Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2025-12-31 Wednesday

Episode Date: December 31, 2025

Headlines for December 31, 2025; U.S. Strikes Against Venezuela: Trump “Wants the Oil” as Grassroots Resist “Economic Asphyxiation”; “One More Step to Push Out Principled Humanitarian Actors”: NRC on Israel Ban on Aid Groups in Gaza; “Mayor for the Masses”: Can the Democratic Socialist Movement That Elected Mamdani Keep Its Momentum?; “The Blue Road to Trump Hell”: Norm Solomon on “How Corporate Democrats Paved the Way for Autocracy”

From New York, this is Democracy Now. There was a major explosion in the dock area where they load the boats up with drugs. They load the boats up with drugs, so we hit all the boats. U.S. officials claim the CIA carried out a drone strike on a Venezuelan port. We'll go to Caracas for an update. Then Israel bans dozens of humanitarian groups from operating in Gaza beginning January 1st, including Doctors Without Borders and the Norwegian Refugee Council. If we're no longer on the ground present with our teams able to support the people who are going to suffer the most,

are the civilians who are the most in need. And at midnight New York time, Democratic socialists or on Mamdani will be sworn into office as New York City Mayor. And then again on New Year's Day by Senator Bernie Sanders with a block party outside City Hall. Mamdani calls it the inauguration of a new era. My sincere hope is that New Yorkers who have long felt on the margins of this city,

the homeless veterans straining to survive, the patient searching for the care that they need, an immigrant trying to get by, will feel that they now have leaders in their corner, who understand their struggles and care to fight for them. That is the city I want to build. We'll speak to New York City, DSA co-chair, Grace Mouser, about building municipal socialism in New York.

And we'll go to Norman Solomon, director of Roots Action, about his new book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, how corporate Democrats paved the way for autocracy. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report. I'm Amy Goodman. Israel's banning more than two dozen international humanitarian groups, including Doctors Without Borders, MSF, Oxfam, and the Norwegian Refugee Council.

from operating in the Gaza Strip starting New Year's Day. Israeli authorities say the organizations did not meet new registration requirements that include sharing detailed information about staff funding and operations. We'll speak with the Norwegian Refugee Council after headlines. Israel continues to claim without evidence that Hamas is infiltrating the distribution of aid a charge the aid groups have repeatedly denied. The announcement drastically harms Gaza's residents who rely heavily on the aid groups for medical care, food, and shelter. For instance, MSF is responsible for 20 percent of the hospital beds and supports a third of all births in Gaza.

In a statement issued last week in anticipation of Israel's announcement, MSF said, quote, if Israeli authorities revoke MSF's access to Gaza in 26, a large portion of people in Gaza will lose access to critical medical care, water, and life-saving support. MSFs activities serve nearly half a million people in Gaza through our vital support to the destroyed health system, they said. Meanwhile, the Pentagon awarded Boeing an $8.6 billion contract to build and deliver 25 new F-15 fighter jets for the Israeli Air Force. The announcement comes after President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at Mar-a-Lago, the U.S.'s largest the splier

of arms to Israel. Saudi Arabia carried out strikes on Yemen's port city of Makala Tuesday after accusing the United Arab Emirates of sending a shipment of weapons and combat vehicles to separatist forces known as the Southern Transitional Council. Shortly after the strikes, the UAE announced it's withdrawing its remaining troops in Yemen. The Southern Transitional Council initially supported Yemen's internationally recognized government against the Houthi rebels. But earlier this month, the separatist forces launched an offensive against the Saudi Arabia-backed government troops. Russia launched an overnight drone attack on the Ukrainian port city of Odessa, injuring four people, including three children. The strike comes as Russia claims to have moved a nuclear-capable missile system into Belize.

A day after Russia accused Ukraine of carrying out a drone attack on Russian President Vladimir Putin's residence. Russian officials double down on the claim on Tuesday, but refused to provide any evidence. Meanwhile, national security advisors from several European countries are set to meet in Ukraine on Saturday, according to the Ukrainian president, Volodomir Zelensky. Speaking to reporters, Polish Prime Minister, Donald Tusk, said a peace deal between Russia and Ukraine could be reached within weeks. The key outcome of recent days is the American Declaration, and this is, of course, something new. Some were even surprised.

The American Declaration of the United States' readiness to participate in security guarantees for Ukraine after the conclusion of peace, including the presence of American troops, for example, on the border or on the line of contact between Ukraine and Russia. In Iran, mass protests over the country's dire economic situation, including a collapsing currency and high inflation of spread from businesses to universities, according to social media post, students protested Tuesday at six university campuses in the capital, Tehran, and as well in Isfahan and Yazid. The post showed students chanting freedom and don't be afraid, we are all together. Clashes broke out between students and security forces near the University of Tehran. comes as Iran responded to President Trump's threats that he would support new strikes against the country over its nuclear program. On social media, Iran's president, Massoud Peshashkin, warned that any actions against Iran would be, quote, severe and regret-inducing, unquote.

This is the head of Iran's Parliament Tuesday. I emphasize that Iran does not seek permission from anyone to defend itself. The Iranian people's response to any widespread adventurism and evil is unapologetic and even unexpected. At least two oil tankers have reportedly arrived in Venezuela in recent days with other vessels navigating toward the Venezuelan coast, despite the Trump administration's blockade. The two other tankers approaching Venezuela are not under sanctions and are part of a fleet from China. It's unclear whether China will press the Trump administration to secure the safe passage of the vessels as a U.S. ramps up its military forces against Venezuela.

This comes as a New York Times investigations offered a glimpse into the physical evidence following mounting U.S. military strikes on boats off the Caribbean. The Times reports, days after a U.S. boat strike in November, a scorched 30-foot-long boat washed ashore a Colombian peninsula followed by two bodies and dozens of packets, some of which had traces of a substance that smelled and looked like marijuana. The damning new details contradict President Trump's claims of targeting cocaine and fentanyl traffickers. Marijuana is legal in at least 40 U.S. states. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned 10 people in firms from Iran and Venezuela over allegedly supporting Iran's drone trade and ballistics program.

It follows President Trump's announcement of a maximum pressure campaign against Iran over its nuclear program earlier this year, which led to U.S. strikes against three nuclear enrichment facilities in Iran over the summer. Iran continued his claim its nuclear program is peaceful and for civilian purposes. In Bolivia, protests led by minors have entered a second week with police forces on Tuesday firing tear gas at demonstrators in the capital of Paz. Protesters have condemned new austerity measures issued by the government of President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, who took office in early November. The decree has doubled gasoline prices and triple diesel costs with labor leaders and workers saying the new reforms will also skyrocket. food and transportation costs for communities living in poverty. This is one of the protesters. We've been repressed with rubber bullets with weapons. We are fighting for a just cause. It is for

Bolivia. We will fight to the end until we get this cursed decree repealed. Honduran presidential runner-up, Salvador Nasrallah, has formally filed an appeal to challenge the results of last month's contested Honduran election. mounting accusations of fraud after the conservative Nasri, Espuda, was declared the winner nearly a month after voters took to the polls in electoral process that was riddled with technical issues and a lack of transparency. Asphoto was personally endorsed by President Trump, which was widely criticized as a way to intervene in Honduras' election. Nasrallah lost to Esphoto by less than 1% of the vote and is seeking a review and recount of voter ballots. The state of Florida

executed 19 people on death row this year, a record high that nearly doubled the national average. That's according to the Death Penalty Information Center, which said Florida's executions accounted for about 40 percent of the country's total this year. Advocates calling to abolish the death penalty of warn many of those put to death suffer from mental illness or were not given access to proper legal representation. Others were victims of abuse. Florida's Republican Governor Ron DeSantis has been accused of expediting executions for political game. Unlike other states where the courts are more steadily involved in the process, Florida's governor has the sole authority to issue execution warrants.

A newly unsealed order in the criminal case against Kilmar Abrago Garcia revealed Justice Department officials push for his indictment, calling it a top priority after he was wrongfully sent to El Salvador's mega prison, Seikot, then returned to the U.S. under court order. Meanwhile, ICE says it will not re-arrest him again as long as a federal judge's order blocking his detention remains in place. The Justice Department brought human smuggling charges against him for driving in a car with other undocumented immigrants. Kilmar-Abrego-Garcia seeking to dismiss his case on the grounds the Trump administration is targeting him. A federal judge has temporarily blocked the Trump administration from ending deportation protections for 230 immigrants from South Sudan.

The decision by Judge Angel Kelly came about a week before their TPS, temporary protected status, was set to expire, citing in the ruling, quote, serious long-term consequences, including the risk of deadly harm if the immigrants are deported to South Sudan. The United Nations is warned of escalating armed conflict in South Sudan and widespread. spread food and security in the region. The Trump administration announced it's freezing all child care funds to Minnesota. The Deputy Secretary of Health and Human Services, Jim O'Neill, said the move was in response to the work of right-wing anti-Muslim influencer Nick Shirley, who published a video

claiming he found that daycare centers operated by Somali residents in Minneapolis had committed fraud. Shirley's video provided scant evidence of his claims, but was retweeted by Vice President J.D. Vance and Elon Musk. And at midnight New York time, Democratic Social Soran Mamdani will be sworn in as mayor of New York City by New York Attorney General Letitia James in a private ceremony at an abandoned subway station under City Hall. Then on New Year's Day, Vermont's independent senator, Bernie Sanders, will publicly administer the oath of office to Mamdani on the steps of City Hall. Democratic Congress member Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez will introduce Mamdani in the midst of an inauguration block party, which is expected to have some 40,000 revelers. Democracy Now will be streaming the inauguration ceremony at DemocracyNow.org.

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 is Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. At least two oil tankers have reportedly arrived in Venezuela in recent days with other vessels navigating toward the Venezuelan coast despite the Trump administration's blockade. Two other tankers approaching Venezuela are

not under sanction are part of a fleet from China. Venezuela's state oil company has begun shutting some crude oil wells on account of the U.S. pressure on exports and storage space being filled. They've announced daily production will be reduced by 15%. Meanwhile, the U.S. carried out a drone strike on a remote dock facility last week in the first report of a land attack on Venezuela by the U.S. since the Trump administration's military pressure campaign began. Since September, the Pentagon's claimed 30 attacks on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. killing at least 1007 people, the Trump administration claims without evidence the votes were carrying fentanyl bound for the U.S. and calls for the people killed, calls that

people killed narco-terrorists. For more, we go to Caracas, where we're joined by journalist Adrenna Chavez, her latest piece for Dropsite news, headlined, War of the entire people. Venezuela's grassroots rise to resist Trump's naval blockade. Andreina, can you start off by talking about the response to this latest news? President Trump said it himself last week that we didn't say there was a CIA land attack on Venezuela. He said there was a U.S. attack. And now in the days U.S. administration officials say it was a CIA strike.

If you can talk about both that, the killing of people in these boats, and how, the people of Venezuela are responding. Thank you so much for having me. And yes, so as you know, in the last four months since August, specifically, the United States has been amassing a large military builder in the Caribbean under the pretext that they are fighting drug trafficking. And under that pretext, they have been bombing dozens of small boats in the Caribbean in the Pacific, and they have killed over a hundred people.

Now, there is absolutely no evidence so far that these people, these civilian boats, were actually drug trafficking. There is no evidence of that. And in fact, if you look at the data, international data, you will find out that Venezuela doesn't produce cocaine or fentanyl. So the narrative that the United States is pushing that these bows were coming from Venezuela and were carrying drugs and they were heading for the United States doesn't rely on any verifiable evidence.

Cocaine and fentanyl are not produced in Venezuela. Cocaine is mainly producing countries like Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, and only less than 10% of that cocaine producing those countries passes through Venezuela, less than 10%. That means that more than 80% of the cocaine that is produced in Latin America, reaches the United States via land, via Central American nations that are actually allies with the U.S. government and via the Pacific. So the idea that these folks are carrying drugs that are coming from Venezuela and getting to the United States is not credible. And in the case of fentanyl, fentanyl is produced in North American countries, and it reaches the United States by land through the Mexican border. So basically the United States is killing people in the Caribbean and the Pacific

with absolutely no evidence. In fact, United Nations experts have already made it very clear that these are extrajudicial killings. And even if there was the suspicions that these boughs were carrying drugs, the correct procedure will be to cease and to detain the people, to detain the bouts. And the United States is not doing that. They're just killing them. And why? You have to ask yourself, why is the United States simply, killing these people, bombing these civilian vessels instead of doing the correct procedure, but because they don't really care about the whole drug trafficking issue. They know that these vessels most likely are just civilians and fishermen.

They care about pushing the narratives, justifying the presence of the U.S. military in the Caribbean. For work so they can arrive to this exact moment right now, in which the United States, the president, Donald Trump, has announced that Venezuela is now under a naval blockade, a complete total blockade against Venezuela, and is now sizing oil tankers in the Caribbean, in Caribbean waters. The first oil tanker was actually ceased on December 10, and the tanker was later taken to Texas to unload the oil, because Trump said that the United States would simply kick the oil that is tankers were carrying.

The second tank was... Andrina, I just wanted to ask you about this issue of Trump claiming that Venezuela in the past has taken oil that belongs to the United States. If you could comment about that. And also, you've written about the commune movement. Most people in the United States have no awareness of the vast commune movement that's developed in Venezuela in recent years. If you could talk about the communes, how they arose.

Indeed. So what I was saying about the oil tankers, I mean, the point that I wanted to reach is that the United States said that they're going to target sanction oil tankers. And that's actually not true. They are targeting any oil tanker that enters and leave Venezuela. And this is with the purpose of creating economic asphyxion. That is the purpose. I was actually listening to an interview of Elliot Abrams yesterday. And he was saying, you know, he was the special envoy for Venezuela during Transforce Administration. And he was admitting that the purpose of the naval block is to asphyxiate the Venezuelan economy so that people will pressure the Maduro government and eventually overthrow the Maduro government. So why is this happening? The whole military operation in the Caribbean, what's behind it, it is the United States wants to control the oil in Venezuela.

It wants the oil. And President Trump said it. He said that he believes that Venezuela owes oil to the United States, that the United States was robbed at some point of all the oil that it belongs to then that is in Venezuelan soil. Why does Trump believe that? Because in early 2000s, the Venezuelan government led by Hugo Chavez nationalized Venezuela's oil industry. That meant that all these corporations that were working in Venezuela, they now have to transfer ownership to the state.

So joint ventures will have a mixed ownership in which the state, Venezuelan state, would have a majority stake. And that was part of Venezuela's sovereign, re-industrialization, sovereignly nationalization of its resources, with the aim to be able to pour this money, this leaveny of the oil exports into the Venezuelan people. A lot of corporations, especially ConocoPhillics, exomobile, they didn't like the idea that the Venezuelan state was going now to have a majority stake in joint ventures.

So they decided to leave Venezuela. They abandoned their oil facilities in Venezuela. And they began claiming to international arbitration. They began trying to claim some sort of compensation for this nationalization process. And right now, what Trump is saying is that Venezuela oils owns oils, the Venezuela needs to give the United States. all this oil that according to him was stolen simply because we nationalize our own resources. So that is what Stram is saying.

And actually, very recently, he claimed that he was bombing a drug facility in Venezuela, in a port in Venezuela. And just to clarify, there's actually no verifiable evidence that this attack happened so far. We don't have any evidence. There is no weakness that this attack happened. We don't know the location of the election. attack. The Venezuelan October 13s have not said anything, acknowledged that there has been a strike in Venezuelan land. So we don't know anything about that. And it's important

to clarify that we don't have actual confirmation about it. Andriena, we only have a little bit of time left. Could you talk about the communes, how they have arose and their role in trying to prevent regime change by the United States? Indeed. So the Venezuelan communes and Venezuelan popular organizations, and I say, just in general, have responded to Trump's claims that he owns the Venezuelan oil with a very strong response saying that they're going to defense of anything, they're going to defend Venezuela's self-determination. And they have also sent this message. I was speaking with Lana Bielma, who is a sportsperson for El Maisal commune. And she reminded me there's something that

is very true. Venezuela is not the same country that was 10 or 5 years ago. Right now, Venezuela that doesn't depend on essential imports to be able, for people to be able to eat or to have medicine, we're now producing almost 100% of the food that we consume. And that is because Venezuela's popular organizations during the worst times of the economic crisis in between 2017 and 2020, when Trump applied the first sanctions against Venezuela,

during those times, we learned that we needed to diversify the economy. we learned that we needed to create a sovereign production, that we needed to create sovereign distribution systems in Venezuela. So we couldn't be led to extirvation, which is what the government administration is trying to do right now. They're trying to restore the Venezuelan population by creating this naval block. So Venezuelan communes are pledging alliance to defending the country

from this imperialist attack. For those who don't know, Venezuela has a communal movement. Communists in Venezuela began to form around 2009, and they were part of Venezuela's political transformation into a more society society. The whole point of communes is that people from the same communities or who share the same territory, they unite,

and they organize to manage their own resources, to manage their own communities. In the case of rural communes, they organize to produce food, to produce services, to process food, and to distribute that within their own communities and even communities beyond the communes.

So this is the response that Venezuelan Communists and the organization in general are given in the face of this new economic service. We want to thank you for being with us and encourage people to read your article at DropSight News. Andrea Chavez, speaking to us from Caracas, the article, War of the Entire People, Venezuela's grassroots rise to resist Trump's naval blockade. Next up, Israel bans dozens of humanitarian groups from operating in Gaza beginning

January 1st. Stay with us. Shill Shiel, Shiel, Carrie Cowry, performed here in New York by the Palestinian choir. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. Israel's banning dozens of international humanitarian organizations from operating in the Gaza Strip starting Thursday, January 1st. The group's band include some of the best-known humanitarian aid groups in the world, including Doctors Without Borders, Medicine San Frontier, MSF, Oxfam, and the Norwegian Refugee Council, among many others. Israeli authorities say the groups did not meet new registration requirements that include sharing

detailed information about Palestinian and international staff, funding, and operations. Israel continued to claim, without evidence, Hamas is infiltrating the distribution of aid. In a statement issued an anticipation of Israel's announcement, and as MSF said, quote, if Israeli authorities revoke MSF's access to Gaza in 2026, a large portion of people in Gaza will lose access to critical medical care, water, and life-saving support. MSF's activities serve nearly half a million people in Gaza through our vital support to the destroyed health system, unquote. For more, we're joined in Jerusalem by Shana Lowe

of the Norwegian Refugee Council. She's communications advisor. She's in daily touch with her colleagues in Gaza, and it's spent much of the last 15 years working on Palestine. Shana, welcome back to democracy now. Can you explain what's going to happen tomorrow and why it's happening? well thank you amy uh in terms of why it's happening i think that's probably the the easiest way to start because we aren't really sure what the consequences will be starting tomorrow

uh in terms of why it's happening this is part of israel's continuous campaign that we've seen since october seventh to obstruct principled humanitarian actors from operating in the occupied Palestinian territory. We've faced obstruction after obstruction. Since March 2nd, dozens of NGOs like the Norwegian refugee council have been essentially barred

from bringing in any aid into Gaza. We haven't been able to get in a single palette directly by NRC since in 10 months, basically. And so this is just one more step to push out principled humanitarian actors, particularly

those that speak out on behalf of half of the people who were there to serve call for accountability for rights violations and violations of international law. And we know what happens when international principled, experienced humanitarian agencies are sidelined. We saw that this year with the GHF where hundreds of people, thousands of people were shot, injured and killed, seeking food for their families. This is what's going to happen as Israel continues to try and block and obstruct

our response. We know that at least starting tomorrow we will no longer be able to bring in international aid workers into Gaza. We have at any particular time around a dozen international staff supporting nearly 70, around 70 local staff and 200 daily workers in Gaza who are the backbone of our response. And so while we will miss and of course it will be a loss to not be able to have aid workers there on the international aid workers there on the ground supporting our teams our teams remain committed to serving people not just in gaza but throughout the occupied palestinian territory with or without international presence and shana what specifically are these new registration requirements of the israeli government on for information

on staffs funding and operations that you have deep concerns about Well, there were two issues with the Israeli registration process, and this is, I should note, a new process. Prior to this being implemented in March, organizations like NRC registered, we registered more than 15 years ago and were able to operate in perpetuity unless the Israeli authorities took some type of action. Now they've implemented new rules that require agencies to reapply for registrously. every three years, putting us under their scrutiny, and there were two major issues with this process. The first was the request for staff lists of our Palestinian staff. Now, we're dealing with one of the parties to the conflict, and not just any party to the conflict, but one in which that has killed hundreds of aid workers in Gaza over the last two

years. So for us, it's a security concern, and it's also a legal concern because those of us that are domiciled in the European Union or receive funding from the EU or EU member states are subject to very strict data protection laws and to disclose our staff's private information would violate those laws that we are contractually obligated to abide by. There is a second issue which we didn't even get to in this process around the criteria by which the Israeli authorities are evaluating us, which is arbitrary and highly politicized, including saying that any organization that engages in quote-unquote de-legitimization of Israel would be subject to having their registration

revoked or not issued. Now, that term de-legitimization is very vague. We don't know what it means, but what we understand it to mean is a way to target organizations like NRC, like Oxfam, like MSF, like our peers, who speak out about what we're seeing, who talk about the violations we're seeing and call for accountability. And so these are the main issues that we are facing. I think it's important to note that we know of some organizations that were re-registered even without submitting staff lists. So we know that this is being used as merely an excuse to target those of us that speak out and are fighting on behalf or fighting for the rights or protection of the people that were there to serve.

And, Shana, Palestinians are not just under attack in Gaza, but could you talk about what is happening in the West Bank, especially with the stepped-up settler attacks? And, of course, in early December, the Israeli cabinet approving a proposal for the construction of 19 new illegal Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank? Well, as you said in my introduction, I've been working in the occupied Palestinian territory off and on for more than 15 years. And the situation that I am witnessing here and that we are witnessing is by far the worst we've ever seen. We're facing a massive displacement crisis across the West Bank. We have over 30,000 Palestinians who have been forcibly displaced from refugee camps in the northern West.

Bank, unable to return. All signs indicate that Israel is using their displacement as a means of erasing the refugee issue, only setting conditions where return would be subject to basically removing this status as refugee camps and turning these camps into basically neighborhoods or extensions of the cities that they're a part of. And we've seen an unbelievable number of settler attacks just over around 260 in October alone. This is 50% of the total attacks that we witnessed in 2021. So we've seen settler attacks skyrocket over the last several years. This is not an accident. This is

government policy. Israel is arming these settlers. Oftentimes these settlers are attacking vulnerable Palestinian communities under the protection or even with the participation of the Israeli military. When Palestinian communities call the Israeli police asking for help and for protection, which Israel is obligated to do under international law. The police don't come, or in some cases they even threaten to detain or arrest the Palestinians who are seeking protection. We've seen 85 communities in the last three years face displacement, and dozens of them have been completely displaced, erased from the map.

And so, and meanwhile, we've seen the Netanyahu government work to quickly expand its settlement footprint. We saw the approval of the E1 plans east of Jerusalem. We've seen now just in the last several weeks the announcement of 19 new settlements, including the reestablishment of five settlements that were removed 20 years ago during the Gaza disengagement that will be reestablished. What we've seen is a government that is out of control in terms of its consolidation of control of the West Bank. It's advancing its annexation agenda. And at the same time, we are witnessing Palestinians continue to be.

displaced and continually to be forced, just as we've seen in Gaza, into smaller and smaller spaces. Shana Lowe, we want to thank you for being with us, speaking to us from Jerusalem, communications advisor for the Norwegian Refugee Council, which, along with dozens of other groups, including the MSF, Doctors Without Borders, have been banned by Israel from the occupied territories. next up at midnight New York time today. Democratic Socialists are on Mamdani will be sworn in as mayor of New York.

Stay with us. Looks like you're feeling under pressure. Need to blow off some steam. We could go to another place somewhere far away. I want to catch every sunrise with you next to me. This is going to be all right. This is democracy now. Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war and peace report.

I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. At midnight New York time tonight, Democratic Socialists or on Mamdani will be sworn in as mayor at a private ceremony at an old City Hall subway station abandoned under City Hall. He'll be sworn in by New York Attorney General Letitia James. Then at a public inauguration outside City Hall on New Year's Day, Mamdani will be sworn in by Vermont. independent senator, socialist independent senator of Vermont, Bernie Sanders, who is originally from Brooklyn. New York Democratic Congressmember Alexandria, Casio Cortez, will introduce Mamdani. Some 40,000 people are expected to attend an inauguration block party outside City Hall. Momdani is calling it the, quote, inauguration of a new era. On Tuesday, he announced a number of

new positions in city government. Steve Banks, former head of legal aid, will be his corporation counsel. He was also head of social services under Mayor de Blasio. Mamdani chose as his chief counsel, Ramsey Qasem, former immigration policy advisor to President Biden, one of the lawyers for Palestinian activist, Mahmoud Khalil. Tuesday's press conference took place at Elmhurst Hospital, one of the hardest hit pandemic hospitals. Mamdani also announced he's chosen Elmhurst's hospital's first Latina CEO, Helen Artiaga, as his deputy mayor for health and human services. He's also announced a public education leader, Kamar Samuels, as his school's chancellor. This is mayor-elect Mamdani.

My sincere hope is that New Yorkers who have long felt on the margins of this city, the homeless veterans straining to survive, the patient searching for the care that they need, an immigrant trying to get by, will feel that they now have. have leaders in their corner who understand their struggles and care to fight for them. That is the city I want to build, the prosperity I intend to deliver, and the leadership that has too long been lacking. On Thursday, Democracy Now will live stream Mamdani's inauguration. It begins at 0.11, just opening music.

And 1 p.m. Eastern is when he is expected to be sworn in. We'll be doing that at DemocracyNow.org on Friday's show will air highlights from the inauguration. For more right now, we're joined by Grace Mouser, co-chair of New York City Democratic Socialists of America. Her recent piece for Jacobin headlined Building Municipal Socialism in New York with DSA. Welcome to Democracy Now. Tell us what you're expecting. Zoran Mamdani has announced his team, a number of members of the team, and the significance of what's happening this week.

They expect 40,000 people at the block party that will be there at City Hall. I think it's indicative of the type of mayor he intends to be. He really wants to be a mayor for the masses. We're saying that with how he's approaching appointments, appointments of people who have served the public, often in progressive and public service-facing roles. and we see it in how he's approached transition teams and speaking directly with New Yorkers and with how he's approaching the inauguration

inviting 40,000 people, which is still less than half of the number of people who signed up to volunteer for him. That was 100,000 New Yorkers. So we're seeing him embrace how he actually won, which is mobilizing tens of thousands of New Yorkers, and he's going to bring that ethos into City Hall. And Grace, I wanted to ask you, in the past, progressive or people's movements who have come to power in municipal governments often end up with their movement being effectively disbanded once the person comes into office.

How do you, how do, does your, what are your hopes or what are DSA's hopes for preventing that from happening this time? And how will that be done? We've learned a lot looking at past examples, like how Obama's volunteer army was disbanded after he became president, and we are working very hard to ensure that that doesn't happen this time. I think Zeran coming out of a mass movement, like the Democratic Socialists of America, is an auspicious start to that. He came to office, mobilizing, like I said, tens of thousands of people. That was a very intentional strategy. And those volunteers were not just canvassers, but they were, in many respect, strategists running important aspects of the campaign. That's how you scale to knock over two million doors.

And we're going to, as DSA, as the Ziran administration, and as part of the broad coalition of groups and individuals that he's been able to knit together with this affordability platform, we're going to bring that same mentality. into governance. I think it's really important that Saran comes out of these movements, that we know he believes in these types of organizing tactics. And he's going to continue with that mentality as mayor. And of course, DSA, the outside groups that helped elect him, are continuing with these tactics as well. We know just getting a mayor into office, while impressive and very exciting is not enough. We have to continue to keep pressure on establishment Democrats, on establishment politicians to do things like taxing the rich to fund child care.

We know that's not going to happen without continuous outside agitation and outside pressure, and we are already working to do that. I wanted to ask you also about the importance of police reform five years after the murder of George Floyd and police reform and some people calling for defund the police spread across the nation, but it was not a major part of the Mandami campaign. He did keep that as a police commissioner, Jessica Tisch and an heiress to a major American fortune. I'm wondering how you see police reform developing and what would be the challenges Mandami, Mayor Mandani faces from the police department. Yeah, we definitely expect there to still be challenges with a socialist mayor being in

charge of the largest police force in the country. That was known when we endorsed Iran over a year ago. It was known by Zeran himself as he was campaigning for office. But of course, those types of challenges can't be a reason for us to shy away from trying to seize and wield power. With regards to what Zoran is actually going to do on policing, he is certainly committed to creating the Department of Community Safety, to disbanding the Strategic Response Group. He wants to change how policing is enacted. He may not have the power to, you know, completely redo the NYPD over the next four to, you know, hopefully eight years. but we know that he has plans for scaling back the role of police, scaling up the role of other types of professionals who can actually intervene positively in people's lives.

And we have to, we trust that he has that vision. He has a team around him who's going to do that. We, you know, would have been great if there was a socialist police commissioner waiting to take over the role from Jessica Tisch. but I think many of your viewers are probably aware. No such person, to my knowledge, really exists. So we have to work with what we have with the constraints we're facing. And we know that abolition is a long-term goal.

It's not something that we necessarily intend to achieve within one administration or even multiple administrations. And as we wrap up, Grace Mouser, your co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. I think it's important to explain what democratic socialism is, Mamdani will not only have to take on those that, well, were opposed to him, and particularly as he took on the billionaires, New York Post, front page, Communist Party with an exclamation point. Bernie does swear in Mamdani as left prepares to carve up New York taxpayers. And on the other hand, you have mayor-elect Mamdani talking about expanding universal child care free under the

age of five, free buses, and freezing rent increases. about why you organized around Mamdani? So for us at DSA, we're a big tent organization. There's a wide variety of ideologies housed within our organization, but fundamentally, we believe that working people should have a democratic voice, not only in their political future, but in their economic future as well. And that obviously contains a lot of ideas within it. The reason we rallied behind Zaran is because he is committed to building our project.

He has built it alongside us since he first volunteered for a Hadariyah team back in 2017. And he's not the only Democratic Socialist in New York State Office. He's certainly not. We have 11 socialists in office, including Zeran. Most of them are in the State Assembly and State Senate. Two of them are in the City Council. and, of course, now one is about to become mayor. So we are building a collective project together.

We don't simply elect people and say, you know, good luck, don't disappoint us, but we actively organize and strategize alongside them so that we can create a strategy that is both ambitious but also realistic and targeted at the right types of enemies, at the right targets, at the right pain points to actually move our agenda forward. We want to thank you for being with us, and we'll be getting back to you over these years to talk about how you're holding Mayor Mamdani accountable. Grace Mouser is co-chair of the New York City Democratic Socialists of America. We'll link to your piece in Jacobin, building municipal socialism in New York with DSA. And remember, Democracy Now will be live streaming the inauguration tomorrow at DemocracyNow.org.

We end our final live broadcast of 2025 with Norman Solomon, director of Roots Action, Executive Director of the Institute for Public Accuracy. He's just published a new book. It's titled The Blue Road to Trump Hell, how corporate Democrats pave the way for autocracy. He also has a new piece for The Guardian, headlined, why is the Democratic Party hiding its 2024 autopsy report, in which he argues, quote, a party unable to publicly examine its own failings is unlikely to climb out of the rut that proves so helpful to Donald Trump in 2024. Norm, thank you so much for being with us.

So why don't you answer that question for us? Why is the Democratic Party hiding its 2024 autopsy report? What report is that? Well, it was officially going to be released before the election in November this year. Then it was, the can was kicked down the road, and we were told it would be released by the end of the year. And that didn't happen. And it didn't happen because the history of the Democratic Party is a repetition compulsion to serve corporate power, and it can't withstand the lighter day. And so rather than do self-examination, the people running.

the Democratic National Committee decided to just pretend that, as the saying, goes, look forward, not backward. But if you don't examine real history, then you're in a cycle that repeats the same problems. And so when, in response to what we anticipated would be either a whitewash official report from the Democratic Party or none at all, as it turned out, our team at Roots Action put together our own autopsy. And we found that it really echoed the same kind of critique that we presented in our autopsy after the 2016 election. In fact, if you were to swap the names Hillary Clinton and Kamala Harris, it would be entirely accurate in a lot of the report because in both cases, and here we have elections, what, eight years apart, service to corporate

power, hostility to the progressive wing of the party, out-of-control militarism, disconnection from the base of the working class, that's been a common thread of the Democratic Party. As we celebrate and look forward to the mayoral reality in New York City coming up, I think it's really notable and very important to remember that, as the saying goes, the Democratic Party is a field of struggle. And I work at Roots Action with the colleague India Walton. Four years ago, as a Democratic Socialist, she won the Democratic Party nomination in the city of Buffalo, the second largest city in the state.

And then right-wing Democrats teamed up with racists and Republicans and defeated her with a rubber stamp write-in campaign. Well, that's a defeat. And a lot of people who are defeatist, unfortunately, or say, hey, forget about the Democratic. Party, they say, oh, we lose. We can't defeat the Democratic Party elite leadership. Well, see what happened four years later is another Democratic Socialist didn't give up, and because of being part of a social movement, was able to not only galvanize tens of thousands of volunteers, but actually win. So I just sort of sum up by saying that the official Democratic Party leadership, such as it is, is unwilling, unable to really examine the true history of

that party and the capacity of that party to respond to the working class, which has been diminishing. And at the same time, when people organize and when people look at real history and struggle to change what comes up in the future, we can win victories. Norm, I want to get back to this DNC autopsy. The Harris campaign spent $1.5 billion in just 107 days of their campaign, what did they spend all that money on? They spend it on consultants, they spend it on TV ads, they spend it on the traditional way that when you don't believe in your party base and you try to win an election from the top down, you squander the money. And there has not been transparency within the DNC or

the various presidential campaigns of the party, it's very lucrative. It's a racket. They win, whether they win or lose. It's sort of like, I would compare it to the weapons manufacturers and the military-industrial complex. You know, the U.S., quote, lost in Vietnam, lost in Iraq, and Afghanistan, but the military-industrial complex, corporate America, they never lose. And in a similar way, the consultants who were intertwined with corporate America and and militarism at the Democratic Party at the very high levels, they have huge quantities of dollars shoveled their way, and frankly, they would rather lose the presidential election and retain control of the Democratic Party than heaven forfend to have Bernie Sanders be the nominee,

and they would lose control of the party. And could you talk about, in terms of the analysis of Roots Action, to what degree the the National Democratic Party and obviously Biden and Harris positions on the war in Gaza affected the turnout for the for president? Well, there's no doubt that the polling at the time, as early as August 24, showed that in crucial swing states like Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, that if Kamala Harris had been willing to call for an arms embargo, even say she would consider an arms embargo on Israel

as it continued its genocide against Palestinian people in Gaza, that she would have gained a lot more votes than she would have lost. This was not a secret. And retrospective polling shows very clearly that she very well may have won the election and be in the White House today if she'd been willing to break from the Israel right or wrong, keep shoveling arms to the murderous regime there. If she had broken with that policy of the

Biden White House, as I say, she might well be president today. And I do again see a parallel between 2016 and 2024. When corporate Democrats, when the militarists control the party, then we have the kind of events and the losses where Hillary Clinton picks up, I mean, we're talking checks, quarter million dollars for one check, for one speech that Hillary Clinton got. And then she turns around and says she's a candidate for working people. It's preposterous. And then we had Kamala Harris saying that she couldn't think of anything that she would do differently than Joe Biden. Well, that signified the complete moral collapse of the Harris campaign last year, just as Joe Biden's policy of supporting genocide also was a collapse

of the Democratic Party from the top. One of the things that we emphasize in this new root section autopsy report, which by the way is online at Democraticotopsy.org is that it was very clear that this was the case

and that Biden and the hierarchy of the Democratic Party have a 50-plus year history of very clearly saying that whatever Israel does, we're going to support it. Well, in point of fact, the polling, not only in the swing states, but across the country, then and today, which brings us to the

current time, shows that the top of the party, most of the Democrats in Congress, certainly the DNC, they're way disconnected from what people actually want. And that's a parallel again with the polling was very clear. Democrats didn't want Biden to run again. And the elites at the top essentially said to Democratic voters and independents around the country, we know what you want, even if that's not what you say you want. One unpublicized reality in the last few months is that when the DNC held its semi-annual meeting in August, because of the pressure to take a position against sending further arms to Israel, the chair of the DNC, Ken Martin, pledged that he would appoint a task force to study Democratic Party policy towards Israel.

Four months later, nothing has happened. We don't even have an announcement of the members of who is on this task force of the Democratic Party. And this is a way of saying, actually, we don't care. We run the Democratic Party, and arms are coming from the United States to slaughter men, women, children in Gaza. Now there's all these restrictions on basic humanitarian aid. the genocide, the gradual extermination of the lives, there's so many Palestinian people, we don't care, we don't have to, we run the Democratic Party.

Well, that has to change from the bottom up. And let me just say that Ilan Omar and Rashida Talib and Zora and Mandami, they are, quote, Democrats, but they're a different kind of Democrat, and we need to fight to elect more of those Democrats. So Norman Solomon, we just have a minute and a half, and yes, Zora and Mamdani will become the mayor of New York at midnight New York time.

Tomorrow, democracy now will be live streaming the inauguration at 1 o'clock, New York time. 40,000 people are expected to come out. Can you contrast Zora Mamdani's victory and what he is promising right now when he talks about free child care, free and fast buses, freezing rent increases with what you talk about, the recent eight Senate Democrats who you say are surrendering to. Trump on health care and the meeting that Mamdani had with Trump where Trump praised him and he didn't take back Mamdani that he had called Trump a fascist. Yeah, being principled is a winner in two ways. It's because that's the way you advance a politics worthy of the name Democratic Socialist, worthy of the name progressive.

You stick to it. You have an analysis and you have a commitment. to changing what is fundamentally wrong. Let me say that as the title of my new book, by the way, which is free at blue road. info for anybody, blue rod.info will be a way you can read the book. It charts the way in which we have been led down the path to a fascistic politics out of the White House and Congress, and much of the judicial branch, because of the failure of corporate Democrats to defeat Republicans, or have decent policies. So this is, as I said at the beginning of our discussion, this is a

field of struggle. Let's struggle to change the Democratic Party. That's the only way next year and in 2028 to defeat this fascistic Republican Party. Norm Salman, we thank you for being with us, Director of Roots Action, author of the new book, The Blue Road to Trump Hell, how corporate Democrats pave the way for autocracy. And we'll link to your piece in Common Dreams and The Guardian. And that ends it for our show. Happy birthday to Dennis McCormick. Happy news year. I'm Amy Goodman with Juan Gonzalez.