Good morning. It is September 9th. It is another sunny, pleasant morning in what's supposed to be a sunny, pleasant day in New York City. And this is your Indignity Morning Podcast. I'm your host, Tom Scocca, taking a look at the day and the news. 

The Prime Minister of Nepal, K.P. Sharma Oli, has resigned, as buildings burn around Kathmandu, and protesters respond to yesterday's killing of at least 19 of them by physically attacking current and former officials. Online video reportedly shows the finance minister being chased and kicked by a mob. 

The New York Times reports that Prime Minister Oli's house was set on fire, as were the houses of three other former prime ministers, critically burning the wife of one of them, and the residence, the Times writes, “of Ramesh Lekhak, the home minister who resigned on Monday after accepting moral responsibility for the 19 deaths. Videos posted on social media,” the Times writes, “showed helicopters airlifting ministers from their quarters in the government's main administrative building.” 

The Israeli military has attacked Doha, Qatar, in what it says was an assassination attempt against Hamas leaders. Al Jazeera is describing the strike as having been carried out against a large residential area containing a lot of foreign embassies. Qatar called the attack cowardly, said it targeted residential buildings and called it a blatant violation of all international laws and norms. Al Jazeera also reports that according to Hamas, the Israeli strikes targeted officials from the group who were meeting in Doha to discuss Donald Trump's ceasefire proposal. 

The New York Times this morning released the latest Times-CNN poll on the New York mayoral race, which found that Zohran Mamdani, the Democratic nominee, as the headline put it, “holds a huge lead.” The subhead tries to put in a little bit of cope, saying that Mamdani is “way ahead of his three rivals, but his lead would diminish considerably if the field shrank to a two-man race.” The numbers in the actually existing race, as opposed to some hypothetical race optimized against Mamdani, found 46 % of poll respondents saying they would vote for Mamdani to 24% for disgraced former governor and Democratic primary loser Andrew Cuomo, 15% for Republican nominee Curtis Sliwa of the Guardian Angels, and 9% for incumbent mayor Eric Adams. The survey, the Times writes, “captured the state of the race in early September at a moment of unusual flux. The day after polling began, the New York Times reported that President Trump and powerful figures in New York City were endeavoring to create a one-on-one contest between Mr. Cuomo, 67, and Mr. Mamdani, a 33-year-old state assemblyman and democratic socialist.” 

Again, there isn't any actual flux in the race. Despite the Times reporting that Adams was considering an offer from the Trump administration to become ambassador to Saudi Arabia in exchange for dropping out, the mayor called a press conference on Friday and declared that he was staying in the race. Wishcasting some different set of events, the Times writes, “the Times-Siena College poll underscored the potential impact of shrinking the field. Doing so, it's suggested could meaningfully erode Mr. Mamdani's lead, but only if both Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa, who have vowed to keep running, suspended their campaigns. In a hypothetical head-to-head matchup, voters who initially supported Mr. Adams and Mr. Sliwa broke heavily toward Mr. Cuomo, a moderate Democrat. The survey suggested that would lead to an extremely tight race, with 48% supporting Mr. Mamdani and 44% supporting Mr. Cuomo.”

In a sidebar whose conclusions they apparently couldn't bring themselves to even include in the main story, the Times's political numbers team found that if they kept on squeezing the numbers, ignoring the announced enthusiasm of Mamdani supporters to go vote for him, and the relative lack of enthusiasm of Cuomo supporters, and ignoring the actual turnout patterns of the Democratic primary, they could even concoct a scenario where Cuomo would come out slightly ahead.

In that same never-say-die spirit, The Times is also reporting that this morning, Hudson Yards developer Jeff Blau summoned his fellow real estate tycoons to an emergency meeting in the pool room of the Seagram building to meet Mr. Cuomo, The Times writes, “and help plot his path to victory.” Besides Blau and his wife, Lisa, whom The Times describes as an investor, the Monday evening blast email was also signed, the Times reports by, among others, “a co-owner of the Seagram building, Abby Rosen, the billionaire philanthropist, Laurie Tisch, and the hedge fund billionaire, Greg Hymowitz.” The Times writes, “‘The time to act is now,’ read the email. ‘If we fail to mobilize, the financial capital of the world risks being handed over to a socialist this November. We cannot — and will not — let that happen.’”

As in the polling story, the Times continues to describe a very stable very straightforward race as something in dramatic flux. The meeting, the Times writes, “comes at a potentially pivotal moment in this year's chaotic race for mayor as it enters its final eight weeks.” And then in an extremely telling formulation, the Times goes on to write that “the general election remains unsettled, with moneyed interests sitting restlessly on the sidelines as they wait for the field to consolidate behind a formidable challenger to Mr. Mamdani.” The primary votes aren't unsettled, nor is the fundraising, as Mamdani has topped out at the limit of $7.9 million from mostly small donors and matching funds. The Times reported on September 5th that Mamdani has 17,981 individual donors since the end of the primary, while Andrew Cuomo has 759. Nevertheless, the real estate moguls and the Times keep hoping that people could rally to Cuomo.

“In recent days,” the Times writes, “the race appears to have shifted slightly in that direction. Jim Walden, a prominent lawyer who had mounted an independent campaign for mayor, said he was dropping out and urged his rivals to unite against Mr. Mamdani.” OK, as far as anyone can tell, the only person who was going to vote for Jim Walden was Jim Walden. So that's one more vote in the Cuomo column. But the claim that the race overall has shifted in the direction that the tycoons are hoping it will seems demonstrably false. No matter how attached the Times may be to its behind the scenes reporting that Eric Adams was open to getting out of the race, the facts on the public record are that late Friday, Eric Adams stepped up to a bunch of microphones and said, “Andrew Cuomo is a snake and a liar,” which makes it pretty hard to claim that any momentum is swinging toward Adams and his admittedly dwindling pile of supporters backing Andrew Cuomo. Meanwhile, in the non-hypothetical poll analysis part of the Times' poll story, the Times writes, “around 60 % of likely voters,” the Times continues, “said Mr. Mamdani was inspirational, had good character, and cared about people like them. He is the only candidate viewed positively by a majority of voters despite months of attacks against him.” 

People like him, and they like what he says he'll do as mayor, but surely somehow, if they try hard enough, the plutocrats can assemble a winning counter-coalition out of three widely despised candidates who all hate each other. Or maybe they won’t. 

Despite the New York Times' big scoop about the panicked emergency meeting, the Wall Street Journal has a rather different story. “NYC developers, resigned to Mamdani winning, now want to work with him. Democrats' big lead in polls causes some property owners to seek common ground on property tax changes and faster building approvals.” Maybe it's not impossible to live under socialism after all. 

On the front of this morning's New York Times, one potential pathway out of American fascism has now been utterly closed. In the lead news spot, two columns wide, the headline is, “Murdochs’ Deal Will Give Lachlan Control of Empire / After Bitter Battle, Multibillion-Dollar Pact Keeps Father’s Outlets Conservative.” Rupert Murdoch after attempting to cheat three of his adult children out of their legally prescribed shares of control of his media empire after his death Because he feared they might not continue his project of rabid far-right propaganda, has joined with his loyally reactionary son Lachlan to buy out the dissident family members for 1.1 billion dollars apiece, in a deal that's expected to keep Fox News poisoning the nation until Lachlan, currently age 54, eventually dies. 

Next to that is a picture of yesterday's part of the violence in Nepal, with a caption noting that the government withdrew the social media ban that had been approximate cause of the youth revolt. 

Below that is Supreme Court news from yesterday. “Justices Cancel Limits on Stops By ICE in L.A.” In addition to voiding via unexplained order, the Humphreys executor precedent, which yesterday's podcast inaccurately said was an 80 year old unanimous decision. It was a 90 year old unanimous decision. The Indignity Morning Podcast regrets our error of arithmetic and-or chronology. 

The Supreme Court also, in another bare bones order, nullified the Fourth Amendment for anyone in Los Angeles whose ethnicity and choice of employment fit ICE's profile of potential undocumented immigrants. “The court's majority lifted an order under which a lower court judge had ordered ICE agents, the Times writes, “not to rely on several factors, alone or in combination in deciding whom to stop in question in her judicial district, which includes Los Angeles and surrounding areas. The factors were race or ethnicity, speaking Spanish or accented English, presence at a particular location, such as a day laborer or agricultural site, or performing a particular type of work.” The Times quotes Justice Sonia Sotomayor in dissent as writing, “Countless people in the Los Angeles area have been grabbed, thrown to the ground and handcuffed simply because of their looks, their accents, and the fact they make their living by doing manual labor. Today, the court needlessly subjects countless more to these exact same indignities.” 

NBC, meanwhile, reports this morning, “for more than 15 years before they conducted any operation to arrest an immigrant in the United States, officers with Immigration and Customs Enforcement's Enforcement and Removal Operations Division have been required to fill out a form with details about their target. Name, appearance, known addresses and employment, immigration history, any criminal history and more, and give it to a supervisor for approval. This year, in a sign of how the agency has moved from targeted enforcement to broad street sweeps under the Trump administration, that policy has been ended, six current and former officials and agents of ICE and the Department of Homeland Security told NBC News. ‘It's hard to fill out a worksheet that just says, meet in the Home Depot parking lot,’ one of the former ICE officials said.” 

And speaking of evidence, way inside the paper, on page A16, down at the bottom. The headline is “Drawing for Epstein, apparently signed by Trump, is released.” “Key congressional committee on Monday,” the Times writes, “obtained a note and sexually suggestive drawing, apparently signed by Donald J. Trump, and included in a book for the disgraced financier Jeffrey Epstein's 50th birthday in 2003. A drawing that Mr. Trump has insisted is fake.” The story includes a picture of the document, a center-justified poem or imaginary dialogue between Trump and Epstein, with the torso and remarkably small breasts of a female figure drawn around the words and with Trump's signature, Donald, in his familiar spiky style, centered at the bottom right around the pubic area. The drawing seems to be in line with other pages from Epstein's birthday book that were released, which were characterized reasonably accurately by the Bluesky user and state level democratic organizer going by the handle “Bobby big wheel” who posted “for decades everyone on the list argued they only knew Epstein in a professional capacity while all the notes to him are ‘I sure love being pedophiles together with you my friend, Jeffrey Epstein’” 

The Wall Street Journal which broke the news of the letter also reported on another entry in the book from a businessman and longtime Mar-a-Lago member named Joel Pashcow which “included a photo of a poster board sized check for $22,500 which had been mocked up to appear that it was sent from Trump to Epstein. Beneath it a caption said, ‘Jeffrey showing early talents with money plus women sells fully depreciated [woman's name] to Donald Trump for $22,500.’” The woman's name is redacted in the image. A certified lover boy, if you will. 

That is the news. Thank you for listening. The Indignity Morning Podcast is edited by Joe MacLeod. The theme song is composed and performed by Mack Scocca-Ho. You, the listeners, keep us going through your paid subscriptions to Indignity and your tips. Keep sending those along if you are able. Please just click those little buttons and put some money in the podcast. And if nothing unexpected gets in the way, we will talk again tomorrow.