Show Notes
Ralph spends the whole hour with progressive activist, Corbin Trent, former communications director for Alexandria Ocasio Cortez to discuss the lack of vision and the spineless leadership in the corporate Democratic Party. Corbin Trent is a co-founder of Brand New Congress and former co-director of Justice Democrats, two grassroots organizations working to elect progressive Democrats to Congress. He was the National Campaign Coordinator for the Bernie Sanders Presidential campaign, and recently served as the Communications Director for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. He writes about rebuilding America at AmericasUndoing.com.This is a [Democratic] Party that is led by sinecurists and apparatchiks who never look at themselves in the mirror after they lose to the most vicious, cruel, ignorant, anti-worker, anti-women, anti-environment, anti-small taxpayer, pro-war Republican Party. They never look into it. It’s always: they blame the Greens or they blame some third party or Independent candidate. And they never ask themselves why as a national party did they abandon half the country, which are now called red states? Ralph Nader
The Democratic Party I think, ultimately, is leaderless because it’s visionless. It doesn’t really see. I don’t think the Democratic Party as an entity or as an ideology has a real vision for how to go forward differently. And, therefore, it’s hard to be led. It’s hard to lead if you don’t have a direction. Corbin Trent
The Democratic Party—like your Chuck Schumers, like your Hakeem Jeffries, and like most of the people that are elected there and in leadership positions at all, look at this system, the system of neoliberalism, and they think that somehow it’s going to magically start working again. And the fact is that it’s not. They have been unable so far to internalize the depth of the brokenness of this system. And then really unable to, I think, really internalize why Trump was powerful, why his messages were powerful. They want to look at it through this extremely narrow and negative lens of racism, bigotry and fear. As opposed to a complete and utter disdain for the system which is sucking from their lives and extracting from their communities. And I think that spells trouble. Corbin Trent
It’s not my job as a voter to inspire myself to vote for you. It’s your job as a candidate or as a party or as somebody to build a vision that inspires me to vote. Corbin Trent
News 3/13/26 * This week, the New York City Council held a hearing on proposed legislation to carry out Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s pledge to repossess property from “landlords who have racked up housing code violations and debt from unpaid taxes and fines.” This bill would empower the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development to turn these buildings over to owners they deem “more responsible.” This would be an update of a program the city has tried to implement before, called “third-party transfer.” However, the council is hesitant to take this step, worrying that it could disproportionately affect small landlords that simply lack the resources to fix code violations or pay fees, as opposed to venture capital backed corporate landlords. Rosa Kelly, chief of staff to the housing commissioner, said the department “views the program as a key part of [their] broader enforcement and preservation toolkit to ensure that housing remains safe and livable for New Yorkers.” This from Gothamist. * In more local news, this week Washington D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser released a long-awaited report on congestion traffic pricing in the District of Columbia. According to the Washington Examiner, the study was conducted in 2021 and the Mayor has delayed the release until now. Along with the release of the study, Mayor Bowser sent a letter to D.C. Council Chairman Phil Mendelson, wherein the Mayor described the “congestion pricing tax scheme,” which includes a proposed $10 charge for people entering the city, as a “bad idea,” and argued that D.C.
More from Ralph Nader Radio Hour
Ralph speaks to Peter Maybarduk of Public Citizen about how the Trump Administration's drug pricing deals favor Big Pharma. Then, some advice for progressive candidates from Ralph and former NYC Public Advocate Mark Green.
Ralph welcomes Dr. Alison Galvani, the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis, and co-author of the forthcoming article, “Projected Economic Gains and Lives Saved Under Universal Health Care in the United States.” Then our constitutional law expert, Bruce Fein, stops by to tell us about a letter he and Ralph sent to states Attorneys General urging them to prosecute Donald Trump for exhorting his followers to commit voter fraud in the forthcoming midterm congressional elections. Finally, we respond to your feedback on how to be a smart voter. Alison Galvani is the founding director of the Yale Center for Infectious Disease Modeling and Analysis and the Burnett and Stender Families Professor of Epidemiology at the Yale School of Public Health, Yale School of Medicine. She has applied her modelling and health economics skills to address public health challenges including HIV/AIDS, Zika, Ebola, influenza, and COVID-19. And she is co-author of the forthcoming article “Projected economic gains and lives saved under universal healthcare in the United States.” We analyze the American healthcare system as a national balance sheet. And on one side of the ledger, we have: covering the uninsured and expanding care for the uninsured (that costs money). And we took into account that utilization will increase for people that currently have inadequate health care… And when we initially started looking at this in 2019…I anticipated a hefty price tag as well. Our work has focused on the effectiveness and cost-efficiency of public health policy in the US and around the world, and usually we’re asking: How much will it cost to save lives? And we rarely get a no-brainer where you save money and you’re saving lives. Alison Galvani
Ralph speaks to Dr. Feroze Sidhwa for an update on the death toll in Gaza as well as the new documentary film “American Doctor.” Then Ralph and economic William Lazonick discuss Nvidia’s planned $235 billion stock buyback. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa is a general, trauma, and critical care surgeon in California. He is also a humanitarian surgeon who has worked in Palestine, Ukraine, Haiti, Zimbabwe, and Burkina Faso. He most recently volunteered at Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis, Gaza. He was blocked from entering Gaza by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service in November 2025. His work in Gaza is featured in the new documentary film American Doctor. If I’m remembering the exact time right, March of 2016 was the deadliest month for children that [Airwars] had ever studied anywhere—so that’s the 31 days of March of 2016. In the first 25 days of the US-Israeli assault on Gaza, the rate of killing of children was 71 to 142 times higher than in the deadliest month they had ever studied for children anywhere else. And just to put these numbers in a little bit of perspective…If you look at Russia’s invasion of Ukraine versus Israel’s invasion of Gaza, Russian forces killed the same percentage of children in Ukraine in 10 months as the US and Israel kill in Gaza every 18 to 37 hours. Dr. Feroze Sidhwa
Ralph welcomes Mary Berry the daughter of the late American novelist, poet, essayist, environmental activist, cultural critic, and farmer, Wendell Berry. Ms. Berry runs the non-profit Berry Center in New Castle, Kentucky, which serves as a repository for the study of small farm agriculture and preserves the legacy of her family’s work. Then, with the midterms on the horizon, Ralph and the team talk about how to be a smart voter. Plus, Ralph has some choice words for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s so-called “Free Enterprise Express.” Leave a comment about how you are a smart voter. We will collect these and discuss them on our next program. Click the button below to get Professor Laura Nader’s book Controlling Processes.
Ralph welcomes “New York Times” reporter Natasha Singer to discuss her new book, “Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools.” Then, Ralph talks about Donald Trump’s midterm convention speeches and the latest impeachment drive with Constitutional law expert Bruce Fein. Natasha Singer is a New York Times reporter covering the intersection of technology, business and education. She has covered tech industry influence in schools for the New York Times for more than a decade, and her school tech reporting helped prompt California to enact a landmark student online data protection law. In 2019, she was part of a Times team whose tech coverage won a George Polk Award and was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for National Reporting. She is also the author of the book Coding Kids: Big Tech’s Battle to Remake Public Schools. It’s not about the companies immediately making money off schools. It’s about influencing kids, getting customers early and for life. But I think more importantly, it’s about imprinting Silicon Valley worldviews and values on young people. So that you get docile consumers who maybe aren’t worried about wholesale surveillance and data gathering, and docile employees who are not going to push back against being surveilled by their employer or using AI tools or having AI replace them. And so I think this story about tech companies capturing the classroom is not just about how they’re shaping learning. It’s about how some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet are able to influence school systems. Natasha Singer