Day: June 24, 2026

What Do the Big Wins By Mamdani-Backed Democratic Socialists in New York Mean for the Future of Democratic Party Leadership

We begin with candidates endorsed by Mayor Mamdani sweeping the New York primaries, with a progressive Democrat Brad Lander defeating an incumbent Democratic congressmen Dan Goldman and two DSA candidates defeating a five-term incumbent and a protégée of a long-serving retiring Rep. Nydia Velazquez. Joining us to discuss this seismic shift as Democratic Socialists prove to be more popular than the incumbent Democrats is Eric Blanc, an Assistant Professor of Labor Studies at Rutgers University, an organizer trainer in the Emergency Workplace Organizing Committee, the director of the Worker to Worker Collaborative, and the author of the Substack Labor Politics.His latest book is We Are the Union: How Worker-to-Worker Organizing Is Revitalizing Labor and Winning Big.

Could There Be a Silver Lining in the Wake of the Otherwise Unmitigated Disaster Trump and Netanyahu Brought to the Persian Gulf?

Then we examine the gap between Trump’s upbeat happy-talk about his so-called “peace deal” with Iran which at every turn is being contradicted by Iranian negotiators, and look for a silver lining in the wake of an otherwise unmitigated disaster Trump and Netanyahu have brought about in the Persian Gulf. Joining us is Stephen Wertheim, a senior fellow in the American Statecraft Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and a visiting lecturer at Yale Law School. He is the author of Tomorrow, the World: The Birth of U.S. Global Supremacy and we discuss his article at The New York Times with Rob Malley, “Trump’s Iran Debacle Could Be a Gift for America.”

Could Ukrainian Gains in Crimea Bring About the End of Putin?

Then finally we get an assessment of Ukrainian gains in Crimea which if successful, could bring about the fall of Putin who annexed the peninsula in 2014 with his “Green Men” is a much-celebrated victory. Joining us is Christopher Miller, the Financial Times’ chief Ukraine correspondent. He has lived in and reported from Ukraine since 2010, and is the author of The War Came To Us: Life And Death In Ukraine, and his reporting has focused on Ukrainian politics, President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s relationship with Donald Trump, and various aspects of Russia’s war against Ukraine. His work has exposed Russian war crimes and revealed the plight of people forced to live under brutal occupation and his latest article at The Financial Times we discuss is “Putin sours on Trump over his latest Ukraine shift.”