| Speaker | Time | Text |
|---|---|---|
|
unidentified
|
Say that Republicans are not for immigration. | |
| Republicans and this president is for immigration. | ||
| We're just against illegal immigration. | ||
| Those who have come into our nation, especially after the last administration, allow some say 10, 15, 20 million people. | ||
| These people have come here. | ||
| We're not speaking to those people who have come here, who are running, who are trying to fight for their lives and seeking asylum and things of that nature. | ||
| We want them here. | ||
| I have said on my show that it's going to be the immigrant that saves this nation. | ||
| It's going to be the immigrant, the black community, and white men will finally have been fed up with people dictating how they should think, feel, and go about their life. | ||
| I really believe that those are the people that are going to help save this nation, specifically the immigrant, because the immigrant has come from countries where they've been just chastising and destroying, and they're looking for a better way. | ||
| And America, that city on the hill that Ronald Reagan talked about so many years ago, still has that shiny light requesting those who want to come to this country and live a life that they would have never lived in their own country. | ||
| That's what I'm hearing. | ||
| That's what we're talking about. | ||
| And as it relates to this, this is the biggest problem with our media. | ||
| The stories that they feed to people and people believe. | ||
| And that's why my voice is so important to combat, to bring people from both sides of an issue and have a robust conversation. | ||
| We've got to get back to doing that in America. | ||
| I just recently had somebody I was on another show and I had an individual. | ||
| She called, she sent me a message just talking about how much she hated me. | ||
| I'm an idiot. | ||
| And I just reached back out to her and I just said, hey, listen, why don't you let's have a conversation. | ||
| This lady now listens to my show. | ||
| She hates almost everything that I stand for. | ||
| But because I reached out to her and had a conversation, that's what we need to do more of in 2026. | ||
| Let's have conversations because when we stop talking, violence ensues. | ||
| John Anthony, for folks who want to hear your voice more, want to watch your show, how can they do it? | ||
|
unidentified
|
Yeah, so I'm at the answerdetroit.com and then I'm on Black My. | |
| You can follow me anywhere, Detroit's Morning Answer with John Anthony or Black and Right Radio. | ||
| If you want to get the book, an autograph copy, blackandrightradio.com, it's getting ready to become a movie. | ||
| I'm really excited about it. | ||
| That my son, who committed suicide four years ago, his legacy will not just be that he committed suicide, but be a legacy of how many people's lives he can change because we've been able to change so many lives. | ||
| Fathers who have reached out to me and say, I look at how I look at how I raise my kids differently now because of reading your book. | ||
| And that's the goal. | ||
| My goal for 2026 is to save and help as many people as possible. | ||
| I don't care what political party you're with, what sexual idea you're with. | ||
| My goal is to help as many people in this coming year. | ||
| And I think that should be a goal to help people, to bring to give them grace in this coming year. | ||
| John Anthony, thanks for being our first guest in the new year. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Thank you. | |
| God bless you and a happy new year. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| We are joined by Laura Bellin from the Hawkeye State of Iowa. | ||
| She's the editor of Bleeding Heartland, the website on Iowa politics and host of KHOI's Capitol Week. | ||
| Happy New Year to you. | ||
| Happy New Year, John. | ||
| It's not a caucus year in 2026, but there's plenty to talk about when it comes to Iowa politics. | ||
| Start in the Senate in Iowa. | ||
| Why is 55-year-old Joni Ernst retiring after just two terms in the Senate? | ||
| And what are your thoughts on that race and how competitive it will be this midterm election? | ||
| Well, just to set the scene for your listeners, 2026 is the first time since 1968 that Iowa has had open races for U.S. Senate and governor in the same year. | ||
| So it's just wide open. | ||
| Senator Joni Years, I think she had a lot of reasons. | ||
| She lost her leadership position after the 2024 election in the Senate Republican caucus. | ||
| She was under tremendous pressure with a lot of nasty emails and threatening calls during that Pete Hegseth confirmation. | ||
| And then there were some other issues. | ||
| I'm sure everybody remembers her saying at that town hall meeting, well, we all are going to die when challenged about the Medicaid cuts and the impact that that could have. | ||
| And I think that she just decided that even though she certainly would have been favored for reelection in Iowa, but I think she decided it just wasn't worth it to her. | ||
| This state has trended toward Republicans. | ||
| So I would say it's still, certainly Republicans are favored in this open U.S. Senate race. | ||
| Ashley Henson is the strong favorite to win the GOP nomination. | ||
| She's been a member of Congress for the last five years from Northeast Iowa. | ||
| The Democratic primary is a three-way race, very open right now. | ||
| Zach Walls, Josh Turek, and Nathan Sage. | ||
| And there's a lot of excitement among Democrats to have an open seat. | ||
| We haven't had a Senate race without an incumbent for decades. | ||
| And you mentioned the governor's race. | ||
| Take us there. | ||
| Governor Kim Reynolds is the governor of a state that doesn't have term limits for a governor, unlike some other states. | ||
| Why is she stepping down and how competitive is that race? | ||
| Oh, yeah, that was a big surprise to almost all of us in the political press corps because Governor Reynolds had signaled that she was likely to run for reelection. | ||
| So it was a big surprise in April when she rolled it out. | ||
| We have, by the way, Terry Branstad, who was Kim Reynolds' predecessor, is the longest serving governor, not only of Iowa, but in U.S. history, because as you say, we don't have term limits. | ||
| The Democratic nomination, there are two candidates, but the strong favorite is our state auditor, Rob Sand. | ||
| He's been elected twice statewide. | ||
| He's currently the only Democratic elected official. | ||
| And then there's just a wild five-way GOP primary that's unlike any primary race I've ever seen. | ||
| I guess you could say the frontrunner would be U.S. Representative Randy Feenstra, who in 2020 was elected to Congress from the strongly Republican Northwest part of Iowa. | ||
| But there's a lot of animosity toward Randy Feenstra in Republican circles, and he's been kind of running a quiet campaign. | ||
| He's avoiding open public meetings. | ||
| He's avoiding multi-candidate forums. | ||
| And a lot of Republicans are not happy about that. | ||
| So I think that the governor's race is going to be extremely competitive, probably even more so than the Senate race, because we've seen in other states like Kansas and Kentucky and Louisiana that we've seen even Republican-leaning states elect Democrats as governor more often than we've seen them elect Democrats to the U.S. Senate. | ||
| So now you have Randy Feenstra running for governor, Ashley Henson running for senator, leaving two of the four seats, the congressional, the House seats in Iowa open. | ||
| How likely is it that some of these seats become the battleground seats that determine control of the U.S. House in 2026? | ||
| Well, one interesting thing about Iowa, and a reason I love covering politics here, is we don't have gerrymandering. | ||
| So we have four U.S. House districts and almost every cycle, at least two of them are competitive. | ||
| So even before any of this reshuffling happened, the first district in Iowa, which is Marionette Miller-Meek, she won by about 0.2% of the vote. | ||
| And the third district, which is the Des Moines metro area, that's Representative Zach Nunn. | ||
| They were already considered among the most competitive U.S. House races in the country, top targeted. | ||
| Now, as you mentioned, Ashley Henson leaving that second district in Northeast Iowa open. | ||
| And I think depending on who wins the nominations there, I think that that could be a very competitive race. | ||
| All four districts voted for Donald Trump. | ||
| The third district, which is that central Iowa, voted for him by the smallest margin, about four points. | ||
| And I would guess that at this point, Donald Trump's approval is probably underwater in central Iowa. | ||
| But the second and the first district, which cover the eastern part of the state, I think that Iowa's been hit really hard economically. | ||
| And it's way too early to know what the prevailing political wins will be like in November. | ||
| But I expect at least two, if not three, of those congressional districts to be competitive. | ||
| Now, in that fourth district, where I mentioned Randy Feenstra is running for governor, there are competitive Republican and Democratic primaries, but that is a very, very Republican district. | ||
| So whoever wins the Republican primary, almost assured to replace Randy Feenstra in Congress. | ||
| You mentioned the economic hit to the Hawkeye State. | ||
| How much of that is due or at least blamed on Donald Trump's tariffs? | ||
| And I'm thinking specifically the soybean farmers in Iowa and the trade wars that we've seen in 2025. | ||
| Well, we had, let's go back to the first Trump administration. | ||
| Trump's tariffs really cost farmers a lot. | ||
| The federal government did do a big bailout of farmers, but at that time, Iowa farmers lost about 25% of their soybean export market to Brazil. | ||
| And basically, it never came back. | ||
| So what's happened this past year is China has almost completely stopped buying soybeans. | ||
| That was a major export market for Iowa. | ||
| And instead, I mean, I've heard in my contacts in rural Iowa say people are very aware that the Trump administration offered a bailout to Argentina, which is basically our competitor now in exporting soybeans to China. | ||
| Now, the Trump administration, the USDA did announce a $12 billion bailout, but you have to understand that only a small percentage of Iowans are directly engaged in farming. | ||
| And then there's a much bigger part of the economy that might be related to agriculture. | ||
| So I'm thinking of farm equipment dealers, farm equipment manufacturers, and other industries that are supported. | ||
| Well, they don't get any of that bailout money. | ||
| And I've heard even from farmers that whatever comes in through that $12 billion bailout, it's not going to make up for what they're losing by not having an export market. | ||
| So Iowa's economy was already underperforming relative to a lot of our neighbors even before Donald Trump came back to the White House. | ||
| So I don't want to say that this is solely because of his tariffs, but certainly it has affected Iowa in a negative way. | ||
| Laura Bellin is our guest, and we have plenty of viewers from the Hawkeye State who call in on a regular basis. | ||
| They, and of course, all those around the country are interested in Iowa politics, may be interested in Bleeding Heartland. | ||
| Explain what that is, how long it's been around. | ||
| The website Bleeding Heartland has been around since 2007. | ||
| It's a community website. | ||
| So I'm the primary author, but I publish work by more than 100, close to 150 now, I think, guest authors every year covering mostly Iowa politics. | ||
| Also, I have a regular feature on Iowa Wildflowers, which is popular. | ||
| And then you mentioned KHOI's Capital Week. | ||
| That's a weekly show, 30 minutes, covering Iowa politics that I do for KHOI Community Radio in Ames, and that's available on any podcast platform or SmartSpeaker. | ||
| And before you go, we were talking about the year ahead in politics with our callers. | ||
| I know that last caller, you were listening in on talking about America's 250th birthday year and how that could impact this country. | ||
| What do you think it means coming from the heartland of this country from Iowa? | ||
| Your thoughts as we enter this birthday year, this semi-quincentennial? | ||
| Yeah, well, Iowa is newer than the country as a whole, but Donald Trump actually did a big rally right before the 4th of July of last year to kind of kick off those 250th year celebrations. | ||
| And I think that Iowa politicians have definitely been talking about that and the pride in the state. | ||
| I don't think that that's going to have a major impact on the politics this year. | ||
| I feel like the economy and what's going on in people's everyday lives is always more important than a major milestone anniversary. | ||
| K-H-O-I in Iowa and bleedingheartland.com is where you can find Laura Bellin and her work and her colleagues. | ||
| Thanks for the time this New Year's Day morning. | ||
| Happy New Year's to you. | ||
| Hope you have a great 2026. | ||
| Thanks. | ||
| Best to you, John. | ||
| We're joined by Mitch Coke now from North Carolina. | ||
| He's a political analyst at the Carolina Journal. | ||
| Mitch Cockey, good morning to you. | ||
| Happy New Year. | ||
| Happy New Year and thanks for having me. | ||
| Glad to have you this New Year's Day. | ||
| North Carolina's gubernatorial state constitutional elections don't take place until 2028, but there is a very big Senate race in North Carolina in 2026. | ||
| Remind folks why Tom Tillis is retiring from Congress or retiring from his Senate seat after two terms, and how competitive do you see this seat in the new year? | ||
| Well, to answer the second question first, it's going to be incredibly competitive. | ||
| It was going to be competitive even if Tom Tillis had decided to stay in the race, and I'll get to that in just a bit. | ||
| But back to the first question, I believe that Tom Tillis, after a couple of terms, realized a couple of things. | ||
| One is that he was going to have a very tough road to reelection. | ||
| And it was going to be even tougher if President Donald Trump continued to speak out against him. | ||
| We know that anytime Tom Tillis, as a Republican, took a stance that was even slightly off of the Trump reservation, he would catch heck about it from the folks in North Carolina and from the Trump administration. | ||
| And after a final battle over a piece of legislation in which Tom Tillis told Donald Trump, you know, if you want me to go this way, I'm not going to go this way. | ||
| You should start looking for my replacement. | ||
| Trump came out on social media, said, you know, it's time to get someone other than Tom Tillis. | ||
| And Tillis said it was time for him to retire. | ||
| So he's going to finish up his second term and go off into some other field. | ||
| But even if he had stayed in this race, this was going to be a tough race because North Carolina is incredibly competitive year in and year out. | ||
| And the most likely person to have faced Tom Tillis and now the likely candidate for the Democrats in 2026 is our former two-term governor, Roy Cooper, who has won six statewide elections and never lost one. | ||
| And if you were pooling North Carolina Democrats or even North Carolina Republicans that said, who is the number one Democratic candidate in North Carolina who you would want on the ballot to win an election, I think people would say Roy Cooper. | ||
| So you have Roy Cooper. | ||
| He's got that name recognition. | ||
| He has support. | ||
| When he ran on the same ballot as Donald Trump, there were quite a few number of Cooper Trump voters who would vote Republican for president, but also vote for Cooper for governor. | ||
| So he has that going for him. | ||
| And on the other side now, you have no Tom Tillis and the likely Republican candidate, although there's going to be a contested primary, the likely Republican candidate would be Michael Watley, who has served as both the North Carolina Republican Party chairman and the Republican National Committee chairman, much less well known to people in North Carolina, except for folks who really follow politics closely. | ||
| The last poll that our organization did on this race in November had Cooper with about an eight and a half point lead. | ||
| And so it's going to be a tough road ahead. | ||
| We know that there are going to be tons of money thrown into this election from all sides. | ||
| So Watley will get some help on that front. | ||
| And I suspect that we're not going to have an eight and a half point final result. | ||
| But you certainly have to go into 2026 thinking that Roy Cooper has at least some advantage and that this is going to be a race that some have predicted will be $750 million. | ||
| I've even seen a couple of predictions that this could be a billion-dollar race for one single Senate seat. | ||
| With Donald Trump playing such a big role in Tom Tillis leaving that Senate seat, is he playing a role in the Republican primary? | ||
| Has the president said this is who I want to see emerge from this primary? | ||
| Yes, Michael Watley. | ||
| And that's one of the reasons why I've said that Watley is the likely candidate, because from the first moment that Tom Tillis decided to get out of this race, the question was, okay, well, who's going to replace him? | ||
| And will Donald Trump get involved? | ||
| Both of those questions were answered fairly quickly. | ||
| Trump, not too long after Tillis got out of the race, said, wouldn't it be great if Michael Watley got into this race? | ||
| And that was a signal to anyone else who is not only a potential candidate, but also a funder in this race that don't throw your good money after bad over a candidate other than Michael Watley. | ||
| So Watley is the presumed frontrunner. | ||
| Now, there are some other names out there that have been mentioned, and probably the most interesting in some respects is a woman who got into the race very late, Michelle Morrow, who was a candidate for state superintendent of public instruction, an election that we have on the statewide level. | ||
| And she was the Republican nominee and lost last time around and had quite a bit of support among activist Republicans. | ||
| And so if there are some who look at Michael Watley as the establishment candidate, even though he has the Trump endorsement, if they look at him and don't like him as much, they might turn to someone like a Michelle Morrow or another candidate who's out there named Don Brown. | ||
| But it's presumed that because Michael Watley has a lot of resources, has the Trump endorsement, that he is almost certainly going to be the candidate who will be nominated when folks go to the polls in March. | ||
| That Senate race will be the headlining act, as it were, in politics in North Carolina in 2026. | ||
| But remind viewers with all of the House seats up, as they are. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We're going to leave this and take you live now to New York City, where Mayor Zorhan Mamdani's inauguration ceremony is about to get underway. | |
| Analysis provided by Spectrum New York One. | ||
| Watching live coverage on C-SPAC. | ||
| Are you going to go into court and just settle them? | ||
| Which, you know, works well for the city, but doesn't work so well for the people who have been accused of wrongdoing in a lot of cases and whose cases are still pending. | ||
| I mean, there's this whole set of police scandals. | ||
| There are a whole lot of different questions that are still kind of hanging out there. | ||
| And also an upcoming criminal trial for the mayor's former chief advisor that we should see play out in 2026. | ||
| So, yeah, still the full scope of what took place under the Adams administration is certainly, you know, unknown. | ||
| And I will say that there have been some real wins for Mayor Adams. | ||
| Increasing literacy, trash containerization. | ||
| And so it's a very complex legacy when you look back at Eric Adams and the four years that he spent in Australia. | ||
| You know, on that question of investigations that are going to continue beyond the Adams administration, I haven't seen Julie Menon here, the city councilwoman who is widely believed to have the votes to become the next speaker. | ||
|
unidentified
|
We'll find that out in a few days from now. | |
| But one thing she told me is that if she does become speaker, they are going to continue and they are going to launch some investigations into what went on during the Adams administration. | ||
| So even aside from court processes, this new council is going to ask some very pointed questions about who did what and why over the last four years, which of course the public is entitled to know. | ||
| Absolutely. | ||
| And as you mentioned, Julie Menon and the pending future of whoever will ultimately be selected as the next city council speaker, we'll have to see what the relationship develops between Mayor Zorhan Mamdani and the City Council. | ||
| We saw some really explosive moments between Mayor Eric Adams and Council Speaker Adrian Adams. | ||
| The council sued the mayor and his administration several times. | ||
| And on his way out of the office, Eric Adams vetoed more than a dozen bills that were recently passed by the city council. | ||
| So will Zorhan Mamdani work with the city council to put forward a shared agenda where there are some commonalities or will there be more friction? | ||
| Yeah, absolutely. | ||
| It's getting very, very noisy here. | ||
| There's a lot going on. | ||
| They're playing some pre-recorded materials. | ||
| It sounds like it's from the campaign trail, as a matter of fact. | ||
| So this is in keeping with Zoran Momdani's status as the son of a filmmaker. | ||
| I think we can expect a highly produced event here. | ||
| And I think that's what we're hearing some of right now. | ||
| Yeah, highly produced video. | ||
| And we saw many highly produced videos on social media from Zorhan Mamdani throughout the campaign. | ||
| And that's part of how he connected with New Yorkers, going around to those different neighborhood spots, you know, speaking to New Yorkers and the language that they use and the communities that they call home. | ||
| That's part of what helps them stand out. | ||
| Okay, let's listen in. | ||
| Let's take a look at this video and the inauguration formal activities will follow. | ||
| Let's watch. | ||
| We stand here with a remarkable opportunity to create a better New York. | ||
| New York, this power, it's yours. | ||
| Okay. | ||
|
unidentified
|
Good afternoon and happy new year, everyone. | |
| My name is Bernie Wagenblast. | ||
| Pleased to join you and be the announcer this afternoon. | ||
| Perhaps you best know me as the voice that says, please stand away from the platform edge. | ||
| Thank you for joining us on this historic day. | ||
| Please welcome Comptroller Mark Levine, joined by his wife Evilise Suarez and sons Alejandro Levine and Daniel Levine. | ||
| public advocate, Jumanji Williams, joined by his wife, India Sneed Williams, and daughters, Amelie Claremont and Amani Williams. | ||
| Please welcome Mayor Zoran Mondani and First Lady Rama Duwaji. | ||
| Welcome the | ||
| ceremonial officers representing the Parks Department, the Department OF Sanitation, the NEW YORK CITY Police Department, and the FIRE Department OF NEW YORK. | ||
| Please welcome to the stage, Javier Munoz, as we rise for the National Anthem. | ||
| Oh, say can you see by the dawn's early What so proud we hailed at the twilight's last gleaming Whose broad stripes and bright stars Through the twilight's last gleaming | ||
| through the perilous fight or the ramparts we watched, were so gallantly streaming? | ||
| And the rockets, red glare, the bombs bursting in air gave proof through the night that our flag was still there. | ||
| Oh say, does that star spangled banner, yet wave o'er the land of the free and the home of the brave. | ||
| To deliver a welcome message, introducing Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | ||
| My name is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and it is my deep honor and privilege to welcome you to the inauguration of our new mayor of New York City, Zoran Kwame Mamdani. | ||
| We gather here today to celebrate the beginning of his leadership, as well as that of two incredible elected officials who will be guiding the city by his side, public advocate Jumani D. Williams and our new controller, Mark D. Levine. | ||
| We also celebrate the hundreds and thousands of public servants and city leaders getting to work today, from our sanitation workers and librarians to our commissioners, deputy mayors, and our schools chancellor as they care for our city and its people in the coming weeks, months, and years. | ||
| Together, this ascent marks a new era for New York City. | ||
| Led by a historic new mayor in Zorhan Mamdani, guided by his dedication to a working class that makes our beautiful city run. | ||
| Importantly, I also ask that we consider today an inauguration for each one of us too, the nearly 8.5 million New Yorkers who make up the greatest city on earth. | ||
| Because it is the people of New York City who have chosen historic, ambitious leadership in response to untenable and unprecedented times. | ||
| New York, we have chosen courage over fear. | ||
| We have chosen prosperity for the many over spoils for the few. | ||
| And when the entrenched ways would rather have us dig in our feet and seek refuge in the past, we have chosen instead to turn towards making a new future for all of us. | ||
| In Zorhan Mamdani, we have chosen a mayor who is relentlessly dedicated to making life not just possible, but aspirational for working people. | ||
| New York City has chosen the ambitious pursuit of universal child care, affordable rent and housing, and clean and dignified public transit for all. | ||
| And we have chosen that over the distractions of bigotry and the barbarism of extreme income inequality. | ||
| We have chosen this path because we know that it's the right thing to do, it's the smart thing to do, and that if we can make it here, we can make it anywhere. | ||
| New York City, this is an inauguration for all of us because choosing this mayor and this vision is an ambitious pursuit. | ||
| It calls on all of us to return to public life en masse. | ||
| Now is the time for us to turn towards our neighbors, stand with them, and return to community life. | ||
| A city for all will require all of us to fill our streets, our schools, our houses of faith, our PTAs, and our block associations as we support this mayor in making an affordable city a reality for all of us. | ||
| Zohran Mamdani will be the first Muslim mayor of our great city. | ||
|
unidentified
|
He will be our first immigrant mayor in over a century. | |
| And he will be the youngest mayor of New York City in generations. | ||
| But most importantly, Zohran will be a mayor for all of us. | ||
| With that, let us extend our deepest well wishes and support to Zohran, his wife Rama, and his family, as well as those of our public advocate, Jumani Williams, and controller Mark Levine. | ||
| We send you, your spouses and families, and all your loved ones all the support in the world as you embark on this great pursuit of a better city and future for all. | ||
| Felicidades! | ||
|
unidentified
|
From the Islamic Center of New York City, please welcome Imam Khalid Latif, joined on stage by representatives from New York City's many faith communities. | |
| Rabbi Ellen Lippmann, Pastor Andrew Weltz, Reverend Stephen Green, Elder Jeffrey Sigler, Achuria Arun Khosai, and Sardif Tandi Koor. | ||
| Let us pray. | ||
| Ya Allah Ya Rahman Ya Arhamurah, most merciful of those who show mercy, we turn to you on this day from our city with hopeful hearts. | ||
| Thank you for this moment. | ||
| Thank you for the amazing individuals you have gathered here, diverse in color, language, journey, and name, but united in purpose, stitched together by shared hopes, all yearning to build something meaningful, lasting, and rooted in love, dignity, respect, and justice, no longer for the few, but for all. | ||
| We come before you mindful that moments like this do not arrive on their own. | ||
| They are carried forward by sacrifice, by organizing, by courage, by people who refuse to accept that the way things were was the way they had to remain. | ||
| We come knowing that this day stands on the shoulders of so many who were told to wait their turn to quiet their demands, to lower their expectations, but instead chose to believe that another New York was possible. | ||
| We recognize that belief is not abstract. | ||
| It was practiced by tenants organizing against displacement, by workers demanding fair wages, by parents advocating for their children's futures, by communities who kept showing up even when the odds said they should not. | ||
| We gather today with hearts shaped by this city, by its noise and its neighborhoods, by its subways and sanctuaries, by the dreams carried in many languages and the prayers whispered on crowded blocks. | ||
| We thank you for New York City, for a place that has taught the world how difference can become strength, how survival can become solidarity, how strangers can become neighbors, and for being a place that taught us that a young immigrant democratic socialist Muslim can be bold enough to run and brave enough to win. | ||
| Not by abandoning conviction, but by standing firmly within it. | ||
| Not by shrinking who he is, but by trusting that authenticity can move a city towards justice. | ||
| We thank you for the beautiful diversity of this city. | ||
| For a people formed across continents and generations, across race and religion, culture and class. | ||
| Teach us to never see that diversity as something to manage or fear, but as a sacred trust, a collective inheritance that expands our moral imagination and strengthens our shared future. | ||
| On this day of transition and responsibility, we ask you to bless this moment of leadership and all who are entrusted with the weight of public service. | ||
| Grant wisdom to Mayor Zahran Mamdani and remind him that leadership is not about power, but about proximity. | ||
| To the people who struggle, to the voices too often ignored, to the lives behind the statistics. | ||
| Keep him close to the realities of this city. | ||
| To the family doubling up in a one-bedroom apartment because rent has outpaced wages. | ||
| To the home health aide commuting hours each day to care for others while struggling to afford care for themselves. | ||
| To the public school student navigating overcrowded classrooms. | ||
| To the small business owner choosing between closing their doors or passing rising costs onto neighbors who already have too little. | ||
| Bless him with the courage to remain grounded, the humility to keep learning, and the strength to lead with principle, even when the profession, even when the pressure to compromise is loud. | ||
| Let his leadership reflect the movements and communities that made this moment possible. | ||
| And never let him forget that this office exists to serve the people, not to rise above them. | ||
| We lift up all those who came together to make what many said could never happen happen. | ||
| Organizers and volunteers, neighbors who spoke to neighbors, young people who believe their voices matter, elders who remembered past struggles and recognized this moment as part of a longer arc. | ||
| Bless those who knocked on doors in the cold, who stood on street corners with clipboards and hope, who had difficult conversations rooted in love and who chose participation over despair. | ||
| Let the spirit that carried this moment forward not fade after today, but deepen and always endure. | ||
| Make this city affordable for the families who built it and the workers who sustain it. | ||
| Let no one have to choose between rent and dignity, between medicine and meals, between staying and surviving. | ||
| We lift before you those living paycheck to paycheck in the shadow of unimaginable wealth. | ||
| Those working multiple jobs yet still one emergency away from crisis. | ||
| Those whose labor keeps this city moving but whose lives feel increasingly pushed to the margins. | ||
| Let justice not be a slogan but a structure. | ||
| Let equity not be a promise but a practice. | ||
| Let policy be shaped by compassion and budgets reflective of our values. | ||
| Protect the most vulnerable amongst us, our children and elders, our immigrants and asylum seekers, our unhoused neighbors, our workers, our artists, our caregivers, and the students who keep this city alive. | ||
| Heal what has been broken by neglect and greed. | ||
| Soften hearts hardened by fear. | ||
| Replace cynicism with courage and despair with collective hope. | ||
| And let that hope be something we practice daily, not something we push back. | ||
| Let it live in our policies, our streets, our schools, and our systems. | ||
| Teach us that hope is not passive. | ||
| It is built through accountability, through care, and through a refusal to abandon one another. | ||
| Remind all New Yorkers, those born here, and those who arrived yesterday, that this city belongs to all of us and that our liberation is bound together. | ||
| Help us show up for one another, not just in moments of crisis, but in the long patient work of care. | ||
| Teach us that the city we pray for is the city we must also build. | ||
| And make this administration and all of us who call this place home a means of mercy, a force for fairness, and a reflection of your justice in this world. | ||
| Let this moment be not an ending, but a beginning. | ||
| Let what was once thought impossible become the standard by which we measure our future. | ||
| And let New York City continue to show the world what is possible when people believe in one another and continue to show that respect, dignity, and compassion are no longer for the few, but for the all. | ||
| Amen. Amen. | ||
|
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Please welcome Mandy Patankin, accompanied by the fifth grade members of Staten Island's PS22 Chorus, directed by Greg Breinberg and accompanied by Adam Ben-David. | |
| It's alright. | ||
| Little darling, the smile is returning to the faces. | ||
| Little darling, it seems like since it's been here. | ||
| When all the world is a hopeless jumble and the raindrops tumble all around, heaven opens a magic lane. | ||
| When all the clouds darken up the skyway, there's a rainbow highway to be found leading from your window pane to a place behind the sun, | ||
| just a step beyond the rail over the rainbow way up high. | ||
| There's a land that I heard of once in a loved skies are blue | ||
| And the dreams that you dare to dream really to come true someday I'll worship the sun, Wake up. | ||
| Where the clouds are far behind Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops | ||
| Birds fly over the rainbow. | ||
| Why then, oh I, can I, if happy little bluebirds fly beyond the rainbow? | ||
| Whoa! | ||
| None of that may be energy. | ||
| Energy to administer the oath of office for Comptroller Mark Levine. | ||
| Welcome, Attorney General, Letitia James. | ||
| It's Brooklyn. | ||
| good afternoon and a happy new year I am so proud to be here today to usher in a new day for New York City, and today it is my honor and my privilege to swear in someone who has been a champion for tenants, a fearless fighter for working people in every corner of our city, my friend and the next controller of New York City, Mark Levine. | ||
| It is truly my honor and my privilege to administer his oath of office. | ||
| Comptroller-elect Levine, please raise your right hand and repeat after me. | ||
| I, Mark Levine, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States and I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Comptroller of the City of New York according to the Constitution. | ||
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to the best of my ability, according to the best of my ability. | |
| Congratulations, Mr. Controller. | ||
| All right, well, there's no going back. | ||
| Give it up for the best attorney general in America, Tish James. | ||
| Give it up for the PS22 chorus all the way from Staten Island to Staten Island in the House. | ||
| The rest are stuck on the ferry. | ||
| All right. | ||
| Thank you to my wonderful family, my wife, Yvalis, and our sons, Alejandro and Daniel. | ||
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I love you so, so much. | |
| Thank you to my partners in city government, our new mayor, Zohran Mamdani, and public advocate, Jamani Williams. | ||
| How remarkable is it that on these steps today we have three swearings in. | ||
| One by a leader using a Quran, one by a leader using a Christian Bible, and one by a leader using a Humas or Hebrew Bible. | ||
| I am proud, proud to live in a city where this is possible. | ||
| Muy vuero días lo tode a todos. | ||
| Melero esteng acaco unos otros. | ||
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La mentre que tampasando tanto frío varo ni modo. | |
| Muojim habaím lo kujemeze quef chebatem. | ||
| Chero me puime es domasizas. | ||
| Now, for those of you who do not know Spanish, Hebrew, or Greek, welcome. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
| And please download Duolingo. | ||
| Now, I know what you're all thinking. | ||
| What the heck is a Comtroller? | ||
| Excellent question. | ||
| This job is about ensuring that people who have spent their lives working for this city can retire with dignity. | ||
| It's about ensuring that our budget reflects our values, that our government inspires the trust of its people. | ||
| A Comptroller also understands the consequences for working-class families when they are excluded from our economic system. | ||
| I have seen this in my own neighborhood of Washington Heights, where far too many families for far too long have been held back from achieving their dreams, blocked from banks, and forced to rely instead on pawn shops and loan sharks. | ||
| Back in the 1990s, I founded a community credit union uptown to change this. | ||
| This financial cooperative, owned by the community, has lent out over $100 million in small loans in the neighborhood with a 98% repayment rate, proving that when you give working people an opportunity, they will seize it. | ||
| This is what our city must do now on a grand scale. | ||
| Build an economy where we care for each other, where our prosperity is shared, where everyone has a fair shot. | ||
| Our city today is booming for people at the top, but it's getting tougher and tougher for working families to pay their rent, to find a job with a living wage, and yes, Mr. Mayor, to find affordable child care. | ||
| A comptroller must use the tools of the office to close this gap, and I will. | ||
| We will invest tens of millions of dollars in new units of affordable housing to build all over the five boroughs. | ||
| We'll make sure that housing is actually built, no matter the opposition from entrenched constituencies. | ||
| We'll use the powers of oversight in the comptroller's office to ensure that the city keeps its promises, that it delivers the highest quality city services, that every non-profit with a city contract actually gets paid on time. | ||
| Wow, very big applause line. | ||
| Note that, Mr. Mayor. | ||
| We got to work on that. | ||
| We will secure full funding for legal services for New Yorkers facing eviction so that at last our city lives up to its obligations under our first in the nation right to council law for tenants. | ||
| Right, Vanessa Gibson? | ||
| You're on board for that? | ||
| We will invest in protecting our imperiled planet by accelerating our city's transition to green energy so that one day when we look at New York from above, we will see a city full of solar panels and trees. | ||
| We will protect the immigrants of this city so that families are not ripped apart by masked, unnamed government agents. | ||
| And we will seek to understand each other. | ||
| Though we will not always see the world the same way, we can and must ensure that all New Yorkers feel safe and respected, whether they're entering a house of worship, lighting a menorah in public, or saying the Salah prayer anywhere in this city. | ||
| Our city government can and must take on the challenges of this moment, but to do that, we need a better city government, one that uses the tools of the modern era, a government freed from the worst limitations of bureaucracy, one nimble enough to move fast during a period of accelerating change and to capitalize on the new promises of technology while protecting against its perils. | ||
| No other city on earth has this many lives, languages, and dreams in one place. | ||
| Our task now is to ensure that this will be a city where all of us together can achieve those dreams. | ||
| Almost 30 years ago, I stood in a small storefront in Washington Heights helping immigrant neighbors open their first savings accounts. | ||
| They trusted us with their dreams. | ||
| A small business, a child's education, a home of their own. | ||
| Today, you have entrusted me with something far greater, to safeguard the resources and the future of this entire city. | ||
| I promise you, I will honor that trust every single day. | ||
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Mutísi Mahracias, toda aba Ev Caristo Polí. | |
| Thank you so much. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
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To recite his original poem, Proof, please welcome Cornelius E.D. Hold on. | |
| Well, first of all, I want to thank the Mayor. | ||
| I want to thank the Mayor and his staff for inviting me, for the honor of inviting me here to read this poem. | ||
| This morning, when I woke up, my wife joked that sometime during the campaign, there was probably somebody who said, him? | ||
| He'll get elected when hell freezes over. | ||
| So, here we are. | ||
| And I really want to, really just thank the biggest, greatest gift I think I've ever had was to be in the blue room this morning after doing sound check because the energy and the recognition and the joy of this moment was incredible. | ||
| I mean, this is it, isn't it? | ||
| I mean, this is what this work has been about. | ||
| Right? | ||
| And it was just wonderful to see people see that moment. | ||
| I was reminded this morning that New York was the first capital of the United States. | ||
| And it seems to me that this might be another kind of new beginning for a certain kind of energy that might be starts here and goes out across the country, the rest of the nation. | ||
| So, though this is a New York poem, a New York-based poem, I'd like to dedicate this poem. | ||
| I just retired. | ||
| I'd like to dedicate this poem to my trans queer foreign students of color at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. | ||
| So they have, so they can see this is possible. | ||
| The poem is called Proof. | ||
| Proof. | ||
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You have to imagine it. | |
| Who said you were too dark, too large, too queer, too loud? | ||
| Who said you were too poor, too strange, too fat? | ||
|
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You have to imagine it. | |
| Who said you must keep quiet? | ||
| Who heard your story, then roll their eyes? | ||
| Who tried to change your name to invisible? | ||
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You've got to imagine. | |
| Who heard your name and refused to pronounce it? | ||
| Who checked their watch and said, not now? | ||
| James Baldwin wrote: The place in which I'll fit will not exist until I make it. | ||
| New York, city of invention, roiling town, refresher and renewer. | ||
| New York, city of the real, where the canyons whisper in a hundred tongues, New York, where your lucky self waits for your arrival, where there is always soil for your root. | ||
| This is our time. | ||
| The taste of us, the spice of us, the hollers and the rhythms and the beats of us, and the echo of our ancestors who made certain we know who we are. | ||
| City of insistence, city of resistance, you have to imagine an army that wins without firing a bullet, a joy that wears down the rock of no. | ||
| Up from insults, up from blocked doors, up from trick bags, up from fear, up from shame, up from the way it was done before. | ||
| You have to imagine that space they said wasn't yours, that time they said you'd never own. | ||
| The invisible city lit on its way. | ||
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This moment is our proof. | |
| Thank you. | ||
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To administer the oath of office to public advocate Jumanji Williams, welcome three New Yorkers who have been impacted by immigration enforcement in New York City. | |
| Josue Nikolno Amundray, Amadou Lee, Asadou Diallo, and Rebecca Press. | ||
| Show me what community looks like. | ||
| Show me what community looks like. | ||
| Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| My name is Amadou Lee, and I'm a Senegalese American, a proud New Yorker, and I am honored to be a naturalized American citizen. | ||
| I came into this country in 2001 as a teenager. | ||
| I was undocumented with no one and nowhere to turn. | ||
| Yet, I felt at home. | ||
| As I walked through the city, the bright light seems to whisper in my ear, telling me, dream, Amadou, dream. | ||
| You too, you belong here. | ||
| But being undocumented meant living in fear. | ||
| It meant being vulnerable. | ||
| It meant facing deportation. | ||
| However, after my life story made the front page of the New York Times, something extraordinary happened. | ||
| People showed up. | ||
| Blue-collar workers, teachers, celebrities, even presidents. | ||
| They too said that I belong here too. | ||
| Because of them, I was allowed to stay here. | ||
| Because of them, I was allowed to study. | ||
| I was allowed to build a life. | ||
| But every day, thousands of New Yorkers face the fear I once did without the spotlight. | ||
| They fear being abducted, detained, and disappeared. | ||
| With me today is Miss Isa Tujallo and Mr. Perez. | ||
| Ms. Jallo has lived in the United States for over 20 years. | ||
| This past Thanksgiving, she was abducted by ICE at La Guada Airport. | ||
| She was shackled and detained. | ||
| After decades of building a life here, her freedom was suddenly shipped away. | ||
| Mr. Perez and his family fled Venezuela in search of safety to New York City. | ||
| He and his partner and their three beautiful children were summoned to 26th Federal Plaza just before Christmas. | ||
| Just before Christmas. | ||
| not knowing whether they would walk out together as a family. | ||
| And standing besides each one, as he stood besides many New Yorkers, was public advocate Jumani D. Williams. | ||
| He used his position. | ||
| He used his voice and his power. | ||
| Not for himself, but to defend people that are under attack, to speak to those whose voices are too often ignored. | ||
| And because of that solidarity, because that leadership showed up, because the neighbors showed up, Ms. Diallo and the Perez family can be here today with us. | ||
| I would like to thank everyone who continued to stand with immigrant families in the face of fear and intimidation. | ||
| And everyone who refused to look away. | ||
| We are the proof that it matters. | ||
| And we are reminded that advocacy can truly change lives. | ||
| Because of the courage and compassion of New Yorkers, we stand here today at City Hall, ladies and gentlemen. | ||
| Ladies and gentlemen, we are proud to swear in the people's voice, the people's champion, our public advocate, Mr. Jumani D. Williams, ladies and gentlemen, Give it up for him. | ||
| Please raise your right hand. | ||
| I, Jumani D. Williams, do solemnly affirm that I will support the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the state of New York. | ||
| And that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of Public Advocate for the City of New York. | ||
| Of the Office of the Public Advocate for the City of New York. | ||
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According to the best of my ability. | |
| According to the best of my ability. | ||
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Congratulations. | |
| Taran Mark, we did it. | ||
| We're here. | ||
| Thanks to everybody out here. | ||
| Thank y'all. | ||
| Peace and blessing, love and light as we begin a new term, a new era for New York City. | ||
| Thank you, everyone. | ||
| I want to thank Amadou and these inspiring families for being here at this ceremony in New York. | ||
| I am a son of immigrants myself. | ||
| My parents came over from Grenada over 50 years ago. | ||
| I was just sworn in on my late father's Bible. | ||
| My mother is here today. | ||
| I'm so proud to have my family and my wife and my children and my sister and my mom, everyone standing with theirs. | ||
| Their stories perfectly capture this moment for the city. | ||
| The challenges we face, the hardships we endure, and the hope that persists. | ||
| Those realities are often in tension because this is a time and a place of contradictions. | ||
| One where even as the federal government drives us to despair, local leadership can invite inspiration. | ||
| When this celebration at City Hall is only blocks from tribulation at Federal Plaza, when the relief that these families are still ununited comes as so many are being separated. | ||
| And this sense of contradiction carries across the five boroughs. | ||
| This is a city of enormous wealth and enduring poverty. | ||
| Of the greed of some and the generosity of many, of darkness and of light. | ||
| And I've seen the darkness, of course, yet I look out on New York today and I see so much light. | ||
| These contradictions mean we can at once love our city as it is and challenge its flaws, not as a reason for pessimism, but a call for activism. | ||
| As public advocate, I've tried to be an activist elected official. | ||
| Someone who pushes back now, now I see the chance to push forward. | ||
| To provide accountability aimed at the idea that government has an opportunity and obligation to do good. | ||
| At the core of public service and progressivism is the principle of making government work and showing people it can work for them. | ||
| That means we need to meet people where they are, also show grace instead of ignoring what brought them there and be honest about why. | ||
| The powers in place would rather create an other to blame for our problems than to address them, whether it be our immigrant communities, our trans siblings, our homeless neighbors, or too many other marginalized groups. | ||
| Rejecting those ideas means naming the reason that the powers in place perpetuate them. | ||
| Because if we are divided, the status quo stands. | ||
| Whether you arrived in our city generations ago, or five years ago, or five minutes ago, the reasons so many New Yorkers have too little are not because of the people who have even less or who have been here for less time. | ||
| Not because of the people pushed to the bottom, but the systems entrenched at the top. | ||
| That's where we should focus our anger and our action. | ||
| If we are not driven apart by the divisions of our races, our religions, our identities, but pulled together by the commonalities and our emotions, our needs, and our humanity, then we can all climb. | ||
| I know that the project of New York is possible. | ||
| That great mosaic described by another mayor who believed in democratic social ideals, David Dinkins. | ||
| Yet the truth of it is there are people who are rooting for New York to fail. | ||
| Some couch it in concern, others openly scorn our city. | ||
| But at the heart of this hate is the truth that our success, that our very existence belies their core belief that New York is not possible. | ||
| They demonize us because our mosaic challenges their ideology. | ||
| They want to be right in their cynicism more than they want us to succeed in our idealism. | ||
| They are driven by the idea that bringing together so many diverse people, cultures, faiths, identities into a united community is impossible. | ||
| But New York, we are a shining beacon of possibility. | ||
| We cross new cultural borders through each subway stop and are introduced to new experiences through each passenger. | ||
| Our possibilities come in every language and from every heritage. | ||
| So do our prayers, so do our people. | ||
| So does our power. | ||
| We've shown it in the face of oligarchy and authoritarianism. | ||
| Neighbors standing with neighbors across borough and background to defend immigrant communities and feed hungry families. | ||
| We see it in the multicultural mosaic that brought us to this very moment. | ||
| Even with this great moment, I know that realizing the full potential of our possibility will not be easy. | ||
| It never has been. | ||
| Yet I believe it's possible to make great progress because I've seen it through my years in the building behind me and the streets before us. | ||
| I've been in our movement and I've seen things move. | ||
| The simple truth is that governing is hard, that achievement is exhausting. | ||
| And I aim to assist my partners in government when possible and hold them to account when necessary to learn from what we've done and guide what we can do. | ||
| I believe in this possibility that with the people, the tools, the passions, and the compassion that we need, we can meet the moment and create change. | ||
| We can look into the unknown and see opportunity. | ||
| That's the thing about uncertainty. | ||
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Anything can happen, but anything can happen. | |
| We could make New York more affordable, more safe, and more just. | ||
| We couldn't. | ||
| We can and we have to try. | ||
| This optimism toward action is embedded not only in our city's heritage, history, but in my heritage. | ||
| In Grenada, Maurice Bishop took up the fight for these radical, crazy ideas, socialist ideals like housing, healthcare, and education. | ||
| He demanded that we move forward ever, backward never. | ||
| And today I echo that call from the Isle of Spice to the island of Manhattan. | ||
| He also cautioned that revolutionaries do not have the right to be cowards. | ||
| We can be afraid, but we have to meet that courage to match it. | ||
| There are things to be feared, but there is also reason to hope. | ||
| Hope is the embrace of possibility. | ||
| Hope and fear are undeniably connected. | ||
| Hope is the belief that good can come. | ||
| Fair is the worry that it won't. | ||
| In these contradicting ideals, we are faced with a choice, and I choose hope. | ||
| In other words, I have faith. | ||
| But faith without works is dead. | ||
| So today, I'm committing to the work of public service, and I ask every New Yorker to commit their own talents to use what they have and do what they can for the success of our city and everyone who calls it home. | ||
| I don't know if when my mother, my Grenadian mother, arrived as a teenager, she hoped that a half a century later her son would speak from these steps. | ||
| But she could have, because here in New York City, we choose to celebrate possibility and work to make reality. | ||
| I wish I could go back and tell my younger self that. | ||
| Instead, I'll say it to my daughters today, to the children of the Perez Ada Nede family, to everyone who may question their own worth like I did, or whether it's worth fighting for the city with all its contradictions and problems and possibilities. | ||
| And I got to take a second to say something to so many young people who are out there. | ||
| But I'm going to say it to one person who's waited 49 years to hear it. | ||
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Little black boy, you were worth it. | |
| And you always were. | ||
|
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And without any titles, you were enough. | |
| You were always enough. | ||
|
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You deserve to accept love. | |
| And you deserve to be protected. | ||
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And I'm honored to be here to help create a city that's worthy of that for you. | |
| I'm so proud of you so just hold on We're going to be all right. | ||
| You're gonna be all right. | ||
| I'm so proud of you. | ||
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It's all right. | |
| As we head into a new year, a new term, I want to ask all of you to take an oath of me. | ||
| Our neighbors, I know in Brazil, adopted this motto that I've tried to embody. | ||
| I did here for Comptroller Lander, but I gotta give him this crap that no one let go of anyone's hands because if we're all connected, we can't lose anyone. | ||
| So we hold on to the hand of our neighbor and we reach out with our other hand to grasp someone who may fall through the cracks and we bring them along. | ||
| I want everyone, if they're comfortable, take a hand of the person next to you or the arm and just repeat after me. | ||
| We can all be the voice of the people. | ||
| I know what's ahead, but I won't lose hold. | ||
| And I won't lose hope. | ||
| Anything can happen, so anything can happen. | ||
| And as we march forward, no one let go of anyone's hands. | ||
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To perform the labor anthem, Bread and Roses, please welcome to the stage, Lucy Dacus. | |
| Where I want to be a man turning up. | ||
| I feel numb. | ||
| On me, though we call. | ||
| I guess I must be having fun. | ||
| Less we say about it, the better. | ||
| Make it up as we go along. | ||
| Feet on the ground, head in the sky. | ||
| It's open, and nothing's wrong. | ||
| Nothing. | ||
| But I'm at time. | ||
| You got my blue eyes. | ||
| And you're standing in the sun. | ||
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perform the labor anthem, Bread and Roses, please welcome to the stage, Lucy Dacus. | |
| Happy New Year. | ||
| a thousand milloffs grey are touched with all the radiance that a sudden sun discloses. | ||
| For the people hear us singing: Bread and roses, bread and roses as we go marching, marching. | ||
| We battle to for men for they are women's children and we mother them again. | ||
| Our lives shall not be sweated from birth until life closes. | ||
| Hearts starve as well as bodies. | ||
| Give us bread, but give us roses as we go marching, marching. | ||
| Unnumbered women dead go crying through our singing their ancient call for bread. | ||
| Smart and love and beauty, the drudgery spirits knew. | ||
| Yes, it is bread, but we fight for it. | ||
| As we go marching, marching, we... | ||
| The rising of the women means the rising of the race. | ||
| No more the drudge and idle tent, the toil where one reposes, but a sharing of life's glories. | ||
| Bread and roses, bread and we sweated from birth until life closes. | ||
| Hearts starve as well as bodies. | ||
| I lose his breath. | ||
| Congratulations Zora And accept it that soon you'll be drenched to the bone. | ||
| If your time be worth worth saving to administer the oath of office for Mayor Zoran Momdani, welcome Senator Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Thank you Mr. Mayor, thank you very much for inviting me to what has been an extraordinarily moving and beautiful afternoon. | ||
| And I'm here mostly to thank the people of New York City. | ||
| At a time in our country's history when we are seeing too much hatred, too much divisiveness, and too much injustice. | ||
| Thank you for electing Saran Mumdadi as your mayor. | ||
| New York, thank you for inspiring our nation. | ||
| Thank you for giving us, from coast to coast, the hope and the vision that we can create government that works for all, not just the wealthy and the few. | ||
| At a moment when people in America and in fact throughout the world are losing faith in democracy, over 90,000 of you in this city volunteered for Zaran's campaign. | ||
| You knocked on doors. | ||
| You shared your dreams and your hopes for the future of this city. | ||
| And in the process, you took on the Democratic establishment, the Republican establishment, the President of the United States, and some enormously wealthy oligarchs. | ||
| You defeated them in the biggest political upset in modern American history. | ||
| You showed the world the most important lesson that can be learned today. | ||
| And that is that when working people stand together, when we don't let them divide us up, there is nothing we cannot accomplish. | ||
| Running a great and winning campaign was extremely difficult, but governing a city of 8 million people with all of its complexities and all of the problems that Zaran is inheriting will be even harder. | ||
| Zaran needed your help to win the election. | ||
| Now he will need your help to govern. | ||
| Grassroots democracy and people participating in the day-to-day struggles of this city will lead to good governance. | ||
| Please remain involved. | ||
| You know, all of us have heard how Zehran's opponents have called the agenda that he campaigned on radical, communistic, oh, and absolutely unachievable. | ||
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Really, That's not what we believe. | |
| In the richest country in the history of the world, making sure that people can live in affordable housing is not radical. | ||
| It is the right and decent thing to do. | ||
| And in the midst of a massive housing crisis, it is exactly what the people of this city and this country want and need. | ||
| Providing free and high-quality child care is not radical. | ||
| Countries all over the world have done it for years. | ||
| It is what our kids require if they're going to be well prepared for school and what working parents desperately need. | ||
| It is, in fact, what every city in America should be doing. | ||
| Free bus transportation is not radical. | ||
| It will save workers time and money, protect our environment, and make the city more efficient. | ||
| And making sure that every family in this city, regardless of income, has access to decent quality food at an affordable cost is not radical. | ||
| Good nutrition keeps us healthy, helps prevent chronic illnesses. | ||
| In the long run, city-sponsored grocery stores will save society money. | ||
| Lastly, and maybe most importantly, demanding that the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes. | ||
| As I was demanding that the wealthy and large corporations start paying their fair share of taxes, it's not radical. | ||
| It is exactly the right thing to do. | ||
| Today, while over 60% of our people, people in New York, people in Vermont, people all over this country are living paycheck to paycheck, we have more income and wealth inequality than we have ever had. | ||
| While tens of millions struggle to put food on the table, pay for health care, pay for housing, the top 1% have never, ever had it so good. | ||
| And yet, there are billionaires in large corporations that pay almost nothing in taxes. | ||
| That has got to end. | ||
| That will end. | ||
| The billionaire class in this city and in this country have got to understand that in America they cannot have it all. | ||
| That America, our great country, must belong to all of us, not just a few. | ||
| And that lesson begins today in New York City. | ||
| Let me thank you all for the hope and inspiration that you are giving people all over this country. | ||
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And now it is my honor to swear in your new mayor after me. | |
| I, Zaran Kwame Mamdani, I, Zevran Kwame Mamdani, do solemnly swear that I will support the Constitution of the United States, that I will support the Constitution of the United States, | ||
| the Constitution of the State of New York, the Constitution of the State of New York, and the Charter of the City of New York, and the Charter of the City of New York, and that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, of the Office of the Mayor of the City of New York, according to the best of my ability, according to the best of my ability. | ||
| So help me, God. | ||
| So help me God. | ||
| Workers, today begins a new era. | ||
| I stand before you, moved by the privilege of taking this sacred oath, humbled by the faith that you have placed in me, and honored to serve as either your 111th or 112th mayor of New York City. | ||
| But I do not stand alone. | ||
| I stand alongside you, the tens of thousands of you gathered here in Lower Manhattan, warmed against the January chill by the resurgent flame of hope. | ||
| I stand alongside countless more New Yorkers watching from cramped kitchens in Flushing and barbershops in East New York, from cell phones propped against the dashboards of parked taxicabs at LaGuardia, from hospitals in Mott Haven and libraries in El Barrio that have too long known only neglect. | ||
| I stand alongside construction workers in steel-toed boots and halal cart vendors whose knees ache from working all day. | ||
| I stand alongside neighbors who carry a plate of food to the elderly couple down the hall, those in a rush who still lift strangers' strollers up subway stairs, and every person who makes the choice day after day, even when it feels impossible, to call our city home. | ||
| I stand alongside over one million New Yorkers who voted for this day nearly two months ago. | ||
| And I stand just as resolutely alongside those who did not. | ||
| I know there are some who view this administration with distrust or disdain, or who see politics as permanently broken. | ||
| And while only action can change minds, I promise you this. | ||
| If you are a New Yorker, I am your mayor. | ||
| Regardless of whether we agree, I will protect you, celebrate with you, mourn alongside you, and never, not for a second, hide from you. | ||
| I thank the labor and movement leaders here today, the activists and the elected officials who will return to fighting for New Yorkers the second this ceremony concludes, and the performers who have gifted us with their talent. | ||
| Thank you to Governor Hochul. | ||
| Thank you as well to Mayor Adams. | ||
| Dorothy's son, a son of Brownsville who rose from washing dishes to the highest position in our city for being here as well. | ||
| He and I have had our share of disagreements, but I will always be touched that he chose me as the mayoral candidate that he would most want to be trapped with on an elevator. | ||
| Thank you to the two titans who as an assembly member I've had the privilege of being represented by in Congress, Nidia Velázquez and our incredible opening speaker, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. | ||
| You have paved the way for this moment. | ||
| Thank you to the man whose leadership I seek most to emulate, who I am so grateful to be sworn in by today, Senator Bernie Sanders. | ||
| Thank you to my teams, from the assembly to the campaign to the transition, and now the team I am so excited to lead from City Hall. | ||
| Thank you to my parents, Mama and Baba, for raising me, for teaching me how to be in this world, and for having brought me to this city. | ||
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Thank you to my family from Kampala to Dili. | |
| And thank you to my wife Rama for being my best friend and for always showing me the beauty in everyday things. | ||
| And most of all, thank you to the people of New York. | ||
| A moment like this comes rarely. | ||
| Seldom do we hold such an opportunity to transform and reinvent. | ||
| Rarer still is it the people themselves whose hands are the ones upon the levers of change. | ||
| And yet we know that too often in our past, moments of great possibility have been promptly surrendered to small imagination and smaller ambition. | ||
| What was promised was never pursued. | ||
| What could have changed remained the same. | ||
| For the New Yorkers most eager to see our city remade, the weight has only grown heavier. | ||
| The wait has only grown longer. | ||
| In writing this address, I have been told that this is the occasion to reset expectations, that I should use this opportunity to encourage the people of New York to ask for little and expect even less. | ||
| I will do no such thing. | ||
| The only expectation I seek to reset is that of small expectations. | ||
| Beginning today, we will govern expansively and audaciously. | ||
| We may not always succeed, but never will we be accused of lacking the courage to try. | ||
| To those who insist that the era of big government is over, hear me when I say this. | ||
| No longer will City Hall hesitate to use its power to improve New Yorkers' lives. | ||
| For too long, we have turned to the private sector for greatness while accepting mediocrity from those who serve the public. | ||
| I cannot blame anyone who has come to question the role of government, whose faith in democracy has been eroded by decades of apathy. | ||
| We will restore that trust by walking a different path. | ||
| One where government is no longer solely the final recourse for those struggling. | ||
| One where excellence is no longer the exception. | ||
| We expect greatness from the cooks wielding a thousand spices, from those who stride out onto our Broadway stages, and from our starting point guard at Madison Square Garden. | ||
| Let us demand the same from those who work in government. | ||
| In a city where the mere names of our streets are associated with the innovation of the industries that call them home, we will make the word City Hall synonymous with both resolve and results. | ||
| As we embark upon this work, let us advance a new question, a new answer to the question asked of every generation: Who does New York belong to? | ||
| For much of our history, the response from City Hall has been simple. | ||
| It belongs only to the wealthy and well-connected, those who never strained to capture the attention of those in power. | ||
| Working people have reckoned with the consequences. | ||
| Crowded classrooms and public housing developments where the elevators sit out of orders, roads littered with potholes and buses that arrive half an hour late, if at all. | ||
| Wages that do not rise and corporations that rip off consumers and employees alike. | ||
| And still, there have been brief fleeting moments where the equation changed. | ||
| Twelve years ago, Bill de Blasio stood where I stand now as he promised to put an end to economic and social inequalities that divided our city into two. | ||
| In 1990, David Dinkins swore the same oath I swore today, vowing to celebrate the gorgeous mosaic that is New York, where every one of us is deserving of a decent life. | ||
| And nearly six decades before him, Fiorella LaGuardia took office with the goal of building a city that was far greater and more beautiful for the hungry and the poor. | ||
| Some of these mayors achieved more success than others, but they were unified by a shared belief that New York could belong to more than just a privileged few. | ||
| It could belong to those who operate our subways and rake our parks, those who feed us biryani and beef patties, Picanya and Pastrami on Rai. | ||
| And they know that this belief could be made true if only government dared to work hardest for those who work hardest. | ||
| Over the years to come, my administration will resurrect that legacy. | ||
| City Hall will deliver an agenda of safety, affordability, and abundance, where government looks and lives like the people it represents, never flinches in the fight against corporate greed, and refuses to cower before challenges that others have deemed too complicated. | ||
| In so doing, we will provide our own answer to that age-old question: who does New York belong to? | ||
| Well, my friends, we can look to Madiba and the South African Freedom Charter. | ||
| New York belongs to all who live in it. | ||
| Together, we will tell a new story of our city. | ||
| This will not be a tale of one city governed only by the 1%, nor will it be a tale of two cities, the rich versus the poor. | ||
| It will be a tale of eight and a half million cities, each of them a New Yorker with hopes and fears, each a universe, each of them woven together. | ||
| The authors of this story will speak Pashto and Mandarin, Yiddish and Creole. | ||
| They will pray in mosques, at Shul, at church, at Gurudwaras and Mandirs and temples, and many will not pray at all. | ||
| They will be Russian Jewish immigrants in Brighton Beach, Italians in Rossville, and Irish families in Woodhaven, many of whom came here with nothing but a dream of a better life, a dream which has withered away. | ||
| They will be young people in cramped marble hill apartments where the walls shake when the subway passes. | ||
| They will be black homeowners in St. Albans, whose homes represent a physical testament to triumph over decades of lesser paid labor and redlining. | ||
| They will be Palestinian New Yorkers in Bay Ridge, who will no longer have to contend with a politics that speaks of universalism and then makes them the exception. | ||
| Few of these eight and a half million will fit into neat and easy boxes. | ||
| Some will be voters from Hillside Avenue or Fordham Road who supported President Trump a year before they voted for me. | ||
| Tired of being failed by their party's establishment, the majority will not use the language that we often expect from those who wield influence. | ||
| I welcome the change. | ||
| For too long, those fluent in the good grammar of civility have deployed decorum to mask agendas of cruelty. | ||
| Many of these people have been betrayed by the established order. | ||
| But in our administration, their needs will be met. | ||
| Their hopes and dreams and interests will be reflected transparently in government. | ||
| They will shape our future. | ||
| And if for too long these communities have existed as distinct from one another, we will draw this city closer together. | ||
| We will replace the frigidity of rugged individualism with the warmth of collectivism. | ||
| If our campaign demonstrated that the people of New York yearn for solidarity, then let this government foster it. | ||
| Because no matter what you eat, how you pray, or where you come from, the words that most define us are the two we all share: New Yorkers. | ||
| And it will be New Yorkers who reform a long-broken property tax system. | ||
| New Yorkers who will create a new Department of Community Safety that will tackle the mental health crisis and let the police focus on the job they signed up to do. | ||
| New Yorkers who will take on the bad landlords who mistreat their tenants and free small business owners from the shackles of bloated bureaucracy. | ||
| And I am proud to be one of those New Yorkers. | ||
| When we won the primary last June, there were many who said these aspirations and those who held them had come out of nowhere. | ||
| Yet one man's nowhere is another man's somewhere. | ||
| This movement came out of eight and a half million somewheres. | ||
| Taxi cab depots and Amazon warehouses. | ||
| DSA meetings and curbside domino games. | ||
| The powers that be had looked away from these places for quite some time if they'd known about them at all. | ||
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So they dismissed them as nowhere. | |
| But in our city, where every corner of these five boroughs holds power, there is no nowhere and there is no no one. | ||
| There is only New York and there are only New Yorkers. | ||
| Eight and a half million New Yorkers will speak this new era into existence. | ||
| It will be loud. | ||
| It will be different. | ||
| It will feel like the New York we love. | ||
| No matter how long you have called this city home, that love has shaped your life. | ||
| I know that it has shaped mine. | ||
| This is the city where I set land speed records on my razor scooter at the age of 12, quickest four blocks of my life. | ||
| The city where I ate powdered donuts at halftimes during AYSO soccer games and realized I probably was not going to be going pro. | ||
| The city where I devoured two big slices at Coronet's Pizza, played cricket with my friends at Ferry Point Park, and took the one train to the BX10 only to still show up late to Bronx Science. | ||
| The city where I have gone on hunger strike just outside these gates. | ||
| Sat claustrophobic on a stalled end train just after Atlantic Avenue and waited in quiet terror for my father to emerge from 26 Federal Plaza. | ||
| The city where I took a beautiful woman named Rama to McCarran Park on our first date and swore a different oath to become an American citizen on Pearl Street. | ||
| To live in New York, to love New York, is to know that we are the stewards of something without equal in our world. | ||
| Where else can you hear the sound of the steel pan, savor the smell of San Cocho, and pay $9 for coffee on the same block? | ||
| Where else could a Muslim kid like me grow up eating bagels and locks every Sunday? | ||
| That love will be our guide as we pursue our agenda. | ||
| Here, where the language of the New Deal was born, we will return the vast resources of this city to the workers who call it home. | ||
| Not only will we make it possible for every New Yorker to afford a life they love once again, we will overcome the isolation that too many feel and connect the people of this city to one another. | ||
| The cost of child care will no longer discourage young adults from starting a family Because we will deliver universal child care for the many by taxing the wealthiest few. | ||
| Those in rent-stabilized homes will no longer dread the latest rent hike because we will freeze the rent. | ||
| Getting on a bus without worrying about a fare hike or whether you'll be able to get to your destination on time will no longer be deemed a small miracle because we will make those buses fast and free. | ||
| These policies are not simply about the costs we make free, but the lives we fill with freedom. | ||
| For too long in our city, freedom has belonged only to those who can afford to buy it. | ||
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Our city hall will change that. | |
| These promises carried our movement to City Hall, and they will carry us from the rallying cries of a campaign to the realities of a new era in politics. | ||
| Two Sundays ago, as snow softly fell, I spent 12 hours at the Museum of the Moving Image in Astoria, listening to New Yorkers from every borough as they told me about the city that is theirs. | ||
| We distrust, we discuss construction hours on the Van Wyck Expressway and EBT eligibility, affordable housing for artists and ice raids. | ||
| I spoke to a man named TJ who said that one day a few years ago, his heart broke as he realized that he would never get ahead here, no matter how hard he worked. | ||
| I spoke to a Pakistani auntie named Samina who told me that this movement had fostered something too rare, softness in people's hearts. | ||
| As she said to me in Urdu, 142 New Yorkers out of eight and a half million. | ||
| And yet, if anything united each person sitting across from me, it was the shared recognition that this moment demands a new politics and a new approach to power. | ||
| We will deliver nothing less as we work each day to make this city belong to more of its people than it did the day before. | ||
| Here is what I want you to expect from the administration that this morning moved into the building behind me. | ||
| We will transform the culture of City Hall from one of no to one of how. | ||
| We will answer to all New Yorkers, not to any billionaire or oligarch who thinks they can buy our democracy. | ||
| We will govern without shame and insecurity, making no apology for what we believe. | ||
| I was elected as a democratic socialist and I will govern as a democratic socialist. | ||
| ...in my principles for fear of being deemed radical. | ||
| As the great senator from Vermont once said, what's radical is a system which gives so much to so few and denies so many people the basic necessities of life. | ||
| We will strive each day to ensure that no New Yorker is priced out of any one of those basic necessities. | ||
| And throughout it all, we will, in the words of Jason Terrence Phillips, better known as Jadakiss or Jay Tremois, be outside. | ||
| this is a government of New York, New York and for New York. | ||
| Before I want to ask all of you if you are able, whether you are here today or anywhere watching, to stand with me. | ||
| I ask you to stand with us now and every day that follows. | ||
| City Hall will not be able to deliver on our own. | ||
| And while we will encourage New Yorkers to demand more from those with the great privilege of serving them, we will encourage you to demand more of yourselves as well. | ||
| The movement we began over a year ago did not end with our election. | ||
| It will not end this afternoon. | ||
| It lives on with every battle we will fight together. | ||
| Every blizzard and flood we withstand together. | ||
| Every moment of fiscal challenge we overcome with ambition, not austerity, together. | ||
| Every way we pursue change in working people's interests rather than at their expense, together. | ||
| No longer will we treat victory as an invitation to turn off the news. | ||
| From today onwards, we will understand victory very simply. | ||
| Something with the power to transform lives and something that demands effort from each of us every single day. | ||
| What we achieve together will reach across the five boroughs and it will resonate far beyond. | ||
| There are many who will be watching. | ||
| They want to know if the left can govern. | ||
| They want to know if the struggles that afflict them can be solved. | ||
| They want to know if it is right to hope again. | ||
| So standing together with the wind of purpose at our backs, we will do something that New Yorkers do better than anyone else. | ||
| We will set an example for the world. | ||
| If what Sinatra said is true, let us prove that anyone can make it in New York and anywhere else too. | ||
| Let us prove that when a city belongs to the people, there is no need too small to be met. | ||
| No person too sick to be made healthy. | ||
| No one too alone to feel like New York is their home. | ||
| The work continues. | ||
| The work endures. | ||
| The work, my friends, has only just begun. | ||
| Thank you. | ||
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Ceremonially sworn in by Bernie Sanders, just delivered a speech to set the tone of his administration. | |
| And here comes the confetti. | ||
| January 1st doesn't just mark the start of the new year. | ||
| As noted by ABC Capitol Hill correspondent Jay O'Brien on X, COVID-era Obamacare tax credits expired today. | ||
| He goes on to define the potential impact of the expiration, writing, healthcare costs for 20-plus million Americans who get their insurance through the Affordable Care Act will now double on average, but in some cases, triple or quadruple. | ||
| Punchbowl News also reporting on the issue, noting that when the House and Senate return, the House will bring up a vote on a three-year clean extension of Affordable Care Act subsidies. | ||
| Although they write that fix likely won't make it through the Senate, where a bipartisan group led by Republican Susan Collins of Maine and Democrat Gene Shaheen of New Hampshire are working on alternative proposals. | ||
| When Congress returns, watch live gavel-to-gavel coverage of the House on C-SPAN and the Senate on C-SPAN 2. | ||
| We'll also continue to bring you updates on healthcare negotiations across the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| Friday on C-SPAN Ceasefire, at a time when finding common ground matters most in Washington, former House Speaker Republican California Congressman Kevin McCarthy and former Independent West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin come together to preview the year ahead in politics, including the upcoming midterm elections and the political and legislative battles ahead in Washington. | ||
| They join host Dasha Burns. | ||
| Bridging the divide in American politics. | ||
| Watch Ceasefire Friday at 7 p.m. and 10 p.m. Eastern and Pacific, only on C-SPAN. | ||
| In a divided media world, one place brings Americans together. | ||
| According to a new MAGID research report, nearly 90 million Americans turn to C-SPAN, and they're almost perfectly balanced. | ||
| 28% conservative, 27% liberal or progressive, 41% moderate. | ||
| Republicans watching Democrats, Democrats watching Republicans, moderates watching all sides. | ||
| Because C-SPAN viewers want the facts straight from the source. | ||
| No commentary, no agenda, just democracy. | ||
| Unfiltered every day on the C-SPAN networks. | ||
| Next, British Prime Minister Kier Starmer giving his annual New Year's message. | ||
| He talks about the key priorities for the UK and wishes British residents a happy new year. | ||
| Things have been tough in Britain for a while. | ||
| For many, life is still harder than it should be. | ||
| You long for a bit more money in your pockets, a meal out, a holiday, the chance to make a special family moment extra special. | ||
| In 2026, the choices we've made will mean more people will begin to feel positive change in your bills, your communities, and your health service. | ||
| But even more people will feel once again a sense of hope, a belief that things can and will get better. | ||
| Feel that the promise of renewal can become a reality. | ||
| And my government will make it that reality. | ||
| More police on the streets by March. | ||
| Energy bills down and the number of new health hubs up in April. | ||
| More funding for local communities. | ||
| And with that change, decline will be reversed. | ||
| That opportunity for you and pride in your community can be restored. | ||
| I share the frustration about the pace of change. | ||
| The challenges we face were decades in the making. | ||
| And renewal is not an overnight job. | ||
| But putting our country back on a stable footing will become our strength. | ||
| Strength that means we can support you with the cost of living. |