3588 - Tenant Strike; Not Just a 'Vibecession' w/ Isi Breen, Yusra Murad & Mike Konczal

Summary

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The Majority Report with Sam Seder

Episode 3588: Tenant Strike; Not Just a 'Vibecession' w/ Isi Breen, Yusra Murad & Mike Konczal
Date: February 25, 2026

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EPISODE OVERVIEW

This episode tackles two main topics at the heart of current American politics:

1. The Twin Cities Tenants Rent Strike, with guests Isi Breen and Yusra Murad, spotlighting organized tenant response to recent federal actions and the push for eviction protections and rent relief in Minneapolis and beyond.
2. An exploration of the so-called “Vibecession”—the disconnect between positive economic indicators and negative public sentiment—with economist Mike Konczal, Senior Director at the Economic Security Project.

The episode also briefly recaps and savages Donald Trump’s record-long, yet substance-thin, State of the Union address the previous night.

Note: All ads, promos, and non-content sections are omitted.

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1. Trump’s State of the Union: “107 Minutes of Pure Gruel”

[00:12 – 13:45]

• Sam’s Reaction:

  • Sam Seder delivers a withering review of Trump’s State of the Union, calling it “the longest, most boring and predictable State of the Union in history” (03:00).
  • Trump spent significant time spotlighting the men’s Olympic hockey team, blowing out the microphone and conjuring “a combination of a telethon and a trade association award dinner” (06:40), using audience callouts to gin up sentiment.
  • Quote (Trump, 09:57):
    “Our country is winning again. ...People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. ...But now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big.”

• Technical Glitches and Awkwardness:

  • Trump’s audio was “crispy and fried” for the rest of the speech. Sam likens the viewing experience to “being a moderator for Facebook, where you have to look at horrible things as part of your job” (11:22).
  • Most memorable content was the near-exclusion of substance—recitations of “winners,” recognition of individuals, but a “garbage fire” with “nothing new introduced…no attempt to recognize any type of the economic issues” (06:00–08:00).

• Protests from the Audience:

  • Rep. Ilhan Omar shouted, “You have killed Americans!” during Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric (13:45).
  • Rep. Al Green held up a sign, “Black people are not apes,” in response to Trump’s previously posted videos (13:00).

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2. The Twin Cities Tenants Rent Strike

[24:18 – 41:03]
Guests: Isi Breen & Yusra Murad

Genesis & Context

• Since December, Minneapolis is under “one of the largest, most violent and long lasting federal occupations of any American city in recent history” (24:18 – Isi Breen).
• Immigrant communities are particularly affected: thousands unable to work, losing income, falling behind on rent, facing eviction due to federal ICE presence and economic disruptions.

Quote (Isi Breen, 24:18):
“This mobilization toward a potential rent strike on March 1st, I think really represents the hunger and readiness among people in Minneapolis to take serious action...to compel our elected leaders to step into their power and make decisive decisions toward eviction protections and rent relief.”

Demands & Political Asks

• State and City Policy Levers:

  • Governor Tim Walz can enact a “peacetime state of emergency”—used during COVID—to issue new eviction moratorium and direct relief (26:49, Yusra Murad).
  • There’s a bill for a 90-day eviction moratorium plus $75 million renter relief, but it’s stalled in the Republican-controlled State House.
  • Mayor Jacob Frey has unilateral powers to block evictions and direct aid; City Councilor Robin Wansley is pushing to extend pre-eviction notice periods from 30 to 90 days.

• Eligibility and Process:

  • Relief would focus on those unable to work or who lost jobs due to the occupation and subsequent “eight weeks of lost wages” (30:07, Yusra Murad).
  • Mechanisms vary—statewide moratoriums are universal; relief funds require applications.

Coalition & Participation

• Support includes labor unions, healthcare workers, faith and school communities, tenant organizations, and small immigrant-owned businesses (31:49, Isi Breen).
• Hundreds of tenants already mobilized; new pledges daily, exact numbers withheld due to evolving campaign.

Quote (Isi Breen, 31:49):
“We have in mind not just protections for this particular moment, but how to build a deeper, more protective foundation around housing stability...for inevitable future political or economic shocks.”

How to Get Involved

• For Twin Cities/Greater Minnesota Residents:
  • Take the pledge at twincitiestenants.org, phone-bank, join local trainings and meetings (36:12, Isi Breen).
• For Out-of-State Supporters:
  • Sign up for phone banking through the website—“close to one in three people that we speak to sign up to take the pledge...a shocking level of success” (37:51, Yusra Murad).

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3. Why “The Economy Feels Bad”—Not Just a ‘Vibecession’

[43:25 – 72:27]
Guest: Mike Konczal, Economic Security Project

The Vibe Session Dilemma

• Despite positive macroeconomic numbers (low unemployment, rising median incomes), Americans report deep dissatisfaction (“consumer sentiment at 2008 financial crisis levels”).
• “Affordability” has emerged as a political rallying cry, especially among progressives and urban movements.

Quote (Mike Konczal, 44:36):
“People are really upset...and going into the last year with the Trump administration, people actually got more upset about the economy. ...In many indicators, people are at the financial crisis of 2008 levels.”

Explaining the Disconnect

The “Money Illusion” Story

• Economists argue that people are “confused” because prices and incomes both rose; in theory, they should break even (“money illusion”). But this ignores category-level specifics.
• Essentials like housing, food, and healthcare ballooned much faster than other expenses.
  • Working-class and lower-income households spend a larger share on these essentials, making real-life cost-of-living feel much worse than averages suggest.

Quote (Konczal, 48:18):
“The price of essentials went up a lot more… For people really depending on those...they’re not making it up, they’re not confused, they’re spending more to get less of things that they need to survive.”

• Fixed monthly expenses (housing, insurance, utilities, even vet services) are unavoidable and rising. Sam notes, “the stuff that we really have to spend on...we may not even get to enjoy the savings” from lower costs elsewhere (51:01, 52:13).

Planning, Stability, and Uncertainty

• Inflation makes it harder to plan for major life milestones: “It makes it hard to plan...how am I going to start a business, buy a house, have a family?” (52:13, Konczal).

Intergenerational/Distributional Dynamics

• Younger people face a far higher unemployment rate and lack access to homeownership and wealth-building that benefited older generations.
• “K-shaped economy”: the older and wealthy are insulated/dominant in spending, while young and non-homeowners struggle (60:32–61:26, Konczal).

Quote (Konczal, 61:26):
“It’s a really brutal housing market… Rents are up dramatically. It’s very hard for you to imagine how you could build up enough to get a down payment.”

Policy and Political Responses

• Current Administration:

  • Trump’s response: Dismisses affordability concerns as “a made up Democrat word,” shows zero empathy (57:49).
  • Imposes new 10% tariffs and poorly targeted economic policies, compounding future inflation and uncertainty, especially with looming Medicaid cuts and rising healthcare premiums.

• Democratic and Progressive Efforts:

  • Mike highlights the Mamdani campaign in New York as an innovative model focusing on housing policy (rent control, expanding supply, prioritizing affordability).
  • “There’s some innovation happening there and I think there’s going to be more. On healthcare, we kind of know what we have to do, we just got to do it. We know other countries figure out health care. We have not.” (63:34, Konczal)

Private Equity & Service Cost Run-Ups

• Seder points to veterinary and dental services, dominated by private equity, whose price gouging now hits families hard.
• Nursing homes: “elderly people die when nursing homes are taken over by private equity because they just cut services to the bone, jack up rates...” (68:48, Konczal).
• Local/state policy can sometimes push back; AELP (American Economic Liberties Project) is cited as a resource.

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4. Closing Moments & Notable Quotes

• Sam on the Trump Administration:
  “Honestly the least competent fascists that I think have been around. It is one of their sort of hallmarks” ([70:06])

• On Housing Crisis Spreading:
  “Problems we once associated with like New York or Washington D.C. or LA...that problem is everywhere now. It’s in the exurbs, medium-sized cities, the Midwest. ...They’re no longer isolated to a handful of blue areas.” ([70:57], Konczal)

• Breaking News (72:11):
  “Lawrence Summers to resign from Harvard as university reviews his Epstein ties. … Manifesting!” (Sam & Konczal)

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TIMESTAMPS & HIGHLIGHTS

| Segment | Content | Key Quotes/Notes | |---------|---------|------------------| | 00:12–13:45 | Trump State of the Union recap | “107 minutes of pure gruel.” “Garbage fire” (06:00+); [09:57] Trump’s “We’re winning too much” riff | | 24:18–41:03 | Twin Cities Tenant Strike | “Represents the hunger ...to wield power ...for eviction protections and rent relief” (24:18, Breen) | | 43:25–72:27 | Mike Konczal on economic vibes | “People are really upset ...at the financial crisis of 2008 levels.” (44:36, Konczal) “Affordability” focus, material hardships detailed. | | 68:48–70:57 | Private equity and service cost crisis | “Elderly people die when nursing homes are taken over by private equity…” | | 72:11 | BREAKING: Summers resigns amid Epstein probe | “Manifesting!” |

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KEY TAKEAWAYS

• The gap between economic data and lived reality is real and urgent. The episode demolishes the “people are just confused” narrative.
• Economic pain centers on unavoidably rising costs for essentials—housing, food, insurance, healthcare—while wage gains are uneven and do not keep up for most.
• Grassroots organizing is filling the leadership vacuum—shown by the Twin Cities rent strike and solidarity campaigns, which offer a model for future crisis response and coalition-building.
• Political rhetoric from the Trump administration is starkly out of touch, while progressive efforts focus on concrete affordability measures and structural reform.
• The long-term effects of private equity monopolization in critical services are a silent but growing source of hardship and policy concern.

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RECOMMENDED ACTIONS & LINKS

• For more on the Twin Cities Rent Strike, take the pledge or sign up for phone banking: twincitiestenants.org
• For anti-private equity organizing/resources: American Economic Liberties Project
• For economic analysis: mikekonczal.com

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Summary by: The Majority Report Expert Podcast Summarizer, maintaining the irreverent and incisive tone of your hosts.

Transcript

[Izzy Breen]

You are listening to a free version of the Majority Report. Support this [e-mail] and get an extra

[Mike Konzo]

hour of content daily.

[Sam Cedar]

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Wednesday, February 25, 2026. 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, Izzy Breen and Yusra Merad on behalf of the Twin City tenants rent strike starting March 1st. Then Mike Konzo, senior director in Policy research at the Economic Security Project, publisher of the newsletter mike consult.com on why the economy feels bad, but the numbers supposedly look good. Also on the program today, Trump's State of the Union. Boring and predictable. But he makes up for it by making it the longest boring and predictable State of the Union in history. Records all over the place. 107 minutes of pure gruel and consistent with my SNAP poll of myself. SNAP polls say it was the least popular State of the Union address in the 21st century. Always important to be a superlative. Dozens of FBI records of Trump accusers interview now clearly missing from the Epstein files. Trump imposes a 10% import tax on all imported goods globally in response to that state of the Supreme Court ruling. Meanwhile, Democratic leadership is trying to block a vote on the Khana Massey Iran War Powers Resolution because they want the Iran war, they just don't want to be responsible for it. No progress in DHS funding bill in the Senate. New whistleblower report Cash Patel's jet use prevented the FBI from responding quickly to the Kirk assassination and to the Brown University mass shooting. It's not like you got to get to the crime scene quickly and his girlfriend had stuff to do. Fifteen states sue the HHS over revisions to the vaccine schedule. NYU professors vote to authorize a strike. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth, former Fox and Friends weekend host, threatens anthropic the AI company Give us your AI without surveillance safeguards or else. All this and much, much more on today's Majority Report. Welcome to the program folks. Emma is out today. I am a little bit tired. I. Should also mention someone just imder they meant to mention this. Two years ago to the day, Aaron Bushnell, a 25 year old US serviceman lit himself on fire out in front of the Israeli Embassy in Washington D.C. to draw people's attention to the genocide. I, you know, look, I don't know about the emotional state of someone who would do this or the mental state or, and I certainly, it's not something that I would recommend to people, but, you know, some instances, the least you can do is provide some memory because there was a genocide ongoing at that time and there has been a genocide that has taken place and still Palestinians living in abject misery. Just wanted to note that also last night, State of the Union address, hard for me to communicate to you the level of regret that I have in suggesting yesterday that we would do live coverage of that event. I spent two hours at home trying to get a computer that was not capable of doing it, combined with my lack of skills in working obs and trying to get Emma tied in. And then. So I abandoned the actual live coverage of the address. And then I think about 4 minutes, 7 minutes, 10 minutes into the State of the Union, I was like, this is the best thing that's ever happened to me, except for the fact that I had promised that I would do a wrap up reaction to it, which meant that I actually had to watch the thing. And I cannot tell you how incredibly boring it was. There was nothing new introduced in it whatsoever. There was no attempt to recognize any type of the economic issues. We have one clip. I think that will really sum up his perspective on that. Trump's there. It was just a rolling series of recognizing people in the audience. It was almost had like a telethon feel to it. I can't really like where it's just. It was a combination of like a telethon and almost like a, like a trade association award dinner where, you know, a lot of people, you just. Just stand up from over there. Table five and separate club. Yeah, it was just our sales leader from the Northwest. And then he finished up with like, I don't know what seat was, probably only three or four minutes, but it seemed like interminable. Like the moving, rousing part, the prose, I guess, purple prose at the end. But he was so tired by that point, and so everybody else was so done that he just sort of like rambled through the part that was supposed to be sort of poetic. And then at the end got, you know, you get. In my recollection, I may be recalling this long, but every State of the Union I have seen done, and I've probably now seen like, you know, 20 professionally, almost just professionally having to watch it, including Trump, you know, four or five of them. The applause at the end was, you know, about 60 seconds, which is about, I think, probably three or four minutes less than it usually is just because somebody every was so tired, ready to text their driver and, and look, I can point, I can only point to a couple of State of the Union addresses throughout the entire time where they have been like, relevant in any way. You know, I think like Biden, when he got the Republicans to vow to basically vow that they wouldn't cut Social Security, I thought was relevant. Biden's last State of the Union address, where it seemed like, oh, you know, whatever cocktail they had him on, he seemed like he was, like, engaged. It was short. And that was probably smart as well. But outside of that, I can't really. Bill Clinton gave a laundry lit, whatever. It's all just sort of like it really more for the media. Nothing. This is not going to change a thing. Within days after this, nothing, nothing. It's going to be completely forgotten. But except for this, which I think people will remember, this is Donald Trump. And the thing that sticks out for me in this, I want you to just think of other, particularly with what's missing from the Epstein files and what's in the Epstein files, I want you to think of just like other scenarios where Donald Trump might be in a situation where he is, like, trying to convince someone that they're loving stuff, they're really enjoying it. Go ahead.

[Donald Trump]

Our country is winning again. In fact, we're winning so much that we really don't know what to do about it. People are asking me, please, please, please, Mr. President, we're winning too much. We can't take it anymore. We're not used to winning in our country. Until you came along, we're just always losing. But now we're winning too much. And I say, no, no, no, you're going to win again. You're going to win big. You're going to win bigger than ever. And to prove that point, to prove that point, here with us tonight is a group of winners who just made the entire nation proud. The men's gold medal Olympic hockey team. Come on in.

[Sam Cedar]

Now, I want to make something clear. That's not our audio. That's blowing out. Trump blew out the audio on the microphone. So the entire speech. And that is the beginning of the speech. That's at the beginning of the speech. They spent about 20 minutes on the US hockey team and they brought them in to start all the cheers of USA every time they wanted to go into it. And Trump blows out the microphone as he's telling like, oh, no, no, no,

[Donald Trump]

you really want it.

[Sam Cedar]

And then for the rest of the speech, the microphone is, like, crispy and fried. Was honestly one of the most painful things that I feel like I've had to do professionally in this job. Now it's, you know, it's. It's better than being a coal miner. That hurts more. And I think I'll be able to recover better than I would from black lung. But it is sort of like being a moderator for Facebook, where you have to look at horrible things as part of your job. Exactly. There should be therapy associated with what I just went through last night. But it was really creepy. To give you an example of our policy victories, here's a hockey team gold medal winning hockey team. Oh, and then he gave, like, the highest congressional medal you could give to the goalie. You on the border, sir. Maybe he can make some teeth out of it. The flip side of that. Congressman Al Green held up a sign saying that blacks, people are not apes. We'll play that clip later in the program, obviously, in reference to Trump posting that video of Obama, Michelle and Barack Obama. But here are two heroes who did not get recognized by the president. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib as Donald Trump attacks both sanctuary cities and Somalis in Minneapolis. Here were their responses.

[Donald Trump]

That is why I'm also asking you to end deadly sanctuary cities that protect the criminals and enact serious penalties for public officials who block the removal of criminal aliens, in many cases, drug lords, murderers all over our country. They're blocking the removal of these people out of our country. And you should be ashamed of yourself.

[Sam Cedar]

They were. Omar, at the very least, was yelling, you have killed Americans. And Trump had a couple of moments where he's like, you should be ashamed of yourself. That's standing up and clapping for this sick people. Sick, sick people. Sick, demented people. And I should know. The whole thing was, you know, a garbage fire, honestly, a real garbage fire. And we don't really have any clips of Spanberger or Summer Lee's speeches. I will tell you that Spanberger's speech was almost exactly as you would imagine, a little bit less, a little bit better than Elise Slotkins. I mean, the delivery was good. It was. It was fine. She. She mentioned Minneapolis. It was largely like, Donald Trump is bad. Maybe she said, Republicans are bad and we really got to vote them out. Whereas Summer Lee's speech was much more oriented towards organizing, getting involved, bringing people into the process, which is indicative of where their politics are. But Spanberger talked a lot about affordability, a lot about what was happening in Minneapolis was a little bit of an appeal to norms and to sort of like the days of yesteryear, largely. I would say everyone did what you would anticipate them doing. It was one of the most predictable, boring nights I can remember in a long time. And I say this as someone who has very, very predictable and boring nights. In a moment, we're going to talk to Izzy Breen and Yusuf Murad on behalf of the Twin Cities tenants rent strike starting in less than a week. Mike Konzol, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, will be here to talk about the Vibe session. First, a couple of words from our sponsors. I have a new mattress and I will tell you something. Right now I have a bit of a snoring problem. I have like a. I think I might be borderline apnea. And I've been working on sleeping on my side because that helps my snoring. 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Make the hat optional. Visit nutrafol.com Enter the promo code TMR10All One word TMR10All no spaces for $10 off your first month subscription and free shipping. Find out why Nutrafol is the best selling hair growth supplement [e-mail] spelled n u t r a f o l.com promo code tmr10tmr10 that's nutrafol.com, promo code tmr10. Again. That'll be in the podcast and YouTube descriptions. Quick break. When we come back, Izzy Breen and Yusuf Murad on behalf of the Twin Cities Tenants Rent strike starting in just a. Sam. Foreign. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Viglin out today. Want to welcome to the program Izzy Breen and USRA Murad of the well on behalf of the Twin Cities Tenants Rent strike which is happening March 1st. This is fascinating, fascinating to me, you know, because we have talked about tenants unions and people organizing around things, obviously around their labor. But it seems to me being a renter is like number two in terms of shared experiences. Tell us, Sorry, tell us what, what was the genesis of this?

[Izzy Breen]

Sure, I'm happy to be here. Thanks for having me. So. And let's see the genesis. Since December, we in Minneapolis have been living under one of the largest, most violent and long lasting federal occupations of any American city in recent history. And I think for those of us who are either in the mutual aid space or the tenant organizing space or are in labor unions or neighborhood groups, it became very clear very early on that the housing crisis that was going to be imparted onto our immigrant neighbors by way of this federal occupation would become unwieldy. And it has reached that point. We are now approaching March 1, which will mark the third month that thousands of Our neighbors have not been safe to go to work and are missing work hours, are losing income and are falling behind on rent and facing the imminent risk of eviction as a direct consequence of the terror that we've experienced in the Twin Cities. And the mobilization and organization toward a potential rent strike on March 1st, I think really represents the hunger and readiness among people in Minneapolis to take risks and to take serious action, to wield our political power, to compel our elected leaders to step into their power and make decisive decisions toward eviction protections and rent relief that would keep people safe and in their homes and keep families together.

[Sam Cedar]

So, Izzy, that is, that's the. The ask is of the municipal, maybe state government to step in and provide eviction protection for, for tenants in a time of crisis. I mean, it almost like, you know, we did this during COVID right. And I would imagine in the context of Minneapolis, like, this is more dramatic in terms of, like what the impact, like this catastrophe, it's manmade, it's coming from Washington. But tell us specifically who the asks are for and exactly what it is that you folks are looking for.

[Yusra Merad]

Totally. So I think that you hit the nail right on the head when you brought up Covid. Sam, there's asks and solutions that both the city and state government, as well as the legislature could do. But your listeners might remember during COVID not just Minneapolis, a lot of places enacted eviction moratoriums. Part of the sort of the legal regime around that is something called a peacetime state of emergency. That's something that the governor of Minnesota, Tim Walls, can unilaterally enact, and that allows him to do things like enact an eviction moratorium and direct cash relief to renters. So that is one solution here. There's a bill in the state legislature that passed out of the state senate that would enact a 90 day eviction moratorium and throw $75 million in direct relief to renters. That has real juice in the Senate, but as you probably know, is a non starter in the state House, where Republicans control both the committee and the floor. And then, of course, there's the city mayor. Jacob Fry has a number of tools at his disposal, as do the city councilors, to provide relief to renters. Jacob also has the ability to enact an eviction moratorium unilaterally. There's large amounts of money in various pots, including a pot that is designated for small businesses, especially in the downtown area that lost business as a result of the ICE occupation that could be directed towards renters. And then There's a couple of bills that the City Council have been working on. For example, City Council Robin Wansley has a bill that would extend what's called the pre eviction notice. That's the time period between when a landlord indicates that they want to evict a tenant and when they can actually start eviction proceedings. That's currently 30 days. Councilwoman Wansley has a bill that would extend that 90 days. And the City Council has signed a number of non binding resolutions indicating their support for things like an eviction moratorium and cash relief. But that's not the kind of thing that can become law unless it has the support of the mayor.

[Sam Cedar]

What would be the mechanism, Izzy, for. Well, I mean, you've talked about the different types of relief, right? We could have a longer moratorium on the eviction. But who, who's the pool that would be eligible for this? I mean, you know, is it a universal thing within the, I don't know, Minneapolis St. Paul or what? Like, what's the, is there a limiting principle? Are there definitions to like, like who's, who's who, who could be eligible? Obviously it's contingent upon what, what mechanism is used, but broadly, like who do you want to be eligible?

[Yusra Merad]

Yeah, absolutely. So I won't get too deep into the, the technical nitty gritty of the thing. I'm not a lawyer, but I can tell you that depending on which avenue relief takes, whether it comes from the legislature, from the governor, from the mayor's office, or from the city council, requirements can differ a little bit. But the group of people that need the relief are the folks that Yisroel mentioned, the people that have been stuck in their homes for the last eight weeks, that have had eight weeks of lost wages. Many of them have lost their jobs entirely as a result of being forced to stay in their homes. You know, process wise, it again depends on the avenue of relief. But typically there's an application process where renters would apply to the government and, you know, state their reasons for needing relief. And an eviction moratorium, of course, would be universal.

[Sam Cedar]

So I mean, and it's, this is not unprecedented. Again, you know, during COVID we had many mechanisms where you had to establish a certain amount of hardship depending on what program it was, et cetera, et cetera. That's right, yes, sir. Tell us about the different coalitions or the different groups that are involved in this coalition and how many people you anticipate are going to participate in withholding their rent on March 1st.

[Izzy Breen]

Sure. Eviction moratorium or Eviction protections have a enormously broad base of support. And I think part of that is because, you know, in your earlier questions and what Izzy was sharing in this moment, the folks most targeted or at risk are immigrant households. During the pandemic, it was universal. In a potential future climate crisis, it will be universal. I think we all fundamentally understand and know that when an economic or political shock hits our city, our state, or our country, housing and rent is sort of the first fear. And so as we're fighting for eviction protections, we have in mind not just protections for this particular moment, but how to sort of build a deeper, more protective foundation around housing stability that will better prepare us for inevitable future political or economic shocks. So I just want to say, sort of at the front end, that is why you see going to your question about the coalition piece, labor unions, health care workers, faith communities, school communities. The organizing from public schools in Minneapolis over the last three months has been remarkable and astonishing to witness. And the way that schools have stepped up to support families with rent relief and fight for eviction protections, of course, tenant organizations, but also, you know, small businesses that are run by immigrants or primarily serve an immigrant customer base. It's a very wide range of support that we see for rent relief and eviction protections. To your second question on how many people will participate, it's a great question. We have hundreds of people, volunteers, tenants, phone banking, door knocking, speaking to hundreds of their neighbors every single day. We're getting new pledges every day. We're not at a point where we're sharing the exact number, and it's increasing every single day. What I know is I see all around me hundreds of really activated and mobilized tenants and workers talking to everyone that they know and getting the word out about not only a potential rent strike, but also how do we continue building our power as tenants in this city, as neighbors in this city, to really build out a strong network of renters that can fight really hard for what we are going to continue to need in Minneapolis and across the state.

[Sam Cedar]

The, the. The structure thing is, is fascinating and it's a great point in, you know, six years ago, 2019, February of. Well, maybe around February 2020, but February 2019, nobody was going to be able to predict that we're going to have a hopefully once in a lifetime pandemic, and then we're going to have hopefully a once in a lifetime invasion of federal thugs to scare people. I mean, that's twice in a decade. Not even a decade, half a decade, really. So the idea of creating A mechanism in which to deal with this and provide more housing security in general just makes sense because it's quite clear that these crises, there's no reason there's going to be less crises in the future, let's put it that way. But specifically, okay, let's say I'm listening to this. I'm in Minneapolis. Is it maybe, is it throughout the state? Are you looking for folks to withhold rent? And if so, whether it's in Minneapolis or throughout the state, what, how do I go about doing that? Do I send a letter to my landlord and I say, look, nothing against you, but I'm joining this action and you can, you can help me help you by writing to your state senator or something like that? Like what? What, how do I do this in practice if I want to participate?

[Izzy Breen]

Yeah, great question. So we are concentrating a lot of our efforts here in the Twin Cities, but we have folks from Duluth and other parts of greater Minnesota involved in not only the work around the current rent strike drive, but also just trying to build out the field of organized tenants across the state that can coordinate and support one another. If you would like to take the pledge, your first step is to go to twincitiestenants.org you'll see a beautiful website with a really clear button to take the pledge as well as a long document for on FAQs if you have questions. There's also opportunities for those who have already pledged to join the strike drive and commit to phone banking. And there are so many other sort of in person trainings and meetings that we're continuing to host. And you can follow Twin Cities tenants on Instagram to stay updated on where to be and what to do.

[Sam Cedar]

Great. And Izzy, your cat aside, we're a cat friendly show for those of us who are outside of the state and have watched, frankly, the solidarity, the bravery, the tenacity of folks in the Twin Cities and all throughout Minnesota. It has been, you know, to watch what you guys have been going through has been both a horror and also inspiring in many ways. If we're out of the state, what can we do to help with your efforts?

[Yusra Merad]

Yeah, totally. So, you know, I think that taking a moment to acknowledge the, what a special place Minneapolis is, I think is really important. Thank you for saying so. I think that your listeners probably all agree, you know, I am from Minneapolis. My family and I live in New York right now. And you should hear the way that New Yorkers talk about Minneapolis. It truly is a beacon and it's a place that a lot of other cities are drawing inspiration from, but we do have a lot of support from outside Minnesota as well. Obviously, this is the action is oriented around Minneapolis, but we've got support from all over the country. If you don't live in Minnesota, probably the best way that you can participate is by going to the website that Yusra mentioned, Twin Cities tenant.org and signing up to do a phone banking shift. We have phone banks every day. I think we typically have two or three shifts throughout the day. And that's something that you can do from the comfort of your home. You just use your cell phone, you sign up, we give you all the training that you need, and then you make calls and, you know, I'll share that. The stories that we get from our phone bankers are astonishing. In most cases. Close to one in three people that we speak to sign up to take the pledge. And for your listeners who might have done some phone banking in the past will know that that is a shocking level of success. And it just goes to show, you know, how universal this problem is and how willing Minneapolitans are to show up for one another and show up for the city.

[Sam Cedar]

I appreciate you guys coming on. We're going to put a link to your website Again, you guys have been really inspirational for people around the country, the way that Minnesotans and Twin Cineites have responded. And, you know, this is also, this is yet another model that you guys are on the forefront of in providing, you know, plans and for other cities to take these measures. Because it may not necessarily be ice, although in many instances it probably will. But there are a lot of other, you know, creating this type of solidarity around the idea of where we live is incredibly important, particularly at a time where, you know, labor unions also have uphill climbs in organizing. Izzy Breen. Yes, sir. Mourad, thank you so much. Really appreciate your time today.

[Yusra Merad]

Thanks, Dan.

[Izzy Breen]

Thank you so much.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, folks, we will put that link in the YouTube and podcast description. We're going to take a quick break. When we come back, Mike Konzel, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project, will be joining us and we'll talk about the Vibe session. It's. We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report. Emma Vigland out today. It is a pleasure to welcome back to the program Mike Konzol, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project and publisher of the newsletter mikeconzel.com. where'd you come up with that name?

[Mike Konzo]

All the other ones were taken.

[Sam Cedar]

There you go, Mike. Thanks So much for joining us. You wrote a great piece on, I should say I'm a regular reader of yours. You wrote a great piece on affordability and the Vibe session. Like, you know, really starting during the tail end of the Biden administration, the Biden people were touting their economy. People were not feeling their economy. Now, of course, there's also like, you know, certain partisan bias, but people across the board were not feeling it. And yet all of the sort of traditional numbers that have been used to measure economic health in the past were at odds with the way that people were self reporting what the economy was doing. And you take a whack at that, just fill out what that sort of dilemma, I guess, or that question that, that when people talk about the Vibe session.

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah, yeah. And just to give a little bit more context on it, during the peak of inflation, when prices went up about 10% very quickly from 21, 2022, people kind of understood why people were upset about the economy then. But even as inflation came down, people were still upset. And going into the last year with the Trump administration, people actually got more upset about the economy. You see it in many different ways of pulling it. Some of the consumer sentiment stuff, because it's an economic indicator, actually goes back decades and really well standardized data. And people are really upset. They're upset at the financial crisis of 2008 levels. There's a lot of different explanations for this. And crucially, I think into this vacuum is a lot of focus on affordability politics. It's Mamdani's campaign. A lot of different electeds are saying in different ways, really in the election you have President Trump saying it's a made up Democrat word because I think he knows he's vulnerable on it. And it's a tough thing to answer. And, and in the background of this, there's some Democratic consultants, some different people making different arguments. I'm responding to the writer Matt Iglesias, who makes this argument. Many other people do as well. Not to pick on Matt, basically saying people are kind of confused.

[Sam Cedar]

We can pick on that, but that's okay.

[Mike Konzo]

Hello, Matt. And you know, people are kind of confused. Like the prices went up, the wages and income went up, and they don't really feel their incomes going up the same way. They just see the higher price even though everything's more expensive, including their wages and their incomes. And so they're just kind of fundamentally confused. And that's actually really difficult politics because you can't address it. And what I want to do in that piece, having Thought a lot about this. I worked in the Biden administration towards the end of it and having followed the inflation debates, kind of give a high level overview of like, why it's legitimate. People are upset. And I know that sounds really stupid to be like, of course people are upset, look around. But even when you're in this kind of like econ echo chamber, even when you're dealing with just like the economics of it, you know, there's a lot of things that have happened recently in the last five to 10 years that I think make people really upset about the economy. Even if unemployment is low, Even if the economy is growing.

[Sam Cedar]

All right, great. So let's go through some of those ideas. You start by giving a graphic of the real median household income, which has gone up. I mean, it had obviously, Covid notwithstanding, it was climbing up. It took a while to Recover from, from 2008 and it was slow going. That's a separate story about the Obama administration and the now disgraced Larry Summers. I would argue then he was also a little bit disgraceful, but. But more I think conventionally perceived as disgraceful. Disgraced. Arguing against a bigger stimulus. And so a lot of people argue that the lack of stimulus and the lack of providing direct relief to homeowners slowed the recovery. But the recovery happens. Wages are real. Median household income goes up. And you say there are two stories that sort of explain this. One is the money illusion story. What is that?

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah. And as a reminder, Larry Summers also said for inflation, the Federal Reserve should bring unemployment to 10% to bring inflation down, because that's the only way you're going to actually get it down. It, of course, came down with unemployment basically not going up very much at all. So got it wrong on both ends, as many people did. But yes,

[Sam Cedar]

you also didn't know how to pick up girls apparently too. But that's a side story.

[Mike Konzo]

He's that very uncomfortable person on every group chain except with some very bad people. In that case, that's a whole other story. So the money illusion is kind of like the Glacier store. It's kind of the. It's what a lot of economists are saying behind the scenes is that like people are kind of just confused about inflation. That's a very complicated thing. And, you know, prices went up, their incomes went up, and they're not actually worse off, their wages went up if they're on Social Security. Social Security is adjusted for inflation. And so what are they actually complaining about? I bring up a couple different things. One is that the price of essentials Went up a lot more. And I think this is often missed when you look at different things that went up a different amount. Some things went up a lot very quickly. At the beginning of the pandemic, the price of cars, if you remember 2021, price of cars went up quite a bit because they essentially just ran out of cars. There weren't semiconductors to make more. They had shut down production under the lockdowns. And so like a lot of things you basically just ran out of. But as time went on, the price pressures were building in a lot of different places that may not be as intuitive to everyone. One is obviously housing, which I think everyone feels in a very important sense. But housing, which was already running pretty high in 2019 and would have been a major stressor on a lot of people even if the lockdowns and Covid never happened, skyrocketed. Right. And you know, that's some of it. Most of it's just there's not enough housing. A lot of it's people moved around because they could work from home, so they bought bigger homes and put a lot of price pressure in places that didn't necessarily have a lot of influx. But so housing is really high. And housing, you can't really not live. So I mean, people do, unfortunately. But like housing is a real stressor on every day's people's lives. And that doesn't just kind of wash out because some other things are cheaper. And on average it's about the same. Food is a lot more expensive, groceries are obviously eating out is even more expensive than groceries, as you imagine. And so a lot of. So one thing is that real wages might have kept up, inflation might not have increased as much as incomes did. But for some of the things that people really depend on, especially working people or people without not a lot of savings or not a lot of high incomes, those essentials ran a lot higher. And crucially, and this is from the econ point of view, and you can walk through the math on my website, they spend more of their budget on it, even though it costs more, which is a kind of very textbook, you know, if you do the calculus of economics, that's, that's people really suffering. That's like, you know, they're, they're not making that up. They're not confused. They're spending more to get less of things that they need to survive. And right there, I think that's more than enough. And it doesn't surprise me that all the candidates who are smart on this stuff are focusing on housing. And they're focusing on food and they're focusing on healthcare, which also went up more because those are the things that are driving people's insecurities. They tell us that. And it's unfortunately that there's this whole affirmative that also needs someone to like do the numbers to prove it. But it's true. People are right to be upset.

[Sam Cedar]

So if I understand it correctly, if I step back 100ft and look at the wages to general costs of things, it looks like there's more parity. But as I get closer, I see that the fixed costs that people have, you know, to borrow a business term like housing, I gotta, I gotta do housing. I can't decide. I'm gonna forego housing. Food, can't forego food. Veterinarian care also in there. You could, but it's like, you know, for a lot of people, your animals or your pets are like your kids and you know, you're not gonna, you're not gonna, I don't need to take my kid to the doctor. They'll get past this. And so all of those, those things are more expensive. So the stuff that we really have to spend on, even though our overall cost of stuff may have gone down, we may not even get to enjoy the savings relative to our wages on other things because we're expending it all on these necessities.

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah, absolutely. And these, these are long term issues, but they also like really boiled up and the fact that, you know, like, you can get a nicer TV for the same price so it feels like it's cheaper. Like a lot of the things that, you know, that, that offset it on the other ends, the non essentials, you know, those are great to have, but they're not the essentials to have. They're not the things you just mentioned. In addition, I talked through some other reasons that people. There's been a lot of polling on this, really sophisticated polling outside the partisan world or just trying to get the political take on it. But a lot of economists really, really want to understand how people react to inflation because it's a very important question for them. We haven't had inflation like this in several generations. Thankfully, the large part of it's over now. Obviously President Trump is doing certain things that are probably going to make a little bit worse next year or this year. But to go back, people are really looking at what people often say when they're focusing in on the reasons. It makes it hard to plan. Right. If prices are going up, it's harder for me to figure out when I'm going to get a home or how I'm going to have a family or how am I going to start a business. And those kinds of insecurity and that kind of uncertainty, I think that's really important for people and I think it often gets missed. And even as the height of inflation is behind us a few years, you know, the fact that it's gotten a little bit worse this year and we can talk a little bit about why consumer sentiment got a lot worse under Trump in a way that kind of even surprised me. It had gotten a little bit better towards the end of the Biden administration. And I expected it for a variety of partisan and just turning the corner reasons for it to pick a lot back up under Trump. But it's gotten a lot worse. And I think it's because a lot of that uncertainty about how do I plan my life, what's going to happen next to me, what's going to happen to my family, what can, what, where's my economic fate in the near future has gotten worse for really legitimate reasons under President Trump?

[Sam Cedar]

Well, let's talk about. I'm also curious, and I do want to get to that consumer sentiment, and maybe this is part of it, I don't know. But it occurs to me as I'm looking at these things that, you know, I go out and I buy a tv. I don't know. I mean, at this rate, like once every five or 10 years, like, I'm a little slow, but I'm paying my, my car insurance on a regular basis, I'm paying my rent on a regular basis. I'm going to the vet with some regularity for my cat. I am all of this, my energy services, I'm paying every month. Like, does how does that implicate things? The idea that, like, you know, stuff that is a regular expense that I can't, that I can't put off or that, like, doesn't allow me to create savings. You know, it's like one thing if these, these monthly expenses are less, I create the savings and I decide at the end of the year I'm going to buy a sweet TV. And even though the TV is like 25% more expensive than it would be, like, you know, in my, you know, a counterfactual world, I have more control because, like, I've saved up this money and I've decided to splurge and I have the confidence that I can save up this money to go buy a nice TV or whatever it is. How much do you think that impacts it or no,

[Mike Konzo]

I think the inability to save comes up. It comes up in surveys. It follows from this essentials argument that, you know, the kind of fixed costs, as you mentioned, that there are certain things you have to pay for every month and you have very little ability to substitute out of it. And even then, it's quite painful for you if you have to, like, eat much worse food than you would have otherwise or, you know, not delay health care or veterinarian care for a loved one or a pet. So I definitely think that part is there as well. Like, and, you know, you think about, like, you know, vacations or other things like that, you know, those are luxuries. It's good, people should have them. But. And the issue is like, well, they can't really afford it if the essentials are becoming more and more of their budget in addition to all the other things that they have to deal with. So I think there's really strong reason for why people are still pretty glum about the economy even after the inflation wave. The worst of it's behind us. I also think that it's downturn right now. And I think this is what really is creating this extra energy around affordability and why it's such a political winner, even though, you know, the worst of the inflation wave is a few years behind us, is because, like, you know, people's health care are going to get taken away. A price of a lot of things went up because of the tariffs when the kind of really catastrophic and haphazardous way that they were implemented and are being implemented again after the Supreme Court ruling. You know, a lot of people are worse off after this tax bill, you know, the way it's going to cut Medicaid and health care premium tax rates. So, you know, people looking forward a little bit and saying, okay, like, so we just went through this thing that was miserable, but maybe something good's around the corner. And they see, like, their health care premiums just skyrocketed in the last few months. They realize, like, the cost of a car or house is even going up even more because of all these tariffs on things. You know, if they're on Medicaid, they're, you know, they're probably reading reports about how real cuts are going to come at this end of this year. And, you know, rural hospitals are already closing, anticipating them. And so, you know, there's a lot of, like, bad stuff on the horizon. And you also have a president who, I think, you know, there's a lot to be said about a President can say, I feel your pain. You know, the Biden and Harris administration had had some trouble doing that towards him. That was part of it. You know, it's a tough thing message.

[Sam Cedar]

Trump did the exact opposite last night. I mean, he's, he's saying affordability is a made up word that is not suggesting like, I know what you're going through, we can do better type of thing. It was, you're so tired of wit. I mean, it was, it was, I mean, it was. You know, we described it as being almost a little rapey with how sort of like you're loving it, you're loving it. And I don't think people are. So that's the consumer sentiment thing is. Let me ask you this too. There's a couple other things that I'm curious about may play into this. Wage growth in the middle of the income distribution has been flatter than it has been on the two ends. 50% of consumer spending is being done by 10% of the population, which is at an all time high or, you know, at least within certainly our lifetimes. People over the age of 50 are also spending much more than people under the age of 50 relative to the past. Part of that is because, you know, it's such, the baby boomers are such a big generation, but also part of it is like they're hanging on to their wealth. And Trump has even mentioned this in terms of like people's housing. You know, the incumbent wants people to feel like their housing has increased in value and the challenger wants, you know, housing to be cheaper. How much of that is also sort of like skewing or translating into the sort of like political movement behind affordability? Like, you know, it just seems to me that if you're 30 or 40 or upper 20s, you are fundamentally, I mean, just statistically doing worse than you would have 20 years ago or 30 years ago. But you also, you are the people who are defining the culture and you are the people who can come out and create political movements. Those of us over 50, we're getting a little tired, you know, and so it's not, it's not, it's not the same. Is that, are we watching like wealth inequality and all these different types of inequality create a more concentrated version of dissatisfaction.

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah. And you can see in a couple of different places, so like, you know, a lot of numbers there. The K shape economy is one can debate specifically, but we do see the saving rates going down to maintain consumption. So like, you know, people are starting to run out of savings, starting to Run out of gas. I mean, the thing was, like, you know, in the Biden years, everyone hated the economy, but they kept spending, and so the economy kept growing. In the Trump years, they hate the economy again. And now they're starting to run out of steam. You know, we see it in the savings rate in this last number. Like, people, like, are just kind of starting to get exhausted of it. They can't keep it up anymore. One big thing that, that jumps out at me when I look at the economy is there's essentially two unemployment rates. There's the unemployment rate for people above 25 and people below 25, maybe like 26, 27. And the one above 27, it's like, fine. The one below 27 is really bad. It's not like a recession recession. It's not the Great Recession, but it's like a bad number. And this gets lost because you just hear the 1 number. You just hear, like, the aggregate.

[Yusra Merad]

How's.

[Mike Konzo]

How is it doing? But if you're a younger person, especially if you're under 30, if you're under 26, like, it is a very hard labor market. It takes you a lot longer to find a job when you're looking. It takes, you know, you can send out a ton of resumes and not get any responses on it. And, you know, especially for those with a college education, it's not. Their labor market situation isn't as bad as people without one, but it's still a lot worse than it would have been five or ten years ago. And. And so I think, you know, as you said, like, young people, like, that's a really harsh economy. The same kind of divide happens with homeowners, right? If you were, if you got a home by 2020, if you kind of sat down in that game of musical chairs, you're sitting on a lot of home price appreciation probably, you know, you probably locked in a really low interest rate, probably lower than where you. What you can rent for in your community, depending on the house, you know, like. But for people who are on the opposite side of that, especially, which is also younger people are facing tougher labor markets. It's a really brutal housing market, right? Rents are up dramatically. It's very hard for you to imagine how you could build up enough to get a down payment. That's another thing we talk about is the way inflation makes it a lot harder to access the housing market and buy a home for a variety of reasons. So that insider, outsider economy dynamic, I think strikes me as very real and a very accurate way of describing some of the discontent people are feeling.

[Sam Cedar]

So in addition to sort of like, I mean, I guess the steps are you want to reevaluate the signals the economy is giving us so that people take people's pain in the economy seriously. And so that then theoretically the next step would be addressing it not just in a rhetorical fashion, but actually from a policy standpoint. What, what is your sense of like some of the bigger policy, like it's. Are people developing these policies, like how, through. How far are they getting into the bloodstream and you know, in terms of being addressed in some fashion?

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah, you know, like at the peak of inflation, I understand why everyone was like, okay, this will be gone in a little bit after inflation. I understand why people were often Democratic consultants and other people and pundits. And I probably said some things I'm embarrassed by now in 2023 was like, yeah, this will all. We'll get over it. You know, like, it's just, you know, people are getting adjusted. This new reality, you know, by 24 is obviously wrong and it's very hard to find a message around it. I'm surprised, but not surprised that the Trump administration has been blindsided by this. That's something we can imagine. They walked in day one and just did some things a little bit smarter and that's just not in their DNA. It's not who they are. So, you know, doing the tariffs a little bit more targeted, they can still do their MAGA stuff, stuff, but like, you know, like picking a few countries to try to annex instead of trying to annex the half the hemisphere, you know, things like that. I'm kind of surprised that it's not better attuned to where people are. You know, the. You talk about policy development like, you know, having been around housing conversations in a White House, like the way they're approaching housing has that like panic, like we need to do something, do anything. So it's like 50 year mortgage, buy a bunch of mortgage bonds through, through an agency like stuff that I think in a genuine bipartisan way, everyone's like, what the fuck is this? This makes no sense and just reeks of someone scrambling to figure out what they're doing. And the fact that they're not retooling on anything on the ICE rates, which I think are going to really start to show up in people's prices this year is a lot of construction and agriculture and other industries are being really disrupted outside the pure humanitarian crisis of the concentration camp network that they're trying to build right now. Like, you know, it's going to start impacting everyone a lot more than it has already. And so the fact that they're not, you know, changing course at all is really, really again, surprising, but not surprising given what they are. Where is the policy innovation coming from? You know, right now I think this year is like Trump is bad. And that's the kind of focus for a lot of people. And that makes sense. I think people are starting to think ahead. I'm really excited about everything they're trying to do on housing in New York with Mamdani's campaign. I think they have a lot of really smart and interesting people on hous. They're trying to do a lot of different things from, you know, thinking through rent control to working with developers, to trying to expand supply. And it's going to be a real experiment, I think, and I think the lessons there will be very helpful. Going into 2028, there's some stuff moving through the House and Senate on housing. I think it's important first step. I don't think it's the last step by any means. And we need to be thinking more about how we can build more housing both on the public side and the private side and also just make it easier for people to get housing. So like there's some innovation happening there and I think there's going to be more. And healthcare. We kind of know what we have to do, we just got to do it. And what that looks like in two years we'll find out more. But we know other countries figure out health care. We have not.

[Sam Cedar]

We know a single payer health care system is going to save us money. I mean, everybody knows it. It's just a question of a political fight between those interests that don't want cost containment because it comes at the cost. The price of cost containment comes out of these people's pockets. What, you know, when I look at veterinarian services, I hate to be like, sort of like you know, fixated on this, but a year or two ago I spoke to a veterinarian who had told me like, private equity has bought out everything. And she said it's the highest rate of suicide of any profession. Now is veterinarians, because they, and I went through this actually with my cats a year ago. The costs, the, the private equity comes in. They buy these shops, they buy these old, you know, these veterinarians, they, they pay out the, the, the, you know, owner and then everybody has to stay on or they, they create these sort of like big animal hospitals, they jack up the rates. And then the vet. The vets, who obviously love animals and understand the love between a, you know, pet owner and a pet have to go in and say it's either, you know, like it's, it's some obscene number to keep your pet alive, or we put your pet down and they know it's a function of cost. Like it's, it's number two on your list. After, after car insurance. I don't know why car insurance has gone up so much. Like you would think, like, the cost of producing car insurance hasn't gone up. And I would imagine, like we haven't had a scene like this crazy jump in the cost, you know, amount of car crashes. Maybe it's just the cost of cars have gone up so much that to replace the car, I guess that's what it is. But there's no reason why vet services should have gone up by 50% over the course of six years, except for private equity. And is there anybody out there talking about, like, the implications? Because this is happening in everything. Private equity is buying everything. Is anybody talking about this as a policy question?

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah, it's not just vets. Right. Dentists have this issue as well. You hear constantly people like. And you know, these are really hospitals, tons of hospitals. And the big one, I think a really scary one is nursing homes where there's been like, really controlled studies, like really good studies that find, like, elderly people die when nursing homes are taken over by private equity because they just cut services to the bone, jack up rates and then like, you know, these

[Sam Cedar]

are not places that are. You can't measure the suffering. That's the thing is, like, you know, when they cut stuff that ends up costing people's lives, it's because they're cutting stuff across the board that just makes their lives, lives less, like, fulfilling and tolerable in many respects.

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah. And so I actually think this is a real crisis at this point. And so our friends at American Economic Liberties Project, aelp, you can check them out online, they have a lot of materials on this. They're really focused on it. And, you know, this is stuff where like, you know, like some concerned citizens at the state and local level, because a lot of this stuff is a lot of nursing homes, car insurance. Well, a lot of these stuff is regulated at the state and local level. And that stuff where I think you could try to make at least kick up some shit, because I think it really needs it because I think the feds are going to be a real laggard on this stuff.

[Sam Cedar]

Well, Mike, I really appreciate your time today in walking us through this. I don't anticipate the Trump administration doing anything, but it would be. I mean they are honestly the least competent fascists that I think have been around. It is one of their sort of hallmarks, it seems to, to me. But I would like to see Democratic politicians and I guess Mamdani is providing sort of like a template and we will see what things work in New York City. And I imagine in many respects, despite the fact that New York is unique in many ways, things that work in New York can be applied relatively easier to other cities because you're really scaling them down. As opposed to scaling them up.

[Mike Konzo]

Yeah, exactly. And you know, I think there might be a view, especially maybe among people who are older and less connected, who lived in their homes for a very long time and aren't really thinking about it or just see how much their home prices is worth and not thinking about any other consequences of that, who aren't aware that like, you know, problems we once associated with like New York or Washington D.C. or LA or San Francisco, like really expensive urban cores, that problem is everywhere now. It's in the exurbs, it's in medium sized cities. It's a huge problem in the mid Midwest. A lot of reasons for that. We just haven't built enough homes. People are moving to different places now. So people being priced out of San Francisco moves them to Montana, which drives up prices pretty aggressively. A million other things. But those problems aren't going away and they're no longer isolated to a handful of blue areas. They're a problem for everyone.

[Sam Cedar]

Even more so Mike Konzle, senior director of policy and research at the Economic Security Project. Also publisher of the newsletter, Mike [e-mail] I should also just add, while we were on, I got an alert from the New York Times. Lawrence Summers to resign from Harvard as university reviews his Epstein ties just to.

[Mike Konzo]

What's that thing where you like envision it and it happens? What's that called?

[Sam Cedar]

Like manifesting. Manifesting. Manifesting. Well, there you go. Like we. It provided a nice sort of like narrative arc to the interview. Mike, always a pleasure. Thanks. Thanks for joining us.

[Mike Konzo]

Thanks for having me on.

[Sam Cedar]

Take care. All right folks, that's it for us. At least in the free half. Now we head to the fun half. I will not be here for the fun half because I have to give a veterinarian $40,000 to clean my dog's teeth. There you go. Brian will be leaving us. He's going to the to his Larry Summers resigning party. The Dow. Remember the Dow, Brian, before you complain

[Mike Konzo]

about stuff like that.

[Sam Cedar]

Oh, yeah, you're right. Yes, the dow is over 50,000. I'm pretty sure it dipped back down below. But, you know, I don't know. I don't know. It's because of your attitude. I'm surprised. I don't know why you're laughing. Brian's. Brian's economic sentiment is actually tanking the economy right now, folks. It's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a [e-mail] when you do, you not only get the free show free of commercials, you get the fun half. And perhaps even more importantly, you keep this show surviving and thriving. As we say very often around the office, it's our members that keep this show afloat. You can become a [e-mail] you can also IM us when you become a member. Matt. Oh, and just coffee, co op, fair trade coffee, hot chocolate. Use the coupon code. Majority get 10% off. Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, first last Friday on the Jacobin show, we had Cornel west on the program and yesterday on Left reckoning and Daniel Besner on talking about cold war liberalism. And we talked about the Talarico Crockett primary coming to a close. Go out and vote if you're in Texas, folks. Yeah, we're a week away. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow, but what is that going on? It's nuts.

[Mike Konzo]

Wait a second.

[Sam Cedar]

Hold on. Hold on for a second. Emma. Welcome to the program,

[Donald Trump]

Matt.

[Sam Cedar]

Boo. What is up, everyone? Fun path. No.

[Izzy Breen]

Mickey, you did it.

[Sam Cedar]

Fun half. Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon Bond hat. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry to disappoint everyone. I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today.

[Izzy Breen]

Fundamentally false.

[Sam Cedar]

No. I'm sorry.

[Yusra Merad]

Women.

[Sam Cedar]

Stop talking for a second and let me finish.

[Izzy Breen]

Where is this coming from, dude?

[Sam Cedar]

But. Dude, you want to smoke this? 7A. Yes.

[Mike Konzo]

Hi.

[Sam Cedar]

Me.

[Donald Trump]

You safe?

[Sam Cedar]

Yes.

[Donald Trump]

Is this me?

[Mike Konzo]

Is it me?

[Sam Cedar]

It is you.

[Donald Trump]

Is this me?

[Sam Cedar]

Hello, that's me. I think it is you.

[Donald Trump]

Who is you?

[Sam Cedar]

No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?

[Mike Konzo]

We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism.

[Sam Cedar]

I'm gonna go far away. Libertarians, they're so stupid. Though common sense says of course. Gobbledygook. We nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge.

[Mike Konzo]

Matt, I'm positively quivering.

[Sam Cedar]

I believe 96. I want to say. 8, 5, 7, 2, 1, 0. 35. 5, 0, 11 half. 3, 8, 9, 11. $3,400. $1900. 5, 4. $3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game. Actually. You're making me think less. But let me say this. You call it satire. Sam goes satire on top of it all.

[Izzy Breen]

My favorite part about you is just

[Sam Cedar]

like every day, all day, like everything you do. Without a doubt. Hey, buddy. We see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.

[Yusra Merad]

It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.

[Sam Cedar]

Yeah. Sun's out, guns out. I. I don't know.

[Yusra Merad]

But you should know,

[Sam Cedar]

people just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares? Our chat is enabled, folks. I love it.

[Yusra Merad]

I do love that.

[Sam Cedar]

Gotta jump. 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.

[Yusra Merad]

Outrageous.

[Sam Cedar]

Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you. Bye. Bye.