Young Americans Are Revolting (And It’s Not What You Think)

A President who has time for 60 Minutes, but not for ending a shutdown. A generation that works but can’t get ahead. And tonight, New York City votes on whether revolt wins.

The government shutdown drags on, and one truth emerges from the chaos: some Americans matter more than others when political consequences are tallied.

Touch Social Security during a shutdown? Political suicide.

Slash SNAP benefits while families go hungry? The only consequence is a court stepping in to restore partial benefits. Children don’t vote. Seniors do. The math is that brutal.

It’s no wonder that today we are on the verge of what could be a sweeping populist victory in New York City. There is a generation that feels ignored. The message younger voters are seeing is that they don’t matter. So they are gravitating toward candidates that they feel are listening to them.

60 Minutes Trumps Governance

President Trump carved out 70 minutes for 60 Minutes last week. It was his first time on the show since Paramount paid him $16 million to settle his lawsuit over its interview with Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump’s 60 Minutes interview was not 70 minutes of the best journalism. More like 70 minutes where he boasted about the payout (though that boast was cut from the footage), admitted he had little knowledge of who he just pardoned and made a series of factually dubious assertions. He seemed to have plenty of time for the interview. But sitting down with Democrats to end this shutdown? Not under force, he said.

The question is: When, then? Because Democrats weren’t getting invitations before the shutdown either.

Shortly after Inauguration, I sat with a conservative family friend who declared that if a Bernie-style Democrat ever got elected and raised his taxes, he’d move to Europe. The irony wasn’t lost on me. Many of my Los Angeles friends were already making similar threats about Trump. We’ve normalized existential politics, made the other out to be the enemy, while a real crisis festers underneath.

The Generational Divide

That crisis is inequity on a generational scale.

One generation enjoys politically untouchable benefits, like Social Security and Medicare, while the other feels they foot the bill and while getting systematically priced out of opportunity. The problem here isn’t just partisan gridlock. It’s a bipartisan political hot potato.

No one wants to make the hard choices. No one wants to raise taxes to meet spending commitments. And no one wants to make the choices on spending and risk political blowback.

So we get gridlock with a side of electioneering: Seniors, a reliable voting base, get guaranteed healthcare, protected Social Security, and tax breaks. Young adults, who are historically less reliable, face student debt rivaling mortgage payments, housing costs they can’t afford and childcare bills that force impossible choices.

While we’ve watched education budgets get slashed as pension obligations increase, colleges become ever more unaffordable and daycare costs skyrocket, the generation expected to fund this system through their labor often feels locked out of its benefits.

The Mamdani Moment

Tonight, as New York City counts votes, that inequity has found its voice: Zohran Mamdani, the charismatic 34-year-old Democratic Socialist. He is leading polls by double digits despite being branded dangerous by the Establishment.

His core appeal to voters is built on closing that inequity. And he’s tapping into youth in revolt.

Mamdani’s primary upset was powered by record youth turnout — He started with little name recognition but built a youth army, he mobilized volunteers, knocked thousands of doors and received tens of thousands of individual contributions.

Am I skeptical about Mamdani’s promises? Yes.

I’m not sure that Mamdani can deliver free childcare, rent freezes, and city-run grocery stores in one of the largest cities in the world. But I was also skeptical that President Trump would bring down prices on day one, immediately end the war in Ukraine (still waiting), or solve healthcare without an actual plan.

Even if Mamdani’s promises are ambitious to the point of fantasy (aren’t Trump’s?), they speak to something happening in our political system. There’s a generation longing for that fantasy: To be heard and to see an affordable America for them. We’ll see tonight if young voters show up.

The Revolt Factor

Mamdani’s rise from little name recognition to a 25-point lead isn’t about policy feasibility — it’s revolt. There’s a generation saying “enough” to being told there’s no money for their priorities while billions flow to tax breaks for those who already have theirs.

I know quite a few young people who just feel lost. They work and still can’t earn enough to get ahead, buy a home, feel secure. They feel like the system is rigged against them from the start. They want what previous generations took for granted, an America that feels like it offers opportunities to them.

Trump has already promised to cut off New York City if Mamdani wins. Which raises the question: If the federal government threatens to cut you off, but you feel like you don’t have what you need either way, why not vote for the candidate promising to fight for you?

The Nuclear Reality

All this division in politics leads to little getting done. Which is exactly what we’re seeing with a never-ending government shutdown.

At this point this shutdown could end with Senate action that deploys the so-called “nuclear” option, unless Senators actually try to find a compromise. The likelihood of compromise? It hasn’t happened in the last month.

The deeper crisis won’t end with any procedural fix. Until cutting food assistance carries the same political price as touching Social Security, or more realistically until we prioritize both, we’ll keep lurching between extremes. Tax the wealthy at 95% or don’t tax them at all, anything except the hard middle ground of actually governing. That hard middle ground that actually would take some compromise.

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Tonight I’ll join

Evan Barker

on a Substack Live in the 7:00 p.m Pacific/10:00 p.m. Eastern hour to watch election results. I won’t be surprised if Mamdani wins. But I worry whatever comes next won’t bring people together to address the fundamental inequity driving this revolt.