Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-12-16 Tuesday

Episode Date: December 16, 2025

Democracy Now! Tuesday, December 16, 2025

From New York, this is Democracy Now. We are renewing our call for the public's assistance in seeking any and all information about the shooter. No amount of information is too small or irrelevant. The two students killed by a gunman Saturday at Brown University have been identified, but the gunman hasn't. We'll speak to Zoe Weissman. This is her second school shooting. She comes from Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff were killed on Valentine's Day seven years ago. Then they're trying to get rich off it.

U.S. contractors Viteri Bill Gaza with Alligator Alcatraz team in the lead. We'll speak with investigative reporter, Aram Rostin. A lot of American companies and Republican insiders are looking to see how they're going to profit and share in the spoils of the reconstruction. They think it's, the estimated reconstruction will be about $70 billion, according to the U.N., and that's a lot of money. We'll also talk to Rostin about the comparisons between U.S. attacks on boats in Venezuela and threats to the mainland Venezuela and the invasion of Iraq more than two decades ago. Finally, placeless homelessness in the new gilded age.

Currently, we're living through the worst homelessness crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. And unfortunately, given the Trump administration's dangerous proposals, the problem is only going to get worse in the coming years. We'll speak with author Patrick Marquis. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report by Mamie Goodman. The Pentagon says it's blown up three more boats in the eastern Pacific killing eight people. Black and white video posted to social media. media Monday by U.S. Southern Command shows three vessels erupting in flames. The Pentagon claimed, without evidence, the boats were carrying drugs and international waters.

The latest strikes bring the Pentagon's announced death toll to 95 since early September. The ACLU and other rights groups have condemned the strikes as murder, and state-sanctioned killings of civilians denied due process. The attacks come, as President Trump signed an executive order Monday, declaring fentanyl a weapon of mass destruction. No bomb does what this is doing. 200 to 300,000 people die every year that we know of. So we're formally classifying fentanyl as a weapon of mass destruction.

Virtually no illicit fentanyl comes to the United States from either Colombia or Venezuela. Last year, the CDC reported about 48,000 deaths from synthetic opioids, not the 2 to 300,000 deaths claimed by Trump. Meanwhile, Venezuela's government has accused Trinidad and Tobago of participating in piracy after it aided the U.S. government's seizure of a Venezuelan oil tanker last week. Trinidad and Tobago officials said Monday they would grant U.S. forces access. to the Caribbean nation's airports in coming weeks as the Pentagon continues to build up forces ahead of a possible attack on Venezuela. On Capitol Hill, members of the Congressional Progressive Caucus

are urging fellow House lawmakers to back resolutions seeking to prevent President Trump from launching an unauthorized war on Venezuela. In Gaza, another winter storms worsen the humanitarian catastrophe faced by tens of thousands have displaced Palestinians who've been forced to shelter in tents for a third consecutive winter. Civil defense crews are struggling to reach people trapped under the rubble of homes that have been damaged by Israeli air attacks before this week's storms caused them to collapse.

With no proper housing, many Palestinians have been forced to choose between living in unsafe homes or makeshift tents. A citizen's alternative to leaving this building is the risk of a collapse. tent. A tent without a doubt cannot be safe for citizens. It cannot protect them from the cold, the winter, floods, stray dogs, rodents, or diseases. Therefore, all the alternatives currently available to citizens in Gaza are dangerous and difficult. The UN's Migration Agency reports nearly 800,000 displaced Palestinians are at heightened risk of dangerous flooding and low-lying rubble-filled areas of Gaza. At least 14 people lost their lives in a winter storm last week.

Israel's blocked humanitarian aid shipments of tents bound for Gaza, claiming the aluminum poles used to erect them are a dual-use item that could be repurposed for military activities. Meanwhile, Israel continues to violate the October 10th ceasefire agreement. Witnesses say Israeli military vehicles opened fire today on the northern parts of the Beredj refugee camp in southern in central Gaza, while other areas inside the military-controlled. yellow line came under airstrikes and artillery fire. This comes as new satellite images show Israel continues to demolish buildings and areas that's occupied since the ceasefire. Later in the broadcast, we'll speak with the award-winning investigative journalist Aaron Rosten about his new report in the Guardian titled, They're Trying to Get Rich Off It, U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with alligator Alcatraz team in the lead. In Sydney, Australia, thousands of people gathered near the site of Sunday's mass shooting in Bandai Beach to mourn the 15 people killed an attack on the Jewish community on the first night of Hanukkah.

At least 22 people remain hospitalized. The Sydney Opera House was illuminated with a Hanukkah manura as memorial events honoring the victims were held across Australia. On Tuesday, the Australian Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, said the father and son duo behind the massacre had traveled to the Philippines before the assault and were inspired by the Islamic State movement. It would appear that there is evidence that this was inspired by a terrorist organization by ISIS. Now, some of the evidence, which is being procured, including the presence of Islamic State flags in the vehicle that has been seized, are a part of that. Radical perversion of Islam is absolutely a problem. A Pakistani man living in Australia who shares the same name as one of the Bandai Beach gunmen says he fears for his safety after he was misidentified and widely shared social media posts

that were amplified by mainstream news outlets. 30-year-old Navid Akram of New South Wales says his photographs circulated widely on platforms, including X and Facebook, alongside accusations he was one of the killers, and that his request to have the post taken down went unanswered. Some of those false reports were then published by news outlets in India and Israel. In Rhode Island, the manhunt for the gunmen who killed two students and injured nine others at Brown University Saturday has entered its fourth day. The two students who were killed have been identified as 18-year-old Mohamed Aziz Amarzakov and 19-year-old

Ella Cook. The FBI is offering a $50,000 reward for information leading to the arrest of a new person of interest. This comes as FBI Director Cash Patel is facing criticism for posting on social media to promote the agency's work and tracking down a person of interest in the shooting prematurely only to release the man from custody hours later. In the wake of right-wing activist Charlie Kirk's assassination, Patel also claimed on

social media a shooter was in custody, even though the shooter had not yet been apprehended. We'll speak with one of the survivors, Brown University student Zoe Weissman, after headlines. This is her second school massacre. We'll speak to her in Parkland, Florida, where her family lives. She was in middle school when the Valentine's Day massacre at Stoneham High School happened seven years ago. Federal prosecutors in California have indicted four members of a left-wing group named the Turtle Island Liberation Front on charges they plotted to bomb multiple targets in Orange County in Los Angeles beginning New Year's Eve. This investigation was initiated in part due to the September 2025 executive order signed by President. Trump, to root out left-wing domestic terror organizations in our country, such as Antifa and other radical groups like the Turtle Island Liberation Front.

The indictment relies heavily on a paid FBI confidential informant. It was announced by Bill Assele, a former California Republican lawmaker, who the Trump administration named interim U.S. attorney for the Central District of California in April. He's now serving his first assistant U.S. attorney after a federal judge ruled in October, he'd been serving unlawfully as the district's top prosecutor since July, since he was never confirmed by the Senate. The indictment comes just days after FBI National Security Branch Operations Director Michael Glashin appeared before the House Committee on Homeland Security, where he struggled to back up his claims that Antifa was the primary concern and the most immediate violent threat facing the United States. Gaussian being questioned by Democratic Congress member, Benny Thompson. We share the same view. When you look at the data right now, you look at the domestic terrorist threat that we're facing. Right now, what I see from my position is that's the most

immediate violent threat that we're facing on the domestic side. So where is the Antifa headquarters? What we're doing right now with the organization? Where in the United States does Antifa exist if it's a terrorist organization and you've identified it as number one? We are building out of the infrastructure right now. So what does that mean? The Department of Veterans Affairs has announced plans to eliminate up to 35,000 health care jobs this month. Many of the targeted positions are currently unfilled and include documents.

nurses and support staff. The agency has already lost 30,000 workers this year. The advocacy organization vote vets said, quote, it is abundantly clear that Republicans and the Trump administration want to strangle the VA until it all gets privatized, unquote. In public health news, measles cases are continuing to rise across the United States. According to the CDC, see, the number of confirmed measles cases has topped 1900 this year, higher than any year since the U.S. declared the disease eliminated in 2000. In South Carolina, there were 129 confirmed faces this month. 250 people are quarantining.

This comes as Health Secretary Robert of Kennedy Jr. continues to express skepticism about vaccinating children. Meanwhile, in California, Governor Gavin Newsom is appointed two prominent scientists, Dr. Susan Menaris and Dr. Deborah Hauri, who left the CDC earlier this year to help lead the state's new public health network innovation exchange. Dr. Menares, the former director of the CDC, was fired less than a month into her tenure after she clashed with the administration over vaccine policy. The CDC's former chief medical officer, Dr. Harry, resigned shortly after Menars was fired. President Trump is suing the BBC for $10 billion over edits to his speech he gave to his supporters January 6, 2021, before they stormed the Capitol. Tim Davy, the BBC's Director General and Deborah Turnus, the head of BBC News, resigned over the edit last month that followed similar suits by Trump against big media firms.

Earlier this year, ABC agreed to pay Trump $15 million to settle a defamation lawsuit he brought over comments made by, anchor George Stephanopoulos, Trump also reached a $16 million settlement with Paramount, the parent company of CBS News, after he claimed an interview with Vice President Kamala Harris was selectively edited. And in California, Rob Reiner's son, Nick, has been arrested on suspicion of murder and the stabbing deaths of his parents at their home in Los Angeles. On Monday, President Trump provoked widespread outrage after he blamed. the killing of Rob and Michelle Reiner on Rob Reiner's anti-Trump views. On social media, Trump wrote, quote, Rob Reiner, a tortured and struggling but once very talented

movie director and comedy stars passed away together with his wife, Michelle, reportedly due to the angry cause, others through his massive, unyielding, and incurable affliction with a mind-cripling disease known as Trump derangement syndrome. Those comments drew backlash, even from some members of Trump's own party. Kentucky Republican Congress member Thomas Massey wrote, quote, regardless of how you felt about Rob Reiner, this is an appropriate and disrespectful discourse about a man who was just brutally murdered. I guess my elected GOP colleagues, the VP and White House staff will just ignore it because they're afraid. I challenge anyone to defend it, the Republican Congress member said. At the White House, President Trump doubled down

on his attacks on the now deceased Rob Reiner. Mr. President, a number of Republicans have denounced your statement on true social after the murder of Rob Reiner. Do you stand by that post? Well, I wasn't a fan of his at all. He was a deranged person as far as Trump is concerned. I was not a fan of Rob Reiner at all in any way, shape, or form. I thought he was very bad for our country. And those are some of the headlines.

This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman in New York, joined by Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez and Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy. And welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. The two students killed in Saturday's shooting at Brown University and Providence, Rhode Island, have been identified. Their 18-year-old freshman, Muhammad Aziz Umar Koso, from Virginia and 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook from Mountain Brook, Alabama.

Umar Zokov's family came to the United States from Uzbekistan in 2011. Family and classmates have described him as gentle, kind, and extroverted. He wanted to become a neurosurgeon one day, inspired by doctors who treated him as a child. His sister, Roksora, Omerzakova, told NBC News, quote, we don't want him to end up being a number. We want everyone to see his face. We want everyone to know his name, she said. 19-year-old sophomore Ella Cook is described by those close to her as grounded, generous, and incredibly kind.

She was also a devoted Christian, talented piano player, vice president of the College Republican Club at Brown. Both students were planning to travel home for winter break in the coming days. As family friends in the university community continue to mourn their loss, the search for the gunmen who opened fire on Saturday, killing both students, and injuring nine others, has entered its fourth day. On Monday, authorities release new images of a person of interest, including video from home surveillance cameras. This is FBI's special agent in charge, Ted Docs.

We are renewing our call for the public's assistance in seeking any and all information about the shooter. No amount of information is too small or irrelevant. We are also here to announce the FBI is now offering a reward of $50,000 for information that can lead to the identification, the arrest, and the conviction of the individual responsible. who we believe to be armed and dangerous. There have been 391 mass shootings this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, including at least 75 school shootings.

For at least two students at Brown University, this is not their first school shooting. Yesterday, we spoke to Mia Tretta, a 21-year-old junior, who was shot in the stomach as a high school freshman at Saugas High School, in Santa Clarita, California in 2019. Today we're joined by Zoe Weissman.

Zoe was in middle school in 2018 when a former student opened fire next door at the Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, killing 17 students and staff. Zoe's left Brown and gone home to Parkland where we're speaking to her today. Zoe, our deepest condolences on what has happened at Brown, not to mention what happened seven years ago, where you were a middle schooler next door in Parkland, Florida. I'm just wondering if you could start off by talking about how you're feeling right now, where you were when the gunman opened fire at Brown, and how you responded. Thank you for having me.

so thankfully I was in my dorm room when everything happened I got a call for my friend probably minutes after the shooting occurred and she asked me if I was embarrassed in Holly which is the building where the shooting happened and just the way she said it I knew that it was a school shooting that's where my brain went and I told her that if that's what happened she needed to tell me and she admitted that people had ran into where she was and told her that there was a shooter and then probably a minute or two after I received the alerts on my phone from the school about an active shooter. And so then I was locked down in my dorm until 6 a.m. the next day when they had a person of interest in custody who ended up being released.

And thankfully now I'm back here in Parkland. But I think that because I've already processed all the grief and the sadness before, I've kind of been grappling with that for the past seven years. My most predominant emotion right now is honestly anger. And Zoe, according to the gun violence archive, there have been 391 mass shootings this year, including 75 at school shootings. Your message to lawmakers, most of whom have done little to next to nothing since the Parkland shooting? Yeah, I just really want to emphasize that if politicians actually want to show that they care about their constituents and they want to be reelected, They need to show a concerted effort to pass gun violence prevention legislation on a federal level. And if they don't do so, we'll make sure to vote them out.

Because we are the only country where this happens, and we are just so happened to be the only country that has more guns than people. And, of course, in these last few days, we've heard the news of the mass shooting in Sydney, Australia. Your thoughts about how Australia has responded in the past and is responding now to this gun violence? Yeah, I think we saw after the Port Arthur Massacre, you know, years ago, that Australia made a very concerned effort to reduce gun violence. And although the tragedy on Bondi Beach happened, we've seen, I believe, only 35 mass shootings in Australia since those changes compared to the U.S. where we've had thousands since that date.

And we're even seeing in the immediate aftermath of this shooting that politicians in the state and national premiers are actually announcing that they will be passing reforms to the gun-led legislation and rules and regulations within the country. And I think that that's a great model for us to kind of look at. Unfortunately, our politicians care more about corporate funding and the lives of their constituents. But I think that Australia is definitely making good efforts after this shooting. Zoe, I wanted to go to the Prime Minister of Australia, where, of course, we all know what happened this weekend in Sydney. A father and son killed at least 15 people in a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration on Bandai Beach Sunday, 42 people injured, 22 remain in the hospital.

Victims included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi, and a Holocaust survivor who died while shielding his wife from bullets. A different reaction in Australia, the deadliest since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, when a gunman opened fire in the Tasmanian tourist village of Port Arthur, killing 35, injuring 23 more. After that shooting, Australia, which had extremely liberal gun laws, a country of cockadile Dundees, within days outlawed automatic and semi-automatic rifles. On Monday, Australian federal and state government leaders agreed to immediately strengthen already tough national gun control laws that came out of Port Arthur. Prime Minister Albanese vowed to revisit gun laws and said, Bandai Beach, shooting with. was different than Port Arthur in some ways. We need to examine the gun laws that were carried in the wake of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre. This is different from Port Arthur, though.

Port Arthur was someone engaged in random violence against people. This is targeted. This is ideologically driven. And therefore, is a different form of hatred and atrocity. So, Zoe, I wanted to. go back to you saying at the beginning of this conversation, you're angry. What that reminded me of was what happened seven years ago in Parkland, where you live, where you grew up, where you were a middle schooler when the Parkland massacre happened, is the students there did something very

different from most students all over the country who survived school shootings. They immediately organized, saying they were angry, took on the Florida legislature. ultimately, the march for our lives took place in Washington, D.C. If you can talk about what you mean by being angry, and if you're concerned with all the students going home, certainly understandable. They've just canceled Brown right now, right? The tests and all kids have gone home. That that level of all the students working together to fight for gun control will be dissipated and what you're planning to do in Parkland right now? Yeah, so March for our lives is an incredibly unique movement in the sense that it was student-led, right?

I mean, we'd seen movements in the past after-school shootings, and those were mostly led by, you know, really compassionate adults, but this was one of the first-ever movements where it was actually students who were directly impacted leading everything. I also do think it's a little different at Brown in the sense that our legislature is already pretty friendly towards. gun violence prevention measures. This past legislative session, they actually passed a sort of watered-down assault weapons ban that bans automatic weapons and assault rifles. But I am actually not as worried about the dissipation of the student body as a lot of people are. I know my peers and my friends really well. We are a very politically active group of students. We've been very active

in response to the Federal Compact proposed to Brown. We were a big part of making sure that our school rejected that. We've been very vocal in regards to the genocide occurring in Gaza, and as well as advocating for local causes. And I think that you're really going to see a large concerted effort once we get back on campus in mid to late January from students. I think that I can speak for all of us that we're angry and we're ready to do something, not just on a state level, but on a federal one as well. I'm asking Zoe that you raised Gaza because a fellow student at Brown, Hisham Awartani, whose mother we interviewed, was shot himself a victim of gun violence with two other Palestinian students

when they went to Thanksgiving break in Vermont, shot by a guy sitting on his, what, standing on his porch as they were wearing kaffia's. How has what happened to Shamm, who came back to Brown in a wheelchair, he was paralyzed, affected the whole campus, another victim. of gun violence? Yeah, I think that, unfortunately, you know, the tragedy in Vermont just confirms that guns are the problem, right? There's no one common denominator between all of these acts of violence except guns and extremist ideology, whether that be anti-Semitism in Bondi Beach. You know, I myself have experienced a wave of anti-Semitism in response to all of the

advocacy I've been doing, or whether it be Islamophobia and anti-Palestinian sentiments. I think that regardless of the ideology, one thing remains true. And that is that people with extremist ideas and people who are willing to kill others are able to access guns in this country. And I do think that ever since the 2023 shootings in Vermont, Brown students have been very active in regards to gun violence. I know Mia and myself have been involved in, you know, actions on campus in the past. But I think this is going to reinfigurate our fight to create a world where students like myself don't have to worry about going through, not one, but two school shootings. for being with us. Thank you for your bravery in speaking out right now. Zoe Weissman, Brown University sophomore, attended West Glades Middle School adjacent to Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida.

When a former student opened fire in 2018 and killed 17 people, mainly students, now just back from Brown, where two students were killed in a mass shooting. Another eight are still in the hospital. A number of them are critically injured. The FBI has offered $15,000 for identifying the gunman and new video has been put out. We want to thank you again for being with us, speaking to us from Parkland, Florida.

Up next, they're trying to get rich off it. U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with Alligator Alcatraz team in the lead, We'll speak with investigative reporter, Aram Raston. Stay with us. How it is so long to tell you what's wrong. How the times have changed. And now. It's all a waste

How long the days come? How long the days they come? Here down on the ground this is democracy now, democracy now. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We turn now to Gaza, where Israeli forces continue to block the entry of mobile homes and any shelter or construction materials that Israel says could be used to rebuild housing or that the Palestinians say could be used to rebuild hundreds of thousands of Palestinians

displaced by Israel's relentless war. This marks the third consecutive winter that thousands of families in Gaza are forced to shelter in makeshift tents and sleep under fragile tarps while others are living in the structures of buildings severely damaged by Israeli bombing over more than two years. Winter storms have compounded Gaza's worsening humanitarian catastrophe caused by Israel's siege, with flash floods inundating tens of thousands of tents and collapsing damaged buildings, where Palestinians attempted to shield themselves from the torrential rain. Al Jazeera reports at least a dozen Palestinians, including a baby, have been killed

in collapsing buildings or have died from cold exposure. A citizen's alternative to leaving this building is the risk of a collapsed tent. A tent without a doubt cannot be safe for citizens. It cannot protect them from the cold, the winter, floods, stray dogs, rodents, or diseases. Therefore, all the alternatives currently available to citizens in Gaza are dangerous and difficult. This all comes as concerns mountains. for the future of Gaza's rebuilding efforts, which the United Nations estimates, will cost approximately $70 billion, for-profit construction, transportation, demolition, and other

companies with ties to the Trump administration and Republican allies are lining up to profit, vying for contracts that will likely be issued after President Trump's so-called Board of Peace begins operations in Gaza. This is at the heart of a new investigation published by The Guardian. That's titled, They're Trying to Get Rich Off It, U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with Alligator Alcatraz team in the lead. In a moment, we'll be joined by the Emmy Award-winning investigative journal, analyst Aram Rostin, senior political enterprise reporter for the Guardian U.S.

But we're going to go to break first. Stay with us. Oh, oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.

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Oh. This is DemocracyNow, Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. In a moment, we're going to go to the Emmy Award-winning investigative reporter, Aram Rosten, who wrote the piece they're trying to get rich off at U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with Alligator Alcatraz team in the lead. We lost our connection with him. As soon as we're able to remake it, we'll go to him. But right now, we're going to turn to the freezing winter temperatures that have brought heavy snowstorms and ice to New York City and across much of the northeastern United States, laying bare. the nation's inability or refusal to provide dignified shelter for unhoused people who are left with no warm or safe place to sleep.

Azoran Mamdani set to be sworn in as New York mayor on January 1st. Addressing the city's housing and affordability crises have been central to his campaign. This is Mayor-elect Mamdani speaking earlier this month. Hundreds of thousands of New Yorkers are just one rent hike. One medical emergency, one layoff from joining the ranks of the homeless in our city, which have swelled to the greatest numbers since the Great Depression. What I spoke about with leaders within the real estate industry was the importance of us reducing the timeline of getting New Yorkers into affordable housing, because we cannot actually disentangle the question that we are speaking about right now with the 252 days that it takes to fill one of those units.

Because the quicker we can fill those units, the fewer New Yorkers we will have living outside. New York City, Mayor Lexora Mamdani is also vowed to end the widely criticized practice of clearing homeless encampments, prioritizing efforts to freeze rents, and permanently house those in need. This all comes as last month the Coalition of States, led by New York Attorney General Letitia James, sued the Trump administration over policy changes that threatened to cut funding for permanent housing for people experiencing homeless. We're joined now by Patrick Marquis, long-time housing advocate. He's just written a book called Placeless, Homelessness in the New Gilded Age. He's the former Deputy Executive Director for Advocacy of the Coalition for the Homeless

and former member of the Board of Directors of the National Coalition for the Homeless. Welcome to Democracy Now, Patrick. It's great to have you with us. Well, there's a lot of discussion about affordability and housing. We don't hear as much in the national discussion of homelessness. Talk about why you called your book placeless and talk about the crisis, not only in New York City, but across this country. Well, I'm glad you asked that because it's true that I think homelessness often gets discussed in the wrong terms, in distorted terms. It gets discussed as a social work problem.

It gets discussed as a problem of personal dysfunction. It gets discussed as a sort of subspecies. of urban poverty, when really, as you said earlier, what it is at its root is a housing affordability problem. And we're experiencing right now in the United States and in New York City the worst homelessness crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s. There are more than three million Americans who experience literal homelessness, meaning sleeping in shelters or on the streets every year. Three and a half million experience what I call hidden homelessness. This is living in sort of doubled up or overcrowded conditions. And right now in New York

city, we have more than 100,000 people sleeping in our homeless shelters each night, and that includes 35,000 children. So contrary to what the kind of stereotypes are of whose experience homelessness, what we're really seeing is a problem that affects families. And this is really why I wrote the book was kind of to talk about this problem that goes now back a few decades and that has roots in structural economic changes, right-wing economic policies, and systemic racism, which has shaped the problem of mass homelessness that we're experiencing now. And Patrick, could you talk a little bit more about those structural policies? Clearly, why has housing become so expensive, especially in the major cities?

You can go outside in rural areas or in the south, and housing is a lot cheaper, but in the cities especially. Well, as you said, Juan, it is really an urban problem. I mean, the majority, the large majority of homelessness that we see in the United States, particularly among families, is in cities. And it's cities where there are extremely high housing costs are really what we would call a housing affordability gap. And we've seen over the last several decades just an increasing sort of breach between the incomes of low-income and working class people in this country, which have really stagnated or even fallen in real terms, and housing costs increasing year to year. And part of that's exacerbated by dramatic cutbacks in federal housing assistance that began in the Reagan years.

You know, some people forget that during the Reagan administration, 80% of the housing, the budget authority of the federal housing agency was cut under the eight years of Reagan. And we've really never recuperated from that. So we're at a situation now where only one in five low-income households in this country that qualifies for federal housing aid is actually receiving it. four out of five who actually qualify who are in need of housing assistance are not getting that assistance now. And in terms of public housing used to be a huge place of last resort for many people, but then there were cities like Chicago, Philadelphia, others, not so much New York that essentially destroyed their public housing. Tens of thousands of units were demolished. Your sense of how this federal policy of pulling out, even of owning housing, has affected the homeless crisis.

Yeah, I mean, again, one of the reasons I wanted to write the book was to kind of get into the historical roots of this problem. There were actually, you know, really progressive and important housing movements that began here in New York City and the Lower East Side, especially, that addressed, you know, the sort of unhealthy substandard housing conditions and tenements that created the first public housing in this country in the 19th. 30s on the Lower East Side that created the rent control system that we have still in New York City and that at one point was actually around the country in the 1940s. And the problem is that attacks by Republicans and attacks by real estate and finance interests over the decades

have really led to, as you said, the destruction of much of the public housing, but really to just a sustained inadequate level of public investment and public creation of housing. There's a reason that other advanced capitalist countries in this world in Western Europe and Canada and Japan don't have the levels of homelessness that we have. And that's because their government plays a much larger role in creating and even owning affordable housing, but also providing affordable housing assistance to needy families and individuals. The title of your book is Placeless. Homelessness in the new Gilded Age. Talk about this analogy between 19th century Gilded Age and now. when do you think this new gilded age started?

And when you talk about a new gilded age, we're also talking about just here in New York City. It is astounding to know that 35,000 children sleep in shelters every night and talk about the racial dimensions that you refer to in New York City alone when we're talking about blacks and Latinos disproportionately affected and why. Yeah, I mean, I found enormous historical echoes between the current era that we're in now and the first gilded age of the late 19th and early 20th century, radical inequality, economic elites that are in control of the economy and have enormous political power, xenophobia and racism against immigrants and, you know, the racism we saw in the late 19th century in the wake of the end of slavery and reconstruction. Now we're seeing many of those same kinds of problems. with structural economic changes, another wave of immigration. You know, you spoke about kind of the racism that we're seeing now.

Systemic racism is one of the primary causes of modern homelessness. 90% of homeless New Yorkers are black or Latino, and that's compared to only 50% of the city's population. And that's a result of the fact that, you know, blacks and Latinos have much higher housing problems, higher rent burdens where they pay a larger portion of their income towards rent, housing quality problems, overcrowding, but also really specifically racist government policies that we saw, for instance, in the Giuliani and Bloomberg years, you know, the criminalization of homelessness, which really ramped up under Giuliani, really targeted black and Latino

New Yorkers. We obviously saw a federal court declare that the Bloomberg administration stop and frisk policing strategies was racist. We saw the same things happening to homeless New Yorkers. And that's, again, one of these sort of historical echoes that we saw going back to the period of the late 19th century. And Patrick, I wanted to ask you to get back to this issue of being able to build more affordable housing. We often hear that people saying, well, it's the construction costs of housing keep going up. But I've looked at many, many projects that have been, had had government subsidy. And what I find astounding is the rise of not so much construction costs, but what is commonly called soft costs, developer fees, financing fees, and architectural

and professional fees, to the point where basically there's been a financialization of the building of affordable housing, but a lot of investors getting tax credits from the government, but still not producing housing that is truly affordable to the lowest income groups. Wondering your thoughts? I mean, that's exactly right. I mean, it's no mistake that we're now seeing private equity and other investment entities now controlling much of the private housing market, particularly the rental housing market. In some cities, 20% of the rental housing stock is actually owned by private equity firms.

We saw the same thing happen in New York City coming out of the 90s and in the early part this century when the rent laws had been weakened by Republican administrations, we saw that private equity firms bought up 10% of all the rent regulated apartments in New York City because they thought this is going to be an opportunity to kind of push out longstanding tenants, gentrify these neighborhoods, and get more profit. At the end of the day, we know that to solve housing affordability problems, government has to play the essential role. And that's one of the reasons, you know, we know what works to solve this problem. I mean, there was a period from the end of World War II until the 1970s when we didn't have mass homelessness in this country.

We didn't have zero homelessness, but we certainly didn't have hundreds of thousands of families experiencing homelessness each year. There's a way we can get back to doing that if we have the right government investments and government policies in place. Patrick, are you one of the advisors to the mayor who will become mayor, Mamdani, on January 1st, one of the hundreds of people who he is consulting in all different areas. No, I'm actually not on the transition committee, but I have colleagues who are. So let me ask you this, and our final question to you, what would you recommend to Mayor Mamdani?

I mean, yesterday he held a listening session out in Queens for something like 12, it was over the weekend, 12 hours talking to New Yorkers, what they recommend. What exactly do you recommend? What is your prescription as we end this conversation? Well, first and most important, he needs to create, and this is three, you know, the city budget of New York is larger than the state budgets of 35 states in this country. So we have the resources in New York to make a serious reduction in our homeless population, even given the fact that we're going to see cutbacks from the federal government. So, first and foremost, he needs to invest in deeply affordable housing for homeless families and individuals, for the poorest families in the city. No more of this sort of so-called affordable

housing, which is really built for families making as much as $100,000 a year. It's not that there's not housing need, you know, across the board, but we need to be targeting our resources towards the most, you know, the most deeply affordable housing that we can. Secondly, he needs to preserve and protect the right to shelter. That's a legal protection that we have in New York, that the Adams administration tried to undo that Giuliani and Bloomberg also tried to attack. We need to be preserving the right to shelter which protects lives on the street, particularly in this winter cold that you spoke of earlier, where it's literally a matter of life and death to be out on the streets. And then finally, I think we need to be, you know, looking at changes in the way that

we deal with rents. And I think one of the positive things we've seen the mayor elect say is that he wants to freeze rents for the one million rent stabilized apartments in the city. That'll help preserve some affordable housing, and that's really the housing stock that is the base of housing for a working class and low-income New Yorkers. And where does Mom Downey get the money for this affordable housing, truly affordable housing? Well, the money is there. I mean, the city has, as I said, an enormously large budget. The state can also be helping to, and we need the state of New York to be stepping in. But we're spending that money now. It's just a matter of making sure we spend it right. We're spending, you know, literally a billion dollars, more than a billion

or on homeless shelters. We should be spending that money on housing instead. We want to thank you so much for being with us, Patrick. Patrick Marquis is a long-time housing advocate. He's just written the book, Placeless, homelessness in the New Gilded Age, former deputy executive director for advocacy at Coalition for the Homeless, former member of the Board of Directors of the National Coalition for the Homeless. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. We go now to a new investigation published by The Guardian.

It's headlined, they're trying to get rich off it. U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with Alligator Alcatraz team in the lead. We are joined now by the co-author of the piece, the Emmy Award-winning investigative journalist, Aram Rosten, senior political enterprise reporter for the Guardian U.S. Aram, welcome back to Democracy Now. Explain exactly what's happening. Who is this team that built alligator Alcatraz in Florida, and what do they have to do with Gaza? Thank you, Amy. So Kate Brown, my colleague and I wrote this story, what we looked at is the budding plans to rebuild Gaza if, in fact, this U.N. approved plan of Trump's.

move forward. And what we found is really two things. One is there's a effort by White House officials to sort of get ahead of this plan for a, quote, Board of Peace run by Trump that would rebuild Gaza. Two of the staffers on it are ex-Doge. They used to work on the Elon Musk team, and they're the ones sort of talking to contractors and trying to plot out things, although there's no authority to issue contracts yet. We found that the lead, it seemed, at this point when we wrote the story was a company that was involved in building this allocate, what's nicknamed Alligator Alcatraz. Really, it's the South Florida Detention Center run by, you know, the state of Florida to house immigrant detainees and really almost in you, in conditions

that are considered quite inhumane in this sort of swamp, where, it's incredibly hot in a sort of tent city. So this company, which was a in the, it's run by a very politically connected entrepreneur named Matt Mitchelson, it seemed to be in the lead in this project

to handle logistics, which is the main thing at this point that'll be necessary in Gaza. I will say, by the way, when we spoke to this entrepreneur, as soon as we talk to him, I'm Friday, as we put in the story, he announced to us. He said he hadn't told his staff this. He was pulling out of the effort immediately. So it was a little confusing to us. And as soon as we talked to him, he said, he said our questions had pushed him to pull out of

the entire Gaza effort for now. What's the name of the company? Aaron, you mentioned these two officials who are leading the task force. Could you talk about them and the planning document that you found? one of them, Adam Hoffman, is a 25-year-old Princeton graduate? So the name of the company, first I should add, was called Gotham's LLC.

It was founded in 2019, and it quickly, it became, it got contracts with hundreds and hundreds of millions in Texas, and then Florida it got contracts. And the state level, really, and it was, it's, its founder was donating large amounts to politicians in the state level. And then your question, one, about Adam Hoffman is really on point. Adam Hoffman, he seems to be 25 years old. He was, he's been a conservative activist and a pro, you know, a writer who advocates

positions that are very pro-Israel. And then he ended up at Doge in March. He joined Elon Musk Doge. And we saw a number of things. We saw, you know, some, we reviewed some documents for planning for this logistics system to come. It hadn't, you know, there's no way they can actually contract it out yet legally that we know of. It's all informal, but there's a slide deck for contractors to try to get them to come up, you know, with this system. They've already got prices per truck. Humanitarian trucks

would pay $2,000 each, and commercial trucks would pay, I think it's $12,000 each to this company. And then we saw this bid prepared by this company, Gotham's, submitting a sort of proposal. Again, it all seems to be informal, but it's all in the hopes of whenever reconstruction really gets going and that money gets flowing, it seems they want it. And you're talking here about $2,000 or $12,000 per truck load? That's what's in the documents we saw, yeah.

So that would be a phenomenal amount of money if you're talking about hundreds and hundreds of trucks coming in per day, wouldn't it? I mean, the math, as we did, it said, $1.7 billion a year. And it seems to be for a three, the one we saw was for three years. Now, if you don't mind my pointing out, the White House got back to us, and they said we're, you know, sort of we misinterpreted, and it was all just planning, they're not issuing contracts yet. But we wrote that in the story.

That's the case. There's no formal legal way that we know of that contracts can be issues. It's just people are lining up. And all these contractors told us, you know, people are all lining up for the spoils. They think this is a massive way. This is a massive amount of money. This one businessman we talked to said people are lining up and treating this the way they treated reconstruction in Iraq, which you remember was immensely profitable for people. Aaron, in last year, Trump's son-in-law, former advisor Jared Kushner, weighed in on Israel's war on Gaza, saying Israel should move Palestinians out of Gaza, which he said contains very valuable waterfront property.

He made the remarks during event hosted by the Middle East Initiative at Harvard Kennedy School. In Gaza's waterfront property, it could be very valuable to, if people would focus on kind of building up, you know, livelihoods. You think about all the money that's gone into this tunnel network and the dollar. all the munitions, if that would have gone into education or innovation, what could have been done? And so I think that it's a little bit of an unfortunate situation there, but I think from Israel's perspective, I would do my best to move the people out and then clean it up. But I don't think that Israel has stated that they don't want the people to move back there afterwards. So that was Jared Kushner last year. I'm wondering if you can comment on this. And these

contracts that you've been talking about can't be issued until Trump's so-called Board of Peace begins its operation in Gaza. Can you talk about the role of Jared Kushner, Steve Whitkoff, Aria Lightstone, who are leading Trump's Gaza Task Force? So, yeah, as you say, they're leading the task force. Jared Kushner said that. It was extraordinary when he did. It's unclear.

He's not saying that right now. He's not promoting that right now. So we don't have any clue what the real, you know, there's been, you know, the real plan there. Is it going to be these resorts or condos that they're planning on top of what used to be housing for Palestinians? We don't know what their actual plans are. And he hasn't issued, there's no public plan by the UN. What they are saying is there's going to be, there's this working group, this committee, then there's supposed to be eventually this Board of Peace chaired by Trump. It's unclear who's going to be on it, but it's going to be heads of state. And then underneath that,

there'll be another committee or two sort of, and there'll be purportedly a Palestinian technocratic committee that will actually issue things. Nobody knows how, you know, land rights will work. Who will, if somebody ends up building condos on a part of Gaza, you know, who would, you know, be compensated for the loss of their land. Nobody knows any of this. Patrick, we have only about a minute left, but I wanted to ask you about another topic, an article you wrote about in October and the CIA playing a most important part in these Trump administration attacks on boats in the Caribbean. We've just had news that three more boats have been attacked by the United States and eight people killed. What is the CIA's involvement in this series of attacks? Well, what I reported back then was that the CIA is providing the most important part because they're providing the intelligence, picking which boats, and they pass the information onto the military, which does the strikes.

The drones, we believe they're drones that are launching these missiles like hellfires. The CIA is providing the information and what you'd call evidence, but it's not evidence. It's intelligence about where drugs are. how many people are on the boat, where it left, where it's going to, and whether there's been sort of radio traffic from it that they can use to, you know, triangulate what it's doing. I think that's why, or the sources said, it was the most important part of it because it's the intelligence.

And the CIA, its role hadn't been sort of described yet. It plays this key role in picking, you know, the targets that are chosen. by the military for destruction. Aram Rostin, I want to thank you for being with us. Emmy Award winning reporter. He writes for the Guardian U.S. We'll link to your piece they're trying to get rich off it. U.S. contractors vie to rebuild Gaza with alligator Alcatraz team in the lead.

Aram is also the author of the book, The Man Who Pushed America to War, The Extraordinary Life, Adventures, and Obsessions of Ahmed Chalaby. That does it for our show. I am Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez for another edition of Democracy Now.