2448 - Is Trump Crashing The Economy?; NYC Organizes For Rent Freeze w/ Hal Singer, Cea Weaver

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode: 2448 - Is Trump Crashing The Economy?; NYC Organizes For Rent Freeze w/ Hal Singer, Cea Weaver
Release Date: March 6, 2025
Host: Sam Seder
Description: An engaging analysis of current political and economic issues, featuring expert interviews and in-depth discussions.

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1. Introduction

The episode begins with Emma Vigeland introducing the main topics of the day: the economic impact of former President Donald Trump's policies and New York City's efforts to implement a rent freeze. Notably, the show highlights significant federal job cuts under Trump and the resulting economic instability.

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2. Trump's Economic Policies and Their Impact

Guest: Hal Singer, Economics Professor at the University of Utah

Key Discussions:

• Federal Job Cuts:
  Emma Vigeland outlines Trump's mass firing of federal workers, leading to the bleakest job numbers since 2009, with a 103% increase in unemployment from the previous month. Additionally, there are plans to cut 80,000 more jobs from the VA, affecting services for veterans.

• Tariffs and Market Reaction:
  Trump has imposed a series of tariffs, including a 25% tariff on Mexico and Canada and an additional 10% on China, though some, like automobile tariffs, are being reconsidered. These tariffs have caused significant turmoil in the markets, leading to a downward spiral as consumers and businesses react to the uncertainty.

• Impact on Federal Agencies:
  The administration is dismantling agencies like the Department of Education and proposing criminal investigations into employees at USAID who do not comply with Trump’s orders. This has led to an erosion of trust in federal institutions and increased anxiety among federal workers.

• Crypto Regulations:
  19 Senate Democrats supported Republican efforts to overturn Biden-era crypto regulations, indicating a bipartisan push that undermines financial oversight.

• Trump's Broader Economic Strategy:
  Hal Singer describes Trump's approach as creating "chaos" to destabilize the economy, making it difficult for opposition parties to formulate coherent responses. This includes undermining agencies like the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), which previously worked to protect consumers from financial scams.

Notable Quotes:

• Hal Singer (27:08):
  "If there's one word to sum it up, I would say chaos. We're living in a time where it's impossible to know what the pathway is going to look like for consumers, workers, and firms."

• Hal Singer (29:05):
  "They want to permanently incapacitate these agencies to impair their capacity to perform, even after they leave office."

• Hal Singer (31:00):
  "If you're going to pass tariffs just to raise revenue, that's the wrong objective. The aim should be to create conditions that make sense for firms to locate and invest in the U.S."

• Hal Singer (36:51):
  "Trump is exploiting wedge issues like immigration to dominate the conversation and prevent opposition from coalescing around effective alternatives."

Analysis:

Hal Singer emphasizes that Trump's economic maneuvers are not aimed at fostering genuine growth or protecting American workers but rather at destabilizing the economy to consolidate power and undermine democratic institutions. The unpredictable tariffs and federal job cuts create an environment of uncertainty, discouraging investment and reducing consumer spending, which further fuels economic decline.

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3. New York City's Rent Freeze Initiative

Guest: C. Weaver, Director of Housing Justice for All

Key Discussions:

• Rent Freeze Proposal:
  New York City's Housing Justice for All is advocating for a rent freeze on rent-stabilized apartments to combat the rising cost of living and prevent displacement of long-term residents. With 2.4 million rent-stabilized tenants in NYC, this initiative aims to provide immediate relief amidst a housing crisis.

• Support from Political Figures:
  Candidates like Zoran Mandani, Senator Jessica Ramos, Former Assembly Member Michael Blake, and City Comptroller Brad Lander support the rent freeze. Additionally, DC 37, one of the largest public sector unions in the city, endorses the proposal.

• Gentrification and Housing Speculation:
  C. Weaver explains that gentrification, driven by real estate speculators and landlords, has significantly increased rent prices, leading to a decline in NYC's black population and forcing working-class residents to choose between basic necessities and staying in the city. The rent freeze is positioned as a tool to halt this cycle of displacement.

• Impact of Previous Policies:
  The discussion touches on the failures of former Governor Andrew Cuomo, who, despite efforts to strengthen rent stabilization in 2019, saw rents increase by 33% and homelessness rise by 50% during his tenure.

• Organizing and Voter Mobilization:
  Housing Justice for All is focusing on mobilizing renters to support candidates who prioritize tenant rights and rent stabilization. They aim to create a strong voting bloc to influence the mayoral election and future policies.

Notable Quotes:

• C. Weaver (56:05):
  "Rent stabilized tenants are a multiracial, multi-generational block of voters. They are not just progressive young people; they are a potentially enormous working-class voter bloc who are forced to choose between child care, groceries, health care, or staying in New York."

• C. Weaver (60:00):
  "Gentrification is bad for everybody. It's bad for older working-class residents, long-term neighbors, and those looking to move to New York City for the first time."

• C. Weaver (64:40):
  "Our goal is to combine the economic power that tenants have over their homes with the political majority we have in New York City to elect a mayor who will work for us and deliver policies that favor the tenant majority."

Analysis:

C. Weaver articulates the urgent need for a rent freeze as a measure to protect vulnerable populations from being priced out of their homes. By highlighting the failure of previous administrations to maintain affordable housing and the resultant increase in homelessness, the initiative is framed as a necessary step to preserve the socio-economic fabric of NYC. The rent freeze is not only a policy proposal but also a rallying call for political action and voter engagement to ensure that tenant rights are prioritized in the upcoming elections.

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4. Conclusion

The episode concludes with a light-hearted, albeit chaotic, segment where Emma Vigeland and Matt Bradley engage in humorous banter, highlighting the show's characteristic irreverent tone. Despite the levity, the substantive discussions on Trump's economic destabilization efforts and NYC's rent freeze initiative underscore the episode's focus on pressing political and economic issues.

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Overall Insights:

• Economic Instability Under Trump:
  The combination of federal job cuts, unpredictable tariffs, and deregulation creates a precarious economic environment. Hal Singer underscores the long-term negative effects of these policies, including reduced consumer spending and diminished trust in federal institutions.

• Housing Crisis in NYC:
  The rent freeze initiative represents a critical intervention to address the housing affordability crisis exacerbated by gentrification and speculative real estate practices. C. Weaver emphasizes the importance of political mobilization among tenants to effect meaningful policy changes.

• Political Polarization:
  The episode reflects deep political divisions, with significant numbers of Democrats supporting Republican measures like crypto deregulation, suggesting a complex and often contradictory political landscape.

This episode of The Majority Report with Sam Seder provides a comprehensive analysis of the intersection between federal economic policies and local housing issues, offering listeners a nuanced understanding of the challenges facing both the national economy and urban housing markets.

Transcript

[Emma Vigeland]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra hour of content daily. It is Thursday, March 6, 2025. My name is Emma Vigeland and for Sam Seeder and this is the final 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, Hal Singer will be back with us, economics professor at University of Utah to talk about Trump's effect on our economy. It's not good so far, folks. And later in the show, C. Weaver of Housing justice for all joins us to talk about advocating for a rent freeze here in New York City. Also on the program, Trump's mass firing of federal workers has led to the bleakest job numbers in the month of February since 2009, mid recession. It's an 103% increase from the previous month. And the dude's not done. Reporter reports say that he is expected to cut 80,000 more jobs from the VA which targeting the ones Biden, I think added to help veterans deal with diseases that they got from serving our country. A workers board temporarily reinstates 6,000 probationary workers at the Agriculture Department. But reporting says Trump is considering to take a separate action on usaid, considering telling the DOJ to criminally investigate employees if they don't comply with his orders. Markets continue to tumble as Trump clumsily walks back some tariffs, including for automobiles. Today, he's expected to issue an executive order dismantling the Department of Education. That's always good for Republicans. Less education. The CBO tells Republicans that they will have to severely cut Medicare and Medicaid to offset their $5 trillion in tax cuts for the rich or extending the tax cuts from 2017. In the House, 10 Democrats joined the Republicans to censure Al Green for standing up to Trump during his address to Congress. Crazy. 19 Senate Democrats join every Republican to vote to overturn crypto regulations from the Biden administration. All that crypto money that poured into our election, it paid off for them. Trump announces he will revoke temporary legal status for over 200,000 Ukrainians. He also threatened Gaza with death on truth Social extremist Israeli Finance Minister Smotrich is meeting with folks in Washington visiting despite being previously barred for years. And lastly, Barnes and Noble workers have won their first union contract nationwide at 3 New York City stores. All this and more on today's Majority Report, or as we call it here, the M Majority Report. Hello. Hello everybody. Welcome Matt Bradley. What's up, guys?

[Matt Bradley]

Oh, not much. Had an. I had a nice, relaxing Wednesday.

[Emma Vigeland]

Nice to hear.

[Matt Bradley]

Unlike some other people getting sick and causing Twitter storms.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, I am a little sick and I'm just like. Well, I do that all the Twitter storm thing all the time, regardless of my ailments. But yeah, my voice sounds a little scratchy, folks. It's. I had some hot tea last night. It's helping, but lots of stuff going around. I can't believe those 10 Democrats that voted to censure Al Green for doing, like, the one real act of protest at that horrific speech by Donald Trump. Their names here. Let's just. I'm just gonna read them out. Ami Berra of California, Ed Case of Hawaii, Jim Costa of California, Laura Gillen of New York, Jim Himes of Connecticut, Chrissy Hulalin of Pennsylvania, Marcy Kaptur of Ohio, Jared Moskowitz of Florida, Mary glusonkamperez of Washington, and Tom Suozzi of Long island here in New York. Right. A few miles from us and wild. Because for the most part, these are.

[Matt Bradley]

Like some of the worst Democratic members of Congress.

[Emma Vigeland]

But Marcy Capture is actually a kind.

[Matt Bradley]

Of a surprising one from Ohio, but I guess her district has been somewhat competitive recently.

[Emma Vigeland]

But, like, every one of these people should be primaried. Oh, absolutely. I mean, we start with the votes to arm Israel and then, I mean, honestly, I haven't done the math, but I would imagine that the Venn diagram of people that voted to censure Al Green and who support Israel's genocide in Gaza is just a circle.

[Matt Bradley]

It's like Fetterman is also on the Senate side of things, being like, we got to show deference to the president.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Matt Bradley]

All APAC guys.

[Emma Vigeland]

It's almost like when you show a willingness to be bought to support one of the worst crimes in the history of humanity, it means that you can be bought in other areas as well.

[Matt Bradley]

Well, like the 19 Democrats, including Chuck Schumer, that joined Republicans and voting to repeal a Biden rule requiring cryptocurrenc currency brokers to adhere to the same tax reporting rules as stock brokers. That's 19 Senate Democrats.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, yeah. And in the fun half, we're going to be talking about this. Ryan Grimm's been doing great reporting on the Republicans trying to statutorily cut into the CFPB's deep banking rules, angering certain conservative activists like Laura Loomer who were denied services because of their extremism. So there's some interesting overlap there. We will talk about that. Yes, exactly. But at least we have some Democrats doing something. Ayanna Pressley and the rest of the squad are a part of the Democrats who are actually deciding to fight right now. There was a hearing of the, the House Oversight Committee, which AOC should be leading, but alas, we have Gerry Connolly in there instead. She's still on this committee and will play her questioning of Eric Adams later, which was just hilarious, if you know, Olay, Emmy and AOC both did expert jobs with this guy. But there was a hearing called by the Republicans over the. They called four big city mayors in for questioning, all Democrats. Eric Adams is technically a Democrat. Brandon Johnson, Mayor of Chicago, Boston Mayor Michelle Wu, and Denver Mayor Mike Johnston. And they were called to testify over the fact that they are using their rights or their powers, provided that they were voted on to execute on the state level or on the city level that the Trump administration is saying is basically completely illegal and immoral. Because apparently I used. I remember back in the day, Republicans used to talk about states rights. No longer. Now it's the federal government trying to impose their ICE detainer requests on these cities who have laws that they have to abide by that contradict these kinds of things. Like, for example, cities provide legal aid to folks which the Trump administration is upset about. They may restrict local law enforcement from sharing the immigration status of someone who is detained with the federal government, or they may not detain them for an extended period to allow for ICE to come and grab them because for, say, like a petty crime or a violation that is not violent. Right. They may not be forced to detain these people. But the federal government under Trump and their, you know, ICE immigration officials, they want to supersede local and state laws on this front so that they can round up a bunch of immigrants. So Ayanna Pressley here in this hearing, attempted to submit evidence, an article under unanimous consent into the record during this hearing. And here, James Comer repeatedly tries to stop her and threatens to remove her from the committee for trying to introduce evidence into the record.

[Hal Singer]

Chair recognizes Mr. Chairman.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have unanimous request. Mr. Chairman. Have unanimous consent request proceedings. I'd like to seek unanimous consent to enter into the record this article. And I'll do this as a survivor of sexual violence myself. This is from courts. March 2018. That objection. So ordered data from Texas shows that.

[Hal Singer]

US born without objection. So ordered. We, We've put it in the record.

[Emma Vigeland]

I haven't entered it. You have what? Mr. Chair, can I have several articles? I need to enter them. Let me just go Ahead with the. What the articles are.

[Hal Singer]

What's the next article?

[Emma Vigeland]

Let me proceed. Data from Texas shows that US Born Americans commit more rape and murder than immigrants.

[Hal Singer]

In this trend of you all trying to get thrown out of committee so you can get on MSNBC is going to end. We're not going to put up with it.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is a procedural member of this committee.

[Hal Singer]

You can go.

[Emma Vigeland]

You can go with Mr. Frost and Mr. Green claiming my. That's what you want.

[Hal Singer]

No, no.

[Matt Bradley]

Say some here the whole like your prop clipping. Objection. Like you're just trying to get out msnbc. This would not be a clip if you just let her read the news article right into the record.

[Emma Vigeland]

Exactly. You know, Republicans never try to get on Ms. Or to get on Fox News or something like that with their stunts. I mean, are you kidding me? Nancy Mace has made basically her entire career out of trying to get on cable news. She gave her staff quotas that she had to be on. On the news every single day or going out to news outlets to put her on air.

[Matt Bradley]

Wasn't going to play just her reading a news article into the public or into the Record. No, it wouldn't have been newsworthy except he throws this fit.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Matt Bradley]

Comer also literally was on like every.

[Emma Vigeland]

Second for Hunter Biden stuff. Oh, right. Like, he is like, it's crazy coming from like one of the thirstiest members.

[Matt Bradley]

Of Congress for attention.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And he's also the idea that MSNBC is more favorable to a representative like Ayanna Pressley than any of the 10 Democrats that I just listed who voted to censure Al Green for.

[Hal Singer]

For.

[Emma Vigeland]

For protesting Trump is. Is ridiculous. Later in the show, we'll like, we'll play David Axelrod saying that it was horrible that Al Green dared to interrupt the President here. I mean, folks like Ayanna Pressley are not aligned really with what MSNBC is doing. Specifically the direction they're taking now, which has been just to sideline or out like outright fire, really the most progressive voices on their network. And there were very few and far between at the beginning. Or to start the.

[Hal Singer]

I have been very accommodating you, Mr.

[Emma Vigeland]

Superdominant, as a survivor of sexual violence.

[Hal Singer]

I will insert record.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is my right. Thank you.

[Hal Singer]

No, no, no.

[Emma Vigeland]

Mr. Subramyam. Mr. Chair. No.

[Hal Singer]

You know, the process of unanimous consent.

[Emma Vigeland]

You.

[Hal Singer]

You are not recognized.

[Emma Vigeland]

I have several articles to enter into the record. Mr. Subanyam, if you don't go, we're.

[Hal Singer]

Going to recognize Mr. Timmons.

[Emma Vigeland]

So that's. He's really threatened I write hall monitor. Yeah, you're not abiding by the rules. It's the same thing that Speaker Johnson did, which got thunderous applause with the Al Green thing. We're going to remove you. I mean, this is how they get off with their kind of fascism. It's the using the power of the state to silence people. Because why is that such a threat for that to be entered into the record? The fact that undocumented immigrants or immigrants in general commit less sexual assault on average than natural born Americans or just the Wall Street Journal crazy lefty publication had an article out this morning and I quot quote, decades of research have found that immigrants are less likely than native born Americans to commit crimes than to commit crimes and that neighborhoods with greater concentrations of immigrants have lower rates of crime and violence. This is established by all of the academia on this front. But Comer is threatened by the idea that this would be entered into the record because at the State of the Union they have. They're using Lake and Riley because she is a white girl that was tragically killed by somebody who was an undocumented immigrant. They are trying to use decades old tropes that white supremacists have used and our racist country has used many times over. Whether it be the victimhood of white women to justify lynching of black people in the south because a black man maybe supposedly whistled at her, or the depictions of Native American populations in this country as threats to the purity of white women. So we should crack down on them. Or what we're seeing right now with trans women who are portrayed as perverted sexual assaulters and right wingers hide behind the protection of these Lilly white women as a justification for cracking down on the rights of trans people and LGBTQ people. The right likes to hide behind women and it's in their mind, usually white women, because it gives them a moral justification for being fascist and cruel towards the people that are supposedly the dark and evil folks.

[Matt Bradley]

I mean, it's hysterical lies like, you know, like the late term abortions or like all the Social Security fraud. I mean, the truth about sanctuary city laws is that they are good for public order and safety. And if they, if cops didn't like them, they wouldn't be there because we don't actually have cops under control in this country enough to force something like sanctuary city laws down their throat if they didn't want it. The truth is that for even something like the Lincoln Raleigh thing, you want communities, whether they're documented or not, to be able to go to the Police say, hey, that guy's dangerous.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Matt Bradley]

Without having to worry about I'm gonna get deported. Cuz I said there's a dangerous guy there. And everyone should know that. Everyone who genuinely cares about public safety, which should be everyone obviously on the left. People on the right don't actually care about that. They want to see continued deterioration because the police state pays for that.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, that's. And, and that is why also we're seeing the melt, the merging of immigration and crime narratives. Despite the fact that we did see a spike in the pandemic for around two years in almost all types of crime. But violent crime since then has been dropping precipitously. But the Democrats on those two issues have essentially allowed the right to define it. Let's just quickly play Mayor Wu of Boston responding to Paul Gosar's question towards her about this very topic we just heard.

[Hal Singer]

We want a comprehensive immigration policy. How can you get a comprehensive immigration policy when you're defining it from the very get go?

[Emma Vigeland]

You're building it on false premises and false tenets.

[C. Weaver]

Respectfully, Congressman, you could pass bipartisan legislation and that would be comprehensive immigration law. False narrative is that immigrants in general.

[Emma Vigeland]

Are criminals or immigrants in general cause.

[C. Weaver]

All sorts of danger and harm. That is actually what is undermining safety in our communities. If you wanted to make us safe, pass gun reforms, stop cutting Medicaid, stop cutting cancer research, stop cutting funds for veterans.

[Emma Vigeland]

That is what will make our city safe.

[Hal Singer]

Yes, thank you.

[Emma Vigeland]

I yield back. Oh, you yield.

[Matt Bradley]

Just a headline on that interesting fellow there, Gosar from Democracy Now, a neo Nazi working in Congress, aide to Representative Gosar, pledged loyalty to white supremacist Nick Fuentes there.

[Emma Vigeland]

Oh, well, there you go. And to put a cherry on top of this, we had Austin Coker on the show I guess a week or two ago now. Great writer, professor up at Syracuse who studies immigration. Updated numbers here on the detentions under Trump. I guess this also really started on January 12th. This data that they have, they have increased the detentions across the board here 1.3 times the increase in detentions for convicted criminals, 1.6 times the increase in terms of detaining immigrants with pending criminal charges, 4.3 times increase for other immigration violator, which means somebody that crossed the border without documentation or may not have updated documentation. So when you hear that they're just going after criminals, know that for the rest, for that, the biggest bucket of folks who are being detained by this far right administration are people that have not committed any kind of crime except for the fact that maybe they want to come to this country to work or to escape political persecution.

[Matt Bradley]

And that's because the previous administrations Trumps, but also Biden and Obama were already prioritizing criminals for deportation.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, this was the Obama. The stated policy of the Trump administration was the Obama policy. But now because we've given them that leeway, they have gone and ran with it. All right, folks, we'll be talking to Hellsinger in just a second. But first, a word from some of our sponsors. You know, you'll say that you want to learn a new language every year, but few of us actually commit to it. But Babel makes it easy for you to learn in less time than you think. I am downloading Babel before I go abroad on my honeymoon. I'm very excited about it because honestly, the traditional classroom way that I've learned languages, it just does not work for my brain. And Babel, it's much more cost effective than say, taking a course and something that I can do on my own time and makes me feel better than I don't know, you know, just sitting around and not doing what I actually intended to do. Because I really do want to try to be able to at least speak a little bit of a second language. 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[Hal Singer]

Thanks for having me, Emma.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, it's good to see you and I'm happy to have you here to break down, I guess, the past month and change of Trump's presidency and the real kind of just incredible economic turmoil that we're seeing. I mean, the markets opened very, I guess, low today since he announced those tariffs. There's been a total contraction and a bit of panic on Wall Street. What do you make of the past five or six weeks from and what is Trump's goal here?

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, let's have the goal is hard, but let's talk about the effects anyway. I mean, I think if there's one word to sum it up, I would say chaos. I think that we're just living in a time where it's impossible to know what the pathway is going to look like, not just for consumers, but for workers, for firms. And so we start with the layoffs in the public sector, the federal layoffs. And it's not just the count of bodies that have been taken out. It's the anxiety among all the current federal employees who think that tomorrow could be their day. And then those are in the millions. Then when you add on top of that the millions more of federal contractors who think that they could be let go. It has a pernicious effect on the economy because everyone starts to save and stop spending. And that's kind of feeding into this downward spiral. You know, the Atlanta Fed is projecting a contraction now in the first quarter of 2025. So it's pretty grim looks. And then you add on top that the tariff war that's coming, it's like it's one shock to the system after the next. And it's kind of scary.

[Emma Vigeland]

When you say the shock. I mean, this just kind of motivates me to, to look into their reasoning. I mean, that's, that's like, I think the federal workforce part. It's clear that this is the privatization presidency. Right. Where they don't want the most of. The media, I think, focuses on the authoritarian nature of this, where when Trump removes these federal workers, it consolidates his power and he can more adequately implement unitary executive theory. Right. And that's a piece of it. But the other piece that is needs to be discussed more is like if these federal workers are not working for the public sector, well, they have to go into the private, private sector. And that's fundamentally what they believe in.

[Hal Singer]

Well, Elon, who might be driving the bus, just doesn't think there is a role for, for federal workers or federal government generally. Right. They just kind of want lawlessness, kind of whatever, whatever the oligarchy kind of dictates. And so it's, it's, we're, we're in a scary state. I, I think that what they're doing, you know, we've had Republican administrations come in before and effectively neuter an agency. Right. You can think about non enforcement antitrust scenario that I work in. But, but I think what's different here and what, what might be motivating them because it seems like that's something you want to get at is, is they want to permanently incapacitate. They want to impair the capacity of the agencies to perform even when, even after they leave office. You know, imagine trying to like put back together the CFPB on day one under a new Democratic administration. You know, you might not have an office, you might not have workers, you might not have a computer system. It just seems like what they're doing is way more violent and more pernicious than any any prior kind of laissez faire or conservative administration has ever done. And that they just kind of, the other ones, the former ones have just kind of turned down the lights. Right. But here I think what they're trying to do is permanently impair the capacity of those agencies on a going forward basis, even if they were to ever lose power.

[Emma Vigeland]

And, and can you talk about those effects on the economy when you, I mean, it, it affects it going forward, obviously, if the Republicans plan to stay in power. But what does it do, I guess, to destabilize these agencies that do that have a role in the market, even though they're not, you know, explicitly private? This is an important element to making our society function as. And the economy is obviously a part of that.

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, well, I mean, just to pick on the cfpb, because that's one that's clearly in their crosshairs. Right. I mean, what was the CFPB doing before? It was looking out for scams in the credit card and banking industry. And so now I feel like the message, you saw how they just one after another, they shut down and terminated investigations of Capital One and myriad other companies. What they're basically telling those firms to do is, you know, whatever you can get away with, right, you can, you can do, right? If you want to inject hidden fees and credit cards or late fees or otherwise exploit, you know, the vulnerable segments of the population, go ahead and do it. There's not really going to be a policeman watching any longer. So, you know, that's where I think what they're trying to do is basically create a world in which, you know, the powerful can basically just do whatever they want and get away with whatever they want.

[Emma Vigeland]

And so I guess the tariffs piece is something that we can turn to here. More chaos, More chaos, more chaos. I mean, this is. So basically, since this week started, Trump announced 25% tariffs on Mexico and Canada, an additional 10% tariffs on top of the 10% that he already issued on China. Now he's walking a lot of these back. At the very least, he's already walked back after meeting with the big three, the auto tariffs, although it's still going to have an effect on the economy just because he made this announcement. And it seems like they're also in talks with Canada right now over potash, which is a really important material export from Canada that our farmers need because it's in agricultural fertilizer. So, I mean, is this just kind of he issues these blanket tariffs and then is going to walk it back in a way that, like, will any of the tariffs remain? I mean, what does this mean right now?

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, I think this is his form of, to put it charitably, this is his form of negotiating. Now, there's Another way to do this with a company, right? Suppose you want to induce a car maker who's set up a plant in Mexico to maybe consider instead, you know, relocating that plant back to the U.S. you know, it seems like there's a, there's a way to go about this. It's not easy. And I don't want to suggest, you know, that you can just wave a wand and make it happen. But there's a set of carrots and sticks that you could offer to that car maker to say, hey, if you come back and you employ 10,000 people, you know, here in the United States, we want to do something for you. But if you don't, you know, this could happen instead, and then you want sign off from that company and then you, I think, want to make an announcement, right, that this company, as a result of this package, carrots and sticks, right, Maybe will never have learned of the sticks that you were threatening them with. But at the end of that negotiation, it'd be nice to make that announcement. What he's doing instead, he's saying, here are the sticks, right? And now you come see if you can negotiate something better. For me, what I'm nervous about is that we're going to get higher prices no matter what. I mean, everyone says this. The companies are going to raise their prices in response to these tariffs, which raise their costs. They're just going to pass it through to consumers. Some of them, if you follow Isabella Weber, are going to exploit the situation, even raise the prices by more than the increase in their cost. You'd be willing to do that if you thought there was a chance that you could induce some of these companies maybe to come back. But there is so much chaos in the way that Trump is unveiling the plan that I can't imagine that any firm would have the confidence to make a long run investment in the US under these chaotic circumstances. So I feel like all we're going to get is the downside, which is higher prices. And we're not going to get any upside in the form of more investment in the United States or more jobs coming back here.

[Emma Vigeland]

I mean, I think that you pointing out the fact that tariffs can have some sort of utility when they are thought out and when it's about a specific industry or sector, like say we want to boost the, you know, domestic manufacturing of X product, it would make sense to put tariffs on the Chinese product that would be imported here so that we can gain some sort of competitive advantage. And this is how this has been done. But it's with, in concert also with the companies that are affected, as you say, because this, the. It's not. Trump is seeing it as a way to, like a negotiating tactic, as you say, completely misleadingly so, but also as a way to generate revenue as opposed to what the most effective use of tariffs is, which is kind of what we're talking about here, making it very targeted to help an industry get an advantage domestically.

[Hal Singer]

Correct. Yeah. You can't be doing it to raise revenue. That can't be the objective. And maybe he thinks it is. But of course, if you just raise the price on US Consumers, at some point, we're going to buy less of it, too. Right. The demand curve sloped downward. So I would hope that some economists could talk some sense in them that we're not doing this to generate revenues or to pay down the deficit. Right. What we're doing it for, if at all, is to create a set of conditions under which it makes more sense for a firm to locate its plants here and to employ workers in the United States.

[Emma Vigeland]

That.

[Hal Singer]

That's the. That's the upside. Right. But I just feel like the way that he's doing it is just horrible. The, the only thing that, if I give him credit for, is that Democrats just do not seem to be able to articulate a response to the tariffs. And where they tend to want to go because of their, sadly, their neoliberal instincts is to talk about higher prices. That's all. That's all they can talk about.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Hal Singer]

On the consumption side, message really misses out on what we should be talking about, which is how do we protect workers? How are we going to get jobs? How are we going to raise wages? And so I think the reason why Trump goes here in part is he's picked a wedge issue, just like immigration, by the way, that Democrats just don't seem to be able to rebut and respond to an effective way. And so he can dominate the conversation. He can dominate the debate.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. And it's almost a building off of what he was talking about in 2016, where he spoke about how NAFTA and the trade deals were unfair. Now, he didn't do anything when he was in office to combat, you know, globalization for the most part. But is this kind of his way to, I don't know, continue that rhetorical, political, you know, identity, but not. But it's gonna harm people. I mean, eventually people are gonna catch up. When the price. I saw some, some, you know, if those tariffs were to have gone through, car prices could have gone up by $12,000 each.

[Hal Singer]

Yeah. Not just car prices, but I saw a study by Moody's which is saying the average family is going to incur costs on the order of fifteen hundred dollars higher, you know, as a result. So it's bad news. I do think that. What, what motivates him. It's hard to get into his head, but, but he does like to litigate and relitigate these fights that he thinks are wedge issues and that move his base and that and that. And for which Democrats don't have a good response. So this is his way of kind of keeping nafta. Like, we're really relitigating this fight. NAFTA was bad. I think that everyone recognizes that it was bad and we'd like to reverse it and bring all those jobs back. Right. But, but setting up tariffs kind of in an ad hoc fashion after the fact, after the companies have already left. Right. And relocated in Mexico. I just don't know if that's, if that's going to be the elixir that he's hoping. But maybe we're onto something. Maybe he's not really sincere about fixing anything. He's just, he's just wanting to kind of continue this fight.

[Emma Vigeland]

I think that's the most, maybe the most likely explanation. But then there's also just the fact that his administration is now chock full of these crypto venture capital Bros. And do they, in terms of like a constituency that would be the most safe from the increase in prices? I can't think of. I mean, billionaires in general, of course, but really crypto billionaires to me stand out because their whole speculative kind of industry is almost outside of the bounds of everyday commercial goods. They're just kind of out there in the ether, betting on things and speculating. And like, we're. I think the Trump administration is going to try to incorporate cryptocurrency into commercial banking, which could really, really harm the economy. I was talking to Molly White about that. But do you feel like there's a possibility that some of these crypto billionaires that are in his administration would benefit from a crashing economy so they could buy up some depreciated assets and expand on their wealth already?

[Hal Singer]

I mean, they might benefit to the extent it pushes money into crypto and I guess you're saying away from more, you know, more traditional assets. He, look, he is. I'll go so far in this conspiracy theory to accept that he's rewarding his crypto friends. No doubt. I mean, they're the ones who kind of put him here and made huge contributions to him. But I think it's enough of a reward that he's deregulating and now he's trying to get the government maybe to even invest in cryptocurrencies themselves. You probably saw that there was actually pushback from all over the political spectrum about how silly that was for taxpayers to actually be here. But I don't think he has to go so far as to crash the economy on that front. I know people are talking about, is this, like, part of the ultimate agenda? I think that Trump is too beholden to, to Wall street and commercial interests to crash the economy. I think that his funders and the kind of people who are pulling the strings behind him care too much about the performance of traditional assets to allow him to do that. So I don't think that's a good story for what. What motivates him. He's doing bad things, but I don't know. I don't know if.

[Emma Vigeland]

So he's just stupid. So he's just. But when he sees the number we played, the Dow just dropping and dropping as he announced these tariffs, I mean, does he just basically say this is going to be temporary and that that's that, or is he. Is he. I don't know if it's just puzzling to me because everything you're saying is accurate and stuff I would have expected of a previous Republican president. But he's so crazy that it's hard for me to know what this could be leading towards or what's motivating him.

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, I think that he takes pleasure, and you probably recognize that if we're in this, if he's injecting chaos on a daily basis, you know, you know, embarrassing Zelensky in the White House or the tariffs, it doesn't really matter. It just feels like we're always kind of on our heels and we're just reacting to whatever chaos was injected in that day. So I feel like that he believes that there's something good that comes from that. Maybe, maybe it becomes impossible for an opposition to ever, like, cohere around some alternative idea if we're just reacting to the insanity that we're being injected, exposed to on a daily basis.

[Emma Vigeland]

Ryan from Rochester writes in can the guests touch on the theories that Trump economists are following as to how this impacts the global economy and the complexity of dollar values compared to wages compared to prices, impacts of interest rates in different countries and how other countries stabilize and manage their currencies and economies?

[Hal Singer]

I'm not sure the question presumes that Trump listens to economists. Now, I know, I know he's got Kevin Hassett there and, and I know that Peter Navarro is an advisor. But just to the caller, you know, I want him to parse out the language of the State of the Union address. And I thought I misheard it before going to bed. And I went back and he said three times that his solution, for example, to the inflation problem was to reduce waste and fraud in the government. He said it three times so it couldn't have been a mistake. And when I read something like that, I just wonder, where are the economists? There are economists all over the political spectrum peddling demand side theories or supply side theories or workers are to blame. But waste in government was like a new one for me and it made me think that there are no economists in the room. So to your caller's question, his economists probably know something about the effect on interest rates and the strength of the dollar. But, but I don't think they're getting through. I don't think they have a voice in this administration.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, you, you, you touch on it. He bragged about the lowering of interest rates in the State of the Union address, which happened because people were panicked about the tariffs. Does he even understand that?

[Hal Singer]

No. And what he, what he also doesn't seem to understand is that he just like Biden, speaking of interest rates are in a tug of war with the Federal Reserve. And the Reserve is not going to budge if they think that inflation is high or if he's injecting forces that are going to push it higher and the tariffs do that. He has no plan for the price of auto insurance or rentals skyrocketing. Every day you open up a story about another sector soaring in prices eggs. And so to me, he's setting up conditions under which the Fed is going to permanently keep interest rates high. And this is going to act as a drag on the economy. So if he wanted to get serious about spurring growth, he should figure out what do we have to do to basically mollify the Fed so that they drop their interest rates. And while he's talking about tariffs and waste and fraud as his solution for, for inflation, you know, the Fed is just sitting there saying to themselves, my God, you know, he's lost and we're just going to keep these things high. So I feel like he's, he's got some serious headwinds against him. I don't want to scare listeners of thinking that we're going into recession, but things are going to he is going to be under tremendous stress in the next, in the next few months with stock market GDP numbers coming in and, and you know, we could be in for some scary, bumpy times.

[Emma Vigeland]

And my question is, how does Silicon Valley play into the potential for these, for these bumpy times. Like the, the whole AI bubble that we're seeing, right. That deep sea just took a hammer to, I guess because of how cheaply the Chinese AI model was able to create there, that create itself or how cheap it was compared to the endless speculation and investment in artificial intelligence here in this country. Can you speak to the fact that there's so much wealth right now that's being hoarded in kind of tech speculation and the precarity that that may create in our economy right now?

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, I think that Silicon Valley is enjoying the show. In fact, I mean they, you know, they were sitting around him in, in the inauguration and they made massive contributions. I think that this is, this is what they wanted. You know, they, they want deregulation, they want, they want, you know, the elimination of government. And so, you know, AI, he's even now talking about subsidizing AI, as I think you mentioned, like a government program that actually subsidizes despite the fact that it's been revealed that we don't need this massive investment to achieve the same kind of gains. As an aside, I know he would never take this into consideration, but the environmental impacts of what, of what the servers are doing in the background to generate the kind of power needed for the. Is just devastating. And it just seems to me that it's an activity that is overblown, that has been revealed to be inefficient, is spewing out negative externalities. Sorry, a little, for a little econ speak, there's. It is the last industry in the world that we should be subsidizing. Right. If anything, we maybe should be taxing it or doing something to discourage it or letting the air out of the bubble. But I think that Silicon Valley, they don't need subsidy. I think their agenda is just to defang government. They'll take a subsidy, of course. I mean Elon's entire businesses, whether it's Teslas getting money from the government, billions of dollars in the 20, around 2015, or Starlink. Now, I don't know if you saw Starlink has twisted some arms. Commerce Department. The broadband subsidy is going to apply now to inferior satellite services, of course, SpaceX. So Elon, though, I think is an exception in Silicon Valley. I mean, Elon's businesses Depend largely on government subsidy, which is. You're getting me started. Which is so ironic. Why? He's the guy in charge of finding waste, you know, in the government.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Hal Singer]

Other parts, you know, Apple's, Google's and Facebook's, they seem just to want instead kind of a hands off, laissez faire approach. And I think they would be content with that. And that's what they thought they were getting by buying in to the Trump.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm wondering if you could react here, Hal, to this clip from this morning of you mentioned Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and Cantor Fitzgerald are deeply invested in both like the satellite commercial space field as well as cryptocurrency. And so him being Commerce Secretary, he's kind of my pick for the most under the radar, you know, horrific cabinet selection right now.

[Hal Singer]

Villain is villain.

[Emma Vigeland]

What'd you say? Yeah, that's a good way to put it. He, he's asked here this morning, I guess this is on cnbc, about the shaky stock market. And this is his reaction. I'm wondering if you could decode this for us. This Secretary Lock, Nick, does the president want a rising stock market? Because we do have stocks 6% off the highs. And confidence is being shaken here a little bit around business. I know you guys wanted lower interest.

[C. Weaver]

Rates and you're getting that, but kind.

[Emma Vigeland]

Of for the wrong reasons because now there's worries about growth and potentially recession because of a trade war.

[Hal Singer]

The president wants American growth and American prosperity. And the fact that the stock market goes down a half a percent or a percent, it goes up a half a percent, 2%. That is not the driving force of our, our outcomes. Our outcomes are driven by we want factory production in America. We want employment to explode in America. We want training for the new industrial revolution to happen in America. We're going to bring factories back to America. We're going to rebuild Michigan, we're going to rebuild Ohio. Why do those auto plants go to Canada? Why would we have auto plants go from Michigan to Canada?

[Emma Vigeland]

This secretary. All right, so that's his reaction to her question about the shaky stock market. I. The AI Industrial revolution. That's an anachronism. There is nothing industrial about this. This is all mindless speculation. Like at least the robber barons of the Gilded Age built railroads. These guys are just tech nerds.

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, yeah. There's nothing real behind their product. Howard said something a lot worse. I thought, I thought, I've got, I've got a worse Howard quote, which is he said he wanted to potentially take out government spending from the GDP figures a few days ago.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right.

[Hal Singer]

That was really scary to me. And I am going to react to the quote, but I just want to make sure that this one, your viewers get to hear this, because Elon was suggesting that Keynesian economics was flawed and that we were too dependent on government spending. And then the next day, Howard said, we're considering taking public spending out of our economy measures. And that is actually a tactic of authoritarian regimes to deflect and to mask some of the injury that they're inflicting on the economy. So that was really scary.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's very Putinesque is my understanding, and.

[Hal Singer]

How Putin does that, something the Chinese have been accused of. But in Howard's defense, I did go back and look at the stock market. We did have some bad days. But if you Compare it to November 4th, the election day, we're about where we were in November 4th. So I don't think that we should measure the. His performance based on a few days of stock performance. I do think that the Atlanta Fed's projection of a recession, not a recession, but a contraction in the first quarter is more powerful than what the stock market did in a few days. Now, the irony, of course, is that Trump famously said this was in the 2012 era. He said any president who oversees the stock market going down by 2% for X days in a row ought to.

[Emma Vigeland]

Lose his job, should be impeached. Right. Yeah. Or something like that.

[Hal Singer]

He does, he does care. He does care about the stock market. I do. I do think. And, and it's because he thinks that's a measure of performance, even though it's, it's not necessarily a great one. And that's what his backers, the, the financiers care about. So I do think it is painful for him to look up in the morning and see the score on the scoreboard. I mean, he, it looks like he's losing in his mind. It's probably hard for him to get out of that.

[Emma Vigeland]

And when the. I guess my final question for you is, I guess some other unions had a bit of a more positive reaction to the tariff announcement than Democratic partisans. Does that speak to what you're saying about the lack of kind of vision on the Democratic side that could combat this silliness? Like, at least, what is our answer for globalization and free trade?

[Hal Singer]

The answer has to be what, what can we do? What kind of policies can we formulate to support workers and to support higher wages? And that that attitude was largely jettisoned from the party. And if you think of the Clinton, the Clinton era and the Obama era, those guys put prices first. So in their, in their worldview, workers were, were almost secondary. In fact, were almost pushing against the extent that wages were pushing up prices. In their view, workers were part of the problem. And, you know, they sent the jobs to Mexico and Trump is exploiting this. And so it's no surprise why the Democrats lost the working class voters. Right. And so now they have to be very careful. And when they speak, right, that they care about workers, they care about wages, they sympathize with the idea of relocating plants. But the solution is how do we get those plants back in, in a coherent and consistent manner that doesn't inject chaos and that doesn't cause, you know, prices to spiral? I feel like there's a message there, but you got to start with worker welfare, and that's been missing.

[Emma Vigeland]

Halsinger, really appreciate your time today breaking this all down for us. Economics professor at the University of Utah. Thanks so much. Good to talk to you.

[Hal Singer]

Thanks. It was fun.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah. As always. All right, quick break. And when we come back, we will be joined by C. Weaver, director of the New York State tenant block. It we are back. And we are joined by Sia Weaver, director of the New York State tenant block. Sia, thanks so much for coming on the show today.

[C. Weaver]

Thank you so much for having me.

[Emma Vigeland]

So There are over 9 million tenants in the state of New York. I learned this from, from you guys. There are 2.4 million rent stabilized tenants in New York City. I'm, I'm one of those folks. And this call here that you guys are getting behind is about a rent freeze for these rent stabilized apartments. Can you explain what that is and why you're choosing to organize around this, this proposition?

[C. Weaver]

Right. So like you said, There are about 2.4 million people who live in rent stabilized apartments in New York City. And, you know, tenants really could be a difference maker in this mayoral election. Rent stabilized tenants have their rent adjusted annually by a set of mayoral appointees. And we believe that, you know, the people who want our votes should commit to freezing our rent at a time when the cost of living crisis is at the front of mind for almost every single person who's trying to afford to stay in New York.

[Emma Vigeland]

And who are the candidates that are behind the rent freeze? Zoran Mandani is one of them. But there are a few, you know, candidates they're polling towards the bottom that also support a Renfrez. I mean, I want everyone to get behind Zoran, spoiler alert. But.

[C. Weaver]

You know, I think Zamnami has a, has endorsed a rent free. So has Senator Jessica Ramos, and so has former assembly 1 assembly member, Michael Blake, and the city's comptroller Brad Lander has said that he supports a rent free if the data supports it, which is great news because the data does support it. And you know, I think really also importantly, DC 37, which is one of the largest public sector unions in the city, has said that they support a rent freeze. And they really just think, you know, it's, it is clear to people who are running for mayor that if you want to be elected, you need tenants to vote for you. And this is something that the mayor can promise, the mayor can deliver on. And, you know, we think it's really important for getting into office.

[Emma Vigeland]

And why does the data support the rent freeze, particularly for this block of rent stabilized apartments?

[C. Weaver]

So, you know, the rising cost of rent is pushing New Yorkers out of the city. There's just no two ways around it. It feels silly sometimes to even say 1 in 4 New Yorkers can't afford the basic things that you need to live. Gentrification is pushing people out of the city. New York City's black population has declined by nearly 200,000 people over the last two decades. That's about 9%. The reality is, is that unless we do something about the cost of rent, the city's going to look completely different. Rent stabilized tenants are a multiracial, multi generational block of voters. They are not, we're not just talking about, you know, progressive young people. We're not just talking about people who are already politicized. We're talking about a potentially enormous working class voter bloc who are with us because right now they're being forced to choose between child care or groceries or health care, staying in New York at all. Right? So the importance of a rent freeze is not just about the rent. It's also about bringing working class people back into its civic engagement. It's about, it's about giving people something to believe in, in politics. When right now you look around and you're like, what really is there to believe in?

[Emma Vigeland]

Right? And this is, it just occurs to me when we're having this conversation about gentrification, you know, gentrification, that term. Right. Which is a very real phenomenon, but it's secondary to the phenomenon of gouging people on their rent. Right? I mean, this is, it's almost a frustrating definition of our housing crisis to put it on that because it makes it, it's almost like, you know, an individualized kind of guilt thing or whatever, as opposed to this is a massive structural problem because we're pricing out so many people so that, I don't know, folks can buy an apartment in midtown millionaires and that asset can appreciate and then they can sell it for a profit. I mean, this is, that's the core problem here.

[C. Weaver]

I completely agree. I mean, when I say gentrification, I really mean a process by which bankers and real estate speculators and landlords are cohooting with one another to drive up the cost of housing in the city at the expense of working class people. I don't mean gentrification as a sort of force is not something that's caused when one person moves into your neighborhood, although it might feel that way. It's not as though. It's not as though every single young white people woke up one morning and were like, you know what? Neighborhood looks good? Bed Stuy. There was no sort of collective decision on Hart behalf of that class of people. The reality is, is that gentrification is bad for everybody. It's bad for older working class residents. It's bad for people who have been living in their neighborhood for a long time. It's bad for people who are looking to move to New York City for the first time. And it is something that has caused like, like you said, like really through real estate speculation. And, and I think rent stabilization and, and rent freeze are just such an important way to interrupt that cycle of speculation displacement and rising rents across the whole entire city. It is the way that we can tell, we can tell an entire class of real estate owners that this building is more important as a home than it is to, you know, lining your pocketbooks.

[Emma Vigeland]

Can you speak to how rent stabilized apartments would even be subjected to rapid rent increases? When, I mean, is this outdated legislation that doesn't truly stabilize the rent? What's behind that?

[C. Weaver]

That's a really good question because, you know, recently somebody just jumped into the Merrill race. The former governor and you know, during the sort of 10 years that Andrew Cuomo as governor, we lost hundreds of thousands of rent statewide apartments to a loophole in the system called Vacancy Deep Control, the tenant block organization, that sort has a sister organization, Housing justice for All. And, and we worked to strengthen and expand rent stabilization. In 2019, we were able to get rid of vacancy de control. And sort of, that's a system where when, you know, you move out of your re stabilized department, they'll be able to bring it up to the market because of vacancy control. Something that you know, I think Andrew Cuomo bears a lot of responsibility for keeping in place. We have lost a lot of rent stabilized apartments in the city. We are no longer losing rent stabilized apartments. But the truth is, is that decades and decades of real estate friendly loopholes led to a tremendous loss of affordability and we're still trying to catch up. When Cuomo was in office, rents went up 33% in the city. Homelessness increased by 50%. You know, he was not a good governor for rent stabilized tenants. And I hope that people are starting to remember that and we're certainly going to work to try to help them remember.

[Emma Vigeland]

How did the pandemic affect rental prices? I mean, again, I'm in a rent stabilized apartment, but it was bought and then sold thankfully by basically a commercial real estate conglomerate where they didn't do any repairs. They flipped it. Right. So they bought it. I bought my building during COVID for a cheap price, cheaped out on repairs, and then sold it kind of recently, basically. My sense is that that's a kind of regular phenomenon and has been over the past few years in the pandemic.

[C. Weaver]

Yeah. And you know, I think it's before the pandemic even. It's really just sort of baked into the system. The truth is that whether your rent is higher, how much you pay in rent has nothing to do with the quality of your house. The reality is that your landlord is going to charge as much as they possibly can for rent. That's just what they're going to do. It's not as though the quality goes down and then all of a sudden you're paying less or. And so the landlords, the sort of, I think at face the problem here is that the landlords have too much power to control how much rents go up in the city. And you know, really thinking about who is on the rent guidelines board for rent stabilized tenants and who gets to put them there, it's the mayor is really critically, critically important to keeping rents low.

[Emma Vigeland]

Right. So how can people in the city get organized behind this? And how can folks, even if, you know, we have listeners all across the country, if they want to do something similar in their city or their state, what would be your advice for them?

[C. Weaver]

So two things. So first, the New York State Tenant Block, the organization where I work, is organizing renters to take back power from the real estate industry over our homes, our neighborhoods and our entire democratic system. Our goal really is to combine the economic power that tenants have over their homes with the sort of sheer political majority that we have in New York City in order to both, like, elect a mayor who will work for us, but also to bring working class voters back into the Democratic Party. The Democratic party has really abandoned working class people, has abandoned tenants. Right. We saw that in this most recent election. And we really think that, you know, if. If we want to beat Trumpism and if we want to beat the far right, we have to be offering working class voters something around cost of living. And as homeownership is out of reach all over the country, and increasingly out of reach all over the country, the way to interrupt that is to get organized as renters in your community to fight for policies like rent control, to push to elect people into office who are going to respect the tenant majority, who are going to deliver policies for the tenant majority. So that's our theory. That's our theory.

[Hal Singer]

Right.

[C. Weaver]

Our theory is that by running pro tenant candidates, by forcing candidates to adopt pro tenant policies, by electing tenants into office, we can sort of interrupt the sort of race to the bottom that we're seeing across the entire country. And by the race to the bottom, I mean the race to the far right in terms of what we're doing in New York City in this election. You know, this election is just the beginning, but we are knocking on hundreds of thousands of doors. Our goal is to build a 250 strong person voting block that is going to only vote for candidates who will, you know, work for tenants once they're in office, work for the majority once we're in office. We are talking to people every weekend. We are really thrilled about the reception that we're getting at the doors. People are hungry for a renter mayor.

[Emma Vigeland]

And in terms of the mayoral primary, this is what, June 24th is the date, right, Bradley? Okay. Yeah. But again, I'm getting a nod from SIA. So I think that's the primary in the city, June 24th. What would you recommend? Like, ranked choice voting can confuse some people. Right. Would you recommend leaving off anybody that doesn't support the Renfreze?

[C. Weaver]

You know, we are urging people to vote for candidates to support the rent freeze. And I certainly would not want somebody to sit the election out. So I would encourage people to Try to rank 5. Your ballot will, you know, you want to make sure that your. Your vote gets counted. And if you don't exhaust your ballot, your vote might not get counted if your candidate at the top of the ticket isn't in there. So we're trying to build a slate of rent freeze candidates, and we're. We're working hard to get there. We think we've seen a lot of momentum so far and it's just the beginning.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, we have three and a half. I mean, Brad Lander. We have three. And then Brad Lander says he would support it if the data supports it. But we need one more to add to the full ballot. Don't leave it blank. But I, you know, it's my, my, my question really is, is like in terms of trying to get a candidate out of the primary that supports a rent freeze, it's probably the most, it's probably the best course of action not to rank somebody who you think is the most odious on that, on that front, certainly.

[C. Weaver]

And I wouldn't want, I would certainly want to say here that it's really important to not rank the governor who I think has a proven record, the former governor, proven record as an enemy of rent stabilization.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep, Yep. Y. That's really what I was getting at. But I didn't want to be as explicit in case you didn't want to say it. But you did. So I appreciate your time today, folks. Check out the New York State tenant block and get organized. If you're in the city or even across the country, this is a really important and crucial time period for you to organize in your communities. And a great way to do that is to organize against the landlords that are gouging you. So really appreciate you talking today.

[C. Weaver]

Yeah, thank you. And if you do, thank you so much for having me. And if you want to get involved, you can go to RentFreeze NYC to check out our materials to get support and talking to your neighbors and get involved in our campaign.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right. We will put a link to that wherever people are listening to or watching this in the description below. Thanks so much, Siya. Have a good day.

[C. Weaver]

Yeah, thanks for having me, Faye.

[Emma Vigeland]

All right. Sure. With that, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun half where we will take your calls and read your IMs. I'm not sure if Brandon's going to be able to join us because he's not feeling well. I think, you know, there's a lot of stuff going around right now. Good thing, man. We have Health and human services secretary RFK Jr on the case with the colloidal silver. I'm going to pick up my.

[Matt Bradley]

I got to say, you know, and I take the advice about ranking people and if I have to rank Lander, I guess I will. But him saying if the data suggested is sort of Like RFK talking about vaccines and autism is like, well, I'll look at those studies. It's like, well, why haven't you look at them before, buddy?

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, well, but her point isn't like, I'm gonna rank the three that support the rent freeze. I'm gonna rank Zo run first and then I don't know what I'm gonna do. Two, whatever. But if we have to rank five, I'm going to put Lander towards the bottom. Now it's a question of who's number five.

[Matt Bradley]

Also, Ramos did the whole I don't know if we want rich people in public or rent supported housing, which is like the Hillary Clinton. I don't know if we want Trump's kids going to state school. So I'm not happy about really anyone else but Zoran right now. Even less so than when we played that clip.

[Emma Vigeland]

But my point is, is just like, you're right, people need to know that their ballot won't be counted if they don't fill out the full rank. You're right. And leaving off Andrew Cuomo is the most important. Putting Zoran first and leaving Andrew Cuomo off the ballot is going to be the most important thing that we can do from a voting perspective. Right. Like I might even rank Eric Adams or frickin Andrew Cuomo because he's not going to win reelection. So we'll see.

[Matt Bradley]

I'd probably rank Myri over both of them. That's annoying.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, just don't rank Andrew Cuomo. That's, that's important because he still has a polling lead right now. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning?

[Matt Bradley]

Yeah, let me look back because it feels like ages ago now. Left Reckoning. Well, coming up, we'll talk in Owen Higgins on his book Owned. And I get into my personal history working for Matt Taibbi. Good boss, not a brave person in terms of addressing sort of things against him in terms of the MeToo thing. And which is why it bugged me when he said he was being brave and coming out against trans people and what was clearly a trial period for Elon Musk. But anyway, check that out. Patreon.com breckinina up on Sunday we had Jason Miles on Talk about His Means TV series about Kayfabe. And also we covered the entire speech of Trump's Tuesday night, which, you know, I would appreciate a few subs for that because it wasn't exactly the most pleasant thing to be doing.

[Emma Vigeland]

Yep. All right, folks, we don't have Matt Bender yet we will have him later. I guess we'll just head into the fun half now. We'll open up the phone lines on the other side. Oh, no, we didn't load it up again. All right. We just keep forgetting. But we'll play the video then. We got the file. It's because it's such high quality, it takes us a little longer.

[Matt Bradley]

Six gigabytes. And I keep forgetting to make it smaller, so I hope it's still uploaded, because I think that's why they keep taking it off of the hosting thing, too. Because it's so large.

[Emma Vigeland]

Because it's large. Oh, no. Is it not there? Did we not download it natively?

[Matt Bradley]

We got it here. We're gonna play it again.

[Emma Vigeland]

Okay. All right. All right. We'll figure this out, folks. Sorry. You know how it works over here. See you in the fun half.

[C. Weaver]

Okay.

[Hal Singer]

Emma, please.

[Emma Vigeland]

Well, I just. I feel that my voice is sorely lacking on the majority report. Wait, look.

[Hal Singer]

Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World, so. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure.

[Emma Vigeland]

To welcome Emma Thursday.

[Matt Bradley]

Thank you for saying.

[Hal Singer]

I'm.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm. I'm going to pause you right there.

[Hal Singer]

Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this, and I'll tell you why.

[Emma Vigeland]

So was offered pork, sushi and poker with the boys. Tour. Sushi and poker with the boys. Who was offered tour?

[Hal Singer]

Yeah, sushi and poker with the boys.

[C. Weaver]

What?

[Emma Vigeland]

Work sushi and poker. Tim's upset.

[Hal Singer]

Twerk sushi and poker with three boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

It was offered with twerk sushi and that's what we call biz. Twerk, sushi and bulker with three boys. Right. Twerk sushi and we're going to get demonetized.

[Hal Singer]

I just think that what you did.

[Emma Vigeland]

To Tim pool was mean. Free speech.

[Hal Singer]

That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now.

[Emma Vigeland]

We shouldn't even talk about it. I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way. But let's get to the meltdown here. Sushi and poker with the boys. Oh, my God. Wow. Sushi.

[Hal Singer]

I'm sorry.

[Emma Vigeland]

I'm losing my mind. Someone's offered with tour.

[Hal Singer]

Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sushi and poker. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Think I'm like a kid Tour. I think I'm like a little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. Add this to base seven a thousand times. I'm losing my mind. So I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but, like, I absolutely think the US should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job tour. That's a real thing that's got real thing. Real thing Willy Walker. That's a real thing. That's thing.

[C. Weaver]

That's a real thing.

[Emma Vigeland]

That's a real thing. That's a real thing that's offered at work.

[Hal Singer]

Ladies and gentlemen, Joe Rogan has done it again.

[Emma Vigeland]

That offered twerk. That's a real thing that's got.

[Hal Singer]

I think he might be blowing it out of proportion.

[Emma Vigeland]

Real thing that's got offered. That's a real thing that's got.

[Hal Singer]

Let's go Joey.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sushi and Take it easy. Twerk. Sushi and poker. Things have really gotten out of hand.

[Hal Singer]

Sushi and poker with boys.

[Emma Vigeland]

Sushi. You don't have a clue as to what's going on live. YouTube. Sam has the weight of the world on his shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. Anymore. It was so much easier when the majority report was just you.

[Hal Singer]

Let's change the subject.

[Emma Vigeland]

Rangers. And Nick's younger right now. Shut up. Don't want people saying reckless things on your program.

[Hal Singer]

That's one of the most difficult parts of this show.

[Emma Vigeland]

This is a pro killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's time we bury the hatchet. Left his best. Violet. Don't be foolish. Don't tweet at me. And don't.

[Hal Singer]

The way Emma has cucked all of these people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Love it. That's where my heart is. So I wrote my honors thesis about it. I guess I should hand the main.

[Hal Singer]

Mic to you now.

[Emma Vigeland]

You are to the right of the unfor. We already formed Israel. Dude. Are you against us? That's a tougher question I haven't answered.

[Hal Singer]

Incredible theme song.

[Emma Vigeland]

Hi, Bumbler.

[Hal Singer]

Emma Vinland. Absolutely one of my favorite people.

[Emma Vigeland]

Actually. Not just in the game, like period.