2/18/26: GOP Midterm Wipeout Polling, Zohran Rent Freeze Win, UAE Pressured On Sudan

28:27And that can end up being fairly expensive. And if it costs$40 ,000 to rehab the unit, it's a lot, but let's say it costs$40 ,000 to rehab the unit, and you can't move the rent to cover that cost. Because construction is expensive in New York. Then what a lot of landlords do is they just leave it empty. Yep. And that's not like nobody would argue that we should leave units empty. I think Zoran has actually talked about that too, like empty units. There's tons of like ghost units. So to me, a more complete policy would be like, okay, we're asking you to subsidize against the market rate by keeping this rent underneath the market rate.

29:07So we then as the city are going to come in and we'll rehab it for you. Like do that at least. Well, let's put this on the screen. I mean, this is E4. This is going to be Assad. This is Mamdani doing a little bit of doge, because even before he was elected, he was the guy who was holding court, speaking fluent abundance in conversations with Derek Thompson. So listen to Mayor Mamdani. This is the next stop. We are being as aggressive as we can in recognizing additional revenue and have surpassed the state in our estimates of personal income tax, corporate tax, and sales tax. But responsible governance is not only about revenue.

29:50It is also about discipline. That means finding savings across city government, reducing bureaucratic waste, and rendering agencies more efficient and cost-effective. That is why I signed an executive order establishing a chief savings officer in every city agency. Chief Savings Officers, or CSOs, have a simple remit, identifying savings within the agencies they serve. They will consolidate redundancies, insource programs that have been outsourced to bloated consultant contracts, and eliminate extraneous programs. Each CSO will issue a public report by March 20th, detailing the savings they have found and provide updated assessments every six months.

30:32These CSOs will have clear goals, 1.5 % in savings in fiscal year 2026 and 2.5 % in fiscal year 2027. I mean, he's picking all the low-hanging fruit, Ryan. He's cleaning the subway. He's doing an obvious thing where he's, as a progressive Democrat, Democratic Socialist, going out and saying, we're appointing chief savings officers to get me a report within a month, basically, about savings that they found throughout the government. So coupling rent control with a little bit of doge is at least better than not, I suppose. Yeah, and the beauty of this to me is that it, and we had Christian Parenti on here saying the left needs to embrace some austerity.

31:12He literally made exactly, yes, the argument for what Zoran Mandani just did. Yeah, and the argument is that if you and the public care about the government doing good things, it has to do them efficiently and effectively. Yeah. And that the government's purpose is to benefit the public, not just to kind of make work for government workers. And under the Tammany Hall kind of style of city politics, it becomes its own thing. Yes. And its own power base. but if you want to really radically use it to make as as as a kind of force for working people in the city working people have to believe that the government is that they are the government the government is them that they're and they're working as one rather than that the government is this thing that is its own separate entity that is actually just trying to extract from you And too many working people think correctly, not I wouldn't say correctly, but like fairly.

32:23Yeah. And in many cases correctly have identified the city governments as like just extractive. And then their goal then is then to get the jobs in government or to get, you know, if their cousin works in this department, maybe they can get in that department too. And that's not sustainable and it's not a way to scale up. You want it working for everybody. So good for Mamdani for embracing this because, like, it's too easy to just to not do it. Yeah. And just go the next. And that's why Doge could have been great if, like, Doge came in and was like, wait a minute, you're all using these, like, 1984 computers running on Microsoft Windows 98?

33:08Like, let's upgrade this stuff. Let's make it so you can do your job more efficiently. It's going to cost a little money here, but it's going to save all of this money down the road. That would have been one of the best services. Al Gore tried to do that, remember? Yeah, but to your point, Doge lost the public trust really quickly. And to undertake significant reforms, you have to have public trust. And they lost public trust. And actually, I wanted to ask you about this because this, I just remember, broke last night. I'm curious what your take of this is. New York Post, so they don't like Mayor Momdani, to say the least.

33:49Two, by the way, producer Max says he's up plus 16. He's up 16 points in his approval rating. So interesting. Momdani won by about 15. So that's up. So he's like even more. Yeah, it's unusual to go northward. We'll see how that continues. But here's the headline. Momdani brings back homeless encampment sweeps, turning on campaign promise after backlash over cold weather deaths. So the New York Post is reporting that he's expected to reverse course on this campaign promise because of this deadly cold snap in which I think at least 10 people have died on the streets of New York City. It's been very, very cold.

34:25And sources have told the New York Post that that is going to start possibly as soon as today. Very interesting. The Post says the city's Department of Homeless Services, which has been left in the lurch with zero guidance since Mom Donnie's order came down to halt the sweeps last month, will again take the lead on issuing notices to people living on the streets, sources said. That was an Eric Adams policy. It's been unpopular with people on the left. But listen, my perspective on that is it can save lives. I wonder if that's Bear Mom Donnie's perspective, having been in power for about a month now, if that actually is worth the life-saving efforts and just bitterly cold weather in New York City.

35:06So I don't know, I don't know what to make of that, actually, to be honest. This seems like a case of where your well-meaning left orthodoxy ran into this fierce ice storm and snowstorm. Right. And I'm glad he's readjusting this. On the other hand, the orthodoxy comes from a serious place where criminalizing homelessness has its own obvious problems. Cruelties. That's not a solution either. But certainly in these freezing temperatures for long stretches of time, it's just incredibly unsafe and can be deadly to be out in the cold then. that the government has some responsibility. You gotta, like, can't, you don't want people to just die in the streets.

36:00I'm curious to see how he handles questions that I'm sure he's gonna get from New York City Press Corps about this because, listen, I think people actually respect when you are leveling with them as a politician. You say, listen, like, this was, we have people dying and I did what I had to do. You know, that's how it goes. So I don't know. I'm curious how he handles that. Yeah, we'll see, but yeah. Because he's not actually afraid to color outside the lines, as we're pointing out with him doing doge in New York City. That hasn't ever been a huge barricade for him. And the storm is interesting in context, in the snow, for his popularity rating.

36:44Like you could easily imagine a world where the city was just wrecked by this dump of snow and that he's at like the 30s in popularity already. Like this was a difficult situation. New York seems to have handled it much better than D.C., in fact. It's been fun. Thankfully, the 40 degree days are now getting us out of this. But the city was struggling. um so and you know mom donnie was very out there and energetic out there like with the crews and like yeah doing the mayor thing yeah which you know they're they're probably some people are like oh the problem with these left-wing candidates they're not they don't they're just going to be lost in like the ivory tower of socialist ideas but not not get into the streets and actually do the job of being a mayor but he was the number one job of being a mayor is plowing the streets when it snows.

37:44But he was so aware of that. Like deeply aware of what went wrong with de Blasio. So we'll see if he can stave that off in his own tenure at Gracie Manor. Let's move on to Sedan Run.

38:01What do you do when the headlines don't explain what's happening inside of you? I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul. a place for real conversation. Each episode, I sit down with people from all walks of life, celebrities, thinkers, and everyday folks, and we go deeper than the polished story. We talk about what drives us, what shapes us, and what gives us hope. We get honest about the big stuff, identity when you don't recognize yourself anymore, loss that changes you, purpose when success isn't enough, peace when your mind won't slow down, faith when it's complicated.

38:39Some guests have answers. Most are still figuring it out. If you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

38:58What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have? Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. NLP, aka Neuro Linguistic Programming, is a blend of hypnosis, linguistics, and psychology. Fans say it's like finally getting a user manual for your brain.

39:34It's about engineering consciousness. Mind Games is the story of NLP. It's crazy cast of disciples and the fake doctor who invented it at a New Age commune and sold it to guys in suits. He stood trial for murder and got acquitted. The biggest mind game of all? NLP might actually work. This is wild. Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the A-Building. I'm Hans Charles. I'm Menelik Lumumba. It's 1969. Malcolm X and Martin Luther King Jr. had both been assassinated, and Black America was at a breaking point. Rioting and protests broke out on an unprecedented scale.

40:16In Atlanta, Georgia, at Martin's alma mater, Morehouse College, the students had their own protest. It featured two prominent figures in Black history, Martin Luther King Sr. and a young student, Samuel L. Jackson. To be in what we really thought was a revolution, I mean, people would die. 1968, the murder of Dr. King, which traumatized everyone. The FBI had a role in the murder of a Black Panther leader in Chicago. This story is about protest. It echoes in today's world far more than it should. And it will blow your mind. Listen to The A-Building on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

41:02In Sudan, the Sudanese army, in a wave of drone strikes in Kordofan and the Sinar states, over a period of a couple days, killed upwards of 60 people, at least 26 of them civilians in West Kordofan. In North Kordofan, 28 people were killed when an SAF drone struck a market, according to the emergency lawyers group operating there. The Sudan Doctors Network reported three killed in shelling and blamed that on the UAE-backed RSF. And some sources said a hospital was directly hit in that case. This comes as at the Munich Security Conference, finally we started seeing some pressure applied to the UAE in particular, which has evaded kind of all responsibility for this catastrophe that they have begotten.

42:08And the U.S. is putting forward a proposal to the kind of the quartet of countries that are kind of behind this war. Let's roll F2 here. You've been very involved in peace talks, particularly with the Quad, which we were talking about earlier, which is the US, Egypt, the UAE and Saudi Arabia. So can you just update us? Is it peace in our time? Can we be hopeful? We've done extensive work. We've been in continuous contact with both parties to work on the Quad Roadmap that we put out on September 12. The Roadmap starts with a humanitarian truth and ends with a political transition process. So on the humanitarian truth, we presented an initiative, we presented a strong text to the parties that addresses all aspects of this, let's call it temporary ceasefire or truth.

43:20We have also engaged in extensive consultations with both sides, and then we've reached, at some point, an understanding that it will be most useful to go through a UN mechanism. So we proceeded with that. We've been working with OCHA specifically and with the UN Secretary General and his team to come up with a UN mechanism that will help implement and monitor this ceasefire or this humanitarian truth. And we've worked on it for weeks, and I can say that we announced that in Washington a few days ago, along with our partner, Tom Fletcher, that we do have a draft mechanism. It's going to be hopefully finalized very soon by the Secretary General's office.

44:13And we will be ready at that point in time, hopefully within days, to present the final draft to the parties and hopefully get their approval. And the reason there is hope that this could be ended is that if the UAE were to back off, Most outside observers believe that this would have to wind up in a negotiated solution. The UAE has completely escaped any pressure internationally from the U.S. At the Munich Security Conference, Channel 4's Lindsay Hilsom asked the American advisor, Mossad Boulos, if it was time to, quote, get nasty with the UAE and finally put some pressure on. Let's roll this.

44:57that there's enough talking. Because I understand that you bring together all these different parties, but it seems to me that this is the time. It's the time to get nasty, isn't it? Isn't it the time to put real leverage on the countries that are arming these factions? And the US has more leverage. President Trump has more power than anyone else. Come on, you can do it. I agree with you. We've been quite patient and we've been quite accommodating. We wanted to make sure it's a successful process. We've been engaging with both sides and all the relevant actors. However, too much time has gone by and it's really, it's about time to act.

45:37In fact, next week at the UN with the Honourable Secretary Cooper, we're going to have some serious talk and action. What is the pressure you're putting on him? What is the pressure you're putting on Hermetti? What is the pressure you're putting on Abu Dhabi to stop taking the gold which is coming out of Sudan at$5 ,000 an ounce? Yes. Regarding the external support, our position is very clear, not just us, but all our partners within the Quad and all the other partners. We are totally against any sort of external support that we're seeing, and we're seeing it coming from all sorts of different sources, different supply routes, and to both parties.

46:22We're seeing it come to both sides. And this is totally counterproductive, absolutely, to the mechanism and to the process that we're putting in place. We have a comprehensive peace plan that we've proposed. But I'm still not understanding how... I mean, I've looked at some of the principles of your peace plan. It hasn't been published yet, but I've looked at it. It looks great. But I don't see what is going to make either the parties or those supporting the parties agree to it. They want to keep fighting. So this is going to be a Sudanese-Sudanese solution. We're not going to come here and impose anything.

46:57We can probably come up with mechanisms that will help them. We can come up with probably a UN Security Council resolution that will give the legal cover and the umbrella for this work. But it's going to have to be a Sudanese-Sudanese solution. It's going to be a comprehensive national dialogue and leading to a civilian-led government. So that's Tiffany Trump's father-in-law, for what it's worth. Let's also roll this clip of the UK Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper at the Munich Security Conference, responding also to those questions about pressure, pressure. What kind of pressure will be used as leverage to get to peace?

47:38Everyone says they want peace. How are you going to get there? Let's roll the clip. What is Britain doing to try and pressure the United Arab Emirates to stop supporting the RSF? so the two different um issues uh there so let me just briefly deal with the issues around arms flows and the u.k controls because we have very substantial controls we ensure in fact when there were any allegations made uh i insisted that all the licenses were reviewed and 2 000 licenses were reviewed to ensure that there was no leakage to ensure that there was no uh nothing that any of those licences was reaching Sudan and to make sure that the allegations that had been made were unfounded.

48:23But if there are any further allegations, we would take the same approach and to review extensively to ensure that that must not happen. But what I'm asking you about very specifically, and I'm going to come on to you as well, is about leverage. Again, what leverage does Britain have on the UAE? Because the UAE is supporting the RSF. I know they deny it, but there is plenty of evidence and it seems to me that Britain has a very close relationship with the UAE. So what I'm asking is what are you doing to pressure them? So we raise all of these issues with the UAE, with Saudi, with Egypt, all of the members of the Quad who are working with Mossad and continue to do so.

49:04And we also believe that this needs to be wider than the Quad. So I've raised this with the African Union, with all of the neighbouring states, with foreign ministers from all of the neighbouring States of Sudan. Our assessment is there's probably more than a dozen countries who are in some way involved in arms flows, maybe through funding, maybe through manufacture, maybe through transit, maybe through training in different ways. And like you, I am concerned of evidence that some of those arms flows may be escalating rather than reducing. However, a huge amount of work has been done on what a ceasefire might look like.

49:39Impressive questions from the moderator, Ryan. and unimpressive answers if you if if you and we wanted to play all those clips because if you read into what she's saying that cooper for instance what what are you going to do about the uae well i reviewed a whole bunch of licenses you know a bunch and then she goes like we cut a lot of that out she filibustered forever before instead of answering the question about how they're going to pressure the uae so the reporter um press it again okay great what are you going to do about the UAE? She's like, well, there are like a dozen countries that are involved in some way in this.

50:13So of course we should pressure the UAE and, but also Saudi Arabia, but also Egypt and all the, like doing everything she can to, if she can't kind of say that the UAE is innocent to just pour as many other culpable parties on top of it so that you spread out the blame. when everybody who's following this is like, no, it's the UAE that is the key driver of this conflict. Now, to be fair, the Sudanese armed forces are also a significant problem here. And the Sudanese prime minister at Munich, we won't play this because it's too hard to kind of clip up, Camille Idris. We can put this, just put this tweet up and people can read it from DropSite.

51:00So he went back and forth with her as well and says basically that a ceasefire would, quote, not be an end. He said a truce, quote, will never work unless it's paired with disarmament, demobilization and reintegration, meaning that the RSF fighters must surrender their weapons, dismantle forces and be reintegrated to civilian life. And all those steps must happen concurrently. he said the RSF are now quote mercenaries. Basically his argument is that they have basically killed any of the kind of indigenous elements of the RSF and now they're basically all mercenaries that the UAE is paying to bring in.

51:43It is a fact that there are enormous numbers of mercenaries that have come in and fought on behalf of the UAE or RSF in Sudan, but it's not true that it's all of them. There has to be, you have to reckon with that fact. And he also deflected when asked about the SAF's own war crimes, which are many. So while there is some pressure in the U.S. is saying that they're putting forward a proposal to end this, like the UAE's backers don't seem that interested in putting real pressure on the UAE to end it, and the SAF also is still drawing a pretty hard line. It's weird you look at... Munich is such a polite place.

52:37It's such a... We're all friends here. All these conferences are like hubs of respectability politics and one of the things you can read into from the tough questions there, at least I think you can read into, is that people who are following this seriously realize when the dust settles, how dark the kind of global disinterest in this is going to look. That's kind of what I'm watching this. It's almost a little jarring to see it on stage at Munich like that. And not just to us. And they all know what they're doing. Yeah, it's really dark. And I think with the moderator, whose name I should know, but what I think she's prepared for is she's looking at the carnage and thinking these are serious questions.

53:22These are not, you can't just sort of like punt this stuff away because everybody is going to look really bad when the dust settles. Everybody looks really bad now if you're following it closely. Right, right. Yeah, absolutely. And before we wrap, we wanted to put up F6. We wanted to give a little shine to the Sudanese journalist network. This is the IIN network. We'll put a link to this. It's down in the show notes. You can watch the full clip. there's not a whole lot of good journalism coming out of this war for obvious reasons. And so it's very difficult to cover. But I, in Network, did some very interesting on-the-ground reporting about what it's like to live through one of these sieges and battles for the civilian population there.

54:10So we'll put that in so you can watch the whole thing if you really want to dive into it. but that will do it for us for today. You were here yesterday. I was here yesterday. I think Sagar's back. I think Sagar's back tomorrow. Sagar's back tomorrow, and we'll all be here. We'll not here. We'll be back Friday. We'll be back Friday, and second half of that show, premium subs, so breakingpoints.com if you want to get it. Yes. It's what makes the show possible. Yeah. It's the counter algorithm. I was going to say they keep the lights on, but that is a horrible point because last week my lights literally went off in the middle of the Friday show.

54:52I lost power for like four hours and it happened while we were live taping the Friday show. So it doesn't necessarily keep the lights on. And Emily and I are going to do the Megyn Kelly show later today. That's right. We're going to do an Epstein deep dive. Right. Which means, by the way, we've been planning here at Breaking Points, as producer Griffin teased last Friday, some type of deep dive into Epstein for a while. This is, I think, a good... Megan has us on today to do a deep dive, but that's a good reminder for us at Breaking Points. We got to get this thing rolling. Yeah, that's also a good reminder for you that you have this Megyn Kelly thing later.

55:31Don't forget that. Yeah, and then the podcast live at nine. Like, there's no rest for the weary, Ryan. It is what it is. It beats working though, right? It does, and the news doesn't stop. There's so much to do. So breakingpoints.com if you want a premium subscription. Otherwise, Ryan and I will see you Friday. And Crystal and Sager will see you back here tomorrow.

55:59You can scroll the headlines all day and still feel empty. I'm Ben Higgins. And if you can hear me is where culture meets the soul. Honest conversations about identity, loss, purpose, peace, faith, and everything in between. Celebrities, thinkers, everyday people, some have answers, most are still figuring it out. And if you've ever felt like there has to be more to the story, this show is for you. Listen to If You Can Hear Me on my iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. What if mind control is real? If you could control the behavior of anybody around you, what kind of life would you have?

56:34Can you hypnotically persuade someone to buy a car? When you look at your car, you're going to become overwhelmed with such good feelings. Can you hypnotize someone into sleeping with you? I gave her some suggestions to be sexually aroused. Can you get someone to join your cult? NLP was used on me to access my subconscious. Mind Games, a new podcast exploring NLP, a.k.a. neurolinguistic programming. Is it a self-help miracle, a shady hypnosis scam, or both? Listen to Mind Games on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

57:33To hear this and more, listen to Selective Ignorance with Mandy B from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.