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Hi folks. Hey. The holidays are here just in case you didn't know. Do you still need some gifts for friends and family? Well, this year skip the Amazon gift card. Give the people you love the gifts of relaxation and a good night's sleep with one of Sunset Lake Saba days famous tinctures. Using one of these tinctures is as easy as screwing off the cap and placing a few drops in your eggnog. You'll start to feel it within minutes. Imagine what it could do for your tightly wound MAGA family members. Or what it could do for you in dealing with your tightly wound MAGA family members. Right now you can save 35%. 35% if you head to sunsetlakesabaday.com and use the code WINTER25. That's why I've got this down there because usually it's left is best would get you 20% but right now 35% sitewide winter 25 no spaces the numerals 2 and 5. I am a big sunset like Seba tincture. I use the good night oil every night a couple of drops under my tongue and I will also say there are times on the weekend when sometimes your kid may be like insisting that he not go outside or he not clean up his room or whatever it is is and I find a couple of tinctures, drops of tinctures, maybe more than two actually help with that situation. But your you other people may use it for other things but honestly great stuff. They've got all they get three different flavors of tinctures in three or four different concentrations. But the good night oil and they also have for your pets the good night oil is my consistent go to head over to sunsetlake sabaday.com use the code winter to five and you will save 35%. So it's winter 2025 but winter number two number five to save 35% on their full lineup of Saba Dia tinctures for people and pets. This sale ends December 21st at 11:59pm Eastern. See their site for full terms and conditions. And now time for the show. It is Tuesday, December 16, 2025. My name is Sam Seder. 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 Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homeless Law Homelessness Law center on the homeless concentration camp that is being built in Utah. Then on the program Abdul El Sayed, Senate candidate running in the Michigan Democratic primary also on the program today, unemployment rate shoots up to 4.6 the a four year high. And you recall four years ago we were coming out of a pandemic shutdown. Meanwhile US Kills eight people in strikes on three boats in Pacific in the Pacific Ocean. Who was on those boats? Who knows? Senate trying to forge a two year extension of the Affordable Care act subsidies. The House going to take a vote tomorrow on something completely different and and useless. Hexith office escalating investigation of Senator Kelly over that video telling military personnel to follow the Constitution. Meanwhile the military rejiggering their chain of command. New York AG sues UPS over wage theft. The VA to cut tens of thousands of health care providers. Zelensky says a peace proposal is just days away. FBI still yet to find a suspect in the Brown shooting.
B
Good job Cash Patel.
A
Andrew Cuomo charges New York state taxpayers another $1.33 million in defense of his sexual harassment suits. The numbers now over 20 million. And Florida puts a nationwide execution rate to a 15 year high. All this more on today's Majority Report. Welcome ladies and gentlemen.
B
It is Newsday Tuesday and I'm about to appear on screen in just a second. There we are, Newsday Tuesday.
A
Yes, indeed. We have a lot to get to and we are, we're also just like I guess, well, no, tomorrow will be a week away from our final show of 2025 live show anyways, although we, you know, that's in January. So yeah, yeah.
C
Wow.
A
We're getting close to the end of the year and that means we are also only a week or so away from the ACA extensions. The subsidies ending. People are going to be hit with tens of millions of people are going to be hit with 200%, 150%, 50%, 300%, 400% increases in their health care premiums. And it doesn't seem like Republicans in the House are going to allow for any vote on it, although there are three different discharge petitions going around. So folks like Mike Lawler and other so called Republican moderates. And by moderate what we mean is people who won in districts that would otherwise be purple or blue, but because of really the weakness at the top of the ticket in the last election, the Republicans got elected there. They're not by any really sort of sense of the word moderates. It's not like they're voting any differently, particularly when it's crucial. So it's a silly thing to say in some respects. But let's turn to the economy. We finally got some numbers, unemployment numbers because of the government shutdown, which incidentally, we could be heading towards another one in January. These numbers also include the government workers who have been on paid leave in some instances up to like seven or eight months, but they are finally now off the payrolls. So there was a, a huge drop in government workers, federal government workers, but across the board the numbers are really bad. Here is CNN talking about it.
D
A fresh look at the US Economy. Long awaited data on the labor market showing that unemployment, the unemployment rate rose to a four year high last month. And while the economy did add jobs in November, data shows that there have been job losses in three of the last six months. Right now, 7.8 million Americans are out of work. CNN's Matt Egan has much more on what really has been a flood of data that came in this morning. What else are you seeing in this report, Matt?
E
Well, Kate, Kate, this report really confirms that the US Job market remains in a precarious place. Unemployment is rising and hiring is sluggish at best. Now the big number here is 4.6%. That is the new unemployment rate as of November, unexpectedly jumping from 4.4% in September. Now 4.6%. That's the highest level in just over four years. You can see on that chart how there has been this steady increase in the unemployment rate over the last year or two. Now we also Learned that the US economy during the month of October lost jobs, lost 105,000 jobs. Now this was driven entirely by the government and largely by the fact that DOGE had a federal buyout program for federal workers and those workers came off the payrolls at the end of September. So we were expecting a significant drag from the government in October and we did get that. Private sector hiring in October was positive. This was all about the government in November. The only piece of slightly good news here is that hiring did rebound during the month of November. The US economy adding 64,000 jobs. That's a bit ahead of the forecast of 40,000. However, there were also more negative revisions. September was revised slightly lower. August went from negative 4,000 to negative 26,000. So when you look at the trend here and you can see it on that chart, it's really been very bumpy recently. In fact, the US Economy has now lost jobs in three out of the past six months. That's after going more than four years without any months of job loss. In fact, when you look at the year to date average, it's about 55,000 jobs per month that the US economy has added this year. That's very low. In fact, that's the lowest since 2020 during the COVID 19 pandemic. And before that you have to go back to 2009. So on track for a very weak year of.
A
Okay, just to give you some context, 2009 was after the financial crash and it was known as the Great Recession. 2020 was when there was lockdowns in a significant portion of the country because of the pandemic.
B
And those numbers, I just want to say in November because the Fed chair Jay Powell said that those job numbers, the 64,000 added, could be overestimated by as much as 60,000amonth.
A
In other words, we could have added 4,000 jobs. But understand that the because of population growth, 64,000 will push up the unemployment rate because it's not keeping up with the, with the fact that we have more people entering the job market every year. In fact, for young people ages 20 to 24, the unemployment rate is at 8.3% which was at a low of 5.5% in April of 2023. So you know, it's quite possible that we are either already in a recession or on the brink of one, which is defined by two quarters of negative growth. And so it remains to be seen, but negative growth in gdp, but it remains to be seen. We'll see, but we are not. You know those government jobs that were lost, those were absorbed, the vast majority of them in October's numbers, not so much in November, but some. But then, you know, we're done with that sort of extraordinary bump of government worker job loss. But it also goes to show that governments do create jobs and they can also shed jobs.
B
So in the sectors too that are growing, it's mostly the healthcare sector. Every everywhere else is due is layoffs at this point. Professional and business services. I think you can also that those entry level jobs. Right. For young people and some of the professional business services stuff, AI is perhaps a part of that. I think that's going to be a looming, a looming problem for young people in terms of like replacement level work.
F
Heather Long mentions construction is hiring as well. But a lot of construction work is to make data centers right now.
B
Yeah, it's construction work and health care and that's the only area that the of of growth in terms of jobs. Everywhere else is is doing layoffs and that's 1 million more unemployed people from January is basically what the estimate is. It's either somewhere between 800,000 to 1 million more unemployed people since January. And that's because in January the unemployment rate was at 4% and now it's at 4.6. And it's just, it's that. And before that, even with that lower unemployment rate, people were underemployed. We talked about this all the time. Wage growth has not kept up. And so the economy, the fact that the stock market might be doing well is entirely disconnected from how people are feeling.
F
I'd say rent and mortgage prices are probably more important and not affordable for anybody. But yeah, it's been good for people who own stocks.
A
We should also say that we have our, we have an AI representation of the economy. We've run the numbers through our AAI audio generation machine. And here it is. That was it. Entire building's electricity bill just went up. 100 bucks a month. Exactly. To develop that, in a moment we're going to be talking to Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law center on this. It was a Time story on this about the Utah essentially like warehouse for homeless people outside of Salt Lake City. We'll be talking to him about that. And then after that, Abdul El said, running for Senate in the Michigan Democratic primary. First couple words from our sponsors. Delete Me is one of those products that I was using for years, I'd say close to 10 or 11 years now before they approached us to sponsor the program.
B
Same here, by the way.
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B
Wow.
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G
For.
A
Unhoused people. Tell us what you know about this.
G
We know that this camp and this idea should send chills up everyone's spine. We should not have to be saying out loud that forcing people into a camp is a bad idea. But that is where we are yet again in this country. Utah's governor, inspired by the Trump administration's attacks on homeless people, is proposing to create what will be the largest government run detention camp for homeless people with upwards of 1300 beds, including 800 beds where people will be forcibly held against their will. This diverts funding from proven solutions to homelessness like housing and support to instead build a literal detention facility for people who just can't pay the rent. It's shameful and it must not happen.
A
Well, what is the authority to. I mean, is this a jail? Like, what is the authority that, that, that. That Utah has to put people in a concentration camp?
G
I love that question. So there is a growth of anti homeless laws springing up around the country that largely stem from a billionaire backed right wing think tank called the Cicero Institute, which was founded by Palantir CEO Joe Lonsdale. And the Cicero Institute has been moderately effective in passing anti homeless laws at the state level, including in Utah. So Utah has a law on the books, thanks to these billionaires that says it is illegal to sleep outside. So now what Utah is going to do is say your choice is either to go to jail or your choice is to go to a detention camp in the middle of nowhere. Those aren't real choices and they don't solve homelessness. They make homelessness worse.
B
I remember that name because it's so, you know, egregiously libertarian sounding. The Cicero Institute, because last year I remember there was a story about this guy in Texas and how effective he had been. I believe it was in Austin, right? This the tech billionaire Joe Lonsdale, who's. His data stuff has been used by ice, the CIA. He did a documentary with Prageru. So this is like deeply, deeply right wing stuff.
A
Okay, but back to the point of this, like, how long will people like, okay, you get a jail term and someone says you have broken the law because you have no home. How long do. Are people like forced to stay in this concentration camp?
G
We don't know.
A
So there's no. Like, there's just no structure to this whatsoever. Like, it's. But the law is on the books that you can go to jail. So are they putting people in jail right now in. In Utah?
G
Well, what they're doing right now, the governor released his budget, I believe, last week and included $45 million to fund this detention camp. And right now, it's our understanding that there is still a significant chunk of cash that they need, and we expect them to be asking HUD to fund the rest. I want to remind folks that HUD Secretary Scott Turner was asked during his confirmation hearing if he supported forcing homeless people in detention camps, and he failed to answer. We believe that anyone who cannot unequivocally say forcing people into detention camps is not only not fit to run hud, they're just not fit to run the federal government. But it's important that we remember Trump has talked about this for a long time. This is something he has campaigned on. And now these billionaires at the Cicero Institute are really shaping homelessness policy. It should scare all of us. And honestly, everyone who cares about justice needs to be mobilizing against these attacks on people who can't afford rental.
A
And so they have tens of millions of dollars. They're looking for federal grants to build this. I assume this is all going to some type of private prison company that will build this facility. Have they started to build it?
G
They haven't started to build it yet. They're still waiting on the rest of the funding. So the governor's budget came out a few weeks ago, and that was the first indication that this was a top priority for Governor Cox. So now we are looking to see where they plan to get the rest of the funding.
B
Yeah, I'm just wanting to know a little bit more about that connection then with the Trump administration. Like, how intimate is that connection? Because it appears like, based on what we've been speaking about, that this is pretty directly linked to some of Trump's top donors.
G
Well, I want to say two things about that. One is that Donald Trump is using homelessness as a wedge issue to enact his authoritarian takeover of the country. Where I am in D.C. it is no secret that his federal occupation of D.C. is began with attacks on homeless people. And I was there when federal agents harassed homeless people and when the government threw away people's belongings for sleeping outside. And when we think about Trump's attacks, we often think about his attacks on immigrants, his attacks on trans folks, which are urgent and demand Focus. But we also need to focus his attacks on homeless people. And then Joe Lonsdale, the former Palantir CEO billionaire, is good friends with folks like JD Vance, Elon Musk, Peter Thiel. And when we see the homelessness policy coming out of the White House that has the Cicero Institute's fingerprints all over it. Billionaires are the last people in this country who should be shaping homelessness policy because they don't care and they don't know what it's like to do the work or to experience homelessness. We know that despite what these billionaires say, the solution to homelessness is housing and supports, not handcuffs or detention camps.
A
Is there any attempt by in Utah, and I imagine this is like, you know, what we're seeing is a proof of concept type of program, right? Like a pilot program for the rest of, I would imagine mostly red states for the most part. But is, are they expending any money to build housing, to provide housing to in any other programs for unhoused people in Utah?
G
Utah has a definite lack of shelter capacity and a lack of housing that people can afford. One of the things that's so insidious about this detention camp is that it actually will take the money that should be funding housing and supports and also mental health care and instead redirect that funding to the creation of a detention camp. So they're actively taking money away from the solutions to fund this cruel, inhumane and ineffective project.
B
It's almost like a blend of debtors prisons, which are supposed to be illegal in this country, and involuntary commitment to mental institutions from the 20th century. That's what it feels like, a combination of and it's federalized or at least it has federal backing.
G
I think that's absolutely right. We know that at no time in this country or in history has rounding people up and forcing them into camps been a good thing. But that is exactly what Utah, with the backing of the Trump administration, is working towards. It's shameful and we have to stop it. Thankfully, there are amazing advocates in Utah working at the city and state level to stop this. And we're honored to support them in their advocacy and working to make sure that this deranged plan in Utah doesn't go anywhere else.
A
We got Utah, I guess on the Im saying that there is the, at the package stores and liquor stores, the government, the state owned ones, there's an option to round up purchases to help with homelessness services. Is that where this money is going towards? Are they building a fund right now to build this camp or do you not know?
G
I don't know. I'm not certain. But I know that small little changes like that are not actually going to fund those solutions to homelessness. In order to solve homelessness, we have to fix our housing system, which right now only works for people like Joe Lonsdale, Elon Musk and Donald Trump. And we have to build a housing system where everyone, regardless of what they do, what they look like, or where they're from, has a safe place to live. That is not what Utah is doing. Utah is showing us the exact wrong thing to do. But I know that in cities and states across the country, more and more people are recognizing that the rent is too damn high and that when the rent goes up, so does homelessness. And we are going to force our elected officials to focus on real, proven solutions to homelessness like housing and support.
A
Where is there a state in the country that is actually doing stuff that you. I mean, I imagine a lot of your time is spent like, talking about stuff that is like, scary like this, frankly. Are there states that are doing it correctly?
G
There are cities and states across the country who are doing the best they can with limiting resources.
A
We just lost your audio for some reason.
G
Yeah.
A
Can you get a little bit closer.
F
To the mic maybe. I'm not sure what happened there.
G
There are cities and states across the country that are doing the best they can with limited resources. And we know that when folks get housing and support, they don't experience homelessness anymore and they thrive. I used to be a homeless street outreach worker in D.C. and watching my clients connect to housing was transformative for their lives and for the community. But the truth is more people are entering into homelessness than we can support because the federal government has abdicated their responsibility. Not just under the Trump administration. Under many previous federal administrations, we have to stem the flow of people into homelessness. And that requires fundamentally reshaping our housing system and moving away from a profit driven housing system and one towards a realization that everybody needs a place to stay and a place to live, but housing first. This idea that we can match people with housing and support works. It has an over a 90% approval rating. I'm sorry, not a 90% efficacy rating. The only people who are trying to poke holes in that are people like the billionaires at the Cicero Institute who have an agenda to gain and you.
A
Know that 90% effectiveness. It seems to me that one of the talking points that we hear on the right is focused on the 10% that it's not effective for. There are People who have serious mental or emotional challenges who are on the street. There are people who are on the street who don't want, who don't, who don't want to be in a house. But again, I would imagine that the percentage of those people who have some mental or emotional challenge is pretty high. What that seems to always be put in the sort of the front of the line in terms of like saying, well, this is why we've got to send everybody to some type of like a concentration camp or you know, a mental facility when in fact, you know, about 90% of those people would, if you gave them the opportunity to live in a place and they could, they would maybe, maybe even higher. But what do you do about those remaining things, those folks, as a way of addressing what seems to be the big talking point on the right?
G
Well, first you don't throw the baby out with the bath water. If you were on a lifeboat and there were 10 people in your lifeboat and there were five life rafts, five people drowned, five people survived, you wouldn't say the life vests don't work. You would say we need more of them. But right now the right is trying to say throw away all of the life vests that won't work. Number two, stop making homelessness worse. Stop cutting budgets that force people into homelessness or, or force people who were homeless and now stably housed back into homelessness. Stop passing laws like these aggressive anti homeless laws that we've seen spread across the country since the grants passed ruling about 17 months ago. But everyone needs a place to live. And a place to live is the foundation for getting your health back on track. Finding, finding employment, reconnecting with your loved ones. And we know that getting someone in housing first and then surrounding them with the wraparound resources that they want and need works time and time again. We also know that more people. We also know that most people who have a mental health issue or drug use issue will never be homeless. And most people who use drugs or have mental health issues will stay in housing for their entire lives. So we, we have it backwards. We're looking to blame people for individual failings, but the fact is our politicians are asleep at the wheel. Half of people in this country struggle to pay rent. Housing is too expensive, healthcare is too expensive, food is too expensive. The solution is to help people, not to force them into a literal government around detention camp. But again, that is exactly what Utah wants to do. I have to say that as a social worker, this idea of forced institutionalization is deeply, deeply unsettling. It is unethical, but we also know it doesn't work. Emma was talking about these debtors, prisons and these institutions. We used to do forced institutionalization in this country and we don't anymore. We stopped doing it because it was ineffective and it didn't work. But again, the Trump administration wants to bring us backwards to a time where you could throw people in jail for being poor, sick and disabled. We must not let them.
A
Jesse Rabinowitz, communications director for the National Homelessness Law Center. We'll put a link to that organization. Folks want to help your work. Really appreciate you coming on today.
G
Thank you.
B
Thanks so much.
A
All right, folks, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back with Abdul El Said, a Senate candidate running in the Michigan Democratic primary. We'll be right back after this.
G
It. Foreign.
A
We are back. Sam Cedar, Emma Vigland on the Majority Report. Pleasure to welcome back to the program. Abdul El Said he is a Senate candidate running in the Michigan Democratic primary. Abdul, welcome back to the program.
C
Always a privilege to be with you all. Thanks for having me back.
A
So you were on in April with Emma. Give the give us, I should say, a sense of, like what, how the campaign has been going over the course of eight months now. I guess, gosh.
C
It'S crazy that these campaigns take as long as they do because we've got the next eight months yet to go. But in the last eight months, I've been able to travel to 71 different cities. I've done 170 public events. These are town halls where we listen and learn to Michiganders with Michiganders about the issues that they face in their lives. And no matter where I go, people tell me the same thing. It just shouldn't be this hard. Shouldn't be this hard to send my kid to a dentist or see a doctor to work the same job tomorrow that I worked yesterday. Shouldn't be this hard to believe that I could actually own a home if I'm under the age of 40 or stay in my home if I'm over the age of 65. These are the issues that no matter where you go, you can be in Escanaba, in the Upper Peninsula, you can be in Detroit. People use the same words to describe their challenges. And that tells me something, that if we're able to reach across the divides that politicians tend to exploit to keep us separated, divides of geography or of race or faith or ethnicity or sexual orientation, gender identity. If we're able to do those things, you can build a movement that's greater than the sum of its parts, because if you can actually reach across that, we can have nice things, but only if we do it together.
A
And what I mean, you mentioned healthcare, and I want to get into that a bit. But what else in the context of Michigan are on people's minds, like these days? And has it changed over the course of the past eight months? I mean, it's been eight months in sort of normal time, but we've seen, you know, like various cycles of assaults on our government and assaults on our neighbors over the course of these, really, eight, 10 months. And I'm curious, A, what else is on folks in Michigan's mind, and B, has that changed over the course of the campaign?
C
I'll tell you this. You know, you're right. We're living in eight months of time in the Trump era, which feels like eight years. And I think the issue, though, is that it's the same problem, different manifestations. I mean, one of the things that folks will talk a lot about right now is the way that our current utility is cutting corners when it comes to deals that they've made around data centers. And look, I think there are opportunities for really great union jobs with data centers, but that has to come with a level of public accountability. And when your local utility that's been raising your rates every single cycle, every single year on you now comes and says that they're going to take on this new client that is going to increase their output by 65% and you lose your electricity two or three times a year for three or four days every time, you're going to look askance at that. And when they tell you that they want to do that without actually having to have public hearings, you start to realize that there's something afoot. But dte, which is our utility here in southeast Michigan, they're the biggest single spender in Michigan politics. I said something when I ran back in 2018 that has been so true since. Donald Trump is not himself the disease of our politics. He's just the worst symptom of the disease. And the disease is the way that corporations like DTE can buy up politicians to do their bidding. And this is just another example. It's the newest iteration of the same old problem. Obviously, we've been talking about health care quite a bit because we're watching as people's premiums are about to skyrocket. Now ask yourself why that is. That's because big corporations, we've ceded our health care system to them. And of course, they put profits First. And so these are the companies that are raising the price of health care on us. And we have to remember that their CEOs are still going to get paid 10, 20 million dollars a year as they raise those prices.
A
Let's talk about specifically single payer and the model that you are supportive of. Tell us about about that model.
C
Look, Sam, anybody who knows about me knows that I'm a physician, I rebuild health departments and I believe deeply in Medicare for all. I literally wrote the book on Medicare for all, how we would achieve guaranteed health care for everybody from the moment they are born to, to the moment that they get a job, hopefully don't lose a job, get married, hopefully don't get divorced, turn 65. All of the ways that you can lose your health care in America, we need to be able to guarantee folks through that and guarantee them the kind of health care that they don't have to worry about. The price that they get hit with when they hit a deductible simply because they dared to get sick and actually use their health insurance. We could do that and we could do that and actually save Americans money. That's what Medicare for All would do. Guaranteed health care from the moment you are born to the moment, hopefully you live to 120 years and die peacefully in your sleep, that it is there for you, no matter the circumstances of your lives. You would think that in an era where we are watching as the price of care is skyrocketing, that anyone running for office in 2025, 2026 should be on board with that idea. Because guess what? The American public is on board with that idea. In survey after survey, the American public, Democrats and Republicans, support this idea, except for if you're taking money from the corporations who make money off the system as it stands. And unfortunately that has been the case for far too long, certainly among Republicans and also among too many Democrats and certainly the kinds of folks that I've been running against here in Michigan.
B
What do you say when people say, well, I work in the health insurance industry, my job could go away if Medicare for All were to be implemented. Just throwing that out there as the devil's advocate, because I imagine you're getting some of that.
C
You know, I don't get as much of that as you think. In fact, when people come up to me in town halls who work in the industry, they're like, you know, it's as bad as you say it is and worse. The reality of it though is that there would still be these jobs. You still need people who can process our claims, process health insurance. If you're the CEO of the company, you're making 18 million bucks. I'm so sorry. I don't think you should be making $18 million that people literally are spending to provide their people health care. But for the folks who work inside the industry, a lot of these jobs are going to persist. I'll tell you a story from the campaign trail that really hit me hard. There was a woman who after a town hall, stayed back and she said, you know, I'm a nurse and I take care of patients with breast cancer. I said, that's amazing. And she said, I want to tell you why I do this. I said, okay. She said, well, I used to work in health insurance and I had to deny a woman who was dying of breast cancer from the reimbursement that she needed for her care. And so it didn't just happen that she died of breast cancer. It happened that she died destitute of breast cancer. And when that happened and I realized that the reason I was doing this was because of the greed of the company I was working for, I resigned, I went to nursing school and I became a nurse. The reality of it is in our healthcare industry, our healthcare system, we need a lot more people who are actually providing care, healing people when they get sick. And if we were to pass Medicare for all, the tens of millions of people who are currently on the outs in the system would be let back in and they're going to need health care. There's so much we could do to provide yet more jobs in health care if we were providing them in the right ways without the gatekeeping of the health insurance industry.
A
And we're already, I mean, this is the thing that people don't seem to understand fully, that we have, one third of the country is already on a program like this, this like in one form or another. So it's really not, we're not reinventing the wheel, we're just putting another wheel on the car essentially. And we have right wing think tanks that have shown that per capita we're going to save money as a country on, on, on health insurance. We're not, we're not even talking about care as much as we are about talking about a middleman who makes money off the way that we pay for health insurance.
C
And Sam, we do this crazy thing, okay, I just want folks to understand this. You're right, a third of the country by people, but more than 50% of the health care by cost is funded by the government already. But what we do is we either provide health care for you when you're low income and therefore more likely to get sick, or when you're older and therefore more likely to get sick. But when you're younger and could invest more in that public system so that it would benefit everybody, we allow you or force you into this private system so that corporations can make more money. The whole thing, right, is a system that is built around maximizing the profits of a very few number of very large corporations that are extremely powerful and use their money to sustain the system rather than to provide healthcare for all of us. I did this video quite recently. We went to Canada and spoke to folks about medical debt, right? And I said, well, you're our neighbors. Tell us how you handle your medical debt. And of course none of them have medical debt because that's not a thing that happens in Canada. And I'll just tell you this, they live two years longer on average than we do. They spend only about 60% as much as we do. And in survey after survey, they're happier than we are. The difference? A few huge corporations make a lot more money in America and a lot of people go without health care than in Canada. We could have that if we had the political will to actually act in what's right for people. But the corporations spend too much money buying off politicians to make sure that those politicians will never actually act that way.
A
Do you think that the forces against doing something like a single payer system are just the insurance companies? Is it like where. Because we have insurance companies, but you know, they're a big business, but they're not that big. I mean, it's almost like you could almost pay them off and still like deal with it. You have medical providers who are able to charge in some instances, like, you know, sort of exorbitant rates because they have the advantage of maybe, you know, not having a coherent system that measures what best practices might be. You know, I buy a CAT scan and all of a sudden it's like, well, you got a cough, let's put you in the CAT scan. I mean, there's a little bit of an exaggeration, but not exactly. Or is it also just sort of like broadly speaking, large corporations want the control over their workers that making the workers dependent upon them for health care provides?
C
You know, Sam, I think it's some of all of that, but I do want to talk a little bit about some of the numbers here because they're quite staggering. If you look at the amount of money spent by corporations, by industry, on lobbying, the number one biggest spender is the pharmaceutical industry. Over the past 20 years, they spent 4.3 billion billion with a B dollars just on lobbying. That doesn't include electioneering, that doesn't include the money that they spend in their packs to shape elections, just lobbying. Number two was the insurance industry. So when you look at the amount of money that is actually spent to sway positions of lawmakers, it's an immense, insane amount of money. And then you have the amount of money that they're using to sway public opinion. If you watch the 2020 primary, you might remember seeing some ads for the Coalition for America's Health Care Future. This was a group funded by pharma and health insurance and big hospitals that came together to try and dissuade people from supporting Medicare for all or candidates who supported Medicare for all in the 2020 cycle. So this is about the profits of a few very, very big, very, very powerful industries. Now look, other folks benefit from this, but you really got to lay the blame at the kind of corporate greed and the way that the corporate greed can cross into our politics in a way that has left us bereft of health care options that people can afford.
A
I'm going to play a video for you now. This may be unfair. It is one of the people that you're running against and she is, she has not been the sort of the handpicked of the establishment of Chuck Schumer and Kristen Gillibrand like Haley Stevens has been. And I will, I will cop to not knowing that much about her then or now. But I saw this video a couple months ago and it drove me absolutely crazy. It was so disingenuous, I couldn't believe it. And I don't want to sandbag you with this, but I want to play this clip of her describing why you wouldn't want single payer health care. And I just, it's astonishing to me because three months later people we're going to like, I don't know how many millions of people are going to end up losing their health care if not paying four times more for it under the Affordable Care act, which is, you know, a private health care system essentially with just subsidies. But Here is Mallory McMurrow. I'm not sure where the location was. Was there some type of rally or you know, campaign. Campaign event, yeah.
D
Now I said it the way that I said it because some people conflate Medicare for all with universal health care. But Medicare for all when it's actually defined is one singular government run health care system that we are all on now. I want you to imagine what that would look like with Donald Trump and RFK Jr. At the head of it. You have this man who just last week held a conference saying that anybody who has been circumcised probably has autism because they probably took Tylenol. This is a man who decapitated a whale and dropped a dead bear off in Central park who works out.
A
I don't know the comedy bit as is funny, but she's not really addressing the issue. What are the implications? I mean, we now have a completely disjointed system. We have, like we say, one third of our country. Medicaid, Medicare, VA, VA obviously getting government like, like delivered health care. Medicare and Medicaid are government insurers of, of health care. But Donald Trump has been able to mess this up quite a bit. Kennedy's been able to mess this up quite a bit. The thing that they're afraid of is messing with Medicare because there's a mass of people there who are going to be like, hey, wait a second. But I would like to get your, your, your sense of that perspective. I can't imagine she actually believes that.
C
Well, it's disappointing to see a Democrat running that in 2025. Really, it's somewhat astounding. I do want to fact check something and then speak to the broader implication. Medicare for all is not one government health system. Medicare for all wouldn't actually provide you health care. It's one government health insurance system so that it would pay for your care. Kind of like Medicare. That's why we say Medicare for All. And then I want you to think about the logic underneath that. Like, it's a crazy thing because you could use the same logic to justify not ever having passed Medicare in the first place or Medicaid or Social Security or frankly, anything else government does and is wild. As Democrats, who are the people who are supposed to believe that government can be a part of solving a number of problems for all of us? When we think about what the public good can be to then run on that kind of logic. But then ask yourself why people like Donald Trump get elected in the first place. It's because people like Democrats run away from their ideals. I mean, the biggest challenge we have is that Donald Trump is very clear about what he believes in. You know, when you ask people about what Donald Trump's about, he's got a very clear narrative. If you're out of a job because an immigrant took your job, if you're out of health care, it's because immigrants took your health care. If you out of a home, because immigrants took your home. And we should be right there with an alternative, true narrative. If you're out of a job because corporations automated and offshored your jobs out of health care, because corporations squeezed you out of health care, out of a home, corporations speculated on your home. But we don't do that. We sit here with lists of options that mean nothing, and then we wonder why we don't win elections. Right? Because if you run against the big, ugly bear and you have an alternative against the big, ugly bear, then what are you actually doing? And so the reason we lose in the first place, the reason people like Donald Trump end up taking power in destroying a lot of these programs, is because we're unwilling to actually state what we're for. And so if you are sitting in 2025 running an election campaign against what government can do, then my question is, why don't you just go join the other party? You could tear it apart if you want to.
A
And it seems to me that, like, and I'm trying to even, like, even when I'm being as charitable as I can, as upsetting as that clip was to me, for some reason, universal health care, according to her system, would essentially be, you know, Obamacare or, you know, the ACA juiced up a little bit more. But that's just us providing subsidies to private health insurance, which Donald Trump has shown can end at any moment. Like, it's not. There's no way to guarantee universal health care without having a government involved in that in some fashion. It just becomes how inefficient and how much of the cost is going to be laid on. Like, how much, how much, how much do we want to pay? I mean, like, during the COVID we provided health care for people who lost their jobs by paying for cobra, which, if you're receiving it, okay, that's great, except for it's the least efficient possible way we could have ever done it. It's the most expensive health care you can provide. You don't get anything more. It's just that the government was paying both sides of the equation in that instance. It was absurd. So it's really just about burning money.
C
Yeah. You know, if you want to guarantee people health care, just guarantee them health care. It's like, it's not really that hard. We do that for people over the age of 65 who, by the way, need more health care. So it is a just a. It's a very frustrating thing because right now, the Insistence of the corporate Democratic wing of the party is that we have to do this and we have to use the insurance industry as the stopgap. And my point is, I don't want to subsidize big corporations. If I could just directly offer people guaranteed health care, which is what Medicare for All is supposed to be. Republicans are responding this moment and saying, we're just going to give you cash. We don't want to subsidize the health insurance industry either. Both of these arguments are disingenuous. If you want to guarantee people health care, guarantee them health care. We can do that through the federal government. We do that for people who are over 65. This is not a difficult thing to understand. And I'll just say this. I come to my position on Medicare for All as someone who's gone to medical school, who did a PhD in public health, who rebuilt a health department, who led the state's biggest health department, who wrote a book on how to do this. A lot of other Democrats come to their positions on health care from the experience of having taken corporate checks from health insurance CEOs. Now you make your decision.
B
Can. Do you want to pivot off health care for a sec? I just wanted to ask you about this, Abdul, because obviously Michigan was a major focus for the 2024 election, in part because Michigan has a large Muslim population. And the genocide in Gaza was looming over that election. And we saw what the results were in Dearborn and across the state and across the country over the past eight months. What has struck you about your stance, which calls it the genocide? You don't take APAC money, obviously, or corporate PAC money in general. And what has some of the reaction that you've seen been to say, you know, you have Haley Stevens who's just drowning in a PAC money. McMorrow's trying to stake out a more middle ground. But your position is obviously the clearest on this.
C
Yeah, it's clear because I'm not. I'm not running for office to say what's popular. I'm running for office to make what is right, popular. That's the work that politics is supposed to do. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend like the murder of tens of thousands of kids, up to 100,000 people, the destruction of all of their infrastructure, their housing, their hospitals, their schools, their universities, their parks, everything, and then the attempt to push them into neighboring countries because they happen to speak the same language is anything short of what experts in Israel call it, which is a genocide. I didn't have to get pushed there. Those are obvious things. And I think there's a couple things that are really surprising to me. The first is you would expect that what I just said would be popular in a place like Dearborn, but maybe not in a place like Houghton up in the Upper Peninsula's Upper Peninsula, or in a church in Redford, right outside Detroit, or on the west side of the state in Holland or Grand Rapids. And no matter where I go, when I share the fact that in an era where our kids schools are crumbling, where our healthcare is failing, where our infrastructure is decimated, that our federal government is sending our money abroad to buy foreign militaries, bombs in tanks to drop on other people's children when we could be investing it here at home, that that resonates like, that resonates. It should be obvious. But it's not just in places like Dearborn or Dearborn Heights or in communities that are ethnic enclaves. It is everywhere. Because this is a fundamentally American problem. When our children go without the things they need from our tax dollars and we're misappropriating our tax dollars abroad, this is an American problem. And I'll just tell you this. It's a wild thing. There's a certain hubris that American policymakers have about believing they get to dictate how other people come to their ultimate peace. That's not my job. I'm not running for senator from Tel Aviv or Gaza. I'm running for senator from Michigan. And as a senator in Michigan, I want Michigan tax dollars spent on kids and adults in Michigan. That shouldn't be a hard thing to say now when folks are bending themselves into pretzels to avoid saying the obvious thing because they're worried about whether or not they're going to receive funding from a special interest funded by MAGA billionaires or they're going to get spent against. At some point you have to ask whether or not they, they passed the basic moral litmus test of our time. Can you call the murder of tens of thousands of kids a genocide? Like, it's not that hard. And so, you know, the fact that it's resonating across my state to me was initially surprising. But when you step back and think about it, it should be really obvious. And I do hope that it gives heart to a lot of other folks running for office right now. Because if your goal is just to get elected, then ask yourself what you're going to do when you get that big old office. And you sit there and now you're tied into knots and can't do the obvious thing that you said you wanted to do. What's the point? The goal here is not just to get a job. The goal here is to govern according to the truth. And so if you can't get elected saying the truth, then ask yourself whether or not you want to get elected at all.
A
I want to ask you too about the filibuster, because there's a lot of sort of like there's several, I should say, candidates running in primaries who have come out, Senate candidates who've come out and said they're against the, or they would vote to repeal the filibuster. I, I can't imagine it's a huge issue on the trail, but you tell me, I mean, do, are there, are there significant amount of like, I wouldn't imagine it would be, but part of that is a function of like, I don't think that people realize what the filibuster does in terms of hiding Senate senators positions from their constituents.
C
You know, it comes up a lot more often than you'd think. You know, right now we are in a moment where democracy feels like it might be on its deathbed, but it's been sick for a very long time. And it's been sick for a very long time because we've allowed corporations to come in and truck the basic interests of everyday people. And one of the tools that they use is the filibuster. Because you're right, if one senator can withhold an entire body from having to vote on legislation, all of the other senators can hide behind that one U.S. senator. So at that point, it serves to in effect, shield senators real interests from their voters. And I just think that's anti democratic and it's wrong. And so it's part of what has put democracy on its deathbed. And it's one of the more dangerous parts because at the end of the day, right now we're in a situation where we're talking about, will I be able to vote in 2026? Am I able to actually say what I believe in a country that's supposed to protect my freedom of speech? But like, we got here through a whole process of everyday people not being able to afford the basic needs of their lives, not be able to afford housing, not being able to afford groceries, not be able to get the health care they need, not be able to send their kids to a dentist. And the fact that our democratic process hasn't been able to solve these problems for people itself has been the illness of our democracy. And the filibuster is part of that. So it comes up a lot more than you would think. But it's important for folks, I think, to connect the dots on the way that you can't afford your meat at the grocery store because a few huge meat packers dominate the industry and they're able to hide behind the filibuster to do anything to actually regulate it. And that plays itself out in almost every aspect of our lives.
A
Abdul El said, if there are folks in Michigan who want to help you in this run for the Democratic primary or frankly around the country who want to help you, what should they do?
C
I hope folks will go to abdul4senate.com I hope they'll follow us on socials. Abdul Al Sayed, I hope that you'll share our stuff and you'll build up these conversations. And look, if you can give us a couple bucks, I'd really appreciate that. I don't take corporate money. I never have. I never will. Our utility and our health insurance company spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to beat me the last time I ran for governor. And I wear that as a badge of honor. But if you don't want bad people's money, you got to take good people's money. So if folks can support us, chip us off, 5 bucks, 10 bucks, or sign up to volunteer, we are going to be building a community of people coming together to change our politics across the state through the next year. I hope that you'll come join us. Abdul4senate.com I deeply appreciate the opportunity to be with you all today.
A
All right. Well, we will link to abdulforsenate.com Abdul Sayed, thank you so much for your time today. Really appreciate it.
C
Thank you all for having me.
B
Thanks, Abdul.
A
All right, we're going to take a quick break and head into the fun half of the program.
B
I will say, I mean, we've got two dynamite Senate candidates I think in the country right now.
F
A few, there's, I think Julie in Colorado. I need to look, I need to look up her. But I saw her announce a few like a week ago. There's a couple.
A
There is a world, there is a.
C
World.
A
That, you know, I don't, I, you know, I don't want to, it's not magical thinking on my part, but it's, I don't want to indulge in sort of like imagining a Senate where we have three or four or five new Democratic senators who come in, maybe, you know, five or six who, one or two that, you know, have returned to the Senate and all of a sudden we can actually do away with the filibuster and we can have, you know, half the caucus be genuinely committed to the idea of a Medicare for All. That would be awesome.
B
Yep.
A
Crusty Gnome says yes to dynamic dynamite candidates Haley Stevens and Seth Moore. Go Bills.
B
I guess. Yeah, I didn't. Peggy Flanagan is the third one I would say too. I forgot. I didn't realize she supported Medicare for All. Sorry, stepping on our bit, but I just wanted to give a shout out to Flanagan as well. In Minnesota.
A
Also, let's say this on the free show, Silly Science people says thanks to the Majority Report Discord. You can go to icerrt.com and find your closest rapid response team as well as legal services for those dealing with deportation, protest groups still under construction but functional. That is awesome. Did folks on the, on the Discord set that up? Oh, that is awesome. That, that would be, That would be great if that, if, if it was a function of the Discord. That would be fantastic. I mean it's great that it exists anyways, but that would be really exciting. We're going to put a link to that ICE RRT for ICE Rapid response teams. Awesome. Really awesome. You can find your local team. You can search by state or county or city. That's fantastic. Gosh, that makes me very, very happy. Oh, that's great. Thank you so much for doing that. Also, somebody saying that two Mondays this month have the wrong YouTube links for members. But folks, it's your support that makes this show possible.
F
Where are those links? Are they in the. Can they. The person just follow up if they're in the fans description.
A
Come on, you gotta find it. It's not, it can't be too, too easy for you. It's like a, it's like an escape.
G
Room.
A
You know, it's like we escaped.
B
Before the election and that he's trapped.
A
Folks, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member @join the MajorityReport.com when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, but you get the fun half as well. And you can IM us with all sorts of like cryptic messages that we need to figure out, which is what we do for fun around here. After the show, Monday, Wednesday and Friday nights, we all get together for. We have a little dinner, a little fondue sometimes and then we just try and decipher for decipher. It's our gaming night.
B
We don't spend time with any other people.
F
That's it.
B
That's it.
A
Also just coffee. You missed the. The big discount they're having. But you can still get 10 off with the coupon code majority. That is just Coffee Co op. Just coffee co op. Use the coupon code majority get 10 off and we still have Max left. Somebody said they weren't beanies, that they're Token Thomas or two. I don't know. They're hats. They're. They're knit cat. They're. They're beanies. Do you not know what we mean when we say beanie? Is it.
G
Sorry.
A
The real me came real caustic.
B
I saw. I saw you were like, should I.
A
Go for reach through the computer and beat you up for saying that six.
F
Months to Brian reaches limit for penetration.
A
This is it as far as he's concerned. You're all his lieutenant now. You can head there and get some majority report knit skull caps and beanies. Max left. I mean all sorts of gifts there@shop.majorportradio.com also am quickie. Am quickie.com three days a week. You get a free email in your inbox 9am every morning giving you the top stories of the day. And for a couple of bucks more, you get it five days a week or 20 plus days a month. You could think about it that way. Then you could also do the math and do the year. I can't do that. And Matt. What? Matt Leck. What's happening with the Matt Le.
F
It's on Tuesday afternoons. As everybody knows now. Not this week, one day only. Next tomorrow, actually.
C
Wednesday.
F
We are talking with senate candidate for Maine, Graham Platner.
A
YouTube is stalled, says Dorsey. So refresh well. Okay. Well, Dorsey says it's okay now.
F
Okay, that's like three times in the past couple weeks that. Exactly at this time of day that we have tech issues, which is just fun.
B
It's the planets. But Graham Platner, Very exciting.
F
No, it's not. It's not the same problem. Yeah, Grand Platner tomorrow. Look, go subscribe to Left Reckoning Charge.
A
Bluegrass dsa. Before we go into the fun, half wanted to give a huge thanks to you guys for shouting out the bluegrass chapter of the DSA and taking my call last week. Turns out dozens of locals were listening and several of them have joined since hearing the show. The shofar called them out of the mountains like the horn of Gondor. So giant thanks. And I'll be sure to call back in next week when we have Herbert Lynn's donation link for city council.
F
That's how I'm feeling hearing that news.
A
I don't know. No, but I know. That's gonna be a 12 minute song by the end of next year.
F
I isolated 33 seconds of raw beat there.
B
We've got to put a bunch of drops over that.
A
It'll be your Christmas present. We should just put out a video, an album. Yes.
F
I'm a DJ now.
A
When Matt came to the show, not only, there were two things that got me to hire Matt. One was he said he had read 153 books that year or something like that.
F
That's unemployed.
A
And. But then he said he also had a podcast where he would take the Nixon tapes and put them to, like.
F
Trance beats or something, James Blake, apex twin sort of stuff, so that he.
A
Could get his friends to listen to it. I was like, all right, I don't need to hear anything else. What time can you start? You're doing, like Christian youth outreach, but for the Nixon tapes?
F
Pretty much.
A
All right, we gotta take quick break. We'll be right back in just a moment. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now, and I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma, welcome to the program. Fun Half. Matt who? Fun Hack. What is up, everyone? Fun hack. No. McKee, you did it. Fun Half.
B
Let's go, Brandon.
C
Let's go, Brandon.
A
Fun Hack. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.
D
Fundamentally false.
B
No. I'm sorry. Women.
A
Stop talking for a second and let me finish.
E
Where is this coming from, dude?
A
But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A.
C
Yes.
G
All right. The sink.
A
Yes. Is this me? Is it me? It is you. If it's me. Oh, it's me. I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?
C
We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.
A
I'm gonna go Snow White.
G
Who?
A
Libertarians. They're so stupid.
F
Stupid.
A
Though common sense says. Of course.
B
Gobbledygook.
A
We nailed him.
B
So what's 79 plus 21?
A
Challenge.
C
Matt, I'm positively quivering.
A
I believe 96. I want to say 8, 5, 7, 2, 1, 0, 35, 5, 0, 1, 1 half. 3, 8, 9, 11.
B
For instance, $3,400. $1900. 5, 4.
A
$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.
B
Actually. You're making me think less of.
A
Wait, but let me say this. You call satire? Sam goes satire on top of it all. My favorite part about you is just.
B
Like every day, all day, like everything you do.
A
Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We seen you. All right, folks, folks, folks.
B
It's just the week being weeded out. Obviously.
G
Yeah.
A
Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know. But you should know.
G
People just don't.
F
Like to entertain ideas anymore.
A
I have a question. Who cares?
F
Our chat is enabled, folks.
A
I love it.
B
I do love that.
C
Gotta jump.
A
Gotta be quick. I gotta jump. I'm losing it, bro. Two o', clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulag.
B
Outrageous.
A
Like, what is wrong with you?
G
Love you.
A
Bye. Love you.
C
Bye.
A
Bye.
Episode 3546 – "The Plan to Put Homeless in Concentration Camps; The Fight for Health Care"
Date: December 16, 2025
Guests:
In this episode, Sam Seder and co-hosts dive into two central topics shaping American politics at the close of 2025:
"It’s quite possible that we are either already in a recession or on the brink of one…" (00:11:19)
Guest: Jesse Rabinowitz, National Homelessness Law Center
Segment Start: 00:23:43
Segment Start: 00:38:28
“It just shouldn’t be this hard...No matter where you go, people use the same words to describe their challenges. That tells me if we’re able to reach across the divides politicians exploit...we can build a movement." – Abdul El-Sayed (00:39:04)
"The reality of it…there would still be these jobs. You still need people who can process claims...In our healthcare industry, we need a lot more people actually providing care.” (00:44:24)
“If you are sitting in 2025 running an election campaign against what government can do, then my question is, why don’t you just go join the other party?” (00:54:54)
“One of the tools...is the filibuster. Because you're right, if one senator can withhold an entire body from having to vote on legislation, all of the other senators can hide behind that one U.S. senator." (01:62:58)
“We should not have to be saying out loud that forcing people into a camp is a bad idea. But that is where we are yet again in this country.”
“There is a growth of anti-homeless laws...thanks to these billionaires...your choice is either jail or a detention camp. Those aren’t real choices—and it doesn’t solve homelessness.”
“Guaranteed healthcare from the moment you are born to the moment you die peacefully in your sleep...is there for you, no matter the circumstances.”
“If you're out of a job, it's because corporations automated and offshored your jobs… but we don't do that. We sit here with lists of options that mean nothing, and then we wonder why we don't win elections.”
“I'm not running for office to say what's popular. I'm running for office to make what's right popular… our federal government is sending our money abroad to buy foreign militaries bombs... that resonates. It should be obvious.”
This episode delivers a hard-hitting look at the intersection of criminalization of poverty and the inertia plaguing American health policy. It gives listeners a close-up with advocates and reformers confronting these challenges head-on. Rabinowitz warns of a new era of punitive anti-homelessness policy with national implications, while El-Sayed speaks plainly about the urgent need for Medicare for All and the stakes for democracy.
Call to Action:
Links & Resources: