The Real News Podcast

The Federal Reserve has responded to runaway inflation with a spike in interest rates. The real cost of such measures is primarily paid by the working class, who are caught in a double-bind of rising prices of goods and falling wages. As TRNN has covered extensively in the past, the real culprits of rising inflation are multinational corporations and financial institutions, who have opportunistica...

Editor's note: This interview was filmed on Dec. 1, 2022. A 19th person, Edgardo Mejia, died at Rikers on Sunday, Dec. 11. 19 people have perished at Rikers Island in 2022, making this the deadliest year in the jail's history. Rikers Island's previous deadliest year was just last year, when 16 people died at the notorious pretrial detention center. NYC Mayor Eric Adams has rejected calls to close...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/body-cam-shows-baltimore-county-police-arresting-citizen-watchdog-at-gunpoint An unnamed motorist was stopped by Baltimore County police, held at gunpoint, and manhandled by multiple officers before being arrested. Body cam footage reveals the motorist, who has requested anonymity, requesting multiple times to speak with a supervisor and...

Read the transcript of this podcast and read the show notes: https://therealnews.com/railroad-workers-speak-out-after-congress-and-biden-block-rail-strike After a 3-year saga of stalled contract negotiations between the country’s freight rail carriers and the 12 unions representing over 100,000 railroad workers, "pro-union" President Biden and Congress last week "averted" a national rail shutdown...

Read the transcript of this episode: https://therealnews.com/william-robinson-global-revolts-in-the-age-of-covid-capitalism Capitalism's response to the COVID-19 pandemic has come at the expense of the lives, health, and freedom of millions of poor and working people around the world. While corporations guzzle profits at every opportunity, governments have been ready to discipline workers to keep...

Read the transcript of this episode: https://therealnews.com/family-of-beloved-baltimore-soccer-coach-killed-by-private-security-guard-demands-justice EDITOR’S NOTE: The Justice for Kevin march will be taking place at 6:30pm EST on Wednesday, Dec. 7, at 4020 E. Lombard Street in Baltimore, Maryland, not on Thursday, Dec. 8. Kevin Torres was beloved by his family and his community. After emigrating...

Read the transcript of this episode: https://therealnews.com/unite-here-union-canvassers-mobilize-ahead-of-georgia-runoff-elections Senator Raphael Warnock is facing off against Republican challenger Herschel Walker after neither secured 50% of the vote during the Nov. 8 general election. UNITE HERE is aiming to hit more than 500,000 doors for Warnock, a pastor at Martin Luther King’s former churc...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/how-private-developers-profited-from-tax-subsidies-in-baltimore-intended-to-revitalize-poor-neighborhoods For 50 years, Baltimore city officials have trumpeted the use of tax subsidies for private developers as a way to catalyze economic development. As more and more public funds have gone into the pockets of the rich, the city’s prospec...

Read the transcript of this episode: https://therealnews.com/gov-ron-desantis-oversaw-torture-in-guantanamo-as-a-military-lawyer Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's political star is on the rise, with many commentators identifying him as the heir apparent to a post-Trump GOP. For someone with such an immense public persona, DeSantis has been curiously tight-lipped about his military past. A bombshell...

Read the transcript of this interview: https://therealnews.com Marc Steiner speaks with Florida State House Rep. Anna Eskamani and Dream Defenders Co-Executive Director Rachel Gilmer about the stakes of Florida's politics and the prospects for undoing the GOP's stranglehold. Anna Vishkaee Eskamani is a member of the Florida House of Representatives from the 47th district in Orange County. Rachel G...

Read the transcript of this podcast: In this “News Brief” episode of the acclaimed media criticism podcast Citations Needed, hosts Nima Shirazi and Adam Johnson speak with TRNN Editor-in-Chief Maximillian Alvarez and TRNN Associate Editor Mel Buer about the crisis in the US freight rail industry and the media campaign to obscure President Biden and Congressional Dems selling out rail workers. This...

Read the transcript of this podcast and read the show notes: https://therealnews.com/striking-case-new-holland-workers-prepare-to-spend-the-holidays-on-the-picket-line This time last year, 10,000 workers and UAW members at John Deere waged a massive strike that became a national news story. This year, workers at another industrial manufacturer are spending Thanksgiving carrying on a strike that ha...

Jim Thorpe's athletic career was a marvel. As a two-time Olympic gold medal winner, as well as a professional football, baseball, and basketball player, Thorpe left his mark across a wide array of sports disciplines. A new biography from David Maraniss, Path Lit by Lightning: The Life of Jim Thorpe, offers us a deeper look into Thorpe's life. Raised as a member of the Sac and Fox nation, the young...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/after-26-years-in-prison-cambodian-refugee-phoeun-you-was-supposed-to-be-paroled-ice-deported-him-instead When Phoeun You's family left Cambodia as refugees, he was only one year old. After spending a number of years in a refugee camp in Thailand, You's family was resettled in the US. At the age of 20, You was convicted of murder and inc...

Last month, the world watched with bated breath as Brazilians voted in two rounds of high-stakes elections that pitted far-right President Jair Bolsonaro against former president, leftist hero, and leader of the Workers Party Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. After being elected president in 2018, Bolsonaro and his far-right movement have unleashed a darkness upon Brazil that has had wide-ranging implica...

Brazil has a new president-elect. Former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva won the Brazilian presidency on October 30th. He defeated far-right president Jair Bolsonaro by just over 2 million votes. Tens of thousands of Lula supporters descended on Sao Paulo’s Paulista Avenue for huge celebrations. Brazil on Fire host Michael Fox was there and he takes us to the streets. But Bolsonaro supporters...

Read the transcript of this episode: https://therealnews.com/william-robinson-how-covid-19-will-lead-to-a-global-capitalist-police-state Capitalism was in crisis before the COVID-19 pandemic, and existing conditions of inequality, dispossession, and ecological ruin set the stage for the deadly success of the coronavirus. But how has COVID-19 changed capitalism, and where is the system headed now?...

The largest strike in the US since 2019 is currently underway across University of California campuses. 48,000 teaching assistants, postdocs, researchers and graders on the front lines of teaching and research at California’s prestigious public university system are seeking a minimum annual salary of $54,000 and increased child-care benefits, saying they do not earn enough to live in the state. Th...

Read the transcript of this podcast: https://therealnews.com/scott-ritter-dont-believe-the-hype-ukraine-cant-win-this-war Reports of Ukrainian triumph and imminent Russian defeat have flooded the West since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine began in February. Yet how much merit is there to this narrative? Former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and UN weapons inspector William Scott Ritter Jr. spea...

Anti-migrant political rhetoric often focuses on the spectacles of border crossings, criminal organizations, and poverty in the Global South. But where do these phenomena come from? A closer look at the history of El Salvador and the Salvadoran diaspora in the US offers a lesson in the links between the so-called "migration crisis" and US imperialism and policing. In his new memoir and first book,...

A recent HBO documentary entitled The Slow Hustle has brought renewed attention to the mysterious death of Baltimore homicide detective Sean Suiter in 2017. Police initially claimed Suiter was the victim of a lone assailant after his body was found in a West Baltimore alley with a gunshot wound to the head. But as details began to emerge regarding Suiter’s involvement with some of Baltimore’s most...

Debates over the proper approach to the Russo-Ukrainian War have dominated much of the year. Yet discussions within the western left have not always featured the perspectives of Ukrainians and Russians themselves. The Real News Network board member Bill Fletcher, in partnership with Haymarket Books, hosts a panel with Ukrainian and Russian academics. Yuliya Yurchenko is a senior lecturer and resea...

Call center workers employed by Maximus went on strike at four locations—in Louisiana, Mississippi, Kentucky, and Virginia—this Tuesday, November 1. Maximus is a federal contractor, and during the open enrollment period workers there handle a non-stop stream of high-stakes calls from people trying to navigate the Affordable Care Act, Medicare, and Medicaid systems, but they have been pushed to the...

Less than two weeks in, Elon Musk's $44 billion purchase of Twitter is already mired in a web of controversies. The CEO of multiple underwhelming companies moved quickly to fire Twitter's board and crown himself the company's supreme authority. Mass layoffs, a half-baked plan to start a subscription service, and a witch hunt for any users who dare impersonate him have been on the top of the new Tw...

The soul of the labor movement is the fight for democracy in and outside of the workplace—and, from the shop floor to the ballot box, organizers, volunteers, and rank-and-file workers with UNITE HERE are putting everything they have into that fight. Even in the midst of a deadly pandemic that hit the service and hospitality industries especially hard, union members with UNITE HERE hit the pavement...