The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3698 - Inside The DNC's Dysfunction; Gen Z Revolts In India w/ David Hogg, Biplob Kumar Das

Episode Date: July 29, 2026

It's Hump Day at The Majority Report On today's program: Dr. Anthony Fauci testifies before the Senate Homeland Affairs & Governmental Affairs Committee Hearing and calls out committee chair Sen. Rand Paul for his "unhinged obsession" with him and then invokes the fifth amendment.  As the Republicans focus on relitigating early COVID policy, the country is reeling from outbreaks of cyclospora, salmonella, measles, screwworm and the return of whooping cough and polio. This is all in the wake of DOGE gutting the CDC's programs dedicated to managing such outbreaks.  David Hogg, former DNC vice-chair and president of Leaders We Deserve, joins the show for a conversation about the dysfunction within the DNC. Biplob Kumar Das, investigative reporter joins to discuss his piece published by Drop Site News, "India's Cockroach Protests End as Modi Government Bows to Demands" In the Fun Half: Lindsey Graham's funeral brings out all the biggest demons from Trump to Netanyahu, and the eulogies are as selfish and hilarious as one would imagine them to be. Hannity uses his eulogy to brown nose to Trump. While Trump's remarks centered around how no one like Graham and that he never saw a war he didn't like. Minnesota State Senator John Hoffman says that when he was in the ICU recovering from a shooting, Angie Craig sent over staffers to seek his endorsement for her Senate campaign. As grocery prices rise at a record pace, NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani announces that staple products will be priced at 30% lower than market rate. Rep. Max Miller (R-OH) is accused of horrific abuse towards his wife and children. all that and more. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. 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 AM Quickie 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: FAST GROWING TREES: Get 20% off your first purchase.  FastGrowingTrees.com/majority SUNSET LAKE CBD: Use coupon code "Left Is Best" (all one word) for 20% off of your entire order at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey 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.

It is Wednesday, July 29th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Cedar, and 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, David Hogg, former Democratic National Committee, vice chair, and president of leaders we deserve. will be with us to give us an inside look at the debt and dysfunction at the DNC. And later in the show, Biplaup Kumar Das will join us to discuss India's Genzi protest movement, bringing Modi to heal. Also on the program, Republicans have hauled Dr. Anthony Fauci in for a Senate hearing

where he pled the fifth and got a president. Trump's Iran war continues to spiral. Iran launched missiles of the U.S. base in Jordan the first time since Trump backed off over the weekend. Europe expresses strong disinterest in heating the U.S.'s call to help patrol the Strait of Hormuz. You're back to freedom fries. Trump met with Netanyahu and Zelensky after Lindsey Graham's funeral yesterday. government data reveals that prices for food purchased for your home have risen by 33% since 2019. That is not the typical rate of increase keeping up with inflation.

A vote on Todd Blanche's Attorney General nomination may be postponed. Republicans are unsure if they have the votes due to, you know, that anti-weaponization slush fund. Settlement agreement that they had to walk back. The Senate did vote to confirm Jay Clayton as DNI, however. Federal disclosures show that data center lobbyists have more than doubled since this time last year. Wonder why that is. Trump implements a new rule that could send hundreds of thousands of asylum seekers directly into deportation proceedings without any due process. around 1.4 million pending asylum seekers in this country.

This would impact around a third. Ohio's Republican governor calls Trump's deportations of Haitian migrants a mistake, psyching local businesses upset about their workforce being decimated. And lastly, the administration also is ending billions of dollars in subsidies that help stabilize premiums for Medicare drug plans. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is Hump Day.

Hello, hello. Sam will be back on Friday. We've got a great show for you tomorrow. I'm going to preview that. An in-studio guest that's going to just knock your socks off. Hopefully they don't cancel at the last minute. Knock on one. Hopefully you like a good.

sisters of recently deceased senators. What? Darling. Darling, get your hat in here. Darling, I can't believe that her name is Darleen. I mean, straight out of steel magnolias.

You might notice that the quality of my camera looks good today. And it's because Matt Leck might be a genius. Let's all give a round of applause for Matt Leck, who seems to have figured out the situation with the cameras, golf clap, golf clap. Yeah, let us know how we're looking and sounding today in the chat.

Hopefully there's no downstream effects that I haven't thought through yet of update to the tech that I did last night. But yeah, it should be a little bit clear and we shouldn't have any drops in, say, video quality of people that are in studio with us. Yes. Like Emma, like the hosts. Right, which is a bit important. Kind of important.

Thanks to Matt for fixing that. Let's start here. So Dr. Anthony Fauci, the former head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, who became the villain of the Republicans and of conservatives and the Maha movement during the COVID-19 pandemic because he was in the administration trying to do basic public health. And Republicans were jumping on the anti-vax train. And as well, we're mostly concerned with the idea that workers wouldn't be putting their health on the line to support business owners and capitalism. And so they made it into a culture war issue that a lot of more conspiratorial people have jumped onto.

And it was fertile ground because our public health system is so poor that people only find a feeling of agency and control. in their essentially individualized health choices, which can range from taking certain supplements, taking certain vitamins, looking things up on the internet to make your child or you healthier, which can lead you down rabbit holes. You know, and it can also lead you to being essentially an anti-vaxxer.

It turned what should have been a moment for Americans to a collective, actively come together on this government's responsibility towards everyone's health, just publicly, and it turned it into one of distrust of government and conspiracies, sizing. Which they love. Hey, I mean. Absolutely. There's no demand for like Pfizer or any of these companies to make these vaccines widely available instead, treat them like intellectual property. Exactly. And, and, and they would love the idea that any kind of understanding that our health is, interconnected and that we should have a public health care system is dispersed and made less

relevant by conspiracism because then you can't have a mass mobilization for a movement like Medicare for all, for example, and that's what we need to be combating. From the start of this hearing, Fauci invoked the Fifth Amendment. Here is him doing so. Senator Rand Paul heads the committee where he's testifying the U.S. Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs Committee, because naturally this is all based on their obsession with blaming China for the pandemic, as opposed to, you know, say, like, it being worsened in this country because the president of the United States said it may be a good idea to inject bleach into your body. But here is the beginning of that, these opening statements when Fauci pleads the fifth. This video, I was a good idea.

I skipped. The first minute of this is him going through his resume and his whole career, and it picks up to where he's now getting to Ram Paul. However, given Senator Paul's obvious obsession with calling for my prosecution, his repeated slanderous comments about me, and recently his publicly releasing my unredacted personal diary aimed at embarrassing and intimidating me, the only conclusion I can reach is that the sole reason he is calling me before this committee

is to get me to say something, anything that could vindicate his repeated public pledges that I end up in his words, quote, behind bars, unquote. Any reasonable people, person who has followed his unhinged obsession with me would readily come to the same conclusion. Therefore, although it pains me to do so, because of the respect I have for the legislative branch of government and my decades-long record of cooperating with Congress, under the advice

of my attorneys, I will invoke my right under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution to refrain from answering your questions. Thank you. We are now... Rand Paul then goes on to ask him a bunch of questions. You know, Fauci saved probably thousands of lives, if not millions of lives. Of the people targeted in Trump 2.0 by this administration, he's one of the most sympathetic. Like, you know, I'm not somebody that thinks James Comey is deserving of our sympathy. But Fauci was a lifelong public servant. And, you know, at the beginning of the pandemic,

there are things that you get wrong. Like, we didn't know initially how it was transmitted. Things like gloves were not necessary. And then we knew the true nature of the virus as it came to be. And so the guidance wasn't on point when you look at it now years later, but what it evolved with the information that we received about COVID-19. And when you compare it to this, you remember Peter Navarro? This is the guy that started off as a trade advisor to Trump. And then he suddenly took on this huge role in COVID in early 2020.

But this was the primary advocate for hydroxychloroquine in the administration. and he and Fauci were battling back and forth. When I say that Fauci saved thousands, if not millions of lives, I mean that they could have been, Trump could have been listening to a guy like this who still is quadrupling down on hydroxychloroquine in the year of our Lord 2026. Stuff with science, science Jasmine, I want to emphasize,

tells us now works. He was saying didn't work. I had a million doses of hydroxychloric. in warehouses. I'm sure you did. Defense policy coordinator for the DPA that I was trying to distribute to hospitals and he got the FDA to stop me from doing that. Thousands of people could have be here in this country right now alive if I had been able to distribute that. Take that to the bank. That's what the science says.

Okay, I'm sure we'll be hearing a lot about that. Okay, saying that on C-SPAN, what do you mean moving on from that? hydroxychloroquine there have been large scale, randomized studies that looked into this very thing. Do you think that the big pharma that they rail against that also produces hydroxychloroquine wouldn't have been really excited to sell this product that they didn't even need to spend all of this money on research and development for an MRNA vaccine, that they could have just handed out hydroxychloroquine and people could have taken it prophylactically

and they could have made hand over fist without that other investment? to work, which is the real imperative. That's why they were pushing hydroxychloroquine at the time, saying you can take this as a preventative measure. And then they did these large scale trials and found that it did not have any efficacy. And the FDA had to backtrack on that at this point. And all the antivacs has moved on to ivermectin. We're even talking about hydroxychloroquine anymore. That's the old version.

Well, I mean, Navarro feels wronged, feels like he could have been the same. And isn't that what's important here, Matt? And again, that's the framing, right? It's a government bureaucrat that got in the way of the life-saving pharmaceutical product that could have saved you if the bureaucrat just allowed it. But really, this was about, you know, getting people back to work as fast as possible. And these sorts of fake ivermectin hydroxychloroquine weren't actually suitable to that purpose. And we should put this all in the context that.

these folks are back in power, they feel emboldened, and we're feeling the ramifications of the Trump administration's approach to public health and disease. Currently, we are in the midst of two major outbreaks in the United States. This is the cyclospora outbreak that you're hearing about on the news a lot, the diarrhea parasite essentially. It's been linked to iceberg lettuce, and there have been now at least 11,000 confirmed or suspected cases in the country. 40 states are reporting it, so an overwhelming majority. And it can result in hospitalization for that kind of diarrhea. It's a really serious issue.

And there's this program within the CDC called FoodNet. When Trump came in with Doge and all of that and this new administration, FoodNet, which was... a program under the CDC that partnered with state health departments to track some of this stuff scaled back its mandate essentially to look at pathogens they moved there were eight pathogens that FoodNet was tracking

with these state health departments and they reduced that to just two so it's only E. coli and salmonella meaning cyclospora should have been and would have been, if Trump just kept this in place, being monitored by FoodNet. They made it voluntary. And then you have this. This is reporting from Wired about the cyclospora lab.

We could put this up here. As cases of the diarrhea causing parasite cyclospora rise across the U.S., former employees of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention say the country's response is being severely hampered by personnel cuts at the agency. Amid mass government layoffs last year implemented by President Donald Trump and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, the CDC lab that responds to outbreaks of the parasite cyclospora was downsized from 11 people to just three, according to Joel Barrett,

a molecular parasitologist and associate professor at Emory University School of Medicine who previously led the team. So you see those are two reductions that I just mentioned. They reduced the guidance in terms of pathogens that were monitored in conjunction with state health departments. And then they also just drastically reduced the workforce that was responsible for these kinds of outbreaks. And specifically for cyclospora, it was downsized from 11 people to just three. based on simple math, these outbreak responses, which required rapid, timely responses are going to be greatly diminished. If we could just put this back up on the screen here.

He tells Wired. Cyclospora is just one piece. It's making the news right now, but there are other more dangerous pathogens than cyclospora. He mentions about how he left the CDC voluntarily because of the purges and, you know, maintaining your benefits. Wired reported in October that the CDC reduced its total workforce by about 3,000 employees, roughly a quarter of the agency since January 2025. That number includes layoffs as well as those who accepted the Trump administration's buyout program. The estimate was compiled by the American Federation of Government Employees Local 2883,

which represents CDC workers. And there's also, we didn't even, there's also this Ebola outbreak, right? Sam has been debated Jillian Michaels on the cuts of USAID and those impacts. But like in the DRC right now, there are, there's an outbreak there of Ebola that we have to monitor. And then we turn to measles because the U.S. has already lapped the previous record. since 2000 or since it was essentially measles was declared, eliminated from the United States. 2025 was a record for measles cases,

and right now we're already beating that record in the year 2026. Here is Dr. Peter Hotez speaking to CNN about what the status of measles cases are in the United States and how the U.S. has lost its elimination status, which it declared in 2000, essentially saying that measles has been eliminated from the United States. And so like international public health groups have to downgrade the United States because of how many measles cases there are.

Basically, measles is back. We've lost our elimination status. And that is the first domino to fall because pertussis, woping cough is falling right behind. And those numbers are also huge in terms of coming back. And, of course, the worry is that polio could return. Generally, you know, it's maybe 100 cases or so a year. Then last year, we hit over 2,000 for the first time in decades. And now we're already at that just halfway through the year.

It's happening for the simple reason that not enough parents are vaccinating their kids. They're getting the wrong message that measles is not a bad illness. they forget how that 10, 20 percent of kids require hospitalization with measles. We've had two measles deaths last year among perfectly well kids who, unfortunately, the parents made the decision not to vaccinate them. So measles at risk of losing its elimination status here in the United States. What's the significance of that? It means that hospitalizations are going to be a new normal for measles.

And it's going to mean that parents, you know, who are responsible. are going to have to rethink the safety of their kids in schools. And I'm also worried about parents, especially new parents, with kids, with infants, not yet old enough to be vaccinated. You know, what do you do with a five-month-old, a six-month-old? There's still six months away from getting a measles bat for their first dose of MMR vaccine. It's horrifying. So, and this is kind of promulgating in,

communities where there are low vaccination rates, perhaps some vaccine skepticism, scientific skepticism, and measles is deadly. When he says they're getting the wrong message about measles, RFK Jr. famously said that when he had measles, it was a great weekend of watching TV and all you need is chicken soup and vitamin A. I didn't even know that. Yeah. It kills children. Children are dying.

And even if they don't die from it, it impacts children's immune system for the rest of their lives. Measles. It's incredibly contagious and dangerous. But we want to play around with this now. Three kids died last year. Oh. It's, it, this war on public health here needs to be met with a response that transforms our public health care system so that these, these kinds of charlatans are not able to make a buck out of this.

I mean, there's a whole industry right now that's getting very rich that RFK and his accolites are connected to of alternative medicine that is exploiting people who desperately want some sort of control over their health care. Like the anxiety that moms feel about what's going into their kids' bodies is something that the Democrats should not ignore. It's a very real thing. but it's not because, you know, you're not just taking the right vitamins or whatever or prophylactic hydroxychloroquine.

It's because nobody can afford to go see a doctor, and so they have to fill the gaps with what they're looking up on Google or hearing from RFK Jr. And this impacts the rest of us. I have a shitload of anxieties about medicines, but what appeases it is more regulation. Right. Not to less. And what also probably appeases it or make a lot of it. it easier for you is the fact that you get help you have health care through the VA right like yes and and

and so it takes that anxiety away about emergencies that can result in you know poor decision making without the the the proper information that's available to people it's not just an information issue you know i really do wish that the democrats nationally would remove like would would would make it less about how people need to be educated on this issue this is systemic it's systemic. The education isn't going to take. The adhesive isn't going to take if people aren't prime for it. You need to be empowered through the state. Right. On this stuff, yeah. And what's ironic about all of this is that's what true freedom about your health care would be to not worry about going into medical debt that could destroy all of your savings if you have one adverse health event. Just get some scent on your taint.

Right. I forgot. Yeah, I haven't done that in a while. I know. Behind on my taint side. That's why you've been getting the sniffles. Not enough taint tanning. What's the women's equivalent of that?

I guess it doesn't really matter. They don't look into women's money. Yeah, that's right. That's right. Get around to that in about 40 years. Yeah, yeah. Let's not worry about ED and baldness.

Women's health care. Let's do a trial with 50. different women, or 15 different men, to study, you know, periods or something. In a moment, you will hear our conversation with David Hogg, recorded that an hour or two ago. Great conversation about his inside knowledge about the DNC's dysfunction. But first, a word from one of our favorite sponsors. Did you know fast-growing trees is America's largest and most trusted online nursery with thousands of trees and plants and over two million happy customers, including myself, including

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and learn how to take care of them every step of the way. And that was what was helpful for me, too, because I have to get a house plant that isn't going to be toxic to the cats, want to make sure that it's some, it can be left alone for a while and I don't have to worry about it because I'm not great with that stuff. I'm not a green, I'm not somebody with a green thumb. But fast growing trees takes out all of those questions. Right now they have great deals on planning essentials up to half off on select plants and our audience gets 20% off your first purchase when using the code majority at checkout. That's an additional 20% off better plants and better growing at fast growing dot com using the code majority at checkout fastgrowing trees.com code majority.

Now is the perfect time to plant. Let's grow together. Use majority to save today. Offer is valid for a limited time. Terms and conditions may apply. We'll put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at majority.fm. Get 20% off your first purchase fastgrowing trees.com slash majority. Quick break. And when we come back, you'll hear my conversation with David Hogg. we are back and we are joined now by david hog former democratic national committee vice chair and president of leaders we deserve david thank you so much for coming on the show today thanks so much for having me on of course happy to have you on um and i want to dive into the dysfunction of at the dnc

and the reporting on that but before we do that i think it might be helpful for people to get a refresher on what the democratic national committee even is right like what is the DNC compared to say the DSCC, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, currently headed by Kirsten Gillibrand, or the D-Triple-C, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee as well? What's the DNC-specific function? Well, I'm really glad that you ask this question because I think there, you know, there's plenty of fair criticisms of the DNC, but I actually think a lot of people bundle all of those groups together. So it's a great question to ask.

To start out, you have the DNC that really is the presidential campaign in waiting. They also help manage state and territorial democratic parties. And they help to obviously have the platform of the Democratic Party, the rules of the presidential debate schedule, and super importantly and relevantly, the presidential primary. And then you have them give some money, obviously, to state parties. Occasionally they'll give it to other committees like the D-T-T-T-T-C or the DSCCC, like you mentioned. And the D-Tri-C's number one goal is winning back a House majority for Democrats. So they're the group that many House Democrats will pay dues into on the order of several hundred thousand to millions of dollars to help win back the House majority.

And then you have the DSCC, which is just like the D-Triple-C, but for winning back a Senate majority for Democrats, where they will work directly. Both the D-TCC and the D-SCCC work directly with candidates, talking to them, advising them. and not always, but most of the time, are investing in red to blue races that are critical to us flipping key states and key House districts in order to win back those majorities. So if you want to think about it this way, the DNC is really around. It's just like in some ways the D-Trip or the DSEC, but for the presidential. They're supposed to be the campaign in waiting. And then you have the other committees that focus on the House and Senate. Although, I will say, to be fair, it's as, you.

you know, you accurately lay out all of the differences. They are still all three right now plagued by the same kind of malaise, where voters don't have trust in any of these institutions within the Democratic Party. And individual candidates are doing well in terms of fundraising with small dollar contributors. But the candidates that the DSCC and the DCC have endorsed have not had a hit rate like they had previously. The more populous candidates are challenging them effectively. and people seem to have more trust in individual Democrats than they do in any of the democratic institutions.

I mean, to be honest with you, can you really blame them after they... I'm not blaming them at all. Yeah, right. After we saw a horrific presidential election where we elected Donald Trump for the second time and the establishment's response was, you know, at least on the DNC's front,

that they're going to do an autopsy, that then they couldn't even include any of the actual issues that decided the election, and then they couldn't even include a conclusion. People are tired of being told, don't worry, we're going to put a different color of lipstick on the pig this time. And that's going to win back voters instead of actually addressing the pig, if you will. Right. Can you talk about that?

I mean, we covered this maybe a month or so ago. Ken Martin, the embattled current leader of the Democratic National Committee was on Pod Save America and was repeatedly questioned by John Favro about his leadership. and the autopsy that was supposed to come out about how the Democrats lost once again to Donald Trump, eventually they released it, and it seemed to raise more questions than answers. What happened there, David? Well, to be honest with you,

I can only speculate as to what happened because I was at the DNC for a couple of months and then I obviously started talking about the necessity of bringing in fresh blood, which then resulted in them. I would argue conveniently finding an issue with the election. Kicking out fresh blood because you suggested fresh blood, that makes sense. Pretty much.

Anyways, I think what happened is that Ken Martin ran for DNC chair because for people that, I think there's a lot of people that don't understand how that process works either. There's 450 DNC members that are from different state parties, state party chairs, etc. That vote on who the DNC chair is. And when Ken was running for that position, One of the main things he ran on was releasing an autopsy that would hopefully address some of the reasons why people are increasingly not interested in supporting these institutional groups like the DNC to offer any form of accountability. So at the DNC in our first meeting, a major part of what we were talking about was what is going to go into this autopsy.

And I remember bringing up in this meeting and saying, I know a lot of it, and this was with all the officers, including Ken where I said, I know a lot of you guys probably don't want to talk about this. but if you're going to talk about why we lost young voters, you have to talk about Gaza. You have to talk about inflation. And I remember on the Gaza part in particular, to my surprise, the officers were like, yeah, no, no, no, no, we absolutely do want to talk about that. We need to talk about that. It's really important, and we shouldn't shy away from it. And then Ken's friend, Paul Rivera, who he hired to do this job, I think what happened is he was doing such a terrible job of it that Ken just told him, stop, this isn't working, it's not worth your time, just stop working on it entirely.

And then Ken was pressured on doing the thing that he actually ran on doing, which was releasing the autopsy. And then it ended up being released where none of the issues that actually decided the election were talked about, whether it was Gaza, inflation, or Joe Biden's age. It was just a bunch of internal mechanics

and zero conversation around the issues. And also, it couldn't even include a conclusion to begin with. I think that's what really happened there. And it's emblematic of broader challenges that Ken has had in his leadership of the institution. We're now at a position where the RNC has over $100 million on hand, and the DNC has $2 million in debt,

18 months into Ken's term. Your job as a chair of the DNC is to raise money. And now we're seeing not only can he not raise money, and he's been able to continue to not raise money, he's also throwing his phone at staff, which is certainly not going to help morale. And ultimately, what we need to focus on is what are we actually doing to move?

for it because I think part of what's happening here is a lot of these institutions have focused on just purely looking at fundraising. That's all that really matters to them a lot of the time is for candidates, like who they take seriously, who can raise money. And sometimes that can be a good indicator, but it doesn't really take into account candidate quality. I think a lot of the time we could win races if we had higher quality candidates, even if they didn't come from backgrounds where they had tons of wealthy friends that they could raise money from, if they actually presented a vision that people actually believe it. Because imagine if we didn't have to spend nearly as much money, gaslighting voters with corporate PAC money that were there for their interests and instead actually were there

for their interests. It's a novel concept, David. And I want to talk about the debt that the DNC is in that you spoke about there, comparing it as well to the Republican War Chess. But I just want to ask you a follow up about this autopsy. That's new information to me, essentially, that it it read as incomplete and that's because it was incomplete. But Martin went on Potsie of America and claimed that the report wasn't even commissioned and that it was done for free, for example. Like that was what the implication was, if I'm remembering correctly. Is that the case?

Well, there was a report that they wrote that they did release and you can go out there and read it. There is literally, it's annotated as well. And you can see there is not even a conclusion that's included in it. And when it came out and Ken was like, you know, this, I'm not really proud. of this but here you go. I'm going to put it out there because everybody's telling me that I actually need to come through on the promise that I ran on doing in the first place, God forbid, and act like it's some huge problem when it's like, Ken, you did this to yourself, you put yourself

in this position. You ran on releasing an autopsy that nobody forced you to do, but this was the main thing that you ran on and you haven't been able to do it. And then he released it. And it didn't even include a conclusion. People can go out there and read it. It's free of available. Yeah, it's just amazing to me that you would begin this attempt at a fact-finding mission to understand how we got to this moment and then abandon it because, I don't know, the facts are a little bit inconvenient for what leadership wants out there. This is not, you have to be able to look at the game tape from the loss from last week or you're not going to be able to adjust in the future. This is just basic politics stuff. But the fact that their resources are so strained, I wanted to ask you about that more because, you know, back in the 08 days, right, there was a lot of criticism about Obama and Obama for America, his organization that didn't really, after he won in the 2008 election, fold the campaign infrastructure into the DNC. He had his kind of own separate entity that a lot of critics said was sapping resources away from the Democratic National Committee and that it was very focused and around kind of Obama and his cadre of consultants.

And, you know, I remember that Hillary Clinton in 2016 was in part paying the DNC's bills as well. Like they were in financial straits in 2016. How much of this and this also contributed to the weakening of state. parties across the country. How much of this is still in the shadow of, you know, Obama for America, the party's inability on the national level to raise this money? To be honest with you, there are many people inside of the DNC that will say exactly what you just said and blame everything on Obama and say he's the reason why the DNC is in this position in the first place. Like, that is over a decade ago at this point, even if we were saying, you know, like that was still a problem going

all the way up to 2016. That's over a decade. ago. This is a problem that does not, regardless of how many problems that created for the D&C, Obama has not been president since 2016. It's been a decade. And that should not result in them having $2 million in debt. Any basic level of competence would result in them not being in this position that they are in right now. And I think what the bigger problem is and why, like, I think it's important to think about, well, why did Obama feel it was necessary to organize outside the D&C's infrastructure and outside of state parties. Let's remember he ran in some ways

as an anti-establishment candidate, right? And these institutions don't really want to change. They want to keep everything as similar as possible to keep the same people in their positions of power, even if it is collectively detrimental to the future of those institutions. And I think I would presume when Obama saw that,

granted I was eight years old in 2008, to take this as a grain of salt, that when he saw that, he thought, you know what, instead of trying to go and clear house and do all the dealing with all the DNC members and everything like that, we're just going to go and build our own thing. And this is the problem with institutions that are 178 years old. Naturally, they do not really want to change. And there's a

lot of incentives internally to try to keep them the same, even if it is collectively detrimental. And that's the bigger problem in D.C. We have a system where there is literally hundreds of millions and billions of dollars on the line that is predicated on the idea of the political, you know, consultant industrial complex of keeping everything the same so that people can keep taking corporate money, keep getting richest consultants off their TV buys and everything like that, instead of actually addressing why do we need to spend so much money on these campaigns to begin with? And the answer to that is because people, we have to spend a lot of money gaslighting people as a party because increasingly we are not voting in their interests.

And I've had conversations like this with people inside of the establishment before where I've said they've had issues with our candidates that leaders we deserve because they reject corporate PAC money and they say, well, you don't understand. And like sometimes candidates just need to take that corporate pack money. And my response to that is, don't you think maybe if we didn't vote for such bad policies and we were able to actually say what we truly believed in, regardless of what these special interests think, that maybe we wouldn't need as much money to gaslight the American people to believe that we're for them and that their lives are increasingly getting better when every single statistics shows us that that is not the case?

Yeah. There's so much there. One, you mentioned, well, The this corporate PAC money, too, there's a question also have had like the Democrats decide to deploy resources in primaries to keep the left out and the Republicans sit on their war chests and we'll get to that in the second. But you touched on something that I have been railing about for months at this point, which is the consultant class being overrepresented in our press to go after campaigns that have an infrastructure that is anathema to their ability to make money where they are, it's a canvas. type campaign. It's a campaign that's built on volunteer work. It's campaigns that aren't taking corporate PAC money that don't have the ability to commission these consultants and they don't get their big digital and TV commissions, right? Where that is where they make their money. Can you

shed some light on the infrastructure of consulting within the Democratic Party and why, say like an Abdul al-Sayyag campaign or, you know, other campaigns that are more focused on grassroots organizing have caused them to kind of freak out and they go on cable news and I'm like, this person's a consultant and they're not disclosing that they're crapping all over this leftist campaign, which would be if this kind of campaigning took over the party, they would be made irrelevant, would they not, David? Well, I think there's always going to be some role. So long as we don't have substantial campaign finance reform and even in the world that we do,

there will be some level of consultants that are involved just because of the natural incentives that are created by campaigns where they're very boom and bust where people are then it's a rough life cycle for and i think it's the problem on frankly that the democratic party should work on in the long term of how do we build sustainable infrastructure so that people are not burning themselves out working on these campaigns and then working for nine months and then not having a job for six to nine months after that and going through that cycle because you create an incentive where people naturally are just going to want to become part of that consultancy system once they get a certain level of seniority, and that advice can be useful. But I think the bigger

problem is, especially lower on the ballot, when candidates are taken advantage of, and they don't know that because it's their first time running, because our party doesn't provide the infrastructure to them to say, hey, you know, here's standard rates of like what is generally reasonable for a consultant to be paid if you're going to hire somebody that's not, you know, for example, there's a, and this is part of why what we do at leaders we deserve is so important. We have, I like to call ourselves like anti-consultants in some ways and that we both give you advice and we will give you money. And we're not incentivized to tell you to keep spending money on your campaign or keep spending money on TV ads if your campaign is going nowhere because we're investing a substantial amount.

And that enables us to be able to tell candidates like one of them who called us recently, not one that we're working with, but one that we're considering working with next election cycle who's just getting set up. He said, hey, there's this consultant who called me that wants to charge me like a commission of 40% of all the money that I raised. that's pretty unreasonable, right? And we were able to say, yeah, don't sign that contract. Whereas with other consultants, they may just be like, yeah, you know, whatever, it's fine. I'm going to make my cut and it doesn't really matter if that makes sense.

Yes, it makes total sense. It's also just, I'm just putting a fine point on that the way that somebody can campaign can literally make a consultant less money, right? That's just, we just hammering that, I think, is important because it's, people can have some media literacy when they're hearing a talking head say something, you know, very critical of a left-wing campaign, then then you realize what the underlying infrastructure is. So I appreciate you fleshing that out a bit. Let's get back to the debt here. The DNC's $2 million in debt earlier this week, notice reported that the Democratic National Committee was forced to put its physical headquarters up as collateral because they needed a $15 million line of credit so that they could work on

investing in the elections and that means that they are $2 million in debt in addition to the New York Times piece that showed Ken Martin throwing his phone in a fit of anger, his belief that he's a certain dead kind of a dead man walking within the organization

just talk a bit about the dead and the dysfunction generally which has spilled over into the press recently. I mean it's an incredibly dysfunctional organization and the fact that we're having to put the building up as collateral is not a product just of, it's not a product just of, uh, the, the overall environment,

right? It's important to remember, Republicans are not popular right now. That is, it's not like everybody loves them and that's why people are not giving money to the DNC or other parts of the Democratic establishment. It's because the Democratic establishment lacks two things more than anything else. Courage and a vision for what to do. That is anything other than saying, well, we're not Republicans. We've done that for the past 10 years. We've got to show people who we actually are. And I think the problem is in order for us to actually be able to secure a majority, it's going to require our political party to embrace candidates that don't make donors happy a lot of the time, or don't make special interests happy that they are not fans of that those consultants are directly,

their livelihoods are directly threatened by if they're not able to raise as much campaign cash for these candidates like Zoron, for example, where, I've seen this up close and personal where I, you know, I've had, uh, I saw major donors go out there and say, uh, to us who had supported us previously, you know, I, I, I, we need to go and win young back, win young people back, right? And then we go and support Zoron. We spend $300,000 supporting him in his primary. And I get a call from that same major donor that's like, yeah, I'm not going to give you, you know, this six figures because I don't agree as your candidates anymore, even though Zoron got three times the voter turnout of 18 to 24 yields. But the reason I was able to tell that donor to take a hike, is because 80% of our money at leaders we deserve comes from people that give less than $1,000 to the organization. That enables us to be able to put our principles first. And it's because we have that grassroots support because we have a vision for the future of this party.

And what Democrats are doing over and over again is engaging in a race to the bottom where they hope that Republicans screw over the American people so much that people come back to us begging for any alternative. That's not leadership. That's a disaster. That's what we're doing right now. It's a race to the bottom and we need a real vision for the future of this country.

And thankfully, while the establishment is in debt, at leaders we deserve, we're in the black. And the progressive movement is in the black. We are winning. We are increasingly winning over and over and over again. And I think that's why so many of these consultants and other people are freaking out is because they know the gig is up. They, like, we are, we have real infrastructure.

This isn't 2016, right? Where it's only just Bernie Sanders movement. We have shows like yours. We have new media. We have new candidates. minutes. We have a generation that has been inspired by Bernie Sanders, that has been inspired by a lot of progressive leaders that are rising up and are now old enough to run for office and say, you know what, we're not going to continue doing things the same way anymore. And the establishment has been so

addicted to enabling geriatric leaders and continuing to have them there for decades that they're literally dying in power. And they don't know what to do about it because that vacuum is being filled by progressive leaders. Just a few more questions before I let you go, David. You know, So the What's his name? Carville, right. James Carville, your old friend, came out and said that you should lead the DNC,

which is quite astonishing, given the fact that you guys have sparred quite a lot. Quite a lot. What do you make of that? I mean, even Carville's recognizing that there needs to be a change, huh? I mean, Emma, think about it this way.

Let me put it in a different way. Carville, less than a year ago, was calling me a twerk. for engaging in primaries and challenging people that are dying in power and asleep with the wheel Democrats. I'm sure that really hit hit you in the heart twerp. That's just absolutely devastating. Yeah, it really was crushing.

But less than a year later, the DNC is such a mess that he's saying that I should be the person leading it. And there are a lot of things that James Carville and I disagree on, including the idea that I should be chair of the DNC. I do not think that I should be. And also I think that it's pretty clear. what the members of the DNC think of me and how they don't really want to hear

what I have to say. I tried to change it from within. And now we're doing it on the outside with leaders we deserve to help elect that next generation. But the fact that James Carville was able to go from twerp to saying somebody who is a twerp should now be the chair of the DNC in less than a year is a testament to how bad things are right now. Yeah. Yeah, it really is.

An actual last question here. The Democratic Party primary calendar that is right now being hotly debated. Biden and his association with, like, frankly, a very elderly and ineffective Southern Democratic Party machine, push South Carolina to the front of the primary calendar, also as a way to foreclose any debate about him being the nominee. We all saw how that worked out.

And now Nevada is also trying to jockey as well to be the first state in the process instead of Iowa and New Hampshire, which are two very white states that, you know, like, Buttigieg did quite well in Iowa for, you know, Bernie and him got close to winning that state last time. And he ended up completely flaming out after that. So I understand the impulse to pick a state that is more representative of the diversity in the coalition. But what do you make of this fight? Like, what is this fight really about Nevada versus South Carolina in the prime? primary calendar. You know, I think that there's some different sides of this, but I think ultimately what gets lost in that is that regardless of what the primary calendar is, we need to just run the best candidates that we can and figure out how to win because inevitably we need to show that even if the establishment, for example, thinks that they, I think there are some people who believe that us picking South Carolina

as a way of stomping down on progressives and making harder for them to win, I think we need to figure out obviously how to win in the deeper self. we have great candidates like Justin Pearson, who are doing great work in the South. We have candidates like Rua Roman in Georgia. We have candidates like Akbar Ali in Georgia. We have candidates all over the place that are progressives in the South.

And time and time again, we see throughout American history that some of the most successful social movements and progressive movements that start in our country, start in the crucible of so much injustice that happens across the South, especially with what we're seeing right now with redistricting that's happening.

And I want to see somebody who can go out there and win regardless of what those states are based off of their vision and expanding the electorate and really exciting people. Because I don't think that just the primary calendar in and of, if the primary calendar in and of itself is totally determinative of who's going to end up being the nominee, I don't think that that's going to be the, there would be other reasons why somebody as a progressive candidate doesn't succeed. If it's just because of the, if it's just because of the sequence of states that are in the primary calendar, I don't think a strong candidate, is actually going to be that affected by it.

And it speaks to the necessity of us making sure that as progressives, we feel the strongest candidate that we can for the Democratic primary. Yeah, absolutely. And we've seen historically even with Iowa and New Hampshire being first, that's not determinative of who the candidate ends up being. I guess my just one final question is, are you concerned at all that if South Carolina is the first primary date, essentially for the presidential pick,

that we're kind of retreating to, to the Biden infrastructure and Jamie Harrison's leadership and it being centered, centered down there where they've really let us wrong in many ways. You know, I think that this is going to be driven a lot more by the candidates, to be honest with you. Like, Jamie Harrison is not chair of the DNC anymore. And sure, there's obviously across the deep south,

there's always like these bigger political machines that happen and everything. But there are going, regardless of the sequence, like I said, of the states that are out there, I think it could say even more if we did win South Carolina. And it presents a potentially bigger challenge for progressives in some ways, but I think it could present a bigger opportunity. If we believe, if the establishment and the media believe that the cards are stacked

against us in that state and there is a progressive that goes and wins the primary there, because things are going so bad. And the establishment is going to do what they have done, which has continued to fail over and over and over again to do anything to stand up to Donald Trump in any form other than a strongly worded letter, I think that is going to help to power us to victory. But what I will say is the primaries

that really do matter right now are some of the final ones that we have coming up across the country for 2026. I want to make sure that people are not sleeping on a great candidate, a great progressive who's running in Patrick Roth up in Boston, who's running against one of the most conservative

Democrats in Congress, Stephen Lynch, who's voted to thank ICE and voted to give ICE billions of more dollars and then say, oh, no, no, this is so terrible after Americans are gunned down by the ICE agents that he is giving more funding to. Patrick's a voting rights attorney, and he's a staunch progressive that we absolutely need to get more support behind. And there's not a whole lot of conversation about him right now, but we're doing everything we can to get him elected and defeat Stephen Lynch as an ultra-conservative Democrat. Who, by the way, when he was at a protest talking, when Stephen Lynch was at a protest talking about what he's doing to fight back against Trump, somebody said, you need to do more to fight back against him.

Stephen Lynch's response in his video of this was to say, I'm the member of Congress. You're not the member of Congress. I am. If you want to make this decision, you run, but I'm the member of Congress. That was his response to a Democratic constituent saying you need to do more to fight back against Donald Trump.

That is the type of entitlement. We need way less than the Democratic Party. We're proud of backing Patrick because of that. And more importantly, and more and sooner, we have Donovan McKinney, who is the first incumbent challenger that we endorse. in our primary efforts to challenge incumbents, who's running against one of the worst Democrats that we have in Congress,

who's so bad that even his own fellow Democrats don't like him and are going on the record saying he won't be Mr. asking who he is. His name is Shri Tandadar, and we have to defeat him with Donovan McKinney, who is a staunch progressives leader. And then we also have My Vang, who's going to be running in November against Democrat Doris Matsui, who's been there between her and her husband, 47 years. and it's taken millions of dollars in corporate cash over and over and over again,

and Mike can win that race. But to do all of that, we need people's support, obviously, Emma, because like I said, we don't back candidates just based off of what a donor wants us to do. We back candidates that younger people and people of all ages can really believe in. It can build a better Democratic Party. And my ask of people would be if they can support our work at leaders we deserve because we rely pretty much entirely on small dollar contributions to support our work. And that enables us to have the independence to do with the establishment

is needed to work for a long time, but is refused to, which is backing truly progressive candidates that will reject the influence of corporate PAC money and special interests in our elections. And if people want to support us, they can just go to Leaders We Deserve.com. And we will put a link to Leaders We Deserve down below wherever people are listening to or watching this. Yes, and I'm on the site now. I'm glad that you mentioned some candidates that are coming up. Donovan McKinney in Michigan, of course, is a Leaders We Deserved candidate. You mentioned Justin Pearson in Tennessee, which is also a... primary that's next week. That's not getting

a kind of attention. Patrick, because it's not on the same day. It's on a Thursday. Patrick Roth as well in Massachusetts. And then of course, you have these candidates in California, Vegas, Mai Vang, as well, who are going to be going up in the general election. But people can go to the website

to check it out. David Hogg, really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. And you can support leaders we deserve. Once again, link down below. Thank you, guys. Thanks. are back and we are joined now by Biplaub Kumar Das, investigative reporter here to discuss his piece published by Dropsite News, India's cockroach protests end as Modi government bows to demands.

Biplob, thanks so much for coming on the show today. Thank you, Emma. A big fan of the show and glad to be here. Glad to have you and thank you so much for the kind words. Over the weekend, hundreds of thousands of protests cropped up all across. across India led by students calling themselves the cockroach movement. And they had success at pressuring Narendra Modi's government. But I want to back up for just a second before we get to these more recent developments. Could you give people a sense of where India's government is right now?

Modi took a little bit of a hit in recent years in terms of his overall past. power in the government, right? Like I believe in the last elections, they were not as advantageous as they anticipated, but still his grip on power being in power for so long as well, has, you know, he sustained himself in spite of some of those setbacks. Yeah, absolutely. So what has happened in India in recent years is that, Narindra Modi, the Prime Minister, has had absolutely consolidated power,

and his Hindu nationalist party, which is the Bharatiya Janta Party, the BJP, their right-wing Hindu nationalist and unabashed about it, right? What you said is right, he has been in power since 2014 when he won in a wave election, right, here. Like he was really popular, and he won a landslide majority in 2014. he won a landslide majority in 2019 again. But in 2024, because of public, like, you know, dissatisfaction with how things were going, we saw that his numbers like went down, like this number of seats that he got in this parliament went down. He was able to form a government only through coalition.

His party alone did not win a majority in 2024. But since then, what has happened is that he has doubled down his concerns. of power by being even more unabashed in terms of institutional capture, in terms of how elections are conducted in the country. And many states across India are like key states, such as a Bengal, which used to be a bastion of resistance against this politics, kind of switched over to the BJP earlier this year, in fact. And the problem with this, this is that what often goes unacknowledged globally is that although India is the largest democracy, is widely considered as the largest democracy in the world.

We are seeing questions around how elections are conducted. Like, there are increasing accusations of electoral malpractices, and that accusations around that the BJP and Modi's government are kind of tweaking. Like, there is immense gerrymandering happening in many states. and the fact that election commission might be compromised, which is a neutral institution, which was widely trusted by India's public. So that's the context in which this current protest,

which is widely now known as the cockroach protests, right, in India, that kind of emerged. So that is a great recap to where we are at right now, to give us context for where we're at right now. then let's just turn to this weekend. This movement, the newly formed a cockroach janta party, which is playing on the BJP, the party that you just mentioned, the fascist Hindu nationalist or far-right Hindu nationalist party that Narendra Modi heads. So they're the C-JP with the cockroach janta party. This is largely led by Gen Z. These are student protesters.

How did this movement start and what happened over the weekend? Yeah. So first and foremost, again, like I have to mention that there is also public dissatisfaction, right? There is high amount of unemployment. Data on unemployment is not available, you know, because the government is suppressing it. We have seen instances of them kind of trying to not reveal what the data is, so we don't even know often. But independent data suggests that unemployment rates are really high.

So the youth is dissatisfied, is like widely felt, you know, reporting from here. So how this came about was in May the Chief Justice of India, Suryakant, in a Supreme Court hearing, man said something on the lines that a certain section of the youth of the country are like cockroaches, they are unemployed, some of them freelance, some of them become activists, and they are only like, you know, filing for the right to information, which is like the FOIA version of like India, right? The RTI, you know, they are always filing these RTIs, wanting to know what's happening, but they don't actually have any job.

So he said something on those lines. And then a certain guy who was sitting in Boston at the time, his name is Abhijit Tipke. He is from Boston. He graduated from Boston University, and he was pursuing his post-grad master's there at the time. this year in May, he tweeted something on the lines of, what if all the cockroaches come together, right?

And when he tweeted that, he got incredible response. Millions of people, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of people responded within, like, hours, and millions of people started, like, engaging with that tweet. And then he sent it on the form asking, like, you know, how about we make a cockroach junta party? Like, you know, as you mentioned, a play on BJP, right? And millions of people started supporting.

He created a profile on Instagram and on Twitter on X. And within weeks, the Instagram profile kind of outnumbered the number of engagement that the BJP gets, right? The CJP's Instagram profile. So we kind of like, I was closing, I was back in New York at the time as well. But like I was closely kind of like, you know, tracking this. And it was pretty interesting. But it was still, we were still wondering what. would it lead to? So what happened next was around the same time, the main issue around this

protest, right, which is paper leaks. There was this medical entrance test that happens every year for admissions into medical schools in the country, publicly owned medical schools. They're highly competitive. Millions of students appear for it like every year. That's high pressure and there are only so many seats that are available. So, The examination got leaked just before the exams were due. So students who appear for the exam were told that you will have to appear for it again, which means that the entire ordeal of like this high pressure environment where you have to like prepare for these exams, you have to repeat that entire ordeal,

which means, you know, sustained, enduring mental stress and anxiety for these young kids who are just, you know, 16, 17, just out of high school, right? they are preparing to go to med school, and they have been preparing for this moment for the last two, three years, perhaps. So the CJP took up that issue and began their protest around June, in fact. But it sought traction over the last couple of weeks because of, because few activists, few leaders of this movement, like went on a hunger strike, number one. And then number two on July 28, which was last Monday, the CJP leaders, They called for a nationwide, they called for a march to the parliament. And they said that everyone, you come here, will march to the parliament.

It will demand one thing, which is the resignation of the education minister because he is responsible for the leaks of this med school entrance test, right? And this was not the only paper league, by the way. There have been rampant, like, you know, instances of paper leak, which is really a sign of the government not being able to assure that, you know, fair examinations happen and the kids get their fair share of their hard work, right? So July 20 is on last Monday when the March the parliament was called thousands of tens of thousands of students flew in to Delhi and the police backlash was incredibly like harsh and it was unseen in many years the way that the police responded to these protocols.

And these are, mind you, these are like Gen Z, right? These are like 18, 19-year-old kids who for the first time are expressing their freedom of speech, like expressing dissent against their own government and demanding the government that they do right by them. But instead are getting beaten up by patents, tear gasped, and in some instances, pallet guns were used that left like, you know, permanent disabilities on some people. there are video evidence of young women being slapped by male officers, some young women who were being hit in the private parts by male officers with patents, like, you know, ridiculous stuff that kind of video evidence that got widely shared.

But what the government did not know that this generation is very internet savvy, right? They are internet native and they can use Instagram. And their brutalities were being live broadcasted. and which infuriated even more people. And that led to a wave of people joining in at the site in Delhi, which is Jantramantar, where I was reporting from last week. And that kind of led to a pressure against the government that was unprecedented. In Modi's time, I guess there had only been two other protests that kind of saw this amount of traction in the past. but this was really like shrewk,

rattled the government the way that students poured into the protest side. Yeah, I had read, and I'm not sure if this is, you know, fully accurate. I'm learning as you're telling me that this is the first time in Modi's tenure that a minister like this has been forced to resign outside of, you know, just staffing changes at his behest. This has been because of outside pressure, which is not something that Modi likes to cave to. He is a strong man or tries to portray himself as a strong man. And I also saw that, of course, Modi and the BJP are calling these protesters Muslims.

So that's been their response to all of this, basically. Yeah, absolutely. First of all, yes, Modi is not known to take criticism kindly, right? He doesn't back down. And often when he is criticized. or someone demands something like, you know, from the government, he kind of double downs on his own action, right? So this hyper-masculine, like, you know, Hindu nationalist image that he has built

has been the reality on the ground as well. And Muslims have, you know, protested in 2019. There was a big protest and pretty successful at kind of mobilizing Muslims around the country against the citizenship law that would have kind of put a question mark on the citizenship of Muslims around the country, really. That was the anxiety at least. There were big crackdowns against Muslims around the time. And then there was another farmer's protest around 2020 and 2021,

which was primarily led by the Sikh farmers from the Sikh community in Punjab in India, primarily from Punjab in India, which also saw an immense amount of anti-Sikh rhetoric. So every time there's a protest of this scale, the government finds a way to narrativeize it or polarize it across religion and tries to kind of retain its Hindu majoritarian kind of movement. And this protest as well, they try to do that by pointing out that, oh, there are some Muslim protesters and sections of the government's BJP leaders in the BJP tried to do that. But the issue was too big. Too many people kind of saw it as a real issue and the crackdowns as brutal. But I must say even now, across many states in India, Muslims are being targeted as being related to this protest or co-organizing this protest. But largely what we see is that government on the back foot, they are being defensive.

right now, they know that their own base, some of the people of their own Hindu nationalist base are also seeing that this government hasn't worked for them really, right? So that's where we at right now. Yeah. And how does the solidarity that these young people have with Gaza play into this, with the Palestinian cause? We've seen that Narendra Modi and his government have cozied up to Israeli Prime Minister and Benjamin Netanyahu and the Israeli government. In recent years, they both share a hatred of Muslim people. And so young people are not happy with that. And that played into this as well.

Yeah. I must say that the primary focus of the protest was education and the issue of education and demanding reforms in the education system. But when I went there, when I was at the protest side, to all these people would come in. And these were like, kids were like just taking the train, fought with their parents to be at the protest side in Delhi, right? And they were just sleeping on the sidewalks, like just on a piece of cloth,

like, you know, just with a backpackers like a pillow, right? And they were like there for like weeks. A lot of them, when I spoke to them, were actually very well versed in the politics of the world. These are educated young kids who just are facing an uncertain future, right? And they are also like, there were kids who were talking about, about like stuff like Gaza. There were students who wore the kifir around them.

They were talking about the genocide. They were talking about genocide because they saw that, you know, on Instagram, these are kids who are on Instagram all the time, right? You know, they interacted with, you know, reels of the genocide being broadcasted on the internet, right? And the fact that there was solidarity. They expressed solidarity with, like, young students, the fact that young Palestinians in Gaza had to, like, you know, see their colleges being fully, like, flattened as a result of genocide.

They felt the same kind of empathy and solidarity towards them. So the kids who were at the protest side, although the leaders of the CJP itself were kind of, like, you know, controlling the narrative around the protest or strategic, being strategic about how to demand, how to go about their demands, with the government, but the protesters on the ground were very well-versed, very well-advocated, and that's kind of what has given hope across, like, progressives around the country, that this could be how we go about, like, you know, resisting this government, that even though there is, like, deep mistrust of the election commission, of elections, of the government, and we don't know if this will reflect on electoral outcomes, right? We don't, it's uncertain if BJP is actually going to be affected.

They seem like such a behemoth in when it comes to elections. There's such a machine. But the politics of the streets could be transformed. And the politics of the streets could what is what could give hope to people across country. Well, this has been super illuminating. Really appreciate your time today, Biplaab Kumar Das. You can read his piece at Dropside News, India's cockroach protests, and as Modi government bows to demands.

We will be monitoring this story and appreciate your time today. Thanks so much. Thank you, Emma. Thank you so much. Of course. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun part of the program where we'll probably take some calls.

We shall see. We will read your IMs for sure. We're going to put the fun in funeral. Oh, my God. You know, we don't need to do too much to have fun when we're talking about Lindsay Graham's death it's kind of in and of itself

a bit of a celebratory event but Trump and the Republicans and Sean Hannity and the other attendees have made it even more humorous somehow thanks to everybody we recognize that the levels were a little off in the interview we'll work on that

we're you know getting the tech right here so at least we look clear I think the show looked pretty good today. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning and with the Jacobin show? Yeah, Left Reckoning had Aram Brown on the program yesterday to talk about

Elon Musk did a long sit down with the Economist magazine. And I think it's really embarrassing for the entire world that he's the richest man in it and is so full of shit. Yeah, actually, you're embarrassing. Everyone hates you, everyone loves me, actually. And I don't care if I'm hated, but everyone loves me. Do you see the Twitter followers?

I got so many Twitter follows. So yeah. Check that out. We went deep into it. It was 80 minutes long. And he's the psycho that he, people, the question is like, okay, Elon, how are your business is ever going to make money? And his literal answer is the AI Jesus is going to take over.

They, I Jesus is my term for it, is going to take over and do all. all of that stuff. And so you don't need to worry about it. We're going to have such abundance because of AI that who cares about money? We don't even talk about raising my taxes because what is money? What does money even mean? He was saying this to the Economist magazine? Yes.

A magazine that's existed for long enough for Karl Marx to have similar problems with it that I do. And, uh, yeah. It seems like you care about money. It seems like you care. little bit about money. Well, that's the thing is like, well, and she's like, okay, if money doesn't matter and it's just, we're going to have such abundance that what is money anyway, do you think you should pay more taxes and his response as well? First of all, I do pay a lot of taxes. Yeah, there you go. So it sounds like it matters a little bit.

Folks, like the stream. Why don't you do that? Get into people's feeds. That's free. But if you want to become a paid member, join the majority report.com. It keeps us alive and thriving in times where, you know, Stephen Miller, Marco Rubio, Trump are circulating memos about targeting leftist groups and individuals, including our colleague and friend, Hassan Piker. So if you want to try to keep us resilient from third-party platforms, join the Majority Report.com. Yeah, pre-fund the inevitable lawsuit that tries to keep us all in business. Oh, my God. how could you say such a thing How could I voice my number one concern

over the past like decade? You got to do it in an artful way. Yes, that is concerning. Anyway, let's not think about it right now. Join the majority report.com, if possible. Okay, folks, see you in the fun half. In a second. Okay, Emma, please.

Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, what? Look, Sam was unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World. So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday.

I think you need to take over for Sam. Yes, police. Sir, I'm gonna, I'm gonna pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why. So it's offered a tour, sushi, and poker with the boys. And what you did to Tim Poole was mean.

Free speech. That's not what. we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. I'm sorry, I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys.

Lodzik, twerk. I'm not trying to be a dip right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. Twirp? That's a thing. Willie Walker.

That's a real thing. It has like the weight of the world on the shoulders. Hogger and more. It was so much easier. When the majority report was just you, you were happy. Let's change the subject. Now, shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

That's one of the most difficult parts about this show. This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet. Left is best. Violet twerk. The winner-teamble. The wind song. I bumbler.

Emma Viglin. one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period.