us.
Stephen Janis: Well, it’s interesting because the picture he paints, it makes Trump seem even more inevitable because if you’re in decline and wealth inequality is increasing, you’re only going to have one emotion that comes out of that, which is anger and resentment. If you don’t, as he points out, acknowledge it and say, look, this is a new reality. We’re not the same as we were 50 years ago. We have to acknowledge it before we can get through it. So what you have —
Dr. Richard Wolff: What Mr. Trump is doing is cashing in unjustified fear and anger, but carefully doing his job, focusing it away from the billionaires, away from the capitalist inequality, and making us learn to hate the Chinese, and maybe now the Panamanians, and the Canadians, and the Mexicans. It’s disgusting, but you understand the logic of why it’s unfolding that way.
Taya Graham: Professor Wolff, thank you so much for making that so clear for us. We hate to let you go, but maybe when you leave, you’ll just give us the promise that you will join us again soon.
Dr. Richard Wolff: I’d be glad to. I believe in these kinds of conversations. I think that The Real News Network is doing a great job producing them and disseminating them. That’s what the country needs. If Americans get a chance to understand the situation, something other than the drumbeat of the mass media, then we have a chance. So I’m as much in your debt as you ever are in mine.
Taya Graham: Thank you so much, Professor. That was very kind.
Dr. Richard Wolff: Good to talk to you.
Stephen Janis: Good to talk to you too.
Taya Graham: You as well.
So, Stephen, I have some thoughts. Do you have anything you want to say before I get started?
Stephen Janis: Well, again, I think it was interesting that everything he said, the psychology of it, is so natural. As a country loses its position of dominance, it turns in on itself, and there’s nothing more turning — And then meanwhile, there’s a few people, fat cats who are profiting off that decline. And that’s why we have this extractive economy, not an economy that improves people and their material existence, but actually puts them in a horrifying psychological position of being extracted from. So what he said made a lot of sense and really explains a hell of a lot.
Taya Graham: And it’s an extraction and distraction economy, which is fueled by those social media billionaires.
Stephen Janis: It’s so true. You need both distraction and extraction at the same time.
Taya Graham: So as we reflect on these sweeping promises and executive orders that President Trump has unleashed in his first days back in office, it’s clear we are facing a profound moment in American governance, and one that demands careful scrutiny, honesty, and compassion. From the deployment of ICE agents to Chicago to the aggressive push for more drilling, these policies seem to serve a really narrow set of interests, consolidating power, deepening inequality, and widening the chasm between the billionaire class and the rest of us. And let’s be clear: these moves are not just policy decisions. They are calculated steps towards entrenching a system of oligarchy where the very wealthy few dictate the terms of our lives.
When you see Tesla’s Elon Musk, or Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg, or Google’s Sundar Pichai, or Apple CEO Tim Cook, or Amazon’s Jeff Bezos literally sitting at the right hand of our president, does that not concern you? Don’t you think they will leverage their money and power for more money and power? The appointment of individuals like Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswami, and even Linda McMahon, and other billionaires to positions of power only underscore this reality. These are people who epitomize wealth hoarding and corporate influence, now wielding even more control over public policy. Musk, appointed to oversee government efficiency, has made his billions breaking unions and hollowing out the very safety nets that working families depend on. Oh, and I think Vivek Ramawwami, I think King Musk sent him packing.
But Tuesday, Jan. 21, we saw the anniversary of Citizens United. It’s an infamous case that gave corporations a say, literally a First Amendment protection to use their money as a form of speech. How are regular folks supposed to compete against the power of billions in lobbying dollars? Money talks, and billions can talk over us.
What we’re witnessing isn’t even an oligarchy; that might be more pleasant. What we’re about to experience is more frightening: a government that is run like a company store, where we have no other options and are forced to buy what they’re selling.
And just let me expand on that a little bit. So there was a time before unions were able to push back against rapacious capitalism when people lived in what were called company towns. Miners in particular were subject to these feudal arrangements. Employees lived in company-owned homes on company-owned land. They bought food and essentials from company-owned stores, and then they went and worked in the mine. The point is that every aspect of their lives was monetized and turned into profit. And if they lost their jobs, they lost everything.
Well, I think we’re headed towards something similar in outcome, but different in how it’s implemented. And that is how this extractive capitalism works: to extract from us constantly and mine our lives for personal profit.
It’s drilled down into facets of our personal existence that were once unthinkable. Zuckerberg and Musk literally make money every time we post something about ourselves. A picture of our birthday or an anniversary fuels the attention economy for their profit. The platform Musk now uses to impose his political will was, in large part, fueled by our industry, journalism, as we posted our stories and worked just to get a few crumbs of attention from his vast digital audience. And even worse, our worth was measured and is still measured by how many followers we have. In other words, our value as journalists is tied to how much we can enrich a tech bro, and that is not a great idea for journalistic integrity or even for a steady paycheck.
And if you want to get some of that scrip to spend at the company store, maybe you should pick up Trump’s meme coin. It’ll probably be part of the official reserve currency soon [both laugh].
But in relation to the company store analogy with our healthcare system, your healthcare insurance is often tied to your employer. If you are sick, you have no idea how much it will cost. You have no idea [if] your insurance will even cover it, and you could even lose the job that provides the needed health insurance. And if your debts are overwhelming, you try to purchase a digital lottery ticket of a GoFundMe page so that you can hope to pay off the debts that have been incurred by the private equity firms that have turned US medical care into a nightmare.
But I’m going to change my tune a little bit. I’m going to ask us to do something that might be the only option left: resist, resist it all. Tell them to take their overpriced medical bills and stuff ’em. Tell ’em to take their overpriced cars and park them permanently. Tell them to take their rents jacked up by algorithms and pay it themselves. And let’s stop creating content for and arguing amongst ourselves so that Zuckerberg can take Judo classes or buy another yacht. Let us all say enough is enough. Let’s resist making a few rich people richer and richer. Let’s resist the Second Gilded Age and end it now.
Stephen, thank you for being patient with me [Janis laughs]. I had to get that off my chest.
Stephen Janis: I totally understand. when you listen to some of this stuff that Dr. Wolff says, it affects you because you want to feel empowered on some level. And so I appreciate that.
Taya Graham: Well, I want people to know that we can resist. And I want to thank everyone for watching, for being here, for listening, and for caring. Until next time we see you, stay informed, stay passionate about your politics, and stay compassionate to your fellow Americans. Remember, united we stand, divided we fall. Let’s try to find some unity, because we’re going to need it. Thanks for joining us.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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Chip giant Nvidia shed nearly $600bn in market value after Chinese AI model cast doubt on supremacy of US tech firms.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Chinese platforms have pledged to crack down on hate, but anti-foreigner sentiment still circulates widely online.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Ulbricht was given two life sentences, plus 40 years for running site that allegedly facilitated $183m in drug sales.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Congressmen and congresswomen are making just crazy profit margins on their investments and they’re doing it with inside information. If you’re investing money in the stock market and you’re making 240% returns, you’re a super genius or you’re an evil criminal. Transcript: *This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse […]
The post Congress Members Are Making INSANE Profits Off Insider Trading appeared first on The Ring of Fire Network.
This post was originally published on The Ring of Fire.
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This story originally appeared in Labor Notes on Jan. 16, 2025. It is shared here with permission.
The following language was compiled from a series of unions and labor activists. It is intended as a resource for workers looking to include pro-immigrant provisions in their collective bargaining agreements.
BARRING ICE FROM ENTERING THE WORKSITE
The Employer will require that any federal immigration agent, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agent, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) agent, or State and Local law enforcement officials comply with legal requirements before they may be allowed to interrogate, search or seize the person or property of any worker.
Should an ICE or DHS agent request to enter the worksite or obtain or review personnel records, the Employer shall verify the immigration agent’s credentials, ask the agent why the agent is requesting access, and require a criminal judicial warrant signed by a federal judge. Staff shall not admit ICE agents based on administrative warrant, ICE detainer, or other document issued by an agency enforcing civil immigration law.
Should an ICE or DHS agent demand access to the premises or seek to interrogate, search, or seize any employee the employer shall immediately notify the union by telephone call to the union’s office. The foregoing shall not require the Employer to deny the DHS or Department of Labor access to the I-9 forms, as required by law.
If the Company is served with a validly executed search or arrest warrant, the Company shall arrange for questioning of workers to occur in as private a setting as possible.The Company will notify the Union if the Company learns of an immigration investigation regarding a worker within two (2) days.PROTECTION OF RIGHTS DURING WORKPLACE IMMIGRATION ENFORCEMENT
If an immigration-related warrant, subpoena or other formal or informal request is issued by a governmental agency to the Employer, the Employer will inform affected employees as soon as possible and give them a copy of the request within three (3) calendar days. If the Employer provides the requested documents to the agency, or allows the agency to view them on-site, it will inform affected employees as soon as possible and give them copies of the provided documents within three calendar days.
The Employer will only comply with governmental requests, including requests to enter Employer-controlled workplaces, to the extent strictly required by law. The Employer will not comply with such requests if the Employer is not required to do so by law. All employees will be notified as soon as possible of the date and time a government agency is expected to enter a workplace. No employee will be required to work in the office that day if they reasonably believe doing so will put them at risk of governmental arrest or detainment.
ABSENCE FROM WORK DUE TO IMMIGRATION STATUS
The Employer agrees to work with all employees to provide an opportunity to gain extensions, continuations, or other status required by the United States Citizenship and Immigration Service without taking a leave of absence. If a leave of absence is necessary, the Employer agrees to give permission for the employee to take an unpaid leave of absence for a period of up to ninety (90) calendar days and return the employee to work. No employee actively seeking work authorization will be terminated while on such leave.
The Employer will not discipline or discharge an employee who is prevented from working for 90 days or less due to arrest, detention, incarceration, or temporary national expulsion by law enforcement pursuant to the employee’s citizenship or immigration status. Such time away from work will be treated as paid leave. This paragraph will not apply if the law-enforcement action is based on or related to violent crimes, hate crimes, or other actions the Employer believes may jeopardize the safety of its staff or organizational integrity.
In cases where immigration status issues arise, the Employer will explore alternative employment options, including remote work from another country, in compliance with applicable laws.
Employees may choose to have a union representative present in all matters related to immigration status.
EMPLOYEE PRIVACY
Immigration status is confidential, and the Employer will not divulge personal immigration status information of employees to any parties except as required for the immigration sponsorship process, as requested by employees in question, as required by law, as required to defend the Employer or its employees in legal proceedings, or as expressly stipulated in this Agreement.
The Employer shall not disclose confidential information concerning employees to Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) or to its agents, except as required by law. To the extent permitted by law, confidential information includes name, address, and social security numbers. The Employer agrees to provide prompt written notice to the union if any government agency, including ICE, contacts the Employer for any purpose involving employees or if the Employer receives a search, arrest or administrative warrant, subpoena, or other request for documents. The Employer agrees to promptly provide the union with all information regarding these matters that the union requests.
NO-MATCH LETTERS
When and if ICE notifies the Employer that certain employees do not appear to be authorized to continue their employment, the Employer will notify such employees and provide them with two (2) weeks to present other documents, including those listed on the form I-9, to establish their work authorization. The employer shall not change the employee’s work status before such two (2) week period has passed.
The Employer agrees to promptly provide the union with all “no-match” information the Social Security Administration (SSA) provides the Employer. “No-match” information means employee names or social security numbers in the Employer’s records did not match those in SSA’s records. The Employer also agrees to promptly review all its records for any discrepancies and to update its records with all information it receives from the SSA or from affected employees.
STATUS VERIFICATION AND I-9 AUDITS
The Employer will not require or demand proof of immigration status, except as required by law. The Employer will not require an employee to re-verify their authorization to work except as required by law. In the event the Employer requires an employee to re-verify, it will provide them 120 days to do so unless a shorter period is necessary to avoid legal violations by the employee or the Employer.
The Employer will not participate in the E-Verify program unless the Employer’s participation in E-Verify is required by law. If The Company seeks to enroll in E-Verify or other comparable programs, it shall provide notice to the Union. The Union shall have the right to reject such enrollment unless the Company’s participation in E-Verify is required by law.
NON-RETALIATION POLICY
The Employer shall comply with all lawful requests of employees to change names and social security numbers (regarding immigration or otherwise) in the Employer’s records, without prejudice to their seniority or any other right under this agreement.
The Employer shall not request information or documents from employees or applicants for employment regarding their immigration status, except as required by law. No worker hired before November 6, 1986, shall be discharged due to their immigration status, nor shall any employee be asked to show authorization to work if they continue their employment after a temporary absence as defined in the immigration law and regulations.The Employer shall not use an employee’s immigration status or sponsorship as leverage to negotiate or coerce them into specific employment terms and conditions. This includes, but is not limited to, requiring an employee to commit to a specific length
of employment, imposing economic conditions, withholding or threatening to withhold sponsorship for any reason, delaying or threatening to delay the immigration process, and using sponsorship to demand concessions from the employee. Any attempt to use
immigration sponsorship as a tool for negotiation or coercion will be a violation of this Agreement.IMMIGRATION SPONSORSHIP
The Employer is committed to supporting every member of the bargaining unit, including foreign nationals, by ensuring that they have access to comprehensive immigration support and protection from deportation.
The Employer will contact every new bargaining unit employee who is a foreign national within two (2) weeks of their start date to inquire about their current work authorization and immigration status. In collaboration with the employee, the Employer will design a tailored plan to extend their work authorization, renew their visa, or apply for new immigration status as necessary.
The Employer shall commit to sponsoring work authorization and other immigration- related legal processes for every bargaining unit employee who is a foreign national as soon as they become eligible. The Employer’s immigration team will contact eligible employees within two (2) weeks of their eligibility date to begin the process with their Consent.
The Employer will initiate discussions with employees who hold temporary work authorization at least 12 months prior to the expiration of their work authorization. These discussions will outline available visa and work authorization options based on eligibility,
with a focus on aligning the process with the employee’s long-term goals, whether through temporary or permanent status. The Employer will prioritize the interests of the employee in this process.The Employer will cover all fees related to an employee’s visa, green card, and other immigration sponsorship, including those required for work authorization renewals and premium processing services through USCIS.
LEGAL SUPPORT
The Employer shall assign an Immigration Liaison to each bargaining unit employee who is a foreign national. The Immigration Liaison will act as the primary contact for all immigration-related matters, ensuring that external counsel adheres to strict deadlines and providing the employee with updates throughout the process. Employees will be granted access to relevant information and resources as needed.
Supervisors overseeing foreign national employees will undergo mandatory immigration training, focusing on the legal nuances of immigration, cultural competency, and non-discrimination practices. Immigration Liaisons or HR Partners will also undergo
similar training, ensuring all involved personnel are equipped with the knowledge necessary to support employees effectively. Updated training materials will be shared with all employees and the Union.Foreign national employees undergoing visa applications or renewals will be offered weekly check-ins with their Immigration Liaison and legal representatives from the Employer while working on immigration paperwork. During periods of inactivity in the immigration process, the Employer will offer monthly check-ins to ensure employees are supported.
The Employer, in collaboration with outside counsel, will ensure that bargaining unit members receive all necessary documentation with reasonable timeframes to complete the visa process. Employees will be kept informed of relevant deadlines, typical approval timelines, and any legal implications that may impact them or their families. In cases of delays or complications, the Employer will promptly inform the employee and work to resolve the issue.
The Employer shall develop and distribute a comprehensive guide for visa holders, outlining their rights and options. This guide will be provided during the onboarding process and updated regularly. Additionally, protocols will be in place to protect employee rights in the event of immigration enforcement actions, with clear communication to managers on how to respond.
The Employer will host periodic Know Your Rights training sessions during work hours, educating all staff on their legal rights when interacting with law enforcement or immigration authorities at home, in public spaces, or in the workplace.
LANGUAGE ACCESSIBILITY
The Employer agrees to translate all employment-related documents, including disciplinary notices, policies, handbooks, procedures, notices, and a copy of the union contract, into the language spoken at home of its employees using a mutually acceptable translator. The Employer agrees to pay for a mutually acceptable translator to translate during all meetings that employees whose language spoken at home is not English are required to attend.
While English is the primary language of the workplace, employees may use the language of their choice among themselves.
UNION PARTICIPATION IN RESOLVING IMMIGRATION ISSUES
In the event that an employee has a problem with their right to work in the United States, the Employer shall notify the Union in writing prior to taking any action. The Employer agrees to meet with the Union to discuss the nature of the problem to attempt to reach a resolution.
DISCLAIMERS
The Employer will comply with all immigration laws. If compliance with immigration laws requires development of new policies which change terms and conditions of employment after the enactment of this Agreement, the Employer will negotiate with the Union over the effects of such policies.
Nothing in this Article shall require the Employer to violate the law.
PROTECTION FROM EMPLOYER I-9 AUDITS
See this memorandum of understanding from UE Local 115 (Refresco workers), available in both Spanish and English. And see this side agreement from UE Local 155 (Chasen Fiber Technologies) which has even stronger language.
SANCTUARY UNIONS
Want to turn your union into a sanctuary union? You can access the Teamsters Joint Council 16 resolution here, and the National Union of Healthcare Workers’ resolution here. In addition, you can access Arise Chicago’s training guide on building sanctuary unions here.
ORGANIZING TOOLKIT
Arise Chicago has produced an immigrant worker toolkit that provides an overview of rights and tools.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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As fires continue to rage in Los Angeles, news of an imminent ceasefire in Gaza are raising hopes across the world. All this comes as Trump is about to enter office, ensuring that the system responsible for these catastrophes will continue. Mehdi Hasan, founder of Zeteo News, and Francesca Fiorentini of “The Bitchuation Room” podcast join The Real News as the world burns, and seems on the edge of an even greater conflagration.
Production: Maximillian Alvarez
Studio Production: David Hebden, Cameron Granadino, Adam Coley
Transcript
The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. A proofread version will be made available as soon as possible.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Welcome to the Real News Network and welcome back to our weekly live stream. You can catch our team here live every Thursday, and you can find us reporting on this channel every week, lifting up the voices and stories of real people on the front lines of struggle around the world and bringing together a diverse, wide array of truth tellers, analysts and fighters for global working class justice. So be sure to subscribe to our channel like this video and share your thoughts with us in the live chat right now. Alright, well, happy New Year and all that 2025 has wasted no time throwing us back into the burning trash heap of history, and we’ve got no time to waste here. So let’s get rolling. We’ve got two powerhouse guests joining us today. Returning to the channel, we’ve got the one and only Francesca Fiorentini, correspondent, comedian, and host of the Situation Room podcast.
Francesca is also the former host and head writer of the Web series News broke on AJ Plus and she hosted the Special Red White and who on M-S-N-B-C. And joining us for the first time, we’ve got the one and only Medi Hassan world renowned broadcaster, former host of the Me Hassan Show on M-S-N-B-C, an author of numerous books including Win Every Argument, which was published in 2023. Medi is also a Guardian US columnist and he is the founder, CEO and editor-in-chief of the Vital News Outlet eo. We’re going to start today’s stream in my home of Southern California where cataclysmic wildfires, which continue to explode in frequency and severity due to the manmade climate crisis, have killed at least 25 people displaced, tens of thousands obliterated entire neighborhoods and scorched wide swaths of the landscape. The entire region was on high alert this week with the National Weather Service warning that a new wave of intense winds could cause explosive fire growth.
But there’s some relief here in the latest reports. According to the New York Times this morning, dangerous winds were subsiding in the Los Angeles area on Thursday, delivering a boost for firefighting efforts, even as frustration grew among displaced residents desperate to return to their neighborhoods. After more than a week of devastating wildfires, nine days after the Blaze is ignited, no timeline has been announced for lifting many evacuation orders that have affected tens of thousands of Southern California residents. The Palisades Fire, the largest in the area, had burned nearly 24,000 acres and was 22% contained as of Thursday morning. According to Cal Fire, the Eaton fire covered more than 14,000 acres and was 55% contained. Now as the fires burn here at home across the world, Palestinians who have somehow managed to evade the civilization erasing fires of Israel’s genocidal assault for the past year and a half are rejoicing at the bombshell news that the bombing may finally end in a stunning development.
As Jeremy Scahill writes at Drop Site News, an agreement on a deal that will halt at least temporarily Israel’s 15 month long genocidal assault on Gaza was announced on Wednesday to scenes of celebration by Palestinians and Gaza. The agreement is divided into three phases, each spanning 42 days, and outline specifics on the first phase, including prisoner swaps, Israeli troop withdrawals, allowances for displaced Palestinians to return to their homes while leaving the details of the ensuing two phases to be determined through future negotiations. The deal will take effect on January 19th. The terms of the agreement being negotiated are nearly identical to what was on the table last May when outgoing President Joe Biden first announced it in his farewell address from the Oval Office last night, president Biden very noticeably tried to take credit for the deal being reached, but reports from inside Israel itself tell a very different story.
The Israeli newspaper Harts reported this week that Israeli sources say that the involvement of the incoming US administration led by Trump’s aggressive Middle East envoy, Steve Witkoff, revived hostage talks with Hamas. While Netanyahu’s propaganda machine claims that Trump has left him no choice. What happens inside his coalition will determine whether the Prime Minister approves the deal. So what does this all mean for Palestinians and Israelis, for the world and for us working people here in the heart of US Empire? What does that tell us about the legacy of the outgoing Biden administration and about the new international order in the Trump 2.0 era and with Trump’s inauguration just days away, what will next week reveal about what we’re actually facing in the coming four years with a second Trump administration and a fully magnified GOP effectively controlling all branches of government? So to dig into all of this, I want to go to our amazing guest, Medi Hassan and Francesca Fiorentini.
And a quick note to all of you watching live. We’re going to be talking with Medi and Francesca for the next hour, but we’ll be responding to your questions from the live chat in the last half hour of the stream. So if you’ve got thoughts or questions, please share them in the chat. Alright, Francesca, I want to come to you first sis, because you are back home in LA right in the middle of the madness and we’ve been following your social media updates on the wildfires for the past week. And first of all, I really just want to say that I and the whole Real news team have been thinking of you, your friends, your family, and we are sending you all our love and solidarity in these apocalyptic ass times. I want to ask if we can start with having you just lay out what the past week and a half have been like for you, what you want most people who don’t live in SoCal, to know about what you and others there have been seeing, feeling, experiencing, and where do things stand now,
Francesca Fiorentini:
That’s a huge question, but thank you so much for having me back and thank you for yes, all the kind words. And my heart also is going out to all the people who have lost everything. My sister-in-law lost everything and her family, but so many people are in this position and I just want everyone to know that we’re relying on mutual aid and solidarity from communities. That is what is happening. That is who is around right now. People are coming back to their homes, but the air quality is not okay. The A QI doesn’t measure things like toxic chemicals burning from electronics or toys or old homes that might have asbestos in it. There’s no way to measure that. Nobody’s out here telling us how to stay safe, what to do, helping us with air filtration systems, which can often be incredibly expensive. It is all person to person.
It is Facebook mom groups to community organizations that were already on the ground. I actually recently just did a piece for EO specifically about the people who are coming together in this moment to literally save lives. And one of those people are day laborers, migrant day laborers, shout out to the day Laborers Organizing Network and the Pasadena Worker Center. They are organizing day laborers who often have experience in things like landscaping. They know how to handle a chainsaw to get rid of some of this debris that is blocking people’s homes, has fallen on their cars, on and on and on. It is the people, and I hate that. I hate that we only have one another, but also it is a reminder that we are all we have. That push comes to shove. We are woefully unprepared in this country for this kind of climate chaos.
We are woefully unprepared as we were under covid for the kinds of pandemics that will be, again, all too commonplace with our public health infrastructure completely decimated and it’s only going to get worse. So it is really gutting, it is apocalyptic, it is scary, but it is also heartening. And the silver lining is to see some of this solidarity. And I think honestly, people just getting offline stop participating in the conspiracy theories and which again, are really, really running rampant right now. There is a lot more to say about what happens next. I’ll just say that LA has a massive fight on our hands and to me it also plays into the questions that have arisen ever since the 2020 George Floyd uprising about where our money in this city goes. Now, I want to caveat that by saying that no amount of money could have stopped a hundred mile winds spreading embers here and there and just lighting fire after fire after fire.
That is climate change. But on an LA specific level, we have a budget that is out of control, skewed towards the cops. We need to change that. And so many grassroots organizations here have been blowing the whistle. And as our elected officials become more representative, you’ve got a shout out to YIs Hernandez on city council who Soto Martinez also to Naia Ramen and finally recently elected Isabelle Rado. All of them are progressives and three of them who were in office at the time voted against that budget that gave more money to the police than any other place. So there is a national conversation we can also talk about that I’d love to talk about, but that is what’s happening here locally. There’s a fight ahead of us and it is on every front.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I think that’s beautifully and powerfully put, Francesca, and just to everyone watching not from Southern California, I am sure the images of the Santa Ana winds blowing those embers was quite shocking. They are nothing new to us, but this speed and this late, or I guess this early in the year that is, I remember my own parents being evacuated from their house in 2008 because the Santa S had blown embers over to our side of Brea and the fires were getting close to our home. This happens all the time, but the speed, the intensity, the ferocity, the fact that these winds are blowing this much in January when normally there’s something we expect in the fall like these to say nothing of the mega drought that we’ve been in the southwest for the past 25 years. I mean, there is so much to talk about here.
Francesca Fiorentini:
I’ve only lived here for a few years and I literally don’t know when the Santa Ana winds are supposed to happen every year. It’s like, no, it’s supposed to be in October. No, they’re in August. It’s very funny that no one actually knows when they’re happening. But yes, what hasn’t happened is rain in nine months
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I guess the Santa Ana’s are just year round at this point. So not great folks. And I also want to highlight what you said, Francesca, about just the impact of the diss and misinformation and medi. I want to come to you on this question in a second because it really strikes me as someone who was interviewing folks on the ground in Asheville, North Carolina in the wake of the hurricane a few months ago. They were saying the exact same thing about how Trump’s tweets, about fema far right conspiracy theories about anything immigrants, that it was actively hurting relief efforts and that those relief efforts were largely being driven by mutual aid, by people on the ground. So I want folks to really take that to heart and think about what that means for us as a society that is going to be facing compounding cataclysms more frequently.
Now, medi, I want to bring you in here first to give you a chance to respond to anything that Francesca said there. But also as someone who has worked in the upper echelons of broadcast news, I really want to get your perspective on how the media has responded to these fires from the manufacturer of bullshit. Pseudo stories driven by whatever Trump or Musk said about the fires to the media’s proven unwillingness to report on these environmental disasters in a continuing context of climate change. And actually in a searing piece that we published at The Real News earlier this week by columnist Adam Johnson, Adam points out that a survey of nightly news coverage from the first full day of the LA Fire showed that in 16 minutes of coverage, A-B-C-N-B-C and CBS Nightly News broadcast did not mention climate change once in their Wednesday morning coverage of the LA fires.
Neither the New York Times Daily Podcast nor the New York Times Morning newsletter address climate change at all. Severe weather events when they’re reported on at all, typically because they’re within the US are indexed in the oh deism genre of reporting where politics and human decision-making are stripped away entirely. And all one can do is look on helplessly and say, oh dear, there’s no villain victims, but no victimizer, no political actors or politics at all. And above all, no explicit or implicit call to action just agency free human suffering that may sort of kind of be linked to erratic weather patterns with no sense there’s anything the viewer or reader can actually do about it. It’s just vaguely sad and everyone is expected to chip in a few dollars to GoFundMe gaw at the suffering and move on to the next extreme weather event right around the corner in a matter of weeks. Meam, please, your thoughts on the media response to the California wildfires and your advice for viewers about how we need to navigate this chaotic information ecosystem to get the answers we need in times of emergency.
Mehdi Hasan:
It’s a very troubling time when it comes to media misinformation. I am somebody who believes that most of our issues that we have in society right now do go back to the media, right? I’m one of these people who thinks that we need to have long, hard conversations about the information era that we’re in. I think people on the left have not done that. I think people on the right are enjoying the fact that people on the left haven’t done that. It’s became fashionable for a while to say, oh, you can’t blame the media for everything. Now look, a lot of this comes back to how you get your info. You mentioned earlier about the pseudo manufacturing of bullshit news. Adam’s spot on in his piece about the O ideaism and the idea from liberal media that if you talk about climate change, you’re talking about something political, right?
The right have so successfully turned science into a partisan issue that you no longer can talk about vaccines or climate science or any other obvious undeniable scientific issue without sounding like a liberal or a progressive or a leftist. It’s actually genius on their part that they’ve managed to turn science, objective science into a right left issue. And so of course, the liberal media cowed by the right doesn’t want to touch issues that they think at a time of storms, at a time of tornadoes, at a time of fires. You can’t talk about politics and therefore you can’t talk about climate change because climate change is coded political. And that is the success story that they’ve done on the liberal media side, of course, on the right wing media side, what they have done. And Adam mentions no villain, no victimizer, that’s the liberal view of the world. The right are the masters of understanding the importance of having a villain, right? What they have done so successfully is they’ve tapped into human beings basic psyches, basic fears, and understood that for any political crisis you have to have a bad guy. Democrats have failed to do that. Liberals have consistently failed to do that. The right have rightly understood the need for a villain. Now, the villains they’ve picked are horrible Mexicans, Muslims, trans kids, foreigners,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Immigrants, DI caused the fire
Mehdi Hasan:
DRT, and they apply that model to any crisis. It doesn’t matter what it is. So fires come along. I tweeted this earlier this week. It’s actually kind of admirable from a kind of, if you put your evil genius hat on, you have to admire the ability for the right to turn in a matter of days, some might say hours, an issue of objective, climate change, natural disaster. What do we do about this policy-wise into, no, it’s about the water hydrants and the pressure and the water hydrants and it’s about the number of helicopters. And why don’t we have drones in the skies? And why was Karen Bass in Ghana? And we can go down the list of what they’ve managed to do in terms of empty reservoirs and DEI, firefighters and all of the rest.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Why didn’t they use their weather machines?
Mehdi Hasan:
Why didn’t they use their measurements to control it for good, not evil? And that is actually admirable. I’m sorry. It’s amazing because a lot of people, I think 10 years ago, five years ago would’ve said, wait till climate change starts hitting the us. Wait till people start dying from it, then everyone will be forced to take it seriously. Actually turns out, no, even if you’re losing Americans in front of your eyes, they can make you look elsewhere. That is the power of propaganda. And in the old days, it would’ve been Rupert Murdoch and Fox. Today it is Elon Musk and social media and Mark Zuckerberg and Co and Musk has of course been driving a lot of this. There was that hilarious moment where he asked firefighters about water pressure. They were like, no, we were good on water. But that is the power of propaganda and misinformation.
And I was talking to a colleague earlier about this. We’ve had the right so successfully hijack the debate about media information, say it’s censorship, censorship. And Mark Zuckerberg last week came out and said, censorship, we’re going to get rid of our fact checking. And actually, no, I’m sorry. The debate has to be about content moderation. It has to be about responsible journalism. When people are dying, we can have inane abstract debates about free speech, but people are dying in a pandemic. Yeah, I do want Facebook to take down posts saying, put ivermectin in your body or inject yourself with disinfectant. Yeah, I do want people to be able to say, you know what? In the middle of a hurricane in North Carolina, don’t stay in your home because if you leave the government are going to seize your property, you might die even the local Republican congressman at that time. So I do think when people’s lives are on the lines, it’s very easy to have abstract First Amendment discussions. But in public emergencies, we can’t just have unlimited misinformation and people say, oh, that’s authoritarian. No, it’s how it’s always been
Until very recently when these libertarian freaks pretend that there should be no restrictions on their lies and gaslighting. So look, we need to have hard conversations about all this stuff. The moment Elon bus bought Twitter in 2022, that in itself told us the Democrats and the liberal side of the spectrum were not ready for this fight. The fact that they just rolled over and can you imagine if George Soros next month tried to buy Fox? You think the Trump administration and Republicans in Congress will be like, yeah, free market. Do what you want to do though they would do everything they could to stop it because they understand the power of those platforms. Liberals and leftists have not understood the power of those platforms,
Francesca Fiorentini:
Right? Or the efforts to reign them in move so glacially slowly, although they begin, and that inevitably if you don’t actually break up big tech, it will just get eaten by a bigger and bigger and bigger fish. And I want to just say that just on social media, misinformation and disinformation, it’s truly leading to online vigilantism that is terrifying so that everyone thinks that they are a particular sleuth to find out who started the fires, likely a downed power line. You dumb idiots, everything else that started wildfires here in this state of California. It’s a down power line. Okay? So just to say that it is really getting into a terrifying level of vigilantism and people are using apps to do exactly this. So it’s taking misinformation and applying it in real world and making citizens arrests and things like this.
Mehdi Hasan:
But also just to go back to your original question about what can people do who are not crazy freaks. I think people watching this need to understand that A, don’t play the game, participate in the kind of crap that Francesca highlighted and you’ve highlighted, but also, I mean the death of expertise and respect for expertise. I mean, look, I’m on the fence on this one. Elites have lied to us for a long time. A lot of foreign policy experts got us into Iraq and defended Gaza. But I do worry since the pandemic, when you saw Dr. Fauci became the villain of the right, not Donald Trump, the man who said, put disinfectant in your body, not Republican politicians who refuse to mask or do basic mitigation measures, but Fauci became the villain of the right wing movement. Scientists started going around with bodyguards. People like my friend Peter Hotez in Texas had people turning up at his home to try and film him. I think that is a reminder of there’s a great meme doing the rounds. Last week I was a covid expert This week I’m an expert on water pressure in California.
Speaker 4:
People
Mehdi Hasan:
Log in and overnight everyone on Twitter becomes an expert on whatever the de jore story is. That’s a real problem. Social media is really empowered, and Bill Bird did a great line on Jimmy Kimmel the other night saying some fuckhead in his underwear in his mother’s basement is now suddenly the world’s expert on California water pressure systems like get a grip on everyone, especially in the US where academia is seen as some kind of shadowy force. People are ivory towers are not to be trusted. It is really weird that we don’t go, oh, there’s a crisis about wildfires. Let’s ask the wildfire experts what we should do. There’s a crisis about covid. Let’s ask vaccination experts and disease experts and infectious disease experts watch No in this country. Let’s ask a pundit on cable news. What we should do.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, I mean there’s a lot to say. I do just want to talk about really quickly, just add to me’s point about a villain and creating villains. And obviously we know that the villain in the LA fire story is the fossil fuel industry, and that is so clear. But there’s a lot of sub villains within that. And right now you’ve got Republicans who are talking about tying aid relief for California to a budget that would enshrine the Donald Trump tax cuts four billionaires into law. So double whammy, quite literally the 1% that gave us these wildfires that giving us these once in a century flood, they’re going to enshrine that 1% even more. So the enemy is the billionaire class, and it is no clearer than when you look at climate chaos and what the billionaire class continues to, but people bring on all of us. Go ahead.
Mehdi Hasan:
Frankly, people just don’t see it, right? This is the problem right now, it’s obvious it’s the billionaire class. It’s obvious it’s the fossil fuel industry, but I’m talking about even apolitical people, not like fox junkies, but such as the power of the social media discussion and the background noise and such as discipline of the right wing media machine and rightwing pundits and rightwing politicians to say the message in unison in a way that Democrats or liberals or leftists don’t, is that today, for example, if you ask people, oh, California, was it really bad? Should there be condition? I think the average person would say, yeah, yeah, but what about Texas? It’s mismanaged. What about Texas? I don’t hear the same. We don’t talk about Texas in the same way. Max mentioned at the start, 25 people are dead. That’s 25. Too many. I’m sure that death hole’s going to go up in Texas. 250 people is the government’s death to 700 is the unofficial death toll from the slow storms. A couple of years back when Ted Cruz fled to Cancun, right when the Texas power grid shut down, there were no consequences from that. No one talks about tying aid or conditions for Texas. There were no political people like Karen Bass’s career is over. Greg Abbott got reelected after that. Ted Cruz got reelected after that. Why? Because again, liberals in the left are not very good at creating villains in the same way that the right does
Francesca Fiorentini:
Because they often receive money from the exact same class that the right does. I mean, we have villains set out before us. Look, the fact is the matter is that 10 years ago we didn’t have names like Elon Musk or Mark Andreessen or Sam Altman or whomever else, other billionaires who were in the rooms with Donald Trump. We didn’t have those names. The income disparity was already concentrating, but we didn’t have the names.
Mehdi Hasan:
Now
Francesca Fiorentini:
We’ve got literal names. These emblems of late stage
Mehdi Hasan:
Capitalism, they’re literally going to be sitting on stage next week in the inauguration.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yes. And we still can’t name them. And I just want to say Democrats are not off the cuff here. I just want to shout out that the Lever had an incredible report about how the California Insurance Commissioner, who oversees fire insurance in this state has received contributions from the insurance industry and is currently in 2023, passed a reform that would allow the buck to be passed to consumers versus the insurance agency because insurers are leaving California, we all know this. They’re leaving Florida, they’re leaving everywhere, and instead they’re
Mehdi Hasan:
Not leaving Florida. Florida is a perfect place in America. What are you talking about?
Francesca Fiorentini:
Well, actually, ironically, Florida has more checks and balances looking at the insurance industry there than in California. So all to say Ricardo Lara is his name. He’s going to be throughout LA if you see him and if he’s giving you a good information, great, alright, but also he has taken money from the insurance industry to specifically pass reforms that would make consumers premiums go up and let them off easy. They would have to do very, very little. They have to try to cover people for two years, 5% more coverage. But if it gets too expensive, they’re going to leave. Meanwhile, they’re literally hiring private firefighting forces that are protecting the buildings that they insure to say nothing of the Republicans like Rick Caruso, who also hired private firefighters to protect his property and wants to be mayor. So again, it always gets worse and we are going to see that come Monday how all of this is going to get worse.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And just to add one more thing there on just how absurd this entire situation is and how villainous it is, and then I want us to kind of pivot and talk about Gaza here in the next half hour. But my colleague Dave Zin was talking to us about this earlier this week. It’s like the Monday night football game that the Rams were playing was supposed to take place in Los Angeles. It got moved to Arizona. Everyone on the media, in the sports media was talking about, oh, what a great effort it was to move this game to the State Farm Stadium in Arizona when State Farm are the pieces of shit who just revoked a bunch of people’s home insurance a month ago before these fires. It is absolute madness. And one more point I wanted to make because me, you mentioned the need for expertise and verifiable information and authoritative information.
I want to also compliment that with information and firsthand accounts and stories and human faces of the working people who are being affected by this. And that is what we do here at The Real News. I remember when the Baltimore Bridge collapsed last year and all these same pieces of shit were on right wing media saying, oh, it was DEI that caused the mismanagement here. That collapsed the bridge. I was there talking to the immigrant workers who were coworkers of the men who died on that bridge. I was talking to longshore workers about how the shipping industry has made these container ships bigger, filled with more dangerous materials. Two to 3% of them are only abiding by US port regulations. The others are flags of convenience ships. Like we’re not talking about that. Instead, people are running around talking about bullshit like DEI. The same way that I was talking to folks in Asheville who were dealing with the effects of that hurricane the same way I talked to folks who were living near Eagle Pass in Texas who had a bunch of right wing idiots show up in their town and cause more disruption than the undocumented immigrants who were supposedly crossing the border.
But then all these right-wing nut jobs got there and there was no one there. I mean, I want folks East Palestinian, Ohio where the train derailed. I’ve been there multiple times. I’ve interviewed countless people from that community Immediately once that train derailed and those people’s lives were turned upside down and they are still sick, they are still suffering. I talk to them every week. It was a media circus over who’s more to blame for this Trump or Biden, who’s going to get there first? Trump or Biden. Everyone just cares about that. And then they stopped caring about the people who were right at the center of it. And that includes you and me and any one of us who are in line to suffer this kind of catastrophe in the future. And sadly, there are going to be more of them whether they’re caused by industrial accidents, climate change, what have you.
Mehdi Hasan:
Yeah.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Oh, please.
Mehdi Hasan:
What you’re saying is we didn’t do enough coverage of James Woods’s house. Almost burning down what you’re saying, the real
Maximillian Alvarez:
Story. Yes. I’m saying my heart bleeds certainly for James Woods, but I will say on that note that I am deeply disappointed in so many people on the so-called progressive left who were talking about my home southern California as if these fires only burned James Woods’s house and that they were something to be celebrated when I’m seeing people who are being displaced who live in homes that they couldn’t afford to buy now, but maybe they’ve been there for a generation and the property values have gone up. So they’re not all these rich people that you’re pretending like are sympathetic characters
Mehdi Hasan:
Conversation perhaps for another day. But having worked at M-S-N-B-C and seen CNN how it goes, I say this as someone who moved to the US from another country, there’s also an east coast bias with our media, right? The West Coast is another country for people in New York and DC LA is not the same value, important status. I think I saw something a week ago in the midst of all the LA Fires houses destroyed 27,000 acres. I think apartment block was on fire in New York and it was live footage suddenly from this one building in New York on fire. And that’s always going to be the case. One building in New York will always get more coverage in the entire city outside of the east coast. And there is that longstanding problem, bipartisan problem. Forget right or left, there is east coast bias amongst our media. That’s the
Francesca Fiorentini:
Fact. Yeah, for sure. And also just really quickly, I mean, I was tuning into local news for the first time in a real ever because you’re watching local news and you’re like, oh, okay, obviously I’m using my husband’s family’s login to get to the log. That’s
Mehdi Hasan:
What good news was made for fire trucks, things on fire,
Francesca Fiorentini:
But right, but exactly. But again, a lot of people have, don’t have cable or don’t just don’t have their TV set up or whatever, only doing streaming. And so then for breaking news, and this is why the ownership of Twitter is incredibly important. They are going to Twitter. And if you’re not doing any fact checking on social media, then we are so
Mehdi Hasan:
Far, Twitter used to be a great place in a crisis. Now it’s the worst place in a
Francesca Fiorentini:
Crisis. Yes.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Speaking of terrible places, I want to turn our eyes to the other side of the world where we have been watching one of the greatest crimes of humanity unfold over the past year and a half on platforms like Twitter. I want to turn to Gaza and Israel, where as of right now, there is both hope and trepidation about whether or not this truce deal reached this week will actually be accepted and implemented by Israel. The Associated Press reported just this morning, a last minute crisis with Hamas holding up Israeli approval of a long awaited agreement to pause the fighting in the Gaza strip and release dozens of hostages. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday. Meanwhile, Israeli airstrikes killed dozens of people across the war ravage territory. The Israeli cabinet was expected to vote on the deal Thursday, but Netanyahu’s office said they won’t meet until Hamas backs down accusing it of reneging on parts of the agreement in an attempt to gain further concessions.
Without elaborating on that, a senior Hamas official said, the group is committed to the agreement announced by the mediators medi. I want to come back to you here and then Francesca, please hop in after we still don’t know if this ceasefire deal will take effect as planned this Sunday. The next 72 hours are going to be very critical and very intense. But if the deal does take effect, what will this mean and what will it not mean for Gaza, for Palestinians and for Israel and Israeli society? And that is the single most important question right now. So only once we’ve all addressed that, then let’s talk about what these developments tell us about the legacy of Biden’s administration and what the hell we can expect in geopolitics and the Trump 2.0 era.
Mehdi Hasan:
I mean, they’re interlinked in the sense that I’m thoroughly cynical about everything that happens in the Middle East, and I’m very cynical about the Israeli government because they’re a group of very cynical people and all American negotiators, whether the Democrats or Republicans don’t have the best interests of the people at Gaza at hand. Let’s be honest about that. Look, if this is real in any shape or form, even in a temporary form, that’s a good thing. Because even if you get an hour where a bomb stop falling, that is some kind of relief for one of the most depressed peoples on earth. The Palestinians of Gaza who spent the last 16th months being Genocided, right? Having their capacity to continue living existing, destroyed in front of our eyes, live streamed to us as the Irish lawyer for the South African government said exactly a year ago at the ICJ, this is the first genocide where people are live streaming their own genocide, begging for help from the rest of the world.
And a year later, here we are with no change. So if we’ve even got an hour of a pause, I’ll take it and Palestinian and Gaza will take it. Now, that doesn’t mean though we have to start celebrating and cheering and suggesting that there’s peace in the Middle East, peace in our time. That’s bullshit. And I’m very skeptical about this deal, not just because Netanyahu today said they’re not going to vote on it, not just because Ben Vere his far right terrorist, convicted terrorist. National Security Minister has threatened to resign if the deal goes through, and that means the Netanyahu government would fall and Netanyahu is all about self-preservation. But separate to that, just look at the deal itself. A, it’s the exact same deal that was on the table in May of last year that the Israelis rejected, but the Americans lied and said, Hamas rejected be.
It involves three phases, right? 42 days for the first phase, 42 days for the second phase. It’s really the second and third phases where the actual long-term impact of this kicks in, in terms of withdrawal of Israeli forces, in terms of any kind of humanitarian reconstruction. Those two phases, a lot of people are saying, we will never get to, right? Netanya is only interested in phase one if we even get to phase one where you do a limited release of prisoners and then he goes back to bombing net. Neil has made it very clear that he’s not going to stop the war. He doesn’t want to stop the war, and that’s why he’s never been interested in a ceasefire. He’s only interested in pauses. So some people spent the last 24 hours attacking me on social media because I was one of the people who said, Trump will be worse on Gaza than Biden.
So there’s a lot of gotcha moments going on right now said, well, look, Trump was better. He did it in 24 hours. What Biden couldn’t do in a year, I would say, let’s wait and see. Right? I’m old enough to know that Donald Trump is not what you think is not what you see. And people who have celebrated Donald Trump early tend to find egg on their faces. So I hope I’m wrong. I hope that in a year’s time or six months time, people will say, Mary, you were wrong. Donald Trump was much better for the people of Gaza than Joe Biden, but the man is not even president yet. Please stop the premature celebrations. Let’s see if this ceasefire happens on the Sunday. Let’s see if it holds. Let’s see if it actually delivers peace. Let’s see if we get any kind of reconstruction, because stopping the bombs is only one part of it.
Garzas cannot continue to exist in a place that is uninhabitable, which groups experts say will take, what, 80 years to rebuild 42 million tons of rubble. So I want to see what happens first. Already today, we’ve seen Donald Trump’s incoming National Security Advisor, waltz, Michael Waltz, I think his name is saying that we support Israel’s right to go back into Gaza whenever they like. We’ve seen Marco Rubio, who’s going to be the Secretary of State saying he’s going to lift all sanctions on the settlers that Joe Biden brought in the limited sanctions on the limited far right settlers. So this is far from done, the people who think it’s all done now of being very naive and have learned nothing from the first four years of Trump. But look, having said all that, I know you want to get into it a bit. Clearly Trump’s done more than Biden in the last week in terms of applying pressure. That’s undeniable. And it’s embarrassing for Joe Biden and the Democrats that that’s the case.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, think, oh, Francesca, please hop in.
Francesca Fiorentini:
No, no, no, go ahead.
Maximillian Alvarez:
No, I was just going to say, I think everyone is rushing to do the thing we were just talking about in la, right? It is like rushing to have a take on what’s happening while it’s still unfolding, and we don’t know what’s going to happen. And so I think everyone, especially on the MAGA Trump side, is trying to kind of sell this as a Jimmy Carter, Ronald Reagan hostage kind of moment before we even know if the deal’s going to be accepted.
Mehdi Hasan:
Well, it simply, you mentioned the hostage Treasury because of course in 1968 you had Nixon, Vietnam, and Kissinger. We discover later that Kissinger was treacherous and was passing messages to the Vietnamese saying, we’ll do a better deal. Don’t stop the war now. And many more Americans and Vietnamese, of course, and Cambodians and lotions died because of that. We know that in 1980 now, and there’s a great new book from Craig Unger on this that Jimmy Carter was very close to getting the hostages out of Iran, but Ronald Reagan said to Iranians, don’t do it. I’ll give you a better deal and I’ll get you weapons. And this may be the third time that happened. We know that Netanyahu and Trump met at Mar-a-Lago last year. We don’t know what was discussed, but I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump said, make sure you hold off till I’m office.
So I get the credit. We know Trump doesn’t give a shit about Palestinian life. It’s all about his ego and showing that he is a deal maker. He’s a successful president. He wanted this done by January the 20th. By the way, it’s not going to be done by January the 20th. Can I just point that out? Everyone? I love the way we grade Donald Trump on a curve, even the left grades Donald Trump on a curve. He literally said he wanted all the hostages released by January. There won’t be hostages won’t be released by January the 20th. The deal only begins on the 19th. So this is the man who also said he would end the Ukraine War in 24 hours. Right? Good luck with that. Apparently it’s going to be over on Monday night. So this is the kind of bullshit that unfortunately left us to have allowed Trump to be graded on a curve about. And like I said, I hope to be proved wrong, but to say that I’m wrong right now, or that those of us who warned against Trump on the issue of Gaza are wrong because there’s this ceasefire deal that hasn’t been even implemented or voted on by the Israelis yet. Calm the F down.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, no, I 100% agree, but I will say I was surprised when I heard it came through. I was like, oh, completely shocked. And it’s amazing that Netanyahu hasn’t even agreed to it, that it hasn’t even gone forward. But the narrative of Trump got a ceasefire is already out there. Right. And again, messaging, right, what we talked about earlier, they masters. Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it’s the kind of the Bill bar. There was no collusion headline. Everyone was like, oh, okay. There was no collusion and that made it. That’s the headline. And so Trump got this, but again, I was reacting to it sort of in real time on my show, and I was like, damn, it really does. And here’s the thing we need to be very careful about, not as Nora Kott lawyer, a Palestinian lawyer, awesome academic said, don’t give Trump any flowers on this. It is really a revelation of Joe Biden and the inability to actually get a ceasefire after the professing of working round the clock. I mean, I think maybe the differences between the Nixon and the Carter examples medi is that I don’t know if Joe Biden really was working on a ceasefire around the clock. I mean, I don’t think he was actually invested.
Mehdi Hasan:
He certainly didn’t apply pressure. I mean, this is the deal, to be fair to Biden, this is the deal that they put on the table that the American,
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yes,
Mehdi Hasan:
He never applied the pressure. I wrote my first column for The Guardian last February, and it was a column about how Ronald Reagan called man be in 1982 when the Israelis were Besieging Beirut. He saw a child on TV with no arms. He rang be and said, this is a Holocaust. And be said, how dare you use the word Holocaust, but no one called Reagan and Antisi in those days. You could say that. He said, this is a Holocaust. You need to stop this now in 20 minutes. The Israelis stopped bombing Beirut. I said, at the time, in February of 2024, Biden can make a phone call and end this genocide. The very serious people, the very savvy, smart people. Oh, no, it’s not that simple. You can’t do that. Actually, you can, right? Steve Witkoff went to Israel and said to Netanyahu, it’s got to be done in time.
I don’t care if you’re on a holiday, but look, how much of it was pressure, how much of it was mutually beneficial behavior by Netanya and Trump? We don’t know yet. The thing about Trump is half the things come out in memoirs and books. We have reporters sitting on stories that they write about in bestselling books like a year later. You’re like, why didn’t you tell us that at the time? How many New York Times and Washington Boast and Politico reporters have done that? So I would like to hear what happened at Mar-a-Lago last year. I would like to hear what was actually said between Witkoff and Netanya. How much of it was pressure and Netanyahu’s arm being twisted? How much of it was Netanyahu and Woff and Trump saying, this is good. We’ll make it look like you pressured me into this because it’s mutually beneficial for it to happen this way.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Sure. And obviously, who knows the back deals that were promised around the West Bank and annexation and the Miria Adelson money and all that,
Mehdi Hasan:
The Israeli press called a gift bank. Francesca, they’ve said that Trump gave
Maximillian Alvarez:
Lifting sanctions on Pegasus, which could come in very handy for an authoritarian regime. Yeah, I mean, I think, again, a lot of these details are going to come out in the wash, but I think one distinction that came up in the great interview that Jeremy Scahill did on Drop Site news yesterday with Palestinians reacting to the news was a sort of distinction that when it comes to Biden, he’s very merits ideological in this regard. Like he’s expressed himself as a full fledged Zionist who wants his legacy or wanted his legacy to kind of be pegged to standing with Israel. Whereas Trump’s is more transactional, and this guy’s got a whole lot of things he wants to do right here. He’s seen how much Gaza has tanked. Biden’s administration hampered that administration. He doesn’t want have to deal with that. I do think that’s a useful distinction while, but I wanted to ask what you guys said.
Mehdi Hasan:
Can I just jump in very briefly, just push back a little bit. I hear that that Trump is transactional. The implication of that is that there is some consistent strategy to what Trump says or does. I refuse to accept that Trump is only consistently inconsistent. So okay, he’s transactional in the sense that he’s a businessman. He likes to make money for him and his kids. He likes to do deals and wrote books about it and sees himself as a dealmaker. I get that. But in actual reality, the man is a narcissist. He’s a dumbass, he’s an ignoramus. He’s a vain, thin-skinned little man. And the idea that people can’t manipulate him, he is absurd. He’s the most easily manipulated politician of our lifetime. So when people say, oh, well, he’s transactional, he’s not an ideological Zion. Even if I accept all that, which I’m not sure I do, he’s surrounded by people who are, you’re telling me that Marco Rubio, and as I say, Michael Waltz, and what about Mike, Mike Huckabee Huckabee now who says there’s no such thing as Palestinians.
There’s no such thing as a West Bank. I just want to know what’s Mike Huckabee thinking for the last 48 hours? He’s okay with this. Clearly stuff has been going on behind the scenes that we don’t know about. There is long-term ramifications that we don’t know about, and I think we have to really be skeptical of this idea that somehow Donald Trump’s going to just do deals with the Saudis and the Turks and the Qataris, and that’s why he’s different to Biden. Who’s this lifelong Zionist? No, I mean, first of all, he’s not even fricking president yet. We’ve got four years of shit coming down the line. Talk to me at the end of four years, if at the end of four years, Palestinians are free, if at the end of four years Iran hasn’t been bombed, if at the end of four years there isn’t another genocide in Yemen, then fine. I’ll be the first to come on here and say, I was a hundred percent wrong about Trump. But come on, if we learn nothing from the first Trump term,
Francesca Fiorentini:
I mean, I think transactional can be taken in two different ways. Transactional, it sounds like diplomacy, but I think when people say it right, when people say it, it’s more like anything for flattery. And to me, I think he is able to read the room, I think, and there’s a line from one of his rallies over the last year that really stuck with me where he said, he goes, well, and Biden, he’s terrible on Israel. He hates Israel, hates the Jews. He was basically trying to, he does the brow beating of Jewish voters. So he was saying he hates Jews, but I guess he hates Palestinians a little bit more. And there was a smile, and I was like that because even he knew what he was saying was bullshit, and that actually Biden is helping genocide the Palestinian people. And there was that smirk as he understood that all of the Democratic voters that now you got Paul proves that so many people voted on Gaza.
Mehdi Hasan:
I mean, in that sense, he’s an evil genius. The man is both an Ior Aus and an evil genius. I mean, he went to Dearborn, Michigan, which Biden didn’t dare to go to Kamala Harris didn’t dare to go to, he went to Dearborn, Michigan and said, I am a peacemaker. I will bring peace to the Middle East. Liz Cheney will get Muslims killed. Don’t listen to Liz and Kamala. I’m the peacemaker, right? And people lapped it up, which is nonsense. Go back and look at Trump’s first term again. I know Americans have the memory of a goldfish. The guy increased bombing in Iraq, bombed Syria, increased drone strikes in Pakistan, and Somalia helped MBS genocide. Yemen, except I can go through the whole record. The idea that Donald Trump was some kind of anti-war anti interventionist candidate is a complete myth. But again, as you pointed out with the Bill Barr report, he’s transactional. He didn’t collude with Russia. He’s a master of getting these one line narratives about himself out there, which somehow people stick to. He’s Teflon Don,
Francesca Fiorentini:
And it’s more than him. I mean, I think medi that it is this desire for a demagogue to just take the reins. And I think everyone has that. I mean, I’d load to think that I would have that in, but there is even liberals or liberal media, there’s like, Hey, maybe he’s such an idiot. He’s smart there,
Mehdi Hasan:
Strong man. I mean, I spoke to No Gaana Paul yesterday in our live town hall as aeo, the Israeli journalists, and she said, look, even Israeli leftist politicians are buying into this idea that he was a strong man who came in and just beat up Netanyahu and made him do it. And she didn’t buy that narrative either. But even leftists, see that. And by the way, one thing I would say about the American left is what I’ve seen over the last few days and during the election campaign, is in the desperate desire to kick Joe Biden, which I totally get and understand, I’ve got a piece coming out in about 10 minutes on Joe Biden’s awful legacy on Gaza. The problem is where I split with some of my fellow leftists in America is this idea that in order to do Biden down, you have to promote Trump.
This idea that Trump is, I can be very critical of everything Biden did without drinking Kool-Aid about Donald Trump. And that is what Im seeing now in the last few days. The reason why we’re seeing the narrative of Trump, the peacemaker, Trump did this cease. It’s not just the right pushing. There’s a lot of people on the left trying to attack Biden by saying, look, Trump did what you couldn’t do. And I get all that, but that only helps the Trump narrative. Like I said, we don’t know the backstory to the ceasefire deal yet. I don’t know if it’s real. I don’t know if Trump went and twisted Benjamin net Neo’s arm and made him do something he didn’t want to do. We don’t know what was offered in return. We don’t know what the long-term consequences are for Gaza and the West Bank, but they’re again, graded on a curve. It’s not just the right and liberal media that grade Trump on a curve. I think progressives do it too, because we are understandably so frustrated with the Democrats
Francesca Fiorentini:
That
Mehdi Hasan:
We give Republicans a pass on things we wouldn’t give Democrats a pass on.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, I agree with that. I think we’re trying
Mehdi Hasan:
To cajole anti the entire establishment.
Francesca Fiorentini:
I think there’s a desperation to cajole the liberal, whatever the Democratic leadership to be like, see what a little bit of backbone
Speaker 4:
Might
Francesca Fiorentini:
Get, which is fair that I think. But you’re right. There’s a slippery slope there, and absolutely it can play into the same. Trump did a thing narrative that we know is bullshit.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Right? And I want to make one point and then throw one more question before we got to let Medi go. I know you only got a couple more minutes, man, but I would point people to a very instructive interview that I did with Sarah Nelson, the president of the Flight Attendants Union, who famously became a household named six years ago in the midst of the longest government shutdown, led by Trump in the GOP ostensibly to secure billions of dollars for his stupid southern border wall. And the government was shut down for 35 days, 400,000 federal workers went to work during that entire time without pay. And it was this high stakes game of political brinkmanship as every government shut down inevitably is. But Sarah, I had Sarah on and asked her what we could learn from that moment, from that struggle going into the next four years.
And I think she really rightly pointed out something that I want to introduce to the conversation that we’re having right now, which is we are going to get trapped in this kind of same bipartisan bullshit cycle if those are the only two terms that we have to define our political values, our struggle are the things that we’re actually fighting for. Whereas Sarah rightly pointed out that even though Trump is coming and we are going to have to be on the defensive, we’re going to have to come to the aid of our immigrant neighbors, our trans and GBTQ folks, neighbors. Everybody who is under attack needs to be protected. But if we are just responding to the Trumpian news cycle, we are not fighting for the working class with principal consistency and with strategy. And Sarah, I would again point people to that interview. I’m not going to go into it all now, but really listen to what she’s saying and take to heart what that’s going to mean going into these next four years, and how we have to define our terms as a class, a global working class, and what we need and who’s getting in the way of it, Democrat, republican, whatever, and keep fighting consistently for what we need.
And in that vein, looking ahead at the next four years, with the last few minutes we’ve got Medi, I wanted to ask you both if we could look ahead to next week’s inauguration, sticking with this theme of geopolitics and international relations in the Trump 2.0 era. And as I said before, friend, you’ve been talking about this quite a lot, and I really appreciate it and medi you as well. So let’s talk about first the Trump effect has impacted countries around the world from Argentina to El Salvador, Italy, India, Brazil, over the past eight years since Trump was first elected. And let’s help our viewers understand this global right word shift that is really happening here. What does it mean for instance, that Trump has invited far right leaders to attend his inauguration, like President Na Bke from El Salvador,
Speaker 4:
Argentinian,
Maximillian Alvarez:
President Javier Malay, Victor Orban, prime Minister of Hungary and Italian Prime Minister Georgia Maloney, and that some like Malay are actually going to be there on Monday. Medi, please hop in.
Mehdi Hasan:
So I’m glad you mentioned this. I mean, I’ve been tearing my hair out for almost a decade now, trying to point out that this isn’t just about Donald Trump in the United States. This is a global phenomenon. You can’t understand it in isolation, but you do need to understand that Donald Trump, because by virtue of the US being the US, is the symbol of it, is the leader of it, is the inspiration for it is the guiding star for it sets the benchmark for it. So whether you’re Narendra Modi in India, or Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel, or Erdogan in Turkey, or Orban in Hungary, or Putin in Russia, or Lapan in France, or Farage in the uk, go down the list, Malay in Argentina, Bolsonaro in Brazil, they look to the United States for inspiration. They see what Trump gets away with. They try and do the same, and it’s remarkable. I used to do a show for Al Jazeera English called Upfront, a weekly show where I interviewed politicians around the world. One thing I noticed in 20 17, 20 18 20 19 was the politicians I was interviewing from Africa and Asia all started sounding like Trump. They were all saying the same. They were literally echoing. Why not? Why wouldn’t they look at America? They go worked in the us, why can’t we do here?
Francesca Fiorentini:
Didn’t do Ter say fake news. Wasn’t that his,
Mehdi Hasan:
All of those lines, fake news and all of that stuff about enemy of the people and all just downright lying about what’s in front of your eyes. All of that. I started noticing in interviews I was doing with politicians around the world. That is the Trump effect globally. And that’s why it was so important to try and stop Trump from coming back to office, not just for the United States, but because of the symbol and the message it sends around the world because of the power of this networking. When people talk about domestic extremism, it’s not domestic, it’s transnational, right? White supremacy, supremacy of all forms, racism, fascism is transnational. It is very global. We are seeing liberal democracy on the decline in the retreat and migrants and Muslims especially demonized across the Western world. So it is really important to pay attention to all these connections and see who Donald Trump is sponsoring and propping up and understanding that this is a common struggle wherever you are in the world.
And to go back to your point about Sarah Nelson, I would tie that into here to make a final point, which is we have to stick with our principles, right? That is what’s key. What worries me now is in an age of social media, we’re very cultish. We are very partisan. And that’s not just the right, the right, they’re way out there, but the left liberals, progressive centris, are not immune to the online disease of cultism and partisanship, right? This idea of politics as a football game, I support my team, not your team, and I’ll turn a blind eye to my team’s successes as long as I’m attacking your team. That’s a problem, right? Politics is not about personalities, it’s about issues, it’s about principles. I think that is the only way we get through this era. I went on Blue sky yesterday and I saw a long list of prominent liberals saying, thank you, Mr.
President, for getting this ceasefire deal. What? That’s as bad as the MAGA people saying, Donald Trump is peace of our times, right? We got to get away from this idea of holding up politicians or political parties and saying, I support them. No, no, no, no. You support principles and if they’re in line with your principles than you get behind them. And I think that is what we’ve forgotten. And social media is making much, much worse by kind of treating everything as a kind of putting you in your echo chamber, putting you in your tribal bubble. And if we’re going to survive the Trump era, if we’re going to survive fascism, we have to stick to principles, not people and politicians.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And Fran, real
Francesca Fiorentini:
Quick, before you hop in
Maximillian Alvarez:
Credit for wanted,
Francesca Fiorentini:
Is that what I’m hearing? I think that’s what I’m hearing. Many.
Mehdi Hasan:
Exactly. He is the Mandela of our,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And I just wanted to hop in because Medi, I know you’ve got to go, but I wanted to really, really encourage everyone watching. If you are not already, please go support eo. Thank you Medi. Can you please let folks know what you guys are doing, what you got coming up, and where folks can find you.
Mehdi Hasan:
So we have got a lot going on right now. xeo.com, ZETE o.com is our place come do support or subscribers. We’ve got some amazing documentaries coming out on Gaza and Palestine very soon. We’re rolling out some amazing new contributors next week, many of whom viewers of your shows will know. We’ve already got some great contributors like Naomi Klein and Baam EF and Owen Jones already in our stable, but we’re adding to that for the Trump era. And we have a wonderful podcast that just won an award. We are not kidding. So we are doing a lot. We appreciate your support and we appreciate the plug.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Appreciate the work that you do, brother. It’s an honor to be in the struggle with you and I’ll see you on the other side, man. Thank you for joining us. Thanks for having me on.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Bye man. Bye-bye.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Alright, Francesca Fiorentini, I’m dying to hear your thoughts on the Trump effect over the last eight years and how this is all coming to a head in his inauguration next week with potentially a lot of foreign diplomats and even heads of state showing up from the global populist, right?
Francesca Fiorentini:
Yeah, I mean it’s chilling and it also, I think to Sarah Nelson’s point, and I’m really glad you brought that up. I think we need to have fighters on every single flank, I don’t know, war terminology, but on every single battlefield. So there have to be people who are pushing against the barrage of misinformation that’s going to be coming from Donald Trump. There have to be people fact checking. There have to be people pushing back on these narratives. There have to be people who are watching what he does and what his administration is doing. That’s going to be critical. But for so much of our sanity, we need to be building. We have got to build. And that can even be with your neighbors. It can be with your community members and your schools and your churches and your synagogues and whatever it is. We have to create spaces of real, again, mutual aid and solidarity.
It’s the only way we are going to sort of mentally survive, but also physically, quite literally as we’re talking about LA fires and people surviving thanks to the goodwill of their neighbors and their communities, we need to make sure that locally, that locally we’re electing the right kinds of folks, that we are holding people to account that we’re pressuring Karen Bass and Gavin Newsom, but from the left that we have again, these amazing new progressive leftist city council members that can be the next generation that so many Democrats have fought so hard, whether it’s the squad nationally or on a local level to make sure that progressive stay out of politics. So I super agree with Sarah that I hate the reactive doom loop that we can get into. One thing, and I don’t want to knock it, but one thing that people on the left do often is look at right wing news outlets and right wing influencers and sort of make fun of them.
And I do think it’s important, but sometimes I think about the world upside down. Imagine if right now there were right wingers who watched everything we said, and then they made clips and videos based on the outlandish things. We said, we need a green new deal. And I’m like, that’s power. I’m tired of giving right wing mouthpieces more power by highlighting their bullshit. I’m like, what are we building? What are the scary things we’re singing? What are the real socialist plans that we are creating and enacting? You know what I’m absolutely for defund the police. Fuck yeah, let’s talk about it. Let’s enact it. The right says we did. No, we didn’t. So these are the kinds of things that I’m interested in building and on my show habitation room, having activist organizers, thinkers who can build that now to Trump’s global fascism. I got to say it’s not just, I don’t want to give Trump too much credit because you look at someone like naive B and you’re like, this dude is his own little creation like El Salvador who has basically consolidated power, political power in his country.
He was able to break through the two party system of, I mean it was mostly a two party system by just demagoguing them, saying, turning on them and using his own independence. I think as a weapon and as sort of a badge of honor, which a lot of people are responding to and has now enacted sort of this scorched earth incarcerate first policy on the communities of El Salvador. And depending on who you ask, many El Salvador are very on board for it and very okay with it because they think it’s cleaned up the streets. Nevermind what happens 10 years later, nevermind when people have been incarcerated for decades. There’s no job opportunities when they come back. Nothing’s improved in the economy in El Salvador, right? But it is fascinating because this little crypto king demagogue is, I mean the Trump Jr came to his inauguration. So did Matt Gaetz came to the naive inauguration. What the hell? So the US is actually looking at countries like El Salvador, like Israel, the countries where we’ve propped up their militaries, we’ve assisted with their genocides and saying, what can we learn? We want to build walls here. We want to lock people up indiscriminately here in the us. I think there is a scary authoritarian symbiosis happening between these figures.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I want to talk about this a little bit more in the last half hour that we’ve got, and I’m going to circle back to it in a sec. But I wanted to let you all know watching live that we’ve got Francesca sister Fran on for the next half hour. Brother Meti had to hop off, but we are here to answer your questions or respond to your comments. So I’m going to be throwing some of those up on the screen in a second. So please, if you’ve got questions for Fran or for me, please throw them up there and we’ll tackle them as many of them as we can get to in the next half hour. But a note on the naive B thing, Francesca, because we’ve got a real problem on our hands here. And again, I appreciate the hell out of you for actually being like one of those prominent voices who is talking about this regularly and getting people, your audience to think about the world beyond our own individual scope. Think about the world outside of the US borders, and in fact, it would tell you a lot about what’s happening here as well.
But we’ve also reported on what’s happening in El Salvador. We had a really powerful video report published by the great Latin American based journalist, Mike Fox from El Salvador s
Francesca Fiorentini:
Such a good podcast. Everyone should listen to it. Tell me the name of it again, remind people.
Maximillian Alvarez:
So the one that we put out last year was called Under the Shadow, which was an incredible podcast series that I would highly encourage everyone who’s listening or watching this go binge that whole series. And also listen to Mike’s previous series, which we produced with him in partnership with Nala, the North American Congress on Latin America called Brazil on fire, specifically go find the episode near the end of Brazil on fire where Mike investigates the rise of the evangelical right in Brazil and talks about how this right wing evangelical pro Bolsonaro group is pretty much saying what the evangelical nut jobs here are saying about Trump. So if you want to look at that Trump effect, if you want to hear it in audio form, it’s there in Mike’s podcast, Brazil on fire and a lot more is there in his podcast that we ran last year under the shadow.
But also to circle back to naive Bke and El Salvador, we published a standalone documentary report that Mike did there about b’s dragnet arrest, first sweeps. We talked to family members of those who have been disappeared in these sweeps who are completely innocent, but maybe they got tattoos, maybe they’ve been accused of being affiliated by a gang or maybe they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. But this is the real problem that I wanted to get your thoughts on. Fran, and you already touched on this, right? There is a parallel here to Trump and the US that we can learn from because Trump, as we know, didn’t come from nowhere. I mean, you have to have a long brewing crisis of legitimacy in the existing system, economy culture to create enough of a desire in people for something as extreme as Trump or bouquet or what have you. And in El Salvador, we can’t pretend that that wasn’t the case. We can’t pretend that working people, poor people were not just devastated for years by drug cartels, by gang violence. This impacted them every single day. And now the functional difference for your average working person in El Salvador, as we’ve heard from them, is I can walk on the streets. My kids can go to school. I don’t feel as afraid anymore. And naive, B, the proto fascist neofascist guy who has accomplished this is the most popular politician in the world right now, but like you said, he’s still serving the needs of capital while addressing some of the needs of the people through draconian measures. And then people, he’s incredibly popular because of that.
What do we do with that? I guess another way of asking that question is what do we do if someone like Trump remains incredibly popular over the next four years? How do we intervene in that? What is the left’s place here?
Francesca Fiorentini:
I mean, I obviously am no expert on El Salvador, but I do just mean to what I hinted at before, there’s only so long you can lock people up and we all know what happens. And it has happened in the United States, that is where gangs are formed. So the odious MS 13 formed, wasn’t it in Los Angeles formed in a prison. So when you lock people up, you are contributing and you treat them like criminals even if they are not criminals to say nothing of how we should be treating criminals. Let’s put that aside. You will create people who are violent, who are gang members who don’t when they come out of prison and you have not helped them reintegrate into society or have offered any kind of job opportunities to say nothing of prohibited them from being employed simply by the fact that they were incarcerated.
What do you think is going to happen? So for me, the bhel model’s really interesting because the US is not El Salvador. Okay? We are not being terrorized by cartels no matter what your Facebook aunt says that is not happening. But what’s interesting about the right in the US is that they’re able to convince us that yes, we are being terrorized by migrants and cartels and it’s happening in Springfield where they’re eating cats and dogs and they’re killing innocent young white victims. And we’re going to pass the Lake and Riley act. And we are convinced that somehow we are El Salvador. And I think any Salvadorian would come here. In fact, they do want to come here precisely because it is safe. So what are you talking about? It is just very funny that the US suffers from this imagined doom and this imagined crime when crime is down.
And so again, back to la, these moments when you’re like, oh, all I got to do is go out, talk to my neighbors, meet people, see the solidarity, see the comradery, and I am suddenly not afraid anymore. I’m not sitting at home just watching local news and getting freaked out. So I think it is our job, while the US is still a relatively safe place because we could get to the levels of El Salvador. That’s what happens when your elites do not invest in their people for decades and decades and decades. But our job is to break through, to humanize specifically, I think the people who’ve been left out of the system, which are unhoused people, the people who are victims of late stage capitalists, greed, and systems not working for them. It’s to hold accountable. Our democratic officials specifically who are still neoliberal actors and who still take corporate donations, it’s to primary them.
It’s to unseat them. It’s to say their way is leading us down the primrose path. Back to fascism. Don’t pull a Biden Newsom, don’t pull a fucking Biden bass. Don’t pull a Biden, don’t deliver us into the hands of Rick Caruso. Don’t deliver us in the hands of a Republican governor so you can seek higher office. So these are all the sites that we need to fight on because it’s not just the global demagoguery. It’s happening in every single place where you have very feckless politicians who might be smart. Newsom’s a smart guy, he knows what he’s talking about, but he also knows that he’s never going to pass Medicare for all for California, that he’s going to skirt environmental regulations so that rich people can rebuild their homes in places they probably shouldn’t build. So we’ve got time on some of these areas.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Well, and the crazy thing that we’ve got here to make your point that yes, the United States is not El Salvador working, people are not being terrorized by drug cartels ravaging the streets. But the thing is working, people are being killed and terrorized by cartels. They’re just the ones in boardrooms. They’re the ones in dc. They’re the ones who are stocking up the Trump administration right now. They’re the people that everyone was righteously pissed off at after the United Healthcare CEO was assassinated, right? I mean, the cartels are here, they’re running the show, and we are all feeling it in one way or another. They are poisoning our water and buying off politicians to do nothing about it. They are corporate capturing the regulatory agencies that are supposed to protect us, which is why we now all have PFAS and other forever chemicals like microplastics all in our bodies, which is, but to your point, at the same time, the right wing fear machine is constantly trying to convince working people that the dangers are here at eye level. The dangers are around the corner. They’re living in your neighborhood, they’re in your children’s schools, they are your fellow workers who are responsible for your misery, not the people. They’re DI.
They’re
Francesca Fiorentini:
DI. Yeah. And I think that is, and that is so, and this is what I, God, if there’s, you know how we each have the one thing we’ve said a million times over, if there’s one thing that I want people to know of, if my political pecking order, the first thing I want to say is that identity politics are radical. They were developed, identity politics was spearheaded by black feminists who wanted intersectionality, who said, we can tackle capitalism, we can tackle racism, and we can tackle sexism. We can do it all together. That’s identity politics. The problem is Democrats have used hollow empty identity politics only in the form of representation as a stand-in for the real radical identity politics of having not just again, the Cornell Westly black faces in high places, but actually passing legislation that positively affects black communities and poor communities and women.
I mean, the one place that we are like El Salvador in the United States in the year 2025, I visited there and I did a whole piece about how they’re locking women up for having miscarriages because abortion is criminalized because the rights of the fetus are enshrined in the constitution, max. I’m telling you, we are headed there in this country. They will enshrine the rights of the fetus, the rights of the unborn into the US Constitution. And guess what? Then all people with uterus become second class citizens, period. And it is fucking terrifying. And we could be sentenced to 30 years to life. I spoke to women who were in prison longer than their rapists who got them pregnant in the first place. That’s what they were accused of is miscarrying slash abortion. But all to say, I forgot where I was saying before that. You know what I mean?
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah. You’re spiting fire. And I kind of wanted to build on the emotion here because I’m feeling what you’re feeling. I know our audience is feeling it, and we’re all feeling a lot of shit right now. And I kind of want to dig into that real quick. And again, I’m looking at questions in live chat and comments. We’re going to be throwing them up. But on that last point, I want to ask if we could maybe just break the fourth wall here. And I have a question for you, Fran, which is right now, what do you think your most unproductive fear is and what your most productive anger or where your most productive anger is coming from? I mean, I guess for us to be a little sort of internally mindful of where our emotions are coming from and where they’re driving us. I am not telling people out there don’t feel anything, but don’t be overwhelmed by those feelings, but also know how you can harness those feelings and when those feelings are harnessing you for other ends. So yeah, I guess just sort of an open question right now, what’s the most immobilizing, unproductive fear that you’re feeling now? And what’s something that’s galvanizing you?
Francesca Fiorentini:
Most unproductive fear is America’s cooked. We need to go by, how do I get out of here? How should I take my child and leave somewhere where the air is cleaner and there aren’t guns in people’s hands? And somewhere that respects her bodily autonomy and her rights. That’s where my maybe unproductive fear is at. And my productive fear is when I squarely plant myself in my place, and I say, you live in a neighborhood, a community, a city. You have an elected official. You can talk to them, you can go, you get involved. There are groups that have been working in the cities that we all live in and the towns we all live in for generations. Plant yourself in this moment in history and get to work.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think that’s beautifully put. I don’t want to add anything onto that I think was amazing. Well, let’s bring in some comments here from the live chat. A lot of these aren’t even questions, just folks really expressing a lot of things in the live chat that I want to make sure we name here. But we’ve got one comment here from Kevin Tuey. I do know the severity. 8% of Americans, 78% of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck. Again, if you need a bigger example of why the kind of red state, blue state MAGA Democrat thing is just horse shit, neither of them have a 78% hold on the population that’s working people, blue, red, independent, who are getting screwed over by this economic system. I think that’s very rightly pointed out. And let’s see,
Francesca Fiorentini:
We’ve got, and I think that’s the resurgence in labor organizing too, is like we have enemies. We’ve got a villains list. Your boss is part of it, your landlord is part of it. That is how you’ve got Elon Musk in your life. They are your boss, they are your landlord,
Maximillian Alvarez:
And they run things like bosses. In fact, if you want to learn about and you want a good sense of what we’re in store for in the next four years, and in fact what we’ve been moving towards over the last 40 years, like look at labor struggles, look at how bosses respond to workers when they get uppity and try to exercise their rights. Like they get squashed, they get fired, they have their rights violated, they get intimidated. They’re subjected to unsafe working conditions regularly, yada, yada yada. This is the kind of boss governance that Trump and his cabinet Musk. I mean, that is how they think. They don’t think about us as human beings. We are at best human shaped widgets that can do things for them, but our lives do not matter to them.
Francesca Fiorentini:
No.
Maximillian Alvarez:
And on that, let’s throw a few more comments here. So yeah, I mean I think this is timeless, but well put by Black Rain, you can tell the greatness of a nation by how they treat the less fortunate.
Speaker 4:
And
Maximillian Alvarez:
On that note, it’s important to underline as Fran and Medi and I have been in this live stream, that we need to not just think about the United States as the center of the universe here. And in fact, there’s going to be a real interesting dynamic going on between the NAFTA countries, Canada, the US and Mexico. And right now you’ve got Mexico’s new president, Gloria Scheinbaum saying explicitly on the so Klo in Mexico City that we have to prioritize the poor for the good of all. That’s kind of to the point of the comment that we just read. And Fran, I’m curious how you’re looking at the soul of that statement and also how Mexico and shine bomb’s government are going to be a player in the next four years. I
Francesca Fiorentini:
Mean, again, I wish I could only do Latin American politics. I like it way better than American politics. So I am no expert, but I have been really heartened by shine bounds rise to power her posturing, her being able to sort of stand up to Trump, but also say we’re willing to work with you. And then of course, in the LA fires, most recently sending 75 firefighters and other national forestry and disaster relief workers and officials to Los Angeles and saying, we believe in solidarity. We are a nation of generosity and solidarity. Max Trump, the Mexicans are rapists and criminals is about to assume office on Monday. And the president of Mexico wants to be in solidarity with us. I mean, it is crushingly.
I don’t even know. I don’t have words for that kind of treatment when we have treated them so opposite. And so I think that there’s a model there. I don’t think it’s an accident. She’s a woman. But again, hey, look at me playing the identity politics card. But I think it shows you that her administration and AMLO enjoyed a certain amount of support already from the people what they had done and delivered for the Mexican people clearly bore out. And so that she can get away with saying, when we help the poor, we help everyone imagine if what would happen in this country, all the Jesus lovers would be like, Ew, gross poor. I don’t believe in poverty. No, no, no, no, no. I’m in the prosperity gospel. God delivers to those who are rich more riches. And I think we had the beginnings and the fits and starts of that in Bernie Sanders. But I dunno about you Max, but I’m still in the post-election haze where I haven’t fully decided to support the Democratic party. I’m still like Uhuh. They have to do a lot to earn my vote and trust and we have to do a lot to change them. So if you don’t let us change you and transform you then and get out of the way, then we’re going to have a problem.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Yeah, I mean, I’ll be honest, that’s where I am. I mean you and so many others that we’ve spoken to on this channel. I mean, I think I’m not naive and I grew up a deep red Republican in Southern California in Orange County. I spent the first half of my life a Latino orange county, very outspoken Republican,
Speaker 4:
And
Maximillian Alvarez:
Now I’m a lefty socialist nut job years later. That was a long ideological journey that really began or really turned in the financial crash and great recession in the 2008, 9, 10, 11, that range. Those were the years that really changed my life, changed my family’s life. Those were the years where the system that I thought I could work hard in and be rewarded for showed how nakedly the deck was stacked in favor of the fuckers who got bailed out for causing a crisis that led to millions of families like mine losing everything, including the home that I grew up in.
Speaker 4:
I
Maximillian Alvarez:
Was working in warehouses in factories 12 years ago, not knowing what the hell I was going to be doing with my life. But that period I think was really important in sort of breaking a lot of that ideological crust that I had. Maybe it was the sort of optimism of youth. Maybe it was also still the last drags of the post Cold War era where it felt for many of us, the US was going to have a big enough pie for all of us to get a piece
Francesca Fiorentini:
And make a good life for us. Sure, you just work hard enough you can get that piece. And now, I mean it’s amazing people now I think there isn’t even that if you work hard, I think everyone left right? Doesn’t matter where you stand. You understand that working hard is not going to deliver. Now it’s about how do I get the cheat code for this life so I can at least not even be rich, but just be comfortable. You need a cheat code to even own a house, right? I need a cheat code. And often that cheat code is a shortcut by bashing minorities and immigrants and women and whomever else who I think has a little bit of something that I want. And so just when I really empathize with people who believe in crypto, and again, I’m not here to knock it. I know a lot of people have it, but it’s like I understand the impetus to like, well, look, if I just play this lottery a little bit, maybe I can get out of the dregs of where the majority of people in this country are at. And in that sense, the right wing narrative of you too can be a billionaire tomorrow. I mean, they’re really just pedaling one massive Ponzi scheme, except there are bodies that have to be, that are being claimed in the process
Maximillian Alvarez:
That hit like an ice pick to the chest. And I know we only have a couple more minutes
Here, but I want to circle back to something you said when we were talking about the productive and unproductive fears we’re dealing with now. And I think this also hooks into some of the comments and questions I’m seeing here in the live chat. So I want to put up two here in succession. One, I think a really pointed question from the brindle boxer, it’s beyond depressing. How do we get out of the doom loop considering what we’re facing in four days? And the brindle boxer just want to let you know we are with you. We’re all feeling that. And I want us to end on that question while also kind of highlighting this other comment from Black Reign, again about the need to intervene on the local level and do what we can to hold politicians accountable, not just react to Trump, but all those people throughout the political hierarchy with names and faces and positions and emails and phone numbers. There’s actually a lot that you can do when you see the spread of power instead of just believing that it all resides in one person over here in Washington dc.
Speaker 4:
And
Maximillian Alvarez:
So I kind of wanted to end on that note, Francesca, and give you the final word here. We don’t have to give everyone a playbook of everything they can do. As we say here at The Real News all the time, no one can do everything, but everyone can do something more often than not that something is going to be in your area in the circles, you have influence in your community, in your apartment building, in your workplace, in your district. So I wanted to just ask for your final thoughts on that, Fran. Not just how people can get more involved locally, but what doing something in your real physical world, offline, why that is so crucial to fighting the larger forces that we are going up against right now.
Francesca Fiorentini:
I mean, every time there’s a demonstration, every time there’s a protest, every time you go out and you make your sign and you listen to a speech and your legs are hurting and you can’t hear the speech and whatever, I really feel that every time I do that, every time I’m with community, I feel much better. I feel mentally prepared and physically and mentally not alone. So I do think protest has a place in the world. We know it has power. Concedes nothing without a demand, never has, never will. But it’s also for our own nourishment. I feel nourished when I am in community, whether it’s chanting, whatever, a slogan or a song, but I also feel nourished. I feel like I have a couple moments of maybe happiest moments in Francesca’s last 10 years and some of the other than my child being born, obviously two moments stick out.
One fundraiser for the I Napa 43 disappeared students, teacher students in Mexico who disappeared in 2015, I believe. And I was at a fundraiser back then in San Francisco, and it was obviously, this is a terrible thing that happened. It should be incredibly depressing. But there was the food, the music, the number of people that came out, the activists and organizers and community leaders that hadn’t seen each other in so long. But this awful event brought us together and we were dancing and we were raising money and we were just in it. And it was truly one of the nicest nights I’ve experienced. Another day in this last year comes to mind when a pro-Palestinian market took place, sprung up in la. I don’t know the organizer’s name and I apologize, but there was everyone selling kafis and pins and cute hats to doing henna tattoos to selling their delicious food from all over the world, amazing, affordable plates. And then you had the poetry and the music and you’re just like, this is it. I feel so fucking seen. I feel so fucking support. We’re not here all chanting, Rob, we’re not getting mad. We’re not having a meeting. We’re eating good food. We’re listening to beautiful music. We are making art. And I know this sounds corny, but I’m telling you, it was like it was intergenerational. I brought my daughter like, don’t, don’t. Don’t sleep on building community and having fun. Allow yourself to be joyous even as we resist.
Maximillian Alvarez:
I think it was beautiful, powerful words by the great Francesca Fiorentini. If y’all are watching and you are not subscribed to Francesca’s show the Situation room, you really need to go correct that asap.
Speaker 4:
Francesca,
Maximillian Alvarez:
I cannot thank you enough for the spending this hour and a half with us. I can’t thank the great Hassan enough for joining us for that first hour. Again, if you’re not subscribing to EO and following the great work Me’s doing and all the folks at eo, including now contributors like Francesca herself, who has a great piece out on the LA fires and the people helping in the midst of tragedy, go watch that video, subscribe to eo, follow Francesca Fran, what are you going to be up to? Where can folks find you? Just final plug here before we
Francesca Fiorentini:
Close out. Yeah, yeah. Look, Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays live, 1:00 PM Pacific, 4:00 PM Eastern youtube.com/franny. Theo fran, I fio o. My name is too long to write it all out. And you can listen as a podcast habitation room. We try to have comedians and then activists and experts and thinkers and all that, and we try to be fun and be a little reverent. Go see live comedy guys. I’ll be at the Ice House in Pasadena next Wednesday, 7:30 PM Tickets are still available. It’s going to be a great show. I’m calling it New World Disorder, a Night of political comedy. So come out to that if you’re in the Pasadena or LA area,
Maximillian Alvarez:
Hell yeah. So everyone out back home, go check that out. Follow Francesca’s work. Fran, I can’t wait to have you back on the channel. Sis, really appreciate you taking the time now.
Francesca Fiorentini:
Thank you, max, as always, for the pointed questions and just your passion, we love it. We see it.
Maximillian Alvarez:
Thank you, sis right back at you means the world to me and to all of you watching, I don’t know what’s going to happen next week, next year, or in the next four to eight to 50 years. In fact, none of us do because that story has yet to be written. I want to kind of close on this thought here because we cannot give over the power of writing history before it’s even been written, right? You can’t ask what the next four years will bring with the assumption that we are just going to be waiting and responding to whatever is passed down from on. High. History is always written in that dialectical space between top and bottom, from the grassroots, from the upper echelons, the struggle over power. We are part of that struggle. What happens next depends on what we all do now, how we respond to it, the demands that we put on power, not just the ways that we respond to the whims of power, right?
I mean, so think about that. Think about the power that you have that your community has, the power you can build with your community, with your coworkers in your workplaces and beyond. You are not powerless here. We are not powerless here, but we will be way less powerful if we already concede the point that what happens in the next few years is just out of our hands. It’s not. And that is what we here at The Real News are committed to people, power and people in general. We are about you and your communities. We are about people around this country and around the world. And we believe all human life is sacred and worth fighting for, and that we all deserve a world better than this. And that we are the ones who are going to make that world happen. And we at The Real News are going to be there covering your struggle as you make it happen. We’re going to be there on the ground. We want to talk to you about what you’re going through and how others can help. So please support our work, subscribe to this channel, reach out to us and let us know about your stories so that we can help lift them up and help them reach more people. And above all else, please take care of yourselves and take care of each other, solidarity forever.
This post was originally published on The Real News Network.
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Japanese gaming company’s stock price falls as much as 7.2 percent as teaser for new console fails to impress.
This post was originally published on Al Jazeera – Breaking News, World News and Video from Al Jazeera.
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Janine Jackson interviewed CEPR’s Dean Baker about China trade policy for the January 10, 2025, episode of CounterSpin. This is a lightly edited transcript.
New York Times (12/17/24)
Janine Jackson: New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s December 17 piece, headlined “How Elon Musk and Taylor Swift Can Resolve US/China Relations,” contained some choice Friedmanisms, like “more Americans might get a better feel for what is going on there if they simply went and ordered room service at their hotel”—later followed, quaintly, by “a lot of Chinese have grown out of touch with how China is perceived in the world.”
But the big idea is that China has taken a “great leap forward in high-tech manufacturing” because of Donald Trump, who, a source says, “woke them up to the fact that they needed an all-hands-on-deck effort.” And if the US doesn’t respond to China’s “Sputnik” moment the way we did to the Soviet Union, Friedman says, “we will be toast.”
The response has to do with using tariffs on China to “buy time to lift up more Elon Musks” (described as a “homegrown” manufacturer), and for China to “let in more Taylor Swifts,” i.e., chances for its youth to spend money on entertainment made abroad. Secretary of State Tony Blinken evidently “show[ed] China the way forward” last April, when he bought a Swift record on his way to the airport.
Okay, it’s very Thomas Friedman. But how different is it from US media coverage of China and trade policy generally?
Dean Baker is senior economist and co-founder of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, where Beat the Press, his commentary on economic reporting, appears. He’s the author of, among other titles, Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy Were Structured to Make the Rich Richer. He joins us now by phone from Utah. Welcome back to CounterSpin, Dean Baker.
Dean Baker: Thanks for having me on, Janine.
JJ: We will talk about news media, of course, but first, there is Trump himself. It’s not our imagination that Trump’s trade ideas, his actions and his stated plans—about China, but overall—they just don’t make much consistent or coherent sense, do they?
Reuters (11/26/24)
DB: Obviously, consistency isn’t a strong point for him, but it does obviously matter to other people. So before he is even in office, he’s threatening both Mexico and Canada. It wasn’t even that clear, at least to me, maybe they got the message what he wants them to do, but if they don’t stop immigrants coming across the border with fentanyl, then he’s going to impose 25% tariffs—I’m going to come back to that word in a second—on both countries.
Now, we have a trade deal with both countries—which, as far as I know, and he certainly didn’t indicate otherwise, they’re following. And it was his trade deal. So what exactly is he threatening with? He’s going to abrogate the trade deal he signed four years ago, because of what, exactly?
And they actually have cooperated with the US in restricting immigrants from coming across the border. Could they do more? Yeah, well, maybe. Canada tries to police fentanyl. So it’s not clear what exactly he thought they would do. Now he’s just said he wants to annex Canada anyhow, so I guess it’s all moot.
But the idea of making these threats is kind of incredible. And, again, he’s threatening, coming back to the word tariff, because a lot of people, and I think including Donald Trump, don’t know what a tariff is. Tariffs are a tax on our imports, and I’ve been haranguing reporters, “Why don’t you just call it a tax on imports?” I can’t believe they can’t use the three words, one of them is very short, instead of tariff, because a lot of people really don’t understand what it is.
And the way Trump talks about it, he makes it sound like we’re charging Canada or Mexico or China, he’s imposing his tariff on, we’re charging them this money, when what we’re actually doing is, we’re charging ourselves the money.
And there’s an economics debate. If we have a 25% tariff on goods from Canada, how much of that will be borne by consumers in the US? How much might be absorbed by intermediaries, and how much might be the exporters in Canada? In all cases, it’s not zero, but almost all, and there’s a lot of work on it, finds that the vast majority is borne by consumers here.
Face the Nation (12/1/24)
So he’s going to punish Canada, going to punish Mexico by imposing a 25% tax on the goods we import from them, which I think to most people probably wouldn’t sound very good, but that is what he’s doing, and it’s kind of a strange policy.
Now, getting to China, I’m not sure what his latest grievance is with China. I’m sure he’s got a list. But he’s talking about a 100% tax on imports from China, and following on the Friedman article, China is at this point, I’m not going to say a rich country, in the sense that, if you look at the average income, it is still considerably lower than the US, and you have a lot poor people in rural areas in China. But in terms of its industrial capacities, it’s huge, and it actually is considerably larger than the United States. So the idea that somehow he’s going to be bringing China to its knees, which seems to be what he thinks—I’m not going to try and get in his head, but just based on what he says, that seems to be what he thinks—that’s a pretty crazy thought.
JJ: And, certainly, we have learned that tariffs are a misunderstood concept by many in the public, and some in the media, as well as some in political office. But that whole picture of Trump threatening to pull out of a deal, in terms of Canada and Mexico, that he made himself, all of that sort of stuff gets us to what you call your “best bet for 2025,” which is improved and increased trade relations between Europe and China. Let’s not be surprised if that happens, for the very reasons that you’re laying out about Trump’s inconsistencies.
Dean Baker: “Trump is saying he doesn’t care about whatever agreements we have, including the ones he signed.” (image: BillMoyers.com)
DB: Basically, Trump is saying he doesn’t care about whatever agreements we have, including the ones he signed. And this has been the way he’s done business throughout his life: He signs a contract, and he doesn’t make good on it. So he has contractors that do things for him, build a building or put in a heating system, whatever it might be. He just says, “no, I’m not going to pay you, sue me.” And maybe he pays half, maybe he pays nothing. He’s prepared to go to court, and spend a lot of money on lawyers. It’s come to be the pattern that most people, including lawyers, insist on getting paid in advance, because they know if they do their work and then come to collect from Trump, they’re not going to get it.
And that’s his approach to international relations as well. So treaties don’t mean anything to him.
And we could have lots of grounds for being unhappy with China. They have a bad human rights record. I’m not going to try to defend it. I don’t think anyone would try to defend it. There are other things you could point to that are not very pretty about China, but just from the standpoint of doing business, they largely follow through on their commitments. Trump doesn’t.
So from the standpoint of Europe, if you want to have trading partners that are reasonably reliable, and won’t pull things out of the air and say, “I want you to do this, I want you to do that,” China looks a hell of a lot better than the United States.
JJ: And so we shouldn’t be surprised, or immediately begin assigning nefarious intentions to European countries who would rather make a deal with China, at this point, than with the US under Trump. It doesn’t make them sketchy or anti-US, necessarily.
Reuters (1/8/25)
DB: That’s right. I mean, I don’t really think they have an alternative, in the sense he takes pride in it. He seems to, at least he says, “I like to be unpredictable.” Well, that’s fine, but if you’re a company in Germany and France, you’re trying to plan for the next five years, ten years: Where’s your market? Where should you build a factory? Where should you look to expand your business? You don’t want to deal with someone who changes everything every day of the week. So China just looks much better from that point.
And also, again, we’re talking about respect for international law. We just saw Donald Trump yesterday saying he doesn’t care about NATO. He’s threatening military force against Greenland and Denmark, implicitly also Canada and Panama, kind of incredible.
So, in that sense, this is not a guy who respects commitments. So I think it’s just kind of common sense from the standpoint, if I were operating a major business in Europe, I would certainly be looking much more to China than the United States right now.
JJ: I did want to say I was hipped to that Friedman piece by CODEPINK’s Megan Russell, who wrote about it, and she had trouble with the idea, among others, that China’s investment in its manufacturing was a recent development that was solely in response to Trump toughness. And that’s what led to what he’s calling their “Sputnik moment.” What do you make of that claim?
FAIR.org (9/29/17)
DB: Well, first off, the investment in manufacturing is longstanding. Because, I saw the Friedman piece, I assumed he was referring to their move into high tech. I think he’s, again, I don’t have access to the inner workings of China’s leadership, I think he is almost certainly exaggerating the extent to which its move was a response to Trump, but they did certainly recognize that they were dealing with a different world with Donald Trump in the White House than Obama, previously.
But the hostilities to China, I mean… Obama, the last couple years of his administration, at least, he was selling the Trans Pacific Partnership, the trade deal that we ended up not completing, as a way to isolate China. I don’t recall if he used that term. “Marginalize” China, I think that was the term they had used.
So the fact that the United States was becoming increasingly anti-China, or hostile to China, that began under Obama. Trump clearly accelerated that. I’m quite sure China would have moved in a big way into high tech in any case, but I suspect this was an accelerant there, that they could say, “Here’s more reason to do it.”
But they’ve been increasing the sophistication of their manufacturing and their technical skills for a long time. They have many, many more computer scientists, engineers, go down the list, than we do. So the idea that it wouldn’t have occurred to them that it’d be good to develop high-tech industries—no, that wasn’t Trump.
JJ: Let me ask you to just unpack, to the extent you feel like it, the big idea that we get from the US press, which is that, No. 1, China is worrisome. Their economy’s growth is inherently troubling and dangerous to the US. And, No. 2, we should consequently insist on, among other things, trade policy that is “tough” on China, somehow, and that will be good for “us.” I mean, there can be nuance, of course, but that seems like the frame a lot of outlets place their China trade coverage within: China is inherently frightening and dangerous to the US, and so we have to somehow use trade policy to beat them back. How useful is that framing?
AP (5/13/24)
DB: I think it’s very wrong-headed in just about every possible way. Obviously, the US has been the leading economy in the world for a long time, so we would always say, well, other countries should recognize that we grow together, so that by having access to cheaper products, better technology, they benefit, trade benefits everyone. That’s the classic story, and economists have been pushing that for centuries. And there’s more than a little bit of truth to that. And that continues to hold true when we talk about China.
So the idea that somehow China growing wealthier is a threat to us is, to my view, kind of wacky. Now, you could raise military issues, and there can be issues, but as far as the economics of it, we benefit by having China be a wealthier country. And we could—I just was tweeting on this—China is now selling electric cars, which are as good as most of the cars you’d get here, for $15,000, $16,000. I think it’d be fantastic if we can get those.
I’m sympathetic to the auto industry, particularly the people in the UAW. I mean, those are still some good-paying jobs. But, damn, you’re looking at Elon Musk, who is charging $40,000 for his cars. I don’t drive an electric car, but I’ve heard people say that the Chinese cars are every bit as good as his cars, and they’re less than half the price. We can’t buy them, though; we have a 100% tariff on them.
So this idea that we’re going to compete—why don’t we talk about cooperating? Why don’t we look for areas where we can cooperate?
And there are clearly some big ones. The two obvious, to my mind, are healthcare and climate. If we had more sharing of technology, think of how much more rapidly we could develop our clean technology, clean industries, electric vehicles, batteries, if we had shared technology more freely.
And in terms of healthcare, again, the pandemic’s not ancient history. If we had shared all of our technology, first and foremost vaccines, but also the treatments, the tests, we could have been far more effective containing the pandemic earlier, and probably saved millions of lives.
And that would apply more generally, obviously, going forward. Hopefully we won’t have another pandemic like that, but we obviously have a lot of diseases we have to deal with, and sharing technology and healthcare would be a fantastic way to do it. But that doesn’t seem to be on the agenda right now. Almost no one is talking about that, from anywhere in the political spectrum, and I just think that’s incredibly unfortunate.
DC Report (1/2/24)
I’ll also add—obviously, I have material interest here—that if you talked about sharing technology, our drug companies might not get patents, and might not make as much money, and they’re not happy to see that. But if the point is to advance public health—and also, for that matter, of the economics; we waste a lot of money on drugs with the current structure—sharing technology would really be a great thing to do.
And I’ll also throw in one more point. This is obviously speculative, but if we want to talk about promoting liberal democracy, seems to me having more contact with people in China, having our technicians or scientists working side by side with them, developing better technology, better ways to deal with disease, better ways to advance clean energy—that’s a really good way to try and influence views in China, because the odds are that a lot of scientists, the technicians who are going to be working side by side with people in the United States are going to be brothers and sisters and children and parents of people who were in the Communist Party, people who were actually calling the shots there.
So when we first opened up to China, allowed them into the WTO in 2000, there was a line that was pushed by proponents of that, saying, “Oh, this is the way to promote democracy.” And I and others said, “I don’t quite see that. We’re going to promote democracy by having people work in shoe factories for two bucks an hour? I don’t quite see that.” And that doesn’t seem to have been the case.
But I think it’s a very different story if we say, “We’re going to have your best scientists working side by side with our scientists, and if you believe in liberal democracy, if you really think that’s a good thing, I think there’s a good chance that will rub off.” So that’s speculative, but I’d like to see us try.
JJ: And I think that’s where a lot of people’s heads are at. A lot of people have family in other countries. They just see things in a global way. It’s weird to be talking, in 2025, it lands weird to talk about “foreign adversary nations,” and how we have to have “trade wars,” in part because of what you’re saying, the positive aspect of working together, in particular by sharing technology, but also it lands weird because Boeing isn’t at war with China. There are conflicts, in other words, but as you’re explaining, the lines aren’t drawn where media suggest they are, at national borders. So that misrepresentation of who the fight is between is part of what obscures these more positive visions.
DB: Yeah, exactly. And Boeing’s at war with Airbus, too. No one’s suggesting—well, I shouldn’t say that; Trump might be suggesting—but most people wouldn’t say that France and Germany are our enemies because Airbus is competing with Boeing. That’s a given. They’re going to compete.
And, again, I’m enough of an economist, I’ll say we benefit from that. So if Airbus produces a better plane, I think that’s great that we’re going to fly on it. If it’s a more fuel-efficient, safer plane than what Boeing has, that’s fantastic. Hopefully Boeing will turn around and build a better one next year.
But it’s supposed to be, we like a market economy. At the end of the day, I do think a market economy is a good thing, so we should think of it the same way with China.
And, again, there are conflicts. Europe subsidizes the Airbus. No one disputes that. China has subsidies for its electric cars. And those are things to discuss, to work out in treaties, but it doesn’t make them an enemy.
JJ: And it doesn’t improve our understanding of our own interest, as individuals, in what’s going on, to have there be this kind of “us and them,” when media are not breaking down exactly who the “us” are. And if we had, in this country, a policy where we wanted to protect workers, or we wanted to ensure wages, well, nothing’s stopping us from doing that on its own.
I think we can expect all of this to amp up, as Trump finds utility in identifying enemies, everywhere and anywhere, that call for conquering, in such ways that enrich his friends. But to the extent that that bellicosity is going to show itself in economic policy, are there things you think we should be looking out for in coverage, being wary of, things to seek out as antidote to maybe the big story that we’re going to be hearing about the US and China?
DB: First and foremost, I am declaring war on the word “tariff.” Given the confusion that word creates, I don’t understand how any reporter could in good faith use the term, at least without adding in parentheses, “taxes on imports,” because it’s not a difficult concept.
And, again, I’m an economist. I’ve known what a tariff is. Obviously many people do know what a tariff is, but the point is a lot of people don’t. So taxes on imports, taxes on imports, taxes on imports. When Donald Trump says he wants to tariff someone, he’s saying he wants to put a tax on the goods we import from them; that’s what he’s doing. And that’s not an arguable point. That’s simply definitional. So that’s one thing, front and center.
CEPR (5/25/24)
The second thing, I really wish people would understand what’s at stake. And the reporting, I think, does not do a good job of it. And when we talk about putting taxes on the imports, particularly with China, that we’re making items that would otherwise be available to us at relatively low cost, at ridiculously high cost.
So cars first and foremost, but we’re doing with the batteries from China, a lot of other things. If we’re concerned about global warming, we should want to see this technology spread as quickly as possible.
I wrote a piece on this a while back. So let’s say that the US had a plan to subsidize the adoption of clean technologies around the world. We’d all applaud that, wouldn’t we, say that was a great thing. Well, China’s doing that, and we’re treating them like it’s an act of war.
So, again, I’m sympathetic to auto workers. I have a lot of friends over the years who were auto workers, and I respect enormously the United Auto Workers union, but it’s not an act of war for them to make low-cost cars available to us.
And just the third thing, when we talk about protectionism, I’ve made this point many, many times over the years. The most extreme protectionism we have are patent and copyright protections. These are government-granted monopolies.
Now, I understand they’re policies for a specific purpose. They promote innovation, they promote creative work, understood. But they’re policies, they’re protectionism, they’re not the market.
And that’s something we should always be aware of, in trade and other areas, even domestically; we’re raising the price of items that are protected enormously, and treating this as just the market. So drugs that cost thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars, almost invariably cost $10, $20, $30 in the absence of patent protection.
And people should understand that this is a really big deal. It’s a big intervention in the market, and also a huge source of inequality. I like to make the joke, Bill Gates would still be working for a living—he’d probably be getting Social Security now, he’s an old guy—but he’d probably still be working for a living if the government didn’t threaten to arrest anyone who copies Microsoft software without his permission. And it really does make a big difference, and it’s literally never discussed.
So those are some items. I can give you a longer list, but those would be my starting point.
JJ: All right, then; we’ll pause at your starting point, but just for now.
We’ve been speaking with Dean Baker, co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. You can find their work, and Dean’s Beat the Press commentary, at CEPR.net. Dean Baker, thank you so much for joining us this week on CounterSpin.
DB: Thanks for having me on.
This post was originally published on FAIR.
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