November 5, 2025 • 40 mins
The ground shifted under America’s political feet, and you can feel the rumble from City Hall to Capitol Square. New York—long the altar of finance—just elected a socialist mayor on a platform of affordability, transit access, and universal childcare. Virginia flipped every top office behind a former CIA officer who campaigned on paychecks, federal jobs, and dignity at work. Two wins, two styles, one unmistakable signal: voters are rewarding leaders who meet real life where it hurts—rent, groceries, and stability.
We unpack how Ziran Mamdani’s biography—immigrant roots, community organizing, openly Muslim faith—became a strength because it matched the substance: fare-free buses, housing that doesn’t demand three jobs, and public goods treated as modern infrastructure. We connect his rise to New York’s deeper memory, from LaGuardia to labor, and trace why the old worship of productivity cracked after a pandemic, a rent crisis, and billionaire spectacle. The moral language matters here, too—faith against mammon, compassion against cynicism—without demanding shared theology to feel the charge.
Then we head south to Virginia, where Abigail Spanberger’s steadiness beat the spectacle. By centering affordability and protecting the federal workforce, she offered competence over culture-war theatrics. We talk stakes for both parties: why Democrats need the left’s fire to animate purpose and the center’s discipline to build maps; why Republicans misread a cycle where shutdowns and cuts landed in kitchen-table budgets. Along the way, we explore California’s Prop 50 redistricting gambit and widen the lens to the myths that keep Americans divided—especially the “lazy millions” narrative that blames downward while power concentrates upward.
If you care about affordable housing, living wages, public transit, and a middle class worth the name, this conversation maps the new political imagination taking shape. Subscribe, share with a friend who loves policy over posturing, and leave a review telling us: which policy on the table would change your daily life first?
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
SPEAKER_00 (00:46):
Socialist in the city of Mamon, you could feel
the tremor before the resultseven dropped something electric
pulsing through the burrows.
It wasn't just an electionnight, it was a reckoning.
New York, the capital ofcapitalism, the city where
skyscrapers kiss heaven and therent, climbs faster than the
subway fair just chose asocialist for mayor.
Let that breathe for a second.
In the city that invented WallStreet, the people just voted
for the son of a Ugandan-bornMuslim filmmaker and an
(01:08):
Indian-born poet who believespublic good matters more than
private gain.
Ziran Mamdani, 34 years old,barely old enough to remember
the Giuliani years, just walkedinto City Hall carrying the
hopes of the janitor, thecabbie, the single mother, and
the student buried under debt.
New York worships productivitythe way ancient empires worship
gods.
The temples are glass, thepriests wear suits.
(01:28):
Every ticker symbol, every IPO,every luxury tower built atop
displaced tenants, all part ofthe same liturgy.
We've built an economy ofofferings.
We sacrificed time, health, andeven conscience to keep the
machine humming.
And we dare to call thatprogress.
But something cracked.
Maybe it was the pandemic.
Maybe it was the rent crisis.
Maybe it was the site ofbillionaires riding rockets to
(01:50):
nowhere while essential workersdied by the thousands.
Whatever it was, the illusionbroke.
So when Mamdani stood up andsaid, the city belongs to those
who make it run, New Yorkersexhausted, cynical,
disillusioned, suddenlyremembered their own agency.
The golden calf started towobble.
And the irony, it's delicious.
Because this isn't supposed tohappen here, not in the city of
Mammon.
Mamdani's rise reads like aparable.
(02:12):
A community organizer, stateassembleman, child of
immigrants, openly Muslim,openly socialist, the kind of
resume that would have beenpolitical poison a decade ago.
But he speaks the language ofthe street, not the boardroom,
when he says affordable housing.
He doesn't mean 80% of marketrate in a building guarded by
doormen.
He means you shouldn't have towork three jobs to afford a
one-bedroom with heat thatworks.
He talks about fare-free buses,city-run groceries, and public
(02:35):
housing as infrastructure theway FDR once talked about
electricity and roads.
Radical?
Maybe.
But every idea we now callnormal once wore that label.
And the man has a poet's heartliterally.
His mother wrote verse.
His father made films aboutpost-colonial struggle.
He grew up in stories thatdidn't center power but
questioned it.
You can hear it in his cadence,moral without being
(02:55):
sanctimonious, hopeful, withoutbeing naive.
This isn't the first time NewYork flirted with economic
conscience.
Go back to Fiorella LaGuardia inthe 1930s, the little flower who
took on the Tammany Hall machineand built public parks, schools,
and airports during the GreatDepression.
Go further back to Jacob Riseexposing Teneman misery to the
labor movements that bled in thestreets for the weekend you now
enjoy.
(03:16):
But the pendulum swung.
By the time Bloomberg leftoffice, New York had become a
theme park for the wealthy,where hedge fund interns lived
in luxury high rises andlifelong residents got priced
out to Jersey.
Mamdanny's victory isn't justpolitical, it's historical
muscle memory.
The city remembers deep downthat it was built by workers,
immigrants, and dreamers, notfinanciers.
Here's where the preacher and mestirs.
The Bible says, you cannot serveGod in money.
(03:38):
It's not anti-wealth, it'santi-idolatry.
And brother, this city has beenbowing to mammon for a long,
long time.
Now here comes a Muslim man in acity still bearing the scars of
September the 11th suspicion,stepping into the pulpit of City
Hall preaching economic justice.
You don't have to share histheology to feel the moral
electricity of that moment.
He's not Moses, but he'sstanding before a modern
(03:59):
pharaoh, the landlords, thelobbyists, the investors who
believe profit is sacred, andhe's saying, Let the people
breathe.
Will he succeed?
I don't know.
History is littered withreformers who couldn't survive
their own revolutions.
The machine is ruthless, andgood intentions alone don't pay
the bills.
But even if his agenda stalls,the message landed.
Decency still has aconstituency.
Compassion can win an election.
(04:20):
That's no small thing.
I've walked those streets TimesSquare at 2 a.m.
Harlem on a humid summer night,the seven train rumbling through
Queens.
Every block tells a story ofsomeone hustling to stay human
in a city that monetizeseverything.
So when I see Zuran Mamdaniwalking into office, I don't
just see politics, I seepossibility.
A faint echo of what citiescould be if they remembered
(04:42):
their souls.
We keep asking whether Americais ready for socialism.
Maybe that's the wrong question.
Maybe the question is whetherAmerica is ready for solidarity.
Because solidarity is older thansocialism.
It's older than capitalism.
It's the heartbeat of everyfaith that ever taught us to
love our neighbor.
In the city of Mamon, a newmayor just lit a candle.
(05:02):
It might flicker.
It might burn out.
But for one night electionnight, it illuminated the faces
of millions who'd stoppedbelieving their voices mattered.
You could feel it before thepolls closed the air, and
Virginia was thick with thesmell of change.
Not the cheap perfume of Copanchanged speeches, but that slow
burn smell of something beingrebuilt after the storm.
(05:23):
And uh sure enough, when theballot settled, Virginia had
gone blue from courthouse toCapitol Square.
Governor, Lieutenant Governor,Attorney General.
Every top seat.
That's not just a democraticsweep.
That's a recalibration of whothis Commonwealth really is in
the age of Trump II.
S.E.
Dart or let's start with AbigailSvanberger, the former CIA
(05:44):
officer turned Congresswoman,turned governor.
She didn't win because she wentviral.
She won because she stayedsteady while everyone else was
screaming.
While Winsome Earl Sears was outhere throwing red meat to
culture warriors talking aboutpronouns in locker rooms,
Spahnberger was talking aboutpaychecks, childcare, and
federal jobs.
And that's the thing, peoplewill listen to the loudest voice
until the rent is due.
(06:05):
Then they vote for the comma'shand.
Spanberger's message was simpleprotect the federal workforce,
protect the working class,protect Virginia's dignity.
And when six and ten voters saidTrump's federal cuts had hit
their family directly, that wasit.
The argument was over.
She didn't need to call heropponent extreme.
She just let her opponent proveit, now Jay Jones.
The man almost lost it all overone stupid, reckless text
(06:27):
message.
Imagine thinking you cancasually joke about shooting a
Republican speaker and not haveit explode in your face.
Republicans smelled blood.
They went full attack Modemiers,Yuncan, Trump, Vance, all of
them.
They wanted Jones to drop out,crawl under the political porch,
and never come back.
But he didn't.
He apologized and keptcampaigning like a man who knew
the scandal couldn't outlastTrump's shadow.
(06:47):
Because here's what really savedhim Spaumberger's win changed
the mood.
When voters are alreadyrejecting the top of the
Republican ticket, the wavelifts everyone behind it.
Virginia Democrats didn't winbecause they were flawless.
They won because the GOP forgotthat confidence and humility
still matter more than swagger.
The irony of all this is rich.
Trump complained that he wasn'ton the ballot and that's exactly
why Republicans lost.
(07:09):
See, Trump's name might not havebeen printed, but his policies
were carved into every paycheck.
Federal workers laid off,agencies gutted, government
shutdowns looming.
Virginia remembers who eats whenthe federal government runs.
Trump thought he was punishingthe swamp.
But a whole lot of that swamplives in Fairfax, Norfolk,
Arlington, and Newport, NewZealand.
They've got you mess withpeople's livelihoods long
(07:29):
enough, and suddenly you're notfighting the deep state, you're
fighting the PTA.
That's what this election was arevolt of the practical, then
came the history books.
Abigail Spanberger, first womanto govern Virginia, Gozala
Hashmi first Indian and firstMuslim woman to hold statewide
office in the US both wonbecause they worked, not because
they represented.
And that's what made thesymbolism so powerful.
(07:49):
It wasn't a diversityperformance, it was competence
crowned by representation.
Hashmi's win matters beyondRichmond.
Because on the same night, ZaranMamdani became New York's first
Muslim mayor.
Two different worlds, onepragmatic centrist, one
democratic socialist, but bothsaying the same quiet truth.
America's political imaginationis changing.
People aren't just voting forideology anymore.
(08:09):
They're voting for authenticity.
And authenticity doesn't alwaysfit neatly in left or right.
But now comes the test.
Spanberger represents thepragmatic center, the steady
hands, the incrementalreformers.
Mamdani, the newly crownedsocialist in New York,
represents the moral fire of themovement left, and both are
right in their own way.
Spanberger's discipline winselections.
Mamdani's passion wins hearts.
(08:31):
The danger is when either sideforgets the other.
Without progressives, Democratslose their soul.
Without moderates, they lose themap.
Republicans will try to paintthe whole party as Mamdani's
mirror, screaming radical atevery turn.
But Spanberger's victory provesVirginia voters aren't afraid of
Democrats, they're tired ofdysfunction.
Here's the poetic twist (08:49):
this whole story isn't about
(10:45):
politics.
It's about maturity.
About a country that's maybefinally learning to separate
passion from paranoia.
When a people choose calm overchaos, work over words, faith
over fear something holy isstirring beneath the numbers.
Maybe that's the quiet revivalwe never saw coming.
Not in church pews this time,but in polling places.
(11:11):
It's that the adult room is openagain.
Americans, Virginians,especially just told every
extremist on both ends, we don'tneed saviors with slogans, we
need leaders with sense.
And if you want to know whatcomes next, remember this
Spamberger's victory is awarning shot, not a lullaby.
Because if the center can hold,maybe this experiment called
Democracy Still Can't Too.
SPEAKER_11 (11:31):
With large turnouts and an off-year election,
Democrats scored big wins inyesterday's vote.
SPEAKER_08 (11:36):
They still have two major governors' races in
Virginia and New Jersey, wherevoters sending a message of
discontent to the White House.
SPEAKER_11 (11:42):
I'm Layla Falden, that's A.
Martinez, and this is a firstfrom NPR News.
New Yorkers made history byelecting Zohan Mandani as mayor
of America's largest metropolis.
SPEAKER_04 (11:55):
New York! Tonight you have to learn.
SPEAKER_06 (12:28):
This message comes from Mint Mobile.
At Mint Mobile, their favoriteword is no.
No contracts, no monthly bills,no hidden fees.
Plan start at$15 a month.
Make the switch atMintmobile.com slash switch.
That's Mintmobile.com slashswitch.
Upfront payment of$45 forthree-month 5-gigabyte plan
required, equivalent to$15 amonth.
(12:49):
New customer offer for firstthree months only, then full
price plan options available.
Taxes and fees extra.
See Mint Mobile for details.
This message comes from NPRsponsor Pete and Jerry X, who
invites you to pause and spend amoment in the life of an organic
pasture-raised car.
On a beautiful sunny morning,she's foraging with her friends
(13:11):
for tasty organic dust.
She travels across the lushpasture to her favorite spot for
a dust bath.
She baths in the sounds ofnature, soaking in the sunshine,
and prepares to lay a rich,delicious egg.
Learn more about Pete andJerry's organic pasture-raised
eggs at Peteandjerry's.com.
SPEAKER_08 (13:33):
President Trump was not on the ballot, but Democrats
are celebrating their victorieslast night as a major rebuke of
the president.
SPEAKER_11 (13:39):
This morning, we're looking at four races reflecting
the scope of those wins.
Virginia elected DemocratAbigail Spamberger as governor.
SPEAKER_02 (13:47):
We sent a message to the whole world.
Virginia chose pragmatism overpartisanship.
SPEAKER_11 (14:00):
New Jersey elected Democrat like a shareless
governor who ran against aRepublican endorsed by Trump.
New Yorkers elected ZohanMondani as their mayor,
defeating former Governor AndrewCuomo, also endorsed by Trump.
SPEAKER_04 (14:21):
New York! You have delivered.
SPEAKER_08 (14:36):
We'll start with Virginia and New Jersey and are
joined by Margaret Barthel fromWAMU.
So how did Spanberger pull offand decide to win in Virginia?
SPEAKER_12 (14:44):
Yeah, she focused the whole campaign on
affordability in Virginia andalso talked about Trump.
Virginia has hundreds ofthousands of federal workers and
contractors.
They were, of course, affectedby the Doge cutbacks and more
recently the governmentshutdown.
Here she is at her electionnight party in Richmond.
SPEAKER_13 (15:05):
To those across the Potomac who are attacking our
jobs and our economy, I will notstand by silently while you
attack Virginia's workers.
SPEAKER_12 (15:17):
Spanberger will be the state's first woman
governor.
She beat the Republican,Lieutenant Governor
Winsomerl-Sears, who talked alot about how transgender rights
have gone too far and what shethinks is a threat to girls in
school locker rooms andbathrooms.
Spanberger was a three-termcongresswoman before this and a
(15:39):
former CIA officer, and reallytried to portray herself as a
centrist as she went out of herway last night to praise Earl
Sears and her service as aMarine veteran.
SPEAKER_08 (15:51):
Well, Spanberger's uh tactics dissimilar to how
Mikey Cheryl won in New Jerseybecause they both won by pretty
big margins.
SPEAKER_12 (15:58):
Yeah, they definitely have similarities.
They were in Congress togetherand share a background in
national security.
Cheryl was a Navy helicopterpilot, and they ran similar
races.
Cheryl also focused onaffordability and pushing back
on the Trump administration,particularly the decision to
defund a major infrastructureproject between New Jersey and
(16:20):
New York.
One difference, as you noted inthe intro, is that Trump
endorsed Cheryl's Republicanopponent, Jack Chitterelli, a
businessman and former statelawmaker.
Trump did not directly endorseWinsomerle Sears in Virginia.
But he did weigh in last nighton the election results, saying
in a post on Truth Social thathe wasn't on the ballot himself,
(16:42):
and that was why Republicansstruggled.
SPEAKER_08 (16:44):
Now, let's uh break down the campaigns a bit because
what can we take away from them?
The you know, the big issues andhow voters saw them.
SPEAKER_12 (16:50):
Yeah, I'd say Spanberger is a test case for
Democrats looking to run oneconomic issues.
She spent a lot of time talkingabout her plans for tackling
things like housing and energyprices, workforce training, the
cost of prescription drugs.
Um, she argued that peopleshould vote for her to push back
(17:11):
on the damage the Trumpadministration's policies are
doing to the Virginia economy,uh, which is very tied to the
federal government.
Uh so she appealed to people whoare maybe less political, but
are worried about cost ofliving, and also to the
Democratic base, which is veryupset about Trump.
And it was similar for Cheryl,who also talked a lot about
(17:31):
economics, presented herself asa centrist, and uh rising energy
prices cropped up in both races.
In Virginia, there was a lot oftalk about the state's cluster
of data centers and the powerdemand that comes with them.
And in New Jersey, uh Cheryl hasalready pledged to declare a
state of emergency on utilitycosts.
SPEAKER_08 (17:51):
That's WAMU's Margaret Bartell.
Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_12 (17:54):
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
SPEAKER_08 (17:56):
New York City voters turned out in record numbers on
Tuesday to elect a new mayor.
SPEAKER_11 (18:01):
Yeah, as we mentioned, Democratic nominee
Zilan Mondani defeated AndrewCuomo, the former governor who
is running as an independentcandidate.
Mondani will become the city'sfirst Muslim mayor, first Indian
mayor, and at 34 years old, theyoungest person to leave the
city in more than a century.
SPEAKER_08 (18:16):
Member States NWNYC's Bridget Bergen joined us
now to talk about this historicelection.
Uh, Richard, I mean it seemedlike there was a lot of
excitement around this one.
How many people voted yesterday?
SPEAKER_09 (18:26):
So we know that more than two million people voted,
and according to the city'sboard elections, that has not
happened in a city mayoral racesince 1969.
SPEAKER_08 (18:36):
Okay, yeah, so clearly lots of people excited.
Um he made affordability thecentral message of his campaign.
What do you have to say lastnight?
SPEAKER_09 (18:43):
So Mom Dani said he had a mandate for change.
His signature campaign pitchincluded making buses fast and
free, a rent for use for nearlytwo million tenants and
rent-stabilized apartments andproviding universal child care
to all families from six weeksto five years old.
Uh these are big,transformative, and expensive
proposals, but he offered votersa vision of hope and stressed
(19:06):
that this moment was atransition from the politics of
the past to a new generation.
That of course was a commentabout defeating former governor
Andrew Cuomo, son of anotherformer governor, Mario Cuomo.
SPEAKER_08 (19:28):
So let's talk about Cuomo for a second because he
was trying to make a politicalcomeback, but he also tried to
use uh Mondani as a backgroundagainst the fact that he's a
Muslim and also an immigrant.
Uh, clearly did not work.
Uh, did Cuomo give anyindication last night about uh
his future political career?
SPEAKER_09 (19:45):
No.
And you know, this is Cuomo'ssecond defeat to Mondani this
year.
Uh, he was running for mayor asreally a form of political
redemption after resigning fromoffice in 2021 in the face of
more than a dozen women whoaccused him of sexual
harassment, which he denied.
Throughout the campaign, he saidthe city was in crisis and that
New Yorkers were living in fearevery day.
(20:06):
And last night, there was nonote of regret about how he ran
his campaign.
Cuomo said that his campaignactually had some success
(20:29):
because they made Mamdani fightfor this win.
SPEAKER_08 (20:31):
Now, President Trump endorsed uh Cuomo.
Uh, did Mamdani have uh anywords for President Trump?
SPEAKER_09 (20:38):
He did.
He was quite direct, in fact.
He celebrated the diversity ofthe coalition that helped him
win in his own background.
Mamdani was born in Uganda andhis parents are from India.
He said he will be unapologeticabout his Muslim faith despite
repeated attacks, and he saidNew York will remain a city of
immigrants, powered byimmigrants, and now a city that
(20:58):
will be led by an immigrant.
SPEAKER_04 (21:00):
And then he said, From now Montani will be sworn
into office on January 1st.
SPEAKER_08 (21:16):
That's WNYC's Bridget Burgen.
Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_09 (21:19):
You're welcome.
SPEAKER_08 (21:20):
California voters easily approved a ballot measure
to redraw the state'scongressional map of favored
Democrat.
That's according to a race callby the Associated Press.
SPEAKER_11 (21:28):
The vote's a big win for Democrats in the partisan
battle over redistricting aheadof the 2026 midterms.
California Governor Gavin Newsomcelebrated the result last night
in Sacramento.
SPEAKER_01 (21:38):
We're proud of the work that the people of the
state of California did tonightto send a message to Donald
Trump.
No crowns, no thrones, no case.
That's what this victoryrepresents.
SPEAKER_08 (21:52):
Cap Radio's Laura Fitzgerald, George is now from
California.
So this measure, Proposition 50,why is it so significant?
SPEAKER_10 (22:00):
Well, a Prop 50 replaces California's current
congressional map, which wasdrawn by the state's independent
citizens redistrictingcommission, with a new map
favoring Democrats.
And the new map will be in placefor the next three elections,
and it could yield up to fivenew U.S.
House seats for Democrats.
California Governor Gavin Newsomand other Democratic leaders
(22:20):
here say it was needed tocounter the Republican
redistricting effort in Texasthat created up to five new GOP
seats.
President Trump called for thoseseats in Texas, and it kicked
off this ongoing nationalredistricting race.
And because California is sobig, it's really the only blue
state that's in the position toredistrict to the Democratic
(22:40):
advantage in any significant wayand really impact Democrats'
chances of reclaiming control ofthe House.
SPEAKER_08 (22:47):
And Governor Newsom was the big driving force behind
Prop 50.
Tell us about the campaign.
How was it able to besuccessful?
SPEAKER_10 (22:52):
Yeah, Newsom has really made this redistricting
measure about more than justcongressional maps.
The yes campaign messaging hasbeen all about national
politics, specifically fightingback against the Trump
administration.
And by emphasizing nationalpolitics, that helped the
campaign because left-leaningvoters really outnumber
conservatives here inCalifornia.
SPEAKER_08 (23:13):
And opponents were not able to break that partisan
split?
SPEAKER_10 (23:16):
No, not really.
On the no side, you mostly haveRepublicans, and their main
argument was that Prop 50 wouldsideline the state's independent
citizens redistrictingcommission that California
voters approved 15 years ago.
But Newsom side won on themessaging front, and they
significantly outspent theopposition campaign too.
SPEAKER_08 (23:35):
Laura, what did voters tell you about why they
voted a certain way?
SPEAKER_10 (23:38):
Well, I spoke with a lot of people who supported the
measure, mostly all Democrats,and they told me they see
California redistricting as achance to fight back against
President Trump.
They brought up things like theTrump administration's tactics
for immigration enforcement,cuts to Medicare, and the
federalization of National Guardtroops here in the state.
But my reporting also took me toparts of the state where lines
(24:00):
would be redrawn under Prop 50,mostly Republican areas.
And a lot of Republicans whooppose redistricting say they're
already a super minority inCalifornia, and now they feel
like they could lose theirrepresentation altogether.
SPEAKER_08 (24:13):
All right, so what happens next in these redrawn
California districts?
SPEAKER_10 (24:17):
Well, Republicans who represent these districts
that'll now lean Democratic,they have a decision to make.
Do they run again?
And if so, in which district?
And meanwhile, some Democratshave already indicated they
intend to run for the redrawndistricts.
We'll also see in a year fromnow whether this new map
delivers five more seats forDemocrats, like they're hoping.
SPEAKER_08 (24:38):
Alright, that's Cap Radios.
Laura Fitzgerald.
Laura, thanks.
SPEAKER_10 (24:41):
Thank you, A.
SPEAKER_11 (24:46):
And that's a first for Wednesday.
Oh, that's sorry.
SPEAKER_08 (24:49):
This is real.
It's a it's it's the Layla show,so I mean you do all the lines.
SPEAKER_11 (24:57):
No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08 (24:58):
Do you all do you all hear what I have to deal
with?
And that's Up First forWednesday, November 5th.
I'm A.
Martinez.
SPEAKER_11 (25:10):
And I'm Layla Falton.
Upfirst gives you the top threestories of the day, but the news
doesn't stop here.
If you want more reporting andcontext behind the headlines,
listen to our radio show,Morning Edition.
That's the show A, Michelle,Steve, and I host.
You can find it on your localNPR station or on the NPR.
SPEAKER_08 (25:26):
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Larry
Kaplow, Acacia Squires, MiguelMacsias, Ben Swayze, Mohamed
Omar Disi, and Alice Wolfley.
It was produced by Zia Bush, NiaDamas, and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support fromStacy Abbott.
Our technical director is CardiStrange.
Join us again tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
The Myth of the Lazy Millions by Durham McLean,
November 03, 2025.
Why is it easier for people tobelieve 42 million Americans are
lazy than to grasp that ahandful of corporations are
greedy?
That's not a rhetoricalquestion.
It's a mirror held up to anation that's been trained
generation after generation toconfuse exploitation with
virtue.
The story we were sold the mosteffective propaganda in America
(26:11):
isn't foreign its domestic.
It's a story that says povertyis a moral failure, that hard
work alone determines success,and that those who struggle must
simply not be trying hardenough.
That story is older than theassembly line.
It was whispered through theplantations, codified in the
Gilded Age, and repackaged inthe 1980s with a catchy jingle
called personal responsibility.
Every era has its scapegoat, thesharecropper, the immigrant, the
(26:32):
welfare queen, the singlemother, the union worker, the
unemployed veteran.
But notice what never changes.
The direction of the blame.
It's always downward.
Never upward.
Never toward the boardrooms thathoard record profits while
lobbying to pay starvationwages.
The math we ignore, let's talknumbers, not emotions.
Since the 1970s, workerproductivity has soared by
(26:52):
roughly 250% wages?
Up barely 15%.
CEO pay has ballooned 1-200%.
Corporate profits hit recordhighs year after year.
Meanwhile, 42 million Americansrely on some form of food
assistance not because they'relazy, but because the cost of
living has detached from thereality of wages.
(27:12):
The data doesn't lie, but we'vebeen conditioned to distrust it.
Instead of asking why therichest country on earth still
has working poor, we're told tobe angry at the cashier using an
EBT card.
We're told the janitor shouldlearn to code, not that his
company should pay him a livingwage.
It's a magician's trick,misdirection.
Keep the public eye on thestruggling many so no one
notices the accumulating powerof the greedy few.
(27:33):
Greed in a three-piece suit,greed doesn't announce itself.
It shows up in tax loopholes andlobbying budgets.
It hides behind phrases like jobcreation and shareholder value.
A company can close factories,offload pensions, and still call
itself a success as long as thestock price jumps.
That's not capitalism at work,that's capitalism on steroids
injected by politicians who havebought it a discount.
(27:53):
When Walmart or Amazon driveswages down, it's called
efficiency.
When workers organize for fairpay, it's called radicalism.
When a billionaire dodges taxesthrough offshore accounts, it's
smart business.
When a single mother misses apayment, she's irresponsible.
You see the pattern.
It's not about morality, it'sabout control of the narrative.
And the people who own thenarrative usually own everything
(28:14):
else too.
The cult of the self-madeAmericans love a myth.
And the self-made man might beour favorite one, but here's the
secret (28:22):
no one is self-made.
Not the hedge fund manager usingpublic roads to drive to work,
not the CEO hiring workerseducated in public schools, not
the billionaire protected bytaxpayer-funded beliefs in
infrastructure.
Every self-made success storyrests on collective scaffolding
society itself.
So why defend a system thatrewards the hoarders and
punishes the contributors?
Because the myth flatters us.
It lets us believe we'retemporarily embarrassed
(28:44):
millionaires, not permanentlysqueezed workers.
It keeps us loyal to a dreamthat's been foreclosed on,
repossessed, and sold back to uswith a 19% interest rate.
A nation of distractions, webecome fluent in distraction.
We argue about who deserves foodstamps while corporations
quietly rewrite tax codes.
We shame people for student debtwhile billion-dollar
universities sit on endowmentslarge enough to pay off half the
(29:05):
nation's tuition.
We moralize about handouts whiletrillion-dollar bailouts go to
industries that crash theeconomy twice.
The laziness isn't at thebottom.
It's at the top.
It's the laziness of inheritedwealth and unearned privilege.
The laziness of companies thatspend more on stock buybacks
than on innovation.
The laziness of CEOs who pocketbonuses for layoffs they didn't
personally carry out.
That's not merit, it'sextraction.
(29:27):
The cost of believing the lieevery time we call the poor
lazy, we're doing free PR forthe powerful.
We're helping them off the hook.
The lie divides us white againstblack, native-born against
immigrant, worker againstworker.
The lie convinces the truckdriver he has more in common
with his boss than with awarehouse worker next door.
And once we believe that,solidarity dies.
This isn't just an economicproblem, it's a cultural rot.
(29:47):
It corrodes empathy.
It normalizes indifference.
It teaches us that suffering isdeserved and greed is destiny.
Relearning the obvious truth issimpler and less flattering.
The system isn't broken, it'sfunctioning exactly as designed.
A handful of corporationscontrol the flow of wealth,
information, and evenimagination.
They don't need us to love themjust to believe their story long
enough not to rebel.
(30:08):
If we're serious about renewal,we have to start by rejecting
that story.
We must call laziness what itreally is, a corporate virtue
masquerading as moral failure.
We have to stop asking why 42million people can't pull
themselves up, and start askingwhy the richest 1% keep pulling
the ladder up behind them.
Closing line it's not forty-twomillion lazy Americans that are
holding this country back.
It's the handful of greedycorporations that convince the
(30:30):
rest of us to look the otherway.
Subscribe to Darrell McLean,launched five months ago
cultural critic and overthinkingintellectual with a theological
edge.
Writing sharp takes on politics,faith, and society, always
questioning, always diggingdeeper.
SPEAKER_07 (30:44):
The great American heist, how Reagan Trump and
their billionaire backers stolethe middle class.
It's election day in MachoAmerica, although the biggest
races are in California,Virginia, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maine, and NewYork City.
As a bellwether for next year'smidterms that could define the
fate and future of Trumpism,stakes are enormous and are
bleeding through into socialmedia.
One of those viral Facebookposts yesterday was from a MAGA
(31:07):
mom complaining that herDemocratic mother-in-law
wouldn't loan her grocery money.
She explains that she can't feedher family because Trump's
government shutdown has frozenher snap, you know, food stamps
and wick benefits.
And she wrote, quote, He askedhis mother to buy a can of baby
formula until our WIC comes in.
Her response was, We voted forthis.
The most common responses werevariations on that's what you
wanted that's what you wantedwhen you voted for that orange
(31:29):
ass, but you must have thoughthe'd only do it to black and
Hispanic people.
F-A-F-O, haha.
Along those same lines, Trumpwent on 60 minutes this weekend
and lied to Leslie Stahl's facemultiple times, including a
whopper about grocery priceswhen she pointed out that
they're going up, up, and up.
No, you're wrong, Trump liedwith his best sincere
expression.
They went up under Biden, right?
Now they're going down, otherthan beef, which we're working
on.
(31:50):
Yeah, tell us about it, Donnie.
Just like climate change is ahoax, cutting taxes on
billionaires helps workingpeople.
You and your sons takingbillions of crypto money from
foreigners isn't corruptlypeddling influence out of what's
left of the White House.
The simple fact is, back in the1960s, you could rent a small
apartment, buy a used car, putyourself and put yourself
through college on a minimumwage job.
I know because I did it, pumpinggas, washing dishes, working as
(32:11):
a part-time DJ, as did millionsof my generation.
Just asked your grandparents.
So what happened?
Through most of America'shistory, our economic life was
similar to that of othercountries that practiced
unregulated capitalism.
Charles Dickens wrote about thatera in most of his novels,
including Christmas Carol.
There was a small 1% that ownedabout 90% of the nation's
wealth, a small middle class ofprofessionals, doctors, lawyers,
(32:31):
etc., who worked for the 1%,making up around 10 to 25% of
the population, and a very largecohort of the working poor.
In Christmas Carol, the 1% don'teven show up.
Ebenezer Scrooge was the middleclass.
He was a small businessman whoowned a company so tiny that it
had only one employee.
Bob Cratchett was the workingpoor who couldn't even afford to
cover the cost of health carefor his son, Tiny Tim.
(32:53):
That was the norm across most ofEurope and America from the 16th
century right up until the1930s.
After the Hoover administrationand their corrupt Wall Street
buddies drove the world economyoff the edge with the Republican
Great Depression, and Americaelected Franklin Roosevelt to
put the country back together,conservatives began to worry
aloud about FDR's advisor,British economist John Maynard
Keynes.
Keynes and FDR and FrancisPerkins had this wild idea that
(33:15):
it should be possible to createa nation where at least
two-thirds of the people were inthe middle class.
They do it by heavily taxing themorbidly rich.
FDR raised it to 77% in 1936,giving union power to working
people, the Wagner Act, 1935,and providing a solid safety
net, you know, Social Security,1935, a minimum wage, 1933,
unemployment insurance, 1935,and food stamps, 1939, to create
(33:36):
a middle class floor.
The programs were universallydecried by the GOP as socialism,
the doorway to communism andradically anti-American.
Every major social program sincethe 1930s has been opposed by
Republicans.
And in the 1950s, Russell Kirk,William F.
Buckley, Barry Goldwater, andother thinkers in the movement
provided a rationale for theiropposition.
They argued throughout the 1950sthat if the middle class ever
(33:59):
got too large, American societywould begin to disintegrate
under the weight of FDR'ssocialist programs.
Kirk and Buckley argued thatwomen would forget their place
in the kitchen and bedroom,young people would stop
respecting their elders and thevalue of hard work, and racial
minorities would demand socialand economic equality with
whites.
The result would be societalchaos leading to the downfall of
America as we knew it.
(34:20):
Their warnings were largelyignored and even ridiculed
through the fifties as thenation's prosperity steadily
increased and we shot past that50% threshold.
And then came the 1960s, as wepassed 60% of us in Kirk's
dreaded middle class.
The birth control bill waslegalized in 1961.
Within a few years there was afull-blown women's movement.
The civil rights movement wasembraced by the Kennedy
(34:40):
brothers, and black people beganto fight back against police
brutality, causing multiplecities to erupt into flames.
And by 1967, young men wererefusing military service,
protesting in the streets andburning their draft cars.
The collective response of theRepublican Party was something
like (34:53):
holy crap, Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, and Barry
Goldwater were right.
The country is on the verge ofsomething like the Bolshevik
Revolution that led straight tocommunism.
Thus, Ronald Reagan came intothe White House in 1981 with a
simple mandate, cut the middleclass down to size to restore
social and political stability,to save the nation.
He started by destroying theunions that supported high wages
and benefits.
(35:14):
A third of us were unionizedwhen Reagan came into office.
Now it's in single digits, andTrump just deunionized a few
hundred thousand federalworkers.
Then the inst then he institutedthe first long-lasting freeze on
the minimum wage, nine years,cut the top income tax rate from
74% to 27%, reformed SocialSecurity by raising the
retirement age to 67% and taxingits benefits as income, ended
enforcement of the FairnessDoctrine in 1987, gutted federal
(35:36):
support for colleges, and threwsmall local businesses to the
wolves by abandoning enforcementof a hundred years of
anti-monopoly laws and otherregulations.
Before Reagan, the middle classwas thriving and growing, and
you could get into it with aminimum wage job.
A union job, like my dad had ata tool and die shop, was
virtually a lifetime guaranteeof stability, solidly in the
middle of the middle class.
Looked through newspapers ofthat era and they talked about
(35:58):
wage earner income because mostmiddle class families were
making it just fine with asingle paycheck.
Today, instead, you'll findreferences to household income
because it takes two or morepaychecks to maintain the same
standard of living a familycould in the 1960s and 70s with
one wage earner.
In the intervening years,Republicans and a few moderate
and third-wave Democrats havecontinued the Kirk Buckley
Goldwater Reagan project ofdismantling Keynes's and FDR's
(36:20):
grand middle class project.
As a result, the middle classhas shrunk into fewer than 50%
of us, and it takes twopaychecks to do it.
Student debt has frozen twogenerations out of the American
dream.
Healthcare expenses destroy ahalf million American families
every year.
Republicans have kept theminimum wage frozen for fully 16
years as they transferred fullyfifty trillion dollars from
working class homes and familiesinto the money bins of the top
(36:42):
one percent.
Trump's big, beautifulbillionaires bill simply
continues Reagan's assault onthe American middle class.
You could call it making Americasafe for the morbidly rich, like
in the 1920s.
He even had a great Gatsby partyat Mar a Lardo over the weekend
to celebrate hisaccomplishments.
We now have more billionairesand richer billionaires than any
other country in the history ofthe planet.
Trump himself and his boys aresetting an example for the
(37:03):
pillaging of America.
They have taken in at least, bysome estimates, five billion
dollars in just the first tenmonths of his presidency.
We stand in a pissed-offprogressive populist moment,
although that movement is upagainst a massive wall of
billionaire-owned media andinfrastructure.
Five bought-off Republicans onthe Supreme Court legalized
bribery of judges andpoliticians.
Bondi and Noam are spouting liesto militarize our cities,
(37:25):
presumably in anticipation ofthe 2026 and 2028 elections.
If America is to survive as ademocratic republic, our middle
class must again become the heatthe beating heart of both our
economy and our politics.
That means restoring strongunions, ending legalized bribery
of politicians and judges,breaking up corporate
monopolies, providing healthcare and education to everybody,
and taxing billionaires enoughto rebuild the social contract
(37:47):
that made this country great inthe first place.
Every generation faces a choicebetween oligarchy and democracy,
between government by the peopleand government by the morbidly
rich.
We made the right choice in 1932when my parents' generation rose
up and said, enough, it's pasttime for ours to do the same.
Vote.
SPEAKER_03 (38:22):
Man can work hard to do just fine.
Put a storm roll in with theTV's wind.
Socialist in the city of Mamon, you could feel
the tremor before the resultseven dropped something electric
pulsing through the burrows.
It wasn't just an electionnight, it was a reckoning.
New York, the capital ofcapitalism, the city where
skyscrapers kiss heaven and therent, climbs faster than the
subway fair just chose asocialist for mayor.
Let that breathe for a second.
In the city that invented WallStreet, the people just voted
for the son of a Ugandan-bornMuslim filmmaker and an
(01:08):
Indian-born poet who believespublic good matters more than
private gain.
Ziran Mamdani, 34 years old,barely old enough to remember
the Giuliani years, just walkedinto City Hall carrying the
hopes of the janitor, thecabbie, the single mother, and
the student buried under debt.
New York worships productivitythe way ancient empires worship
gods.
The temples are glass, thepriests wear suits.
(01:28):
Every ticker symbol, every IPO,every luxury tower built atop
displaced tenants, all part ofthe same liturgy.
We've built an economy ofofferings.
We sacrificed time, health, andeven conscience to keep the
machine humming.
And we dare to call thatprogress.
But something cracked.
Maybe it was the pandemic.
Maybe it was the rent crisis.
Maybe it was the site ofbillionaires riding rockets to
(01:50):
nowhere while essential workersdied by the thousands.
Whatever it was, the illusionbroke.
So when Mamdani stood up andsaid, the city belongs to those
who make it run, New Yorkersexhausted, cynical,
disillusioned, suddenlyremembered their own agency.
The golden calf started towobble.
And the irony, it's delicious.
Because this isn't supposed tohappen here, not in the city of
Mammon.
Mamdani's rise reads like aparable.
(02:12):
A community organizer, stateassembleman, child of
immigrants, openly Muslim,openly socialist, the kind of
resume that would have beenpolitical poison a decade ago.
But he speaks the language ofthe street, not the boardroom,
when he says affordable housing.
He doesn't mean 80% of marketrate in a building guarded by
doormen.
He means you shouldn't have towork three jobs to afford a
one-bedroom with heat thatworks.
He talks about fare-free buses,city-run groceries, and public
(02:35):
housing as infrastructure theway FDR once talked about
electricity and roads.
Radical?
Maybe.
But every idea we now callnormal once wore that label.
And the man has a poet's heartliterally.
His mother wrote verse.
His father made films aboutpost-colonial struggle.
He grew up in stories thatdidn't center power but
questioned it.
You can hear it in his cadence,moral without being
(02:55):
sanctimonious, hopeful, withoutbeing naive.
This isn't the first time NewYork flirted with economic
conscience.
Go back to Fiorella LaGuardia inthe 1930s, the little flower who
took on the Tammany Hall machineand built public parks, schools,
and airports during the GreatDepression.
Go further back to Jacob Riseexposing Teneman misery to the
labor movements that bled in thestreets for the weekend you now
enjoy.
(03:16):
But the pendulum swung.
By the time Bloomberg leftoffice, New York had become a
theme park for the wealthy,where hedge fund interns lived
in luxury high rises andlifelong residents got priced
out to Jersey.
Mamdanny's victory isn't justpolitical, it's historical
muscle memory.
The city remembers deep downthat it was built by workers,
immigrants, and dreamers, notfinanciers.
Here's where the preacher and mestirs.
The Bible says, you cannot serveGod in money.
(03:38):
It's not anti-wealth, it'santi-idolatry.
And brother, this city has beenbowing to mammon for a long,
long time.
Now here comes a Muslim man in acity still bearing the scars of
September the 11th suspicion,stepping into the pulpit of City
Hall preaching economic justice.
You don't have to share histheology to feel the moral
electricity of that moment.
He's not Moses, but he'sstanding before a modern
(03:59):
pharaoh, the landlords, thelobbyists, the investors who
believe profit is sacred, andhe's saying, Let the people
breathe.
Will he succeed?
I don't know.
History is littered withreformers who couldn't survive
their own revolutions.
The machine is ruthless, andgood intentions alone don't pay
the bills.
But even if his agenda stalls,the message landed.
Decency still has aconstituency.
Compassion can win an election.
(04:20):
That's no small thing.
I've walked those streets TimesSquare at 2 a.m.
Harlem on a humid summer night,the seven train rumbling through
Queens.
Every block tells a story ofsomeone hustling to stay human
in a city that monetizeseverything.
So when I see Zuran Mamdaniwalking into office, I don't
just see politics, I seepossibility.
A faint echo of what citiescould be if they remembered
(04:42):
their souls.
We keep asking whether Americais ready for socialism.
Maybe that's the wrong question.
Maybe the question is whetherAmerica is ready for solidarity.
Because solidarity is older thansocialism.
It's older than capitalism.
It's the heartbeat of everyfaith that ever taught us to
love our neighbor.
In the city of Mamon, a newmayor just lit a candle.
(05:02):
It might flicker.
It might burn out.
But for one night electionnight, it illuminated the faces
of millions who'd stoppedbelieving their voices mattered.
You could feel it before thepolls closed the air, and
Virginia was thick with thesmell of change.
Not the cheap perfume of Copanchanged speeches, but that slow
burn smell of something beingrebuilt after the storm.
(05:23):
And uh sure enough, when theballot settled, Virginia had
gone blue from courthouse toCapitol Square.
Governor, Lieutenant Governor,Attorney General.
Every top seat.
That's not just a democraticsweep.
That's a recalibration of whothis Commonwealth really is in
the age of Trump II.
S.E.
Dart or let's start with AbigailSvanberger, the former CIA
(05:44):
officer turned Congresswoman,turned governor.
She didn't win because she wentviral.
She won because she stayedsteady while everyone else was
screaming.
While Winsome Earl Sears was outhere throwing red meat to
culture warriors talking aboutpronouns in locker rooms,
Spahnberger was talking aboutpaychecks, childcare, and
federal jobs.
And that's the thing, peoplewill listen to the loudest voice
until the rent is due.
(06:05):
Then they vote for the comma'shand.
Spanberger's message was simpleprotect the federal workforce,
protect the working class,protect Virginia's dignity.
And when six and ten voters saidTrump's federal cuts had hit
their family directly, that wasit.
The argument was over.
She didn't need to call heropponent extreme.
She just let her opponent proveit, now Jay Jones.
The man almost lost it all overone stupid, reckless text
(06:27):
message.
Imagine thinking you cancasually joke about shooting a
Republican speaker and not haveit explode in your face.
Republicans smelled blood.
They went full attack Modemiers,Yuncan, Trump, Vance, all of
them.
They wanted Jones to drop out,crawl under the political porch,
and never come back.
But he didn't.
He apologized and keptcampaigning like a man who knew
the scandal couldn't outlastTrump's shadow.
(06:47):
Because here's what really savedhim Spaumberger's win changed
the mood.
When voters are alreadyrejecting the top of the
Republican ticket, the wavelifts everyone behind it.
Virginia Democrats didn't winbecause they were flawless.
They won because the GOP forgotthat confidence and humility
still matter more than swagger.
The irony of all this is rich.
Trump complained that he wasn'ton the ballot and that's exactly
why Republicans lost.
(07:09):
See, Trump's name might not havebeen printed, but his policies
were carved into every paycheck.
Federal workers laid off,agencies gutted, government
shutdowns looming.
Virginia remembers who eats whenthe federal government runs.
Trump thought he was punishingthe swamp.
But a whole lot of that swamplives in Fairfax, Norfolk,
Arlington, and Newport, NewZealand.
They've got you mess withpeople's livelihoods long
(07:29):
enough, and suddenly you're notfighting the deep state, you're
fighting the PTA.
That's what this election was arevolt of the practical, then
came the history books.
Abigail Spanberger, first womanto govern Virginia, Gozala
Hashmi first Indian and firstMuslim woman to hold statewide
office in the US both wonbecause they worked, not because
they represented.
And that's what made thesymbolism so powerful.
(07:49):
It wasn't a diversityperformance, it was competence
crowned by representation.
Hashmi's win matters beyondRichmond.
Because on the same night, ZaranMamdani became New York's first
Muslim mayor.
Two different worlds, onepragmatic centrist, one
democratic socialist, but bothsaying the same quiet truth.
America's political imaginationis changing.
People aren't just voting forideology anymore.
(08:09):
They're voting for authenticity.
And authenticity doesn't alwaysfit neatly in left or right.
But now comes the test.
Spanberger represents thepragmatic center, the steady
hands, the incrementalreformers.
Mamdani, the newly crownedsocialist in New York,
represents the moral fire of themovement left, and both are
right in their own way.
Spanberger's discipline winselections.
Mamdani's passion wins hearts.
(08:31):
The danger is when either sideforgets the other.
Without progressives, Democratslose their soul.
Without moderates, they lose themap.
Republicans will try to paintthe whole party as Mamdani's
mirror, screaming radical atevery turn.
But Spanberger's victory provesVirginia voters aren't afraid of
Democrats, they're tired ofdysfunction.
Here's the poetic twist (08:49):
this whole story isn't about
(10:45):
politics.
It's about maturity.
About a country that's maybefinally learning to separate
passion from paranoia.
When a people choose calm overchaos, work over words, faith
over fear something holy isstirring beneath the numbers.
Maybe that's the quiet revivalwe never saw coming.
Not in church pews this time,but in polling places.
(11:11):
It's that the adult room is openagain.
Americans, Virginians,especially just told every
extremist on both ends, we don'tneed saviors with slogans, we
need leaders with sense.
And if you want to know whatcomes next, remember this
Spamberger's victory is awarning shot, not a lullaby.
Because if the center can hold,maybe this experiment called
Democracy Still Can't Too.
SPEAKER_11 (11:31):
With large turnouts and an off-year election,
Democrats scored big wins inyesterday's vote.
SPEAKER_08 (11:36):
They still have two major governors' races in
Virginia and New Jersey, wherevoters sending a message of
discontent to the White House.
SPEAKER_11 (11:42):
I'm Layla Falden, that's A.
Martinez, and this is a firstfrom NPR News.
New Yorkers made history byelecting Zohan Mandani as mayor
of America's largest metropolis.
SPEAKER_04 (11:55):
New York! Tonight you have to learn.
SPEAKER_06 (12:28):
This message comes from Mint Mobile.
At Mint Mobile, their favoriteword is no.
No contracts, no monthly bills,no hidden fees.
Plan start at$15 a month.
Make the switch atMintmobile.com slash switch.
That's Mintmobile.com slashswitch.
Upfront payment of$45 forthree-month 5-gigabyte plan
required, equivalent to$15 amonth.
(12:49):
New customer offer for firstthree months only, then full
price plan options available.
Taxes and fees extra.
See Mint Mobile for details.
This message comes from NPRsponsor Pete and Jerry X, who
invites you to pause and spend amoment in the life of an organic
pasture-raised car.
On a beautiful sunny morning,she's foraging with her friends
(13:11):
for tasty organic dust.
She travels across the lushpasture to her favorite spot for
a dust bath.
She baths in the sounds ofnature, soaking in the sunshine,
and prepares to lay a rich,delicious egg.
Learn more about Pete andJerry's organic pasture-raised
eggs at Peteandjerry's.com.
SPEAKER_08 (13:33):
President Trump was not on the ballot, but Democrats
are celebrating their victorieslast night as a major rebuke of
the president.
SPEAKER_11 (13:39):
This morning, we're looking at four races reflecting
the scope of those wins.
Virginia elected DemocratAbigail Spamberger as governor.
SPEAKER_02 (13:47):
We sent a message to the whole world.
Virginia chose pragmatism overpartisanship.
SPEAKER_11 (14:00):
New Jersey elected Democrat like a shareless
governor who ran against aRepublican endorsed by Trump.
New Yorkers elected ZohanMondani as their mayor,
defeating former Governor AndrewCuomo, also endorsed by Trump.
SPEAKER_04 (14:21):
New York! You have delivered.
SPEAKER_08 (14:36):
We'll start with Virginia and New Jersey and are
joined by Margaret Barthel fromWAMU.
So how did Spanberger pull offand decide to win in Virginia?
SPEAKER_12 (14:44):
Yeah, she focused the whole campaign on
affordability in Virginia andalso talked about Trump.
Virginia has hundreds ofthousands of federal workers and
contractors.
They were, of course, affectedby the Doge cutbacks and more
recently the governmentshutdown.
Here she is at her electionnight party in Richmond.
SPEAKER_13 (15:05):
To those across the Potomac who are attacking our
jobs and our economy, I will notstand by silently while you
attack Virginia's workers.
SPEAKER_12 (15:17):
Spanberger will be the state's first woman
governor.
She beat the Republican,Lieutenant Governor
Winsomerl-Sears, who talked alot about how transgender rights
have gone too far and what shethinks is a threat to girls in
school locker rooms andbathrooms.
Spanberger was a three-termcongresswoman before this and a
(15:39):
former CIA officer, and reallytried to portray herself as a
centrist as she went out of herway last night to praise Earl
Sears and her service as aMarine veteran.
SPEAKER_08 (15:51):
Well, Spanberger's uh tactics dissimilar to how
Mikey Cheryl won in New Jerseybecause they both won by pretty
big margins.
SPEAKER_12 (15:58):
Yeah, they definitely have similarities.
They were in Congress togetherand share a background in
national security.
Cheryl was a Navy helicopterpilot, and they ran similar
races.
Cheryl also focused onaffordability and pushing back
on the Trump administration,particularly the decision to
defund a major infrastructureproject between New Jersey and
(16:20):
New York.
One difference, as you noted inthe intro, is that Trump
endorsed Cheryl's Republicanopponent, Jack Chitterelli, a
businessman and former statelawmaker.
Trump did not directly endorseWinsomerle Sears in Virginia.
But he did weigh in last nighton the election results, saying
in a post on Truth Social thathe wasn't on the ballot himself,
(16:42):
and that was why Republicansstruggled.
SPEAKER_08 (16:44):
Now, let's uh break down the campaigns a bit because
what can we take away from them?
The you know, the big issues andhow voters saw them.
SPEAKER_12 (16:50):
Yeah, I'd say Spanberger is a test case for
Democrats looking to run oneconomic issues.
She spent a lot of time talkingabout her plans for tackling
things like housing and energyprices, workforce training, the
cost of prescription drugs.
Um, she argued that peopleshould vote for her to push back
(17:11):
on the damage the Trumpadministration's policies are
doing to the Virginia economy,uh, which is very tied to the
federal government.
Uh so she appealed to people whoare maybe less political, but
are worried about cost ofliving, and also to the
Democratic base, which is veryupset about Trump.
And it was similar for Cheryl,who also talked a lot about
(17:31):
economics, presented herself asa centrist, and uh rising energy
prices cropped up in both races.
In Virginia, there was a lot oftalk about the state's cluster
of data centers and the powerdemand that comes with them.
And in New Jersey, uh Cheryl hasalready pledged to declare a
state of emergency on utilitycosts.
SPEAKER_08 (17:51):
That's WAMU's Margaret Bartell.
Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_12 (17:54):
Appreciate it.
Thanks.
SPEAKER_08 (17:56):
New York City voters turned out in record numbers on
Tuesday to elect a new mayor.
SPEAKER_11 (18:01):
Yeah, as we mentioned, Democratic nominee
Zilan Mondani defeated AndrewCuomo, the former governor who
is running as an independentcandidate.
Mondani will become the city'sfirst Muslim mayor, first Indian
mayor, and at 34 years old, theyoungest person to leave the
city in more than a century.
SPEAKER_08 (18:16):
Member States NWNYC's Bridget Bergen joined us
now to talk about this historicelection.
Uh, Richard, I mean it seemedlike there was a lot of
excitement around this one.
How many people voted yesterday?
SPEAKER_09 (18:26):
So we know that more than two million people voted,
and according to the city'sboard elections, that has not
happened in a city mayoral racesince 1969.
SPEAKER_08 (18:36):
Okay, yeah, so clearly lots of people excited.
Um he made affordability thecentral message of his campaign.
What do you have to say lastnight?
SPEAKER_09 (18:43):
So Mom Dani said he had a mandate for change.
His signature campaign pitchincluded making buses fast and
free, a rent for use for nearlytwo million tenants and
rent-stabilized apartments andproviding universal child care
to all families from six weeksto five years old.
Uh these are big,transformative, and expensive
proposals, but he offered votersa vision of hope and stressed
(19:06):
that this moment was atransition from the politics of
the past to a new generation.
That of course was a commentabout defeating former governor
Andrew Cuomo, son of anotherformer governor, Mario Cuomo.
SPEAKER_08 (19:28):
So let's talk about Cuomo for a second because he
was trying to make a politicalcomeback, but he also tried to
use uh Mondani as a backgroundagainst the fact that he's a
Muslim and also an immigrant.
Uh, clearly did not work.
Uh, did Cuomo give anyindication last night about uh
his future political career?
SPEAKER_09 (19:45):
No.
And you know, this is Cuomo'ssecond defeat to Mondani this
year.
Uh, he was running for mayor asreally a form of political
redemption after resigning fromoffice in 2021 in the face of
more than a dozen women whoaccused him of sexual
harassment, which he denied.
Throughout the campaign, he saidthe city was in crisis and that
New Yorkers were living in fearevery day.
(20:06):
And last night, there was nonote of regret about how he ran
his campaign.
Cuomo said that his campaignactually had some success
(20:29):
because they made Mamdani fightfor this win.
SPEAKER_08 (20:31):
Now, President Trump endorsed uh Cuomo.
Uh, did Mamdani have uh anywords for President Trump?
SPEAKER_09 (20:38):
He did.
He was quite direct, in fact.
He celebrated the diversity ofthe coalition that helped him
win in his own background.
Mamdani was born in Uganda andhis parents are from India.
He said he will be unapologeticabout his Muslim faith despite
repeated attacks, and he saidNew York will remain a city of
immigrants, powered byimmigrants, and now a city that
(20:58):
will be led by an immigrant.
SPEAKER_04 (21:00):
And then he said, From now Montani will be sworn
into office on January 1st.
SPEAKER_08 (21:16):
That's WNYC's Bridget Burgen.
Thanks a lot.
SPEAKER_09 (21:19):
You're welcome.
SPEAKER_08 (21:20):
California voters easily approved a ballot measure
to redraw the state'scongressional map of favored
Democrat.
That's according to a race callby the Associated Press.
SPEAKER_11 (21:28):
The vote's a big win for Democrats in the partisan
battle over redistricting aheadof the 2026 midterms.
California Governor Gavin Newsomcelebrated the result last night
in Sacramento.
SPEAKER_01 (21:38):
We're proud of the work that the people of the
state of California did tonightto send a message to Donald
Trump.
No crowns, no thrones, no case.
That's what this victoryrepresents.
SPEAKER_08 (21:52):
Cap Radio's Laura Fitzgerald, George is now from
California.
So this measure, Proposition 50,why is it so significant?
SPEAKER_10 (22:00):
Well, a Prop 50 replaces California's current
congressional map, which wasdrawn by the state's independent
citizens redistrictingcommission, with a new map
favoring Democrats.
And the new map will be in placefor the next three elections,
and it could yield up to fivenew U.S.
House seats for Democrats.
California Governor Gavin Newsomand other Democratic leaders
(22:20):
here say it was needed tocounter the Republican
redistricting effort in Texasthat created up to five new GOP
seats.
President Trump called for thoseseats in Texas, and it kicked
off this ongoing nationalredistricting race.
And because California is sobig, it's really the only blue
state that's in the position toredistrict to the Democratic
(22:40):
advantage in any significant wayand really impact Democrats'
chances of reclaiming control ofthe House.
SPEAKER_08 (22:47):
And Governor Newsom was the big driving force behind
Prop 50.
Tell us about the campaign.
How was it able to besuccessful?
SPEAKER_10 (22:52):
Yeah, Newsom has really made this redistricting
measure about more than justcongressional maps.
The yes campaign messaging hasbeen all about national
politics, specifically fightingback against the Trump
administration.
And by emphasizing nationalpolitics, that helped the
campaign because left-leaningvoters really outnumber
conservatives here inCalifornia.
SPEAKER_08 (23:13):
And opponents were not able to break that partisan
split?
SPEAKER_10 (23:16):
No, not really.
On the no side, you mostly haveRepublicans, and their main
argument was that Prop 50 wouldsideline the state's independent
citizens redistrictingcommission that California
voters approved 15 years ago.
But Newsom side won on themessaging front, and they
significantly outspent theopposition campaign too.
SPEAKER_08 (23:35):
Laura, what did voters tell you about why they
voted a certain way?
SPEAKER_10 (23:38):
Well, I spoke with a lot of people who supported the
measure, mostly all Democrats,and they told me they see
California redistricting as achance to fight back against
President Trump.
They brought up things like theTrump administration's tactics
for immigration enforcement,cuts to Medicare, and the
federalization of National Guardtroops here in the state.
But my reporting also took me toparts of the state where lines
(24:00):
would be redrawn under Prop 50,mostly Republican areas.
And a lot of Republicans whooppose redistricting say they're
already a super minority inCalifornia, and now they feel
like they could lose theirrepresentation altogether.
SPEAKER_08 (24:13):
All right, so what happens next in these redrawn
California districts?
SPEAKER_10 (24:17):
Well, Republicans who represent these districts
that'll now lean Democratic,they have a decision to make.
Do they run again?
And if so, in which district?
And meanwhile, some Democratshave already indicated they
intend to run for the redrawndistricts.
We'll also see in a year fromnow whether this new map
delivers five more seats forDemocrats, like they're hoping.
SPEAKER_08 (24:38):
Alright, that's Cap Radios.
Laura Fitzgerald.
Laura, thanks.
SPEAKER_10 (24:41):
Thank you, A.
SPEAKER_11 (24:46):
And that's a first for Wednesday.
Oh, that's sorry.
SPEAKER_08 (24:49):
This is real.
It's a it's it's the Layla show,so I mean you do all the lines.
SPEAKER_11 (24:57):
No, I don't know.
SPEAKER_08 (24:58):
Do you all do you all hear what I have to deal
with?
And that's Up First forWednesday, November 5th.
I'm A.
Martinez.
SPEAKER_11 (25:10):
And I'm Layla Falton.
Upfirst gives you the top threestories of the day, but the news
doesn't stop here.
If you want more reporting andcontext behind the headlines,
listen to our radio show,Morning Edition.
That's the show A, Michelle,Steve, and I host.
You can find it on your localNPR station or on the NPR.
SPEAKER_08 (25:26):
Today's episode of Up First was edited by Larry
Kaplow, Acacia Squires, MiguelMacsias, Ben Swayze, Mohamed
Omar Disi, and Alice Wolfley.
It was produced by Zia Bush, NiaDamas, and Christopher Thomas.
We get engineering support fromStacy Abbott.
Our technical director is CardiStrange.
Join us again tomorrow.
SPEAKER_00 (25:51):
The Myth of the Lazy Millions by Durham McLean,
November 03, 2025.
Why is it easier for people tobelieve 42 million Americans are
lazy than to grasp that ahandful of corporations are
greedy?
That's not a rhetoricalquestion.
It's a mirror held up to anation that's been trained
generation after generation toconfuse exploitation with
virtue.
The story we were sold the mosteffective propaganda in America
(26:11):
isn't foreign its domestic.
It's a story that says povertyis a moral failure, that hard
work alone determines success,and that those who struggle must
simply not be trying hardenough.
That story is older than theassembly line.
It was whispered through theplantations, codified in the
Gilded Age, and repackaged inthe 1980s with a catchy jingle
called personal responsibility.
Every era has its scapegoat, thesharecropper, the immigrant, the
(26:32):
welfare queen, the singlemother, the union worker, the
unemployed veteran.
But notice what never changes.
The direction of the blame.
It's always downward.
Never upward.
Never toward the boardrooms thathoard record profits while
lobbying to pay starvationwages.
The math we ignore, let's talknumbers, not emotions.
Since the 1970s, workerproductivity has soared by
(26:52):
roughly 250% wages?
Up barely 15%.
CEO pay has ballooned 1-200%.
Corporate profits hit recordhighs year after year.
Meanwhile, 42 million Americansrely on some form of food
assistance not because they'relazy, but because the cost of
living has detached from thereality of wages.
(27:12):
The data doesn't lie, but we'vebeen conditioned to distrust it.
Instead of asking why therichest country on earth still
has working poor, we're told tobe angry at the cashier using an
EBT card.
We're told the janitor shouldlearn to code, not that his
company should pay him a livingwage.
It's a magician's trick,misdirection.
Keep the public eye on thestruggling many so no one
notices the accumulating powerof the greedy few.
(27:33):
Greed in a three-piece suit,greed doesn't announce itself.
It shows up in tax loopholes andlobbying budgets.
It hides behind phrases like jobcreation and shareholder value.
A company can close factories,offload pensions, and still call
itself a success as long as thestock price jumps.
That's not capitalism at work,that's capitalism on steroids
injected by politicians who havebought it a discount.
(27:53):
When Walmart or Amazon driveswages down, it's called
efficiency.
When workers organize for fairpay, it's called radicalism.
When a billionaire dodges taxesthrough offshore accounts, it's
smart business.
When a single mother misses apayment, she's irresponsible.
You see the pattern.
It's not about morality, it'sabout control of the narrative.
And the people who own thenarrative usually own everything
(28:14):
else too.
The cult of the self-madeAmericans love a myth.
And the self-made man might beour favorite one, but here's the
secret (28:22):
no one is self-made.
Not the hedge fund manager usingpublic roads to drive to work,
not the CEO hiring workerseducated in public schools, not
the billionaire protected bytaxpayer-funded beliefs in
infrastructure.
Every self-made success storyrests on collective scaffolding
society itself.
So why defend a system thatrewards the hoarders and
punishes the contributors?
Because the myth flatters us.
It lets us believe we'retemporarily embarrassed
(28:44):
millionaires, not permanentlysqueezed workers.
It keeps us loyal to a dreamthat's been foreclosed on,
repossessed, and sold back to uswith a 19% interest rate.
A nation of distractions, webecome fluent in distraction.
We argue about who deserves foodstamps while corporations
quietly rewrite tax codes.
We shame people for student debtwhile billion-dollar
universities sit on endowmentslarge enough to pay off half the
(29:05):
nation's tuition.
We moralize about handouts whiletrillion-dollar bailouts go to
industries that crash theeconomy twice.
The laziness isn't at thebottom.
It's at the top.
It's the laziness of inheritedwealth and unearned privilege.
The laziness of companies thatspend more on stock buybacks
than on innovation.
The laziness of CEOs who pocketbonuses for layoffs they didn't
personally carry out.
That's not merit, it'sextraction.
(29:27):
The cost of believing the lieevery time we call the poor
lazy, we're doing free PR forthe powerful.
We're helping them off the hook.
The lie divides us white againstblack, native-born against
immigrant, worker againstworker.
The lie convinces the truckdriver he has more in common
with his boss than with awarehouse worker next door.
And once we believe that,solidarity dies.
This isn't just an economicproblem, it's a cultural rot.
(29:47):
It corrodes empathy.
It normalizes indifference.
It teaches us that suffering isdeserved and greed is destiny.
Relearning the obvious truth issimpler and less flattering.
The system isn't broken, it'sfunctioning exactly as designed.
A handful of corporationscontrol the flow of wealth,
information, and evenimagination.
They don't need us to love themjust to believe their story long
enough not to rebel.
(30:08):
If we're serious about renewal,we have to start by rejecting
that story.
We must call laziness what itreally is, a corporate virtue
masquerading as moral failure.
We have to stop asking why 42million people can't pull
themselves up, and start askingwhy the richest 1% keep pulling
the ladder up behind them.
Closing line it's not forty-twomillion lazy Americans that are
holding this country back.
It's the handful of greedycorporations that convince the
(30:30):
rest of us to look the otherway.
Subscribe to Darrell McLean,launched five months ago
cultural critic and overthinkingintellectual with a theological
edge.
Writing sharp takes on politics,faith, and society, always
questioning, always diggingdeeper.
SPEAKER_07 (30:44):
The great American heist, how Reagan Trump and
their billionaire backers stolethe middle class.
It's election day in MachoAmerica, although the biggest
races are in California,Virginia, New Jersey,
Pennsylvania, Maine, and NewYork City.
As a bellwether for next year'smidterms that could define the
fate and future of Trumpism,stakes are enormous and are
bleeding through into socialmedia.
One of those viral Facebookposts yesterday was from a MAGA
(31:07):
mom complaining that herDemocratic mother-in-law
wouldn't loan her grocery money.
She explains that she can't feedher family because Trump's
government shutdown has frozenher snap, you know, food stamps
and wick benefits.
And she wrote, quote, He askedhis mother to buy a can of baby
formula until our WIC comes in.
Her response was, We voted forthis.
The most common responses werevariations on that's what you
wanted that's what you wantedwhen you voted for that orange
(31:29):
ass, but you must have thoughthe'd only do it to black and
Hispanic people.
F-A-F-O, haha.
Along those same lines, Trumpwent on 60 minutes this weekend
and lied to Leslie Stahl's facemultiple times, including a
whopper about grocery priceswhen she pointed out that
they're going up, up, and up.
No, you're wrong, Trump liedwith his best sincere
expression.
They went up under Biden, right?
Now they're going down, otherthan beef, which we're working
on.
(31:50):
Yeah, tell us about it, Donnie.
Just like climate change is ahoax, cutting taxes on
billionaires helps workingpeople.
You and your sons takingbillions of crypto money from
foreigners isn't corruptlypeddling influence out of what's
left of the White House.
The simple fact is, back in the1960s, you could rent a small
apartment, buy a used car, putyourself and put yourself
through college on a minimumwage job.
I know because I did it, pumpinggas, washing dishes, working as
(32:11):
a part-time DJ, as did millionsof my generation.
Just asked your grandparents.
So what happened?
Through most of America'shistory, our economic life was
similar to that of othercountries that practiced
unregulated capitalism.
Charles Dickens wrote about thatera in most of his novels,
including Christmas Carol.
There was a small 1% that ownedabout 90% of the nation's
wealth, a small middle class ofprofessionals, doctors, lawyers,
(32:31):
etc., who worked for the 1%,making up around 10 to 25% of
the population, and a very largecohort of the working poor.
In Christmas Carol, the 1% don'teven show up.
Ebenezer Scrooge was the middleclass.
He was a small businessman whoowned a company so tiny that it
had only one employee.
Bob Cratchett was the workingpoor who couldn't even afford to
cover the cost of health carefor his son, Tiny Tim.
(32:53):
That was the norm across most ofEurope and America from the 16th
century right up until the1930s.
After the Hoover administrationand their corrupt Wall Street
buddies drove the world economyoff the edge with the Republican
Great Depression, and Americaelected Franklin Roosevelt to
put the country back together,conservatives began to worry
aloud about FDR's advisor,British economist John Maynard
Keynes.
Keynes and FDR and FrancisPerkins had this wild idea that
(33:15):
it should be possible to createa nation where at least
two-thirds of the people were inthe middle class.
They do it by heavily taxing themorbidly rich.
FDR raised it to 77% in 1936,giving union power to working
people, the Wagner Act, 1935,and providing a solid safety
net, you know, Social Security,1935, a minimum wage, 1933,
unemployment insurance, 1935,and food stamps, 1939, to create
(33:36):
a middle class floor.
The programs were universallydecried by the GOP as socialism,
the doorway to communism andradically anti-American.
Every major social program sincethe 1930s has been opposed by
Republicans.
And in the 1950s, Russell Kirk,William F.
Buckley, Barry Goldwater, andother thinkers in the movement
provided a rationale for theiropposition.
They argued throughout the 1950sthat if the middle class ever
(33:59):
got too large, American societywould begin to disintegrate
under the weight of FDR'ssocialist programs.
Kirk and Buckley argued thatwomen would forget their place
in the kitchen and bedroom,young people would stop
respecting their elders and thevalue of hard work, and racial
minorities would demand socialand economic equality with
whites.
The result would be societalchaos leading to the downfall of
America as we knew it.
(34:20):
Their warnings were largelyignored and even ridiculed
through the fifties as thenation's prosperity steadily
increased and we shot past that50% threshold.
And then came the 1960s, as wepassed 60% of us in Kirk's
dreaded middle class.
The birth control bill waslegalized in 1961.
Within a few years there was afull-blown women's movement.
The civil rights movement wasembraced by the Kennedy
(34:40):
brothers, and black people beganto fight back against police
brutality, causing multiplecities to erupt into flames.
And by 1967, young men wererefusing military service,
protesting in the streets andburning their draft cars.
The collective response of theRepublican Party was something
like (34:53):
holy crap, Russell Kirk, Bill Buckley, and Barry
Goldwater were right.
The country is on the verge ofsomething like the Bolshevik
Revolution that led straight tocommunism.
Thus, Ronald Reagan came intothe White House in 1981 with a
simple mandate, cut the middleclass down to size to restore
social and political stability,to save the nation.
He started by destroying theunions that supported high wages
and benefits.
(35:14):
A third of us were unionizedwhen Reagan came into office.
Now it's in single digits, andTrump just deunionized a few
hundred thousand federalworkers.
Then the inst then he institutedthe first long-lasting freeze on
the minimum wage, nine years,cut the top income tax rate from
74% to 27%, reformed SocialSecurity by raising the
retirement age to 67% and taxingits benefits as income, ended
enforcement of the FairnessDoctrine in 1987, gutted federal
(35:36):
support for colleges, and threwsmall local businesses to the
wolves by abandoning enforcementof a hundred years of
anti-monopoly laws and otherregulations.
Before Reagan, the middle classwas thriving and growing, and
you could get into it with aminimum wage job.
A union job, like my dad had ata tool and die shop, was
virtually a lifetime guaranteeof stability, solidly in the
middle of the middle class.
Looked through newspapers ofthat era and they talked about
(35:58):
wage earner income because mostmiddle class families were
making it just fine with asingle paycheck.
Today, instead, you'll findreferences to household income
because it takes two or morepaychecks to maintain the same
standard of living a familycould in the 1960s and 70s with
one wage earner.
In the intervening years,Republicans and a few moderate
and third-wave Democrats havecontinued the Kirk Buckley
Goldwater Reagan project ofdismantling Keynes's and FDR's
(36:20):
grand middle class project.
As a result, the middle classhas shrunk into fewer than 50%
of us, and it takes twopaychecks to do it.
Student debt has frozen twogenerations out of the American
dream.
Healthcare expenses destroy ahalf million American families
every year.
Republicans have kept theminimum wage frozen for fully 16
years as they transferred fullyfifty trillion dollars from
working class homes and familiesinto the money bins of the top
(36:42):
one percent.
Trump's big, beautifulbillionaires bill simply
continues Reagan's assault onthe American middle class.
You could call it making Americasafe for the morbidly rich, like
in the 1920s.
He even had a great Gatsby partyat Mar a Lardo over the weekend
to celebrate hisaccomplishments.
We now have more billionairesand richer billionaires than any
other country in the history ofthe planet.
Trump himself and his boys aresetting an example for the
(37:03):
pillaging of America.
They have taken in at least, bysome estimates, five billion
dollars in just the first tenmonths of his presidency.
We stand in a pissed-offprogressive populist moment,
although that movement is upagainst a massive wall of
billionaire-owned media andinfrastructure.
Five bought-off Republicans onthe Supreme Court legalized
bribery of judges andpoliticians.
Bondi and Noam are spouting liesto militarize our cities,
(37:25):
presumably in anticipation ofthe 2026 and 2028 elections.
If America is to survive as ademocratic republic, our middle
class must again become the heatthe beating heart of both our
economy and our politics.
That means restoring strongunions, ending legalized bribery
of politicians and judges,breaking up corporate
monopolies, providing healthcare and education to everybody,
and taxing billionaires enoughto rebuild the social contract
(37:47):
that made this country great inthe first place.
Every generation faces a choicebetween oligarchy and democracy,
between government by the peopleand government by the morbidly
rich.
We made the right choice in 1932when my parents' generation rose
up and said, enough, it's pasttime for ours to do the same.
Vote.
SPEAKER_03 (38:22):
Man can work hard to do just fine.
Put a storm roll in with theTV's wind.
Popular Podcasts
Las Culturistas with Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang
Ding dong! Join your culture consultants, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, on an unforgettable journey into the beating heart of CULTURE. Alongside sizzling special guests, they GET INTO the hottest pop-culture moments of the day and the formative cultural experiences that turned them into Culturistas. Produced by the Big Money Players Network and iHeartRadio.
Crime Junkie
Does hearing about a true crime case always leave you scouring the internet for the truth behind the story? Dive into your next mystery with Crime Junkie. Every Monday, join your host Ashley Flowers as she unravels all the details of infamous and underreported true crime cases with her best friend Brit Prawat. From cold cases to missing persons and heroes in our community who seek justice, Crime Junkie is your destination for theories and stories you won’t hear anywhere else. Whether you're a seasoned true crime enthusiast or new to the genre, you'll find yourself on the edge of your seat awaiting a new episode every Monday. If you can never get enough true crime... Congratulations, you’ve found your people. Follow to join a community of Crime Junkies! Crime Junkie is presented by Audiochuck Media Company.
The Brothers Ortiz
The Brothers Ortiz is the story of two brothers–both successful, but in very different ways. Gabe Ortiz becomes a third-highest ranking officer in all of Texas while his younger brother Larry climbs the ranks in Puro Tango Blast, a notorious Texas Prison gang. Gabe doesn’t know all the details of his brother’s nefarious dealings, and he’s made a point not to ask, to protect their relationship. But when Larry is murdered during a home invasion in a rented beach house, Gabe has no choice but to look into what happened that night. To solve Larry’s murder, Gabe, and the whole Ortiz family, must ask each other tough questions.