Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-08-24 Monday

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

Headlines for August 24, 2026; “Most Stupid Trade Fight in History”: U.S. & Canadian Workers Stand to Lose in Trump’s New Tariff War; Montreal Considers Cutting Ties to Israel as Outrage Grows in Canada over Israeli Impunity: Avi Lewis; “Unbought & Unbossed”: Angie Nixon on Winning Democratic Senate Race in Florida, DSA Membership & More; In Defeat for AIPAC, Aisha Wahab Wins House Seat, Becoming First Afghan American in Congress

From New York, this is Democracy Now. You're at war when you get attacked. We got attacked. The U.S. put 50%. We waited until the United States decided to actually implement the so-called 338 tariffs. That's fine. We've got the reserves. We've got the resilience. We've got the plan.

We've got the focus. We respond. The U.S.-Canada trade war is deepening after talks collapsed Friday. The U.S. has imposed 50% tariffs on Canada. which responded with retaliatory tariffs. We will speak with Avi Lewis, the leader of the New Democratic Party in Canada and Lori Wallach of the American Economic Liberties Project.

Then we go to Florida to speak with Angie Nixon on her upset win in Florida's Democratic Senate primary. We will go to California, where Aisha Wahab has won a special election for a seat in the House, even though APEC spent millions to defeat her. She's set to become the first Afghan American in Congress. All that and more coming up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report.

I'm Anjali Kammat. Amy Goodman will be back later this week. Iran's leaders have threatened to halt all oil exports from the Persian Gulf and to treat any nation's support for U.S. sanctions against Iran as an act of war. The threat came ahead of today's announcement by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent of what the Trump administration is calling an economic deed. aimed at completely severing Iran's remaining financial lifelines. This is Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Arakchi.

This is a repetitive scenario from the crippling sanctions imposed during the Obama administration to the maximum pressure campaign during Trump's first administration and now the latest sanctions. All of these measures have been introduced under different titles, but they represent the same kind of bullying that we have always seen in American policy. In other words, it is the same movie they keep playing over and over again. We know this movie, so we know how to confront and deal with it. On Sunday, Iran's currency, the Rial, sank to a record low against the U.S. dollar. The International Monetary Fund now predicts Iran's economy will contract by nearly 5.5% this year.

Fuel prices are surging in Iran, something that preceded nationwide protests in 2019 and earlier this year. In Gaza, two Palestinian brothers were killed. and several others wounded when an Israeli war plane struck a tent sheltering displaced people near Al-Axah hospital earlier today. The attack followed another bloody weekend in Gaza. On Sunday, Israeli forces killed at least two Palestinians, including four-year-old Mohammed Abdul-Salam Thaha. Separately, a girl was injured by Israeli fire on Sunday in a camp north of Khan Yunus. According to Palestinian officials, Israel has violated the U.S. brokered so-called ceasefire agreement

nearly 4,400 times since it took effect in October. This is Abu Ahmed, a displaced Palestinian who was sheltering close to a building that was blown up by Israel on Sunday. There is no ceasefire. There is nothing. There is nothing. Our lives are destroyed. Our youth are destroyed.

What can we do? We want solutions. We want to live in peace. This does not make sense. This does not make sense. It's true these things are happening to other people, but I am also human. I see these things. People torn into pieces. We die. Our morale is destroyed. Meanwhile, Israel's government has warned it may further intensify its attacks after several

kites landed in an illegal Israeli settlement on Gaza's border. Palestinian officials said the kites were flown by children, were made of paper, and posed no threat. But Israeli defense minister, Israel Katz, accused Hamas of launching attacks, calling the use of kites an act of war. Israel's far-right national security minister Itamar Ben-Gavir has posted video and social media celebrating the construction of gallows where Palestinians will be hanged. This is the facility. In this place, the terrorists will be executed. A hanging rope. Viewing chambers where the crime victims will be able to come and watch, like in the United States, by the way. And we are fulfilling what we promised. Look, there were those who ridiculed.

There were those who giggled. This place is starting to be built. The facility is. is being built. In March, Israeli lawmakers passed a law mandating death by hanging for Palestinians who are convicted of terrorism offenses. Jewish Israelis will not face the same punishment for similar crimes. In 2008, Ben Gavir himself was convicted by a court in Jerusalem of incitement to racism and supporting a terrorist organization. Diplomats from Syria and Israel held U.S. broker talks in Jordan on Sunday aimed at easing tensions following repeated Israeli attacks, including air strikes on a major Syrian Air Force airbase. They were the first talks between the two countries in several months.

Coming after Israel on Saturday struck a civilian vehicle on the outskirts of Damascus. Israel said it had targeted a, quote, terrorist in the deadly drone strike, which left several bystanders wounded. This comes as Israel continues to occupy Syria's Golan Heights, which had seized in the 1967 War, as well as more territory in southwest Syria it seized after the fall of Bash. Shah al-Assad. In Canada, Prime Minister Mark Carney has announced retaliatory tariffs on U.S. imports after talks collapsed without a deal on Friday. On Saturday, the U.S. slapped 50% tariffs on around

$20 billion worth of imports from Canada. In response, Carney announced tariffs on $20 billion of U.S. products beginning on September 8th. Karnie spoke to reporters on Saturday. Why does it feel like today Mark Carney is going to war? trade war, the tone. Because we're attacked. Like you're at war when you get attacked, we got attacked. The U.S. put 50%. We waited until the United States decided to actually implement the so-called 338 tariffs.

That's fine. We'll have more on the U.S.-Canada trade war after headlines, and we'll speak with Avi Lewis, the leader of the new Democratic Party in Canada and Lori Wallach of the American Economic Liberties Project. In New York, a federal judge has struck down a Trump administration ban on issuing visas to immigrants from 75 countries. When the policy was enacted in January, the State Department claimed, without evidence, that people from those nations are likely to receive public benefits after arriving in the U.S. Among the countries targeted were Afghanistan, Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Iran, Iraq, Nigeria, Somalia, Sudan, and Yemen.

In her ruling, U.S. District Judge Jeanette Vargas, said, Trump's measure was, quote, patently unlawful and violated federal immigration law by discriminating on the basis of nationality. In Texas, calls are mounting to shut down the South Texas family residential center in Dilley, where it's estimated more than a hundred children are being detained by ICE. This comes after a five-year-old boy, identified as Liam Tadeo, and his father were taken by ICE on their way to a child's soccer game in Austin last week. Journalist Lidia Ré Tarasas of Univision posted a video on social media showing Liam crying and his father handcuffed as they're escorted into a vehicle. The arrest happened just days before Liam was set to start kindergarten.

This is Texas Democratic Congress member Greg Kasar. ICE just arrested a five-year-old boy on his way to a soccer game in my home city of Austin, Texas. His name, just like the name of the little boy from Minnesota, is Liam. And Liam should be starting kindergarten this week. But instead, he's sitting in a trailer prison right now in Dilley, Texas. Texas Democratic Congress member Joaquin Castro said ICE denied his request to visit Liam and his father at the ice camp. Castro said afterwards, quote, his detention is another devastating example of why Dilley must be shut down and why our government must end the detention of children and families.

I have seen firsthand the conditions that children and families. are being subjected to a Dilley, and no child should be held there. Dilley is run by the for-profit prison company, Core Civic. More than 160 people have been deported to Haiti as the Trump administration begins to round up immigrants following the end of TPS, temporary protected status. It was the first deportation flight to Haiti after the Supreme Court greenlit the Trump administration's termination of TPS for an estimated 350,000 Haitians. The plane, landed in the northern Haitian city of Cap Hesian Thursday, the country's main international airport in Port-au-Prince has been deemed too dangerous due to gang violence and growing political instability.

Many of those deported last week were TPS holders and had been living and working in the U.S. since 2010. In related news, a U.S. Navy sailor, who is on his ninth month of deployment aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln, said his father has been detained by ICE. Joshua Avillas said he'd received a call this weekend notifying him of his father's arrest. Luis Manuel Avelas was taken into custody doing a traffic stop in Key West Florida.

His wife said he's a handyman with a valid U.S. work permit. Avelas is originally from Nicaragua and has lived in the U.S. for nearly 20 years. His son Joshua said on social media, quote, this is heartbreaking for me. I don't know how I can mentally continue working 12-plus hour days, knowing that my dad is

somewhere, possibly being treated like a criminal. My dad's only crime was coming to this country to give my siblings and me a better life. Tyson Foods, the largest meatpacking and processing company in the U.S., has shuttered two of its facilities in Illinois and Utah, laying off more than 3,000 workers. The company said in a release earlier this month, it'd be closing. It's Jocelyn, Illinois, and Eagle Mountain Utah facilities, claiming, quote, one of the most historic cattle shortages the country has ever experienced as the reason for the move. About 2,500 Tyson employees were impacted in Illinois alone due to the sudden closure of the plant. Workers and supporters held a rally in Jocelyn Friday in protest of the mass layoffs.

They're demanding the facility be reopened as well as six months of full compensation and benefits for workers who have been left jobless. This comes as Tyson Food CEO and President Donnie King made over 30, $34 million in 2025, according to the Securities and Exchange Commission. In Northwest Indiana, thousands of homes remain without power, nearly two weeks after high winds and torrential rain knocked down trees and power lines, leaving behind flooded basements and roads. More than a third of a million homes and businesses were affected by the storm.

This is Desmond Pompey, a resident of hard-hit Gary, Indiana, where over one in three residents lived in poverty even before the disaster. And these are all the things that people take for granted. The basic thing as far as like power, taking the shower, flushing your toilet, anything of that nature like that. So we really under siege, and I hope they just take care of the situation. And a private arbitrator has ordered the Washington Post to rehire the opinion columnist Karen Attea with back pay. Attea was fired last fall over comments she made.

about the death of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. Her termination came as the Washington Post laid off more than 300 journalists, dismantling its sports, local news, and international coverage, all under the ownership of billionaire Amazon founder Jeff Bezos. That followed Amazon's $1 million donation to President Trump's inaugural fund. Karen Atthea spoke to Democracy Now in February. The reason why this is an international news story, I think the Washington Post stands for a lot more than just a media company.

It stands for a lot more than even just journalism, I would say. For a lot of people around the world, they're looking at the Washington Post as a proxy and a bellwether for what's happening to America and democracy. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. DemocryNow.org, The War and Peace Report. I'm Anjali Khammit. Amy Goodman will be back later this week. The U.S.-Canada trade war is deepening after talks collapsed without a deal on Friday. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney accused the Trump administration of issuing demands

that would compromise Canada's sovereignty and undermine key industries. On Saturday, Trump slapped 50% tariffs on around $20 billion worth of imports from Canada. Carney then announced retaliatory tariffs on $20 billion of U.S. products beginning September 8th. Carney spoke on Saturday. We've been under no illusions. We recognized from the start that America has changed. Early last year in this room, I observed that the decades-long process of steadily increasing integration between our economies was over. Our government understood before many that America would transform all of its commercial relationships,

that it would put a series of tariffs on its closest allies and use economic integration. as a weapon. We recognize that sometimes its signature was written in pencil. The gap between partnership and competitor, unfortunately, has remained too wide in recent days. So last evening, I instructed our negotiators to return to Ottawa. We cannot accept what they've offered, and we will not give what they've asked. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney took questions from reporters after his address. Why does it feel like today Mark Carney is going to war, trade war, the tone.

Because we're attacked. Like you're at war when you get attacked, we got attacked. The U.S. put 50%. We waited until the United States decided to actually implement the so-called 338 tariffs. That's fine. President Trump responded online writing, quote, Canada wants the benefits of being a state without being one. They've also charged our great farmers for many years, massive amounts of tariffs, no more, end quote.

U.S. Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy appeared Sunday on Fox News. We're great trading partners, right? But Canada gets the benefit of trading with the U.S., way more than the U.S. gets the benefit of trading with Canada. It's a country that doesn't have a military. We want fairness for the American worker. and some of our best friends are the worst offenders that treat us the worst. And the fact that we provide their security for them and they take advantage of us, I think President Trump was the first one to go, you know what, that's not the kind of relationship that friends should have.

And so the president's calling them out. I think you're going to see Mark Carney come to the table very, very quickly because it's going to be devastating for his country. On Sunday, the editorial page of the Wall Street Journal ran an editorial headline, The Dumbest Trade War Revised. decision to escalate a tariff brawl with Canada makes no economic or political sense. The tariffs come just 10 weeks before the midterms. Economists predict battleground states, including Maine, Michigan, Ohio, and Alaska could face disproportionate economic pain from the tariffs. For more on this, we're joined now by two guests. Lorry Wallach is director

of the Rethink Trade Program at the American Economic Liberties Project and founder and former director of Public Citizens Global Trade Watch. Her recent piece for Foreign Affairs is headlined, The Right Way to Balance Trade, What Comes After the Neoliberal Order? She's joining us in Wisconsin and in Toronto is Avi Lewis, the leader of Canada's new Democratic Party, the NDP. He's also a longtime Canadian journalist, documentary filmmaker, and activist. We welcome you both to democracy now.

Avi Lewis, let's begin with you. Talk about what these talks were supposed to be about and why they broke down. Well, good morning, Anjali. Hello, Lori. It's great to be back on Democracy Now. This has followed a sickeningly familiar pattern with Trump threatening and setting a deadline for devastating. I think the Washington, the Wall Street Journal, rarely agree with the Wall Street Journal, but this is incredibly dumb. It's also incredibly damaging and dangerous. It's going to hurt Canadian workers. It's going to hurt American workers. It's completely unnecessary. And at the last minute, after negotiating, are going on under the threat of these massive tariffs. Suddenly, Howard Lutnik arrives with a whole set of new demands at the 11th hour. This is the pattern, and we've seen it over and over again. In this case, Prime Minister Carney read the room correctly. Canadians are sick of this.

We're already under-punishing tariffs in many of our most important industrial sectors, from automaking to forestry to steel and others. And we simply are not in the mood to grant more consequences. concessions. And so the Prime Minister walked away from the table. But the truth is, and the wider context of this is that unfortunately Canada has already made a whole bunch of unilateral concessions. And so we're in a weakened position just in the context of the short-term trade deal. The Prime Minister gave up the digital services tax without anything to compensate it. That's a modest for big tech. That's a modest tax of about $7 billion a year.

It was the only real solid tax we had on the big tech billionaire. I guess we have to say, trillionaire class behind Trump. And that was at the beginning of this process, something like a year ago. We're also, while Canadians are united in this feeling that we've given enough to Trump's demands, and we can't concede further without securing protection for our own industries and economy, we're not all in this together. We have to remember, and Lori and I have been fighting free trade deals between Canada and the United States since the 1980s, because the integration of the corporate classes of our two economies has been achieved at the expense of working class people in both of our countries.

And to the incredible, staggering enrichment of the wealthiest people and corporations in our economy. We are not all in this together when the six big Canadian banks made $70 billion. last year, they are not directly affected by tariffs, and they continue to make higher and higher profits every single year. We are not all in this together when the oil and gas sector in Canada, which is majority owned by U.S. corporations, is on track to make up to $150 billion in wartime profits this year alone because of the immoral, senseless, illegal attack on Iran by the United States in Israel, $150 billion in profits for this industry that is not affected, but that has been spared all of the terrorists because, of course, the United States needs a huge amount of Canadian

oil each and every day. So we are united as Canadians in rejecting more unilateral concessions. We are not all in this together in terms of who's going to be hurt. And we need to build an independent Canadian economy. Mark Carney has had well over a year to get started on that project. He has announced big plans like buying the oil industry a new pipeline for 40, 50, 60 billion dollars of public money, like major projects that suspend indigenous rights and environmental protections in favor of largely foreign corporations coming in and buying more of our resources. He's having an investment summit on September 12th in Toronto to invite BlackRock and Blackstone and J.P. Morgan. And the prime minister has mused about selling our airports and our ports and private. more of our economy to the benefit of foreign investors.

So we need a made-in-Canada plan to develop our autonomy and double down on the things that unite us as Canadians, like our embattled healthcare system, which is also being privatized these days. But we're not on track to do that. This is a fork-in-the-road moment for Canada, and we have a completely different progressive vision to offer Canadians that would help Canadian workers defend Canadian workers in this crisis and also get back to work building a truly independent Canadian economy

that would benefit American workers as well. As we'll see in this next period, everybody is going to be hurt by this. Avi, these new tariffs affect about 5% of the goods, of Canadian goods that are imported by the U.S. They target about $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Who has actually hurt by these tariffs? Who are the workers? What are the industries and the workers?

Canada that would be hurt by these tariffs? Yeah, I mean, this is, we already have tariffs on the automobile sector of 25% a major integrated sector between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico. And this deal was only to achieve a lowering of 25% to 15% on auto tariffs. That makes the auto industry in Canada uncompetitive, which is why Lana Payne, the head of Unifor, the largest private sector union in Canada, said months and months ago that no deal is better than a bad deal. But this is an extension beyond steel and forestry and auto to tariff a lot of consumer goods,

everything from furniture makers to apparel, to rubber and plastic products. This would bite deeper into the Canadian economy across the economy, a lot of smaller and medium-sized businesses in every region of the country. But again, it's not all equally apportioned. It's always certain sectors and certain regions which are hurt the worst. In this case, my province of British Columbia, would be most affected by this latest round of tariffs, Ontario and Quebec, the largest economic provinces

in our country would also be severely, severely damaged by this. And don't forget that it's Americans who pay these tariffs and it's American workers who are also affected. It's the cost of living emergency in Canada and the United States, where food prices, where rent and the cost of putting a roof over your head, and all of the costs of living are going, up and up and up in a period where people are really suffering. So, you know, there are corporate players who will make out fine, but it is the working class people of our continent who are going

to be hurt. This may not be the huge proportion of Canadian exports to the United States in one of the biggest trading relationships on planet Earth between our two countries. But this is a deepening of an attack on Canada and on the American working class, which has been going on since Trump was elected for the second time. And here in Canada, we need to do something big about it. We've got plenty of fantastic proposals about how we could actually protect ourselves. In the short term, we have an unemployment insurance program in Canada that only covers one out of three workers that pay into it. And it only gives you a little more than half of your previous wage or salary when you get laid off. It's hard to qualify for. It takes too long to kick

in. We need immediate reforms to our employment insurance system to cover people with more support faster and to cover way more workers in our economy. Those are sort of the short-term things. We need emergency assistance for the sectors that are worst hit by this. Again, manufacturing, wood products, apparel and furniture and others. But we also need a bigger plan to actually Trump-proof the Canadian economy. We could do things when we are making major investments of public dollars in oil pipelines. We could use that money instead to build an East-West electricity grid, double down on renewable energy, which is energy independence forever, because the inputs for renewable energy are always free, unlike oil and gas and coal.

We could build an East-West electricity grid to trade renewable energy across our country with battery storage and the cheapest installed energy, solar and wind on planet Earth today. The world is moving away from fossil fuels in this period and Canada is being left behind because we are continue under the Mark Carney government to tie our fate to massive military expenditures, massive fossil fuel investments, and all in on AI, which despite the prime minister's excellent words about Canadian independence from the United States mirror the Trump agenda, and unfortunately, under the surface, we're seeing an expansion of decades of integration of the corporate class between Canada and the United States. That is not a plan to make anybody safe.

I want to bring Lori Wallach into the conversation, director of the Rethink Trade Program at the American Economic Liberties Project and founder and former director of public citizens' Global Trade Watch. Lori, building off of what Avi was talking about in terms of U.S. consumers who are hurting, I just wanted to read a couple quotes from politicians from border states. Here we've got Minnesota Senator Amy Klobuchar saying on X, Canada is Minnesota's number one trading partner. Minnesotans are paying for Trump's chaos. Republican Senator of Maine, Susan Collins, said the new tariffs would quote,

increase costs for Maine families as most businesses will have no choice but to pass on the tariffs to their customers through higher prices. Your response to what's high. happened with the collapse of the trade talks? So it is the case that this situation is, again, I don't typically agree with the Wall Street Journal, but perhaps the most stupid trade fight in history. In that, yes, if you are a purchaser in the U.S. of some of these goods, for instance, hockey sticks, but not pucks, I mean, go figure, you will see higher prices. But let's step back at the whole situation.

And Avi's exactly right. You have at this moment, this fight between two visions, neither of which are good for working people or for the environment. There is a way to do trade that benefits the majority of people, small businesses, farmers. And in Trump, you have an oligarch first trade policy. He got elected saying he'd have working people. In fact, what he's done is make exceptions in his tariffs, whatever you think about tariffs at this point, 55% of imports in the U.S. have been excluded from tariffs because Trump gives free entry for his buddies in big tech, in chemicals, et cetera. So we have a situation where between the disruption of supply chains like the U.S. and Canada, which have been not under the right rules, but united in a way that literally, it's,

disruptive to U.S. manufacturing when there's disruption in Canadian manufacturing, you have a situation where the U.S. now is down, 75,000 manufacturing jobs since Trump came down, came back to office. We have 30 percent decreased right now in factory reconstruction since Trump came back the second time because the chaos, the tariff chaos and malpractice is so severe. But the problem is in Mark Carney, there is sort of the high priest of neoliberalism, a guy who has been going around the world trying to sell the Trans-Pacific Partnership, NAFTA on steroids, extra goodies for big tech and for big pharma, ways to attack Canada's wonderful pharmaceutical pricing system that don't even exist in the old NAFTA as the replacement for the World Trade Organization,

as if that's not bad enough. And there is something that is neither Trump's oligarchic trade grift, nor the neoliberalism that Carney has in mind that actually could harness the benefits of trade. But neither of these guys is thinking about that. Rather, they're having this kind of personal fight. And it's political. So Trump can't bear the thought someone is standing up to him and not just steamrolling him. Folks in Canada are getting tariffed because they had the temerity to stand. stand up and put tariffs in retaliation to Trump unilaterally tariffing them. That is the basis for

these tariffs. And the notion that politically, the U.S. Canada and Mexico right now have the only duty-free trade at all under Trump too. Can in Mexico still have majority duty-free access. Underlying all of this is, will we renegotiate in a way that works for people in the planet, the NAFTA replacement, the U.S.-Mexico-Canada agreement, And there, I think, are people with a good vision. Avi, for instance, in the U.S., many Democrats in Congress, of how you could fix that agreement and have a lift-up agreement. But instead, with this fight, we're just heading in the worst direction possible.

And, Lori, how have Trump's economic policies vis-a-vis Canada differed from those, say, with China? And this especially at a time where we're coming up on what the Trump administration is calling economic deed-day, threatening to sanction any country trading with Iran? So this is part of the lunacy of the situation. The United States not only has many decades of putting the economies together, as Avi said, not on behalf of working people, but for instance, the aerospace industry, literally, if you hit tariffs on metal products that are part of the aerospace industry, which is happening, you hurt jobs. the U.S. Instead of thinking about how do we make this smoother, and the U.S. and Canada have

relatively balanced trade. If you take the crude oil sent to the U.S. to be processed and employ U.S. workers out of the formula, U.S. and Canada have balanced trade. And then tariffs go to 50 percent in some products are higher, lower, but targeting Canada is the big problem when it's not. rather it's a partner and has balanced trade versus in China, China is the source of a ginormous trade deficit with the U.S., but not exclusively with the world. And it's because of particular policies that Canada is not implementing that China uses regularly, often called beggar thy neighbor, where you take policies suppressing wages, no independent unions, or no safety net, social safety net.

So you basically suppress consumption. People save a ton because they're responsible for everything on their own. They have no support from the government. Or you subsidize an enormous rate. All of those interventions mean China is exporting an enormous amount. It's not just hitting the U.S. At this point, countries that were the emerging trade countries, countries like Mexico, like India, like Brazil, are going into trade deficits

and are being deindustrialized because of this behavior in China, Trump has cut the tariffs. He feels some friendship with the authoritarian leader of China. And so he and Premier Xi have had many a happy meeting where they cut tariffs with China the cause of the trade deficit. And here we have 50% tariffs on Canada. It is, I would say, something that is more alike middle school or childhood playground battles between Carney and Trump as compared to anything that makes economic sense or geopolitical sense.

Before we end, Avi Lewis, I want to go back to you. And I wanted to ask you about this other news from Canada. The Montreal City Council is set to debate a controversial motion calling on the city to suspend institutional ties with the Israeli government. Your response to this. Well, I think I've been knocking doors in a series of by-elections that the Prime Minister has called. in Toronto, in Montreal, in Vancouver.

And I've been talking to a lot of Canadians at their doorsteps in the past few weeks over this summer. And I have to say that the ongoing genocide in Gaza is a pressing moral issue for, I believe, a supermajority of Canadians. I have only come across a couple of people who take a pro-Israel position at the doorstep, knocking doors in all of our major cities for weeks now. And the vast majority of people are shocked and appalled by the activities of the state of Israel, dragging the United States into attacking Iran and another endless, incredibly damaging war, spiking oil prices and punishing people around the world with higher inflation and higher cost of living, which is already out of control. And the sheer trauma of witnessing, and democracy now has done a better job than most media outlets in the entire world

in documenting the ongoing murder of Palestinians in the West Bank, in Gaza, what is effectively an invasion now of southern Lebanon. People are upset and traumatized by the impunity and the violence visited by Israel on many different civilian populations now in the Middle East. And people in Canada are appalled and want to see their governments at every level do something. We've seen a big battle in Canada, as you have in the United States, where the pro-Israel forces like APAC or SIGA here in Canada, the parallel pro-Israel lobby group are on the defensive now. They are, they still capture most of the political class and the mainstream media, but among the majority of people, we want to see our government step up and take a clear moral position against apartheid, against genocide,

and against the killing of civilians. And you see these debates breaking out at the city Council level in educational institutions and at the national level in Canada. And the tide has turned definitively and Canadians want to see their governments and their elected officials stand up on the right side of history. It's an ongoing battle and the forces against us. The conventional narratives are still very much in place in the political class and in the corridors of power. But the people of Canada know which side is in the light. and which side is in the horror of these massive crimes against humanity. And I think the Montreal City Council debate is one of many that you're going to continue to see.

It is not going to stop because Canadians are outraged by this impunity. Avi Lewis, thank you so much, leader of Canada's new Democratic Party. Thank you also to Lori Wallach, director of the Rethink Trade Program at the American Economic Liberties Project. Coming up, we go to Florida to speak with Angie Nixon on her upset win in Florida's Democratic. Senate primary. We turn now to Florida, where the progressive state representative, Angie Nixon, pulled off a stunning victory last week in the Democratic Senate primary. Nixon defeated Alexander Vindman, a former Army intelligence officer who testified during Trump's first impeachment trial. Vindman was backed by the Democratic establishment, and his campaign raised more than 16 times as much cash as Nixon's campaign.

Nixon has served in the Florida House of Representatives since 2020. In 2022, she made national headlines for leading sit-ins and other protests inside the Florida Capitol to protest a Republican move to redraw congressional maps. In November, Nixon will face incumbent Republican Senator Ashley Moody, who was appointed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to fill the seat of Marco Rubio, who resigned to serve as Secretary of State. If elected, Angie Nixon would become the only member of the Democratic Socialists of America in the Senate. She joined the group in June.

Angie Nixon joins us now from Jacksonville. Welcome to Democracy Now, Angie Nixon. Tell us how you defeated Alex Vindman. Good morning. I'm so happy to be with you all today. I was able to defeat Alex Vindman because it was a good old-fashioned grassroots organizing. I am a former union organizer. I'm a community organizer. And I've had the opportunity to travel all across the state of Florida over the past nearly two decades,

to build a diverse coalition of supporters and, you know, just folks who I've been working with over the past few years, nearly two decades, I'm sorry, we actually were able to help increase the minimum wage. I was a statewide organizer with that ballot initiative, also helping with automatic rights restoration. And so it was just hustle. And so I'm super excited to be the Democratic nominee, and I'm glad to be here with you all today. And Angie, you're facing off Republican Ashley Moody in November. Florida has gone to Trump twice. This is a deep red state.

What is your strategy going to be to win in November? My strategy is going to expand on the strategy we had during the primary, just really going to meet people where they are. Unfortunately, my opponent likes to call me names, but that's because she doesn't have anything to show for it. You know, folks are trying to label me right now and put me in a box, but Ashley Moody is someone who actually stole $10 million from the most medically needy kids here in the state of Florida, and they allowed her to divert that funding so that they could defeat two ballot initiatives that would have helped improve the health of Floridians across the state,

and her reward for that theft was her appointment to this United States Senate seat. Not only that, but Ashley Moody is just someone who does not speak with folks. She runs away from folks. I've had to answer many calls and respond to many emails that she just did not return to constituents that were in need of assistance. She also voted against the ACA subsidies, which caused nearly 300,000 people here in the state of Florida. to drop off the rolls, the ACA marketplace, and it caused our private insurance premiums to go up as well. Ashley Moody is someone who cannot be trusted.

She's simply a rubber stamp for Donald Trump. She does any and everything that he says to do, and it's just ridiculous. We need to send people to Washington, D.C., who are going to stand up and push back against Donald Trump, people who are actually going to work hard to ensure they are lowering the cost and ending the corruption and the chaos that's in D.C. And Angie Nixon, you ran on an affordability platform.

Talk about your policy priorities if you do win the election in November. What is the message you'll be taking to the Senate? So when I win, because I like to speak things into existence, on day one, I'm going to file legislation to re-extend the ACA subsidies. Folks are going bankrupt simply because they are trying to stay alive. that is the leading cause of bankruptcy. And that's absolutely absurd. And then we're going to also push hardcore for universal health care. A recent Yale study came out that showed that the government would save $1 trillion

if we pass universal health care. Also, it's going to be really important for us to address this housing issue. Right now here in the state of Florida, people who rent, they're paying over 18% the national average, people who have property insurance and they are homeowners, they are paying 300 times more than folks in other states. And they just totally has to change. The reason they're paying all this money is because Ashley Moody took a lot of money from insurance companies. She didn't rein them in when she was the attorney general. And so they just, you know, they help her out by contributing to her campaign coffers. And so I'm happy to let folks know that

The only people that I'm beholden to are hardworking everyday folks. I am someone who prized myself on being unbought and unbossed. Also, I am a mother of five. Me and my husband have a blended family. I was a single mom for 12 years. And I understand how tough it is as it relates to childcare. Right. I have a five-year-old right now.

And some parents are paying $800 to $2,400 a month simply to try to send their children to a child care facility. And so I support universal child care. I know that for every dollar we put into child care, we get $3 back in the economy because that allows parents to be able to work. that also allows our children to be diverted from the school to prison pipeline, which, you know, these for-profit prisons, these elected officials, these billionaires, they want our children to have an ill education, a ridiculous, a horrible education, right, which is why they're defunding public schools, because they want to usher them into the school to prison pipeline. Why make sure that our children have a good quality education when they know they'll make more money off of them going to prison and exploiting their labor?

And so these are some of the things that I'm really pushing for and want to see accomplish when I become the next United States Senator. I know there's a rumor going around saying that I want to abolish prisons. I don't. I want to abolish for profit prisons. There's also a rumor going around saying that I want to defund the police. I don't want to defund the police. I want to defund flock cameras so that bad cops don't have the ability to stock their ex-girlfriends or their ex-boyfriends. I want to make sure that we have a justice system that works for everyone, not just for

the billionaires and co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, who actually are treated more fairly than a single mom who got caught stealing formula to make sure that her child had food. And so these are things that need to really be worked on. We need to make sure that hardworking everyday people get to shape what their communities look like and what their economies look like. And that's my mantra. That's my motto. And that's what I'm fighting for each and every day. Angie Nixon, in May, you took part at a sit-in

in Governor Ron DeSantis's office in protest of the redistricting bill where you were arrested and now face a jury trial on trespassing charges in September. Talk about redistricting and how that affects the elections in November? I mean, Donald Trump basically went to a lot of Republican governors and asked them to rig elections for him in the form of redrawing maps. And so we know that this was a partisan gerrymander

because Ron DeSantis decided to release the maps to Fox News and he did it when it was color-coded and it showed and illustrated where blue seats, blue seats, Democratic seats with, possibly be converted to Republicans. And so that goes against our state constitution. And they illegally and unconstitutionally

passed this bill. And so I decided to stand up for democracy and actually disrupt the proceedings because again, what they were doing was illegal and unconstitutional and it went against what the voters wanted. I believe I know

that the people should decide who their representatives are, right? The politicians should not be able to choose who their voters are. And what we're witnessing right now in conjunction with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act is Republican lawmakers in D.C. and all over these state legislatures, they are trying to return us back to the worst chapters of our history. And that is simply because they don't want us to have a say. They want the status quo. And I'm telling and making an appeal to everyone. right? Like right now these politicians are working less and less and less. And meanwhile, they're getting

richer. We are working harder than ever. And many of us are still struggling to stay afloat. They want us feeling hopeless. They want us to feel as though nothing can change, as though voting won't matter. But they're spending billions and billions of dollars, right, to suppress our right? They're changing laws, making it harder for marginalized communities, for working families to go out and vote. And this is because they want to stay in power. They are so fearful of losing power. And they are fearful that we are going, many people are going to come into power. And they think that we're going to do to them what they've done to many of us for hundreds of years.

But that's not the case. What happens when working families come into power, when everyday hardworking people become our state law, lawmakers, our federal lawmakers, we leave with love and humanity and dignity and compassion and respect. We want to make sure that no one experiences what we experienced is marginalized people. Again, I was a single mom, and I keep going back to this. I was a single mom for 12 years. I know what is like to struggle. I don't want anyone to have to struggle the way in which I did, right? I know what happens. I am also proof positive of what happens when government does it right. I was a recipient of a workshop program in which I was able to gain down payment assistance

because money trickled down from the theds that trickled down to the state, that trickled down to the local government that allowed me a woman who had graduated from the University of Florida that was working for the state but only making $28,000. They helped me pay my down payment assistance, they helped me with down payment assistance as well as closing costs, right? and when I was when I refinanced my home I paid that back but these are programs that Donald Trump cut under the big BS bill programs that Ashley Moody does not want and that's because they just want their campaign donors and their billionaire friends and family and themselves

to get richer I am ready for hardworking everyday people to get bailed out I'm ready for small business owners to get bailed out we have to focus our efforts on lowering their costs and not these costs of these big corporations. Over 88 companies last year made over $105 billion. They paid absolutely nothing in federal taxes. Meanwhile, I had a woman tell me she made $55,000 last year and she's on a payment plan with the IRS. Our system is broken and I want to go to Washington, D.C. to help fix it. Angie Nixon, final question. You joined the DSA recently in June. What is your relationship to the organization? If you win in November, you'd be the first DSA member in the Senate.

So you are exactly right. I just recently joined the DSA. I also just recently joined the Working Families Party. And my relationship is won, and I just joined them because I saw that they were one of the organizations that was working the hardest to help ensure that people have universal health care. I'm talking to too many people who have loved ones that have died because they were underinsured or they didn't have any insurance.

And so I am not an active member of DSA. I just paid a little bit of dues because as I paid dues with the Working Families Party, because I appreciate certain parts of their platform. Do I agree with all of it? No, I don't. And I don't agree with everything in the Democratic Party as well. And so I want folks to know they don't have to worry about me pushing some type of authoritarianism or any type of dictatorship.

As a matter of fact, I have made it my life's mission to push back on any type of authoritarian and dictatorship, which is why I am so adamant about fighting back against Donald Trump and heading to D.C. I want folks to know I am someone accessible, ethical, someone that they can trust. I'm willing to have conversations about any questions folks may have of me and my ideology. But if they look at my track record, they know that I always put people first, hardworking everyday people first.

And that is what I'm going to do when I become their next United States Senator. Thank you so much, State Representative Angie Nixon. You're the Democratic Senate nominee for the state of Florida. Thank you for joining us. Coming up, we'll go to California where Aisha Wahab is won a special election

for a seat in the House, even though APEC spent millions to defeat her. She's set to become the first Afghan American in Congress. Stay with us. Everybody we want to do. I would stand for you. Would you stand for me? Dear, to be free.

I would lend a hand to you. Would you lend a hand to be free? It's close and I won't give up the fight. I would stay. Everybody deserves to be free by the Resistance Revival Chorus. In California, progressive Democratic state senator Aisha Wahab has made history by winning a special election to fill the congressional seat vacated by disgrace representative Eric Swalwell, who resigned amid sexual misconduct claims. Wahab becomes the first Afghan-American elected to Congress representing eastern parts of the San Francisco Bay Area. In 2018, she also became the first Afghan-American elected to public office in the United States.

During Wahab's congressional campaign groups affiliated with A-PAC, the American-Israel Public Affairs, Affairs Committee spent over $6 million to support her rival, Melissa Hernandez. Aisha Wahab joins us now. Welcome to Democracy Now. Aisha, you won the primary pretty easily earlier this year. And during this special election, between then and this special election, groups affiliated with APEC spent over $6 million to defeat you. Talk about the significance of this victory and how you did it. Well, I just want to appreciate my team in the district for really seeing through it. My district is a decently well-educated district.

They knew that my record is very, very clear versus the lies that were spread by APEC. And I do want to highlight the fact that the millions of dollars in this district compared to many other districts, for example, we don't have a big city. We don't have an Oakland. We don't have San Jose or San Francisco. And San Francisco is barely touching $3 million of outside spending. We were pushing over $9.4 million, right, and still counting. We'll see the final, final numbers. But it did significant damage when there's in a single month nearly $6 plus million

dollars being spread to spread lies. And I'm very happy that the Chronicle actually stated that a lot of the ads were misleading and were lies. And Isha, it wasn't just APAC that was a special interest group that was working against you. You also pushed for a bill that would outlaw caste discrimination in when you were in the state Senate. and you pushed for this law in 2023, it ended up being vetoed by Gavin Newsom. But during that time, you faced a lot of death threats and violent threats. And how did you deal with that? And talk about what you were pushing for and what that interest group was.

Yeah. So there was a bill that I pushed to ban caste discrimination, which is practiced in some cultures where you could never educate yourself enough to get out of the cast. It's literally a 3,000-year-old slavery model that still exists today. And there were a lot of people that were opposed to it. They will never say why they were completely opposed to it. They pretend that caste does not exist. But the fact that we had the Senate have to pay for a bulletproof vest for me

because of the amount of death threats that I received, rape threats, you know, just a lot of weird things. It was important for me to carry the bill all the way through because it was the right thing to do. said that in California, let alone in the United States, discrimination of any kind is bad. And I wanted to ensure that all people in my district felt seen, felt heard, and felt protected. Aishaob, you're the first Muslim and first Afghan-American woman in the state senate, and you'd be the first Afghan-American in Congress. We're now, you know, coming up on 25 years since the invasion of Afghanistan and five years since the Taliban took power. Your thoughts on you know, the significance of your trajectory and what is happening in Afghanistan?

Yeah, you know, I'm an American through and through, born in New York, raised by Uncle Sam in the foster care system. And as an Afghan American, someone who is proud of my culture and heritage, it's disappointing to see what is happening in Afghanistan, where they are blocking women and children from going to school, really living their lives. I think that that's going to be a disaster to come for Afghanistan, let alone the fact that the United States needs to practice diplomacy. And regardless of which group is in power, we should be exercising diplomacy and having a relationship, hopefully even kind of steering them in the right direction when it comes to human rights, women's rights, and just civil rights across the board. Afghanistan is a landlocked nation. It is surrounded by interested parties.

They have unlimited amount of resources that the United States needs to, you know, at least partner with to have contracts with. And Afghanistan also needs other allies. And we have not really exercised that. There are a lot of different warlord groups that want power that are not the Taliban, too. And I think that each of them are deeply, deeply failed and misguided in the sense that they are not doing what's right for the country. They're doing what's right for themselves. And we have seen even under the support of the United States that these warlord groups literally raped the country. And Aisha Wahab, last question, you just have 30 seconds. You talked about growing up in the foster care system.

How is that informed your policy priorities? And what is the message you'll be taken to Congress? Definitely. You know, our entire campaign was about unity and supporting the most vulnerable community member. Growing up in the foster care system, going to church, living with different types of people, hearing different languages. realize that at the end of the day, everyone wants stability, everyone's peace, a thriving future, and to live the American dream. And I embody that. I want to be able to do that. Thank you so much. Congressman Eisha Wahab won a special election in California. And that does it

for today's show. Happy birthday, Julie Crosby. I'm Anjali Kamaith. Thank you for joining us for another edition of Democracy Now.