11/12/25: DHS Attacks Krystal, Shapiro Scolds Poor Young People, Bombshell Epstein Emails, Katie Wilson Wins In Seattle

you to you from this article. By the way, this reporter has done some really great on the ground reporting and has been following the court cases that have been going on and cargo as well, so he's certainly worth.

city and suburbs on edge. Commander Gregory Bovino, the top official on the ground leading the Trump administration's efforts, was expected to depart Chicago for another assignment within days, and most of the Border Patrol agents under this command would soon be redeployed elsewhere, three sources told The Tribune Monday. An on call task force composed of FBI and assistant US attorneys is also expected to close up shop in

the coming days, the source is said. In a statement Monday, a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security, which is overseeing the operation, said, every day DHS enforces the laws of this country, including in Chicago. We do not comment or telegraph future operations. They go on to indicate that some of the people who the federal agents that have been involved in this Operation Midway Blitz would be relocated

now to Charlotte, North Caro, Carolina. So it's not like the you know, insane and violent and reckless and lawless immigration actions are going to stop. Just looks like they're going to be relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. DHS is pushing back on this reporting. We can put D three up on the screen so people can take a look at what they're saying. This is Trisia McLaughlin. She says,

we aren't leaving Chicago. Since start of Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago, ho sizer down sixteen percent, shootings down thirty five percent, robberies down forty one percent, carjackings down forty eight percent, transit crime down twenty percent. A lot of people pointing out online don't know if it got a community note or not that these numbers, first of all, included time period when they weren't even in Chicago, and those numbers had been coming down anyway. But in any case,

she's saying here, we aren't leaving Chicago. Emily, I think likely the you know, full force operation that we've see in with the insane like black Hawk helicopter raids and ice and CBP agents. I mean CBP agents literally shot a woman and then bragged about the number of holes they put in her body. We've had numerous traffic incidents, We've had tear gassing of you know, near children getting ready for hall Ween Parade. Just a lot that has been going on that we've been seeing every single day.

I think the height of that will be diminished significantly. That doesn't mean that they're pulling every single federal agent, which is why I think, I mean, Tricia McLaughlin is the chill just lie anyway, But I think that's probably what they're hanging their hat on to say, like, oh, we're not really technically leaving.

and some really brutal, awful crimes. So I don't know how they're going to start, you know, they've sort of put themselves. I'm just thinking about this, even from a PR perspective, But with places like Chicago and Washington, d C. Where they had this big surge, First of all, their own base is not happy with the pace of deportations.

They say they're at roughly like two million self deportations, which is obviously part of the goal with the show of force that you're seeing in these cities, but also they think about five hundred thousand total deportations, and based on you know, where the base thought those numbers were going to be, this is not even doing it for the hardest core mass deportation people in MAGA world, who are getting annoyed honestly with Christy nomes like social media

designed content, designed videos to kind of prove how tough the administration is being. So they're sort of they've sort of set themselves up for a difficult situation even as they go forward in some of those cities by their own measures, which is kind of an interesting part of it as well.

going to have to deal with that. People are not looking like they didn't vote for you, including your own base who are fully on board with mass deportation. Now, they did not vote for you for some ASMR deportation video. They didn't vote for you so that the DHS account could Nazi post every day, right, So you know, even for the hardest core supporters, this is starting to leave them flat. And for the rest of America, it's very clear they are completely appalled. They're appalled by your lack

of focus on their lives. They're appalled by your sadism. They're appalled by the fact that you want to put absolute cruelty and horror on display every single day. And you know, I know the idea is that this is going to lead to a bunch of self deportations, and guess what it has. And I would ask people, has that led your life to being any better? Because the sale of this immigration crackdown is that it's these people's fault that you're struggling. It's their fault that housing is

too expensive. It's their fault that healthcare is too expensive. It's their fault that the job market isn't.

your life better? Did that improve your life? And the answer is no. I mean, people say the economy sucks, and so the thing that you were blaming for all of the economic will woes, scapegoating this group of vulnerable people, turns out that wasn't really the problem, and voters would beginning to notice, you know, having these mass thugs in the street is actually keep creating more lawlessness and chaos

and sense of unsafety then I was experiencing before. So you know, I think it's noteworthy to me that, you know, I think the timing of the winding down of this operation probably has to do with two things three things. Number one, the intense pushback in Chicago. Chicago residents have really been galvanized. Uh and the political class there as well has been quite galvanized. Number two, the election results being so clearly against the Trump administration on every front.

And then number three, it's getting really cold in Chicago, and they're probably like, you know what, we don't like. We don't really want to be out here in the streets anymore. This is this, you know, violent sadism is no longer as fun as it was earlier. We've got a clip here of JB. Pritzker, the governor of the state, talking about this reporting this is D two. Let's go ahead and listen to that.

this city. But I would not say that we're now going to be free of these terrorized neighborhoods, because ICE and CBP probably will still be here, though they will have fewer people, and we'll have to continue to protect our neighbors and our friends and our.

tear gas. The family later said they had to take her to the hospital. They were worried about her airwaves closing up, because of course little children are very vulnerable to these sorts of chemical weapons. Effectively, so I said, they dumped pepper spray on a one year old baby. Demons, actual demons. I stand by that. And then Homeland Security quote twidts me and says DHS law enforcement does not

pepper spray children. Here are the facts. During an operation, rioters began throwing objects at agents and blocking the road. This did not occur in a Sam's Club parking lot. Border patrol deployed crowd control measures that means pepper spray and safely cleared the area. So they're claiming that they did not, in fact pepper spray a one year old and that the whole presentation of this video is not correct. So let's go ahead and put the video up. You guys

can judge for yourself of what happened here. This is the aftermath. This is the little baby who is being comforted by her mother and clearly distressed here after this event. And so here is the incident. So they're just driving and you can see they have a window open, and whoever this is ICE or CVP just dumps pepper spray into their window. These are not These are lawful residents. They were not protesting the exactly according to ye citizens exactly.

And let's put the next piece up on the screen. There was a news report about this incident and spoke to this family, and the family basically said we were going shopping at Sam's Club and saw that there was some sort of something going on here, so we went to turn the car around and as we're trying to drive away, that's when they, you know, dump this pepper spray into their vehicle, and you know, everyone in the vehicle,

including the one year old baby, is affected. This comes after too emily there have been court orders saying you cannot use pepper spray in this insane way that you've been using like you should be using it incredibly rarely. You have to issue multiple warnings before you deploy it, and you are not allowed to just be using these aggressive riot control tactics whenever you feel like it. So when I talk about them being lawless, this is a perfect example of that where you know, there was no

warning to this family. This family did literally nothing wrong. They just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They were trying to, you know, leave the scene, and like, okay, you guys are doing whatever you're doing, We're getting out of here, and that's when they're hit with this pepper spray. According to what they told local press, so, you know, just unbelievable stuff.

I don't think the administration or anybody who's promising to do mass deportations really knows what that number means, as they constantly are trying to redefine what it means. But when you do it lawlessly, first of all, you completely lose support for the overall project, and it's wrong. It's

just it's wrong. It's plainly wrong. It's not American, and it's a real problem when you're trying to do things so quickly that you have like very little control over or concerned for the way that it's being played out on a local level. So I mean, of course there are going to be people who protest these deportations that put themselves and others in dangerous situations, but that's obviously

not what we're looking at in this case. There are some cases where you can look at that and say, you know, this is that's there's a there's a legitimate question as to who was being unsafe in the presence of law enforcement. This is not one of those situations whatsoever. They didn't check to see who was in the car. They saw what looked like a Hispanic male and pepper

spray into the car. He's a citizen's exactly right, and he's a family like the little girl in the car, and they don't even they're driving my so quickly they wouldn't have even known.

et cetera. And so, you know, to me, it is an indication that they realize that this is you know, people aren't just going, oh, it's a base that you to your guys to one year old base based base. They're like, what the fuck is wrong with you? And feel at least some level of Oh, we better come up with some kind of a justification here for what looks to be a horrible act.

But if your solution is always give me more power, and it does seem like that is the solution of the day from both sides, actually, then you are likely to just continue pendle theming one side to the other because people don't want to learn the actual lesson, which is, if you actually want affordability, then either you have to change policies or change locations, though those are really the only two things. And also, I think more broadly, it's

not about affordability. We have trained an entire generation of people to believe that if their lives are not what they want them to be, it's the fault of systems, as opposed to decisions that are in their own control. I mean, I was looking around at property prices, real estate prices in New York.

like that. One of the reasons that we see so much malaise in those cities is that the people who grew up and have family there can't afford it and move away, And you have people who are sort of in and out for five years, ten years, don't really care that much in the way that you care about the place that you grew up because you're part of the social fabric. You know people who know people in

city council. You go to church with people, or you're in the pta people or that person was your teacher Christly.

close to them. But I love the feeling of, you know, having that connectivity to this specific place. It is it's hard to describe the feeling, but it is a very rooted feeling and that loss of community in our country, which has been tracked, you know, all the way going back to Bowling Alone, which is this seminal sociological study of the way that we're all sort of like coming apart, and all of that accelerated of course by social media

and smartphones. I think it is an affirmative value that we should aspire to that if people want to be able to live and raise kids in the places that they're from, that, you know, that's something we should value

as society. And there's nowhere. I mean, on the one hand, rural areas have been decimated because of the free trade regime, so you know a lot of places don't have opportunities, so people feel they have to move then to a New York City because Ben Shapiro says that, well you go where the opportunity is, Well, where do you think the frickin' opportunity is it's places like New York City, but then you get there and you're living in a shoe box and you can't afford to make it, so

it's like damned if you do, damned if you don't. This is a I think liberals have had a blind spot for the you know, that importance a place and that being an affirmative value, and then the economic elites over the past forty years, you know, their view has always been as they're destroying jobs in these various places, like basically big deal creative destruction.

at what happened to Flint. You look at the way the people who were in the auto industry were treated.

bring with them all of the problems. By the way, that conservatives hate about global governing organizations, whether it's like the World Economic Forum or the United Nations, there's just something that is completely detached in different and it's much easier to do mass layoffs. And conservatives will say, okay, well, that means it's much easier for you to be more efficient,

But efficiency isn't the end of the economy. Nobody just believes the economy should exist only for the sake of efficiency. And I say nobody, but some people, of course do. They're just a minority, you know. Hardcore libertarians basically are the ones who will tell you that. So I wanted to put this chart on the screen because one of the things been talked about was how both sides are basically trying to consolidate power and that has created a

less affordable America. And this chart is from AI. It gets updated like every six months. This is the twenty twenty two version of it from the American Enterprise Institute Mark Perry, who's an economist at the American Enterprise Institute. It's a little bit of an ink blot test. You can kind of look into it. You can read into it a lot of different things. Stoller and I were going back and forth about how you can read antitrust into this chart.

affordability of TVs, nursery, school, childcare going up, medical care services going up, college tuition, food and beverages going up, and then you see computers, software, toys, TVs, clothing, new cars roughly going down a little blip around the COVID time period. And I think the reason that I think Ben in a sense is correct this chart points to it. From my perspective is that I really do worry about subsidies in the like mom Donnie era New York City,

making things in the long term less affordable. This is a huge part of the debate we're having right now about the Affordable Care Act subsidies and Obamacare subsidies really can create oligopolies, like they actually do have that effect. I think it's been pretty clear with college tuition that subsidies have created little incentive for these colleges to compete with one another on tuition price, and so I do think that should be part of the conversation. I don't

know chrisl how you feel about it. But the question for me as a conservative is like, well, if the status quo is also miserable, which is the case with health insurance, then you can't just ask people to wait until there's some type of like comprehensive, conservative market based solution in six months or six years. People don't deserve to have their premiums spiked because the system is failing.

And just like shoulder that on the promise that someday you'll do like a reform to the subsidies, Like I don't think the subsidies are a great option right here. I don't think just subsidizing housing, freezing rent.

fifty year mortgage. We have left to the market instead of having our own values and priorities in the way that for example, China has, we have said we are going to outsource our thinking and our values to the market, and all the market does is says, great, we're going to figure out how we can builk you for all of the money that we possibly can and consolidate power

and wealth among a very few people. And that's how you end up broadly with the system where the core building blocks of a middle class life, housing, healthcare, and education are wildly unaffordable because we can't as a country say, you know what put them like the profitability aside. These are things that are just basic goods and values that everyone should have access to, and we're going to do what we need to do to make sure that that is the case. So, you know, your comment about subsidies

is absolutely correct. Don't disagree with that at all. Where I would disagree is so for example, with college education, Zorn Mamdanie and Bernie Sanders wouldn't be saying that's why we need to, you know, have a better student loan program. They'd say, that's why we need free college education three, you know, public colleges that are free and available to everyone. On housing, they wouldn't say, you know, that's why you

need an extra tax credit or for affordability. I mean, they may be on board with those sorts of things, but they would say, we need more direct government building of social housing so that we can surge affordable housing into the market and don't have to wait for some developer to decide that it's in their best financial interest to do it. And by the way, when they do, they're going to build luxury, high end condos, not starter

homes for young families, you know. So and on healthcare. Obviously, they're not looking like, yes, they'll support subsidies in the short term just so people don't fifteen million people don't lose their healthcare or whatever the number is. That's not their long term solution though. What they would say is Medicare for all, we have to tackle putting profit at the center of our healthcare system instead of.

things at public colleges, that sort of thing. But my position in medicare for all of for the last several years, has been will it be more miserable than the already miserable system that we're in? And I don't know that the answer to that is no, because this system sucks. It sucks and it is great for people who continue to profit off of it. And that does go in both directions. I mean, the biggest enemies of capitalism, This was a common sentiment in the Gilded Age, by the way,

the biggest enemies of capitalism are the capitalists. And that's how you end up with people reflexively going towards subsidy regimes because they're band aids. And it's understandable that people are looking for band aids when they're bleeding out, and so actually the capitalists continuing to prioritize themselves over let's bring this full circle the public, their communities. Michigan is such a good example of this, such a good example is you, mother effing capitalists, why do you think you

got Trump? You didn't want Trump? Why do you think people voted for Trump. Well, it's because of what you did to Michigan, it's because of what you did to Wisconsin's because of what you did to Pennsylvania. Do you think the country is healthier because of any of this, because you put people to the brink of desperation that they voted the host of celebrity Apprentice into the presidency.

working for Milwauk and think about like Masterlocke. But if you're in Michigan GM, those types of things, it's just me just like I'm talking about it, I'm almost crying. It's just so horrible, and there's no reflection on it whatsoever from the capitalists themselves. And again, that was a common sentiment in the Yilded Age, was that the capitalists

were the enemies of capitalism. But nobody wants to Even after Donald Trump gets elected and Bernie Sanders almost gets elected, nobody wants to talk about that.

their their goal is to make everyone irrelevant. That is, you know we talk about like late stage capitalism, like that is actually their end state that they're trying to achieve, because the whole history of labor and capital is that capital basically hates labor, wants to pay them as little as possible, work them as much as possible, like not that let them have maternity leave or paternity leave or

sick leave or whatever. It's this adversarial relationship and they would love nothing more than to make it so they don't have to deal with us at all, and the level of power and wealth that would float to them in that scenario is just I mean, it's beyond anything that we have even come close to seeing before in human history. That's what they're aiming for. I mean, that is the goal, and that's that's the market based solution.

And you know, I think a few of them realize, like, if we're going to pull this off, we're going to have to give them like a universal basic.

whatever I want. I got my tax cut, you know, he's I can the tariffs are now you know, being rolled back, and anyway, I was able to get my car ounce, so it wasn't that big of a problem for me whatsoever. And the big thing that they're getting, these tech giants in particular.

but that is not what the tech giants belief. And the tech giants, some of them might have these like sincere libertarian positions that I think are insane, but they may like genuinely believe that UBI is, you know, the peak version of humanity.

but also so can deregulation. So that's much harder work to have a fair market and a place where people actually can you know, create small businesses where they can have meaningful lives and thrive through the dignity of work.

house with him. He has never once been mentioned, police chief, etc. I'm seventy five percent there, Maxwell responded again, this is twenty eleven, April of twenty eleven.

what do you think it should be? So basically Wolf and Epstein are trying to preemptively give Donald Trump a little something to work with that might be beneficial to them in the long run. Here is Wolf who styles himself as a journalist who is critical of Donald Trump and is something of a crystal Do you have any like you have any thoughts on this Wolf? Part of it all because it's making me so mad that I

can't even really speak. To see these emails, it's not surprising in any way whatsoever, But to see how involved he was and then to watch him try to claim the moral high ground as like an Instagram TikTok celebrity is deeply, deeply irritating.

And Michael Wolfe has been, you know, out there talking about, Hey, I've seen pictures of Donald Trump with girls of uncertain age. I've you know, here's what Epstein told me about Trump. He also claimed that Epstein had a lot of insider knowledge into Trump's first administration, so still had a lot of connectivity there. In any case with regard to this you know this question, Abo, he might get asked a debate question about this. CNN did not ask him about

Epstein at that debate. Probably would have been a good question to ask him, but that didn't get asked at that debate or in the scroll. And then do you have the other email, Emily where they're talking about Trump spending hours with one of the victims.

was I think you should let him hang himself. If he says he hasn't been on the plane or to the house, then that gives you a valuable pr and political currency. You can hang him in a way that potentially generates a positive benefit for you, or if it really looks like he could win, you could save him

generating a debt. Interesting line right there. Of course, Wolf continues, it is possible that when he'll say, Jeffrey is a great guy and has gotten a raw deal and is a victim of political correctness, which is to be outlawed in a Trump regime. Now when he says, of course Trump knew about the girls. This is from Jeffrey Epstein,

he asked Glaine to stop. That is, in the strangest way ever, confirmation of what Donald Trump has said, which is also, in the strangest way ever, confirmation that he clearly knew as he alluded to in media reports before he was president, before Epstein became such a mythical figure. Trump said, Jeffery likes him on the younger side. He said recently, I think he was on Air Force one within just the last few months saying, yeah, they were stealing girls from mar A Lago, which is exactly what

happened to Virginia. Jeffrey, who was working at mar A Lago was poached by Gilan Maxwell at mar A Lago. So these emails, again, these are ones released by the Democrats on the House Oversight Committee. As the Guy government shut down ends, Mike Johnson is going to face enormous pressure to bring an epscene vote to the floor. There may even be a discharge petition that goes around Mike

Johnson to bring some of this to the floor. So Chrystal, no surprise that we are starting to see these as the government looks poised to reopen, hopefully forcing a vote.

was going on. And then you add to that the color of he spent hours with a victim, and then him pondering like, why isn't why isn't Donald Trump getting mentioned in all of the coverage surrounding me, And you know, I mean that would be that would be a sort of head scratching thing, given how close we know that they their lives were intertwined for years and years where you know, again, according to Michael Wolf and Jeffrey Epstein, Epstein and Trump were besties.

club fed prison because she's a sex offender. That's number one. Number two, they're providing her with extraordinary perks, what they described as concierge service. One of the prison officials said, I'm tired of being Glene Maxwell's bitch because she's getting She got a freaking puppy, she got special meals, she gets to go to the exercise area when no one

else is there. She gets to have these long meetings where people bring in computers so she can communicate with the outside world in whatever kind of way she wants. Oh and lo and behold, she's filling out her application for a presidential commutation. Gee, why is she getting such special treatment? I wonder? I mean, it doesn't take a genius to figure out. Trump is afraid of what she has on him, what she would say about him, and so he is directing his administration to make sure you

keep Galaine happy, do what you need. And every time that he gets asked about a potential partner commutation for Glene Maxwell, he de Marse. He will not say one way or another whether he would consider that, because you know, as soon as she got moved to Club Fed and started getting this cushy treatment, well that's when the leaks to the Wall Street Journal and other places about the birthday book and other things. That's when those leaks stopped.

So again, put two and two together, you can likely see, Okay, those initial leaks were kind of a shot across the bell, like, hey, here's a little taste of what I might have, what I might be able to say about you. And again, given their long history together and the incredibly guilty and bizarre way that the Trump administration has acted around the Epstein files, you know, it's I don't think anyone should

be surprised that some of this is coming out. And Emily, you know, one example of that is they refused to swear in Adelita Grihalva for almost two months, seven full weeks. They refused to swear this lady in, meaning that that district has no representation whatsoever in Congress, just so they would not have another vote on that Epstein discharge petition. Mike Johnson like shut down the entire House and ended

the session to avoid that vote previously. You know, they're and the way that this has, you know, really undercut their reputation. As though we're outside we're going to shine a light on the truth here.

about this guy as well. And the Republicans, led by Trump and Mike Johnson, have gone to extraordinary lengths to try to keep any of this from becoming public.

Todd Blanche over the last several months. That's certainly possible. Well, Johnson is set to swear in Adelite Girlova today and that's the vote they need for the discharge petition, which Thomas Massey I believe Marjorie Tayler Green among other Republicans are among the Republican Conference support, So that gets them around Mike Johnson to a vote demanding a release of

all of the Epstein files. And so the House Overside Committee had that conversation back and forth with Alex Acosta, former Labor Secretary nominee who dropped out because Vicky Ward's reporting and other information surrounding the sweetheart deal in Florida

that happened under his watch. Triguerian Epstein and the House Overside Committee asked, you know about that Vicky Ward quote from an anonymous source many people speculate to be Steve Bannon that Acosta says he was told Epstein belonged to intelligence and to leave him alone. Acosta denied basically that

in spirit, but he wasn't really. I mean, there are a lot of other ways that that question could have been posed to him to get around the technicalities of whether Epstein was an asset or an agent and who told him what that The House Oversight Committee just did not get to the bottom of in that interview, at least according to the transcript of it that we have so crystal this story to see in writing from Jeffrey Epstein that Trump has never once been mentioned by police chief, etc.

I don't know what Epstein means when he says I'm seventy five percent there, but it sounds like maybe he's speculating that Trump is cooperating with an investigation.

with the Israeli government and Israeli intelligence specifically. You can go and read numerous stories at this point based on the leak of a former's really prime minister's emails, which also worth noting, as we always do, any mainstream outlet could have looked at these emails and reported them out. They're all sitting out there for anyone to report on. They are the only ones who have put that aside.

So you're the President of the United States, and you know, whatever, whatever things you did or you know, you're worried that Jeffrey Epstein knows about you have to assume that the Israelis know about as well. You have to assume that, right, And so what kind of pressure does that create in your relationship? How does that impact your foreign policy and the way you conduct yourself vis a VI this state.

That's one of the most obvious reasons why this reporting and getting to the bottom of this is so incredibly, incredibly important, because even if Jeffrey Epstein, you know, there's all sorts of reports about the cameras he had and a sort of documentation he kept, even if he didn't actually have the goods on whatever it is that Trump is terrified of coming out about him, and clearly there are things he is terrified of coming out about him.

Even if Epstein didn't have the goods, you have to assume that he did, and you have to assume that he was sharing that information with his very close friends, allies, business partners in the Israeli government. So I mean that that is extraordinary and incredibly important for the American people to know and understand.

on the table, keep a job, all of that. Yes, our foreign policy is downstream of the shadow government in many ways that we aren't quite aware of. And that sounds crazy. But go ahead read the emails that the mainstream media probably isn't covering, so they don't want to go into what looks like a hack from Iran, but one that Ryan and Moz are confirming is verifiable by talking to people saying, is this is these emails? This is you in this email, Is this a real email,

et cetera. So when you see it put so plainly in those drop site stories, Jeffrey Epstein and Hooper Rock were puppet masters and they were doing it, putting it in writing. We have that evidence for everybody to see. They were actually pulling the strings of geopolitics and foreign policy, willing and dealing in their punctuation error laden emails which Ryan says as a power move. I'm not so sure that I agree it's a power move. It may just

reflect the actual incompetence. And that is remarkable when you look at it, because you see how few people have such disproportionate control over foreign policy. Foreign policy affects domestic policy. So these are enormously serious questions. And I think, you know, Epstein is an example of something that is still happening right now with other names that we just don't know.

was very much on the back burner. And Soccer and I were talking about this, and what I said is, but this is the sort of thing that can erupt back into the public consciousness at any time, because it's completely unresis and you know, I think a lot of maga that were upset about it first kind of made their peace with it, kind of like bought into some convoluted like, oh, actually, Trump is playing the Deep States somehow, or they're fake or Clinton comy whatever. They just were like,

all right, we're just gonna move on. When things like this come out, makes it pretty hard for you to just like close your eyes and pretend like nothing's happening here and pretending like pretend like this is all fine, especially when you have a voice, a running gade voice like Marjorie Taylor Green out there, who is willing to make her own side uncomfortable for whatever reason she's doing it. She is that voice right now, willing to make her

own side uncomfortable. So, you know, we talked about the Maga revolt. When you have a president who was just weakened by an extraordinary electoral defeat for his party really across the board, you know, he's effectively already a lame duck at least is not legally allowed to run for

another term. Is aging very clearly in front of our eyes, you know, sleeping through White House events at this point, and outsourcing major parts of his administration to his aids, seems to only really care about, like his his parties at mar A Lago and his renovations. Yeah, when you have all of those sorts of things, then people start to feel a little bit bolder about their criticism and start to be looking at and constantly Okay, well, what is the world after Trump going to look like? And

where is the place to be? How to position myself in that world? So I think even as you know Democrats just capitulated in Anthony and are embarrassing and all of that sort of stuff, you also have Trump at a becoming increasingly sort of weakened in his own administration. Approval rating is very low. You know, some errors starting to come at him from his own side, economic troubles, and you know a lot of unfulfilled promises, and then

you add this to the mix. It's not it's a it's a pretty pretty challenging landscape for him.

at continuing to blame the Biden administration or inherited. Yeah, people are not going to buy it, and you are mister draining the swamp, so as emails come out showing you part of a swamp.

got to get these documents. To his credit, he's subpoena's the Epstein estate, and the Epstein Estate has been producing these documents gripped by Grip by grip, And today, of course comes out the first time some of the emails thing that Trump knew about the abuse of these young girls and the guilty conduct. And I expect four more documents are going to be coming out over the next couple of months.

Those questions didn't end up getting asked, but in any case, interesting to see them strategizing back and forth. You see them talking about how surprised they are that Trump hasn't been brought up in the context of Jeffrey Epstein in a more significant way given their long standing ties. So what is your reaction to the content of these emails?

mayor of Seattle. Progressive insurgent taking on and incumbent, so some some sort of Mum Donnie West Coast Mum Donnie vibes. I would say she's very different character from him, but also really centered affordability and housing affordability in particular in her campaign, both as a way to deliver for voters across the board and also a way to tackle a chronic homelessness issue that Seattle has continued to suffer from.

So with all of that being said, let's go ahead and take a listen to my interview with Katie Wilson. So I am super excited to talk to our next guest this morning. Katie Wilson is the co founder executive director of the Transit Writers Union. She is also the progressive candidate for mayor in the city of Seattle, locked in an extraordinarily close race with the current mayor, Bruce Harrell, and she joins us now, Welcome Katie.

So on election night, I was at forty six percent. Now I've pulled ahead by ninety one votes, as you said, and there's another about ten thousand ballots out there still to be counted, mostly from election day, mostly skewing younger. So we're really hopeful that that margin will liden. It's possible that there will be a recount because the margin will still be very small, but we're feeling really good about this race.

protections in Seattle and other cities around King County. Fought for progressive taxation, so we have a landmark tax on wealthy corporations in Seattle called the Jumpstart Tax that I played a big role in designing and passing. And then of course public transit right as the name of the organization suggests, fighting for better public transit, and we've won a bunch of affordable and free fair programs for lower

income riders for youth. So that's the kind of work that I've done over the years, it's very grassroots community organizing, coalition building, and I really have never had the ambition

to run for elected office until this year. And so this early this year we had an election on funding Seattle's new social housing developer through attacks on wealthy corporations, and our current Mayor, Bruce Harral was kind of the face of the opposition campaign, and he's done a lot in office to try to undermine Social Housing, which is a kind of a new project for Seattle that a

grassroots campaign put on the ballot last year. And nevertheless, this funding measure to fund the developer passed by a landslide, and so that really showed me that our current mayor, Bruce Harel is out of touch with the issues that people are facing in their daily lives. And I think the affordability crisis is really right up there at the top.

And you know, when I jumped into this race, I've never heard of zoron Mondani, but it's very clear that there are some similar dynamics playing out across the country where coming out of the pandemic with really high rates of inflation, the cost of housing in high cost cities like Seattle is just really out of control. Rents just keep going up and up. Home prices are out of reach for anyone wanting to buy a home, and then everything else, from childcare to food to groceries, everything.

have this extremely bad homelessness crisis here in Seattle. We actually have rates of unsheltered homelessness that are much higher than comparable cities around the country in the US. And I really, you know, our current mayor, rece he came into office promising to address issues of homelessness in public safety, and I think people are looking around and not really feeling that.

And I think our current mayor he doesn't break that mold right like he's he's been the mayor for four years, but before that he was a council member for twelve years. So he's kind of part of that kind of centrist Democratic party establishment that people are pretty upset with right now. So I think that's also a dynamic in this race.

And so for me, you know, coming coming in as an outsider, someone who's you know, worked with city worked with city hall, is familiar with the legislative process and and all that, but at the same time is coming in as kind of an insurgent candidate. This was the right moment for that to work, and it looks like we're going to pull it out by the skin of our teeth.

getting people inside. So we basically have thousands of people sleeping on sheltered on the streets, and we have two homeless people in the Seattle area for every one shelter bed, and there's been very very little focus of his administration on actually opening new emergency housing and shelter so that we can get people inside. Instead, they're spending all this time and energy just basically telling people you can't be here and forcing them to move along.

And so the fact that they're not actually focusing on getting people inside is just really damning in my mind, and people are noticing it, right, Like there's you know, people who just rather than small business owners in various neighborhoods around the city, who you know, they see that there's like an encampment there and they know that they're like, Okay, well,

the city's going to come and sweep them. But we know that they're just going to go to the next neighborhood and then a couple of weeks from now they'll be back. And so there's this deep frustration with this approach. So I you know, what I've been saying on the campaign trail is I'm going to really focus on opening new emergency housing and shelters so that we can actually revolve encampments by getting people inside rather than just sweeping them around the city. And we you know, we know

that this works, right. So there's during a pandemic, there was a program that several nonprofits put together called Just Care, which basically did that, right, resolved encampments by getting people inside. And at that time it was kind of temporary hotel that had been repurposed as shelter and was very successful. So we know that the vast majority of homeless folks sleeping outside will accept meaningful offers of shelter and support when that's given to them, and that's just not what

we're doing right now. So that's really the big difference in our approach there.

is pretty challenging. But here's the thing, Like, most people who are addicted to drugs, you know, are also engaged in various forms of criminal behavior, right in order to obtain drugs or just in order to meet basic needs almless people, That is right, And and so we have the ability to, if necessary, arrest people for criminal behavior, and then we have successful diversion programs where because we also know that just throwing someone in jail like doesn't

work right, and then they're back out of the street and have been destabilized and or more at risk of overdosing. But what we can do is put people into a diversion program where there's basically accountability and there's you know, shelter and services. But that's kind of like offered as an alternative to the booking and jail kind of route.

And so we have programs that that have been very successful, and so it's a matter of scaling those up, and I think that we can if we do that well, I think that we can address those those toper cases or the vast majority of them as well.

fairly high threshold. And then by having this like publicly owned and operated permanently affordable housing, you know, once you get that to a certain scale, that also helps to moderate rents in the prime of a sector. Now we're a long way from that, but there's no better time to start than now. So part of my platform is really having the city and the mayor be a strong partner in getting the new social housing developer up and

rolling and acquiring buildings and developing buildings. At the same time, I also believe that we need to make it possible for the private market to build more housing in our great neighborhoods around Seattle, and so that means working on our land use and zoning laws to make that possible, because we have had very restrictive single family zoning laws and Seattle for a long time, and that's beginning to loosen up a little bit, but we can go a

lot further than the previous administration has gone. In addition, so we are not allowed in local jurisdictions in Washington State to do rent regulation directly, so we can't do rent control here locally without a change in state law. However, we do have a law called the Economic Displacement Relocation Assistance Law, which basically said, if your landlord raises your rent time percent or more and you move out because you can't afford it, your landlord is spilt to pay

you three times your monthly rent and relocation assistance. So that's nice, and it also diffincentivizes large rent increases because landlords don't want to trigger that law. And so one thing that I've talked about is bumping that threshold down from ten percent to for example, five percent, and so

that would help to disincentivize those larger rent increases. There's some other things that we can do on the renter protections front, like regulating or banning rental junk fees something that happens, especially if you have a corporate landlord in the United States, there's kind of the sticker price of your apartment, but then there's all these like hidden monthly fees or hidden annual fees that are kind of in the fine print, and so you end up paying a

lot more than you think you were going to pay. So something that the city can do is also regulate or ban some of those kind of extraneous fees. So those are a couple of other ideas for how we can help around the margins. The city can do more to invest in affordable homeownership programs. There's some other things to do, but it's kind of a whole range of things, right, There's not one silver bullet, but we kind of need to do it all the above.

if this analysis tweet analysis was incorrect. But basically they said, you know, there were a lot of progressive legislators in Seattle, and then there was after Black Lives Matter and the pandemic, there was kind of a backlash and that's when people like Bruce Harrel and other war like centrist types get elected to the city council. And now, with Harold's likely defeat, that wave of the backlash wave has now been swept

out by a more progressive cohort. And so, first of all, is that sort of accurate your view of the way that Seattle politics has swung back and forth? And then how what is most important to you in order to make sure that there isn't another sort of backlash swing to the center after your mayoralty.

city council member. And now one thing to note though, is that during that time when we had a very progressive council, we had pretty centrist mayors and so that really that dynamic kind of cramped the council's style in a sense, in terms of their ability to get things not just passed, but.

Now we have kind of staggered elections. So this year there was only well for complicated reasons three, but normally there would be two at large council positions up for elections. So there's seven district council elections seats which will be

up for election in two years. So right now, assuming that I win this race, right, we'll have me and the mayor's office, and we'll have several very progressive council members, but the bulk of we don't have a strong progressive majority on the council yet, but that could happen in twenty twenty seven. Now, in order for that to happen in twenty twenty seven, you asked about kind of what needs to.

left to bey show that we can actually govern. And so there's going to be I'm going to be paying a lot of attention to the work that needs to happen to basically get City Hall, the city bureaucracy moving in a good direction, actually delivering services for the people of Seattle, and hopefully pioneering a new model of kind of responsive government and communication with the people where we're really explaining what we're doing and why and if we're

coming up against obstacles, here's why. And I think this is a similar challenge that I think, you know, Mom Donnie's going to face in New York City where there's a lot of really ambitious things that we want to get done, but there's also real obstacles.

So that's going to be big. And you know, I mean, like I'm in this race, right there was more corporate pack spending against me than has ever been spent in a Seattle race against a candidate, and a lot of those same trists are also going to want.