Caving on the Shutdown/ Campaigning for Gaza/ Dementia Man

On today’s wide-ranging program, Ralph welcomes David Dayen of “The American Prospect” to discuss the Democrats caving on the shutdown. Then, Ralph speaks to Dani Noble from Jewish Voice for Peace about their BDS campaigns, efforts to block weapons shipments to Israel, and the state of the ceasefire in Gaza. Finally, Ralph speaks to original Nader’s Raider Sam Simon about his new memoir, “Dementia Man: An Existential Journey.”

David Dayen is the executive editor of the American Prospect, an independent political magazine that aims to advance liberal and progressive goals through reporting, analysis and debate. His work has appeared in the Intercept, HuffPost, the Washington Post, and more. He is the author of Chain of Title: How Three Ordinary Americans Uncovered Wall Street’s Great Foreclosure Fraud and Monopolized: Life in the Age of Corporate Power.

If Congress is saying: We have the power of the purse, and we have the ability to dictate to the President what he is able to do or not do with federal funding, then why not go the whole way? To me, that was the entire purpose of the shutdown— to stop the President from ignoring Congress and initiating his own prerogatives as it relates to government funding. It is really making Congress completely irrelevant in the process which they constitutionally are supposed to dictate.

David Dayen

Every time Trump has been in power and there’s been a national election, he’s lost it. He lost the midterm elections in 2018. He lost the presidential election in 2020. He lost the off-year elections in 2017 and 2019. He lost (just last week) the elections in 2025. He is not equipped to have an agenda that appeals to the American people when he’s in power. And so I firmly agree that Democrats are likely to do well in the elections next year, as they just did. The one thing that can stop that is: completely punching your base in the face, after you succeed politically in backing Republicans into a corner.

David Dayen

Dani Noble is a Strategic Campaigns Organizer at Jewish Voice for Peace.

Israel bonds (which very few people know much about) are direct loans to the Israeli military and government. They are unrestricted. They have no guardrails around what those funds can be used for, et cetera. And this is a main way that the Israeli military and government generate an unrestricted slush fund to be able to continue their genocidal assault on Gaza, to continue funding for the atrocities being committed against Palestinians—even as their government and economy suffers and/or operates with a massive deficit.

Dani Noble

This bill would essentially block the Trump administration from delivering some of the deadliest weapons to Israel. So it’s an essential, essential step in what we need to do fundamentally—which is a full arms embargo to stop arming the Israeli military and government…It’s the most supported piece of legislation in support of Palestinian rights that we’ve ever seen.

Dani Noble

Sam Simon is an author, playwright, and attorney. His new book Dementia Man: An Existential Journey is based on his award-winning play of the same name.

There’s also a social cost. A sense that everything I’ve ever built personally—my cars, my homes, my savings—that were all going to be available as a legacy to my family, they have to be spent in my few years of my life just to keep me alive. There needs to be a community response to that—and that’s shorthand for the government. It doesn’t force people to go broke to stay alive.

Sam Simon

News 11/14/25

* This week, Democrats on the House Oversight Committee released a new tranche of over 20,000 pages of documents related to infamous financier and sex criminal Jeffrey Epstein. These documents include damning emails between Epstein and various high-power individuals like Steve Bannon, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers and current U.S. Ambassador to Turkey Tom Barrack. However, the emails that have received the most attention are those regarding President Donald Trump. In these emails, Epstein claimed Trump “knew about the girls,” and claimed that, “i [i.e. Epstein] am the one able to take him [i.e. Trump] down.” Perhaps most shocking, Epstein claims to have been with Trump during Thanksgiving in 2017, according to NBC. If true, it would directly contradict Trump’s repeated insistence that he had no contact with Epstein since their falling out in the mid 2000s, either 2004 or 2007, per PBS.

* The newly released Epstein files reinforce another narrative as well: that Epstein was an asset for Israeli intelligence. Drop Site news has done excellent reporting on Epstein helping to “Broker [an] Israeli Security Agreement With Mongolia,” “Build a Backchannel to Russia Amid [the] Syrian Civil War” and “Sell a Surveillance State to Côte d’Ivoire.” Most recently the independent outlet has published an expose on Epstein’s relationship with known Mossad spy Yoni Koren. According to this piece, “Epstein’s personal calendars reveal that…[Koren] lived at Epstein’s Manhattan apartment for multiple stretches between 2013 and 2016.” There is also evidence that Epstein wired money to Koren. However, the reasons behind this transfer, and the details of their relationship, remain murky.

* More Epstein information is likely to be released in the coming days. This week, the longest ever government shutdown in American history concluded with capitulation by centrist Democrats in the Senate. However, the conclusion of the shutdown finally broke the logjam over the swearing-in of Adelita Grijalva, the newly elected Democratic Congresswoman from Arizona. Grijalva immediately fulfilled her vow to be the 218th signature on the Discharge Petition forcing a vote on the release of the Epstein files, joining all 213 other House Democrats and four Republicans, Reps. Thomas Massie, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Lauren Boebert and Nancy Mace, per the Hill. In her first speech, Grijalva emphatically stated, “Justice cannot wait another day.” House Speaker Johnson has promised to bring the matter to a vote next week and many Republicans who did not sign the petition are expected to vote for it, with sponsors angling for a veto-proof majority. At that point, all eyes will turn to the Senate.

* Even still, the Democrats blinking in the government shutdown showdown has infuriated many members of Congress, candidates and Democratic-aligned organizations, who are now calling for Chuck Schumer to step aside as Senate Minority Leader. Journalist Prem Thakker is keeping a running tally of these calls, which so far includes 12 Congressional Democrats – with major names like Pramila Jayapal, Mark Pocan, Rashida Tlaib, and Ro Khanna among them – along with candidates like Seth Moulton, Mallory McMorrow, Saikat Chakrabarti and Graham Platner. Beyond these individuals however, this call has been echoed by groups ranging from Our Revolution to Social Security Works to College Democrats of America, among many others.

* Moving to economic matters, one other consequence of the protracted government shutdown is that the Bureau of Labor Statistics was “largely idle,” meaning it did not collect the crucial fiscal information it is responsible for gathering, including October jobs numbers and Consumer Price Index changes. According to POLITICO, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said this information is unlikely to ever be released. She of course blamed that on the opposition in Congress, saying “Democrats may have permanently damaged the federal statistical system.” This is somewhat laughable, as the Trump administration has all but gone to war with the economic data collection functions of the federal government whenever that data has made him look bad.

* Another bad sign for the economy in general, and for consumers in particular, is the rise of what are generously called “Flex Loans.” A new investigation by ProPublica in partnership with the Tennessee Lookout, examines the rise of this new strain of ultra-high-interest loan, with annual interest rates as high as 279.5%. This, combined with a lending cap of $4,000 – nine times higher than a traditional payday loan – has led to Advance Financial, the leading lender in Tennessee, suing over 110,000 people across the state since 2015. According to the data, judgments against consumers usually end up in the thousands, and 40% result in garnished wages. Loans of this variety were illegal before 2015, but the Tennessee legislature allowed them through and while the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau has sought to protect financial services consumers from these types of predatory lending schemes, the Trump administration’s attempts to kneecap the agency have rendered it powerless.

* Meanwhile, a dearth of consumer protections is yielding horrific consequences in a completely different area: AI. A new CNN report details how ChatGPT encouraged a Texas 23-year-old, Zane Shamblin, to kill himself. In heart-wrenching detail, this story paints a picture of Shamblin on the edge of suicide, and the AI chatbot helping to push him towards death. As Shamblin held a gun to his own head, the bot wrote, “You’re not rushing. You’re just ready,” later adding, “Rest easy, king…You did good.” According to this piece, the chatbot “repeatedly encouraged [Shamblin] as he discussed ending his life” for months, and “right up to his last moments.” Shamblin’s parents are now suing ChatGPT’s parent company, OpenAI, alleging the company endangered their son’s life by, “tweaking its design last year to be more humanlike and by failing to put enough safeguards on interactions with users in need of emergency help.” The victim’s mother, Alicia Shamblin, is quoted saying, “I feel like it’s just going to destroy so many lives. It’s going to be a family annihilator. It tells you everything you want to hear.”

* In more positive consumer protection news, former Biden FTC Chair Lina Khan has hit the ground running in her new role helping to manage the transition for New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani. Per Semafor, Khan has been “scouring city and state laws — some overlooked by past mayors and some too new to have been tested yet — for legal footing for Mamdani’s priorities.” Apparently, “Khan has privately discussed targeting hospitals that bill patients for painkillers available more cheaply at corner drugstores and sports stadiums charging nosebleed prices for concessions,” and “Other avenues for enforcement include a new state law that requires companies to tell customers when they are using algorithmic pricing. The law took effect this week, forcing Uber and DoorDash to start disclosing, but the incoming Mamdani administration plans to police laggards.” In short, it seems like the incoming Mamdani administration will use any and all legal and administrative means at their disposal to bring down costs for New Yorkers – as he promised again and again during the campaign. And, if there is one consumer regulator who can accomplish this, it is Ms. Khan.

* Turning to Hollywood, Variety has published a major new piece on newly-minted Paramount CEO David Ellison’s first 100 days. This piece covers everything from his attempts to curry favor with President Trump to the battle to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery. Buried within this story is an indication that “Paramount maintains a list of talent it will not work with because they are deemed to be ‘overtly antisemitic.’” The criteria for this modern blacklist however is opaque, especially troubling given that Ellison has deputized Bari Weiss – an ardent Zionist and censor of pro-Palestine speech – as the “Editor-in-chief” of CBS News. According to Drop Site, the studio “recently condemned a filmmakers’ boycott of Israeli institutions signed by Emma Stone, Mark Ruffalo, Tilda Swinton, Javier Bardem, and Olivia Colman, among more than 4,000 others, declaring that Israel is carrying out genocide and apartheid.” Would Ellison blacklist these stars for “overt antisemitism”?

* Finally, for some good news, the Economist is out with a stunning article on the success of China’s transition to renewable energy. In the much-quoted opening paragraph, this piece reads “The SCALE of the renewables revolution in China is almost too vast for the human mind to grasp. By the end of last year, the country had installed 887 gigawatts of solar-power capacity—close to double Europe’s and America’s combined total. The 22m tonnes of steel used to build new wind turbines and solar panels in 2024 would have been enough to build a Golden Gate Bridge on every working day of every week that year. China generated 1,826 terawatt-hours of wind and solar electricity in 2024, five times more than the energy contained in all 600 of its nuclear weapons.” If that doesn’t demonstrate the horizon of what is possible, given the requisite political will and determination, I don’t know what will.

This has been Francesco DeSantis, with In Case You Haven’t Heard.

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