affordability

Seasoned fitness coaches Mary Pelino and Lizzy Picardi met at their local powerlifting gym, where they instantly became friends in meet-cute fashion. The hours they spent together sparked the beginning of an idea: to open an inclusive, women-owned gym. After finding a space, Pelino and Picardi officially launched the small-but-mighty Rose City Barbell in the summer of 2022.

“Our mission from the beginning,” Pelino told me, “has been to make humans stronger. That includes everyone — women, men, any gender, from beginners to advanced lifters.” This is why Pelino designs the Monday through Friday barbell programming with modifications in mind: so that everyone can perform the same lifts, no matter their skill level.

I am self-conscious about my piddly strength, but when I walked into Rose City’s brick-lined main room, where there were daisies painted on the lilac-colored deadlift platforms, my lizard brain felt at ease. The gym was also stocked with a variety of inclusive, high-quality equipment, such as 15 to 55 pound specialty barbells, belts of all sizes, 10-pound bumper plates and fractional plates as light as a quarter pound.

That morning, I was greeted by my coach, Sionann, as well as my gym-mate, Davida, before preparing to work on our bench presses. We warmed up together, then performed a light set of bench presses, three sets of six. In between sets, I learned that Davida was a gallery owner, a mother of two, and like me, found Rose City through word-of-mouth. Pumping iron, as it turns out, is a social affair — especially when the classes, which are capped at eight, are this intimate.

“The beauty of the gym comes from the people who we spend time with,” said Picardi, which is why Rose City hosts an array of social events for the community, including clothing swaps, lettering classes and Friendsgiving potlucks. The gym also hosts seasonal mock meets where attendees compete in a setting that emulates the experience of a professional powerlifting meet, prizes and all.

After the main lift, we moved onto accessory work. Sionann gently corrected my form as I performed gorilla rows, instructing me to picture my arms as if they were chains. I pulled the dumbbells off the floor toward my hips, mimicking the movements of a majestic ape. By the end of the class, I did indeed feel like a stronger Homo sapien.

Parking: Plenty of street parking

Pricing: $45 per drop-in; $325 for 13 classes per month; $433 for unlimited classes plus gym access

The 2028 presidential election is more than 1,000 days away, but you’d hardly know it from all the speculation and anticipation that’s swirling from Sacramento to the Washington Beltway.

Standing at the center of attention is California Gov. Gavin Newsom, fresh off his big victory on Proposition 50, the backatcha ballot measure that gerrymandered the state’s congressional map to boost Democrats and offset a power grab by Texas Republicans.

Newsom is bidding for the White House, and has been doing so for the better part of a year, though he won’t say so out loud. Is Newsom the Democratic front-runner or a mere flash in the pan?

Times columnists Anita Chabria and Mark Z. Barabak disagree on Newsom’s presidential prospects, and more. Here the two hash out some of their differences.

Barabak: So is the presidential race over, Anita? Should I just spend the next few years backpacking and snowboarding in the Sierra and return in January 2029 to watch Newsom iterate, meet the moment and, with intentionality, be sworn in as our nation’s 48th president?

Chabria: You should definitely spend as much time in the Sierra as possible, but I have no idea if Newsom will be elected president in 2028 or not. That’s about a million light-years away in political terms. But I think he has a shot, and is the front-runner for the nomination right now. He’s set himself up as the quick-to-punch foil to President Trump, and increasingly as the leader of the Democratic Party. Last week, he visited Brazil for a climate summit that Trump ghosted, making Newsom the American presence.

And in a recent (albeit small) poll, in a hypothetical race against JD Vance, the current Republican favorite, Newsom lead by three points. Though, unexpectedly, respondents still picked Kamala Harris as their choice for the nomination.

To me, that shows he’s popular across the country. But you’ve warned that Californians have a tough time pulling voters in other states. Do you think his Golden State roots will kill off his contender status?

Barabak: I make no predictions. I’m smart enough to know that I’m not smart enough to know. And, after 2016 and the election of Trump, the words “can’t,” “not,” “won’t,” “never ever” are permanently stricken from my political vocabulary.

That said, I wouldn’t stake more than a penny — which may eventually be worth something, as they’re phased out of our currency — on Newsom’s chances.

Look, I yield to no one in my love of California. (And I’ve got the Golden State tats to prove it.) But I’m mindful of how the rest of the country views the state and those politicians who bear a California return address. You can be sure whoever runs against Newsom — and I’m talking about his fellow Democrats, not just Republicans — will have a great deal to say about the state’s much-higher-than-elsewhere housing, grocery and gas prices and our shameful rates of poverty and homelessness.

Not a great look for Newsom, especially when affordability is all the political rage these days.

And while I understand the governor’s appeal — Fight! Fight! Fight! — I liken it to the fleeting fancy that, for a time, made attorney, convicted swindler and rhetorical battering ram Michael Avenatti seriously discussed as a Democratic presidential contender. At a certain point — and we’re still years away — people will assess the candidates with their head, not viscera.

As for the polling, ask Edmund Muskie, Gary Hart or Hillary Clinton how much those soundings matter at this exceedingly early stage of a presidential race. Well, you can’t ask Muskie, because the former Maine senator is dead. But all three were early front-runners who failed to win the Democratic nomination.

Chabria: I don’t argue the historical case against the Golden State, but I will argue that these are different days. People don’t vote with their heads. Fight me on that.

They vote on charisma, tribalism, and maybe some hope and fear. They vote on issues as social media explains them. They vote on memes.

There no reality in which our next president is rationally evaluated on their record — our current president has a criminal one and that didn’t make a difference.

But I do think, as we’ve talked about ad nauseam, that democracy is in peril. Trump has threatened to run for a third term and recently lamented that his Cabinet doesn’t show him the same kind of fear that Chinese President Xi Jinping gets from his top advisers. And Vance, should he get the chance to run, has made it clear he’s a Christian nationalist who would like to deport nearly every immigrant he can catch, legal or not.

Being a Californian may not be the drawback it’s historically been, especially if Trump’s authoritarianism continues and this state remains the symbol of resistance.

But our governor does have an immediate scandal to contend with. His former chief of staff, Dana Williamson, was just arrested on federal corruption charges. Do you think that hurts him?

Barabak: It shouldn’t.

There’s no evidence of wrongdoing on Newsom’s part. His opponents will try the guilt-by-association thing. Some already have. But unless something damning surfaces, there’s no reason the governor should be punished for the alleged wrongdoing of Williamson or others charged in the case.

But let’s go back to 2028 and the presidential race. I think one of our fundamental disagreements is that I believe people do very much evaluate a candidate’s ideas and records. Not in granular fashion, or the way some chin-stroking political scientist might. But voters do want to know how and whether a candidate can materially improve their lives.

There are, of course, a great many who’d reflexively support Donald Trump, or Donald Duck for that matter, if he’s the Republican nominee. Same goes for Democrats who’d vote for Gavin Newsom or Gavin Floyd, if either were the party’s nominee. (While Newsom played baseball in college, Floyd pitched 13 seasons in the major leagues, so he’s got that advantage over the governor.)

But I’m talking about those voters who are up for grabs — the ones who decide competitive races — who make a very rational decision based on their lives and livelihoods and which candidate they believe will benefit them most.

Granted, the dynamic is a bit different in a primary contest. But even then, we’ve seen time and again the whole dated/married phenomenon. As in 2004, when a lot of Democrats “dated” Howard Dean early in the primary season but “married” John Kerry. I see electability — as in the perception of which Democrat can win the general election — being right up there alongside affordability when it comes time for primary voters to make their 2028 pick.

Chabria: No doubt affordability will be a huge issue, especially if consumer confidence continues to plummet. And we are sure to hear criticisms of California, many of which are fair, as you point out. Housing costs too much, homelessness remains intractable.

But these are also problems across the United States, and require deeper fixes than even this economically powerful state can handle alone. More than past record, future vision is going to matter. What’s the plan?

It can’t be vague tax credits or even student loan forgiveness. We need a concrete vision for an economy that brings not just more of the basics like homes, but the kind of long-term economic stability — higher wages, good schools, living-wage jobs — that makes the middle class stronger and attainable.

The Democrat who can lay out that vision while simultaneously continuing to battle the authoritarian creep currently eating our democracy will, in my humble opinion, be the one voters choose, regardless of origin story. After all, it was that message of change with hope that gave us President Obama, another candidate many considered a long shot at first.

Mark, are there any 2028 prospects you’re keeping a particularly close eye on?

Barabak: I’m taking things one election at a time, starting with the 2026 midterms, which include an open-seat race for governor here in California. The results in November 2026 will go a long way toward shaping the dynamic in November 2028. That said, there’s no shortage of Democrats eyeing the race — too many to list here. Will the number surpass the 29 major Democrats who ran in 2020? We’ll see.

I do agree with you that, to stand any chance of winning in 2028, whomever Democrats nominate will have to offer some serious and substantive ideas on how to make people’s lives materially better. Imperiled democracy and scary authoritarianism aside, it’s still the economy, stupid.

Which brings us full circle, back to our gallivanting governor. He may be winning fans and building his national fundraising base with his snippy memes and zippy Trump put-downs. But even if he gets past the built-in anti-California bias among so many voters outside our blessed state, he’s not going to snark his way to the White House.

I’d wager more than a penny on that.

SEATTLE — First-term Seattle Mayor Bruce Harrell conceded his reelection fight to progressive activist Katie Wilson on Thursday, handing another victory to leftist Democrats around the country frustrated with unaffordability, homelessness, public safety and the actions of President Trump’s administration.

Harrell, a centrist Democrat who previously served three terms on the City Council, led in early results. But Washington conducts all-mail elections, with ballots postmarked by Election Day. Later-arriving votes, which historically trend more liberal, broke heavily in Wilson’s favor, adding to a progressive shift to the left nationally.

In a concession speech at City Hall on Thursday afternoon, Harrell said he had congratulated Wilson in a “delightful” call.

“I feel very good about the future of this country and this city still,” he said.

Wilson, 43, is a democratic socialist who has never held elected office. She told a news conference later Thursday that it was hard for her to believe she had been elected mayor, considering that at the beginning of this year she had no intention of running, and she acknowledged concerns about her lack of experience: “No one saw this coming.”

But she also spoke to the resonance of her volunteer-driven campaign among voters concerned about affordability and public safety in a city where the cost of living has soared as Amazon and other tech companies proliferated. Universal child care, better mass transit, better public safety and stable, affordable housing are among her priorities, and she said she would take office with a strong mandate to pursue them, though she acknowledged the city also faces a significant budget shortfall.

Wilson called herself a coalition builder and community organizer, and said she would also work with those who questioned her qualifications to lead a city with more than 13,000 employees and a budget of nearly $9 billion: “This is your city too.”

“When I say this is your city, that means you have a right to be here and to live a dignified life — whatever your background, whatever your income,” Wilson said. “But it also means that we all have a collective responsibility for this city and for each other. … We cannot tackle the major challenges facing our city unless we do it together.”

She will be working with a relatively new City Council: Only two of the seven council members have served more than one term.

Harrell was elected mayor in 2021 following the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic and racial justice protests over George Floyd’s murder by Minneapolis police. With crime falling, more police being hired, less visible drug use and many homeless encampments removed from city parks, the business-backed Harrell once seemed likely to cruise to reelection.

But Trump’s return to office — and his efforts to send in federal agents or cut funding for blue cities — helped reawaken Seattle’s progressive voters. The lesser-known Wilson, a democratic socialist, ran a campaign that echoed some of the themes of progressive mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani in New York. She trounced Harrell by nearly 10 percentage points in the August primary and quickly became favored to win the mayor’s office.

Wilson studied at an Oxford University college in England but did not graduate. She founded the small nonprofit Transit Riders Union in 2011 and has led campaigns for better public transportation, higher minimum wages, stronger renter protections and more affordable housing. She herself is a renter, living in a one-bedroom apartment in the city’s Capitol Hill neighborhood, and says that has shaped her understanding of Seattle’s affordability crisis.

Wilson criticized Harrell as doing too little to provide more shelter and said his encampment sweeps have been cosmetic, merely pushing unhoused people around the city. Wilson also painted him as a City Hall fixture who bore responsibility for the status quo.

Harrell, 67, played on the Rose Bowl champion University of Washington football team in 1978 before going to law school. His father, who was Black, came to Seattle from the segregated Jim Crow South, and his mother, a Japanese American, was incarcerated at an internment camp in Minidoka, Idaho, during World War II after officials seized her family’s Seattle flower shop — experiences that fostered his understanding of the importance of civil rights and inclusivity.

Both candidates touted plans for affordable housing, combating crime and attempting to Trump-proof the city, which receives about $150 million a year in federal funding. Both want to protect Seattle’s sanctuary city status.

Wilson has proposed a city-level capital gains tax to help offset federal funding the city might lose and to pay for housing. Harrell says that idea is ineffective because a city capital gains tax could easily be avoided by those who would be required to pay it.

Johnson writes for the Associated Press.

Proposition 50 has passed, and with it goes the warm spotlight of never-ending press coverage that aspiring presidential contender Gavin Newsom has enjoyed. What’s an ambitious governor to do?

My vote? Take inspiration from President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, who not only pulled America through the Depression, but rebuilt trust in democracy with a truly big-tent government that offered concrete benefits to a wide and diverse swath of society.

It’s time to once again embrace the values — inclusiveness, equity, dignity for all — that too many Democrats have expeditiously dropped to appease MAGA.

Not only did FDR make good on helping the average person, he put a sign on it (literally — think of all those Work Projects Administration logos that still grace our manhole covers and sidewalks) to make sure everyone knew that big, bold government wasn’t the problem, but the solution — despite what rich men wanted the public to believe.

As he was sworn in for his second term (of four, take that President Trump!), FDR said he was “determined to make every American citizen the subject of his country’s interest and concern,” because the “test of our progress is not whether we add more to the abundance of those who have much; it is whether we provide enough for those who have too little.”

Roosevelt created jobs paid for by government; he created Social Security; he created a coalition that improbably managed to include both Black Americans everywhere and white Southerners, northern industrialists and rural farmers. In the end, he created a United States where people could try, fail and have the helping hand to get back up again — the real underpinning of the American dream.

The similarities between Roosevelt’s day and now aren’t perfect, but they share a shoe size. FDR took office in 1933, when the Great Depression was in full swing. Then, like now, right-wing authoritarianism was cuddled up with the oligarchs. Income inequality was undeniable (and worse, unemployment was around 25%) and daily life was just plain hard.

That discontent, then and now, led to political polarization as need sowed division, and leaders with selfish agendas channeled fear into anger and anger into power.

Like then, the public today is desperate for security, and unselfish, service leadership — not that of “economic royalists,” as FDR described them. He warned then, in words sadly timeless, that “new kingdoms” were being “built upon concentration of control over material things.”

“They created a new despotism and wrapped it in the robes of legal sanction,” FDR said when accepting the presidential nomination for the second time.

“We’re in a similar moment now,” said New Deal expert Eric Rauchway, a distinguished professor of history at UC Davis.

But Roosevelt wasn’t just fighting what was wrong, he pointed out. He “wanted to show people that he was going to not put things back the way they were, but actually make things better.”

Like then, America today isn’t just looking to overcome.

Despite the relentless focus on cost of living, there is also hunger for a return to fairness. Even cowed by our personal needs, there is still in most of us that belief that Ronald Reagan articulated well: We aspire to be the “shining city upon a hill … teeming with people of all kinds living in harmony and peace.”

Washington, D.C., resident Sean Dunn distilled that sentiment for the modern moment recently, standing outside a courthouse after being found not guilty of a misdemeanor for throwing a turkey sandwich at an immigration officer.

“Every life matters, no matter where you came from, no matter how you got here, no matter how you identify,” Dunn said. “You have the right to live a life that is free.”

But America needs to pay the bills and affordability is fairly the top concern for many. Voters want a concrete plan for personal financial stability — like FDR offered with the New Deal — grounded in tangible benefits such as healthcare, housing, jobs and affordable Thanksgiving turkeys that do not require lining up at a food bank.

The Republicans understand only part of this complicated mix — the affordability angle. Though, like the robber barons of the Roaring ‘20s, MAGA elite are finding it increasingly difficult to dismantle government and strip the American people of their wealth while simultaneously pretending they care.

Trump made a big to-do about the price of Walmart’s Thanksgiving meal this year, about $40 to serve 10 people (though it comes with fewer items than last year, and mostly Walmart house brand instead of name brands).

Walmart “came out and they said Trump’s Thanksgiving dinner, same things, is 25% less than Biden’s,” he said. “But we just lost an election, they said, based on affordability.”

Billionaire-adjacent Vice President JD Vance summed up that Republican frustration on social media after Democrats won not just Proposition 50, but elections in New Jersey, Virginia and even Mississippi.

“We need to focus on the home front,” Vance said, using weirdly coded right-wing nationalist language. “We’re going to keep on working to make a decent life affordable in this country, and that’s the metric by which we’ll ultimately be judged in 2026 and beyond.”

Vance is partially right, but FDR ultimately succeeded because he understood that the stability of American democracy depends not just on paying the bills, but on equality and equity — of everyone having a fair shake at paying them.

Despite all the up-by-the-bootstraps rhetoric of our rich, the truth is healthy capitalist societies require “automatic stabilizers,” such as unemployment insurance, access to medical care and that Social Security FDR invented, said Teresa Ghilarducci, a professor of economics at the New School and another expert on the New Deal.

Left or right, Republican or Democrat, Americans want to know that they won’t be left out in the cold, literally, if life deals them a bad hand.

Of course, Newsom isn’t president so all he can do is give us a vision of what that would look like, the way FDR did as governor of New York in the early years of the Great Depression, before moving to the Oval Office.

There’s the evergreen refrain that as governor Newsom should stay in his lane and focus on the state, instead of his ambitions. To which I say, that’s like shaking your fist at the rear of a bolting horse. Newsom is running for president like Secretariat for the Triple Crown. And since we do in fact need a president, why shouldn’t he?

Next is the equally tired, “Republicans can’t wait for him to run because everyone hates California. Wait until Newsom hits Iowa!” But regular people hate despair, poverty and Nazis far more than they hate California. And the people who actually hate California more than they hate despair, poverty and Nazis are never going to vote for any Democrat.

For once, thanks to MAGA’s fascination with California as the symbol of failure and evil, the Golden State is the perfect place to make an argument for a new vision of America, FDR-style. In fact, we already are.

At a time of increasing hunger in our country, California is one of a handful of states that provides no-questions-asked free school lunches to all children, a proven way to combat food insecurity.

With Trump not only destroying the scientific institutions that study and control environmental and health safety, California is setting its own standards to protect people and the planet.

California has fought to expand access to affordable healthcare; stop the military on our streets and push back against masked police; and it leads our country in livable wages, safety nets, social equality and opportunities for social mobility. The state is doing as much as one state can to offer a new deal to solve old problems.

What if Newsom built off those successes with plans for Day One executive orders? Expansion of trade apprenticeships into every high school? A pathway for “Dreamers” to become citizens?

How about an order requiring nonpartisan election maps? Or declaring firearm violence a public health emergency? Heck, I’d love an executive order releasing the Epstein files, which may be America’s most bipartisan issue.

But, Rauchway warns, Newsom needs to be more like FDR and “put a sign on it” when he puts values into action.

“That investment has to be conspicuous, positive and very clear where it came from,” he said.

We are not a nation of subtlety or patience.

If Newsom wants to stay relevant, he has to do more than fight against Trump. He needs to make all Americans believe he’s fighting for them as FDR did — loudly and boldly — and that if he wins, they will, too, on Day One.

NewsFeed

“You have to deliver on addressing that crisis.” New York City Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani criticised President Donald Trump for not fixing the affordability crisis he campaigned on, adding that Republicans are scared the new mayor may actually deliver.

NEW YORK — Fresh off winning New York City’s mayoral election, Zohran Mamdani announced Wednesday that a team including former city and federal officials — all women — would steer his transition to City Hall, and that he would “work every day to honor the trust that I now hold.”

“I and my team will build a City Hall capable of delivering on the promises of this campaign,” the mayor-elect said at a news conference, vowing that his administration would be both compassionate and capable.

He named political strategist Elana Leopold as executive director of the transition team. She will work with United Way of New York City President Grace Bonilla; former Deputy Mayor Melanie Hartzog, who was also a city budget official; former Federal Trade Commission chair Lina Khan; and former First Deputy Mayor Maria Torres-Springer.

With his win over former Gov. Andrew Cuomo and Republican Curtis Sliwa, the 34-year-old democratic socialist will soon become the city’s first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa and the youngest mayor in more than a century.

He now faces the task of following through on his ambitious affordability agenda while navigating the bureaucratic challenges of City Hall and a hostile Trump administration.

“I’m confident in delivering these same policies that we ran on for the last year,” he said in an interview earlier Wednesday on cable news channel NY1.

More than 2 million New Yorkers cast ballots in the contest, the largest turnout in a mayoral race in more than 50 years, according to the city’s Board of Elections. With roughly 90% of the votes counted, Mamdani held an approximately 9 percentage point lead over Cuomo.

Mamdani, who was criticized throughout the campaign for his thin resume, will now have to begin staffing his incoming administration and planning how to accomplish the ambitious but polarizing agenda that drove him to victory.

Among the campaign’s promises are free child care, free city bus service, city-run grocery stores and a new Department of Community Safety that would expand on an existing city initiative that sends mental health care workers, rather than police, to handle certain emergency calls. It is unclear how Mamdani will pay for such initiatives, given Democratic Gov. Kathy Hochul’s steadfast opposition to his calls to raise taxes on wealthy people.

On Wednesday, he touted his support from Hochul and other state leaders as “endorsements of an agenda of affordability.”

His decisions around the leadership of the New York Police Department will also be closely watched. Mamdani was a fierce critic of the department in 2020, calling for “this rogue agency” to be defunded and slamming it as “racist, anti-queer & a major threat to public safety.” He has since apologized for those comments and has said he will ask the current NYPD commissioner to stay on the job.

Mamdani has already faced scrutiny from national Republicans, including President Trump, who have eagerly cast him as a threat and the face of a more radical Democratic Party that is out of step with mainstream America. Trump has repeatedly threatened to cut federal funding to the city — and even take it over — if Mamdani won.

”…AND SO IT BEGINS!” the president posted late Tuesday to his Truth Social site.

Mamdani, for his part, said at his news conference that “New Yorkers are facing twin crises in this moment: an authoritarian administration and an affordability crisis,” and that he would tackle both.

While saying he was committed to “Trump-proofing” the city — to protect poor residents against “the man who has the most power in this country,” as he explained — the mayor-elect also reiterated that he was interested in talking to the president about ”ways that we can work together to serve New Yorkers.” That could mean discussing the cost of living or the effect of cuts to the SNAP food aid program amid the federal government shutdown, Mamdani suggested.

“I will not mince my words when it comes to President Trump … and I will also always do so while leaving a door open to have that conversation,” Mamdani added.

Mamdani also said during his news conference and interviews that he had not heard from Cuomo or the city’s outgoing mayor, Eric Adams. He did speak with Republican candidate Curtis Sliwa.

A spokesperson for Cuomo, Rich Azzopardi, said he would “let their respective speeches be the measuring stick for grace and leave it at that.”

In his victory speech to supporters, Mamdani wished Cuomo the best in private life, before adding: “Let tonight be the final time I utter his name, as we turn the page on a politics that abandons the many and answers only to the few.”

Asked about the comments Wednesday on NY1, Mamdani said he was “quite disappointed in the nature of the bigotry and the racism we saw in the final weeks.” He noted the millions of dollars in attack ads that were spent against him, some of which played into Islamophobic tropes.

Izaguirre and Colvin write for the Associated Press. AP writers Jake Offenhartz and Jennifer Peltz contributed to this report.