Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-04-28 Tuesday

Episode Date: April 28, 2026

Democracy Now! Tuesday, April 28, 2026

From Toronto, this is Democracy Now. 31 years after the first cop on climate change, global CO2 emissions have increased by at least 65%. It could be said that we have failed, but we would also like to think that we are precisely at a moment of opportunity when the window has not yet closed. Environment ministers from more than 50 countries are gathering. and Santa Marta, Columbia, for a major summit on transitioning away from fossil fuels. But the United States, Russia, and China are skipping the summit. We'll speak to South African climate activist Kumi Naidu, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative. Plus, as we broadcast from Toronto, we'll speak to Avi Lewis, recently elected head of the NDP,

the New Democratic Party, Canada's Progressive Party, after Camas, campaigning on a platform embracing eco-socialism and expanding publicly funded projects. A network of public providers for food, phones, and internet, developer, and public construction companies to build millions of non-market homes. But first, we look at how the Trump administration's moving to make it easier to deport people with DACA. That's deferred action for childhood arrivals. The Obama era program that granted deportation relief to hundreds of thousands of immigrants who came to the U.S.'s children so they could obtain work authorization and not live in the shadows.

We'll speak to Democratic Congress member Delia Ramirez of Chicago. Her husband was a DACA recipient. She's the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the war impeachment. report, I'm Mimi Goodman, today we're broadcasting from Canada. Iran's offer the United States a new proposal to end its control over the Strait of Hormuz in exchange for the U.S. lifting its blockade of Iranian ports while suspending its threat to resume bombing. Axios reports

President Trump's expected to hold a meeting today in the situation room with his top national security and foreign policy team to discuss the stalemate in the negotiations and potential next steps. Several news outlets report Trump does not appear open to Iran's proposal, which would postpone talks over Iran's nuclear program to a later date. At the United Nations, diplomats from dozens of countries Monday demanded the reopening of the Strait of Hormuz, while a resolution calling for reopening the waterway was blocked by China and Russia. U.N. Secretary General Antonio Gutierrez warned of a global food emergency. After the U.S. Israeli war on Iran, triggered a crisis that sent the cost of fuel, fertilizer and other commodities soaring.

The economic shock has been immediate and everyone is paying the price. Acute volatility in energy and commodity markets, surging transport and insurance costs, and the worst supply chain disruption since COVID-19 and the war in Ukraine. These pressures are cascading into air. empty full tanks, empty shelves, and empty plates. On Saturday, the Iranian Red Crescent Society says it's submitted evidence to the International Criminal Court documenting U.S. Israeli war crimes. The RCS estimates more than 132,000 civilian structures were bombed across Iran,

including hospitals, apartment buildings, universities, research facilities, and bridges. Meanwhile, Iran's retaliation for U.S. and Israeli attacks caused billions of dollars of damage to U.S. military bases and other assets across the Persian Gulf region, with the damage inflicted far worse than the Trump administration's publicly admitted. That's according to a report by NBC News, which reports Iran struck runways, high-end radar systems, dozens of aircraft, warehouses, command headquarters, aircrafts, aircrafts, hangars and satellite communications infrastructure at a cost of up to $5 billion to repair. On Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz said he had become disillusioned with the U.S. and Israel over the war in Iran and said the Trump administration is being outwitted and humiliated. The Americans clearly have no strategy, and the problem with conflicts like this is always, that you don't just have to go in, you also have to get out again.

We saw that all too painfully in Afghanistan for 20 years. We saw it in Iraq. An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian state leadership. Israel's militaries launched attacks across southern Lebanon after it issued new warnings to residents to evacuate more than a dozen villages and towns and travel northwards immediately, or face death. It's the latest violation of Israel's ceasefire agreement with Lebanon, which was officially extended last Thursday. On Monday, Hezbollah chief, Naim Qasem, issued a statement condemning

the Lebanese government's direct talks with Israel, citing Israel's occupation of Lebanon's southern territories and its persistent attacks. In response, Israel's defense minister, Israel Katz, threatened to burn Hezbollah and all of Lebanon, unquote. Palestinian municipal elections were held in Gaza's Dierel-Belah Saturday, marking the first elections of any kind in the besieged strip since 2006. Meanwhile, in the West Bank, loyalists of the Palestinian authorities President Mahmoud Abbas won most races running unchallenged in many seats. Candidates in Gaza for the Palestinian Authority secured six of 15 contested seats.

Hamas boycotted the West Bank race. and did not formally nominate candidates in Gaza. Voter turnout in Gaza reached just 23% while turnout in the West Bank was 56%. This is Mohamed al-Hassanath, a first-time voter in Gaza. I was happy today because I was able to vote and cast my ballot in the elections. I was surprised, though, that the ballot box was made of wood

and the pen was a felt-tip pen, not official ink. Despite that, we are still able to vote and elect and face all challenges. We want to vote. We want to rebuild Gaza from scratch, and we want to rebuild it. A former top State Department official under President Biden has accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of committing genocide in Gaza with U.S. participation. Wendy Sherman served as Deputy Secretary of State until her retirement in July

2023. She spoke with Michelle Hussein of Bloomberg podcasts. I think that it is critical that Israel remain an ally of the United States and that we protect the right of a Jewish state. But I also believe that the prime minister has led us down a road and we have been part of it that has, in essence, created a genocide in Gaza. More than a dozen Biden administration officials resigned their post to protest U.S. policy toward Israel and its treatment of Palestinians. To see our interviews with many of them, go to DemocracyNow.org. In Sudan, human rights workers say six people were killed Monday when a Sudanese army drones struck a camp for displaced people in the Western Darfur region. Dozens more were wounded in the attack, which destroyed several homes and settled.

panic among displaced families. In Al-Fasher, the last major city in Darfur to fall to the UAE-backed paramilitary rapid support forces. The Sudan Doctors Network reports over 1,400 civilians, over 900 military personnel, and 20 doctors are being held in dire conditions in detention facilities. The RSF is accused of committing ethnically motivated killings and field executions inside the detention centers, which have also seen a cholera outbreak since February. Meanwhile, in East Darfur's labado, a measles outbreak, has killed approximately 70 people

infected around 1,000 others since March as the health care system has collapsed. According to the UN, nearly 34 million people, about 65% of the population are an urgent need of humanitarian support, and famine has been confirmed in Darfur and the court of funds. This is Sahamusa, a displaced Sudanese woman. Since we arrived in Tohila a month ago, we've been suffering from a severe lack of services, except for water, which we draw from wells. We have no other services here, and we desperately need assistance. Our children aren't receiving an education, and I'm a nurse, but I can't find work. Virginia's Supreme Court heard oral arguments Monday on the legality of redistricting referendum.

that voters approved last week. The redrawn Democratic map could result in the party holding 10 of Virginia's 11 congressional seats up from six. Meanwhile, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis released a new congressional map Monday that seeks to create four additional Republican-leaning seats in Florida. It comes as the Supreme Court formally reinstated Monday, a redrawn Texas electoral map, allowing Republicans to flip as many as five houses. seats currently held by Democrats. Justices at the U.S. Supreme Court appeared split on Monday over whether a federal law that regulates the sale and marketing of pesticides preempts state-level lawsuits against manufacturers. The case centers on whether the federal government or state should

decide what warning label should be put on herbicides. Its main plaintiff is a Missouri man who sued Monsanto and its parent company Bayer in two. 2019 over its popular weed killer glyphosate marketed as Roundup. He alleged two decades of exposure to the chemical caused him to develop blood cancer. A jury found Bayer had failed to warn him of the risks associated with Roundup and awarded him $1.25 million in damages. The Trump administration, which has called Roundup safe, is siding with Bayer in its challenge at the Supreme Court.

if successful thousands of lawsuits alleging cancers caused by Roundup could be thrown out. More than 600 workers at Google have signed a letter to CEO Sundar Panchai, demanding he refused to allow Google's AI tools to be used by the Pentagon for classified work. The employees cited concerns about lethal autonomous weapons and mass surveillance, writing that, quote, the only way to guarantee that Google, does not become associated with such harms is to reject any classified workloads, unquote. Google's reportedly pursuing a Pentagon deal similar to the one OpenAI struck after the Pentagon's public clash with Anthropic. Meanwhile, protesters gathered outside an Oakland courthouse Monday as jury

selection wrapped up in the trial pitting Elon Musk against OpenAI and its CEO, Sam Altman. A California ballot initiative to impose a one-time 5% tax on billionaires' assets has gathered more than 1.5 million signatures well above the 870,000 needed to qualify for the November ballot. The measure backed by the SEIU, Service Employees International Union, would use the revenue to backfill federal Medicaid cuts signed by President Trump. Silicon Valley executives have poured $93 million into defeating the ballot initiative, Google's co-founder, Sergei Bryn, has emerged as the measure's leading opponent, spending $57 million against it and relocating to Nevada before a December 31st deadline to escape the billionaire tax. The New York Times reports that at a holiday party last December, Brin cornered Governor Gavin Newsom and demanded he opposed the measure. The following month, Governor Newsom publicly pledged to defeat it. President Trump and First Lady Melania Trump welcome King Charles and Queen Camilla to Washington, D.C. on Monday.

It's Charles' first visit to the U.S. since he ascended to the throne in 2022. He's due to address a joint session of Congress this afternoon. His speech comes after Trump threatened to cancel a U.S. U.S. U.K. trade deal, mocked the Royal Navy, and insulted U.K. Prime Minister Kier Starmur is weak and cowardly and a loser with no future, unquote. During his U.S. visit, King Charles will not. meet with survivors of sexual abuse and human trafficking by Jeffrey Epstein, despite a request by California Congressmember Rokana for a private meeting. Charles' brother Andrew Mountbatten Windsor was stripped of his royal title prince and arrested in February over accusations of

misconduct and public office over his close ties to Epstein. 31-year-old call Thomas Allen of Torrance, California was charged Monday with the attempted assassination of President Trump following Saturday's shooting at the White House Correspondence Dinner. Alan allegedly charged a security checkpoint at the Washington Hilton armed with a shotgun and pistol. A secret service officer was shot but survived due to a bullet-resistant vest. An FBI affidavit revealed Allen had reserved a room at the hotel weeks before the dinner and traveled across country by train from California to Chicago to Washington. And an email sent to family just before the attack, he referred to himself as a friendly federal assassin.

He faces up to life in prison. At the White House, press secretary Carolyn Levitt blamed leftists for the attack. Those who constantly falsely label and slander the president as a fascist, as a threat to democracy, and compare him to Hitler to score political points, are fueling this kind of violence. The left-wing cults of hatred against the president, and all of those who support him and work for him has gotten multiple people hurt and killed, and it almost did so again this weekend. And First Lady Melania Trump's joined her husband and calling on ABC to fire late-night comedian Jimmy Kimmel following the gunfire that erupted outside the White House

Correspondents Association dinner on Saturday. The First Lady objected to Kimmel's joke last week before the shooting took place that she had to glow like an expectant widow, unquote. On Monday evening, Kimmel, push back. I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend, is pretty stressful in that house. And also, I agree that hateful and violent rhetoric is something we should reject. I do, and I think a great place to start to dial that back would be to have a conversation with your husband about it.

This comes after CBS last year canceled, the late show with Stephen Colbert under pressure from President Trump. His show will end in a few weeks. And after ABC temporarily suspended Kimmel's show last September over his comments about the assassination of the conservative activist Charlie Kirk. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace report.

I'm Amy Goodman in Toronto, Canada, with Juan Gonzalez in Chicago. Hi, Juan. Hi, Amy, and welcome to all of our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. We begin today's show with Trump's repeated attacks on DACA. That's the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals Program, which is granted deportation relief and work permits to an estimated half a million immigrants who came to the United States as children. The tariff. bargaining of people with DACA has intensified under Trump's second term with nearly 300 DACA recipients detained last year. Of that group, at least 174, have been deported, many after living nearly all their lives in the United States. Maria de Jesus Estrada Juarez is among them. She came

to the U.S. at the age of 15 and had been living here in the United States for over 20 years. years when the Trump administration detained her in February despite having DACA. She was taken during her green card appointment and deported to Mexico within 24 hours. A judge later deemed her deportation illegal and ordered her return to the United States in March. Hora spoke to PBS news from her home in California earlier this month. We showed up to the appointment at USCIS in Sacramento. We walk into the office.

We had my interview. At the end of my interview, the interview agent, the interview agent told me that I shouldn't need to speak to his supervisor. And as soon as that I know, they knock on the door and I got arrested and I was told that I was being detained

and I was going to get deported back to Mexico. I know that the deferred action, DACA, it protects people that they brought into the country when there were children for deportation. That's what the DACA program was created for. DACA was enacted by the Obama administration in 2012 and has been at the center of ongoing contentious litigation with advocates worried about the program's future. Well, a new decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals, that's BIA, may make it easier for

the Trump administration to continue deporting DACA recipients. The new precedent decision by a three-judge panel outlined that DACA no longer guarantees protection from deportation for hundreds of thousands of people in the program. The BIA operates within the Department of Justice. The decision came in the case of Catalina Social Santiago. A DACA recipient and longtime immigration rights advocate who was released from an ICE jail last October after about two months in detention. For more, we go to Capitol Hill, where we're joined by Congressmember Delia Ramirez. She is a Democrat from Illinois, fighting to bring legislation to the floor to protect DACA. Her husband is a former DACA recipient himself.

Congress member Ramirez is the daughter of Guatemalan immigrants. Welcome back to Democracy Now, Congressmember Ramirez. if you can talk about the significance of the BIA decision and overall the Trump administration deporting over a hundred DACA recipients. Look, this decision by the Board of Immigration Appeals is a very concerning decision because, as you just mentioned, deferred action for children arrivals. The purpose of that was to protect these children from being deported. And the idea that now 500,000 or so DACA recipients who've had deferred action are now at the whelm or concerned that if they get in fact stopped or if they go into a check-in or some sort of procedure with immigration that they too can now be deported should be concerning all of us.

These are folks that have been here, Amy. You know this since they were two or since they were 14 like my husband. they don't know any other world, any other countries in the United States of America. And all of a sudden, that deferred action, that protection that was afforded through this program no longer applies because of this panel of three judges who are ruling under whatever Donald Trump wants them to do. And Representative, the Washington Post is reporting that, quote, more than 140 new deportation judges have been appointed following the deal. OJ's firing of 100 immigration judges since Trump took office. Your view of how Trump is trying to completely remake the immigration judicial system? Look, he's weaponizing the court system.

He is firing judges for doing their job, for practicing what they have taken on in their oath as a judge following procedure, and then he's replacing them. You know, one would have called to question with judges who are more concerned with being loyal to the president so they can keep their job than actually following the law that they swore to upkeep. That's really concerning. Look, I've done a number of court visits to monitor what's happening in the courtrooms. And oftentimes what you're saying is judges who are just rushing through cases, especially these merit cases, so that they can speed up these deportations of people seeking refuge in this country. It calls the question, what does our Department of Justice system truly look like when there is no justice? Because now you're hiring judges who are loyal to the president and not loyal to the law. At the same time, though, there was a federal appeals court ruling in Washington, D.C., that President Trump's claims that there's an invasion of the United States as a reason for shutting down asylum requests at the U.S. Mexican.

border, that court has ruled that that's unlawful. I'm wondering your response, given the fact that Trump issued that proclamation on his first day back in office. Yeah, no, look, first, I want to tell you, judges and the courts are in a really difficult position right now. I mean, you're talking about immigration judges who have been serving for 15, 20, 25 years now being called to question because they are following the law. They're following the procedures.

that's been put in place by this Congress, right, by the Constitution. And so when you hear the President used invasion or the Department of Homeland Security, this guys are protecting us from domestic terrorism to be able to shoot people or justify the shooting of Alex Pready or Renee Good or Silberio Villeges, you know that we have entered dangerous, dangerous territory. At the same time, I have to make sure, Juan, that I say this. Clearly, this Congress also has a responsibility. We've had the Dream and Promise Act here for no.

number of years, and we have not been able to pass it to both chambers. Congresswoman Ayanna-Pressy just recently used a discharge petition process to be able to extend protections for TPS holders from Haiti. We have to do the same thing here in Congress to finally bring the Dream and Promise Act to the floor to be able to bring the protections to these DACA recipients that should have already had a pathway to citizenship a long time ago. I also wanted to ask you about a particular immigration facility, the ICE North Lake facility in Baldwin, Michigan. There's a hunger and labor strike going on there by the detainees. Could you talk about what you know about that and what you're calling for?

Look, as you know, it's been very difficult for members of Congress to conduct these oversight visits. In many cases, they continue to say you need to send an email. They've denied entrance, which again is the violation, right, of the authority that's been afforded to us through the appropriations process. What is happening there is unconscionable. I have a bill to melt ice and what it does, in fact, this ends detention. What you're seeing around the country, whether it's the conditions that children are being treated inside detention

and families and individuals, what is in their food, the conditions that they're sleeping in in these private detention centers, We have to address it. It's why this bill is so important to me, and we're calling more members of Congress to join it. It ends detention, it disrupts enforcement, and then redirects all those billions of dollars used for private detention to really incarcerate people in these what feel like concentration camps back into the communities that have been impacted by ICE enforcement. It's why we call the bill the melt ice bill. But we should all be looking at doing more oversight at these facilities, especially these private facilities that get to do. whatever they'd like so that they can maximize their profit. And in many cases, you have seen

the corruption between employees of DHS and the contracts afforded to these detention facilities. Congress member Delia Ramirez, as we begin to wrap up, you have motioned to subpoena the White House Deputy Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, White House Borders, Tom Homan, to answer questions before the House Committee on Homeland Security. What do you want to ask them, and if Is this going to go forward in a Republican House? Look, Amy, they're trying to shove a reconciliation bill down our throne in the House of Representatives to get authority for over $140 billion, although they're saying that they only need to appropriate $70 billion, but they want authorization for $140 billion.

The idea that Tom Homan and Stephen Miller, the architects of these operations, have not come before the Committee of Jurisdiction, is unconscious. I mean, that is part of the process and responsibility. You're asking for more money. You won't even respond to us about the things that have happened with the money that you have already been afforded. And so I'm going to continue to push for a subpoena. Democrats are going to continue to push back. It is our responsibility because how do you ask for more money without actually coming before the committees

and responding on the question of corruption, of shootings, of the fact that you have agents who have been weaponized around the country, harming people, children, people dying in detention, and the list goes on, which is why I'm going to continue to ask for that subpoena. Anne Gabarino should do his job as a chair of Homeland Security to demand that these members of the cabinet, Tom Holman, come before the committee if they have nothing to hide to come to respond to the committee. Finally, very quickly, President Trump is trying to use the attempted attack on the White

House correspondence. dinner, to end the Democratic Congress members hold on money for ICE saying that, you know, from Secret Service to TSA, it's affected them. Your response. Look, let me be very clear. Secret service is part of law enforcement, and they have never not been paid. While TSA agents have not been paid, administrative positions within DHS have not been paid, the Secret Service continues to get paid even during the shutdown. The president, as always, continues to try to spew misinformation in order to get away with what he wants, this ballroom, or no oversight, or to continue to operate as if there are no other co-eatical branches of government.

But it's really important for me to note the Secret Service continues to get paid. Their funding has not been interrupted. Congress member Delia Ramirez of Chicago fighting to bring a bill to the floor to protect DACA. Her husband was a DACA recipient himself. Coming up as we broadcast from Toronto, we'll speak to Avi Lewis, recently elected head of the NDP, the new Democratic Party, after campaigning on a platform embracing eco-socialism and expanding publicly funded projects. Stay with us. In judgment of... By morning black star.

This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Mimi Goodman with Juan Gonzalez. I'm in Toronto, Canada today, where special elections were held earlier this month, delivering a slim majority in the House of Commons to the Liberal Party and Prime Minister Mark Carney, who will now have more latitude to advance this political agenda. Last year, Canada's Liberal Party's soared in popularity as President Trump intensified his threats to make Canada the 51st state and imposed tariffs. This is a video message released by Prime Minister Carney last week. Security can't be achieved by ignoring the obvious or downplaying the very real threats that we Canadians face. So here's the current situation. The world, as I said earlier, is more dangerous and divided. The U.S. has fundamentally changed its approach to trade, raising its tariffs to levels last seen during the Great Depression.

Many of our former strengths, based on our close ties to America, have become our weaknesses, weaknesses that we must correct. Workers in our industries most affected by U.S. tariffs in autos, in steel, in lumber, are under threat. Businesses are holding back investments restrained by the pall of uncertainty that's hanging over all of us. The U.S. has changed and we must respond. Canada's strong is our plan to build Canada by Canadians for Canadians. Meanwhile, Canada's main Progressive Party, the National Democratic Party or NDP, recently elected socialist activist, documentary filmmaker Avi Lewis, as its new party leader. The NDP was once the main opposition in party, Canada, but now holds just five seats in the House of Commons.

Lewis campaigned on a platform of affordability, equity, and higher wealth taxes. The NDP will now have to rebuild. Avi Lewis comes from a prominent political family. His grandfather, David Lewis, helped found the NDP and led the party. And Avi Lewis's father, Stephen Lewis, led the Ontario NDP in the 70s. Stephen Lewis was also a human rights advocate, broadcaster, former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations and special UN envoy on HIV, AIDS, and Africa. Stephen Lewis died of cancer at the age of 88 just two days after Avi's election this victory. This is Avi Lewis, speaking at his father's memorial on Sunday.

Many of you know that the final months of dad's journey coincided with my campaign for the leadership of Canada's NDP, our lifelong political home. And for those of you watching from around the world, it is a miracle to be able to tell you that the last thing he saw with open eyes in this life was our victory in that race and the passing of the political torch. to talk about his election, his father and more. We're joined now by Avi Lewis in Ottawa. First of all, Avi, our condolences on the death of your father, Stephen Lewis, a man we interviewed a number of times over the years. If you can talk about the trajectory of your family and what has brought you to this point as the new leader of Canada, new Democratic Party, the NDP. Good morning, Amy. Thank you so much for those kind words. It has been, obviously, the last

month of my life has been just an extraordinary experience. I'm at a loss for words, which, as you know, and my family doesn't happen very often. Yeah, I grew up in the NDP of the 1970s. And in a way, the sort of last moment in the post-war boom of public ownership and and build out in Canada of our social safety net, our universal healthcare system, which the NDP was the founding force in bringing it from Tommy Douglas in Saskatchewan to a national level. It's our pride and joy. It's one of the main things that makes us different from the United States. You don't have to be rich to get sick in Canada, although the privatization efforts have accelerated

and our health care system is not what it used to be. It's really these kinds of accomplishments and that period of the 1970s was when I was, you know, I was a kid, I grew up in the party. My life, as you know, because we've talked many times over the years, has been devoted to activism, came up in the globalization movement when we were fighting these free trade deals that would integrate Canada's economy so tightly with the United States that now we're in an era of Trump stopping around the world, acting with impunity, shredding international norms, and attacking Canada threatening to annex us and levying these massive economic

attacks in the form of tariffs. we are, you know, we were always right to say that we should never integrate our economy so deeply with the United States. But now we have to figure out how to trump proof of our economy, how to create an independent economy. And this is a very, it's a unique and historic moment for me. I've been running for office for a few years unsuccessfully, but I won the leadership of the NDP at the low point in the electoral cycle. But at a pivotal moment in Canada's history, when we need concrete proposals for how to make our economy more independent, and how to protect the basic social safety net and the values of solidarity and community that that are, you know, are storied Canadian difference.

So it's a very, it's a momentous time. The NDP has a lot of rebuilding to do. But, you know, we ran a campaign that was really forthright. As the Carney government was elected, Carney's a central banker. And so, you know, his first job was at Goldman Sachs. But he was elected as a kind of Canadians felt that he would be the progressive protector of Canada in the Trump era. He's moved very fast to the right. He's advanced a project of doubling down on resource extraction of oil and gas pipelines and of massive infrastructure projects that will

largely benefit foreign corporations, fast-tracking them, sidelining indigenous rights, sidlining environmental consultation. And the conservatives, under Pierre Polyev, have voted with him on many of these big items. And so the NDP has wide. And so the NDP has wide open political space now to advance real solutions for a cost of living crisis in a country where a handful of corporations dominate every sector of our economy. And they're jacking up prices and rents and mortgages are completely out of control and not affordable. I think the affordability crisis is even worse in Canada than the United States because there's such tight control of a handful of corporations over groceries, cell phones and telecommunications, the oil sector,

big banks in Canada. You know, so we have advanced really populist left agenda, a heat pump in every home, an east-west electricity grid, an electric bus revolution, a public option for groceries and public ownership in telecoms and many sectors of the economy and a huge build-out of public housing. We need non-market solutions to a time of market failure, and we've struck a chord. Our base is growing fast, and now we've got to reach out to the whole country and grow a political movement in a time of crisis. And Avi, could you talk about how your party, the NDP, fits into this broader political

and ideological landscape, especially given the fact that the party in recent elections suffered a big defeats? Yeah, we, you know, we have, we had a high point about 15 years ago when Jack Layton was our leader and we broke through, especially in Quebec, and became the official opposition, for the first time. And over the last 15 years, we've been going down and down in the NDP. We have failed to connect with working class voters in Canada who have been, you know, like in the United States and around the world, have been, you know, there's a lot of successful rage harvesting on the political right, punching down and blaming immigrants and, you know, trans folks for

society's problems, which have obviously been created by the incredible extraction of wealth by the 0.01% who now dominate our economy as working class life gets impossible. And so we have to get those folks back. And we're at the low point of the electoral cycle, as I said. But the space for us to move is enormous. And I think young people in particular are really responding to a vision where life just doesn't have to be so grindingly unfair. And, you know, in a rich country, a country of wash and wealth. But we need a party that's going to say, we need wealth taxes. We need to go and get all that wealth, or at least a significant chunk of it, that is stuck at the top of society and actually put it behind things that will improve the daily life

of Canadians. Public transit that actually works, public housing that is beautiful and affordable and not governed by speculation. And we got to take on the tech pros who dominate our economy like they dominate the global economy. So we came out right away when I was first leader and came to for the first time with a call for the government to ban surveillance pricing, which is happening now in states across the country. We've got a human first AI policy where we're calling for a moratorium on data centers, much as Bernie Sanders is doing in the states. And I think there is a common surge in Democratic Socialist politics,

which is really speaking to people's everyday emergencies of just trying to get by in an economy that is completely impossible and rigged in favor of the rich. And I'm very optimistic about our chances in Canada. now. I don't have proof points in the polls. We've got five seats in the House of Commons, but I can feel something shifting in politics. It is underneath the mainstream radar. The corporate media wants to declare us on life support in a death spiral. Every day is another story about how the NDP is toast. And yet, in the leadership campaign, we signed up tens of thousands of new members in every single part of this country. We set fundraising records for the NDP in the leadership

race. And we won on the first ballot in a ranked ballot system with the largest margin and the largest absolute votes of any of NEP leadership campaign in history, including Jack Layton when he was first elected leader. So there's something going on here up here in Canada. Don't romanticize it as Americans too often do. But we are building like Zora and Mamdani is building like Bernie and others are building. And we're very optimistic. Abbey Lewis, I want to turn to the Canadian Prime Minister, Mark Carney. Speaking in Davos, at the World Economic Forum in January. We knew the story of the international rules-based order

was partially false. That the strongest would exempt themselves when convenient, that trade rules were enforced asymmetrically. And we knew that international law applied with varying rigor depending on the identity of the accused or the victim. This fiction was useful. An American hegemony in particular helped provide public goods, open sea lanes, a stable financial system, collective security, and support

for frameworks for resolving disputes. So we placed the sign in the window. We participated in the rituals. And we largely avoided calling out the gaps between rhetoric and reality. This bargain no longer works. The former banker, the Canadian Prime Minister, sounds like he could be you, Avi Lewis. What does he actually mean? I mean, this is a speech that caught the world's attention. And what are you countering it with at the NDP? Well, you know, that Davos speech, I think rightly got a lot of attention. It was nice to hear a grown up in the room. He's an urbane, intelligent guy, Mark Carney. But there's been a stark gap between those words and the reality. Canada's liberal government

has utterly failed to condemn the genocide in Gaza. The NDP has been really clear on the moral rupture, the tearing at the fabric of humanity that represents the human experience for all of us and a huge majority of Canadians watching a live stream genocide. The liberals have claimed they have an arms embargo

in Israel, and yet there's vast loopholes where we sell arms to the United States and their arms washed and delivered to Israel. When Israel and United States started the reprehensible, attack on Iran that has destabilized the entire world. Mark Carney in the first hours praised that attack and played up the Iran nuclear threat, which we know there's not a shred of evidence for. And so there's a really harsh contrast between the Davos speech, which really did speak to

a desire for a more level and clear political, political perspective, and the actual actions of the Canadian government. So, you know, the other thing is like yesterday, Carney, announced a sovereign wealth fund as a way to fund these major projects. We are in the mood to do big things in Canada, but these huge extractive projects with this new sovereign wealth fund, which is going to be unlike Norway's, which is now over $2 trillion worth, because they harvested through public ownership in the oil industry,

they harvested royalties and profits and saved them and redistributed them to build their social safety net. Canada has done the exact opposite. We ship 97% of our oil and gas straight to the United States, States. It's come down a tiny bit, but that's been the historic figure. And foreign corporations, our oil industry is still 60% U.S. owned. And a lot of these extractive projects, the profits are going to go straight to U.S. and other foreign corporations. But that's what we're doubling down on under Carney. This sovereign wealth fund is a great example of the liberal doublespeak.

He references Norway. It's a completely different model. It's another private partnership where they're going to put $25 billion of public money into a fund that's supposed to attract massive amounts of private capital. But what they're really doing is de-risking these big projects like a new oil and gas pipeline, which has no private sector proponent in Canada. They're going to do it anyway to achieve political peace with Alberta, which has never actually been achieved, despite the fact that we already bought them a $40 billion pipeline at public expense. They're going to do it all over again. They're going to put public money behind it. And this is the direction. We're saying we need a new direction for the Canadian economy.

We have been connecting climate action with addressing the cost of living emergency. So we've been advancing a whole bunch of concrete solutions, like a heat pump in every home, a whole new industry, manufacturing jobs, using Canadian steel that we can't sell to the United States because of Trump's tariffs, in order to slash people's household bills for heating in Canada, which are significant and slash emissions at the same time. And electric bus revolution to reconnect this vast country, to save our auto industry, which is so entwined with the U.S. and Mexico under NAFTA and now Kuzma, that we're really, really in an existential spiral with the auto industry in Canada. We need public ownership to put people back to work, to reconnect our country,

to build an independent economy, and more than anything, we should be investing in the economy of care, where most of the biggest sector by employment in Canada, healthcare, education, long-term care, child care, these, dominated by women, this industry, underpaid and undervalued is the actual social fabric, the ties that bind us together in communities. You get way more economic benefit when you invest in care, and we need to pay women, workers more and actually support what holds Canadian society together.

We've got a very strong alternative offer that speaks to Canadians, and we still have a lot of work to do to kind of surface the contradictions and the Carney story. He is a smart guy, and he's very popular right now, but we think that these programs, are going to fail because they're doubling down on the same old thing that got us in this mess in the first place. Avi Lewis, we want to thank you so much for being with us, the newly elected leader of Canada's new Democratic Party speaking to us from Ottawa. I'm here in Toronto for Hot Docs for the screening of the new documentary, steal this story,

please. It will be screening tonight at 6.30. People can check our website at DemocracyNow.org. This is Democracy Now. Coming up, ministers from more than 50 countries are gathering in Colombia for a major summit and transitioning away from fossil fuels. Stay with us. I'm said that was a

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Studio This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Toronto, Canada. Juan Gonzalez is in Chicago. What will it take to transition world economies away from fossil fuels? On Friday, more than 50 countries began gathering in the Caribbean coastal city of Santa Marta, Colombia, in a groundbreaking effort to open another channel of global cooperation on climate change after years of frustration over the UN-led COP process, which requires consensus. The transitioning away from fossil fuels initiative was launched in the final hours of COP 30

held in Belém, Brazil last year, as fossil fuel-producing countries led by Saudi Arabia and Russia blocked binding commitments sought by more ambitious nations. Colombia and the Netherlands are co-hosting the gathering, billed as a coalition of the willing. This is Columbia's Minister of the Environment and Sustainable Development, Arine Velas, in her opening remarks. 31 years after the first cop on climate change, global CO2 emissions have increased by at least 65%. It could be said that we have failed, but we would also like to think that we are precisely at a moment of opportunity when the window has not yet closed. The transition faces technical, economic, and let us say plainly, geopolitical obstacles, because despite having a science-based agreed roadmap, we are also under enormous pressure in a changing world,

where decisions also end up being shaped by the pressure of war. Several major fossil fuel powers, including Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Nigeria, Norway, are in attendance. The timing of the summit couldn't be more relevant as the U.S. Israeli war on Iran and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz's focus world attention on the vulnerabilities of fossil fuel-dominated economy. For more, we go directly to San Amara, Colombia, where we're joined by Kumi Nidu, South African human rights and environmental justice activist, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, former head of Greenpeace International, as well, Amnesty International. Kumi, welcome back to Democracy Now. Nearly 60 nations are gathering where you are for the first global summit on phasing out fossil fuels. Can you talk about the significance of this moment, of this summit? Thank you, Amy.

And greetings to your listeners and viewers. To put it very simply so that we call can understand, imagine, imagine one day you rush off to work in a hurry. you get home, you open the door, and you see water coming out of the bathroom. As you pass the kitchen, you pick up the mop, you go to the bathroom, you open the door and he's, oh, in rushing to work, you'll have the stopper on, and the water's, you know, filled up and was now flowing into the passageway. What do you do first? Do you start mopping the floor first, or you turn off the tap?

So the frustration comes from 30 years of mopping up the floor and not addressing the root cause of climate change, which is our dependence and a degree. to fossil fuels, which is at least more than 75 to 86% of the problem of what's driving climate change. So we have been together at many climate negotiations, and you'll remember in Copenhagen, in 2009, we asked for a fab deal, not a fabulous deal, but a fair, ambitious, and binding deal. And each year what we get is a flab outcome full of loopholes, and I'll leave to the imagination of your audience to say what the B stands for. So eventually now we are saying that we have to take the process of the most ambitious

countries who accept the science to actually come together and provide leadership where we are not constrained by the reality of the client negotiations where you need absolute consensus. So that's where the conference comes in. It's inspired by other moments in history where progress outside formal UN processes. Just to take an example, the landmine treaty, for example, was negotiated completely outside of the UN system and then brought into the UN system and then with the overwhelming number of countries actually be supporting it. So this gathering in Santa Marta is about breaking the

deadlock, creating a space where ambition is not held hostage and where real pathways to phase out fossil fuels can be discussed openly and honestly. Now, Kumi, in the gathering at Santa Marta, there are still major nations that skip the summit, including China, India, and Russia. Can you talk about the significance of countries like this, not attending, even though many would argue that China has made tremendous strides in moving toward renewable energy more than many people expected? So we expect dominant nations to join once this momentum gets going. So, for example, we would not really find it helpful to have the United States at the negotiation at this conference right now. Because the United States government acting against the interests of its own citizens, as they have done for decades now, will come there and block any progress because they are so beholden to the fossil fuel. industry, oligarchs, and they'd serve those interests rather than serve the interests of the

American people or people in the world at large. So we are seeing now leadership coming from the most ambitious countries and those that don't contest the science, those that are not saying drill, baby drill and so on. So bottom line is, you know, there was a field of dreams by Kevin Costner. You remember the movie where the tagline was, if you build it, they will come. So we are building a undeniable science-based vehicle to move us forward. And we would rather the dominant nations like the U.S., like Saudi Arabia, Russia and so on, don't actually come now and contaminate the conversations and bring down ambition as they have done repeatedly year in, year out at the climate negotiations.

I mean, I do. Hormuz is a checkpoint, is really a choke point for a fifth of the world's oil, now war zone. How do you convince nations like India that building more renewables is safer and more reasonable than digging up more of their own coal and countries like the U.S.? Well, I think President Trump is actually an accidental advocate here. for phasing out of fossil fuels. It's not a secret. We've known it for decades, right? That fossil fuels is the biggest conflict driver

and the biggest driver of war. You know, on a lighter note, you might remember that the horrific violation of international law when the Iraq invasion happened was called Operation Iraqi Freedom. Evidently, it was called Operation Iraqi Liberation, which spout oil, and then they change it to Operation Iraqi Freedom.

So basically, most people know that these wars are driven by fossil fuel interests. And I think this terrible invasion of Iran that has happened in this attack, basically I sent a message to many people, including in India and elsewhere, that fossil fuels is not a safe way to be able to secure your energy needs. and I think that overall what we are seeing conversations happening on the ground, the advocacy of social movements to push the governments is actually getting some currency because of the exposure of our dependency. Imagine if one straight can shut down fertilizer, can shut down, drive up costs of fuel and so on.

Is this a system we want to live on with this level of vulnerability? I believe most ordinary people in the world want to break away from that system. And that's why we are optimistic that more people will be with us now to face out on the fastest possible timeline, in the furthest possible way from fossil fuels. And we are seeing that shift happening in public opinions accelerated by the anxieties over the shutting down of the state of Amos. And Kumi, we just have about a minute. But the conference is scheduled to last until April 29th. What single concrete outcome would make you declare this some of the real success? So one, that there is no question.

After this, we will get the focus on fossil fuels in a fundamental way. So it needs to have a basis of a fossil fuel face-out plan that even the COP process will not be able to ignore. but we already have an in-principle agreement, which is that in the first quarter of next year, irrespective of what happens in Turkey, we'll have the second fossil fuel phase out conference, and if this year lays the basis, which we hope it will,

to actual negotiation starting by the most ambitious countries, that would be not obviously immediately, but in the course of next year, will be the best possible outcome from this conference. Kumi and I do, thanks so much for being with us, South African Human Rights and Environmental Justice activists, president of the Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative, speaking to us from Santa Marta, Colombia.

And that does it for the show. I'm in Toronto for the Hot Docs Film Festival where the new documentary about Demarchs Now, Still the Story Pleased, is being featured in the festival's Big Ideas Program. I'll be joining one of the film's directors, to you lesson for a conversation with the award-winning Canadian journalist and filmmaker Michelle Shepard tonight in Chicago, in Toronto. Juan will be in Chicago tomorrow.