The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3576 - McTrump Slump; The Immigrant Rebuild of NOLA w/ Sarah Fouts

Episode Date: September 8, 2025

It's Fun Day Monday on the Majority Report On Today's Show: The Trump slump is really starting to punish Americans as farmers panic and stagflation builds McDonald's CEO breaks down the dual realities of the American economy. People making over 100k are living in a strong, healthy economy while lower income people are skipping breakfast to save money. Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland - Baltimore County, Sarah Fouts joins the show to discuss her book Rebuilding New Orleans: Immigrant Laborers and Street Food Vendors in the Post-Katrina Era In the Fun Half: In an interview in the hallways of Congress, Speaker Mike Johnson claims Donald Trump was an FBI informant. Tim Pool has a magical thought experiment over Daddy Trump saving the country from pedophiles as an informant. Bernie Sanders and Zohran Mamdani hold a town hall in Brooklyn. All that and more. The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Become a member at JoinTheMajorityReport.com: https://fans.fm/majority/join Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the ESVN YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/esvnshow Subscribe to the AMQuickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: CURRENT AFFAIRS: For 30% for a year on any subscription of your choice Go to currentaffairs.org/subscribe and enter the code MAJORITYREPORT at checkout. The offer expires October 31st PROLON: ProlonLife.com/majority Get 15% off sitewide plus a $40 bonus gift when you subscribe to their 5-Day Nutrition Program COZY EARTH: Go to cozyearth.com/MAJORITYREPORT for up to 40% off the best pants, joggers, shirts, everything! SUNSET LAKE:  Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and buy any three 4-packs, and you’ll get a fourth one for free. Just add four 4-packs to your cart and use the code LABORDAY25 at checkout Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech Check out Matt’s show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon’s show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza’s music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com/

Hi, folks. Today's episode brought to you by your childhood. Well, not really. But you remember when you were a kid and you had those sugary cereals and you thought, oh, I'm going to live forever, except you didn't realize how much junk you were putting into your body? Well, Magic Spoon makes high protein zero sugar cereals and treats. And they are completely reminiscent of. your childhood cereals.

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It is Monday. September 8th, 2025. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. On the program today, Sarah Fouts, Association. professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and to author of Rebuilding New Orleans, immigrant laborers, street food vendors, in the post-Katrina era.

Also on the program today with 22 days until a government shut down, Schumer and Jeffries desperate to help Republicans help themselves. Meanwhile, Supreme Court just breaking allows Trump to fire an FTC commissioner against all precedent, really explicit precedent. Now, to be fair, it just blocks a ruling that blocks that firing, but of course, we know how that goes with the Supreme Court. And speaking of the FTC, remember during the Biden administration, the U.S. FTC found that non-compete clauses should be banned? Well, now the FTC drops the defense of that non-compete ban because populism. Rokana says they have the congressional votes to introduce the Epstein-Files legislation.

Chicago braces for a federal military invasion. Florida Surgeon General brags. He's done no research before removing school-required vaccine mandates. Felt it in his gut. Yep. In a rare ruling, the Israeli Supreme Court finds Israel guilty of having a systemic policy of starving what they call detainees. Some people call them hostages. this on a day when Israel has killed near 50 civilians in Gaza

and as the economy craters, Scott Besant gets into a near physical altercation with Trump's housing finance chief slash hatchet man all this and more on today's majority report welcome ladies and gentlemen Thanks so much for joining us. It is... Fun day, Monday.

Wow. Yes, very fun. You might want to get a little more on a monopoeia with that. What's up? Fun day, oh, you're mad about the Giants. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I do have a little bit. People already, yeah.

I rushed back from the trip I was on, got up really early in the morning, so we could make the drive, just so I could get back home in time for 1 p.m. kickoff and uh yeah that was not great it was awful atrocious but congrats to brian's a packers who look like a real 20 and no potential super bowl team yeah here we got exactly i'm on the bandwagon us basketball fans are like whatever

wake me up when uh basketball starts socks i'll wait for the socks Yankees series until i talk about sports again um meanwhile by that point um I don't think how that, well, whatever. I know Anamonopoeia should be like a word that sounds like it, as opposed to the way that you expressed it, but who cares? I don't care. Whoopsy. Yeah.

It doesn't matter. Your jokes are. It doesn't matter. In this environment, yeah, exactly. In this, listen, I've watched a lot of people do far better with much worse. Like Rob Schneider? Exactly. We will get into maybe that little tussle that Scott Passant had.

I imagine things are getting a very little hairy for the Secretary of Treasure because one can't help but think that A, he thought he was going to be a Fed chair. It's quite clear he's not going to be Fed Chair. He thought that he could probably convince Trump not to do the Trump not to do the tariff thing and crash the economy for his buddies, it looks like that's not happening. Either way, it's going to be a crap show because the tariffs are already taking their toll on inflation. The economy is stalled out. There's reason to believe that parts of the country already in a recession, even if the tariff thing was to be reversed ultimately by the courts and you can't rely on the Supreme Court,

the amount of money the U.S. government would have to then pay back to people. And by people, we're not talking about the people who paid the tariffs. It's probably going to go to Howard Lutnik's sons who bought up a huge portion of all the potential tariff refunds. Besant gets into a fight with Trump's FHA House. hatchet man who has been digging through the mortgage documents of Trump's enemies found discrepancies in mortgage documents by one member of the Fed, mortgage documents she initiated and signed well before she was part of the Fed as a way to get her to quit the Fed that Basant is no

longer going to be a part of and he gets into a big fight uh with him uh i guess they got into each other's face they were trying to take it outside to have a fight but they didn't want to get hit by bags of stuff falling out of the window the white house apparently and um but at the heart of this is the economy is what appears to be doing like cratery yeah and besant is in the news saying things are going to turn around in a year like they that was letnik but yes no no no he's him too now no letnik said that yesterday and this is just the talking point this is just there this is what they're starting to talk about now because pie in the sky when you die but the interesting thing is it's just now that we're starting to see like any uh reference to this in the economy

And now, Besant, to be to his favor, it says, actually, we're going to see the, the economy should accelerate by the fourth quarter. And presumably that's this year's fourth quarter. Which is basically when every expert I've heard on this topic has said is going to be when the economy completely collapses, when inventory that has been accumulated in anticipation of the tariffs runs out, when holiday season comes around and the tariffs on China, where people will be buying toys for children are going to be in effect. Even if the Trump is unable to prove the legality of his tariff regime by what, that's the October deadline, that doesn't have its effects like miraculously dissipate overnight ahead of Christmas and Hanukkah and all of that. It's going to be bad. It's going to be bad.

And someone's asking, I still don't understand how Ludnik's sons placed that bet. in financial markets or just in finance in general you can buy essentially the rights to something that is owed somebody so this happens in bankrupties all the time majority report goes bankrupt i still owe uh brian money and uh it's quite clear i'm not going to pay brian or at least Brian's not sure, if he will. So I owe Brian $100. Obviously, that's a half year's salary. And Brian's like, I don't know if I'm going to get this money.

And if I do, I don't know when. And Matt comes along. He's savvy. And he says, Brian, I'll tell you what, I'll give you $50 or I'll give you $25 right now. And you walk away. and you just give me the right to collect that loan. I'm going to bet that that loan may come in. Maybe I'll only give 50 cents of the dollar,

but I'll give you $25 today. Brian goes, you know what, I'm going to take that $25 now because I don't think I'm going to get anything out of Sam. And Matt waits to see if he gets anything out of me. In this instance, Brian is somebody who had to pay the tariffs, and if the tariffs are found illegal gets a refund,

Matt's coming in and going like, you may not get that refund, and this was like three or four months ago, but Matt in this instance is literally Howard Lutnik's sons at a subsidiary of Cancer Fitzgerald. They're buying up that $100 potential refund for $25, and they may end up seeing all hundred bucks. But even today, because of the court rulings,

that refund that you bought, that right to refund you bought for $25 back in April may be worth $50 today because it looks like there's a better shot of those refunds happening. Nevertheless, that is distinct, or at least the tariffs have been raising prices. But what's also happening is the economy is slowing because the tariffs are also harming the economy. And here is the CEO of McDonald's, basically outlining, I think, a dynamic that's existed in this country for decades. But it is particularly pronounced now in terms of, like, the direction of economic fortunes for people across the income's distribution. And part of what we also saw was that, particularly with middle and lower income, consumers, they're feeling under a lot of pressure right now.

I think there's a lot of commentary about what's the state of the economy, how's it doing, and what we see is it's really kind of a two-tier economy. If you're upper income earning over $100,000, things are good. Stock markets are near all-time highs. You're feeling quite confident about things. You're seeing international travel. all those barometers of upper income consumers are doing quite well. What we see with middle and lower income consumers is actually a different story.

It's that consumers under a lot of pressure. In our industry, traffic for lower income consumers is down double digits. And it's because people are either choosing to skip a meal. So we're seeing breakfast. People are actually skipping breakfast. Or they're choosing to just eat at home. And so for our business, which has a significant, group of consumers which are in that middle and lower income, we needed to step in with something

like what we're doing here. Now, I don't know what he's doing, maybe lowering prices or I'm not sure exactly what he's talking about, but that dynamic is something that has been brewing since all of the COVID support ended, 23 or so. And I think a large reason why the Biden administration and then the Harris campaign could not recognize what was happening in the economy is because we have really, like in many respects, two different economies, one that is driven by wealthy people and is large enough where we mistake it as including the other, like, vast majority of people who actually live in our society. the divide is really between people who are making their money gambling on the stock market and who have assets and people who don't have property or assets and need to survive on wages and that's always been the case but there has been an effort to kind of segment the working class and calling them middle class versus lower income or whatever it's just everybody that needs a wage to survive and doesn't own

property or doesn't own these assets are going to be impacted by this disproportionately. And it's why, you know, 10 out of the last 11 recession started under Republican administrations, just throwing that out there. And income and wealth inequality keeps getting worse and worse and worse. This is just so naked what they're doing right now, where they know that they have the funds to gamble and increase their wealth and everybody else will have to deal with the increased prices. And Donald Trump is trying to bring all these corporations to him to negotiate. to get deals for himself and his buddies. If you're already in the top 0.001%,

what is a recession going to do for you except create assets on the cheap for you to buy up and increase your wealth? Yep. And of course, that's called populism. Apparently. For some. And by the way, before we get to this ad just quickly,

this AI bubble, the data that we're seeing about how that's going to burst, like the technology sector is basically the only health care, for-profit health care and technology is like the only thing that's growing in the United States right now. I guess real estate too

because there's a lot of building happening in places like Texas and stuff. But AI is the is like the center of this technological like expand, expanse. And we're seeing that already these large firms,

the adoption rates for AI into their workflow is decreasing and has been over the past few months. And without the gains in the healthcare sector, the Financial Times had this, that the non-form payroll reports that came out on Friday would have... Non-farm.

Is that what I said? Form. Form. Damn it. I'm just reading my bad handwriting. Non-farm payroll reports would have been a loss. So this is not... It's like consumer spending's down. Jobs are down. And this one speculative bubble is about to burst

because our AI... like AI does not have the value that is being portrayed by the markets. It's totally disconnected from reality. We'll have more to say on this, obviously, in the coming days and probably weeks, maybe months. Years. Possibly years. In the meantime, however, I took a little trip this weekend once in Pennsylvania, delivered a puppy. and this time of year in particular, very difficult to figure out what do I need to wear.

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stuff as my favorite hoodie i love my bamboo joggers because it's actually the first pair of joggers i've ever had because i thought like i'm not the type of person i don't wear sweats outside it's not like i'm too um i'm not stylish necessarily but i'm formal and uh but the joggers and i just feel like i can't put my keys yeah i'm rigid i'm very uh particular And I can't put my keys in a, you know, like a pair of sweats. But with these joggers, they're like stable enough that you feel like you're wearing pants, but they're incredibly, incredibly comfortable. And they look really good.

Made with viscos from a bamboo, they will be your softest all-season staple, along with the hoodie. But I love those joggers. I think I look good at them. And I can use them to play both softball or actually, like, go to the market. I'm trying to think of, like, what I do socially. But, you know, if you did something social, you could wear the cashier sometimes. Yeah, exactly.

It's not self-checkout. How's it? How's it doing, guys? And I feel comfortable because I'm my joggers. You sound comfortable. And the everywhere pant is also the epitome of refined comfort and adaptability. It is the new go-to pant effortlessly blend. breathability and flexibility allowing you to embrace movement on the go um these are also great they look

great they stretch um super comfortable i get a lot of uh compliments on my hoodie too instantly in my i know because my kids try and take it um thanks to cozy earth for sponsoring this episode go to CozyEarth.com, use my code majority report for up to 40% off, the best pants, joggers, shirts, everything. And if you get a post-purch survey, tell them you heard about Cozy Earth right here, built for real life, made to keep up with yours, Cozy Earth. Literally in the middle of that read, I was like, I got to get another sweatshirt. I got to get another hoodie. 40% off. I know, right?

That's when my ears prick up. a little bit. Hey, also, we're doing a little bit of a partnership with a magazine or a website, a periodical I love. We've had Nathan Robinson on this program many times. If you like deep, thoughtful, progressive analysis, and I hope you do, because otherwise, I don't know why you would be listening to this show. I can be. Exactly. Just curious how many times Sam can say, ah, in a sentence, you're going to love the print and digital or digital, for that matter, of Current Affairs Magazine. Current Affairs combines intelligent commentary, biting political satire, and really gorgeous

artwork to produce one of the country's most elegant and informative magazines, and it's all ad-free. current affairs is a fantastic compliment to the majority reports work they deliver hard-hitting totally independent and entertaining coverage of the most important political social and economic issues of our time i've been has it been five years maybe more uh been reading current affairs you should check it out too and now you can use code majority report for 30 percent off a year on any subscription of your choice go to current affairs.org slash subscribe enter the code majority report at checkout this offer expires on halloween it was 10 years actually it's been 10 years I know it makes you feel very old

oh geez I'm losing in my sense of time meanwhile take quick break we come back Sarah Fouts, Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, author of Rebuilding Norlands, Immigrant Laborers, and Street Food Vendors in the post-Katrina era. Katrina was 20 years ago. Oh, geez. All right. We'll be right back. We are back, Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland, on the majority report.

Want to welcome to the program, Sarah Fouts, Associate Professor in the Department of American Studies at the University of Maryland-Baltimore County. An author of Rebuilding Norland's, Immigrant Laborers, and Street Food Vendors in the post-Katrina era, Sarah, welcome to the program. We were just saying at the break, it's been 20 years since Katrina, which was terrifying for me to actually realize it's been that long. And it's obviously a good time to look back and see what the implications were. There was a huge concern, some of it realized, that the city was going to be be gentrified in many respects. A lot of folks were sent to Houston. We literally put into the metro, whatever the metro dome, I think it was.

And many of those people never came back. And your book is both timely in the sense that gives us an opportunity to reflect on. on this, but also, obviously, in the context of what's happening with immigration in this country. I don't know if I would describe this necessarily as an ethnography, but it is a, it's using the stories of individuals to tell sort of this some of the dynamics that take place. Let's start with Dennis, who was one of the day laborers who came in. many of whom were from Central America let's use Dennis as the way you do in the book

to tell us this broader story. Great, yeah, thanks Sam and thanks to Emma for having me on the show. And yeah, Dennis is a great starting point. I use him as a thread throughout the book to kind of tell this story about immigration, but also kind of labor organizing in the post-Katrina era. And I do, yeah, it is wild to think it's been 20 years. But Dennis serves as, you know, he was a day labor,

Then he got injured on the work site. He was fighting for his rights to, for OSHA protections. While he was doing that, he became an organizer with the Workers Center. And so Dennis really kind of was emblematic of this process of organizing and kind of coming from Honduras to first to Tennessee and then to Louisiana for Post-Katrina rebuilding. And really kind of worked with day laborers to do know your rights, to understand kind of their kind of wage. thefts, claims, and things like that. But they also build power with the black workers in the city as well. So I think kind of using his story to tell this bigger picture of organizing in the era is really important.

And Dennis is back in Honduras, and he has a coffee farm. So he's like, has also gone back, but has siblings that are still in the area. Do we have a sense of how many folks like Dennis from Central America, I mean, originally from Central America, who were in the country either undocumented or within the process of potentially being documented. This was at a time when the Bush administration was attempting to do comprehensive immigration reform and really prevented in many respects by their own party, by the sort of conservative element that I think had grown. grown within the Republican Party that Bush and Carl Rove, I think, underestimated how much of that part of their party had taken over. So I'm curious, like, if we know the numbers, and particularly relative to how many people

were there rebuilding or cleaning up, I guess, in that process. Right. The immigrant workers made up about 50% of the workers that came in to rebuild. others were volunteers or local workers or other people brought in. Of that 50%, about 25% were undocumented. I think this is when you see early, ISIS kind of a nascent organization was set up in March 2003. So I think that's really important to think about. So by Katrina, it was just a little over two years old.

So really thinking about how much it's changed over time and kind of beefed up budget-wise and things like that, which maybe we could talk about. about a little bit. And then also thinking about the Bush administration, like what they're, you know, how they saw kind of this rebuilding, suspending different labor laws like Davis Bacon, which is guarantees a prevailing wage. You've seen different OSHA suspensions to really expedite workers to come in, but also expedite exploitation and kind of lay the groundwork for a lot of these injustices that took place at that time period. So I do think, you know, it was a time very different than now where you did see kind of on both sides, possible immigration reform at a large scale, but then that, you know,

has fallen apart and we don't really see that halfway at all. So you have this massive portion of the people who come in to clean up after Katrina and to ostensibly rebuild are immigrants, Central American immigrants, And then you talk about like, like anything, like you can't have an influx of any type of like, you know, whatever it is. A lot of New Yorkers move to Florida and then all of a sudden you start to see more, you know, New York Giants posters everywhere or, you know, you go to the to the sports bar and they're playing the Giants game as much as they are, the Dolphins game in certain areas. areas. We start to see like these, uh, the, these immigrants, we start to see culture build around them. Um, and, uh, you use a guy named Mateo, uh, who as an example of sort of like the, the economy that's built around those, those people who are brought in to sort of help

the, uh, economy. Yeah. So, yeah, Mattio's a great example. I mean, he began as a construction worker, but then sell the need for more street food vendors to sell food to the workers because things like Red Cross and other food services weren't really reaching those communities. And they're working 12-hour days, so they need, you know, kind of this is an issue of food security. So Mateo and his family turned to having food trucks to sell to people or selling like itinerately on the streets with like tamale vendors and things like that. So you really see this kind of, and I wouldn't say it's a new form of selling food. is like informal economies that emerge because they already existed in the city, like historically and even in black community. So I think that, you know, kind of understanding the role and the importance of those sort of grassroots food economies in getting people fed in this time when other kind of there were systemic failures in different ways of actually getting people fed and having sustainable systems of getting food to places instead of making people come to a park or things like that. The flip side of that is that when you start to see the street vendors selling the food, there becomes suddenly the workers become more visible in terms of a cultural force that I'm trying to find where I have this in my notes.

but at one point Nagin, the mayor of Norlands is like like I think he explicitly said like you know like I don't want tacos replacing

you know hush puppies. I can't remember what it was that it said. The gumbo, yeah. The gumbo. And and it it it's like all there in that statement there it's both a sort of a cultural thing it's also from an economic standpoint it's also about a fear of a change in the city the irony of course is that there wasn't the same sort of concern that um a significant portion of the black population left norleans uh they were evacuated did not have the money to come back

and we're going to be replaced by wealthier white people but there's a concern that there's going to be sort of like a a population of Central Americans right so the fear yeah and I'll give Megan

some credit he said I don't want to seem to be overrun by workers by Mexican workers but it was a council member Oliver Thomas had said why did the talk how do the tacos help the gumbo so it was negative yeah but it was you know but you're still getting that kind of food reference um from from who's running for mayor's office right now in new Orleans um but yeah you see kind of yeah food is this very much visible to this day if you're in new Orleans you see much more honduran restaurants or taco trucks and and even people sitting outside the grocery

stores um selling tamale so it's the way that you could see the visibility of of of those populations are represented by the foods right so thinking about the impact of using food as that lens how it's going to infiltrate the New Orleans culture and impact in this ways. And New Orleans culture is so dynamic. Like that's what makes it beautiful, like from the Vietnamese communities, right? You see how they're kind of this acclaimed immigrant community in the city, but seeing them as like kind of fear mongering around immigrants, but not this like gingerfying class that's bringing in kind of, you know, kind of raising levels of housing at the same time of displacement of black communities because of lack of housing, because

destruction of public housing and things like that, these policies that have pushed the people who make the gumbos out, and then you're bringing in these kind of gentrifier class that comes in while vilifying the working class in the group communities. Yeah, I think that's kind of the point of the book is to think about how food can, which is New Orleans is a food city, but how you can think about these different issues through that lens and how it's actually coming out in the politician's mouths, right, in these different ways. Is food in this instance, is it a sort of a leading indicator, a lagging indicator? Like where it plays off in so many different ways, particularly with a city like New Orleans.

But broadly speaking, food is you can enter into there and have obviously multiple different conversations. Um, but where, like how quickly, was the food, the impetus or was it the excuse or was it, I mean, surely someone must have been like, aware of this dynamic and on both sides of like the desire to have, I mean, you know, these people who come back in, they're rebuilding the city. Um, you could, you could respond to that in two different ways, I guess. Yeah, what? In 2007 in Jefferson Parish, which is the county around New Orleans, they banned taco trucks. Like there was an outright ban on those types of trucks. So you can really see, and that's where the majority of the Mexican and Central American population lives to this day, is in those suburbs. So you really see this very much racialized ban of taco trucks. So through food, they're using it, you know, they're kind of acting out these words of these suburbs. politicians to ban and they're using food as that way to do that. So when I moved to New Orleans in 2010, and that's when I started, you know, reading about those policies, reading about

different comments, and really thinking about using food as that way to surface these other issues from bureaucracy that kind of also was used to racial profile folks through allowing these gourmet trucks, these food trucks to come in, but outlawing like taco trailers, which is what most of the immigrants used. So there's, on the books to this day, a ban against trailers, but you can have, you know, gourmet food trucks, they really liberalize those policies. So, you know, I think that, you know, as I kept following food in these different ways and also working with the New Orleans Workers Center for racial justice, kind of seeing on the ground how these everyday experiences through the restaurants, through, and even the restaurant

industry, who's working in the kitchens, right? After Katrina, there was, you know, much an increase in the amount of restaurants, even though there's a decrease in population in the city, and who's working in the backs of those restaurants, right? It's oftentimes immigrant workers and also born, working class black workers. So really thinking about these spaces as ways to think about labor and labor organizing in the city, I think, helped me to surface a lot of these kind of issues of power and things like that. Let's talk about it in terms of that context of wages, because that dynamic of more restaurants

opening with less people, it implies that what you have is a higher concentration of wealth because, you know, they can go out to eat five nights a week, six nights a week or seven nights a week. So you don't need as many people if they have, if the ones you do have are wealthy. Meanwhile, you have a workforce that is, um, perfectly situated to be exploited uh because so many of these folks are undocumented or um uh you know within that community talk about that dynamic i think you have a a wealthier class but also you're catering to a tourism economy right so they're building these restaurants are not for the local folks they're built for kind of this growth of tourism and that's how the city was rebuilt right

You have developers calling it a green banana. You have white developers calling it a, the city a, the vision is like an Afro-Caribbean Paris, right? But how do you have, you know, these kind of top-down outsiders kind of imagining these spaces and creating, you know, these restaurants and these neighborhoods that aren't for the local people, right? And I think, you know, the restaurants definitely embody that. And it shows like how much of the city was rebuilt in this way. Again, it's called a blank slate, right, to pave way for this tourist economy, for the, you know, all the Super Bowl that just happened there, of course, Mardi Gras,

carnival celebrations, all the festivals that take place, all the concerts, right? They're paving way for that instead of kind of making, you know, keeping those jobs for local folks, but also making it accessible and equitable for people to be able to come back. there to be enough housing there to be enough jobs that have good wages for people to come back to and I think that's why it's what's kept people what's kept the population so low and also more kind of upper class of who can afford those housing prices and things like that interesting and what I mean do we have a sense of like what percentage of the population pre-Hurricane Katrina was able to return well I can't give you the

The numbers before Katrina were about almost 500,000, and now they're around 350, 375,000. So you still have this decline, and even though, you know, who is coming back, right? It is still a majority black city, but much less of the city is black than it was before. You have a higher, you have a, from 4% pre-Katrina of Latinx people is now around 9% or 10%. And so you see kind of like who the new demographic, this big shift is pretty drastic, right? And that is, that's not because people just didn't want a return. It's because they couldn't. And it's not because they didn't have, they had access to wealth, but they didn't have access

in the wealth to be able to rebuild their homes because there was disproportionately benefited white wealthier neighborhoods than it did in like the ninth ward neighborhoods. And then you have, you know, these, I think housing is central to these processes. and then also kind of union busting and the jobs and kind of low wages have been kept down in these service sector economies. I think that's been a part of it too in that 21st century context. Talk about El Crosso. This grew out of this dynamic, I guess.

Yeah, so the El Cresso, they were one of three parts of the New Orleans Worker Center for Racial of justice. So they emerged in like 2006, 2007 to fight for rights for workers. And the Congresso was for immigrant workers who came in, mostly day laborers. So it was the Congress of Day Laborers. And so it was like these five different day labor corners that established after Katrina in different places across the city in front of Home Depot and things like that, where workers would congregate. And then Dennis, and I went around with him for about a year to organize at the different work sites, and then leaders of those different day labor corners would come together with their families. And that group in a 10-year period grew from about 80 people to around

250 people at regular meetings every Wednesday night with a membership base of around 1,000 people. So you have this massive group of immigrant workers well-organized with great organizers and great leaders within the community. And then you had black workers organized within the same worker center model understand with dignity. And these are black poor and working class folks who are displaced because of housing, this public housing being destroyed. But we're trying to fight for those jobs through Section 3 ordinances to be able to maintain some of those jobs. And these are two groups that are usually pitted against each other, right? And you have them really great organizing brought together to fight for kind of rights across the board for immigrant

rights, but also for wages, right to remain, right, to not be locked out of different jobs because of a felony conviction and things like that. And people showing up for each other's campaigns that were at the local level, but also state and federal levels, too, fighting in front of the ICE office against deportations under Obama administration. So I think that's what I really wanted to showcase in the book is how these groups came together, these coalitions within the organization, but also across class, race, language barriers, things like that. And I think that's really powerful and kind of can speak to the

contemporary moment. What's been the durability of that coalition? The workers' centers still exist, but it's in kind of a different form. I think there, you know, the El Congreso does not exist anymore. But there are other groups that have emerged out of it, like Neo-Migrante that have really, you know, and a lot of the work that's happening today, and even, even kind of similar to then where these kind of reactionary trying to, how do we prevent, how do we maintain these rights to stay? And so they don't exist in the same capacity as they did 10 years ago, but the worker center still exists. And then all these, a lot of different off branches exist. And I think, you know, there's a lot more different coalitions in the city,

a lot more kind of the unions are coming back in different ways. There's like step up, up Louisiana you have like uh know the teachers organization so you have different groups coming together and you have other grassroots organizations that are really bringing a climate change into the conversation in ways that the worker center did it so I think it's you know kind of evolved in different ways there are smaller organizations that are around that are that are strong but I feel like at that time period the worker center was really doing something that was unique and powerful under great leadership and really building coalition strength across different organizations I am curious as to how much of that period between 2006 and 2016, where it feels like ICE was used as sort of like a way to calibrate how much of the immigrant population the city wanted there.

Like, we need to have just enough so that they can do the work that we need to have done, but not so much that they become a political force. Is my sense of that correct? And how much of that was a model for the way that ICE operates today? I think, okay, two parts. I think that the Congress was a political force. They were sitting at the table with the Chief Harrison to do the consent decree. They were at the table. Undocumented immigrants were at the table doing a lot of that kind of debates to rebuild policy.

They fought against the local sheriff's office, Sheriff Gusman, to there were ice holds that were under 287G and got his office to stop collaborating with ICE under those policies, so to were voluntary. and then got him to end these holds that were happening that were kind of constitutional crises where he was holding people longer than the 48-hour period. So I think in some ways that their impact in shaping policy, they ended a big, and this is Obama time period, ended the carry raids, which was the criminal alien removal initiative, which was this major deportation,

kind of similar to what's happening now, these raids that were workplace raids, church raids, and they were able to kind of intercept that email that kind of divulge that was happening. But I think the difference is the accountability, right? Is, you know, back then you have like the racial profiling. We could call that out. Now we're getting, you know, the Fourth Amendment.

The administration in front of the Supreme Court basically saying, let us please racially profile. And there's a reason to believe they're going to. They just did with L.A. Yeah, I just checked my. 30 minutes ago. Oh, 30 minutes ago? 30 minutes or an hour ago, yeah.

I just, I mean, for people to be clear on this, a federal judge had basically said, ICE cannot operate by looking at the color of someone's skin, seeing that they may have a Spanish accent or that they're working like as a gardener and decide we're just going to roll up on that person because that's some type of evidence that they may be an undocumented immigrant. And the Trump administration explicitly went to the Supreme Court and said, yeah, we want to be able to basically racially profile. And I guess 30 minutes ago, the Supreme Court's been... Unbelievable.

And I would imagine no decision written, right? Just a shadow doc. It would be my guess. Although, I don't know. Maybe there is actually a decision from Sotomayor. I know that. Sotomayor wrote a dissent. There's dissents.

Well, I guess Kavanaugh is concur. opinion. So there may actually have written as to why it is legal to racially profile, essentially, when you're looking for immigrants. Well, that's that's that. Things are moving quickly. So where are we today in terms of like neurons and what from the perspective of I mean, I would imagine if this was to happen to New Orleans again, it would be a very different story about the capacity to rebuild because I would imagine that those people who came from all over the country to help rebuild New Orleans would be like, I'm not going anywhere near there.

The whole thing is just some type of like honey pot for ice at this point. But where from New Orleans perspective, like where is it relative to the fears that people had about this city becoming just either a Disney world or a place for wealthy people? And then I guess where is it in terms of like how replicable these dynamics can be because of everything is happening? happened really over the course of like the past eight months right and I mean a lot of the critiques of Katrina are about FEMA but now you know but it's about the not about like the necessity for FEMA but the like the the lack of corruption within that context right and so during Katrina's almost a billion dollars were just kind of lost went wasted and but now you just have like this this this dissolution of FEMA as a in the most dire of times across you know

when we're getting floods and hurricanes affecting Appalachia, you know, I think, you know, that's what's really frightening. And I think what we have in terms of ice is, you know, a friend called ICE now, like as Sheriff O'Rpio of Arizona, on steroids, right? So it's like this, like, exactly what we're just hearing from this decision from the Supreme Court. And you also have technology being used in ways that it was only 10 years ago being kind of developed like Palantar, all of Peter Thiel stuff, all the surveillance used to face surveillance and things like that.

I think that's what's also really scary is the ways in which those types of technologies are able to really kind of make it even harder for any, not just immigrant communities, any communities, especially communities of color, that are kind of subjected to these types of surveillance in these different ways. So I think that's like, and then this, I think the budget of, is three times what it was and is growing in these jobs like I think that's what's also frightening in terms you know I think with you know hurricanes are getting worse and I think we're not really you know there is I think a push on the city level I have friends who work in and kind

of disaster related fields at the city of New Orleans who are really kind of being thoughtful of these processes but a lot of you know the money the funding the things like that that that will be so necessary in those times aren't there. And, you know, even under Bush, during Katrina, you had Michael Brown, who is the FEMA director. He had no experience in disaster management, right? And think about the people that Trump's putting in place now are people with no experience. There's cronies who he's just trying to empower or do a favor because whatever reason. So I think those are the things that are, you know, we've always had a lot, you know, people in place that aren't trained for those positions.

But at this point, not only is we're moving funding for budget cuts or for tax cuts for billionaires, but we are also moving funding that is a public sector in ways that help people, not in ways that just are public sector in terms of ICE or policing in ways that threaten people. So I think that's what it's frightening. And that's not a positive happy messaging at all. Two other things that occurred to me. My understanding is, are there even any public schools left now in New Orleans? I mean, it's all a charter, right?

And they're all private charter. Exactly, yeah. But they have, I will say there's great, like, and that was a big issue with Katrina. So those were great jobs, right, for people from New Orleans. And then they completely got displaced. The union was busted or kind of dismantled. But there has been a strong movement with Utno.

And there's a long history of strong teacher organizing in that city. And I think those teacher organizing groups are really kind of coming together to get, within the charter school systems. But yeah, the public schools are completely gone. I mean, and one of the things now I recall, too, is that early in the wake of the hurricane, I don't know if they were called Blackwater at the time or Jay, but mercenaries were sent down there to basically take over control of the city. I mean, all of the worst elements of this, God forbid there's some type of replication in terms of a natural disaster.

All of the worst elements of it seem like have arrayed themselves in this administration, almost to be deployed less as like, almost by design in this instance. Like, you know, I think like the, the sending in Jay or whatever it was at that time, Blackwater, was because they had no idea what to do. I mean, they had no idea what to do leading up to it. They had no idea what to do afterwards. They were fortunate to be able to get 45% of its workforce, 50% of its workforce from immigrants. That would not happen today. I mean, what, like, it, it's sort of hard to imagine what would happen in there other than some billionaire saying like, okay, this new city is going to be, you know, Muskville and otherwise, nothing's going to happen, right? Like, I mean, like, it's, if, if New Orleans was to suffer a Katrina today, same type of thing.

I know that's impossible, but I'm saying it's something similar. It seems to me like there is no, everything stops at one point. Like, it's just going to be a mess. Nobody's coming in to clean up the moldy ruins. Nobody's going to do this. And it puts a billionaire in the position of being able to say, like, I'm going to do this. I mean, we almost saw this with wildfires out in California, in L.A., but there's a robust enough sort of like state infrastructure. But in one of these red states where none of that infrastructure exists, it seems to me that it is completely vulnerable to like almost being fully privatized.

Yeah, and I think those are, you know, the failures of 2005 in that recovery period, right, that we were like, these are failures. you can name these, you know, kind of the ways in which this privatization really kind of impacted negatively these communities and the city as a whole. And now those politics are kind of like a Tuesday, right? It's kind of what we're, the way we operate, not we, but like the systems that we're moving toward. So, yeah, I think you're completely right. And I think they'll say it's the failure of the city, right? They'll blame the local people instead of understanding kind of this divest and, these ways in which like the public housing, the things that people who make that city and those places

so rich and so important. And I think that, you know, they'll move the shift the blame like they do with public education, right? They'll say, well, you, the schools are failing, but actually this divestment that's been happening for 40 years is the problem, right? It's not the schools. It's like this lack of investment. Yeah. And I think, and what you do have, you have like great local leadership that is there, but what you have is, like, what happened in Katrina is these no contract bids that come in, like for Katrina's like Halliburton and these mercenaries that are coming in and doing these top-down wasting money, right? It's going to, the voted contracts, it's going, it's, there's a lot of wage stuff, and they're not doing their job because they don't know. And you have these

local organizations that are set to do it, but they're being displaced or pushed out in different ways. When you, when there is, I think the answer for me is like the city organizing which is always the case you know it best but then you're also impacted in Louisiana right now with the Landry administration right that is creating this kind of detention center mecca for for immigrant you know whatever Trump says Landry does and they're making Angola this immigrant lockdown Angola prison so you know I think it's really kind of scary but I do think that there are ways in which the city and its people know what's best but they're not being listened to

where they're being erased in these different ways that are that's that's that's quite frightening can you talk briefly about that angola story i feel like it's not getting too much attention but this is a notorious prison in louisiana that the very trumpy governor is uh kind of you know working with with trump to turn into an immigrant detention facility uh it's infamous for its exploitative labor practices abusive treatment of prisoners that kind of thing yeah it's on a former plantation in kind of west about three hours outside of New Orleans

Angola Penitentiary and they're building kind of this kind and there's already multiple decisions in Louisiana but using Angola as this kind of like also a space to hold I think 400 immigrants is how much the capacity it is but just kind of the symbol

the symbol of using that prison that so hasn't such a troubled history in so many ways that you explained Emma And, you know, it's just Landry cowering, too, and they were going to name it after Landry. I'm not sure where that is right now, but, you know, these are ways in which they're really trying to double down in these ways of being, you know, using Louisiana as this anti-immigrant space. But New Orleans is this kind of stronghold in these different ways that I think is really important to the immigrant communities that are there. I feel like maybe it was 25 years ago

there was a documentary about Angola which is worth seeing just to give you a notion of like what the history of that prison is and it was I mean did they still do that kind of display of like the rodeo

where people come and like bed on them yeah it's still yeah that still exists which is yeah and there yeah it's a yeah it's a very problematic to say the least prison yeah it still exists and there's

you know not much well Sarah Fouts it's I mean Norlands just a there's so many stories within the recovery of Norlands

and frankly the disaster that took place in Norlands relative to what happens when you have an agency that has been completely dismantled that is insightful for where we are today and perhaps maybe sadly in some respects predictive of what we can't say for sure

but certainly of something that could happen well not just during this administration I think their failures are going to resonate for a long time But Sarah Fouts, the book is Rebuilding to Orleans, immigrant laborers, and street food vendors in the post-Katrina era. We'll put a link to that at majority.fm. Sarah Fouts, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, Sam.

Thanks, Emma. Thanks, Sarah. All right, folks. We're going to take a quick break and head into the fun half. Yeah. I mean, I just was reminded that Angola story I hadn't, I had forgotten about that, but yeah, basically they pay the prisoners, the inmates there, such low wages that I guess once a year or something like that, they have a rodeo where they can win hundreds of dollars, which is like a lot in terms of prison rations, and people from all around the state come and gamble on them. And it's like a gladiator type situation that happens. as a tradition that started in like the 60s at this particular prison in Louisiana. Louisiana's, I mean, I love New Orleans, crazy state, like historically speaking,

in terms of like the types of political machines that have been down there. Like, they're funded by the like a state lottery for at least, I don't know if that's still going on, but for a huge part of the history, like really bizarre governance down there. And oil money, just soaking the whole state and creating like, areas of the state that are entirely uninhabitable basically or when they are you do live there you're you're likely to get cancer you don't want cancer alley to be in your state yeah hey folks your support uh makes this show possible you can become a member at join the majority report dot com it's just like uh we'll have fun in the fun half we're determined

uh join the majority report uh dot I think it's good. You can help this show survive and thrive. And then you get the fun half and you can IAM us. Also enjoy just

coffee.comop. Fair trade coffee out of not in Green Bay, but in Madison, Wisconsin. Co-op there. Great politics. Great coffee. Use the coupon code majority, get 10% off.

Matt, Left Reckoning. Yeah, we had a good Sunday show, Patreon.com slash Left Reckoning Sunday show for patrons talking about an insane story out of wired about a Silicon Valley surrogacy story, which is sort of, I mean, insane. And then also talking about this blowing up a Venezuelan boat that just, you know, they're drug dealers, terrorists, both of them at the same time, shoot a missile. bad sort of trajectory we're on in this country in terms of how we're acting out as a nation so check that out patreon.com says left reckoning I'm just reading into I mean I'll just read the first paragraph for this breakdown of this

the LA Times Supreme Court ruled on Monday for the Trump administration and agreed U.S. immigration agents may stop and detain anyone they suspect is in the U.S. illegally based on little more than working at a car wash, speaking Spanish, or having brown skin. You know, sometimes you worry that you are a little bit hyperbolic when you, you know,

haven't seen a ruling and make an assessment, and then it's, that's what it is. it is full on racial profiling um and my understanding is it's it's an it's an emergency appeal and i don't know if that means that it is a lifting of the judge's order in a on a temporary basis seems like it's like an injunction that they're repealing it's it's an it's a it's a repeal of a of an injunction or temporary order, which means that the case continues, but this, the Supreme Court has done this multiple times now. The implication is that if you don't allow ICE to racially profile, they will be irrevocably, uh, harmed. And I mean, that's why you, you lift an appeal or you issue an appeal i should say you lift an injunction or an order or you

repeal one it will um the existence or the absence of one will cause irrevocable harm irrevocable thank you irrevocable uh harm i'm having a stroke um and uh uh now what's going to happen is as you go about your day in California if you're brown that was on you man I mean they were already doing this but now there's no recourse for clear racial profiling right that's right I mean they were doing this that's why the case was brought yeah but now it's going to be policy stated policy where does this uh does I we have to still read like what the Supreme Court decision says but does this open the door for explicit uses of racial profiling in contexts that are not immigration related?

I mean, say, going into a black neighborhood. This is what Kavanaugh says. And federal law says immigration officers may, quote, briefly detain an individual for questioning if they have a, quote, reasonable suspicion based on specific articulable facts that the person being questioned is an alien illegally in the United States. That's like Tom Homan said explicitly that on a hit, articulable facts. Well, yeah, but, but there used to be articulable facts that were not relevant as to creating a reasonable suspicion. In this instance, it's going to be like, well, he was brown.

Well, he was speaking Spanish. Well, he was doing a job that supposedly Americans won't do. and this is the emergency docket this is the shadow docket so it very little um i mean this is this is the implications of the supreme court i mean it's like a dread scott era a bit right i mean like that what this is the kind of decision that will be a stain on our history and we're living through it yep um Texas left is this just for California well it's specifically the case is California but I don't see why if it was brought up if Los Angeles sorry why if it was brought up you know presumably ICE is going to use this exact same thing in Chicago in whatever you know

name the locality precedent's been set and uh the you know chicago uh acl u will uh will will attempt to enjoin them from using this at in a court and the court that federal court could say oh we're we're not going to abide by uh that ruling because it was specifically to LA but it's unlikely and the event they did that the supreme court probably say like you're purposely ignoring uh our rulings supreme court just did do that actually i can't remember what the case is now off the top my head one of the judges clap back and said you know um it's not our intention to do that but when you make all these rulings that are clearly against precedent and creating new law and you have no explanation for it uh we're a little bit um in capable of

of following what you're, you consider to be precedent. But more on that at a different time. Folks, left reckoning? Do you already say it? I'm losing it. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now.

And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program.

Hey. Fun pack. Matt. What is up, everyone? Fun pack. No, McKee. You did it. Let's go Brandon.

Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappointment. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false. No, I'm sorry. Women?

Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? 7.8? Yes. Hi, me. You're safe?

Yes. Is this neat Is it me? It is you Um Is this me? I think it is you Who is you?

No sound Every single Frickin day What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets And we can discuss capitalism I'm gonna guess my life Libertarians

They're so stupid though Common sense says of course Gobble Deguck We fucking down So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively clovering. I believe 96, I want to say.

857. 210. 35. 5.01. 1 1⁄2. 3-8s. 911 for instance. $3,400.

$1,900. $6.5,4. $3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making me think less. But let me say this. Poop. If you call it satire, Sam goes to satire.

On top of it all, my favorite part of it. About you, it's just like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. All right, folks, folks, folks. It's just the week being weeded out, obviously. Yeah, sundown, guns out. I don't know.

But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Got to jump.

I got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o'clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you?

Love you. Love you. Bye-bye. You know,