Note: The first episode shown during the First Quarter 2026 was a rerun of #335 on December 22, 2025.
Episode #1040: Rearview Mirror
First Broadcast: 12/29/25
The year 2025 is almost up, and we spent this episode going over some of the various topics Free New York covered in that time, starting with the death of former President Jimmy Carter way back in December of 2024 (yes, it was a different year, I know, don't @ me). We also talked about the death of director David Lynch; President Trump's war of words with an Episcopal bishop; the price of eggs; the chaos of Trump's tariffs; the 50th anniversary of Saturday Night Live; a baffling tribute to James Bond at the Oscars; the Trump administration's open hostility towards anyone who isn't from here (however you want to define it); technology that makes a dubbed movie look like it's not dubbed; Trump's speculations on how he could run for a third term (spoiler alert: he can't); Eric Adams' doomed re-election campaign for mayor; a union victory for striking workers at the Alamo Drafthouse; and the seeming trend of electoral victories around the world going to whoever opposes Trump the most (which, hopefully, bodes well for 2026), for starters! And we're still not done! Tune in for the second half of our round-up next week... if there is a next week...
Episode #1041: A Cracker Barrrel and an IHOP
First Broadcast: 1/5/26
Free New York continues its wrap-up of 2025 with our recap of the second half of the year in this episode, starting with President Trump's anticlimactic military parade on June 14, which was thankfully outnumbered by all the "No Kings" protestors around the country on the same day. We continue with Trump's bombing of Iran; Zohran Mamdani's victory in the Democratic primary for Mayor of New York City; Andrew Cuomo's refusal to take "no" for an answer as he continued his own mayoral campaign after losing the primary; the summer movies of 2025 that we liked (and disliked); Cuomo's really bad proposal to make New Yorkers even more rent burdened than they already are; an in-depth look at the movie Caught Stealing and the late 1990s environment it depicted; the horrors of A.I. podcasting; the end of Mayor Eric Adams' re-election campaign, and the time one of his campaign workers handed a reporter an envelope full of money hidden inside a bag of potato chips; the demise of Morgenstern's Finest Ice Cream Parlor and many other businesses that have come and gone in the city; the startling statistic that 42% of respondents to a particular survey did not know that POTATO CHIPS were made of POTATOES; the "No Kings" protests of October 18, which surpassed the number of people who turned out for the protests in June; Zohran Mamdani's unequivocal victory in the mayoral election, and right-wing meltdowns in response to it; how A.I. is more abysmal than even the lowest-level employees at the simplest tasks; and how the new citizenship test--along with so many other things--seems designed to reduce the number of new citizens we have in this country, and probably for the most racist of reasons. Quite a year, wasn't it? The only question is whether 2026 will have me reaching for antacid more or less often than the year that just ended, and I don't want to make any predictions, but maybe I should invest in calcium futures now...
Episode #1042: Chief Vampire
First Broadcast: 1/12/26
There never seems to be a dull moment with the current occupant of the White House (despite how much so many of us are yearning for one), and the first week of 2026 proved that in no uncertain terms, as President Donald Trump did an about-face on his previous opposition to regime change and the United States bombed the Venzuelan capital of Caracas on January 3, kidnapped Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores later that morning, and by that evening transported both of them to a federal jail in Brooklyn that will be their new home for the near future. The next day, January 4, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that Congressional authorization was not necessary for this action because it was "an arrest operation" and "not an invasion," which sounded like it conflicted with White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Policy and U.S. Homeland Security Advisor Stephen Miller's statement that the action was "an active and ongoing US military operation." Later that day, President Trump said "we're in charge" of Venezuela, and he clarified two days later that by "we" he meant "me," as he added that he, personally, would be controlling the money he anticipates to receive from the sale of millions of gallons of Venezuelan oil to the United States. This, he said, even though control of Venezuela today seems to be mostly the same as it was before Maduro's removal, as it is still being ruled by the same party that was in charge before, with the opposition seemingly shut out of the process due the U.S. reaching an agreement with the Venezuelan Vice President Delcy Rodriguez several months ago, and due to opposition leader Maria Corina Machado having the temerity to accept the Nobel Peace Prize she won in 2025 instead of handing it over to Donald Trump. On January 5, Maduro and Flores were arraigned in a federal court in Manhattan, where they both pleaded "Not Guilty" to various charges, and on the same day Stephen Miller told CNN that "By definition, we are in charge [of Venezuela], because we have the United States military stationed outside the country," and added "For them to do commerce, they need our permission. For them to be able to run an economy, they need our permission," which sounds an awful lot like a blockade to me, which has been internationally recognized as an act of war for over a century now, so doesn't that add to the argument that this is an illegal military operation unauthorized by Congress? To add to the chaos, the dust had barely settled in Caracas when President Trump and Stephen Miller's wife, Katie, made aggressive remarks implying that Trump was going to acquire Greenland for the United States, regardless of how either Greenland or Denmark felt about it, even though doing so without permission from anyone (let alone Greenlanders themselves) would be a catastrophic event for American relations with Denmark, and probably mean the end of NATO as we know it--which is exactly what Russian President Vladimir Putin wants, isn't it? And, despite the earth-shaking nature of all these events, I had a sinking feeling that by the time this episode aired we would all be talking about something else that would displace them in the news, and I guess I wasn't wrong, but these events are still in flux, and far from being over. I so wish we didn't live in interesting times every day of the week...
Episode #1043: Organized Bombardment
First Broadcast: 1/19/26
On January 7, 2026, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Agent Jonathan Ross approached Renee Nicole Good, a U.S. citizen, and fired three bullets at her head as she was driving her car and speaking to him, killing her, while other agents denied her medical attention as she died. Almost immediately afterwards, Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Spokesperson Tricia McLaughlin defended Ross's killing of Good, characterizing it as "defensive" and calling Good's actions--which were, reminder, merely driving while speaking to Ross--"domestic terrorism," a claim which was echoed later that day by DHS Secretary Kristi Noem. President Donald Trump said Good had "violently, willfully, and viciously ran over the ICE officer, who seems to have shot her in self defense" and said Ross "is now recovering in the hospital." However, not long after Good's death, several videos of her killing were released on the internet; and to me and many others who watched them, this looked like an unprovoked murder by Ross, who also appeared to be completely uninjured by Good. In response to remarks by DHS, Trump, and others, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz said "I've seen the video ... Don't believe this propaganda machine," while the Mayor of Minneapolis, Jacob Frey, put it more bluntly, calling DHS and Noem's claims "bullshit," and telling ICE to "get the fuck out of Minneapolis." Not too long after that, protests against Good's killing, against ICE's presence in Minnesota, and against ICE in general sprung up all across the nation. In response, agents from ICE apparently ramped up their attacks on students and protestors, their kidnappings of people regardless of their citizenship status, and their terrorizing of the populace in general, effectively making the entire situation worse by their very presence. This reminded me of an infamous remark made by Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago, in response to the riots instigated by the Chicago Police Department against people protesting the Democratic National Convention there in August, 1968: "The policeman isn't there to create disorder, the policeman is there to preserve disorder." In a similar vein, ICE is not making Minnesota (or anywhere else) more safe while it's there; it's making Minnesota less safe every day it remains there. You would think maybe the National Rife Association would have something to say about this, the literal armed federal agents terrorizing ordinary Americans that were supposedly one of the reasons why Americans should be arming themselves for the last few decades, but so far they've been nothing but crickets on this issue--just like they were with Philando Castile, not too long ago. Some Democrats, like Representatives Ilhan Omar and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, seem to have read the room correctly and condemned ICE and federal officials' defense of this killing, while others like Representive Hakeem Jeffries and Senator Chuck Schumer shied away from endorsing any actions that might restrain ICE in the future (one of many reasons why someone should challenge Schumer in the primary if he runs again in 2028). Other presidents in the past have tried to de-escalate tensions during similar times of unrest; but Trump appears to be hell-bent on doubling and tripling down on escalating the violence instead, so who knows when any of this will end, or even what this country might look like when it's finally over? I wish I could end this episode on a better note, but maybe the best advice I can give for now in the face of all this overwhelming awfulness is to try and hang in there, and "Be Good." What other choice do we have?
Episode #1044: No Philosphy
First Broadcast: 2/2/26
In one of the worst instances of déjà vu in recent memory, we find ourselves yet again talking about federal agents killing an American citizen in Minneapolis, again seemingly for the "crime" of non-violently observing Immigration and Custom Enforcement (ICE) officers, for the second time in less than three weeks. On the morning of Saturday, January 24, 2026, Alex Pretti, a nurse who worked in the Intensive Care Unit at a Veteran's Administration hospital in Minnesota, was observing the activity of masked ICE and Customs & Border Patrol (CBP) agents on the street in South Minneapolis when he witnessed one agent shove a woman hard enough to knock her off balance, causing her to fall into Pretti's arms. As Pretti tried to support her, the agent who shoved the woman then shoved Pretti, and began spraying him in the face repeatedly with what appeared to be a chemical irritant, like pepper spray. At that point, several federal agents--at least six--swarmed onto Pretti, simultaneously holding him down on the ground and punching him, with at least one agent appearing to remove a firearm from Pretti's person--a handgun that Pretti was legally permitted to carry, and which he was neither holding nor pointing at anyone during this interaction. After the one agent disarmed him, one or more agents shot Pretti, firing as many as ten shots at him, after which they all quickly backed away from his body, without even attempting to give him any kind of first aid. A pediatrician who witnessed the shooting and whom agents initially refused to let offer any medical assistance to Pretti before they relented, said in a sworn statement that "Checking for a pulse and administering CPR is standard practice. Instead of doing either of those things, the ICE agents appeared to be counting his bullet wounds." Pretti died on the ground, and, like they did with Renee Good, federal officials quickly went to work portraying Pretti in the worst terms imaginable, labeling him a "would-be assassin" who "brandished a weapon" and was out to "massacre law enforcement"; and, also just like with Renee Good, all those claims were thoroughly disproven by multiple videos taken by other bystanders, which collectively appeared to show Pretti as the victim of a cold-blooded murder by ICE & CPB agents. People throughout the country were outraged at this latest killing, seeing it as a direct assault on press freedom (and, to me, not unlike the shooting out of journalists' eyes during the George Floyd protests in 2020), an attack on gun owners, and yet another example of how the various agents at the Department of Homeland Security are acting like an unaccountable occupying army wherever they go, a secret police force with no clear agenda other than to terrorize the populace. In the wake of this and many other events, when Democrats and even some Republicans might be briefly united in their criticism of the federal government's disregard for human life, "Abolish ICE" might be the sanest response. Will anything be done to stop ICE from acting like the Gestapo? Will the Democrats do anything if they win the 2026 midterms? I don't know the answers to either of those questions, but something needs to change soon, because people can only take so much before they reach a breaking point. P.S.: Remember: You have the right to record the police!