Welcome to another episode of Lurie Breaks It Down, a podcast where we dig deeply to connect the dots on the issues that shape our world.

I'm Lurie Daniel Favors, author, activist, attorney, and the host of the Lurie Daniel Favors show on Sirius XM's Urban View, Channel 126. If you like what you're about to hear, go ahead and give us five stars and then tell everybody that you know. And if you don't like it, just, child, keep it to yourself and pray our strength. Okay? Thank you so much.

Also, don't forget to check out my YouTube page, Lurie Daniel Favor's Media, where you should subscribe, like, and share, because then you'll get notified when I post videos from my show, which I do just about every single day and when I go live with my YouTube audience. All right, good morning, good people. today is January the 5th, and I guess good morning,

good afternoon, good evening, whenever you're listening to this. I hope you are well. We are officially in 2026. And my lord, it has been a year already. We just got started and it's already

been a year. I just want to say very quickly, shout out to New York City Mayor Zoharim.

Donnie. I'm going to talk more about this in my actual show. I just

need you all to know that because I am a New York City voter, how extremely happy I am that this man is mayor. I often say that about Mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, because he's got an amazing media team. And I'm always like, this mayor is mayor. And now I get to say the same thing about the New York city mayor and I am absolutely thrilled about it. We'll surely have time in the future for me to

unpack why I think this is... is mayoring. And now I get to say the same thing about the New York City mayor. And I'm absolutely

thrilled about it. We'll surely have time in the future for me to unpack why I think this is such a good thing, why I was so excited to vote for him. And how thrilled I am just as a civic-minded person to have somebody who actually has plans and a civic plan to make those plans happen. I'm very excited about this but we ain't got time time to get into that today because, child, it's been a year and it's only the fifth day of it. But baby, there's a lot going on. And I want to unpack this because I know some of y'all are expecting me to start this conversation with what's happening in Venezuela. But I don't think the real story is what's happening in Venezuela. I think the real story is that

Venezuela is happening to distract you from all the other things we're going to talk about just now.

So let's get into it. A few years ago, I introduced this concept to my audience. This isn't a

concept I originated. It's just something I began sharing with my audience called the squirrel.

And the squirrel effect is what happens when there's something that you should be paying attention to over here on your left side, but this squirrel is just moving all over the place on the right side. And the squirrel is so quick. And it's so, you know, it can run up the tree, it can drop down some acorns, it can fight with another squirrel, it can run back and forth, all before you can say supercalifragilistic, S.B. Alidoscious, your president is a pedophile. All before you can say that, the squirrel can do 51 different things. And the squirrel is able to easily distract you on the right side from the thing you're supposed to be to paying attention to on the left side. So let's get into the first podcast episode. I should say, technically this is not the first podcast episode of the new year. It's not. It's the first podcast episode of the first full week of January. I feel like I like first. So we'll just go with God. Anyway, listen, listen, listen. A lot we got to get into. Let's get into this right now because this squirrel of Venezuela is really trying to distract us from all of these other things. at the same time, we also got to pay attention to that, too.

So let's get into it.

The economy is in free fall.

And I know it doesn't necessarily feel like that because the news media, the mainstream

news media is not really leading off in a lot of stories with the doomsday that they would

be using if this were a Joe Biden presidency.

But more than a hundred companies,

according to Newsweek and other outlets, have filed Warn notices, which is an indication that they

plan to lay off massive amounts of workers in January. Now, warn notices stand for the

worker adjustment and retraining notification act. And if your employer is planning to lay off a significant number of people, they are required.

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