On Thursday’s Mark Levin Show, Chicago’s Mayor Brandon Johnson warns of a “point of no return” for city finances amid a $1.1 billion 2026 deficit, pushing for tax hikes like a millionaire tax, corporate head tax and wants progressive revenue options. In On Power, it explains that the progressive movement aims to fundamentally transform America and Western democracies by centralizing government power, diminishing individual freedoms, and reengineering society through soft negative power. Johnson’s progressive tax hikes reflects a drive to expand centralized governmental authority, which will erode economic freedoms and individual autonomy in pursuit of societal reengineering. This is what NYC can look forward to if Zohran Mamdani gets elected. Mandami repeatedly trashes America, failed to assimilate, and acting as a revolutionary against the country since his teenage arrival. His Marxist, Islamist, and Jew-hating ideologies echo terrorist lines. Also, On Power describes authoritarian democracy as a gradual slide from democracy into authoritarianism, where power centralizes—often in unelected branches like the judiciary or administrative state, or through excessive executive/legislative dominance—marginalizing citizens. It employs authoritarian tactics softly at first, justifying tyrannical laws or flawed processes simply because they follow legal forms, prioritizing legality over justice or morality. This has permeated Western society, embedding ideas like Marxism unconsciously, as noted by Ludwig von Mises. Later, federalizing Washington D.C. is constitutionally allowed and necessary because local rule has failed amid out-of-control crime like murders and carjackings. D.C. is an overwhelmingly Democrat one-party city that doesn’t protect people, despite being the nation’s capital where elected officials, staff, judges, and bureaucrats must work.
Breitbart
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson Says Finances at ‘Point of No Return’ Without Massive Tax Hike
AP
Judge orders temporary halt to construction at Florida’s ‘Alligator Alcatraz’ detention center
Fox News
AG Bondi offers $50M for arrest of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro
Fox News
Jewish Insider
Spanberger avoids addressing anti-Israel rhetoric from top Virginia Democrat
X
Eileen T. Meslar/Chicago Tribune/Tribune News Service via Getty Images
The podcast for this show can be streamed or downloaded from the Audio Rewind page.
Rough Transcription of Hour 1
Segment 1
New York City, this is what you have to look forward to from our friends at Breitbart. Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson says finance are a point of no return without, quote, massive tax hikes. Chicago’s self-professed progressive. Yeah. Democrat Mayor Brandon Johnson is warning that the city’s finances, quote, are at the point of no return, unquote, unless he gets massive tax hikes to replace dwindling revenue. Johnson told his constituents that the systems that the people rely on are woefully underfunded. What’s higher taxes? He says. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows that. You know, my commitment is to progressive revenue. I can’t do this by myself. Progressive revenue. Chicago’s facing a disastrous $1.1 billion budget deficit for 2026, and Johnson insists he needs more progressive revenue options to fill the shortfall, according to CBS News. Now, while Johnson did not lay out any particular tax hikes, he has previously said he’s looking in instituting a millionaire tax. We are implementing the per employee head tax on corporations, doing business in the city and imposing a tax on social media advertising so people will flee that city even faster than they already are. Late last year, Johnson’s plan for a huge $300 million increase in property taxes was knocked down by the city council in a rare, unanimous rebuke. But Windy City mayors proposed budget. Johnson has since promised not to float that taxing scheme again any time soon. For one. They’ve have a problem with the state legislature, it says. State Democrats beat back demands that more state dollars be handed to Chicago’s mass transit system. I want you to think about mundane me as I go through this America. Worst left wing Democratic Governor J.B. Pritzker. He is a sleaze ball extraordinaire. Signed a bill that puts an even greater burden on Chicago’s already an unfunded pension system with a new law that adds an unsustainable $11 billion in additional pension costs for the city’s fire and police departments. So Illinois is going to collapse. In my humble opinion. The wild growth in taxes has been a chief reason businesses and residents are leaving Chicago. For years, Chicago was one of the worst case cities for losing population. Over the last two years has seen some small growth. That growth, though, was only because of the arrival of 96,000. Aliens mostly illegal. This is what’s going to happen in New York, but even in a bigger sense. Productive citizens, taxpaying citizens, law abiding citizens, regardless of race. They’re going to leave. If they can get out, they’re going to get out. If they’re going to get out. They can’t get out. They’re going to get out. I want to read something to you. Just to show you the relevance of this book, constant relevance of on power and the need to get it in people’s hands. And I’m doing my best. The extensive written history I write and on power of the cunningly named progressive movement and apologetically declares its purpose, as does its modern progeny in a flood of essays, books and speeches to fundamentally transform America. It is a force and presence in the United States, as it is in all Western democracies, albeit operating under different party and official nomenclature. Where truly enlightened progress is met with regressive and primitive ideological forces hailed as modern and futuristic, thus tearing down the barriers to centralized decision making and governmental power and diminishing individual freedom to re-engineer society and indeed mankind are essential objectives, if not the epitome of both soft, negative power and negative power. Now, that soft negative power and negative power I’m talking about are people like this Johnson and Mamdani and the rest of them. This is precisely why the early progressive intellectuals in America in the late 1800s and early 1900s, including future Democrat President Woodrow Wilson, relentlessly and furiously assailed both the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, especially separation of powers and federalism. Woodrow Wilson wrote about the need for a living and breathing constitution, and he insisted it be understood within an ALEC allegory to the human body. Now, how? Wilson asked, Can a person live if his organs are constantly working against each other rather than in harmony? In other words, separation of powers. The heart of the Constitution is a debt is as deadly to America as the separation of organs in the human body would be. Now. Wilson was an early Marxist, American Marxist. When I spoke to people in New Jersey at the book signing, a lot of them said they hadn’t known a lot of this about Wilson, which is why I am. Specifically in explicitly addressing this in the book on power and relaying it to you. And this, of course, every time I read from the book, understand there’s far more, far more in the book per se, than what I’m that I’m relaying to you. Moreover, Wilson and his progressive contemporaries argued that successive generations are not bound by the decisions and doctrines of the past, and we need not adhere to them any more than the authors of the Declaration or the Constitution were bound by those who preceded them, Wilson argued. We are free to do as we wish, just as they were, and we need not worship them or what they wrote. Wilson and his ilk argued for a sinister revolution. Indeed, launched that revolution in which intellectual elites and self-appointed experts thought a ruling class of like minded manipulators and schemers, social engineers and contrives would employ the instrumentalities of the unelected and non-representative parts of the federal government and further empower them in service to the cause of the so-called new progressivism. That is a form of European totalitarianism that I previously termed American Marxism. That’s what’s happening in Chicago. That’s what’s happening in L.A. That’s certainly what’s going to happen in New York if they don’t get that taken care of. Now, in this way, the Constitution could be altered if not bypassed, with a top down imposition of life altering directives, regulations and ultimatums to accomplish their ends. The will of the people through actual representative bodies is to be adhered to only when convenient and aligned with the ruling classes, causes and goals. Otherwise, it is to be circumvented. Killed through delay in atrophy r where feasible simply ignored. Woodrow Wilson and others insisted that a complete break from the past as required, just like marks a blank slate upon which to design this new governing blueprint. In this they were mimicking Karl Marx. At first, Wilson couldn’t decide if this was best accomplished through an all powerful president or judiciary. But he eventually settled on what he considered the most obvious and certain means by which to accomplish this scheme. That is the judiciary. What better means to achieve the progressive end, she believed, than the careful selection and appointment of ideological soulmates who served for a life without any effective method for public accountability? Who would drive this revolution and give it a legal pretext, justification, authority and protection? Indeed, if your objective is the fundamental transformation of constitutional republics and parliamentary democracy into centralized leviathans. The path of least resistance, a maximum impact would be seemed to be the judiciary. And we have more decisions today. We have another federal court weigh outside its lane saying and putting a halt on any further construction on the so-called Alcatraz facility. So basically, the federal judiciary has taken over immigration, taken over the facilities, taken over deportation efforts. The entire premise for this revolution is not, for example, as Marx and others predicted and hoped, a foment a to foment a bottom up movement that is the oppressed proletariat overthrowing the oppressor bourgeoisie. For in much of the Western world, and certainly in America, the public do not seek such a violent revolution. In fact, in America and elsewhere, there is no popular will to overthrow the existing society. And on the contrary, the people have and are prepared to fight and die for this country. Now, this is a very, very important point. The point being, even though people say, even though some people say yes, yes, man. Damien So-but yes. Johnson they do not support if it’s explained the overthrow of the system, They do not support open borders and illegal aliens coming in. They do not support the government, government control of the means of production. Oh, there are some that do. Of course these are these are the fanatics or the imbeciles. But you see. What’s happening in Chicago. I just read you that article. It’s going broke. It’s going broke. Massive tax increases. So it’ll go broke even faster. So the productive elements are going to leave. So the citizenry is going to leave if they can. They’re going to get up and move. That’s what’s happening all over the country. This is New York’s future. This is New York City’s future. If this man, Domi, gets elected. But it’s important to try and fight these people, try and stop them. Johnson’s case to try and make sure he doesn’t even get nominated again. In Madonna’s case to make sure he doesn’t get elected again. And we need certain tools, certain arguments. We need words. We need sentences. We need terms to take them on. To stop them. And people need to understand what’s going on. You don’t have to be a professor. Neither do I. You don’t have to be a proselytizer. If you digest the things I’ve written in this book or for that matter, give this book to people who you think. Can be influenced or at least have them open their minds. You will have done what you need to do or what I think you can do. To try and stand up to this. That’s why I don’t write books about look at me or write books about. Let me tell you how to live. I write books about. Let me tell you about these 17 people and why they’re important. I don’t do that. I’ll leave it to other people and their ghostwriters. I don’t do that. The issue here is we have a short time on this earth. We have to spend our time living it freely. Fully happily and to ensure that the next generation can do the same thing. We have individuals who want to destroy this society, this culture, this republic. We’ve got to push back. These ideas matter. People are going into that voting booth. They don’t even know what they’re voting for. Where they think they know what they’re voting for, but they really don’t. And so for our fellow citizens and for us and for our own families and the future generations yet born, we need to be. The Paul Revere is the Thomas Paine. Do books have consequences? You better believe they do. Do ideas have consequences? You better believe they do. The Communist Manifesto mattered in a very big way. And those ideas, unfortunately, despite the 100 million dead as a result, they still persist. They’re still passed along. Well, we can do the same thing. In the promotion of positive power against negative power. We can do the same thing. We understand how they’re trying to control language. But no, we’re not going to allow it. We will speak the right language. Their goal thought control. No, we’re going to fight the thought control. People ask me all the time, What can we do? What can we do? What should we do? Inform ourselves. Read the book. Pass the information along. Pass the. The education along. Each and every one of us. So one person, two people, ten people, the family members and friends. We can do this. We can do this. There may be a time when we can’t. There may be a time when we can’t. I’ve often said I was born at the wrong time. That I should have been born around the time of the founding man. Would I have loved that? But I have loved to. In a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. I would have loved it. But here we are today. This is our own constitutional convention. This is our own national town hall meeting. We need to do what they did. We need to do what others have done. And we need to do it today. We can’t just throw up our hands that it’s over. We can’t just throw up our hands and complain about it. We can do this. Each and every one of you. You’re the pamphleteers. You’re the voices. You’re the people who make the difference. You’re red blooded, patriotic Americans. You have this power. You have this power. I’ll be right back.
Segment 2
Just a reminder, two days away, just two days to Saturday, 10 a.m.. Barnes and Noble Spectrum at Reston Town Center, brand new Barnes and Noble. You’re going to love it there. Again, that’s the Spectrum at Reston Town Center in Reston, Virginia, at 10 a.m.. Barnes and Noble, we hope to see a whole ton of you there. This book on power is number one in the first week, and I don’t expect it to remain there forever. That said, it’s not because of me, it’s because of you, because people are very interested in what we’ve been discussing here. And I think that’s very important. It. It should give you hope. It should give you a lot of hope. So there’s a lot of books out there that cover a zillion different topics and so forth. This this zeroes in on what I think is so relevant today. Here’s another example. We have this Zoran Mamdani in New York today. And so he want you to believe that his administration would be Donald Trump’s worst nightmare. I just want the people of New York to understand. And this may fall on deaf ears on the left in New York. You’re voting for your own demise. And some of you who are relatively wealthy who can just leave it the whole place craters. And it will at some point the cities going bankrupt before under a liberal Republican in the 1970s. Lindsay Imagine what it will do under a marxist Islamist Jew hater. People are not going to invest there. People are going to leave. Their people are not going to visit there. Crime will be rampant. It’ll be flooded with illegal aliens. You’ll be flooded with people on the dole who would rather use your welfare system than the welfare system they’re currently using, because it’ll be very generous. You see this clown, Johnson in Chicago? He tried a lot of this. Not not as much, but he tried a lot of it. He’s a left wing radical and the city’s financially collapsing. I’ll be right back.
Segment 3
You know, there’s some great books out there that last a long time. The test of time we call. Some really great books. And. You know, HANNITY said to me before he interviewed me on the FOX program and his radio program, and since you said this one, this on power is going to outlive you, which, of course, is a little nerve wracking, Mr. Producer, knowing you like. But that said, I know what he means. I feel this book will. Here’s what I don’t want to happen. 50 years from now, somebody reads this book. And says he warned us, he warned us. He told us what to do. And unfortunately, it wasn’t done. You know, I read a lot of books. I know a lot of these authors. Old time, ancient. Alexis de Tocqueville. Came to the United States a few years. He wrote really two volumes. Democracy in America really is a book that is a combination of two volumes. And when he died, his books were that book. Democracy in America wasn’t considered very much, didn’t draw much attention. And about 50 years after he died, people started to read it. And now everybody quotes from. Frederick Bastiat wrote a little book, really few essays called The Law. Told the law. Nobody paid attention to it. In fact, Marx specifically denounced him and his quote unquote, stupid little book. Now. He’d been a politician, he’d been a legislator, but he saw what was happening to France. He saw it was moving in the direction of socialism. He saw how the law was being distorted. Now an awful lot of people remember Frederick yet, but when he died, most people didn’t know who he was. Most people did know who he was. Kind of sad when you think about it. I think. I’ll give you another example. Has nothing to do with books. Vincent Van Gogh. Shot himself in the chest when he was 37. He had some. Difficult issues. He died nearly a pauper. You assumed he was failed. He failed artist. He’s considered one of the five great artists of all time now. Unfortunately, he didn’t live to see any of it. As they say. But that’s a legacy. You know, you’re put on this earth and you get one shot at it unless you believe in reincarnation. I don’t. My mother kind of did, but I don’t. Maybe you go somewhere else. Maybe your soul does. I can believe that. I don’t know, but I can believe it. And so you want to do whoever you are, whatever your role in life is, whatever you’ve decided to do or whatever you’re doing, whether you’ve decided to do it or not, you want to do it the best you can. You want to make your family proud. Sometimes there’s a lot of stress in your family. Sometimes you try and raise your kids the best you can and. Maybe it doesn’t work out the way you want to. Or maybe there’s some horrendous accident or disease that occurs. Life is tough. Life can be a struggle even in the greatest country on the face of the earth. Can be very sad at times. With little, little periods of happiness. But if you have a heart and soul and a conscious life can be tough. It’s why people turn to faith. And try and find life partners. But it’s also why people read. Even more than listening to radio or watching television, certainly more than podcasters. And so that’s why the written word is so important. The written word tells us how people thought. Several thousands of years ago. You read the Torah? And the New Testament. Or you read Plato, whom I view as a disaster, but nonetheless Aristotle, whom I view as. Not the smartest one of the smartest people to ever live. You read about Socrates, who was Plato’s teacher, but he didn’t write. Plato was Aristotle’s teacher. You read about Cicero? What’s the senator in Rome? Brilliant, man. Very much the philosopher. He died at the hands. The Roman army. As they try and track them down because the things he said and especially the things he wrote were considered blasphemous. He stood up. To the building of the empire. And he wrote about democracy. You know, Rome last about a thousand years. The first half or so, it was a republic. The second half it was an empire. It’s important to dip into this information in this knowledge. So we know where we are and so we can know where we’re headed and try and figure out a way to. Prevent disaster. Marxists and Islamists have a lot in common. They’re throwbacks. To a primitive time. Their tactics and techniques are barbaric. They’re not interested in reading what came before. They’re not interested in knowledge. They don’t accept. That individuals are sovereign. They don’t accept the civil society. They accept none of it. And these attitudes and these beliefs or maybe dogma. Are what powers now the modern Democrat Party. It’s what powers our universities and our faculty, what powers our media, whether they are smart enough to know it or not, is beside the point. They all sound like. Totalitarians. Marxists. They never talk up the country. They never explain our history, our founding. They’re embarrassed by it. They give voice to the Bernie Sanders and the AOC and the Mamdani. They give voice to the professors who poison the minds of your children and other children. We have podcasters who self-identify as influencers that should tell you how narcissistic they are. You don’t teach. They don’t explain. They don’t have substance. Many of them are quite vile. Because what they do is not intended. To do good or advance the cause of liberty or. Or to explain our history and. The history of those who would undo it. They’re self-promoters. They’re the technological. Modern day. Clowns. And they try to build followings and they do build followings. But those followings are temporary. So some. Sometimes I sit up at night and I wonder, what can I do about this? What else can I do? What else can I do? What else can we do? And I’ve concluded and I have concluded many times. There are there is strength in numbers. We are people of goodwill. We are people who do believe. In God. We do believe that he is the sovereign. We do believe. And what the Declaration was all about. That the people on Earth are the sovereign. In a civil society. We the people. We know that people are imperfect. So we can’t have pure. We’re seeing mob ocracy. We know that we have unalienable rights. So we know that the vote is important, but certain things. Are not to be voted on their unalienable. Like the Bill of Rights. It doesn’t matter what everybody thinks. What matters is that you are a sovereign human being. You. And I understand. That this government was set up. To nurture. We the people, the sovereign to nurture this civil society. To nurture the human soul. We understand this is why we cherish the Constitution of the United States. That’s why we want our children to learn about it, to embrace it. Because the alternative, the people who pushed the 1619 project and CRT and die, the people who push economic socialism and cultural Marxism. They’re very dark. They’re very evil. And they will destroy. What mankind has learned through knowledge and experience. They are throwbacks. They are primitive. Their tactics are barbarian or barbaric. So I get this question a lot when I do the interviews with these wonderful hosts on radio. Why did I write this book on power? Now you know why. I had to. For me. I had to. And I need to use my platforms to talk about it and to promote it. So as many people as humanly possible. What participate in this? Time will tell. I’ll be right back.
Segment 4
I want to underscore something I touched on the other end. I’m not one of these conservatives, a Republican, who believes that there is a silver lining. If we lose New York City to a marxist Islamist anti-Semite. Now, we can run on that in every corner of the rest of the country. We don’t give up the biggest city in the country. We don’t give up the financial center of the country. Two Marxist Islamists anti-Semites. Only to prove a point. When you lose liberty, you rarely get it back. And I mean that in the broadest sense. Property rights, the ability to make individual decisions and so forth. When a city is destroyed. They don’t come back. Maybe they’ll show a little ankle at some point, but they don’t come back to their former selves. It doesn’t happen. We need to fight these people. No, no, I don’t mean violence. That’s them. But you understand what I mean in the context of what I’ve been talking about. We need to do something. We’re not spectators. We’re not observers. We’re the American people right in our own midst. And our biggest city. Our biggest city. Look, we know it’s liberal Democrat. But it’s not Marxist, Islamist, anti-Semitic. And he can win with a plurality of the vote. Not a majority. A plurality. And destroy the whole thing that’s been built up. You know, New York actually has a tremendous history in our founding. And I started off with this guy Johnson in Chicago, just to remind everybody what happens. What happens? Now, if you hate billionaires so much, that’s why you’re voting. Then the billionaires are going to leave and they’re going to take their businesses with them, their investment with them, their jobs with them. They’re going to leave. Billionaires don’t affect us in any direct way unless, of course, they leave our communities. Then they’re not paying taxes. They’re not creating jobs. We’re not creating things. They’re not putting money in in capital and research and things that we need. Illegal aliens. Don’t make our cities work. The poor don’t make our cities work. Do they? Am I missing something? People on welfare, whatever that is, they don’t make our cities work. And so those people are going to vote. If they can. For a marxist Islamist Jew hater. And that because they’re Jew haters, by the way, just because it’s part of the package, they’re voting for the Marxist part. But that for another day you get the point. He says no more billionaires. Well, that’s exactly what’s going to happen in your city. They’ll go to another city. They’ll go to another state. No contribute to the tax base there. They’ll bring the jobs with them. Mondavi. I think you’re going to call him Man-dummy. What do you think of that one? Mr. Producer?