Transcripts

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast, in which we take a look at this year, 2024, which is already shaping up to be even more of a disaster than expected. The causes for anxiety are many and varied, leaving many of us with questions. And we generally try to avoid topics and commentaries that lean directly into the realm of pure speculation, but today we decided to lean all the way in to answer your most pressing questions about this year. What about Biden's supportive Israel? What about his age? Should he be replaced at the Democratic Convention? How likely is Trump to do the terrible things he promises. And what about his court cases, et cetera?

Sources today include Breaking Points, Democracy Now!, The Thom Hartmann Program, The Muckrake Political Podcast, All In with Chris Hayes, and Today, Explained, with additional members only clips from Amicus and Today, Explained.

Biden GENOCIDE COMPLICITY US Court Backs ICJ - Breaking Points - Air Date 2-1-24

KRYSTAL BALL - HOST, BREAKING POINTS: There was a court case. It hasn't gotten a lot of attention, but here working its way through the U. S. courts, [00:01:00] accusing Biden of complicity in genocide. And we actually just got a ruling yesterday that is pretty interesting. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. Um, so a federal judge just ruled the Biden administration does appear to be supporting a genocide. Um, they go on to say, but he must dismiss the case under the political question doctrine, despite preferring otherwise.

So, this judge is saying basically because of the political questions doctrine, I can't actually do anything here. But he backs up the ICJ ruling, which found that Israel is plausibly committing genocide in the Gaza Strip. Let me read you a little bit of the judgment here so that you guys can hear the way that this judge lays this out. They say, "Similarly, the undisputed evidence before this court comports with the finding of the ICJ, indicates that the current treatment of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip by the Israeli military may plausibly constitute a genocide in violation of international law. Both the [00:02:00] uncontroverted testimony of the plaintiffs and the expert opinion proffered at the hearing on these motions, as well as statements made by various officers of the Israeli government, indicate the ongoing military siege in Gaza is intended to eradicate a whole people and therefore plausibly falls within the international prohibition against genocide. It is every individual's obligation to confront the current siege in Gaza. But it also is this court's obligation to remain within the meets and bounds of its jurisdictional scope. In conclusion", the judge writes, "there are rare cases in which the preferred outcome is inaccessible to the court. This is one of those cases. The court is bound by precedent and the division of our coordinates branches of government to abstain from exercising jurisdiction in this matter. Yet, as the ICJ has found, it is plausible that Israel's conduct amounts to genocide. This court implores defendants" - that would be Joe Biden - "to examine the results of their unflagging support of the military siege against the Palestinians in Gaza".

So basically, [00:03:00] you know, this is kind of a mixed bag, Emily, for the Biden administration on the one hand. The judge says, Listen, I can't do anything because of the political questions doctrine. But to have an American judge rule that the ICJ is correct and implore Biden directly to cease his aid of what may well be a genocide of the Palestinian people is nonetheless a pretty extraordinary outcome.

EMILY JASHINSKY - GUEST HOST, BREAKING POINTS: And a refresher on the political questions doctrine. I pulled up Ballotpedia here, they write, "The traditional expression of the doctrine refers to cases that courts will not resolve because they involve questions about the judgment of actors in the executive or legislative branches and not the authority of those actors".

So, Biden himself, people who are making decisions at the Pentagon, they say, for example, cases involving foreign policy or impeachment often raise political question concerns. So, foreign policy, which is so heavily controlled and influenced by unelected people at the Pentagon, at the Department of Defense, more broadly by people in the executive branch fall under the political questions doctrine, which is pretty interesting [00:04:00] in this context where you have a court decision by the ICJ that's in question. It makes sense and then it doesn't make sense because again, you have a court decision that you're talking about. So, it's an interesting ruling for sure. And this doesn't make anything better for Joe Biden.

KRYSTAL BALL - HOST, BREAKING POINTS: Yeah. And they have another challenging situation that's going to unfold this week, which is the ICJ is set to rule on another case, this one not about Israel, this one about Russia and Ukraine. And so the US has, they, I mean, again, the level of gaslighting from this administration is outrageous. First of all, they tried to say, Well, you know, the ICJ didn't find that Israel was guilty of committing a genocide. Well, no shit. That wasn't the question that was before them right now. So they've completely tried to dodge. They've said, Oh, actually the ICJ backs up our position on, you know, Israel and Gaza in that... which is, you know, insane if you read the ruling, it's the total opposite of what the U. S. has been claiming and the support that the U. S. has been giving to Israel. [00:05:00] But put this up on the screen. So, judges at the world court are going to hand down a judgment this week in a case in which Ukraine accused Russia of violating an anti-terror treaty by funding pro-Russian forces, including militias who shot down a passenger jet. And the reason this is uncomfortable, Emily, for the U. S. obviously, is you can't on the one hand be like, yay, ICJ, I agree with your ruling when it comes to Russia, but boo ICJ, I disagree with your ruling and I'm not gonna abide by it when it comes to Israel. You don't get to pick and choose. Of course, I mean, you shouldn't be able to pick and choose, but of course they will pick and choose and it just becomes blatantly obvious, the level of hypocrisy and how they just use international law for their own ends. When it's convenient, they, Oh, yes, the international rules based order. And when it's not convenient, then they just ignore it. And even beyond ignoring it, the fact that in the wake of the ICJ saying Israel must increase humanitarian aid to Gaza, people are starving to death and you must do better. And our response on that very same day is [00:06:00] to cut funding to the number one aid agency on the ground in Gaza to the benefit of the Palestinian people. It's not just an, we're going to ignore the ruling, it's we are actively going to flout and thumb our nose at the ruling.

Moral Failure Democrats Urge Biden to Change Gaza Policy - Democracy Now! - Air Date 2-21-24

AMY GOODMAN: What are you demanding — as the Michigan House majority floor leader — what are you demanding of the Biden administration? You don’t usually take such stands against your own party, but right now the Democratic Party is really dealing with enormous pressure at this point. Can you talk about what you want to see happen?

REP. ABRAHAM AIYASH: Look, I think our demands are simple. We just don’t want our government, our country, to support, to aid, to abet any operation that kills innocent men, women and children. It is not a radical idea for us to suggest that the richest and most powerful country in the history of the world should not be funding what we see as a genocide, that [00:07:00] we have seen nearly 30,000 dead Palestinians at the hands of the U.S.-funded Israeli missiles and bombs, and we want our leadership to not engage in that type of moral failure and that degenerative act that does not dignify the humanity of the Palestinian people.

So, you know, more than anything, we’re not standing against anyone, but we’re simply reaffirming our stance for humanity and for the basic tenets of human rights, which says it is not a crazy concept that we should not be supporting any effort that is killing any innocent person in the world, especially to the magnitude that we’ve seen in Gaza, where more people have died in this conflict than any war since World War II, which is just a devastating toll.

And we’re hoping to exercise our right. We’re going to use the ballot box on February 27th to show that we are going to not support any effort that is [00:08:00] supporting a genocide and that we’re going to stand firm and, hopefully, allow this administration to change course before the November election.

JUAN GONZALEZ: Well, I wanted to ask Congressman Ro Khanna, who’s with us, as well — you’ve said that, for example, that President Trump is too dangerous to not support President — I mean, former President Trump is too dangerous to not support President Biden. Your response to those Democrats who cannot in good conscience vote for President Biden, at least in this primary?

REP. RO KHANNA: Well, first of all, I have a tremendous amount of respect for Representative Aiyash, and I’m looking forward to seeing him in Michigan. I do believe the administration needs to change course in foreign policy in the Middle East in order to gain the trust of people who we have lost. You can’t just meet with the Muslim American or [00:09:00] Arab American community and then veto in the United Nations a resolution calling for a ceasefire and, by the way, an unconditional release of the hostages. This is the third time we have vetoed that. It is hurting our moral standing. It is hurting our commitment to human rights. And it is not giving confidence to people that you’re hearing them and changing course.

So, my hope is, in my meetings with Representative Aiyash and others, that we can come up with a strategy that helps change course in the Middle East so we get a permanent ceasefire, so we have a release of the hostages, so we get aid into Gaza, and we have more peace and justice in the region.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Representative Aiyash, I wanted to ask you about the meeting you had with Biden officials earlier this month in Dearborn. What did you get out of those talks?

REP. ABRAHAM AIYASH: We're firm in reiterating our points. We want to see an immediate, [00:10:00] permanent ceasefire. We want to see humanitarian aid delivered to the people of Gaza through entities like UNRWA. And we want to see restrictions and conditions on the aid that is sent to Israel. You know, it is unfathomable that we just send a blank check with no conditions to a country that has violated human rights, that has violated international law over and over and over again.

And we reminded the administration that, one, they showed up 124 days into this conflict. They visited a state that happens to be the swing state. So, we are not seeing the level of support. We’re not seeing the level of concern that our communities have demonstrated for months. And we reiterated those messages once again.

And unfortunately, just four days after that meeting, we saw the Netanyahu regime did one of the worst attacks on the Rafah region, and the United States [00:11:00] still did not put the type of pressure on that regime to stop these heinous acts.

AMY GOODMAN: Let me ask Congressmember Khanna: Do you think the Biden administration made a mistake in vetoing yet another ceasefire resolution? And I want to go a little further. Right after the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations issued that veto, President Biden was in Los Angeles at a fundraiser. He was attending a high-dollar fundraiser with the media mogul Haim Saban, well-known Democratic, pro-Israel billionaire. The dinner — the meeting was at, what, $3,300, to cost as much as $250,000. I’m looking at a piece now in Common Dreams. Your thoughts on this and on President Biden continually saying he’s putting enormous pressure privately on [00:12:00] Netanyahu, yet their private acts continue to be against the kind of ceasefire that was put forward and vetoed at the United Nations?

REP. RO KHANNA: It was a mistake to veto the United Nations resolution. At the very least, we could have abstained. I mean, you have 15 countries on that Security Council. Thirteen of them are voting for a resolution for a permanent ceasefire and the release of all hostages, which is the sentiment not just in the world, it’s the sentiment about the majority of American people. And we are the lone “no” vote in the global community. It is hurting America’s standing in the world, especially an administration that is committed to multilateralism and rebuilding international institutions. What does this say about the credibility of the U.N. if we aren’t going to participate in those institutions?

The other issue is that I appreciate that there has been some movement [00:13:00] in the administration because of many of us in Congress who have called for a permanent ceasefire, who have called for the humanitarian aid to Gaza. There has been movement in recognizing the value and dignity of Palestinian lives and the humanitarian concerns. But now we need action. There needs to be clear consequences to Netanyahu and his very far right-wing government. I mean, people in his government are way to the right of Donald Trump, and that is important to understand, people like Ben-Gvir. It needs to be clear to Bibi: He can’t go into Rafah. Our secretary of defense doesn’t want it. Our president doesn’t want it. Who is he to defy the United States of America and then expect us to continue to provide military aid to do that? So, we need to be very, very clear of the consequences, and that is not what has happened so far.

Manufacturing Discontent How Was America SO Easily Convinced Biden’s Brain is Bad - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 2-13-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: "Media creates Biden 'fitness' crisis", so writes Judd Legum over at [00:14:00] Popular.info. He's talking about how Robert Hur, the Republican special prosecutor that Merrick Garland appointed to look into Joe Biden, another reason to remove Merrick Garland, now. But in any case, Robert Hur is a lawyer, not a doctor. And yet he's opining about the President of the United States' mental acuity. And this is an actual political threat. But what makes it really bad is how the media dealt with it. When Robert Hur's report came out, the media could have said, You know, uh, Robert Hur had, there's no there, there, Joe Biden didn't commit any crimes, and, uh, they're not gonna prosecute him, and this Republican who did the investigation thinks that he's an old man, but so what? I mean, it could have been dealt with that way. And frankly, I think if it was about Trump, it would have been dealt that way. But because it was about a Democrat, The New York Times, The [00:15:00] Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, the three big national newspapers that we have in this country, all went nuts.

Judd Legum did an analysis. And he says, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal collectively published 81 articles about Hur's assessment of Biden's memory in the four days following the release of Hur's report. Eighty-one articles. The New York Times published 30 stories about Biden's alleged memory issues between February 7 and February 10. The story was covered by 24 reporters, four opinion columnists, and The New York Times editorial board. Only one of those 30 stories in The New York Times mentioned a key fact, writes Jo Legum, that Hur is completely unqualified to render a judgment on Biden's mental capacity.

The Washington Post featured even more coverage of Biden's memory, writes Judd Legum, in the aftermath of Hur's report. That paper produced 33 articles featuring Hur's opinions about Biden's memory between February 7 and February [00:16:00] 10. Just one of The Washington Post's 33 articles noted that Hur's opinions of Biden were baseless, and that piece was written by their health reporter. The Wall Street Journal published 18 articles on Biden's memory during that time period, those four days. Uh, the Wall Street Journal's opinions pieces were even most caustic, flatly asserting that Hur's report "PROVED THAT BIDEN WAS IN COGNITIVE DECLINE AND HAD A FAILING SHORT TERM MEMORY". Quotes from the article. They did not produce any articles in The Wall Street Journal explaining that Hur has no qualification, no medical qualifications, to determine whether Biden has a functional memory.

I mean, keep in mind, Donald Trump called Victor Orban the leader of Turkey. He said that he defeated Barack Obama in 2016 when he ran against Hillary Clinton. He has claimed that Obama is his opponent right now and that Obama is actually running the country. He mixed up Nikki Haley with Nancy [00:17:00] Pelosi. Um, Trump's mix, and so, you know, did these three newspapers go after Donald Trump for those failures? Judd Legum notes, the tenor of the coverage was markedly different. One of The New York Times articles was a brief recounting of the incident. This is when Trump mixed up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi. It was a brief recounting of the incident without any suggestion that it was a political liability for Trump.

So Robert Hearst says, Biden couldn't remember when his son died, and everybody's like, Oh my God, that's the end of, uh, you know, Biden, we gotta, we gotta move on. You know, get the, get him the hell out of here. Trump mixes up Nikki Haley and Nancy Pelosi and The New York Times, instead of writing 30 articles about it, like they did about Biden, they write one article about it, and that article never mentions the fact that this might hurt Trump politically, when that's the entire focus of the 30 articles that they ran about Biden. The other three articles [00:18:00] briefly note, noted that Haley was using the mix up to attack Trump. The Washington Post published only two pieces about this mix up of Haley and Nancy Pelosi.

I mean, there's just this huge double standard. We saw this with Comey, the same thing, you know, that if you can provide The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, if you can provide our national media with data to attack a Democrat, the "Dean scream", you know, Gary Hart and Monkey Business. If you can provide the media with something that can be used to attack a Democrat, they will run with it as long and as hard as they can, because they just love this stuff. If you provide them with stuff that they can use to attack a Republican, they tend to downplay it and it's been that way for a long time.

I remember when Reagan was senile. I mean, a friend of mine - whose name I shouldn't probably disclose because of what I'm about to tell you, but - a friend of mine's wife was one of the court [00:19:00] reporters in the room with Ronald Reagan when he was deposed in Iran Contra. And I will remember this till my dying day. I was sitting in their kitchen, with Michael and his wife in Los Angeles, and, you know, having this conversation about, she had just finished this deposition, like, you know, a day or two earlier, and she was just in shock. She was like, You know, over a hundred times. Ronald Reagan did not know where he was. He didn't know what day it was. Now, this was the 7th year of his presidency. This wasn't after he left office. And it was no secret that, I mean, I'm sure you can still Google it. But did the media go nuts with it? No. They were like, well, you know, Reagan seems to be having some problems remembering things. Right.

Should Biden Be Replaced With Special Guest Max Burns - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 2-20-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: By the way, Nick, I'm going to have you play the second thing here in just a second, but I want to point out the casualness with which Kamala Harris is [00:20:00] absolutely brushed aside in every one of these conversations. Like, it basically always comes down to this. We all know Joe Biden's older, he's lost his step, but the other problem is that he can't just hand it over to his VP. It is a very strange way to handle this, and Ezra Klein does it as well, but Nick, if you could, you could play this clip, I think there's something else that's happening here as well.

EZRA KLEIN: So yes, I think Biden, as painful as this is, should find his way to stepping down as a hero, that the party should help him find his way to that, to being the thing that he said he would be in 2020, the bridge to the next generation of Democrats. And then I think Democrats should meet in August at the convention. To do what political parties have done at conventions so many times before.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Okay. So very quickly, rhetorically - and Max, I know that like you do the same thing as well - "helping Joe Biden find his way" is a really interesting piece of rhetoric. You know, helping somebody find their [00:21:00] car, helping somebody home, helping somebody with their groceries. This is very, uh, weird choice of language. But on top of that. I think what's being expressed here, and people need to understand, Ezra Klein is not in a bubble. Ezra Klein is really tight with Barack Obama, really, really close with Barack Obama and the entirety of the Obama world. The Obama world does not want Joe Biden to run for reelection. They are very interested in sort of re-establishing the Obama-DNC Democratic Party, and it's been that way for a while. We've heard leaks that Obama keeps trying to tell Biden to change the campaign, to do this, to take this sort of a strategy. And that's the thing is there's a signal that's happening here, and this is what happens when parties sort of, kind of, lose control over the process. No one can keep Joe Biden from running for reelection. It is his choice, but the entire point is everybody is saying somebody needs to do something. And this idea of the brokered convention, which we'll break down in a second, they are saying somebody needs to step in here.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Are you saying that Ezra [00:22:00] Klein is in lockstep with Obama on that podcast? Like, that he wouldn't have been able to record it like that. If Obama said...

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, no, no, no, no. I don't think Obama gave him some sort of a signal. I'm saying that they traffic in the same waters. Like, this is a very specific type of liberalism, a very sort of like, you know, today Bruce Springsteen is going to come over and we're going to talk about songs and politics, you know? That's sort of that, like, uh, oasis, I guess you would call it, that sort of pool. But it definitely feels - does it not, Max - as the idea that somebody needs to do something here. Somebody needs to break the glass in case of emergency.

MAX BURNS: Yeah, and Ezra's doing his best in his calm voice to try and give you a sense of continuity. That this wouldn't be what it actually is, which would be a radical change from the norm and a very destabilizing, not just for politics, but for the markets, for world affairs.

It would create a moment of crisis, even if you don't intend to. But he's saying, no, this is actually just what parties have done [00:23:00] for centuries. They've had conventions and they've nominated candidates. Well, we don't have the party system of a hundred years ago when we went and had contested conventions.

The DNC made the choice, like we talked about earlier, to defund all those parties so they don't have the structures. What you're really saying is we want to take this to a convention and have a group that has already made this decision, put it forward at the convention. And that is radically different from anything that's been proposed before.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: And I want to put this out there. And I've said it many times on the podcast. I do not think Joe Biden is the person for this moment. I don't. I wish he wasn't running for reelection. I wish there was some sort of a bridge for the future, but I also want to point out: I am 'small d' democratic and I really have a hard time with all these people being like, we just need to get to a convention and the calmer heads will prevail and we'll figure it out.

And that's what happens in all of this, Max, is the punditry is always talking about like, Oh, if we just didn't have pesky primaries, if [00:24:00] we didn't have the electorate and the base figuring this out, we saw this after 2016, when they said, Oh, the parties would have never allowed Donald Trump. But this whole idea is just very, very elitist, and I don't think people understand how big of a shitstorm it would be if we had a brokered convention with the Democratic Party. I really don't think people understand, like, what an absolute disaster that would be.

MAX BURNS: No, and it's that kind of thing that sort of bugs me about that kind of opinion reporting is that it doesn't inform the way it needs to.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: No.

MAX BURNS: Like, for example, in order to do any of this, you would need to significantly change the party rules. But the rules committee of the DNC is firmly Biden people. They're all very strong Biden allies. So what you're really saying is you need to bring in people to challenge all of those people, which would become a very public, very nasty fight that would be on the national news for days as it rolled out, the convention grinding to a halt, [00:25:00] which makes Joe Biden and the party look even more inept and inadequate.

I mean, I really genuinely think this is a fantasy created by people who learned politics from the West Wing.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, Nick, by the way, Nick, I want to point out and I want you to imagine something because like when we get into like these scenarios, it's always good to imagine. Imagine the field day that Republicans would have: Look at the Democrats behind the scenes, pulling puppet strings, doing all this. And for the record, just because I want to give everyone a reality check, Barack Obama does not want to be seen like that. No politician has been more concerned with their public perception than Barack Obama, besides maybe Bill Clinton. And, like, he does not want to be seen as the person who's pushing out Uncle Joe in order to bring people. But Nick, can you imagine the disaster this would be?

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Oh, well, a couple of things. And because I don't see this as a disaster that you guys see it. I see another issue. But the thing about that, I'm getting frustrated with Biden is that he now becomes accused of being [00:26:00] the most corrupt president ever. He also is accused of lying and being the most dishonest, all these things, which, and being a grifter. And it's basically the knee jerk reaction to, because Trump was accused of these things and is accused in the court of law of these things, then you have to then say, well, the other person is just as bad.

And that means, going forward, no matter who you are and how, you know, stellar your reputation is, you are simply going to be accused of all these things without any evidence that people are going to believe it. But so that's really, really a frustrating thing.

And then as far as the shit storm about a broker convention, I just think it's a time thing. If you're going to wait until - when is it August? Is that what it is? July, August? - you can't run a national campaign in, like, two months. There's no way to ever be able to do that no matter who it is, even if the ghost of, let's say Abraham Lincoln comes back suddenly...

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: ...switches parties

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: ...and he runs, like, he wouldn't win if you gave him like a month to run a national campaign. That would be ridiculous. He needs the train. He needs to go across the [00:27:00] country. You need to build all that stuff up. I don't think you could do it. And certainly not with whoever we have in the wings. So that is really the worst part of it for me, is that it would just be, we'd lose the, the, the Democrats would lose this election.

This Law Can Turn America Into a Police State & Trump Wants To Use It! - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 2-14-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: ...fix the Insurrection Act before Trump uses it to create a police state. This is actually ver important. This is a big deal. You know, uh, when Senator Tommy Tuberville, the traitor who has now taken Putin's side on the Ukraine invasion - and I'm gonna get to that in the next hour - but when Tommy Tuberville was in the Trump Hotel on the evening of January 5th with the Trump family preparing for the insurrection the following day, the plans had been laid for the Proud Boys to seize the Capitol and for Trump to essentially deputize them, to invoke the Insurrection Act, define them as a militia, [00:28:00] and let them take control of the Capitol. The key to all this was the Insurrection Act. This was a package of laws that was passed between 1792 and 1874, that's been used about two dozen times throughout history. The first by George Washington, the Whiskey Rebellion, and most recently by President George H. W. Bush, in response to the riots in Los Angeles around the beating by police of Rodney King, an unarmed Black man.

The act allows the president to define what an insurrection is, and that's a huge problem. It also has no time limits. He can declare an insurrection, which ends posse comitatus. He can declare an insurrection and then bring the military into the streets of any American city or all American cities and start rounding up millions of Americans and putting us into concentration camps, which Trump has said he intends to do.

Now, he had this thing all ready to go on January 6th, [00:29:00] and he wanted to invoke it. And the Proud Boys thought he was going to. They were constantly checking their Twitter feed, waiting for him to declare an insurrection. And the problem that Trump had, though, was in order to do this, he had the executive order, it was ready to go. But it would have required Bill Barr as the Attorney General and General Mark Milley as the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs, and Mark Esper, his Defense Secretary, would have required all of them to sign off on it. And none of them would do it. Well, not to sign off on it, to implement it. To put it into effect. And they just refused.

And that's the problem. Because next time, Trump has told us, he's not going to have people like Milley and Esper and Barr in his cabinet, he's not going to have people who respect even marginally the rule of law in his cabinet. He's going to get nothing but 100% Trump loyalist fascists. And they will implement the Insurrection Act. And they will put it into place on the first day of his [00:30:00] presidency. The law is written so vaguely. That any effort to impede the enforcement of the laws of America constitutes an insurrection under this act. In other words, if five people show up on a street in Washington, DC and block traffic for 30 seconds, under this act, under the current Insurrection Act from the 1790s, that is an insurrection that the President can use to declare martial law across the entire nation.

This can only be fixed by Congress. And there have been several efforts to do so, and interestingly, several Republicans, Mike Lee, at the lead of this bunch, Mike Lee, the very, very conservative, right wing Republican senator from Utah, has been at the front of that. He offered an amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act back in 2021 that would have fixed, in large part, the Insurrection Act. It did not pass. And he and Bernie Sanders and Chris Murphy, two Democratic Senators - well, Bernie's an Independent, [00:31:00] but you get... well, I guess all three now: you got a Democrat, a Republican, and an Independent - all three of them co-sponsored a bill, a stand alone bill, last year, that would have time limited the presidential proclamation of insurrection to 30 days and allowed Congress to give them a one year extension. And that's it.

But here's the problem. Donald Trump and Tommy Tuberville and, you know, MAGA Putin-loving fascists like them are a clear and present threat to our Republic. And we've got to be concerned about this and Congress needs to act.

‘The threat is authoritarian government’ What happens if Trump wins again - All In W/ Chris Hayes - Air Date 12-6-23

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: As we approach what may be a repeat of 2020, there's a growing agreement and acute concern, I think across the political spectrum, about the explicitly authoritarian threat of a second Trump term. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney believes that Trump "will never leave office" if he is elected president again.

The New York Times just published this headline explaining "Why a second Trump presidency may be more radical than his first". And the threat of another Trump term is the focus of a special issue of The Atlantic devoted to the question of what happens [00:32:00] "if Trump wins". In a new piece for that issue, Barton Gellman warns that if he makes it back to the White House, "we know what Trump would like to do with that power because he said so out loud. He is driven by self interest and revenge in that order. He wants to squelch the criminal charges now pending against him. He wants to redeploy federal prosecutors against his enemies, beginning with President Joe Biden. The important question is how much of that agenda he could actually carry out in a second term".

And Bart Gelman, staffer at The Atlantic, joins me now. The sort of top line point that you make, which we talked about on the show, is that you can't forget the fact that the man is literally running for his freedom. And I think it's so easy for it to see abstract, because the man has escaped accountability for so long, he's 78 years old, but, like, he could end up in prison. That's not an insane idea. Like, what prison would look like secret service and what, you know, but like, that's a real thing that he's really scared about and it is motivating more, I think more than anything, to [00:33:00] grab the run and the desire for power.

BART GELLMAN: Yeah, I think that's exactly right. And I think there are people who console themselves with the idea that maybe he'll already be convicted in one of the cases by the time the election comes around, and so they've got him. But that is not what's going to happen. Even if he does get convicted in the DC case, which is the only one that looks likely to run its course before the election, the case will be on appeal when the time comes that it's inauguration day. If he wins, uh, his justice department will move to withdraw the case on appeal. There's a, legal maneuver called confession of error, and they go to the appeals court and say, nevermind, you know, we don't think he should have been convicted.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Withdrawn.

BART GELLMAN: Withdrawn. And I would be surprised if he doesn't also try to pardon himself. And the interesting thing about the pardon is there's a legitimate [00:34:00] debate among constitutional scholars about whether a president can pardon himself. But like so many other things about Trump, it's sort of irrelevant because if he does pardon himself, there is nobody with standing to go to court and challenge that pardon, except maybe the Justice Department, his own Justice Department.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Well, this speaks to a sort of thing I keep coming back to in this discussion - I was thinking as I was reading your piece, the Liz Cheney line about, you know, he's not going to leave - is that, you know, it all depends what other people do. I mean, he doesn't have unilateral power, right? So when Liz Cheney says he's not going to leave if, you know, he's elected again, I thought, No, the Secret Service is going to escort him from the building at noon on January 20th, 2029, because that's their constitutional duty. And you could say, well, Chris, you're being naive. But at some level, it's like, I guess I, I feel this battle within myself between warning of the graveness of the danger and not ceding the terrain of his power. Does that make sense to you?

BART GELLMAN: Yeah, that's right. I mean, and, [00:35:00] and we shouldn't exaggerate. There are things the president can do and there are things the president can't do. And we don't know to what extent the guardrails will be holding. There is a career civil service. He wants to politicize it. Uh, there are courts. There are...

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: And he wants to steamroll them all.

BART GELLMAN: Right. There's Senate confirmation. But for example, it's not clear to me that even a Republican Senate would confirm Jeffrey Clark as Attorney General.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Correct. That's not going to be either.

BART GELLMAN: They might not. But what Trump's people are doing is very clever. He can put in under the Vacancies Reform Act, he can put someone as Attorney General for most of a year...

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Acting.

BART GELLMAN: ...as an acting, as long as they're in any Senate confirmed position around the US government. So, of course, if he comes into power, uh, in January [00:36:00] 2025, the people already serving in confirmed roles will be Biden appointees. But there's more than a hundred positions that are Senate confirmed and that are held by Republicans right now under Biden because there are all these, like, National Labor Relations Board.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah, statutory bipartisan boards and positions.

BART GELLMAN: Right, they must be party balanced. And the Trump people are looking at those names and trying to figure out, you know, what MAGAs they've got to work with. And then after 90 days, he could appoint anybody he likes, you know, Mike Davis, Kash Patel, you know, as a counselor or a section chief in the Justice Department, as long as there are GS-15 or higher in DOJ, he can then make them acting Attorney General. And he could do that with all the other confirmed positions.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: And we've got to say they were very, very aggressive with the Vacancy Reform Act, which is the law that governs a lot of this stuff. Obviously, there's constitutional requirements for advising consent in the Senate. There's a huge sprawling government. The Vacancy Reform Act, which is a pretty loophole ridden piece of legislation. They were very aggressive on it [00:37:00] before. But I guess my point too is, all the things you're describing, like, in the end, what I see in the future is a very immediate constitutional crisis if he's reelected. Or people roll over. It's one or the two. But I think the former is as likely as the latter, which is not like, Oh, great. We're just going to have a constitutional crisis. It's just to say that, like, he's going to go very hard and be very aggressive. And there are going to be some obstacles in his way.

BART GELLMAN: No, well the threat is authoritarian government. The threat is lawless government and people are going to have to stand up to that people are going to have to resist. And I think a Trump presidency would for sure have more than one constitutional crisis. You know, you talk to legal experts and they're all full of thoughts about loopholes he could exploit or residual powers or things that are profoundly against the norm, but that a president could do if he wanted to go completely off the deep end.

But what they don't think about is stuff that's just flat out unlawful. I [00:38:00] mean, there's a legend that President Jackson once said that Justice Marshall has made his decision, now let him enforce it. Apparently he didn't really say that. But he kind of meant that. And it's not clear to me who enforces a ruling by the Supreme Court if Trump says I'm not doing that. I mean, Trump has said that any law or regulation or article of the Constitution can be terminated, in the right circumstances. The right circumstances in that case being his fictions about the election. He said he could terminate it and it's not clear who could stop him.

Florida man owes half a billion Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 2-21-24

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: We're back and Vox's Abdullah Fayyad is here to tell us why Donald Trump's half a billy in Legal debt is everybody's problem

ABDALLAH FAYYAD: It's everybody's problem because he's running for president of the United States, and what it generally means when any candidate running for public office, let alone the presidency, when they're in debt, is that there can be a lot of leverage [00:39:00] used against them when they're in office by their creditors.

In this particular case, it's not just a matter of Trump being in debt, it's a matter of him potentially being cash strapped, facing nearly half a billion dollars in civil damages from just two civil lawsuits alone. And being on the hook for that money while he's running for office again means that any donor, any special interest group, any bank, any foreign government that's looking to curry favor in a potential second Trump term could swoop in and help bail him out.

It doesn't necessarily mean it would be an explicit pro quo.

DONALD TRUMP: I want no quid pro quo!

ABDALLAH FAYYAD: But this is exactly how money in politics works. We see it for every candidate when it comes to fundraising for their campaign. In Trump's case, it's fundraising for his own survival as a businessman. And a lot of people can step in and essentially advance their interest in their second term by having that relationship with him, and having [00:40:00] that leverage over him, potentially as his creditors.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: But I gotta ask, we don't ever really know how rich, how broke Donald Trump is, but we know he owns some serious real estate. Couldn't he just sell a building or two, a tower, or a rosy, gaudy mansion in Florida or something and be done with all of these debts?

ABDALLAH FAYYAD: He could. And, I think what should be clear to most people is that even after all of this, Trump is still going to be a rich man. The question is just how much cash he has on hand to pay these civil damages right now. He's on the hook for over $450 million that's due soon. Even if he appeals, he has to front a considerable amount of money, potentially the entire amount and even some interest while that appeals process plays out, and the question is where he's going to come up with that cash. Based on his own accounting, last April in a deposition, he mentioned that he had $400 million [00:41:00] in cash, which is a lot of money even for a billionaire in cash, but that's still not enough to cover these damages, which means that yes, he will have to liquidate some of his assets.

For him, that's an uncomfortable thing to do because A, it's a big part of his personal identity, it's part of his political identity, and it shows that he's in a lot of trouble. It shows a weakness on his part that he really does not like to do on the public stage. And so will he survive this as an individual being able to pay his bond? Of course he can. His net worth is estimated somewhere between 2 and 3 billion, though obviously it's very opaque and we actually know very little about his finances. It's still going to do a good amount of damage, both politically, but also in the short term financially.

The fact that he would have to liquidate some of his assets means that his business is going to suffer. He's going to lose some of his assets in the short term. And that actually could deal a blow to his businesses, which [00:42:00] is by design. This is what these penalties are supposed to do. They're partly supposed to be punitive. And so that's why there's such a high sum. It's because he has such a high net worth.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Okay, so you're saying basically, yes, he could sell his assets, but he probably won't want to, and that's why we should be concerned.

ABDALLAH FAYYAD: Not exactly that. It's just a matter of, him having to front so much money in the short term that even if he does liquidate some of his assets in order to maintain his finances, he's probably going to have to take on more debt and take on more loans. And, just for context, when he was running for reelection in 2020, he was, per The New York Times reporting on his tax returns, which were leaked before the election, in 2020, he was running with about 400 million in debt, most of which was coming due in the next four years.

So had he won a second term in 2020, creditors, as The New York Times put it back then, would have been put in the [00:43:00] unprecedented position of potentially having to foreclose on a sitting president of the United States. That's never really happened before. We might be facing a similar situation now. If he has to sell some of his assets, he's still going to have to take on more loans in order to fund his businesses, and the fact that his business will be dealt a blow through these civil damages, he is going to have to likely take on more loans, and that just puts him in a bad situation with creditors. Even if they are big creditors, big major financial institutions that are quote unquote trustworthy, but it's still a serious liability for any candidate to just have that much amount of debt in public.

And just one more thing on this is federal government employees generally are graded on certain criteria to see whether or not they can qualify for security clearance. Having an enormous amount of debt is one thing that's used against giving people security clearance, because it's primarily seen as a tool that can be used [00:44:00] to target people for bribery, and things of that nature, just improper conduct while in office. So that's a window into the ethics problems that could come up should he win a second term.

Should Biden Be Replaced With Special Guest Max Burns Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 2-20-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: I also want to say that there's something really weird happening with this too, which is there's still the divide, and this goes back to the first segment that we were talking about—the Republicans and Trump's base, it literally is a cult. And so when Trump tells them, I built a wall, the wall doesn't need to exist. It's there. It's a matter of faith. And actually, what we're talking about right now in terms of quote unquote, resistance or, liberal things, people are being sold on the liberal side with the idea that if they buy these things, if they donate to these things, if they do this, there will be results. And that's still, something of an empirical base sort of society.

I think a lot of people who have been taken in by this resistance consumerism, Max, I think a [00:45:00] lot of people are looking around, they're saying, ?You know what? I bought all this RBG merchandise and Roe v. Wade's gone." We literally have seen this stuff taken away. And so what we're missing and this is the problem, is I actually think that there are energies out there, and there is momentum in terms of democratic energies, progressive energies that are building up, it just so happens that they are not profitable. You can't put that on a t-shirt. Organizing the local Amazon warehouse doesn't fit on the back of a t-shirt, it just so happens that it's what gets things actually done.

MAX BURNS: Yeah, and it brings voters out. We saw that with abortion in Ohio. We saw that with all the labor organizing in Bessemer. We're in a renaissance right now of labor organizing, and nobody's printing off shirts for that. And the reality is, these are the issues that bring Democrats to the polls. This is what the national party is supposed to be for, is sending national money to state parties to tell this story. And instead all that money goes [00:46:00] directly up to the presidential races now. We have completely abandoned the Democratic Party's role in funding state parties. And if we're not going to subsidize that message, it shouldn't be surprising that a bunch of for profit grifters have stepped in to tell people who have no other mechanism for learning it what their version of the message is.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: The only other problem I think I have with that is that on a local level, up until the state races, it becomes dangerous to run for those positions. You know what I'm saying? Because the other side has made it such a treacherous road where they're going to threaten you and dox you and all sorts of things. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm pretty sure it's mostly the right doing that. And it to the point where who would want to run anyway?

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: And the apparatus isn't there either. What has happened, and Max brought this up, I think it's one of the most consequential things that's happened in the past few years, the Democratic Party gave up on the 50 state strategy. Howard Dean is one of the most influential people in modern American politics, and the fact that that [00:47:00] stake got pulled up, and instead they've been relying on basically Stacey Abrams in every quote unquote red state that there is. They've just given up on it and hoped that a Stacey Abrams would show up and bring in all this money.

And so what actually happens, Nick, is let's say you're in a deep red state and you want to run for Congress, and you want to run as a Democrat, you're putting your life on the line and the party's not even going to help you put out signs, much less make sure that you're protected and make sure that the environment is actually fair.

Max, does that check out for you?

MAX BURNS: Yeah, that's the frustration I hear from activists every day. And you see it, Stacey Abrams isn't even exempt. She delivered two monumental turnout performances in Georgia that many Washington based consultants said was statistically impossible to do. And she did it twice. She did it on a shoestring budget. And her reward for that wasn't to be made DNC chair and taking the strategy national. It was for the DNC to say this year, Georgia doesn't look [00:48:00] as competitive, we're pulling funding out, and now her organization is closing down. It is, if anything, one of the most self inflicted wound moments I've seen from the DNC in years. Because now Stacey Abrams has essentially no infrastructure in Georgia.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: God, the most self inflicted wound from the DNC. That is, that's not at the Mount Rushmore right there. It's a big ol list.

NICK HAUSELMAN - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: Max, what do you think? Why? Why did they abandon the 50 states outreach like they had under Dean's vision?

MAX BURNS: Because Obama won. It's as simple as that. Obama came in and his great contribution at the time was leveraging digital. No one had done it 2008. And there was no politics really on Twitter at all until Barack Obama spearheaded that. And he won big, and then that sort of became orthodoxy. He appointed his people, and the thought became, as long as we protect the White House and Congress, we're great. And as long as we have [00:49:00] that, it's everything. It doesn't matter about governorships. It doesn't matter about state houses. And that worked really well at electing the president. Not so much for anything else.

JARED YATES SEXTON - HOST, THE MUCKRAKE POLITICAL PODCAST: And I just want to throw in there, Max, and this was one of the things, because we can get deep in the weeds for a quick second. One of the prevailing dogmas of that period was this idea of demographics are destiny. That America was changing, and as a result, we weren't going to have to worry about this anymore. Basically, the Republican Party was going to moderate itself at some point.

The Marco Rubios, the Nikki Haley's, that, that was the whole idea is eventually, they were going to have to fix themselves. It was both I think, naive but also dangerously ignorant in its own right to believe that somehow or another demographics were going to completely change the entire thing, or that there wasn't going to be a backlash in some way, shape, or form, and eventually you look up, and you have states now where there is no significant democratic [00:50:00] presence. You don't have a neighbor. You don't have a co worker. You don't have anybody in town, basically in any office, anybody around who isn't in a quote unquote satanic cabal. And so as a result, you have states that it's been turned into trench warfare at this point.

BONUS Is SCOTUS Afraid of Holding Trump to Account - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 2-10-24

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I want to ask you another slightly Calvin-ball, feelings-ball... It's right in the middle of Calvin-ball and feelingsball, it's Calvin-feelings. I want to ask you a Calvin-feelings question, which I haven't seen talked about a whole lot, but really struck me only at three in the morning when I was trying to figure out what I thought about oral arguments on Thursday morning, and the thing that I was really clocking that we hadn't talked about, I think, enough is the mob like threat of "nice democracy you got there, would be a shame if something were to happen to it."

And by that, that was my [00:51:00] mobster voice, by that I mean there is this subtle threat, and it starts in Jonathan Mitchell's briefing. That there's going to be all sorts of chaos and mayhem and violence if this is allowed to happen. We hear it in questions on Thursday from the chief justice. It's there in Justice Alito's questioning about vexatious, frivolous lawsuits that are going to follow up. And I think that we are so used to the menacing tone of, "well, you know, if you allow Colorado to knock him off the ballot, there's just going to be a lot of vexatious, frivolous, pointless suits by people who are willing to weaponize the legal system," and the degree to which you're just telling on yourselves when you do that, that every accusation is a confession.

There's one answer to that, which is, I think, the answer that Jason Murray gave, which is "no, we actually know [00:52:00] what to do about vexatious, frivolous, threatening suits that have no point." But the other answer is, "I'm sorry, Justice Alito, are you threatening me?"

And we didn't talk about the underground. pinning here of since when do we just accept the idea that if Colorado is allowed to deploy Section 3 of the 14th Amendment in a way that it was intended to be used, other people will use it for shitty outcomes and therefore we should stop it because "nice democracy you got there."

MARK JOSEPH STERN: Yeah, it's a threat, that's it. It's a threat that if a majority of the court allows this case to prevail, if a majority of the court allows Colorado to remove Trump from the ballot, that justices like Alito are gonna come out swinging for the other frivolous, ridiculous cases that should not be compared to this one, which is very much rooted in the Constitution, but that will emerge from red [00:53:00] states that are trying to retaliate. That if Ron DeSantis tries to remove Biden from the ballot for fill in the blank reason, he's an enemy of the state, he's a traitor, a Chinese spy, whatever, that Sam Alito is going to be lining up to refuse to stay the decision from a crazy panel of the 11th circuit keeping Biden off the ballot.

I think our friends Steve Ladeck and Lee Kovarski wrote a great piece about this and MSNBC saying, well, actually the check here is the Supreme Court, you guys, who have full authority to step in and say, "Okay, this is a meritorious case. This is a frivolous one. This is a case that we will consider and embrace. This is a case that we will reject out of hand." It's the Supreme Court for a reason. They have the last word on this, and could easily shut down any of those kinds of absurd retaliatory moves by Red State.

So this slippery slope argument, and as you said, Roberts cited it, Alito [00:54:00] cited it, classic Alito grievance line, classic "watch what you're doing here, because I'm gonna come back twice as hard twice as fast" to say, " this is all going to redound to your detriment if you happen to squeeze out a win over my dissent. I am going to find a way to get back at you." I mean, was it even a veiled threat, really, or was it just a threat?

So, yeah, in a way, I think it ties into the piece that we wrote on Thursday about judicial humility where the court said over and over again through Roberts, through Barrett, through Kavanaugh, "well, this could lead to such dangerous places. We have to look at the consequences of our decision. We can't possibly be getting involved in each and every case that will arise out of red states and blue states alike if we let one state, colorado, remove a presidential candidate from the ballot."

Where is that concern in literally any other case, but especially in gun rights cases [00:55:00] where, I think this is an apt comparison, the Supreme court, in 2022's Bruen decision, declared all gun restrictions presumptively unconstitutional and created an entirely new test out of thin air for assessing them. And we have seen scores of gun laws struck down, and now the Supreme Court's docket is getting flooded with every gun restriction under the sun being invalidated because the Supreme Court decided to completely change the rules and upend and overturn centuries of precedent here.

They didn't care about consequences then. They specifically said, in fact, that judges were not allowed to consider the consequences of gun laws when assessing their Constitutionality. They specifically said we don't care if a gun restriction could save a thousand lives or a million lives, if it doesn't have enough historical analogs from 1791, it is unconstitutional. Judges cannot look to the consequences ever, period, that [00:56:00] is the rule. And here it was all consequence based judging. All of it, top to bottom.

So I think that it's another example of a hypocrisy and a disparity between the different sides of the court. In Bruen, in the gun decisions, the liberal justices have been very focused on the consequences. They've said, we can't pretend like we can just close our eyes to reality and to what's going to happen in the real world after we render our decision. The conservatives said the opposite. And yet here magically they're all on the same page. Magically justices like Roberts have discovered judicial humility and rediscovered the beauty of letting the people decide and letting democracy work itself clean.

It doesn't sit right, and I can only hope that, again, I'll just keep coming back to this, I can only hope that the liberals wring something good out of this behind the scenes. I know we're supposed to pretend like the justices don't do horse trading behind the red velvet curtain, but we know that they do. [00:57:00] And it would be a really Acutely painful moment for the country if this just turns into a slam dunk win for Trump and otherwise the court continues to let him run out the clock in all of these other cases that matter just as much.

BONUS Florida man owes half a billion Part 2 - Today, Explained - Air Date 2-21-24

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: So a lot of granular detail from the attorney general in New York. How does the former president's defense team defend him?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: So one of their big defenses is, "no one was hurt here. Deutsche Bank wanted us as a customer. They were willing to give us these incredibly low rates because it was good for them. They benefited. There was no victim." That was one. Another one was, "our accountants figured it out. Our employees figured it out. We left it to them. We trusted them." And then, there was, "Nobody really relied on these statements, and also, it didn't make a difference."

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Okay, so Trump's legal defense team essentially says, "Show us a victim. [00:58:00] Everyone got paid. This was good for everyone." But the judge ultimately decides that's not the case.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Well, the law decides it, right? This law, 6312, is a very powerful law in New York, and it was written in the middle of the last century with the idea that if you have a fraudulent marketplace, you corrupt the business market in New York. And it is the Attorney General's job to defend against that, and to make sure that people don't do this as a course of business no matter who the victims are. Because the idea is that hurts all business in New York.

LETITIA JAMES - NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: Today, the court, once again, ruled in our favor, and in favor of every hardworking American who plays by the rules. Donald Trump and the other defendants were ordered to pay $463.9 million. That represents $363.9 million in disgorgement, plus [00:59:00] $100 million in interest, which will continue to increase every single day until it is paid.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Where does that number come from, Andrea? It's big.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Okay, so let me introduce a concept, which I know Today Explained listeners can handle, which is called disgorgement. It's not actually a fine. What the law says is if you have these ill gotten gains, based on the fact that you lied over and over and over again, you have to pay it back.

LETITIA JAMES - NEW YORK ATTORNEY GENERAL: Donald Trump may have authored the art of the deal, but he perfected the art of the steel.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: So a very big portion of the money that Trump has to pay comes from the cash that he Kept by keeping his interest rates so low. If you have to pay 12 percent interest versus 3 percent interest, hypothetically, those are not the actual numbers, but for example, [01:00:00] you save a lot of money.

In this case, the difference in the interest was about $170 million. So that is considered an ill gotten gain, got to pay it back. Then, the judge said, well, because they had all this extra cash that they weren't entitled to, they were able to pour money into A number of properties, two in particular, the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C., and the Ferry Point Golf Course, which is in Bronx, New York. They were able to pour so much money because they had all this extra cash, and then sell it and make even more money. So all of that comes back too. So that's how they get to the $355 million.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Okay. And this is on top of the $83.3 million he already has to pay E. Jean Carroll.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Totally separate case. Correct.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: In the E. Jean Carroll case, the jury awarded her something like $60 million more than her lawyers were asking for. In this latest case, because of disgorgement, the fine is $355 million—big [01:01:00] numbers. Do you think he might be getting hit harder in either case than, say, a less famous former president New York City civilian would?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: So let's take E. J. Carroll. So one of the things that was so interesting in the E. J. Carroll case is right before plaintiffs wrapped up their case, they played a video deposition of Trump from the business fraud trial. And in the business fraud trial, Trump says, I have four $400 million in cash. That is very unusual for developers. Developers don't usually have that much cash. Mar a Lago is worth $1.5 billion. Doral golf course is worth $2.5 billion.

DONALD TRUMP: If you take Doral, could be worth two and a half billion by itself.

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Now, of course, those valuations have been found to be fraudulent by Judge Ngoran, but the jury didn't know that. So the jury is watching this and E. Jean Carroll's [01:02:00] lawyers say to the jury, "Trump says he has a lot of money. Please have him pay a penalty that will get him to stop. You determine how much that amount is." So in that case, they asked the jury for an amount of money and damages to rehabilitate her reputation, but then they said, "give us some punitive damages, you figure out. This guy says he has billions of dollars, you use an amount that will make him stop," and that's how they came up with the $65 million plus the $18 million for her to repair her reputation.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Does Trump have to hand over this nearly half a billion dollars, like, tomorrow? When does he actually have to pay?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: The $355 million doesn't include the pre judgment interest. The attorney general's office has said it will be upwards of $450 million when you put that all in. Now, Trump is appealing. They say the verdict is wrong. [01:03:00] If past is prologue, they will take every opportunity to appeal this case. It can be appealed first to the first level of New York Appeals Court, which is called the First Department. Then to the highest court, which is called the Court of Appeals, and in most cases, that would be the final word. However, Trump being Trump, they may argue that there's a federal issue involved, so it would theoretically go to the US supreme Court.

So, all of that has to happen before the money is finally transferred to New York State, but, there is talk about putting up a bond, putting the money in escrow. He can't just go off and say, "well, I'm not going to pay it until we're done." That isn't the way the law works.

SEAN RAMESWARAM - HOST, TODAY,EXPLAINED: Maybe the half a billion dollar question is, will he still have to pay if he wins the election later this year?

ANDREA BERNSTEIN: Assuming he loses all his legal appeals, the answer is yes. I wouldn't be surprised if the case is not [01:04:00] resolved. And were he to win the election to hear his lawyers make an argument that even to address this issue is too distracting for the president.

Now, there is Supreme Court law in Bill Clinton and Paula Jones that certain aspects of a civil suit can continue, and this is a civil suit. So, I I hate to say this, because it's so overused in this context, but it's uncharted waters. In theory, yes. In theory, the judgment has been made. If Trump loses all his appeals, he has to pay the money. He has to find the money now to guarantee that he will be able to pay it in the event he loses all his appeals. But what would happen, would he try to argue that? If past is prologue, it's not out of the question.

Final comments on the presidential age debate and what we're really voting for

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with Breaking Points, discussing the Biden administration's complicity in Israel's war in Gaza. Democracy Now! looked at Democrats pushing Biden to shift on Israel policy. The Thom Hartmann Program looked at the media reaction to concerns about the age of the presidential candidates. [01:05:00] The Muckrake Political Podcast discussed the idea of a brokered democratic convention. Thom Hartmann looked at the likelihood of Trump using the insurrection act if inaugurated again. All In with Chris Hayes discussed the constitutional crisis of a second Trump term. Today Explained explained the threat of a president carrying as much financial strain and debt as Trump does. And The Muckrake Political Podcast discussed the positive actions happening among the democratic base that happened to not sell t-shirts.

That's what everybody heard, but members also heard bonus clips from Amicus discussing the Supreme court oral arguments in the case, looking to ban Trump from the ballot in Colorado. And Today Explained broke down the business fraud case against Trump. Resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in fines.

To hear that and have all of our bonus contents to the red seamlessly, to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the bestoftheleft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of [01:06:00] funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now to wrap up, I just want to relay the single best argument for any presidential candidate whose policies you more closely align with compared to their opponent.

The question in this campaign of age or competence is essentially a distraction, and I think that almost everyone knows it at at least some sort of gut level. The number of people who would really cast their vote based on which of the two candidates had the fewer number of verbal gaffes is, I think, vanishingly small. And it's for the same basic reason that the same Christian conservative family values people who claimed to be completely appalled by Bill Clinton's scandalous behavior, now defend one of the most unethical scandal prone, disgusting people our country has ever produced. It's not about the person, ever, [01:07:00] and it never has been. It's about what they represent, about what policies the administration will push for, and whether that will push the country in the direction that we, as a voter, want or not.

Back in the 2000s, I loved making fun of George W. Bush's verbal flubs that were so frequent, they were dubbed Bushisms.

GEROGE W. BUSH: I know the human being and fish can coexist peacefully.

Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we.

We got an issue in America. Too many good docs are getting out of business. Too many OBGYNs aren't able to practice their, their love with women all across this country.

There's an old saying in Tennessee, I know it's in Texas, probably in Tennessee, that says fool me once, shame on, shame on you. If [01:08:00] you fool me, you can't get fooled again.

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: But those sorts of things, while fun to mock, weren't really the reason that anyone on the left oppose his presidency. It was the policies he represented, the Supreme Court justices he would appoint, and the direction he would push the country and the world. And there's an old saying in politics, probably in both Texas and Tennessee, that personnel is policy. What that means, and what we should constantly remind people, is that the presidency isn't really about the person on the ballot. It's about the fountains of members of the administration that get hired as the personnel, whose job it is to work toward and implement the policy vision of the administration. That's really what you're voting for when you cast a vote for president. The person at the top is the one on the news all the time, but they're not the one doing all the work of the government single-handedly.

Literally any conversation or debate you come [01:09:00] across regarding Biden's or Trump's age should be immediately redirected to the existence of staff, and not just the white house staff, the entire administration staff. And what we know without a doubt is that every halfway reasonable person who's ever worked for Trump has come out on the other side. Criticizing him, not just a little bit, but often in the harshest of terms. And we are running desperately low on halfway reasonable people who would even be willing to work for a second Trump administration. Meaning that only sycophants who prove their value through loyalty rather than competence will be the only ones available to fill the ranks of a second Trump administration.

The number of gaffes and the precision of memory and mental acuity of either candidate will have basically no measurable impact on the country or the world, but the personnel differences between the two couldn't be [01:10:00] starker or more consequential.

That is going to be a for today as always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected].

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist trio Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and a bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the apple podcast app.

Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and very often funny bonus episodes, in addition to [01:11:00] there being extra content, no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You can find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So coming to you from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left Podcast coming to twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com

1 reaction Share

#1612 New Tech and the New Luddite Movement (Transcript)

Posted by · February 20, 2024 1:38 PM

Air Date 2/20/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, in which we take a look at why a Luddite should never have become the epithet that it is, as Luddites were never afraid of or opposed to technological advancement. They only opposed the exploitation of workers and the degradation to society that came with the unfair distribution of the benefits of the targeted technology, which is echoed in the debate over AI and its impact on the future of work today. Source today include Shift, Left Reckoning, TRT World, jstoobs on TikTok, Factually!, torres, and The Majority Report, with additional members-only clips from Factually! and Alice Cappelle.

The New Luddites - SHIFT - Air Date 2-14-24

BRIAN MERCHANT: The Luddites were a band of rebels, basically; cloth workers in the beginning stages of the industrial revolution, who, after trying [00:01:00] various peaceful measures for a long, long time to make sure that they're working lives and their identities and their trades were protected from the march of what we would refer to today as automation, found themselves with their backs against the walls. Tech companies of the day -- entrepreneurs of the day -- were using machines that automated work that sort of did their jobs worse, shoddier and more cheaply, changed course and they started fighting and they started doing the thing that would come to define them: that smashing the machines that were taking their jobs.

They organized around this the fictitious, apocryphal figure, Ned Ludd, who was probably just completely made up or may have been an apprentice cloth worker who wasn't working as fast as his master wanted him to. So his master had him whipped and he, enraged, took a giant hammer and smash the machine that he had been working on, fled into Sherwood Forest like Robin Hood before [00:02:00] him. They were both in Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and the legend grew. He's Ned Ludd. So the people who followed in his footsteps smashing the machinery of oppression were the Luddites. And they organized themselves into a big guerrilla force that could oppose the forces of industrialization, the elites and the British crown all at once.

JENNIFER STRONG - HOST, SHIFT: The word basically has had a negative connotation ever since. But you wrote an interesting piece for the Atlantic. The term is suddenly in vogue.

BRIAN MERCHANT: Yeah. Yeah. It's being reclaimed by people who are increasingly turning to this history as a little bit of a contextualizing source, because a lot of the things that happened 200 years ago -- the Luddites rose up in 1811, so about 210 years ago or so -- the conditions are very similar in a lot of ways to what's happening today with AI and gig work, where big companies, powerful people and rich people with a lot of access to resources are using technologies in a certain way. They're adopting [00:03:00] AI in ways that might threaten writers, artists, ordinary workers. The gig app companies are turning to industries that had been organized a certain way for a long time and basically saying we can do this with a peer-to-peer platform now where we take a cut of it, but also cut out the part where you get benefits. And it started with Uber and it started with Lyft and now it's this gig work model is moving on to bigger sectors of the economy like health care and so forth. And all the while workers are feeling like it's pushing them into more precarious situations.

So a lot of people are recognizing these forces and the similarities to the original Luddites, and they're saying, Hey, the Luddites were not dummies. The Luddites, in fact, used technology in their lives every day for hundreds of years. If you're a cloth worker, if you're a weaver using a hand loom in a cottage, or if you're a stocking frame worker, using it to knit goods, or if you're working a cloth finishing device, a gig mill -- all of these [00:04:00] things were technologies that they had really firsthand knowledge of how to use, and they were opposing these changes, not because they hated the technology, but because they hated how it was being used against them.

And so we find ourselves in a similar situation today where artists are saying, Hey, wait a minute. And I've talked to many of them in my work as a journalist who are seeing up to 50 percent of their work dry up because they used to draw illustrations for a company that can now do that with Midjourney, or a copywriter that used to work for a corporation, now they can use ChatGPT to get some approximation of it.

And so these already precarious jobs are drying up a little bit in a way that is very contested because -- just like the cloth workers 200 years ago who complained about the quality and the methods of their work being stolen by the machines and all the labor that they'd put into building a reputation and so forth of England's cloth industry, the machine owners were capitalizing on [00:05:00] that, automating large parts of it, using children to run the machines for less cost and then putting out an inferior product -- well, artists today say, Hey, all of this stuff has been stolen from work we've put on the internet. It's been vacuumed up into these systems that a tech company is going to profit off of to churn out an inferior product. And it's going to not only deprive us of a chance to make a living selling our work, but it's also going to drive the market down in general for the prices for this stuff, 'cause now we're competing with an automated system.

So the similarities are so numerous and the Luddites I think are increasingly seen as sympathetic and not reactionary or dumb because really that mischaracterization is the result of a propaganda campaign, to put it bluntly, by the Crown at the time that really had an interest in the Luddites, at when they first rose up were really popular. People would join them in the streets, people from other trades who weren't an obvious threat of being automated away in their workplaces -- [00:06:00] the steel workers, the coal workers, the shoemakers, hatters -- they would all come out and they'd join the Luddites. And even some of the authorities at the time would just let them attack the shops. Part of that is because the Luddites were very tactical and at first, especially, they would only destroy the machines that were automating their work. They would leave all the other machinery that didn't disrupt the social contract in place and they would write threatening letters explaining why they were doing what they were doing, they'd give the factory owners an opportunity to take down the automating machines, and they would be blunt: they said, You have erased 300 of our brother's jobs. And you take down the machines or you'll get a visit from Ned Ludd. That's how they would write their letters and go about their campaign. And if they complied, Ned Ludd's army wouldn't show up. But if they didn't, if they kept the machines up, then they'd either sneak through the window or hold up the overseer at gunpoint, and they'd take that hammer to those machines.

And it was twofold. It was a symbolic tactic, saying "These are the machines being used by the rich to get even richer. If we destroy them, we're also dealing a [00:07:00] blow to these forces that are making society more unequal, less just." And so people could get behind that.

They were also very tactical. You destroy the machine that can do the work that has caused you to lose a job.

Economies were much less complex. We didn't have globalization to the same degree. It was: your town was probably a cloth-producing town if you were in the Luddite sphere of influence. If you smash the machine in the factory that's doing your job, then they can't use it to take your job anymore.

So, it did serve both purposes. And they were really popular. So people were cheering for them. So the state had to come in and say, Look at these people, they're destroying their own industry, they're dummies, they're against progress. They're fighting against technology and advancement in general. They're deluded." That was the favorite word: they were deluded, and they would always suggest that they were under the influence of some malcontented leader, because common people at the time couldn't be trusted to act on their own accord or to understand what was bad for them.

Being a Luddite Is Good, Actually ft. Jathan Sadowski - Left Reckoning - Air Date 5-29-21

JATHAN SADOWSKI: Luddism was a glorious moment of [00:08:00] solidarity and collective action by workers. The reason that on TMK, Ed and I are really trying to bring back Luddism is because we think that there's a lot of lessons to be learned in terms of how we think of tech criticism, going back to the beginning of our conversation is understanding tech criticism as something that is fundamentally adversarial, something that should be dangerous to the interest of capital, to the material conditions of capital, while raising up the material conditions of workers.

And at the same time, understanding that the reason why the good name of Ned Ludd has been dragged through the mud is because because of the capitalist, really, saying that this is actually threatening to us, we need to assassinate the character of this.

Actually, this was one of the first instances of capital asking the state to bring in the army to suppress workers was the Luddite uprising. And they did. [00:09:00] The army came in and killed so-called Luddites and made Luddism a treasonous act because it was so threatening to the interest of capital.

MATT LECH - HOST, LEFT RECKONING: It's a lesson about activism too, because there's this way that activism is defined, you either have nonviolence or you have terrorism. And sabotage is something different between those two and it's, I think, very threatening to the interest of capital. So we shouldn't be surprised at this reaction to Ludd.

JATHAN SADOWSKI: I could go off on this and the linkages to sabotage because I think, fast forward a hundred years later from the Luddites, and you've got the IWW, the International Workers of the World, and you've got people like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn writing a brilliant pamphlet in defense of sabotage, saying that like the strike, sabotage is a necessary tool in the workers' arsenal against capital. Like the strike, we should not moralize about [00:10:00] sabotage, we should not look down upon or question the motivations of workers who engage in sabotage, but instead understand why they do what they do and how we might support what they do.

And that is in the same way, I think, what we see of Luddism is it is really about understanding and asking really critical questions. Does this technology contribute to social welfare? Does it contribute to socially beneficial ends? I've called it like the Marie Kondo of techno politics. You hold up this technology, you ask those questions, and if the answer is no, then you throw it in the trash. And we need to get more comfortable with understanding technology as something that is not only political, not only human made, but it's something that therefore can be unmade, can be deconstructed and dismantled by people for good ends. Just because something exists doesn't mean it deserves to exist.

And I think that's a myth of determinism that we are [00:11:00] sold is that all we need is innovation: more stuff on top of more stuff on top of more stuff. I think we need to start asking more questions about why we have this stuff and if it deserves to exist.

DAVID GRISCOM - HOST, LEFT RECKONING: I think that's on point. And it's a lot of the way that Ludism is properly understood are people who have severe fears of technology or people who don't understand technology. When in fact the picture that you're painting right here is people who very much understand technology and what it's doing to them and doing to their community.

And it's something that should be replicated much more because, especially if you read tech journalism -- I know there's a lot of great folks out there who do good tech journalism, but a lot of it is just, as you were saying earlier, repeating press releases, acting as if these things have no effect on a material reality, but are just expressions of us uncovering the truth of the being, the truth of the world, uncovering the tech that is just always out there instead of a very specific process that is bringing about a particular end.

And I think it's important for us to [00:12:00] understand not just as workers, but also in politics, because one thing that was so frustrating, for example, is Andrew Yang's campaign in 2020, the way that he talked about unemployment was this is just the consequence of the wheels of history moving in a certain way, because technology and robots and artificial intelligence are just reaching a point, and there's nothing we can do to stop it. But we'll just, put a bandaid on the bottom, right? It was very attractive to some people, especially working people were attracted to it because they're seeing, oh, my job is becoming more automated. There is more surveillance than I've ever experienced. And it's a great tool for the wealthy and people like Bezos who say yeah, this is just the natural order of things, rather than no, the technology is being developed in a certain way because you have been historically put onto this lower rung, like the working class in this country has been devastated for decades and decades. So technology is being used to brutalize you and to turn you more and more into a machine.

Again, these things are not just coming out of nowhere.

JATHAN SADOWSKI: A lot of the coverage around [00:13:00] Amazon over the last year or so I think also really shows that the conditions that the Luddites were originally reacting against sounds a whole lot like an Amazon warehouse, right?

And it's the fact that these things in capitalism continue to replay themselves. These same relationships continue to replay themselves, but in ways that just are ever intensifying. And I think that the reaction to them also demands an equal and opposite reaction, right? One that is increasingly intensifying to meet capital where it is trying to meet us.

Why this top AI guru thinks we might be in extinction level trouble | The InnerView - TRT World - Air Date 1-22-24

IMRAN GARDA - HOST, THE INNERVIEW: You're sounding the alarm. Geoffrey Hinton, seen as the founder or father or godfather of AI, he's sounding the alarm and has distanced himself from a lot of his previous statements. Others in the mainstream are coming out, heavily credentialed people who are the real deal when it comes to AI. They're saying we need guardrails. We need regulation. We need to be careful. Maybe we should stop everything. [00:14:00] Yet, OpenAI, Microsoft, DeepMind. These are companies, but then you have governments investing in this. Everybody's still rushing forward, hurtling forward towards a possible doom. Why are they still doing it despite these very legitimate and strong warnings? Is it only about the bottom line and money and competition, or is there more to it?

CONNOR LEAHY: This is a great question, and I really like how you phrase, you said they were "rushing towards", because this is really the correct way of looking at this. It's not that it is not possible to do this well. It is not that it's not possible to build safe AI. I think this is possible. It's just really hard. It takes time. It's the same way that it's much easier to build a nuclear reactor that melts down than to build a nuclear reactor that is stable. Like, of course, this is just hard. So, you need time, and you need resources to do this.

But unfortunately, we're in a situation right now where, at least here in the UK, [00:15:00] there is currently more regulation on selling a sandwich to the public than to develop potentially lethal technology that could kill every human on Earth. This is true. This is the current case. And a lot of this is because of slowdown. It's just, you know, governments are slow, people don't want, and vested interests. You make a lot of money by pushing AI. Pushing AI further makes you a lot of money. It gets you famous on Twitter. You know, look how much, like, these people are rock stars. People like Sam Altman's a rock star on Twitter. People love these people. They're like, Oh, yeah, they're bringing the future. They're making big money, so they must be good.

But like, I mean, it's just not that simple. Unfortunately, we're in a territory where we all agree, somewhere in the future, there's a precipice which we will fall down if we continue. We don't know where it is. Maybe it's far away, maybe it's very close. And my opinion is, if you don't know where it is, you should stop. While other people, [00:16:00] who, you know, gain money, power, or just ideological points... like, a lot of these people, it's very important to understand, do this because they truly believe, like a religion, they believe in transhumanism, in the glorious future where AI will love us, and so on. So there's many reasons. But, I mean, yeah, a cynical take is just I could be making a lot more money right now if I was just pushing AI. I could get a lot more money than I have right now.

IMRAN GARDA - HOST, THE INNERVIEW: How do we do anything about this without just deciding to cut the undersea internet cables and blow up the satellites in space and just start again? How do you actually, because this is a technical problem, and it's also a moral and ethical problem. So, where do you even begin right now, or is it too late?

CONNOR LEAHY: So, the weirdest thing about the world to me right now, as someone who's deep into this, is that things are going very, very bad. We have, you know, crazy, [00:17:00] you know, just corporations with zero oversight just plowing billions of dollars into going as fast as possible with no oversight, with no accountability, which is about as bad as it could be. But somehow we haven't yet lost. It's not yet over. It could have been over. There's many things where it could be over tomorrow. But it's not yet. There is still hope. There is still hope. I don't know if there's going to be hope in a couple of years or even in one year, but there currently still is hope.

IMRAN GARDA - HOST, THE INNERVIEW: Wait, hold on. One year? I mean, that's... come on, man! I mean, we're probably going to put out this interview like a couple of weeks after we record it. A few months will pass. We could all be dead by the time this gets 10,000 views. I mean, just explain this timeline. One year. Why one year? Why is it going so fast that even one year would be too far ahead? Explain that.

CONNOR LEAHY: I'm not saying one year is like guaranteed by any means . I think it's unlikely, but it's not impossible. And this is important to understand, is that [00:18:00] AI and computer technology is an exponential. It's like COVID. This is like saying, in February, you know, 'a million COVID infections! That's impossible! That can't happen in six months!', and it absolutely did. This is kind of how AI is as well. Exponentials look slow. They look like, you know, one infected, two infected, four infected, that's not so bad. But then you have 10,000, 20,000, 40,000, you know, 100,000, you know, within a single week. And this is how this technology works as well, is that as our computers get - there's something called Moore's Law, which is not really a law, it's more like an observation - that every two years, our computers get about, you know, there's some details, but about twice as powerful. So that's an exponential. And it's not just our computers are getting more powerful, our software is getting better, our AIs are getting better, our data is getting better, more money is coming into this field. We are on an [00:19:00] exponential. This is why things can go so fast. So while I'm not like, you know, it would be weird if we would all be dead in one year, it is physically possible. You can't rule it out if we continue on this path.

IMRAN GARDA - HOST, THE INNERVIEW: The powerful people who can do something about this, especially when it comes to regulation, when you saw those congressmen speaking to Sam Altman, they didn't seem to know what the hell they were talking about. So how frustrating is it for you that the people who can make a difference have zero clue about what's really going on?

And more important than that, they didn't seem to want to actually know. They had weird questions that made no sense. And, uh, so you're thinking, Okay, these guys are in charge. I mean, no wonder the A. I. is gonna come and wipe us all out. Maybe maybe we deserve it.

CONNOR LEAHY: Well, I wouldn't go that far. But, um, this used to annoy me a lot. This used to be extremely frustrating. Um, but I've come to I've come to peace with it to a large degree because the thing that I've really found is that [00:20:00] understanding the world is hard. Understanding complex topics and technology is hard, not just because they're complicated, but also because people have lives. And this is okay. This is normal. People have families. They have responsibilities. There's a lot of things people have to deal with, and I don't shame people for this. You know, like, I have turkey with my family every Thanksgiving or whatever, and, you know, my aunts and uncles, look, they have their own lives going on. They maybe don't really have time, you know, to listen to me give them a rant about it, so I don't.

So, I have a lot of love and a lot of compassion for that things are hard. This is, of course, doesn't mean that solves the problem. But I'm just trying to say that, like, it is, of course, frustrating to some degree that there are no adults in the room. This is how I would see it. Is that there is sometimes a belief that somewhere there is someone who knows what's going on. There's an adult who's got it all under control, you know, someone in the government. They've got this under control. And as someone who's tried to find that person, I could tell you [00:21:00] this person does not exist.

The truth is, the fact that anything works at all in the world is kind of a miracle. It's kind of amazing that anything works at all with how chaotic everything is. But the truth is, is that there are quite a lot of people who like, who want the world to be good. You know? They might not have the right information. They might be confused, they might be getting lobbied by various people with bad intentions, but like most people want their families to live and have a good life. Most people don't want bad things to happen. Most people want other people to be happy and safe. And luckily for us, most normal people, so not elites, not necessarily politicians or technologists, but normal people, do have the right intuition around AI, where they see like, Wow, that seems really scary. Let's be careful with this. And this is what gives me hope.

So when I think about politicians and I'm not being in charge, I think this is now our responsibility as citizens of the world that [00:22:00] we have to take this under our own hands. We can't wait for people to save us.

This is not good - jstoobs (TikTok) - Air Date 2-16-24

MEGAN CRUZ - HOST, THE BROAD PERSPECTIVE: I'm becoming increasingly convinced that we are headed towards an artistic apocalypse. I know that sounds dramatic, but this technology should scare absolutely everyone. In case you hadn't heard yesterday, OpenAI announced their newest technology. They're calling it Sora. It is a text to video engine that allows people to use word prompts to create photo realistic video.

Every single video in this thread is 100 percent AI generated and it's something that absolutely cannot be stressed enough that every single AI generator that exists is trained off of existing art. It is trained off of art and words and writing that often they don't obtain permission from the original artist before they feed them into their generators to learn how to recreate their work essentially.

But before I get into all of the many ways that this is objectively horrifying from a human and artistic standpoint, I want you to think about all of the immediate real world applications of this technology. Think about the way this technology could be used in a surveillance state. Think about the way this technology could be used in a court of law with a potentially corrupt [00:23:00] legal system and law enforcement system.

This technology absolutely will be used to inflict trauma and humiliation by way of things like AI deepfake porn or anything else that you can think of that is humiliating or degrading. The worst things you can think of that could be used with this technology, I guarantee you will be used with this technology.

And the ease of use and accessibility means that children will inevitably have access to this as well. There are a million terrifying applications for this. I cannot even imagine how one would protect themselves from scams or identity theft with technology like this. Of course, there'll be rampant political propaganda, AI deepfakes. Something absolutely everyone needs to consider is the way that this technology could be used to discredit the validity of things like genocide that are happening in the world right now. If you think Holocaust deniers are bad now, imagine when technology like this is normalized and people can see real footage of human suffering being inflicted by, say, an authoritarian government, and say, Well, who even knows if that's real? Or worse, governments using this technology to create artificial evidence of atrocities they claimed happen but have no evidence of.

Like, this is [00:24:00] absolutely terrifying in terms of the misinformation that is possible, and I personally find it absolutely disgusting that this technology barely exists. It's in its infancy, and the very first application that people want to use it for in this world is to eliminate artists.

I've seen so many people say, Oh, well, it'll never really be able to replace humans. We'll always know the difference. And the thing is, no, we won't. The way that this technology has advanced in a single year is absolutely astounding. Any deficiency you can think of right now that you can say, Oh, well, it can't do this thing that a human can do. It will learn way faster than you think it will. Artists have been underpaid and undervalued since forever, and it's only gotten worse with the rise of film as the most prolific art form of the modern age.

I think film is great, but it is inextricably tied to capitalism. Art and entertainment are kind of indiscernible from one another sometimes because of the world we live in and the fact that film is art, but film is also a capitalist endeavor meant to make money. Art is born out of passion, and it inspires passion. I just don't understand why that would ever be something that we would want to fucking streamline. People don't go into [00:25:00] art to become rich and famous. I'm sure it's nice when that does happen, but most artists feel a burning need to create. And that comes from needing to connect with people, needing to make sense of the cruel and chaotic senselessness of our existence, to find meaning in this fucking world. And I'm so sorry. But being good at putting sentences together to throw into a generator that's going to spit art out on the other side is not what that is.

This is the thing about automation and the way AI is going to eventually be used in all industries, is that it is fundamentally stripping us of our reasons to be alive. Like, there are studies that show that once people retire, they die earlier. Work, even busy work, even monotonous bullshit jobs that we hate, give us a reason to get out of bed in the morning and live. And I am all for finding a way to use this technology to improve people's lives, to make it so they have to work less and live more, but that is not the direction that this is going.

And the scariest thing about all this to me, not just as someone who identifies as an artist, not just as someone who really believes that art is one of, if not the most meaningful [00:26:00] things you can devote your life to, but just as a human who has existed in this world that has become increasingly more isolated, increasingly more digital, increasingly more performative, is that I look around and I see the average person does not give a fuck about any of this. Because for over a decade now, we've had this conditional programming, this dopamine hit after dopamine hit, this artificial identity that we have to construct for ourselves to perform on the internet all the time is becoming increasingly our real identity, and people don't care about the real fucking world.

All of this is so strategically designed to stimulate the pleasure triggers in our brain to slowly turn us into these perfect, docile consumers who don't need real world comforts because we have virtual fun. Like, it's fine that we're all getting poorer and nobody can afford anything because we don't actually need real money to do most of the things we want to do online.

Whether or not you believe it's intentional, this is what's happening. We're being stripped of the things that make us human. Our sense of community has crumbled as we've become more isolated in this digital space and now our sense of artistic expression is being replaced by the literal click of a button. It is so dystopian.

The ACTUAL Danger of A.I. with Gary Marcus Part 1 - Factually! - Air Date 7-2-23

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Please walk us through your other [00:27:00] proposals for regulating AI.

GARY MARCUS: So, next thing would be global AI governance. I think we need to coordinate what we're doing across the globe, which is actually in the interest of the companies itself.

You know, large language models are expensive to train and you don't want to have 195 countries, 195 sets of rules, requiring 195 bits of violence to the environment because each of these is so expensive and so energetically costly. So you want coordination for that reason. The companies don't really want completely different regimes in each place. And ultimately, as things do get more powerful, we want to make sure that all of this stuff is under control. And so I think we need some coordination around that.

Next thing I would suggest is something like the FDA, if you're going to deploy AI at large scale. So it's one thing if you want to do research in your own lab, but if you're gonna roll something out to 100 million people, you should make sure that the benefits actually outweigh the risks. And independent scientists should be part of that and they should be able [00:28:00] to say, well, you've made this application, but there's this risk and you haven't done enough to address it. Or, you know, you've said there's this benefit, but we look at your measures and they're not very solid. Can you go back and do some more? So there should be a little bit of negotiation until things are really solid.

Another thing we should have is auditing after things come out, make sure, for example, that systems are not being used in biased ways. So like our large language models being used to make job decisions. And if they are, are they discriminating? We need to know that.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: But, uh, now all of these regulations sound great to me. They sound important having an FDA-style agency, et cetera. Uh, that sounds like a great thing to do when you've got a technology that's causing problems. The history of that sort of regulation in the United States is that when you have a new field, that field desperately resists regulation with every fiber of its being. And it isn't until there are real, massive harms, people dying in the streets from tainted food that we get, you know, food regulation and, [00:29:00] you know, instituted by Teddy Roosevelt. I told that story on my Netflix show, The G Word. Um, it requires generally like wholesale death and devastation before we start regulating these things. Do you feel that there's any prospect in the near term for the kind of regulations that you're talking about? Or are we going to have a lot of harms first?

GARY MARCUS: It's difficult to say. I mean, when I gave the Senate testimony, there was actually real strong bipartisan recognition that we do need to move quickly, that government moved too slowly on social media, didn't really get to the right place. And so, there's some recognition that there's a need to do something now. Whether that gets us over the hump, I don't know.

Part of my thinking is, figure it out now what we need to do, and even if it doesn't pass, we'll have it ready, so if there is a sort of 9/11 moment, some massive, you know, AI induced cybercrime or something like that, we'll be there. We'll know what to do. And so I don't think we should waste time right now being defeatist. I think we should figure out what is in the best interest [00:30:00] of the nation and really of the globe and be as prepared as possible, whether it passes now or later.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: I agree that we should do as much as possible. I'm just a little bit concerned about the amount of power wielded by the tech industry. You know that this is one of the most profitable industries in America. So it's very easy for those CEOs to go and get a meeting with Joe Biden, whatever they want. And it's harder for folks such as yourself or some of the other academics we've had on the show to have those conversations, but I agree that we need to have those conversations.

GARY MARCUS: I'll say this. I'm in a little bit of a special category, especially after the Senate testimony. But right now it's actually very easy for me to get meetings. I met, um, well, I guess I shouldn't be too explicit, but I'm able to talk to whoever I need to talk to in Washington and Europe and so forth right now. So, people in power right now. are recognizing that they don't entirely trust the big tech companies, that they do need some outside voices. And for whatever reason, I right now am in that position and they're taking me very seriously. If I say I'm going to be in [00:31:00] Washington, could you meet next week? People say, yes. And in fact, I was just in Washington, met a lot of very high ranking people. And then I got on the airplane and then some other high ranking people are like, when are you coming back? I think just by coincidence.

But, you know, people noticed the testimony that I gave, wanna solve this problem, like, they're sincere in wanting to solve it. There's a problem that not everybody agrees about what to do and everybody's trying to take credit for having the one true solution. And like, in some ways it's an embarrassment of riches, everybody's trying to help. In some ways there's a coordination problem. I would say that more than any time I've ever seen before, the government is reaching out to at least some of us who are experts in the field, trying to say, you know, What would you do in this circumstance? So I give them some credit for that.

The Left Luddites and the AI Accelerationists - torres - Air Date - 5-15-23

TORRES - HOST, TORRES: Visions of the future are varied, and for as much as I'd like to believe that the future will be as rosy as these authors do, I find it hard to believe. Take for example the scandalous finding that 40 percent of jobs will be lost to AI. [00:32:00] These findings have been moderated by more measured studies, like a 2016 OECD study that found that less than 10 percent of jobs were likely to be automated. The study was more robust than the previous one for a variety of reasons, and more importantly, it wasn't funded by the companies that are creating AI technology and want to sell you on it. Seriously, if we were to listen to the CEOs, ChatGPT might as well be digital gold. But even then, 10 percent is still a lot of jobs.

The question of whether AI advancements will lead to job loss is, undeniably yes. You won't find one serious person saying otherwise, but there's something we're missing here. Author Aaron Beninov centers his analysis on one primary question. Why are we so obsessed with technologically driven job loss? There's a recurring hype surrounding automation theory, one that's been happening since at least the 1800s, but frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if we found a manuscript by a caveman afraid that the invention of fire was going to cost him his [00:33:00] role as hunter.

Beninov argues that the cyclical nature of automation discourse has less to do with technology itself and more to do with the nature of capitalist society. Taking its periodicity into account, automation theory may be described as a spontaneous discourse of capitalist society that, for a mixture of structural and contingent reasons, reappears in those societies time and time again as a way of thinking through their limits.

What summons the automation discourse periodically into being is a deep anxiety about the functioning of the labor market. There are simply too few jobs for too many people. Why is the market unable to provide jobs for so many of the workers who need them? Proponents of the automation discourse explain this problem of a low demand for labor in terms of runaway technological change. But this is misguided. In short, there's a fundamental problem in the labor market that's prompting these fears in the first place.

As [00:34:00] we discussed, a whole lot of jobs people used to do a hundred years ago no longer exist. But this isn't new. Automation is a constant feature in the history of capitalism. What is new, relatively speaking, is that global capitalism is now failing to provide jobs for the people who need them. And those of us who find them are often underemployed, doing jobs we're way too qualified to do. There's higher spikes of unemployment, inequality is only getting higher, something has gone wrong. Labor is in short demand. Automation theorists would argue, "yeah, no shit. That's because of automation, baby. That's what we've been telling you. Robots took our jobs and they're only gonna keep doing it." but Beninov argues we'd be wrong to chalk it up to simple automation, because if you look at the numbers, there's a deep economic rot at the center of this.

Let's look at manufacturing, an industry that's already seen automation hit it in a big way. Already cybernetically enhanced, we would expect productivity and output to have skyrocketed, right? But this isn't the case. In fact, recent figures [00:35:00] show the manufacturing industry diminishing, growing at a sluggish pace that doesn't compare with the post WWII golden age. It's a classic crisis of overproduction and overcapacity. Demand for goods has stagnated compared to our ability to produce them, leading to a wave of deindustrialization. And manufacturing is only one such industry.

Across the board, economic growth has stagnated. Some would argue that this is inevitable if we're using the economy after World War II as the baseline. The global economy was booming after the war. Expecting it to stay like that, well, it's not a fair comparison. If we instead compare it to pre World War I levels, things are much more similar, but here's the kicker. As Beninoff explains, in that period, large sections of the population still lived in the countryside and produced much of what they needed to live. Yet, in spite of the much more limited sphere in which labor markets were active and in which industrialization took place, this era was marked by a persistently low [00:36:00] demand for labor, making for employment insecurity, rising inequality, and tumultuous social movements aimed at transforming economic relations.

In this respect, the world of today does look like this era. The difference is that today, a much larger share of the world's population depends on finding work in labor markets in order to live. Considering how you can't just grow food in your backyard like you used to a hundred years ago, this development is unsettling.

Beninov admits that technological progress does play a factor here, but it's secondary to the primary issue of a stagnant capitalist engine that can't fuel economic growth to keep people employed. The difference today versus a hundred years ago is that the vast majority of the planet is now a part of this wage labor system. If this stagnation continues, it's likely to make the employment insecurity, rising inequality, and social movements of the past century look like child's play. The problem is capitalism, not AI [00:37:00] or automation.

Luddites Show Us The Politics Of Technology | Brian Merchant - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 11-21-23

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We should note that literally a couple hours ago was announced that the UAW came to at least a tentative agreement with GM after announcing, I guess it was yesterday or over the weekend, an agreement with Stellantis. This is on the heels of an agreement with Ford. And it seems like one of the most successful strikes, union demands in modern history, maybe at least in the past 50 years, I think maybe for sure in the past 50 years, it seems. 25 percent pay increase is the top line figure, over the course of a three- or four-, five-year contract, depending on all the details we're going to get a little bit more. But how much of that type of unionism in particular -- one that is really aggressive and more democratic. The UAW had a big -- they were under a consent decree. That brought about this administration of Shawn Fain, which [00:38:00] feels far more democratic, both in structure and processes, but also just in disposition. He is much more in tune to the Membership. It feels like from the outside than we've seen in the past. How much of that is a, descendant of the Luddite movement?

BRIAN MERCHANT: Yeah. So when the Luddites were rising up, one of the reasons they had to rise up, I didn't mention, was that it was illegal to form a union. There were laws on the books called The Combination Acts. So it tried to collectively bargain and say, Hey, we're all agreed on this, we won't work for this much less, you could be thrown in prison. So part of the outgrowth of the Luddite movement was the reform effort that was really spurred by some of the folks that I follow in the book, Gravener Henson, who was a Luddite himself, but also was interested in pulling the levers of reform and he really fought to the bitter end and with, ultimately, some success to get those Combination Acts repealed and we saw the [00:39:00] beginnings of the union movement take rise.

But there's a really good lesson from the Luddites in that, so being militant can work. You don't need to actually smash machines, but the industrialists and the elites of the day were terrified of the Luddites. A lot of them gave in and offered demands because they had power and they were popular. And, we've seen as you mentioned with Shawn Fain and the previous leadership of some of our unions had not wanted to mix it up too much. They had not wanted to push against the companies. It had gotten pretty slack.

So I think seeing these more -- it's not militant, but it's a lot more confrontational, they're leaning into their power a lot more.

And I would also point out, one of the big things was that the companies were trying to say we have new technologies, right? Where you're going to be working with batteries and electric cars, and that's not as hard to produce. So we need to pay you less. And one of the things the union did was stand up and say, absolutely [00:40:00] not. This is still labor. This is still very labor intensive and skilled work. Just because it's a new technology does not give you the right to say that you should be paid less or take more work off the table.

Same thing with the WGA. I would say that's another modern example of a very successful Luddite-tinged strike, because they saw the studio saying that we want to be able to use AI to write scripts, and then maybe we'll let you rewrite them for a lesser fee. And they drew a red line.

And I argue, and I think I did argue in one of my columns that that's Luddism in the modern day. You don't need a hammer, you just need to reject what you know is going to be an exploitative use of technology. Because they knew the studios were not going to write a whole movie with AI, they were just going to write a blueprint, bring it to them and say, okay you can get a rewrite fee for this, but we'll own the rights, you don't get residuals, you don't get all this, and it was mostly a way to try to break labor power, to try to degrade conditions. And they drew that red line in the WGA and they said no. They said, absolutely not. If somebody is going to use AI, we're going to have control [00:41:00] over how it's going to be used. The studio can't do it. We'll make that decision. And amazingly, they won that. They won that right to control that part of the labor process. So that's a huge victory, and I think one that is extremely inspiring because we're going to see a wave of these fights coming down.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Do you think that the legacy of the Luddites or the lessons that come out of there are that tactic of militancy that they had, or did they represent a new way of understanding of the benefits/increase in productivity, and who gets a piece of that, who shares in that so-called benefit -- if the sharing of that benefit goes to all the parties, the constituencies involved in that factory or whatever it is, that production line, or just one narrow beneficiary, or is it both?

BRIAN MERCHANT: Yeah, I think it's a little bit of both, but I think it's more the latter. I think it's saying [00:42:00] it is, in fact, you shouldn't be encouraged to question how technology is going to be used in your workplace, in your life, in your daily routine. Is it, Who is a given technology going to serve? Is it going to serve you the worker? Or is it going to serve your boss at your expense? And it's giving, I think, people license again, especially.

This is really important in this era, where for so long we've been taught that progress is equal to technology. It's Silicon Valley is the bringer of all of these great technological gifts and to question or to resist them was unthinkable for so long. We've seen some of that change with the tech clash and so forth, but there's still a lot of people who are very resistant to even say, Wait a minute, this seems like an awfully raw deal. And we're seeing that I think with, thanks to the writers and to a number of the other folks who are pushing back on this right now, we're seeing that facade start to crack.

So I think the Luddites [00:43:00] have given us a good example and an important example to look at the way that it's being deployed in society or even in our specific workplaces and to question it. And it's okay to question it. It's okay to be a Luddite. And in fact, there's great power in being a Luddite.

BONUS The ACTUAL Danger of A.I. with Gary Marcus Part 2 - Factually! - Air Date 7-2-23

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: You do have a view on what regulations you feel that we actually need around AI.

GARY MARCUS: I do.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: So let's talk about what a few of those might be.

GARY MARCUS: So I have suggestion from the top level, like macro level all the way down. I don't know how much time you want to go into it, but I'll start with I think that the US and other countries similarly need a central agency or a cabinet level position or something like that, a secretary of AI with supporting infrastructure, whose full time job it is to look at all the ramifications of this, because they are so vast.

And because even though we have existing agencies that can help, none of the existing agencies were really designed in the AI era. And there are all kinds of cases that [00:44:00] slip through what do you do about wholesale misinformation as opposed to retail misinformation? Like if some foreign actor makes a billion pieces of misinformation a day, maybe you have to rethink how we address that.

And so we definitely need someone who's responsibility, somebody who lives and breathes AI follows all of this stuff. We don't want to leave it to, the Senate has to make different rules when GPT 5 comes out from GPT 4 and from GPT 6. That's not what they're there for.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: So we need a regulatory agency similar to the EPA or another agency where, when facts on the ground change, that agency can issue new regulatory rules without having to go through Congress, which is how we regulate. We've got the FAA, we've got NHTSA for highway safety, et cetera.

GARY MARCUS: We obviously need this for AI. It's obvious to me, it's probably obvious to you not everybody in Washington agrees. People will tell you it's very hard to stand up a new agency, which is true. There arex complications, it is not trivial, but we need it. So that's one thing I would say.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Do you have any concern? Let me just ask you Gary about that first, because agencies of that type in the [00:45:00] past have become captured by those groups. If you look at the FAA and, the Boeing 737 Max, that really falls at the feet of the FAA is, having lax regulation. You can look at other agencies that have that problem. And why is that? It's because you have the revolving door.

GARY MARCUS: My understanding, I'm not an expert, but my non expert understanding is that they got tricked on that one. They got told this is not really a new vehicle and it really was. It was, there were not fundamental changes. I think that the general answer to that question is you have to have independents, mostly scientists, outside scientists who can raise their hand and say, no, they're telling you that this is, just the same airplane, but they've gutted all of these systems and replaced them. And we need to understand these new systems. They're nice on paper, but we need data to see if this is actually going to work. We need, for example, to understand how the pilots are going to respond to these new systems, which in principle, mathematically correct, but if they fool the pilots, then you're going to have all kinds of mayhem. And we need to look into that. And so you have to have independents.

[00:46:00] What you don't want is regulatory capture where the companies being regulated, we already talked about this are the ones who are making the rules. And so, Boeing shifted things and framed things in a way that suited their purpose, but didn't suit the public's purpose.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Yeah, that's my concern is that we stand up this agency. And then 10 years from now, the person running it is like Sam Altman's brother or whatever, because he has the power to get his buddy appointed to run the thing. And that's been the case with agencies in the past, especially when an administration changes, but that's just good government. That's a problem of good government that exists for any field.

GARY MARCUS: And it's a serious problem, it's not to be ignored, but I think we have to face it. So my second, recommendation I just already talked about. Which is scientists have to be involved in this process. We just cannot leave it to the companies and the governments alone. And the governments have been running around putting out press releases and doing photo ops with the leaders of the companies without having scientists in the room or without prominently displaying the scientists that are there, and that turns my stomach every time I see that. They did that in the UK, they've done that in the US, where they roll out some top government [00:47:00] official and they have OpenAI and Deep Mind CEOs or things like that, and you have to have scientists there to send the message that this is not just, my brother in law running the organization kind of thing that you just talked about.

ADAM CONOVER - HOST, FACTUALLY!: Not only do you need to have scientists there, it would probably be better not to have the companies that you are seeking to regulate in the halls of power. If the point is to regulate, the use of AI and regulate these companies, then you probably shouldn't welcome them all to the White House for a big summit where you do what they say, right?

GARY MARCUS: You actually do need them in the room. They have a lot of knowledge about what's practical and where things are. They should have a voice and they're affected and we don't want to. Regulate our way into losing the AI race with China. Like there, there are lots of reasons to have the company in the room, but it has to be in moderation with other voices too. They just can't trust them for the whole deal.

BONUS The anti-tech movement is back. - Alice Cappelle - Air Date 6-15-22

ALICE CAPPELLE - HOST, ALICE CAPPELLE: Recent anti-tech sentiments echoes the skepticism around Web3, cryptocurrencies, the metaverse. The numerous TV reports, articles on data exploitation, online [00:48:00] surveillance, big tech monopolies have succeeded in making the majority of people across all ages, social classes dubious of big tech.

Cryptocurrencies, NFTs appeared for many as the solution to fight against the lack of transparency of big tech. But the language used -- blockchain, smart contracts, etc. -- the scammy practices, its shortcomings, the volatility, and the massive online backlash it received, really reduced its potential and scope of influence.

Web3 and the crypto world thought to establish themselves as the only alternative to big tech's hand on society and all the problems it brought. Bella Hadid's latest NFT ad is a good example of that. Bella talks about a private society, a new global nation built on peace, love, compassion to escape the imperfections of our world.

As someone commented, private society? For who? New meta nation? For who? Everyone wants sustainability, compassion, peace, and love. This is terrifying. I found it terrifying too, not gonna lie. [00:49:00] Everybody wants sustainability, compassion, peace, and love, and that can be achieved outside of technology.

The idea that progress should be the aim of every nation stretches back to the Enlightenment, where scientific discoveries, the democratization of knowledge and literacy, meant that people could see society advance quickly in their lifetime.

This obsession with progress translated into a new economic model, capitalism, into greater liberties for individuals, new forms of government like democracy, greater power to parliaments.

Technological progress went hand in hand with social progress, and we can argue that it's still the case. Technological advances have enabled people to live longer, healthier. They have facilitated manual labor. They have allowed us to come together and internationalize social movements through hashtags.

Technologies aren't inherently bad. That's not the point I'm making here. I won't be a romantic here. I won't talk to you about indigenous communities who live in harmony with nature as an argument against our technology-obsessed societies. I think this argument is used way too often by people who [00:50:00] refuse to give them the technological tools that they deserve and they demand. I mean, they are doing great! Let them do their own thing with nature while we continue to pollute over here. I've seen this argument presented by right wing people, but also by people who claim to be progressive.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't embrace those communities and listen to what they have to say. I think the direction the climate movement is taking, a.k.a. including more indigenous people, is absolutely necessary. Their knowledge of nature is so precious. What I find more questionable is that we romanticize, almost fetishize, a sustainable way of living that only a tiny little fraction of us would be willing to embrace. And we use that argument to continue to isolate them from modern technologies. We all have a right to access modern technologies, so drinking water, medical services, transportation, efficient transportation, in case those services aren't local.

What seems problematic to me is the reward system we have built around those technologies, that is fed by the ideology of constant progress, but also by our economic system, to the point where [00:51:00] it has become quite hard to define what progress really is.

Think about this. In the West, a new revolutionary cancer treatment gets the same media coverage as a new iPhone. But are we really talking about the same kind of progress? As Tom Nicholas argued in his video on the fake futurism of Elon Musk, the ideology of never-ending progress keeps people hopeful that the future can be bright, that humanity will always find a solution to the problems it faces.

But who is really benefiting from that sort of technological progress? By that I mean high speed tunnels for five-people-max cars, rockets to see the earth from space, or Bella Hadid's meta community. These are toys for the wealthy who ultimately want to leave this planet.

On the other hand, vaccines patents were kept private by Western companies, and people like Bill Gates claim that we shouldn't give patents to non-Western countries and wait till the West can produce vaccines and send them to them. Of course, they came last on the list and suffered economic and social consequences as a result of that.

I really want to argue that the [00:52:00] belief in constant progress is an ideology, a.k.a. an idea that has been repeated so many times that it appears as the truth. And one way to show it is to look at how it trickled down to us, how we have internalized it.

Let's take the phrase "be the best version of yourself." That's a good example. Becoming your best version means that you need to improve a little bit every day. The body and mind are perceived as a machine that needs to be improved, yes, every day, month, year, to increase its performance. The individual who seeks to become the best version of themselves will work on their physique, mental health, strength, intelligence, using scientific data to figure out what's the best way to achieve their goals.

In fact, scientific based methods of training at the gym, of memorizing for an exam, are now super appealing. Let's imagine that we make two videos with the same advice, but one is titled, "My 5 Tips to Lose Weight," and the other one, "5 Scientifically Proven Ways of Losing 10 Pounds in a Month." Guess which one is gonna get the most engagement?

Smartwatches tell you how many hours you slept last night, [00:53:00] how deep the sleep was, encouraging you to improve your stats. They also calculate how many steps you did per day, how many calories you burned. My experience of tracking steps, calories in the past completely changed my relationship with things that, in my opinion, should be intuitive: eating, working out, being active. A workout session was only good if I had reached the right amount of calories burned. A meal was only good only if I had met all the macronutrients targets.

But anyway, closing the parentheses here. To conclude and connect everything we've said with ideas I hear more and more in left wing circles, especially in France at the moment, is the right for intimacy in the sense that we should be able to turn it all off, to be left alone. We are constantly invaded with lights, sounds, notifications, and it's not always our fault. Being stimulated has become the norm and prevent us from having time to just think.

I'm not saying that we should distance ourselves from the outside world, from politics, or any of that. You know you're not like that. What I'm saying is [00:54:00] that the constant flow of stimulation puts us in a state of paralysis. We're numbly being drawn back and forth by the waves of information, of so-called progress, without reflecting on them.

I'll end with this quote I found in the book Psychopolitics, written by Byung-Chul Han. It's [French philosopher Gilles] Deleuze talking, and he says, "It's not a problem of getting people to express themselves, but of providing little gaps of solitude and silence in which they might eventually find something to say. Repressive forces don't stop people from expressing themselves, but rather force them to express themselves. What a relief to have nothing to say."

Final comments on the fork in the road and a look at our options

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with SHIFT, laying out an overview of who the Luddites were. Left Reckoning discussed the middle ground between peaceful and violent protest. TRT World explained some of the potential dangers of AI. jstoobs on TikTok described the cultural dystopia of AI video generation. Factually! discussed how government is attempting to regulate tech. [00:55:00] torres looked at the problem of capitalism and AI. And The Majority Report discussed the Luddites as a labor movement.

That's what everybody heard, but members also heard bonus clips from Factually! discussing the process of setting up regulation for AI, and Alice Cappelle looked at who benefits from big tech and who can opt out. To hear that and have all of our bonus contents delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now to wrap up, I have an excerpt from a New Yorker piece on Luddites and the book Blood in the Machine, the end of which may repeat some things that have already been said, but really sum things up pretty well. "The tragedy of the Luddites is not the fact that they failed to stop industrialization, so much as the way in which they [00:56:00] failed. In the end, parliament sided decisively with the entrepreneurs. Blood in the Machine suggests that although the forces of mechanization can feel beyond our control, the way society responds to such changes is not. Regulation of the textile industry could have protected the Luddite workers before they resorted to destruction. In the era of AI, we have another opportunity to decide whether automation will create advantages for all, or whether its benefits will flow only to the business owners and investors looking to reduce their payrolls. One 1812 letter from the Luddites described their mission as fighting against 'all machinery hurtful to commonality'. That remains a strong standard by which to judge technological gains".

So, fundamentally this fork in the road we are standing in front of is about who the government or society more broadly [00:57:00] is going to back. And I must say it's an interesting time to try to guess what the government might do in this area, given that the right seems to be a leaning, you know, even if only slightly, a bit anti-corporate these days, you know, not for the same reasons that I am or you might be, but this could be one of those cases where we get back to the world of politics making strange bedfellows. We've actually been so hyperpolarized for so long now that that doesn't happen much anymore. But the efforts to reign in or break up big tech could be one of the first big ones in a while.

The second thing I want to highlight is the conclusion drawn in an episode of a show called Things Fell Apart that tries to trace the origins of our current culture wars. In the episode about managing online speech, or maybe our tendency to not think we need to manage online [00:58:00] speech until really, really forced to, they talk about the first time anyone was ever shamed for something they posted online. Back during the proto-Internet, an antisemitic joke was posted and it sparked a debate about whether to moderate such things or just let it run free. Initially, after much deliberation, it was decided that it was important to do some sort of content moderation for the sake of a healthy online discourse. However that stance was immediately attacked from a more libertarian perspective that would ultimately win out and set the tone for Silicon valley.

A Scottish Jewish joke - Things Fall Apart - Air Date 1-25-22

JON RONSON - HOST, THINGS FALL APART: John McCarthy was horrified at the thought of speech codes becoming the norm online. So he published a ferocious riposte to the ban, calling John Sack an "underling, who had spent those weeks not deliberating, but gurgling". He launched an [00:59:00] online petition too, one of the very first in internet history, gathering a hundred signatures from faculty. Then, as now, the power of the online petition was formidable. The ban on Brad's joke page was quickly reversed. John McCarthy's winning argument, John Sax says, had boiled down to: "We're really exploring the leading edge of computing here. Let's keep exploring it. Don't try and cut it off. We need to discover the boundaries of free speech by essentially running into them or crossing them." And that's the internet we have all lived in for the decades that followed. A libertarian engineer's utopia, where free speech thrived unencumbered, with no regard for the dangers it might cause society. And by dangers, I mean not only offensive speech, but fake news, too. And [01:00:00] because unencumbered free speech leads to conflict, which keeps people online longer than harmony does, it's a profitable ideology for the tech companies. It's epitomised best by how Twitter's UK general manager described the site in 2012 as the "free speech wing of the free speech party". "The interesting thing about Twitter is it's sort of Silicon Valley native, so maybe it all does tie back to the libertarian bent in the engineering culture".

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now, maybe it's obvious, but I play this because I see it as another inflection point in the evolution of the relationship between technology and society. So it's clear that these kinds of moments are really important to think through with a long view in mind. What I would argue is that to side with the capitalist and big tech during this AI inflection point, you know, essentially co-signing the [01:01:00] idea that AI can and will replace massive numbers of jobs and the benefits of those advances should go exclusively to the capitalist class, we'll ultimately bring about a destructive wealth stratification that really only has a chance of bringing mass misery.

However, there's also a left wing, socialist vision of a techno future of full automation where the fruits of those advances are shared across society and people are freed from long hours at bullshit jobs. Maybe only a handful of hours a day and only a couple or a few days a week would even be spent working, leaving people free to live their non-work lives to the fullest. That is a possibility, certainly better than the alternative. But it does also come with the danger of taking work away from millions of people who derive their inner sense of purpose from the work they do, leading to a massive mental health crisis [01:02:00] even if their economic needs are taken care of. Not to mention the way that AI is tending to tackle art as well. Some neo-Luddites hasten to remind us that, much aside from work, the creation of art is also one of the greatest sources of meaning for people and if AI sort of swamps the art scene as well then that could have similar effects as taking away people's work.

So it really strikes me as a choice between economic hyper-stratification and economic abundance for all, but with the danger of there being too little of what gives life purpose to people. Now of course, given that stress levels are at all-time highs brought about by overwork and a general sense of time poverty. I suppose bringing down work hours and days should start to create improvements for people before it goes too far in the other direction, but all of these things are concerns to keep our eye [01:03:00] on.

That is going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave us a voicemail or send us a text to 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben, for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and a bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them today by signing up at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patrion page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and very often funny bonus [01:04:00] episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So, coming to you from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1611 Higher Education: the Myths, McCarthyism, and Change Makers (Transcripts)

Posted by · February 17, 2024 5:50 AM

Air Date 2/17/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast in which we take a look at how the debate over education has been derailed from the legitimate concern to the past, focused on the downfalls of No Child Left Behind and Common Core policies into a cul-de-sac of ignorance over opposition to diversity, equity and inclusion programs and the teaching of critical race theory, not to mention the new McCarthyism that has sprung up to squash any criticism of Israel's genocidal war in Gaza.

Sources today include the At Liberty podcast, The Majority Report, CounterSpin, The EdUp Experience Podcast, and Virtually Connecting & Equity Unbound, with additional members-only clips from The EdUp Experience and The Majority Report.

How to Dismantle the Anti-DEI Machine - At Liberty Podcast - Air Date 2-9-24

LEAH WATSON: So, in 2020, there was really a moment where people paused and considered racism. Professor Tillery just spoke about the importance of the racial reckoning in the workplace, but the [00:01:00] reckoning didn't just happen in the workplace. There was reflection about how all of our American institutions could become anti-racist institutions. Particular to education, as there is social progress, there's always immediate retrenchment, as we talked about. And almost immediately, in the face of these commitments to anti-racism and racial justice to embrace students of color in classrooms in a system that has never fully embraced them, to be honest, conservatives coordinated an attack, alleging that critical race theory was infiltrating schools. They started to create educational gag orders, primarily in the form of legislation, but also in the form of executive orders, school board rules, and attorney general opinions that prohibit discussion of racism and sexism, particularly systemic racism and sexism in classes.

And so the first educational gag order really built on [00:02:00] an executive order, 13950, that was signed by President Trump in September of 2020. And this was an executive order that prohibited discussion of eight enumerated concepts deemed to be divisive in workplaces, really in trainings for federal contractors.

And so after President Trump signed the executive order, it was challenged in court, struck down on constitutional basis in a preliminary injunction and was rescinded by Biden on the first day of the administration. But it really planted the seed for how to attack conversations that conservatives just frankly did not want to have.

So we saw legislation designed to prohibit these concepts and courses. It's called educational gag orders because it limits teachers from having these discussions with students. And legislation was introduced in over 40 states, laws were passed in over 20 states.

These laws were in the K-12 context, but also in higher ed [00:03:00] too, and we've seen an increasing focus on higher ed in 2022 and 2023 as a way of limiting the ideas that people learn.

So the ACLU is very proud to be at the forefront of this fight against classroom censorship. It is unprecedented in many respects. We filed the first challenge to an educational gag order in the country with co-counsel Lawyers Committee Under Civil Rights and Schulte, Roth and Zable. We filed this challenge in Oklahoma to HB 1775, alleging constitutional violations. We also filed a challenge in Florida with the NAACP Legal Defense Fund and Ballard Spahr. I should mention that both of these are with the ACLU of Oklahoma, the ACLU of Florida as well. And in that case, we continue to allege constitutional violations in the Florida's educational gag order, which is called the Stop Woke Act.

The Stop Woke Act prohibits discussions of systemic racism and sexism in K-12 [00:04:00] classrooms, higher education classrooms and workplaces. In that case, we were able to obtain an order, a preliminary injunction, blocking the state of Florida from enforcing the higher education provisions of the Stop Woke Act. And we are defending or arguing in support of that preliminary injunction before the 11th Circuit currently.

Finally, we filed a case in New Hampshire on behalf of K-12 teachers challenging HB 2 and that case is proceeding as well, also, on constitutional grounds. There's a number of organizations involved in that case. I won't list all of those co-counsels, but we've really been leading this charge from the beginning, setting a framework for challenging these laws on unconstitutional grounds, obtaining favorable orders where the laws had been substantively reviewed by courts, and we're continuing to hold the line on what is permissible in classrooms, both in the K-12 and higher education setting.

KENDALL CIESEMIER - HOST, AT LIBERTY: Leah has [00:05:00] been busy. The education gag orders she's fighting against, and all of the anti-DEI efforts we've mentioned, are all a part of this same playbook, drawn up by the same people.

But there's one person who is touted as the brains behind this whole operation, and that's conservative activist and journalist Christopher Rufo. Rufo is not a politician, but so many of his ideas have emerged to the forefront of conservative politics.

CHRISTOPHER RUFO: What I'm concerned about and what millions of parents are really concerned about is things that are happening in hundreds of public schools in Illinois and Chicago, where they're teaching children as young as kindergarten, that whiteness is the devil.

What I've discovered is that critical race theory has become in essence the default ideology of the federal bureaucracy and is now being weaponized against the American people.

LEAH WATSON: Individual conservatives, primarily Chris Ruffo, really manufactured hysteria around critical race theory by [00:06:00] utilizing Fox News to deliver reporting that has been, at best, identified to misrepresent the facts, at worst, debunked in some respects. But he's gone on Fox News a few times and stated the government is using critical race theory. It's infiltrated our workplaces and schools. Fox News collaborated in creating hysteria by using the term "critical race theory" more than 3,900 times in 2021, having Rufo on at least 50 times in 2021 and then continuing to stoke concerns using the Great Replacement Theory that any progress by BIPOC people comes at the expense of white people. And we've seen this very dangerous rhetoric resulting in violence against BIPOC communities.

And so people felt like something new was happening and it was really bad for their students. Christopher Rufo said, "The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory. We [00:07:00] have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans." And I think that quote is just so powerful because it's not about CRT and it's not about DEI. It's really about controlling what people have access to and what is said in our culture.

Fighting Back Against The GOP’s War On College w. Bradford Vivian - The Majority Report - Air Date 2-8-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We hear constantly from the right wing that no one can disagree anymore. No one can disagree anymore on college campuses, like the pink haired, pronoun youth are creating this chilling effect and there's no more free speech anymore on university campuses. When and how did that narrative really begin to form, based on your research into this phenomenon?

BRADFORD VIVIAN: Terrific. Right. So there is a story to this. And I think for US society, what I describe as the language of campus misinformation, really kicks into high gear around 2017. And that's for [00:08:00] very strategic reasons. If listeners think of the things they might have been reading in op eds and clickbait media around that time, there were many, many stories about speakers on college campuses who had, quote unquote, conservative views or traditional views, who were being protested and shut down and there were mobs, quote unquote, of coddled undergraduate students irrationally reacting to the mere idea that somebody would express a dissenting viewpoint on college campuses.

So the way in which that was reported, this language of describing what's allegedly happening on campuses, which was very scary and frightening and seemed anti-free speech, became popularized around 2017. But what I think was underreported was the fact that this was a strategic reactionary movement that was trying to make relatively free, diverse, pluralistic college campuses, where a lot of disagreement and [00:09:00] competing viewpoints are tolerated, seem very ugly and confrontational and try and drive down public support, particularly for state funded higher education. And if you think about what those speakers would have been speaking about, these were conscious efforts to try and antagonize and create some sort of conflict. What was allegedly so controversial on college campuses were not, say, talks about biology or ancient archeology or obscure parts of history, all these sort of myriad different academic subjects, but they were always forms of speech that were about antagonizing marginalized groups on college campuses to create very intentionally a spectacle, a confrontation, for a bunch of provocateurs and, for the most part, propagandists to market themselves that way. And this has become unfortunately sort of legitimized with a lot of pop psychology.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, it's a cottage [00:10:00] industry, too. i'm just thinking about just a few off the top of my head of these grifters that have made a ton of money off of this kind of thing. Brett Weinstein left college because he couldn't say what he wanted to say about, what was it? He's a biologist --

BRADFORD VIVIAN: The day of absence and stuff like that.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Oh, yeah, it's, it's nonsense. But now he has his COVID misinformation podcast. He's cashed in. Charlie Kirk, his whole thing with Turning Point USA is going to college is thickened here a diversity of viewpoint, and it hasn't been effective, but it's made a lot of people wealthy.

For your money, who are some of the most egregious actors in this space, currently propagating this myth?

BRADFORD VIVIAN: It falls into what I would describe as a few groups and I think, right, there's definitely a sort of easily-described grifter group like you're describing. The number of organizations out there, for example -- and this is in the interest of free speech, they can do this, but I'm just describing what they do -- Turning Point USA, for example, YAF, [00:11:00] traditionally conservative speakers organizations. They speak on college campuses all the time. It's a very slim minority of incidents where you'll get a protest or some sort of conflict, but they make a lot of money and they gain a lot of political capital by speaking on campus, and on those campuses saying they're not allowed to speak on college campuses anymore.

So I think we should just be honest about the duplicity of that sort of unconstructive take on what's allegedly happening on campuses.

I also think a lot of egregious things are happening when hyper-partisan, as I described them, reactionary legislatures in different states take up these narratives as pretexts for why actually we allegedly have to have tighter state control over higher education. We have to put political litmus tests on to ensure a mandatory pro-and-con viewpoint is getting taught in every classroom, which is not the way free circulation of ideas should [00:12:00] take place.

And then finally, there's a lot of outside organizations who their ideas are not part of the normal process of university research and teaching. I'm thinking of groups like Heterodox Academy here, and books like The Coddling of the American Mind by attorney Greg Lukianoff and, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt. These have a lot of populist centrist appeal. It goes across the board. but these are groups and messages that are about criticizing institutions of higher education from outside those institutions to try and create a negative perception of them in public discourse.

Wadie Said on the New McCarthyism - CounterSpin - Air Date 12-22-23

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: The FBI, as you also point out, they're trying to enlist campus law enforcement on these crackdowns and on these lists. And again, it's a kind of authority versus authority, and we've seen campus law enforcement resist those efforts when it comes to immigration, for [00:13:00] example. So in other words, these tools that are being used to get onto campus and name people who, we're going to call violators of law, campus authorities have had an opportunity to say the degree to which they're gonna get federal law enforcement involved in what they're doing, and they've chosen against it other times. So there are tools they have to use if they want to resist this kind of encroachment.

WADIE SAID: That's a really interesting point because I think in the context of immigration, there's an understanding on behalf of university leadership around the country, private and public universities that immigration and foreign students and being attractive as a place where foreigners would want to come and study is a critical interest of the American university system and how it operates and generates, I hate to use this horrible phrase, but generates revenue. Basically it's a critical component [00:14:00] in the way the American university markets itself.

So, like you said, universities, when faced with draconian immigration laws and calls for crackdowns on immigrants, they resist, universities resist, and university administrations resist. What we saw, I think it was two weeks ago, with the university presidents of Harvard, MIT, and Penn being called before a committee on the House, to testify about, on campus tumult and the issue of anti Semitism, and they were faced with representative Stefanik saying that Intifada is a call for genocide of Jews, and from the river to the sea is a call for the genocide of Jews, which to me is an a factual assertion at best and a malicious falsehood at worst. And when that occurred, none of the university presidents challenged her [00:15:00] on the facts and said, this is an outrageous assertion that you're making.

So, for example, in the Palestinian context, the 1st Intifada from 1987 to 1993 was a largely peaceful uprising against what was then and still now the longest military occupation of modern time. So it's a kind of a moment of great pride in the Palestinian consciousness, and she was basically equating it to a call for genocide of Jews. And the issue of the phrase from the river to the sea is also intentionally misunderstood and misused for purposes that don't reflect the facts of what it stands for. And none of the university president said anything about that. They didn't say, well, actually your assertion is wrong. They just dithered and wound themselves up, which provided fodder to people like Representative Stefanik and those who share her position, that this was somehow endorsing calls for genocide, which is, of course, a kind of monstrous twisting of the facts.

And [00:16:00] it's on that note that I think university administration don't fully grasp or are scared to grasp, and I can't figure out which it is. In my mind, for example, my question was, "do these university presidents really not know what the term Intifada means?" It means shaking off in Arabic. Or loosely translated an uprising. Do they really not know that? Or do they know, and are they scared to engage? Either way, it's alarming.

So, I think that in that context, there's a real deep fear that university administrators must have. In grappling with these issues that they don't, for example, in the context of, say, immigration.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Just to pivot from that, I feel a certain sense of desperation in terms of anybody asking questions is supposed to shut up, and then you go on TikTok or any other social media and you see all kinds of people, not only young people, saying, [00:17:00] "I just don't believe what the media is telling me. I see the message they're trying to give me, but I'm just not buying it.": And the idea that questioning and dissenting should mean that you should go away doesn't read to people, it doesn't land in the same way as maybe some folks will think that it is.

But I do think that it has to do with some people's understanding, including my own, of law. You think that there's a law. Surely this is against the law, and if we just apply the law... and I remember this from a conversation I had with Noura Erakat a couple of years ago, the importance of not equating law with justice, and of helping the public conversation understand that law and justice are not the same thing. But it's a difficult thing to interpret and understand.

WADIE SAID: It is for sure. So, one thing I think that you mentioned that was [00:18:00] exceedingly important to my view is that you're seeing the call for a crackdown, you're seeing attempt that what has been deemed McCarthyite or a new type of McCarthyism, and you're seeing young people to not letting it deter them. They're not being deterred, which is, I think, a real point of hope, a point of departure from the past from the McCarthy era itself. And. I think that when you have, for example, wealthy billionaires, hedge fund managers, saying they want to know what students are saying so that they don't hire them, I think you're hearing the message from students that also they don't really care to work for people like that. So they're going to continue to advocate for the principles that matter to them as opposed to kowtowing, to people they think are. Not worthy of their time or energy anyway, to begin with. There's no meeting of the mind there. [00:19:00]

And to feed it into the last point, and what you were talking about with Noura the law itself is clearly, in this context, the material support law, but other laws that kind of target Palestinians and pro Palestinian advocacy, like we've seen over 30 states with anti BDS laws, et cetera, is there is a reckoning that's taking place between what people in this country believe about what they think their freedom should be, what they think their rights should be, the First Amendment at the heart of it, and the laws that the government has passed.

It was really interesting to me that very early on in this current Israeli assault on Gaza, when the calls for the 1st, and a poll came out within a couple of weeks, when the 1st poll came out that said the majority of Americans support a ceasefire and, almost no one in Congress has called for it at this point. And Pramila Jayapal, the leader of the progressive caucus in Congress, [00:20:00] mentioned something, she said, the American people are not where Congress is on this issue, or she maybe said it the other way around, congress is not where the American people are.

It's very interesting because you see popular support for a ceasefire continues to grow. The latest polls were, for example, that the handling of this current war, assault on Gaza, the 5th major one in the last 15 years, by the way, people are overwhelmingly unhappy with the Biden administration's response, and the Biden administration doesn't seem to understand why. So, the issue of justice and what is right and what is the country we should be standing for still incredibly contested despite government and certain political leaders on certain business leaders taking the opposite stand, and people are standing up for them, which is, I think, giving those of us who are deeply concerned and highly alarmed at what's going on in Gaza, and the [00:21:00] Middle East, more generally, a source of hope.

The Education Myth - How American Changed It's Relationship With School w. Jon Shelton - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-20-23

JON SHELTON: I'm a historian who does primarily late 20th century, and when I undertook this book, I was trying to understand how it was that Americans think about education over time, because I think there's something really important how Americans think about it recently, and what we expect it to do, and how that's led to some disastrous political consequences—I'm sure we'll get into that.

But to answer that question, I had to go all the way back to the nation's founding and think about what it was that people, Americans at the nation's founding expected the education system to do, and, it's not that I was surprised, but when I studied this systematically, it was pretty clear to me that for the vast majority of American history, Americans didn't see education in terms of helping people get jobs. It was about everything but that. So, you go back to Thomas Jefferson in the 1770s, and let's not romanticize Jefferson. He only saw white people as being capable of, being citizens in a democracy, but he argued for a public education system in Virginia because he said, [00:22:00] Americans needed to be able to understand power and, in a new democracy, understand corruption and its many forms in order to ensure democracy continued.

Going to the 19th century, you've got education reformers like Horace Mann pushing for education in order to, again, help Americans be citizens in a democracy. Mann was really thinking a little bit more about reigning in some of the impulses of democracy, but the point was he wasn't pushing for education and job training. And then, you can take this into, after the civil war, when freedmen and freed women in the, during the reconstruction era in the South, we're pushing for public education, but again, not because of that connection to job skills, but because they understood full quality of citizenship as connected to education and being good citizens.

And you can go into the 20th century. Some of your listeners might be familiar with this presidential commission in the 1940s called the Truman Commission, which was obviously convened by President Truman. The Truman Commission is a fascinating thing to read because this commission essentially argued for two years of [00:23:00] tuition free higher education, but not because Americans needed job skills, because in the context of an increasingly complex world, Americans needed to be trained as citizens, they needed to be able to think broadly and understand that context.

So it's only very recently, comparatively speaking, relatively speaking that Americans have seen education primarily in terms of job training.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And what I find fascinating about that brief history of the promotion of education as tied to the civic knowledge, people as citizens, is that it crosses over different periods in terms of technology and industry. Look, to become educated in Jefferson's time, the idea of it being a vocational investment would be absurd. You go and you apprentice, and I think that's arguable, well into the late 19th century. And then to see Truman, when we're certainly deep, [00:24:00] deep into the industrial revolution and past essentially, the idea that still you don't go to school to increase your earning potential, you go because there's an inherent value to society to have educated citizens. That's what I think is really fascinating about that broad stroke of history.

JON SHELTON: Yeah, Sam, and that's such an important point because, if you take the flip side to that, which is, how is it that Americans thought about economic opportunity and economic security. And the way they thought about it, especially after the in the context of the Industrial Revolution and more and more working people effectively losing their economic independence, —having to work for wages in the marketplace and really having their economic fortunes dictated by increasingly wealthy employers—is the primary means that working people used to fight for a better future, it wasn't to, argue to their kids to go out and get a good education, it was "let's [00:25:00] organize unions." It's "let's push for minimum wage laws and maximum hour laws and child labor protections," which, up until very recently I thought was a settled question in this country, but apparently it's not.

Then that all culminates in the 1930s with the New Deal, where you have the institutionalization of many of these calls from working people, things like the Wagner Act, which enshrined workers rights to organize and collectively bargain and go on strike, which people at the time called labor's Magna Carta, social security. And then, in the 1940s, in the context of World War II, FDR even calls for an economic bill of rights, a second bill of rights, kind of crystallizing a lot of these things that working people have been pushing for. It was deeply popular. And that really framed the conversation in American politics after World War II for the next 30 or 40 years.

And I think, to a large extent, Americans have forgotten that. I don't want to romanticize that era by any means. We know that there's a lot of racial inequality that continues to exist, which is why the civil rights movement is there. It's a kind of breadwinner model that disadvantages is [00:26:00] women in the labor markets. But at the end of the day, the premise of American politics during those years was to try and secure and expand as many economic and social rights for Americans as possible. And that's really what we've lost in the past few decades.

Resistance to Change in Higher Ed - with Dr. Brian Rosenberg - The EdUp Experience Podcast - Air Date 11-7-23

JOE ALLUSTIO - HOST, THE EDUP EXPERIENCE: And this raises what you define as a dilemma. And you say, "we've created a system in the United States in which we expect colleges and universities, especially those that are private, but increasingly those that are public as well, to come up with their own sources of funding. In essence, to act like businesses, even if they are nonprofit businesses, then we blame them for acting like businesses and call them greedy or duplicitous. We speak of higher education as a public good, fund it as a private good, and then blame it for developing strategies for maximizing revenue in an increasingly competitive environment." We're just getting hit from all sides, so how do you, as a leader, how would you recommend a president navigate a [00:27:00] situation like this, where you have this need for change, but then you have this dilemma that you describe here?

How do you press forward?

DR. BRIAN ROSENBERG: Yeah I wish I had really easy answers and I would be the first to acknowledge that the book is much better at diagnosing the problem than at prescribing the cure, but I think that there are certain things that, if one studies change, presidents and other leaders within higher education simply have to acknowledge.

One is that transformational change is not going to come through trying to build consensus. Every person who writes about change, everyone who studies change says the same thing, which is that more or less consensus is the enemy of innovation. This doesn't mean that you don't engage people in the process. It doesn't mean that you don't try to socialize some of these ideas, but typically what colleges do is look to engage as many people as possible, as many [00:28:00] constituencies as possible in the process of developing strategic plans and the process of change. And what you end up with is something that is the least objectionable to the largest number of people.

The system that we have in higher education was designed to allow for very slow, very incremental change. In effect, it's a system designed to prevent dramatic change. And for much of the history of higher education, that has more or less worked, in the sense that colleges and universities tend to be institutions that have been around for a long time. And in part it's because they haven't zigged and zagged with every change in the job market or change in politics, but the question that I think everyone has to confront right now is, is that system really suited to this moment?

That is, is a system that's designed to allow for very slow change [00:29:00] suited to a moment where the industry is under what I would describe as unprecedented financial pressure, unprecedented loss of public confidence, demographic problems, very much more diverse population and student body. Is that system, which is designed to move things along at a pretty glacial pace, is that system suited to the moment in which we are living right now?

JOE ALLUSTIO - HOST, THE EDUP EXPERIENCE: I love this because I I personally feel like higher ed, it creates this, and I've written about it before, it's an assimilation culture. Where, if you believe you're a change maker and you try to create change, the structures exist to sap the energy from you almost. And if you're trying to do something yourself or your, there's so many layers that you have to break through that by the time you get the, at some point during that change, you have this moment where you go, [00:30:00] is this really worth it? And it's at that moment that you assimilate to the culture of higher education. Because a lot of times you'll go, "No, it's just not worth it. I'm going to leave that alone. It's not important right now. But could it help students? Could it make the business move faster?" it's like breaking through layer after layer. There's another brick wall there behind you. And you eventually assimilate to these

How have you found that people who want to create change can stay focused on creating change without getting wins all the time? Because it does sap your innovative spirit.

DR. BRIAN ROSENBERG: Yeah, well, first of all, you're exactly right, and the story with which I begin the book is essentially a story of exactly what you described—of pushing for a particular, at least a particular discussion and deciding after meeting a lot of resistance, and I literally say that we just decided it's not worth it. Too much energy, too little likelihood of success, too many other things to do. [00:31:00] And that is a very, very widespread experience within higher education.

What I, and this gets to the earlier question about what I'd recommend to leaders, I think what you need to do is to give those people, and they exist on every campus, the people who do want to do things differently, who do want to come up with innovative ideas, try to give them some freedom to operate within some limited space without running into those walls. In change theory, it's sometimes called an ambidextrous organization. That is, one part of the organization, the main part, just goes on with business as usual. You don't ask everybody all of a sudden to change.

But you have this other part off to the side. It can be very small. It could be an individual. It could be a small team. It could be a small group and you tell them run with your idea. Maybe you run an experimental course or an [00:32:00] experimental program, or you try teaching something in a different way. You don't try to convince 150 faculty members to do it that way, you just tell five faculty members, "okay, give that a shot. I'm not gonna I'm not going to stand in your way. I'm going to give you some funding to do that. Let's see if it works."

There is some evidence, based on research done mostly in Europe, that ideas that start in what we would call honors colleges where they do things differently and where people are given a lot of freedom, can then seep back into the main institution and change the way things are done.

What I would do with those people, if I were a leader is just give them as much freedom as possible to pursue their ideas without having to try to convince everyone at a faculty meeting that that's the way we should do things. And only after the ideas have proven to be successful, only after this evidence that, this might actually work, this might actually be interesting, do you then [00:33:00] widen the circle. I think too often we try to start with very large groups.

So if you think about the way strategic plans are done, you'll get a call from the institution that goes out to everybody, alumni, faculty, students, "We're developing a new strategic plan. Send us your ideas." To me, that's the inverse of the way you should do it. That is, you should bring together a group of people who are the most open to change, who are the most creative, and have them work on really innovative ideas. And then you take the best ones, and you try gradually to sell those to the rest of the community. So you need to get those impediments out of the way of those people in whatever way that you can so that they don't finally say "it's not worth it."

Fighting Back Against The GOP’s War On College w. Bradford Vivian Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 2-8-24

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I want to return to the William F. Buckley example that you give, because, as with most things in conservatism, what is new is old, and what is old is new again. The tropes are pretty easy to [00:34:00] identify once you cover this as much as I do, at least. The fact that this is a similar exploitation of the cultural anxiety that he engaged in. Do you mind drawing some parallels to campuses in the fifties and in the sixties at this time, and what's happening today?

BRADFORD VIVIAN: Absolutely. Well, I think a lot of the crux of -- and I use the word "reactionary" because I think it's a little bit more specific, and I think a lot of self-described conservative politics about college campuses is really what I call reactionary, in a pretty standard political science definition there, is a movement that wants to say, okay, we've had enough change. We've had enough expansions of rights and culture has become open enough. And now we have to start putting limits on that or roll it back. They're reacting to change in a backward-looking notion.

So I think we're in an era then of what I call ongoing [00:35:00] desegregation. We're not in a post-segregation era with respect to publicly-funded education and even private Ivy League education. A lot of what was going on in Buckley's time, if we think about his idea that college campuses are too liberal, that just doesn't live up to an understanding, basically, of what college campuses were like at that time. In the 50s, 60s, only until recently, there was a change where college campuses, very historically recently in the US, used to be primarily reserved for cultural and economic elites. Primarily women, people of color were largely systemically barred from those communities. And we can go on down the list. In Buckley's time, college meant more like almost exclusively Ivy League or distinguished state institutions.

And so I think, interestingly, the parallel is that we have a lot of messages now about saying, well, college campuses have [00:36:00] become too diverse and so forth. When you just start to get those percentages, we're really just within a generation or two where there are significant amounts on many university campuses of people of color, of people openly identifying as being from the LGBTQ community, international student populations.

The irony is then that a lot of these messages are reactionary, as I described them, because they sound like those things that people like Buckley and all kinds of radio hosts and ideologues were saying to resist desegregation in the 50s and 60s. And now we're in an era where we're truly, historically speaking, just starting to get something like a more authentically diverse representative, and fact-based for that reason, free speech, all these different people, these communities. We're approaching something like a more diverse meritocracy and trying to attain it. And that's [00:37:00] where I think the reactionary kickback comes from and why it seems so reminiscent of some of those pro-segregationist ideas from the 50s and 60s to keep university education exclusive and out of reach for many people.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: You can see that in the two Supreme Court decisions that we just saw, the overturning of Biden's student debt cancellation and the affirmative action one. We want to keep these universities as institutions of capitalistic reproduction, as opposed to ones that are more emancipatory or allow for more diverse opinions and diverse people to have success. It's re-stratifying those lines.

And you talk about this in the context of even the war on education more broadly with the anti-CRT stuff. And I would put Don't Say Gay in there as well and that kind of legislation.

Can you talk about how [00:38:00] rapidly the war on colleges and universities, the free speech stuff trickled into legislation about public education, broadly down to kids in kindergarten and K through 12.

BRADFORD VIVIAN: Absolutely. It was quite rapid. So as I mentioned, I started being concerned about hearing all these messages about what's allegedly happening on campuses. And then it just not resembling the profession as I understood it very much at all. That was in about 2017, 2018, as I mentioned.

And when I was revising the book and it was going to press last year, I have notes in there about things that were just starting to happen in the Florida legislature under Ron DeSantis. But really we're living -- and that's why I say it's an ongoing struggle to fully desegregate campuses. You've had a lot of activity for several years now. There is a crisis of free speech and academic freedom in publicly-funded education. And the crisis is not coddled undergraduate [00:39:00] students, it's increasing political interference with what should be free, relatively self-governing academic affairs. And so I mentioned in the book for years now, the Goldwater Institute, a hyper partisan think tank has been marketing in political circles, politically marketing all kinds of draft legislation that now not only in Florida, it's also being adopted throughout numerous state legislatures. And I think it's very important for listeners to understand that, as you mentioned, the K through 12 education, you have these broad slogans now, the idea that students in K through 12 are being ideologically indoctrinated, there's no teaching going on, or that they're digesting critical race theory, or it's being forced upon them. Or that they're being sexualized by teaching about the full spectrum of gender and sexual diversity and humanity from a fact-based perspective. All these claims were first beta tested about college [00:40:00] campuses. So the disturbing thing for democracy, as well as K through 12 education, is that when you have these anti-university messages, they become a good engine for generating these political pretexts.

And now we have a historically significant wave of outright state censorship in these state legislatures. My objection to them is not because it's primarily from one political party. My objection to them is because it's anti-democratic, it's anti-academic, it puts a brake on basic liberties.

And so there you have really a crisis now in what, if you look at what a lot of scholars describe as K through 12 education in addition to higher education, these are some of the most democratic spaces in the country, because they're governed by locally elected officials. You can go to your school board. But just like on college campuses, now we have provocateurs and propagandists trying to [00:41:00] gum up the works of what's in US culture, one of our, relatively speaking, more open and self governing forms of institutional decision making.

How to Dismantle the Anti-DEI Machine Part 2 - At Liberty Podcast - Air Date 2-9-24

KENDALL CIESEMIER - HOST, AT LIBERTY: For anti DEI dissenters, identity neutral practices are purported as the best solution, the antidote to racial inequity in our society and the most fair means of institutional decision making, as educational institutions continue to be among the fiercest battlegrounds for the anti DEI movement. Leah explained why protecting identity conscious practices is crucial at this time.

LEAH WATSON: Research has shown, academic scholarship has shown for decades that racial colorblindness does not work. it's simply a mask to construe the perpetuation of our current systems of oppression. This is the exact type of instruction that our plaintiffs in Florida are teaching their students that have been recognized as foundational in their disciplines. And now, not [00:42:00] only has this research been challenged by conservatives without cause, they're seeking to eliminate any efforts to implement and to build upon the understandings that we have.

Studies have shown that culturally responsive teaching methods benefit all students. They increase engagement, they increase attendance, they increase retention of material, students score better on tests because they can connect what they're learning to the world. These benefits are felt by BIPOC students, or the students whose identity is being featured as a way of bringing them into the learning, but also for white students as well.

And the benefits aren't limited to just academic achievement, but also how students relate to each other and are able to Identify and understand and appreciate each other's differences and collaborate together. Those benefits are something that's really important. And the Supreme Court has recognized that our schools are nurseries of democracy. They are supposed [00:43:00] to teach students not only academics, but prepare them for life in a multicultural society.

KENDALL CIESEMIER - HOST, AT LIBERTY: Efforts to thwart these crucial DEI practices are so steeped in politics, and with the presidential election fast approaching, it's important to consider what implications the anti DEI machine could have. From presidential competitors Donald Trump and Nikki Haley, to race dropouts Ron DeSantis and Vivek Ramaswamy, anti DEI is a cornerstone of Republican campaign strategy, and one that we should all keep a close watch over as the race continues.

ALVIN TILLERY: It's all a political tool. The reason they've captured the courts and all of these things is because they believe that white grievance politics will carry the election for them. That's how they set strategy. And it's fundamentally backward because we know that in the modern day, I'm gonna let you in on a little secret, most white people don't hold overtly racist ideals. And so [00:44:00] that's both heartening and scary, because part of the reason the Republicans are committed to more authoritarian tendencies is because they know that they can't win fair and free elections anymore, because nobody likes their ideas.

And so you might say, like, "why did Ron DeSantis tank?" Ron DeSantis tanked in part Because this stance about DEI and anti wokeness is wildly unpopular. It's not surprising that Nikki Haley doesn't want to say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War, she went to a white segregation academy.

But here's the other side of the coin. Right now, I watch Mr. Biden struggling for re election with Black voters, talking about Bidenomics and all of these things that he believes should be, you know, "Oh, I'm going to reduce the fees that you pay for overdraft at Chase." Oh yeah, that's going to get Black folks standing five hours at the polls in Atlanta for you.

The three things that my polling, and I'll share it [00:45:00] with you, show that Black people want the president to talk about are people getting shot, CRT bans, and DEI bans. For Black people, these are economic issues. I can't educate my kids to get into a good school and they can't be themselves. Mr. Biden is been not talking about any of this stuff. I'm not saying that he could win the fealty back of young people necessarily, but at some point, you've got to go negative against the other side and start saying what they're clearly going to do. And if you start messaging on that and get away from Bidenomics, whatever that is, you're going to have a chance.

KENDALL CIESEMIER - HOST, AT LIBERTY: All of this can seem really overwhelming. But the good news is that people like you and me actually have a role to play here. I asked Leah what we could do to help support her and her team in this effort, and what we could do ourselves. [00:46:00]

LEAH WATSON: The efforts can honestly feel overwhelming sometimes, but I do think that there are a few things that anyone can do to stand up against what is happening right now, and it's very important to take action right now.

The first is to have conversations, talk about how you want students to learn about racism and sexism. How you want to have anti racist trainings in your office because you don't want to perpetuate systems of oppression. And so having those discussions to just counter the view, because the opposition is so loud with this vocal minority, it can feel like they have the majority of people and that's not true. And that hasn't ever been supported by polling that has been done or research that has been done.

I think another thing is continuing to hold a line. If you are a business owner and your business has a DEI program, keep it. There's a huge chilling effect because of the threat of litigation, high profile litigation that's been filed, and then the conservatives are saying that [00:47:00] DEI is dead or DEI is illegal. They're making representations far broader than any court has made, and so continuing to maintain the programs that are in place now, voice your support for programs that are in place now is really important.

KENDALL CIESEMIER - HOST, AT LIBERTY: Another thing that comes to mind is showing up at those contentious school board meetings and offering the opposite perspective. I think the last time that there was a school board election in my hometown, all of this subject matter came up. It was really interesting to see it hit my small suburb of Chicago, which just speaks to the fact that it's happening everywhere, and people did actually show up and counter the folks who were trying to ban some of this subject matter from being taught in schools. So we can actually show up in opposition or show up in even positive support for the expansion of culturally responsive education in our towns and communities.

A Manifesto for Higher Education for Good with Laura Czerniewicz & Catherine Cronin - Virtually Connecting & Equity Unbound - Air Date 8-21-23

CATHERINE CRONIN: We [00:48:00] didn't want it to be glib hope. It is rooted in the actual and in theory and so on, but the whole goal is hope because we were inspired by work in climate justice, like Mary Robinson's work and social justice that doesn't just diagnose what's wrong, but really looks to paths towards hopeful futures. We're really inspired by those kinds of works and we wanted the book to be in that party, in that kind of literature.

We end the introduction and we send the book to its life once it finds readers as really a reflection on hope and hope in all its different guises as bomb, as antidote, as continual one of my favorite quotes again, "hope is invented every day" from James Baldwin.

And our last slide is from one of the authors of the book. This is Sherri Spelic who contributed a chapter that consists of a small collection of poems.

LAURA CZERNIEWICZ: Shall I read it?

CATHERINE CRONIN: Please, Laura. Yeah.

LAURA CZERNIEWICZ: If my students and I [00:49:00] build anything, we must build imaginations. If my students and I build a city of care, a province of justice, a nation of acceptance, we are never done and always beginning.

BONUS Resistance to Change in Higher Ed Part 2 - with Dr. Brian Rosenberg - The EdUp Experience Podcast - Air Date 11-7-23

JOE ALLUSTIO - HOST, THE EDUP EXPERIENCE: Maybe we could talk about some of the impediments that you mentioned in your book, and kind of at the top of your list is 'ineffective pedagogy'. And you talk a lot about self-directed learning. And maybe you could tell listeners a little bit about this idea of how the current model just doesn't scale. It just gets more expensive and it's affordable to fewer people, and somehow we need to harness this self-directed learning, this sort of active learning that you talk about. Maybe you could share a little bit more, some of your thoughts about ineffective pedagogy and what you see as some potential solutions to it.

DR. BRIAN ROSENBERG: Right. So, you know, as far as the ineffective pedagogy goes, you know, there is evidence based upon years and [00:50:00] years of research that people learn better by doing things than by listening to things, that engaged learning, active learning sticks more than sitting in a lecture hall and listening to someone talk to you. This is not to say that some lectures aren't brilliant. They can be works of art. They can be enjoyable, but ultimately the question is not how good is the lecture, but how much of the knowledge that is communicated in a lecture sticks. And there's a lot of evidence that if you're just a passive listener, it doesn't stick as well as if you are doing something.

And yet, we still consume an enormous amount of time and cost in higher education by simply sitting and delivering information to rooms full of students. And technology could do that in different ways and more efficient ways now so that that really valuable face to face time could be used for much more active, higher levels of learning.[00:51:00]

Uh, but let's grant for a second. Look, I was a president of a really good liberal arts college for 17 years. If I could take the Macalester model and recreate it for every student across the world, I'd say, Sure, you know, it's great. You know, a smart faculty member in a room with a small number of students. But the simple reality is that that's a fantasy. That model is really, really expensive. And so it is not scalable to the extent that we need higher education now to be scalable at a cost that people can afford. And this was really brought home to me through this work that I'm doing in Africa.

Right now, in Africa, 9 percent of the students who graduate from high school go on to a college or university. It's the lowest percentage in the world. And if you wanted to increase that percentage by building American- or European-style universities, it would be simply impossible. There aren't enough [00:52:00] PhDs. It's too costly to build campuses and the resulting product would be much, much more expensive than even the middle class in Africa, which is small, could afford.

So the question is, how do you take something that is unaffordable and make it into something that is more affordable and accessible? Now, an easy answer, is just slap everything online. But the problem with slapping everything online is that most of those purely online universities right now are not very good. The completion rates are awful. If the students are sitting and passively listening to something on a computer, it's even worse than sitting and passively listening to something in a classroom. And so, and now I'm quoting, Fred Swaniker, who founded the African Leadership University, 'if you're in a place like Africa, you don't build the university around scarcity, which is faculty, you build it around abundance, which is students and you ask yourself how much can a student [00:53:00] accomplish by taking control of their own education'.

I don't know that we fully know the answer. People have been writing about self-directed learning for centuries. John Dewey was writing about self-directed learning well over 100 years ago. And the reality is that there is some evidence that people can accomplish a lot with the right guidance and direction without necessarily needing someone with a PhD sitting in the front of a room and talking to them.

So, to me, as I think about potentially reducing the cost of education, figuring out how much students can take control of their own learning, with guidance, you don't just leave them on their own, and not necessarily be dependent upon a large cadre of traditional faculty members, ultimately, that's the only way to lower the cost. At every college and university in the country, roughly two [00:54:00] thirds of the budget goes to pay for people, right? And so when people talk about lowering the cost, it's not going to be fixed by printing on 2 sides of paper or by reducing shared insurance co-ops. You have to go to where the expenses are. The expenses are people and facilities.

And so the only way to change the cost structure to bend the cost curve is to look at those 2 big areas, which means you can't continue to rely on traditional, very, very, very expensive campuses, and you can't continue to rely on very, very low student faculty ratios with people who are very highly trained with PhDs, graduate degrees. It's just, for the schools that continue to can continue to afford that, you know, Harvard is going to do that until the end of time because they can afford it. And, you know, good for them. They can do that. But the vast majority of schools are not in that situation, and so they need to [00:55:00] explore other models. And I think to me the experiential student-centered model is one that is promising and that has not been yet fully explored.

BONUS The Education Myth - How American Changed It's Relationship With School w. Jon Shelton Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 8-20-23

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, you mentioned the Vietnam War. I didn't want to pass through that before asking you about this. How conscious was the threat of kind of like an educated citizenry that was standing up to, especially young people, powerful actors in government? Because it seems to me that, yes, obviously, the shift of education being to make citizenry versus to make workers is, you lay that out so well. But the conjoining political factors, too, of consciousness and social movements, also I feel like it has a story here.

JON SHELTON: Yeah, so that's such a great question. And I don't write extensively about this in the book, but there's a moment in the 1970s, it sounds like tinfoil hat stuff, like political conspiracy, but all you have to do is kind of just go and read it. There's literally a [00:56:00] report by the Trilateral Commission in the 1970s, which is this commission that's put together by all these political elites, David Rockefeller, you know, from the Rockefeller family connected to banking interests, and this is 1974-75, Carter's, uh, Zbigniew Brzezinski was a member of the Trilateral Commission and became a big part of the Carter administration. And again, it sounds tinfoil hat, I hesitate almost almost to bring it up. But effectively, what the Trilateral Commission argues is that for the stability of the West, the Western democracies, basically they had to tamp down the democratic aspirations that young people were pushing for. And it's not an accident that you see the party, the Democratic party in particular, move in that direction.

So, in 1976, Humphrey Hawkins, which was a bill that was co-sponsored by Hubert Humphrey, this liberal Mid-Westerner, and Augustus Hawkins, founder of the Congressional Black Caucus, who represented [00:57:00] Watts, they were basically saying we need a jobs guarantee. There's high unemployment. We've got to do something for working people.

Coretta Scott King actually organized to, um, you know, [she] sort of led the effort to mobilize grassroots support. She called it Martin's legacy. There were hundreds of demonstrations across the United States. And Carter, who was again, you know, kind of, I think, influenced by this line of thinking and just sort of looking at the direction the Democratic party was going, literally says in 1978, in the State of the Union address, we need to accept that government can't do everything. It can't give people a job. We people need to lower their expectations. And, you know, so there is a direct moment in the 1970s when the Democratic Party kind of moves pretty explicitly in that direction.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But like, you know, that period of time and we've, you know, over the years interviewed so many people, from Lily Geismar, who is really focused on this era quite a bit...

JON SHELTON: Her book is incredible, by the way.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And, um, and both of them actually, I mean, and [00:58:00] having grown up in Massachusetts around that time, you know, and seen some of this. But this is such a big jump in the course of, like, six years, right? I mean, you know, six-eight years. And, yeah, the education thing fits in with this push for neoliberalism, which had been growing since Mont Pelerin and in the late forties. And, we see, Milton Friedman gets sent out down to Chile and gets a chance to do a dry run here, of this, and this push for education, so the people understand how it fits into the neoliberal framework. It is just providing juice for someone to enter the marketplace, essentially, energy within the marketplace. It's like the marketplace is going to settle it out. The input is not going to be structurally touching the marketplace at all, it's just that we're going to train people for the marketplace better. And that's where this twist on education comes. And we get a guy like [00:59:00] Carter, who had some positive aspects, but also very anti-union, coming from the South, and education just almost like on a dime starts to become a commodity that has like a dollar value that you can place upon it in the marketplace, as opposed to an important thing for society to maintain for the stability of the society just broadly speaking.

Final comments on the tradeoffs we make when we allow culture wars to dominate the education debate

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with the At Liberty podcast, explaining the efforts of the ACLU to defend against educational gag orders and censorship. The Majority Report dove into some of the myths about the reaction to speakers at colleges and the grifters who profit from them. CounterSpin that looked at the new McCarthyism around criticism of Israel on campus. The Majority Report explored the history of education in the US. The EdUp Experience podcast described a theory of change universities should [01:00:00] engage in to innovate. The Majority Report explained to the historical conservative perspective on universities, going back to William F. Buckley. The At Liberty podcast bluntly explained to the benefits of DEI programs and why Republicans oppose them. And Virtually Connecting & Equity Unbound closed out the show with a call for the building of better educational systems to never be done.

That's what everybody heard, but members also heard bonus clips from the EdUp Experience describing a promising but untested educational method. And The Majority Report discussing the importance of education for democracy. To hear that and have all of our bonus contents delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information

Now to wrap up, I want to draw attention to [01:01:00] one example of what gets overlooked while we're being distracted by nonsense attacks on education. As part of our research for today's episode, I came across a Slate article written by a college professor lamenting the very obvious drop in reading skills exhibited by students over just the past few years. This is undoubtedly from a variety of factors, the article points out. Some that come to mind quickly and others that don't: growing up with the ever-present distraction of phones is almost certainly a culprit as is some of the learning loss from COVID. But the writer pointed out that college students starting a few years ago were the first cohort to have been raised entirely in the No Child Left Behind and Common Core standards era that completely incentivized 'teaching to the test' more than anything, which has consistently been criticized by child education experts. You can go back more than a decade to hear episodes that we had done on that topic.

When I [01:02:00] started this podcast, after the turn of the century, you know, back in the mid aughts, that was the entirety of the debate over education. George W. Bush's plan to test our way to learning, and then the Obama era changes that didn't change nearly enough. So, for anyone who's been paying attention for that long, it shouldn't be a surprise that kids are falling behind what used to be considered standard not too long ago.

But there's one thing that's also been going on in the background specifically related to reading. Now, I grew up when phonics was the standard teaching method for reading. And I didn't even know until this week that it has gone in and out of fashion over time. The Slate article mentioned another teaching style that has risen in popularity recently that de-emphasizes the skill of sounding out words, which critics argue is the fundamental skill required to be able to read any new word that one hasn't previously [01:03:00] learned. And to be clear, you know, that teaching concept was definitely recommended by people who thought they were helping. There's no evil scheme to stop kids from reading, but that was a change that was made, not everywhere, but in many places, which may have been missed by, you know, people in the general public due to other distractions.

I also read an article about all of this in the New York Times, and this paragraph sums up the problem pretty well. "It may not inspire political campaign ads, the way Critical Race Theory does, but the debate over how to teach children to read, perhaps the fundamental skill of all schooling, has been just as consuming for some parents, educators and policy makers." So, I'm taking this as a reminder, and I think you all should to, that boiled way down to the essence, when you say yes to one thing, you are inevitably saying no to everything else. Meaning when you choose to focus on [01:04:00] something there's a trade-off happening, that means your focus cannot simultaneously be on something else.

When Critical Race Theory becomes the all encompassing debate regarding education in the US it will inevitably push other issues out of the way. And meanwhile, as we've spent the last decade or so, getting pulled into culture war nonsense, the real discussions about how best to educate children and young adults has gotten pushed to the periphery. Obviously, there are people working hard, deep in the weeds on these problems. And there are even people who have strong feelings about both CRT and reading phonics. It's not that an individual can't be aware of more than one thing at a time. But the media attention leads to political attention, which results in school boards, getting yelled at by parents for, you know, creating trans safe bathrooms or history curriculums that tell more of the real story of the US.

So, that's where all the attention goes. It sucks [01:05:00] up all the air in the room. And as much as we may wish that we could all stay focused on implementing the best educational practices as well, when we get sucked into the world of culture wars, the actual nuts and bolts of educational standards are going to naturally be pushed to the side. And then the people left fighting those battles, ignored and fighting for attention against the tidal wave of culture wars, are going to be the people most personally impacted by it. And so a lot of the people are actually dyslexic. People are parents of dyslexic children who've been like leading the fight against this new form of reading, because it's so profoundly negatively impacts them personally. But because the general population is distracted away from actual, you know, education standards and methods, they end up being sort of [01:06:00] left on their own, trying to fight that battle. Whereas, I like to imagine, you know, living in a healthy society where we have conversations and debates about things that actually matter, a lot more people could be aware of an issue like slipping reading proficiency and the underlying causes for that. And we may think that's the thing that we need to take action on. That's the thing we should show up to school board meetings to talk about, not how we build our bathrooms and whether or not White kids are being made to feel bad by the reality of our history.

As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave me a voicemail or send us a text to 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Ttranscriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben, for their [01:07:00] volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patrion page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and very often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So, coming to you from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1610 The Border, and Our Border Politics, Are a Mess (Transcript)

Posted by · February 14, 2024 10:40 AM

Air Date 2/14/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast in which we take a look at how the entire political system has lurched to the right on immigration, as Democrats adopt the talking points of the Republicans and the MAGA Republicans put Trump's election chances over the policies they claim to support.

Sources today include The Readout; The Majority Report; The Damage Report; Today, Explained; The Brian Lehrer Show; All In with Chris Hayes; and Deconstructed; with additional members-only clips from Amicus and Deconstructed.

‘Basically a cult’: Trump's MAGA Republicans slammed for vowing to block immigration reform bill - The ReidOut with Joy Reid - Air Date 2-5-24

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: We begin tonight with an emergency, a crisis, a catastrophe! At least that's what Republican lawmakers have spent the last few months calling the situation at the southern border.

REP. MIKE JOHNSON: One thing is absolutely clear. America is at a breaking point with record levels of illegal immigration. It is an unmitigated disaster, a catastrophe. And what's more tragic is that it's a disaster of the [00:01:00] president's own design.

REP. ELISE STEFANIK: The border crisis, which is the top issue across the country. The numbers do not lie. Our country is being invaded right now, right in front of our very eyes, because of Joe Biden's catastrophic border policies.

REP. MARK GREEN: We cannot allow this border crisis to continue. We cannot allow fentanyl to flood across our border, or criminals to waltz in undeterred.

REP. CHIP ROY: This is very clearly an invasion. It is a purposeful one and it's inflicting dangerous consequences on our country and the people of Texas.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Wow, well given such alarmist rhetoric, you'd think that these lawmakers would want to act immediately to get this catastrophe under control, right?

Well, as of yesterday, they actually had the chance to do that. After months of talk, Senate negotiators finally released a sweeping bipartisan border security deal. The proposed bill would raise the standard to grant asylum, send away those who don't qualify, and expedite cases for those who do. It would also give the president new authority to effectively shut down the border to migrants when attempted crossings are high and end the [00:02:00] practice of catch and release, while also providing billions of dollars in funding for Ukraine, Israel, and Taiwan, as well as humanitarian assistance for civilians in Gaza.

But just hours after the bill was released, leading Republicans in the House said, Nope, we don't want it. Almost immediately. House Speaker Mike Johnson, along with Steve Scalise and Elise Stefanik, took to social media to throw cold water on any hopes of even debating the bill. And earlier today, they released a statement putting the final nail in the coffin, writing that any consideration of this Senate bill in its current form is a waste of time. It's dead on arrival in the House. We encourage the Senate to reject it.

Instead, the Speaker is proposing a standalone bill providing aid to Israel, completely cutting out the border and aid to Ukraine.

So let's just be very clear: The same people who are going on and on and going on these trips to the border to stir up outrage and yell about an immigration crisis were [00:03:00] handed the opportunity to help fix the issue on a silver platter, a bill that was negotiated by conservative Republican Senator James Lankford. And this is not some liberal wish list. It's actually the most conservative and aggressive border bill that we've seen in decades, that Democrats and President Biden were willing to bite their tongues and support, despite the fact that it offers no path to citizenship and doesn't even address the Dreamers. A bill that the Border Patrol Union, which has been very critical of President Biden, even they endorse it, saying, " while not perfect, it is a step in the right direction and is far better than the current status quo." And MAGA Republicans say, nah, we're good.

Make it make sense. Because right now, even Senator Lankford is calling his party out on their foolishness.

SENATOR JAMES LANKFORD: Are we, as Republicans, going to have press conferences and complain the border's bad and then intentionally leave it open? Are we going to just complain about things, or are we going to actually address and change as many things as we can? If we have the shot, and [00:04:00] it's amazing to me... if I go back two months ago and say we had the shot under a Democrat president to dramatically increase detention beds, deportation flights, lock down the border, to be able to change the asylum laws, to be able to accelerate the process, no one would have believed it. And now no one actually wants to be able to fix it.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: But the Republicans refusal to even consider this bill makes a lot more sense when you see the reaction of the guy who -- let's just be real -- is calling all the shots here: Donald Trump. Posting on his fake Twitter site, he declared that the "ridiculous border bill is nothing more than a highly sophisticated trap for Republicans to assume the blame on what the radical left Democrats have done to our border just in time for our most important election. Don't fall for it!!!!" Lots of exclamation points.

Never mind the fact that when Trump actually was the president, he never passed a single immigration bill, even when his party controlled the House and the Senate. He never even closed the border, which he keeps saying needs to be closed. But I guess facts don't [00:05:00] matter to these people. The only thing that does matter is getting Donald Trump elected. I've said it before and I'll say it again: they don't want a solution, they want the chaos. Because they'd rather run on the problem than give Joe Biden a win in an election year on what voters say is one of the most important issues to them.

Democrats Fully Embrace Trump’s Immigration Narrative - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 2-9-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I don't think the Democrats would have done this were it not for Biden pushing it, and we'll hear him say that in a moment. Basically want to provide at least part of that authority to the president, in addition to setting up a system which makes it even harder for asylum seekers and immigrants in this country. Again, we went through this yesterday, you can be in this country for over a decade, legally, with legal documents and working papers, still not have the opportunity for citizenship. This is just about, ultimately, preventing non-white people from coming in. [00:06:00]

First of all, the majority of undocumented people in this country have overstayed their visas. They came in, they had documents, they overstayed. The majority of people coming in through the border now are apparently Chinese. I'm talking the southern border. On one hand, we talk about how oppressive the CHICOMs are, and the other hand, we're like, well, but we don't care about any of the people there. Who are they oppressive to?

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Exactly. There's a few things, those two clips would have made so much more sense, especially the Chip Roy one, if this was literally Trump in office proposing this bill. The way that they're talking about, we need the executive authority here, it's like unitary executive theory, but for the border, that would allow for the White House, essentially, for the presidency to have this emergency authority, and you can activate [00:07:00] it on a discretionary basis and say like, "no, no, no, we're going to override international law on asylum and then also domestic law on asylum because I've decided to."

And so Biden proposes, this is in favor of this. What happens when the Republican gets an office? They don't care about that because, I don't know, Biden ideologically doesn't care, but also wanted to make this point for 12 Morning Joe viewers that the Republicans are unreasonable and can't make a deal, but now this is where the center of the conversation is to your point, which is really scary, really, really scary.

This bill was as far right as you can get in terms of a bipartisan effort to address immigration there, and when you're saying they don't want non-white people in this country, that is true, and that's what motivates the base of the Republican party, but for a lot of Republican party, big money donors and supporters, and for Republican politicians with deep pockets, what they also want is to create an underclass of workers who are terrified and have a [00:08:00] deportation hanging over their head so they can take lower wages, work in horrible conditions, and be silent, but working, and really...

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Without any type of protection.

MATT LECH: It's interesting, Chris Murphy was going around talking about, "Oh, look at how the Republicans won't even meet us when we would say we want to do what to do." It's interesting that Chris Murphy and the Senate and all these people can get together on bipartisan coups when it comes to places like Venezuela or whatever, but they can't get together on actually dealing with the fallout of our policies like that.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, let's be clear here, this is Initial push for border legislation was a sweetener to get the supplemental funding for Ukraine, and then Israel passed. That's the way this was offered. And now, the Biden administration has made it the primary focus of this legislation. They have moved the Democratic position on Comprehensive immigration reform from a place where we'll give you more border patrol [00:09:00] agents if you give us a path to citizenship and provide citizenship for people like the Dreamers. That was where the position was then.

And now it's just. We're racing to see who can put more money into the border. Here is Joe Biden yesterday and it is him admitting, this is what he's saying, this is what the subtext of this entire exercise is, "the Republicans are right. We're being invaded. This is a crisis. I just don't have the tools to do it, and now I can't convince the Republicans to do it."

Well, what is the average American to make of that?

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Weak.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Well, A, weak, and B, who's the guy who's going to solve this massive invasion crisis? Because I've only got two choices. It's either this guy, or the other guy.

Here he is.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: For much too long, as you all know, the immigration system has been broken. [00:10:00] It's long past time to fix it. That's why months ago I instructed my team to begin negotiations with a bipartisan group of Senators to seriously and finally fix our immigration system. For months now, that's what they've done. Working around the clock, through the holidays, over the weekends, it's been an extraordinary effort by Senators Lankford, Murphy, and Sinema.

The result of all this hard work is a bipartisan agreement that represents the most fair, humane, reforms in our immigration system in a long time and the toughest set of reforms to secure the border ever Now, all indications are this bill won't even move forward to the Senate floor. Why? A simple reason. Donald Trump, because Donald Trump thinks is bad for him politically. Therefore, even though it helps the country he's not for it. He'd rather weaponize this issue than actually solve it.

So for the last 24 He's done nothing, I'm [00:11:00] told, but reach out to Republicans in the House and the Senate and threaten them and try to intimidate them to vote against this proposal. It looks like they're caving. Frankly, they owe it to the American people to show some spine and do what they know to be right.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I can't even watch this anymore.

MATT LECH: You're not energized by that?

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Aside from me not being energized, I mean, listen to what he's saying. My opponent in this race is all powerful and has the ability to govern as non president.

You can't even say like you don't want him to be president because if he's president, he's going to push this exact same bill. He wants this bill, the legislature wants the bill, but he doesn't want it to happen until he gets into office. And now the bill is not going to happen. So the American public is supposed to go like, Oh, well, I'm going to punish him for being so powerful and keep you in office, even though you won't be able to [00:12:00] solve the problem that you are now telling us is so urgent, that it has to be solved now.

Well, in 11 months and 12 months, it's going to be that much more urgent. So I want the guy who's just going to come in and be able to do it, who has control of these people. Like none of this makes sense. None of this makes sense.

Republican CALLS OUT Trump By Name Over Outrageous Border Lies - The Damage Report - Air Date 2-10-24

REP. CHIP ROY: No, we're not going to just pass the buck and say that, oh, any president could walk in and secure the border. I saw former President Trump make that allegation earlier today on one of his social media posts. All the president has to do is declare the border is closed and it's closed. Well, with all due respect, that didn't happen in 2017, 18, 19 and 20. There were millions of people who came into the United States during those four years.

So, where's the lie exactly in that? Now, look, I don't know exactly what his long term goal is in that. He could be attempting to continue to demonize the fact that "look, even under a Republican, tons of these [00:13:00] immigrants came in," but he is right.

JOHN IADAROLA - HOST, THE DAMAGE REPORT: They claim you can just shut it down. Biden doesn't need this bill. He can just do it anyway by enforcing the law or snapping his fingers and then we're done. So we don't need to do a bill. We don't need Donald Trump to be mad at us. That's just a lie. And I would love to see Donald Trump answer why, if you can just shut down the border, he never did. If you can just do that, if it's that easy, just snap your fingers, you're done. Why is it that so many people crossed the border under Donald Trump?

There's of course no answer to that, so they will do what they always do when faced with reality. They will completely ignore it. They will tuck tail and run. They will just hide behind their convenient lies. And there are so many in this topic. There are lies about the 5,000 migrants a day threshold. Look, we're not going to relitigate all of it. We've been going over for a solid two weeks at this point, but they're massive liars, and I love that you have at least one Republican who's willing to admit it from time to time.

Sharon, what are your thoughts?

SHARON REED: Yeah, the band is, is breaking up here. Okay. They don't even need Yoko. The band is [00:14:00] breaking up. These defections, all this little stuff, there's infighting. And speaking of if petty was a person, George Santos is, miss me yet?" Okay. It's a beautiful thing to see when people who do nothing but lie and orchestrate, beyond normal politics, are now caught up and in a family feud. It's a beautiful thing to see, except, oh yeah, what about running the country? What about the rest of us?

JOHN IADAROLA - HOST, THE DAMAGE REPORT: Look, and I'll admit, this is my closing thought, I am delighting this. I love to see them fail to do things that they never should have tried to do in the first place. But I will also remind you, there is an opportunity cost to all of this, and it's the functioning of Congress. Yeah, they're failing to do stupid stuff. They're not doing anything else. This is what they're doing. They name a post office, they fail to impeach someone. They name another post office, they talk about impeaching Joe Biden. That's literally it. And the thing is, people [00:15:00] do need help. They don't just need antics.

The border standoff in Eagle Pass - Today, Explained - Air Date 2-7-24

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: We hear about places along the US-Mexico border where there are floods of people coming through, but I'll admit, Eagle Pass is not a city that I'd heard that I had heard much about until recently. Is this a place where you have huge numbers of migrants, typically?

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: Historically, no, this is not a place where people cross. But this part of the river that is bordering Coahuila state, which is reportedly one of the more safer states in Mexico to cross, has become a huge crossing point, and Eagle Pass because in part, the river is pretty wide and shallow. And right by Shelby Park has become a staging area for the processing of thousands of migrants, unprecedented numbers of people crossing at the same time. It's not unusual to hear local officials talking about having watched a thousand people like a sort of wave of humanity, just cross the river together.

SEN. TED CRUZ: One day last week, they had in a single day, 4,000 cross illegally into [00:16:00] Eagle Pass. 4,000 people in a town of 28,000, that’s about 14% of the city’s population.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: In Eagle Pass you have two groups that are claiming responsibility for securing the border, so to speak. You've got the Border Patrol, which is a federal force, and then you have the Texas National Guard. How do those two groups normally interact in Eagle Pass? Whose job is it to oversee migration?

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: In the beginning aughts of Operation Lone Star, which is this border crackdown that Governor Abbott has undertaken since 2021. They actually worked together pretty well.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Shocking!

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: Right. I mean, most people who do any kind of border law enforcement work together quite, intimately. And so you had both of these agencies, they're keeping a lookout, whereas Border Patrol are the only ones who actually have the jurisdiction and the immigration enforcement powers to detain people, to screen them for any number of immigration-related processes and to take them into custody at their self cited [00:17:00] facility. National Guard can't put their hands on migrants unless they're trying to help or save them. And we had that tragic incident of that one National Guardsmen who actually drowned after trying to help a couple of migrants. But, yeah, no, this is a no-fuss kind of thing. Border Patrol would welcome more boots on the ground. They're chronically asking for more help while Border Patrol is processing folks and running them through these screening processes, they're not watching the river. And so they would have – they welcomed the National Guard, watching the river and keeping an eye out. Now they're at odds because their leaders are at odds.

Since 2021, Governor Abbott has been beating this drum, saying that the federal government is essentially abandoning its duty to protect Texas's borders.

GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT: The Biden Administration’s open-border policies have created an open season for human traffickers, for drug smugglers, for cartels and gangs. Because [00:18:00] the federal government is failing to respond to these dangers, Texas is stepping up to secure the border and to keep our communities safe.

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: So it started with, sending state troopers down to the border. It started with sending National Guardsmen.

GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT: This is necessary because more than 45,000 people have been apprehended crossing our border in just the last three weeks.

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: It's building state border wall. It was busing migrants from the NGOs to other cities across the country.

GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT: Before we began bussing illegal immigrants up to New York, it was just Texas and Arizona that bore the brunt of all of the chaos and all of the problems that came with it. Now the rest of America understands exactly what is going on.

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: And then it was arresting migrants accused of trespassing. You need landowners to sign onto that, so they were getting permissions from various landowners, riverfront property [00:19:00] landowners to be able to arrest people and run them through, a sort of specially-created justice system. And so Abbott, little by little, has been taking bites out of this apple until we get to this point where, Shelby Park is a municipal park, and they decided that, the fact that Border Patrol was using this park as a staging area that was allowing thousands of people into the country, at least from their point of view, that they needed to shut that down.

GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT: So, Texas has the legal authority to control ingress and egress into any geographical location in the state of Texas. And that authority is being asserted in that park in Eagle Pass to maintain operational control of it.

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: And basically the Biden Administration asked the Supreme Court to intervene because of a confrontation that happened. We’re still mulling through the details, but essentially the National Guard kept Border Patrol from entering the park in a moment of what they considered a medical emergency, [00:20:00] that there were migrants that were in distress. Now, if you ask Texas National Guard and Texas state troopers, they’ll tell you that those people had already drowned, but it's the fact that Border Patrol couldn't go in when they wanted to and have access to the border that pushed the Biden administration to say, "Hey, SCOTUS this can't be happening - this is an enumerated power in the Constitution that we have. Texas has no leg to stand on here."

WQAD: Tonight, a narrowly-divided Supreme Court delivering a victory for the Biden Administration, clearing the way for federal agents…

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Can we talk a bit about how Abbott is framing this for his constituents, for the people of Texas? What is he saying when the Supreme Court says, "hey, buddy, you got to step aside?"

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: Well, he invoked the Constitution, that Texas has a right to defend itself and that this constitutes—the tide of humanity that's coming across the border—constitutes an invasion.

GOVERNOR GREG ABBOTT: Because Joe Biden has completely abdicated and abandoned his responsibility to enforce the laws of the United States, I have used a [00:21:00] clause in the Constitution that empowers states to defend themselves. It is Article 1, Section 10, Clause 3.

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: It's the kind of rhetoric that has been used by extremists throughout all of this. And so, Abbott is saying, "Look, Texas is going to do whatever it can to defend itself against what it fears is an invasion." And a lot of people in the state agree with him. While they might not agree specifically with his methods, the numbers are such and the images are such that it provokes concern. Whether you're a Republican Democrat, whether you're progressive or a conservative, across the spectrum.

NOEL KING - HOST, TODAY, EXPLAINED: Where does this leave us? Where does this stand right now?

ARELIS HERNÀNDEZ: We’re waiting on the courts to help us figure out who's actually in charge here and who has authority as enumerated by the Constitution to continue to operate on the border. We have this border deal that [00:22:00] came through over the weekend that Republican leaders are saying is dead on arrival. So we're just kind of in stasis the way that the border has been in stasis now for almost four decades. I mean, migration has changed. The hemisphere is on the move, and it's not just folks from Central and South Americans, it’s folks from all over the world. So the question is, how much work is the United States willing to put into working with Latin America to try and staunch some of these flows, which it already has—and conversation in Mexico has gotten a lot more aggressive with migrants, and that's why you see the levels plummeting the way they have in January, in terms of crossings. But, we're also entering the spring, and then the summer, when migration traditionally and historically has continued to increase. It's just a matter of wait and see what happens in the courts, what happens in Congress, and what the United States is able to do with its partners in Latin America.

Republicans Forge Ahead to Impeach Mayorkas - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 2-1-24

JACQUELINE ALEMANY : This has been ongoing for about a year now, really ever since Republicans took back the House [00:23:00] majority in the 117th Congress, when you just all heard those vows from people like Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene and others who, even before any impeachment investigation or proceedings began, promised voters that they were going to impeach Alejandro Mayorkas.

The main players that we're seeing lead this charge forward and finally execute this impeachment right now is the chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security, Congressman Mark Green of Tennessee, who is leading the committee and, this week, introduced two articles of impeachment against Alejandro Mayorkas. One, a betrayal of public trust, and the other really boils down to the allegation that he's broken the law by refusing to enforce immigration statutes that would prevent migrants from entering the United States.

Obviously, right now, there have been record numbers of migrants that have been crossing the border, [00:24:00] but the issue at play here is essentially that what Green is charging Mayorkas for does not actually arise to high crimes and misdemeanors. Ultimately, the migrant crisis won't be addressed by impeachment at all. Rather, the proceedings and negotiations taking place in the upper chamber with regards to the border deal that's being negotiated on a bipartisan basis by lawmakers is what could address that crisis. We're seeing a split screen in Congress right now.

BRIGID BERGIN - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Absolutely. Jacqueline, you started to get into this. We know that the issues at the US-Mexico border are the backdrop for this hearing with a record number of migrants entering the country. We even heard President Biden say this recently that if a bipartisan immigration deal was passed, he would do this.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: It'll also give me, as president, the emergency authority to shut down the border until it could get back under control. If that bill were the law today, I'd shut down the border right now and fix it quickly.[00:25:00]

BRIGID BERGIN - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Why do we hear this new hard line from President Biden and how does it connect to the hearing that happened this week?

JACQUELINE ALEMANY : Yes, I think that there's a two-fold reason. There's obviously a political calculus here. This is something that Biden has not gotten very good reviews on as border crossings has caused a major strain to federal, state, and local governments and resources. It has become a very overheated conversation on the right and that has further been inflamed by the, essentially, de facto nominee of the Republican Party for the 2024 election, former President Trump, and House Republicans who have mimicked his language.

You've seen the Biden administration finally try to address this head-on and get ahead of some of the messaging battles that they've previously been losing. Secondly, this deal actually does address a lot of the [00:26:00] policy issues that have been under discussion, policy issues that actually Republican lawmakers have been saying and clamoring for Congress to address for years now.

One of my colleagues has a really good layout of all of the things that Republican lawmakers have said over the past few years about what needs to happen on the border. Just a few years ago, Trump had wanted Congress to work on changing asylum laws and basically taking legislative action. Now, you've seen in this election cycle as we get closer to November, people like House Speaker Mike Johnson, people like Senator Ted Cruz, who obviously represents a border state, claim now that Congress isn't needed to address the crisis at the border and that, actually, the President has enough powers to do this himself. Really, [00:27:00] a 180 on what they were previously arguing about.

How this all relates to the hearing this week is that as the House has been trying to impeach Mayorkas and blame him for what a lot of people, constitutional experts, even Republican constitutional scholars have argued amounts to a policy difference, which they have claimed is an impeachable offense, the upper chamber has been working on addressing these policy differences.

It's been hard to reconcile, as you can imagine, in one chamber, Alejandro Mayorkas, being criticized as the cause of the surge at the border. While in the other chamber, he's been someone who's been integral to the negotiations taking place between lawmakers for months now. Over the Christmas break during recess, [00:28:00] he was spotted back and forth on the Hill sitting in the room and trying to get this deal past the stalemate and finalized.

BRIGID BERGIN - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Certainly, the membership of the Homeland Security Committee includes Congress member Marjorie Taylor Greene. She was also referenced in Congressman Thompson's opening remarks as someone who has made this an issue since the start of this Congress and has also potentially fundraised off this issue and may also be angling for a political future in 2024. What is your reaction to that piece of this equation?

JACQUELINE ALEMANY : Well, at the end of the day, it's not just Marjorie Taylor Greene in the House GOP conference that wants to impeach Mayorkas. Overall, the House is dramatically more conservative than the Senate. There is this growing unanimous consent amongst Republican members that impeaching Mayorkas is the [00:29:00] most politically expedient thing to do for them, especially with such a slim majority where it's really hard to push things through legislatively.

This is a welcome distraction, something that even vulnerable members are in agreement about, especially as base voters have been clamoring for accountability. Oversight is obviously a big responsibility for a majority in any Congress and this would be the first promise that I think lawmakers have made to constituents about impeachments that have been going on for several years now that would actually be executed.

It's highly unlikely that the Senate would ultimately vote to impeach Mayorkas. You've heard Republican senators say that they're not in favor of it, that they feel like the House needs to get a grip and actually get something done legislatively. There is some agreement that this is good politics, especially as you have people like Donald [00:30:00] Trump explicitly saying that, at the end of the day, the House should not give President Biden a win on the border and not to pass this bill.

BRIGID BERGIN - HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Jacqueline, just to underscore this, and I know you've said it already, but what are the specific crimes Republicans are accusing Mayorkas of? What makes up these two articles of impeachment?

JACQUELINE ALEMANY : Yes, that's a really good question, and it's definitely under debate right now. They have charged that Mayorkas was lying under oath about the state of the border. This is under the charge of the betrayal of the public trust. This surrounds this term that he used when he testified before Congress in 2022 when he said that the Department of Homeland Security had "operational control."

The definition of this according to Mayorkas, as employed by the Border Patrol, is the ability to detect, respond, and intercede border penetrations in areas deemed as high [00:31:00] priority. There was a 2006 law that was called the Secure Fence Act, and that defines the term a bit differently as "the absence of any unlawful crossings of migrants or drugs", so they've tried to nail Mayorkas on that. They've also said that he has been obstructing their investigation. They listed 31 different requests that have been partially or completely unsatisfied by Homeland Security, but Mayorkas, as the department has noted, has actually been one of the most cooperative cabinet members appearing before Congress dozens of times.

The primary charge though is that he's broken the law by refusing to enforce immigration statutes. This means that he's failed to uphold certain aspects of immigration law, which they believe is a constitutional crime. Policy experts and, again, constitutional scholars and past secretaries of Homeland Security, and there have been [00:32:00] some former legal advisors too, former President Trump, who noted that they do not agree with this assessment of it rising to high crimes and misdemeanors as laid out by the Constitution. At the end of the day, the presidential administration does have wide latitude in how to control the border and that they do not feel like Mayorkas has exceeded those authorities that have been given to the executive branch.

Fox News fearmongering backfires on live TV - All In With Chris Hayes - Air Date 2-9-24

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: You cannot overstate how much vile demagoguery about migrants constantly appears on Fox News, day in, day out.

FOX NEWS ARCHIVE CLIPS: This is a government jobs program that lets in more migrants. Not to mention how much we're paying for the migrants kids to go to school. But now the migrants are shutting down the hospitals in Denver more than COVID ever did. We shouldn't be allowing even one migrant into the country. Isn't this really an attempt, ultimately, to destroy the country internally? That's exactly what it is.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: It's poisonous stuff, and Fox News executives don't seem to [00:33:00] care if what they're saying is true, as quite famously demonstrated when they paid out a nine figure settlement to Dominion Voting Machines. And when they defended a now-former primetime host from a slander lawsuit by just telling the court his Fox News show did not really do news, so he couldn't be guilty of defamation.

Which brings us to what happened the other night. Fox News host Sean Hannity tried to get some synergy with another brand you might remember from the 80s: the Guardian Angels and their vigilante founder, Curtis Sliwa. Do you remember him? His gang was going to make the streets safe for regular people by rooting out criminals, as he told the Today Show back in 1982.

CURTIS SLIWA: Because the criminal is very violent, and operates in what we call the wolf packs. You see them by the way they dress, their style, almost like modern day pirates, and that's what keeps you in fear.

Once they've smelled fear from you, once they've seen you change your path of entry, or to cross the street from where they're hanging out, they descend upon you like wolves.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: [00:34:00] Oh my god, like a time warp to my childhood in the Bronx.

Fast forward to Tuesday night when Hannity interviewed Curtis Sliwa, live in Times Square, about 40 years older, back in his costume, like it's the Kiss reunion tour, talking about the hellscape that is New York under the migrant invasion. And they had a remarkable Fox TV moment.

SEAN HANNITY: If you divide 53 million by 500, that's a $106,000 debit card. Not a bad deal. I don't think they're giving them to vets that are homeless in New York City, not that I've heard, Curtis.

CURTIS SLIWA: Well, in fact, our guys have just taken down one of the migrant guys right here on the corner of 42nd and 7th while all this is taking place.

SEAN HANNITY: Can you pan the camera?

CURTIS SLIWA: They've taken over. They've taken over. Light the camera over there if at all possible. He is out of control. Out of control. They had been shoplifting first. The Guardian Angels spotted them, stopped them. He [00:35:00] resisted. And let's just say we gave him a little pain compliance. His mother back in Venezuela felt the vibrations. He's sucking concrete.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: What a despicable, despicable exhibition. So, Sliwa says the man they were assaulting was a migrant shoplifter, the one that was "sucking concrete." A perfect story that Donald Trump and Fox News are telling their audience about the illegals and the rampant crime -- except, guess what? After the cameras turned off, a little more reporting and digging revealed that the man Sliwa's gang wrestled down was not a migrant, but -- drumroll -- a New Yorker from the Bronx. And while Sliwa claimed he was a shoplifter, there was no evidence of that, and he was not charged with shoplifting by the police. He was issued a disorderly conduct summons, apparently for being disruptive during Curtis's live shot. In other words, a New Yorker in the middle of Times Square was interrupting a live shot of Curtis Sliwa and his goons assaulted him.

Yesterday, Fox [00:36:00] once again had to do some cleanup to avoid another lawsuit.

SEAN HANNITY: Now, Curtis said that the man was a migrant and that he was shoplifting. Fox News has since spoken to the NYPD. Apparently the statements made by Curtis that the man is a migrant is not true. Curtis said, in part, quote, "I shouldn't have been listening to the crowd. That was my mistake. I should not have had that knee jerk reaction."

Again, on this show, we always want to set the record straight.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Oh, they sure do. Some good advice there, life advice generally for folks. I shouldn't have been listening to the crowd and shouldn't have had the knee jerk reaction.

You know, in America, there is a real issue we have right now with migration flows at the southern border, both in terms of what danger and uncertainty it presents for the people that are showing up there, and also the sort of strain it puts on various social systems here in New York and Denver and Chicago and a whole bunch of other places. It is a real thing. And there's lots of folks working very hard [00:37:00] to deal with it.

And then there's the disgusting garbage that is being pumped out by Fox and other parts of the Rupert Murdoch empire, like the New York Post. Just the vilest, most dehumanizing, disgusting filth you can imagine.

Do you remember the nationwide shoplifting panic that turned out to be completely belied by the statistics? Or the splashy stories of a migrant caravan apocalypse that never came?

Please, remember those every time you hear a viral story -- in a city that, by the way, where crime has dropped significantly last year during the migrant surge -- when you hear one of those viral stories, I am urging everyone, in the words of Curtis Sliwa, don't have a knee jerk reaction. Wait for a bit for the truth to emerge.

The Case for Open Borders Part 1 - Deconstructed - Air Date 2-2-24

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: You say, “open borders doesn’t mean a rush to migrate.” Because the running assumption among a lot of Americans is that everybody wants to be in America, everyone around the world, all [00:38:00] 9 billion people. And then, if you just gave everyone a green card and a plane ticket, that, tomorrow, you’d have all 9 billion people on the planet here within the borders of the United States, and we’d have social collapse immediately.

You’ve actually got some interesting research on this. To me, that never scanned, because most people like the place that they grew up, it’s where they’re comfortable, it’s where their family is, it’s where their friends are, it’s what they know. But you’ve dug in a little deeper on that.

So, what did you find on this question, of mass migration being sparked by an open border policy?

JOHN WASHINGTON: Well, I want to reframe two things here really quickly. One is, when people talk open borders, I don’t think folks mean a green card necessarily right away or a plane ticket. And the reason I’m harping on that for a second is because there have been so many claims about current asylum seekers getting gift cards, getting free plane tickets, and that’s just not the case.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: Five-thousand dollar is [00:39:00] one of the myths circulating on the right. Just, you get, that you just get a card with $5,000 on it.

JOHN WASHINGTON: Completely false. I’m in Arizona, we have one of our Senate candidates here, Mark Lamb, who claims to have knowledge of this happening, and it’s just not true.

That’s not happening. No one is getting plane tickets, or vouchers for anything, who are crossing the border.

But the other reframe I want to do is something that I think a lot of folks in the United States see as an issue that affects the United States [uniquely] . And the current migration problem — and I agree that it’s a problem — is not a United States problem, it’s not an American problem. It’s a regional problem and it’s a global problem.

If you think about it in [terms of] just, where people are going currently, a lot of people are coming to the United States, a lot of people have always come to the United States. We can get into some numbers on that in a second, I think that’s really important work to do as well.

But look at, for example, the number of Venezuelans and the number of Nicaraguans who have [00:40:00] resettled in neighboring countries, compared to how many have come to the United States. There are, approaching, 3 million Venezuelans in Colombia right now, and over the past 20-some years, the number of Venezuelans who have come to the United States hasn’t even topped 1 million.

Nicaraguans are largely resettling — or maybe temporarily resettling — in neighboring Costa Rica. Some of them are coming up through Central America, Mexico, and trying to get into the United States as well, there’s been a parole program. But people generally stay close to their home countries.

This is the same for Africa as well; there’s a number of African states who have become “receiving countries,” in immigration speak. Gabon, which is a country probably a lot of people never think of and couldn’t necessarily point to on a map, has been an enormous receiving country for a lot of African refugees right now. Same with Uganda, for people from other different countries in Africa. Turkey, as well, for Syrians, [00:41:00] has welcomed far, far more people than some of the neighboring states in Europe that have complained and cried foul for supposedly being overrun.

So, I think, if you consider where people are going, they typically don’t want to go far. And there have been a number of examples of, when the border has been effectively open — you mentioned that in the 19th century — there was a lot of immigration in the 19th century in the United States. Something like 50 million Europeans went from different countries in Europe to the United States over a hundred-year period, ending in the late 19th century.

But there are a number of other examples where… I think Puerto Rico is a telling case. Puerto Ricans can move freely. They’re U.S. citizens, they can move to New York, to Miami, to wherever they want to go. And plenty of them have, but not all of them have. And you can look at even some of the [00:42:00] economic differences between the island and different parts of the United States. You’d think, well, we have higher wages here, we have all these other things that people think would attract migrants, and sometimes does, but it doesn’t empty out, and hasn’t emptied out Puerto Rico.

You can go case by case and see that people want to stay where they are. If they can, they will. And if they can’t, they’ll often go to the next easiest place to get to. Of course, there are exceptions to this, and a lot of those exceptions are due to prior relationships.

But if you look at the history of colonialism, a lot of the states who have gone in and meddled with these so-called “developing nations” are now receiving citizens of those same countries, where the empires have destabilized, have engaged in conquest, have tried to exploit as much as possible. So, there is a connection, and so, some people will go further than their neighboring [00:43:00] states, but it’s not an inevitability.

Migration costs money, it’s expensive, and opening the gates doesn’t necessarily mean people are going to rush, because it costs a lot, both monetarily and emotionally, professionally. They’re going to leave behind everything they knew, and folks don’t tend to do that.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: All right. So, to push back on that a little bit, you’re seeing record numbers of migrants approaching the U.S. border over the last months and year-plus. So, what does that tell us about how much kind of pressure there is on outward migration, and what we might see if you actually did just fully say, you know what? Come on in.

JOHN WASHINGTON: Well, I think it’s too early to say if this is just another peak, and we’re going to drop down into a valley in terms of numbers of migration, or if this is going to be necessarily a steady upward trend.

If you look at the big picture, [00:44:00] there are right now about 270 million international migrants; that was based on last year’s count by the U.N. That’s about 3.5 percent of the global population. That number, 3.5 percent, has held steady for about a hundred years. If you look at forced migration — so people who aren’t just migrating for economic or family reasons, but are actually forced out of the country — the count topped 110 million last year. And that, too, is about the average of the global population. It’s a little bit hard to count, because the tabulations weren’t done as thoroughly in the mid-last century, when we newly defined what a refugee was.

I’m going to give you another number, and then I want to get into that, what this means about the outward pressures of migration. The United States, too, a little bit less than 15 percent of all people living in the country are [00:45:00] foreign born, and that number is almost identical to what it was 100 years ago.

So, there’s a number of things to think through that might imply that these numbers are going to increase. I mean, climate change is the biggest one of them. Large parts of the world are becoming less habitable because of all the reasons we know and, increasingly, strong storms, droughts, floods, heat, etc. So, we might be in a new era, but I think it’s so far a little bit too early to tell, going back to that 100-year perspective.

And then you can go further than that, too. There’s something that is true here, is that humans are moving, and humans have historically moved. That is how humans have always been, and that has been true before the rise of nation states, that has been true before the rise of empires.

So, I think the question is not how to stop migration, but how do we respond to [00:46:00] migration?

Greg Abbott and the Battle for the Texas Border - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Air Date 1-20-24

DALIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: On December 18 of 2023, Texas Governor Greg Abbottt signed into law a measure that makes it a crime under Texas state law for non-citizens to enter or re-enter the United States without authorization.

It allows Texas state law enforcement authorities to stop, arrest, and jail those suspected of having committed that offense.

It empowers state judges to issue deportation orders, de facto deportation orders, against folks convicted of violating this new law.

Can you just walk us through whether this just is a sort of shabby stunt or whether this is a kind of sea change in the way he is attempting to do immigration law in Texas?

ROCHELLE GARZA: Yeah, I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that SB4 threatens to destroy the very foundation of our nation’s immigration system. We are required, as a country, the United States is required to speak with one [00:47:00] voice, one set of laws, and SB4 is challenging that very aggressively. And Governor Abbott is implementing these unconstitutional, hostile takeovers of immigration law in the form of SB4.

So SB4 creates essentially two new criminal laws, illegal entry and illegal reentry into the State of Texas. These are mirroring what we have on the federal level. But now there is a state scheme around this, and untrained officers across the state are expected to enforce this law, and magistrates and judges across the state are expected to enforce the law as well. And just to kind of situate things, Texas is a very big state. We are also 40% latino.

So there are many threats this law has not just on immigrant communities, but latino communities, because it stokes anti-immigrant, anti-Latino sentiment. But [00:48:00] there is no limitation on where it would be implemented.

This can be implemented in West Texas and El Paso. It can be implemented in the panhandle in Amarillo. It can be implemented in south Texas, where I live in Brownsville. So there is no uniform way that we’re going to see this law implemented.

Nonetheless, Greg Abbott has put this forward. I’m very proud of what we have done as an organization, Texas Civil Rights Project, along with ACLU and ACLU of Texas have sued to challenge SB4. It is set to go into effect in early March. We filed a preliminary injunction very recently on the 12th of January, and so we’re challenging this in court and trying to stop the implementation of this law.

DALIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: Look, we’ve been fighting about immigrants and immigration policy and about the alleged nexus between crime waves and immigrants, about whether the president or Congress sets immigration policy. I [00:49:00] mean, we’ve been having this fight and also kicking this can down the road every election of recent memory. And it feels as though, and I know you agree with me, that Abbott’s take on this is sort of particularly cruel and particularly opportunistic and showboaty.

But there is this underlying immigration problem, and I wonder if you can just situate from where you are sitting on the ground why we’re doing this Groundhog Day iteration again of claims, largely false claims about immigration in an election year. What does it signal to you about where our heads are on this question nationally?

ROCHELLE GARZA: I can speak to my experience. I grew up in a border community. I grew up in Brownsville, Texas, my family’s fifth generation Texan. I have a personal experience of what it’s like to live on the border, in border [00:50:00] communities and seeing how it plays out on the state level and then seeing how it plays out on the national level and the border immigration.

Immigrants are always being used as a wedge issue, as a talking point, something for divisive politics. And Greg Abbott is very intentionally using this during an election year to position himself. I don’t know for what exactly. He may be positioning himself for a future run. He may be positioning himself to be the pick for vice president.

Regardless, this is just about politics for Greg Abbott. It is not about really addressing the needs of Texans. Greg Abbott has put in close to $10 billion in border enforcement in the State of Texas through Operation Lone Star, now through SB4, through a bunch of different legal means.

And these power grabs that he’s engaging in instead of investing in the communities in the state, instead of investing in Medicaid expansion or making sure [00:51:00] that colonias and communities across the borderlands have running water.

DALIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So, you mentioned in response to, I think, my first question, Rochelle, that you all are involved in a lawsuit. There’s a whole bunch of different lawsuits challenging different parts of Lone Star, challenging SB4. And I wonder if you can just kind of walk us through what the challenge is, because I think if you and I are agreeing that this feels like almost a textbook constitutional crisis, right? This feels like a standoff between state and federal authority. Can you walk us through why it is that this is unbelievably consequential, even though it’s not getting the attention it deserves and what the sort of predicate is for the legal challenge?

ROCHELLE GARZA: Yeah, absolutely. I think what we’re seeing here is an unprecedented exercise of state control [00:52:00] over what is clearly within the federal purview, within federal control, which is immigration law. There are essentially three cases here.

There’s SB4, which we are part of the challenge against with the criminalization of immigrants through these state schemes of illegal entry and re entry.

There’s also a case around the concertina wire that the State of Texas and our military force put along the border.

And there is also litigation around the buoys that were originally placed inside the river, in the middle of the river, with razor wire. And the buoy case is still pending at the Fifth Circuit.

But what all of these cases come down to is what is within the federal government’s power versus what is in the state government’s power. The Supreme Court was very clear back in 2012 with Arizona, the US, that the federal government has exclusive control over [00:53:00] immigration laws. They are the sole enforcer of federal immigration laws.

And there are a plethora of reasons for that, because the United States should be the only one to have control over its borders, its national borders, but also its relationship with foreign nations. And so the threat here is if you allow Texas to create its own immigration system, to pick fights with Mexico or any other latin american country, it drags the entire United States into this problem.

We cannot have 50 different states with 50 different immigration laws or enforcement laws. It undercuts the basic structure of our country, of federalism, of our constitution. And I think it’s incredibly dangerous what we’re seeing happen.

The Case for Open Borders Part 2 - Deconstructed - Air Date 2-2-24

JOHN WASHINGTON: We do have these cross-cultural ties. You’re basically describing open cultural borders right there. People playing Fortnite from Brooklyn to [00:54:00] Gabon, or whatever. Think of everyone else who has open borders as well.

I mean, most people who are citizens of the United States effectively can waltz through the world as if there were completely open borders. And that is true, also, of the wealthy from many other countries in the world. Much of Western Europe could do basically the same. The ultra wealthy in many even so-called developing countries can do much the same.

The U.S. military, what border stops the U.S. military right now? Maybe a few are contested? But there’s, what, 800 bases, nearly, American bases spread throughout the world?

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: That reminds me of a moment that I’ve really never forgotten. A friend of mine, Christian Parenti, and I were down doing reporting in Bolivia, and we were able to tour a Bolivian military base, and interview military figures, and they were going to talk to us about the war on drugs and all this. And, while we’re waiting, there’s a couple soldiers, they’re kind of just sitting in the waiting room with us, and one of them says to us, [00:55:00] “Why are you guys allowed to walk around our military base, when I’m not even allowed to come into your country?” And Christian said, “It’s called imperialism,” and he kind of nodded along.

But that was a moment that always stuck with me, because it did seem bizarre to me. That, well, what am I doing here? Like, why am I able to just wander around here and be welcomed onto this base?

JOHN WASHINGTON: I think imperialism is a good answer. I have another one, too. I think it’s also just definitionally called apartheid. There’s different laws for different people, and when you zoom out from just within a nation, we are allowed to do things that other people are not. How is that fair?

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: Like, global apartheid.

JOHN WASHINGTON: Global apartheid. I mean, it seems like a silly question, or almost a juvenile framing, but I think fairness is actually key here. Some people are allowed to do and have the freedoms that others do not. That is the way that the global [00:56:00] border system works right now.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: Right, based on where they’re born or their ethnicity. We understand that as apartheid inside the borders of a country like South Africa, but when we stretch it out to the entire globe, we say that’s just how it is.

JOHN WASHINGTON: Right. So, you asked about the rise of federal immigration law. For the first hundred-plus years of the existence of the United States, there was no immigration law. There was maybe something like implicit understanding of who would be allowed in, based on tradition, based on just common practice, based on the definition of who a citizen could be, which was, you know, white men.

There were some state laws that go back, actually, to before there was a United States, that tried to keep poor people out of their states, or poor people out of their towns and cities. And then we really saw the rise of immigration law in the late 19th century, with anti-Chinese legislation that [00:57:00] barred Chinese people from being allowed into the country. There was some version of these Chinese Exclusion Acts that were on the books well into the 20th century; it lasted a really long time.

Those Laws were based on previous anti-Irish sentiment, and you can see, there’s sort of this idea, there’s almost this concept of whack-a-mole. The newest incomers are the ones that are going to be scapegoated, the ones who are going to be said to be un-American, impossible to assimilate.

I was doing some research about this situation in New York, the crying foul of Mayor Adams, and this idea that New York is existentially in peril is ridiculous, and ahistorical. And yet, that is the sort of rhetoric that has been used by politicians for a long time.

And so, going back to the 1850s, when a much larger percentage of new migrants were coming into New York City at that time, people were terrified. They were [00:58:00] mostly Germans and Irish, and New Yorkers thought that they couldn’t handle it. But the percentage was like 30 percent of the population of New York arrived to New York City in a single year. Right now, it’s like 1 percent or something like that, the asylum seekers who have come to New York City in the past couple years.

And it is expensive, and it does change things, and there does need to be some, I think, help with resettling. But, that New York can’t absorb 160,000 people and be actually invigorated by them, by those new incomers, I think is just completely ahistorical, and betrays the very essence of New York City, which I think also stands in large part for how we can think about the United States as a whole, or any other country with immigration.

RYAN GRIM - HOST, DECONSTRUCTED: Since your book is called The Case For Open Borders, rather than the case against closed borders, you make the point that there has to be a vision, a positive [00:59:00] vision of what benefits this is going to bring to humanity, rather than just a knocking down of the arguments against it.

So, to you, what is the vision that makes the case for open borders?

JOHN WASHINGTON: Yeah. I grapple with that a lot. You know, I’m not a policymaker. As a reporter, what I do is find, basically, malfeasance, or major traumas, and report on them. And I’ve documented for years now the problems that borders cause. And so, it was a stretch for me to start thinking about the benefits of this hypothetical future, of something with open borders, of a world with open borders.

But I think it comes down to looking at some examples that are already in existence. The United States of America is a good one. We transit freely from California to Virginia, from [01:00:00] Florida to Nebraska, wherever, and it’s pretty seamless. People can move wherever they want. There are enormous economic and cultural differences between different places in the United States, and people kind of figure out where they want to settle, where they can settle, and do so. And it doesn’t upend the political system.

You mentioned previously, people also traveling freely within the Schengen zone in the European Union. And that, too, there was a lot of nerves about that, especially as they incorporated some more Eastern European states. But those Western states haven’t been overrun, despite the claims of the Brexiteers, and now the rise of the far right in the Netherlands, and France, and elsewhere. And people go back and forth with relative ease, and they settle where they want to settle.

And what incentivizes people to move are open [01:01:00] jobs, that’s one of the major incentives. And when there are open jobs, it’s good that they’re filled. There are a lot of open jobs in the United States right now, and they need filling. And so, if there are not open jobs, I think they won’t be filled, and people won’t move as much.

So, I think that this also goes back to your question of, there won’t be a run, or will there be a run on the United States border if suddenly it was open? It doesn’t seem to be, because I think people are driven by the things we’re all driven by: opportunities. And, if they’re not there, they won’t go.

So, there’s a number of other free migration zones in the world. There’s a Nordic Passport area, there’s a Trans-Tasmanian area, there’s the Central America-4 region, and Mercosur in South America. There are so many that we don’t think of — also, there’s a couple in Africa — where people can cross borders easily. And expanding it, I think, seems to be a very doable thing, and [01:02:00] that’s based on the evidence that we’ve seen with, as I was mentioning, the now past steady expansion of the E.U., or the incorporation of new states in the United States.

There’s a good quote that I think about a lot [by] Nicolas de Genova, who’s a researcher, and he says, “Without borders, there is no migration, there’s only human mobility.” And I think he’s absolutely right, but what’s interesting is that there’s human mobility no matter what. That people will move, as I’ve said before, and the way that we see it and term it, and the way that we designate it, whether it’s migration or just movement, I think is actually less important than people really realize.

Final comments on the incentives for our politicians to fail at governing

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with The Readout, looking at the politics that derailed the proposed immigration bill. The Majority Report looked at the Democrats move to the right on immigration. The Damage Report highlighted the Republican who's actually mad at his own party. Today Explained explained the Texas [01:03:00] border stunt. The Brian Lehrer Show discussed the GOP attempt to impeach the Secretary of Homeland Security which, just before publishing this episode, they succeeded in doing. All In With Chris Hayes highlighted the danger of Fox News is hateful framing on immigration. And Deconstructed made the case for open borders.

That's what everybody heard, but numbers also heard bonus clips from Amicas diving deeper on the legal ramifications of Texas border stunt, and Deconstructed continued the discussion about the nature of humans to move and the inequality of the rich already having the privilege of free movement around the world.

To hear that and have all of our bonus contents delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

Now to wrap up, I want to tie together a couple of stories that really [01:04:00] highlight the structural dysfunction of our democracy right now. First, I'll start with the unsurprising story. I'll take it as granted that you already heard about the migrant busing story where asylum seekers were put on buses and planes from Texas to be driven to cities, run by Democrats as a craven political move that used real life human beings as political pawns to score points. It was inhumane, gross, and probably illegal human trafficking because lies were told to some people to get them on those buses.

But the seed of truth underneath that policy was that people coming across the border who are processed through our underfunded and understaffed system who then needs somewhere to go to wait for their court dates, need to be moved away from border towns because it's completely unreasonable to expect the border region to absorb all of those people alone. So way down underneath all the political games [01:05:00] and treating humans like placings, that was the primary argument. The logistical burden of processing asylum seekers should be spread across the country. And I completely agree. And so do immigration advocates working at NGOs dedicated to helping migrants once they've entered the country. The woman who runs the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition was working with the State of Texas on the logistics of coordinating services for the migrants at their destination cities.

The state would organize the bus rides, give that information to Tiffany Burrow of the Val Verde Humanitarian Border Coalition, who would in turn coordinate with NGOs in the destination cities so that there could be people waiting to receive the buses and give guidance to the migrants when they arrived.

The people working at these NGOs believe in the need for the busing program. They're not just there to mitigate [01:06:00] harm. They see it as necessary to relieve pressure from border communities. However, the story I'm actually highlighting is that after Texas and these NGOs had been working in partnership for a time, Texas suddenly decided to stop providing the bus route information that allowed the advocates to organize logistical support. No details or reasons were given other than that they just sort of felt like they didn't need to.

Of course, the result was to maximize chaos at the destination cities, which was very likely the point. The whole policy, though necessary, has always been conducted in a way to maximize the spectacle of it, not to be an example of good governance or policy, or even to help people. Democratic officials have criticized the busing policy, but less about the existence of the policy and more for Texas governor Abbott's refusal to coordinate with [01:07:00] other governors and mayors in the process. And we know why there is a political motivation that rewards more political clout to those who make the other party look bad than to those who govern well. Abbott is definitely seen more favorably in the eyes of Texas Republicans because of his cartoonishly cruel busing policy intended to make Democrats look bad than he would if he devised a well-organized, well coordinated policy that accomplished the goals of spreading the logistical burden of incoming migrants, but without all the drama.

I will say one thing for Abbott stunt though: he also made clear that it was intended to bring attention to the lack of federal support for the logistics of dealing with the influx of migrants. And it did succeed at that. In fact, I was surprised to learn that there wasn't already a system in place to transport migrants around the country because, of course, we need something like [01:08:00] that. But the perverse incentives to not enact reasonable effective policy, don't just flow in one direction.

As reported by CBS, federal officials considered setting up just such a federally coordinated effort that would transport migrants from the border around the country, so they could be processed in their destination cities, easing the strain at the border. The system would work with organizations in those cities to ensure that migrants could be accommodated and worked with the cities directly, unlike Texas's bussing effort of course.

Now reading from the CBS article: "But the proposal was blocked by the White House due to concerns about the political optics of the federal government transporting migrants across the US and objections from some of the cities asked to take part in the program, according to three current and former US officials. The White House officials said the plan is no longer under consideration. [01:09:00] A former Biden administration immigration official said 'the interior processing plan would have distributed migrants and resources more proportionally across the US in an orderly way. Interior processing capacity would have provided access to additional resources and taken pressure off many cities'. The White House rejected those plans in 2021 and 2022 due to politics and the requirement that the White House would need to own the coordination, the former official said."

In short, the fear that it would look bad to attempt to create a well-organized thoughtful policy to manage the influx of border crossings stopped the effort entirely. And I suspect that they feared it would look bad regardless of whether it went well or poorly. If it went well, the GOP would frame it as Biden actively helping migrants who are probably mostly [01:10:00] criminals and terrorists so that they could vote for Democrats. And then if it went badly, then it would just be seen as more evidence that the government doesn't work. So the idea was scrapped. On the bigger picture. We obviously need to get back to a politics where politicians are not dis-incentivized from attempting to create good policy. That's sort of the core of democratic governance. Without it we are totally screwed.

On the smaller picture, looking at immigration specifically, here's my proposal. We obviously need a coordinated effort to manage immigration because it is going to happen whether we are organized or not. So we'd better get organized and the very core of that effort needs to be fairness. No ad hoc system like Texas is running could ever be fair or just so the federal government needs to step in. The CBS article mentioned that some cities might complain about being asked to help support the effort and to [01:11:00] them, I would invoke the promise of fairness. No city should be asked to do more than their fair share. And therefore every city needs to do what they can to help spread the effort.

Also, I am sick to death of the right claiming a monopoly on patriotism. And to any who criticize an effort to create a well-organized immigration system, I say e pluribus unum, 'from many, one'. It was our unofficial motto from the very beginning until the godless communists scared us into adopting 'In God We Trust' as our official motto back in the fifties. But e pluribus unum is still on our money and it still goes deeper to the heart of what the US is supposed to be about than any other option.

And the best thing about it is how nicely it's scales. Originally it just referred to the coming together of the original 13 colonies. But it seamlessly scaled to include every additional state that was added. It could just as easily have been [01:12:00] referring to the origin countries of everyone who's ever migrated to this land. And we'll continue to encompass everyone who comes from abroad and become an American citizen.

But most importantly, for our current politics, it should be a reminder of the necessity for all parts of the country to work together when facing issues that affect us all. There's a recent headline in the LA Times. I quote, "Half of Republicans say California isn't really American". Which isn't surprising considering the rhetoric coming from Trump and his MAGA supporters and other Republicans who may or may not be following reluctantly, but are following all the same. Their whole game plan is to do two Democrats writ large, what they have done to every group they've decided to target based on race, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or gender identity throughout the ages. They are attempting to frame anyone who doesn't agree with them as [01:13:00] fundamentally un-American and, for those willing to use the more extreme rhetoric which Trump has recently embraced, not fully human. And fighting back against that with 'no, you're the one being un-American' is never going to work. The left needs to define a positive vision of functional government and inclusive democracy. We've never been a homogenous country full of people who get along well with each other and we're not about to start now, but we have gotten to an extremely bad divide, even in a history full of pretty bad divides. And I think the path back to sanity might start with a full-throated embrace of one of our oldest shared beliefs.

We may not agree on much other than that we have grudgingly agreed to co-exist because we recognize we are stronger and better off working together than going it alone. E pluribus unum. Out of many, one.

And besides immigrants are good for the [01:14:00] economy and tax base. So even if you don't care about treating them like humans, you can think of immigrants as a source of a future tax base to help pay down the national debt or whatever pet economic concern you have.

That is going to be it for today as always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else you can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and the bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patrion page, [01:15:00] or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1609 The Post-Roe World is Bad But it Could Still Get Worse (Transcript)

Posted by · February 10, 2024 8:53 AM

Air Date 2/10/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left Podcast, in which we take a look at stories of those directly impacted by abortion bans to demonstrate the extreme stances taken by anti-choice politicians. But we also look ahead to potential ways the situation could be made even worse, as well as some efforts to relieve the suffering.

Sources today include Amicus, The Nocturnists, The Thom Hartmann Program, The Majority Report, CounterSpin, and Ring of Fire, with an additional members only clip from The Majority Report.

Texas Abortion Laws Cruel Outcomes - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 12-16-23

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So this week's show is about the impact of a single case from 2021, and the case is Dobbs v. Jackson. In the event that that Dobbs decision is not fresh on your mind, on Friday, the New York Times dropped a thoroughly reported timeline of how that long shot appeal coming almost minutes after Amy Coney Barrett had been seated on the court was taken [00:01:00] up, broadened and decided for perfectly political reasons. The New York Times piece also confirms that the cert and decision process in Dobbs was precisely as ends driven, corrupt, and mindlessly violent toward women as we all imagined it to be. And that is where we are laser focused this week, not on the unnamed sources who confirm that Samuel Alito maneuvered the toppling of Roe or that Brett Kavanaugh is fundamentally useless or that Amy Coney Barrett is ultimately just a coward.

We are not focused on those things. We are focused on the primal scream from so many of us this week as we watched Kate Cox's case unfold in Texas, because regardless of how craven and broken the system was that allowed Dobbs to be decided, women are going to keep dying. They're going to keep bleeding out. They're going to keep going septic in hospital parking lots. [00:02:00] And that's going to happen all as a result of abortion restrictions that were allowed by Dobbs.

The five to four decision in Dobbs overturning Roe v. Wade formally returned the question of abortion regulations to the States -- partially, allegedly, in the hopes that judges could get out of the abortion arbitration racket. But this week, the Texas Supreme Court, in a nine to nothing unanimous decision, very much got itself back into the abortion arbitration racket in the case of Kate Cox. Cox was challenging the hot mess that is current Texas law regarding medical exceptions to its unbelievably draconian abortion restrictions. She was carrying a non-viable pregnancy that would likely end in the death of her fetus, and also possibly impair her ability to bear future children. And yet Cox was forced to leave the state in order to terminate that pregnancy, after [00:03:00] Texas's high court determined that her physician's good faith belief that she deserved the exception would not shield her from huge fines and up to 99 years in prison or the loss of her medical license.

Cox faced almost exactly the same barriers as the plaintiffs in a massive lawsuit called Zurawski v. Texas that was filed last summer by a group of women and physicians asking whether Texas law actually demands that pregnant people lose their lives or future fertility in order to satisfy the new state laws.

Joining us today is the lead plaintiff in that lawsuit, Amanda Zurawski. She lives in Texas with her husband, Josh, whom she met in preschool in their home state of Indiana, and they live with their dogs, Paisley and Millie. We're also joined for this conversation by trial attorney Jamie Levitt, who, alongside counsel from the Center [00:04:00] for Reproductive Rights, brought the Zurawski case last summer. Jamie and the Center also represent Kate Cox. She is managing partner of the New York office of Morrison Foerster.

Jamie, Amanda, it is such a pleasure to have both of you on the show this particular week. And before we even start, I want to thank both of you for your great big voices on an issue that has been breaking all of our hearts the last few days.

AMANDA ZURAWSKI: Thank you. Thank you so much for having us.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So Amanda, I want to start with you. And I kind of hate doing this to you, but I think folks need to hear this story of your pregnancy loss, your efforts to be treated in increasingly hellish conditions. And as I said, I hate that you have to tell and retell this story that becomes one of the prongs of your lawsuit, but it's almost impossible, I think, to understand the stakes of what this litigation means without your voice humanizing it. So do you [00:05:00] mind, yet again, reliving your story for us?

AMANDA ZURAWSKI: Sure. I think it is important. I think it helps to illustrate what these laws are doing and what they can do. And so even though it's terrible to relive it over and over again, I think it's important that we do.

So, essentially what happened was, after about a year and a half of trying to get pregnant, lots of rounds of fertility treatments, different tests, exams, procedures, I was finally pregnant last spring and everything was going really well until about the 18 week mark, at which point I was diagnosed with a condition called incompetent cervix or cervical insufficiency. Basically what that means is I was dilating prematurely. Obviously a baby can't survive outside the mother's womb that early. So we were told that there was nothing the doctors could do to save the pregnancy or save the baby. And so it was inevitable that we were going to lose her.

Now at [00:06:00] that point, what would have happened or what should have happened pre-Dobbs, my doctor should have been able to intervene. She should have been able to induce labor and I should have been able to deliver the baby and begin the healing process. But because the baby's heart was still beating, had she induced labor, it would have been considered an illegal abortion. And so she couldn't do anything. So we just had to sit and wait until either the baby's heart stopped beating or until I met the medical exception in Texas, which states that my life is at risk, at which point our doctor could intervene.

So we were locked in this hell, waiting for one of those things to happen, and what happened in my case is my life finally became at risk after three days when I went into septic shock. At that point, my doctor could finally provide healthcare, and it landed me in the ICU for three days, and then the hospital for another four days after that.

Post-Roe America 5. Culture of Silence - The Nocturnists - Air Date 10-19-23

ALI BLOCK - HOST, THE NOCTURNISTS: Soon after the Dobbs decision, the state of Indiana started talking about passing a near total ban on abortion, but they didn't [00:07:00] make a decision. Three days later, on June 27, 2022, Caitlin received a call from a child-abuse doctor in Ohio. He had a 10-year-old patient who was six weeks and three days pregnant. Because of a trigger ban that had gone into effect in Ohio, hours after the Dobbs ruling, the patient was unable to receive an abortion in her home state. Caitlin performed the abortion days later in Indiana, where it was still legal up to 12 weeks. Soon after, she went to an anti-abortion rally, where a reporter from the Indianapolis Star overheard a conversation she was having with another doctor and asked for comment. Caitlin shared that in the previous days, she had performed an abortion on a 10-year-old from Ohio who was unable to access care. This story rapidly became national news.

Media Clip: O'Donnell sat down with someone who's become a symbol of this debate. That's Dr. Caitlin Bernard who's an OB/GYN in Indiana, who according to state records obtained by CBS News, provided a [00:08:00] medication abortion to a 10-year-old rape victim from neighboring Ohio. That's the...

CAITLIN BERNARD: Part of the initial retaliatory statement about me was that I am an activist. So I was an activist acting like a doctor.

Ali Block: That statement came from Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita. "She's lying," he suggested. "There's no way Caitlin was telling the truth." That there weren't any 10-year-olds in need of abortions, that she was just an activist trying to manipulate people into sympathizing with her pro-abortion agenda. At first, Caitlin wasn't worried.

CAITLIN BERNARD: I mean, the biggest thing that I remember from that whole experience was just like, "How could people not know that little girls get raped and pregnant?" Like, how could they not know that this was literally the natural course of an abortion ban? I felt less concerned about my own personal, retribution, like crazy people calling me or something like that. It just didn't occur to me. It was much more of I just don't understand how they could not realize what [00:09:00] was going to happen.

Ali Block: But as time progressed, Rokita's tactics evolved.

Media Clip: Attorney General Todd Rokita alleges that Dr. Bernard broke the law. He alleges that she violated patient privacy laws, by sharing that story with the Indianapolis Star, and he alleges that she failed to report the abuse of that child. Those are allegations she and her legal team deny.

Ali Block: Caitlin's story was bad press for the anti-abortion agenda. And, because the abortion that she performed was still legal, Todd Rokita had to find a different way to take her down. So he came after her medical license. In an unprecedented move, he brought charges against her to the State medical licensing board. He suggested that she had failed to report the incident of child abuse to the proper authorities, despite the fact that there was official documentation proving otherwise. And he suggested that she had broken privacy laws when she shared the age and home state of her patient with the Indie Star. All of a sudden, Caitlin was facing the real possibility of thousands of dollars of fines, [00:10:00] and losing her medical license—all for having talked about performing a legal abortion.

CAITLIN BERNARD: So at the beginning of the hearing, they had to go through these procedural processes, and one of them is that they wanted to force me to answer the questions about my tattoo, which is of a hanger. And so the first twenty minutes of the hearing, with everybody in the room, all the cameras, everything... was like, "We want to force her to answer these questions about her tattoo." And so, there was this back-and-forth about, "Well, what is that tattoo?" And "What does it say?" And, "Why would that be relevant?" And, "How is this... Is this important?" and... So fucking bizarre. And then, to the right is twenty cameras just trained on me. This wasn't like an administrative process, it was really just a personal attack.

Ali Block: It wasn't just the personal nature of the attack that set this hearing apart. It was the legal tactics, too, [00:11:00] that were unlike any medical board hearing Caitlin had ever heard of.

CAITLIN BERNARD: Literally, they used our taxpayer dollars to pay lawyers from Washington D.C. to come and prosecute me, which is just unheard of in a medical licensing board hearing. It just felt like the government of my state is against me.

Ali Block: The hearing lasted 15 hours. A wall of cameras followed Caitlin's every move, filming her testimony, her pauses, even snapping photos of her while she ate an apple during one break. And, I can tell you personally, this is every physician's worst nightmare—being brought in front of a medical board and deemed incompetent, or unfit to perform the job you've trained for your whole adult life. In the end, the board unanimously agreed that Caitlin had reported the case to the proper authorities, but they found her guilty of violating privacy laws when she shared the age and home state of the patient, [00:12:00] despite the fact that neither of these pieces of information are listed in HIPAA. She got to keep her medical license, but they fined her $3,000 and issued a letter of reprimand.

Caitlin's continued working as clinician this whole time, it's what she would rather be doing, she says, than defending herself against the state. But although she tries not to let the legal mess affect how she shows up with her patients, Indiana's legal and political climate have fundamentally shifted what it means for her to provide reproductive health care.

CAITLIN BERNARD: I mean, already, in literally the last two days, it's like trying to figure out if somebody will meet our criteria for an abortion in Indiana, I had a patient who called and, in her last pregnancy, during her labor, she ruptured her uterus. Does that count as life-threatening enough that this could happen again to [00:13:00] her? Who decides that? Who's gonna second guess my medical opinion, the medical opinion of the MFM? What happens if we do her abortion, and we put it on the terminated pregnancy report? It gets sent to Indiana Right-to-Life... They send a complaint to the Attorney General's office... I'm back in a hearing again. On my to-do list is to call my County Prosecutor to find out what he's gonna do if somebody calls in a complaint against me. Am I gonna go to jail? I mean it's a Level 5 felony, if I perform an illegal abortion. What does that process look like? My hospital security brought up on a, planning implementation call, for this new law... If somebody complains to us, we're a police force, are we supposed to arrest her? In her office? How does that [00:14:00] work?

I was at a conference. Sometime this Spring, I guess, and my mentor and friend Colleen McNicholas said, I gave an advocacy grand rounds at this hospital. And this person stood up and was like, that Caitlin Bernard did everything that you're telling us to do, and look what happened to her. How could we possibly do these things if that's what's gonna happen to us?" And she was like, "I'm sorry, do you know her? Because I know her personally, and I can guarantee that that is the last thing that she wants to come out of this." And, it's absolutely true. That is literally... would be the worst-case scenario. It just allows them to win. That is exactly what they are trying to do. [00:15:00] And, if that's the lesson that everybody learns from this, then it feels like it was not worth any of that, personal risk.

Texas Abortion Laws Cruel Outcomes Part 2 - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick - Air Date 12-16-23

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I'm gonna now ask you to tell us about just a couple of the other plaintiffs in this suit. There's been a sort of different tranches of plaintiffs added as you went along. And I wonder if you can tell us about one or two others, the stories, the testimony has been just harrowing. But just give us a sense of a couple of the other people that you've formed common cause with in order to tell these stories together.

AMANDA ZURAWSKI: Yeah, there are a few that had an instance similar to mine. I think there's a handful of us that have a similar story. There are two in particular that were carrying twins. One of the twins in both cases was diagnosed with a fatal fetal anomaly, meaning it wasn't going to survive. But the other twin was healthy and was going to be fine. [00:16:00] Continuing to carry the unhealthy twin would have put the healthy twin's life at risk. But those two women were not able to get an abortion for their unhealthy twin because it would be considered an abortion, even though it would have protected the life. It was necessary to protect the life of the other twin. So that's a harrowing example, I think.

And then there's another one that a lot of folks have probably heard of who her child was diagnosed with a fatal fetal anomaly as well. She couldn't get an abortion, she couldn't leave the state, so she had to carry to term. This just breaks my heart. She had to carry to term knowing that the baby wasn't going to live, and then once the baby was born, she had to watch her slowly essentially suffocate to death.

And these lawmakers say this is pro-life, I just don't understand what's pro-life about any of those instances.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So amidst all of this just relentless trauma, Jamie, [00:17:00] the C. R. R. lawyers at your firm and several other firms come together to file the case that becomes Zorawski versus Texas. As I said, Amanda's the name plaintiff, and this is supposed to be a challenge about parsing this murk of these overlapping Texas statutes that don't make any sense and then trying to parse the fuzzy exceptions to the murky statutes. So I'm going to just take a crack. -- Amanda's already flicked at it. Let me take a crack at explaining what the law seems to say, and then you're going to try to make clear the mess that you are sitting in right now.

Texas imposed a full criminal trigger ban that would have punished providers, including revoking licenses, a penalty of at least $100,000 per violation, up to 99 years in prison. Let me say that again: 99 years in prison. And there's no exceptions for cases of rape or incest or severe fetal abnormality. There's a carve out, as Amanda just said, for medical emergencies that is somehow vaguely described [00:18:00] as "a risk of death or substantial impairment of a major bodily function." So I'm just going to ask you, A, have I basically got it? B, what does any of that even mean? And where these women and their physicians are trapped, could you just explain as one of Amanda's team of lawyers, how it is that you're supposed to navigate what her physicians were trying to understand in real time as somebody is on the table in front of them?

JAMIE LEVITT: Thank you, Dahlia and Amanda, of course, for telling your story and some of the other plaintiffs. I will say that you did get the statutes right. There are three overlapping statutes, pre-Roe ban, trigger ban, SB8. All of them have a similar exception, which you noted, which is death or substantial impairment of a major bodily function. Those words read in black and white, but no doctors can understand what they mean. In fact, the state's own expert in Amanda's case, in the Zowarski case, testified that doctors do not understand what it means, that it's [00:19:00] unconscionable that the Texas medical board hasn't come in to clarify. And the Supreme Court of Texas did nothing to help with respect to clarifying the language in Kate Cox's case in their recent per curiam decision.

I guess in terms of parsing, what we did in filing this case was try to ask the courts to finally give some clarification because it's been almost two years. And as I said, the Texas Medical Board, no one is providing clarification. But what makes these cases so unique and so important is that real women, real families are telling real stories. These aren't hypotheticals. It's showing the life-threatening crises that these very laws are putting women in, and the fact that doctor's hands are tied. We do have, as you know, 20 plaintiffs in Amanda's case, as well as 20 women who've gone through horrible, heart-wrenching situations like the one Amanda described and others; and two doctors, because doctors do face, as you said, 99 years in prison and loss of license and [00:20:00] fines, and their hands are tied because, as we learned in the Texas Supreme Court decision and in Amanda's case, the Texas Attorney General does believe it has the right to come in and second guess women's doctors, to second guess the good faith medical judgment of doctors. And none of us want Attorney General Paxton in our doctor's offices, I can assure you of that.

And so that's really the point of these cases: to bring to life the effect of these statutes, to try to clarify them, but also say, to make incremental change. I must say that it is the absolute honor and privilege of my legal career to help represent these dozens of women who are standing up to tell their stories, because we are taking back the narrative. That's a really important way to start making change.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I want you to be crystal clear, both of you. The relief sought in this case is just to clarify the stinking exception, right? you are not asking to overturn the laws. You are not asking for new laws. You are essentially saying, please [00:21:00] tell our doctors what this means, right? That's the relief sought.

JAMIE LEVITT: You're exactly right. And, as one of my other attorneys, Molly Duane, often says, we are literally asking for the bare minimum. And it's outrageous that it's gotten to this point that we even have to ask for this. But it's literally the bare minimum.

Did Kate Cox Expose GOP Plan To Turn Women into Property - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 12-14-23

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: So yesterday the Supreme Court said, okay, we're going to hear these arguments in this Mifepristone case. Now, just to backfill here, just to give you the backstory, a right wing, a group of right-wing, fundamentalist religious doctors incorporated in Amarillo, Texas, specifically so that they could go before Judge Matthew Kacsmaryk, a Bible thumping right-winger, a Trump appointee, and argue that someday, one of these doctors may end up with a patient [00:22:00] who had an abortion that caused some sort of long lasting consequence to them, and now this doctor is going to have to treat them and it will cause them mental anguish.

None of them have ever treated anybody who's had a problem with an abortion. There should be no standing here at all. This group has no legitimate complaint. They're anticipating a future complaint, which you can't do. But the judge took the case, and then the Fifth Circuit took the case very seriously and said, yes. And what Judge Kacsmaryk said was Mifepristone... he said two things. One, that the FDA didn't have the authority to make it legally available in the way that they did, that part of the argument the Supreme Court was largely struck down by the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court is waiving, they're not going to get into that. That's kind of a Chevron deference argument that actually the Supreme Court's got another case this year that they're going to use to [00:23:00] take that one up and we're all holding our breath on that one.

But the second argument that Matthew, or that was made to him and with which he agreed, this Amarillo, Texas judge, was that in 1873, when Congress passed the Comstock Act, that law outlaws the distribution through the mail, and it was updated in 1997 to include FedEx and UPS and any other common carrier. In other words, the shipping, via any means, of two categories of stuff. Number one, any product that could be used to produce an abortion, and number two, any product that could be used for lewd purposes.

Now, lewd purposes was interpreted by the Supreme Court itself, as well as the other courts, right up until relatively recently, as including birth control [00:24:00] devices. This only ended in 1965 with the Griswold case, the Griswold v. Connecticut, before the U. S. Supreme Court, in which the Supreme Court, in '65, legalized birth control for married couples. It was still considered lewd and illegal to send birth control through the mail by the Comstock Act right up until 1972 when the Supreme Court, the year before Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruled that even unmarried people should have legal access to birth control. So that's, that's how relatively recent this stuff is.

So anyhow, Matthew Kacsmaryk, this judge, says, the Comstock Act says you can't ship Mifepristone through the mail. It's for lewd purposes, and it's for abortion. And the logical extension would be, if you can't ship it through the mail, then hospitals can't receive it, doctors offices can't receive it, pharmacies can't receive it, and you sure as heck, can't receive it.

Now, there [00:25:00] are a number of groups, including the wife of Josh Hawley, who argued this before the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, who are even going so far as to suggest, imply, or even sometimes outright say that not only should we ban Mifepristone from being mailed, but we should ban all birth control devices from being mailed. This is like the ultimate Catholic argument. And although it's not unique to the Catholic Church any longer, but, it's been their argument for 50 years.

So, the question is, will the Supreme Court uphold the Comstock Act? And the simple reality is that the Supreme Court has never ruled on the Comstock Act. It's still on the books. It's been there for literally one hundred and fifty years this year. Back a couple of decades ago, one of the circuit courts, I believe it was the second circuit court, took a look at it and said this the ban on sending legal things through the [00:26:00] mail—this was a lawsuit in the 1930s or 40s that had to do with a company called Young's Rubber. And Young's Rubber manufactured condoms out of rubber, out of latex. And they sued because the Comstock Act said that they couldn't ship their products—they couldn't ship it to their customers, they couldn't ship it to stores. —they were very concerned about this. And the Supreme Court agreed with them and said, condoms were legal, or are legal now, and so the Comstock Act doesn't apply to them.

But that has not been upheld by the U. S. Supreme Court. So the Supreme Court could very easily just say, "Well, that 1930s decision for Young's Rubber, we're going to reverse that. And we're going to say the Comstock Act still stands. It's on the books. It, it clearly reflects Congress's intent. And if Congress doesn't want the Comstock Act to be on the books, Congress should repeal it."

[00:27:00] Now, in all probability, Congress would then get about repealing the Comstock Act, but I'm not sure that it would do it with this Congress. I don't think that MAGA Mike Johnson, who's guided by God and the Bible exclusively, is gonna say oh yeah, we're fine with mailing birth control and abortion and lewd purposes things through the mail.

I mean, Anthony Comstock was just one weird cat. His mother died when he was ten and he never again met a woman who lived up to his mother's standards. He used to travel around the country visiting pornography shows, visiting peep shows and belly dancers, and he had a huge collection of the hardest hardcore pornography that whenever he came to Washington, D. C. to lobby for things like the Comstock Act, he would invite all these male senators and members of the House of Representatives to these showings of his hardcore pornography. And they'd all go, and they'd go, "Oh, [00:28:00] this is terrible. I can't believe that. We gotta write a law that says, Hey, can we come back tomorrow night and watch this again, please?"

Literally, this is what happened. It was like Ed Meese's commission, during the, was it the Reagan administration or Nixon? I forget which one. Ed Meese was the Attorney General and he watched some 600 hours of hardcore pornography and then said, "this stuff damages your brain. We need to outlaw it." yeah, tell us about it.

So anyhow, this is the bottom line. If the Comstock Act is upheld by the Supreme Court, and I frankly expect them to do so, I realize that I'm probably the outlier here, most don't. Dahlia Lithwick and Mark Joseph Stern are also writing about this over at Slate, where they say that even if the court just says, hey, go ahead and mail the stuff. More dramatically, such a move could leave open the possibility that a future Republican president could ban abortion nationwide without enacting a single new law by exploiting the Puritanical Comstock Act of [00:29:00] 1873.

Abortion Pills For All w/ Sydney Calkin - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-6-24

SYDNEY CALKIN: You know, when I started this work, Roe v. Wade was still the law of the land of the U. S., Ireland had a constitutional abortion ban, Northern Ireland had a near total abortion ban, and Poland had restrictions, but fewer than it does now. Fast forward to 2024 and we see, you know, in the U. S., increasing numbers of state total abortion bans or near total abortion bans. Poland tightened its laws. By contrast, in Ireland, there is a relatively progressive abortion law that allows abortion without regard to reason, up to 12 weeks. And in Northern Ireland, it's been decriminalized. So, these countries have seen a transformation in the years during which I studied them. And I make the case in the book that medication abortion has been an important driving factor in changing the politics of abortion in those countries where we've seen progressive changes. And in countries where we've seen the rollback of reproductive rights, medication abortion has been a lifeline for people that has allowed them to continue to [00:30:00] access abortion, you know, regardless of what their local laws say.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It reminds me a bit of how, you know, AIDS drugs were smuggled into the country in the late 80s and 90s, I believe, in the United States over the Mexico-U.S. border, because the FDA was dragging its feet essentially on treating people who were dealing with HIV/AIDS because of homophobia and then also, you know, administrative issues as well. But like, you know, these are drugs that can save people's lives and change people's lives that are subjected to these kinds of moral, religious, fundamentalist - and I say moral in, like, their terms, not in reality - kind of handcuffing that is completely needless, but we're still dealing with these kinds of religious fundamentalist perspectives [00:31:00] decades out.

SYDNEY CALKIN: I think it's a fascinating parallel, the one you make with AIDS drugs. And in fact, it's one of the things that sparked my interest in this topic. I was interested in how these medications move. Where do they originate? Who makes them? How do they get from A to B? And the, kind of the buyers clubs that you talked about who we associate with moving those drugs for HIV/AIDS have a lot in common with the self-managed abortion movement today, in the way that they develop fairly sophisticated systems for identifying where drugs are manufactured, quality, reliable producers of those drugs, routes through which they can be moved, and very sophisticated systems for understanding the different customs and border regimes and the geography of abortion through which these pills can get to people who need them.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right. And you highlight a lot of these groups as well: these feminist groups, others, organizations led mainly by [00:32:00] women in order to source these medications, procure them, provide them for people in need. What was it like covering some of these groups and what were some of the people that you interacted with in your journey in writing this book?

SYDNEY CALKIN: In the book I talk about a few different feminist activist networks, some of whom will probably be familiar to your viewers because they've been in the news a lot in the U. S. Like, one of them is Aid Access, which is the sort of American-facing branch of the Women on Web, Women on Waves organization, but there's others like Women Help Women, the Abortion Without Borders Coalition, etc.

They're fascinating groups of activists and they are linked up across borders in such interesting ways. A lot of the same faces reoccur in a lot of these different groups because the needs for abortion pills are so similar across borders and the kind of tactics that people develop in one place to move pills [00:33:00] can be useful in other countries when that legal landscape changes.

The thing about the self-managed abortion movement that I think is maybe the most kind of revolutionary that I want to share with your viewers is this idea that, the self-managed abortion movement is grounded in this sense that access to pills today creates a legal change in the future. So, these activists are quite skeptical of an approach that prioritizes the courts or legislatures because they think that... well, first of all, they don't think that really any abortion laws are good abortion laws. They think they always end up criminalizing someone, but they also think that creating access to pills on the ground right now will trigger change in public attitudes, change in beliefs about abortion, will trigger realization that abortion is a normal, you know, fact of life, many people go through it, and that will eventually [00:34:00] lead to legal change. So, they want to have change now, access now, and produce better laws and better legal outcomes in the future, but they don't want to wait for that to happen.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Right, and I mean, it's not just, I would say, normalizing self-medicated abortion, but for me, I hope this is not too radical, but it's just normalizing illegal abortion, and normalizing this kind of process where, you know... we're, um, later in our program, we'll probably cover some of the claims by Republican Speaker of the House Mike Johnson about fentanyl smuggling where that he claims it's coming over the Mexico border where the overwhelming comes through normal ports of entry in the United States because you could just send stuff through the mail, and obviously fentanyl is a very dangerous drug that does not have this kind of usage, but you can kind of apply some of those networks to circumventing some of these religious fundamentalist controlling laws in states in the United States. [00:35:00]

SYDNEY CALKIN: It's another interesting parallel, and it's also one that I thought through in the research for the book because I was interested in, How do medication abortion pills move through border control points in the US? And how is it the case that these pills pretty reliably get to their destinations in the U. S.? There's simply too much mail to be searched, the medication simply can't be stopped. We hear a lot about this in a kind of narcotics and opioids control situation, but in fact Americans rely so much on medications that come through the mail, we hear so much about people traveling to Canada or to Mexico to get drugs or medications or, you know, using mail order pharmacies. It's already quite an established, inbuilt part of the way that people manage in the American healthcare system, is to look abroad for their medications.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And to your point, I mean, medication abortion as well means that in these states and [00:36:00] in other places as well, where there are these restrictions, or if they're in a rural area, people who may not be able to travel, people who may be disabled, or people who do not have the funds and the ability to take off time for work, to go to multiple doctor's visits, or to go out of state... If you're in a very restrictive state, medication abortion being sent through the mail does solve those problems to a degree.

SYDNEY CALKIN: Yes, and that goes to a point you made earlier I didn't address, which is the self-managed abortion movement. They're also quite critical of medicalization of abortion that imposes a lot of different forms of control by doctors, or puts in new forms of gatekeepers who can decide whether an abortion request is legitimate or whether it's not legitimate. Part of what's revolutionary about self-managed abortion is that it lets people make their own decisions about if they want to have an abortion, how they want [00:37:00] it to proceed, where they want it to happen, etc.

Melissa Gira Grant on Abortion Rights & Politics - CounterSpin - Air Date 12-1-23

MELISSA GIRA: Yeah, it really says something about mainstream political media's value of the lives of women or anyone who has an abortion, how reproductive rights are seen within the broader context of politics in the United States, that this has truly been treated as a separate special issue that doesn't have very much to do with people who actually need abortions. It's mostly about voters, right? Or it's about the Supreme Court and what voters think about what's going to happen at the Supreme Court. It's about something transactional that has nothing to do with the actual abortion itself. Maybe that's because there's still places in media where there's a reluctance to even say the word abortion. We have a president who's reluctant to say the word abortion. So the reality of what it is to even have an abortion, what that entails, is something that has to be consciously brought into every story about this.

One of the people that I really admire in how she does this is Renee Bracey Sherman, who [00:38:00] is the co executive director of a group called We Testify that does abortion storytelling work. That's how they do their advocacy. And when she testified in Congress earlier this year - or it may have been the end of last year, I'm not 100 percent sure - but sometime since the Dobbs decision came down. In her testimony, she actually verbally gave the instructions for how to use medication for an abortion, how do you use mifepristone / misoprostol. And so that's in the congressional record now. That's on C-SPAN. Like, that is information that could be considered against the law to share in some states.

The degree to which information is powerful here, I think, isn't quite fully appreciated. And what that also means is that every story kind of feels like people are reinventing the wheel, particularly mainstream outlets, that, you know, there has been incredible reporting from outlets like Rewire, formerly RH Reality Check, from outlets like Bitch, which is no longer, outlets like Jezebel, which [00:39:00] we'll see. I think they just got revived today, maybe. There's been incredible reporting, you know, under the umbrella of "women's media" that has gotten to this nuance and that was really marginalized right up until the moment Roe was a big story, in 2022 or, you know, whenever there's an election and abortion becomes a story for 5 minutes.

So, the information is out there. It just needs to become part of the practice, particularly in legacy media and to realize that this is a story that has implications for people in their day to day lives, not just every four years or when a Supreme Court seat opens up.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Exactly. And, you know, I'm just following on from that to say how galled I am by pieces... like, okay, this one's from Steven Roberts, you know, but still it's reflective of, I think, a pervasive kind of beltway media attitude. And it's a column, syndicated column, the headline's "Why [00:40:00] the abortion issue matters". All right. So, already I read "issue", so I know that my human rights are, first and foremost, a political football, like an issue to be considered. And then in the same breath, there's the idea that somebody needs to have it explained why it matters. You know, like somebody needs. doesn't understand why it's important, but then he goes on to explain that why it matters has to do with what's damaging to Joe Biden and whether Trump might be able to finesse a new line on abortion. But I guess what maybe bothered me most was that Steve Roberts says that polls show U. S. public opinion is clear, and it's unchanged: Americans want legal abortion. They want access to abortion. And he then says that since Roe, "abortion remained an abstraction to pro-abortion [00:41:00] rights voters. Their rights were protected, and their attitude was complacent" .

Now, I don't doubt that Steven Roberts had a lot of cocktail parties with some complacent White women, right? But reporting is not supposed to be, as my mother-in-law used to say, something that happens to or near an editor, you know? You're supposed to seek out the views of the people who are affected by the things that you're talking about. And reproductive justice, of course, extends beyond the right to abortion, the right to have a pregnancy and a child and a safe, healthy environment. It just seems like reporting about abortion has so much to do with who they talk to, or who they listen to, and that defines their understanding of what the meaning of access to this right means.

I guess I just want to say, uh, you know, you're a reporter: what would you like to see more or less [00:42:00] of in this coverage?

MELISSA GIRA: I mean, one thing that's maddening about that kind of coverage is It feels like, at its best, when somebody who has that kind of perspective does decide to actually reach outside their, you know, small network of friendly sources, and maybe try to contact somebody who, you know, works in a clinic or is a provider or is involved in some direct way with the provision of abortion, they tend to not treat those people with a lot of respect, right? This comes down to who they listen to and who they believe. The best reporting on abortion comes from people who are not treating their sources like a pump that they can just hit at will and get what they need out of them.

The stories I was hearing from people who work in clinics leading up to Dobbs and immediately after, you know, hearing from reporters they had never heard from before, reporters who wanted to come by in, like, two hours and talk to someone who just had an abortion. I mean, just outrageous stuff that [00:43:00] like, I can absolutely hear an editor telling them, like, that would be a great idea. But it is your job to push back and say, like, I don't know, like, I think that maybe a better time to interview someone about their personal experience of abortion isn't an hour after they've had one, when it might be illegal.

Like, there hasn't been a full appreciation of people's ability to speak out about this. It's going to be shaped by who is worried about the legal consequences of abortion, right? Like, we are disproportionately probably going to see people in states that have legal abortion access, people who might not fully appreciate the criminal risks that they're having abortions under, which does include a lot of those White cocktail party women, wherever they live.

It's a lot, I understand, to ask of sort of the way that news is really kind of political news that treats abortion as just like an issue that we return to when it's time to talk about elections or what voters want. But that kind of reporting feels so unnecessary and so out of pace with where we're [00:44:00] at right now. Like, we need stories about this gap between the rhetoric of politicians in places like Texas and Montana about valuing mothers and showing that that's not actually playing out in the lives of people in those states, who are having huge maternal mortality rates, who aren't able to get access to childcare. Like, all of these women that they say they're going to support because they're taking abortion away from them, but don't worry, we'll support you when you're pregnant and parenting. And that support is not showing up. It was never that great before this moment and it's not great now. And those are the people that need more scrutiny. Those are the people who should be held to account.

Biden's Team Finding Ways Around Brutal Abortion Ban - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-16-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Okay, let's move to Idaho. They have a complete ban on abortion essentially. And the Biden administration, in an attempt to at least have some leeway for women to get an abortion, even in those states that are not, that have banned it, [00:45:00] essentially reminded states that if you have a hospital that operates and receives Medicare money, which is just about every hospital in the country, that there is a provision there that emergency care must be given if necessary, and that includes abortions, if a doctor deems that a woman is in a state of emergency.

Now in practical terms, that's difficult because in the same way that these supposed exceptions in abortion laws are so vague that it puts doctors in a position where they're like, this is never a binary cut and dry thing; I'm going to have to go and make an argument that a 60 percent emergency, a 50 percent emergency, a 70 percent emergency is a real emergency or 30 percent or 40 percent, whatever; and I could lose my license, I could go to jail, if I do this. So from a practical standpoint it's a little bit secondary, [00:46:00] but as a legal standpoint, this is the case that the Supreme Court is going to have to look at, right?

MARK JOSEPH STERN: Yes, the Supreme Court has taken up this case and will decide exactly what federal law requires. I think you described the facts well. I would just say this statute says that hospitals have to provide stabilizing care to a patient in emergency distress to resolve their medical emergency. Idaho law, like a bunch of other abortion bans, says that you can't terminate a pregnancy until basically the patient is dying. They're either very close to death, or very close to permanent impairment of organs or other major bodily functions, which is another way of describing close to death, right? So there's a delta between those two standards. You stabilize a patient before they're that close to death. And what the Biden administration is saying is, look, federal law is supreme over state law. So Idaho law might say you can't terminate a failing pregnancy until the patient is dying. [00:47:00] But federal law says that you have to provide stabilizing care when they're in distress, but not yet at the point of death. So we think that federal law reigns supreme. Constitution says so as well. And we think that it preempts any kind of state law, whether it's Idaho or Texas or some other red state that forces women much closer to the brink of demise.

A federal judge in Idaho agreed with the Biden administration. Different federal judges in Texas disagreed with the Biden administration. The Supreme Court has now stepped in and will resolve the case. A rather ominous sign, though, is that while doing that, the Supreme Court actually stayed the Idaho decision that had sided with the Biden administration.

So for the past year plus, if you had a failing pregnancy in Idaho, you had a right to stabilize in care, including an abortion when necessary, because of this ruling. The Supreme Court just lifted that ruling, which means that Idaho law kicks back in and you have to be much closer to the point [00:48:00] of serious organ impairment or death before you can obtain emergency treatment.

I am not optimistic about how this case will turn out at the Supreme Court. The signs are pretty bleak, but I guess hope springs eternal.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Can we just talk about how much BS is involved in the idea that you can stabilize someone on the brink of death? What does that mean? Like at what point? If we just look at this, this is the whole fallacy of this whole thing too. When is someone about to fall off a cliff? Are they one foot over? Is it 90 percent of their body weight that is over that cliff? This is all subjective.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And if there's also this legal threat to the person who's supposed to pull you back from the cliff, that if they are not sufficiently close to falling off the cliff, that you could face literal prosecution or loss of your license if you don't let that percentage get a little high to meet that threshold.

MARK JOSEPH STERN: So this is the problem and vividly illustrated in Texas, which has a 99-year prison sentence for any doctor who provides an abortion that does [00:49:00] not fall under the state's extremely narrow medical exception. Doctors are looking at patients coming in. They have infections. They are bleeding out. They have amniotic fluid leaking. Their pregnancies are clearly doomed. And the doctors say, look, I don't want to go to prison for 99 years. So I am legally obligated to wait until you develop sepsis or you are hemorrhaging before I can legally terminate that pregnancy. The state has come back and said, "That's not true. These doctors are misreading the law. We would never pass a law like that." But then when Kate Cox actually went to court and said, "I have a failing pregnancy, I am bleeding, I have amniotic fluid dripping down my legs, I need an abortion," the Texas attorney general swiftly went to court to block her abortion. And in fact, issued a threat to every medical professional in the state of Texas and said, if you provide an abortion to Kate Cox, we will prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law.

Republicans Are Deleting Mentions Of Abortion From Their Campaign Websites - The Ring of Fire - Air Date 2-3-24

FARRON COUSINS - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: There's no other way to [00:50:00] say it, abortion is now a losing issue for Republicans. And part of the reason we can say that of course is because Republicans have admitted through their autopsy report and this initiative being headed by Kellyanne Conway, that abortion is in fact a losing issue for Republicans. Even in deep red States like Kansas abortion bans, when put to a vote for the public, do not and cannot pass.

So Republicans know this year and election year, a very important election year, if they campaign on abortion, they're going to lose, which is why according to a new report from The Independent over in the UK, a lot of Republicans are actually starting to scrub their campaign websites of any mention of the word abortion, any mention of being pro-life, any mention at all that really has to do with women's reproductive health freedom.

Here's what's happening. You have Congress people such [00:51:00] as Republican representative, Monica de la Cruz, Ohio Republican representative, Troy Balderson, Congresswoman, Laura Chavez de Riemer and Congressman Blake Moore. All four of these individuals in the past on their campaign websites actually had mentions of supporting pro-life policies, of restricting access to abortions for women. But now, somehow magically, all four of them no longer have any mention of any of those things anywhere on their websites. It's almost as if they're trying to convince the voters that they don't actually have a stance on this issue.

Here's the thing. The Independent found these other three, in addition to Dela Cruz, removed all vestiges of their once vocal pro-life stance, eliminating terms like abortion or pro-life or protecting the unborn from their reelection campaign websites. [00:52:00] Gee, it's almost like y'all think voters are stupid or that they all suffer from short term memory loss, which of course is what these Republicans are hoping. They're hoping the public is stupid enough to forget that Republicans took away women's rights to decide what to do with their own body. Hopefully that doesn't happen, and to be honest, I don't think it's going to happen because I don't think the public is as stupid as Republicans think. Here's another reason why.

Right now, the White House has vice president Kamala Harris. She is traveling the country, I think it was Tuesday or Monday this week, she was in California giving a speech on women's reproductive health freedom, including her stance on abortion. They're keeping the issue alive with this administration. And I think it's a good thing. Now, I don't think they should be hyper focused on it because according to polls, it's way, way down the list of things that are important to voters right now. [00:53:00] But as we get closer to the election, it's going to become more of an issue. Republicans have captured certain narratives and that's why things like immigration... immigration is the number one issue for voters right now. Which by the way, doesn't affect like 99 percent of the country. Like nobody is actually being affected by it in 99 percent of the country, but Texas has taken center stage, so voters in places where immigration's not even a thing are now freaked out about it. It's just the way it is.

But abortion right now is not the top of voters concerns, but when we get closer to the election, it will be. So it is good that Democrats are keeping it alive right now. I do think there's other issues they've got to talk more about as well, but Democrats aren't letting it go. They're not going to let voters forget. So you can scrub your website all you want, but it's not going to change the fact that your party did this, and more importantly, your party's campaigned on it for 60 years, basically. [00:54:00] So yeah, you want to erase 50, 60, I think 50 actually years of history, do your best. The voters remember. There's one party that wants to strip away your right to choose, and it's not the Democrats.

Abortion Pills For All w/ Sydney Calkin Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-6-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So, of course, you know, we're in a post-Dobbs era, and many women, people who can get pregnant, are feeling anxiety about the future of their health care, particularly if they live in red states, and in this country in particular, you know, I think a lot of women are starting to think, like, What if I need to get an abortion? What if I need to get an illegal abortion? And you know, when people hear this, I think they think of the 1950s or the movie Revolutionary Road of coat hanger abortions and bleeding and pushing yourself downstairs. I mean, not to be glib about it, but that is, like, I think the image that gets evoked. But as you write, that does not need to be the case [00:55:00] anymore with abortion pill access.

SYDNEY CALKIN: Yeah, absolutely. The, so much of the research that I did for this book actually took place before the Dobbs decision. And basically the work that I was doing was looking at, in a country when Roe was in place, abortion was constitutionally protected, and yet it was unavailable in practice for so many people. So, self-managed abortion was already a reality in the U. S. before the Dobbs decision. The post-Dobbs bans that we're seeing and the restrictions that will continue to come down are going to make it the go-to method of abortion for many people, but it was already the reality for many, many Americans who were seeking abortions before the Dobbs decision.

But as you say, self-managed abortion is not the so called coat hanger abortion of the past. In fact, it's a very safe and accessible method of abortion that's used across the world. And medication abortion pills were themselves the majority of abortions before the Dobbs decision.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Can you [00:56:00] explain the pills themselves, what the medications are and their safety and compared to, you know, say other medications?

SYDNEY CALKIN: Sure. So medication abortion in the US generally takes place with two pills. One is called mifepristone, the other is misoprostol. Mifepristone is known as Mifeprex, or RU486 in the U.S. These two medications are usually used in combination. In other countries where mifepristone isn't available and, perhaps in the future, if, mifepristone is further restricted in the U. S., people use misoprostol by itself. But for the most part in the U. S., we're talking about mifepristone plus misoprostol. These medications are extremely safe.

The safety has been what's been an issue in this Supreme Court case, well, it's been working its way through the courts, it'll be at the Supreme Court soon. But these drugs are as safe as any other medication that the FDA approves. By a lot of measures, they're safer than medications like Viagra for instance. But [00:57:00] of course, they're subject to much, much more regulation. The kind of medications that people use to self manage abortion, when they do it outside of the law, are often the same pills that are available in other countries across the world. It's just that people in the US, when they live in restrictive states, they have to get them through other methods that might be online or might be through activist groups.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, I mean, that Supreme Court case, when you see actually what the text of the claim is against mifepristone in particular, it's essentially a ton of hypotheticals about what could happen in this scenario and wildly inaccurate claims about the dangers surrounding it, which is not backed up, in my understanding, by any of the data when it comes to these drugs.

SYDNEY CALKIN: No, definitely. I mean, the irony is that the claims about safety in this case, as you say, they're very overblown. The irony is that medication abortion [00:58:00] for self-managed abortion has dramatically transformed the safety of illegal abortion around the world. So people who live in countries with restrictive laws can use medication abortion for self-managed abortion, even if they're, you know, not able to go into a hospital or a clinic for that abortion because of their local laws. And the availability of these pills and this method has produced a dramatic fall in injury and death from illegal abortion.

So, not only is it not the case that the pills are unsafe, but actually they are so much safer than the kind of abortion methods that people were using before. And, you know, medication abortion was used in 53% of all abortions in the U. S. in 2020, before the Dobbs decision came down and before these statewide bans started to come through. So, it's a highly safe method that was developed decades ago, approved in countries around the world since the late '80s, and, you know, approved by the US [00:59:00] FDA because of the evidence of its safety.

Summary 2-10-24

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with Amicus, going over the details of the Kate Cox case in Texas that made national news, as well as another personal story of medical trauma brought about by an abortion ban. The Nocturnists told the story of one doctor being targeted for performing a legal abortion for a 10-year-old girl. Amicus looked further into more stories from both patients and doctors. The Thom Hartmann Program looked at other legal avenues anti-abortion extremists could use to attempt to ban abortion medication nationwide. The Majority Report focused on a policy around abortion pills. CounterSpin discussed the way abortion gets talked about, abstracted through politics rather than impacts on people. The Majority Report looked at some efforts being made by the Biden administration to soften some abortion bans where possible. And Ring of Fire explained how all of this is playing out politically.

That's what [01:00:00] everybody heard, but members also heard a bonus clip from The Majority Report diving deeper on the safety of the medical abortion pill for self-managed abortions.

To hear that and have all of our bonus content delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And now, we'll hear from you.

Potential concerns about walkable towns - Jeff from Charlotte, NC

VOICEMAILER JEFF FROM CHARLOTTE, NC: Jay, how are you? This is Jeff. Long time, no call. I'm in Charlotte, North Carolina.

I was giving you a call in response to your most recent episode regarding the smaller cities, and they also talked about the 15 minute city. And I just want to say the concept is good, sounds good on the surface. However, there are some points that you have to take into consideration.

It's just these small communities might not be for everybody. Some people [01:01:00] enjoy their space. Some people like to be left alone. Some people also have, by, nature,\ of who they are, do not have the luxury of working close to where they reside, which in turn, a lot of times these people who live in these smaller communities, they live and work close to where they reside, and so do all their friends and everyone they communicate with. So they're actually creating a smaller group within themselves, and they're also, in the long term, being exposed to less people.

Another challenge I will say about these walkable communities and these common communities is many are not handicap accessible, because [01:02:00] I recently had a elderly person living with us, and when we would go out to dinner, we would go to so many shopping centers that they say, oh, they're walkable, they're a community and yes, they were, however, the handicap parking was so far away from the restaurants where the person who could barely walk 50 feet was out of breath by the time we got to our location at the restaurant.

So these are some points that we have to consider. Again, it sounds good to have these small walkable communities, and it sounds like you have less isolation because you have community around you, but there are some drawbacks. Thank you. Have a great day.

Final comments on addressing concerns regarding the 15-minute city concept of walkable towns

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Thanks to all those who call into the voicemail line or write in their messages to be played as VoicedMails. If you'd like to leave a comment or a question of your own to be played on the show, you can record or text us a message at (202) [01:03:00] 999-3991, or send me an email to [email protected].

And thanks Jeff, for his message. However, I just want to reframe what he said, like only slightly, but I think it is going to make a big difference. He mentioned a couple of elements of walkable communities that could be downsides or drawbacks, but I would describe them more as things to think about when designing and building a community, as opposed to an inherent problem. There's a big difference between an inherent problem, something that cannot be avoided, and an implementation problem—say, something that could be solved if you came up with some thoughtful design considerations.

For example, on a recent bonus show for members, we were having a discussion about the idea of banning phone use for kids in schools. We went over some of the pros, there are a lot of them, but we also looked at some of the arguments people were making against bans. And a lot of them ran into the same [01:04:00] issue of confusing, inherent and implementation problems. And the best example was the very real, very unsurprising and definitely serious problem of how phone bans are sometimes administered inequitably.

At least in some cases, schools with more Black and Brown kids were doling out punishments for phone use that far exceeded the kinds of punishments being used at schools with similar bans, but a greater proportion of white students. So, it was argued, that the problem of inequitable punishments being given was a reason to repeal the phone bans.

But, inequitable punishments, while an obvious problems, something that definitely needs to be addressed, it's not an inherent problem to the idea of banning phones in schools. That's just an implementation problem. And that's what I thought of when Jeff described an area where a person with limited mobility had trouble reaching the destination on [01:05:00] foot. That's not necessarily an inherent problem with 15 minutes cities, but it is absolutely an important thing to consider when designing them. There are definitely critics who say that the 15 minutes city concept is too dependent on abelist assumptions of how people's bodies work.

Like, we think that people can all walk for 15 minutes or use a bike to get around. But design considerations that really focus on accessibility can go a long way toward alleviating those problems. The most obvious is public transit, which is already at the heart of all 15 minutes city concepts. The idea is to create spaces where private cars are removed and replaced with other mobility options—most notably walking or riding a bike, but public transit is always part of the plan as well.

Also really good sidewalk networks with wheelchair access being kept in mind are [01:06:00] super critical for accessibility. I found a counterpoint article about how to build walkable cities. With accessibility in mind, and sidewalks are at the heart of it. You have to have a really, really high quality sidewalks.

But there's also the option of designing carve-outs for those in need, rather than trying to design a system that works for literally everyone. For instance, we already have disability placards to access parking spots set aside for disabled people. There's no reason disability placards couldn't also be used to access public transit only areas of 15 minutes cities, because some people just really need that carve out—there are going to be those circumstances.

And there was a similar argument made about cell phone bans. Some people may expect for themselves or someone in their family to have a medical emergency, it was argued, and in a situation like that, communication is extremely important. [01:07:00] And so they said that every kid in school should have access to their phones, because of the very small number of cases who would reasonably expect to have to deal with an emergency like that.

Now, what seemed obvious to me is that there should be medical waivers for kids in that kind of a situation, just like there are for disability placards issued to people who absolutely need to park. In the front of a parking lot. It's not that complicated.

Now Jeff mentioned that they actually did park in the disabled parking spot and still had a long way to walk. Now without more information, I'm going to have to speculate a bit, but what's coming to mind is not so much a 15 minute city center concept, but more like maybe one of those outdoor pedestrian malls with a huge parking lot on the outside, and then only walking paths in the middle. Maybe that's what it was, maybe it wasn't, but that's what's in my head. In a case like that there wouldn't be any public transit option like a boss, because there are no roads to [01:08:00] drive on. You've got the parking lots and the outside and then nothing but pedestrian walkways throughout.

Although, you know what that scenario reminds me of airports. They're huge spaces—without vehicle access—where people of all physical abilities need to be able to get around. So what airports do is provide mobility options, either wheelchairs available to borrow which, may or may not be a viable option in a pedestrian mall scenario. Or there's those little electric carts with drivers who cruise around giving rides to anyone who needs a lift. I would love to see something like that implemented in pedestrian only areas to help maximize accessibility, while maintaining the peacefulness of car-free spaces.

Now, I know Jeff mentioned other things, there's the people who would simply prefer to be farther away from others, and people who simply won't be able to work near the city center, meaning that they'd still have [01:09:00] to commute. And sure, there's always going to be those cases, but the idea of rethinking our urban planning is to move the needle on meeting people's needs, not to magically meet literally everyone's different desires.

In fact on the personal preferences, front-end there are conspiracy theories about 15 minutes cities saying that they're not just a design idea to create better lives for people and reduce climate change, but that they're an evil plot to trap people inside small cities and not let them out, because, something, something, evil plans, something, control people, et cetera. It's not really clear. We intentionally did not address those in the show because there were ridiculous distraction to be clear. I know that's not what Jeff was referring to, but we did have a conversation about it on a bonus show. Uh, episode 2 67. bonus episode 2 67, if you're interested.

So anyway, the point is that I think it's really important to be clear on [01:10:00] the difference between inherent problems and solvable problems that should be addressed. When I heard Jeff describe walkable communities as having drawbacks, like when the elderly person living with him had a hard time walking to the restaurant, it sounded like an immutable problem, right? Like, well, that's a drawback and when it gets framed that way, people just start to do the math. They're like, well, okay. So, there was some benefits to this idea, but don't forget those drawbacks. So. You know, when it all hashes out is the idea of worth or not. But that only makes sense if you're faced with an inherent problem.

So it's much more beneficial to get everyone into the problem solving mindset. And the article that I found detailing the criticism of walkable towns from an accessibility perspective, closed with this. "Disability is often an afterthought in planning, education, and practice. Perhaps this reflects a lack of representation of disability and disabled persons in planning, education, and professional practice. Designing [01:11:00] sustainable inclusive, urban futures, however, requires inclusive education, thinking, rhetoric, and design from the beginning. My challenge to those involved in urban design and planning. Including planners, engineers, geographers, and architects, is to consider what cities or neighborhoods might look like when designed with disability in mind."

Damn straight. We absolutely need to do that. And as we know from the curb cut effect, when we design with disability in mind, we ended up creating systems and features that provide benefits that stretch far beyond the disabled community. So it's important to keep those concerns coming, but they're not necessarily drawbacks. They may be problems to be solved, challenges to be met.

As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else you can leave a voicemail or send us a text at [01:12:00] (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian and Ben for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism, segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page or from right inside the Apple Podcast app.

Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes. All through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

[01:13:00] So coming to from far outside, the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay!, and this has been the Best of the Left Podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1608 Widespread Loneliness is a Solvable Social Problem (Transcript)

Posted by · February 07, 2024 11:50 AM

Air Date 2/7/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast, in which we take a look at the loneliness epidemic that long predates the COVID lockdowns, which of course only made things worse. But it's not primarily a cultural or even a technological problem in origin as many believe. The issue, I think, largely has to do with how our built environment is designed, and then social and technological aspects compound the problem.

Sources today include the PBS NewsHour, Studio Leonardo, The Happy Urbanist, a TED Talk, Changing Places, Strong Towns, Not Just Bikes and Vox, with an additional members-only clip from Andrewism.

Surgeon General discusses health risks of loneliness and steps to help connect with others - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 5-2-23

AMNA NAWAZ - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: Your declaration in this report very clearly link loneliness to matters of life or death, to put it plainly. This one number stuck out to me; it found social isolation increases the risk of premature mortality by nearly 30 percent. [00:01:00] How and why did you come to focus on this topic?

DR. VIVEK MURTHY: Well, I had certainly had firsthand experience with loneliness in my own life, and also in my care of patients, where I found so often people come into the hospital for one condition or another, but there was loneliness lurking in the background.

But it was only when I began my tenure as Surgeon General that I started to realize, in talking to people across the country, that loneliness was extraordinarily common. In fact, we are now finding that one in two adults report measurable levels of loneliness. And it turns out that young people are most affected than any other group.

And here's why this is so concerning: it's because we have realized that loneliness is more than just a bad feeling. It has real consequences for our mental and physical health. It increases our risk of depression, anxiety and suicide. But social disconnection also raises the risk of heart disease and dementia and premature death on levels on par with smoking daily and even greater than the risks that we see associated with [00:02:00] obesity.

So, however you look at it, loneliness and isolation are public health concerns that we have to prioritize.

AMNA NAWAZ - HOST, PBS NEWSHOUR: We see, according to your numbers, that things were already trending this way, that it was then accelerated during the pandemic. In fact, one of the numbers you highlight was, between 2003 and 2020, social engagement with friends decreased from 60 minutes a day in 2003 to just 20 minutes a day in 2020. Before COVID, how do you see that? What was driving that trend?

DR. VIVEK MURTHY: Well, there are a number of factors. And I'm glad you mentioned COVID, because COVID has poured fuel on a fire that was already burning. It's exacerbated loneliness and isolation.

But this has been building, Amna, for decades. We have in fact seen a decrease in participation in community organizations, in faith organizations and recreational leagues over several decades. We have seen that technology has fundamentally changed how we interact with one another and how we communicate with one another and, unfortunately, has often replaced what used to be rich in-person [00:03:00] connections with online connections, which often are of lower quality.

And, finally, we see that people are just experiencing tremendous change in their lives. They're moving more. They're changing jobs more often. And that can disrupt a lot of our social relationships.

It's not that these trends are necessarily bad, in and of themselves. But what we have to do now in modern life is intentionally build in the infrastructure we need for connection in our individual lives, as well as in our communities.

Our Loneliness Epidemic is Infrastructuralized - Studio Leonardo - Air Date 6-2-22

RACHEL LEONARDO - HOST, STUDIO LEONARDO: Let's start by looking at this at a macro level. On the left, we have Los Angeles, California. And on the right, Copenhagen, Denmark. Nice places, right? Two well-known cities.

But I don't really want to focus on how one differs from the other in terms of their climate or even their culture, although this does have an impact on that. What I want to touch on is the characteristics that actually make one of these cities lonelier than the other.

And I know what you may be thinking: these are pretty standard maps. [00:04:00] The information on them is fairly basic. It's what you would see in Google or Apple Maps or Waze or whatever applications you use while driving around. It doesn't seem to present much more information than just that. But I actually want to show you something different. Every map that you have ever seen consists of at least one of six elements; that is, the city block, the buildings, the streets, the public space, the topography if we're getting technical or the landscape that we're in, and the last one is the overall land use.

So if we go into our maps again, we can actually start to highlight some of these elements. You begin to see how predominant the streets are in L. A. versus that of Copenhagen and the open space Copenhagen offers in comparison to L. A.

Now I know these are two completely different cities; L. A. is significantly larger than Copenhagen, the climate is different, and there are other factors that have led into them being constructed the way that they have been.

But this is interesting, no? I mean, [00:05:00] if you think about it, L. A. is known for its heavy traffic. And the age-old American solution to traffic problems is adding more car lanes to the highways or roads, to which the response is more cars on the roads, which creates more traffic. And so we continue to make our roads wider and wider, only to find that the traffic problem is getting worse and worse. And what happens when you add more lanes is you take away space that could be used for bike lanes or open public spaces.

I mean, picture this. You're standing on the sidewalk. Maybe you're trying to walk from your job to the gym. And on one side of you, you have huge skyscrapers, and then the other is a four to five lane road with cars barreling down it at least 40 to 50 miles per hour. That scenario doesn't feel like a very safe or inviting place to [00:06:00] be in.

Now imagine you're walking down the street and the buildings are more proportionate to you, and on the other side of the street there are trees and maybe some housing and the road is actually blocked off to traffic. You can walk in and out of the street without feeling the danger that you would potentially get hit by oncoming traffic.

And if you think about it, this isn't just some theory, right? If we look at Harvard's website, we see that a group of researchers have reported that about 61 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds experience severe loneliness.

Now when we look at the Danish website, we actually see that 22 percent of young adults between the same age range experience loneliness. Which means that young adults in the US in that same age group experience loneliness at a rate three times higher than that of a Danish person.

VIDEO CLIP: Coincidence? I think not!

RACHEL LEONARDO - HOST, STUDIO LEONARDO: The people in Europe are known for walking more, whereas in the US we are always known for taking a car. The roads [00:07:00] dominate the L.A. map and there's barely any green space inside of the city. You always have to go outwards to find hiking trails, and even still you can't walk or bike there. You're pretty much always taking a car.

And when we look at the map of Copenhagen we can visibly see that there's a balance between these elements that we mentioned before in the map. There is more green space. There are these small, narrow roads that spark your curiosity and make you want to walk down them. And when you are actually there on street level, these elements combined well, not only make the city feel safer, but also more inviting.

Copenhagen is a city whose land use is catering towards the people who are inside of that city, whereas Los Angeles, and actually many US cities, are designed to cater that experience towards the people driving inside of their cars. Huh.

So then if most American cities you have to use a car to get from [00:08:00] point A to point B, that means I reduced the amount of time that I'd be spending outside on a daily basis. And when I'm not outside as much, and my neighbors and friends aren't outside as much because they're also using the car to get from point A to point B, then we are less likely to randomly run into each other on the street. Which also reduces my chances to feel like I'm a part of a community. Because there is no casually bumping into or indirectly meeting up with friends.

And when we don't have community, that's when we start to feel lonely.

VIDEO CLIP: I think she's got it.

RACHEL LEONARDO - HOST, STUDIO LEONARDO: So when we take away our natural ability to be able to interact with one another, we actually begin to build our houses larger, so that we can fill the void of this loneliness that we're feeling with more space. But when we have more space as [00:09:00] individuals, then we actually make it more difficult to interact with one another on a daily basis, which also makes us feel more lonely. This process is cyclical.

And this is the infrastructuralization of loneliness. It's a fact that between 1950 and 2022 that our home sizes have tripled. And really, for what? How often are you using all of the space in your homes?

I think the harsh reality is that we are distracting ourselves from feeling lonely by building bigger houses. But that distraction is temporary. And once we feel like we've had our fill, we just build even bigger houses. And I don't think that that's solving our problem.

Look, I'm not trying to condemn anyone's lifestyle. Oftentimes, we don't even realize that maybe this is why we are more prone to being lonely as a nation. And fortunately, I do feel like we are catching on to this.

[00:10:00] Architectural and urban design firms like Optico in Tempe, Arizona are creating carless communities to fill a demand that people are now desiring. These communities have little to no access to cars, which makes the residents there feel safer. You're reducing noise pollution, and it just adds a quaintness that you can't get when you live next to huge roads. They offer this European vibe that we all seem to love so much. And that vibe is actually because of a well-balanced mix of the six elements that we mentioned before.

In order to begin changing the infrastructure of the US, we have to show that there's a demand for this, right? Encourage your cities and towns to throw a block party and close down the street for a weekend and use that as a test to see if this is something that would be better for the area that you're [00:11:00] living in.

These changes will come slowly. Infrastructure is not something that's built overnight. But I'm excited to see that there are people who are working on this right now and looking to make those changes.

Original Barcelona video - @The Happy Urbanist TikTok - Air Date 12-15-23

JON JON WESOLOWSKI - THE HAPPY URBANIST: When did we go from a casual socialization culture to a planned socialization culture? The answer is complicated, but fascinating. Every sort of socialization we do in America has to be done with intent. Whether it's parents scheduling a play date, showing up for soccer, meeting a friend for coffee. And all this effort translates to being exhausted if you're an extrovert, and being lonely if you're an introvert, because you're less likely to want to do all that. But I think it's a hardware issue.

Think of our cities, the public realm, the design of the landscape as hardware, and human activity within it as software. I think I got this idea from Coach Balto. One of the reasons we don't have more serendipitous, spontaneous interactions with our neighbors like we used to in the past and like they do in other countries is because of how we built our cities and this [00:12:00] became true to me when I was in Barcelona. Check this out. The typical neighborhood in Barcelona looks like this. You can live anywhere in the neighborhood and be a 15 minute walk from school, business, groceries, church, park, plaza, cafes, whatever you need. So, this facilitated more neighborly living. On your way home from walking your kid home from school, you might stop at the plaza. And this happens every day after school in Barcelona. Parents hang out in the periphery, kids get together and play in the middle. And this is where introverts would chime in and tell me like, I don't want to hang out with people every day, that sounds exhausting. But you're thinking of it from a planned socialization mindset. Because if this is something that's happening day in and day out with little pressure, you can show up, go off to the corner with your headphones on, or open up your laptop and get work done. But if you do overhear an interesting conversation or see someone you've been meaning to connect with, you can do it.

As an introvert, it makes your life so much easier because you're not having to put yourself out there. And all these plazas are lined with cafes and bars, so a lot of the [00:13:00] time the parents are hanging out having a drink while the kids play. Oh, by the way, unstructured free play is so healthy for kids, it's like one of the best things you can do to decrease potential future anxiety and depression. And in our planning socialization culture, where every kid's outing has to be facilitated by an adult driving them there, an adult with nothing to do, kids are losing autonomy in that unstructured free play. This is giving them that back. What's interesting about cities that have these neighborhoods, the cities develop by copying and pasting these neighborhoods over and over again. So that, as the city grows, you just have all these different neighborhoods, each with similar and different personalities. And your walk or your commute to work or school, whatever it is, it's 15 minutes, is at a human pace. You smell smells, you see sights, you can hop into a store if you need to, or stop and say hey to someone. You're introduced to new types of people and new ways of living life.

But let's contrast all this with planned socialization cultures and how they came about. In America, we decided to [00:14:00] divide up the city based on uses. The idea is that the commute is still 15 minutes, but it requires a car in order to get those times. But unlike being a pedestrian, when you're isolated inside of steel and glass, you don't care about the places you're driving through. Even now, you can think of places you'd be more than willing to drive your car through that you wouldn't want to walk to as a pedestrian. This is why Jane Jacobs says that when we truly call a place interesting, we mean it's interesting from the pedestrian's perspective. And because of this, we create a lot of what are called liminal spaces. Spaces of transition that don't feel comfortable to exist in. Think of an empty parking garage or a really wide street. These are places people don't want to be. But they're required in order to make these commutes feasible for these planned events.

The problem is, this is so inefficient that the city's footprint has to continue to grow in this same pattern. So that Nashville, even though it's similar in size to Barcelona, population wise, landmass-wise it takes up an [00:15:00] area 13 times that of Barcelona. This is expensive and part of the reason why our city's infrastructure is crumbling. That's 13 times more roads, power lines, sewer lines for the same size tax base. This also means when we go here to the store, we're not seeing people that we encountered at work and on our way to the coffee shop. We're just encountering people we happen to see at that store. It's a lot looser social capital, and social capital is one of the biggest indicators on whether or not someone can bust out of poverty and have increased economic mobility.

What's strange is America didn't used to be this way, and most of the world isn't this way. This is how cities naturally developed, a strong neighborhood copy and pasted over time to build out a city. You might think, It's America, land of the free, home of the brave. We have liberty, and this is what we chose to build. But that's not exactly true. This is what people 70 years ago chose to build, and they made laws to outlaw anything else. And these laws and plans were actually quite [00:16:00] nefarious. America's success started before this started happening, and our success is likely in spite of this, not because of it. One of these is better for our kids and for our mental health. One of these happens as a result of freedom and liberty and personal choice. One of these has to be enforced by sort of authoritarian laws. One of these creates liminal spaces that we don't like to inhabit. One of these bankrupts our cities and keeps marginalized people marginalized.

And it's about this point that people come in and they like to comment something like, Well, capitalism, that's why. But I'm not going to accept those comments right now. Because Paris and London aren't capitalistic. If America became this, capitalism would find a way to thrive within this, like, casual socialization structure. It feel like, a lot of times, capitalism is an excuse used by those who don't want to take action. Because you want to know something? A lot of these laws and things that are happening are at the municipal level. They're at your city. You're being held up by city [00:17:00] councilors who win their elections by 50 votes. These are the things that can be changed. A small group of committed people can reshape their community for more spontaneous., whimsical, and delightful interactions by simply repealing laws that are on the books right now. I don't want to make it sound too easy or that it's too straightforward, but it's easier than you think and you're more capable to help influence it than you think.

How cohousing can make us happier (and live longer) | Grace Kim - TED - Air Date 8-7-17

GRACE KIM: Co-housing is an intentional neighborhood where people know each other and look after one another. In co-housing, you have your own home, but you also share significant spaces, both indoors and out. But before I show you some pictures of co-housing, I'd like to first introduce you to my friends Sheila and Spencer.

When I first met Sheila and Spencer, they were just entering their 60s and Spencer was looking ahead at the end of a long career in elementary education. And he really disliked the idea that he might not have children in his life upon retirement.

They're now my neighbors. We live in a co-housing [00:18:00] community that I not only designed, but developed, and have my architecture practice in. This community is very intentional about our social interactions. So let me take you on a tour.

From the outside, we look like any other small apartment building. In fact, we look identical to the one next door, except that we're bright yellow. Inside, the homes are fairly conventional. We all have living rooms and kitchens, bedrooms and baths, and there are nine of these homes around a central courtyard. This one's mine, and this one's Spencer and Sheila's. And the thing that makes this building uniquely co-housing are not the homes, but rather, what happens here, the social interactions that happen in and around that central courtyard. When I look across the courtyard, I look forward to seeing Spencer and Sheila. In fact, every morning, this is what I see. Spencer waving at me furiously as we're making our breakfast.

From our homes, we look down into the courtyard. [00:19:00] And depending on the time of year, we see this. Kids and grown ups in various combinations, playing and handing out with each other. There's a lot of giggling and chatter. There's a lot of hula hooping. And every now and then, Hey, quit hitting me, or a cry from one of the kids. These are the sounds of our daily lives and the sounds of social connectedness.

At the bottom of the courtyard, there are a set of double doors, and those lead into the common house. And I consider the common house the secret sauce of co-housing. It's a secret sauce because it's the place where the social interactions and community life begin. And from there, it radiates out through the rest of the community.

Inside our common house, we have a large dining room to seat all 28 of us and our guests. And we dine together three times a week. In support of those [00:20:00] meals, we have a large kitchen so that we can take turns cooking for each other in teams of three. So that means, with 17 adults, I lead cook once every six weeks. Two other times, I show up and help my team with the preparation and cleanup. And all those other nights, I just show up. I have dinner, talk with my neighbors, and I go home having been fed a delicious meal by someone who cares about my vegetarian preferences.

Our nine families have intentionally chosen an alternative way of living. Instead of pursuing the American dream, where we might have been isolated in our single family homes, we instead chose co-housing so that we can increase our social connections.

And that's how co-housing starts, with a shared intention to live collaboratively. And intention is the single most important characteristic that differentiates co-housing from any other housing model. And while intention is difficult to see or even [00:21:00] show, I'm an architect, and I can't help but show you more pictures. So here are a few examples to illustrate how intention has been expressed in some of the communities I visited.

Through the careful selection of furniture, lighting, and acoustic materials to support eating together, and the careful location and visual access to kids' play areas around and inside the common house, and the consideration of scale and distribution of social gathering nodes in and around the community to support our daily lives.

All of these spaces help contribute to and elevate the sense of "communitas" in each community. What was that word? Communitas. Communitas is a fancy social science way of saying spirit of community. And in visiting over 80 different communities, my measure of communitas became how frequently did [00:22:00] residents eat together.

While it's completely up to each group how frequently they have common meals, I know some that have eaten together every single night for the past 40 years. I know others that have an occasional potluck once or twice a month. And from my observations, I can tell you those that eat together more frequently, they exhibit higher levels of communitas.

It turns out, when you eat together, you start planning more activities together. When you eat together, you share more things. You start to watch each other's kids. You lend out your power tools. You borrow each other's cars. And despite all this, as my daughter loves to say, everything is not rainbows and unicorns in co-housing, and I'm not best friends with every single person in my community. We even have differences and conflicts. But living in co-housing, we're intentional about our relationships. [00:23:00] We're motivated to resolve our differences. We follow up, we check in, we speak our personal truths, and when appropriate, we apologize.

Skeptics will say that co-housing is only interesting or attractive to a very small group of people. And I'll agree with that. If you look at Western cultures around the globe, those living in co-housing are just a fractional percent. But that needs to change, because our very lives depend upon it.

In 2015, Brigham Young University completed a study that showed a significant increased risk of premature death in those who are living in isolation. The US Surgeon General has declared isolation to be a public health epidemic. And this epidemic is not restricted to the US alone. So, when I said earlier that co-housing is an [00:24:00] antidote to isolation, what I should have said is that co-housing can save your life.

Fifteen-minute cities: inside the new model reshaping the world’s urban landscapes - Changing Places - Air Date 8-8-22

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: How did we get to a place in our world where most of what we need and do is located so far from our homes or immediate neighborhoods?

Jo Davis: I think you've got to look really back quite a long way to get to that answer. The industrial revolution was fundamental in all of that, and then that moved through the 19th and 20th Century with zonal planning. So, in effect, what we did is we put homes in one location, and we zoned the employment in another location, and the shops in the other. And of course then, with the growth of the car, that was absolutely fine. So, that's how we got to zonal planning. What obviously has changed in the UK is that that was based on a 1947 planning act. But we then turned around to the 1990 planning act, it was all about sustainable transport. It was actually all about actually, what does sustainable city mean? And therefore, we had to question whether actually those barriers to connecting places [00:25:00] was failing us.

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: Yeah. In some cities like London, the theater district is in the West End, and more niche high streets like those in Kensington and Hampstead are located on the other side of the city. Is the urban plan of our current cities restrictive by design, or just by folks buying into this idea that this is how things are, and this is just how it will continue to be?

Jo Davis: Well, it's really interesting. The starting point is that still, 80% of our population has a car. So, immediately, this first thought is to go by car or to travel by car. So that connection is done by car in the first instance. Second point that you just raised, which I think is largely important, more so in the UK than possibly elsewhere globally, is the fact that actually the history of how our cities has evolved influences where things are located, but also how you travel around places. And that's been really important, therefore, in actually allowing us to redress this point and to actually challenge whether [00:26:00] traveling to leisure and traveling to shops by car is the only option. And those barriers are being broken down there.

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: Let's hear from Professor Carlos Moreno, the man at the forefront of the 15-minute city.

Carlos Moreno: We need today to redefine our urban lifestyle, because this urban alternative lifestyles are not sustainable. One of the most relevant contribution is our crazy commute for going from my home to our office, two, three hours for a round trip. And at the same time, all actions linked with this hectic urban alternative lifestyles, we need to change not only preserving our environment, but for preserving our social link.

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: Prior to Mayor Anne Hidalgo's commitment to making [00:27:00] Paris a 15-minute city, there were places like cities... Amsterdam prided themselves on being very accessible, but was that simply because of the size of the city, or was that planned out? And are you seeing anything similar to that in the UK?

Jo Davis: So, I think without question that your Paris and your Amsterdams, they were planned out. That approach was in policy. That 15-minute walking place was in policy. Whilst it's best practice in the UK, in terms of the time and country planning association in the Royal Time Planning Institute, it's not policy, it's not dictated. So, therefore our ability is influenced by that. But then what's really happened in the UK, which I think is really interesting is that we started to challenge what makes a good place. And instead of designing for the car or designing for specific locations, what would you think is not what it looks like on the outside. How does it function? How does that space function? How do people move through it? In the city centers, what do people need to have a successful lifestyle? So actually [00:28:00] therefore moving away from the need from a car into actually I need a really good cycle route, or I really need a really good place to sit outside to enjoy my environment. And certainly COVID in the UK fundamentally changed that when everybody flipped from eating inside to outside. So therefore those spaces, that road space and the quality and the air quality of those spaces to allow people to sit outside fundamentally flipped overnight. And that's really changed, not through policy and dictate, but actually through people's demands and wants and expectations of the city.

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: When it comes to the UK, are there cities that are committing to becoming 15-minute cities? And on the flip side of that, are there cities that are just dropping the ball?

Jo Davis: Not necessarily 15-minute cities in the way that you are perceiving them in your kind of your Paris and your Amsterdam where there's a dictate to that. In terms of the quality of those locations, all of the cities attest about walkability. What makes a good, safe city for people to [00:29:00] move around it, live in it without reliance on the planet or on the car? That's what's changing. So in effect it's a parallel process to 15-minute cities, but it's being taken from a different angle.

Speaker 10: I can't speak for all Vancouverites but it's definitely something that appeals to me. Yeah, and that's just because I decided many years ago to go car free. And that's as a result of living in Japan for a year and relying on mass transit. Tokyo was highly transited. There were trains and transit everywhere to go everywhere and was so convenient. So I came back to Vancouver and I just wanted to see if I could live that lifestyle here. And I'm very pro 15-minute cities.

MARIAM SOBH - HOST, CHANGING PLACES: Can you tell me about how and why Bristol, England, from your point of view, has adopted a 15-minute city ethos and how it will benefit the [00:30:00] city and its residents in the long term?

Jo Davis: So I think Bristol is ahead of the game. So when it had its cycle strategy in 2000, so it was the European Cycle City, that changed the goalpost into the way that people were intended or encouraged to move around the city. So, we started to create the Brunel Mile that went from the train station right away to the city center and into the residential areas. That created the opportunities and the space for people to walk and cycle safely across the city. We're seeing policies that require every development on the harbor side to have a harbor-side walk in front of it so you can do a circular walk around it. So there's a number of really good policies that have been put forward by the city, through its planning process to blend that kind of 15-minute city center and that removal of cars from the city. So, it's a carrot and stick approach.

You Don’t Have To Move To Live In A Better Place - Strong Towns - Air Date 1-9-24

ERIC WEBER: What I say, let's just do it as a community and get it done and get a thank you from the city, like, Thank you for taking care of this problem. Thank you for being a part of our [00:31:00] community and saying, I care about this community. This is what we're doing. And give it the stamp of approval instead of the, well, Did you see what they did?

HOST STRONG TOWNS: This is Eric, and he's the kind of person that any city would be lucky to have. He embodies the Strong Town's principle of seeing needs and meeting them. And he runs the Union Gospel Mission. As you can tell, he's not one to wait when he sees an opportunity to make a difference.

ERIC WEBER: That's our outreach department for domestic violence. We have a youth area over here. Fridays at one to three, they get free haircuts. A community art space. This is our dentist office area. This is a teaching kitchen. This is a women's center right here. I'm not gonna send a 17-year old boy over to the men's center without his parents, right? So, we decided to create, this used to be a big empty space, and so we created a place.

HOST STRONG TOWNS: Eric and the Union Gospel Mission aren't the kind of people who just wait for things to get done. And the local conversation isn't either. After painting crosswalks in front of the Union Gospel Mission for an event, [00:32:00] both groups noticed this similarity and decided to start the CRC, or the Community Revitalization Collective mentioned earlier.

ERIC WEBER: Like, if we're gonna feed more people and do bigger things, I'll go get it. And so sure enough, I showed up with it. He's like, we need a refrigerator. I'm like, here you go. There's your refrigerator, you know? You know? Like, what do you need now? You need pots and pans? We got that, too. You know? So it's one of those things, how can I help our community? How can they help Jordan and his team do better stuff in our community?

HOST STRONG TOWNS: Do you see it now? For five years, people in Strong Town Sioux Falls were grabbing coffee, painting crosswalks, talking cities, making connections, slowly and slowly, and then all at once it comes together. Those years of relationships and built trust mean that they don't just have to talk.

LOCAL NEWS CLIP: An organization built around bringing people together received a $100,000 grant to study the Whittier neighborhood and bring forward ideas for the area.

JORDAN DEFFENBAUGH: There were plenty of grants we applied for that we didn't get. [00:33:00] There were plenty of projects that we dreamed up in these meetings and they never happened. But, that iteration, that prototyping that we did, put us in a place where we were ready to get and receive that $100,000. If we got that $100,000 the first year, we would have screwed it up.

HOST STRONG TOWNS: What Jordan is saying is reminiscent of what Jane Jacobs called cataclysmic money, where a neighborhood sees disinvestment for a long time and then is presented with a ton of money all at once, which can change a neighborhood radically and quickly. So, there is risk with receiving a large grant like this.

JOHN PATTISON: If we were to get these big grants, like they got in Sioux Falls, too quickly, before we have really cohered as a team, before we tried things, before we've developed a leadership team, critically, before we've developed a reputation in our community, that can be disastrous. You really need the [00:34:00] resilience that comes from trying things, sometimes failing, sometimes succeeding, but growing stronger and more robust.

HOST STRONG TOWNS: And luckily the group in Sioux Falls did go through this process. They knew what they were doing because they spent time listening to their community's needs. By staying involved at the community level, they were then ready to act when groups like Habitat for Humanity had similar goals. Habitat was already a major player in town working to revitalize the Whittier neighborhood through what they call the Quality of Life Framework, which begins with the dreams and concerns of a neighborhood and works up from there.

MARCUS BRANDENBURG: Um, and so through that process, after a few meetings, I started noticing that there's more and more individuals that were joining us, but wasn't quite sure what that connection was. And then I found out it was Strong Town members that started to come to the CRC and actually started to help us with some of these projects throughout our community.

HOST STRONG TOWNS: There's also something special about this approach that we should take note of. The grant that the CRC received isn't being [00:35:00] used all at once on a huge project. It's being used to continue that same process of listening to a community's needs, fixing the next smallest thing, and then iterating to figure out what works. One way that they keep tabs on the community's needs is simple: hosting events based around food.

MARCUS BRANDENBURG: So sometimes, you know, starting at the lower levels, you know, just serving a taco or painting someone's house or, you know, doing yard work. It may seem kind of, you know, that it's not really making an impact, but it is because it helps those networking aspects, like I was saying. It's building relationship. It's, uh... and then it's just amazing how that develops over time and how things just all come together and connect.

HOST STRONG TOWNS: With things coming together, Sioux Falls is securely in the making moves stage. Sure, they're nowhere close to being Amsterdam or Copenhagen, but even if they had the billions or trillions needed to make those massive changes immediately, the community would fight that kind of top down massive initiative.

It's [00:36:00] frustrating, sure, but if we want to live in a resilient, vibrant, and unique place, those changes need to come from a swarm of locals, all across town, making incremental changes, listening to the needs of neighborhoods, and winning people over by addressing those needs. To do this, you're going to have to touch some grass, get outside, make some friends, and then grab a paintbrush, a trash picker, or a hammer and get to work.

There are so many reasons that people move, and we aren't saying that you shouldn't. But if you're pro/con list even suggests that you might stay, we think it's not only worth your time to leave your place better than you found it, but it's also a really meaningful way to live. We all want to live a good life in a prosperous place, and you can move the needle in that direction. You have allies in your city waiting for you to do something. Friends and teammates who are ready to meet you and a lot of stroads to, um, to unstroad.[00:37:00]

Why American public transit is so bad? - Vox - Air Date 10-22-20

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: This is Cincinnati in 1955. It's what a lot of American cities used to look like. There were some highways, but most of the city was on a grid, which made it easy to get around either on foot or on public transit, like streetcars. But around the same time, a huge government infrastructure project changed the US dramatically. New interstate highways were built from coast to coast, many of them running right through the downtowns of many cities. Today, Cincinnati looks like this. Instead of a grid, there's a tangle of highways that make some neighborhoods almost impossible to get to on foot. And if you don't drive, it's hard to get around the city at all.

The same thing happened in countless other cities too, like Detroit and Kansas City. And as cities expanded outward along those highways, one kind of American neighborhood flourished, entirely residential, filled with single family homes. And because they were spread out instead of dense, they also changed how Americans got around. Living there required you to [00:38:00] travel a lot farther for just about anything. By 2020, a study found that the average workday distance traveled for Americans was seven miles.

ADIE TOMER: Now if you're a driver, that doesn't sound long at all. In fact, in your head you might be thinking, that only takes 10 minutes. It's a biking distance that is both strenuous and potentially unsafe, and for pedestrians it's a nearly impossible distance to traverse in any kind of reasonable time. By seeing these kind of travel distances, we understand the consequences of what we've built: automobile-oriented neighborhoods.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: A later approach to neighborhood planning has created places that look more like this: neighborhoods designed to put you closer to what you need, that center around a transit hub, with buildings that contain not just housing, but office space and businesses too. This is called transit-oriented development. And the people who live in these places are less likely than the national average to drive, and more likely to walk, bike, or take transit. But developing new neighborhoods like this is an extremely long-term project. [00:39:00]

JONATHAN ENGLISH: If we're going to address these issues, we have to accept the world that we live in now, and make transit work in that world, rather than dream of a new world.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: Jonathan English is an urban planner in Toronto, and he thinks getting more Americans to use public transit doesn't have to be so hard.

In a research project, Jonathan created these maps of American cities, and drew lines on them wherever there was a reliable public transit route, which he defined as this.

JONATHAN ENGLISH: A bus that comes every 30 minutes, till midnight, 7 days a week. The absolute bare minimum of a transit route that you can count on.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: These were the results in Denver, Portland, Charlotte, and Washington, D. C. You can see a familiar design in them: service-oriented around a downtown, but that doesn't really connect neighborhood to neighborhood. And this was the result in Toronto.

JONATHAN ENGLISH: When you go to a Toronto suburb, it's not very unfamiliar to any American. You see [00:40:00] houses with big driveways, two car garages, winding suburban streets. The difference is that the bus goes past those single family homes every five minutes, and it runs 24 hours a day.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: And that difference changes everything. Even car owners in Toronto ride the bus. And Jonathan says the lesson for American cities is obvious.

JONATHAN ENGLISH: That shows that it is possible that if we invest in basic operations and improving basic local service, that the riders will come. Something that we can do in a matter of weeks.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: In other words, it's mostly a matter of whether we choose to fund that.

This chart shows how public transit gets funded in the US, mostly by local and state governments, and by the fares people pay to ride, which makes state and local elections super important for public transit. Right now, the federal government contributes the smallest part. And even that part is limited in what it can pay for. Very little federal transit funding [00:41:00] helps pay for day-to-day operations, even though that's often where transit systems need the most help. Instead, most federal money gets directed to what are called capital investments, flashy new physical infrastructure projects that often get a lot of media attention.

JONATHAN ENGLISH: So you end up with a billion-dollar rapid transit project or light rail or bus rapid transit project where the vehicles don't actually run all that frequently.

NINA LIMBECK: I still really value being on a train line and I would never live anywhere that wasn't a 15 minute walk from the train, because I think that's so much a part of my experience as a Chicago resident being able to access it if I need it. But it's pretty poorly designed.

LARA BULT - HOST, VOX: Most Americans live in places that were built for cars. If we want to change that in the long term, we'll have to build communities that look differently.

Right now, Americans drive because it's the most convenient option. But that also means that you don't actually need to transform a whole country to get more people to ride public transit. You just need to make it convenient [00:42:00] enough that they want to.

The Great Places Erased by Suburbia (the Third Place) - Not Just Bikes - Air Date 11-21-22

JASON SLAUGHTER - HOST, NOT JUST BIKES: Lacking public space, many suburbanites try to recreate a third place, but in their own private fiefdom. You might have a neighborhood barbecue in your backyard, join a private social club, or God forbid, build yourself a man-cave. And the kids will play on their own in your own backyard instead of playing with other kids in your local park.

But all of these lack the important characteristics of a true third place. You're unlikely to run into anyone you don't know and you're almost certainly not going to meet anyone who isn't demographically similar to you. Most suburban neighborhoods in North America are built with all houses at about the same price point.

This means that all of the people you'd meet in your homemade hang zone are probably the same socioeconomic status that you are. And one of the benefits of a third place is meeting people who aren't exactly like you.

And private recreations of public places remove all spontaneity anyway. There's nothing wrong with planning to have friends over, but if it's your only option for socializing, then [00:43:00] you miss out on the chance encounters and bumping into familiar faces like you'd get from your local.

Maybe you can drive to your favorite bar, but if you have to drive there, you're probably not meeting people who live near you. And a place where you go out with friends and never talk to anyone else is very different from the neighborhood pub where you run into the same people on a regular basis. Plus, if you have to drive there, you can't hang out all night getting absolutely sloshed, or at least you shouldn't. North America has a lot of problems with drunk driving due to its insane zoning laws, but that's a topic for a future video.

Of course, the most famous suburban attempt at recreating a third place in suburbia is the shopping mall. Whether you're a teenager who can't go anywhere without a driver's license, or a senior who wants to go for a walk but your suburb has no safe sidewalks, the mall is the suburban alternative to the town square.

But we can't rely on malls as third places either. For one thing, a lot of malls are shutting down. Up to a quarter of them will be gone soon, according to some [00:44:00] estimates, and their replacement, the big box store, is even worse. But more importantly, malls don't do what a third place does. They are designed to be attractions that draw people from all over, not just from your local community, and therefore they don't build any kind of social cohesion. You're unlikely to recognize familiar faces at the mall unless you work there, and you're really unlikely to strike up a conversation with any of them unless you're one of those pushy kiosk guys.

Some cities are trying to recreate third places themselves. In Washington, D. C., office workers can reserve tables and chairs in certain public parks to work and socialize. But, again, this eliminates the spontaneity that is inherent to a third place. You can't just pop by and see the regulars. It's a whole thing that you have to plan. Also, reserving a public table to do even more work on your laptop is kind of defeating the purpose of a place outside of work.

However, one interesting third place that's still hanging on in many places in the US is [00:45:00] the local barbershop. This is common in many Middle Eastern cultures, but also in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods in the US as well. The barbershop can function as a third place where men can hang out and chat, even if they're not there for a haircut.

Of course, there are still historical walkable neighborhoods in North America where third places are more accessible, but unfortunately, their numbers have been declining since the 2008 recession, and the lockdowns during the pandemic accelerated this trend. According to the same American Community Life Survey, in 2021, just 56 percent of Americans report having a spot in their communities they go to regularly, and that was 9 percentage points lower than in 2019. Unsurprisingly, the same survey showed that Americans who do have a local spot generally live in denser, walkable urban areas and not suburbia.

Ultimately, US and Canadian cities will never have really great third places as long as zoning stays broken. As of right now, [00:46:00] third places don't exist in most new neighborhoods in America, mostly because they can't, and trying to recreate their benefits in a world that is specifically designed to exclude them is always going to fail.

The concept of a third place can seem a bit nebulous at times, and it's easy for people to dismiss it. I've heard suburbanites say, I'd much rather hang out in my basement with my friends than go out somewhere. Which may be true, but, I really think that some of this sentiment comes from people who have never really had a good third place nearby before, a place you can easily stop by whenever you want, without driving and without taking a trip out of your neighborhood, because, once you try it, you don't really want to live without it.

Ultimately, if a neighborhood truly prioritizes third places, it's going to be a better place to live in general, even when you're not spending time in them. A neighborhood that plans for third places will necessarily be more walkable, more accessible, and a better place to live. It could even turn your neighborhood into somewhere where everybody [00:47:00] knows your name.

What is Mutual Aid? - Andrewism - Air Date 3-24-21

ANDREW SAGE - HOST, ANDREWISM: Mutual aid is more than donating to someone's GoFundMe or delivering groceries to the elderly during the pandemic though. Mutual aid is a long term commitment to anti capitalism, to building community relationships, to reciprocity and exchange, and to removing community dependency on the capitalist state.

Peter Kropotkin is well known for his observations of mutual aid in nature and in the various social organizations humanity has undertaken. In his book Mutual Aid, A Factual Revolution, he explores the collaboration of insects, birds, and non-human-mammals as they practice mutual aid in the furtherance of their species, and in some cases, other species too.

Humans throughout history and prehistory have also practiced various forms of mutual aid, regardless of their sociopolitical organization, in order to survive—mutual aid always finds a way. Kropotkin speaks of the communes of the Ariège in southwest France, where neighbors would come together to enjoy chestnuts and wine, and work together while making nut oil, crushing hemp, and [00:48:00] shelling corn. All worked and provided for all, with no concern for remuneration or transaction.

Communities were also organized to share butter and cheese, maintain canals, protect land and provide free medical care. And such activities, not relegated to past picturesque French Countrysides. For example, here in Trinidad, when folks lime, as in hangout, whether at home, on the beach or wherever people bring drinks and snacks, helps to cook and clean, organized jobs, and so on. Mutual aid, communal care, you can find such practices anywhere you go.

Long before Kropotkin put pen to people, mutual aid has been the central practice of colonized peoples across the world, both pre and post colonialism. It's not new, but many practices were purposefully destroyed by settlers through genocide, assimilation, and capitalism.

States have always viewed such communal relations as a threat to their existence, and have consistently taken [00:49:00] efforts to erode such relations. Mutual aid has been the foundation of peace and prosperity, as well as the refuge in times of war, disaster, and misery, keeping people together when they need it the most.

Today, mutual aid is especially significant in the context of social movements resisting colonial, and capitalist domination, where wealth and resources are extracted and concentrated, and people can only survive by participating in the corrupt system. In such a context, the coordinated, collective care of mutual aid is radical and generative. Mutual aid has tremendous potential.

As an organizer, I'm all too familiar with folks in need. Eviction defense, child care, healthcare, transportation, and so on. It's hard for people to get involved in building tomorrow when they're trapped in a crisis or crises, struggling to survive today. That's where support comes in. But not just any old support. Support that has a political [00:50:00] analysis of the conditions that produce these crises. Support that targets systems, not people. Support that breaks stigma and isolation. Support that uplifts. Mutual Aid.

Effective mutual aid exposes the system's failure and shows an alternative. It builds faith in the power of people to organize themselves, destroying apathy and hopelessness. And it also builds new transformative skills for collaboration, self determination, participation, decision making, conflict management, meeting facilitation, coordination, and so much more. A lot of organizers build these skills during the pandemic, the Black Lives Matter protests, as far back as the Occupy movement.

Skills share plays a very important role in mutual aid, and I'm not talking about that skill share sharing skills is a way to build autonomy by giving everyone opportunities to learn skills they can then go on to share with others. And although reciprocity is a key aspect of mutual aid, [00:51:00] that doesn't mean we're constantly measuring contributions. In some cases, you really can't pay back certain skill shares, because of how vastly valuable they may be. And that's okay. Shed the tit for tat transactional view of relationships, and just provide for the greater good because you can and want to. As indigenous anarchist Regan de Lugans put it, mutual aid is about community knowledge. Community knowledge is community strength we do not withhold.

Cultivating community solidarity is essential, bringing people of all walks of life together. Mutual aid can also foster the community's ability to boldly defy the illegitimate limitations of rules and authorities. Here, I'll paint an example for you.

Organizers from Mutual Aid Disaster Relief traveled to Puerto Rico after the devastation of Hurricane Maria to support in whatever way they could, and ended up discovering a government warehouse that was neglecting to distribute huge stockpiles of supplies.

They showed their [00:52:00] Mutual Aid Disaster Relief badges to the guards and said, "we are here for the 8am pick up." When the guards replied that their names were not on the list, they just insisted again, "we are here for the 8am pick up." They were eventually allowed in, told to take whatever they needed. After being let in once, aid workers were able to return repeatedly. They made more badges for local organizers, and this source continued to benefit local communities for months afterwards.

In the face of disaster, We need to take bold actions, without waiting for permission, to save lives and communities, and to reimagine ways of interacting with the world. We need to break norms of individualism, passivity, and respect for private property above human need. And besides extreme cases of disaster, understand that mutual aid is more than survival or scraping by. It's how communities can thrive. However, as mutual aid has gained popularity, we have to recognize certain errors, pitfalls, and [00:53:00] challenges that mutual aid organizers have faced and will face.

Mutual aid is not charity. First and foremost, we can't let the media machine turn mutual aid into a synonym for charity. We have to be able to protect radical ideas from assimilation into the status quo. Always ask yourself, "is it mutual? Is it aid? Because charity is not mutual aid, and mutual aid is not charity.

People default to the framework of charity because that's what dominates our mainstream understanding of what it means to support folks in crisis. It's a giver receiver relationship. One group, usually wealthy donors of the government gives, and another group, usually struggling to survive poor folks, receive.

Of course, there are projects that are more horizontal and collective, but if it's a giver-receiver relationship, it's not mutual aid, cuz it's not mutual. I'm not saying these projects are a bad thing, nor am I saying you shouldn't give to people. I'm just saying, don't [00:54:00] call it what it isn't. Charity constantly frames rich folks and corporations as benevolent and good for the community and generous, while the uphold and legitimized systems that cause such poverty. The massive charity industrial complex is one big operation freely donors to avoid taxation secure government grants, and decide what projects even get support without any say from the people they're supposedly helping. If we're talking about the charity model as a whole, it's often tainted by notions of Puritan morality.

Charity often has eligibility requirements like the means testing of government welfare. These requirements usually demand sobriety, clean records, piety, curfews, job training, course participation, cooperation with the police and so on. It's a big effort to determine the worthiness or unworthiness of those in need, pathologizing and criminalizing usually poor black people. Plus, there's so much effort in our culture to stigmatize those who receive aid, so a lot of people desperately try to avoid those conditions [00:55:00] by jumping into exploitative jobs and such.

When we're organizing, we have to work against these forces, not with them. Remember, mutual aid must have a strong political analysis of the systems that produce these crises, expose these failures, and demonstrate an alternative.

Mutual Aid is not saviourism. Mutual Aid projects must avoid saviourism and paternalism. That's that charity mindset playing up again. The benevolent, superior saviour swooping down in to save these desperate people by replacing their old ways of life with smarter, more moral, and more profitable ways of life. They "save" people with "innovations", that decimate housing, displace residents, privatize schools, destroy infrastructure and gentrify neighborhoods. It's just colonialism. Mutual aid projects have to resist those saviour narratives and support folks through a conscious analysis of savourism and a constant centering of self [00:56:00] determination for people in crisis.

Final comments on what you can do today to improve your social connections

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with the PBS NewsHour speaking with the surgeon general about the health implications of loneliness. Studio Leonardo explained why loneliness stems from our built infrastructure. The Happy Urbanist explained the planned socialization mindset. Grace Kim in a TEDTalk explained the benefits of co-housing. Changing Places looked at the concept of the 15 minute city. Strong Towns described how to build community to make change in your area. Vox explored why US public transit is so bad. And Not Just Bikes touted the benefits of third places. That's what everybody heard, but members also heard a bonus clip from Andrewism describing the concept of mutual aid. To hear that and have all of our bonus contents delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support, or shoot me an email requesting [00:57:00] a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information

Now to wrap up, I have a quick bonus clip for you. This was sent in by one of our transcription volunteers, Brian. It just caught his attention. He thought we'd be interested in hearing it. And I was, and it turned out very coincidentally to fit very well with a show we were already working on.

mychal3ts on Instagram: A library grown up and library kid come up to me at the library desk and the library grown up says, Can you help us check out our books? I say, Yes, that's my job. So I start checking out the books and, as I do, the library kid waves at me. So I wave back and I say, Hi! And the library kid says, Hi! What's good in your life? And the library grown up chuckles and says, You're trying so hard to make that a thing, aren't you? And I love that they're trying to make that a thing. 'What's good in your life?' as part of a greeting to other human beings. We, as human beings, when we say, Hi! How are you? We're not ready to listen to how that person is. If I say, Hi, how are you? And you say, I'm crippled by anxiety. [00:58:00] I am unhinged. That is not part of the response that we're expecting. It's a five second greeting. Hi, how are you? We don't want to know how are you, how you're doing, but this library kid does by saying, What's good in your life? And I love the power behind that.

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: So, I definitely liked that idea, but, forgive me, I cannot bring the same level of, uh, energy that that guy was able to bring to Instagram. But I will talk about it in a slightly more subdued way. Now, we talked on the show today about the built infrastructure around us and how that impacts our interactions with each other. And I would say that our standard greetings, as he was describing the, you know, Hey, how are you?, it's sort of the verbal equivalent of built infrastructure. It's just, it's all around us. It's what we do. It's something we don't consciously think of. Right? If you wanted to take a really conscious approach, you could dramatically change your greeting, like the guy described in that video, and you could say [00:59:00] like, What's good in your life?, and you say it, you know, really earnestly and with emphasis while looking the person in the eye and letting them know you actually want to hear their response. But honestly, that's not what most people are going to do. But even making a modest change from How's it going? to What's good?, could make a subtle but profound impact by always framing the question in the positive rather than the neutral. You know, you may spark positive thoughts in the other person's mind, as opposed to the negative ones that may naturally come up when you ask that question slightly differently. And they might appreciate it, or they might put them in a slightly better mood, or it might very slightly improve your interaction with them. Any number of small positives that could happen that could compound over time.

Now, the only note I would add on this is that we shouldn't stop there lest we add to toxic positivity. We shouldn't [01:00:00] only ever ask about the good, right? If we're actually connecting more deeply, it's definitely important to demonstrate that you're open to hearing about people's problems, their sadnesses, anything like that as well. So, small aside.

Now, moving on, on the topic of third places, as we heard described today, I have some thoughts. I had a place like this in my, like, late teens-early twenties. It was just the pizza place where my friends and I, you know, most of us all worked in the same place. And it was like the habit of plenty of people to show up at that restaurant anytime we were bored, not just when we were working. So, if you, and some other people did that, then you'd just end up meeting spontaneously. And that's kind of the essence of a third place, right? You didn't have to make a plan. You just went to the place and allowed the socializing to happen to you. So I can [01:01:00] totally vouch for the statement made in the show today that once you've lived with a good third place in your life, you really don't want to go without it.

Now, unfortunately for me and apparently most of society, that was really the only third place I've ever had and I have been lamenting the loss of it for 20 years. But I would argue that the third place problem goes beyond the lack of good third places themselves. There's also the lack of general free time and energy for so many of us, which is why I also love the point made in the show about the planned socialization mindset, that that way of socializing drains energy, because it's so much more work. And they point out that it affects everyone. Extroverts get exhausted from having to make plans all the time and introverts can't even muster the energy to make plans in the first place and so they default to staying in.

Now I'm a pretty solid introvert, which does not mean I don't want to hang out with people, but [01:02:00] it does drain my energy. And so if just the process of getting the socializing started also takes energy. Then that's a real double whammy for someone like me. That's why having the third place at my old pizza job worked for me. Because you just show up and the socialization happens without extra effort and energy being expended. But, you know, let's just say that you're not 19 years old with hardly any responsibilities, as I was, and you and the people you know are all fully in the planned socialization mindset because your lives are busy and it doesn't feel like you have another choice, I actually do have some advice on pulling some of the benefits from third place spontaneity into our over-scheduled lives. And it doesn't even require building permits and urban planning experts.

I heard this idea, you know, once a long time ago, about [01:03:00] how a particular individual likes to facilitate social gatherings for themselves. They would pick a window of time, maybe three to five hours, something like that on a weekend afternoon and plan to be in a specific place for that whole window, like, you know, a cafe. They would bring things to entertain themselves a book, a project to work on, and then they would tell everyone who they knew, who was sort of in the area, who they had any interest in hanging out with, where they were going to be and when, giving an open invitation with, you know, like, the clarity that, Hey, I'm inviting a bunch of people, if you can make it, come whenever you like, stay for as long or as short as you like. I'll be there. I'd love to see you. If you can't make it. No problem. Right? Just totally open, no pressure invitation. That way, other people could figure out for themselves what worked with their own schedule and [01:04:00] responsibilities. Can they make it or not? And at what time and for how long. These are the sorts of details that are the exhausting part of hashing out a planned socialization. But if there's just an open invitation during a window of time at a specific place. Then there's no need to go back and forth about details at all. Just show up if you can, stay until you need to leave, or if you can't make it, maybe I'll catch you next time. Right? Easy. No pressure. Semi-spontaneous socialization. And that's something that anyone could start doing today.

So, try that out if you think it suits you. And then when someone does come to your semi-spontaneous social meetup, talk to them about the benefits of co-housing and how one of the biggest benefits is the endless supply of semi-spontaneous social gatherings with essentially no planning ever required.

That is going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about [01:05:00] this or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text to 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patrion page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through [01:06:00] your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community where you can also continue the discussion.

So, coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show, from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1607 The Tangled, Flammable Web of War in the Middle East (Transcript)

Posted by · February 03, 2024 10:06 AM

Air Date 2/3/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast in which we will attempt to understand as many of the interlocking elements as possible in the current Middle East conflicts sparked most prominently by the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Sources today include Democracy Now!, The Inquiry, Intercepted, and Americast, with additional members-only clips from Intercepted and The Majority Report.

From Red Sea to Iran, Will Israel's Gaza Assault Spark Wider War - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-17-24

SPENCER ACKERMAN: I think that in my years of covering the “war on terror,” this is the most dangerous moment for the Middle East that I’ve seen professionally. You talk about there being the possibility of a full-blown regional conflict. We’re at least at half-blown now. Consider what the battlefields are and have been in this conflict: Gaza, obviously the most important one, the most devastating to humanity, where the Palestinians are experiencing what could and [00:01:00] probably should be understood as a genocide, but also southern Israel, northern Israel, southern Lebanon, northwestern Syria, Beirut, northeastern Syria, Erbil, Baghdad, southwestern Yemen, the Red Sea, Pakistan, as well.

This is now a conflict with battlefronts ranging across the region, each of which facing pressure to escalate as their various combatants’ objectives are not fully achieved. We shouldn’t think that absent an active act of deescalation, that this won’t continue spiraling outward throughout 2024.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And, Spencer, this whole idea that we hear almost every day some member of the Biden administration say that they’re trying to prevent an escalation of the conflict in the region, when in [00:02:00] fact their actions are quite the opposite?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: That’s right, Juan. We heard the Biden administration say most recently that it was deeply concerned about escalation in Lebanon. Well, just in the last 24 hours, the Israeli Air Force has been bombing southern Lebanon, bombing what it says are Hezbollah positions there, but also the United States has taken direct action, not just in the Red Sea, but also on Yemeni soil itself multiple times, three times at least, including most recently yesterday. And, as well, recently it carried out its first drone strike in Baghdad since 2020, which has now strained US-Iraqi relations. So, the United States, while it might say that it’s seeking to contain the conflict, is caught up in the logic of escalation.

And that means we shouldn’t give the Biden administration a pass on this. These aren’t automatic gravitational forces. [00:03:00] These are the accumulations of choices that Biden and his team are making to involve the US more deeply in this spiraling conflict, all of which could be stopped if the United States used its immense influence over Israel to restrain it or stop it from carrying out its collective punishment of Gaza.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We often hear, as well, about the Axis of Resistance, supposedly controlled or financed by Iran, but very little about the Axis of Empire, of the UK, the United States and Israel in the region. To what degree does this axis have more right to control the affairs of the region than those who are actually from countries there?

SPENCER ACKERMAN: Quite well said, Juan. Without ceding any of Iran’s claims to regional hegemony, the United States [00:04:00] and its allies act as if they are the representatives of the natural and just order of the Middle East, and not, in fact, Western impositions upon the aspirations of the citizenry, the people of these countries, to determine their own affairs.

And we are seeing that quite starkly most recently in Yemen, where one of the most war-devastated countries in the Middle East, as a result of not only US strikes against al-Qaeda targets, what the United States says is al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, stemming from something like over the past 15 years, but also a US-backed Saudi and Emirati campaign that lasted seven years before a ceasefire took hold in 2022, that brought not only famine but cholera to this country, that has been engulfed in a foreign-backed, foreign-sponsored [00:05:00] and foreign-accelerated civil war. Nevertheless, even among people who don’t accept the Houthi movement as the legitimate rulers of Yemen, saw massive demonstrations after the United States and its Western allies started bombing Yemen in retaliation for the Houthi attempt to relieve the siege of Gaza. So we really have on full exposure the rejection of US claims to standing for peace and stability in the region.

Houthis Are Not Iranian Proxies Helen Lackner on the History & Politics of Yemen's Ansar Allah - Democracy Now! - Air Date 2-1-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Helen, could you give us some background, though? What are the origins of this movement? And how is that they came to play such a prominent role in Yemen?

SUZANNE MALONEY: Yeah. So, the Houthi movement started in the 1980s, 1990s. I think what you need to understand is that, in terms of religious sects, Yemen is divided into two basic sects: a [00:06:00] Sunni sect, called al-Shafi’is, who basically live in the majority of the country, and a branch of Shi’ism called the Zaydis, who live basically in the mountainous highlands of Yemen. And the Houthis are al-Zaydis. And again, within the Zaydi movement, there’s a certain variety, in the sense that the Houthis, I would say, are extremist Zaydists, and they’ve developed their ideology and their policies to strengthen their own branch of Zaydism. And they basically emerged in response to the rise of Sunni Salafi fundamentalism within their own area in the far north of Yemen. And so there have been conflicts and problems arising since the 1990s.

Between 2004 and 2010, there was a series of six wars between the Houthis [00:07:00] facing and fighting the then-regime of President Ali Abdullah Saleh. Each one ended with a ceasefire which was promptly broken. The reason the last one in 2010 was not broken was as the result of the uprisings in 2011, known as the Arab Spring in various places. And that was a moment when the Houthis joined with the revolutionaries and basically took a position against — they continued their position against the regime.

During what was supposedly a transition period between the Saleh regime and what should have become a more democratic regime in 2014, the Houthis then changed their alliances, and indeed Saleh changed his alliance, so they operated together against the transitional government. And then, eventually, that allowed them to take over the capital Sana’a in 2014 [00:08:00] and then to oust the existing transitional government in early 2015.

And that’s when, really, the war started, which was then internationalized from March 2015 with the intervention of what was known as the Saudi-led coalition, which was basically a coalition led by the Saudis and the Emiratis, with a few other states with minor roles, but supported actively by the U.S., the Europeans and the British and others.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Sorry, just to clarify, what was the point at which the Iranians started backing the Houthis? Was it in the moment when the Saudi-led bombing began, in 2015, or was it prior to that? And if you could also clarify the distinction between, as you said, the Yemenis are Zaydi Shias, and to what extent Zaydis are ideologically or theologically [00:09:00] aligned with the dominant form of Shi’ism in Iran, and what that has to do with Iran’s complicity or support for Houthis, whether or not now they do as Iran says?

SUZANNE MALONEY: Yeah. Thank you for these, for bringing up these points. The Iranian role at the time, in 2015, when we’re in the internationalized civil war started, was minimal. The Iranian involvement with the Houthis, and prior to that and since then, has always been connected with, partly, theological connections, but differences. So, in that sense, the Houthis are differentiating themselves from other Zaydis by having adopted a number of the rituals and activities and approaches of the Iranian Twelvers. It’s all a matter of how many imams they trust or they believe in after [00:10:00] the Prophet Muhammad. But in practice, the Houthis are getting closer to the Iranian Shi’ism over the last decade, but they are still quite distinct. So the alliance is much more a political alliance.

And the Iranian involvement, which was really very, very insignificant at the beginning of this war, has increased over time, and is primarily — has been, for a while, mainly financial and of providing fuel and things like that to the Houthis, but more recently has been much more focused on military activities and primarily on the supply of advanced technology. If you look at the Houthi weaponry — and I’m no military expert — but the Houthi weaponry originally was basically a lot of Scuds and other Russian-supplied materials and also some American-supplied materials to the Saleh regime. And these have been [00:11:00] upgraded and improved and changed, to some extent, thanks to Iranian support. So, in that sense, the Iranian involvement has become greater.

But it’s very important to note that the Houthis are an independent movement. The Houthis are not Iranian proxies. They are not Iranian servants. They don’t do what the Iranians tell them to do. They make their own decisions. If their decisions and their policies coincide with those of Iran, then there’s no issue. But if they don’t do it. So it’s very important, I think, to destroy this myth of Iran-backed Houthis in a single word as if it’s a conglomerate. That is not the case.

What does Iran want - The Inquiry - Air Date 1-25-24

PHILIP REEVELL: The Axis of Resistance...

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: ...is a loose coalition of mostly non-state actors across the Middle East -- in [00:12:00] Lebanon, Hezbollah; Shia militias in Iraq; Hamas; the Houthis -- that are essentially allies of Iran.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: Negar Motazavi is a journalist, host of the Iran podcast, and senior fellow at the Center for International Policy in Washington, D. C.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: So these allies essentially are seen by Tehran ideologically as a resistance to their big enemy, the United States, and also their small enemy, Israel, in the region.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: In 2002, US president George W. Bush described Iran, Iraq and North Korea as an "axis of evil," which posed a threat to world peace.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: And so the Axis of Resistance is an opposite play on that "axis of evil," saying, no, we're not evil, we're actually resisting you, the United States, that has caused all the trouble in our region. And we won't stop fighting and resisting until this ends.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: Several [00:13:00] military personnel were injured in a recent missile and rocket attack on an air base in western Iraq, which hosts US troops. The Islamic Resistance in Iraq, an umbrella group said to be linked to Iran, has claimed responsibility.

Negar Murtazavi says it's important to know that Iran's direct airstrikes into neighboring countries lies beyond the axis.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: The skirmishes on the Iran-Pakistan border is fairly unrelated. That has to do with a separatist ethnic Baluchi group, which has had trouble with the central government. The Iranian government sees them as a terrorist group and has been going after them. It's something that Iran is dealing with simultaneously.

So all of these, I would say, are connected to each other in the big picture, but the Pakistan border is on the other side of the country, and not really part of this big Axis of Resistance that we're talking about vis-a-vis Iran and Israel.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: Most of the Axis of Resistance groups have been designated as [00:14:00] terrorist entities by some western states. Coalition members have different aims but share a broader goal.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: The Houthis in Yemen were an insurgency that emerged about two decades ago as a resistance for the demands of their own ethnic population. The Lebanese Hezbollah was also a resistance in response to the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. So at some point, Iran has realized that, okay, this group has shared goal in resisting what they see is this bigger enemy: the US meddling, israeli presence in the region. And so they have connected to them.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: Yemen's Houthis consider Israel an enemy. The group has increased attacks on commercial ships in the Red Sea since the start of the Israel-Gaza war, in order to show support for fellow Axis of Resistance member Hamas. In response, the UK and US have carried out a second round of airstrikes on Houthi bases in Yemen.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: The groups do take cues from Tehran. They get financial support. They get [00:15:00] weaponry. They get logistical support. They get political support. But they also have autonomy. They're not part of the Iranian armed forces, but they do work in tandem.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: So what does Iran get in return?

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: This is an insurance policy. This is a way for them to fight the world's most powerful army, which is the US, and also the region's most powerful army, Israel, in an unconventional and asymmetric way.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: That approach was influenced by lessons learned in the 1980s when Iran was invaded by its neighbor Iraq. The eight-year war that followed was deadly and expensive.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: So since then, essentially the thinking is, okay, the Iranian government decided we're not going to let our soil be attacked again. But we also don't have a strong enough army and weaponry to be able to make that happen. So they've set up these allies who can create trouble if ever needed [00:16:00] for their enemy. And we're seeing that really unfold in the Israel-Hamas war since October 7th, how each of these groups -- the Houthis in the Red Sea, Hezbollah in the northern border with Israel, are able to create headaches for Iran's enemies when it comes to the situation of war and conflict.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: However, the full extent of Iran's commitment to the coalition isn't clear.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: The Iranian state at times would like to emphasize the fact that these groups are autonomous. And that they only support them because of the shared goal. But then when it comes to other instances, they do boast of their support that they provide to this group. So it's a double-sided strategy when it comes to their relationship with the Axis of Resistance.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: An example of that mixed messaging followed Hamas's deadly attack on Israel that sparked the current war in Gaza.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: I actually believe US intelligence that concluded that Tehran wasn't involved in the planning of that [00:17:00] attack. And so we saw Iranian officials coming with two levels of claims. One is that this is something that they ideologically support, but at the same time there was an opposite message saying that this was an independent, 100 percent Palestinian operation. And that's your cue essentially saying that we weren't as much involved in the planning of this attack and so they want to maintain some form of plausible deniability when it comes to the cause of the October 7th attack.

CHARMAINE COZIER - HOST, THE INQUIRY: Working in tandem doesn't mean that axis members are unified.

NEGAR MORTAZAVI: So the coalition is not necessarily seeing eye to eye on every single issue when it comes to the region. For example, in the Palestinian cause, we have seen differences in strategy or in ideology when it comes to talking points from Tehran and talking points from Hamas. Sometimes Hamas are more radical, sometimes Tehran is more radical, and so the coalition will remain [00:18:00] loose. But I think as long as Tehran is able to lead and support and be in touch with all of them, they can continue as an axis.

Biden Stands at the Precipice of a Greater War in the Middle East and His Political Future - Intercepted - Air Date 1-31-24

MURTAZA HUSSAIN - CO-HOST, INTERCEPTED: You know, Juan, you mentioned that it's commonly perceived and described in politics that Israel is an asset to US strategic interests in the region, but it's very interesting at the moment, it seems like, given the widespread regional anger about the war in Gaza and its consequences, the US is having to intervene very extensively in the conflict, not just to resupply Israel with munitions and give it targeting information and defend it diplomatically at international fora, but also the US is now directly fighting the Houthis in Yemen on behalf of Israel, who have said themselves are acting in response to the war in Gaza. This past weekend, several US service members were killed in the drone strike in Jordan carried out by Iraqi militias, who also said they were acting in response to US support in the war in Gaza. And finally, the US actually has [00:19:00] aircraft carriers and troops in the eastern Mediterranean specifically to deter Hezbollah, which may intervene more forcefully in the conflict without that deterrence from the US provide there. So it seems like the US is doing a tremendous amount to help Israel at the moment.

But to the argument that Israel is beneficial to the US, they just seem very clear what the US getting out of this, seems a very lopsided exchange, in a way. Can you speak a bit about what do you think continues to hold and drive this relationship on these terms, given the fact that the strategic utility is not clearly obvious at the moment?

JUAN COLE: I think the strategic utility goes beyond a moment.

And, again, I'm trying to understand the mindset in the foreign policy establishment in Washington. I'm not trying to allocute as to the truth. But they perceive Israel to be a long term strategic asset in the Middle East of some importance.

For one thing, the Israelis [00:20:00] have very good intelligence in the region. Trump, when he was president, met with Sergei Lavrov and some other Russian officials and actually let it slip that the Israelis had placed someone high in the ISIL councils and that they were getting direct intelligence from ISIL planning through this Israeli agent. Apparently the CIA was not able to do this, but the Israelis were. And since ISIL during the Obama period was the major foreign policy threat and dictated a lot of Obama policy in the Middle East, the response to it and the attempt to destroy it,having the Israelis penetrate it like that was gold. And I think behind the scenes and in ways that we don't hear about, there are lots of those kinds of things that the Israelis do for the United States.

And so I perceive the Biden administration to feel that it can hold the status [00:21:00] quo with regard to what the Americans call the Axis of Resistance. I prefer the Alliance of Resistance because we always use Axis for pejorative purposes. But the Iranians have, over time, established allies in Lebanon and Iraq and Yemen, as you say, although these are very loose alliances. It's not a command and control kind of situation. The Houthis don't take orders from Tehran. But they are allied on the basis of a common perception of Israel and the United States as a threat to their interests.

And the Biden administration came into office hoping to do a deal with the Alliance of Resistance to bring them in from the cold. And I think there was a genuine hope that could be done for various reasons, and it may have to do with Biden's acquiescence in [00:22:00] the views of some of the hawks around him. That didn't go forward in a big way. And in fact, local regional actors became tired of waiting for Biden to make this move, and so the Saudis reached out to the Iranians themselves through China. And the Biden administration has been trying to work to extend -- or had been trying to work to extend -- the ceasefire between the Saudis and the Houthis in Yemen. And that struggle may start back up, we don't know. But the US has now taken the Saudi role of bombing Sanaa, I think to very little effect.

And so I think what the Biden administration is trying to do is to hold the status quo against the Alliance of Resistance through surgical interventions, bombing a base of one of these Shiite militias here and there, time to time, while they believe the Israelis are rolling up Hamas.

And [00:23:00] I think they must understand that this can't go on for a very long time, or the status quo simply will not hold. But that's what they're trying to do in the meantime.

And even though the Iraqi militias have Killed American troops at a base in Jordan near Syria, the response of Biden on Sunday was remarkably restrained. He said we'll reply at a time and a place of our choosing. That's usually the way you would reply to a stray mortar hitting a base and not doing it. Killing three American soldiers, that's not something that you would put off the response to a time and a place of your choosing; you would want to go to war over it. And it's very clear that the Biden administration does not want to go to war over it, and that they're attempting to find a way to muddle through this crisis.

JEREMY SCAHILL - HOST, INTERCEPTED: You also had two US navy SEALs that, according to the official reporting on it, went missing as part of [00:24:00] the US military presence deployed in an effort to stop the Yemeni blockade of the Red Sea, and now they've officially been declared dead by the United States, so it's In addition to those two, now you have the three confirmed deaths of American service members in Jordan from this drone strike.

Drone Strike Kills 3 U.S. Troops in Jordan as Risk Grows of Regional War over Israel's Gaza Assault - Democracy Now! - Air Date 1-29-24

RAMI KHOURI: So, I would say that the significance here is severalfold. First of all, the people who did this attack, the Americans blame a certain group in Iraq funded or backed by Iran. There’s dozens of these groups all over the region. There’s almost as many of these groups around the region as there are American military bases around the region. I think there’s something like 30 or 35 American military bases, with something like 30-40,000 troops. And, of course, when you add the ones that come in on the aircraft carriers, it’s more than that.

So, you have to see this in the context of a regional situation with many American military installations, some of them [00:25:00] killing and attacking Arabs and others, some of them not. And you have to see the groups from Arab countries, official state groups and nonstate actors, like Hezbollah and Hamas and Ansar Allah. That’s the context in which we have to see this.

There are so many potential people who could have done this attack, which should make us wonder about why are there so many people who are potential attackers. It’s because they see the American presence linked very close to what Israel is doing in Palestine. They see this as a threat. And they come right out and say it. The thing about the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, like the Resistance Axis, which is the broader Middle East coalition of Hezbollah, Hamas, Ansar Allah in Yemen, the Islamic groups in — resistance groups in Syria and Iraq, their significance is that they come right out — and they’ve said it so many times — “We’re not scared of being attacked. We’re not put off by the US and [00:26:00] Israeli threats. We’re defending our territory. And if we’re aggressed against, we are going to fight back.” This is unusual in this region, but it’s going on all the time.

The Ansar Allah in Yemen have been saying the same thing. The US went in there with — and the UK, the two great colonial powers in the Middle East of the last century. Both have been attacking Ansar Allah targets in Yemen, and the Ansar Allah people say, you know, “Go ahead. Attack. We don’t care.” And they keep attacking back and hitting ships and trying to fire at other places, as well.

So, that’s the context that we have to look at. And some of it is linked to Gaza, some of it was there before Gaza, which is another important thing. And the Ansar Allah in Yemen and others have said, “Look, if the US stops actively supporting the genocidal, savage moves of Israel in Gaza, [00:27:00] we will stop attacking American targets.” It is significant that this is the first direct strike that killed three Americans, but that’s not as significant as the broader picture that we have to look at.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Rami Khouri, can you talk about the other countries and their response and where they stand vis-à-vis the United States and Israel? For example, Jordan. I listened to the Jordan deputy prime minister yesterday saying this did not happen on Jordanian soil, it happened in Syria. But, in fact, it looks like it did happen in Jordan. And why that was relevant — because, of course, they’re all very close right there on the border — is he said if it happened on Jordanian soil, they would consider it an act of war.

RAMI KHOURI: Jordan tries to stay out of these big conflicts. It’s a small country. It has quite a sophisticated military capability. They spend a lot of money and attention on their security [00:28:00] services, both internally and regionally, their intelligence services, their technical capabilities, special forces, things like that. And they try to not get directly involved in large-scale warfare, but to do a little strategic, pinpoint actions when necessary either to protect themselves or to help their allies, like the US and others.

It’s hard to know exactly where this attack came from. If the US intelligence agencies have the information, they should make it public so people stop speculating. But Jordan is a country with a huge territory on the borders with three, four countries, and it’s very hard to patrol it. By the way, I know that area in northeastern Jordan quite well. I spent many, many days there years ago when I was writing books on archaeology and I lived in Jordan.

And there’s two things I think people should recognize about this area. [00:29:00] First of all, if you look at that aerial photograph which you showed of the camp, of Tower 2, I think it’s called — if you look at that photograph and then you go back into the archaeological journals and look at pictures, aerial photographs of Roman and Byzantine camps that archaeologists have mapped in surveys, you find exactly the same thing. And this is a sign that these kinds of foreign military installations inside the region, especially on peripheral border areas, don’t have a long lifestyle, and they will be abandoned, because the local people don’t want them there.

The second thing I’d say, that area is really fascinating, because people call it a desolate desert area. It’s a desert area now because of climate change and overgrazing and things like that, but this was a strategically important region in the beginning of modern civilization as we know it in the Bronze Age. There’s people who think that the [00:30:00] Abraham’s Path came through here on his way into what’s known as the promised land, that this is an area developed early urbanism in the Bronze Age, walled large towns, sophisticated water systems, showing the human capabilities that have been in this area for about 5,000 years. So, those are just two little side points I’d like to throw in there.

Biden Stands at the Precipice of a Greater War in the Middle East and His Political Future Part 2 - Intercepted - Air Date 1-31-24

MURTAZA HUSSAIN - CO-HOST, INTERCEPTED: One, you mentioned that the Houthis are taking these strikes in the Red Sea and they're generating a tremendous amount of attention to themselves -- negatively, obviously from the US and U. K. and so forth in various ways, but also in the region where they were not very popular before they've become relatively popular in recent weeks and months. You see the Houthi spokespeople going on television, becoming quite fixtures in social media and on regular media in the region, because of a sense that they're standing up for the Palestinians, but also by extension, a perception that they're [00:31:00] standing up to the US and there seems to be a very pronounced view in the region that this is not just an Israeli war, but it's a US war specifically. And we saw that in the statements of some of these Iraqi militia groups that claim responsibility for the attack on the base in Jordan as well, too. They view the US very intimately involved in the war, a direct participant in the war in Gaza, even.

Whereas in the US it's often depicted that a more of an arm's length relationship, and people are sometimes surprised to see a retaliation against the US directly for actions which are taken by Israel. Can you speak a bit about the sort of disconnect and how the US israel relationship is viewed by people in the region as very hand in hand?

JUAN COLE: Oh, well, people in the region don't make a distinction. They view. Even you know, when the United States invaded Iraq, US troops on the ground in Iraq were often referred to by the Iraqis as Israelis. And the notorious incident in Fallujah, where four [00:32:00] contractors were attacked and strung up, was carried out by people in Fallujah who called themselves Iraqi Hamas. And part of the reason that they attacked those US contractors was because the Israelis were at the time conducting an assassination campaign against Hamas leaders.

And so the American public has never viewed these events synoptically, has not been able to see them in the same frame. But in the Middle East, the United States and Israel are basically seen as one thing.

And so when you hear in the United States that the Israelis have killed so many thousands of people, the American public might say, "Well, is that really necessary? Maybe the Israelis shouldn't be doing that." But in the Middle East, the comment would be that, why are the Americans doing this?

And people are furious in the Middle East. I mean, their blood is boiling all through the region against the United [00:33:00] States. This is not a completely new phenomenon, of course, and we've seen moments in the past when there has been a lot of anger towards the US in part because of its unqualified support for Israeli impunity. But it is quite remarkable, the amount of anger. And so, it puts American allies in the region in a difficult position because the Saudi government, the government of the United Arab Emirates, the Jordanian government, they all hate Hamas. And nothing would please them better than for Netanyahu to succeed in destroying it. And so, none of those governments has done more than criticize the war. And, de facto, they agree with the war aim. But their publics are not on the same page. So the Saudis and the Jordanians, who have a real population -- the United Arab Emirates is a postage stamp country with a million [00:34:00] citizens and eight million guest workers, it's in a different demographic situation -- the Saudis and the Jordanians, the governments really have to negotiate with their publics, and their publics are furious.

So you see people in Saudi Arabia, for instance, who the government has demanded a cease fire, even though the US is opposed, and they have criticized the conduct of the war, and they've said openly that you can forget about these Abraham Accords business until the Palestinians are treated properly. That's for Saudi public consumption. They're trying to reassure their own public that they are not villains in the peace.

So, not only people in the region see the United States as more or less behind this war, as a hundred percent backer of it and the reason for which it can go on, but the publics and the governments are deeply split. And so that's why something like the Alliance of Resistance, [00:35:00] by sending out some drones and committing some pinpricks against Western security, gives them a great deal of cachet.

And in a place like Iraq, it could be consequential. They have elections and the militias are all also civil political parties. And they have, last I knew it, some 60 seats in Parliament. The current Prime Minister, Al Sudani, is beholden to the Shiite militias and their civil bloc in Parliament. So, there's likely a fair storm coming in relations between the United States and Iraq over all this.

And, of course, what the Shiite militias want is not only to punish the US for its involvement in Gaza, but also to push the remaining US troops out of the region. So with their 2,500 troops in Iraq, mainly doing training and logistics for the Iraqi army and its [00:36:00] continued mop up operations against ISIL, there are some 900 US troops in Syria, liaising with the YPG, the Kurdish leftist militia -- and again, to make sure that ISIL doesn't come back, to give some support to the Syrian Kurds, and also maybe to block Iranian and Shiite militia activity in, in southeast Syria.

So the Shiite militias in Iraq are trying to push the Americans out, and I may be hoping that the US response to something like the attack on the base in Jordan will provoke such a large rift between Baghdad and Washington that the troops will have to leave.

Christiane Amanpour on Biden's Iran Dilemma - Americast - Air Date 1-31-24

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Christiane, you know very well that because this is a presidential election year, domestic politics are interfering with the decisions that the President has to make. And this idea that Donald Trump puts forward that his strongman presence in the White House would deter the kind of attack that killed American forces at the weekend, whether or not that's true, [00:37:00] of course.

So Joe Biden is now faced with trying to make a decision that responds to that, as well as responding to the facts on the ground, trying to thread the needle of saying this action will look like a deterrent to stop other people trying to attack our troops in the region. And it will also look like vengeance to a certain degree, but not so much that it escalates the conflict in the region.

Is it possible to achieve all of those aims?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Look, I think it's very important for your listeners and viewers to understand that whatever Donald Trump says is not what is the facts. It's really important to tell people that he has essentially lied to the world and to the American people about foreign policy and domestic policy ever since 2015, when he began his first campaign for president. And now he's coming back saying that I'm the strong man. The only people who that will appease. People like Putin, people like Kim Jong un, Xi Jinping, all those people who he's expressed [00:38:00] respect for.

And so I think that, yes, President Biden, if it was me and it's not me, thank goodness, who has to make this very, very difficult decision, I would be very troubled by the, as I said it earlier, the baying for a war on Iran by certain quarters of the extreme right wing in Congress. At the same time, having to do something to, as I said, deter it. So I don't want to say what it will be because I don't know. But I do think, yes, he has a difficult needle to thread, and I think the fact that it's happening in an election year is difficult, but more to the point, I think it's not even the election year—for me anyway, as a foreign policy and a war journalist—it's that there's so much war in the region now. They don't know which way to look. They don't know what to do right now.

And not only that, you have Donald Trump and his allies nixing a border deal. was about to pass between the Democrats and the Republicans, which means that [00:39:00] Ukraine will not get the weapons it needs to actually defend not just its own self and its own democracy, but our democracy and US national security. So this is a very, very complex and very dangerous moment. And it is a real problem that is being muddled and fake newsed by the MAGA wing.

SARAH SMITH - HOST, AMERICAST: Now, we definitely need to talk about the southern border and the way it's being tied into American foreign policy. But just before we do, let me ask you this, sticking with Iran, and this is a genuine query, I don't know the answer to this. When the Pentagon is planning some kind of retaliatory military strike, is it possible at the same time for diplomats to be talking to the leadership in Tehran and saying, "we're going to have to take action. You've forced our hand. This will happen, but please do not retaliate. Understand that this is us responding to the fact that our troops have been killed. This is not us trying to escalate a conflict," and can you be talking to them, [00:40:00] trying to calm things down at the same time as you're escalating your military action?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Look, I don't know because I'm not in the room, but I do know that the Iranians have said, if you attack us, whatever you tell us about not wanting a war. And remember. Well, we'll get to this in a minute. The US keeps saying we don't want another war with Iran, but if you attack us, we're going to retaliate. I mean, that's what they've said publicly. What happens, what the reaction is from the United States and then from Iran, we just don't know yet, but it is a very, very difficult situation.

And there are many experts who are calling for proportionality. And again, remember, The Donald Trump did not want to attack Iran when many on his right flank said that he should over various things. And all the way back to the George W. Bush administration, when again, Israel and others on his own right wing were urging him to attack Iran. Remember, it was going to be Afghanistan, Iraq, Iran, and and he didn't because they didn't think that that was going to [00:41:00] raise the security of the American people, national security.

And let's just not forget. It's one thing to be hitting non state actors, the Houthis, for instance, in Yemen and their bases the Iran backed militias, wherever they may be in Iraq, in Syria and elsewhere. It's another thing to attack a sovereign nation with a big military and a huge country. And I'm sure President Biden is looking at weeks of attacking bases in in Yemen and seeing no response and no end to the Houthis action. So if they having trouble with the Houthis, you can imagine how it's going to be trying to direct firepower to Iran.

Look, if you want me to bet, I would say they're going to choose some kind of other route. I may be wrong, but since 1979, when the Islamic Republic came and basically cited America as its enemy, remember the great Satan, America has never struck Iran and vice versa. Iran has never struck America. So it would be a massive new war in the Middle [00:42:00] East.

JUSTIN WEBB - CO-HOST, AMERICAST: You know Iran well, obviously in your background, your heritage, how rational are the Iranian leadership, how open do you think to the world of diplomacy and pressure?

CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR: Very rational. I think they're very rational, and you've seen that in 46 years. Not the politics most of the West likes, but they are about survival of their regime and the projection of whatever power and influence they can. So in that regard, they would rather survive than have any kind of existential threat posed on them.

BONUS Biden Stands at the Precipice of a Greater War in the Middle East and His Political Future Part 3 - Intercepted - Air Date 1-31-24

JEREMY SCAHILL - HOST, INTERCEPTED: But speaking of arcs, I wanted to ask you about German policy, and I'm glad you also brought up Ukraine because Germany has been, the major voice in the European Union in terms of big, powerful, more powerful countries in pushing that war, and Germany actually started to increase the amount of GDP that it's willing to spend on defense, exporting of weaponry, which was [00:43:00] unusual for Germany. And mind you, this is not the CDU in power anymore under Angela Merkel; this is supposedly the liberals that are in power now under Olaf Schultz and the green party, in fact occupies the position of foreign ministry in the German government.

But Germany has been a major proponent of Israel's war in Gaza. It has sent a record level of assistance to Israel, but at the beginning, it was overwhelmingly in the form of what Germany categorized as defensive materiel, armored vehicles, body armor for troops. And now there are reports in the German media that Germany is considering a variety of requests from Israel to actually start sending munitions to Israel as well. Germany signed on to be effectively a defense council in support of Israel's defense at the International Court of Justice, where they're being accused by South Africa of committing genocide and genocidal acts in Gaza. And many [00:44:00] Palestinians have a perception that Germany's involvement in what they believe clearly is a genocide or an attempted genocide in Gaza is linked to the fact that Germany committed genocide against the Jews in World War II, and you had Germany announcing that it was going to sign on to support Israel at the International Court of Justice on the very day that in Namibia, Namibians were marking the German genocide that began a century earlier, and issued a scathing attack against the German government linking those two events together, the genocide in Namibia with Germany signing on to defend Israel against genocide charges at the International Court of Justice.

And just one last point on this: It's not just that Germany is full on supporting Israel politically, diplomatically, now it seems militarily, in a very aggressive [00:45:00] way; it's also that domestically in Germany there are speech laws now that are supposedly aimed at halting or cracking down on antisemitic speech that have been weaponized now to criminalize it -- although it's in misdemeanor form -- criminalize several specific acts of speech that are perceived to be anti-Israel.

You've written recently about some of the historical connections to Germany's full support right now of the Israelis, and I'd like to hear your analysis of this transformation of Germany's posture in the world, which really ratcheted up during Ukraine, but is in full force now with the Israeli war against Gaza.

JUAN COLE: Yeah, this generation of Germans are still traumatized by World War II and the Nazi era and the Holocaust. And I think they decided that the way you work out your national guilt about the Holocaust is knee jerk support for Israel. [00:46:00] And remember that there are ways in which there are limits to liberalism in Germany that come out of the Nazi experience, because the one flaw in liberal philosophy is a belief in everybody being able to have a voice. But giving Hitler and his gangs voices didn't work out very well for the Weimar Republic. And so there are laws in Germany and Austria that limit speech of a Nazi sort. So it bleeds over then into the Palestine issue, because to what extent is supporting Palestine hate speech against Israel? And these become very difficult political negotiations. And I think the Germans have just decided that the Palestinians are a source of disturbance. They produce terrorism. Their claims against [00:47:00] Israel are outrageous and that they've put them in that limbo of speech that they put the far right, and upsetting the apple cart of liberal society that the only way to have liberal society in Germany is in fact to be illiberal with regard to certain kinds of speech and actions.

So it's an enormous psychological an emotional wound that the Germans are dealing with, and I think they've come down on the wrong side of how you deal with this. Yes, they should never forget what their ancestors did, because remember, there are hardly anybody left alive from the era where the Holocaust occurred. But they should never forget what their ancestors did and they should be determined to maintain the kind of liberal freedoms that would forestall any return of the far right. And of course, the return of the far right is all of a sudden in Germany, an actual prospect. The AFD seems to be growing in strength. And [00:48:00] there's genuine conversations, at the heights of the German Government about whether to bite the bullet and put the AFD under the anti-Nazi laws and ban the party and ban that kind of speech. Because it does skates very close to what's illegal in Germany.

So if these things are seriously being considered against 20 percent of the German population, imagine how expendable the Palestinians and their cause is in this regard. I think the only way forward for Germany ultimately is to have a different view of the significance of the Holocaust, not as something that they did to Jews for which their unstinting support for everything that the Israelis do is the only penance, but to see it as a global event against an ethnic group.

And of course the Germans also committed a Holocaust against Poles. [00:49:00] And the Siege of Leningrad was intended to be a holocaust against Slavs, and they were going to move people out of Russia and Ukraine and replace them with Germans. If you saw these events as of universal significance, and then you were determined that they never happen again, then they have to never happen again to Namibians and Palestinians, as well as never happening again to Jews.

And that's a universalism of an earlier period of German liberalism -- I think something maybe that Immanuel Kant might have sympathized with -- that this generation of Germans has lost and they need to recover it.

BONUS Host's Anti-Ceasefire BS Dismantled Completely During INTENSE Debate - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-28-24

YALDA HAKIM: But, uh, Francois, I mean, there are many who are saying that, frankly, the Biden administration should have acted sooner and faster, that hundreds of billions of dollars has been put at risk because the Houthis have held this area in the Red Sea at ransom. [00:50:00]

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: Sorry, so just let me get this straight, Yalda. So we are bombing the poorest, one of the poorest countries in the world that has been under a humanitarian blockade. There has been famine. These people have been decimated and we are bombing them because a couple of guys in dinghies in support for the Palestinians who are having a genocide committed against them. They're objecting to that and we're bombing them? Come on now. I mean, this is just an insane world for us to even think. I'm so sorry your Amazon packages are delayed. I really am. Like I wish mine came on time. But you know: genocide, guys, genocide. There are two mothers a day dying in Gaza right now. It's 109 days into a conflict in which a humanitarian crisis has been declared to the world day in, day out.

YALDA HAKIM: By the way, Dr Francois, there are many who are Yemen-watchers who monitor and follow the Houthis who say this is doing wonders for their branding, actually, that it isn't just the Palestinian cause that they're [00:51:00] focused on.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: So pause it, pause it. I mean, I have no doubt that the Houthis, um, and I think, you know, everything I've read suggests that they're having a hard time governing and that this is, engaging in a conflict like this drives their national, their legitimacy and sort of nationalistic fervor. Yes, of course, that dynamic exists in every time a government launches a conflict in some fashion. Um, but the bottom line is like, this was all to be expected.

The reason why the Biden administration moved in naval ships early on was because they knew this conflict has the ability to expand. And so you have a choice. You either roll with the expansion of that conflict. Or you try and end the conflict. And the Biden administration has made their choice, which is we're not going to try and end the conflict.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, why is, I'm sorry, but why does that give the Houthis more [00:52:00] legitimacy? Why? It's not just, it's not just that they're engaging in a war or in a conflict. It's the fact that they're showing solidarity for the Palestinian people. When you see how other Arab countries and people in those nations feel about Israel's genocide of the Palestinian people, you can understand why the Houthis domestically might see it as a prime opportunity for them to show and thumb their nose at U.S. imperial power, which, I gotta tell, like, I hate to break it to White, British, and American anchors in this country who are cozy and make millions of dollars, but the United States is not viewed with much reverence in the region that we have been indiscriminately bombing for decades and decades and decades, and that Israel is like a colonial outpost for our interests in that region.

Yeah, they don't have a ton of legitimacy there, or we don't. So the Houthis doing this is actually completely logical, even though it's painted [00:53:00] as some sort of like, Arab barbarism. It's, if the genocide was happening in our backyard to one of our allies or other people, I mean, look at how we responded in solidarity with sending weapons to people in Ukraine because Russia is in opposition to us. This is how geopolitics works, but it, but White people get to be rational actors on the international stage and then Brown people or Arab people or Muslim people, they're all irrational.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: The people that are supporting the bombing of the Houthis, yeah, it is disgusting that people are saying, well, what about the, uh, uh, might be inflation or rise in shipping? You know how many people are starving in Gaza right now?

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Half a million.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: It's absolutely disgusting to be called like pro-terrorist or something like that. Kiss my ass.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I mean, uh, let's put it this way: if the Houthis were disrupting international trade routes and were firing on civilian vessels, and whether you think they're sincere or not, in there, right? - I mean, [00:54:00] uh, which is just a bizarre way to look at this - whether you think they're sincere or not, if they were doing this in the total absence of this Israeli assault on Gaza, if there was nothing else going on and they were doing it because they were they're trying to drive their own sort of like, public perception, the quality of their public perception in Yemen, no one would be talking about it.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: If the U.S. was bombing, we would be like, Wait, we shouldn't be doing this, and that would be the end of the story. Like there would be nobody, it would...

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: You have a coalition being able to be built because the Houthis are just acting out for some reason against [unintelligible].

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, of course. I mean, that's the thing, is that the whole point is that the Biden administration have completely opened themselves up to this expansion of this regional conflict because of their failure to, in any way, attempt to reign in Israel. Because it is not an attempt to say we're [00:55:00] sending a letter to your manager and we just put 'to whom it does concern'. I mean that is, that is the point. Uh, continue on with this [clip].

YALDA HAKIM: ...who are Yemen watches, who are, who monitor and follow the Houthis, who say this is doing wonders for their branding, actually, that it isn't just the Palestinian cause that they're focused on.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: So, call a ceasefire now and then the positive branding, if you want to stop the Houthis doing what they're doing, then call a ceasefire right now...

NEWS ANCHOR: Do you actually believe that the Houthis would stop doing what they're doing if...

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: They have literally said that that's why they're doing what they're doing, they have not previously blocked those routes for any other...

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Pause it real quick, you know, I'm not gonna take it off, but like the idea that America and Britain have the ability to vet others for sincerity in this sort of conflict is ludicrous

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: ...that we all state actors that are White and are powerful or rational, state actors that are poor and Arab, we have to assess their moral character.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yep.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: ... reason except [00:56:00] this one. So, yes, I do. And I also think the West needs to start to understand that you cannot just go around playing cowboys in the world. There are consequences to your actions. You cannot just go around bombing people's countries, ignoring international law and expect no repercussions. For every cause there is a consequence. And just because you don't like a couple of guys trying to resist the fact that this...

YALDA HAKIM: I mean, these are now proscribed terrorists, the Houthis.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: Sure, according to Western governments, the other terrorist governments.

YALDA HAKIM: Well, also according to the Yemeni people.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: Which is a Saudi-backed government, which is essentially our....

YALDA HAKIM: But the Yemenis who live, uh, you know, under Houthis rule, talk about the fact that this group continues to terrorize them as well.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: Yeah, that's, I'm no fan of the Houthis, apart from when they're blockading in favor of a ceasefire, which should have been called a long time ago. Twenty-five thousand people are dead in Gaza right now. There are over 60,000 people injured with no access to food, water, aid. How dare we have a conversation about trade when there [00:57:00] are children right now being treated without anesthetic. There are things that require us to make...

YALDA HAKIM: They do have the global economy, global markets, hostage.

MYRIAM FRANCOIS: Good for them, good for them. Cease fire now. Cease fire now.

YALDA HAKIM: We're going to have to, uh, leave it there.

Summary

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with Democracy Now!, laying out the overview of the danger of escalation in the Middle East. Democracy Now! Also laid out some of the contextual details of the Houthi movement in Yemen. The Inquiry broke down the role of Iran. Intercepted looked more closely at the influence of the U.S. Democracy Now! highlighted the context of the region being dotted with dozens of U.S. military bases. Intercepted explained the impact of the Israel-US relationship. And Americast spoke with Christiane Amanpour about the U.S.'s attempt to both retaliate but not escalate, while risking a major new war in the Middle East with Iran. [00:58:00] That's what everybody heard, but members also heard a bonus clips from Intercepted diving into the relationship between Germany and Israel in the context of the history of the Holocaust. And The Majority Report analyzed a mainstream coverage debate about the conflict.

Countering Green-Lanternism - Erin from (Just Outside) Philadelphia

VOICEMAILER ERIN FROM JUST OUTSIDE PHILLY: Hey, Jay!, this is Erin from what I now understand to be the most important county in the United States, which is to say the Philadelphia suburbs of Delaware County. Boy, it's great to be the center of attention every four years, isn't it?

In any case, wanted to respond to the recent show about the various strengths and weaknesses of the Biden campaign as it exists in this [00:59:00] moment. And A, I want to really thank you for your summary at the end, because while I fully understand that that was a disappointing reaction from J. B. Pritzker when the Humanist Report immediately went into, oh, we're doomed mode, I really started gritting my teeth, because it's just not helpful to think that way this year, for reasons that I think we all understand. But the point being, I appreciate your explanation of campaign literacy, we'll say, not necessarily media literacy. So yeah, one of the reasons I've been a member for so long is the way you were able to just pull everything together.

The other thing that just keeps coming to mind in every discussion I've had over the last few months, particularly with some friends and family is what the old progressive blog, Lawyers, Guns, and Money, used to refer to as Green Lanternism. Which, I'm not a big comics fan, but as I understand the Green Lantern is a [01:00:00] comics hero who can create things or cause things to happen purely by the force of his will, focused through some sort of magic ring. And this is a thing that they frequently criticized people on the left for back in the day, which, it's taken me a while to warm up to the theory, but I'm really beginning to understand it, that well, we just need Obama to get up and talk about this thing, and then it's gonna happen.

And you really see it every time there's a big presidential election, and I really do feel like it's a thing that is a bit of a problem on the left, because I feel like we ought to know better. Trump engages in Green Lanternism all the time, too. He's always saying, well, I'm gonna come in, and I'm gonna fix, Ukraine, and fix the border, and this and that, and nothing ever happens. But, whatever, that, that's not our problem.

But I do really feel like on the left, we have a similar sort of idea that, oh, well, If the president just says this, he can end things we don't like, create things we do like, and bend [01:01:00] other sovereign nations to our will. Which A, I don't think we should want, because that sounds an awful lot like a king to me, and we had a war about that about 250 years ago that I think we were on the right side of. And also, it takes so much of the energy that we really need to be focusing all the way up and down the ballot and especially locally. I the one thing we saw last year and the year before in the midterms is we can change so many things by focusing locally to make it more likely that the president we get, whether it's Biden or in the future, someone like Gretchen Whitmer, Josh Shapiro, whoever, can do the things we want them to do because they have Congress on their side.

We flipped school boards. We flipped state houses. As we're heading into this era where the Supreme Court is kicking everything back to states rights, we need those things in our column to survive. And so I'm also going to grab from another, just happened to listen to it directly before,[01:02:00] the You're Wrong About podcast was talking about specifically the, the pro-life/pro-choice movement in the context of the current campaign. And the guests they had on said, you know what, the thing to do this year to keep, as she put it, "the trauma of the world from residing in your body" is to get involved locally in something, whether it's abortion rights or queer rights or electing a better city council or state representative, we're going to need that. And so, keep high hopes and high expectations for the president, but definitely make sure that you are flipping as many seats locally as you can because it's going to take all of us in every state to make that happen.

All right, that's just my pitch. that's my watch word for 2024 get involved and I know altogether we will find great ways to do that Thanks for everything you do stay awesome.

Final comments on building power in the long and short term

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Thanks to all those who call into the voicemail line or write in their messages to be played as voicemails. If you'd like to leave a comment or a [01:03:00] question of your own to be played on the show, you can record or text us a message at 202-999-3991 or send an email to [email protected].

So, thanks to Erin for her message. I love Green Lantern-ism and, you know, obviously I agree with her analysis that, you know, that is an idea that is sort of for the impatient, right?, whereas real results come from slow progress and getting down into the dirt and doing the work. Right? And there's actually a silly example of this playing out right now in Congress concerning the border. Slate published an interview under the headline, "So Many People Agree That Joe Biden Should 'Shut Down' the Border o Stop Migration. There’s Just One Problem With That!", and it's discussing the bipartisan legislation that's sort of making its way through, that is supposed to give the president the authority to simply shut down the border if authorized crossings reach a certain threshold.

Of [01:04:00] course, the only problem is that that's a ridiculous framing because there's really no such thing as shutting down something that is already happening in an unauthorized way to begin with, that wouldn't require greater political will or a strong man president, it would require a magic wand. And that's the fantasy that always plays out, mostly on the right regarding immigration, but it happens elsewhere that, you know, we just need to believe stronger, or something, ignoring all of the complicated systemic issues that are much harder to solve, but would actually have a greater impact on whatever issue you're trying to fix.

On the other hand, real success does sometimes require both. I mean, think about the Supreme Court. I don't think it would be right to say either that the far right takeover of the court was solely the result of the decades-long working in planning by the Federalist Society. [01:05:00] Nor was it the hard-nosed powerplay of Mitch McConnell and the Senate Republicans to stop Obama from appointing a third justice, or what really seemed like a basic bribe to Anthony Kennedy to convince him to step down during Trump's presidency. It was clearly a combination of all of those things. You do need long-term ground game. Planning. Running all the time. And also you have to be prepared to play hardball and occasionally use whatever force is necessary to push through your preferred agenda.

So, to fully back up Erin's point, I definitely think it's appropriate to be on the side of demanding greater, you know, let's say backbone from elected Democrats on a pretty frequent basis, but to lose sight of the bigger mechanisms at play is to really fail to understand how politics works. And I might add that it's those people who really just don't understand how things are supposed to work, who end up getting [01:06:00] frustrated and start thinking, Well, I'd happily give up all my personal power and influence if someone would just say that they will fix everything, as though with a magic wand. And of course that's the most dangerous scenario of all and Something like a third or 40% of the country has basically done that now.

Which actually gets to the heart of why our current disjointed and hyper-targeted information system that is filled to the brim with falsities and propaganda is so dangerous, because it limits the ability of average people to become well-informed citizens who understand how the system works, which is what is required to maintain a democracy. But yeah. That's a discussion for another day.

As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave us a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email to [01:07:00] [email protected]. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with a link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So, coming to from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name [01:08:00] is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast, coming to you twice weekly thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1606 Biden's Barriers and Boons to Reelection (Transcript)

Posted by · January 26, 2024 1:12 PM

Air Date 1/26/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of Left Podcast and which we will look at an election year where more than ever before democracy itself is on the ballot, and yet there is less democracy actually happening in the lead up to the election than anytime in recent memory. And, with two profoundly disliked candidates running, the supporters of democratic ideals have a hard uphill push ahead of them.

Sources today include The Majority Report, Ring of Fire, the Humanist Report, MSNBC, the NPR Politics Podcast, the Professional Left Podcast, and Olurinatti; with additional members only clips from Future Hindsight and the NPR Politics Podcast.

Democratic Strategists Have Their Heads In The Sand - The Majority Report - Air Date 1-24-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Republicans are one by one losing their majority in the House with resignations and whatnot. Also it seems that Johnson's whole strategy is going to be we're not going to pass any [00:01:00] immigration bill whatsoever. Even as much as the Democrats are compromising on it. Where does this leave it? This almost reminds me of when Obama tried to cut Social Security and the Freedom Caucus back in 2010 wouldn't say yes. And so the Democrats couldn't come out and campaign "they're going to cut Social Security" because it was the Democrats who were willing to offer it. And yet, what's going to happen when the Republicans just use immigration as a bludgeon on Biden, but Biden doesn't want to come out and actually defend immigrants in any way.

DAVE WEIGEL: Oh, yes, so there's a few issues like this. This is a big one though. I would say energy policy is the same, where the Biden administration's slowly moving towards a policy that eliminates some of the political problems they see, except it doesn't, because Republicans don't give them credit and Democrats don't like it. And this is one of them. The Republican approach -- [00:02:00] I hate using "they" -- but I can say a common line you heard from Republicans, Kevin McCarthy would say this, is "Democrats want the issue. They don't want a solution. They want the issue of immigration because they can use it against us, and because yada yada, Great Replacement Theory." Side note, that was probably the most memorable thing I saw in Iowa was Vivek Ramaswamy was late to an event and Steve King, who had endorsed him, just vamped by talking about the Great Replacement Theory for eight minutes. But that's how they talk about this.

And they really are, I think, running down the clock. The expectation from them is in a year and four days, Donald Trump is going to be president again. Why should we agree to anything until Donald Trump is president? Why would you take a deal with Joe Biden that you can throw out and say, all right, no deal whatsoever.

You saw Stephen Miller, who expects to be back in a Trump administration, saying deportations begin at noon on inauguration day. So this is mitigating against any deal is the sense that Republicans have that we can make, this is a [00:03:00] loser for Biden, every day that there's footage of people in New York, migrants living in hotels, we can talk about it.

It came up a lot in the trail. Immigration was the top issue in the exit poll, but also every candidate was saying, look at these reports of migrants living in schools in New York. The issue is great for them. And one, they don't want any compromises that Biden would offer in terms of a path to citizenship. Every Republican in this race, even Nikki Haley, who we just started talking about trying to appeal to Democrats, their position is deport everybody who's here illegally. So if their starting position is deport everybody, and they think they're going to win the election, the cost to them is 11 plus months of people crossing the border and getting asylum, who they can then deport.

Is that ideal? No, but it seems like it mostly is making life hell for Eric Adams and for Brandon Johnson and for Karen Bates.

If you are in a cynical mindset, which I usually am, that's the incentives. What would be good for Republicans if there's a deal on immigration and border crossings [00:04:00] decrease, asylum seekers decrease, and Biden says, look, I fixed a problem. That's not good for them. And that's how I see this issue. I do see it as driven through the presidential campaign. But they're pretty clear on it. Just if the worst things are for Biden, no matter what the human cost is, the better they are for us.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And I imagine when you're dealing with the Republican electorate, it's people who are not as engaged in this as maybe you would if you were in a Democratic primary, but is Biden's support -- like a complete, unmitigated support for Israel and what people are seeing in Gaza is that, are people talking about that in the Republican primary at all? Are you hearing stuff from like non-Republicans as you go around reporting?

DAVE WEIGEL: No, it didn't really. The most that came up with Republicans is the Trump argument, which is if he was still president, we Israel would be fine, never would have been attacked. And it just folds into -- they don't even praise Biden for doing things that they [00:05:00] agree with. They say, yeah, but things are worse than they would have been if he wasn't there.

And he does get no -- I'm not saying he should get credit from Democrats, I'm saying he doesn't, he doesn't get any. I think he gets the DMFI, APAC, etc. Democrats who have worked to beat people they disagree with. They like his policy. They're not running ads against him. But in all the polling, younger voters don't like the way that Biden's handling this.

I've seen -- not in Iowa -- I've seen Genocide Joe tags, posters, in bigger cities. I think it has become a problem, not in Iowa, but in polling of Michigan, it's clearly a problem. Voters under 35. And this is, if you went to college, you didn't go to college, you're white, you're black, whatever, this is very well known phenomenon.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: I think it's very much an age, people under the age 40 or 35 is across the board, it seems to me. There's just a much more sensitivity to it.

DAVE WEIGEL: You've only known Israel as Benjamin Netanyahu's Israel. You've only known it as a country that is perfectly safe -- I [00:06:00] should say, there are attacks -- but a country that is able to defend most attacks and brutally, effectively counterattack, destroy anyone who has attacked it as it's done in Palestine right now. It is not, if you're a boomer, you remember Golda Meir, you remember the country almost being destroyed. That's not how young people view Israel, not to get into a whole tangent. I have not seen a place where that would play out for Biden.

Now, in New Hampshire there are Palestinian Americans who live here, Lebanese Americans who live in the state., There is some opposition, but it's really only in Minnesota, Georgia and Michigan where this is significant. And when you ask Democrats about it -- I asked the governor of Minnesota about that a few weeks ago -- they just think, yes we'll get to a point where Trump is the alternative. And if young people see the Trump-Biden choice, at best they will vote for Biden reluctantly. At worst, they're going to stay home or vote for Cornel West. And they're just not really processing, okay, we need to change direction because we're going to lose votes on this. [00:07:00] Not so far what I've seen.

Bidenomics Continue To Worsen For Young Adults - The Ring of Fire - Air Date 1-21-24

MIKE PAPANTONIO - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: The Biden administration keeps telling us that the economy is humming along just fine, but for young Americans, things are really getting worse. Huge percentages of young voters being forced to move back in with their parents because they can't afford rent or mortgages, even though they're working two jobs to make ends meet.

That's the state of affairs moving into The 2024 election. How does it affect things?

FARRON COUSINS - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: It's horrible for Biden. And here's the thing. Look, I'm on social media all the time and that's, yeah, you got a much younger crowd, especially over on Twitter. A lot of them talk about how sick and tired they are of hearing this administration tell them that the economy is doing great. Because when you look on paper, you look at the numbers, yeah, the economy is doing great. We've got record low unemployment, stock market going through the roof, inflation is coming down. Price is still way up and a lot of that is price gouging.

But get down on the micro level, not the macro level. Get down to the micro level, and that is where you start to [00:08:00] see how bad the divide is in this country. Because if you're somebody who's over 40 --

MIKE PAPANTONIO - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: You're talking about age, age divide, right?

FARRON COUSINS - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: Yeah. if you're over 40, you're feeling the recovery, you're doing pretty good. You're under 40? It's hell for these people right now.

MIKE PAPANTONIO - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: Here are the numbers, Farron. Almost 30 percent of Gen Zers, reported they can't afford rent and they had to move back with their family. It's one out of three adults between 18 and 34 today are living with their parents. And that's not that they just don't want to work. Some of them are working two jobs. And, part of it is we've talked about before is you've got Wall Street coming in buying up houses, buying up entire neighborhoods so they can jack the rents up.

But this, I don't see this getting any better and I don't know how, I don't know how you can, in one side of your mouth saying, this is really good, we got a great economy. You have more movement right now with minorities and younger voters moving away from [00:09:00] Democrats. They're moving away. You've got, I think every week you've got some high profile minority leader coming out and saying, you know, we've all invested in the Democratic party; what's it done for us? And so this is another one of those stories, isn't it?

And I think, yeah, it has to be addressed. You can't move into the election, say, and put your head in the sand and say everything's okay. Bernie Sanders, I think, really handled it well.

FARRON COUSINS - HOST, THE RING OF FIRE: Yeah, Bernie came out recently and essentially he said, Biden has to change course. It was that simple. He said he has to change the course. And of course, Bernie's big thing is always these economic inequality issues. And this is where Biden has plenty of leeway to do something. He could go out there, hold a press conference in 10 minutes from now and say, look, we got a problem in the country where we've got Wall Street bankers moving into small town America, buying up all your homes and then charging you double what the rent should be, triple what the rent should be. I want to make that illegal.

Is Biden Trying to Lose - The Humanist Report - Air Date 1-18-24

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: [00:10:00] When it comes to young people, the administration seemingly doesn't even have a strategy in place to address their concerns. And I say this because in an interview with Joy Reid on MSNBC, Illinois Governor J. B. Pritzker, who is an advisor to Biden's 2024 campaign, he really did not have a strong answer when he was asked about Biden's weakness with young voters.

So let's listen to what he has to say, and then there's a follow up that's even worse. But first, here he is.

JOY REID: I think that there is some significant anecdotal evidence that President Biden does have some issues in terms of parts of the younger electorate that are not in a good place with him on things like Gaza, on the bombing of Yemen. There were just protests outside of the White House this past week. There is some energy that's building, particularly among Arab American voters, Muslim American voters who say they will not vote for him because of his stance on Gaza. Is that, is it bedwetting? Or is the White House maybe [00:11:00] not paying enough attention to real passionate objections to its policies by younger voters that they need to turn out? And I mean younger voters, including younger African American voters.

GOVERNOR JB PRITZKER: Well, when you're a responsible leader, when you're in office, you have to make tough decisions, no doubt about it. And every time you have to make a tough decision, someone doesn't like it. The truth is that we've seen Joe Biden underestimated all along in his entire career and especially in 2020. In 2024, I think what we're going to see is a real focus on the things that really matter to people's individual lives, to their families, to their communities. And that's the economy. It means their freedoms. We talked about choice. In a lot of places in the country, people are deeply concerned about gun violence. And we know that Joe Biden has stood up for a ban on assault weapons, and he has stood up for violence prevention programs in a way that Republicans just want to let [00:12:00] go and frankly, let people shoot each other wherever they may be with as many guns as they may want to have.

So I do think that a focus on the issues that really matter to working families across the United States is gonna matter for Joe Biden in a positive way. Now, they're always detractors, right? There are people that even that vote for Donald Trump, who don't like things about Donald Trump. But in the end, when people are going to see the two visions for the future of America, that young people and people of color across the United States, not to mention the vast majority of American workers know that it's Joe Biden that's fighting for them, and Joe Biden that'll do better for them. Donald Trump will be a disaster for those groups.

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: Incredibly naive. Again, the young people Joe Biden needs aren't voting for Donald Trump. They don't support Trump. The risk is them just not voting altogether. And tepidly signaling support for gun safety laws and abortion [00:13:00] rights is not going to sufficiently mobilize young people.

Biden needs a concrete action plan that he talks about nonstop to mobilize these voters. And even if he has that, it still might not work because they can't put aside the fact that he's supporting a genocide.

But Joy Reid, to her credit, who's been excellent lately, she asked a follow up question since she seemingly wasn't convinced. And it gets so much worse.

JOY REID: You don't think that the White House needs to adjust or the Biden reelection campaign needs to adjust in any way its messaging on issues of war and peace? Because these are issues -- I mean, we are on MLK Day and we do know that one of the things that Dr. King did later in his life was to oppose the Vietnam War. And this was an important issue to him, as important in the end of his life as fighting for living wages and for racial justice. You know, issues of war and peace are passion issues. They're voting issues. And for a lot of younger Americans, not even just younger Americans, but a [00:14:00] lot of progressives and a lot of just people who have a humanist view of the world, the Gaza issue is a voting issue. So you're saying that people will ignore that? You don't think that the White House needs to in any way adjust its messaging on that?

GOVERNOR JB PRITZKER: Well, look, here's what the White House has been doing. They're fighting what has become a mortal enemy of the United States, and that's Vladimir Putin. They're standing up for democracy in Ukraine, they're fighting against terrorism in the Middle East. Those are the things that I think the messages that the Biden administration needs to make sure they're getting out to people.

But look, nobody likes war. We'd like to have all of this ratcheted down and go away. And I know the president wants that, right? But it, you have to have a careful foreign policy expert in the White House who understands how to manage all that in a very difficult environment.

You think Donald Trump has shown that he can do that? Do you think Donald Trump would handle this better than Joe Biden? The answer clearly is [00:15:00] no.

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: [Groans] We're doomed. We are doomed. She asks him about Gaza and he pivots to Putin and ends with, well, at least Biden's not as bad as Trump. I promise you, that is not going to resonate with young people who want him to stop doing a genocide. But they don't get it.

But what that answer does tell me is that the Biden administration doesn't actually have a plan to meaningfully address young voters' concerns.

So the question is, how exactly does Joe Biden plan to win back the White House without young voters? There's two responses to this.

First, he either assumes that they'll acquiesce in November, and that's a possibility. But it's a big if. And it was a gamble that Hillary Clinton also made in 2016 that didn't pay off. So I don't know that I'd want to make that gamble if I were Joe Biden with how much is at stake.

But second, he maybe thinks that he doesn't need young voters. He can just use negative partisanship against [00:16:00] Trump again to win over voters, in particular voters that Trump is losing: moderate voters, independents. And that seems to be his game plan, right? So after Trump won the Iowa caucus in a landslide, here's what Joe Biden tweeted: "Looks like Donald Trump just won Iowa. He's the clear frontrunner on the other side at this point. But here's the thing. This election was always going to be you and me versus extreme MAGA Republicans. It was true yesterday, and it'll be true tomorrow."

So if you'll notice, he's making a really interesting distinction here. It's us versus extreme MAGA Republicans, meaning not all Republicans are bad, just the most sycophantic Trump supporters. Now, I think that this is naive to an extent, because the Republican Party is the party of Donald Trump, so to pretend as if there's this massive swath of Republicans who are just like itching to vote against Trump, I think they're probably gonna suck it up and vote for Trump.

So, the intent behind this, though, is to [00:17:00] signal to moderate Republicans that they are welcome in Joe Biden's coalition. And this is what Joe Scarborough hinted at as well.

JOE SCARBOROUGH: We're running, he says, against extreme MAGA Republicans. Mika, it's not an us versus them. Joe Biden's not saying all Republicans are bad guys, all Republicans hate the rule of law, all Republicans still are going to Chinese religious cult websites to get their information. No, he's talking about extreme MAGA Republicans. It makes a difference, because there are a lot of Republicans out there that again, this is about conversion. There are a lot of independents out there that Joe Biden's going to get voting for it.

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: I think that Joe Scarborough is correct to assume that converting moderates and independents is Joe Biden's strategy here. And in some ways, it could pay off, right? I think that his position on abortion is going to help him with independents, for example, and maybe some moderate Republicans, although not much.

But with that being said, it's wishful thinking to [00:18:00] believe that you're going to make up enough ground with moderates and independents. to account for the hemorrhaging of young support. I'm not saying that you forego the strategy of courting moderates altogether, but it's not a binary choice, and it's not something that should be your main strategy. It should be supplemental to your existing strategy of mobilizing young people and your core base, people of color.

Maddow on Trump-Biden rematch 'Not very much democracy in election about saving democracy' - MSNBC - Air Date 1-24-24

RACHEL MADDOW - HOST, THE RACHEL MADDOW SHOW: On the Republican campaign schedule this year, you guys, there were supposed to be two debates after Iowa and before the New Hampshire primary. Remember that? We all blocked it out on our calendars. We all planned to be here. This was one of the things that was going to happen. It was awkward because they were only a few days apart, but there's only eight days between Iowa and New Hampshire. They were going to squeeze in two debates between Iowa And New Hampshire, two more chances for the candidates to make final appeals to New Hampshire voters before the polls opened in New Hampshire today. Did those happen? No. No, they did not.

Those debates did not happen because Donald Trump is refusing to [00:19:00] debate this year. Nikki Haley said it would be pointless to hold another debate without Trump when, in her words, Ron DeSantis was closer to zero than he was to her. So why would she bother talking to him? This is sort of a fair point, but that does mean there were no New Hampshire debates at all.

Now, my in-laws live in New Hampshire. I have lots of family and lots of acquaintances in New Hampshire. I spend lots of time in New Hampshire. I did not expect to hear this, but I did anecdotally hear a lot of people say that they were mad there were no New Hampshire debates. The Republican primary debates, none of them included the front runner, none of them included Trump. But they were in Wisconsin and Florida and California and none of them were in New Hampshire because they were supposedly going to be these two dedicated New Hampshire debates, both of them off. And so people in New Hampshire, at least anecdotally in my experience, were mad about that.

But more broadly, that is becoming kind of a theme this year, more so than at any time since the Civil War. This is the election in which we're deciding whether or not to keep a democracy.

But there's [00:20:00] not very much democracy in this contest thus far, right? With an incumbent president, which is true any time you have an incumbent president, there's no real primary on the Democratic side. It may be the shortest primary ever on the Republican side, which is what we've been talking to Steve Kornacki about all night. Supporters of the frontrunner are emphatically demanding that everybody has to clear the field so we can stop with all this darn voting. The voting is so offensive. We've got no debates for the Democratic nominee. We've got no debates for the likely Republican nominee. Very possibly, we've got no general election debates at all. Because neither Trump nor Biden has debated thus far. Neither of them seems to want to. And so why would they?

We are now in a fight to save democracy in this country, but we are trying to fight for it without using democracy to fight for it, which feels historically unprecedented, but if there's one thing we've learned, nothing is.

2024 Election Is About The Fight For Democracy - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Date 1-25-24

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: It's been three years since the January 6th attack at the Capitol. The insurrection [00:21:00] has changed the way America talks about democracy.

President Biden gave a speech today near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. Of course, that's a famous revolutionary war site, so there's a significance in picking that as a location for a campaign event. Biden framed the 2024 election as an inflection point where Americans have to decide whether or not democracy and democratic values are what the country believes in.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: Today. I make this sacred pledge to you, the defense protection and preservation of American democracy will remain as it has been the central cause of my presidency.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Sue, Biden's campaign in 2020 said they were fighting, " a battle for the soul of the nation," and now you can hear him using the events of January 6th specifically as a stark example of this is what the country faces if Trump is reelected.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: There's clearly connective tissue here between Joe Biden's reason for running the first time in 2020, [00:22:00] which he said was in response to Trump's reaction to the racist uprising in Charlottesville, healing a soul of a nation, protecting and defending American norms. And again, in 2024, he said today that it would be the central cause of his presidency.

What I find Interesting about this speech is it's what I would call a better angel speech. It's just speaking to the ideals and values of American citizens. It wasn't a policy speech. He was not running on an agenda. There was nothing affirmative that he would do as president. It was basically just making the case for keeping things the way they are, for preserving the powers of the presidency as they exist today.

In contrast to his likely opponent, who is very Openly running on remaking the idea of how far executive power should go, having a much more emboldened executive, and frankly, as Joe Biden said today, Donald Trump has also been very clear that he would use the power of his office to exact revenge on his political enemies.[00:23:00]

CLAUDIA GRISALES - REPORTER, NPR: I think one big challenge that Biden is facing when we look at the American electorate is that he's losing the audience, if you will, in terms of what role Trump is played or has played in the January 6th attack. We see that in a recent poll by the Washington Post and the University of Maryland, that within a three year span, we've seen the percentage of Americans who see that Trump played a role in the siege, that number has declined.

This poll found that that number was at about 53%, that's down from 60% in 2021. So, This is clearly on the mind of the president and the Biden/Harris campaign, because they're trying to fight that narrative back. The House Select January 6th Committee is no longer out there telling their part of the story in terms of what they found in their bipartisan investigation, and Republicans have been able to fill in that gap with more [00:24:00] disinformation.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: I do think that, to me, might speak to how much of Biden's speech today was backward looking, recounting the events of January 6th and recounting all the court challenges to the election and the legitimacy of it. Because in some ways, either many Americans have forgotten or don't view it the same way. They don't blame Trump to the same extent that the president does. And it was almost like a history lesson, "let me remind you of what my opponent did," and yes, there was an element of it that was about this year in this election, but I was surprised at the balance of how much of it was backward looking versus the question put to the country and the coming 11 months.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Yeah, and you can also see Trump making the same argument, right? As I was watching Biden's speech, my inbox was getting a lot of Trump, " the Democrats are a threat to democracy." He's also making the case that his campaign is about protecting democracy from the threat they see from Biden and Democrats, mostly on issues of free speech and stuff like that.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: That is true. From a conservative standpoint, you could argue that they don't like the [00:25:00] direction that liberals and Democrats are taking the country in, but I also think when we talk about this, we have to make clear that a lot of Republicans views are predicated on false information. Sure, you might think democracy is at stake if you think that Joe Biden stole an election.

If you think the sitting president is illegitimately elected, you would say, yeah, of course, democracy is at stake in 2024. That same Washington Post poll that Claudia referenced also indicated that a third of self identified Republicans believe that January 6th was orchestrated by the FBI, it's based on a conspiracy theory. That's not an insignificant portion of Republican voters.

So yes. Republican voters and Donald Trump continues to falsely allege that the election was stolen, he continues to stoke all of these conspiratorial ideas. So I think that we have to keep that in context when we talk about, voters seeing democracy on the ballot. A lot of voters see democracy on the ballot based off of false information.

Iowa, New Hampshire, and No Fair Remembering 2012 - The Professional Left Podcast - Air Date 1-24-24

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: One is, it [00:26:00] is like every other survey that the Democrats send out for fundraising purposes, to make it seem as though, and there are people for whom this works, " they want to hear what I think, so I'll fill out this survey and send it in with a check, and whether they do anything with it or not is immaterial."

First thing they want is your email address, of course, and your cell phone number. And then the questions are, section one, we want to understand the beliefs of voters like you. Which of the below best describes you? Very liberal, somewhat liberal, moderate, somewhat conservative, very conservative, I don't know, or other?

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Independent.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Independent isn't in there. I'm an independent.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Isn't that weird? Yeah.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Section 2, on a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being not involved and 5 being very involved, how much do you plan to be involved in elections in 2024?[00:27:00]

Section 3, in what ways do you plan to help Democrats win their races? And there are signing petitions, hosting an event Volunteering to call voters or text message voters, knocking on doors, helping to register voters, none of the above, I'm not sure. Okay.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: There's no physically threatening Republican voters or changing vote signs?

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Physically threatening Republican voters is not on here, because we don't work that way. That's a different survey.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Oh, oh, okay, okay.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Now, here is the workshopped and focus grouped question that made me think, okay, this is podcastable. Section four. What are some of the key issues keeping you up at night? Please choose three.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Will there be a season six of Fargo? Why isn't Margot Robbie nominated for a goddamn Academy Award?

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: That goes under other.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: It keeps me awake at night, Joe Biden. Fix this shit, fix it now!

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Why was the director of [00:28:00] Barbie denied a nomination.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: It gets the best picture nomination.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: She got best picture, but okay.

So, please choose three. I don't know how you could choose three of these, but: GOP attacks on abortion access, our nation's ongoing gun violence epidemic, the climate crisis, book bans and attacks on our public school teachers, Republicans trying to reverse our historic progress on LGBTQ plus rights, the global rise of far right ideologies, and other.

And I just thought, the keeping you up at night thing is a really critical choice, and it proves to me that someone In the Biden world is actually tapping into the anger and anxiety of Democratic voters. And you don't see it on the media. We do not get a voice on MSNBC. They are too busy desperately looking for Nikki Haley [00:29:00] voters to show that independents and moderates want a different thing other than the message that Donald Trump is sending.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Well, there's that anecdote from, I think, New Hampshire or Iowa, where a reporter was looking for some local color and ended up talking to a New York Times editor. Because there's not enough bodies to go around. It's become New York Times pitch bot. We wanted to know what America's foreign policy should be vis a vis Gaza, so we talked to six undecided voters in a diner in New Hampshire. Nikki Haley leaning voters in a car park and it's just fucking ridiculous. And this part of the survey is the stick. This is what's coming if you don't fix this shit.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: That's the stick, and section five is the carrot, which is what is giving you hope during this time in America. And you can just hear the Leonard Bernstein... the strings coming up, and the sunrise and the so forth.

But it's please rank in order of importance, one equals most important, and it's all of the [00:30:00] accomplishments of the Biden administration listed. The Inflation Reduction Act, the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, Historic action to address gun violence epidemics through the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, the Violence Against Women Act, capping the price of insulin, the last one is Justice Katonji Brown Jackson, the first Black woman and public defender to serve on the Supreme Court.

Which does give me hope, I'm not dissing any of that.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: No, no, that's all good stuff.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: But this is a marketing effort, is what I'm saying. And it shows me that despite the desperate desire of the media to pretend we don't exist, to pretend that democratic anger has no place in this race.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: That's right.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: It does. And it's being heard by people that want to elect Joe Biden.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: It also flies in the face of the constant dumbing down of messaging, which is, voters can only think about one thing. It's gotta be about abortion [00:31:00] or democracy or the economy. Can't be like two things or three things or nine things, because, human beings in their house, at home here, we can only think of one thing at once. I must get coffee, therefore, the cat starved because I can't possibly feed the cats and get coffee at the same time. My little brain just doesn't work that way. No, people can be distressed about multiple things. And you can be really pissed at Joe Biden about some things and really look at him and go, "on the other hand, all these other things are going very well, and the alternative is so horrifying, I'm willing to give him my vote, because, on balance, there's no contest between these two." As opposed to, "you gotta pick democracy or abortion or economy."

And that might work for Republican voters.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: The person who has proved that you can be subtle about these issues is Kamala Harris. Because her messaging all week on the anniversary of Roe has been, "you can have strong religious beliefs about abortion. You can believe that you would never get one. Your [00:32:00] religious beliefs are your religious beliefs. Do you want the government deciding what you do with your body?"

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: And the fact that she's out this week is somebody at the White House is aware that she needs more FaceTime on real specific issues to boost her ratings.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: And she's the one to talk about this issue.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: But all of this bullshit. We've heard over the last year about nobody likes Kamala Harris. She's the most ineffective vice president. We did a whole show about, who was the most effective vice president, what are you talking about? Vice president's job is to...

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Dan Quayle?

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: Their job is to be the wallpaper in the White House. Their job is to fit into the background and do what the president asks them to do, that's their goddamn job. So why are you picking on this. Oh, that's right.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: We all know why they're picking on this.

DRIFTGLASS - C0-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: That's why you're picking on her because your friends, your racist friends, can't say Black woman, but they can't say she's not a very good vice president. Well, she's a fine vice president. I'm very happy she's vice president and putting her in front of a microphone on issues that she's very good at talking about it is a tremendous asset to the biden administration.

BLUE GAL - CO-HOST, THE PROFESSIONAL LEFT PODCAST: It's a phenomenal asset. And with the anniversary, timing it with the [00:33:00] anniversary makes the news media have a slot for it. They love anniversaries. And there was an article in the New Yorker, which started with all of the turmoil, and this goes back to our initial theme of the important drinking hasn't started yet. The entire year that we're going to have of election turmoil is going to end on election night with everyone focused on the Philadelphia suburbs and Maricopa County, Arizona. And remember that.

And that doesn't mean don't vote. That means get out and vote. And especially in the House races, especially in your local races, the headliners, Trump versus Biden, is really just that. It's a headliner to get all of these other races filled with the right people.

Biden Talks Reproductive Rights - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Date 1-24-24

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN - REPORTER, NPR: President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris made their first joint campaign appearance yesterday in Virginia for a reproductive rights rally. They were joined by [00:34:00] Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who told the crowd that abortion is not just a women's issue, it's everyone's issue. Meanwhile, First Lady Jill Biden recounted the story of a friend in high school who became pregnant, and Jill Biden warned the crowd of how the nation was returning to a time of shame, secrecy, silence, danger, and even death.

Deepa, abortion is clearly a really, really big topic, it has been in the last couple of national elections, so let's talk about this. Vice President Harris spoke before the president, and this was her second event this week. where she spoke directly about reproductive rights. And then President Joe Biden also spoke on abortion, which is not a topic he talks on a whole lot, so what was their messaging like overall, and do the two differ in how they talk about it?

DEEPA SHIVARAM - REPORTER, NPR: I mean, this was a big show of force event. You had not only the president and the vice president there, but the first lady, Jill Biden, the second gentleman, Doug Emhoff, all four principals being at one campaign rally. Not something that really happens every day. So this was definitely a big show of force. And of course, a little bit of counter [00:35:00] programming to the New Hampshire primary going on, and all the coverage of Trump and Nikki Haley, and things like that.

And what they really wanted to do was rile this crowd up and make sure that voters and Democratic voters really know that, yes this reversal of Roe happened in 2022 and they are not taking their foot off the gas. And what you heard in common, I will say, that was a major point that both Vice President Harris and President Biden said yesterday was they named Donald Trump and they laid the blame for the reversal of Roe on Trump.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: And let there be no mistake, the person most responsible for taking away this freedom in America is Donald Trump.

DEEPA SHIVARAM - REPORTER, NPR: And you're right, Danielle, to point out that. This is not a topic that we hear Joe Biden talk about all that often, he has an interesting history with his own personal beliefs on abortion. He is, of course, a practicing Catholic and has said in the past that, he's not really big on abortion, but he is really supportive of Roe. So what you heard a little bit differently yesterday is Biden emphasizing that this is something that he strongly believes is cruel.

PRESIDENT JOE BIDEN: The cruelty is astounding [00:36:00] and it's a direct affront to a woman's dignity, to be told by extreme politicians and judges to wait to get sicker and sicker before anything can happen, even to the point where you heard your life had been determined to be in danger.

DEEPA SHIVARAM - REPORTER, NPR: Just honing in on that message of this is about health care, something that Kamala Harris said was that this is a health care crisis, and so you're hearing both of them in lockstep talking about Donald Trump on this issue and also talking about how this is a decision that the government should not be making.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN - REPORTER, NPR: It's also very clear Democrats are not being subtle about how much they intend to focus on abortion in campaigns up and down the ballot this November. I also thought it was notable that the Biden campaign put out an abortion related ad, but it focuses on this clip of Donald Trump bragging about the fact that he played a central role in overturning Roe v. Wade by appointing conservative justices and says, "and I'm proud to have done it."

And when you hear that clip, you're like, oh, we are going to hear that clip thousands [00:37:00] of times before election day. If anything, that might be the singular case that the Biden campaign is going to make here, that Trump is the one that played a critical role in rolling back Roe v. Wade and reelecting Joe Biden will push the country closer to potentially codifying Roe v. Wade if Democrats continue to control the White House and Congress.

DEEPA SHIVARAM - REPORTER, NPR: And that was something Biden ended his speech with yesterday. He was saying, they're not done yet. Like yes, Donald Trump is proud to have made the Roe reversal possible and also that a national abortion ban is on the table very much that momentum of yes, this happened as an in the past and like it is still actively happening.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN - REPORTER, NPR: And it is relatively rare for Joe Biden to do a whole event, a whole speech like this focusing on abortion and reproductive rights. And I know that some reproductive rights supporters, for example aren't super enthusiastic about him on the topic, therefore they might not even trust him.

It strikes me that his past on this, his Catholic faith which he cites in his stances on this, that this all could cut two ways. One is, yeah, [00:38:00] it might not enthuse some of the more enthusiastic abortion rights supporters, but on the other hand, is it possible that his history of, I guess you could say moderation, could appeal to people who are more in the middle.

DEEPA SHIVARAM - REPORTER, NPR: I was wondering the same thing is that what is the role for Joe Biden here to speak out on this issue? Because look at his counterpart, right? Kamala Harris is the most effective messenger on this from the White House. We have a woman vice president. She's someone who not only, is a woman and can speak from her own Personal identity, but also was a prosecutor and has specifically gone into the law and she tells the story a little bit more often now, which I think is also interesting about how she decided to become a lawyer because of her own history of having a friend in high school.

You mentioned that Jill Biden was talking about her friend in high school and that experience. Kamala Harris had a friend in high school who was being molested, and that was one of the reasons that she wanted to become a lawyer to focus on crimes against women and children. And she's been sharing that a lot more on the trail as well.

You have that in the White House and she's there and she's up front and she's [00:39:00] traveling and carrying on that message, so I think there is this backseat role for Biden in a way where he has to come in and talk about this, but that question of who is he reaching I think is really interesting.

I will say, I think, a lot of folks will point out that his record has never been to restrict the right to have choice. So, while people are maybe not super enthusiastic on his history in terms of the issue writ large, like he is someone who supports the right to choose, obviously. And so I think they're just happy to see him out and talking about it.

DANIELLE KURTZLEBEN - REPORTER, NPR: There's also no more gray area in politics on the issue of abortion. When Joe Biden first got into office many, many years ago, it was a much more complex debate, especially for Democrats. There was a lot of Democrats at the time when he was coming up through politics that were abortion opponents. And this has been one of those dividing issues where I don't believe there is a single what you would call pro life Democrat left in Congress, with the exception of maybe Henry Cuellar in Texas, but even he has support for abortion rights to some extent.

And there's very few or almost no [00:40:00] Republicans left who support abortion rights with the exception in the Senate of senators like Lisa Murkowski and Susan Collins. So even if a voter who's passionate about this issue doesn't believe that Joe Biden shares their passion for the issue, there should be no doubt among voters of which party would vote to expand abortion rights and which party would not, because there's no middle anymore on that area in elected office.

A Better Way to Vote Deb Otis - Future Hindsight - Air Date 1-11-24

MILA ATMOS - HOST, FUTURE HINDSIGHT: So, this year, 2024, we know that the election coverage will be dominated by the presidential race, and the Iowa caucuses are just around the corner now. How are you and the movement thinking about ranked choice voting this year in 2024, aside from, let's say, Oregon? Do you have a specific focus?

DEB OTIS: Well, the presidential race is really making our case for us. Consider the discussions about possible third party or independent candidates entering the general election. We hear a lot about this No Labels Party, possibly groups like the Forward Party or other independent candidates who might want to run, and all of a sudden, people start throwing the spoiler word around.

[00:41:00] Some folks pressure the candidates not to run, saying that you might split the vote and help the other side. Some people will pressure their friends and neighbors, "hey don't waste your vote," which is really misguided. Candidates who want to run want to have a platform, they want to have their issues out there, and voters should feel free to vote for the candidates they like best.

And now that's going to happen in Maine, for example, where they use ranked choice voting. People will be able to rank the presidential candidates, and so Maine's electoral college votes are going to be based on the ranked choice voting votes. In other states, especially swing states, voters are going to have to be strategists. Voters will go into the voting booth doing the math. "How can I vote my conscience and make my vote as impactful as possible without hurting my own side?"

MILA ATMOS - HOST, FUTURE HINDSIGHT: Oh, thanks for putting it this way. This makes it very clear. So I guess at the end of the year, we'll see whether Maine will make the case for the rest of the country to use ranked choice voting also for presidential elections.

DEB OTIS: By the end of the year, I think we [00:42:00] could double the number of states that use it. We've got at least two states that will be running ranked choice voting ballot measures in Fall of this year, possibly up to three more states, so potentially up to five. But definitely we'll see statewide ballot measures from Oregon and Nevada, and so they could join Maine and Alaska and double the number of states.

MILA ATMOS - HOST, FUTURE HINDSIGHT: Oh, that's amazing. So what's your strategy to put Ranked Choice Voting on the ballot that people can vote on or introduce it in state houses and state legislators, let's say, where there is not an option to put it on a ballot? What's your strategy to make it become standard across the country? How do we pass it?

DEB OTIS: There are a couple of different paths to achieve this, and I will flag this is a reform. Changing the status quo can be hard, and so at times it can feel like you're fighting an uphill battle here, but it gives me hope to see the growth in this movement.

Several years ago, it tended to be smaller groups trying to pass it by ballot measure. Now we have a [00:43:00] lot of support from elected officials. And so the state legislative victory is a viable path now. In 2023, there were twice as many pro ranked choice bills in state legislatures as in the prior year. This year in 2024, we're expecting that trend to continue, as elected officials start to see that this can actually make their job easier, this can improve their relationship with constituents, and this can allow them to get things done without being punished for, say, crossing the aisle or making a compromise, as long as they are following the will of the voters and maintain the voter support.

Why Voting Still Matters The 2024 Election Survival Guide - Olurinatti - Air Date 12-31-23

NINA TURNER: I get the frustration that people are having because their, as you laid out, material needs are not being met by either party and I surmise that neither major party is answering to the needs of the people. So folks might say, Well, Senator Turner, you still a Democrat? Yes, I am. I am still a Democrat because I'm still fighting, you know, because we only have two major parties right now, and you [00:44:00] gotta be able to lea... it's tactical more than anything. I want people to understand that. Yes, to answer your question directly, while I went all around the block, voting is still a relevant tool, but notice how I said it is one of many tools. It is not the only tool. It will not come and save us immediately. There are other things that we conscious-minded people should be doing in and around and before elections, because election is the last, it's the last leg of the race. It's not the first leg. We gotta be out there agitating, we gotta agitate, aggravate, push for the things that we wanna see elected officials do. We have to organize, you know, Michael Render, a. k. a. Killer Mike, a dear friend of mine, he has a saying that I think fits for anybody that's in organizing, and it's 'plan, plot, organize, strategize, and mobilize'. That is what we must be doing at all times. Voting in and of [00:45:00] itself is not going to be the thing that gets us there. We gotta do the other things in and around it.

And we have to be engaged as a community beyond just federal politics. Who's in the state houses and governor's mansions matter. Who's on the regional level or what we would call the county level of government matters. Who's on school boards matter. And who serves on the local levels of government matter. So when people say the off year election, as far as I'm concerned, there is no year that's off, because every single year, no matter where you live, there are either issues on the ballot or there's somebody on the ballot, who sits in the judiciary matters, too.

IMANI GANDY: Every administration is going to be the adversary of the people, the oppositional force we have to try to move or fight through. So you vote for the outcome easiest for you to fight. And as someone on the left, I can fight the Democrats. But I, we, have absolutely no [00:46:00] ability to fight or push the Republicans. Republicans don't care if we oppose their agenda, or don't approve of what they're doing. Ah, ah, ah, ah, they do care, actually, because they love it when we oppose what they're doing.

DAVID DOEL: You cannot pressure, as someone who's an activist on the left, you cannot pressure somebody who is a Republican. So, you know, and that goes to all the potential energy wasted during the four years of Trump. Like, all the potential pressure that could have been on Hillary for other things were spent on hoping Trump doesn't steal the next election.

Like, it was just, the focus is completely off of anything material because you can't expect a Republican president and the party controlling Congress to do anything for your life. So it's all about, you know, trying to prevent just how bad what they're going to do is. Which you can argue in some ways is also when Democrats are in power, too, but it's still, it's to much different degrees.

And people also, I think, get caught up in this idea that, Oh, if I vote for this person then I can't complain. Which is, I don't know who thought this [00:47:00] idea up, but that's ridiculous. Like, just because you voted for say, uh, Kathy 'Hotchul' or Hochul, whatever it is, just cause you voted for her doesn't mean you now have to support everything she does.

No, you, you get to criticize, you get to push, you get to pressure in however way, whoever's in power, whoever you want, because, but the difference being with a Democrat in power, there is more of a potential there to actually have some impact because it is a Democratic politician and they have to worry about losing some votes from some people, so they have to speak to some of those issues, some of those groups that otherwise a Republican would not be caring about at all.

FD SIGNIFIER: It's, so, the thing that I'm sure you're going to get in this video is that we are working against our own best interests by keeping them in power. And to me, that fundamentally misunderstands the nature of power. We are not keeping them in power, right? We are the only check on the power they actually [00:48:00] get from all these other institutions, systems, that we suffer under. So we don't keep them, like, they're going to be there regardless, or somebody worse is going to be there that we can't check at all.

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: Although this election is probably a little bit different because I think this is going to come down to Trump versus Biden, probably, and if that's the case, I think that a lot of voters, particularly liberals and lefties, are going to see that this is more about democracy than anything else. Like, this is kind of make or break. Like, to me, I'm not going to vote for Joe Biden because I think that he is going to do anything about my student loan debt or expand healthcare at all. I'm voting for him because he's not Donald Trump. And I think that that really matters, even if I know that he's not going to like benefit me in any way, shape or form, politically speaking, and I know that I can't really push him left. I'm voting for him because he's not Trump. It's as simple as that.

FD SIGNIFIER: Yeah. So I feel like I have the best take on this. Nobody's going to be better than what I'm about to give you right here, right? Vote [00:49:00] like you wash your hands. The same energy that when you take a shit, or you play you outside and you've been doing something, right?, you wash your hands. You don't wash your hands cause you like to. You don't wash your hands to keep you from getting shot or keep you from getting cancer or anything like that. You wash your hands cause it's a basic minimal thing you can do to lower the risk of catching some bullshit.

NINA TURNER: Yes. Yes.

FD SIGNIFIER: And like the thing that I think people struggle with is they want, we've been taught voting is like this bigger, more profound thing. That we are who we vote for. We identify what the party we represent. We wear the colors. We fly the flags and shit. And like, I get it. I was there, like, 2008 FD had the hope shirt, and the [inaudible] on, was playing will.i.am, you know what I'm saying? I was in there and then 2012 FD [00:50:00] was like, Ah! It don't make that much difference. Especially, so like, if I didn't live in Georgia...

NINA TURNER: Yeah.

FD SIGNIFIER: ...I might vote for Cornel West. I might vote for insert random [bleeped] here that's not, doesn't have a real chance, as a personal statement or as a branding strategy or some shit. I live in a low key swing state. So I'mma vote for, I'mma vote for Joe Biden. I'mma do it.

2024 Election Is About The Fight For Democracy Part 2 - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Date 1-25-24

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Of course, an election year doesn't just mean a presidential race. All of the House of Representatives is up for election and 34 Senate seats are up as well. Let's focus on the Senate for a moment. Democrats face an uphill battle to maintain their narrow majority.

Sue, I want to focus on two states that you recently reported on and look closely at. That's Ohio and Montana. Can you tell me about those races?

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Sure. I mean, these are probably two of the marquee Senate races for the 2024 election year, in that both [00:51:00] states have an incumbent Democrat running for reelection in a state where the Republican nominee, likely Donald Trump, is all but certain to win.

So what does that mean? That means that they're going to need a significant portion of voters in their respective states to split their tickets to vote for Donald Trump at the top and vote for a Democrat for Senate. And that is not only difficult to do, it is increasingly becoming one of the most difficult things to do in American politics because people don't split their tickets anymore.

Just one point to underscore that: in 2020, there was just one state, the State of Maine, in which the top of the ballot and the Senate race had different outcomes. Joe Biden won Maine and Republican Senator Susan Collins did. She is the only senator who has been able to pull that off in recent elections.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Claudia, I feel like we can't discount West Virginia here where Joe Manchin, a reliable, if not sometimes temperamental Democrat, is retiring. Given the state's conservative tilt, do you think Democrats are just [00:52:00] writing off West Virginia as like a loss for them?

CLAUDIA GRISALES - REPORTER, NPR: I think you can say in some ways they are, at least quietly, they may tell you they're writing off West Virginia. That was an interesting part of Sue's reporting this past month with Manchin resigning his place in that seat that really changes the calculations for Democrats in terms of their path forward and trying to reclaim a majority. And in the end, it really narrows those options for them. It also highlights another interesting trend that Sue, you've been tracking for several years, which is voters getting further entrenched in their own bubbles in terms of going red or blue and not splitting tickets anymore. And I think West Virginia is a classic example of that. We'll see that state really go red in the upcoming election without Manchin there. And so, it's interesting. Democrats are bullish, as the one Sue spoke to about perhaps reclaiming that majority, but the odds of that [00:53:00] happening are really, really tough.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Look, I try not to go too deep on math, but the math here matters. You know, Senate Democrats have a 51-49 majority as we sit here today. And Joe Manchin retiring means that the best case scenario, if Democrats shoot the moon in 2024 and hold every incumbent, they're still looking at a 50-50 Senate.

Now, you talk to really optimistic Democrats and say, Hey, we could put Texas in play. We could put Florida in play with Ted Cruz running for reelection, and Rick Scott. I'm not going to say that's not going to happen, but I'm going to say in January of 2024, it's not accurate to call those races toss ups. I think there's going to be a roller coaster of things that are going to happen this year. But right now, Democrats are entirely on defense. There is nowhere where they are looking realistically to expand the majority. And if anything, like these red state Democrats, Jon Tester in Montana, Sherrod Brown in Ohio, and then other just competitive states, Arizona, Pennsylvania, are going to be either highly competitive or uphill battles.

And the [00:54:00] caveat here, which you always have to talk about when we're talking about the Senate majority, is who are they going to run against? And the thing that I think Democrats feel the most confident about, but it's completely out of their control, is who Republican primary voters ultimately nominate to run against these Democrats. Because we have seen in 2022, 2020, 2018, the caliber of the Republican candidate will matter a lot to the outcome of these elections.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Which I guess is a lesson you'd think Republicans probably learned from 2022, right?

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: You would think, but again, like, Trump has certainly overtaken the Republican Party. It is Trump's Republican Party. But you still have very key establishment players, like Senate minority leader, Mitch McConnell, who's aligned with the outside super PAC, the Senate Leadership Fund, which is run by McConnell allies who are still very much players in these Senate races and who have a very different idea of who a good general election candidate is compared to often the candidate that ultimately [00:55:00] Donald Trump might endorse in some of these races.

What I think is different in 2024, and another reason Republicans should feel a bit confident, is that, but obviously a lot of that's volatile. Who the establishment wants and who Republican primary voters pick has been one of the big stories of the past decade in politics. And so Republican primaries don't really start in earnest until March, so these races won't really start to take shape until the spring and summer. But if you are Mitch McConnell and the Republican senators sitting here today, you feel pretty good about 2024. And the only way you could really lose it is if Trump is the nominee and really loses big in the election and drags down tickets, or you put up candidates that just can't win among a broader electorate.

CLAUDIA GRISALES - REPORTER, NPR: Yeah, I think Democrats in the end are really going to need a Hail Mary moment, if you will. When you look at some of these contests, like a surprise win, you know, in a race such as Florida with Debbie Mucarsel-Powell going against Rick Scott, or Arizona, Ruben Gallego [00:56:00] is expected to be the Democratic nominee, we're still waiting to see what Kyrsten Sinema does, who was a Democrat, she's now an Independent, and that could really shake up that race if she decides to stay in it. And so we'll see which way that race goes as well.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: I will say that I do think Democrats have a Hail Mary, and I think that a lot of them believe it's the issue of abortion.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Yeah.

CLAUDIA GRISALES - REPORTER, NPR: Mmm hmm.

SUSAN DAVIS - CORRESPONDENT, NPR: Especially, as we've seen, it's been a very motivating issue for voters. It seems to continue to be something that animates voters.And people like Jon Tester and Sherrod Brown, I think that, if they win, if they can pull it off, it's because their states sided with them on the abortion question. It's clear that Democratic campaigns are going to make abortion access central to every single one of these races. And in places like Montana, you know, every place is unique, but I think Montana is a good example where it's, Yeah, you'd call it a red state, but it's not a red state in the way that like Alabama is. It's a bit more of a libertarian state, um, [00:57:00] individual liberty, individual freedom. And you hear that in the way Jon Tester's talking about this issue, he's like, Liberty matters to Montanans. Freedom matters to Montanans. And if they can make that a winning argument, that could be the Hail Mary.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: Right. And Claudia, I mean, how likely do you think it is that one party could control everything after elections this year? Or do you think like divided government is more likely here?

CLAUDIA GRISALES - REPORTER, NPR: In terms of one party controlling everything, it's not an impossible outcome. It is possible, but it's hard to see, especially when we talk about the reporting that Sue and others have seen, especially with the electorate in terms of voters getting further entrenched into their bases of their parties. It's hard to see that we will not end up with a divided government once again. How divided, and what way, that remains to be seen. But it seems to be really reflective over the last few elections and perhaps what we see the coming year of the country, where it is and how closely divided it is.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - REPORTER, NPR: [00:58:00] Always the wild card.

Final comments on how the game of election messaging works

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips today, starting with The Majority Report looking at GOP cynicism on immigration and Biden's disregard of young voters regarding genocide in Gaza. Ring of Fire looked at the disconnect between the overall economy and the economics experienced by the youth. The Humanist Report discussed the weak talking points from a Biden surrogate in response to valid questions about the impact of the president's stance on Israel and Gaza. Rachel Maddow on MSNBC pointed out the very small amount of democracy actually happening this election year. The NPR Politics Podcast gave an analysis on how Biden is attempting to frame his campaign as a defender of democratic norms. The Professional Left Podcast discussed the marketing of left-wing anger and Biden accomplishments. The NPR Politics Podcast looked at Biden finally taking abortion rights head on. And Olurinatti compiled a series of arguments for why voting matters.

That's what [00:59:00] everybody heard, but members also heard bonus clips from Future Hindsight discussing the benefits to democracy of ranked choice voting. And the NPR Politics Podcast got into the weeds looking at the upcoming election and the likelihood of continued divided government between the parties.

Now to wrap up, I just have a couple of comments about how to interpret campaign speak, particularly in the media, like we heard today from JB Pritzker speaking with Joy Reid. To refresh, the conversation was about whether the Biden administration and reelection campaign should be thinking about changing course regarding Israel and Gaza because of how deeply unpopular their current [01:00:00] stance is among young voters.

The first thing to understand is that JB Pritzker is a surrogate for Biden, which means that he is empowered to go and speak on behalf of the campaign. But the expectation is that surrogates will not deviate far from approved talking points and will not criticize the campaign they're supporting. So, Joy Reid was asking questions of Pritzker about whether he would advise Biden to change course on how fervently they've been supporting Israel. And he gave very evasive answers that redirected the discussion. What's important to understand is that that is outside the approved parameters of a surrogate to answer questions like that. And so, being evasive is basically the only option available and what literally any surrogate for any campaign would have likely done in that scenario.

Now, I understand that the point I'm making may sound like only a slight [01:01:00] difference, but I actually think it's an important distinction. We should think of Biden and his close circle of communication strategists, the ones actually empowered to change messaging of the Biden White House and campaign, as - for this analogy, we'll call them humans, full thinking, feeling logic-using humans. But we should think of the surrogates, like JB Pritzker as parrots who have simply been trained to talk by the humans. If you want to know what the approved talking points are on any given topic on any given day, then speaking with a surrogate parrot is fine. They'll just regurgitate the talking points. But if you want critical analysis of those talking points, the parrots aren't going to be able to help you.

Now, at this point, I know this sounds like media criticism so far, but it isn't, and I'm actually trying to drill down into something deeper. As a viewer or [01:02:00] listener of that conversation, it is not illogical to see a Biden surrogate, ostensibly representing the Biden campaign, being evasive about Israel and conclude that it is the policy of the Biden campaign to be evasive about Israel. Right? But I'm pointing out an alternate reason for that evasiveness, which includes, first, understanding how circuits work and, second, understanding the fourth dimension of politics, which is time. It's pretty clear that when that interview was recorded, Biden's team hadn't figured out what to do or say about Israel yet. But it doesn't mean that they won't. And I very much hope that they do figure out a better stance than their current one. And if the humans in charge come up with some new talking points based on a pivot in their stance, for instance, you can be sure that the surrogates will be the first to hear about it and will be out in force parroting [01:03:00] whatever the new messages.

So, what I'm saying is that we shouldn't despair, like the guy from The Humanist Report did on the show today, because a Biden surrogate couldn't give a good answer on Israel and evaded his way out of it with some other weak talking points about Biden being better than Trump. We have to simply understand what the game is that's being played and how it's played, then keep the pressure up, because it really does make a difference.

So, here's a different example. I was reading a bunch of articles this week about what Biden needs to do to win the election. And two of them discussed his seeming aversion to talking very much about abortion. During his big campaign kickoff speech that was supposed to be like the opening salvo of his campaign, abortion wasn't even mentioned once. At least one of the articles titled "Biden is whiffing it on the most important issue for Democrats", this is from Slate magazine, you know, that was written this past week with the [01:04:00] anniversary of the overturning of Roe v. Wade in mind. And it mentioned that Kamala Harris was reportedly about to go on an abortion rights tour of the US but that Biden himself really hasn't put it as high enough of a priority. And then two days after that article came out - I'm not saying that the two are connected, but you know, the timing, and obviously the anniversary of the overturning of Roe is relevant to all of it - couple days after that article came out, Biden gave a major speech standing in front of a giant "Restore Roe" sign. The point is that pressure works. Politicians pivot and new messaging has always been developed along with new policy stances.

Obviously that article from Slate was not the first criticism the administration had gotten or, you know, the Biden campaign had gotten, on needing to be more full-throated about their support of abortion rights. It was likely, you know, one of the [01:05:00] last pieces of criticism before they rolled out their big abortion rights sort of element of their campaign, right?, Joe Biden front and center. And maybe it's true that he's usually not very comfortable talking about that issue. He has a weird history, you know, Catholicism and, you know, discomfort talking about it, but it kind of sounds like he's coming around and that definitely happened in large part because of outside pressure.

So, back to the surrogates, you know, wishing that they would be less mealy-mouthed in the media when they don't have any talking points is like being frustrated at a parrot when you ask them like, Look, I get it that you want a cracker, but what I'm asking is why do you and other parrots seem to like crackers so much when they're not even part of your natural diet? Do we even know the health effects of crackers on parrots? What sort of answer do you expect to get from that parrot? Right? However, making surrogates and, by [01:06:00] extension, the campaign look foolish on national television when they can't get their messaging straight is a great way to put the pressure on. People like Pritzker don't want to look foolish and feel like they're being hung out to dry while trying to prop up the campaign. I can certainly imagine someone like that calling up Biden or his communications team and demanding that they work up some better talking points and ideally a better policy stance on Israel so that they can all stop looking like fools every time that question comes up from journalists and it is sure to continue to come up.

So does all that makes sense? You know, basically, don't despair about the inflexibility of a politician just because their surrogate answers difficult questions inflexibly. And understand that pressure really does work for forcing politicians to change not only their tune, but the tune that'll be parroted throughout the campaign surrogate expanded [01:07:00] universe. So, keep making demands for Biden to improve his policies, his stances, his messaging, and, as was made very clear by the last clip of the show today, don't lose sight of the bigger picture all at the same time.

That is going to be a for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about this or anything else. You can leave us a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Erin Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our Transcriptionist Trio, Ken, Brian, and Ben, for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work on our social media outlets, activism segments, graphic designing, web mastering, and bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member or purchasing gift memberships. You can join them by signing up today at [01:08:00] bestoftheleft.com/support, through our Patrion page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Membership is how you get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny bonus episodes, in addition to there being extra content, no ads, and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. And that would be greatly appreciated. You'll find that link in the show notes, along with our link to join our Discord community, where you can also continue the discussion.

So, coming to you from far outside the conventional wisdom of Washington DC, my name is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to you twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors to the show from bestoftheleft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1605 Our Prison System is a Demonstrable Failure (Transcript)

Posted by · January 23, 2024 12:43 PM

Air Date 1/23/2024