It's the Brian Larer Show on WNYC. Good morning, everyone. On today's show, the

scholar of authoritarianism and Applebaum on how the U.S. is becoming more like Victor Orban's hungry by design.

What Trump's climb down from some of his tariffs in anti-federal reserve language yesterday does to fit into the larger democracy versus authoritarianism struggle, if anything, and what Ann Applebound thinks can be done for democracy preservation

and Applebaum coming up. And we'll continue our series on being upwardly mobile without a

college degree. We'll invite more of your stories. But we'll start locally on the New York

City mayoral race. Our lead city hall reporter, Elizabeth Kim, is here as usual on Wednesdays

for remember what used to be her weekly check-in after Mayor Adams' Tuesday news conferences. Those

are still happening and we'll play a clip, but we've started broadening the scope of these segments to

meet the moment as it is in the city, as it actually is right now, with a multi-candidate Democratic primary

coming soon to be followed by a possible five-way race in the general election in which anything

could happen, a working families party as opposed to a Democratic Party candidate could be elected.

The Republican candidate, Curtis Lewa, could be elected in a five-way

race. So what do New Yorkers want for the city the next four years? That is squarely on the

table and squarely what we will be mostly talking about, I think, these coming Wednesdays now

with Liz. Her latest article on Gothamist is about the competition between two of the

progressive candidates in the Democratic primary in particular, the city controller, Brad

Lander and the state senator from Queens or on Mamdani. Hi, Liz. Happy Wednesday, Brian.

There are many candidates in the Democratic primary.

Why did you write an article specifically about Mom Donnie and Lander?

Well, you know, I first got interested in the inner workings of the working families party

when I started reporting on how they were strategizing in this moment. And what they are doing is they are coming out with a slate of candidates that they are endorsing.

It is a slate of four that includes Bradlander, Zoran Mamdani, Adrian Adams, and Zellner-Mirey.

...