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Good News for Dems – plus Fascists and Teachers | Start Making Sense · The Nation Podcasts

• 0:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: From the nation magazine, this is start making sense.
• 0:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner, later in the show, why fascists fear teachers.
• 0:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Randy Weingaard and Will explain.
• 0:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: But first, some good news for Democrats from all the recent special elections.
• 0:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols will report in a minute.
• 0:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: We're told the Democratic brand is in deep trouble, but Democrats have been winning special elections for the last few months, lots of special elections all over the place.
• 0:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: For comment we turned to John Nichols, of course he's executive editor of the nation.
• 0:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: We've reached him today at Home in Madison.
• 0:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, welcome back.
• 0:49
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's great to be with you, John.
• 0:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, I'm gonna talk about three special elections.
• 0:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last week, a special election to fill a congressional seat in northern Virginia.
• 0:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Democrat, a guy named James Wachenshaugh, won by 50 points.
• 1:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Now, this is a blue district.
• 1:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's a middle class suburban area south of Washington, D.C.
• 1:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: known as surprise that the Democrat won, but winning by 50 points in this district is a surprise.
• 1:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: Kamala Harris won the district last year by 34 points, so that's a 15 point gain for the Democrats in less than a year.
• 1:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: And that's not the only one.
• 1:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: There's two others in state senate races.
• 1:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: One in Pennsylvania in March, where the Democrats flipped a state senate district,
• 1:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Lancaster County, a district that trump won by 15 points just a year ago, a Democrat has not represented that district in the state legislature for 136 years.
• 1:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: And a few weeks ago, a Democrat won an Iowa State Senate seat by nearly 10 points in a district that Trump had won by 11.
• 2:02
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's a 21-point swing towards the Democrats just in less than a year.
• 2:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: So this is suburban DC, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, and Sue City, Iowa, very different places.
• 2:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you make of this?
• 2:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: What's significant is that, for instance, in that Virginia district, that was an area where Republicans used to do pretty well.
• 2:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: And notably, where even as recently as 2021, when their Republicans were doing very long state races in Virginia, that was a place where they were making up some ground.
• 2:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: They were closing the gap.
• 2:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now the gap is widening out massively.
• 2:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: part of that has to do with the fact that this is suburban Washington.
• 2:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: These are people who worked for a federal government that has been under assault by Elon Musk and a lot of Republicans.
• 2:54
  [SPEAKER_02]: So that makes sense.
• 2:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: But it's a little more interesting in places like Clinton, Iowa and in, you know, industrial areas of Pennsylvania.
• 3:01
  [SPEAKER_02]: where we are seeing seats flip, where we're seeing better margins.
• 3:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what I think that tells you is a couple things.
• 3:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: One, there is frustration with the Trump administration.
• 3:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's very real, it's very passionate in a lot of places.
• 3:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: Number two, at the level of energy, mobilization, just the desire to come to the polls, all the pollsters tell us the Democrats are super excited.
• 3:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: to come.
• 3:26
  [SPEAKER_02]: That votes very well for the fall off your elections of votes very well for the midterms.
• 3:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's something that those who simply look at polling data that says the Democratic party itself is not particularly popular.
• 3:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: Miss, because in America, whether we like it or not, and I have an inferior multiparty politics, but whether we like it or not, in America, you generally have two choices.
• 3:50
  [SPEAKER_02]: and what we're seeing in these special elections is given the two choices, and given the chance to send the messages that they want to send.
• 3:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: People are lining up to vote for Democrats even if they're frustrated with some of the party's national leadership.
• 4:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: So that's some recent elections which have already happened, of course in
• 4:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Just six or eight weeks, we're going to have the off-year elections of November 2025.
• 4:19
  [SPEAKER_01]: Some of those are pretty important and significant.
• 4:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: New York City, of course, is going to elect a mayor and for the future of the Democrats.
• 4:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: This is a really big one.
• 4:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: So, Aaron Mombani has a huge lead in the race for mayor of New York City.
• 4:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: The New York Times, most recent poll, has him ahead of Andrew Cuomo 46 to 24.
• 4:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: In Virginia, Democrats are hoping to flip the governorship, Democrat Abigail Spanberger is ahead 49 to 40.
• 4:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then the election that a lot of us regard is the most important of the year, the California referendum on redistricting.
• 5:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: which is the Democrats' response to Trump's only way of maintaining control of the House, Jerry Mandarin to create new Republicans' seats that they're not going to be able to win otherwise.
• 5:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The referendum in California on redistricting would create five new Democratic seats, which matches the five created for Republicans in Texas.
• 5:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Both sides
• 5:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: the poll that we have so far on California Redistricting shows it well ahead 46 to 36.
• 5:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what we know about polls for elections coming up in just six weeks.
• 5:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: The big one in the one that I would point to is that New York mayor always because that allows us to go deeper and to analyze a question of where the democratic party itself should go.
• 5:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: And remember, a few minutes ago, we were referencing the fact that the democratic party doesn't
• 5:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There's tremendous number of Americans who don't like their Republicans, but they're not overly thrilled with the Democrats.
• 6:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in part that is a reflection, in fact, the Democratic Party is seen by a lot of its base.
• 6:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's having been way too cautious in recent elections.
• 6:12
  [SPEAKER_02]: Not taking the bold stance that might actually define it as a super clear alternative to Trump and Trumpism.
• 6:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And frankly, to neoliberalism, to a lot of economic policies that have become
• 6:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: Zora and Mamdoni in New York has mounted a campaign that is really a challenge to both major parties.
• 6:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: He has the Democratic nomination, but in a sense he is arguing that our politics needs to be different and better.
• 6:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: It needs to be a politics that reflects the demand's working-class people that really reaches out to the multiracial multi-ethnic coalitions in in ways that the Democrats have tried to do, but not only succeeded at,
• 6:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: And the frankly is very blunt about a host of issues, including Gaza, including taxing billionaires, including the need to really expand the role of government in all sorts of ways.
• 7:03
  [SPEAKER_02]: And frankly, to protect the citizens of New York from Trump administration policies.
• 7:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: what is sometimes referred to as Trump proofing the city.
• 7:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so, Mom Donnie's running on that, you had a lot of the pundits, a lot of the political insiders say, well, this is a disaster.
• 7:20
  [SPEAKER_02]: Democrats are going to be harmed by this.
• 7:22
  [SPEAKER_02]: They'll lose the morality to an independent candid super-half set of intercomal, and also the signal from New York will be, all of the Democrats, you know, don't want to be like Mom Donnie, right?
• 7:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, he's too far out
• 7:34
  [SPEAKER_02]: see them the opposite.
• 7:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: In fact, the matter is as Maldana has campaigned.
• 7:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's expanded his coalition.
• 7:40
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's gotten endorsements from people that didn't back him in the primary.
• 7:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: He's gotten big endorsements from unions that had back Cuomo in the primary.
• 7:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: And what we're starting to see across the country is people get into races for offices in other states and other contests and openly acknowledge that they're borrowing a page for Maldana.
• 7:59
  [SPEAKER_02]: that they are trying to be candidates who speak more boldly, especially on economic issues, especially out of affordability.
• 8:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And it looks to be working.
• 8:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: So I think that's one of the reasons why this week we saw Governor Hockel of New York, who had been resistant to endorse him on Donnie, give him actually a very warm and enthusiastic endorsement.
• 8:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: And then we have new polls on presidential approval ratings.
• 8:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's all terrible for Trump.
• 8:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: In the NBC poll that came out last week, now more disapprove than approve of what he's doing.
• 8:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: We call that being underwater in the polls, even on border security, which was the one where he was a little bit ahead.
• 8:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: His overall favorability ratings have dropped.
• 8:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: 20 points since he took office.
• 8:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: He's the most unpopular president to the American history.
• 8:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: Americans opposed pretty much everything he's done, including most recently, the favor or opposed Trump sending troops to American cities, favor 42, oppose 58 percent.
• 9:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Do you favor or approve Trump's tariffs?
• 9:08
  [SPEAKER_01]: Favor 38 percent, oppose 62 percent.
• 9:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: The economists, you have a poll from last week, American say the most important issue is inflation and prices.
• 9:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: 32% approved of what Trump's been doing.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: 62% disapprove.
• 9:25
  [SPEAKER_01]: We call that 30 points under water.
• 9:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: 41 points under water with independent voters.
• 9:33
  [SPEAKER_01]: and it's not just that every single thing he's done since he took office has gone immediately negative, it's the intensity of the opposition.
• 9:41
  [SPEAKER_01]: The number of people who tell pollsters they are strongly opposed.
• 9:45
  [SPEAKER_01]: That is hit record levels in the history of polling.
• 9:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: And Trump knows this, he reads these polls, and that's one reason why he's become wilder and more threatening.
• 9:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: Remember, whether you like Donald Trump or not, he must accept the fact that it no member of last year in a very contentious race, he prevailed.
• 10:07
  [SPEAKER_02]: And though it was a narrow victory and it's important to understand it was one of the closer presidential elections in recent history, it was still a genuine victory that gave him the presidency control of the house in the Senate.
• 10:19
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so I think they came in assuming that they had something more
• 10:24
  [SPEAKER_02]: then just a victory they were busy claiming a mandate.
• 10:27
  [SPEAKER_02]: Now, as they have done many of the things they've wanted, they've found to become dramatically less popular.
• 10:35
  [SPEAKER_02]: Trump got a strong vote last fall from people who were just upset with the where politics were at and upset with the economy, upset with a sense that things were unaffordable, et cetera, et cetera.
• 10:48
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so he was given a chance,
• 10:53
  [SPEAKER_02]: what he has done has caused, it looks like a tremendous number of Americans to have, you know, bars of mors and to say, look, we don't like where this administration's had it and we don't approve of it.
• 11:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think it's summed up by the big beautiful bill or the big ugly with any any politics.
• 11:11
  [SPEAKER_02]: The Trump administration, which is often tried to present itself as being
• 11:15
  [SPEAKER_02]: you know, different from, you know, a lot of the previous Republican administrations in this regard went to the classic position, which is cut programs for working people and shift the money over to the billionaires, right?
• 11:28
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a very simple model and it's always unpopular, but this comes dramatically unpopular because in such aggressive ways it went after Medicaid,
• 11:38
  [SPEAKER_02]: it went after snap benefits for people who need food.
• 11:43
  [SPEAKER_02]: It just seems so blatantly cruel.
• 11:46
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I think that this is caused a real political blowback.
• 11:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: And as a result, you've seen Trump and his administration kind of desperately seeking to change the subject to, to, to shore up their their basis of support.
• 12:02
  [SPEAKER_02]: But, you know, I'm talking to political analysts on both sides,
• 12:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: There is a strong sense that we are headed toward a midterm election in which this administration could take a real hit politically.
• 12:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: And so that's, I guess that's, in a sense, why we're seeing such a churn right now and such intensity because I can tell you this, if I haven't covered down Trump for a long time, he doesn't like to lose.
• 12:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: One last thing, the aftermath of Charlie Kirk's assassination.
• 12:35
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, we condemn all political violence.
• 12:39
  [SPEAKER_01]: Trump and his people this week said they would go after what they called far-left groups that promote violence and terrorism.
• 12:47
  [SPEAKER_01]: and J.D.
• 12:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vance said on Monday that two foundations in particular were going to be targeted because they fund the nation magazine.
• 12:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: Vance said during a podcast quote, I read a story in the nation magazine about my dear friend Charlie Kirk.
• 13:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then he said, George Soros' open society foundation funds this magazine, as does the Ford Foundation and many other wealthy titans of the American Progressive Movement closed.
• 13:20
  [SPEAKER_01]: He pointed to an article at themation.com, had lined Charlie Kirk's legacy deserves no mourning by Elizabeth Spires,
• 13:29
  [SPEAKER_01]: But she said in this piece, quote, I do not believe anyone should be murdered because of their views.
• 13:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: She did have a sharp critique of those views.
• 13:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: So we want to talk about this just for a minute.
• 13:43
  [SPEAKER_01]: For starters, is Vance correct that the Ford Foundation and the Open Society Foundation's fund the nation magazine.
• 13:51
  [SPEAKER_02]: that the nation has not received money from sorrows that I know of.
• 13:57
  [SPEAKER_02]: There may have been a small grant from Ford to support an internship program.
• 14:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: The Ford money I understand came in more than five years ago, and designed to understand that the nation magazine has not received any sorrows money in the last five years.
• 14:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: But first up, I don't like the demonization of the foundations.
• 14:18
  [SPEAKER_02]: I think that open society and Ford have done a lot to promote advanced democracy.
• 14:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Going after Soros and Ford, this is going after the Harvard's of the liberal nonprofit world.
• 14:31
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's consistent with their attack on liberal institutions.
• 14:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: well indeed and in fact it's even stated as such.
• 14:39
  [SPEAKER_02]: But I was of course intrigued by the highlighting of the nation and the notion that the nation, which by the way is primarily funded by a lot of retired teachers and students and working classmates across the country who subscribe to the magazine and
• 14:58
  [SPEAKER_02]: And I have helped our subscription on our support base to grow in recent years.
• 15:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: And that's something we're excited about.
• 15:06
  [SPEAKER_02]: But at a fundamental point, it was intriguing because the Vice President said, well, here's a system magazine that published things that were critical about Charlie Kirk.
• 15:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, people can debate how you respond to these jarring horrible moments in our society.
• 15:23
  [SPEAKER_02]: I know that for myself, as somebody who had met, talk with Charlie Kirk, I do find it, especially shaking to me that we've seen a political assassination just as it was horrifying to me a few months ago when we saw the assassination in Minnesota, Melissa Hortman, one of the leading legislators in the United States, as well as her husband, a political assassination.
• 15:47
  [SPEAKER_02]: All these things have been happening, tells me that we live in this very dangerous, very volatile time, and it's a time
• 15:52
  [SPEAKER_02]: when we ought to be dialing tensions down.
• 15:55
  [SPEAKER_02]: And here we have the vice president, you know, and Steven Miller and others, you know, talking about targeting groups, they don't like and things like that.
• 16:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Where I think what I think is important to understand is this.
• 16:08
  [SPEAKER_02]: In our discourse, we can have an honest discourse where we fundamentally disagree and we point out the reasons for our
• 16:16
  [SPEAKER_02]: and in a healthy society, so we can go back and forth, but it ought not lead to efforts to destroy or harm or violently attack those we disagree with.
• 16:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: The nation's been around for 160 years.
• 16:32
  [SPEAKER_02]: We've been read by people in the White House for most of those 160 years.
• 16:36
  [SPEAKER_02]: We have been criticized by President's advice,
• 16:45
  [SPEAKER_02]: As long as JD Vance wants to criticize the nation using his first amendment rights, and as long as we can respond to that criticism using our first amendment rights, then I think things are good right that's as it should be, I don't mind criticism, but what I mind is a suggestion that we ought to discard a robust discourse.
• 17:09
  [SPEAKER_02]: and discard, you know, honest dialogue because somebody doesn't like what they hear.
• 17:14
  [SPEAKER_02]: You know, at the end of the day, we should be able and country to have real debate, real discord, real, you know, expression of First Amendment rights.
• 17:25
  [SPEAKER_02]: But with an understanding that we do it,
• 17:29
  [SPEAKER_02]: as Americans, right?
• 17:31
  [SPEAKER_02]: And in our Americanism and in our commitment, this shared commitment to the First Amendment, that we come away from it with a choice to say, well, we've stated our views.
• 17:41
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's have an election.
• 17:42
  [SPEAKER_02]: Let's see how things turn out.
• 17:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: So the nation will continue to criticize the ideas and actions of the Trump administration, especially their efforts to intimidate and silence those who speak truth to power.
• 17:58
  [SPEAKER_01]: John Nichols is executive editor of the nation.
• 18:01
  [SPEAKER_01]: John, thanks for talking with us today.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: Thanks, John.
• 18:04
  [SPEAKER_02]: It's a great honor to be with you.
• 18:05
  [SPEAKER_02]: I'm very honored to talk about these important issues.
• 18:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: It's been a rough year for schools, for kids, and for teachers, with Trump's attacks.
• 18:27
  [SPEAKER_01]: But in many ways, there's nothing new about what he's doing, for a hundred years, attacks on schools, and on teachers have been a hallmark of fascist regimes.
• 18:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: For that we turn to Randy Weingaarten, she's president of the AFT, a union of 1.8 million teachers, healthcare workers, and public employees, she started out
• 18:48
  [SPEAKER_01]: As a social studies teacher at Clara Barton High School in Brooklyn, now she's a leader of progressive Democrats nationally, enter a new book, just published, has the wonderful title why fascists fear teachers, public education, and the future of democracy.
• 19:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: Randy Winegarten, welcome back.
• 19:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's always an honor to be with you, John.
• 19:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you.
• 19:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, Trump's most immediate threat to public schools right now is in cities like LA, where ISIS been in the streets and immigrant families have been afraid to send their kids to school.
• 19:21
  [SPEAKER_01]: The first day of classes in LA public schools, we record our show in LA, came in mid-August.
• 19:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: And we've never seen anything like the way teachers and community members prepared to protect the kids from ICE.
• 19:36
  [SPEAKER_01]: The strategy involved setting up what they called safe zones around 100 schools in Latino neighborhoods where community volunteers joined school police and teachers, the trolling on foot around their schools on the lookout for ice.
• 19:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: So schools could be locked down and parents could be quickly notified via email and text.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: L.A.
• 19:59
  [SPEAKER_01]: Mayer Karen Bass spoke about how profound this moment is in U.S.
• 20:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: history.
• 20:06
  [SPEAKER_01]: When the job of the teachers, the schools in the city, includes protecting kids from the federal government.
• 20:14
  [SPEAKER_01]: You know a lot about this.
• 20:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: I think what they did in LA was really inspirational because it shows how when community gets together and here it was a community of teachers and parents together protecting our kids.
• 20:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: It sends not only our moral message, but it also sends a message.
• 20:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: to those anti-freedom, anti-child forces within our current government that you are not welcome here, that we welcome the stranger that we are a nation of immigrants and that don't use our kids.
• 20:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: as pawns in whatever political battle this administration wants to do.
• 21:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I think that coming together, you saw that, frankly, in LA, you've seen that in New York, you've seen that in Washington, D.C., we have the safe passage program.
• 21:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: You've seen that in Chicago.
• 21:15
  [SPEAKER_00]: So now, we've also filed a lawsuit that has said that for years,
• 21:24
  [SPEAKER_00]: there was a prohibition against ice going into sensitive locations, churches, obviously, separation of church and state, hospitals and schools.
• 21:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: And I, I beg the president, the first day of his administration when he stripped us of those protections, I begged him not to, I wrote him a letter, I said, you know, I tried to use what all these other people are using, being, you know,
• 21:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: to answer, and ultimately what's happened is that people across America, teachers, parents, are basically saying no, you can't take our kids from schools.
• 22:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And I also wanted to ask you about New York City politics.
• 22:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Of course, there's an election for mayor coming up in November.
• 22:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: The teacher's union of New York City has been pretty active there.
• 22:18
  [SPEAKER_01]: They and you endorsed Zorhan Mamdani.
• 22:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: He won the primary.
• 22:23
  [SPEAKER_01]: Let's talk about Mamdani and the significance of his campaign for teachers, for kids, for everybody.
• 22:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: the governor of New York actually did a very good essay laying out her reasons for endorsing Mr. Bontami because she laid out a few of the reasons why which is what both are local you know college union and my local home
• 22:59
  [SPEAKER_00]: is he is responding to real needs of people in New York City.
• 23:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: If you look at New York City and what he did was he said, we have a real affordability crisis.
• 23:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: But can't afford housing if you want to raise a family in New York City, transportation is really hard.
• 23:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: The buses are too slow and groceries are too expensive and childcare is too expensive.
• 23:27
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so when you add all of this up, it's hard to raise a family in New York, any New York City anymore and all these young people want to be in New York City now, just bursting with light.
• 23:41
  [SPEAKER_00]: And then yes, of course there are issues.
• 23:44
  [SPEAKER_01]: Yeah, there are issues, of course, the big one, especially for you and me as Mombani and the Jews.
• 23:51
  [SPEAKER_01]: New York City has the largest Jewish population of any city in the world outside of Israel.
• 23:56
  [SPEAKER_01]: More Jewish voters, I understand, supported Mombani than any other candidate, but he didn't win a majority in the primary of Jewish voters.
• 24:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: And there are still Jewish voters who consider him an anti-Semite.
• 24:09
  [SPEAKER_01]: What do you say to them?
• 24:10
  [SPEAKER_01]: What does he say to them?
• 24:11
  [SPEAKER_00]: It's frankly more important what he says to them than what I say to them.
• 24:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: Obviously, I do not believe he is an anti-Semite.
• 24:20
  [SPEAKER_00]: That is based upon what he has said and what he has done, as opposed to what others have said about him.
• 24:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is he very concerned about Palestinians and Palestinian life
• 24:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Yes, and yes, but his job in New York City is to keep if he becomes mayor, every person in New York City safe.
• 24:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is a lot of anti-Semitism just like there's a lot of Islamophobia in New York City as there is elsewhere and it's his job to keep people safe and I think he's been out there directly making that pledge
• 25:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: he's apologized for calling the New York PD racist.
• 25:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: He is talking to Jewish voters, including making a significant change in his stance.
• 25:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: understanding that when you say in Tefata to a Jew, that could potentially mean political violence or terrorism and to understand that and to say not only that he will not use the term, but he is urging his supporters not to because he understands the harm that it does.
• 25:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: All of these are important steps.
• 25:45
  [SPEAKER_00]: Is it enough for everyone?
• 25:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: No, it's not enough
• 25:51
  [SPEAKER_00]: if he wins six months from his firm starting.
• 25:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: When people see that he's the mayor for everyone, that is what will change hearts and minds.
• 26:02
  [SPEAKER_00]: Last thing I'll say is he instead of ignoring it instead of saying, oh, I have enough votes that I can win regardless.
• 26:13
  [SPEAKER_00]: He's really doing this work and I respect that.
• 26:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: Well, now let's talk about your new book, Why Fashits Fear Teachers.
• 26:22
  [SPEAKER_00]: There are Pharaoh's everywhere.
• 26:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Whether it was Hitler, whether it was others.
• 26:30
  [SPEAKER_00]: And part of our job as school teachers.
• 26:34
  [SPEAKER_00]: is to be the antidote to fascism, the antidote to authoritarianism, because for teachers, it is about binding people together.
• 26:49
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is about creating a safe and welcoming environment.
• 26:53
  [SPEAKER_00]: It is about giving kids the skills they need, so they thought, like critical thinking,
• 27:04
  [SPEAKER_01]: So you say in your book that the core of public education is that everyone is embraced and accepted.
• 27:12
  [SPEAKER_01]: That's what you say.
• 27:13
  [SPEAKER_01]: Then there's Trump's former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
• 27:17
  [SPEAKER_01]: In 2022, he asked, who's the most dangerous person in the world?
• 27:24
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it Chairman Kim of North Korea?
• 27:26
  [SPEAKER_01]: Is it President Xi of China?
• 27:28
  [SPEAKER_01]: He said no to both of those.
• 27:30
  [SPEAKER_01]: Who did Mike Pompeo say was the most dangerous person in the world?
• 27:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: Me.
• 27:37
  [SPEAKER_00]: Me.
• 27:38
  [SPEAKER_00]: why?
• 27:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do they do this endless smear?
• 27:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why do they demean teachers?
• 27:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why is it constantly let's undermine couple of education rather than support it or fix the things that ale it?
• 27:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why defund it instead of attempting to support it?
• 28:05
  [SPEAKER_00]: why vouchers rather than helping kids succeed with the support?
• 28:12
  [SPEAKER_00]: Why all of this?
• 28:14
  [SPEAKER_00]: And the point is, I think, that they do this to do exactly what another of these conservative activists who I quote in the book said.
• 28:25
  [SPEAKER_00]: that to undermine our society, they, and his words not mine, they'd have to create universal public school distrust.
• 28:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And teachers are the way back they are the antidote.
• 28:42
  [SPEAKER_00]: What they try to
• 28:54
  [SPEAKER_01]: One of my favorite topics in your book is the Chicago Teacher Strike of 2012, which was a strike, not just for higher pay for teachers.
• 29:03
  [SPEAKER_01]: It was for something we call the community school model.
• 29:07
  [SPEAKER_01]: And here in LA, that was the basis of the LA Teacher Strike of 2019, a very memorable event for those of us who live in LA.
• 29:15
  [SPEAKER_01]: Please explain the difference between a strike for better pay and a strike for community schools.
• 29:21
  [SPEAKER_00]: many of us believe that we need to use whatever crowd we have in collective bargaining to try to make conditions better so that more and more kids would succeed and one of the ways of making conditions better for families for children is if you wrap services around a school who can have
• 29:47
  [SPEAKER_00]: a health center conducted to the school in a way that's geographically close or at the school itself.
• 29:54
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have things like, um, I glass availability.
• 30:00
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have a food pantry.
• 30:03
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have adult ed courses.
• 30:06
  [SPEAKER_00]: You can have financial literacy courses.
• 30:09
  [SPEAKER_00]: And when somebody says
• 30:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: unlike so how is it traumatized kid or a kid that doesn't have enough food in her balance or a kid that needs glasses like I now need to read can't read the board, the blackboard or the whiteboard if we don't do that how will we help in all kids?
• 30:36
  [SPEAKER_00]: And so we have to do more than teaching reading, writing, and arithmetic.
• 30:43
  [SPEAKER_00]: We have to find a way that we level the playing field so that all kids saw her.
• 30:50
  [SPEAKER_01]: Last thing before we let you go, I wonder what your thoughts are about the assassination of Charlie Kirk.
• 30:56
  [SPEAKER_00]: There is no place, no place in our society for political violence.
• 31:07
  [SPEAKER_00]: is a symptom of society crumbling and we need to condemn it, theory.
• 31:16
  [SPEAKER_00]: The next point I would make is this.
• 31:19
  [SPEAKER_00]: What's happening now going after people who are commenting about what we said and chilling their
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: is wrong.
• 31:35
  [SPEAKER_00]: There's very little that govern a Cox and I probably agree on.
• 31:40
  [SPEAKER_00]: But I completely agree with him on saying, have to have an off ramp on what social media is doing that makes it almost impossible when we have disagreements about anything to have a real discussion in discord.
• 31:58
  [SPEAKER_00]: And we need as a society to figure out how to talk to each other even when we deeply disagree
• 32:11
  [SPEAKER_01]: Randy Winegarten, her new book Out This Week has the wonderful title, Why Fascists Fear Teachers, Public Education in the Future of Democracy.
• 32:22
  [SPEAKER_01]: Randy, thank you for all your work and thanks for talking with us today.
• 32:26
  [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much, John.
• 32:28
  [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it.
• 32:38
  [SPEAKER_01]: Start making sense.
• 32:40
  [SPEAKER_01]: The podcast from the nation magazine is recorded in Los Angeles at our Blive Abonus Studios.
• 32:46
  [SPEAKER_01]: Renee Reynolds is our associate producer, Alan Minsky is our producer, Jack Merkinson is executive producer.
• 32:53
  [SPEAKER_01]: Baskar Sunkara is president of the nation, Katrina Vandenhuvul is editor and publisher of the nation.
• 33:00
  [SPEAKER_01]: Our theme music is from Barcelona, Afrobe, licensed by Creative Commons,
• 33:05
  [SPEAKER_01]: You can find out more about StartMakingSense at theNation.com and you can subscribe to StartMakingSense on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.
• 33:16
  [SPEAKER_01]: I'm John Weiner, thanks for listening.