Democracy Now! Audio - Democracy Now! 2026-10-27 Tuesday

Episode Date: October 27, 2026

Headlines for October 27, 2026; Trump Is Already Undermining Confidence in Midterm Election Results from Alaska to California: ACLU; “Anti-Fascist Economics”: Isabella Weber on How Inequality Fuels Extremism & Erodes Democracy; “Dark Day for Journalism”: Egypt Shutters Independent News Site Mada Masr, Detains Editor

University in Fort Collins and New York, this is Democracy Now. No, I could just see the fake headlines. President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. That'll be the headline. They said, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We'll make it a freaking fortune. With the midterms a week away, President Trump dismisses rising gas prices caused by the U.S. and Israel.

L.A. War and Iran. We'll speak to the acclaimed economist, Isabella Weber, author of the new book Anti-Fascist Economics in defense of affordability, dignity, and democracy. Anti-fascist economics means no longer leaving the alternative to an unbearable status quote to the extreme right. It means an economics that starts from dignity for all as the decisive goal for everything that we do in economic policy. First, the Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the results of the U.S. Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent Dan S. Sullivan loses because there is another Dan Sullivan on the ballot. Democrats blasted the move as a, quote, unprecedented, preemptive strike on Democratic elections. We'll speak to the director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. All that and more coming.

up. Welcome to Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org, the Warrant Peace Report. We're broadcasting from Colorado State University in Fort Collins. I'm Amy Goodman. Voters in Israel are heading to the polls today in the first general election in nearly four years. At stake are 120 seats in Israel's parliament, the Knesset, where 61 votes will be needed to form a majority. The Kulat Party leader Benjamin Netanyahu is seeking to accept. extend his term as Israel's longest-serving prime minister. That's despite a warrant issued by the International Criminal Court, seeking his arrest for war crimes and crimes against humanity committed in Gaza.

Netanyahu also faces criminal charges of bribery, fraud, and breach of trust. His main challenger is Israel's former army chief, Gadi Eisenkot, who supports illegal Israeli settlements, opposes a Palestinian state, and has vowed to destroy Hamas's military wing in Gaza within 18 months. A prominent Palestinian citizen of Israel, Sami Abu Shadha, who leads the Palestinian nationalist political party, Balad, was forced out of the race. Meanwhile, millions of Palestinians living under Israeli occupation in East Jerusalem, the West Bank in Gaza Strip are ineligible to vote. even as election officials set up polling stations in illegal Israeli settlements.

A United Nations Commission of Inquiry has accused Israel of committing genocide in the Gaza Strip during the war that followed the October 7, 2023 attacks. The report published Monday by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the occupied Palestinian territory found Israel's attacks on Gaza were intended to, quote, destroy the Palestinian people in whole or in part, unquote. The commission also accused Israel of committing crimes against humanity in the occupied West Bank, including extermination, torture, and rape. The report was released as Israeli attacks on Gaza killed at least five Palestinians,

including a seven-year-old girl. Meanwhile, in the occupied West Bank, Israeli forces her committing, continuing a large-scale offensive for a fifth consecutive day in the city of Hebron, where officials say nearly 5,000 Palestinians have been forced from their homes. In Yemen, Ansarala, also known as the Houthis, used explosives to severely damage a critical road into Thais, according to Human Rights Watch.

The hijat of Abid Road is critical for delivering food, medicine, and fuel to the city. Ties has been besieged since fighting escalated between the Saudi-back government and the Houthis. Fuel shortages and ties are straining hospitals with one hospital forced to cut the number of incubators putting newborn babies at risk. This is a neonatal nurse at the Yemeni Swedish hospital.

We reduced the numbers to 10 incubators because of the fuel shortage. There's no oxygen. There's no fuel to run the incubators, to keep the babies warm. We also moved from a hospital. upstairs to downstairs for the baby's safety. There is shelling near the hospital.

In Syria, officials say seven people were killed, including women, children, and an elderly man after Jordan's military struck sites in Dara and Swayda provinces. Jordan's military said its fighter jets had killed and wounded, quote, several terrorists, unquote, without elaborating. The strikes followed a shooting at a Greek Orthodox church in Jordan on Friday that left nine people dead and 34 injured. Earlier on Monday, Jordan's government said it had arrested three suspects behind the deadly

church attack. In the Democratic Republic of Congo, youths wielding machetes attacked two community health workers who were raising awareness of the Ebola outbreak in the country, killing one and wounding another. A local official said health workers in the area where the latest attack took place are sheltering at the general hospital under-plom. police guard. This is a UN spokesperson on the latest. These incidents highlight how violence and mistrust can undermine the Ebola response and limit access to essential health services, as the numbers of confirmed cases approach 10,000 according to national authorities.

In Ukraine, a local ceasefire is underway in the Russian-occupied city of Oletsky, where fighting has left residents cut off from food and medical aid. The rare ceasefire to allow humanitarian access was brokered by U.S. First Lady Melania Trump. Meanwhile, Russia and Ukraine continue to trade attacks elsewhere. Overnight, Russia launched hundreds of drones and ballistic missiles across Ukraine, killing at least one person and injuring 15 others in the capital Kiev, including students in a dormitory. And Russian officials said a Ukrainian judge, drone killed a man and wounded six people in the western Russian city of Brijansk near Ukraine's border. Well, another person was killed in 30 injured when a drone hit a bus in Russian occupied Zaporichia.

Meanwhile, a new report submitted to the UN General Assembly finds Russian officials committed war crimes by directing attacks against civilian targets in Ukraine as well as crimes against humanity through continuous attacks on Ukraine's energy infrastructure. This is Pablo de Dave, a member of the Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Ukraine. Those attacks that target civilian objects indispensable to the civilian population are unlawful and amount to war crimes. In Brazil, far-right presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro has backed off his pledge to challenge the results of Sunday's election. After results showed incumbent President Luis Inasio Lula de Silva, won by nearly four and a half million votes.

Bolsonaro's concession came just minutes after President Trump signaled he would not intervene on Bolsonaro's behalf, although Trump did state without evidence that the vote, quote, looked like another rigged election, unquote. Bolsonaro also said Brazil's Supreme Court had ordered police to seize his passport. According to the New York Times, Bolsonaro faces a criminal investigation, over his links to a Brazilian lawyer accused of laundering more than a billion dollars through a fraud scheme, fraud scheme. President Trump continued his campaign tour of deep red states on Monday with a rally in Mississippi,

where incumbent Republican Senator Cindy Hyde Smith is facing a challenge from Democrat Scott Colum. Trump spoke for 83 minutes, while Senator Hyde Smith spoke for, exactly three seconds. These were the senator's entire remarks. Is this not the best president? Senator Hyde Smith has refused to debate her Democratic opponent, Scott Colum, who is seeking to become Mississippi's first black senator since reconstruction. Column is a district attorney who was nominated by President Joe Biden in 2022, become a U.S. district judge. His confirmation was blocked. by Senator Hyde-Smith, who cited his support for transgender student athletes.

A new report finds President Trump's investments in oil and gas stocks doubled in value in the past year, even as fuel prices surged due to Trump's war of choice against Iran. The report by Democrats on the Congressional Joint Economic Committee found Trump's fossil fuel investments are worth up to $81.6 million, and that the vast majority of his new stock purchases came after he ordered strikes on Iran in late February. Over the weekend, Trump rejected that gas prices are too high. He spoke from a campaign rally in Perry, Georgia. No, I could just see the fake headlines. President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump.

That'll be the headline, but I said, I don't give a damn I'm going to say it. We'll make it a freaking fortune. Meanwhile, the cost of war project at Brown University estimates Americans have spent $609 per household just for gasoline since the start of the U.S. war on Iran. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee released a 50-page report Monday detailing testimony from 11 women, five of whom directly accused. Donald Trump of rape or sexual assault in the presence of convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The allegations span from the mid-1980s to the 1990s. In the report, there are new details from Beatrice Coyle, a model and former Miss Switzerland, who alleged to the Judiciary Committee that she was raped by Trump in 1993 in a Plaza Hotel Suite in Manhattan,

when she was 24 years old. According to the report, Trump, quote, grabbed Coil behind and forcibly raped her, unquote, leading to, quote, bleeding and bruising on multiple parts of her body, unquote. Democrats on the House Judiciary Committee have formally requested that the DOJ appoint an independent special counsel to investigate Trump's ties to Epstein. Federal judges ruled the firing of former federal prosecutor Maureen Comey was unconstitutional. Comey had claimed in a lawsuit her termination was an act of retribution because her father, former FBI director James Comey, is a fierce critic of Donald Trump who oversaw investigations into alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election.

Maureen Comey was in charge of several high-profile cases, including against convicted sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein. Just hours after the judge ruled that Maureen Comey's firing was unconstitutional, charges against James Comey were unsealed on Monday. It's the third time he's been charged. In this latest case, James Comey is charged with knowingly communicating information related to national defense to unauthorized individual. Comey is also seeking to dismiss another case after the case.

the DOJ obtained an indictment against him on charges of threatening Trump's life by posting a photo of seashells on a beach on social media. In his first indictment that was later dismissed, Comey was accused of falsely testifying to Congress. Again, it would almost be funny if it weren't such an appalling abuse of the Department of Justice, one that we cannot become numb to. Nothing's changed with me. I'm still innocent. I'm still not afraid of these people, and I still believe in the independent federal judiciary. Anthropic is seeking an initial public offering that could make it one of the

world's most valuable corporations. The AI company reported $16.3 billion in revenue during the first half of the year with losses of over $80 billion. Despite the Red Ink Anthropics' initial valuation could exceed SpaceX's record-setting $1.8 trillion IPO last. summer. In paperwork filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Anthropic warns of the growing risks of misaligned or misused AI models, acknowledging that, quote, sufficiently advanced AI systems could, if not develop, deployed and operated with appropriate safeguards, oversight, and security measures pose catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, particularly if such systems who are misused, replicated, weaponized, or allowed.

operate with a high degree of autonomy, unquote. In more tech news, Microsoft announced Monday it would offer voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 workers or more than a quarter of its global workforce, citing cost cutting as it spends hundreds of billions of dollars on AI data centers and chips. And in this breaking news from Egypt, a court in Cairo has ordered the closing of the independent news site, Matamasser. The court also ordered the site's editor-in-chief, Lena Atala, to be detained until she pays a fine of over $50,000. She was convicted on charges of managing an unlicensed website after the court's ruling Atala was taken into custody. Earlier this week,

Matamasser published an editorial that read in part, quote, we understand that a sword was most likely be raised above our heads very soon. Even the faintest spark shakes darkness to the grounds. We still think of all of this as an interruption because that's how you fight, a political fight, she wrote. We'll have more on this story later in the broadcast. And those are some of the headlines. This is Democracy Now. Democracy Now.org, the War and Peace Report. Coming up, the Department of Justice has filed a lawsuit seeking to block the results of the U.S. Senate election in Alaska if the Republican incumbent Dan Sullivan loses. Back in a minute. Inside my head, I decorate with tapestry in China plays.

Two lamps with bulbs of different shades. One for the night, one for the day. A studio with covered space. 600 squared inside my brain. Wooden floors in both hallways. One for the night. One for the days. Without hands, they're either covered or on display.

One four than I. Inside my head by Sova, the second. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman in Fort Collins, Colorado at Colorado State University, Rocky Mountain Student Media, CTV, that's campus television, with Nermin Sheikh in New York. Hi, Amy, and welcome to our listeners and viewers across the country and around the world. Early voting is underway in Alaska where a competitive Senate race has gripped the once-liably Republican state. If Democratic challenger Mary Peltola wins the election, it could tip the balance of power in Washington. Earlier this month, President Trump campaigned with Republican Senator Dan Sullivan.

Ladies and gentlemen, the conflict in the Middle East is temporary. The true forever war is the National Democrats' war against Alaska oil and gas in our jobs. That's the forever war. Mary is no friend of Alaska. So on November 3rd, you need to vote for the man that delivers Alaska like no one else. And that's the real Dan. You have to do it. Well, last week, the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit seeking to block the certification of the election results in Alaska if Republican incumbent Senator Dan Sullivan loses.

The lawsuit alleges that the appearance of another candidate on the ballot named Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. would mislead voters. Daniel J. Sullivan Jr. is a retired elementary school teacher from Petersburg, Alaska, who's running unaffiliated. The Alaska Supreme Court ruled ahead of the primary that he could appear on the ballot. Speaking in Florida on Friday, President Trump confirmed he'd ordered the Department of Justice to file the lawsuit, less than two weeks ahead of the midterms, saying, quote, I'm the one that said do it. Meanwhile, Alaska's other Republican senator, Lisa Murkowski, said she opposes the Justice Department's lawsuit saying, quote, Alaskans don't need any help voting for their preferred candidates. And the state of Alaska has already handled this by clearly distinguishing the candidates on this year's ballot. The Department of Justice should never have filed this lawsuit, she said.

attorneys for Alaska's Democratic Senate candidate, Mary Peltola, and the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, have filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit, which they denounced as, quote, an unprecedented preemptive strike on Democratic elections. The ACLU, on behalf of two Alaska voters, the League of Women Voters of Alaska and Common Cause, moved to intervene in the case and have also filed a motion asking the law. court to dismiss. To discuss this latest DOJ lawsuit and more critical cases ahead of the midterm elections, we're joined now by Sophia Lynn Lakin, director of the ACOU's Voting Rights Project. She's joining us from Brooklyn, New York. Hi, Sophia. Thanks so much for being there.

Can you explain what's going on in Alaska? Well, we have a baseless lawsuit brought by the Department of Justice. It is, there's no basis in the law for this. There is no merit to this claim. We're really scraping the bottle when it comes to true legal arguments to take over, essentially, the certification process if the administration's preferred candidate doesn't win. This is an extraordinary ask for an election that hasn't even, the votes in this election haven't even been counted. It is a press release with a case number. And the ACLU has asked the court to dismiss this lawsuit in the strongest terms. And we've asked the court to consider sanctions because the courts shouldn't be used to launder basis claims into distrust in our elections.

There should be consequences for that. Go to comments made by U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche about this case, which he defended, defended the Department of Justice. lawsuit blocking Alaska Senate results if Republicans lose. He was speaking on CBS's Face the Nation. There's not two Dan Sullivan's, one an incumbent and one running. That's not true. The head of the Alaska election commissions, not President Trump, not me, has said that the second Dan Sullivan is running solely to confuse voters, solely to pull votes away from the incumbent senator. All we are doing is trying to put guardrails in place so that if that happens, there's a system. There's a allowed where the ballots are kept in a way so that we can determine whether there was confusion.

It's not saying don't certify. It's saying if a court ultimately determines that it was decided because of confusion and not the will of the voters, then we do not think the states is certified. And that's consistent with federal law and consistent with even Alaskan law if that happens. So, Sophia, if you could comment on what Blanche said, and also, is there any precedent for two candidates with virtually indistinguishable names? to be on the ballot. Well, look, Alaska Supreme Court already decided this issue and said that these two candidates can be on the ballot and that there are distinguishing features for voters, if they are at all

confused, one of the candidates, the incumbent has incumbent listed next to his name as well as the notation that he is the Republican. So voters should be able to distinguish, and the courts and the state of Alaska have a already address this issue. Now, in terms of the merits of the case itself, the Department of Justice cites a national voter registration law. That's the name of the law. It has to do with voter registration. It has nothing to do with certification or the counting of ballots at all. And not only that, the lawsuit doesn't cite any substantive provisions of this National Voter Registration Act. It cites merely the preamble, the introductory paragraphs.

So it doesn't even cite any authority, any basis that gives the Department of Justice any ability to enforce these claims about confusion, these claims about the possibility that voters might not be able to distinguish what's pretty clear on the ballots. Yeah, the implications of Trump just coming out quite openly in support of this lawsuit, indeed, saying that he is the one who said do it. Yeah, that is quite extraordinary. to have, and it's part of a broader effort that the Trump administration started the moment that Trump took office the second time. It's part of an attempt to undermine confidence in our elections, to interfere in election administration, to create pretext to challenge results that the administration doesn't like. It's part of that broader pattern. But courts, we have pushed back, courts have held that the Constitution is really clear on this point. The president doesn't have any role in setting the rules of elections.

President doesn't have the ability to interfere in our elections. States run our elections and voters are the ones who decide the outcomes, not the president, not the Department of Justice. In California, Los Angeles election officials say a list compiled by the Department of Justice of some 20,000 alleged non-citizen registered voters in. includes a high percentage of people born in the United States. The new revelations come after a court filing by California state and local officials in response to a lawsuit filed by the Trump administration.

Earlier this month, the Justice Department gave California 48 hours to segregate the ballots of those named on the list, which local officials blasted as unreliable after an early review of the voters' records. Can you comment on this? Yes, once again, this is another attempt, a part of that broader effort to undermine confidence in our elections this time using an unverified, completely undisclosed list that we know causes errors. We know that it's going to sweep up eligible voters,

and the California and the L.A. County have identified some already. And what we do know is that this, again, is a claim as baseless, that it's an attempt to decide in advance which votes should count and give a pretext to challenge outcomes that the administration doesn't like. We're seeing this once and once again, and again, these claims are meritless. We're scraping the bottom of the barrel when it comes through arguments here. These are press releases masquerading as lawsuits. And could you put this, Sophia, in the broader context of attacks on voter rights as we approach the midterms?

Well, unfortunately, we are seeing unprecedented assault on voting rights from the Trump administration, from the Trump administration's allies in the states, in the localities as well. And we're doing everything we can to push back. Courts have been holding partners on the ground have been pouring out in numbers. We have over 100,000 volunteers at this point who are ready to mobilize and organize to make sure that these threats that the Trump administration, its allies, are putting on our elections to undermine confidence in our elections, are put to bed that these elections run according to law and that we can have a new seating of Congress that is peaceful and that people feel confident in those election results. Sophia Linlaken, want to thank you so much for being with us, Director of the ACLU's Voting Rights Project. Coming up, anti-fascist economics in defense of affordability, dignity, and democracy. We'll speak with the acclaimed economist, Isabella Weber.

Stay with us. By Montreal musician Paul Carnello. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org. I'm Amy Goodman at Colorado State University, Rocky Mountain Student Media, CTV in Fort Collins, with Nermin Sheikh in New York. With the U.S. midterm elections just a week away, the issue of affordability has emerged as a major campaign issue, as voters expressed frustration over the rising cost of groceries, housing, gasoline, and other basic necessities. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show workers' wages have failed to keep pace with inflation over the past. year. President Trump has blamed his predecessors, denied the current affordability crisis, and defended his record. Here's Trump speaking earlier this month in Denton, Texas.

They're the ones that cause the inflation. I'm the one that's bringing it down, and we have to be able to get that word out somehow because they're using the word affordability. President Trump campaigned on a promise to bring down prices, but his tariffs, The war in Iran and rising energy costs have intensified concerns about affordability. Across the country, families are struggling to make ends meet, while oil and gas companies have reported record profits during recent periods of price shocks. This is Trump speaking in Perry, Georgia, this weekend. And while oil prices are temporarily high and will be falling dramatically in a short period of time, as soon as that we're, war's over because there's so much oil. All in the hormone straight, there's ships waiting to

come. We hit him out so fast. The United States oil and gas business is making hundreds of billions of dollars. No, I could just see the fake headlines. President Trump is talking about all the money they're making while people are suffering at the pump. That'll be the headline. But I said, I don't give a damn. I'm going to say it. We're making a freaking fortune. Our country is getting stronger and stronger all the time. And those pump prices are going to come down. Our next guest warns economic insecurity can fuel the rise of authoritarian movements and says protecting democracy requires making life affordable for everybody.

We're joined now by the acclaimed economist Isabella Weber, author of the new book, Anti-Fascist Economics in Defense of Affordability, Dignity and Democracy. She's the founding director of Essential Economics, an associate professor of economics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Welcome, Professor Weber, to Democracy Now. Why don't we just begin with you outlining the argument you make in the book in the context of what Trump said

in this introduction that we played in Trump's overall position? Yeah, thanks so much for having me. So each of these shocks that we are going through is kind of a choice point. Now, when it comes to the Iran war, it's actually an engineered shock that has been literally started

by the United States government. right? And what we see that in the wake of this shock, oil prices have been shooting up, as you have just shown in the trailer. So this has meant that for ordinary Americans, the price at the pump has been up 45%.

But at the same time, if we look at what's happened to profits in the petroleum and coal industry, it's actually been up 415%. So we have record oil and gas profits that are even above what happened in 2022 in the wake of the Russian attack on Ukraine.

Then the question is, of course, if Trump says, you know, we as a nation are winning, he's pretending as if the nation was united. But the reality is that 50% of those profits go to the top 1%. The bottom 50% only get around 1%. So for each of these shocks, you know, on the one hand, you have a deepening of the affordability crisis. But on the other hand, you have massive increases in profits that go to the richest of the rich. So it's a combination of an economic insecurity crisis and an acceleration of an inequality crisis with concentrations of private economic power that is no longer compatible with any meaningful notion of democracy.

So that's the starting point of the book. And if we apply a neoliberal economics playbook, then we say, you know, in moments of shocks, let the market do its job, which deliver. the kind of outcomes that we have just looked at. What I'm arguing is that to defend democracy in this world of shocks and crisis, we need democratic states that stand up and protect people's basic livelihoods. And that also means limiting wind for profits means limiting this acceleration in private economic power and actually stepping up against that.

So it's about a floor under people's livelihoods and a ceiling on extreme forms of concentration. And how exactly would you carry out this anti-fascist economics, Professor Weber? What is President Trump doing when he says, for example, he dismisses affordability concerns, says he doesn't give a damn about rising prices, but then at the same time claims that he is bringing prices down? What should he be doing? I mean, what Trump is doing is treating the global economy in people's livelihoods as collateral damage in his war, right, and his political project.

And that, to me, is the authoritarian kernel of what he's up to. What he should be doing or anyone in power should be doing, I mean, not start illegal wars to begin with, but then, you know, put a price ceiling on essentials and a price floor, concretely for the fossil fuel industry. So you could be defending such a price ceiling and a price floor with the strategic reserves that we already have, with the releases from stockpites through the International Energy Agency that we already have. So you could be actually having an even multilateral effort to defend a price ceiling so that prices do not explode in the ways in which they have. This is a short-term intervention, a short-term stabilization. Of course, in the medium run, we need to get out of fossil fuels because fossil fuels,

fuels is what makes our economies volatile, which is at the core of the climate crisis. So the time that we buy with price interventions like the one that I've just mapped out needs to be used for large-scale investments in renewables. And the build-out of renewables has to be done in a way that we do not replicate the power structures that we currently have in the energy system. In the book, I actually go back to the debates of the 1940s, where the question of an economics of never again was really, you know, a central question across schools of thought. And one of the main lessons was that the essentials are too important to be controlled by private companies because whoever is in charge of our water, our energy, our food system, our housing

infrastructure and so on, is actually in command of the fate of society and economy. So therefore, for democracy to be resilient to authoritarian things, threats, we actually need public control over those essentials. And energy is one of the obvious points to start, but it is about the full range of essentials where what you do for every essential depends on the sector. So for example, for food, I think that what Mexico did with the so-called basket model is a very good approach. They defined a basket of food essentials, then drew up an agreement between the government and the largest. grocery companies in the country.

And the companies had to commit to keeping the price of this basket as a whole stable. And the president herself would actually in press conferences report on how companies have been doing in keeping that price at that agreed level. Now, what this is doing is saying that it's the job of the head of the state to make sure that people can afford the basics, starting from food. and it's her job to hold companies accountable to actually hold up this agreement. Now, this is the exact opposite logic

of what we have been seen under neoliberalism where people have been told that, you know, democracy is the greatest system that has ever existed, which is, of course, right. And then in the second sentence, unfortunately, even when it comes to, you know, your most basic needs, like being able to afford food, there's nothing that we can do for you.

Anti-fascist economics take. the opposite stance and says, no, it's the job of democratic states to make sure that everybody can afford the basics. And policies such as this basket policy is something that can be done in the here and now, and then has to be backed up with structure policies that change the ways how essential are being provisioned to tackle the power concentration and tackle the climate crisis, because actually the essential sectors account for large parts of emissions. So decarbonization is also a question of transforming essential sectors.

Well, let's go to what our very own New York City Mayor, Zoran Mamdani, what steps he's taken with respect to affordability, and that was, of course, one of the central tenets of his campaign. Mamdani announced that the city's first municipally owned grocery store will open in the Hunts Point section of the South Bronx next year. The plan is part of a broader $70 million initiative to open one city-owned store in each of the five boroughs. Under the proposal, the stores would pay no rent or property taxes, keeping overhead costs low. The plan still requires City Council approval.

This is Mayor Mamdani. Standing here this morning, I cannot help but think of the words of our 40th President, Ronald Reagan. He famously said, the nine most terrifying words in the English language, are I'm first. the government and I'm here to help. It's a good quote, but I disagree. I think nine more terrifying words are actually, I worked all day and can't feed my family. ...of government to lower prices and make it easier for New Yorkers to put food on the table. So that is Mayor Mamdani, as we said earlier, who campaigned on affordability. So one of the questions that arises, as I was reading...

your book is that on the one hand you have states, you take what you call anti-fascist economics, which is to say that there are economic policies in place, some of which you were just talking about, that create the conditions for the rise of fascist movements. On the other hand, in an exactly, in a more local sense, where those same economic policies are in place, we can have a movement like the movement that elected Mamdani, and it's not just in New York city. We have Democratic Socialist mayors elsewhere in the country, including Seattle and then also in

Paris, Barcelona, et cetera. So how do you explain this difference? Yeah. I mean, from where I stand, anti-fascist economics is a very flexible, very nimble strategy. It basically tries to demonstrate that an alternative

to the neoliberal playbook is possible in the here now, under the concrete conditions that we face, whatever the level of governance we are looking at. So if we take the example of New York City and the question of food, then the creation of municipal grocery stores is one of those steps in the direction of demonstrating that the state can deliver for people's affordability, right? Now, creating a grocery store is, of course, a project that will take several years,

even with the greatest level of determination and, you know, the most skillful project management. So in the meantime, you also have to do things that deliver in the here now. That's a Sorons focus on potholes, right? That's the sidewalks that are no longer icy because he organized for people to clean them up, right? So you have to do these steps that are effective in the here and now while building out the infrastructures for greater public control in the name of an economy that serves life and affordability and ultimately dignity. So at that sense, you know, wherever you can operate, you take a step in the right direction. And the municipal level is a very important one. And thank you for bringing up that it's not just New York City,

right? I was at the Urban 20 that Sorinamadani hosted, and I was actually really impressed by seeing how across the world cities are taking action. In Mexico City, there are the urban utopias, there are projects to actually integrate rural, small producers with urban consumers through public provisioning of wholesale and retail infrastructure. In Istanbul, there are people's kitchens. In Rome, they reintroduce public provisioning of sports facilities for youth to actually compete with the private providers and thereby drive down prices. And that's an important point because both for the grocery stores as well as for the public provisioning of youth programs, It's not necessarily about, you know, getting rid of public, sorry, private providers.

It's not about getting rid of the market. It's about having public players that behave differently and by behaving differently, changing the dynamic of the market as a whole and literally creating an alternative so that people are not dependent on often very concentrated private providers as the only choice they face. Now, for something like healthcare, I think this. situation is different. I mean, healthcare is something where we literally do not have a choice, right? Like what kind of youth program you join, you have some choice. Where you go for grocery shopping, you have some choice. But if you have a heart attack, you don't have a choice where you're

going to go. You're just going to do whatever keeps you alive, right? Which is why for health care, I would not be arguing for a public option, but I would be arguing for Medicare for all as a, you know, all in public, public effort. So the idea really is to say for each sector, we have have to understand how these markets work, how the need side work, how the supply structures are, and then find sectorally targeted strategies. And can you also talk about Professor Weber, the enormous concentration of wealth? When you look at President Trump's second inauguration, the men standing behind him, as they are called the billionaire tech bros, what does this mean? You say affordability is not just an electoral issue.

It's a democracy issue. And how do you deal with this disparity as people are struggling to make ends meet? Yeah. I mean, the concentration of wealth is, of course, staggering. And in fact, in the 30s, economists warned that this level of wealth concentration, power concentration that they had at the time was going to be a threat to democracy. it was a threat to democracy, but the levels of corporate concentration

that we face today are even much more staggering. And we have all seen the images of the inauguration and the tech oligarchs having a front-arose seed. But I think it's also important to realize that this is the tip of the iceberg, right?

We have seen a business community that has been cheering on Trump's deregulation agenda that has been cheering on Trump's tax cut agenda. We just saw how the market reaction was to Lula's re-election, right? I mean, the real had the worst decline in value since the 1990s

since, you know, like total economic turmoil in Brazil. We have seen the market reactions in France to the mass affordability protest. So it's very clear where the markets stand, right? So of course it's about power concentration, it's about these individuals

that have outrageous amounts of power, but it's also structurally about where capital lands amidst this crossroads for democracy. And I think it's pretty clear that the richest of the rich have chosen their side, that markets are reacting in the ways in which they do to a lula winning against a Bolsonaro with a proto-fascist agenda, with an agenda that would tip the balance in Latin America very clearly against democracy. So what we are up against is the concentration of wealth, but it's also a

the power of markets over our governments. And if you could say, Isabella, what, are there particular demographics you feel are particularly vulnerable to what you call fascist economics? And what the broader, because obviously, as you say in the book too, the economy and the way that the economy

is structured is essential, but there's also a wider political and social context in which, and this is not to say that all of these sectors are impermeable, but that they do signal, they refer to separate things. Yeah, I mean, studies suggest that it's those who still have something to lose that become most vulnerable, most perceptive to fascist rhetoric. So often it's those who, you know, who are already unemployed, who are already at the bottom, who are already poor, are not necessarily the prime constituency here.

It's those who get squeezed. And these shocks squeeze people very directly, right? The bottom 50% in the United States spend around 70% on essentials, from energy to health care, to food, to housing, to transportation, the stuff that they can't do without. Now, when these prices shoot up, this other 30% get squeezed, right? If we then react by hiking interest rates, which is currently the standard playbook in response to inflation,

then the prospect of being able to buy a house. which, of course, for Americans, is a very important step towards a certain economic security, a certain lifestyle, a certain sense of self-worth, in fact, that is pushed out even further out of reach. So this means that, you know, we have these shocks in the first place, then we have a policy response that makes housing less affordable, that aims to push people out of work. That's a declared goal of hiking interest rates, right? And all of this becomes this. toxic cocktail of economic insecurity, where people have been told over decades that their worth is however they perform on the market. Now, with these structural shocks, they have no chance

to perform well on the market, right? They go to work every day. They do their job, and yet their lives are becoming more precarious. And then when the far right comes in, they basically, you know, appear to this experience of depreciation by saying, no, you are actually worth something because you're white, you are men, you are better than these other folks. So they appear to this natural hierarchy and they suggest that, you know, you are not performing on the market because the hierarchy has been distorted by women not staying at home, by transgender kids being in your sports club, by disabled children being allowed to be in the classroom and so on. And then the promise goes, if we remove all these distortions, then the market will be pure again

and you will be able to perform and show how strong and capable you are. And that's actually why even very neoliberal policies are often key to the far right because the promise goes that it's about these impurities. And once they are removed, then the market can do its job and you will be doing Fine. Professor Vibber, we just have one minute, and I just wanted to touch on AI. You write in your book, Artificial Intelligence is the new arms race between China and the United States. You say what AI is for the future of defense steel, coal and cannons were for Nazi rearmament. This is quite a statement. 30 seconds. Yeah, I mean, what we have seen with AI is that the AI leaders for more than 10 years by now have been saying that this could lead to human extinction, but that in the process, great business will have been made. So this contradiction between, you know, business interests, profit fundamentalism, and literally the life of humanity is becoming very clear when it comes to the AI question. And the AI is an emergent, essentially, where the need for democratic control is as urgent.

as it gets. I want to thank you so much for being with us. There's so much more to talk about, but people will just have to read your book. Isabella Weber, the author of the new book, Anti-Fascist Economics, in Defense of Affordability, Dignity, and Democracy, founding director of essential economics, associate professor of economics, at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. This is Democracy Now, Democracy Now.org.

I'm Amy Goodman, broadcasting from Colorado State University, in Fort Collins with Nermin Sheikh in New York. Today's show with breaking news from Egypt. A court in Cairo has ordered the closing of the independent news site, Mada Masser. The court also ordered the site's editor-in-chief, Lena Atalah, to be detained until she pays a fine of over $50,000. She was convicted on charges of managing an unlicensed website. After the court's ruling, Atala was taken into custody. We're joined right now by Sharif of Dokadus.

the Middle East editor at Dropsite News previously worked at Madamasser in Egypt for four years as a journalist and editor. Sharif, talk about the significance of this breaking news. Well, Amy, this is a dark day for journalism, not just in Egypt, but in the entire Arab world. Madamasr is one of the last remaining independent media outlets reporting the news in Egypt. It's really the flagship independent media outlet in Egypt and a pillar of independent media outlet in Egypt and a pillar of independent media outlets. media in the region. It was founded in 2013 in the midst of Egypt's revolution and counter revolution. It's managed to survive all of these years in one of the most hostile media environments for the media in the world. It's had its journalists jailed, foreign staff

deported. Its website has been blocked for nearly a decade. Their offices were raided by security forces. There are various forms of intimidation, and the threat of imprisonment is always there. Lena herself has been hauled before interrogation in numerous cases over the years, but what happened today is an unprecedented escalation. This has never happened before. Lena, Atalla, or Madamahsr have never been referred to trial before. Then barely a week after they're being referred to trial, they hold a court session today where Mademus' Defense lawyers are denied a request to even review the case file that's given to them in the moment. They're supposed to review it right there on the spot and present their defense.

The court then calls for a recess to deliberate the request, comes back into session, clears the entire courtroom of everyone, except for Lena and her lawyer, and then fills it with plain-closed security guards and security officers, and then the court announces it's rejected all the requests by the defense, including to submit any documentation or hear any witnesses. And the judge then appoints a lawyer for Lena, despite objections, of course. And then after that, he just summarily reads out the conviction.

And the conviction is fining Lina Atalla herself as editor-in-chief and co-founder of Madamehast to the maximum possible penalty, which is a fine of 3 million Egyptian pounds, which translates to about $50,000. the closure and the closure of Madame Osre of the website and the confiscation of its property. And then security personnel physically surrounded Lena, physically lifted her off the ground and took her out of the courtroom. And she remains in custody now.

Her lawyers and her colleagues are scrambling to gather the money to pay the $3 million before the courthouse closes in just a few minutes from the time of this broadcast. so she doesn't have to spend the night in custody. But really, you know, the future of MEDA and of independent media in Egypt has suffered a very severe blow today. And if there is not a lot of noise made about this by journalists around the world, her colleagues, and by the power brokers that this authoritarian Egyptian government relies on to survive, including, of course, the United States,

you know, Egypt's the second biggest recipient of the U.S. foreign aid in the world. If there isn't an uproar, then we may lose this crucial media outlet in Egypt and in the region. Sharif, as you mentioned, of course, Mada Masser has come under attack by the state many, many times and in various ways. But this, as you said, is an unprecedented escalation. Why do you think this is happening now? It's difficult to say why now. Let's remember this is coming less than a month after Egypt authorities arrested an entire newsreacted an entire newsreact. room of Madadetsh. Six people from, arrested the entire newsroom of Madadash, which is six

journalists, threw them into a prison, interrogated them, abused them and tortured them and forced them to record false confessions, and they remained behind bars. And that was allowed to happen. So that was also an escalation. It's coming after Cece, the president of Egypt, announced a bombshell last week where he said for the first time in Egyptian modern history that he's not going to, he's going to step down at the end of his term, whether that happens in 2030, whether that happens or not, we don't know. Not that it'll be a democratic transition, but the fact that he will hand over power in some way. It's also coming as Egypt has controversially agreed to send its military to Saudi Arabia to what they said is defend against attacks by Ansar Allah

and the Houthis in Yemen. It's coming as Egypt held this big conference, you know, alluding its achievements over the past few years. But it's also coming as the world is on fire and, you know, no one may be paying attention to what's happening in Egypt and what's happening to Madamash.

You have elections around the world that are consequential that have happened in Brazil and Serbia. You have an election today in Israel. You have the U.S. midterms next week. You have the genocide continuing. In Gaza, you have a war raging between, on Saudi Arabia, and all across the region. And so it's also coming at a time, I think, when the authorities, they've been trying to close Mada for many years. When I was working there, they raided our offices and hauled Lina away in front of us and the managing editor and Ranah Madooh, a senior reporter, and tried to imprison them.

And they had the case ready and everything. And it was only pressure from foreign governments that had them released and from solidarity, within Egypt as well. But this may be the moment where they can close it down and get away with it. Sure, Shereef, we have to leave it there, but we'll continue to follow this. Sharif Abduce, Middle East Editor, Dropset News previously worked at Matamasa in Egypt for four years as journalist and editor to see our interviews with Lenaetala. Go to DemocracyNow.org. We have to end right now, and I want to thank the amazing student team here at Fort Collins, Colorado State University, at Rocky Mountain Student Media, CTV.

Michael Urbanic and Leila Duran and Hazel Canner and Calvin Maston and Devon Allen, as well, Josh Middleton, and Hannah Schiro, and Beth Ryan. I'll be appearing tonight at Colorado State University's Democracy Summit with a screening of Steel This Story, please, at 630 at the Lorry Student Center Theater, and it will be followed by a Q&A with the film's director, Tia Lesson, as well as the moderator with us, Colorado State University President Amy Parsons. That does it for our show. I'm Amy Goodman with Nermaine Sheikh.