Transcripts

[00:00:00]

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

When women's value is seen only in relation to their ability to bear and raise children, you get policies that strip them of the right to choose whether or not that's something they actually want for themselves. And the lived consequences are devastating.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today include The ReidOut, NowThis Impact, Danielle Moodie, Democracy Now!, Brittany Page, and The Defenders. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in five sections: Section A. The casualties; Section B. Religion; Section C. The punishment is the point; Section D. Black women; and Section E. The pushback.

‘Authoritarian’: Vance’s weird war on women echoes history's biggest facists - The ReidOut - Air Date 8-15-24

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: You may not be familiar with the term [00:01:00] called "coverture," but stick with me for a moment because I'm going to explain. Coverture was the law of the land in Europe and in America for the first three and a half centuries, from colonization through the creation of the United States. And it's the reason women in the 1800s and before -- and we're talking white women here, not enslaved black women -- had essentially no rights over their money, land, or even their own bodies. Under coverture, married women were considered the property of their husbands, which meant they could not seek gainful employment or manage their assets independently.

It wasn't until the women's rights movement in the mid 1800s that women began to gain financial and legal control over their lives. Specifically, the passage of the Married Women's Property Act in Mississippi in 1839 triggered a wave of similar legislation across the country that allowed women to regain ownership of their property. And that [00:02:00] was all before women gained the right to vote, which didn't happen until 1920 and still didn't include all women.

And even after that, there were still things women couldn't do without a husband or father's permission, including buying stocks and opening a bank account. Women didn't gain those rights until 1974 when President Gerald Ford signed the Equal Credit Opportunity Act into law. And that was nine years after the Supreme Court gave women the right to use contraception, and one year after the Supreme Court decision in Roe v. Wade gave women the right to an abortion. A right the current Supreme Court majority rescinded in 2022.

And apparently it's not just Sam Alito and his five Leonard Leo friends who disagree that women achieving full citizenship was a good thing.

Enter J. D. Vance, who has said so many disparaging things about women, specifically childless women. It is hard to put them all in one montage. But here's our good old college [00:03:00] try.

JD VANCE: We're effectively run in this country via the Democrats, via our corporate oligarchs, by a bunch of childless cat ladies who are miserable at their own lives and the choices that they've made, and so they want to make the rest of the country miserable too.

Just to be a little stark about this, I think we have to go to war against the anti-child ideology that exists in our country.

AOC has said basically, if you look at her public remarks on this, that it's immoral to have children because of climate change concerns, right? This is -- let's just be direct -- a sociopathic attitude towards families.

If you bought into an idea that it's liberating to leave an 8-week-old baby to go work 90 hours a week at Goldman Sachs, you've been had.

When you go to the polls in this country as a parent, you should have more power, you should have more of an ability to speak your voice in our democratic republic than people who don't have kids.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: I mean, did anybody in the Trump campaign even vet this guy? And by the way, none of this is super old. That was [00:04:00] Vance. I mean, this was Vance as we played for you last night on this show just four years ago on a right wing podcast denigrating, in one go, menopausal women, grandmothers, and Indian women like his own mother-in-law.

JD VANCE: They spoil him. There's sort of all the classic stuff that grandparents do to grandchildren. But it makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents. And the evidence on this, by the way, is super clear. That's the whole purpose of the post monopausal female in theory.

When your child was born, did your in-laws, and particularly your mother-in-law, show up in some huge way?

She lived with us for a year. Right. So, you know, I didn't know the answer to that. That's this weird, unadvertised feature of marrying an Indian woman.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And just last night, when asked by a friendly host on Fox about what he would say to suburban women who are worried about abortion rights, this was Vance's response.

JD VANCE: [00:05:00] Well, first of all, I don't buy that, Laura. I think most suburban women care about the normal things that most Americans care about.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: J. D. Vance has a long obsession with childlessness, with there being a problem that enough women in America are not bearing children. Talk about this obsession and how you fit that in the construct of his wider belief.

RUTH BEN GHIAT: He is like a one-man compendium of misogynist ideas and, although it's unfortunate he's in the position of vice presidential candidate, it's useful for us to track this, because he expresses these attitudes which are really at the roots of authoritarianism's war on women.

I'm often asked, when do the kind of charismatic demagogues and authoritarians appeal? And it's often when women have made great strides in society. And my book shows case studies from after World War I, when there was tons of gender emancipation, Spain, 1930s, before the coup of [00:06:00] Franco, women had won all these economic independence for the first time and so on and so on. And it creates this kind of backlash.

And so you get this focus, obsession with women whose value has to be in their ability to bear children, to be mothers. And so there's a whole century of this. And Vance is an example of this, but it goes all over the global right today.

In Italy with Giorgio Meloni. She says, Oh, I'm breaking the glass ceiling. But she also says that my value is as a mother. So the childlessness obsession has demographic implications, has racial implications because it's usually tied to wanting more white Christian babies, and it's this massive fear and dread of female autonomy, female independence in all ways.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: Yeah, to go to the piece about it being international, in Hungary, Victor Orban encourages mothers in Hungary to have [00:07:00] four or more babies. We will note that Mussolini argued that the Italian people have a duty to produce as many children as possible. He introduced a number of measures to encourage reproduction. Loans often offered to marry couples. The part of the loan canceled with each new child. Any married man that had more than six children was made exempt from taxation. His regime outlawed abortion, restricted women's access to birth control. You've got Republicans, conservatives in red states who are getting rid of no fault divorce, or at least trying to get rid of it.

And then they're tying it to this other piece, which I think people don't often connect: immigration. Here is JD Vance talking about abortion and tying it to cheap labor and immigration

JD VANCE: When the big corporations come against you for passing abortion restrictions, when corporations are so desperate for cheap labor that they don't want people to parent children, she's right to say that abortion restrictions are bad for business. We should be for abortion restrictions, even [00:08:00] if they are bad for business.

JOY REID - HOST, THE REIDOUT: And the idea being that if they can do mass deportation, they must tie it to forcing American women to bear more children so that they can be the labor. I think people don't often tie all that together, but they certainly seem to.

RUTH BEN GHIAT: Yeah, and it's really good we're talking about this, because mass deportation on a truly old dictator scale. They're talking about 15 million people being deported, is part of Project 2025, and it's part of what Trump said in his interview with Time magazine, that they would deport 15 to 20 million people who would be undocumented immigrants, people of color, and that creates a need for more babies of the right race and the right religion.

So these things are always tied in history.

Where Did MAGA's 'Post-Birth' Abortion Claim Come From? - NowThis Impact - Air Date 9-12-24

CHELSEA FRISBIE - HOST, NOWTHIS IMPACT: At the debate, Donald Trump kept insisting that babies are getting aborted after they're born, saying:

DONALD TRUMP : Just look at the [00:09:00] governor, former governor of Virginia, the governor of Virginia said, we put the baby aside and then we determine what we want to do with the baby.

CHELSEA FRISBIE - HOST, NOWTHIS IMPACT: So what Trump is referring to is a clip from former Democratic governor of Virginia, Ralph Northam, who in 2019 was on a radio show talking about newborns who were born with a birth defect so severe that they would not survive outside of the womb for long.

He was saying that in that specific case, the priority would be the comfort of that newborn and the will of the parents. He was talking about a newborn baby that a mother wanted, carried for nine months, had hopes and dreams and outfits for. He was talking about what happens when that baby doesn't make it more than a few hours after being born.

He was saying the woman who carried that baby inside of her Yeah, her comfort, her will, her opinion is valued, heard, and prioritized. But of course, that was all taken out of context. So no, Democrats don't want to kill your baby once they're outside of the womb. They want that baby to be [00:10:00] pain free. And they want to do everything they can to empower parents as they witness a child that was supposed to outlive them pass away in their arms.

And it speaks volumes of MAGA Republicans that they can't wrap their goddamn heads around the fact that for some people, the heartbreak that comes from making these decisions are private and the government shouldn't have a say.

Woman Shares 'Trauma' of Abortion Bans During Senate Hearing - NowThis Impact - Air Date 9-24-24

KAITLYN JOSHUA: My name is Kaitlyn Joshua, and I'm from Louisiana. I'm here to talk about my own experience under extreme abortion bans in my home state soon after the Supreme Court eliminated the federal right to abortion care more than two years ago, and the problem these laws caused me and continue to cause other pregnant Louisianians and their families.

You see, I was turned away without care twice from two different emergency rooms in Louisiana while experiencing a painful and potentially dangerous miscarriage. This was two summers ago. My husband Landon and I were already parents to a curious and happy four year old daughter when we found out [00:11:00] I was pregnant again.

We were thrilled. At least to us, this was the perfect time to add a second baby. But this time, Louisiana's new abortion ban affected my pregnancy from the very start. When I called to schedule my first prenatal appointment, I was told I would have to wait until I was 12 weeks pregnant, a month longer than my first pregnancy.

I was asked, or I asked, excuse me, if this was because of the Louisiana abortion ban and the young lady was very candid. She said yes. Because of the abortion ban, prenatal appointments were purposely scheduled weeks later than normal, delayed further into pregnancy when miscarriages are less common, so avoid potential legal and criminal liability for medical providers.

Practically overnight, these laws were already compromising health care for all pregnant patients.

Aside from experiencing some mild cramping and spotting, my second pregnancy was going along okay until around 11 weeks, just one week shy of that first prenatal appointment. I started bleeding while also experiencing pain worse than childbirth. My husband was at work at the time, so I drove myself to the emergency room. [00:12:00] There, the medical team evaluated me and told me that my fetus had completely stopped growing. I realized I was having a miscarriage, but because of the state's abortion ban, the healthcare team wouldn't even say the word. They sent me home telling me that they would pray for me.

The next day, the bleeding and pain got worse. I did not want to go back to the same hospital that I had been turned away the day before. So I met my mom and husband at a different hospital. I was losing so much blood at this time, even the security guard knew to put me in a wheelchair. The standard treatment for a miscarriage, what I was experiencing, is exactly the same treatment as abortion care: to empty the uterus by prescribing pills or a procedure called a DNC. It is an abortion, yet in the second hospital, the staff told me we're not doing that right now and told me to go home and wait.

Ultimately, it took me weeks for me to pass my pregnancy at home, on my own, without medical care, and I was absolutely terrified.

This experience has made me see and realize how black women like me die needlessly in and around childbirth.

Since telling my story, I've received hundreds of letters [00:13:00] from women across Louisiana who have had similar experiences. And we know routine and potentially life-saving medical care is being in denied states across the country.

And I've met so many other women who are also suffering because of abortion bans like others in Louisiana. 22 states have banned all or most abortions, and several states have criminal penalties for healthcare providers. As a result, doctors and other healthcare providers are afraid to treat patients who are miscarrying. And that's why women like me are being denied the dignity of basic, essential, time sensitive health care that saves our lives: abortion care.

Capable and caring physicians simply cannot practice medicine based on their training and expertise and of course the Hippocratic Oath. We're simply asking for, yet still being denied, the most basic level of maternal health care.

Sharing my story is not fun, nor is it easy. I don't like being away from home. I have two children now and part of me would like to forget the weeks of trauma I endured. But I know that I have to speak out. I owe it to those women who wrote to me, who have [00:14:00] met in person, for women who look like me and who women or for women who don't.

This is certainly an attack and an affront to our most basic fundamental rights: life, liberty, health, happiness, self determination.

This is government and political interference in private healthcare decisions. How is that okay in a freedom loving country in 2024?

Donald wants to CONTROL WOMEN not PROTECT them. The truth behind his FALSE PROMISE. - Danielle Moodie - Air Date 9-25-24

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, DANIELLE MOODIE: If White women didn't go along with and parent in a way that would have White men think that everyone is just there to cater to their needs, to their tantrums. Then maybe they would turn out as better fucking men and I mean that real talk because the fact of the matter is that when you look at the Brett Kavanaugh's, the Donald Trump's, the Justice Roberts, the list of horrible CEOs, the [00:15:00] string of me too's and all of these things, it is White men, White, heterosexual, Christian, pseudo-Christian men that have caused so much goddamn damage, not just in this country, but around the world.

And you would think then, that much in the same way that Black women have been pathologized, with regard to Black men and high incarceration rates and all of these things that we would have a serious conversation about White women parenting White boys that turn into incel misogynistic men like Donald Trump and JD Vance.

But we don't because when it comes to White women and White men, they get to be [00:16:00] individuals. We don't think about them as a collective and that if we were to actually unpack the internalized Right misogyny that White women carry if we were to unpack right the racism that has been innate and figure out what is at the root of the root of the thing and talk about accountability and responsibility, then maybe we would get somewhere and we wouldn't see numbers folks.

Like this one. Take a look. Yes, that's CNN's recent poll that has White women polling 50 percent for Donald Trump and 47 percent for Vice President Harris. So, the woman in the lobby, the White woman in the lobby, is not alone in her thinking. Because 50 percent of White [00:17:00] women think the same way. And if you recall, 2016 and 2020 had their numbers grow.

Which is why you had Shannon Watts, following the lead of Jotaka Eadie and Win With Black Women, put together her call, the second call that we, the third call that we saw after Black men, White women answer the call because there is a set of White women that are recognizing their role and responsibility to bring their community along to the side of democracy and educate these women into understanding that your whiteness and proximity to maleness is not going to save you in Trump's America.

So Donald [00:18:00] Trump, as he's starting to see his numbers with other demographic women, Black women, Latina women. Asian women, Indigenous women, traditionally, these women are like, Yeah, no, I'm good. I'm good with your misogyny and I'm good with your racism. So listen to what Donald Trump just said recently at a rally in Pennsylvania. Take a listen.

DONALD TRUMP : You know why they like, they like to have strong borders. They like to have safety, nothing personal. I think they like me, but I make this statement. I love you too. I love you too, because I am your protector. I want to be your protectors president.

I have to be your protector. I hope you don't make too much of it. I hope the fake news as ago, he wants to be their protector. Well, I am as president, I have to be your protector. I will make you [00:19:00] safe at the border. On the sidewalks of your now violent cities, in the suburbs where you are under migrant criminal siege, and with our military protecting you from foreign enemies, of which we have many today because of the incompetent leadership that we have, you will no longer be abandoned, lonely, or scared.

You will no longer be in danger. You're not gonna be in danger any longer. You will no longer have anxiety from all of the problems our country has today. You will be protected and I will be your protector.

DANIELLE MOODIE - HOST, DANIELLE MOODIE: "I will be your protector" coming from a man who is an adjudicated rapist and owes E. Jean Carroll, the woman whom he raped 80 million or something to that [00:20:00] effect.

Because like he said on the Access Hollywood tapes, "when they're a star, they just let you do it. You can grab a woman by the pussy". So when I hear this man say, I will be your protector. I am your protector. What I hear is a toxic, violent abuser and what was so disgusting, folks, were the rounds of applause and cat calls from women in the audience.

So we wonder, where do the men like JD Vance and Donald Trump come from? They come from White women who have told them, you can do whatever it is that you want. Because the world is yours and we are here to do nothing [00:21:00] other than be ornaments in your life and serve you. That's why JD Vance continues to go on his misogynistic sprees where he talks about, Oh, how feminism and independence and working got women out of their traditional roles.

Where Donald Trump is saying, you don't need to worry your pretty little head about abortion. I took care of that. All you need to worry about is tending to my needs. They want to take away not only bodily autonomy, but any choice that you have whatsoever. And the target, dear friends, truly is White women because it goes hand in hand with their ability to create more White men to avoid what they have been referring to as [00:22:00] the Great Replacement Theory.

So if you get rid of abortion like they've done and you force women into becoming mothers and then they have to drop out of the workforce. Their plans are in motion and folks, we don't have to wait for the election to see Project 2025 and their plan for women operationalized because it's already here. There are women dying in Georgia. There are women bleeding out in parking lots in Texas, Alabama. These red states are blood red because the lives of women, the deaths of women are on their hands. And Donald Trump's response is "I will be your protector. Don't worry your pretty little head about it".

Georgia's Deadly Abortion Ban: The Tragic Deaths of Two Black Women, Candi Miller & Amber Thurman - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-18-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: [00:23:00] On Tuesday, Republican senators once again blocked legislation to protect access to IVF, in vitro fertilization, and require health insurers to cover the fertility treatment, after Democrats forced a vote.

Meanwhile, Vice President Kamala Harris slammed Donald Trump, her Republican rival, for his role in abolishing national abortion rights after he appointed three of the Supreme Court justices who issued the Dobbs ruling overturning Roe v. Wade. In an interview yesterday with the National Association of Black Journalists in Philadelphia, Vice President Harris cited the case, reported by ProPublica, of Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old Black woman in Georgia who died from a fatal infection after doctors refused to treat a rare complication from a medication abortion.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: I don’t know if anyone here has heard most recently the stories out of Georgia, [00:24:00] tragic story, about a young woman who died because, it appears, the people who should have given her healthcare were afraid they’d be criminalized, after the Dobbs decision came down, laws that make no exception even for rape or incest, which means that you’re telling a survivor of a crime of a violation to their body that they have no right to make a decision about what happens to their body next, which is immoral, an approach that doesn’t take into account that — most people, I think, agree you don’t have to abandon your faith or deeply held beliefs to agree the government should not be telling her what to do with her body.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Georgia’s Maternal Mortality Review Committee found Amber Thurman’s death was preventable and largely due to delays in care. This comes as Project 2025 staffer, former Trump White House personnel chief John McEntee [00:25:00] doubted the danger of abortion bans in a TikTok post last Thursday.

JOHN McENTEE: Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don’t hold your breath.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: McEntee was widely ridiculed as women posted responses about their experiences being denied care.

Well, today, ProPublica published a new report on a second woman in Georgia who died from medical abortion complications. Candi Miller’s family said she didn’t visit a doctor, quote, “due to the current legislation on pregnancies and abortions,” unquote. Overall, deaths due to complications from abortion pills are extremely rare.

For more, we’re joined by two guests. Monica Simpson is with us. She’s executive director of SisterSong, the national women of color reproductive justice collective based in Georgia. And Ziva Branstetter is also joining us, from Walnut Creek, California, senior editor [00:26:00] at ProPublica, who helped edit two new reports by Kavitha Surana.

We welcome you both back to Democracy Now! I want to begin with Ziva. Actually, Vice President Harris cited your investigation in her answers to questions from the National Association of Black Journalists yesterday. Can you lay out the stories of [Amber] Thurman and also today you’ve just broke a new story on a second death?

ZIVA BRANSTETTER: Correct. Well, thank you, first of all, Democracy Now!, for having me on to talk about reporting by ProPublica and reporter Kavitha Surana. We have reported two stories. Both deaths of these women occurred in the months following the overturn of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court. Both were in Georgia. Both were African American women.

The first case, Amber Thurman, 28-year-old single mother with a 3-year-old son, she died after doctors did not provide care over about a [00:27:00] 20-hour period in the emergency room. She had taken abortion medication to end her pregnancy, and fetal tissue remained, which is a rare — a very rare complication of taking abortion medication, very simply solved with a procedure called a D&C, that doctors did not provide over 20 hours in the emergency room. That procedure, in almost all cases in Georgia now and in other abortion ban states, is a felony. Doctors could face criminal prosecution for performing it. We don’t know what was going through their minds, but they did not operate over 20 hours. And she died in August of 2022.

The story that we just published today on ProPublica’s website is about Candi Miller, a 41-year-old woman, also from Georgia, a mother of three, who also self-managed her abortion at home, which is becoming far more regular under abortion bans. She took abortion medication. Again, rare complication. [00:28:00] Instead of going to the hospital, she was afraid to seek care, and did not and died at home with a mixture of drugs that her family believes was trying to manage the pain. And she died, as well, in November of 2022. That death has been ruled by the state preventable and, not only that, directly related to the state’s abortion ban, which is the first time we’ve seen this reported.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And explain the abortion ban in Georgia.

ZIVA BRANSTETTER: Correct. It’s a six-week ban. You know, we classify that almost the same as a complete ban, because many people can become pregnant and don’t know at that point that they are even pregnant. And experts say a six-week ban is tantamount to a complete ban. And there are no health exceptions in Georgia’s ban. Well, Candi Miller had lupus. She had hypertension. She had diabetes. She’s 41 years old. She already has three children. She found herself pregnant. Doctors had told her, [00:29:00] “You can’t. Your body cannot survive another pregnancy. It will kill you.” So, she had, literally, no good options under Georgia’s abortion ban.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Now, can you talk about how rare medication abortion complications are, Ziva?

ZIVA BRANSTETTER: About 6 million people, since the FDA approved abortion medication, have used it, and there have been 31 deaths of any kind, only 11 of those from sepsis. It is 0.0005% of cases that are fatal, which is a lower complication rate than penicillin and Viagra. And so, it’s extremely safe. All medications have risk. There is a simple solution to a complication with abortion medication, and that is a D&C. And abortion ban states, for the vast majority of cases, criminalize that procedure.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to turn to Monica Simpson. You’re [00:30:00] executive director of the Georgia organization SisterSong. Can you talk about the levels of Black maternal mortality in Georgia?

MONICA SIMPSON: Absolutely. Thank you so much for having me this morning.

We are devastated to hear this news and to see that Black women are still not being treated in the ways that they need to by our healthcare system in Georgia. What is real in the state of Georgia is that we are in a maternal healthcare crisis in our state. We are a state that has yet to expand Medicaid, which means that thousands upon thousands of people are already falling under the radar and not getting access to the care that they need. And on top of that, we are dealing with the fact that we are in this country seeing Black women die at a rate three to four times higher than white women in childbirth, right?

So, we look at that, and coupled with the fact that Georgia has a desert of OB-GYN availability in our state. There are over half of our states that do not — excuse me, half of our counties that do not have access to [00:31:00] an OB-GYN, so people are having to travel miles upon miles just to get care. So, when you bring all of that together in this context of a state that is also dealing with a six-week abortion ban — SisterSong is the lead plaintiff in that case against our state; we have been fighting that for many years now, trying to get this ban removed — we are seeing a really dire picture for Black women and for people in general in the state of Georgia.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: In this case that ProPublica talked about today, the story of Candi Miller, Monica, Candi Miller’s health was so fragile — I’m reading the first sentences. “Candi Miller’s health was so fragile, doctors warned having another baby could kill her.” So she was already at high risk. Her previous pregnancy was high-risk. But she was terrified to go to the doctor. Talk about that, what this means. And the number of women who may be [00:32:00] suffering or have died that we don’t know, it’s because of their fear of going to the doctor, that they would be criminalized.

MONICA SIMPSON: Absolutely. We hear this story far too often, that we know too many Black women, in particular — right? — are saying that they do not feel safe when they go to their doctor. They don’t feel as if they’re listened to. They don’t feel as if they’re trusted. We have seen this show up in the lives of people who are celebrities, like Serena Williams, right? So, if we have people who have the amount of privilege and resources that a Serena Williams has and they are still not listened to and trusted by healthcare providers, imagine what that looks like on the ground for everyday people who are trying to get access to care. In our membership, we get these stories all the time, that we don’t feel like we’re trusted, we don’t feel like we’re going to get access to the information that we want. And so it silences people. And we know that that silence then drives people inward, and it does not allow them to be able to move towards the solutions that they need for [00:33:00] themselves and their families.

So, this is a really sad day in the state of Georgia. Our elected officials need to be on top of this more than ever. And we have to take this very seriously, because we knew and we have been saying, since the Dobbs decision and even before then, that when you remove access, restrict access, ban access to lifesaving care, healthcare that people need, then those who have historically been pushed to the margins will be the ones most affected. And we are seeing that in the state of Georgia, where these Black women have lost their lives to a preventable — preventable — issue that could have been taken care of in real time.

Texas Republicans ARE KILLING WOMEN!!! - Brittany Page - Air Date 9-26-24

BRITTANY PAGE - HOST, BRITTANY PAGE: Last week I covered the first confirmed preventable death from abortion bans in Georgia, with reporting from ProPublica. Shortly after I posted that video, ProPublica announced a second preventable, confirmed preventable death in Georgia, this time involving a woman [00:34:00] named Candy Miller. And in the video, I said this was just the beginning because Georgia's Maternal Mortality Review Committee is two years behind. They are reviewing deaths from fall 2022.

I said we would get more deaths from abortion bans, but I also said Georgia is just one state. And now we're starting to see the impact of abortion bans from other states, this time in Texas. In an analysis shared exclusively with NBC News, the Gender Equity and Policy Institute used publicly available data from the CDC and found, quote, from 2019 to 2022, the rate of maternal mortality cases in Texas rose by 56%, compared with just 11 percent nationwide during the same period.

"There's only one explanation for this staggering difference in maternal mortality", said Nancy L. Cohen, president of GEPI. "All research points to Texas's abortion ban as the primary driver of this [00:35:00] alarming increase. Texas, I fear, is a harbinger of what's to come in other states", she said.

Now, anyone who has been paying attention could have predicted this. Experts have warned politicians repeatedly that abortion bans kill women. And yet, we're still existing in a world where Republicans continue to push lies about abortion, and try to hide their true goals of banning abortion entirely.

Which, as we're seeing now, causes more death for mothers. In Texas, we've read the stories about OBGYNs fleeing the state, increasingly fearful of what will happen to them under draconian laws that put lives at risk. Leaving behind, in some cases, maternal health care deserts. But Texas restricted abortion before the Supreme Court overturned Roe in June 2022.

So we have an even more unique glimpse into the damage caused by abortion bans in Texas. Reading again from NBC News, "The Texas [00:36:00] legislature banned abortion care as early as five weeks into pregnancy in September 2021. Nearly one year before the U. S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade, the case that protected a federal right to abortion in June 2022.

The passage of Texas Senate Bill 8 gave GEPI researchers the opportunity to take an early look at how near total bans on abortion, including cases in which the mother's life was in danger, affected the health and safety of pregnant women. The SB8 effect, Cohen's team found, was swift and stark. Within a year, maternal mortality rose in all racial groups studied.

Among Hispanic women, the rate of women dying while pregnant during childbirth or soon after increased from 14. 5 maternal deaths per 100, 000 live births in 2019 to 18. 9 in 2022. Rates among white women nearly doubled from 20 per 100, 000 to [00:37:00] 39. 1. And black women, who historically have higher chances of dying while pregnant during childbirth or soon after, saw their rates go from 31.

6 to 43. 6 per 100, 000 live births. And so what is the result of this? Well, obviously, inaction on the part of Republicans. Well, inaction and doubling down on restrictions on abortion from Republicans. But also, what is the result of this, meaning what is the impact of this on women? I'm sure you can guess that it's fear.

And this quote really stood out to me. "Fear is something I'd never seen in practice prior to Senate Bill 8", said Dr. Leah Tatum, an OB GYN in private practice in Austin, Texas. Tatum, who was not involved with the GEPI study, said the request for sterilization procedures among her patients doubled after the state's abortion ban.

That is, women prefer to lose their ability to ever have [00:38:00] children over the chance that they might become pregnant following SB8. So for the pro family, pro life party, we have Republicans doubling down on policies that are not just increasing the maternal mortality rate, not just killing women. Who are often already mothers, but also forcing women to choose sterilization over the possibility of death due to pregnancy or due to the inability of having access to life saving medical care in the form of abortion.

of an abortion, if needed. We need to keep this issue front and center, because these stories are the kind of thing that can move the needle. And it's unfortunate when people can't find their empathy before their tragedy. We would hope that people don't need to experience something firsthand before understanding an issue fully and investing themselves in activism.

But that's often the way that it works, and we're [00:39:00] slowly starting to see that happen as more people suffer the negative consequences of these dangerous policies. So keep talking about it, keep sharing it.

Everyone Loves Someone Who's Had an Abortion - The Defenders - Air Date 12-30-23

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Obviously the majority of Americans who support abortion rights, but many people are locked into an old way of seeing things. And I’m hearing you say that we there is new, there is a fresh way to look at it, there is new thinking there is new, relevant information that everybody deserves to have, and an arms you.

JESSICA VALENTI: It does, so many people even though we are the majority still have that mindset of this is a controversial issue that we are split on. But when you actually look at the polls, that’s just not borne out, like we are seeing that people really understand this issue in a much more nuanced and complicated way than they did even five years ago, young people especially. [00:40:00] And I think we just need to give them credit for that and start talking about this in the way we want the policy to look like and in the way that we want our future with pregnancy and abortion to look like and stop holding on to those old ways of thinking and having this conversation.

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: And the old language, the old verbiage of like safe, legal rare, which we’ll.

JESSICA VALENTI: No, like overlooks all over it like it’s, it is. It is so stigmatizing honestly, I’ve struggled with that in my own life like for when I used to talk about having an abortion. At first I only talked about the abortion I had after my daughter was born, and I had a really terrible pregnancy and almost died and being pregnant again, could kill me and so it was not really a choice. I was like, well, you know, I don’t want to leave my daughter mother listened so I had an abortion. It was very easy for me to talk about that abortion, and less easy for me to talk about the abortion I had, you know, four years [00:41:00] before or before I met my husband before I had my daughter because that was like not as okay, right? And I’m someone who does this for a living and I internalize that stigma. There’s just so much of that we need to like really move past it.

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I could not agree more that stigma can impact any of us, even those who write about this topic for a living like Jessica. So how do we move past it? Part of it is doing the work arming the choir with the information that they need to break it down. Like Jessica’s incredible newsletter, Abortion Every Day, which we will of course link in the show notes for you. But another part of it is in the stories we tell each other. This is something I got to chat about with Renee Bracey Sherman of We Testify.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: What feels important is educating the mass on why people have abortions. And we can do that through our [00:42:00] stories, and dispelling the myths that exist about abortion that we’ve all believed.

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: We testify supports abortion storytellers, especially for marginalized backgrounds. Renee was motivated to do this work because of her own experience sharing her abortion story. We dug into her personal story and why she works to train storytellers in our interview. So okay, so can you tell us why? Why did you decide to start this organization? What was the genesis of that?

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: I did not see people who looked like me sharing their abortion stories. It was about a little over a decade ago, when I first started sharing my abortion story and it was so isolating, not seeing people of color and their stories be out there especially with who was like interviewed in the news or when abortion was the topic. [00:43:00] And when I had my abortion at 19, I thought I was like the only person of color to have an abortion ever. It was like me and like rumor Lil Kim. That was it right? And I knew that my cousins and aunts, White women in my family, had had abortions, but it had not been talked about with Black folks in my family. And so I really felt like what do we need to do to create a space and to create a world in which people of color who have abortions feel like they are able to step in and feel supported to share they’re stories. And it was it again, I would be on panels and people of color would come up to me and say I had an abortion too. I had an abortion too. And that was really, really wonderful but it was like, okay, but why am I still like the only on this panel?

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Right? It’s just me and Lil [00:44:00] Kim out here and we could use some company.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Yeah, and I later learned Vanessa Williams. There’s just so few of us. And so I, I don’t think that you can ask someone to do something that you’re not willing to do yourself. And it’s not right to ask people to do things without giving them the proper training and support. And when I first started sharing my abortion story, the harassment was so bad, especially so racist. And I definitely heard from a lot of White leaders at the time, well, that’s just part of it. That’s just it is what it is. And there wasn’t this desire to fix it. And so when I thought about how do we actually protect abortion, storytellers, they are the people that were say we’re supporting, they are at the core of this work. But they’re not centered. They’re not invited to be part of our movement. They’re not the leaders of our movement. They’re not the spokespeople of our movement. How do we support them and [00:45:00] so then I did an a survey 10, it’ll be 10 years ago next year, where I interviewed abortion storytellers and asked them what it was that they needed. And they said that they needed harassment support, they needed compensation for their time and their energy. They needed someone to be there with them. And so then I started creating a curriculum for that which later, then became we testify as an organization. And what I have sought to do is just to make sure that all abortion stories are heard, that the stories are as diverse as the people who have them, and that it’s within proportion of who has abortions on why the majority of people who have abortions are people of color, their parents, their spiritual, they experienced financial, logistical and legal barriers to their abortions. But what ends up happening is that White women’s stories get elevated, especially if there’s tears [00:46:00] involved. And Black folks, Black and Brown folks, just their stories get deprioritize. So the majority of abortion stories that you hear should be from people of color. But we’re not there yet. We’re getting there, right now. All right, yeah.

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I guess let’s can I, we talk about the approach? Because you’re using storytelling as a way to build leadership within the movement? I guess why is that more effective or more important than just trying to run out and change the minds of people who disagree with us. Do you know what I mean?

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: Well, couple things. I think there’s a misunderstanding of the people who agree with us and people who don’t. The majority of the country agrees with us. I believe in reminding them as we say that we testify, everyone loves someone who’s had an abortion, that the things that you think about abortion, even if you’re supportive of it, you might think of some things that are stigmatizing like, oh, well, it’s [00:47:00] dangerous. And so for me, what feels important is dispelling the myths, the pro choice myths that we write, which Paul protrace politicians spread constantly.

SAMANTHA BEE - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Yeah, I was just gonna say that, like generationally, too. There’s like a whole cohort, like a large cohort of people who support abortion, but it’s, you know, there’s some conditional support, you know, people who are like, I’m fine with abortion, but I don’t want people to use it as birth control it things like that.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: That is the stigma right there. And at the end of the day, they’re uncomfortable with abortion, and you need to get deeper into figuring out why you’re uncomfortable with abortion, not shaming people who have abortions along the way.

Notes from the Editor about further demands for reproductive justice

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips, starting with The ReidOut, discussing the worldview of people like JD Vance. NowThis Impact explained the truth behind the lie of post-birth [00:48:00] abortion. Also from NowThis Impact, there was featured testimony given by a woman to describe her experience with pregnancy in Louisiana. Danielle Moodie discussed the role of patriarchy on how men are raised to see women as subservient. Democracy Now!, looked at the preventable deaths of two women in Georgia who couldn't access the reproductive care they needed. Brittany Page looked at the rising rate of maternity mortality in Texas and the promise of the trend spreading. And The Defenders stressed the importance of de-stigmatizing abortion. And those were just the Top Takes.

There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives section, but first a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support—there's a link in the show notes—through [00:49:00] our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes we provide in the show notes to jump around the show, similar to how chapter markers work. Now, if regular membership isn't in the cards for you, 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, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half the show, I have a couple of articles I wanted to highlight with some counter narratives, but they're counter from even further left. The first was published in Jacobin though I've seen similar sentiments expressed in multiple outlets. It's titled "We Need Better Than a Return to the Roe Status Quo". And basically, the initial stance of the Democratic Party after the Dobbs decision that overturned Roe vs. Wade was to call for a reinstatement of [00:50:00] the previous status quo through legislation, going around the Supreme court. Reproductive justice advocates, I think, rightly recognize that this is actually a once in a generation opportunity to demand, not a return to the old, entirely insufficient status quo, but a real fundamental shift in reproductive and family policy under a reproductive justice framework. Which, by the way, is also in line with what the majority of people in the country actually support. So, from the article, "It's not only reproductive health care that's necessary for communities to thrive, but also Medicare for All, universal childcare, more funding for public education, paid family leave, and a higher minimum wage, all demands of the reproductive justice movement". And they go on to put a finer point on the problem itself: "A right without access is meaningless, and access [00:51:00] was frequently blocked by pre-Dobbs restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion, state restrictions on health insurance coverage of abortion, and state regulations on abortion clinics, that have led to many clinic closures. Roe did not ensure that everyone was able to make unencumbered decisions about their bodies and lives and was decided on flimsy legal arguments about the constitutional right to privacy that did not sufficiently advance or protect women's rights to autonomy and self-determination".

And there is certainly hope that the shift in this stance is already underway. They point out that, in a 2023 interview on Face the Nation, Kamala Harris said, "We're not trying to do something new. We need to put into law the protections of Roe vs. Wade, and that is about going back to where we were before the Dobbs decision". However, "In Harris's August 6th rally in [00:52:00] Pennsylvania, her language evolved from the 'Restore Roe' call that Biden popularized. Under her presidency. She said, 'We will restore reproductive freedom'".

And finally the article highlights further ideas to promote "expanded access to care by funding clinics and direct service providers for ending the criminalization of pregnancy outcomes, especially for pregnant people of color, and for the repeal of the Comstock Act, a 19th century anti-obscenity law that could function as a nationwide abortion ban".

All good ideas.

Now, next up, this article published in The Nation is highlighting a split between large reproductive rights groups and those local groups providing services in their local communities. The headline is "National Abortion Rights Groups Have the Wrong Priorities For Our Movement". And it starts out pointing out that this piece was written and signed by a [00:53:00] collective of abortion fund representatives. So, it was written by several people and then it was signed onto by many, many groups and it says. "As representatives of local abortion funds across the country, we of course support any political efforts to expand abortion access in the future. But we also want to pose this question to the elite sectors of our movement: where is your strategy to increase abortion care right now when it has never been needed more?". And highlighting their meager resources and the ever-increasing need for their services, the local groups points to "Some national funds with resources that our organizations could only dream of are making it harder, not easier, to get abortion care. In June, for instance, the National Abortion Federation announced that it would be cutting back on the amount it gives people who qualify for its financial assistance program. Where the NAF previously paid for 50% of the cost of care, it will now pay for [00:54:00] just 30%. These groups blamed their decision on budget constraints. But their resources dwarf anything local funds can provide. For instance, planned parenthood received $275 million in 2022 from just one donor. Every budget is a reflection of priorities".

Now, the argument that these big groups are making for the decisions with their budgetary priorities, right?, is that they're keeping an eye on the political landscape and efforts to establish new lasting policy that will benefit all going forward. And it's not a ridiculous case to make. But it's important to not lose sight of the immediate emergency of need for care right now. And the 34 signatories to this article theorize that the lack of funding may be at least partly due to differing official stances between [00:55:00] the organizations. "Local funds have been put in a position to disproportionally hold the weight of abortion access while being abandoned based on their more radical and staunch values than their national counterparts. Local abortion funds are the experts in this political moment and deserve respect and investment". And then finally they say, "In order to more directly support abortion seekers now donate directly to your local abortion funds to ensure that your donation gets to abortion seekers and realizes abortion access right now". And they link to an Act Blue donation page to support abortion access right now. I will link to that along with these two articles in the show notes.

SECTION A: THE CASUALTIES

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to a dive deeper on five topics. Next up, Section A: The casualties. Followed by Section B: Religion. Section C: The punishment is the point, Section D: [00:56:00] Black women. And Section E: The pushback.

Trump-Vance Ticket and the He-Man Woman Haters - Hysteria - Air Date 9-19-24

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: We've got Some interesting news in Nebraska. The Supreme Court ruled last week that opposing constitutional amendments can appear on state ballots in November. So currently, Nebraska law prohibits abortion after 12 weeks, with exceptions for medical emergencies, sexual assault and incest. Now, let me just say 90 percent of abortions take place at 12 weeks or earlier because the first trimester sucks.

Most of the time, you know you're pregnant. There are circumstances where you might not know you're pregnant or you're disenfranchised and you can't. You can't access the care that you need, but 90 percent of abortions take place before that 12 week mark. The ones that are delayed until after that often take place because of something catastrophic, heartbreaking, awful, terrible.

Like, you get your NIPT results back around 12 weeks, and that can tell you if your child has like a, um, a genetic defect that's incompatible with life. It doesn't test [00:57:00] for all of them, but it catches some of the big ones, and sometimes you're not gonna know until you're 12, 13 weeks along. You know? Anyway, that's neither here nor there.

One amendment known as Protect Women and Children would codify that law, like keep it on the books, and another amendment called Protect the Right to Abortion would effectively reverse it. So only a handful of states have protections for the right to abortion in their state constitutions, and Nebraska is a deeply red state.

Alyssa, do you think, That the Protect the Right to Abortion Amendment has a chance at passing. Or is that wishful thinking?

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: I'm concerned about the name of the second amendment. Like, it's very confusing. Protect Women and Children. If you're a low From what? Right, if you're a low information voter, and you're going into the Like, like, if you're just looking at the name of it, you're like, I guess, yeah, of course I want to protect women and children.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: Not if you're a gay man woman hater.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: You might actually be like, you know what, I'm motivated by my hatred for women and children. So fuck them. Fuck them kids. Listen, I think that Republicans continue to underestimate, [00:58:00] look, Kansas, Ohio, overwhelmingly people have voted to protect a woman's right to abortion.

So I don't know, fingers crossed. I feel less, a little less hopeful about this because of the dueling amendments and because I do think that they were wrong to have let. The second amendment protect women and children be named protect women and children. I actually do think it's confusing. It is

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: confusing and it's inaccurate because, uh, pregnancy is more dangerous than being an on duty police officer.

If it were a job, it would be one of the top five most dangerous jobs in the U. S. Yeah. You're right. More likely to die when you're pregnant or in the first year after giving birth than you are if you are literally a non duty cop. Uh, so, yeah. Um, Nebraska's one of ten states where constitutional amendments that would protect or expand abortion rights are set to appear on ballots in November.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: Mm hmm.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: What do you think these amendments mean for the future of abortion in a post Roe country?

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: Look, what we've seen is that when there are amendments, [00:59:00] Thus far, they are passing overwhelmingly. I think maybe at some point, I mean, look, and the thing that's like really fucking creepy about Republicans is that their constituents are telling them what they think, not, I'm not talking about the core base of their party, I mean, the constituents that they represent in their state are telling them abortion, reproductive freedom.

Should exist. Um, women should have access to it and then it passes and then what do they do like in Ohio? Secretary of State's like mmm. We actually think that some of the some of the sentences in here are like not constitutional So we're gonna go line by line and try to strike them all it's bullshit, but I do think at some point Ignoring the will of your constituents will have consequences, you know, like too many local leaders are running on a national platform, um, that I think at some point is going to truly, uh, bite them in the ass,

But, Erin, this isn't the only issue. We have our eyes on down the ballot in Nebraska. Democrats are also hoping to flip the congressional seat in Nebraska's second [01:00:00] district. Incumbent Don Bacon The Republican and Tony Vargas, the Democrat, are in a tight race and we know we can flip the seat. Ooh, it would save America.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: Dot com slash vote 2024.

I think it's slash 2024 or slash vote either way either one. You're gonna get what you need All right another couple things, you know, this is another situation where uh conservative legislators Put all the ingredients to make a cake in a bowl stirred the cake stirred the ingredients around Put it in a cake pan, put it in the oven that was preheated to 350 degrees after about 30 minutes, took it out, and act shocked that it became a cake.

Uh, back in May, Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry signed a bill into law making abortion pills, Mifepristone and Mizoprostol, controlled substances. The law will go into effect on October 1st. And this is what I mean about people getting their science tests handed back to them face down. Mm hmm. Because both of these drugs Are important drugs in the treatment of things [01:01:00] besides post miscarriage care and abortion care like even if you want to be like, fuck them women, abortions, you know, we don't even take care of miscarriages like Both of those drugs have other uses.

Both of those drugs.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: And can I give you, I have a lot of thoughts on this. One, for the misoprostol, which I know doctors use especially if a woman is hemorrhaging, right? And so now it's a controlled substance akin to Valium or Xanax. If a woman is bleeding out, normally misoprostol would be in the crash cart.

Now it is in a locked room, potentially very far away. Do you know that doctors in Louisiana right now are doing time trials to see how far and how long it will take them to write the prescription, run to where it's kept, and get back to the rooms where they would be using it? That's fucking deranged, number one.

Number two, even though they're classifying it as Xanax and Valium, here's something. [01:02:00] Erin, I take Xanax. I don't take it every day. I take it when I need it. My doctor says, Alyssa, here's X number of pills. I pick up my prescription. I don't have to have a nervous breakdown, wait for it to get really bad, and then call my doctor and try to get a pill and run to CVS and get it before I'm a messy puddle on the bathroom of my floor.

So it doesn't even work like the controlled substances they're talking about.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: Mhm. No, and like, you know, when's the last time you crushed up a mythoprostone and snorted a couple lines of it? Like, me and my girls in the bathroom, we're having abort summer. We're going into the bathroom, we're doing key bumps of misoprostol.

It's like, no, it's not, it doesn't get you high. Nobody's breaking into, like, houses to, to, nobody's breaking into pharmacies to raid them as a pro, postal supply. Yet. So now they should. Exactly. Um, but it also may, means that in order to access the drugs, you need to have a prescription from a medical professional based in Louisiana, which [01:03:00] totally bans abortion.

So, like, If you're trying to do the pills by mail thing, like, that's another added layer of risk, and it's really, really stupid. It is a huge waste of time and a huge waste of money, and people are going to die. People in Georgia have died because of the abortion ban ProPublica uncovered just this week.

It's, it's just, it's disgusting. Um, Ron DeSantis still being, uh, trying his hardest to be somehow less appealing than J. D. Vance is having his goons go around knocking on doors trying to verify that real people signed a petition that meant to get an abortion amendment on the ballot this November. What is Ron DeSantis long game here?

Does he really want to like, edge out J. D. Vance as America's biggest fucking prick?

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: Erin, that's a sad thing. I think he's spiraling, and this is part of a midlife crisis, because he knows that he lost his one chance. He's nothing but to sanctimonious now to Republicans, and God knows Democrats [01:04:00] don't want him.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: Mm hmm. Yeah, you can't click those high heels together and bring back the political career that you thought you had. Nope! But some good news. Some men in red states have come out loud in support of abortion rights, which would give us some hope in places like Florida and Louisiana.

I gotta admit that it is a little frustrating for me to read Story after story that's like, man, I was really against abortion. And then my wife needed one or she would die. And then I was like, wait a minute. Are other women also people? And then I realized that abortion wasn't a frivolous procedure for loose women.

Uh, it's just, okay. Like glad to have you welcome in, but like, I'm giving you like a little bit of side eye cause it shouldn't take somebody in your immediate family suffering a medical emergency for you to see other people as human...

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: because fundamentally it means you lacked empathy.

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: But I'm glad. Welcome to team. We're here. We're not judging. Um, you know, show me when you get your one year [01:05:00] chip and I will, I will gladly applaud you. And I really appreciate them being outspoken. You know, it's, it's never too late to do the right thing. Yeah, it's sometimes it's almost too late. It's before election day.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - HOST, HYSTERIA: So we're like, okay,

ERIN RYAN - HOST, HYSTERIA: that's true. That's true. Okay, so good job. Tepidly, red state men, don't take your foot off the gas because we are going to be watching.

Exactly how Trump could ban abortion - Vox - Air Date 9-9-24

MARY ZEIGLER: Banned states want the possibility of prosecuting people, abortion providers, abortion funds, organizations that help abortion seekers.

ADAM FREELANDER - HOST, VOX: A Trump administration could help states get that information, either by lifting the protections that keep doctors from sharing it, or by using the Center for Disease Control to create detailed records on every pregnancy in the country.

All these plans are written down in a document called Mandate for Leadership. You probably know it. As Project 2025, [01:06:00] a plan written by conservative analysts and former Trump administration officials for what they would do in a new Trump administration. The document includes the word abortion just about 200 times, and we've only touched on a few of its plans to limit abortion access, but It actually contains one anti abortion measure that dwarfs all the others.

If the other plans in Project 2025 are more piecemeal, just kind of chipping away at abortion access, this one would come the closest to an actual national abortion ban. And it uses a powerful tool to make that happen. Something that has just been kind of hiding in the law of the United States. for a hundred and fifty years.

No obscene publication or any article or thing intended for the prevention of conception or procuring of abortion shall be carried in the mail. This is the Comstock Act of 1873. It banned the mailing of three things. Obscene publications, [01:07:00] pornography, and then anything intended for either The Prevention of Conception, or Abortion.

In the 150 years after this law was passed, it was weakened by various court cases and used less and less, and Congress eventually repealed part of it entirely. But the overturning of Roe v. Wade brought this part back, and how or whether to enforce it is now up to the U. S. Department of Justice, overseen by the President.

In December 2022, the Biden administration said that the revived Comstock Act does not prohibit the mailing or receipt by mail of Mifepristo. In other words, mailing abortion pills is illegal. Still okay. But a Trump administration would probably feel differently. Not long after that, a group of Republican members of Congress wrote to the Biden administration urging them to enforce the Comstock Act and stop the reckless distribution of abortion drugs by mail.

One of those members of Congress was Senator J. D. Vance, [01:08:00] who is now running to be Trump's vice president. It's pretty straightforward to see how the revived Comstock Act could be interpreted to prohibit the mailing of abortion pills from providers. But if that's the case, there's no reason it wouldn't also prohibit the shipping of abortion pills from manufacturers.

To providers, and for that matter,

CARRIE N. BAKER: about two thirds of abortion are done with pills now, but about a third are done with instruments and mailing. Those instruments could be a violation of Comstock Law if the Trump administration interprets Comstock as prohibiting the mailing of anything. They could accomplish an abortion.

And that would shut down abortion nationwide, in all states, because every doctor orders things from out of state.

ADAM FREELANDER - HOST, VOX: An administration enforcing the Comstock Act would probably target the two major manufacturers of mifepristone first. And just going after a few doctors would probably be enough to create a chilling effect on all doctors providing abortions everywhere.[01:09:00]

In August, Trump finally addressed this, kind of.

MARY ZEIGLER: It's kind of been Trump's game plan from the beginning to be confusing about what exactly he means on abortion. Would you enforce the Comstock Act, which could prohibit the distribution of medication abortion by male?

DONALD TRUMP : First he said no. No, uh, and then we will be discussing specifics of it, but generally speaking, no.

And that

MARY ZEIGLER: was reported as no, but I don't know what generally no means or we'll discuss the specifics. Does that mean you're going to prosecute some people, but not other people? Like does it mean you're going to prosecute people sometimes and not, like, He hasn't been as clear, I think, as is sometimes reported.

CARRIE N. BAKER: Look at what he's done rather than what he says he will do. Look at who his supporters are. He says what he says to get elected to office, and then he does what he does.

ADAM FREELANDER - HOST, VOX: We don't know what will happen with the Comstock Act. If Democrats win control of the government, They could repeal it.

This is the 2024 Republican Party platform. It barely [01:10:00] mentions abortion. What it does say is more interesting. It says, we stand for families and life, and that the 14th amendment guarantees no person can be denied life or liberty. What It doesn't sound too out there, but that is actually coded language.

Anytime you see these phrases together, 14th Amendment and the repeated use of the word life, they are talking about an idea called fetal personhood. Fetal personhood gives fetuses, embryos, fertilized eggs, full constitutional rights under the 14th Amendment with the assumption that those rights would override the rights of pregnant people.

MARY ZEIGLER: The anti abortion movement has, um thought of fetal personhood as the kind of endgame since the 1960s. To the extent that Comstock approximates a national ban, fetal personhood is pretty much a ban full stop. You can't legally justify abortion if the law says that embryos are people. Nineteen of the states actually already have some form of personhood law on the books.

ADAM FREELANDER - HOST, VOX: But [01:11:00] on the national level, this is almost certainly not something Congress will be able to pass. And it's not something the president can do either. It will have to be done through the courts. This is where the anti abortion movement ultimately wants to go. This is sort of the next Roe v. Wade. In 2019, an anti abortion group filed a lawsuit in the state of Rhode Island, asking the state's court to block Rhode Island's abortion rights law on the basis that Human life commences at the instant of conception, and that said human life is a person.

In other words, fetal personhood. They lost. After Roe v. Wade was overturned, they appealed that case to the U. S. Supreme Court, again on the basis of fetal personhood. The Supreme Court declined to hear their case. But the Supreme Court can change, and the groundwork has already been laid for that. Over the course of Trump's first [01:12:00] administration, he installed right wing judges throughout the federal court system, which is where future Supreme Court justices will probably come from.

And in just four years, Trump was able to replace one third of an already conservative Supreme Court. Another Trump term could do the same.

South Carolina Woman Charged with MURDER Following Life-Threatening Miscarriage - The Humanist Report - Air Date 9-28-24

MIKE FIGUEREDO - HOST, THE HUMANIST REPORT: This is genuinely Orwellian and reading the details sent chills down my spine.

Mari Marsh had just finished her junior year at South Carolina State University in May of 2023 when she received a text message from a law enforcement officer. Sorry, it has taken this long for paperwork to come back, the officer wrote. But I finally had the final report and wanted to see if you and your boyfriend could meet me Wednesday afternoon for a follow up.

Marsha understood that the report was related to a pregnancy loss she'd experienced that March. Okay, having to talk to a police officer due to a miscarriage you had already. [01:13:00] Deeply, deeply draconian situation we're dealing with here, but it's so much worse. During her second trimester, Marsh said she unexpectedly gave birth in the middle of the night while on a toilet in her off campus apartment.

She remembered screaming and panicking and said the bathroom was covered in blood. I couldn't breathe, said Marsh, now 23. The next day when Marsh woke up in the hospital, she said, a law enforcement officer asked her questions. Then a few weeks later, she said she received a call saying she could collect her daughter's ashes.

So, just to kind of slow down a little bit, so we can try to process the insanity here. She has a medical emergency, bleeds in the bathroom, panics, probably thinking, you know, she's gonna die. Uh, and the next day in the hospital, she's visited by a fucking police officer. Why? Because she had a miscarriage.

There are no words for this. [01:14:00] Uh, at that point, she said she didn't know she was being criminally investigated. Uh, yet three months after her loss, Marsh was charged with murder homicide by child abuse, law enforcement record show. She had a miscarriage, ended up in the hospital because of it through no fault of her own.

And she was charged with murder. How fucking insane is that? She spent 22 days at the Orangeburg Calhoun Regional Detention Center. She went to jail for having a miscarriage! What the fuck? Where she was initially held without bond, facing 20 years to life in prison. Folks, this is why the issue of abortion is so salient to women.

Men don't have to deal with this shit. I never have to worry about this. This is genuinely astonishing to hear. Like, this is the type of shit [01:15:00] that we hear about from authoritarian regimes, right? But it's happening in the United States. She went to jail for having a fucking miscarriage. This is August, 13 months after she was released from jail to house arrest with an ankle monitor.

Again, all for a fucking miscarriage. Marsh was cleared by a grand jury. Her case will not proceed to trial. And again, we're talking about a 23 year old. This is a very young woman. She's 23. And she had to deal with this through no fault of her fucking own. When Marsh took an at home pregnancy test in November 2022, the positive result scared her.

I didn't know what to do. I didn't want to let my parents down. She said, I was in a state of shock. She didn't seek prenatal care, she said, because she kept having her period. She thought the pregnancy test might have been wrong. An incident report filed by the Orangeburg County Sheriff's Office on the day she lost the pregnancy stated that in January of 2023, Marsh made an appointment at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Columbia to take the Plan C pill, which would possibly cause an abortion to occur.

The report doesn't specify whether [01:16:00] she took or even obtained the drug. During an interview at her parents house, Marsh denied going to Planned Parenthood or taking medicine to induce abortion. It shouldn't even fucking matter. Why does this matter at all? It's insane to me that she went to jail for all of this.

I've never been in trouble. I've never been pulled over. I've never been arrested, Marsh said. Uh, I never even gotten written up at school. She played clarinet as section leader in the marching band and once performed at Carnegie Hall. In college, she was majoring in biology and planned to become a doctor.

South Carolina State Representative Seth Rose, a Democrat in Columbia and one of Marsh's attorneys, called it a really tragic case. It's our position that she lost the child through natural causes, he said. No, no, no, but, uh, Apparently, there was an incident report filed because she went to Planned Parenthood and was considering getting an abortion.

So when she ends up having a miscarriage naturally after not getting an abortion, uh, then she's a criminal all of a sudden. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it's, we gotta back up and just [01:17:00] go, go through how crazy this is. An incident report for going to Planned Parenthood. 2024 America, folks. 2024 America. So on February 28th of 2023, Marsh said she experienced abdominal pain and that was way worse than regular menstrual cramps.

She went to the emergency room investigation record show, but left after several hours without being treated. Back at home, she said the pain grew worse. She returned to the hospital, this time by ambulance. Hospital staffers crowded around her, she said, and none of them explained what was happening to her.

Bright lights shone in her face. I was scared, she said. According to the Sheriff's Department report, hospital staffers told Marsh that she was pregnant and that a fetal heartbeat could be detected. Freaked out and confused, she chose to leave the hospital a second time, she said, and her pain had subsided.

In the middle of the night, she said, the pain started again. She woke up, she recalled, feeling an intense urge to use the bathroom. And when I did, the child came, she said. I screamed because I was scared. Because I didn't [01:18:00] know what was going on. Her boyfriend at the time called 911. The emergency dispatcher kept telling me to take the baby out of the toilet, she recalled.

I couldn't because I couldn't even keep myself together. First medical responders detected signs of life and tried to perform life saving measures as they headed to Regional Medical Center in Orangeburg. The incident report said, but at the hospital, Marsh learned that her infant girl had not survived.

I kept asking, asking to see the baby. She said they wouldn't let me. So, It seems like she wanted to have the baby, and even if she was considering getting an abortion, that is fine, it's her body. Um, but she wanted the baby, and she still, even wanting to see the baby, she went to jail for a fucking miscarriage.

I can't get over this. I mean, it's really not that surprising, um, given this is kind of what we expected to happen if Roe v. Wade was overturned. But, this young woman, Was traumatized again, unnecessarily. So [01:19:00] the following day, a sheriff's deputy told Marsh in our hospital room that the incident was under investigation, but said that Marsh was currently not in any trouble.

According to the report, Marsh responded that she did not feel as though she did anything wrong. Yeah, because she didn't. And I'm sorry, like, I have to go back to this. You're a police officer like this is what you want to focus on. Like, look, I don't like Police officers. Uh, that's a different story for a different day, right?

I don't think you can reform this system. But like, I would imagine that there's at least some naive belief in anyone who becomes a cop that they're doing this to stop the bad guys, right? Do you really feel like you're accomplishing much by going to the hospital and visiting this woman who just had a miscarriage?

Because she's a little bit sus. Do you really feel like you're accomplishing a lot by doing that? Like, what the fuck is happening? More than 10 weeks later, nothing about the text messages she received from an officer in mid May implied that the follow up meeting about the final report was urgent. Oh, it doesn't have to be Wednesday.

It can be next week or another week. The officer wrote in [01:20:00] an exchange that Marsh shared with KFF Health News. I just have to meet with y'all in person before I can close the case. I'm so sorry. No problem. Understand. Marsh wrote back. So she's like going out of her way to be so cooperative when she has every right to.

To be like, fuck you. I'm not cooperating with you. It's none of your business. I had a miscarriage. Leave me alone. Why are you nagging me? Take him and talk to you. Fuck off. Like she is well within her right to say that, but she's not. She's a sweet person. And she's like, no, I understand. I'll cooperate when she doesn't have to, or she shouldn't have to, I should say.

She didn't tell her parents or consider hiring a lawyer. I didn't think I needed one, she said. Marsh arranged to meet the officer on June 2nd of 2023. During that meeting, she was arrested. Her boyfriend was not charged. How reasonable of them.

How Texas' Abortion Ban Increased Infant Deaths - Mama Doctor Jones - Air Date 9-8-23

DANIELLE JONES - HOST, DOCTOR MAMA JONES: What did abortion in Texas look like before SBA?

Well, to be honest, it [01:21:00] wasn't entirely easy to access at all before that. There were huge barriers. Most hospitals in Texas won't let the OB GYNs working there provide abortions even if they want to. Most pharmacies don't dispense because of the regulations and because of just statewide trends towards being opposed.

It's incredibly difficult. For example, I have trained and worked up until I moved here my entire life in Texas and I've never worked at a facility where I was allowed to do abortions or like elective abortions or to give people medication for it. It just was not something I could do in Texas for a whole lot of reasons that I've talked about in a whole lot of other videos.

I don't know how much that this actually changed access. Except that it made people scared. It changed like the face of abortion access in Texas. Does that make sense? Because it doesn't do anything, SBA doesn't do anything to make it technically more difficult. It just made people scared to access it and to provide it.

I [01:22:00] don't think most people Physicians who were already providing abortions in Texas would have stopped providing them based on this SB 8 bill. It just kind of gave people a lot of hesitancy in accessing that kind of care. All right, so they found that spike. It's interesting, they say here, earlier research has found that the number of Texas residents who travel out of state for an abortion spiked after SB 8 took effect.

And, uh, It says that may not be an option for as many people under DAWBS. As many neighboring states, more than a dozen states nationwide, have also enacted abortion bans. Other factors may affect birth trends too, so this is what I was getting at that we don't know for sure that we can see a change in this related to that ruling specifically.

Okay, so, um, At least we can see this public health journal, review it and see if they address the overall birth rate. So researchers expect that the number of abortion procedures to drop and live births to increase when abortion [01:23:00] restrictions go into effect, but don't know what the extent of that will be.

Okay, so it's, it's compared to what they would have expected it to be based on birth trends. around the country. So they have controlled for the expected birth rate. So it's not just comparing it to like last year or anything like that. It's comparing it to expected birth rates based on other places. So that makes sense.

And it's 3 percent higher than what they would have expected. All right. So that's kind of where we're starting with this. So we know that after the 2021 abortion ban. went into place, we saw an increase in the birth rate. Nearly two years after Texas's six week abortion ban, more infants are dying. Texas abortion restrictions, some of the strictest in the country, may be fueling a sudden spike in infant mortality as women are forced to carry non viable pregnancies to term.

And not just non viable pregnancies, right? Any pregnancies that previously would not have been terminated. happening. So some 2, 200 infants died in Texas in 2022, an [01:24:00] increase of 227 deaths or 11. 5 percent over the previous year. According to preliminary infant mortality data from the Texas Department of State and Health Services, CNN obtained through a public records request, infant deaths caused by severe genetic and birth defects rose 22 percent.

So we are noticing a trend here, right? Severe Genetic and birth defects rose by 22 percent. Essentially what they were saying, the number of pregnancies people are forced to carry to term, which then puts them and their health at risk, and also puts their family in a position of not having an option for what to do in a situation where they are put between a rock and a hard place, essentially.

You have to remember most of these people are pregnant with pregnancies they want to have, and then they find out a devastating problem, and they. are not allowed to make a choice, right? So, I kind of liken this to life support options for people. If you are pregnant with a fetus that has a lethal anomaly, and you don't want to continue that [01:25:00] pregnancy, I don't think anybody should be forced to terminate a pregnancy for any reason, obviously.

But, uh, But you also should not force somebody to continue a pregnancy, particularly in a situation where you know that the health outcome is going to be dire. Why? Well, for a whole lot of reasons, not the least of which being, in that interim period from, I don't know, 18 ish weeks when you find out that this could be going on, up until the point that you end up delivering, your health is at risk, right?

So pregnancy is not a health neutral state. Being pregnant puts you at an increased risk of pretty much everything bad that can happen to you in life, and you are naturally at an increased risk. So why it doesn't make any sense to force people to have that. And then in addition to that, while some people would like to have time with a baby if it's born or let things happen naturally on their own.

Some people would really like to, [01:26:00] in what they see, in my experience taking care of these patients, is that some patients fall into that group of like, I just want to stay pregnant as long as possible, have as much time with this baby that is my baby as long as I can. Or in the event that it's born alive, I just want to be able to have that time with it.

And that's perfectly reasonable. I don't know what I would do in that situation. And I think anybody who says that they do know what they would do in that situation, if they have not been through that situation, is lying to themselves and everybody else if they say they know what they would do. Because I've seen this happen hundreds of times, and I can tell you for sure, I don't know what I would do.

That being said, there are some people who fall into another group, which is, I would like to Make what I see as the most humane decision to end this pregnancy so that maybe they think that the fetus is suffering or that when the baby is born, it will suffer and they don't want that to happen. So this is a very personal thing, right?

I think that's really important when we're discussing this is not to lose sight of [01:27:00] the fact that some people on Twitter in particular have looked at this and said, oh, 2200 infants have died. Well, that's, you know, X number less than how many abortions there would have been. And what we're not going to do is compare taking a pill to induce a miscarriage to Somebody having a two month old or a two hour old or a three month old die.

Because those are not the same thing. And we're not going to pretend they are. If somebody wants to pretend that's the same thing, they are just lying because you know And I know that that's not the same thing. That is not to diminish the absolute horrible heartbreak that it can be for people who have lost pregnancies even really early.

That can also be a tragedy. It's not competition of tragicness, but we cannot, Sit here and say that, you know, there's 2000 Texas families [01:28:00] in this short time frame who have lost newborns or babies that were a few months old and say that that's worth it. That is not necessarily something that I will get on board with.

That is a wild thing to even imply. In addition to that, people were asking, well, you know, why would it be associated with higher neonatal and infant mortality to ban abortion. So let's talk a little bit about that. There's a few reasons for this, and it's multifactorial. One is that a lot of times people who have terminations are doing so because they're not in a health situation where they can take care of, grow, birth, and safely care for after birth.

a newborn. Anyone who is at a higher risk of having pregnancy complications, which is a large number of people who choose to have an abortion, they are also at [01:29:00] an increased risk of pregnancy complications, which increase risk of infant mortality. So a higher risk pregnancy, which is Not everybody who has an abortion would fall into a high risk pregnancy group, but a good number of them will.

So you've increased the number of people who have higher risk pregnancies, which increases the risk of having complications related to the pregnancy, specifically things like preterm birth, premature rupture of membranes, abruptions, small for gestational age babies, which increases the risk of things like cerebral palsy, and also, all of those things increase the risk of neonatal and infant mortality.

So yes, banning abortion does increase infant and neonatal mortality rates. We know this. We know this from the plethora of research that we have on this topic, but we also can understand it from a basic level of thinking through what happens when more people are pregnant. And another thing that came up on Twitter was, okay, well, there's more babies being born, so obviously [01:30:00] there's going to be more infant deaths.

And that is true. But the rate is what we're talking about. So if you have one in one hundred, that's one percent. If you have ten and a thousand, that's still one percent. The rate should not change just because the absolute number goes up. And what we're seeing is a trend towards that happening in Texas.

We don't have enough data, I don't think, to know that for sure because I think I'm not positive on this. Again, I would have to look at the data specifically, but I would imagine that we are in too short of a time frame at this point to say if that is an actual change or if it's just related to something else.

But we know this from other data. We know this from logical thinking. We know this from other data on the topic. Banning abortion will increase maternal and infant mortality. What is happening? already starting to happen. It was predictable that this is what would happen, and I think we need to be aware that that's what's happening, because you cannot in one breath [01:31:00] say, I am pro life, and in a second breath ignore the fact that we have thousands of families now grieving their infants dying.

Okay? We cannot ignore that, and we cannot ignore what will likely be an increase in maternal mortality as well.

SECTION B: RELIGION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Religion.

LIVE FROM NETROOTS NATION 2024 #3: Yes, Pro-Faith and Pro-Abortion IS A THING! With Ashley Wilson & Rev. Terry Williams - Feminist Buzzkills - Air Date 9-20-24

REV TERRY WILLIAMS: I just want to lift up the joy and the wonder that we have in partnering with local clinics and with organizations such as your own, that we get people who send folk to us not because they are primarily having a moral decision making quandary around abortion, but because they're struggling with the stigma and the violence that has been forced on them by religious systems that don't represent the majority but do represent in many systems and many situations, the power [01:32:00] structures. And they get this messaging, this consistent onslaught of very loud messaging, and the silent majority is not heard in their life. So they come to us and they say, I'm struggling with the stigma, not with the decision, but with the stigma and the violence of this society. And for us, like you said, to be able to just hold space with people and say, you know what? You're not alone. Not only are you not alone, you're in the majority, and you are beloved. And you know your body and what your body needs and what your life looks like. When you think about a flourishing future, you are the expert on your own future and the expert on your own body.

KRISTIN HADY - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILS: So good.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: And I just want to say, too, as somebody who is brought up Catholic, sometimes when we look at who's outside of those clinics and we look at those men that we just showed you, right? Those violent men. while they are holy garbage, sometimes you can say, oh, yes, I [01:33:00] know that. And sometimes for a young person of faith who is coming to have an abortion, maybe alone, maybe Catholic, those guys are predictably awful. And sometimes the more damaging stigmatizing person can be that quiet person with a rosary who, as the person walks into their procedure, says, if you go in there, you will not have salvation. And those, sometimes I think that we look at the loud ones as the most aggressive, when really it's sometimes the people who pretend to be peaceful who can really take that and make that experience be really scary.

ASHLEY WILSON: It's spiritual violence is what we call it at Catholics for choice. You know, I, everyone, I used to love Pope Francis, and now I have a complicated opinion. He has said that if you have an abortion, you have hired a hitman. And, like, that is bananas [01:34:00] to me. Right. And, like, shows how truly out of touch, you know? Never forget, in the Catholic Church, the people who are writing our policies are ostensibly celibate, ostensibly straight men who have no inroads into the lives of women. They don't have children. They're just so far removed. And they're also obsessed with sex. And it just creates this, like, dark black hole, like, this black hole of spiritual violence and shame that just ripples out everywhere. Even though in the United States, one in four abortion patients in this country identifies as Catholic.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: I also want to say that being the coolest pope is sort of like being the smartest person at Fox News. It's like. It's kind of like. Not that. It's like, okay, fine. Like, you know, like, what are the pickings here? The history's not that great.

REV TERRY WILLIAMS: As an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ and part [01:35:00] of the german protestant tradition, I've had a very clear opinion about the pope for about 400 years.

KRISTIN HADY - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILS: you're like, I was ahead of the game. I'm glad everybody's catching up.

REV TERRY WILLIAMS: But I think to Lizz's point, we have for so long in religious circles, we've given people a pass on the worst possible behavior of, like, oh, they're not totally trash today. Guess what? There are people who aren't just minimally, not totally trash. There are people with really great theology and who support abortion access, people who have stood up for decades across many different denominations, across many different systems of faith within the catholic hierarchy, to say no, actually, consciousness is important, and your ability to control your body is a really big fucking deal, to paraphrase.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: So I want to jump on that exactly, because I think it's important to talk about the history of abortion and [01:36:00] religion, how it wound up in the hands or rephrase clutches of these extremists and their narrative around. So let's just talk about the history of abortion.

ASHLEY WILSON: Well, I will say, you know, at Catholics or choice, we talk about the very rich tradition of choice that our religion has. You know, Mary famously was visited by the angel Gabriel and had a choice or not to bear the son of God. And she said, yes. And if Mary had a choice, you should too.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: Oh, wow. That's going over well with those Catholics at the Vatican Church.

KRISTIN HADY - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILS: Merch alert.

REV TERRY WILLIAMS: Mary had a baby by choice.

ASHLEY WILSON: Yeah. And the reality is the catholic hierarchy's obsession with abortion is much more recent. The formal catholic church didn't have a position totally banning abortion until 1917\. It was only a little bit before that, that one of the pope piuses, I think, 9th, [01:37:00] firststarted talking about abortion.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: Can we call him pp nine?

ASHLEY WILSON: Yeah. For real. So all of this is much more modern, really. We're thinking we're looking at the last hundred years, and when you look at the universe that is the United States today, and you look at people like Leonard Leo who have constructed this Supreme Court, people forget Paul Weyrich, who's one of the co founders of the Heritage foundation. He's Catholic. You know, Leonard Leo, who is the architect of the Supreme Court, he's Catholic.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: Six justices.

ASHLEY WILSON: Every member of the Supreme Court who overturned Roe versus Wade, Catholic. Paul Ryan, Catholic. John Boehner, Catholic. Like all of these members of Congress and our government at all levels have literally, intentionally been put there by religious overreach and the catholic bishops to advance this very anti [01:38:00] LGBTQ, anti woman, anti abortion agenda. And it is like the signs of the Catholic Church becoming this political body that has been devastating. And then we're at progressive conferences like this, and the word religion is never talked about. And I'm always like, but Heritage foundation is the one behind project 2025\. Let's look at those roots. The roots are all catholic.

LIZZ WINSTEAD - HOST, FEMINIST BUZZKILLS: Totally. And also, just to point out that once you realize that the priest can't get married, thing changed in the 7th century because the church was like, these bitches are dying and giving their property to their families. We want their property. So we're gonna change up that rule. And so when you see the patriarchal spiral of how do we keep control? Eventually you're gonna get to the narrative of let's control the reproduction of people so that this patriarchal [01:39:00] system can work for us.

ASHLEY WILSON: Yeah.

REV TERRY WILLIAMS: The roman empire did not fall. It became a church. Right? I mean, literally, like, this idea of constantly utilizing those systems to reinforce the power and the ability to hold onto resources that has become institutionalized religion, whether it's protestant or catholic, particularly in this country, for decades. I love the phrase that you used, Ashley, that the roots are Catholic. The roots might be catholic, but the fruits are protestant.

Project 2025: The Plan To DESTROY Women’s Rights - Fast Politics with Molly Jong-Fast - Air Date 7-22-24

MOLLY JONG-FAST - HOST, FAST POLITICS: I'm hoping you could talk us through where we are in America right now with abortion.

That sets the stage for all of this.

MARY ZEIGLER: Yeah, I mean, where we are right now is, is it kind of a mess, right? I mean, there are two pending U. S. Supreme Court cases that we're likely to hear about any time between this week and the end of the month. There are any number of [01:40:00] divergent state laws. States are introducing new bans, even as they already have existing bans.

We're starting to see more interest in conservative states in limiting travel for abortion. We're seeing conservative efforts to introduce a kind of backdoor federal ban on abortion through the Comstock Act that they're hoping a potential Trump administration would enforce. And we're also seeing, I think, leakage or slippage between the concepts of contraception and birth control that could have a lot of consequences.

So, I mean, big picture, you know, the U. S. Supreme Court, when it overturned Roe v. Wade, was essentially saying, well, sure, you know, everybody's going to lose this fundamental right, and that's kind of too bad, but on the bright side, the abortion conflict will simmer down, because the real problem was Roe v.

Wade. So, once we, the Supreme Court, like, exit stage left, everyone is just going to get along better, and this conflict is not really going to exist anymore. And, you know, it turns out that that's not the case. Not true, right? Um, and it turns out that not only that, but the U. S. Supreme Court has more abortion cases than ever before, not fewer.

So the kind of general [01:41:00] picture is sort of is chaos, but also I think it's not necessarily that we've hit rock bottom either. I mean, I think that it, you know, since we're talking about 2025, things could get a lot more draconian at the federal level still.

MOLLY JONG-FAST - HOST, FAST POLITICS: Part of the plan here is this embryonic personhood.

So I'm hoping that you could talk a little bit about how heritage. Um, and the question is, how did the, the movement get involved in that? And what that means in this post Roe America?

MARY ZEIGLER: Yeah. One of the things that most people don't understand is that the embryonic personhood was sort of the reason the anti abortion movement came into being, right.

The anti abortion movement existed before Roe v Wade. Like it started, the modern anti abortion movement started in the 1960s as soon as states tried to reform their criminal abortion laws. and the argument that the movement made Was essentially, well, you can't, you know, have reformed abortion laws because it violates the constitutional rights of fetuses and embryos.

And that [01:42:00] argument never went away. If people want to kind of, you know, check me on this, look at the Republican Party platform, starting in the 1980s, it always called for a fetal personhood amendment. It was just that the anti abortion movement thought it was politically impossible for a long time to get such an amendment or to get a court to say that fetuses or embryos had constitutional rights.

And now for obvious reasons that isn't true anymore, right? I mean, it seems that some conservative judges are, are quite open to this idea. And so that's always been kind of the end game for the anti abortion movement. And since the Supreme Court overturned Roe, you know, the overturned window has shifted and we've seen more and more conservative groups saying, yeah, you know, we're, we're here for fetal personhood.

Like that's the, the idea. Um, they have referred to the, uh, um, Coalition of anti abortion groups refers to this as the movement's new North Star. Um, and they have quoted, for example, Abraham Lincoln saying, you know, you can't have a nation that's half slave and half free, by which they mean you can't have a nation where abortion is [01:43:00] legal in some places and illegal in others.

There needs to be a sort of one size solution imposed on everyone from the top down. I

MOLLY JONG-FAST - HOST, FAST POLITICS: mean, they went from states rights to we have to ban this, making us think that this was never, ever. Ever about states rights.

MARY ZEIGLER: No, yeah. It totally wasn't. I mean, the anti apportionment movement is not the pro democracy or pro states rights movement.

I mean, the idea that anybody like believed that that was the point is sort of beggar's belief a little bit.

MOLLY JONG-FAST - HOST, FAST POLITICS: Right. No, I agree. So Heritage has sort of mapped out a kind of roadmap for this post Roe America and includes this embryonic personhood. and in this embryonic personhood is regulating. IVF. Now, if you look at the, the heritage documents, there's no even pretend there's just like, why don't we regulate IVF?

Why, you know, let's not regulate Exxon because oil companies are fine. Let's [01:44:00] not regulate cigarettes. Let's not regulate, but we have to regulate IVF. Can you sort of make this make sense?

MARY ZEIGLER: Well, still, if you, if you buy the argument, so, I mean, there are two, there are two things going on here, right? One is that if you buy the argument that fetuses and embryos are persons, then IVF might be weird to you, right?

Because you'll see anti abortion people saying, Well, we can't put children in freezers, and we can't donate children for research, and we can't destroy children. So once you kind of go down that road, that's part of what's going on. I think the other thing that's going on in the background is that often beliefs about personhood travel alongside beliefs about gender, sex, sort of the idea that there are God given gender roles, that those are necessary to human flourishing.

And I think there's always been a subset of people within the anti abortion movement who are disturbed by IVF because they see it as sort of antithetical to the idea that children are only born when straight married people have sex [01:45:00] or that it's sort of is used in ways that subvert their, their beliefs vis a vis gender and sex, right?

You have lots of queer families that use IVF, you have single parents, single women who use IVF. So, uh, I think it's both about personhood, but also about this kind of constellation of beliefs that often travel alongside personhood.

MOLLY JONG-FAST - HOST, FAST POLITICS: From there, there's this, like, need to regulate birth control, and that's sort of another branch of this fetal personhood.

So, these are wildly unpopular things. It's not like abortion where you poll it and you get 60, 65 percent say there shouldn't be, you know, there should be choice. It's like 80%. You don't 90%. Nobody wants to take away birth control. Nobody wants to take away IVF, but the part of this is birth control. So can you talk us through?

And it's not just the morning after pill, which might. In this idea sort of makes sense [01:46:00] because I mean, again, it doesn't. But the idea is that maybe, you know, whereas the birth control just totally doesn't make sense at all. I mean, by this sort of fake logic. So talk us through that for a minute.

MARY ZEIGLER: Yeah, well, I mean, I think that there there again, two things going on.

So the first thing some people may remember back to the fight about the Obamacare contraceptive mandate. So there were lots of conservatives at the time. Lobby. It turns, right, Hobby Lobby, that it turns out that most of the things we all thought were contraceptives are actually abortifacients, right, so not just emergency contraceptives but IUDs and the birth control pill.

And ever since Hobby Lobby, really powerful anti abortion groups like Students for Life on which Leonard Leo sat on the board of directors, you know, they've said, you know, contraception is a con, right, this is the sort of marketing, right, that these things, we're being told these things are contraceptives, but they're not, and this has been a major, um, social media campaign.

So, part of the, the Push back against contraception is a definitional thing, like another interesting feature is that, um, since dogs, [01:47:00] several states have, um, reformed their definitions of abortion to remove language that excludes contraceptives, right? So, um, that's created some kind of gray area. Uh, they haven't, you know, said that contraceptives are a worse patients either.

They're just leaving that to the imagination. The other thing I think that's happening is that, again, many conservatives have been uncomfortable with contraception going back some time to viewing, you know, separating sex and reproduction as immoral or as encouraging promiscuity or as unnatural or as contrary to their religious teachings.

So we're starting to to see some conservatives mount efforts to criticize contraception, not as abortion, but just to say, contraception is bad as contraception. The most obvious at the moment focus unsurprisingly on on minors, right? So saying minors shouldn't be able to access contraception and if their parents don't want them to.

We've started to see some arguments that kind of parallel ones we saw about abortion where you're hearing them say, well, contraceptives are [01:48:00] dangerous and they increase the risk of depression and cancer. Kind of the same thing we saw with abortion. And we're seeing, I think one of the interesting things too is, you know, a lot of kind of.

Behind the scenes efforts to defeat right to contraceptive bills, even when conservatives are not always putting out front why they oppose contraception, they don't want right to contraception bills either.

Weekly Roundup: Trump Makes Republicans Pro-Choice - And His Christian Base Revolts - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 8-30-24

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I want to remind people, because I've had people who reach out, who, who again are like, why, why is IVF like, like, why are the, the, the anti abortion people so opposed to IVF? And again, we've talked about this, but just to throw it out, You have fertilized eggs that are destroyed in the process of IVF, and if you believe, if one believes that a fertilized egg is a full human person with human rights and all of that, that's the issue.

Um, this is like, again, one of these like, kind of unforced errors that Trump keeps doing. Um, It's also sort of [01:49:00] humorous, like, so I, I can imagine, I can imagine, you know, they're sitting around strategizing and they know that banning IVF is colossally, colossally unpopular. We've, we've heard Vance trying to walk back on this, Trump has been trying to do this and so forth.

And I can hear the analysts now, because they know, they know that they're pissing off all the, the, the anti abortion people, like, we need to frame this as not being pro choice, but as being pro family. People need to be able to have families, families are important, it's pro family, and Trump, the other thing about this is, not only does he come out in favor of IVF, And like a mandate for it and whatever, but he, he, the way he talked about it was sort of comical.

So here's what he said, because we want more babies to put it very nicely. And for this same reason, we will also allow new parents to deduct major newborn expenses, uh, from their taxes so that parents can have, uh, that beautiful baby will be able. So we're pro family. It's like, it's like, he's like, let me get all the buzzwords [01:50:00] in babies and families, and we're pro family.

And it's just, on one hand, the transparency of it. We need to sound pro family, so let's throw this out there, and we need to try to appeal to other people. I, I, I don't, I'm, I'm with the right wingers who say I don't see the, the strong benefit of this for Trump. You're right, I, I'm with you, I don't think that this moves the needle much for Trump with most populations, cause he's, he lies all the time, everybody knows he lies all the time.

He clearly, the way he articulates these things makes explicit that it's a political calculation. Yes, politicians are politicians. They're always making political calculations, but like on abortion, Trump has said, we need to not talk about abortion so much because like, it's not a good policy win for us.

Like he says the quiet parts out loud, but this, if this catches fire the way that it appears that it might, and it kind of has, and if it keeps going, I think this only hurts him with some of his own people. He had a major [01:51:00] abortion rights group this week before the IVF comment, who said we're not obligated to vote for Donald Trump.

I mean, it was kind of a warning shot to his campaign. And I think we also see, and we can get into the Florida stuff a bit more in a minute, I could see him tomorrow turning around and having to try to walk this back and creating the policy salad that he does. Where, no, no, no, it's states rights, I always said it was states rights, I'm the one that took away Roe v.

Wade, and you're like, cool, so like, how, like, how, how do you square this circle, Donald Trump, in saying we're pro family, isn't gonna be enough, it isn't gonna do it, so, it's, yeah, it's a, if I thought Trump was more of a calculating person, like, like, more sort of logical and strategic in his thinking, instead of just sort of instinctive and reactionary, I would be like, what in the world is he doing?

Um, I think this comes out to me as like a really bad mashup of political strategists trying to get him to do things mixed together with Trump [01:52:00] mixed together with, I think desperation. Um, so yeah, you're, well, I think, I think he knows,

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: I think he knows that an abortion ban, whether a full abortion ban or a six week abortion ban is wildly unpopular.

I think he knows that. I think he, so is he calculating? I don't think that's the right word. What I think he's doing is saying, if I come out and say that. I'm it's wildly unpopular what he's not calculating and this is the part I want to dig into and I think is the part That on this show we can really speak to is this has been one of the the excuses to vote for trump Well, yeah, he's not he's not a great christian.

Yes, uh porn stars. Yes adultery, yes, uh You know eugene carroll. Yes all that stuff grab them by the dad But abortion but abortion

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: but abortion. Okay,

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: so here's what peter You Peter Wiener says at the at the Atlantic, how could an evangelical who claims to be passionately pro-life vote for a presidential candidate who now promises that his administration will be great for women and their reproductive rights, [01:53:00] especially when that person has cheated on his wives and anonymous taxes, paid hush money to porn stars and been found liable of sexual assault.

So, dent, let's just, let's just kind of cut to the chase. Does this make a difference? Does it make a difference? I mean, you know, a lot of, a lot of folks are waiting for Al Mohler in about a week to come up with a tweet thread that says, well, we're disappointed in President, former President Trump, but when it comes to the two choices, he's still better than Kamala Harris.

That's gonna happen. And I don't know if that'll be Al Mohler specifically, but it might be Marjorie Taylor Greene. It might be Ralph Reed. It might be any number of like evangelical Christian nationalists, luminaries who are all, all completely against reproductive rights. They, they will rationalize their way into a vote for Trump.

The, the thing that I, I think is important is 2016 and 2020, he gets 80 percent or more of the white evangelical vote. He cannot afford to let that slip [01:54:00] to like 75. He cannot afford to let some of those people just not vote. Because if they write in, if they write in somebody, if they write in a candidate, if they write in Ron DeSantis, if they stay home, they're Whatever that white evangelical base shrinks every year because there's less and less white evangelicals every year.

The Trump campaigns basically approached 2024. Like we've got them in the bag. They didn't pick a Mike Pence evangelical. They picked JD Vance. Right. And who is a reactionary Catholic, but nonetheless is not that like tried and true evangelical Reaganite kind of legacy pick. In addition, they are really looking at Latino and black voters as the kind of new Christian, uh, population and constituency that they would like to win this time.

All in my opinion, assuming that they will get 82, [01:55:00] percent of the evangelical and other white Christian nationalists sort of base, whether that's Pentecostals, whether that's Catholics, This might be one of those moments where, like, 2024, we see the election results, and it's like, he got 77, he got 76, but that, Dan, that could be Pennsylvania, that could be Wisconsin, that could be Georgia, because if enough of those hard line, anti abortion people are willing to not be Al Mohler or someone else, and just say, we're not voting for him now, he's in trouble, and it may be, like, three percentage points in, in one category of religious voter in the country, But it may be enough.

That's my, that's my take. And that's my, that's how I'm looking at this whole issue as we go forward. Final thoughts, and we'll go to Arlington.

DANILE MILLER - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, just a couple thoughts about that. Um, is number one, I, I, I think that that all makes sense. And I think we're not talking about, I think this is important, we're not talking about people who are going to go to Harris, but you're talking about the same kind of enthusiasm gap that can [01:56:00] start to open up that was plaguing Democrats forever.

And if there's an enthusiasm gap for Trump with religious voters, that's a huge problem. I'm also thinking about, you know, there was an article, maybe it was Politico, I don't remember where I read it, but, you know, they were at a Trump rally in Michigan, and they're interviewing rally goers there, and the people, the, the, you know, who absolutely do not believe that Donald Trump is behind in the polls, this one dude's predicting he's gonna win by, you know, an 80 percent to 20 percent margin, and this is all fake, and like, whatever.

Remember in 2016? When Hillary Clinton lost, in part because a lot of people who would have voted for Clinton weren't super excited about her, but thought she was going to win the election, so they didn't vote. If you get a tiny sliver of people that do that for Trump, they think he's got it overall, yeah, they would like him better than Harris, but you know, they're upset about what he's now saying about abortion, and they stay home, I, I, I think it's, I think it's a possibility.

The last point I want to do, I just want to talk about in Florida real quick, and the, you know, what happens here. [01:57:00] You get Trump who one minute, you know, he's asked about DeSantis and as you say this, this thing and he says that, you know, six weeks is too short and they asked him, Oh, you'll vote in favor of the amendment then that would, you know, override this.

Um, he says, I'm going to be voting that we need more than six weeks. And so people that the headline was Donald Trump opposes this and his pro life. And then immediately his campaign turns around and says he hasn't said how he'll vote. He just said he believes six weeks is too short. That is not going to be what those religious voters want to hear.

They want to hear him say, we are going to eradicate abortion. Now, when he says I'll veto a federal ban, if they still believe that there's a wink wink with that, I'm saying this, I have to say this to get elected. We all know I need to say this to get elected, but you put it on my desk and once I'm in office, I'll do whatever the hell I want.

If they still believe that, okay, maybe they go. But if he keeps doing this, I think that sows that doubt and there's the chance of losing that.

SECTION C: THE PUNISHMENT IS THE POINT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [01:58:00] You've reached Section C: The punishment is the point.

Blue State Barriers and the Messy Map of Abortion Access - Reveal - Air Date 3-8-24

AL LETSON: Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee and Arkansas have all banned abortion since the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Roe v. wade in 2022.

Georgia and South Carolina only allow abortions up to six weeks, before most women know they’re pregnant. Up until recently, Florida was a stronghold of abortion access in the South.

Over the last seven years, more than 30,000 abortions were performed on patients from out of state. But in 2022, a Republican super majority passed a law banning abortions after 15 weeks.

And then last year they passed a six-week ban. And Sadie says, if the Florida Supreme Court upholds this ban, women’s health across the South will [01:59:00] be at risk.

SADI SUMMERLIN: It is scary to be somebody capable of becoming pregnant right now. It is terrifying. And when I say-

AL LETSON: Sadi’s standing with about five other activists, she’s holding a bullhorn and a sign that says “Pro-women. Pro-choice.”

SADI SUMMERLIN: We need Florida. We need Florida.

SPEAKER 17: If Florida falls, where would people go?

SADI SUMMERLIN: Florida falls, Virginia, basically, they’re going to have to go up to Virginia.

AL LETSON: Virginia. It’s the one state in the South where abortion is still legal. Up to 26 weeks. Over the last six months, Laura’s been talking to one Florida abortion provider who’s been preparing for this very moment. Laura takes it from here.

LAURA MOREL: It’s July 2023, two months before the hearing at Florida Supreme Court, and Kelly Flynn is preparing for abortion access to keep shrinking across the South.

KELLY FLYNN: All right, [02:00:00] you got the measuring tape?

LAURA MOREL: She’s standing in a medical plaza in Danville, Virginia checking out an office. She put an offer on site unseen and she’s trying to be inconspicuous.

KELLY FLYNN: Yeah, so I’m been trying to be really discreet about this because I don’t want to get any backlash before we open.

LAURA MOREL: Kelly walks across the parking lot with a purple notepad and a Diet Coke. This is her latest venture, her next abortion clinic, and she’s got to do it quietly, because she’s worried about protests and pushback.

KELLY FLYNN: But yeah, we’ll take a walk around and see.

LAURA MOREL: This used to be an OBGYN’s office, but it’s been empty for a while and it looks pretty rough. Kelly’s walking around the rooms, making notes, measuring door frames.

KELLY FLYNN: Oh whoa, this room, it’s orange. And brown. Or something.

LAURA MOREL: [02:01:00] It’s truly an awful color like pumpkin pie filling, but years expired.

Kelly knows she’s got a lot of work ahead of her. There’s water damage. A bunch of the cabinet doors are broken and there’s a room with stacks of documents from 2001. She keeps clicking her pen. It’s this giveaway that she’s anxious.

KELLY FLYNN: I’m really excited, nervous and scared at the same time, because I never know how unpredictable these laws are going to be, but it looks like Virginia is pretty safe right now.

LAURA MOREL: In Virginia. Democrats have been protective of abortion rights. They’re in control of the state legislature, and won’t face reelection in the Senate until 2027.

KELLY FLYNN: So my contractor is going to be here in just a little bit to go ahead and start the remodeling process. We plan to close on this building pretty quickly, as our patients in North Carolina [02:02:00] need somewhere to go.

LAURA MOREL: She owns three clinics in North Carolina and one in Florida. And ever since Roe fell, Kelly’s been shifting and pivoting like a point guard scanning the court for the next open play.

So, when Florida passed a 15-week ban, Kelly sent her patients to North Carolina where abortion was still legal up to 20 weeks. But then last year, North Carolina passed a 12-week ban, so Kelly sent her patients back to Florida, but now that Florida is facing a possible six-week ban, her new plan is that women can come here to this clinic in Danville, Virginia.

KELLY FLYNN: I have big visions for this place. It’s going to look really pretty when we’re done, and the goal is to be open, ideally… I mean in a perfect world, I’d like end of August, but I’m thinking mid-September.

LAURA MOREL: Kelly’s on a mission to make sure people can access abortion and it’s something she can relate to. She had two abortions during [02:03:00] college and the second time she ended up comforting another patient because Kelly knew what to expect. She held the patient’s hand while they ate crackers in the recovery room, the clinic staff noticed and offered her a job. That was her path to becoming a provider.

I’ve known Kelly since 2021, when I interviewed her for a story about harassment and violence targeting abortion clinics. After that story aired, Kelly and I kept in touch mostly over the phone. I wanted to understand what the fall of Roe would mean for providers.

And Kelly agreed to let me follow her.

KELLY FLYNN: Just text me if you need anything. And I’m sorry about the delay in the schedule.

LAURA MOREL: Oh, it’s fine. No worries. We’ll touch base next week.

One I learned about Kelly early on is that she’s really careful.

KELLY FLYNN: Because I’ve got my little boy. I never know how crazy somebody can get, and how obsessive they become. So I mean, I take it very personally, and I’m careful in terms of [02:04:00] who I choose to bring into my circle.

LAURA MOREL: And this venture into Danville. Only a very select group of people know about it. Kelly’s worried about attracting backlash before she’s even had a chance to open, and there’s good reason to be so cautious.

After Tennessee banned abortion, a clinic in Bristol crossed state lines to open in Virginia, and almost immediately, it faced legal challenges and protests.

VICTORIA COBB: Virginians, no matter where they stand on the value of human life, don’t want abortion to be part of the tourism offerings.

LAURA MOREL: This is Victoria Cobb, president of the Family Foundation of Virginia, an anti-abortion group based in Richmond. Victoria doesn’t live in Bristol, but her group has organized residents there and in other cities along Virginia’s border to advocate for laws that would stop abortion providers from coming to the state.

VICTORIA COBB: People don’t want to see a commercial that says, “Come to Virginia, visit historic Williamsburg and get your abortion while you’re [02:05:00] here.”

That’s not any community’s desire. And so that’s what these communities are trying to do, is wall off being exploited by the abortion industry.

LAURA MOREL: What is abortion tourism? How would you define that?

VICTORIA COBB: I would say it is marketing our location, our commonwealth as a place to pursue your abortion.

LAURA MOREL: Victoria’s organization had a strategy for Bristol. They drafted a zoning ordinance that would ban future abortion clinics from operating within city limits.

VICTORIA COBB: Yeah, I mean it’s essentially in the same way that an ordinance would prevent a strip club from setting up next to a church or a school, for example.

LAURA MOREL: Bristol’s ordinance hasn’t gone into effect yet. It still has to be approved by other city officials.

It is a particularly hard time to open an abortion clinic in the US. There’s a complicated [02:06:00] web of local ordinances and state laws to maneuver around. And with so many states enacting all-out bans, more than 60 clinics have closed or stopped offering abortion care across the country.

But that also means they’re clearing out offices, getting rid of equipment.

KELLY FLYNN: I’ve got equipment in my garage that I bought from another office earlier this year, like exam tables and chairs.

LAURA MOREL: It’s all now heading to Virginia.

Honestly, it’s like the floor is lava. You know that game where you jump from couch to chair across your living room? Each state that passes a ban is one less safe place for abortion providers like Kelly to stand.

I don’t know. I am assuming that’s got to be a very surprising shift for you in the last few months, just realizing that, “Well, if I want to keep doing this, then I’m going to have to go to another state.”

KELLY FLYNN: Right. I feel like I’m too young to retire [02:07:00] and too stubborn to quit, and this is my life’s work. I am still in a little bit of disbelief that we are going backwards.

A Right-Wing Conspiracy Overturned Roe, Then Came Back for More. - Grave Injustice - Air Date 3-9-24

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Small details are important to Bex. She notices things. And the details are what made her first abortion, I don’t want to speak for her and call it traumatic, but it was pretty clearly an overwhelming experience.

BEX: So like immediately it just kind of feels a little, it felt a little intense for me. I don’t know about like feeling unsafe, but I was just like, whoa, this was unexpected.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: For context, she had her first abortion in 2017 in Texas, where she’s from. It was a surgical procedure. It wasn’t an easy process. For starters, Bex was broke.

Also, the clinic was an hour and a half drive from her house, and she had to go twice, first for an ultrasound, and then for the procedure itself. But it was the little things that made the [02:08:00] procedure so ghoulish.

BEX: I walked in the building, there’s like, you know, metal detectors, and you have to take everything out of your pockets, and they like, check your IDs.

It’s like, not, also not like a normal routine thing for healthcare, um, to be like, Someone with a gun is like asking for your ID when you walk through the door.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Then there was the sterile, uninviting medicalness of the whole place.

BEX: I grew up, um, homeschooled, so I didn’t go to school, which also meant we didn’t really have to go to the doctor.

So I think that I still have like really, um, extreme feelings of discomfort in a lot of medical settings. They weren’t like a routine thing for me growing up. So whenever I went, it was like something really bad happened or I just feel really uncomfortable. I would say in like most medical settings.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: She had to listen to the fetal circulatory system and they also made her look at the ultrasound display.

BEX: Because of [02:09:00] regulations, you had to have an ultrasound, you had to listen to the like heartbeat. cardiac activity. They actually made me look at the screen. And then two days later I came back. And that was after waiting three weeks from the time I called asking for an appointment. You know, so there was a lot of travel involved, which just kind of like added

to the

stress level, like logistics.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Bex’s next abortion last year was a lot better. She caught the pregnancy early. She was more informed and medication abortions were more accessible. She literally took a day off, took her pills, and that was that.

BEX: It felt simple. It felt straightforward. Very uneventful. Like, in a way, it was like, very nice that it was private and at home.

It was very important to me to be able to do it myself and to not have to go into, like, a medical facility.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Whether to take an abortion medication, Mifeprestone, off the market in all 50 states will be the Supreme Court’s first abortion decision since it overturned Roe [02:10:00] v. Wade in the summer of 2022. That case, of course, was Dobbs v.

Jackson Women’s Health Organization, or just Dobbs for short. I’ll try not to swamp you with case names and legalese, but the upshot is that with Dobbs, the Supreme Court decided that abortion access isn’t a right. It was a moment many red states had been waiting for. Several had trigger bans. That is, anti abortion legislation set to spring into effect the moment the Supreme Court overturned Roe.

Since the ruling, 21 states have restricted abortion beyond what the Roe vs. Wade standard would have allowed. 14 have banned it outright. What has this meant for women in America? To find out, I spoke with an abortion provider.

LAUREN JACOBSON: My name is Lauren Jacobson. I’m a women’s health nurse practitioner, and I work as an abortion provider for Aid Access.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Aid Access mails pills for medication abortion to women throughout the U. S., and since Dobbs, demand has skyrocketed.

LAUREN JACOBSON: Right [02:11:00] now, 50 percent of all of our pills are going into Texas. So, just for context, um, Yeah, and I’m sending 30 to 50 packages a day total, and there’s about 10 of us now, so if you do the math there, it’s a lot.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Lauren says her clients in states like Texas are nervous, not just because they now need to outsource their abortion in distant states, but also because they just don’t know what’s going to happen next.

LAUREN JACOBSON: There’s a lot of fear. Because some people don’t know what can happen to them. You know, we see people who are four weeks pregnant.

We see people who are 12 weeks, five days. You see this whole spectrum. So some people, I think, are more, and this is anecdotal, are more aware of You know their bodies and if they’re pregnant and they’re testing quicker and then they’re just like got to get the pills as soon as possible because I’m in a restricted state, but then there’s also people who of course know what’s going on and they’re afraid and so they wait longer.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Last year that [02:12:00] aforementioned Texas judge.

ruled to strike down FDA approval for Mifepristone, which is one of two pills used in the most reliable medication abortion method. The plaintiffs in that case were a group of anti abortion doctors who call themselves the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine. They claim that Mifepristone was rammed through the FDA approval process back in 2000 and was never proven to be safe.

That claim is, of course, bullshit. Mifepristone is safe. A paper in the Stanford Law Review pointed out that after 20 years on the market, Mifepristone is, quote, one of the most studied drugs available, end quote, and is safer than penicillin and Viagra, and 14 times safer than childbirth.

LAUREN JACOBSON: It’s just crazy to me that a pill that was FDA approved, like, what, 23 years ago, is suddenly just, people are deciding, Oh no, we’re gonna say it’s no longer, uh, safe.

Based on absolutely no evidence. I mean, it’s incredibly safe comparatively to like, as you know, Tylenol, Viagra, [02:13:00] the potential risks or complications are less with Mifepristone.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Renee Bracey Sherman agrees. She’s the founder of We Testify, an abortion advocacy group. She also co hosts the podcast, The A Files, A Secret History of Abortion.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: It’s like settled science. We, this pill has been around globally since 1988. It’s been in the United States since 2000. It’s widely available. Mifepristone is one of the safest medications that we have, right? But that is being put into question on purpose by people who want to sow this distrust and, and miscommunication and confusion.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Who exactly are these people sowing miscommunication and confusion? In this case, they have a name, Alliance Defending Freedom.

ADF PROMO TAPE: Wherever human freedom is under attack. We stand ready to defend it, both at home and around the world, in courtrooms, legislatures, [02:14:00] and the public square. You’ll find us on the front lines.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: Architect the Dobbs case and overturn Roe v. Wade. They’re also bent on overturning same sex marriage and restricting trans rights. The Southern Poverty Law Center is called ADF, an anti LGBTQ hate group. They have strong ties to Washington, including to Amy Coney Barrett. who spoke at ADF backed events before she became a justice on the U. S. Supreme Court.

PAUL WEYRICH: Louisville wedding photographer has won her federal lawsuit.

ADF PROMO TAPE: We must protect Title IX and women’s sports for the next generation. One powerful Christian legal organization has been planning a strategy to overturn Roe v. Wade. Their plan worked. ADF is one team, a part of a broader alliance.

We are Christ centered. We are committed to victory.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: ADF helped launch the Alliance for Hippocratic Medicine in 2022 [02:15:00] in Amarillo, Texas. Why Amarillo? Because that was the home of this one Trump appointed judge named Matthew Kaczmarek in the District Court of Northern Texas. Matthew Kaczmarek backed Trump’s harsh immigration policies, shot down the Biden administration’s protection for LGBTQ plus workers, and has been an outspoken anti abortionist before he took the bench.

If anyone was going to ignore the science and ban the abortion pill, it was going to be this guy.

RENEE BRACEY SHERMAN: So they’re judge shopping. Like, that’s what that is. There’s not a question about the science here. There’s not a question about, you know, what the American public wants. There’s not a question about, ah, do four out of five doctors believe this?

We don’t know. There’s no question there. What they’re doing is judge shopping for any sort of decision that they want.

LISA GRAVES - HOST, GRAVE INJUSTICE: The lower federal courts have spent the last year bickering over Matthew Kasner’s ruling. Another U. S. district judge in Washington state ordered the FDA to leave Mifepristone on the [02:16:00] market.

For Later, the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, which includes Texas, ruled that while Mifepristone could stay on the market, it reinstated old regulations that required women to obtain a prescription and pick up the pills in person. So no more getting pills by mail from providers like Lauren Jacobson.

Finally, in December, the U. S. Supreme Court agreed to make a final call. They might side against both Kasemiric and the Fifth Circuit and leave Mifepristone as it was. They might uphold the old regulations and make the pill harder to get. Or they might just ban it for everyone, in every state. Even if the worst happens, there is still another abortion pill on the market.

It’s called misoprostol, which was technically approved as a medicine for stomach ulcers, not an abortifacient, making it much harder for the likes of ADF and Casimiric to target. It’s still effective when used on its own, but less so. Right now, the far right agenda isn’t about huge victories. The game plan isn’t to wipe out abortion access in one fell swoop.

[02:17:00] It’s about the little things, making it that much harder for people to obtain medical abortions, sowing that much confusion and misinformation about their options, setting a precedent for revoking FDA approval so that maybe, next time, they can go after a stomach ulcer medication, or surgical abortions, or even contraception.

Abortion bans reduce women to breeding stocks– and that’s exactly the point - Velshi - Air Date 9-15-24

JOHN McENTEE: Can someone track down the women Kamala Harris says are bleeding out in parking lots because Roe v. Wade was overturned? Don't hold your breath.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: Don't hold your breath. That condescending smirk belongs to John McEntee, who is a former Trump White House official and now a staffer for Project 2025, the extremist blueprint for a second Trump term.

Thousands of women responded to his callous post, sharing stories of being denied abortion care during a health emergency. Among them was Carmen Brewster. [02:18:00]

CARMEN BREWSTER: Present. I'm right here. I had a 19 day miscarriage in Idaho because of the abortion regulations. I was turned away, not from one ER, but two ERs, technically three, because I walked into one and they said they wouldn't help me and I had to walk out.

I blacked out in my hallway due to blood loss. I developed a heart condition called AFib. It, it means my heart doesn't work right anymore, and it f s up. So if I get too excited, too hot, too much in pain, uh, too traumatized, if somebody yells at me too much, my heart f s. And so I have to regulate for my heart to keep active, otherwise I could have a heart attack and die.

I have to deal with these side effects for the rest of my life because of abortion laws. But yeah, women are bleeding out in parking lots. I actually have a pinned video of me saying. They're gonna just let me f ing bleed out here, [02:19:00] if you want to refer to that. But I'm present! Hi! But yeah, we exist.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: Some Republicans want you to think of abortion as, uh, sort of an isolated elective procedure with no medical basis that's disconnected from women's overall reproductive health.

But since the Dobbs decision overturned the constitutional right to abortion, stories like Carmen's underscore the reality that abortion care is a critical component of maternal health. Many women who have been denied care because of draconian abortion bans were carrying wanted pregnancies, but each faced health complications that required abortions to save their lives.

Their stories illustrate a very stark, uh, in very stark terms, how the politicization of this aspect of women's health has life or death consequences for any woman who can be pregnant. Everything that could go wrong as a result of Dobbs has, including the case of Caitlin Cash, a Texas woman whose routine postpartum care was delayed for the removal of remaining placental tissue after giving birth to a healthy baby [02:20:00] girl.

That procedure, known as a D& C, is also used in abortion care, which may be why medical staff at the hospital where Caitlin was staying failed to perform it. Texas's near total abortion ban criminalizes medical professionals who carry out abortion procedures. Even when DNCs are used for other medical purposes, doctors are simply too afraid to be able to do their jobs.

When Caitlin didn't receive the care she needed, her condition deteriorated and she lost consciousness. What began as a normal delivery ended up with her in the ICU and she was later told she was lucky to have not lost her uterus. This is what it means to be a pregnant woman in post Roe America. The U.

S. already has the highest rate of maternal death among high income countries, according to the Commonwealth Fund. Abortion bans have only made that worse. A KFF study found that 68 percent of OBGYNs believe the Dobbs ruling has worsened their ability to manage pregnancy [02:21:00] related emergencies, and 64 percent say pregnancy related mortality has increased.

For At best, the anti abortion activists pushing these abortion bans assume that nothing can go wrong during a pregnancy, but you have to be pretty stupid to think that's true. There is, however, a darker truth lurking behind these efforts. To remain indifferent to the countless women who are harmed by these abortion bans is to see them as nothing more than collateral damage in a broader crusade to impose forced births.

Let's be clear. This isn't actually about saving unborn babies. It never has been.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: Should the woman be punished for having an abortion? Uh, look, uh, This is not something you can dodge. If you say abortion is a crime or abortion is murder, you have to deal with it under the law. Should abortion be punished?

Well, people in certain parts of the Republican Party and conservative Republicans would say yes, they should be punished. How about you? Do you believe in punishment for abortion, yes or no, as a principle? The [02:22:00] answer is that abortion There has to be some form of punishment. For the woman? Yeah.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: The answer is there has to be some sort of punishment for the woman.

By treating abortion as a crime, as something isolated from general maternal health care, Christian fundamentalist extremists frame women's bodily autonomy as something to be policed and controlled by the state. Now, imagine if men's healthcare were treated the same way. Imagine a world in which a man is denied basic care for a prostate condition because a law overrides his urologist's professional judgment.

Imagine men being forced to bleed out in parking lots because lawmakers felt entitled to interfere with their doctor's decisions. It's almost inconceivable because it sounds so absurd, yet this is the reality for women in America today. Men don't live in a world where their reproductive organs are treated as state property.

I have greater rights over my body today than the segment producer who wrote this script. Than my senior producer. Than [02:23:00] her boss, my executive producer. Than her boss and her boss. I have greater bodily autonomy than the majority of my staff. All the women in my family and in fact all the women in America watching me right now.

And that's not right. That's not equality, that's not liberty, and that's not democracy. No one living in a democracy should have to endure such intrusion into the most personal and intimate aspects of our lives. This is the very definition of a human rights violation, made possible only in a world that reduces women to mere instruments of reproduction.

Abortion care is health care, and the GOP's campaign to convince you otherwise poses a deadly threat to American women.

SECTION D: BLACK WOMEN

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Up next Section D: Black women

Maternal Mortality Crisis: Why Black Women in the U.S. Are Dying During Childbirth w/ Dr. Joia Perry - Marc Lamont Hill - Air Date 7-31-24

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: What, what was the main factor for black women receiving birth support? Uh, these drastically negative outcomes. It's like, if there's nothing [02:24:00] biological about us as black people that makes us more likely to die giving birth, why are we dying more giving

DR. JOIA PERRY: birth?

Well, it's racism. We know that despite income or education, even a black woman who has a college degree, it's five times more likely to die within a year of childbirth than a white woman who has no high school education. So if you think about that, even when we're normal weight, we are more likely to die than a white woman who's obese.

Even when we live in a fancy neighborhood, we move into gated communities. I love my other doctor friends who love staying. I went to my Fancy HPC or my IV. And now I live in this gated community. Guess what's this? You're still more likely to die than a white woman who doesn't even have a high school diploma.

So despite our income, despite our education, we cannot buy or educate our way out of dying from the impact of racism.

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: Connect the dots for me though, because people are going to be watching this and they're going to say, well, how does racism make you die? Well, I don't see it.

DR. JOIA PERRY: True. Well, I mean, your first comments were really important.

You talked about the blood pressure cuffs. That would be, I liked your, that statement. That was very important. So who are you going to take the time to put the right cuff on? [02:25:00] Who do you care about enough to stop and say, Hey, your arm is not the regular size. You have a smaller arm or bigger arm. We know right now that one of the leading reasons that people die from in childbirth is a heart attack.

Or Kira Johnson, Charles Johnson's wife, who died, um, who is Judge Hatchett's daughter in law. So think about all the layers of privilege that this woman had. She was a healthy, FAMU grad, loved by her husband, brought there for a repeat C section. And she was allowed to bleed to death for hours. And what the nurse said to his wife, to Charles was, Your wife's just not a priority right now.

So even as he tried to advocate for his wife as a Black man, With a suit on, at a fancy hospital, guess what? The more he escalated, the more they downgraded and didn't listen to him. So, that's how you get those outcomes.

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: Wow. You know, the idea that we don't listen to black women's pain. We don't trust their expression of pain levels.

Uh, we're sort of dismissive of them in general. It's something that we experienced throughout life, not just in the hospital, [02:26:00] all parts of life. But it seems like it's playing out so much in U. S. Hospitals. But the report also mentioned that black women in Latin America and the Caribbean face racism in health care as well.

So, uh, You know, why the U. S. Why do we focus on the U. S. So much?

DR. JOIA PERRY: Well, I mean, the truth is, I live here. I'm from here. I'm from New Orleans. And so as a black woman who's an OBGYN who's had three different complicated births myself. Um, like most black women, you start an organization to fix your own problem first, right?

So I had a son who was born premature and I started him back to say now what is wrong with me? I know that there is no biological basis of race. Me having more melanin does not make my kidneys act differently. Doesn't make my lungs act differently. All those were racist tropes. We were taught, I was taught in medical school at Louisiana State University, a publicly funded university, playing state dollars in a state that has a lot of black folks in it, that there were three biological races.

Mongoloid, Caucasoid, and Negroid. That was taught in a lecture in class in the 1990s. What year was that?

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: Oh my god, that's [02:27:00] like, that's like early 20th century race science. We still doing We're still doing that eugenic

DR. JOIA PERRY: science in medical schools. Yes. And then, so even when we get rid of it finally across the United States, guess where we export it?

The Caribbean and Central and Latin America. Guess where they get their textbooks from? Our old textbooks. So guess what they're learning? Eugenics, race based science. So yes, it's also we don't listen to black women and we don't listen to black men. I just don't want to over to discount that black men are showing up for their wives, for their partners.

Just like Charles Johnson did. And even, you know, if you escalate, if you buck, guess what happens, a nurse is going to buck back, and nothing happens, and then you can end up, the police get called on you so many times, people getting kicked out of hospitals. Oh, I've seen it. Because they're part of security.

I have seen it. So this is, this is a real thing. Racism kills us for real. Like, it's not just police brutality. I love to talk to, um, Kimberley Crenshaw about how, like, yes, we talk about what happens in the streets, but the hospitals are also a war zone for us being able to survive and live.

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: Absolutely. You know, I, I [02:28:00] was, uh, my, my, my one year old was born.

Uh,

DR. JOIA PERRY: We

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: were born, you know, we were in the hospital, we were in the NICU for months. Um, and you know, we had the ability to advocate for ourselves in certain kinds of ways. And, and we were sort of legible to them as people who deserved certain kinds of treatment, uh, sometimes. But as, but when you sit there for months, you watch different people come in and And I watched how nurses treated different people and how they disregarded people's concerns and people's pain.

And I heard people talk about how they, when they decided to drug test certain people during delivery and not others. And when they, they sort of weaponized all aspects of the system against black women and particularly poor and working class black women. That's a key thing. But you said something else that I thought was important, which was that you can't behave your way out of it and you can't, you know, Achieve your way out of it.

And we've seen that with celebrities like Beyonces, uh, Serena Williams. They talk about the experiences they've had giving birth, and if they ain't listening to Beyonce, people pay 300 to sit behind a wall, to listen to Beyonce at the [02:29:00] concert, but they're not listening to her in the hospital. What, what hope do we have?

DR. JOIA PERRY: I mean, I'm thinking about Serena being pregnant right now, right? So I'm thinking about her. She's married to a very kind of appearing white man who's a, who's a billionaire, and yet she almost died. So here she is. if you hear her story, wh is that she said to them She walked to the nurse's listen, I think I might b just give me some heparin blood clot?

And they were feel faint because you ju is a world class athlete If you don't listen to Serena Williams, so they made her go lay back down, they didn't listen to her for hours. Serena would be dead if she didn't act as what they like to call her as a diva. If she didn't keep saying, you know, for real, I need a CAT scan and I need, they first did an ultrasound, they did all these other things to stall.

These are things that could have killed her. So then if you are Serena, where do you go now for help here? Where do you and your billionaire husband go that you're going to be seen and be valued? So what we say, I'm not all doom and gloom. [02:30:00] You really have to find someone who you trust. If you don't trust them, leave, just like you would do with anything else.

You don't have to stay with the provider you don't trust. If you don't trust the healthcare facility, go somewhere else. And while you're there, you're constantly negotiating all those things. I might vote my father's a doctor, my mom's a pharmacist. I still have to go in hospitals with them, with their elder care, I'm sorry, and do the same kinds of things to make sure that they, our elder black folks can still get medical

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: treatment.

DR. JOIA PERRY: You ain't

MARC LAMONT HILL- HOST, MARC LAMONT HILL: never lied, I asked. I had similar experiences. It's just crazy that in this country, it's not surprising, but it's just still crazy that in this country we still have to wrestle with this stuff as black folk, no matter how hard we work, no matter what we do. Everybody deserves quality health care.

Everybody deserves quality treatment. You shouldn't need a degree or a big bank account to get treated well.

Treating abortion bans ‘as if they aren’t violence’ turns Black women into ‘collateral’ - Velshi - Air Date 9-22-24

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: You and I have not had a chance to see each other in person for some time, but as soon as Roe fell, you were my first stop. I went to Alabama. We talked about some of the things that women were going to face and you pointed out that women across [02:31:00] Alabama and across the Southeast were going to face these problems, but black women were going to face them.

yet more harshly. Tell me about how these restrictions have exacerbated exacerbated the challenges that black women in the south were already facing.

JENICE FOUNTAIN: First of all, I really want to thank you for your coverage of this. Um, and I have to apologize. I'm still very emotional about all this happening. But when I joined you in Tuscaloosa, I remember saying that black women would die right from this abortion ban.

It was a death threat. And so many people told us. And I was told me that that was hyperbolic, that I was exaggerating. And now here we are with Amber Thurman and Candy Miller being casualties of this country's attack on reproductive health care. And they're not just inconvenienced. They're dead, right?

They're not coming back. There's not going to be a policy change that means that they get to take care of their children. They're gone.[02:32:00]

And we, we named this, right? We said this would happen. And so it's just infuriating for people to, um, still have these conversations about abortion bans as if they aren't violence, as if they aren't killing people. And Black women shouldn't be the collateral for people's political campaigns. Um, and fighting this has been such an uphill battle because there's that, we have to be civically engaged, right?

But we have to organize now. Like, not all of us are going to make it to see those policy wins. So what is it like to care for people now, in this moment, where we're having to watch Black women die and be collateral for political agendas?

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: Yeah, you did name it. You, you were very, very clear about how this is going to unfold.

Michelle, um, let's talk about why it's especially dangerous for women of color to have abortion access isolated and removed from the umbrella of, of health, reproductive health, and maternal health, all of which [02:33:00] suffer in this country in a way that they do not in most, most developed countries.

MICHELLE GOODWIN: Such a long legacy of the targeting of black women and utilizing their bodies in the most horrific ways.

We know this. It's written in stone in terms of the history of our country, a disregard for the lives, the well being, the health, the safety of black women from time of slavery through Jim Crow. We see it now there is a book called unequal treatment. The Institute of medicine published this over 20 years ago.

And they chronicled virtually every area of health care, and it turned out in every area of health care in the United States, black people had it worse. And the only area where black people got more service than white people did was with amputation. Black people were two to six times more likely to have their limbs amputated.

The only area. And when we think about matters of reproductive health and safety, my goodness, what black women have been targeted with. In the 1960s, when black women demanded inclusion and [02:34:00] welfare programs and Medicare, Medicaid, that's when we get the Mississippi appendectomy, the coercive sterilization of black women because they wanted equality.

Fannie Lou Hamer told us about that the Supreme Court itself has acknowledged that an abortion is far safer than carrying a pregnancy to turn. You know, just a few years ago, in the Supreme Court case, Whole Woman's Healthy Hellerstedt, Justice Breyer, in writing that opinion, said that you're 14 times more likely to die carrying a pregnancy to term in the United States than having an abortion.

Abortions are incredibly safe. And when you look at the risks that are involved, if these were men, the government would say, Save your lives. Do that, which is 14 times more likely to save your life, and we will fund it. We will underwrite it rather than the risk of you dying. But when it comes to women, there is that disregard, and then it becomes even heavier, like concrete tied around the ankles for women of color and especially black women in [02:35:00] communities where there's just been historic mistreatment in the medical community.

I mean, if we're honest about it, Ali, then we know that there are black people in the 19 forties, fifties and sixties that were dying on the steps of hospitals that refused to admit them. Segregation within hospitals. And there's still suspicion about black folks. And let me just add one thing that I think will bring it home for your listeners and viewers.

At the University of Virginia, they did a study within the last decade of medical students. And residents to see whether or not they had these same beliefs that people had 50 years ago, and it turned out they did, you know, that they believe that black people had thicker skin density, that they don't feel pain that they have a different kind of blood that their blood coagulates differently.

So, Ali, that's where we are.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: Uh, these, these myths persist and you make an interesting point, Michelle, that when it suited people, black women are being sterilized. Uh, when it suits people's political agenda, uh, then to, uh, Janice [02:36:00] for black people to have an abortion is black genocide. And in fact, this black genocide thing is having a bit of a revival.

I'm hoping your answer is no, but do you hear people using this argument?

JENICE FOUNTAIN: Oh, absolutely. I will live with transport folks to the Atlanta abortion clinic. That's all you heard in the background was, well, I guess black lives don't matter. Well, y'all are killing all the black people. It's not us. So, absolutely.

There's definitely a resurgence of that. What's difficult is that there are conversations that have to be had around how we offer abortion and how we talk about reproductive autonomy. Absolutely. But that's not it, right? That's not that conversation has been weaponized in an intentional way against us and not as a part of bodily autonomy at all.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: One of the things you pointed out to me, Janice, when we were in Tuscaloosa, Is it for a lot of one of the inherent structural pieces of racism that is only multiplied by this is the lesser access, the lower [02:37:00] access to health care or health insurance that black women in places like Alabama have. So they're starting from a net negative place in the first place.

And then if they require added protections or added reproductive health services, they're not available to them anyway, but they weren't getting them in the first place.

JENICE FOUNTAIN: Oh, absolutely. I think one of the things that people don't talk about enough in terms of access or in terms of what abortion bans mean for black women is that we're largely relying on state clinics, state, you know, like state medical care, which is obviously incredibly biased.

It's not like, we're talking to primary care physicians that trust what we're communicating to them is that we're having to take whatever we can. And that's a risk. And a lot of people don't know where they can go to actually have. conversations with their providers that actually care about their well being.

Not everyone knows that Dr Yoshiko Robinson has a birthing center and that she's pro abortion right where they can have a candidate conversation about their choices [02:38:00] or Heather's games. And a lot of people are just scared. So it's either that they don't seek that medical care at all, but they don't know how to have the conversations with someone that is biased in that way.

ALI VELSHI - HOST, VELSHI: Michelle, what's your sense of this, this black genocide conversation and its historical context.

MICHELLE GOODWIN: Well, you know, it's it's the big lie that's been portrayed by the Supreme Court. And this is where we should be very, very cynical and skeptical about the court itself. Because genocide, as Justice Thomas should know, who's been a perpetrator of this mythology, 1927, the Buck v Bell decision is where the United States Supreme Court.

Permits eugenics policies to go in place. And we know explicitly it's not a case about black women. We know it's not a case about black women and abortion. It is a case where Justice Oliver Wendell Hobbs says Carrie Buck is a poor white girl and the reality. And it's a 2020 project 2025 reality. And people should know this in the United States at the turn of the century.

There was a real question about what to do with poor white [02:39:00] people. And we are a country that in 1927, our Supreme Court said it was okay to coercively and forcibly sterilize poor white people, just as Holmes said, better than to let them starve for their imbecility. Society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind manifestly unfit.

It was considered white people. The state of Virginia was rounding up poor white people, little girls, 10, 11, 12 years old. and sterilizing them. The idea was America had no room, no space for poor white people. And Justice Holmes said three generations of imbeciles are enough. And the subject of that litigation was a poor white girl who had been raped at 16 and had a baby out of wedlock.

So this mythology is a made up thing. And what makes it so horrific is that this is a Supreme Court case. Our Supreme Court justices should know the law and should know this case and its origin. And so there has been a way again of utilizing black people, black women in this [02:40:00] space of mythology, stereotype and stigma.

SECTION E: THE PUSHBACK

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section E: The pushback.

Why Ron DeSantis Hates Direct Democracy - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Air Date 9-14-24

DALIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: Explain the mechanics of how direct democracy works. In over half of all of the states, the people can place measures on their ballots. They can pass statutes, constitutional amendments. They can do it through the popular vote. And yes, the process varies. And yes, the number of signatures vary. And yes, the percentage of the populace that vote, yes can vary. But can you just explain to us what this logic of sort of ballot initiatives, constitutional amendments is and why only half the states do this kind of direct democracy?

JESSICA VALENTI: It has only been literally in the last two years that I have learned anything about ballot measures, and now this is all I think about.

As you said, it’s half the states in the country have the ability to bring citizen led initiatives [02:41:00] where, depending on the state, you need to get a certain amount of signatures from a certain amount of counties to get something directly on the ballot, whether it’s abortion rights, marijuana, what have you, and then in half the states, it’s only legislators who can get something on the ballot.

And what’s been really sort of fascinating to me, especially over the last year, because these abortion rights ballot measures are getting so much attention and people are so excited about the ability to perhaps be able to restore abortion rights, that in the states where there aren’t citizen led initiatives, voters are asking why this link between democracy and abortion rights has just never been clearer.

Voters are p***** off when they don’t have the ability to weigh in directly on abortion. I’ve read piece after piece from columnists who are talking about readers writing in, asking them, why don’t we have this [02:42:00] ability? Why aren’t we doing this? I think it was in Mississippi where they had to put the question of why there wasn’t the ability to vote directly on abortion rights.

They had to ask it at the gubernatorial debate because it became such a big deal for voters wanting to know why they couldn’t do this, watching states like Ohio restore abortion rights, getting really excited about that possibility, and then figuring out that actually they don’t have the same right to direct democracy that other people do.

And as you said, this is what makes Trump’s will of the people. I gave it back to the people. Such utter nonsense. Because that’s not true for everyone and as we’ve seen in the states that do have the ability to vote directly on abortion rights, Republicans, anti abortion activists, legislators are doing everything that they can to make sure that that just doesn’t happen. They are working overtime to keep voters as far away from this issue as possible because they know that when voters have a direct on abortion, abortion wins.

DALIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: So, Lauren, one of the [02:43:00] reasons I really wanted to talk to you in as part of this conversation is that the week kind of opened this week with the Tampa Bay Times revealing that Florida’s State Department is like scrutinizing amendment four signatures for vote fraud and that the secretary of state, Brad McVeigh, is contacting supervisors to collect signatures for review.

And I think what is so crazy about this is how quickly we kinda of vaulted from, you know, we want to make sure people have the right information, quote unquote, to oh no, we’re knocking signatures off the freaking ballot.

So I would love for you to just tell us how we got here in Florida because this is actually quite a shocking intervention and it’s much more dramatic than, you know, the earlier iterations of the shenanigans, which are like, futzing with the language.

LAUREN BRENZEL: First and foremost, I want to say about this moment. There wasn’t a time where the Florida [02:44:00] coalition didn’t think that this was coming. We saw in 2022 the arrest of numerous individuals who had felony convictions for registering to vote, despite the fact that it was put to Florida voters that they wanted to give those folks the right to vote back. And then most of those cases were dismissed afterwards.

We have seen people bust out of state because of their immigration status. This is like the playbook of Florida right now. It’s what our government does.

There are few people who are deeply in charge who weaponize state systems against people. We’ve had democratically elected officials removed from office for saying that they were going to protect abortion patients and abortion providers.

We have right now at my alma mater, books being put into a dumpster from our gender and diversity center. Like, this is the model and the playbook. And I think something that’s really disheartening on our end is this coalition has worked incredibly hard to make this process as non [02:45:00] political as possible. We have really relied on the voters of Florida, the coalition of organizations, on patient stories, on activists, in order to qualify this for the ballot. And that’s been in removing conversations about any political party. But it’s also just been in how we structured this.

We are not coordinated with the Florida Democratic Party. We are not speaking out against republican actors because we know we have a 60% threshold. And we are aware that that means that people need to think of this issue as a health care issue, not a partisan issue. And so to have a year and a half of work to really intentionally center, be entirely disrupted and have this turn into a fight about DeSantis like this needs to last beyond any administration in the state of Florida.

We’re talking about our constitution. So seeing narrative shift so quickly into what has Ron done? And take away all of the focus and the emphasis that we’ve been very intentional about is also the playbook. Like, [02:46:00] part of this is to stoke fear. I have, like, 70 year old white women right now telling me that they’re afraid to go vote this November, and it’s like hitting them that they think that the election police are gonna come after them to ask them about whether they sign the abortion petition and what their vote is.

And like, that is part of the mind game as well. It’s just so the idea that we’re not credible actors, it’s to one disrupt. Also, the petition collector vendor that they’re going after is like the only progressive vendor in the state of Florida. So none of the corporate initiatives have been investigated. It is solely the one who, like, works for progressive initiatives. It’s the same vendor who successfully qualified medical marijuana, the dollar 15 minimum wage redistricting initiative, and citizens rights restoration. So that’s incredibly telling of. And then it’s a distraction and it’s a misinformation campaign. It’s a disinformation campaign to cause fear and to weaponize all systems so that we’re having to fight on the legal front, we’re having to fight on the comms front, we’re having to [02:47:00] fight on the reputational front. And it is the playbook of authoritarianism. And people let it happen for abortion in very specific ways because we know that there are actors who are so radicalized on this issue that they believe that abortion advocates are actual murderers. So they’re willing to put aside any belief they have in democracy or democratic processes because they are such radicalized actors on this subject. And once you learn how far you can radicalize people, you can figure out how to do that for any issue.

What’s At Stake in Arizona - The Defenders - Air Date 9-12-24

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: This past spring, there was a lot of whiplash for Arizonans. Within just one month. Right when things were starting to feel really hopeful, Arizona came close to losing almost all access to abortion.

First, in early April, the coalition behind the ballot initiative [02:48:00] announced it had collected more than half a million signatures.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: Arizona for abortion access need about 300, 000 signatures to put their question on the ballot. But today, this group said they have more than 500, 000 signatures on their petition, and they still have more than three months left until the deadline.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Things were looking up. And then, just a week later, the Arizona Supreme Court revived the 1864 near total ban on abortion. You know, the one we talked about earlier, that Athena had been trying to repeal for years as a legislator.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: Arizona's highest court today backing a law that bans nearly all abortions, and carries up to five years in prison for doctors who perform one.

Immediately, there was confusion. The legal ramifications of all of this, a lot of questions there, the political consequences of all of this, a lot of questions there, a lot is up in the air right now.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: And in an election year, the court ruling set off a political storm. With even anti [02:49:00] abortion state legislators calling for the ban's repeal, but it still took a few attempts before the Arizona legislature narrowly voted to repeal it a few weeks later.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: The repeal passes by a 16 to 14 vote here in the state senate with Republicans helping out Democrats to cross the finish line. They've gotten to that 16, the magic number of 16 to repeal the 1864. Abortion ban. The eyes of the nation are on the statehouse in Phoenix today.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I imagine, uh, that that month was quite something for you.

So I would love for you to just tell me, you know, what were you thinking? How were you doing? I,

ATHENA SALMON: I, I was among the people that just was not anticipating that the court was going to resurrect. a total ban on abortion from 160 years ago. It was a shock after the news came out. I didn't really take a second to actually feel it.

Yeah. I was just like, nope, not going to feel that. We're just going to go straight to the legislature and do the work to repeal this. And we are going to push [02:50:00] so hard and hold their feet to the fire. Um, and so we knew we were starting with 29 votes and 14 votes and we just had to find two more in the house and then in the Senate.

And it was interesting because The pressure in the moment and having the entire country watching what would happen next in Arizona, I think really laid the groundwork to finally get this law off the books. Um, and thank goodness, thank goodness we have a governor that is unapologetically supportive of Reproductive freedom and an attorney general, Attorney General Mays, who has just done a phenomenal job to make sure that this law doesn't take effect.

And so it's fundamental that we not only lock this right into the Constitution to prevent further interference by the state legislature, but we also have to flip the legislature to a reproductive [02:51:00] freedom majority to then defend that right. instead of passing laws that are intended to go to the courts that are not reflective of the American people that are also stacked with extremists and try to erode the rights that we just secured.

So I think it all goes hand in hand and it all connects to one another.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I, I'm, I'm curious. Can you tell me what it was like to be with Governor Katie Hobbs when she signed the repeal? What was going through your head at that time?

ATHENA SALMON: I was standing there, um, behind the governor with allied organizations and with the legislators and you know, I was just like beaming.

I kind of felt like a mom in that moment. I was like, we did it. Like, I was just like getting teary eyed. I was like, Oh my gosh, like, look where, look how far we come. There's never been an Arizona that has not had the 1864 ban. 1864 was the first year that a legislature convened. [02:52:00] So I really just like soaked in the historical nature of that moment and these women that led the way.

And then a reporter from CBS News like being the most emotional person out there. She was like, Athena, can we get your remarks? And then I just started bawling. I was like, what? I'm sorry. I did not come prepared to speak today. I um,

I can't. Stop thinking about my daughters and how they will have a future. And as we continue to go into the future and protect and enshrine the constitutional right to abortion and reproductive freedom, that future generations will not have to live under the, the restrictions and the interference that we've had to experience.

So. It's just been an incredible moment, and I'm going to turn it back over to folks.[02:53:00]

It was just very nice to be recognized in that moment. I wasn't expecting it. Hence, you know, the bawling. Hence the tears.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Yeah. Well, it also makes me think that it's a moment where you let yourself feel like all that hard work that you had done to carry that bill for so long, finally, in one moment, came to fruition, right?

ATHENA SALMON: It came to fruition, and I really let my guard down.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: With the 1864 abortion ban finally repealed, Athena could shift her efforts to door knocking for the abortion ballot measure. Let's move out again and look at the ballot initiative. So your organization, Reproductive Freedom for All, that's part of a larger coalition to pass the Arizona Abortion Access Act.

So walk us through what the ballot initiative proposes and what it will do if it passes.

ATHENA SALMON: makes abortion a fundamental right in the constitution. It guarantees the right to abortion up to fetal [02:54:00] viability. And then after that, those decisions can occur with the consultation of your healthcare provider and the really good news.

And we see this at the doors where, you know, we're knocking on doors. We're talking to voters across political affiliations is nine out of 10 Arizonans support the legal right to abortion. It's actually higher than the national average nationally. It's eight out of ten Americans. So I think that the people are with us.

I think that's part of the reason why you saw one out of five Arizona voters signed the petition to refer this to the ballot so that they would have an opportunity to secure and lock this right in the Constitution.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I know that July 3rd was the deadline, right, to turn in the signatures for the ballot initiative.

Um, How many signatures can you tell me did it end up getting and what did it feel like to have those submitted and in? I mean, it's like, okay, dust off your hands. That's done.

ATHENA SALMON: Yeah. We turned in over [02:55:00] 823, 000 signatures. It was a historic number of signatures.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: The most signatures ever submitted by a citizens initiative.

Yeah. To put that into context. That means one out of every five Arizona voters. Signed this petition.

ATHENA SALMON: It really is incredible the grassroots effort that went behind mobilizing for the Arizona for Abortion Access Act. So it felt really good. It felt like we made history. And it's also a relief because I just with any Citizen initiative effort, like the signature phase is just so grueling and and towards the end, he said it's July 3rd.

I mean, to put it into context for your listeners, like it's like 115, 117 degrees that time of year. And we were collecting signatures all the way up until the [02:56:00] very, very end.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I'm curious what you're hearing from organizers who are door knocking and phone banking and are there any stories that stick with you?

Um, Um, and empower you in this fight.

ATHENA SALMON: Um, there are so many stories that empower me. I love door knocking, you know, I'm out there door knocking organizers out there door knocking and we've received feedback where people were very closed minded and very black and white about what access to abortion care was about.

And then once conversations happened about like, Oh, this also includes like miscarriage management and helping people navigate. through unviable pregnancies. And like, this is health care. We talk about how it's health care. People walk away from those conversations being like, Oh, I didn't realize that that was also included in a part of abortion rights.

Yeah, I support that. I do support that. Right. And so like, there's really meaningful, important conversations that have been [02:57:00] happening on the ground that I challenge people to think. Overwhelmingly, people are supportive of the issue. So, always door knocking and talking to voters. It always gives me a lot of hope because when you actually talk to people, people are aligned with our values and people are with us on this issue.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Here's Arizona State Organizer with Reproductive Freedom for All, Jamila Rahim, who sent us this voice memo about door knocking.

JAMILA RAHIM: We faced all kinds of voters at the doors from enthusiastic reproductive freedom voters Two voters who literally wins at the mention of the word abortion. There is one thing that remained constant, however, and it was that the American people seem tired and exhausted too, of the political vitriol, the extremist political agendas put forth before them and in general political fatigue, but right now in Arizona, there is another shift in energy starting to [02:58:00] take place.

People don't just seem tired. They seem angry. Whether it was a young woman in the professional space or an elder woman who does not want to relive the past, or even a father who simply cares for his daughter's future, I had conversations on the front porch of countless neighbors recounting over and over at how angry they had become that something like this could even happen in our state.

That an 1864 abortion ban could even be thought of, let alone materialize. That they would have to vote again for the autonomy of their own bodies.

Reversing Florida’s 6-week Abortion Ban - The Defenders - Air Date 9-19-24

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: What I want to know right now is for you, let's see, heading into the election. What is your day to day look like? What does every day look like for you?

LAUREN JACOBSON: Everyone on this campaign is. Waking up every morning and going to bed every night, trying to do everything we can ahead of November. We have a really [02:59:00] phenomenal team of organizers who have already started their door knocking process.

They've already started phone banking. When we did phase one of this campaign, we set up hubs all across the state. We had over 50 hubs in the state of Florida where people could come get petitions so that they could gather signatures in their community and then drop them off to be submitted to us. And we're trying to rebuild that model right now for this canvassing phase.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I want to circle back for a moment and just get specifically to speaking to, uh, not the opposition, but the people that you have to convince, right? How do you go about that? What's the thought process in speaking to conservative and independent voters on this issue?

LAUREN JACOBSON: It's another area where I feel stories are so incredibly instrumental to the work that we're doing.

And I also think that it's uplifting how ridiculous it is to trust a politician with your health care over a doctor. That's something that is resonant with [03:00:00] a wide variety of Floridians because they don't want politicians making medical decisions for them. They don't want politicians in their doctor's office with them.

So for swing voters, it's incredibly important for us that we talk about the realities of what it means to allow politicians to control your health care, and it's important that we share the stories of aboriginal Floridians who have experienced the harms of these abortion bans.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: What are the stories that you've heard that have stayed with you, that come to your mind quickly when you're thinking about?

Talking to not only Republican and independent voters, but just, I don't know, that you just can't let go of.

LAUREN JACOBSON: I got a chance about a year ago now to meet, um, a man named Derek Cook and Derek's wife, Anya, was pregnant and she was, um, He was hemorrhaging and lost half of the blood in her body before she was offered a medically necessary abortion.

And she had come in for care two days before that happened. [03:01:00] And I was on a call with him and he talked about the loss of his child and the devastation and the trauma that that caused him. And then he talked about that moment calling him into action. And he's been volunteering with an organization called Men for Choice consistently over the past.

And Over a year since his family experienced this, I come back to it regularly. If I'm feeling tired or sad or unmotivated, and it's like, who am I to not show up every day in the same way that he shows up? And who am I not to advocate for others in the same way that he is advocating for his wife? And so that is a moment that I constantly come back to, seeing somebody translate.

A devastating [03:02:00] trauma into a desire to change his state for the better is one of the most impactful things that I've seen on this campaign.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: I love that. That's really beautiful. Who am I? Right? I mean, when you first started telling that story, I was thinking, Oh, I want to hear a story about a person. A person who's pregnant, but I like this idea of someone intimately adjacent being so invested.

So therefore, why can't you? Yeah. Yeah.

LAUREN JACOBSON: Not everybody in the state of Florida should have to experience trauma at the level that the Cook family did, but everybody in this state better care about them. and what they experienced because we have a response. We are the only ones who are going to protect us from what's going on here.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: And you said that story is one that you reflect on when you, you know, feeling sad or unmotivated. So when somebody literally knocks on my door or the phone rings, [03:03:00] what am I going to hear? How do I? Get to hear that story

LAUREN JACOBSON: right now in the organizing realm, we're honestly doing just a ton of public education about what the laws are here in Florida.

People know that they don't like extreme abortion bans, but they don't know that we have one in effect. Very oftentimes people don't find out about the ban until they're trying to actively seek care. It's incredibly common story that we're hearing right now. So we are trying to let everybody know that there is it.

It's almost all care banned in the state of Florida already, but there's also the other subsect of people that they don't need to be convinced on this issue, but they do need to be convinced that they should go to the polls and vote this November. And so that is a ton of the work that our organizers are doing at this stage in the game is not trying to persuade people to vote yes on this, but trying to persuade people to get up to the polls and vote in November on this issue.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Okay, so let's talk about an [03:04:00] ideal world in which this initiative passes.

LAUREN JACOBSON: What happens? We have a fabulous network of abortion funds in the state of Florida, and I can't wait for them to go back to getting to do community activism instead of having to focus on getting folks out of the state. I would love for us to figure out more local solutions to making sure people have access to care and working on, you know, mutual aid within communities.

So I have to shout out, um, the phenomenal worship funds across the state of Florida who will be helping to lead that work. Um, and then we have to start building towards a long term vision of what change is possible in the future. I have not gotten that far yet. Um, I am, I am a singular thinker right now.

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: Yeah. I mean, and having been in this work for so long, Lauren, do you think Floridians have it in them to pass this initiative?

LAUREN JACOBSON: I do. I think that they know what's at stake. I think we are resourced and if we do our job correctly over the next four months that we will win because I don't think Floridians are stupid.

I think they [03:05:00] are empathetic and I think they,

GLORIA RIVIERA - HOST, THE DEFENDERS: What can they do? What can Floridians do from now until November?

LAUREN JACOBSON: Everybody should go to our website, Floridiansprotectingfreedom. com, and you can learn all about the stories of Floridians and how they've been impacted by these abortion bans. You can sign up for events in your community or online, and you should talk to everybody you know about what's going on in the state of Florida right now with regards to a lack of access to abortion and that there is a solution this November, and it's to vote yes on 4 and end Florida's abortion ban.

Want to Fight for Reproductive Health? Fight for Medicaid, Too. - rePROs Fight Back - Air Date 6-25-24

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Medicaid has existed for almost 60 years. It is the largest public health insurance program for low-income people in the United States. And the way that it works is as a federal state partnership. So, the federal program [03:06:00] provides some amount of money for the states per service, and then the state gives at least half or even less than half of the amount for every service that is covered by Medicaid.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: That's so great. I think people, there's a lot of confusion around that. Like, you have Medicaid and Medicare and, like, how are they different? And like I think people don't not necessarily know how they're different or, like, get confused, like, with the Affordable Care Act and stuff. And I think there are so many different things that sound similar but are different that it's worth kind of digging into that a bit.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Yeah, it is so much. So, Medicare is a purely federal-run program. Medicaid is a state federal partnership and that means that it's really complicated because if you know Medicaid in one state, you just know Medicaid in that one state. It's very different across the board. Here in California, the Medicaid program is very different from New Mexico, even from New York, from Texas, from Mississippi—it's just really all over the [03:07:00] place. And that's what makes sometimes Medicare great, but sometimes Medicaid really confusing and bureaucratic.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: Yeah, I'm so glad we were able to kind of clarify that a little bit 'cause it really, it does vary so much state by state. One of the things we do is a 50-state report card that looks at sexual reproductive health and rights at the state level. And one of those things we look at is like Medicaid and like if this, if states have expanded their program, like, they were able to under the Affordable Care Act and like even there you just see such huge variety of, like, what states are doing and how many people are being left behind.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Yeah, I'm really glad that you raised that because historically before the Affordable Care Act, it was not enough to just be low-income or poor. You either had to be pregnant or you had to be a minor or you have to have a disability, or you have to be old. And thanks to the Affordable Care Act, we created Medicaid expansion, [03:08:00] which allows someone who is not pregnant or who doesn't have a child or doesn't have a disability to be able to qualify to the Medicaid program. Now when the Affordable Care Act was passed, it was supposed to extend this great new category for all states, and of course, you know, which states sued the federal government and said, no, we don't want healthcare for low-income individuals, so therefore they made it optional. And at the beginning there were about more than half of states who opted to expand Medicaid. And little by little other states have realized that actually it's really good because one of the things that the Affordable Care Act said is actually the state is only gonna be able to cover10% and the federal government picks up 90% of that healthcare service. So, now I'm pleased to say that only nine states have not expanded Medicaid [03:09:00] and there's definitely conversations in the works in some of the states where Medicaid has not expanded.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: That's so amazing.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: One important thing...it is so wonderful. One of the things that I wanna highlight is that one out of five Americans are in the Medicaid program. I used to be in the Medicaid program. We believe at the National Health Law program that Medicaid saves lives. There are 77 million people who are on Medicaid and without Medicaid, people wouldn't frankly be able to live or to operate as human beings. So, it is absolutely critical to make sure that it's working and I'm happy to talk to you more about some of the complications which we know exist.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: So yeah, how does this relate to sexual and reproductive health?

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Yeah, so Medicaid is actually a critical payer of sexual and reproductive healthcare services for the most part, and I'll talk about the [03:10:00] Hyde Amendment in a little bit, but in regards, for instance, to family planning, Medicaid is the largest public payer of family planning covering 75% of all public expenditures on family planning. Medicaid is the largest single payer of pregnancy services covering almost half of US births, and that includes prenatal, labor, delivery, postpartum. Medicaid also covers outpatient prescription drugs and sterilization and breast cancer services, and some gender-affirming care and mental health and all of the things that relate to sexual and reproductive health. But the one thing that we know Medicaid does not cover is abortion. Shortly after Roe v. Wade was held by the US Supreme Court, so many of your listeners I'm sure know, a congressman by the name of Henry Hyde wanted to get rid of [03:11:00] abortion access. And essentially, he knew that the first thing to do was to get rid of Medicaid coverage of abortion services. I'll paraphrase here, he said something like, I would for sure like to get rid of all abortions, but I know that the one way in which we can do that significantly is by running a Medicaid bill. So, since 1977, what we call the Hyde amendment bans Medicaid coverage of abortions with very limited, just with very few exceptions—rape, incest, and life endangerment. And as a result, a lot of people, I would say the majority or at least half of abortion patients, don't have their abortions covered because there is this prohibition. Now there are 17 states that use their own funds to cover abortions for their Medicaid beneficiaries. So [03:12:00] not all is lost, however, this is absolutely huge.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: Yeah. So, as a DC resident, like, definitely expressed my frustration as DC has tried so many times to expand coverage for Medicaid and abortion and Congress keeps blocking it. So, very frustrating.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Yeah, it's absolutely awful. And it's not only frustrating, but it really has endangered people. Since the Hyde amendment was passed, only months later, a Latina woman by the name of Rosie Jimenez lost her life because she couldn't, she was a Medicaid recipient, she wanted to get an abortion. She was a single mother, she was a part-time worker. She was a student, and unfortunately, she had to get an unsafe abortion that ended her life. So, it is no exaggeration to say that the Hyde Amendment is more than [03:13:00] frustrating.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: Yeah.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: It's cruel. It is a danger to people's lives, and it has been for many years.

JENNIE WETTER - HOST, REPROS FIGHT BACK: Yeah, it just makes me think of like all of the people who could be able to access care, who are being blocked from it, who are having to go to abortion funds, which I mean thankfully are there, but like abortion funds shouldn't have to cover them because they should have coverage and then abortion funds would be able to fund other people who were needing access. Like, it's just like trying to fill in these stop gaps to ensure that people can get the basic healthcare they need.

FABIOLA DE LIBAN: Absolutely. Thank goodness for abortion funds. They do really the work that's really needed, but they shouldn't have to be. You're absolutely right. I mean, just do the math. If half of US births are covered by Medicaid, then if the Hyde amendment didn't exist, it would cover at the very least half of US abortions and, and the other side knows that really [03:14:00] well. So yeah, it's just really unfortunate, especially I think it's cruel to someone who's poor, someone who has children. I mean, you should get an abortion regardless of the circumstances, but it's particularly dangerous to prohibit the coverage of a healthcare service that used to be covered just like anything else once Roe v. Wade was held. And yeah, just to have this barrier is just really awful and it's just really cruel. And this has been happening for almost, I don't know, 50 years and the situation was even bad before the Dobbs decision. So yeah, there was definitely a lot of work to do there. I think given that so many of your listeners like myself, our advocates, as we're thinking about how to rebuild from having you know, the no more of the constitutional right to have abortion services, [03:15:00] that as we think about our long-term plan, we have to have coverage in the equation. We have to think about those who are at the margins and that includes low-income people in the Medicaid population.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Hysteria, Vox, The Humanist Report, Mama Doctor Jones, Feminist Buzzkills, Fast Politics, Straight White American Jesus, Reveal, Grave Injustice, Velshi, Marc Lamont Hill, Amicus, The Defenders, and rePROs Fight Back. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for [03:16:00] 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 Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to all those who 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 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 [03:17:00] BestOfTheLeft.com.

Add your reaction Share

#1659 Conflagration Through Escalation: Israel expands the war to Lebanon to defend their ongoing genocide in Gaza (Transcript)

Posted by · October 01, 2024 10:52 AM

Air Date 10/1/2024

[00:00:00]

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. There is still no end in sight to Israel's real war on its neighbors and the US continues its toothless efforts to deescalate, while maintaining seemingly unconditional support in spite of standing laws that should prevent our sale of weapons to any country committing war crimes, which Israel certainly is. Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes The Muckrake Political Podcast, Democracy Now!, The Real News Network, and The Book Cafe Podcast.

Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections:

Section A: State terrorism;

Section B: Global complicity;

Section C: Protests and indoctrination; and

Section D: Resistance.

Israel Terrorizes Hezbollah With Exploding Pagers - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 9-20-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: [00:01:00] People, we have a whole lot to talk about today, but we have to start with a really really bizarre story that I think has huge implications. Over the past few days Israel has carried out—I don't even know what else to call it—a strange, innovative, tragic attack in Lebanon against Hezbollah, blowing up pagers and walkie talkies.

So far, it looks like the death toll has climbed up over 30 and we're talking about over 2000 people being injured by this. The details are starting to come out a little bit here and there, how this might've happened, what exactly took place. Israel has officially called this "a new era of war". And also it seems that they're now turning their eye towards Lebanon in their operations as peace remains unfortunately and tragically far off or nonexistent.

Nick, I have a lot of thoughts about this. I've been [00:02:00] walking around thinking about it for a few days now. What were your initial reactions when you heard about this?

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: I mean, it sounds like a Mission Impossible thing where somehow a number is dialed... and at some point, I thought, like, they could have put explosives in there and then the next page is when it blows up, but it's supposedly, no, it was coordinated to only a specific number received, so they all go off at the same time. And I suppose the real question now is, why now? That was really what's on my mind most, is why are they widening what's going on in Israel to another front basically. And so, you know, we have to now decipher or maybe we get more information eventually about the timing. Was it simply a use it or lose it situation, where somebody was about to tell them what was happening and they were going to find out and obviously Israel wanted to continue this mission for whatever reason, and then, you know, pull the trigger on this thing?

So, that is what I find most interesting, exactly what's going on and [00:03:00] why they have to do it now in the midst of a war they're in with Gaza, on the other front.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, it appears—and there have been leaks that have been coming out and of course, the Biden administration has handled a lot of this by leaking to the press its frustrations, what it's trying to do, what it can achieve—it does appear as if Israel felt like this plot wasn't going to come to fruition or it would be discovered and they needed to do it.

On one hand, I think it is evident of a new type of attack that I want to talk about in just a moment because I'm truly horrified by this and its implications and larger thoughts that we need to have. But I think logistically, you know, Israel has been given the most state of the art weaponry and innovations that you could imagine. The United States has kept them afloat and awash with weapons. Meanwhile, America just continually is just, like, I don't even know what to do here. And now we're hearing leaks that they're [00:04:00] trying to keep them from, you know, putting troops on the ground in order to follow this thing out.

But I think the other thing with this—and, Nick, we're talking about over 2000 people being injured, children being killed, innocent bystanders being injured and killed—like, this is again, I think, another moment where Israel has all this innovation, it has all this support, it has all these abilities, and it's just haphazard, right? It really doesn't matter. Like, we can hear about "terrorists". That is a very, very handy rhetorical designation. Like, if you got killed by this thing or you got wounded by this thing, then that means you're a terrorist.

But I think it is the, the sloppiness and the brutality that the Netanyahu regime represents. I think it shows that they have no interest in peace whatsoever. I think it's only going to continue and any idea that this is going to be taken care of in November, much less just in a timely manner, I think we can wave [00:05:00] goodbye to that and just, uh, you know, settle up to the reality that Netanyahu absolutely depends on this thing growing and continuing. And that's where we are.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh, I agree wholeheartedly as far as the resolution of conflicts going on there. None of this is going to get settled by probably the middle of next year, the way this is going. And there are plenty of reports that Netanyahu continues to torpedo any kind of ceasefire in Gaza. And so, if that's the case and they're trying to just continue keeping chaos going so he can stay in power, this is how you would do it.

But, Hezbollah is going to respond and Israel is going to respond. So, you kind of have to wonder. 'Cause again, there were two choices. It's not a use it or lose it situation. You could have decided, You know what?, we're not going to send out that code anyway, even if they do find out. In fact, they could have made it into some sort of a diplomatic thing where they said, Okay, you found that we didn't do it. We showed restraint. [00:06:00] Something! You know? They could have tried to make a positive out of that.

But, here we are now where... yeah, they're going to mount some sort of attack. It's going to widen the war. And then when mistakes are made, which are inevitable in a war situation...

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Already happening. Yes.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. It widens, it gets worse and worse. And so, it's still unfathomable that this guy can still be in power. 'Cause you have to imagine that Netanyahu had final say on whether they detonated these things. And I don't believe that they had done this like a year ago. This is not a thing where, I mean, I don't know. To me, it seems like it would have been more recent when they would have gotten...

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: It appears that this was put into motion a few months ago.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Right. So, it's like in the middle of what they're doing already, with the whole thing going on in Gaza, they're actively planning this stuff, too. It just, it doesn't make a lot of sense if any kind of resolution is the goal here.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Oh, it's not. And I think one of the things that we have to do is we have to change the way that we view Netanyahu. And I've been thinking about him a [00:07:00] lot through the lens of someone like a Kim Jong Un, like a dictator who only relies on fear and paranoia. Right? Like, the only reason that North Korea is able to operate the way it is, is because it has the "threat" of the West. Right? 'There are spies everywhere, they're going to attack you, they will annihilate you', and that is the entire basis of power, which is the entire basis of Netanyahu's power.

What concerns me, Nick, I've been thinking a lot about the horror—I mean, this is state terrorism. Let's make this clear. That's what this is. Like, literally, this was done not just to kill and assassinate members of Hezbollah, but the way that it was done was intended to sow fear. We're hearing reports now out of Lebanon, people are turning off the refrigerators, they're turning off their baby monitors, they're turning off every appliance that they own for fear that somewhere or another there's a bomb that is hidden in this that could kill them or their family. That is a lot different [00:08:00] from state power in the past, such as drone attacks and drone strikes.

I was thinking a lot about Barack Obama and the regime of drone strikes. Like, you would be going to a wedding and if there was a suspect there, a drone strike could wipe out your entire extended family. But that actually, Nick, that involved intelligence. At least there was somebody in a room looking at a report that said these people will be here. That's not what this is. It's literally a device that they're not tracking. They don't know who has it. They don't know what the vicinity is. We've now seen like footage of people being in like marketplaces and places, and it just goes off and it can kill anybody.

On top of that, this is also a weaponization of the global industrial chain. Like, the reason this happened is because Israel made a deal. These pagers, I don't know about the walkie talkies, but the pagers came out of a company in Taiwan called Gold Apollo. Israel went over [00:09:00] there, worked with Taiwan and talked them into putting weapons grade explosives in their products. How are we supposed to feel about this?

Knowing that the global supply chain can be taken over by states. and have weapons put in them. And by the way, it's not like this happened and no one's ever going to do it again. This, you know, it's like you develop a weapon, somebody's going to develop their own version of it, and somebody's going to use it. And now, like, to look at that entire sort of new sort of frontier for a person who worries about state power, particularly with growing authoritarianism, it has me really, really concerned.

Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We go now to Beirut, where we’re joined by Lara Bitar, editor-in-chief of The Public Source, a Beirut-based independent media organization.

Lara, if you can talk about what’s happening on the ground in [00:10:00] Beirut? And here we are in New York right next to the United Nations. You have this international call for a ceasefire, but apparently the Netanyahu government of Israel is saying no, the Israeli general in charge of the IDF forces rallying troops, saying he’s preparing them for a ground invasion of Lebanon.

LARA BITAR: Good morning.

Here in Beirut, nobody really has any hope in these processes in the United Nations, in the words of the Biden administration or in the words also of the Netanyahu government.

I wanted to share with you some things that were relayed to me by one of our journalists who is now working in the south. He is going around to different schools that are hosting people who have been [00:11:00] displaced from their homes but remain in southern Lebanon. So, first, he relayed to me that people are very, very tired. They’re unable to sleep for longer than a few minutes at a time because of the relentless bombardment by Israel. And he said that the shelters are full with elderly people, who have lived through so many massacres and witnessed so much horror inflicted by the Israeli settler colony. And he shared the story of one woman in particular. He said that she was in her eighties. She was wearing her house key as a pendant. And she told him that this is nothing in comparison to what they have lived through over the past few decades. And she mentioned the 1982 Israeli invasion of Beirut, the first Qana massacre in 1996, the second Qana massacre in 2006, and so on and so forth.

And the one [00:12:00] thing that I want to relay here is that for a lot of these people who have been displaced from their homes, whose homes have been destroyed, their attachment to their land only grows stronger. And this is a prevailing sentiment among those who have been displaced. And this is not uncommon for Lebanon.

So, if you will just allow me 30 seconds or so, I would like to read a brief passage that I came across yesterday, written by Mahdi Amel, who was a Marxist intellectual. And he wrote this a few months after the 1982 invasion of Beirut. And he writes, “They said that the war in Lebanon would be swift and that in a few days those who have not knelt and who understand only the language of force would kneel. They declared that there would be no salaam, but shalom, and that Israel is the Rome of our modern times. To the kings [00:13:00] of Israel, to the scum of our nation and our foul Arab regimes, to the petty fascists and to their imperialist masters, we say: It pleases us to spit in your faces. We will fight you even with our nails. Our fists are the compass of history. And the bullet of our freedom will pierce your hearts. To them, we say, brick by brick, we build a world on your graves. You are the dustbin of history, and Beirut is the city of the free. We have vowed that we will resist you.”

And this is not to say that everyone in Lebanon shares this sentiment, and definitely not the over 200,000, up to half a million people who have been displaced from their homes over the past few weeks, because there is a lot of suffering. There is a lot of hardship right now. People are struggling to find housing, shelter, food, diapers, milk. [00:14:00] Hospitals are at capacity. People are really exhausted and suffering across the board. But for the most part, this pain can be pinpointed — the source of this pain can be pinpointed to the presence of the Israeli settler state in our region that continues to wreak havoc in Palestine, in Lebanon and across most of the world.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, Lara Bitar, you talked about this quotation that you read from 1982, when Israel invaded in 1982, and you’ve said that you don’t have much faith in a ceasefire. So, if you could provide some context to a possible imminent invasion, Israeli invasion of Lebanon. Talk about what happened in not just 1982, but also in 1978 and 2006.

LARA BITAR: [00:15:00] I think we have to take very, very seriously every genocidal intent that is now being uttered by different government and military officials in Israel. Lebanon has a long history of invasions and occupation and terror by the Israeli state. And we can go even further back, to ’47, ’48. Lebanon [sic] seized over a dozen Lebanese towns and villages in ’78. There was also an invasion in ’82. The ’82 invasion lasted until the liberation in May 2000. There was also an attempted ground operation in 2006. And in terms of the 2006 attempted ground invasion into Lebanon, [00:16:00] soldiers who returned home recounted how traumatizing it was for them, how they felt that they were fighting with ghosts. They could not see the fighters on the other side.

So, I think it’s important to note that coming into Lebanon is deeply traumatizing and frightening experience for the Israeli soldiers, who are accustomed to throwing bombs from the safety of the airspace. But on-the-ground battle, on-the-ground confrontation with real fighters who are fighting for their land, for their country, for their people, they don’t stand much of a chance.

And to the point of pushing for a ceasefire or for a truce or for the Biden administration having any kind of redline, we saw exactly what happened in Gaza over the past 11 months. The Biden [00:17:00] administration was repeatedly saying that Rafah was a redline, that a ground invasion into Gaza was a redline. But the Israeli state, there were absolutely no repercussions, no ramifications for any of the actions that the Israeli state was doing. And this is what compelled it to continue to escalate, to continue to escalate its massacres, its terror of the Palestinian people in Gaza, who to this day continue to endure daily massacres that are not being reported on as much as they were at the beginning of the war.

U.S. Gov't Agencies Found Israel Was Blocking Gaza Aid. Blinken Ignored Them to Keep Weapons Flowing - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH: ProPublica has revealed USAID and the State Department’s Refugees Bureau both concluded this spring that Israel had deliberately blocked deliveries of food and medicine into Gaza, but U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and other top Biden officials rejected the findings of the agencies even though they’re considered the two foremost U.S. authorities on [00:18:00] humanitarian assistance. Blinken’s decision allowed the U.S. to keep sending arms to Israel. Under U.S. law, the government is required to cut off weapons shipments to countries preventing the delivery of U.S.-backed aid. Days after receiving the reports, Blinken told Congress, quote, “We do not currently assess that the Israeli government is prohibiting or otherwise restricting the transport or delivery of U.S. humanitarian assistance.”

On Tuesday, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR, called for Blinken’s resignation, accusing him of lying to Congress. [Blinken] was asked about the ProPublica report Wednesday on CBS. This was his response.

SOS ANTONY BLINKEN: So, this is actually pretty, pretty typical. We had a report to put out on the humanitarian situation in Gaza and what Israel was doing to try to make sure that people got the assistance they needed. And I had different assessments from different parts of the State Department, from other agencies that were involved, like [00:19:00] USAID. My job is to sort through them, which I did, draw some conclusions from that. And we put our report, and we found that Israel needed to do a better job on the humanitarian assistance. We’ve seen improvements since then. It’s still not sufficient.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Of course, that was U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

We’re joined now by the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Brett Murphy, a reporter at ProPublica, where his new piece is headlined “Israel Deliberately Blocked Humanitarian Aid to Gaza, Two Government Bodies Concluded. Antony Blinken Rejected Them.”

Can you respond to Blinken’s response to your report, Brett?

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah. So, he said, basically, it was his decision to make. He was getting a lot of information, and he ultimately decided that it was not the assessment of the State Department that the Israelis were deliberately blocking aid.

What he didn’t mention and what’s really important to note here is that the two agencies that had told him that they were in fact deliberately blocking aid, one being USAID, are the [00:20:00] foremost experts in this, as you said. They are the ones responsible for delivering humanitarian assistance into Gaza, into war zones all over the world. In addition to that, his own refugees bureau had made a similar conclusion called that a law called the Foreign Assistance Act should have been triggered because the Israelis were restricting aid.

The other assessments he was receiving were nowhere near as detailed as what he received from USAID. They sent a 17-page memo with detailed evidence describing exactly what they knew to be the truth on the ground, and he ultimately rejected those findings in what he told Congress.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: So, if you could elaborate, Brett, also on what U.S. obligations are under the Foreign Assistance Act?

BRETT MURPHY: Sure, yeah. So, it’s this law that has not been used very much systematically, but it basically says a foreign partner or ally that is receiving military assistance from the U.S. [00:21:00] cannot at the same time be blocking U.S.-backed humanitarian assistance into a war zone. If it is the conclusion of the U.S. government that that is happening, the U.S. government is then required to cut off the military assistance. That’s what the law says.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: Is there any other context in which this has occurred, that the U.S. has denied that a country is preventing U.S. aid from getting in in a conflict zone?

BRETT MURPHY: The last time it came up was in Turkey and Armenia. That was kind of the original context of the law itself. But, like I was saying, we have never truly been applying this in a systematic way. So, this has really been an obscure provision in the Foreign Assistance Act, but this year lawmakers, activist groups have been calling for the Biden administration to be using this exact provision.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We interviewed two people: Stacy Gilbert, the former senior adviser in the State Department’s Bureau of Population, Refugees, and Migration — she resigned over this after 20 years in service — and Alex [00:22:00] Smith, a former contractor for USAID, who was forced to resign over the Biden administration’s support for the war on Gaza. Talk about the significance of what they did, and Antony Blinken understanding full well what they understood and why they left.

BRETT MURPHY: Stacy Gilbert worked on the report that Secretary Blinken ultimately delivered to Congress. She was working on the drafts of that report. She was in the refugees bureau. She had a very clear understanding of what was going on. And what she ultimately said, when she resigned, when she saw the final version of what he had told Congress, she said, “We know this not to be true. We, the experts inside of the government, know that the truth on the ground is that the Israelis have been blocking humanitarian aid into Gaza.” This is what she said, and this is what she resigned over. And she said in her resignation letter that this report, what he told Congress, “is going to haunt us.”

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And can you explain: How detailed was [00:23:00] that USAID memo that Blinken saw?

BRETT MURPHY: It was extremely detailed. It’s 17 pages of evidence that they were bringing to bear. The example that stuck out to me the most was on food, food shipments that were being held up just 30 miles outside of Gaza. There was enough flour, USAID said, to feed 1.5 million Palestinians for at least five months. But at the time — this was in the February to March timeframe — Israelis were not allowing flour into Gaza, because they said it was going to the U.N.’s branch there that had been accused of having ties to Hamas, so they were not allowing the flour in.

And this is what — this is the kind of thing that was really bothering USAID and frustrating their efforts. They couldn’t get food in. They couldn’t get medicine in, other supplies. A lot of their trucks, from, like, the Red Crescent, other humanitarian groups, were being turned around because of items in there the Israelis were not allowing in. Aid workers had been killed. [00:24:00] Their convoys had been targeted. These were all the types of examples that USAID was telling Secretary Blinken.

NERMEEN SHAIKH: And basically, there’s no recourse now, right, because it’s done? Or is there anything that the U.S., the Biden administration could now do differently?

BRETT MURPHY: Yeah, the law is not — it was not just a one-time shot. And this is what the U.S. government said, too, in response. They said, “We’re currently — we’re always assessing the situation.” They said that they believed that the situation was improving since after they applied leverage with this. The folks I talked to, both inside the government and in the humanitarian world, said that’s not true at all. The situation is as bad as it’s ever been, including since the Rafah incursion. But this law does not only have — you know, whenever Blinken addresses Congress to it; it can be applied at any point.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: That they could cut off, that the U.S. government could cut off aid to — military arms to Israel.

BRETT MURPHY: Absolutely. If it assesses that the Israelis are deliberately blocking [00:25:00] humanitarian assistance at any point, they can apply this law. That’s right.

'Whitewashing genocide' How Democrats & the media kept Gaza out of the DNC - The Real News Network - Air Date 8-31-24

MAX ALVAREZ - EDITOR, TRN: Well, speaking about shifting rhetoric, I want to just quickly follow up. I got some thoughts on what you guys just said, but I wanted to follow up really quickly on the role that the media was playing in laundering this rhetorical change that we saw manifest on the DNC main stage, where some of the loudest applauses I heard throughout the week came when people like Bernie Sanders mentioned the word "ceasefire," and suddenly the stadium's clapping. And I know you guys were losing your collective minds. I saw Adam losing it on Twitter in real time, as mainstream and corporate media journalists were doing the work of laundering this rhetorical shift. Could you just say a little bit about that, about the role that certain actors and institutions in the media are playing to make that rhetorical shift where Kamala Harris [00:26:00] is calling or mentioning a ceasefire, but it's now meaning something different, and the media is there to massage that difference out of perception.

ADAM JOHNSON: Yeah, this is the most literal minded -- this is trained clapping seals. I don't if you've been to the Shedd Aquarium, but they have a seal that does the clapping This is lower than that, I mean this is when Harris, again, she's very clear she's not going to engage in arms embargo, not going to use real leverage, and I understand why this is confusing to passive media consumers who can't really keep up. I get it.

But those in the know, those who track these things, know better. And they know that what Harris talks about the word "ceasefire", she means exactly what Biden means, which is appeal to these nebulous talks that are like the peace process. They're designed to provide cover for Israel. They're not in good faith.

Israel is very clear, to their credit, to Netanyahu's credit. Every single day he's asked he goes down and says, "We do not support a lasting ceasefire. We are not going to end this war until we defeat Hamas." Quote, unquote, "Total victory." He's very clear about that.

But that goes through the liberal media laundry machine and comes out as Israel supports a ceasefire. Hamas is the one holding it back. But [00:27:00] Israel is very clear. They support a temporary pause for the purposes of hostage exchanges.

So when Harris talks about how we need a ceasefire, that's what she's talking about, a genocide cigarette break. And she's been very clear about this. Biden's been very clear about this.

On his May 31st speech, which is one of the most cynical things I've ever seen, Biden used the term in their twice, three times. And then in follow up questions, their dead-eyed zombie press -- Matt Miller, these guys, John Kirby -- they say, well, wait a second, do you support a lasting ceasefire that keeps Hamas in power? Because that's implied in the idea of ending the war, because obviously, insurgent militias, maybe in some normative sense you may not like them, but typically, you don't just defeat them by magic, right? And they're not even remotely close to defeating Hamas to the extent they could, it would basically be tantamount to genocide, which is why they're carrying out the plan they're carrying out. And they say, Oh, no, no, we're not going to support an end of the war until Hamas is defeated.

Well, okay, so what's the mechanism here? So clearly it's bullshit. Again, when people said ceasefire, they were referencing things like 2009, 2012, 2014, 2018, 2021, when a ceasefire meant Israel ends its current military campaign. It doesn't mean [00:28:00] kumbaya, doesn't mean we solve the problem, but it means we stop killing dozens of people and scores of children per week. That's what it meant. Everybody knew it.

But then they switched the definition to this ambiguous open ended peace talks. So when Bernie Sanders calls for a ceasefire and he gets all these write ups, it's like, well, he's just appealing to the same bogus ceasefire talks, unless he's explicit, when the demand shifted months ago from this vague sort of normative appeal of a ceasefire -- which again could mean anything from two days to two years to two decades, right? -- to an arms embargo. Because everybody knows that's the only mechanism with which Israel will agree to anything. And we know that because that's what they keep telling us.

And so, when the trained seals at the Shedd Aquarium started going, ah, ah, ah, ah, when she said the word ceasefire, I was like, oh, here we go. And then people started doing all the bullshit, all the kind of progressive and foreign policy adjacent sheepdogging. They started doing all this kind of tea leaf reading like, oh, oh, her empathy speak was slightly better. And she said this words. And then you look it up and it's actually the exact language Biden used four months ago.

And by the way, the exact language the Trump [00:29:00] administration had been using: Palestine needs dignity and freedom and these meaningless buzzwords.

This doesn't mean anything. People don't need better tone. They don't need better nonprofit speak. They need her to change her policy and to support an arms embargo. And it's a very clear ask. It's an ask with a material consequence. It's actually an ask that'll make A-PAC have a five-alarm meltdown.

And that's how this bullshit rhetoric doesn't matter. 'Cause they're not saying anything. They don't care. And in fact, they praised her speech, which reinforced every basic premise of this genocide. Israel has a right to defend. It's always this sort of liberal code for "we're going to keep sending arms and let them do as they wish in Gaza."

And so, I know that was immensely frustrating because they're just rebranding the same policies with a different face. It's just the same thing Biden did. And then whenever she's asked to clarify, she's very clear that she has the exact same position as Biden. I'm not sure how much clearer she can make it because she keeps saying it.

Palestine In Israeli School Books w Author Nurit Peled-Elhanan - Book Cafe Podcast - Air Date 2-22-24

NURIT PELED-ELHANAN: Well, this idea was even before the Holocaust with the beginning of Zionism. The idea of Zionism at the [00:30:00] beginning was to create what they called a Jew with muscles. Because the diaspora Jew -- Jews who lived everywhere -- was considered, in anti Semitic discourse but also in Zionist discourse, as a weak, spiritual, effeminated man. They never talk about women. Women are just there to produce more men, you know?

And, the idea was to create a new Jew that would be the opposite of this Jew.

So when they came to Palestine at the beginning of the 20th century, and even the end of the 19th century, they wanted to indigenize themselves. They wanted to look like Arabs. To be suntanned, muscly, to master Arab horses, to know how to use guns, and to work the [00:31:00] land, to be farmers. Because Jews in Eastern Europe were not allowed to have land. So they were all merchants and bankers and whatever.

That's why, whenever you go to Poland, they sell you these little puppets of a man who holds a coin in one hand and the Torah scroll in another. And when you ask the lady who is sitting there in the street, what is this puppet? She said this is a Jew. I don't think she knows what a Jew is, but this is the image. And that's because they could not work the land and so on and so forth.

So the idea was to heal the illnesses of diaspora by becoming farmers and warriors. So this was the counter to the diaspora Jew.

What happened was, as you know, they became too muscly and much less spiritual. And they lost it. They lost [00:32:00] this Jewish quality of being spiritual. And they became thugs, as you know today.

But it was even before the Holocaust. During the Holocaust, David Ben Gurion, who was the first prime minister later, said you can call me anti-Semitic, but I'm ashamed of the Jews in Europe because they don't fight back. And I grew up to despise these people who didn't fight back. They told us they went like sheep to the slaughter.

Later on, so we were educated about Holocaust heroism whenever there was some uprising, which was nothing but a choice to die with a gun in your hand, because they could never win. This was commemorated in the culture of Israel in school books, everywhere. Even today you can find statues of these people who don't resemble the people at all, because they were small and weak and pale, but the statues are like Michelangelo's [00:33:00] David.

And Ben Gurion set the tone to despise them, to really despise them. And then when the survivor came, he despised them even more because he said, how come you could survive? There's something tricky in here. Okay?

So the attitude towards the victims and the survivors were of complete contempt.

Now, later on, they decided that there's something wrong with that. And the school books started to say that even living day-to-day life in the conditions of Nazi Germany was heroic. So today we celebrate, celebrate. Every year we commemorate Holocaust and Heroism Day.

But still the idea that you have to be heroic when you are being exterminated. Okay. And the way these people are represented in school books to this [00:34:00] day is very demeaning. We know nothing about them. We know only that they were annihilated, exterminated, but we know nothing about their life before. 2,000 years of life, of rich life, of contributive life, of industrious life. We don't know nothing about it. Just as we don't know anything about Palestine in all those 2,000 years. Nothing.

I studied especially the photographs. Because the school books present what a Holocaust historian by the name of Hannah Blanca said, what they teach the children is the pornography of evil. They show you naked bodies on a cart. They show you naked bodies of tortured children. They show horrendous, gruesome, terrible photographs. And also they tell every single detail of German sadism. So you [00:35:00] don't really learn about the history. You learn to fear. You are being traumatized. The children are being traumatized. Because it's enough to see one photograph in your life of Jewish victims or victims of Nazis, whether they're Jewish or not. To change your life.

Susan Sontang, the famous photographer, she wrote this very famous book looking at the pain of others. And she tells there that when she was 12, she walked on the beach and she saw someone selling old photographs. And there she found a photograph of these emaciated bodies on a cart from Bergen Belsen. And she said, my life has changed that very moment. I can speak of before and after.

So can you imagine what happened to Israeli children when they're exposed to these photographs from the age of three, [00:36:00] every single year, every single year.

Now what it creates is heterophobia. They are afraid of anybody. Anybody. Now at the age of 16, 17, they go to the death camps, wrapped in Israeli flags, accompanied by armed Israeli soldiers, and they come back nationalist and imbued with the urge to revenge. But their revenge is not towards the German or their collaborators. No, their revenge is directed towards the potential exterminators, who are the Palestinians and the Arabs in general.

Okay. So it's a very sophisticated education that really educates the children to take revenge at the wrong people.

Now there is an organization in Israel called Breaking the Silence, in [00:37:00] which soldiers confess about the terrible things they did during their army service, until something changed in them. And all of them say, I was educated to believe that whatever I do to Palestinians will save us from another Holocaust. And it wasn't until I found myself aiming my rifle at a little girl that I realized that I was the evil one here. Okay.

So it's so deep and thorough and abusive, I would say, really. Abusive, because as this professor Yablonka says, you only teach the children to be victims. And since they are victims, they must be super powerful and must mistrust everybody, especially the neighbors.

How U.S. College Administrators Are Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-5-24

AMY GOODMAN: I want to bring into this conversation another professor, Natasha Lennard, columnist at The Intercept, associate director of the Creative Publishing and Critical [00:38:00] Journalism Program at The New School, not far from Columbia University. Her most recent piece, “College Administrators Spent Summer Break Dreaming Up Ways to Squash Gaza Protests.” Can you put Professor Thrasher and Professor Franke’s experience in a broader context of the universities from here in New York, NYU, to other universities around the country?

NATASHA LENNARD: Absolutely. And thank you. It’s lovely to be back. And I firstly want to say thank you to Professor Franke and Professor Thrasher for being among the professors who refuse to be silenced in this moment of what is widely being called a “new McCarthyism.” And I think that’s an accurate description.

Their cases are not unusual, and it is indeed sad, and it is indeed disappointing, indeed no less than ghoulish. We are having, both de facto and through policy, [00:39:00] both in terms of new regulations and student conduct guides coming through for this semester, as well as punitive actions against students and professors, a real reification of the claim that Israel critical speech and pro-Palestinian speech should count under violations of Title VI nondiscrimination law and regulations and policy in universities. What that does is align university policy with the right-wing agenda of Congress and right-wing lawmakers who follow in the footsteps of a right-wing Israeli-U.S. consensus.

And I think if a university is not a place where that can be critically challenged, especially at a time of genocide, when there are no universities left standing in Gaza — which we cannot forget — and the [00:40:00] concerns of our academy is the speech of professors speaking out for academic freedom and speaking out for the liberation of an occupied people, we’re in very dark times indeed.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, you write in your piece in The Intercept that, quote, “Tucked into a document purportedly offering clarification on school policy, the NYU” — New York University — “guidelines introduce an unprecedented expansion of protected classes to include 'Zionists' and ’Zionism’”?

NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, this is a very exemplary, in the worst of ways, document that was just released by the administration at NYU. It is a new updated guide of student conduct about nondiscrimination and harassment. It goes further than any document I have seen in asserting that Zionism, [00:41:00] when used critically, should or at least readily can be understood as — and I quote the document — a “code word.” It doesn’t say that occasionally by antisemites that Zionism is used as a code word. It takes that as a given.

So, that is — to clarify, that is a student conduct guide, very poorly written, very open to misuse, that is asserting that the political ideology founded in the 19th century of the ethnostate of Israel being a Zionist project, that that should be considered part of the protected class of Jewish identity, religion and ethnic and shared ancestry. That is what we’re seeing in attempts of statehouses nationwide to attach Zionism, the [00:42:00] political ideology, to the protected class of Jewish identity. It’s extremely dangerous. It performs de facto apologia for Israel. And to have that put into writing by a university so clearly is just open for further abuses and an escalation of the sort of repression we’ve already seen.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Franke?

KATHERINE FRANKE: Well, I teach a class on citizenship and nationality in Israel and Palestine. And we begin with a critical look at the concept of Zionism. Of course, it was advanced as a place, as an idea, about the safety of the Jewish people being located in Mandate Palestine, but there were plenty of Jewish people at the time who said, “This is actually a horrible idea from the perspective of the safety of Jewish people, because what it says is the Jews all belong in Israel and nowhere else, not in Europe, not in the United States, nowhere else. And so this will lead to more violence, more expulsions, more [00:43:00] antisemitic pogroms, if we lean in too much to the idea that Jews belong primarily and especially in Israel.” And those were critiques coming from Jews, again, themselves.

So, if we are not allowed to talk about that anymore in universities, what we’ve done is surrendered the very idea of the university itself. And that is so much what troubled us about Minouche Shafik, our president — former president of Columbia’s testimony in Congress, and some of those other presidents who came, who were called before Congress, is they not only did not put up a robust defense of the idea of a university where we teach students how to be critical thinkers in such a critical time, but they actually joined in to the criticism of the university. My president did not stand up for any one of us, nor did Professor Thrasher’s at Northwestern.

And this is part of what concerns me, is that our [00:44:00] universities are places now where we could not have a protest and say things that are now being said in Tel Aviv by Israelis. The protests that are happening there this week, if they took place on Columbia’s campus, our students would be expelled or charged with very serious disciplinary violations. This is where we’ve come. It’s impossible to talk about the kinds of things that, Amy, in your setup, of the just horrible things that are happening right this week in Jenin, in Gaza — we can’t talk about that at Columbia. That’s part of what concerns me is, is that we don’t know our history, and these new policies are keeping us from learning it.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Natasha Lennard, we just have about 30 seconds, but you’ve noted that universities are not only facing attacks from Congress, they’re also being subjected to lawsuits all around the country. Could you talk about that briefly?

NATASHA LENNARD: Yes, we’ve seen a series of litigation, including at NYU, [00:45:00] Columbia, Harvard, UCLA, brought by often unnamed students and faculty, often very frivolous suits that universities are forced to answer to nonetheless, and then, through settlements and often nonpublic agreements, are then forced to change policy, often leading to the conflation of anti-Zionism and antisemitism.

Arrest Netanyahu: NYC activists call for mass march during Netanyahu's UN address - The Real News Network - Air Date 9-25-24

JU-HYUN PARK - ENGAGEMENT EDITOR, TRN: Some people may be wondering by this point, if the things we do from within the U. S. are truly having an impact, what's it going to take for the movement in solidarity with Palestine to achieve its political objectives?

LAYAN FULEIHAN: Thanks for that. I mean, I think the number one thing that we need to be doing as organizers, as the movement, the people that make up the movement for Palestine in the United States, is to continue growing the movement. And that means a lot of different things.

One, it means showing people the fact that [00:46:00] growing the movement and the movement itself is actually important. It can feel strange because people came out on the streets almost now a year ago saying, 'no genocide on Palestine, we want to end the genocide on Palestine', and spoke directly to the United States government, of which we are constituents, to say please stop everything that you are doing to make possible this genocide.

As the months went on many people grew conscious of the fact that the United States is actually the perpetrator of genocide. The way the relationship between Israel and the United States is shaped and it's formed means that Israel cannot do any of the things that it is doing without the support, whether it is public open support or not, of the United States.

And we saw multiple moments in which the U. S. 's role was actually exposed in more direct ways. Whether it was actual U. S. military personnel on the ground in [00:47:00] Gaza, helping the Israeli occupation forces carry out massacres, or whether it was U. S. intelligence agencies providing more information for the Israeli occupation than the Israeli intelligence services themselves.

So the question of complicity has moved to, now to be transformed into a greater understanding that it's not about complicity at this point. The United States is responsible for the genocide. That said, it isn't the movement in the United States that is fighting on the front lines in Gaza. It is the Palestinian resistance, the Palestinian people, who are the ones fighting directly against the military machine of imperialism.

And we've seen that the United States is completely unwilling to listen to the demands of its own constituents, of its own population and to shape its foreign policy along the lines of the demands of its population. And so what we've watched over the past year is that the battle [00:48:00] has been played out and has prolonged, primarily because the Palestinian people have not yet been defeated.

There have been huge massacres. The pain of the losses and ththemmensity of the losses is impossible to describe at all in words. And the everyday torture that the Palestinian people are going through in Gaza is just impossible for anyone to really understand. What we're witnessing is so inhumane and so brutal that it is just beyond human comprehension.

That said, the Palestinian liberation struggle has not been defeated. And we can see the results of that. I think what you mentioned about Lebanon is extremely important. And I want to say a few words on this because what we've now seen is that Netanyahu and his administration, frustrated by the fact that they can't win in Gaza, have now moved to open a new front of the war. They've been [00:49:00] threatening this for the past year, but with the massacres that they committed and the terrorist attack that they committed yesterday and their declarations of war with that act and with their actions today, as well, claiming that they're going to triple their bombardments of Lebanon every day, that now Lebanon is the focus of the war. They've added a new objective to the war, which is returning the Israelis back to the north, which they had been evacuated from to avoid casualties from the conflict across the border. So, we've seen now that Netanyahu has no qualms about expanding the war of extermination to Lebanon because he's unable to reach a conclusion that works for him in Gaza.

Now, I'm giving all of this context because It's important for us to understand the shape of the genocide and the war of extermination that the United States is carrying out alongside its Israeli partner. And we have [00:50:00] to understand also that our role is extremely important. The United States cannot publicly say right now that they're willing to go ahead and open another front of the war of extermination with Lebanon.

If you listen to what the White House is saying, They are saying diplomacy, de-escalation, et cetera. They've been saying now for months, and they've been trying to trick the population into thinking that they are engineering a ceasefire, when in fact, we know that they are providing cover for Netanyahu to create obstacles to the negotiation process.

But again, we're not believing the words of the White House, but this is a sign that the public opinion is acting as some form of restraint, that the White House is anxious to fully associate itself with its own actions in the region right now. And we need to keep building that restraint, keep building that pressure. And most importantly, the most important thing that we can do is through the movement change public consciousness [00:51:00] in the United States. Public opinion is one thing. Public opinion right now is not on the side of the White House and on Israel. The majority of people in the United States would like to see an end to this chapter, this terrible chapter of human history.

Consciousness is another thing, and consciousness is that realization of the fact that it's the U. S. system itself, the U. S. capitalist and imperialist system itself, that has created the conditions for this genocide to occur. And it is only by changing that system that we are going to be able to end, not just this chapter of the genocide, but the entire occupation of Palestine and all other U. S. imperialist wars across the world.

One. And two, that we're going to be able to have a system in which the demands of the population itself has an impact on the decisions that the government makes in regards to both foreign and domestic policy.

So I kind of was a bit long winded there, but I [00:52:00] think it's a complex issue, and one of the main roles that we have in the movement here is to bring this kind of analysis and this kind of understanding to people who have been in the streets now for almost a year, who have changed their entire way of living. I mean, many people used to do things on the weekends, like other things, like go see people and have brunch. I don't know what people did. Now, you go to protests. You go to meetings. You go to actions. You go to teach-ins. A large section of the population, their whole daily life has been transformed. They have changed their routines. They have reorganized themselves, to become not only people who participate in the movement, but who organize it. And it's important that all of us actually develop the skills and the capacity to understand the shape of this genocidal war as it continues. Because the number one thing we need to do is not let down of the movement. We need to keep it [00:53:00] growing. If war breaks out in Lebanon, direct war, a larger scale war with Lebanon, if it breaks out in the region, if it breaks out in other places, this new shift in consciousness that we've created, we need to build off of it. We don't want to have to rebuild it again.

So, we are really committed to continuing to mobilize, continuing to organize, and to not allow the White House and the propaganda arm, the mainstream media, to distract people from our task.

Note from the Editor on the ease of misunderstanding when discussing Israel

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The Muckrake Political Podcast describing Israel's state-sponsored terrorism in Lebanon. Democracy Now! discussed the history and present conflict escalating between Israel and Lebanon. The Real News looked at the language of ceasefire. The Book Cafe Podcast looked at the development of the Israeli self-image after the Holocaust. Democracy Now! looked at the impact of universities expanding the concept of protected class to [00:54:00] include Zionism. And The Real News looked at the role of the US complicit in the escalating conflict.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section.

But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics. This coming week, we will be continuing the discussion on Israel and anti-Semitism. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new, members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support -- there's a link in the show notes; through our Patreon page; or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show similar to how chapter markers work.

If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of [00:55:00] hearing more information.

Now, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half the show, as I said, we're going to be having a much bigger discussion about the role of antisemitism, both real and imagined in the debate over the escalating crisis in the middle east, on the bonus show for members. But I just wanted to share this one passage that I found in an article prepping for that larger discussion. And I'm sharing it because I find it hopeful and instructive.

And this is the author of the book, Safety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism, which comes at the whole issue from the left, arguing that the left needs a better structural understanding of antisemitism in order to be better equipped to fight it. And in this article. That author said, "At one of our book events, someone said, 'I'm offended by all the talk about anti-Zionism. I'm a Zionist. And for me, Zionism means full equality between Jews and Palestinians in the [00:56:00] Holy Land.' I responded, 'Well, okay. For me, anti-Zionism means the same thing. So maybe let's stop arguing about the word Zionism altogether.'" And then he continues: "We certainly don't want to give anyone a pass for supporting Israel's genocide. At the same time, being more attentive to the nuance is important for winning over more American Jews, for whom the definition of Zionism might not really mean support for an ethno state. It might be more of an identity, meaning more or less 'Jewish pride.'" End quote.

And for more, the article is "A Leftist Analysis of Antisemitism" and that's from Jacobin magazine.

And I just wanted to share that above all other potential quotes I could have pulled or points I could have made, because I think it exemplifies how language can get in the way of the real discussion we're trying to have, particularly on a topic that is so fraught with opportunity for miscommunication, confusion, distraction, [00:57:00] obfuscation, and yes, accusations of antisemitism that are sometimes, but definitely not always, well founded.

Here's just one example that always comes up during discussions of antisemitism: "from the river to the sea," often with the addendum, "Palestine will be free." It's perfectly understandable that many hear this as an anti-Jewish, anti-Israel code phrase. I'm not going to debate here whether or not it should be heard that way, now or in the past or ever. My point is that it is heard that way. And therefore becomes a flashpoint in accusations about antisemitism. However, it's also incredibly understandable that many particularly young people who are only awakening to this issue in the past year or so wouldn't understand the backstory and context of that phrase, and therefore take it at face value, hear it as a perfectly innocuous [00:58:00] call for peace and freedom, and then repeated themselves with that exact intention.

So knee jerk labeling of the use of that phrase as antisemetic makes nothing but perfect sense for some, while being completely nonsensical for others. And how does that help sort out people's true feelings on the war or the dynamic between Israel and its neighbors? Obviously it doesn't. But continuing that debate rather than getting to the underside of what people truly mean only works to the advantage of those who want to maintain the status quo of Jewish supremacy and apartheid in Israel.

So for those of us who oppose that unjust status quo, just like the discussion at the book signing where the author and the audience member turned out to mean the exact same thing while using diametrically opposed language, we all need more understanding of what people actually [00:59:00] believe what they mean with their words, and, most importantly, for what we can control ourselves -- how our own words may be interpreted by others.

When there's so much opportunity for miscommunication, not being mindful of language can blind us to actual fundamental agreement that we have with others, and undercuts opportunities for gaining would-be allies, all of which weakens our ability to oppose the ongoing injustice.

So language is important. Be careful how you use it.

In the meantime, I might suggest going with something like "from the river to the sea/coexist peacefully."

Just a thought.

SECTION A: STATE TERRORISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A: State terrorism. Section B: Global complicity. Section C: Protests and indoctrination. And Section D: Resistance.

Hell Is Breaking Loose in Lebanon Israel Rejects Ceasefire Proposal as U.N. Chief Calls for Peace - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-26-24

NERMEEN SHAIKH: [01:00:00] Lara Bitar, so, if you could tell us a little bit more about how you think Hezbollah might respond to a possible invasion? And also explain Resolution — U.N. Resolution 1701, because the U.N. secretary-general, speaking Wednesday, he warned that Lebanon is at the brink, calling for an urgent ceasefire, but he also called for the implementation of U.N. Resolutions 1559 and 1701.

LARA BITAR: I can’t really predict how Hezbollah will respond, but what we know is that, so far, Hezbollah has continuously tried to deescalate. Hezbollah is not targeting civilians or civilian infrastructure. They have consistently aimed their weapons at military [01:01:00] infrastructure and sites and soldiers, even after the pager attack, the walkie-talkie attack, repeated campaigns on Dahieh. Just a few minutes ago, before I joined you, Dahieh was yet again bombarded by the Israelis. I think this is the eighth attack on the Lebanese capital. Despite all of this escalation from the Israeli side, Hezbollah remains restraint, continues to try to deescalate. And the only ask here, which is not a really unreasonable ask, is for Israel to immediately end its war on the Palestinian people of Gaza after 11 months.

As far as U.N. resolutions, for the most part, they’re not legally binding. For the most part, they’re not respected. The 1701 Resolution, that was adopted after the 2006 war, [01:02:00] is habitually, if not daily, violated by the Israelis in a variety of different ways. That’s why the majority of the Lebanese population is not holding its breath waiting for a U.N. resolution or for the Security Council or even for the international community. I think not just the people in Lebanon, but people around the world have completely lost faith in the so-called international order, the rule of law.

So, right now we can only expect things to get significantly worse. So long as the international community does not take any action to halt the insanity and the barbarism of the Israeli state, so long as the Western world continues to supply the Israelis with weapons, with support, with diplomatic [01:03:00] cover, we have very little chance of seeing an end to this campaign anytime soon.

But on the other hand, what people can do, people anywhere can boycott Israel, can put pressure on their institutions, on their universities, on the corporations in which they work, and to divest from Israel. The only chance that we have is for the world and for comrades around the world to put this kind of pressure on their governments and on their institutions to isolate Israel, because Israel will only stop this campaign and this war around the region if it becomes too costly for it. And right now it’s not paying any kind of price for its actions.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: As we wrap up, Lara Bitar, there is a protest that is approaching the United Nations now, especially people protesting what’s happening in Gaza. You have Netanyahu, the Israeli [01:04:00] prime minister, who delayed his trip by a day. He was supposed to address the U.N. General Assembly today; he’s going to do it tomorrow. What do you expect him to say? And in the U.S. media, on television, they’re saying that Blinken has been desperately, you know, rallying countries on the sidelines to get this 21-day ceasefire that the U.S., France, Canada, Australia, Japan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia are now calling for. But you have The Guardian reporting that, in fact, an effort by France and Britain to secure a joint statement by the U.N. Security Council calling for a ceasefire has stalled in the face of U.S. objections. Your final thoughts, Lara?

LARA BITAR: At the risk of repeating myself, I don’t see —or, we, for the most part, don’t really believe anything that’s coming [01:05:00] out of the Biden administration, neither its White House spokespeople or Blinken and others who are representing the U.S. And again, we have seen these maneuvers and this manipulation of public opinion, manipulation of the press for 11 months. They are not serious about a ceasefire, neither in Gaza nor in Lebanon, regardless of what they’re saying, regardless of what narrative they’re trying to sell us. We’re simply not buying it.

Jon Stewart on Israel's Widening War & Biden Admin's Stalled Ceasefire Attempts - The Daily Show

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: the Americans have been working tirelessly On a ceasefire in Gaza, But this new conflagration points to another outcome the United States has been very much trying to avoid.

ANTHONY BLINKEN: From day one, since October 7th, it's been one of our primary objectives to prevent, Prevent the conflict from escalating, from spreading in other places.

Prevent an escalation or widening or deepening of this conflict.

WH SPOKESPERSON: We have been laser focused on trying to prevent that wider war since October [01:06:00] 7th.

PRES. JOE BIDEN: I don't think we need a wider war in the Middle East, that's not what I'm looking for. Why would you be looking for

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: that? You know what I'd love? A wider war in the Middle East!

Well, uh, now that a wider war has broken out in the Middle East This is President Biden yesterday talking about what we're going to do about it. a wider war from breaking out. How f ing wide does this war have to be before we call it a wider? Without Turkey, it's still technically in the margins.

Look! As far as I'm concerned, it's not a wide war until it includes Mongolian archers. Cut.

What are we doing? And by the way, if this isn't the wider war, then what is this?

BIDEN ADMIN SPOKESPERSON: It continues to be a very dangerous [01:07:00] situation, a very difficult situation, a very difficult, volatile situation, um, and, and the, the situation could, um, could escalate at any moment. Tch. F

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: it. Oh, I'm sorry, okay, so it's not a war, it's a volatile situation ship.

Uh, uh, Friends with Bamafits, if you will. But what, what if,

what if you really want to experience the full cognitive dissonance and language calisthenics that have to be deployed to describe the Middle East over the last, I don't know, 000 years? How we're describing what's I give you the golden Sound bite brought down from Sinai to explain how f ing convoluted this has

CNN GUEST: to be.

What the [01:08:00] Israeli government is saying, and the Biden administration is in many ways subscribed to this idea, is de escalation through escalation.

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: Or as that is sometimes called, War! That is World War II! Look at the subhead! here's the worst part. Now, the country that's providing all the bombs to the Middle East, or I guess now we have to call the bombs escalators, seems to have no idea when these bombs are going to be used.

PENTAGON SPOKESPERSON: We were not notified by the Israelis about their, um, strike or the intended target of their strike.

ANTHONY BLINKEN: First, uh, this is something we were not aware of or involved in. The United States, uh, did not know about, uh, nor was it involved in, uh, these, uh, [01:09:00] incidents.

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: Oh, you're not telling me anything, huh? Have you checked your pager?

I mean, my God, there have to be other ways of achieving de escalation without all this Respectful exchange of missiles. Historically, that part is generally followed by years of sorrow and bloodshed. And we know there have been opportunities for de escalation, but Netanyahu did not seem particularly interested in it.

Oh my God. I've criticized Netanyahu.

PRES. JOE BIDEN: What have I done? Go, go ahead. The people who are criticizing the Prime Minister, it is shameful, it is pathetic.

FOX NEWS GUEST 2: We should be standing shoulder to shoulder with our strongest ally in the Middle East instead of launching this criticism. They criticize them for going too far, constantly, and that gives Hamas comfort.

I'm

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: [01:10:00] sorry? Criticism of the war is shameful and it gives comfort to Hamas. You know who might be surprised to hear that? The Israelis, who are unbelievably critical of the war and Netanyahu.

PRES. JOE BIDEN: The Prime Minister did not look the public in the eye and tell the truth. That he won't bring the hostages alive. It's a

ISRAELI: total failure. The Israeli government. No strategy. No vision. He

PRES. JOE BIDEN: is trying to do everything to prevent a deal. He don't have any intent to end this war.

Netanyahu is lying as he breathes.

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: What anti Semites the former prime minister of Israel and defense minister are. But still, people are going to see this segment and go, all right, maybe Israel isn't perfect, but criticizing them feeds the fire. Don't you worry about anti semitism? And to that I say no. I believe anti [01:11:00] semitism will be fine.

laughter I gotta say applause not for nothing applause but from what I've experienced It's very resilient. And it's not really tied to any event, or war, or activity, or reality. For God's sakes, Kanye thought we ruined his Adidas deal. We just need orthotics, that's all.

Anti Semitism will survive this war like it survived all wars, going back to the brave Hebrews at Masada.

Do you see, Rabbi? I was paying attention and he wasn't. But you know what? You know what? Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe the blame the Jews from the Black Death, the Spanish Inquisition, to [01:12:00] the space lasers will all go away if Israel does right. And peace will reign. And people will no longer baselessly and conveniently blame the Jews when things don't work out exactly the way they want them to.

DONALD TRUMP: This is the most important election in the history of the United States. I'm not going to call this as a prediction, but in my opinion, the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss if I'm at 40%.

JON STEWART - HOST, THE DAILY SHOW: SON OF...

“Lebanese Civilians Are Paying the Price”: Israeli Strikes Kill Nearly 600, Displace Tens of Thousands - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-25-24

AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, the onslaught that started Monday was really unprecedented. We saw tens and tens and tens of thousands of families hastily pack up their bags, leave their homes, without any idea where they’re going to next. All across Beirut now, you see cars that are parked with displaced families that have nowhere to go. The [01:13:00] strikes have been expanding. There’s a lot of misinformation around. People are paranoid about another pager or walkie-talkie attack. I mean, the situation is really devastating.

And, Amy, you know, I really want to put the death count into perspective here. In a single day, on Monday, more than 500 people were killed, and that is a really astounding number. It is one of the highest daily death tolls in recent global wars. It is higher than most daily death tolls in Gaza in the past year. You know, in Gaza, despite the horrific Israeli onslaught, it took 18 days for the death count to reach 500. This happened in Lebanon in about 24 hours. In 2006, the 33-day war that took place between Hezbollah and Israel resulted in 1,100 deaths over 33 days. We’ve already achieved half of that in just 24 [01:14:00] hours. So the numbers are really unprecedented.

And you see a major panic across the entire country. People don’t know where is safe anymore. The Israelis have expanded the areas that they’re targeting. They’re not limited to some areas in south Lebanon along the border and in the Beqaa. They’ve really expanded inwards into coastal cities, into mountains in the north. It really feels like nowhere is safe, and people are very much at a loss for what to do and where to go.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And, Aya, what about these phone calls and text messages and also reports of dropping of leaflets on the population by the Israelis? How are people reacting to that? And what indication do they have of even where to go?

AYA MAJZOUB: So, on Monday, the information minister said that around 80,000 people [01:15:00] received calls to evacuate. And we tried to look into some of those calls, and there didn’t seem to be any pattern for who was receiving these calls. Some people in Beirut received them. Some people in the south received them, in the Beqaa. It was really all across the country. So it seemed like a tactic that was more intended to cause fear rather than an actual evacuation.

Some residents in south Lebanon did get more specific evacuation orders. But again, under international law, for evacuation orders to mean anything, they have to be effective, meaning that people must have the time to leave, and they must have the means to do so. What we saw on Monday was anything but. I mean, the instructions that people got were stay away from Hezbollah targets. Nobody knows — a civilian doesn’t know where a Hezbollah target is. So people just fled with the clothes off their back. It took 14, 15 hours for some families [01:16:00] to make it from south Lebanon to Beirut. And we were receiving reports that there were some strikes on, you know, near where civilians were gathered to evacuate, in traffic jams. We’re still looking into those. But if that holds up, then that is also a serious violation.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And I wanted to ask you — that Amnesty is calling for an international investigation into the deadly attacks using these exploding portable devices. Could you talk about what you’re calling for and why? And why isn’t this patently labeled as a terrorist attack?

AYA MAJZOUB: So, under international humanitarian law and human rights law, we don’t use the term “terrorist attacks.” For us, attacks are either lawful or unlawful. Our qualification of the pager attacks is if, as [01:17:00] is being reported and as U.S. officials and Lebanese officials have said, Israel was behind the attacks, then international humanitarian law applies, because these attacks were part of an armed conflict. Under international humanitarian law, it is prohibited to use weapons indiscriminately, which we found that the pager attacks were. The people who detonated the pagers did not know who was given the pagers or the walkie-talkies, and they did not know who would be around the individuals carrying those pagers and walkie-talkies. Therefore, the attack was indiscriminate and, therefore, unlawful under international humanitarian law and should be investigated as a war crime.

The reason that Amnesty has called for an international investigation on this particular attack is because of the risks of this kind of warfare. It transforms everyday objects, like pagers and walkie-talkies, into essentially booby traps. And there is an [01:18:00] explicit prohibition under international humanitarian law on the use of such booby traps. But we felt that such an attack, although it didn’t cause nearly the same number of casualties as Monday’s onslaught, did instill some fear and panic into the Lebanese society and is a really dangerous method of warfare to be using. It was unprecedented. And the involvement goes far beyond just, you know, the Israeli military. There are allegations around various shell companies. So we’re trying to look into all of the multifaceted aspects of this attack, but we do feel that an international investigation in this case is warranted.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I want to ask you, Aya Majzoub, if you consider this a war on Hezbollah or Israel’s war on Lebanon.

AYA MAJZOUB: I mean, in terms of the [01:19:00] impact on civilians, it is undeniable that Lebanese civilians are paying the price. You know, a lot of the media coverage of Monday’s attacks was Israel strikes Hezbollah targets. However, you know, we’ve looked at entire neighborhoods that have been flattened, residential towers that have been brought down, people’s livelihoods, their shops, their homes, their cars, all in ruins. You mentioned the deaths of the two UNHCR staff members. The health minister also mentioned the deaths of four medics and paramedics. Ambulances are being hit, medical centers. And the wave of displacement from south Lebanon, the Beqaa and other areas is now, I think, almost 500,000 people have had to leave their homes. Not all 500,000 people are Hezbollah. So, the impact on Lebanese civilians has really been catastrophic.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: And the response of the United States? President Biden [01:20:00] just gave his last speech at the United Nations as U.S. president. He — let’s see — the EU foreign policy chief Josep Borrell has characterized this as almost a full-fledged war. President Biden said, “Too many on each side of the Israeli-Lebanon border remain displaced. Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest.” Even though a “situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is not [sic] possible.” He said “is still possible,” he said. Aya Majzoub, at the same time, the U.S. continuing to provide billions of dollars to the U.S. military — to the Israeli military.

AYA MAJZOUB: Yeah. I mean, there’s an obvious hypocrisy there. We consistently, since October 7, have been calling for the suspension of weapons sales and shipments to Israel. We’ve continued to call [01:21:00] for respect of IHL. We have, in at least one instance, documented a possible war crime that Israel committed in Lebanon using U.S. weapons. So, if the U.S. really was serious about a deescalation in the region, then they should start by stopping arms and weapons shipments to Israel and by also supporting judicial criminal proceedings, including at the ICC.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Aya.

Israel Terrorizes Hezbollah With Exploding Pagers Part 2 - The Muckrake Political Podcast - Air Date 9-20-24

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Well, and by the way, the idea of state control versus small d democratic populist movements against it, Nick, think about the implications here.

And one of the, one of the worst things America has done in the 21st century, and we have done plenty, was the war on terror. And the designation of the idea of a terrorist being anybody that we decide is a terrorist, which Israel has now learned from, um, That idea that state power needs to defend itself against the people, [01:22:00] like, I'm, I'm sorry, but like, if you look around the surveillance that we've been under during the 21st century is overwhelming.

We now know that all of these companies have worked with the government in order to provide constant surveillance. On top of that, like now the idea that any product or anything, cars, phones, laptops, you name it. And by the way, like in a, it almost, It's almost quaint. It almost feels like the old plots to kill Fidel Castro, right?

With like an exploding cigar. Like that idea that a state can then weaponize, uh, the, the articles and artifacts of consumerism to basically carry out targeted assassinations. And by the way, I just want to remind you and everybody listening, cause I almost forgot about this. Remember how the Supreme Court said that a president can do anything under their official power, including possibly killing political opponents?

Like this type of stuff starts to grow and grow. And a large part of the problem, it's not individual based like Netanyahu didn't come up with this, right? [01:23:00] Like he, he wasn't sitting around and he came up with this. It's expressions of power by the state as things become more and more destabilized. Like there is a creep.

That happens here, whether it's Israel, the United States, Great Britain, you, you name it, whatever it is, that creep mixed with the willingness to use state power to kill randomly and indiscriminately, like I've been seeing people like laugh about this online. I don't find this funny. This isn't about supporting Hezbollah.

This is about needing to always be curious and to always have a critique of state power, because unchecked state power only will grow and grow and grow and take advantage of whatever is given to it.

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Absolutely. I mean, listen, Hezbollah is a terrorist organization. Sure. Generally people who are affiliated with it are people who are terrorists.

Uh, but you know, people are getting named. They're losing eyes. They're losing limbs. Uh, they're, you know, they're, they're dying. Um, and then, yeah, again, the residual or the, um, you know, people who nearby or getting [01:24:00] injured again, those are the, that's where it becomes terrorism on Israel's part. Did, by the way, did you mention maybe a couple of times, a couple of pods before about how wifi routers can actually see people?

Did you ever see that report? No, I didn't, but I'm not surprised. There was a, there's a report about that where somehow they could take data that they're receiving and it can actually map like movement in rooms so they can almost have like that matrixy, matrixy looking thing. Um, and now see where you are and where you're moving.

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: No. And we, we've even heard, you know, that like things like Roombas do that. And what we've basically done is we've come to accept all of this. I'll, I'll never forget back in the early 20th century when the Patriot Act was happening, whenever the whole PRISM program was coming out, people would tell me like, Hey, we don't need to worry about this.

Like, you know, just sort of relax about it. That's not how this stuff works. It grows and grows and grows. And if you really want to know how any of this works, look at China, which isn't just an authoritarian state. It's a model for how Western societies are starting to [01:25:00] change themselves. And like, Eventually, over time, this sort of access that we give, uh, corporations, which for the record, just to go ahead and connect the dots, Nick, am I wrong or do all these corporations work hand in hand with authoritarian regimes when it serves their bottom line?

NICK HAUSELMAN - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: Yeah. I mean, they want to make money. So they want to make

JARED YATES SEXTON - CO-HOST, THE MUCKRAKE PODCAST: money and they want to, you know, have their contracts going back and forth. They want access to, you know, giant markets like China and India. Like there is a relationship that starts to take place and anything that happens overseas, particularly an American knew about this, we've now heard that they gave America a heads up that they were going to carry out this attack.

They didn't give them all the specifics. If you believe that. All the stuff that happens to people across the ocean and other countries, it's always going to boomerang back. That is just how this stuff works. And this thing, I'm sickened by it, Nick. I really, truly am. And like, the first thing I had was surprise and shock by it.[01:26:00]

But the more time that has passed since these attacks took place, the more that I am absolutely concerned and sick.

SECTION B: GLOBAL COMPLICITY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Global complicity..

U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of Starvation Campaign in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Top experts at the United Nations have strongly condemned Western countries for supporting Israel's devastating war on Gaza. Speakers at a U. N. press conference Monday included Pedro Arroyo Agudo, the U. N. special rapporteur on the human rights to safe drinking water and sanitation.

MICHAEL FAKHRI: The lack of clean water has led to 1.

7 million cases of infection diseases, mainly diarrhea, dysentery and hepatitis A, particularly affecting children, as well as cases of polio, smallpox, and other infectious diseases that can trigger massive [01:27:00] and deadly epidemics. All these, coupled with the lack of medical care, result in deaths, especially of babies and children, making water scarcity and contamination a silent bomb, which has far less visibility than those that destroy buildings, uh.

But Uh, no less lethal bomb.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: This comes as the U. N. Special Rapporteur on the right to food, Michael Fakhry, has accused Israel in a new report of carrying out a starvation campaign in Gaza. Francesca Albanese, the U. N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, wrote to the U. N. In response to the report, quote, The way Israel is destroying Palestinian food sovereignty will be studied not only as a shocking example of genocidal conduct, but also as a textbook case of sadistic disrespect for human life and dignity, unquote.

U. N. Special Rapporteur Francesca [01:28:00] Albanese is joining us now from Tunisia, and Michael Fakhry is joining us from Brasilia. in Brazil. We thank you both for being with us. Michael Fakhry, let's begin with you. You have just released this report. Can you explain what you found?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, Amy. What we're witnessing in Gaza is the starvation of 2.

3 million Palestinians. We've never seen a civilian population made to go hungry so quickly and so completely. So in this report, I answer the question, How was this possible? How was Israel able to starve so many Palestinians so quickly and so completely? And the story starts of course, with the political economy of Gaza.

This story starts to, in some ways. In 1991, Israel started restricting the, the flow of goods into Gaza. Starting in 1991. By 2000, it imposes a full blockade. So what we saw from 2000 to 2002 is the rate of malnutrition [01:29:00] amongst children in Gaza double. In 2005, what Israel did is it changed the nature of its occupation.

It pulled its military out of Gaza and surrounded Gaza in a siege. So since 2000 until now, Israel has created a wall, in effect, a wall around Gaza, limiting the flow of goods. And what they did is they counted calories. They made sure that people in Gaza were just hungry enough to be weak, but not so hungry to raise an alarm.

So right before October 7th of last year, 50 percent of Palestinians in Gaza were food insecure, and 80 percent depended on humanitarian aid. So when this war started, Israel announced its starvation campaign on October 9th, and that's in effect what they did. And they've been pushing people from the north into the south.

While at the same time continuing to bomb civilian structures and target schools, hospitals and homes.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Can you [01:30:00] explain, this is the first report that includes graphic reporting, Michael Fakhry.

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, the situation is so horrific in Gaza right now that I felt that words weren't enough to explain what's going on, but words weren't enough also to imagine a better future for Palestinians, but for people all over the world.

This report focuses on the Palestinian people's food sovereignty, but it looks at how starvation is being used as an increasing rate by forces all over the world. So I was lucky to work with Ammar Jure, an artist from Lebanon. And what we presented are illustrations and graphic reports highlighting the struggle of fishers, highlighting what food sovereignty means for the Palestinian people, but for everyone.

And highlighting what it means to maintain and fight for your dignity despite the the genocidal violence that the Palestinians are experiencing.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: [01:31:00] Michael Fery, who did you talk to for this report?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: For this report, I've consulted, uh, starvation and right to food experts from all over the world. I received, uh, direct testimony from people in Gaza.

I, uh, spoke to, uh, UN, um, workers, uh, both within Palestinian territories and around the world. I spoke to diplomats from countries from all over the world. Um, And I did my own research, and I drew from statistics from the U. N., and this was standard, standard methodology for any U. N. human rights report.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: So, Israel's finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, has suggested starving the entire Gaza Strip To death could be justified.

He told a conference last month, quote, nobody will let us cause 2 million civilians to die of hunger, even though it might be justified and moral until our hostages are returned. SMOs also [01:32:00] repeated the Israeli government's goal of removing the threat of Palestinian statehood. You have that. And then you also have, um, what, uh, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said, um, that accusations of Israel limiting humanitarian aid were outrageously false.

He said a deliberate starvation policy, you can say anything, it doesn't make it true. Your response, UN rapporteur Michael Fakhry.

MICHAEL FAKHRI: There is never an exception to starving civilians. There's never a justification for starving any civilian, whether it's one person or 2. 3 million. And this is in the context of genocide.

And there is no exception to genocide. Israeli officials since October 9th until today have explicitly announced their intent to starve civilians. And they've executed their plan and we've seen the effects of their plan. We also have received [01:33:00] reports regularly and consistently, um, from UN sources that humanitarian aid is either blocked or restricted.

And then even when it goes through these humanitarian convoys that are coordinating with Israeli forces are targeted by Israeli forces. And then even when these humanitarian aid, uh, convoys reach civilians, civilians have been repeatedly targeted, shot and killed you. While trying to get aid, but the issue is not just aid and the denial of goods.

The issue is Israel has been weakening and destroying the food system in Gaza in this war and previously they're just over 75 percent of the agricultural system has been destroyed. Uh, fishers have been targeted, uh, orchards have been uprooted, shepherds have been targeted and shot at. So what Israel is trying to do is making sure they're trying to make sure that the Palestinian people can't feed themselves.

This starvation campaign is part of displacing Palestinians from their land. And it's part of a [01:34:00] plan to annex not just Gaza, but the West Bank as well. This is the last two years have been, we've seen record violence against Palestinians, especially Palestinian farmers. Uh, this is, again, targeting all Palestinians and all of their territories.

So it's not just about Gaza. It's Israel has, over the decades, attacked and destroyed the Palestinian food system as a way to create the conditions of starvation and, in this case now, to the degree of genocidal violence.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Michael Fakhry, according to your report, 34 Palestinians, the majority of them children, are known to have starved to death since October 7th?

MICHAEL FAKHRI: Yes, and this is this is what indicates to us that it's a full blown famine across all of Gaza. So you can imagine a situation when a community is struggling. The first thing they always do is they feed their children. This is true throughout history. And so when a parent is watching their child, Waste away before their very [01:35:00] eyes and is unable to do anything and that child dies when the first child dies in a community.

That indicates to us that that whole society is being attacked. And when the first Palestinian child died, that confirmed that the situation in Gaza is a situation of famine.

'Whitewashing genocide' How Democrats & the media kept Gaza out of the DNC Part 2 - The Real News Network - Air Date 8-31-24

ADAM JOHNSON: And to be clear, those, those protesters who I think are, are, uh, terribly courageous.

I mean, again, these are people who were there for hours. They have nothing to gain. There's no career gain. They're not getting paid to do it. Although of course Fox news would say they are, who are literally just trying to get people to pay attention. And, and I worked on a piece for the nation about the, what I'm calling or what I call the compartmentalization, which is to say, There's been an, there's an elaborate regime of excuse making and burden shifting that liberal media has propped up to make it so people can go celebrate at the DNC, including some of our, you know, frankly, union brothers and sisters who are there celebrating again, I, there's, this is already [01:36:00] complex.

We can get into that while while the administration, the current administration, and it's, it's Current replacement running on the Democratic ticket, the Vice President, Vice President Harris have have committed to doubling down, tripling down on the policy of supporting genocide. Again, this is not and I think some people have a hard time drawing this connective tissue because ostensibly, right?

They sort of use the magical C word. They say they support a ceasefire and that they correctly guess that would be sufficient. And they were right because what they did is they simply redefined the term ceasefire. Something I've been writing about since March. Mhm. The second they began doing it, because for the first five months of this, of this so called conflict, the, the State Department issued a memo banning people from using the word ceasefire in related terms.

And then on the eve of the Michigan primary, when the uncommitted movement was increasingly embarrassing the administration, who at that point, of course, was running for re election, they decided to co opt the term ceasefire and just make the temporary pause hostage exchanges, which they used to call temporary pause, and rebranded that ceasefire, which is why activists And in concert with that switch from the White House's part, started [01:37:00] talking about an arms embargo and conditioning aid to Israel as being the ask, because that was the implicit ask of a ceasefire demand.

But because the White House and liberal media and more generally started to play stupid, they had to explicitly state what the demand was, which is using the leverage of conditioning aid or arms embargo to compel Israel to agree to a lasting ceasefire, which, you know, is Again, finally, you know, the New York Times today said on the daily podcast, Patrick Kingsley, their Jerusalem correspondent said, uh, literally is Netanyahu opposes a lasting ceasefire.

So now finally, I guess people are, are acknowledging that reality, that when he, when they talk about ceasefire, when liberal Zionist organizations talk about ceasefire, when the white house talks about ceasefire. Yeah. They're talking about a temporary pause for a few weeks while they exchange hostages, get the only, you know, get leverage from, from Hamas or whatever militants have hostages and then continue doing, uh, the, the sort of genocide, which they've been carrying out.

I think pretty much consensus among, among genocide scholars who are not, you know, in denial. I know that's a bit of a tautology, but that it is a genocide as every, you know, they, Gaza is not livable. They are [01:38:00] pushing people to a very small, Airport, you know, airport size, a piece of land, and they are continuing to punish them with engaging collective punishment and displacement and unleashing diseases, especially polio, which is now taken off and that this is this is not going to stop unless the U.

S. conditions arms to Israel. Everybody knows it. Again, to their credit, although they did not withhold their endorsement on this condition, seven unions representing six million workers, including UAW, SEIU, demanded that Biden engage in a full arms embargo of Israel until it ends its genocide, which is now the sort of baseline ask, I think, of, you know, humanitarian organizations.

Again, this was always the implied mechanism of the ceasefire, but now you got to say it literally. And so when they did the switcheroo from Biden to Harris in a matter of 48 hours, Because the issue of Gaza was not allowed to be litigated in a primary, because there really wasn't one, there was an attempt to try to push Harris, again, to the extent that's even possible, uh, the uncommitted, which, of course, began under [01:39:00] Biden during his primary and continued until, up until the DNC and continues to this day, um, saying, we're going to withhold our support until you agree to an arms embargo on Israel, which sounds scary to some people, some lay people who say, arms embargo on Israel, but what about blah, blah, blah, but really what it is, another way to phrase it is conditioning aid until Israel, uh, Is in line with international U.

S. law, which, by the way, the U. S. is supposed to be doing anyway. Otherwise, I'm not sure what the point of having these laws are. And, you know, many experts, many normie experts just today, just security had an article showing how again, this is kind of a very normie publication showing how Israel's in gross violation, both in Gaza and the West Bank of international law and the Leahy law compels the White House.

And ought to compel a future harris white house to comport to that law as israel commits gross human rights violations The state department's own internal memo a few months ago Said, uh, they committed human rights violations, but they're taking the necessary steps to prevent in the future Which everyone knows was a total whitewash job And so what the protesters are demanding the baseline ask obviously protesters outside the perimeter, you know Their asks [01:40:00] are more ambitious right in apartheid and occupation liberate palestine all that But the baseline ask that every organization agrees on Liberal progressive left, far left, Palestinian, uh, even frankly, some non Zionist, you know, Jewish groups and anti Zionist Jewish groups, uh, over 30, I think at this point, uh, hundreds of Nobel laureates.

They say we have to end selling arms to Israel to compel them to stop this madness. So it's a very basic ask. I think it's incredibly reasonable ask. It's a ask that the Biden White House and a future Harris administration can do unilaterally. They don't need Congress. There isn't some parliamentarian who they can appeal to to sort of block their way.

And it's something Harris could have agreed to that she decided not to. And so that's the connective tissue that, again, through the ceasefire co option PR effort and all these kind of other faux humanitarian efforts, the humanitarian peer, um, all these other public relations campaigns they've undertaken, the White House, that they've confused liberals and so they kind of put Gaza out of their mind.

And so when they, when they're going into, when you're actually physically going into the DNC, as you [01:41:00] know, You're bombarded by by protesters calling out the names of the people that their candidate has agreed to continue, frankly, supporting and killing killing because she is now through her foreign aid advisor or foreign policy advisor.

Phil Gordon has reaffirmed their support, unequivocal support for continued arms sales to Israel. So she's not budging. And so she's just assuming she can kind of do brat memes and vibe her way beyond the criticism from Gaza protesters, which theoretically ought to be picking up this week with with school being back in session.

SARAH LAZAR: If I could just jump in for 1 second to talk about the demand of protesters. So the Coalition of March on the DNC is composed of more than 250 organizations. It's a lot from across the country and a lot of Palestinian organizations are numbered among them. For example, US PCN, the US Palestinian Community Network.

And so U-S-P-C-N [01:42:00] actually moved to join the coalition before October 7th, 'cause their position was. What Israel is doing to Palestinians, the injustice, the apartheid, the colonial settler context predates October 7th, and so they had reason to protest before that, but then given what Israel has done over the past 10 months, 40, 000 Palestinians killed, this is likely a dramatic underestimate, you know, one Lancet study estimated that 186, 000 people have been killed.

This is likely a dramatic underestimate, you know, one Lancet study estimated that 186, 000 people have been killed. When you consider both direct and indirect death, you know, we're seeing the most efficient killing campaign in the 21st century if you're speaking just in terms of daily death tolls. So given that emergency, the coalition march on the DNC decided to center Palestine and Gaza in the multiple marches that they held that had thousands of people in the streets.

The two demands that they put out were very simple. One was end [01:43:00] the genocide, and two was end all USAID to Israel. The end, the demand to end all USAID is a little different from some of the demands that we've been seeing, focusing on arms specifically. The seven major unions representing nearly half of all unionized workers in the U.

S. That Adam mentioned, their demand was specifically around an arms embargo pursuant to a permanent ceasefire. And then the uncommitted delegates, there were 29 who went to the DNC. They were also demanding an arms embargo. That was their demand that they had painted on their banners. And that they had put out in terms of their messaging around not another bomb.

We all know that they ended up putting out more moderate demands, so they did their sit in because they were denied a Palestinian American speaker on stage. Any of them would have told you that was absolute bottom of the barrel, lowest possible bar demand, and they did go in there calling for an [01:44:00] arms embargo.

And so even though the these demands have some variation and difference. The, what unites them is the focus on ending material support, which is a recognition that it's not enough to shift rhetoric. You have to change material reality.

U.N. Experts Accuse Israel of Starvation Campaign in Gaza & Demand End to Western Complicity Part 2 - Democracy Now! - Air Date 9-17-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Now you are expecting to give, present this report, um, to the UN General assembly, uh, in October. What are you expecting? How will this be presented

MICHAEL FAKHRI: right now?

Uh, all of us, all the U. N. Human rights experts. And I think the whole world is watching closely the current draft resolution that's before the General Assembly. That is, uh, in the draft. They're calling for sanctions against Israel. Since the first weeks of this war, we as human independent human rights experts have been calling [01:45:00] for a cease fire.

An immediate ceasefire and sanctions against Israel. And we'll see how this resolution goes through. By the time I get to New York on October 18th, if there are no sanctions, I will repeat that call for sanctions against Israel. And what I will, I will tell the general assembly, what is at stake? What is at stake is the global order itself.

How the world responds to Gaza and to the Palestinian struggle for liberation will determine the structure and the fate of the U. N. and the global order. Because what's at stake is, of course, the Palestinian people's right to self determination, their right to return to their territory in Palestine, and American global power.

And the, the, and Europe is facing an existential crisis. This is its, what's at stake. This is why millions of people are marching in the streets. in solidarity with the Palestinians. If the world does not respond to Palestine today, just like the world is not responding to the starvation in Sudan, [01:46:00] we're going to see more and more starvation campaigns around the world into the future.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We want to bring in Francesca Albanese into this conversation, U. N. Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territory. You're in La Marza, Tunisia, where you participated fromin that news conference yesterday in Geneva. Um, uh, you, uh, talked about the significance of this report. Can you respond?

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Yes, I was really, um, impressed by the report that my colleague Michael Park reproduced, because not only it analyzed what he just said, I cannot really add to the brilliant presentation he gave, but he put things in context, which is something that tends to be missed when discussing, uh, the situation of Palestinians under Israeli's military rule.

People tend to, um, Align themselves or [01:47:00] accept critically the narrative of the two parties in conflict without capturing the troubling asymmetry that exists, um, between the Palestinians, the occupied people, and Israel, the protracted occupier, which is colonizing by force. The little erritory that.

bringing the attention back to the root causes and the fact that these didn't start on October 7th, didn't start even with the blockade that has been declared on Gaza 17 years ago. This is a long term plan that Israel has somewhat devised. to achieve its final goal, which is getting as much control as possible over maximum land with minimum Palestinian people.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Naezy, you've said the attack [01:48:00] that Israel has unleashed is not just against Palestinians in Gaza, it's against Palestinians as a whole. Explain.

FRANCESCA ALBANESE: Absolutely. Um, Amy, since the beginning of the assault against Gaza on the beginning of October, following of course the attack unleashed by Hamas and other Palestinian armed groups, we have recorded an escalation of violence against the Palestinians in Gaza.

The rest of the occupied territory, both is Jerusalem and the West Bank. Over 11 months, 670 Palestinians have been killed. Carfew incursions and raids have escalated at unprecedented rates, particularly against the north and Gaza that over the past Tweaks as experienced least less lethal, but similar, um, attacks [01:49:00] on civilian infrastructure, roads, water reservoir, electricity, um, uh, electricity sources and homes that are unjustifiable.

And, uh, The other thing is the detention, arbitrary detention, detention without any legal justification of Palestinians, both from the West, the Gaza Strip, but all the more the West Bank and East Jerusalem have skyrocketed. And all Palestinians, no matter their place of residence, have been exposed to humiliation and sadism.

That's what we're And what B'Tselem has qualified as a network of torture across Israeli detention center, how can we explain that? This is why I say when international community has failed to prevent genocide in Gaza, we have to be very careful because I do see patterns of violence clearly expanding to the West Bank and East Jerusalem.[01:50:00]

And ultimately, the goal is the same. expel the Palestinians or simply displace the Palestinians from the little that remain of their land. And this is not something that I'm inferring from the evidence. This is something that is accompanied by endless statements of Israeli political leaders and actions of Both army and settlers, illegal settlers, that have been armed by Israeli ministers.

So this is a state, there is a state endeavor sustaining this wild attack against the Palestinian people as such.

Ilhan Omar On The Shallow Divide Between Dems And GOP Over Israel’s Gaza Genocide - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-16-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We just heard from the Israeli military that they killed three hostages that were found dead, I guess a couple of months ago. They killed them early on in their, um, a bombing campaign. It is, it's almost feels like shock that Israel was [01:51:00] going to admit this, but there definitely seems to be more pressure on them.

There's also been reports out now how, when there was an outcry about, uh, the, um, hunger situation in Gaza, Israel let in a trickle of food and is now sort of like tightening up again on it. Um, we also have a story of the first, uh, UN worker, uh, in, at least in the past year, who was, uh, killed by a sniper in the West Bank.

This after, um, an American citizen also killed by an Israeli sniper, uh, which. Joe Biden claimed was like an accidental shot that ricocheted, I guess, off the ground up into her head. Sounds like something Trump would say. And, uh, with a lot of evidence that, um, That, in fact, was not the case, that it wasn't a bullet that bounced on the ground.

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: evidence that it was the case. [01:52:00]

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: No evidence.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And the Biden administration has been kind of propping up Yoav Galant as somebody who's more reasonable within Likud, the defense minister who they can reportedly work with in this administration. News broke this morning that Netanyahu is apparently planning to fire Yoav Galant from his post.

Uh, that's maybe, it hasn't happened yet. But it's this, as we've been saying, the reality of Netanyahu and the far right of the Israeli government being together on this has not changed since October 7th. It's been that reality for that this entire period solidified. Yeah.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Here is Ilhan Omar on, uh, with the CNN's Kaitlyn Collins and, um, commends, uh, Harris on a rhetoric, but says.

We got to do more.

CNN REPORTER: Well, I'm glad you brought that up because there's really important constituencies in places like your home state and michigan and others. There wasn't a lot of time spent on on the Israel Hamas war that [01:53:00] is that is underway last night between the two candidates. But when they did talk about it, despite trump saying that Israel would cease to exist if Harris was elected, they largely agree on the policy of that supporting Israel and backing it on a ceasefire hostage deal.

She said that she would work around the clock. But she didn't offer any specifics on what that would look like. Was that enough of a plan in your view?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah, I mean, I think there is a, um, I believe there is a great appreciation, um, in, in the empathy and compassion that she offers. Uh, but I do believe that voters both in, in my district, um, and in, in Minnesota and across the country that care Um, want to actually see either an implementation of a ceasefire, um, or an actual, uh, concrete answer, um, to how we get a ceasefire and why we have not been able, um, to utilize, [01:54:00] uh, the leverage that we have in order for that ceasefire to be implemented.

CNN REPORTER: And of course, I assume by that in part you mean sending arms and weapons to Israel, which Something, you know, we can

REP. ILHAN OMAR: hear intangible actions that could be taken, right? We are supplying the weapons that are causing the catastrophe. Uh, and so, you know, to, to say you're working around the clock and, and not, you know, take any actionable steps that the, the voters, um, and, and the American people can see, um, makes that rhetoric really hard to, to swallow.

And is that,

CNN REPORTER: I want to hear this follow up, you know, that was her rhetoric last night. And so when you hear about the implementation of a ceasefire deal, we hear off all the time from the administration. Take it or leave it is on the table. Take it or leave it is on the table. I talked to the Israeli ambassador to the UN last week.

He said the idea of a ceasefire being close is is just not realistic at this moment.

REP. ILHAN OMAR: And I think, and I think that is where, um, it does feel disingenuous, [01:55:00] right? Because we hear Our Secretary of State, Blinken, um, who has now traveled to Israel, I believe 11 times, um, you know, who makes these statements, um, as he's departing, uh, the country from Egypt and says We are.

You know, very close and deal has been reached. Um, BB Netanyahu is there and then we see the humiliation that follows as BB takes the stage right after he departs and says there is no such thing. Uh, and I think For a country that is not only considered as a leader, uh, in, in the world, but a country that is directly in, in support, in, in supplying these, these weapons, um, to, to Israel to, uh, you know, not, not do that after the first time that they backtracked on, on what they promised us, not do that on the second time, not do that on the third time.

Um, now, you know, 11 months in, [01:56:00] uh, I, I think it is starting to, to sound like this is not a, a, a serious thing, um, that, uh, our secretary is, is working on.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah. Congressman Ilhan Omar. Understated, uh, but, uh, accurate.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Carrot and stick, right? So she's opening with the empathy thing to appeal to Harris and her supporters, I guess, but then giving her a path forward because Ro Khanna now has come out on cable news and said that she should talk about enforcing the law.

Elizabeth Warren has done the same, and Ilhan Omar as well, still being like, I'm a team player, but this is what you can do. Um, I was just like appreciative of that because, can we pull up this tweet? This was from over the weekend. This is why she needs to now begin to, like, the Biden, Biden officials are complaining to ABC that she didn't defend him more in the debate.

Selena Wang of, uh, of ABC reports some White House officials are, uh, also disappointed that Harris did not stand up for [01:57:00] Biden during the debate. A former Biden White House official tells me many feel Harris missed opportunities to acknowledge that Biden deserves thanks for his service, according to the source.

So the point is that They're already, she, she, she tried to distance herself from Biden in the debate by not really mentioning him. She at one point said, I'm not Joe Biden, I'm Kamala Harris. She didn't go out of her way to full throatedly defend Biden in any way because he's an extremely unpopular president right now.

So, a way that she can distance herself from him is also on this matter. On this matter, and there are a lot of lawmakers trying to give her the, the path forward to do so. But if the Biden administration and his, like, lame duck lackeys are going to whine and complain in the press that she's not being more forceful in her defense of him, First of all, then why not go all the way, all, uh, full bore on this and actually do something that is both right, good policy, and in her interest to distance herself from him in some meaningful way?

MATT LECH - PRODUCER, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Because, uh, for all the talk [01:58:00] of all these Reagan staffers, uh, supporting Kamala Harris, there's no votes there. There's not, that's not going to turn people out. We know undecided voters turn out because they're activated by the partisan leading they already have, not because they're right in the middle and are waiting to see who's the most center of all the candidates.

So they're just, this, this like sort of conservative look at what they're doing is, I think, because they think they can walk to a victory, and they don't need to break that glass and actually change the policy, because they'd rather win with these freaks than with people who, uh, expect to win. People to stop a genocide.

SECTION C: PROTESTS AND INDOCTRINATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C: Protests and indoctrination.

Whose Speech, Whose Campus - What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law - Air Date 9-10-24

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, until 2004, it wasn't really obvious that the kind of problem you see with the student protests of this past year have anything to do with Title VI. But in 2004, the Office of Civil Rights under the Bush [01:59:00] administration issued a new interpretation of Title VI.

And under the new interpretation, Title VI's protections also apply to students who are discriminated against based on what the office calls shared ancestry. And that includes being part of a group that is identified for its racial, and religious characteristics. The 2004 interpretation specified that title six could now apply to students who are Muslim, Sikh, or Jewish and say, well, hey, I'm being discriminated against at my school.

And so specifically for Jewish students, this means that the office of civil rights now considers Judaism like a race or a nationality, not just a religion. And it's that 2004 interpretation. which is applying Title VI's protections to students of religious faiths who are targeted for what the Civil Rights Office calls perceived shared ancestry.

That new [02:00:00] interpretation has been adopted by every presidential administration since, including the Biden administration.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So how does this expanded interpretation of Title VI, to include shared ancestry and Jewish students, how does this affect the protest?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, because of the enforcement powers possessed by the Office of Civil Rights.

So Congress has given the Office of Civil Rights broad powers to investigate complaints of potential Title VI violations. If there's a violation of Title VI, the office is supposed to first find some cooperative resolution with the school that's being investigated. So that might mean persuading a college to change its policies or how it treats students or maybe doing something different or to stop doing something it had been doing before.

And of course, we're talking about federal funds. And as a very last resort, the department of education could seek to cut off federal funding for the college or university. And that could mean the potential loss of hundreds of millions of dollars. And practically that's [02:01:00] probably unlikely, but the threat of it does give a college the incentive to change its behavior.

If it's been found in violation of title six and since October 7th. The Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights has opened dozens of investigations into claims of anti Semitism at colleges and K through 12 schools under this relatively recent interpretation.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So how does the language of the protesters.

you know, when they're sort of taken in and perceived by Jewish students, how does that violate title six?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That is a much, much more difficult question. So a title six violation can happen with a school, either one, when the school treats a student differently because of their race, color, or national origin, or two, because the school creates what courts have called a hostile environment.

So a hostile environment means that the school might know that a student is being treated differently because of their race. Mm

MUSIC: hmm. But

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: the school does nothing [02:02:00] about it. And so it's that kind of indifference that can violate federal law. And the Office of Civil Rights has recently released some examples of how this might work.

So imagine a college student whose dorm room is defaced with swastikas or white supremacist slogans about Jewish people. Or a Muslim student who is targeted for wearing a hijab. And if the school is told about this and does nothing, The office of civil rights has said that can be the basis of a hostile environment investigation for a violation of title six, based on this idea of shared ancestry.

MUSIC: Yeah.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So if any pro Palestinian protester acts in ways that are similar, that would be a potential violation of federal law for the schools. But it's not so easy, right? Because what about some other statements? What if a campus protester puts up a sign that says, Israel is a racist state that must be dismantled?

Or if a professor says that we must oppose Israel at all costs? Are those [02:03:00] statements violations of federal anti discrimination law? Because if you're a Jewish student hearing these words, and you consider Israel as part of what it means to be Jewish, then it could feel threatening. And if you're asked to disavow Israel just to cross campus and get to your classes, it can feel like maybe you have to deny your own identity just to be a student on campus.

But even if these kinds of statements might violate Title VI, Aren't these also the kinds of statements that are protected by the First Amendment? So thus far, there haven't been any major court decisions that answer these questions. But there may be soon, because ever since October 7th, a number of lawsuits have been filed that ask this very question, whether highly critical statements against Israel can violate Title VI.

Because Title VI has been interpreted not just to give powers to the Office of Civil Rights, but it allows private individuals to bring lawsuits too. [02:04:00] So for example, there is now a lawsuit by a group of Jewish students who have sued the University of California, Berkeley Law School.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: What's the story with that lawsuit?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, some student groups at the law school had established a policy. They said, look, we're not going to invite any speakers who hold views in support of Zionism. So the UC Berkeley lawsuit argues that this student policy violates title six. Because it's anti Semitic and the law school tolerates it. It allows the student groups to do this.

Now the law school, on the other hand, has argued that, well, we can't punish student groups for their policy because that would violate their own first amendment rights. And in June of this year, a group of Jewish students at UCLA filed a federal lawsuit over pro Palestinian protests held at UCLA's campus in April.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So what happened there?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, there, the protesters established an encampment on part of the campus called Royce Quad. And according to the [02:05:00] lawsuit, protesters established checkpoints at the campus and required people who wanted to cross the quad to go to class or go to the library, they had to denounce the state of Israel.

MUSIC: Uh huh.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: And the plaintiffs here, these Jewish students, argued, well, they had a religious obligation to support Israel. And the fact that the university did nothing to stop these checkpoints violated their rights. And on August 13th, a federal district court judge granted the plaintiff's request for a preliminary injunction or to order the university to stop doing what they were doing.

And the judge ordered UCLA to ensure equal access to Jewish students when they wanted to be on campus and go to class. Now, this lawsuit claimed that UCLA violated the students First Amendment rights, including their free exercise of religion rights, as well as their rights under Title VI. On the preliminary injunction motion, the judge found that the students were likely to win on their First Amendment free exercise of religion claim, so he didn't resolve the Title VI claim.

And on August [02:06:00] 23rd, UCLA decided not to appeal the judge's decision. So that was a victory, uh, for the students at UCLA who had argued that they'd basically been denied their ability to freely access libraries and classes on campus.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Because they had to go through these checkpoints.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That's right. At the very least, this means that other lawsuits are also going to be coming to test out whether these kinds of actions that we're seeing and have seen violated federal anti discrimination law.

Whose Speech, Whose Campus Part 2 - What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law - Air Date 9-10-24

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So describe institutional neutrality.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, after October 7th, many colleges and universities offered official statements of support for 7th attack. And many colleges offered official statements in support of Ukraine over the Russian invasion. Many colleges also condemned the attack on the Capitol in 2021. And many of them also made official statements regarding George Floyd's death when he was killed by a police [02:07:00] officer in 2020.

But it's been the October 7th statements that have put universities maybe in the most uncomfortable position because They received a response from students and some faculty that were not in support of the statements that they'd made. They wanted them to reverse those statements. And so after the campus process of last spring, where you had hundreds of arrests of students and some faculty, several colleges, including Harvard, Johns Hopkins, and the University of Texas have said that they will adopt what they call institutional neutrality.

And you asked about it. It really means that yeah. The university is officially saying we will stay out of political and social issues. And it's a policy position most commonly associated with the university of Chicago, because it comes from a document called the Calvin report from 1967. The university of Chicago had studied this through a committee saying, what should we do in the wake of these violent protests of the sixties?

And Chicago ever since has said, we stay out of these things. We [02:08:00] don't say one way or the other, uh, in terms of our political support.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: So if henceforth all these institutions were, you know, neutral, how would this affect the protest going forward?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, it does affect it because of what the students protesting for Palestine have been asking for.

First of all, they've been asking for campuses to condemn Israel. So if a college is institutionally neutral, they'll say, we're not going to say one way or the other. They've also been asking campuses to divest their financial holdings from companies that have anything to do with Israel. And that too can be related to institutional neutrality.

So if a college says from now on, we are institutionally neutral, then they could respond to these demands by saying, look, politics do not dictate our financial decisions. We're not going to change based on what students are asking for. I

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: mean, through all of this, how did the University of Chicago fare?

Like, if they adhered to the Calvin Report since, you know, the late 1960s, were protests [02:09:00] substantially different there?

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, they didn't reach any level of violence. They certainly restricted, uh, the way in which students could protest. And I think more than that, you know, for a long time now, the University of Chicago has, uh, promoted a certain culture that you can have respectful protest.

You're allowed to protest in these places and in these ways, but that's it. If you go beyond that, we're going to crack down on you. And I think other colleges have promoted freer interpretations of how and whether and when to protest. And some of that of course has backfired because it's led to calling the police in and sometimes, um, some violence and a lot of tension on campus.

So what you see with these student protests of 2024 is colleges having to take a new look at what free speech really does mean in practice for them and how much they're willing to tolerate.

MUSIC: Yeah. Yeah.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: And, and keep in mind that some of the faculty themselves were part of another generation of protests.

So [02:10:00] there's some irony here too.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it just goes back to this whole idea of, like, when there's conflicting ideology, free speech is extremely complicated. So is neutrality. I mean, like, neutrality, the idea of neutrality, you know, could mean, oh yeah, I'm not on anyone's side. And then another interpretation of neutrality is the Swiss, like, laundering Nazi gold.

You know what I mean? Like, it's just like, both of those things are. Kind of their own mess.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. And of course, neutrality is a statement, right? Yeah, exactly. So if you look at the, if you look at the University of Chicago statement, um, for January 6th. It only says we understand there was a terrible incident and we have counselors and people to help for students who are upset.

That's very, very neutral to say that there's been a thing that happened. Whereas other campuses were much more willing to say, we condemn this attack on democracy. Now it all works when most of the campus is behind that [02:11:00] statement. It doesn't work when there's incredible division.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Right, right. Right. And so is there any sense of how this will play out?

I mean, is it just like a matter of there really being no solution if the temperature is hot enough, you know what I'm saying is the only solution just like. Things not being quite so volatile.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Well, I mean, I, I think it's, uh, early yet in the school year to see whether these protests will be of the same size and intensity as last spring.

I do think there will be continuing conflicts in the courts now that there have been investigations and there have been some successes in the courts, um, on the part of, um, Uh, Jewish students who say, look, this is a title six violation. And I think it will be really interesting to see how courts grapple with, is this a protected speech issue or is this a federal anti discrimination issue?

Because there does have to be some kind of decision and it's not obvious, um, which way [02:12:00] to go for some of the most difficult questions.

ROMAN MARS - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: Yeah. It doesn't seem obvious to me at all. It seems completely case by case with every utterance, like every message. It seems completely different.

PROF ELIZABETH JOH - CO-HOST, WHAT ROMAN MARS CAN LEARN: That's right. And I think the problem then, of course, as someone pointed out, is that if you have the potential for the Office of Civil Rights to investigate you as a college and you just don't want to get involved in too many lawsuits, then you pull back and you actually curb student speech.

You say, you know, you can't say stuff like this because we don't want to get sued in court.

SECTION D: RESISTANCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D: Resistance.

Anti-Zionism Sweeping Across Jewish Communities - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-12-24

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: And I think it came from, you know, a real sense of like, These really harmful ideas can get bonded with our identity such that we think that that's who we are. And so, you know, that's part of why we talk about racism, and we talk about white supremacy, particularly that there's this idea of supremacy that got bonded [02:13:00] in with what it meant to be a white person when the whole world.

idea of whiteness was being formed. It was being woven in, right? That supremacy is a part of it. And so now when people are like, Oh, I'm an anti racist, like I'm a white person, but I'm actively working against that, that connection that happened. I think the same thing happened for Jewish people with Zionism.

There's been Judaism forever. There's been Jewish people since the beginning, and they've been practicing in so many different ways. It's so many communal ways, so many beautiful ways. Um, I have a lot of incredible Jewish friends in my life who have gifted me the practice of ritual with them, of Shabbat with them.

Um, I've gotten to go through some of these things. I'm like, Oh, what it means to be Jewish is actually to be loving, to be caring, to be looking out for your neighbors, to be thinking about repair from harm. Zionism comes in and is like, this is about taking land and claiming something and trying to create an ethno state.

That, that. That's a totally different project from what Judaism has [02:14:00] been about for its entire existence, but it comes in at this interesting moment where there's a ton of trauma and you can take advantage of that and you can fuse these things together. So I wanted to talk about that because I learned that from anti Zionist Jewish people.

That they were like the way that I began to understand that Zionism wasn't a fundamental aspect of being Jewish. It was actually a really harmful thing that was happening. And it was. We were raised to think it was a beautiful vision and that it was our destiny, but actually it's, it's causing so much harm.

It's causing, um, so much dissonance in our community. And, and now we see this genocide playing out where I think if any other country was doing what Israel is doing right now, we would be very clear headed. And it's even interesting, you know, to watch the debate and to be like, Oh, look at this, the differences in the stance on Ukraine and the stance on Palestine, where the power dynamics are so similar, and we're showing up in one situation for the person who's being attacked, and in one situation for the person [02:15:00] who is doing the attacking.

And, yes, there, There's so much, I mean, we can unpack and unpack and unthread and unthread, but for me as a black person who has really lived in this country and watched and become in deep community with white people, undoing racism, it felt so important to me to see that there was an option like this for Jewish people that was like, oh, we can undo this work as well.

And in this moment. I think one of the most beautiful things I've seen, um, amidst all the horror is how many Jewish people are like, oh, I can let go of Zionism and I can heal. I can recover my soul and I can recover community. And in, in doing that, that's the way that we will actually stop this problem, not just in this moment, but in an ongoing way.

Because I think that's also the piece is now people are not just saying we want to cease fire. It's like we want an arms embargo and we want to stop this occupation. We want to end this. And I will also say this. I live on land that was stolen. I live in the United States. And so it's very [02:16:00] personal for me.

I'm like, I didn't get, I wasn't there at the moment in history when I could have intervened on this happening and could have changed the story of this happening. But I'm here now and my country is supporting the same thing happening somewhere else. And I can intervene. I can play a role in that. So it felt really important for me to include that.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Yeah, um, and I think the optimism about that moment, that, that display of solidarity for a free Palestine in this current moment is, I think, you know, part of the vision that you're, you're hoping for, which is a glimmer of hope in, in this and, um, can you expand a little more on the notions of power and whiteness and how, um, the, the, you, you including that section, you know, it's also, you know, An acknowledgment that whiteness and, and, and power through whiteness is, is done through imperialism, too, um, and that Zionism has folded into that, obviously, but that that history is so present, [02:17:00] I think, in white supremacy all around us.

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Yeah, I think that's important. I mean, I want to acknowledge, you know, and I was, as I was writing it, I was like, I understand that Jewish people are multiracial people, um, and then I also understand and what I see, the visual of what's happening between Israel and Palestine is very much um, That Israel has, in part of its development, really drawn in white Jewishness and really created a space of whiteness for Jewish people.

And if you study American history, you see how whiteness developed and how it has claimed one people at a time, right? It's like, okay, we're starting off with these British people, these French people. Okay. Now, all right. Italians, okay. Irish people, like y'all can be down. Now Jewish people come in in a different way where they're like, we were oppressed by white people.

We were oppressed by people who wanted to be Aryan. So the journey from going from that to being in a space where you're like mostly in the U. S. when we were moving through the world, we're identified as white people. We're seen as white people and it gives us a different kind of [02:18:00] access and a different kind of power than brown people have.

And when I speak with anti Zionist Jewish people, they're like, I can see that. I can understand that. I can acknowledge that. And then I can take responsibility for it. I think that's part of what we're seeing play out internationally now is that we're looking at the Middle East and we're partnering with people who have the whitest looking leadership, people who would come to this country and be acknowledged as white people.

We're being like, that's where we're going to pour our energy and attention. That's who we're going to call our ally. That's who we're going to call our friend, the people who will serve Western interest in this part of the world. It's deep and. The other piece of this I think that we have to bring in is we're in a, you know, it was 9 11 yesterday.

It was like we're in this, we're in a long arc in the U. S. with our Islamophobia, with our anti Arab sentiment, with our racism against people from that part of the world. So these things are all tied in, right? And one of the things I keep trying to do is like pull them apart [02:19:00] just enough so we can look at them clearly and be like, oh, we were told to see these people.

As untrustworthy as terrorist as violent. We were told that as a black person. I'm like, I've been on the other end of that same kind of storytelling where all of my people are something and all of us deserve some kind of, um, punishment and all of the white people are innocent and all of them are victims and all of them deserve protection.

And once you start to see it, you can't unsee it. Right? This book, the ideas. It's exactly the same tropes. Yeah, and it's sexual violence, but it's also like the story only gets told one way, right? I mean, I think it was so interesting in the debate when Kamala was like, well, look at where all this started, October 7th.

And I was like, oh, that's such, um, that's, that's a very Western way to tell that story, right? To say, oh, you know, You know, and again, because it's the same thing that happened with 9 11, where it's like, oh, this just happened to us out of the blue, out of nowhere. We have no idea why it happened. Instead of saying, what are the conditions that are being [02:20:00] created around the world that would make people want to do this, right?

Can we get curious about it? And without having to justify it, right? I think that there's a disparate distinction that's important. That's being able to say, I'm not in charge of whatever strategies people are using for their resistance, but can I understand why people might engage in resistance or why people might engage in pushing back against empire or why people might engage in pushing back against those who are oppressing them?

And one of the things I think we are privileged in is that we get to sit in a place where I'm like, well, I'm not. Under bombs and constant attack and being enclosed in a small space. I have room to have a ton of nuance about everything that's happening. When I have been in situations of deep oppression, I, that nuance fell away.

All I was concerned with was how do I get this person to stop hurting me? And. whatever story I need to change to get them to stop hurting me, I'm going to try to do that. I think we're in that situation right now where there's a ton of people who are like, how do I get this person [02:21:00] to stop hurting me?

And to be a U. S. citizen is to recognize like, we are the funder of most of the harm that's happening in the world. We are thinking it through. We are collaborating with those who are causing harm and we need to take responsibility for that. If we hope to continue to exist.

Palestine In Israeli School Books w Author Nurit Peled-Elhanan Part 2 - Book Cafe Podcast - Air Date 2-22-24

NURIT PELED-ELHANAN: So I'm an Israeli Jewish woman. Well, I didn't choose to be Jewish. You know, this is forced upon you. There is something like Jewish blood, which is really a very racist way of looking at people. If your mother is Jewish, then your blood is Jewish, then you are Jewish, but it's not a matter of choice.

And in Israel, they divide the population between Jews and non Jews. The non Jews are nothing but non Jews. Nobody tells you what they are, only what [02:22:00] they aren't. And these are, of course, the Palestinian Arab citizens. They are defined as non Jewish population or non Jewish sector, and that's it. Okay, I grew up here in a very patriotic, chauvinistic, racist society.

Uh, we didn't have television. We didn't have any way to know what's going on in the world. And, uh, but then I went, uh, abroad to study and I started looking at things differently and I learned a lot of things that I didn't know about, uh, Israel. And that changed me a little bit, you know, Little by little.

My family was mostly socialist. My father was in the army. He retired as a general, but he was very critical of the army and of the politics of Israel, of course. [02:23:00] After he retired, he devoted himself to, um, to the study of Arabic and especially Palestinian literature. And he was a professor of Palestinian literature in University of Tel Aviv.

I am a researcher of, um, the educational discourse of Israel. So I started by studying the development of literacy at school, uh, writing and reading and speaking at school. This is my PhD. And then I studied the classroom discourse and dialogue in the classroom. Class, and I came upon racist discourse in class, especially towards Ethiopian children.

So I did some study about that. And then I wanted to study the teaching of scientific discourse. Because there are a lot of [02:24:00] literature that says that the fact that so many children decide that science is not for them is not because of science, but because of the language of science. And I started studying that, but when I I read the school books.

I realized there's something much more urgent to look at, which is racism in Israeli school books. Uh, so my first book is about the representation, misrepresentation of Palestinians in Palestine in Israeli school book. And my second book just came out is about other minorities, Jewish minorities that are marginalized and discriminated.

And also, of course, in the textbooks, who are the Arab Jews, Jews who came from Arab countries and the Ethiopian Jews who were brought in the 90s. Um, and of course, Holocaust education, Holocaust education is, is the key [02:25:00] factor to understand a lot of things about Israeli education and Israeli behavior also.

It is the main factor of Israeli identity, both personal and national. More than Zionism, more than Judaism, more than anything, it's a holocaust. Israel is presented to the children as an alternative to holocaust. And the potential exterminators today are Ever since, you know, we befriended Germany at 53, 1953, the Arabs received the role of potential exterminators.

So all the feelings and actions of revenge go to them. The idea is that since we are the eternal victims, we have to be very strong and domineering in the area in order to prevent another holocaust. And that's the main, uh, the [02:26:00] main foundation of, uh, the Holocaust.

Anti-Zionism Sweeping Across Jewish Communities Part 2 - The Majority Report - Air Date 9-12-24

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: But, um, personally, you had your section on your conversation with your sisters was something that I really loved. Like I have a sister and I really resonated with how you talked about how you guys would argue and, uh, lacking, uh, Uh, models of conflict resolution when growing up, uh, like my parents are lawyers, so, uh, we were taught to argue a lot, uh, that's why I'm in this job, maybe a little bit, um, but not the conflict resolution part, and we've gotten better, but like some of your suggestions about these kind of inter familiar, familial Dynamics are really key here too because we always get I am from viewers about my my brothers in the QAnon rabbit hole My dad is a trump supporting The whatever and how do I approach them about this?

I think this the the the conversation that you transcribe between you [02:27:00] and your sisters is About repair in those relationships if you could talk a bit about that. Yeah

ADRIENNE MAREE BROWN: Yeah, well, you know, I I do appreciate it's all connected to me, right that i'm like You Even when I look at Israel Palestine, I'm like, y'all are all brothers and sisters.

We're all brothers and sisters. Like, in all these places where conflict is happening, we're actually all family. We're all related. We're all coming from the same root systems. All of us are, but none of us learn conflict resolution. Almost none of us learn it at a young age. And that plays out. at the small scale, at the, you know, local scale, at the federal scale, and at the international scale.

Like, I think it's the same thing happening in, at every level. So for me, I'm like, okay, let's bring it back down to the most accessible place for many of us, which is every year I'm going to see my family, at least once. How do I shape those conversations? And this idea of repair, of being proactive about it, is, you know, Recognizing most of the time that the conflicts that are happening, it's, it looks like it's about something that's [02:28:00] happening between us, but so often it's actually about stuff that's happening within our own lives and things that are not being seen, right?

Those, that cousin who's like slipping off into a cult, something was not being seen usually in that person. There was a way that that person was not being heard. They were moving into a crisis of isolation. of individualism, of not feeling honored, of not feeling smart enough, not being recognized in dating or whatever it is.

Something's happening where that person's being lost in the social, um, fabric. They're slipping through. And as siblings, as loved ones, as family, we're in a unique position to be like, Hey, I see you. I see that something's going on. Can we talk about it? Can you tell me what's happening? When we started doing these check ins, like we have political differences.

They're not that, that kind of, um, you know, it's not like that kind of golf, right? Yeah. It's not like a huge chasm. I'm like, Hey girl, you know, but, but we were coming together and being like, [02:29:00] we're exploding over how the dishwasher got loaded or something. And then having to, Cry it all out and be like, well, what was really happening is I'm super stressed at my job or My money's not right or I just went through a breakup or something's happening with my health or I'm in a grieving process And I need you to know that so that you can be tender with me That's the thing that almost everyone wants is someone People to look at them be like I can be tender with you.

I can still see the child in you I can see the person that I love in you and I can give you room for your humanity and your contradictions And your need for repair, whatever that might be, um, I can learn to give you a good apology. And then I can learn, you know, the good, the best apology is the one where it includes how you're not going to do something again and you don't do it.

So it's like really learning to make those adaptations as well. Um, I think that if more people are able to practice this at the intimate level, and I also want to say, like, if your family doesn't feel like a safe space to practice this [02:30:00] chosen family or other, your friendship circles. There's tons of places where you can actually practice this.

The idea is to just be very intentional. Like, we're going to be together. How are we? Let's start off with, how are we actually coming into this? And then let's be.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from Democracy Now!, The Daily Show, The Muckrake Political Podcast, The Real News Network, The Majority Report, What Roman Mars Can Learn About Con Law, and The Book Cafe Podcast. Further details are in the show notes.

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 Quartet—Ken, [02:31:00] Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 the 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

#1658 Pileup on the Information Superhighway: Information Dispensation in the Age of Deep Doubt (Transcript)

Posted by · September 27, 2024 7:35 AM

Air Date 9/27/2024

[00:00:00]

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

Let's just say that it's not a coincidence that right wing authoritarians are on the rise at the same time as people around the world are having a harder time than ever figuring out what's true. That said, society is beginning to fight back.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 45 minutes today includes The New Abnormal, The Commonwealth Club World Affairs, Wisecrack, Zoe B., Tech Tank and On The Media. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in three sections: Section A. Social misinformation; Section B. Live by the algorithm; and Section C. Solutions.

Trump: Project 2025 Will Lay ‘Groundwork’ for Second Term - The New Abnormal - Air Date 9-22-24

JASON PARGIN: I'm someone who is terminally online. I have been since I [00:01:00] first got an AOL connection in 1996, I think, and have had many experiences of refreshing a feed, not of journalists, but of people who are rapidly trying to gather information ahead of the journalists, because the journalists are waiting to actually get sources and confirm things.

So I just did this yesterday, after there was another assassination attempt on the president, like I was refreshing Twitter and watching the bad information flow in and watching good information get discarded. It's something I've been doing now for more than half my life. So ultimately it becomes a story about that, about the movement of information through this bizarre system we've built.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Yeah. And look, there's a lot of stuff in the book is about the internet and about social media. One of the characters in the book, a former FBI agent named Joan Key, says that, or is thinking in the book that a TikTok is possibly the most addictive piece of software ever created.

You, in real [00:02:00] life, are someone who uses that platform a lot, and really well, I should add. Do you share Joan Key's belief in this case?

JASON PARGIN: In a book like this, I tried to include characters that represent every view, and I never wanted to seem like one person is voicing, like they're there to yell at the reader about "You need to get off your phone," because I am a creature of this ecosystem.

I would not have a writing career if the internet had not come along. My first novel was originally posted as a blog. It was one of the first big books that, back in the era when letting bloggers publish books was seen as weird. So I cannot lecture anyone else about being glued to a screen.

But there is no question: the algorithms are not built for truth. They are not built to make you smarter. They are built to keep you doing one thing and one thing only, which is glued to a screen. So, automatically from the jump, no matter who is running it, no matter how honest the company is or how much you like them, [00:03:00] their incentive Is not in your benefit. Their incentive is to keep you glued to a screen where, in a perfect world, if there was a news story and you wanted to find out what had happened and then you find out what happened and so you can say, okay, now my curiosity has been satisfied. I have learned what has happened. I'm going to turn it off and go outside and play with my children in the sun. The algorithms fail if you ever turn it off. So it's more like a casino thing. Obviously the casino's job is not to help you win money. The casino's job is to get you to stay there, glued to a stool, pulling the lever on the slot machine.

So the thing we are using to get us information -- and with TikTok, Gen Z uses TikTok as their Google.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Right.

JASON PARGIN: When they want to find out something, they search on TikTok. This is a habit. TikTok is not built for that. TikTok is built to hypnotize you. And I have more than half a million followers on there. I've been on there for two years now and have [00:04:00] grown a huge following. And I tell myself that I'm trying to be one of the good ones, like I'm trying to spread things that are actually true or things that are interesting and not trying to play up on people's fears or anything like that.

But if you try to do what you feel like is good, honest content, you will find yourself swimming against a current. And it's not that TikTok is specifically more evil than any other company. I don't trust Mark Zuckerberg more than I trust the owners of TikTok. They all have an incentive that runs counter to my interests.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Except for Elon Musk, who is the world's greatest altruist, I think

JASON PARGIN: [Laughs} He just wants us to be better. That's all, his only motivation.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Yeah. So in the book, Abbott, who is the Lyft driver and Ether, the woman who hires him to drive her in the black box, they head out across the country. And because they don't have any cell phones or computers or anything, they're blissfully unaware that they've become the subject of a ton of online scrutiny. Talk about the role of Reddit, both [00:05:00] in the book and in real life. You describe it as where the internet's unfathomable gush of data was gathered, sorted, and shaped into a satisfying narrative.

JASON PARGIN: That's -- it's so interesting to me because I've been around long enough to see the internet evolve from a series of chat rooms to a series of message boards to a series of blogs, and then finally around 2009, 2010, you start to see the social media era. And then when smartphones came along and started to become pervasive around 2012, everything totally changed, like everything had to be geared totally around something that could be easily browsed on a tiny screen.

My whole deal is that I have watched the nature of the flow of information change with each of those. For example, where there used to be a whole galaxy of message boards of niche interests, now it's pretty much just Reddit. The internet has one big message board and it's all divided up by the Subreddits. It's like if you're a fan of, I don't know, [00:06:00] the Philadelphia Eagles, once upon a time, there'd be a bunch of niche fan websites and message boards where you could talk to other fans. Well, now by far the biggest gathering of Eagles fans is going to be the Eagle Subreddit.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Right.

JASON PARGIN: So he has basically a kind of monopoly on that kind of discussion, which is permanently recorded, long form discussion where it's all threaded out and people can reply to each other. But because that now dominates, then Reddit Culture, which is a very distinct type of culture where it's heavily male, it's heavily libertarian, it's heavily atheist, that kind of acts as an umbrella over everything in a way that I don't think anybody fully appreciates, especially if they were born after the internet was pervasive. Because the one advantage I feel like I have is that I was in my twenties before the first time I logged on, because I'm extremely old. I don't think -- it's hard to understand how platforms shape [00:07:00] information and shape misinformation until you've seen the difference between how people used to talk to each other versus how they talk to each other now. And with Reddit, which plays a role in the story, this is where people like Reddit wants you to do this. They want you to follow a live thread on any kind of a breaking story.

And so, for example. Infamously during the Boston Marathon bombings, Reddit sloots all got together and immediately found the guy who did it, who it turned out not only didn't do it, but he wasn't even alive at the time.

ANDY LEVY - HOST, THE NEW ABNORMAL: Right.

JASON PARGIN: And that's the kind of thing where the rush to be first, where we're not going to wait for a journalist to tell us what happened; we are going to ourselves dig through social media. We're going to put clues together. We're going to take this still photo from a security camera and decide, Hey, I've decided I know exactly who this guy is.

The way like voting on comments works, the way certain things rise to the top, the way it governs what becomes visible and what doesn't, [00:08:00] that all winds up pulling the strings on the discussion in a way that is not necessarily visible to you, if this is the only way you've ever known it.

NBC's Jacob Ward: How Technology Shapes Our Thinking and Decisions Part 1 - Commonwealth Club World Affairs (CCWA) - Air Date 1-31-22

JACOB WARD: So around January 6th, for instance, I spent that day monitoring all of the online streaming folks, typically on YouTube, who were streaming from the Capitol. And they're pulling in the live feeds on people's phones, which of course have gotten so many of those people arrested. And at the top of the YouTube screen, if you have a certain number of subscribers, you're allowed to institute what's called a super chat, which allows you to charge money for pinning somebody's comment to the top of the window for a few minutes, and you can set whatever price you want. YouTube of course takes a percentage of that and it's 20 bucks, 50 bucks, whatever, a hundred bucks. And I'm just watching [00:09:00] people bing, bing, bing, they're making a few thousand bucks a minute.

Now...

DJ PATIL - HOST, COMMONWEALTH CLUB: Is that a few thousand bucks a minute live streaming over at the seat of democracy!

JACOB WARD: An insurrection at the Capitol. You cannot make it up. Exactly. You would not believe it if you saw it. So it is, yeah, it's idiocracy, but not funny, right?

And so that profit incentive is a huge driver of this. When I I was covering a lot of the Stop the Steel protest rallies at NBC, I would go see these people there who are streaming live. And it's so interesting because they look to a space alien, they might look like their job is the same as mine. They've got lights, their hair's done, they're doing their makeup, right? And then they go live. But these people are leading the chant. And, when you look at their Instagram feed, or you look at their super chat on YouTube, you can see they're making money in that moment. Now I am also being paid to cover this, but I don't get paid more per comment. You know what I'm saying?

DJ PATIL - HOST, COMMONWEALTH CLUB: You have an industry behind you ideally called [00:10:00] journalistic ethics.

JACOB WARD: Yeah, that's right. And I get fired if I make it up. If I lie, I get fired. So there's some gargoyles around it.

But anyway, lfor me, earning the grift was really powerful. And then there's a very brilliant woman named Nandi Jamini who runs something called Check My Ads. And, she was the co-founder of Sleeping Giants, you're probably familiar with. And she has been doing all of this research about the ways in which online advertising funds all of these very scary publishers of all kinds of scary stuff. And, she turned me on to the research that really set her on her path, which showed that there are all kinds of blacklist services that will spike certain published articles against -- basically make it such that advertisers who don't want to be publishing or advertising next to sensitive topics, won't be published next to certain news articles. And she discovered that in fact, with the research actually discovered, that it is people covering [00:11:00] really important stuff that are being blacklisted off of these lists, such that some Pulitzer Prize-winning brilliant people at the New York Times, for instance, no online advertising was appearing next to their work. So it's actually costing the New York Times money to run that kind of really important journalism.

So for me, when I think about misinformation again, I'm thinking, Okay, there is a system here, both of pattern, dumb pattern recognition that nobody is equipped to question, and incentive structures that is fueling this stuff.

I also blame, as much as the next person, our tendency to just try and be tribal and crass and get attention. The attention economy is a really important part of this, all that stuff. But there's some specific machinery in there that I think we should be starting to think about how we're going to take a hammer to it.

DJ PATIL - HOST, COMMONWEALTH CLUB: One of the ones I will highlight because this is how much I enjoyed the book here is, and I think it's in chapter two, you talk [00:12:00] about this experiment of what happened when kids are just basically told they're on the green team versus the orange team and what affiliation does as a powerful psychological motivator, and it gets me to one of these big questions that's in here is -- and the way I almost want to describe it is once you -- could you talk about this is addiction of people have too much time on their hands. because technology is freeing them up. They can take drugs, get into the stupor and detached from the world. Same thing happens with gambling. You see a version of that. You see a version of this with people who don't have. alternatives to spend their time on work or other things, getting into these forums where they get radicalized, not just here in the United States, we see it around the world. And it's almost this version of, we're using technology to free ourselves up from time, but then, when time comes together, your free time plus despair, the note I wrote is "free [00:13:00] time plus despair equals opportunity to take advantage of people, and technology accelerates it."

I'd love for your reaction to that.

JACOB WARD: Yeah. I'm very interested about what you say. I'm not sure that I blame free time as much as I blame despair in the equation that you have there. And I also think that social isolation is a huge part of that as well.

So one of the common threads there in the book, there's a 14-year-old kid who lost his mom, and was deeply isolated in Florida, who wound up going down this rabbit hole, of quote unquote, "race realism," and all of this stuff, and wound up adhering to all kinds of white supremacist ideology.

And he turned out to be Muslim. That's right. He was a, his parents were Bosnian Muslims who escaped genocide. And he nonetheless wound up down this rabbit hole and became somebody who believes in white supremacy. That kid couldn't have been sadder or lonelier than he was. He was deeply looking for connection and was not able to find it.

Another [00:14:00] character who fell prey to online casino simulators, also, a deeply lonely and sad person. And here's the thing, what I'm starting to understand is that there are marketing mechanisms out there that find people who exhibit those conditions. I don't know about you, but a lot of my pandemic -- as soon as I turned in the book, I went hard at TikTok for a while and would doom scroll my way through hours of it, until -- and here's what happens when you get to a certain point in TikTok -- until a video comes up that says you've been scrolling really fast; you should slow down. There's a little warning that says you've been going too fast, slow down. And then eventually it'll say, you've been looking at videos for quite a while. You want to take a break?

Meanwhile, every ad I get is for ADHD medication. And I'm sure anyone out there listening to this who's been on TikTok recently has gotten these ads as well. Huge amounts of ADHD medication.

Now, maybe everybody's getting that. Maybe that's just a blanket kind of advertising campaign. I don't think so. [00:15:00] I think that inside that company, there is a pattern recognition system that says this guy is exhibiting the classic signs of X, Y, and Z; serve him an ADHD ad. It is not just the affinities that we have and the hobbies we exhibit and what we post about. It is the way we behave that is showing our inner state. And I think that we are being analyzed in that way. That is the loop. That's what's starting to grab us. And as they get better at noticing that I'm ADHD, I'm not actually a diagnosed ADHD, people. And there's a whole problem with advertising ADHD to people who have not been clinically diagnosed.

But putting all that aside, the qualities they have spotted in me, and are feeding me information as a result, basically the way TikTok is for me, it's like doing drugs. I do it for a couple of months, and then I have to erase it off my phone, because I cannot control myself with that app.

And so, yeah, there's an inner state being analyzed here, that I think is a huge part of this. And, maybe it is extra time on our hands, but I don't know about you, like half [00:16:00] of Americans can't put together an extra $400 in an emergency right now.

I don't think time is our problem.

Streaming is Changing Politics...Is That A Good Thing? - Wisecrack - Air Date 9-20-24

MICHAEL BURNS - HOST, WISECRACK: It's clear that authenticity is critical to the success of political streaming, but of course, it's not just about being cool and relatable, because some of these guys aren't cool or relatable. They're kind of weird and unrelatable.

It's that the very structure of the medium creates moments of truthfulness in both the streamer and their audience that are almost impossible to achieve in other forms of digital media.

Now we can better understand this via the work of French philosopher Henri Bergson and his concept of pure duration.

Now, for Bergson, duration is a way of thinking about time or a type of time which operates in distinction from clock time. It's not mathematical or mechanical. Like I have a little watch right now, and the second thing it's going 50, 51, 52, 53, right? [00:17:00] Sequential, linear, mathematical, things of that nature.

But duration is more to do with our experience of time. Imagine what it feels like to wait for 45 minutes in the waiting room of your dentist. Feels like an eternity. Now imagine what it feels like to spend 45 minutes catching up with your best friend that you haven't seen in a while. Probably flies by before you know it, they're on their way, and you wish that you could hang out for longer. Same amount of, linear time, but we experience it way differently.

And we see this at play in the unique temporal experience of watching a live stream. Now, unlike watching a cable news show, which is broken up into distinct segments and commercial breaks equaling precisely one hour, streams can often go on for hours without any segment breaks or time constraints.

To be clear, some streamers do have sponsors -- take a little break to talk about that -- but it's not quite the same as cutting away to, I don't know, some commercial about mesothelioma.

AD CLIP: How will this affect my loved ones?

MICHAEL BURNS - HOST, WISECRACK: But all of this creates a sense of flow that [00:18:00] affects both the streamer and the audience. And in doing so it can collapse the way that we think about and experience time.

Now think about it this way: okay, you're pretty unlikely to get home from work and just say, now I'm going to sit in front of a screen for five hours, watching a guy talk about politics, play some games, hey, maybe do some research. Instead, you probably just tune into your favorite streamer, and before you know it, you're caught up in the discussion, you're jumping in the chat, you're participating in an active way, and, then five hours have passed, and holy crap, you have to be up for work soon.

Now, for Bergson, this disillusion of clock time creates the space for "pure duration," where we're purely in the moment, fully experiencing our own internal lives.

Now, Bergson unfortunately died way before you could watch Hbomberguy stream Donkey Kong 64 for 57 hours straight, but, he may be considerate in terms of music.

CLIP: Chunky Kong is my favorite.

MICHAEL BURNS - HOST, WISECRACK: Now, music does follow a specific temporal structure, right? It [00:19:00] conforms to a certain clock time. Maybe a song is in 4/4 at 110 beats per minute. But when you're caught up in a song that you love, your experience is one of pure duration. You're not thinking about measures and time signatures. You're just fully in it. This is why Deadheads can vibe out to a song for 45 minutes and then want more as soon as it ends. Cause when that music never stops, you feel free from everything else.

This feeling of temporal freedom is the exception to the rule of our normal lives. Which, let's be honest, are mostly governed by clock time, and more specifically, work time or work clock time.

Now, as Bergson writes, "We spend the majority of our lives outside ourselves, hardly perceiving anything of ourselves but our own ghost." He goes on to write that "we live for the external world rather than for ourselves. We speak rather than we think. We are acted rather than act ourselves." This means that our identities and our internal states of consciousness are shaped by rigid clock time. It's maybe I'm this [00:20:00] person when I'm at home; when I'm this person when I'm at work.

But considered from a perspective of duration, I'm all of these things at once. And my identity and consciousness are constantly unfolding.

And streamers are able to tap into this, creating an experience of duration in which different elements of their consciousness or perspective emerge over time. Think about the stream marathons of someone like Ludwig, where dramatic variations in his behavior can create a palpable sense of authenticity.

Sometimes even a streamer's mistakes or lapses in judgment or random asides make them feel most real to us.

CLIP: Hawk Tua on that phobia.

MICHAEL BURNS - HOST, WISECRACK: Take this time that Assam Piker, seemingly forgetting that he was streaming, got a little bit distracted.

But the sort of realness that emerges via duration doesn't just lead to personal details or accidental bro behavior. It also creates a particular experience for us, the audience, one in which I am actively listening and engaging and experiencing myself thinking in real time.

When this is happening, it can [00:21:00] feel like my identity is unfolding in dialogue with both the streamer I'm watching and the community that I'm engaging with. This can all create the conditions for the political streamer to truly guide the audience when dealing with tricky or contentious issues and policies. And when they do this, they might help the audience see past rhetorical traps and empty platitudes, ideally creating the feeling that you're learning alongside your favorite streamer.

And the authenticity of the medium, mixed with the freedom of duration, can then lower our guards. And that makes us maybe more likely to reconsider our opinions, or remain open to ideas we don't immediately agree with.

That might sound like I'm being too gracious, but I've seen this a little bit on our tiny little YouTube streams where people in the chat kind of open their minds, debate with each other, change their minds on stuff. It's a very beautiful thing to see. Other times they just say This channel fell off. Why is he here?

Now, we can see some of this in Piker's analysis of a debate between Ben Shapiro and Malcolm Nance, in which, the audience gets all the [00:22:00] benefits of having a political commentator who can translate, add context, and fact check in real time. This enhances the audience's understanding and equips them to critically engage for themselves.

And it's not just the political streamers are able to offer us more honest and authentic analysis than traditional news media. They also have a pretty dialectical relationship with their audiences, participating in an open back and forth that can shift the conversation or lead to digressions and insights that a streamer maybe wouldn't arrive at on their own.

The duration of these streams and the communities they engender really do open up new types of interaction between host and audience. One where, unlike most experiences of our media consumption, you feel like being in the audience actually matters. We see this in an instance like Piker responding to his audience when they had concerns about the rise of anti woke rhetoric.

The unique temporal nature of political streaming might then be one of the reasons that it creates such impassioned communities, which is all well and good. But if you're like me, you [00:23:00] might still be a little skeptical of the actual political efficacy of any of this. Because sure, political streamers draw audiences as large as traditional news outlets, but are they as politically influential? Now, this question feels especially relevant when we know that networks like Fox News and CNN or podcasts like Pod Save America have exhibited the power to influence voters.

Here's the thing that makes streaming so interesting on a theoretical level, that the temporality that comes through an experience of duration might actually be the problem. By keeping folks locked into a consumptive trance, it's arguably doing the opposite of facilitating offline political activism.

Which raises the question, are we too busy watching political streams to actually participate in politics?

YouTube and the Death of Media Literacy - Zoe Bee - Air Date 9-2-24

ZOE BEE - HOST, ZOE BEE: For a lot of people with poor media literacy, numbers are a really easy metric for understanding media. Why would you worry about actually analyzing a film to understand its strengths [00:24:00] and weaknesses when you could just look at its Rotten Tomatoes score instead?

And on the industry side, making art objective and quantifiable makes it easier to figure out the most efficient method of dispensing that art, as we've seen with the rise of binge watching thanks to streaming services. And we're not just seeing this with movies, either. There's been a recent rise in book summary apps, and I find that absolutely fascinating.

Now, obviously, things like CliffsNotes have been around forever, but now we have ShortForm, Blinkist, and Magibook, which aren't helpful guides to books. They're literally just summaries of books. And something that all of these services emphasize is how easy they're making things. They take confusing ideas and explain them in plain and simple ways. Never get confused by a complicated book again. I don't know if you've seen these ads for Magibook, but they are wild. There's a couple of videos that I've seen from folks breaking down [00:25:00] exactly what they do and how terrible it is, so I won't get too much into it here, but suffice it to say, Making something simpler doesn't necessarily make it better.

But if you see books not as art that's made with intention, but instead as a quantifiable and infinitely reducible data point, of which you need to sell as many units as possible, then of course it makes sense to reduce it down until it's as easy as possible to consume. But this focus on ease of use is also a big factor in another media literacy issue: the spread of misinformation online.

Part of this is because, as Mike Caulfield puts it, the primary use of misinformation is not to change the beliefs of other people at all. Instead, the vast majority of misinformation is offered as a service for people to maintain their beliefs in face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In other words, it's confirmation bias.

Social [00:26:00] media actually thrives on confirmation bias. Because while changing your beliefs is hard, maintaining them, having them catered to, being told what you want to hear, is easy. And like I've said over and over again, brains like easy. So, social media companies aren't incentivized to combat these algorithms, and instead just focus on giving users what they want.

And that's to say nothing of how much YouTube and Facebook actually directly profit off of grifters. But just because these systems aren't incentivized to change, doesn't mean that we're stuck like this. Now, unfortunately, a lot of solutions for these big picture problems are unsatisfying. Like I mentioned earlier, most articles and organizations focus on education as a panacea to media literacy issues, and I think that's just a lazy answer.

One of the books I read for this video is a non-fiction graphic novel, A Firehose of Falsehood: the Story of Disinformation. And I think that it can be a [00:27:00] really valuable resource, like it has some really interesting stuff on the history of propaganda, but this whole book talks about the firehose, the big institutional forces that overload us with information.

And its solution to that issue? Wear a raincoat. So, first of all, that metaphor really falls apart, because the danger of a fire hose isn't the water. It's the pressure. Sure, wearing a raincoat will probably keep your clothes from getting wet, but it's still gonna hurt. And second of all, like I said earlier, I'm skeptical of any solution that comes down to just teach more media literacy in school.

When you have such powerful forces bombarding you with information and misinformation and disinformation, it doesn't really seem fair to put the responsibility entirely on the individual. Rather than trying to protect yourself from [00:28:00] the firehose, doesn't it make more sense to just turn the hose off?

Now, to be fair to this book, the authors do offer other suggestions for how to protect societies from the proverbial firehose of falsehood. They bring up regulations on businesses, especially social media, as well as safeguarding free press and repairing the public sphere. And these are solutions that have been echoed by other media literacy scholars like Dana Boyd and her article, "Did Media Literacy Backfire?"

Now, I don't love every single thing she says in this article, but there are some gems that I think are really helpful for understanding the scope of our society-wide media literacy struggle. She argues that media literacy programs and solutions that focus on expert fact checking and labeling are likely to fail. Not because they are bad ideas, but because they fail to take into consideration the cultural context of information consumption that we've created over the last 30 years. Addressing so called fake news [00:29:00] is going to require a lot more than labeling. It's going to require a cultural change about how we make sense of information, whom we trust, and how we understand our own role in grappling with information.

In other words, we've built this huge, tangled, attention economy web and there's so much baggage associated with it, like all the algorithm stuff I brought up at the beginning of this section, that surface level issues like labeling misinformation aren't ever going to be enough. What we need to do is untangle the web.

The question of how we untangle the web is complicated. Some people, like Ben and Elliot, argue that we need big picture, radical, societal change.

ELLIOT: For one to just start radically changing systems of education, systems of media, just sort of radically undermine capital. You know, the more that you undermine capital and put power into the hands [00:30:00] of workers and in the hands of non-proletarian, working class people, in the hands of people who are underprivileged, in the hands of people who are disabled—the more that you do that, the less you'll feel there's a problem with media literacy.

ZOE BEE - HOST, ZOE BEE: But until the revolution happens, Dana Boyd suggests in her article that we instead get creative and build the social infrastructure necessary for people to meaningfully and substantively engage across existing structural lines.

This won't be easy or quick, but if we want to address issues like propaganda, hate speech, fake news, and biased content, we need to focus on the underlying issues at play. No simple band aid will work. Part of the problem with this, though, is that there's been an erosion of trust in a lot of the institutions that make up this social infrastructure.

For instance, people are becoming more skeptical of higher education, but especially of the humanities. [00:31:00] And the humanities are the home of media literacy studies.

BEN: Actual humanities education of, like, thinking and reading and writing is on the decline on the average in our society because we don't, like, assign a value to it, really.

LILY ALEXANDRE: I would situate this in the context of a growing resentment for, like, humanities and liberal arts in general. You know, I get the feeling that people don't understand, or can't quantify the benefit that those disciplines give. And, like, universities all over the world are slashing humanities funding to make room for more, like, STEM funding.

ZOE BEE - HOST, ZOE BEE: I'm not saying that these solutions are doomed to fail. I actually have a lot of hope for these kinds of things. I'm fatally optimistic about this kind of stuff. But, like Boyd said, this won't be easy or quick.

A Citizen’s Guide to Disinformation - TechTank - Air Date 9-3-24

NICOL TURNER LEE - HOST, TECHTANK: We used to have decades where we were attacking disinformation based on these [00:32:00] falsehoods that, you know, essentially persuaded the collective conscience. It sounds to what Daryl's talking about in the area of climate and what we previously talked about in elections, they're also becoming like these advertising commercials. Is that right, Elaine? For people like to pick up on in the book?

ELAINE KAMARCK: Well, you know, the advertising example is an interesting one because we are fairly sophisticated consumers these days of advertising, and we are not sophisticated consumers of stuff that looks like news. And so one of the ways disinformation spreads is people make up fake newspapers.

You know, they'll just make up the name of the, you know, the "Santa Fe Evening Sun", right? And it turns out that newspaper doesn't exist, but they'll send along an article from a newspaper that doesn't exist, and people will say, Oh, that's from a newspaper, and they assume [00:33:00] that this news, this fake newspaper has all the fact checking and editorial oversight that a normal newspaper has, and it doesn't.

So, that's where we're really getting confused out there, and where the citizen is getting confused. And one of the things we urge the citizen to do is, look, if this doesn't make sense to you, it probably is something you should look into, okay? Don't take this stuff at face value and don't pass it on to your 400 friends until you think it's really true. And that sort of thing is, I think, a public service that we're trying to do in this book.

NICOL TURNER LEE - HOST, TECHTANK: Yeah, that's the part that I really found to be interesting, right? Because across those verticals that I mentioned that you discussed, you're essentially trying to embolden citizens back to action, back to agency over these issues.

You know, one other area I do want to dive into before we pass on what those tools [00:34:00] are for citizens, you've got a fantastic chapter on disinformation and race relations, which I found to be interesting because I think we still have, you know, a lot of memories of the 2016 election and the use of foreign operatives to sort of play off of our history and use that to the advantage of spreading more disinformation and essentially disenfranchising voters.

Why was it important, Darrell, to put that in this book? Right? Because I think, in and of itself, it's one of those areas where people will probably say, yes, there's disinformation, but this is a long history of a whole lot of other stuff. I just, I found it fascinating the way you talked about it in the book.

DARRELL WEST: I mean, disinformation is at the heart of race relations and, in fact, racism itself. Historically, there's the myth of African American inferiority. There were prominent Harvard professors who spread this and disseminated that viewpoint. In more recent times, we see [00:35:00] a overlap between race and crime and the idea that blacks commit more crimes than whites and then therefore that became a vehicle to toughen the sentencing patterns and we ended up in a situation where, you know, it seems like three quarters of the people in prison now are racial minorities. So, there is a long history of disinformation that links up with racism. So, we just wanted to point that out.

We also have seen foreign governments and foreign agents play on the racial divisions in America. Like, whenever anything happens, basically these other countries see it as an opportunity to further divide Americans from one another. And so they will spread false rumors. You know, we just saw this in England, where there was violence that was committed and people blamed it on immigrants. And then there was a wave of anti-immigrant violence that took place. So, even in the contemporary period we're seeing a close tie [00:36:00] between disinformation, race relations, and ethnic conflict.

ELAINE KAMARCK: And one of the things that social science has shown for many years now is that communities that have a high number of immigrants in them actually have less crime, not more crime, than the general public.

And of course there's a reason for that if you think about it. Common sense. And we, by the way, keep coming back to common sense in this book. If you're an illegal immigrant in the United States, you are going to pay every parking ticket. You are going to be careful to walk in the darn crosswalk. I mean, you are not going to run the risk of putting yourself in the midst of the legal system, which could end up having you deported. So, ironically, the very fact of being an undocumented person in the United States makes you less likely, not more likely, to commit a crime. And [00:37:00] yet, given the information out there and the disinformation out there, you would think that immigrants here are coming here to rape and murder.

NICOL TURNER LEE - HOST, TECHTANK: That brings me to a question, too. I mean, we just came off the heels of the Democratic National Convention, where I think there was this play on maybe unraveling some of the disinformation that is out here on some of those issues as well, Elaine and Darrell. My question for the two of you is, as we're thinking about your book, and particularly this time, are we going to catch this disinformation trend in time or, Elaine, is it going to be in the next three to four weeks that it's going to ramp up? I mean, I think we're seeing those tropes play out in such significant ways that your book is so timely on this, right? So I'm just curious, coming off of the heels of this, is this something that, you know, citizens have to be aware of?

ELAINE KAMARCK: Boy, I think it is. And the question really goes to campaigns. You know, there's a lot of discussion in your world and [00:38:00] Darrell's world about the sort of legal aspects to fighting disinformation. But the fact of the matter is, in a fast moving environment, the law is just too slow. Okay? In a fast moving environment, the responsibility for fighting disinformation rests with the opposite campaign. And campaigns are going to have to spend a great deal of resources on literally just the constant monitoring of the internet, of the huge, huge internet, and the constant real time fight against disinformation. Because waiting for it to be proven, and waiting for somebody to have a subpoena brought to them, et cetera, you know, that does not work in elections. And so I think the campaigns are going to be spending a lot of time and a lot of money doing it. And we've gone so far as to propose that, in fact, under the federal election law, there'd be an exemption for monitoring disinformation in terms of [00:39:00] spending, just as there's an exemption for accountant and lawyer fees.

DARRELL WEST: I agree with that. I think the problem in an election campaign is this stuff just happens so fast. It gets seen by millions of people sometimes in a matter of hours. And so it's hard for other candidates to respond. It's hard for the media to respond. And then there's the risk that people are going to end up making up their minds based on false narratives. And I think this is particularly worrisome with the undecided vote. Like, 95 percent of Americans have made up their mind in this presidential election. They are not likely to be persuaded by disinformation, but there's a question about that last 5 percent: On what basis are they going to make up their minds? And I think that's the part that I worry about in the coming months.

Enshittification Part 3: Saving The Internet - On the Media - Air Date 5-19-23

CORY DOCTOROW: Well, I've got some good news for you, Brooke, which is that podcasting has thus far been very enshitification-resistant.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: [00:40:00] Really?

CORY DOCTOROW: Yes, it's pretty cool. Podcasting is built on RSS.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I know that. It stands for Really Simple Syndication that lets pretty much anyone upload content to the internet that can be downloaded by anyone else. The creators of RSS were very aware of how platforms could lock in users and build their tech to combat that. In turn, podcasts are extremely hard to centralize.

CORY DOCTOROW: Which isn't to say that people aren't trying.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Like Apple?

CORY DOCTOROW: Oh, my goodness. Do they ever? YouTube. Spotify gave Joe Rogan $100 million to lock his podcast inside their app. The thing about that is that once you control the app that the podcast is in, you can do all kinds of things to the user like you can spy on them. You can stop them from skipping ads.

The BBC for a couple of decades has been caught in this existential fight over whether it's going to remain publicly funded through the license fee or whether it's going to have to become privatized. It does have this private arm that Americans are very familiar [00:41:00] with BBC Worldwide and BBC America, which basically figure out how to extract cash from Americans to help subsidize the business of providing education, information, and entertainment to the British public.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The BBC created a podcast app called BBC Sounds?

CORY DOCTOROW: That's right. One of my favorite BBC shows of all time is The News Quiz.

GAME SHOW HOST: Welcome to The News Quiz. It's been a week in which the culture secretary suggested that BBC needs to look at new sources of funding, so all of this week's panelists will be for sale on eBay after the show.

[laughter]

CORY DOCTOROW: You can listen to it as a podcast on a four-week delay. [chuckles] You can hear comedians making jokes about the news of the week a month ago or you can get it on BBC Sounds. From what I'm told by my contacts at the B, people aren't rushing to listen to BBC Sounds. Instead, they're going, "There is so much podcast material available, more than I could ever listen to. I'll just [00:42:00] find something else," and that's what happened with Spotify too.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Spotify paid big bucks like hundreds of millions of dollars to buy out production houses and big creators like Alex Cooper and Joe Rogan in an attempt to build digital walls around their conquest's popular shows just to see their hard-won audiences say, "Hmm, I'll pass."

CORY DOCTOROW: Now, Spotify is making all those pronouncements, "We are going to, on a select basis, move some podcasts outside for this reason and that." Basically, what's happening is they're just trying to save face as they gradually just put all the podcasts back where they belong on the internet instead of inside their walled garden.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Maybe it's because of the abundance of content or because, like the news business, people are used to getting it for free. Podcasting seems resistant even though no medium is safe from what Doctorow is describing. Enshitification sits at the intersection of some of our country's most powerful players, entrenched capitalist values, [00:43:00] and the consumer's true wants and needs. How do you see our future?

CORY DOCTOROW: I have hope, which is much better than optimism. Hope is the belief that if we materially alter our circumstance even in some small way that we might ascend to a new vantage point from which we can see some new course of action that was not visible to us before we took that last step. I'm a novelist and an activist and I can tell the difference between plotting a novel and running an activist campaign. In a novel, there's a very neat path from A to Z. In the real world, it's messy.

In the real world, you can have this rule of thumb that says, "Wherever you find yourself, see if you can make things better, and then see if, from there, we can stage another climb up the slope towards the world that we want." I got a lot of hope pinned on the Digital Markets Act. I got a lot of hope pinned on Lina Khan and [00:44:00] the Federal Trade Commission's antitrust actions, the Department of Justice antitrust actions, the Digital Markets Act in the European Union, the Chinese Cyberspace Act, the Competition and Markets Authority in the UK stopping Microsoft from doing its rotten acquisition of Activision. I got a lot of hope for people who are fed up to the back teeth with people like Elon Musk and all these other self-described geniuses and telling them all to just go to hell. I got a lot of hope.

Note from the Editor on bad media diets and brain worms

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with The New Abnormal explaining the change algorithmic casinos have brought to the internet. Commonwealth Club World Affairs spoke with NBC reporter Jacob Ward about the differences between fact-based journalism and the wild west of live streamers. Wisecrack dove deeper into the effect of live streamers on politics. Zoe Bee expounded on media literacy. TechTank discussed the impacts of [00:45:00] disinformation that society is not trained to handle. And On The Media explored enshittification and how podcasts have avoided the worst of it. And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section.

But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here at discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. To support our work and have all of those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.Com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes in the show notes to jump around the show, similar to chapter markers. So check that out. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership. Because we don't let a lack of [00:46:00] funds stand in the way of hearing more information.

And one more quick note, we are in search of a new volunteer transcriptionist. If you would like to join the team and help put our transcripts together, please send an email to [email protected]. Thanks.

Now, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half, I have a few random thoughts, slightly more random than usual.

The first is to give credit to a sit-com from about eight years ago. Because I just saw it and they just made a clever joke about giving kids phones and the problem with the internet. It's the show You're the Worst. And there's boy in it, maybe about 13 or so. And in one episode, he needs to be found by an adult. He sort of out in the world. And so an adult finds him and asks, "Hey kid, don't you have a phone?" And the kid says, "Nah. My parents are afraid I'll become a YouTube celebrity if I had a phone." Which I find pretty great on multiple levels. There's the classic subverting the expectation of what the parents would be [00:47:00] concerned about, classic joke form, but then there's the underlying reality that being a YouTube celebrity is actually awful, and parents should be concerned about that. So, congrats on that joke from 2016 I just heard.

My second thought is something that I came up with during a recent bonus show, but I need to share it here so it gets wider traction. I think I have an important contribution to the future of internet literacy. I was describing my theory about how modern internet and phones are a disruptive technology to society, similar to how cars were a hundred years ago. People used to be able to simply walk in the road whenever they wanted, without fear of death, just like we used to be able to go on the internet without fear of an algorithm feeding us conspiracy theories. Right?

Well, when cars came along and started killing people on a regular basis, there [00:48:00] were a few ways that we tried to change culture and laws to protect people from being run over. And at the time -- I am personally familiar with this -- "Jay" was an insult term, meaning basically a sort of dumb bumpkin kind of person. So "jaywalking" wasn't just a misdemeanor; it was actually an insult. So it was a way of using shame to help push people to make better decisions for their own benefit.

So I thought we could do the same for modern internet and all of the ways it's trying to feed us disinformation. People need to be pushed to be more discerning in what they believe about what they see online.

So I figured that JFK Jr is a good modern example, having recently admitted to getting sucked in by online misinformation and not being able to recognize AI images and the like on a regular basis -- that he could be a good point of reference. So when someone believes something [00:49:00] false that they saw online, you should ask them, "When do you get your brain worm? You believe stuff you saw online without checking the source? I didn't know you also had a brain worm." And by insulting people, we can steer them to make better decisions. That's my idea.

And the last thing I have to add is the phrase, "deep doubt." I came across this while prepping for this episode in an article. And I think it describes well the informational predicament we find ourselves in. I'll link to the article from Wired, "Welcome to the era of deep doubt." It goes into more detail and the history on the subject.

But to cut to the Suggestions portion and then to add my own bit to it: Getting trustworthy information basically it comes down to this: number one, try to seek out reliable sources. It's sort of obvious, but you got to remind people, right?

But, number two is also really important, because no single source is [00:50:00] right all the time. So after trying to find reliable sources, number two, seek out multiple sources. Only by hearing from multiple perspectives can we ever really hope to get a well-rounded, contextualized perspective on anything.

And then number three, this is my own addition: It is well overdue time to Make RSS Great Again. If you're not familiar with RSS, don't worry. It stands for Really Simple Syndication. And you are actually using it right now, in all likelihood. So it's not scary. Podcasts run on RSS. Blogs, which have fallen a bit out of fashion recently, also run on RSS. And you can get just about any source of media through an RSS reader instead of an algorithmic feed. Instead of saying, I like this, I want to be shown more of it in my [00:51:00] feed, you can just subscribe to a source in an RSS reader. And then get every article, every video, every piece of information that source sends out, and you know exactly what you're getting. No guessing, no casino involved.

Personally, I subscribe to dozens of sources that I consider to be reputable, and they span the spectrum from perspective and temperament. And, even some that get more radical opinions or more conservative opinions, just to round out my perspective. I read each source, understanding their context. And by reading multiple sources, talking about the same issue from different perspectives, I get a greater context, and a more three-dimensional view.

Now look, don't get me wrong. My style isn't what I recommend for everyone. It's my job to read this much, and it's not healthy. So don't take it as a suggestion. But the basic idea of curating your [00:52:00] own set of trusted sources, making sure to throw in some more light and funny stuff for entertainment, is easily superior to the algorithmic alternative.

And look, it's not that I don't see the appeal of the algorithms. They're a slot machine, after all. For you, feeds are made to be fun, so fun that they're addictive. But to me, they're like going to a restaurant that serves really good food, but 10% of the time you order, your food will be just a little poisoned. We're not talking about a lethal dose, but you're going to get ill clearing your system, one way or the other. And maybe it's only one out of a hundred, maybe even it's only one out of a thousand times. But one of those meals you get from this great restaurant with all the fun stuff, it's going to give you a brain worm. And you're going to be in for a world of hurt. So, that's the risk you're taking. To me, no thanks. Not worth it.

SECTION A: SOCIAL MISINFORMATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper in our quest for truth [00:53:00] in three topics. Next up, Section A: Social misinformation. Followed by Section B: Live by the algorithm, and Section C: Solutions.

Charges against Telegram CEO sparks debate over balance of free speech and responsibility - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 8-29-24

STEPHANIE SY: French authorities have charged Telegram founder Pavel Durov with several offenses related to his messaging app. The charges include complicity in the distribution of child abuse images, drug trafficking and failure to comply with law enforcement requests.

Durov, who operates Telegram from Dubai, was apprehended over the weekend and was ordered to pay five million euros for bail. The arrest of the Russian-born tech billionaire has sparked a free speech rallying cry in some circles and has raised questions about how other social media executives may be held accountable for their platforms.

Joining me to discuss the implications of this arrest is Pranshu Verma, technology reporter for The Washington Post.

Pranshu, thank you so much [00:54:00] for joining the "News Hour."

Before we get into the ramifications of this arrest, tell us why Telegram is in law enforcement's bullseye and what brought about this unprecedented arrest of the company's founder?

PRANSHU VERMA: So Telegram is a wildly popular messaging app, mostly in places like Russia, the Middle East, and South Asia.

About 950 million people use it. And it's a way to send private chats or public broadcasting messages to large — hundreds of thousands of people. And it's also a way to send individual kind of encrypted chats as well. So it melds two types of messaging into one app.

And now this kind of app is pretty good in some ways, for example, if you're a dissident and you want to organize a protest against an authoritarian government. But it's also become an app where some of the worst activity online kind of has become a haven for it, such as the sharing of child sexual abuse imagery.[00:55:00]

And so that's kind of what's made Telegram into the bullseyes of the French authorities now, is that they are basically saying that the owner of Telegram, Pavel Durov, is complicit in making Telegram spread child sex abuse imagery, kind of spread organized crime, and also not complying with law enforcement when law enforcement wants user data about criminal activity.

And so, as you saw this weekend, this all culminated into a head when Pavel Durov landed in France outside of a Paris airport and was arrested and has now been issued charges around these types of activities.

But the other platforms, as you know, including platforms like Facebook and Instagram, have also been accused of having nefarious activities, including sexual abuse imagery of children, extremism, scammers.

How is this different? How does Durov differ from his peers when it comes to that? Do the other platforms, for example, cooperate much more with governments and law enforcement?[00:56:00]

There's no doubt that platforms like Meta and Twitter do host similar types of content.

But what Telegram is very specifically known for, it actually boasts about is its reluctance and often complete noncompliance with law enforcement in sharing user data. So even if a law enforcement official comes to Telegram, it is their policy as they boast about even on their own site to not share zero bytes of data with government to date.

And that's what makes it really different from all the other tech companies is that kind of strong noncompliance.

STEPHANIE SY: Elon Musk and other tech giants have posted their support of Mr. Pavel on X. Musk did. And a lot of people are asking what his arrest means for the heads of other similar platforms.

Should folks like Mark Zuckerberg, for example, be concerned about facing similar accusations? And could you see him being arrested if he travels to Europe? [00:57:00] And do you see these charges being levied against a tech executive in the United States?

PRANSHU VERMA: Yes, this is the big question here. It's opened up a can of worms.

Are the people who own the tech companies liable for the content that is on their platforms? Now, in the United States, there's a rule in law that shields companies from being held liable for the content that they have put on their sites.

But in Europe, there is a little bit more of a strength around holding tech companies accountable. And you have seen now, in this case, kind of the most muscular act to date of a government official — of a government holding a private official of a company to account. And it is unlikely that we would see it in the United States where somebody like a Mark Zuckerberg or Elon Musk is detained for what is on Facebook or on Twitter.

But now the question becomes, what happens if that activity happens in Europe or elsewhere, and will governments kind of respond in kind? And we don't know the answer yet.

Beyond the Grifterverse - Pillar of Garbage - Air Date 9-13-24

PILLAR OF GARBAGE - HOST, PILLAR OF GARBAGE: [00:58:00] Let's start by taking a look at the DOJ indictment. The document opens with some relevant context, which is probably worth including here. I quote, After Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, RT was sanctioned, dropped by distributors and ultimately forced to cease formal operations in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and the European Union.

In response, RT created, in the words of its editor in chief, an entire empire of covert projects, designed to shape public opinion in Western audiences. As we'll go on to see, that shaping of public opinion is sometimes specific and targeted, but Arty's broad goals in the West are perhaps best summed up by the words of an Arty journalist to an academic researcher the indictment quotes a few pages later.

I asked my editor what is Arty's line for this, but And he said, anything that causes chaos is RT's line. That context aside, the body of this [00:59:00] indictment is the story of one of those covert projects. A Tennessee based online content creation company, it refers to as US Company One, but which we can identify by matching up some website copy the document provides later.

Media. At the end of 2022, following a period of direct work for RT, Tenet's two founders were approached to work with a fictitious Paris based investor by the name of Edouard Gregorian, a figure whose name was repeatedly misspelled by his would be representatives and whose name Google search returns no results for.

Hold on to that fact for later, by the way. It's clear from private communications, though, that the company's two founders knew Gregorian wasn't the real deal. Between themselves, they referred to their backers as, quote, the Russians, the same term they'd used in prior correspondence to refer to RT.

There's also the fact that one founder, while awaiting a response for an invoice sent to the ostensibly Paris based Gregorian, Google searched time in [01:00:00] Moscow. Despite this, Tenet never disclosed to its viewers that the content was sponsored by RT, and Tenet's founders never registered with the Attorney General as agents of a foreign principal, which is, you know, illegal.

But who are those founders? Well, since US Company One is we can fairly easily find out that Founder 1 and Founder 2 are Lauren Chen, the Turning Point USA, PragerU and BlazeTV affiliate we've discussed previously on this channel, and her husband, Liam Donovan. And while it's not straightforwardly apparent who everyone mentioned in the document is, It is clear that the collaborators Chen and Donovan eventually hired and paid with that Russian money included Tim Pool, Lauren Southern, her Blaze TV co star Dave Rubin, and her old Turning Point buddy Benny Johnson, among others.

The indictment reveals that Chen was making tens of thousands of dollars per month coordinating Tenet, and that some of these contributors were getting paid hundreds of thousands of dollars per [01:01:00] video. All in all, the indictment states nearly 10 million dollars trickled from the Russian state into RT, through shell corporations, and into the hands of Tenet and their contributors.

Tenet's YouTube channel officially launched in the autumn of 2023, and in the year since has amassed over 300, 000 subscribers and over 16 million views. I would be showing you footage of all this by the way, but the channel's been deleted by the time I'm editing this. Over that period, the influence RT held over Tenet's output reportedly grew more direct.

The initial contacts who would set up the deal with Chen and Donovan, who by the way all shared an IP address, as did the so called Gregorian, suggesting that all these personas were in fact or Handless, directed Tenet to work with Kalashnikov and Afanasyeva, the RT employees being charged, under the guise of hiring them as an editing firm.

But before long, the pair were corresponding with commentators directly, and by June 2024, had even started [01:02:00] posting their own content directly to Tenet's sites. Allegedly, they also successfully persuaded Chen to have commentators cover directly supplied talking points. And all this was ticking along nicely, at time of writing, their last published video was released just yesterday, until that indictment was released, and Tenet's viewers, Tenet's collaborators, the internet at large, and the mainstream media discovered the business was funded by the Russian state.

We'll get into the fallout and what this all means shortly, but just before we do, it's probably worth addressing the elephant inside the elephant inside the elephant in the room.

Russia bad? The less politically engaged among you might wonder why the Russian connection here even matters. Why is this being treated as a smoking gun? Some of the more politically engaged among you might wonder why I'm going with the Russia bad framing here. Isn't that just some jingoistic cold war relic?

Aren't we past that? If [01:03:00] America bad, wouldn't that make Russia good? Well, in a nutshell, no. The flaws a lot of folks, particularly on the left, find in the US and the West, warmongering, imperialism, corruption, worker exploitation, inequality, restrictions on civil liberties, all that, are just as present, if not far more so, in Putin's Russia.

You guys, it's still colonialism even if they didn't use boats. Anyway, what you need to know here, and I'm obviously simplifying things, is pretty much that the jabronis in charge of today's Russia have a bit of a nostalgia fixation, and think it'd just be swell if things went back to the good old days.

Not to the USSR and whichever genuine leftist sentiments may or may not have kicked off that period of history, but to Russia's imperial period. The only problem there is all the Eastern European, Caucasian, and Central Asian countries and citizens that kind of like not being under the Russian yoke, some of whom have made allies in the West for precisely that reason.

[01:04:00] Naturally then, the weaker the US, NATO, and the EU are, the more feasible Russia's clawing back of influence or land becomes, the more successful the jabronis themselves look, and the less likely it is they end up falling out the window. Remotely weakening foreign countries without launching any missiles is pretty tough though, or it was before we decided to collectively hook ourselves up to the brain rot matrix that is social media, and before the people developing that matrix figured out that throwing in a bunch of black box recommendations algorithms would make them more money by dialing up the brain rots.

Or in more scientific terms, there's a functional misalignment between human psychology, which evolved to learn and adopt beliefs based on a host of social factors, and these algorithms, which are designed simply to maximise engagement. The result of this is the tendency for algorithmic media to amplify our own biases and create false polarisation.

So, and again, this is [01:05:00] something of a streamlined history. In the time since social media became an everyday part of western life, the Russian governments put more and more resources into waging an information war on this front, through tactics like bot farms, paid trolls, and, of course, content.

The Intentions of the Adversary: Disinformation and Election Security - Disinformation - Air Date 5-21-24

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: information warfare efforts are robust widespread and increasingly sophisticated. But what makes them even more effective, Rand study says, is that those efforts are taking full advantage of our own weaknesses and divisions, in other words, what we are doing to ourselves. In this regard, the Russians are hardly alone.

MAREK POSSARD: And so in many cases, it's not that Russia or China or these other countries are doing this. What, in fact, is happening is they're waiting for us to kind of essentially create a tactical opportunity that they exploit, and then they can amplify it further. So we're doing it to ourselves, and then our [01:06:00] adversaries essentially exploit it. And I think that's what happens in many cases with our elections, where there might be some one-off case. There might be a court case that one is trying to have adjudicated. And then our adversaries are going to jump in the mix and start trying to amplify this stuff online or in other mediums.

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: They're just piling on to things that we are doing to ourselves.

MAREK POSSARD: Oh, yeah. I mean, when this issue of partisanship and actually broader truth decay in our society are actually really tactical opportunities for our adversaries. It is a Christmas gift to the Russians. It is a gift to the Chinese and the Iranians and other countries that are trying to harm our democracy.

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: And you say, rather disturbingly, that these are not individual silos, that these seemingly unrelated threats could happen simultaneously. Tell me more about that. How might that unfold? What should we be looking for?

MAREK POSSARD: I think the key thing we should be looking for here [01:07:00] is how one type of seemingly disconnected threat could suddenly relate to another threat. So if there's an attack on our critical infrastructure, such as our utility companies, and there is a partisan reaction and suddenly you start seeing it grow, we do have to ask ourselves, why is it growing? Is it actually homegrown in terms of the reaction to some type of crisis, which could be Attack on critical infrastructure, it could be a hurricane, it could be a cyber attack, or our adversaries trying to amplify this up further. And I think one thing that we're not particularly prepared for is having multiple adversaries jumping in at the same time. And so if there is some national crisis or a regional crisis that may affect the ability for us to carry out election in a state or locality, and then suddenly you have Russian trolls online, you might have Iranian operations operating separately, to really just kind of mishmash this [01:08:00] crisis, are we going to be in a position to be able to adjudicate it accordingly, essentially, and say, what do we need to do to get this done to carry out our elections? Or are we going to essentially just self-consume ourselves during this crisis?

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: At a recent summit between Russian President Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, Xi said there are no bounds to our relationship, meaning military cooperation, intelligence cooperation, economic cooperation, on and on and on. Is there any evidence that you have seen that they are coordinating their efforts to interfere with their election in any of the ways that you have described?

MAREK POSSARD: So I haven't actually looked at that question specifically, so I don't want to speak to whether or not that's happening. I will say, as a hypothesis, it wouldn't be super surprising. These are very cheap operations to carry out. You don't need to invest in a [01:09:00] 10-year weapons system and dump hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D to carry this stuff out. It really is a matter of You have a direct pipeline, particularly with social media and with individuals. Essentially, all you're doing is figuring out who you want to target and you pump out content. It would be not super surprising, to say the least, if Russia and China were somehow coordinating, either explicitly or implicitly. And that very well could just be that there might be a tactical opportunity that Russia finds and they exploit. And then China jumps in in their own way, not necessarily coordinating every step of the way, but again, just finding that opportunity and being able to communicate it. You don't need to do a whole lot to gin people up, particularly in this type of election cycle where I would suspect we're going through a political realignment. And so it's a lot of exploitable opportunities to say the least.

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: And to your earlier point about our election system being decentralized, you really don't have to do [01:10:00] that much. And in the case of Russia and China, you really only have to look at these handful of swing states that are going to determine the election. It's conceivable they could target just two or three states that they think are going to make a difference and just focus on those. So talk about you know, asymmetric warfare in a very tiny way could actually make a huge difference.

MAREK POSSARD: Exactly. And I think the key is, is that they're not going to, I don't think it's really a huge payoff to necessarily try to hack our voting machines or try to turn individuals who are local election workers because it's such a decentralized system. There's a lot of different standard operating procedures across states, but you're right. There's a few states where the vote margins are very narrow. And if you can find a crisis that somehow relates to or is happening inside that state, it's not that hard to gin people up. And then you start casting doubt [01:11:00] more broadly on the election system based on one or two examples or one or two crises that are occurring in a swing state that could potentially directly relate to kind of the national outcome because of our electoral college. It's an opportunity for the Russians and the Chinese, the Iranians and others.

PAUL BRANDUS - HOST, DISINFORMATION: Let's shift, if we could, just for a minute to artificial intelligence. This is something that is far more top of mind than it was in 2020. Tell me about the impact of that in 2024 relative to four years ago.

MAREK POSSARD: So I had to hypothesize here. I would probably suspect that it's just going to pollute the information space. Well, I think there's two things. One, it's going to pollute the information space because it's just going to create more bullshit on the internet. And when you have more crap on the internet, it's difficult for individuals to disentangle what is true from what is a falsehood, particularly because you might have images and video that look [01:12:00] very, very realistic. The second thing is it allows our adversaries to scale their operations relatively easy. These are already cheap operations to run. You don't need a lot of money to stand up a server and maybe stand up some individuals to produce content, but this will allow you to automate that. Essentially, you're reducing the costs. to enter into this kind of operation. And we already have a lot of crap on the internet. And now you're going to have AI producing more crap, essentially polluting the information space, making it harder for regular citizens to make an informed decision based on whatever policy issue is popping up in a discussion on a given day.

Is Social Media Fueling Far-Right Riots? - Tech Won't Save Us - Air Date 8-15-24

HUSSEIN KESVANI: There are lots of live streamers and stuff who go to these protests because again, like another way of making money out of chaos is by live streaming, apparently.

And so you have these guys and you've got them everywhere who will go to protests and be like, Oh, why are you protesting? And like a lot of these channels very clearly have an intention of [01:13:00] like, you know, we promote right wing views, but we try to do it under the guise of like, oh, we're just sort of going around asking questions.

You know, these people aren't racist. They just love their country, etc. But like watching these interviews is really interesting, because even the people who are sort of there, it's not to sort of say that, oh, yeah, they don't really know why they're there. But it's more just like, And maybe it's because I also spend so much time or I have spent so much time online, but you can sort of see how the internet's kind of cooked their brains a little bit, or like quite a lot at times, I would like encourage people to watch it because like it's interesting to sort of see what happens when you're sort of navigating like a real world environment, but like you sort of believe that.

What you've seen on the internet is real. Like that is kind of the world that you understand, so for example, one of them like with us, like, Oh, why have you come to this? Like, you know, Southport protest, you know, or the right wing thing. And there'll be like, Oh yeah, I'm here to like pay my respect to the little girls who have passed away.

Okay, fine. But then like a second later, there'll be like, yeah, but you know, all these Slur inserted there like, you know, they've come in and like, you know, they take all the money and they take all the jobs and they're setting up mosques everywhere. And like, you know, there used to be a pub down the road and that's a mosque and everything [01:14:00] like that's not true.

Like there's no evidence of that, it feels like an assemblage of stuff that they've kind of read or they've seen on their phone. maybe some of it, they've also sort of invented in their head as well. so where your sort of reality kind of becomes like an assemblage of consumed online, put together by people who have sometimes nefarious ambitions, but sometimes they'll just sort of put stuff out there because you can do that.

Right. Like what's the effect of just putting out like fiction. You never know. I've also seen like right wing Twitter accounts, praise themselves for being able to like insert like pieces of misinformation map. They sort of felt. kind of got a lot more traction than they expected. That's kind of a game to these people.

I always go back to this thing that Adam Curtis said years and years ago about how eventually the internet will become this place where you go to sort of mostly go for entertainment, but you kind of never know what's true and what isn't. And it's not to say that the internet will be full of lies but it's more like You'll approach everything with this idea, but you don't actually know whether what you're reading is true or valid or whether it's not.

And for some people, that'll be like a really scary experience because [01:15:00] it'll be really dislocating and really detaching. But for other people, it'll be like immensely entertaining because again, so much of being online and so much of experiencing online is primarily for entertainment. the Riot livestreams are a form of entertainment, it's not really journalism.

The stuff that Tommy Robinson does is primarily entertainment, and he knows it. in the week before the Southport attack, Tommy Robinson had a very big demonstration in London, where he screened an hour and a half long film, where the entire film was About why he couldn't even though a court told him to stop harassing this teenager why he refused to stop harassing a teenager It was an hour and a half long film about how he was a victim because he couldn't stop harassing a teenager It's like insane But again, it like frames his ideas like well These people sort of see it as entertainment that they see it as entertainment that leads to kind of material effects and so again to kind of go back to British media, which is very right wing, like, where it has sort of struggled to kind of keep up the pace with it.

They cannot be the same type of entertainment platforms as all these other sort of, like, anarchic [01:16:00] creators. Some of them having right wing agendas and some of them having fascistic agendas, but some of them just wanting to cause chaos and mischief. And because they'll never sort of be able to sort of match to that, their only choices, really, are to try to shut them down.

And in some cases, like, what's been interesting is, like, The right wing kind of papers in the UK, oddly enough today, have had front covers, which is like, Oh yeah, the night when the fascists were sort of taken down. And it's like insane to look at, cause it's like, well, but you didn't like the anti fascists.

You've been sort of printing stuff for years and years saying how they were like destroying the country. You have kind of laid the foundations for something like this to happen. but then, you know, other right wing outlets and, you know, your sort of GB news talk TV, which are like the very right wing end of it, having to sort of accommodate a lot of these content creators purely on the basis that they know that they're never going to sort of get as much traction as these guys.

So I think it's like a very messy media environment, one where a lot of chaos can sort of ensue, but one in which like. The content creators who don't have any strings kind of pulling like [01:17:00] holding them in and no real regulation are sort of like, I can create great entertainment by sort of just framing Muslims as more of an existential threat than the Daily Mail ever could.

PARIS MARX - TECH WON'T SAVE US: Yeah, this will drive engagement and will really rile people up. So I'll get my viewers. But you were talking about how you can tell that some of these people have their brains like cooked by the Internet. And it's clear that one of those people is. The owner of Twitter X himself, Elon Musk, who has become a major right wing influencer of his own.

We talked in the past and, you know, there's been like this ongoing conversation and discussion about how Facebook has helped to fuel right wing politics in the past because of the way that it has decided to treat its platform. We know that YouTube has pushed kind of right wing extremism in its algorithms.

Twitter is not immune from that, but since Elon Musk has taken over. And the changes that he has made to the platform have made it. So people on the right basically get boosted a lot more, all of this kind of right [01:18:00] wing misinformation, these right wing narratives get boosted. And then he is also doing the work of boosting them, whether it is the anti migrant stuff, whether it is the great replacement stuff, as you were talking about.

The explicitly anti Muslim narratives. And now with these riots going on in the UK, he has been participating directly in that tweeting that civil war is inevitable. I believe that was after the first night that these went on or the second, like very early on. And just recently he retweeted this fake headline posted by Ashley Simon, who is co leader of Britain first, a far right.

Party that talked about how the UK government was going to set up detainment camps on the Falkland Islands for these protesters, which was completely false, taken from a telegram group, made up, but Elon Musk quote, tweeted it and said detainment camps. And, you know, it took a while to delete it. Like, what do you make of.

One, I guess how social media platforms in general kind of fuel this stuff, but also how when you have someone like Elon [01:19:00] Musk, who is participating in that, how does that become so much more difficult than to try to reign this stuff in?

HUSSEIN KESVANI: I think this is such a good example of how the fiction is sort of like all that's important to these people, because in the aftermath of the riots some of the right wing sort of people who participated in them, one of the things they weren't expecting, was that right wing media would Kind of turn against them or have the appearance of turning against them, which is not to say that they don't like, you know, they've sort of stopped believing in the same things, but it's more just like all the optics of this are really bad, right?

And so we can't be seen to like, so it's sort of put the writers. And so, like, one of the things I think they've sort of really latched to is the idea of , Well, we have to sort of be perpetually seen as victims, right? And so, yeah, we tried to burn down a hotel of children in it, but like, actually we were just doing it because we were scared for our children.

We were scared, but like, you know, our children's safety, why does no one talk about our children's safety and so on. And so like the element of victimization is really important. So, and this is where like fake news content or like fake kind of images and stuff become so important because really what's happening is that like, The [01:20:00] reinforcement of the victim narrative is so essential for perpetuating this movement.

Like, they need these types of grievances and everything. And I also imagine that, like, that probably is the thing that resonates with Elon Musk as well. But, like, he has to kind of perpetually see himself as a victim because, you know, his platform's not doing great and advertisers don't want to do it.

And, like, you know, I imagine he's also becoming more and more alienated by, like, people who used to be his friends.

So, like, he's probably not having, like, the best of personal times right now.

But Elon has also always fallen for like scams or fake stuff quite a lot. My impression though, is that the reason why he sort of seems to be going a lot harder on the UK, partly because we have a new prime minister who is, by his standards, like a left wing socialist.

He is not a left wing socialist by any means,

PARIS MARX - TECH WON'T SAVE US: What? I thought communism had returned to the UK.

HUSSEIN KESVANI: I feel like the UK is kind of because of like the riots and every time a riot happens, the sort of the MPs are always like, Oh, we need to ban like Blackberry. So we need to ban like whatever the sort of contemporary form of technology is.

And at the moment it's like, we need to ban like social media or we need to like put really big [01:21:00] controls and. could tell like Tiktok and Twitter and all that stuff and Twitter in particular, because I feel like for lots of journalists and lots of middle aged people and stuff who still use Twitter as their primary news source, it was very obvious and it's become very obvious to like power users and stuff like, Oh no, this is filled with fascists now.

Like it's very evident that even despite how much you try to Not see right wing stuff. It becomes more and more impossible because of who's boosting what and the messy blue check system and all that type of stuff.

SECTION B: LIVE BY THE ALGORITHM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Live by the algorithm.

How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka Part 1 - Decoder with Nilay Patel - Air Date 3-11-24

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: You have in the book, a meditation on the concept of taste. And that, I mean, literally throughout history, you dive into the history of people thinking about taste and what it is and where it comes from.

And that dynamic you're describing is someone has a little bit different taste or they make something a little bit different, and then suddenly everyone else has the same taste. Uh, the example that I actually really want you to talk about and help me understand is the Stanley cups right now, [01:22:00] where I've read a lot of, you know, Pieces just about what a Stanley cup is and whether they have lead in them.

And like why all these people are buying them, but it feels like it is, it is like a filter world product. That the algorithm lit upon a cup, like literally just a cup. And then everyone was like, I am the cup. Like the cup is my lifestyle. As you think about filter world, like, can you put the Stanley cup in the context of suddenly everything is the same?

KYLE CHAYKA: I think so. I mean, the Stanley cup was interesting in that the chief marketing officer of Crocs moved to Stanley and Crocs had like gone through this viral trend of being adopted by a lot of influencers and TikTok creators and stuff. And so this guy has kind of. turn the same process or strategy with Stanley, and I think it's partly that they like seeded the ecosystem, giving Stanley cups to influencers and stuff.

And it's just the fixation that the internet has on one thing at a time. So a Stanley cup like [01:23:00] starts to become this go to lifestyle accessory. First, for like, Mormon bloggers, actually. That was an early adoption group. And then it becomes almost a kind of currency on TikTok and on Instagram, where memetically, like, if all my friends have this thing, I also have to have this thing.

If all the other influencers are making Stanley Cup content, then I also have to make Stanley Cup content. I think it's almost like, on Twitter we could see this happen with discourse subjects, like there was one subject of conversation each day, and either you were jumping into that conversation or no one cared what you were talking about, except now it's, we're doing that with visual trends and physical objects, it's like, you have to be holding up that Stanley Cup or no one's going to want to watch your content, so you're kind of forced to participate in the meme, in the trend, or otherwise you get ignored.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: One of the tropes of decoder is that distribution has an outsized impact on the actual content [01:24:00] that people make, which is a very obvious idea, but we just come back to it over and over and over again, because we spent so much time talking about platforms. You're thinking about filter world is a broad concept, right?

Algorithms on the internet shape the culture in some big way, but YouTube has a different kind of algorithm, right? Like Stanley cups are not happening on YouTube. God forbid Stanley cups happen on X. What was formerly known as Twitter. That's a, that's a particular kind of TikTok trend that bleeds into everything else.

Do you think about the different platforms and their different aesthetics and what they prioritize and what kinds of culture they make?

KYLE CHAYKA: I think they all have different flavors. My pet theory, I think, is that each algorithmic feed, each platform generates its own kind of signature culture that fits into it.

So we're familiar with like. Instagram face, the kind of influencer plastic surgery aesthetic. Um, we're familiar with TikTok influencer voice, which is the kind of monotone syncopated packing as many words into a [01:25:00] sentence as possible. So I think there's like forms of content that work for each different platform.

And on YouTube, I mean, my favorite example of like YouTube culture is lo fi chill hip hop beats to study slash relax, which is this like ambient 24 7 never ending stream of chill drum beats with acoustic instruments and electric synths behind it. And it's all different artists composing these songs, but they're just turned into this wash of, you know, ambiguous, semi meaningless music.

And it's, like, that works for YouTube in a way, because you just leave YouTube on. It's this, uh, Streaming background and that's not how you use TikTok like TikTok that wouldn't work because you're constantly flipping through the feed. You're going to new videos. A tik tok video to be successful has to like grab you and throttle your attention immediately, whereas this YouTube content can be ambient and chill and like [01:26:00] homogenous in a soothing way. So I think there are these, like, quirks or forms that emerge from the structures of the platforms themselves.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: Your earliest approach at writing about filter world was Instagram and Airbnb, what you were calling airspaces as you expanded the concept into filter world, it's everything, different social networks, take on different levels of prominence in the culture. So Instagram is still huge. But I would say it is not a driver of culture in the way that it once was.

That role is now TikTok. How do you see that waxing and waning? Why do you think that change happened? Is it just young people use TikTok and that's it? Or is there something else going on?

KYLE CHAYKA: People get bored. I think partly, partly it's like, I mean, just as fashion trends change, technological trends change.

And I think we discount that too often. Like when we use the same platform for. Five or six years, we tend to start getting itchy and wanting something else. And I think it's also been this kind [01:27:00] of gradual evolution of the internet from Text, to more professionalized images, to audio and video, to TikTok, which is this kind of full featured television, essentially.

Like, when we watch it, it's as if we're watching television. So I think, like, the multimedia race has, has gone on and on, and that's changed things. It's also just, more and more of culture has moved onto the internet, I think, like, like digital platforms have absorbed. different areas of culture that used to be more offline, whether it's, you know, a television equivalent like Tik TOK or podcasts that used to be radio, like over the past decade, more things have gotten more online.

And I think that's been a major shift.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: I'm always curious on the effects that participating in the platforms have on people and creators. The Stanley Cup to me is actually a really fascinating example. When you are a big distribution network and you say anyone can participate [01:28:00] here, people will sort of naturally gravitate towards exactly what worked for someone else.

It's the first easiest, most instinctive thing to do. And so you can see why things spread mimetically a bunch of kids are like, well, that worked for them. I will do the same dance and participate in the culture. And that is a conversation in a way that I think like broadcast programming directors who are professionals were like, well, we can't just copy that thing.

We have to like, do something different. Right? Like there was, there's that element of like, well, I'm paid to have better ideas than the next person. That a bunch of people working for free are like, I'm just going to do the easiest thing. You can sort of see the tension there, but I'm curious if you see it particularly in a different way with Tik TOK, because there's something about the culture of Tik TOK that not only rewards that repetition, but like directly incentivizes it and makes repetition, the actual content.

KYLE CHAYKA: Yeah, I have, I'm sorry, I'm saying pet theory all the time, but another, another [01:29:00] framework to use to kind of, it's a great vocabulary, uh, framework that I have is that. And in the current iteration of the internet, we're all just like middle schoolers running through the hallways. Yeah. And so it's like, when you see some other kid wearing his hat backwards or something, you're like, Oh man, I'm going to wear my hat backwards right now.

Like it all filters out very quickly. The model of culture we have right now is more bottom up, like, like trends filter. From a grassroots level upward and then get noticed. And I think TikTok rewards that repetition because. You rehash someone else's content in order to participate. It's like making a new version of the same meme, as you were saying, is how you fill the vacuum of TikTok.

And it is how you interact with someone else and have that conversation. So rather than coming up with something new or trying to make a trend of your own, it's like the core behavior is [01:30:00] replicating a trend that already exists. And that's incentivized Like, by the algorithmic feed, by the kinds of aesthetic tools that you have, like the recommendations of sounds to use, or video editing tricks to use.

And I mean, I think you can see that replication happen all over the place, like as Twitter became, or X became more algorithmic. You saw a rash of prompt tweets, just like people asking for you to list your five favorite breakfast foods or something. And suddenly, because that worked for some people, everyone, everyone was doing it and being like, name the five opinions that everyone else hates that you have, it's like, that's not good content.

It's a kind of race to the bottom, I think.

NBC's Jacob Ward: How Technology Shapes Our Thinking and Decisions Part 2 - Commonwealth Club World Affairs (CCWA) - Air Date 1-31-22

JACOB WARD: Here's what we're going to do. I think we're going to, first of all, need to look deep inside these companies and make them civilly, and maybe even criminally liable for, you know, the ways in which they've tried [01:31:00] to manipulate our behavior, I think that it's gonna start costing these companies money.

Right now, human attention is treated as this kind of ephemeral thing. There's, it's endless, but, people smarter than me have been, saying, no, no, no. It is like. Mining and we need to regulate it. Not that we do a great job of regulating mining, but we need to get into to these companies, I think, probably through lawsuits and begin showing what they are knowing and doing.

Now that's for me the first step, but I also think there needs to be a recognition that all of that, like Star Wars, we're watching, you know, when I watched Star Wars these days and Han Solo is being told by C3PO, never tell me the odds, you know, leave me alone, nerd. Right. He's always saying, you know, don't tell me, you know, Oh, you know, Captain Solo, the chances of survival are 10, 566 to one.

Right. And he says, never tell me the odds. Listen to C3PO. C 3PO should be the hero of that movie because he's [01:32:00] right. Should not do this, you know, and our whole culture is geared and has been since the 19th century, on this idea of rugged individualism, growth at all costs is good. We're going out to the West and, pioneering our way out to a better life, you know, as opposed to thinking as a community about how are we going to support one another and what if it all goes wrong?

For me, a big part of that is going to have to be making it socially acceptable to say, here are my mental predilections. So for me, I tell anybody who you know, wants to talk to me about it. Like I no longer drink. I think it's unfair to people who suffered from alcoholism to refer to myself as an alcoholic.

I'm not sure I fall fully into that category, but I absolutely cannot drink. I've learned that about myself. And I have also learned as a result that when people say to me, Hey, let's meet up and go to a bar. I say to them, no, I would love to take a walk with you. I would love to do this other thing, but I cannot go to a bar with you.

I used to drink and I don't anymore. And that's going to mess me up. Right. Being able to [01:33:00] say, TikTok has got me, right? Being able to say, I'm having trouble with this thing, you know, making it socially acceptable to look at the odds, right? To listen to C3PO, I think is going to be a really important thing.

And then the last thing is, I think we need to stop letting culture, the modern culture as it's being dictated by some of the biggest companies. Tell us our norms. So for me right now, I'm in the process at the school that my Children are at of creating a pact with all the parents in the grades that we are in to not give our Children personal smartphones until they enter high school at the very earliest.

And I can't tell you how complicated that conversation is. It's a very hard thing to have that conversation because it involves admitting to your own difficult relationship with smartphones. you gotta sort of admit as a parent, you don't have any idea what your kid is really doing with them and what that might be.

And that you may not even know your kid fundamentally at all. it's a really hard conversation, but we have managed to get through it. And in fact, I'm on the [01:34:00] hook right now for being the guy who's supposed to write up the new revised pledge after a huge amount of really smart input. it makes my palms sweat to realize that I am, on the hook for that right now, but, it's going to require.

Communities coming together and saying, nope, I'm not going to do that because you know, the statistics show that the vast majority of parents get their cues about what's an appropriate use of technology from the ads for technology from a cutesy Alexa ads, in which the kid and the dog, trigger Alexa by accident is not adorable.

You know, they're normalizing behavior that we have not actually signed off on. And I think that we should start coming up with some civic structures for saying, no, it's too quick to say, Oh, don't be a Luddite. As if that's some sort of terrible thing. if you read up on the Luddites, they're pretty interesting group.

That's pretty interesting. You know, and I'm not saying we need to kick it all out of our lives. I love being here with you tonight, DJ, in this way, this is an incredible empowerment of our, slow thinking brain. You and I are doing right now. Fantastic. But. We have to recognize the [01:35:00] profit motive, the power, the way it's going to feel inexorable as pattern recognition systems make their way into our lives and that we have to come up with some civic structures for pushing back on them.

And I think we can, we've done it before. We're going to do it again. I just think we need to speed it up a little bit.

Internet Poisoning (with Jason Pargin) - The Daily Zeitgeist - Air Date 7-23-24

JACK O'BRIEN - HOST, THE DAILY ZEITGEIST: Do you feel like there are trends that, I think this is something we tried to do at Cracked sometimes is just in addition to debunking like myths that get spread around is like, here are the types of lies that our brain or the internet tends to gravitate towards.

And it's, you know, like one that I would say that, you know, I feel like we're seeing this process of like, you know, internet focus grouping and writers rooming a real event in real time with the [01:36:00] attempted assassination of Trump, as we've referred to. And I think. One of the themes that we're seeing there and also in the CrowdStrike story is like people have a real aversion to incompetence as being the explanation or, you know, accident, somebody fucking up.

It's just not a satisfying plot point. In your movie, like if diehard hedge, just like the story had resolved itself because the hacker had accidentally like detonated a bunch of the bombs while Hans Gruber was on top of the bill, you know, like something like that. And then it's, it's just a fuck up along the way that.

It doesn't happen, it doesn't happen in movies really because it's not satisfying the part of our brain that craves novelty and like good storytelling resists that [01:37:00] sort of thing. And so I, I believe like it's a bigger part of the story of the JFK assassination than we tend to think. And I think it's probably a bigger part of the story of the Trump attempted assassination than.

Some people are willing to, like, I, I think it seems to be pretty surface level that there is a fuck up there. But are, are there other, do you, first of all, do you agree that that's a trend and then are there other kind of trends that you've noticed as you, as you've kind of been studying this sort of the Well, yeah, but habits of.

JASON PARGIN: Like, I get that part of it is you just want to simplify the world. So for example, I have one extremely unpopular political opinion, which is, this is the perfect time to get it out when you're trying to sell a book and you've got it up your

ass,

which is that I think most of the world's problems, most of the things that frustrate you in your life are not anybody's [01:38:00] fault.

I think the world's an imperfect place, and I think it's hard to run a society in a way that's perfectly fair to every single person. I think, uh, you know, it's lots of times when prices go up or whatever. It's not necessarily that some evil person. It has a scheme, it's just, it's market forces and it's a company is trying to maximize the revenue because the shareholders demand it.

And like the, the blame for things spreads in so many directions that it just kind of disappears because it's just a system that we're all trying to survive in. And that is incredibly unsatisfying. We would love to hear that there's a villain because in a movie, if there's a problem like this, I don't know if you've seen the, um, Jason Statham, uh, film, the beekeeper.

JACK O'BRIEN - HOST, THE DAILY ZEITGEIST: I have not, but I started watching it a lot about it.

JASON PARGIN: Yeah, it's a, it's, it's a great boomer fantasy of like everything that is terrible about the world, all the way going up to the [01:39:00] president. There's like a cabal of just cartoonishly evil people that if you could kill them. The world would finally be at peace.

And that's, that's very satisfying to think of because yeah, every movie's got to have a villain, a human villain that is causing the problems. Like even a film like the Martian, which is supposed to be all about like troubleshooting and smart people and confidence porn, they still had to have like the villain character, the one guy who refused to was like being obstinate and say no to all of their plans because there's gotta be a bad guy.

And. Uh, this is something that I think is true across the whole political spectrum. Everybody wants there to be a bad guy and not just sometimes like with the pandemic. Sometimes pandemics happen. We are, we exist in nature and we actually. I don't know it's, I think most people did their best and most people didn't freak out.

And most people did what they thought was most reasonable. And I [01:40:00] don't think we like that. I think we like the thought of there being somebody we can yell at and hate. And then if we could get rid of them, everything would be fixed. That seems to be, to me, the most common bias, which is, I want to believe that somewhere there is a person, a bad person who has caused this, because then I've got an opponent and then if we could defeat them, everything would be fine.

The end. Most things in life are not like that. I, I believe.

MILES GRAY - HOST, THE DAILY ZEITGEIST: But in that version, does that sort of like absolve people of any responsibility for like what the actions of like an organization that they come like, you know, or the, the figurehead of, or how do you look at like that sort of piece of it? Like I get the sort of our yearning to be able to like, say, this is where it's all focused.

And that's like, it's in these four or five people kind of thing, but how, like at what point is there, obviously there are systems that are, have the lives of their own, but. Are you saying that everyone is just completely powerless to those things and nothing can be done or how do you score that part?

JASON PARGIN: I think that, for example, I could go on Reddit right now and I could find [01:41:00] memes talking about how the boomers ruined the world, how the boomers, when they were alive, jobs were easy.

Lifetime employment, houses were cheap. They had everything. And then they intentionally screwed over the next employee or the next generation after them because they were so greedy. And so, you know, sociopathic and, and narcissistic, if you could actually grab a random, if

you

could go grab a random boomer off the street, somebody in their seventies say, Hey, why did you run the world?

He's going to say, I worked at a muffler shop for 40 years. I don't, what are you talking about? I don't even, I rented for most of my life. I, I got to take a vacation. Like once every five years, what are you, you're talking about like the CEOs and the politicians that not, not, but it's like, no, we've now distilled all of the boomers into like one, you know, Evil person.

And guess what gang, whatever generation you are, like, let's say there's some Gen Z kids listening in this, a couple of generations from now, they're going [01:42:00] to blame you for what happens with AI. And you're going to say, I didn't do anything with AI. I thought it was stupid. I barely used it. And the kids in the future can say, well, why didn't you stop it?

And

you're going to say, I don't even know who, who did it. I don't even know who was in charge of it. Every company just started doing AI and it suddenly there was AI and all my devices. And they're going to be like, well, why didn't you, why didn't you vote to stop it? Why didn't you boycott those companies?

Why did you, and you're going to say. I was just trying to live my fricking life. I was trying to survive. No, I did not have time to go firebomb a server farm where they were, where they were operating Chet GPT 5. I was just trying to. And so what you find is you get that same answer all the way up to the president saying, look, I, I was voted, people voted for me to carry out an agenda.

They could have voted for somebody else. This was the agenda. This is what I did. I did what I thought was right. This is the most terrible truth. That nobody likes to face, which is that most people are doing their [01:43:00] best. And the, the flaws that happen are because you have different factions in society with different interests.

For example, like housing prices. Every time somebody talks about how, why housing is so expensive, they want to come up with this theory that like, there's like one corporation is secretly buying up all the houses. It's like, no, that they may be doing that. The issue is that half the country are already homeowners and they like the fact that their house costs twice as much because that's their retirement.

You have, it's not a secret cabal of guys in a shadowy room. It's an entire section of the country and their interests are separate from yours. And they're not billionaires. They're just retired dentists or whatever. And it's like, well, no, my entire retirement is based. I'm going to sell this house. When I turned 70, I'm going to move to Florida and rent a condo.

But yes, 400 percent more than what it did when I bought it in 1995. Like, no, I'm not, I don't want housing prices to go down. This is, um, you know, I, this is my retirement right here. So [01:44:00] there's times when some people just want different things from you. And if you're always trying to look for a specific villain or a cabal or a conspiracy, you're going to be disappointed more often than not.

A lot of times it's just people acting out of short term interests or out of ignorance, or, you know, they're just being oblivious, you Yeah,

MILES GRAY - HOST, THE DAILY ZEITGEIST: but is there, I mean, yeah, I guess in that's like, that feels like sort of like a bleak, like how in, in that instance, what, how would we solve things if we're willing to always say like, well, this person is just trying to do the best, not that I think, like, I get the point about like trying to find like this cabal or like darker angle as to explaining certain things like that, but does like, At a certain point, like if, how would that worldview, how do we try to change things like from that perspective?

JASON PARGIN: But things have changed. None of us would prefer to go back and live in the year 1924. Think about what you lose. If you go back, think about how many civil rights get rolled back. Think about how much shorter people [01:45:00] lived, how many more babies died in childbirth. Think about how can much more contaminated the food was back then and how nobody had air conditioning.

Like we have improved the world immeasurably because we've While everybody was yelling at each other, the normal people were just out doing their jobs and building houses and building safer cars. And there's bureaucrats that are just quietly passing, you know, ordinances that make things slightly safer.

And, and

JACK O'BRIEN - HOST, THE DAILY ZEITGEIST: yeah,

JASON PARGIN: the, you know, I, none of us would go back and live a hundred years ago, things were worse by, I think in every possible measure.

How to save culture from the algorithms, with Filterworld author Kyle Chayka Part 2 - Decoder with Nilay Patel - Air Date 3-11-24

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: One of the things that's interesting about that idea is the influencers are sort of buffeted by algorithmic pressure, right? So they, they have to go pay attention to everything's paying, everyone else is paying attention to, and that loses specificity. But then some of them rise above the others and you get very powerful individuals who can make different decisions or take brain deals or whatever needs to happen there.

That's a very commercial, you can go give Stanley cups to a bunch of Mormon influencers and [01:46:00] make Stanley cups of thing, which is just a fascinating reality. Like that's, I don't think that has been true in the past. Next to that is the decline of media institutions, which they're not supposed to be collections of individuals in that way.

They're supposed to be brands unto themselves. With their own kind of taste. You have the Meryl Streep monologue from Devil Wears Prada in your book, right? It's like an example of how people think about these institutions. In that case, whatever runway, which is a stand in for Vogue, Vogue still exists.

Right. And it's still, it's still for now. Whatever's going on with Connie and ass is going on with Connie and ass, but Vogue still exists and celebrities still want to be on the cover because that institution still has power. My view of the platforms do not want any institutions to have power. They would rather negotiate with an infinite supply of burned out individuals that all kind of do the same thing.

This is a history of, I think the 2010s media is the decline of these media institutions. Do you see a return to that? Like someone [01:47:00] else has to play that validating role. Someone else has to provide a celebrity. Um, something that feels like a magazine cover, something that rises to that level, and that feels like the antidote to filter world, right?

The people seek this validation. People talk about Anna Wintour as though she's in the Illuminati, like literally as though she's in the Illuminati, but that's not forever. And there needs to be something that replaces it.

KYLE CHAYKA: Yeah. I mean, there needs to be like a taste making force that works and there needs to be a way that cultural ideas or people can get distribution that is not just algorithmic, though, like what you're saying has induces this nightmare for me of like TikTok covers, like, like TikTok releases a digital cover for its celebrity of the month and just makes them famous.

Like that's a scary thought. Um, But I think,

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: but to be clear, I don't think they could, I think that would be empty, right? I think, I think TikTok, the TikTok audience would reject that kind of top down taste making from the [01:48:00] platform itself. YouTube famously tried to do YouTube originals. Like we're going to make TV shows now.

And everyone was like, why? And they just disappeared and PewDiePie went back to making PewDiePie videos, right? Like, there's something about the nature of the platform. So they actually can't do the thing themselves. They need something else to provide that role. And I don't know what that next thing is.

I think it behooves us all to figure it out, but I don't quite see it yet.

KYLE CHAYKA: No, no. And no one trusts those platforms enough to give them their tastemaking judgments. But I think, so we're in a weird, Swing of like media institutions are totally crumbling. And we're, I think we are seeing some rebuilding of that.

Like, I mean, you are a tastemaker, the verge, the verge is a curatorial force that both produces original content and directs attention at specific ideas. The last person on earth. I keep saying that's what we have, but I think like newsletters.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: I want to point out that the editor in chief on this podcast was like, I don't know where to leap us.

I do know where she's like from just put it there as a tastemaker. [01:49:00] Sorry.

KYLE CHAYKA: But, so, like, the rebuilding of those taste making forces is happening, I think, in newsletters. I mean, you look at, like, Blackbird Spy Play in the men's newsletter, you look at Magazine, the women's fashion newsletter. For some reason it's happening in fashion very quickly and obviously.

But I think those places will build up and grow and hopefully sustain themselves, which they will have to do by hiring more writers, like, more people. They will have to decentralize from the single person personality cult, just as magazines did, just as Anna Wintour has done. And so I think we'll see them get a little bit bigger and consolidate their presence.

Power and like YouTube channels will publish articles and make podcasts and everything else. But we are in this like rebuilding phase, I think. Yeah.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: I want to end with an exercise you did in the book called an algorithmic cleanse. You, you divorced yourself from filter world. [01:50:00] Uh, I feel like everyone did a version of this when Elon bought Twitter and everyone kind of reconsidered their relationship to Twitter, but you went all the way, right?

Explain what that cleanse was like, how you actually executed it and how you came out of it at the end.

KYLE CHAYKA: Yeah, this was toward the end of 2022. So it was as Musk was buying Twitter and I just hit a point where I felt so saturated by algorithmic feeds. And I'd spent the whole process of writing this book thinking about them.

I don't know. I had to escape. I was like, uh, I had to just run from this whole ecosystem. And so I, you know, paused on my accounts. I logged out of everything on my computer and on my phone. I deleted Spotify, I deleted Instagram and Twitter and everything else. And I just went cold turkey for about three months, so I was no longer getting any feeds of information.

I wasn't getting recommendations of anything. And I kind of had to figure out new ways of seeking [01:51:00] out content. Like, I had to look at the newspaper, I had to go to a library, I had to point my browser to theverge. com and see what was on the homepage. I mean, really what I found was that the internet Is no longer built for not being on feeds.

Like, particularly two years ago even, websites were not thinking so much about their home pages. Like, newsletters were less of a thing. I feel like we've come to rely so much on distribution and broadcast that we media creators like don't think enough about just having a place where people go to find things they're interested in.

NILAY PATEL - HOST, DECODER: Do you, that, there's a real. Uh, tail wagging the dog element of this, right? Where you can want to have a different media diet. I have set up RSS readers many times for the past two years. I used to read all of my news in RSS. I used to sit in school, my laptop open and not pay attention and like go through my RSS reader.

And I remember [01:52:00] saying to some of my friends, I'm out of the internet. I finished the internet today because I'd read everything in the RSS reader. And there was a great diversity in content. No one thinks that way anymore. You open our assessor, you plug your favorite websites into it. Even ours. Candidly, even ours, and you get a bunch of stuff.

And some of that stuff is like obviously made for SEO. And some of that stuff is obviously made for other platforms. And very rarely do you see, Oh, there's an audience here that wants to read every article on this website. And that is a package, but it's coming back. Like people want to do that, right?

Like you can see there, there's. You felt that way. I have felt that way. We, we write articles about RSS readers and people read them. There's demand for it. Do you think that demand is ever going to get filled?

KYLE CHAYKA: I hope so. I mean, I tend to think wasn't the great promise of Silicon Valley and all these tech startups, like we are going to give users things that they want.

Like there's this thirst for a new form of delivery of content, better curation, like more [01:53:00] holistic ideas of what we should consume. And I hope that products arise to give us that. I think people are like restlessly questing for it right now in RSS, in newsletters, in a kind of parasocial podcast video, whatever ecosystem.

But I don't know, like, I like internet technology. I like when startups do new stuff. I hope that they take on this challenge and figure it out.

SECTION C: SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section C: Solutions.

Why is Brazil's supreme court shutting down social media platform X? - DW News - Air Date 8-30-24

FABIO DE SA E SILVA: X, basically refusing to accept Brazilian laws and to comply with Brazilian judicial orders. There are some, investigations going on in Brazil. On individuals who used social media to violate Brazilian law, electoral law, as well as criminal law.

Some of those investigations are being presided over by just a small guys. And in the course of those investigations, there have been some orders for Twitter or X to bring down some of those profiles [01:54:00] and so on. And in the beginning, X would comply with those orders as just like other social media platforms, but after Mr.

Musk bought the platform, he made it very clear that he did not accept those orders and that he thinks they amount to censorship.

PHIL GAYLE - HOST, DW NEWS: Well, before, Justice Mores, followed through with his threat, X announced on X that he would not comply with the court's, instruction. Here's some of what appeared on the company's global affairs account today.

soon we expect, Judge Alexander de Mores, will order X to be shut down in Brazil simply because We would not comply with his illegal orders to censor his political opponents. Now, these enemies include a duly elected senator and a 16 year old girl, amongst others. So, Professor, what is Elon Musk referring to there?

FABIO DE SA E SILVA: He's referring to some of those investigations that I mentioned. So in this case, there was a senator who was using his, his account [01:55:00] to, for instance, incite the military against the civilian government. In the other case that he mentioned, a profile of a young girl was used apparently by her father. To docks a police officer who was working in one of those investigations.

And so it was in that context that justice more guys ordered the platform to bring those profiles down. But Mr. Musk, as I mentioned, is refusing to do that. And he's claiming that this is censorship, which I do not agree with. Because, as I mentioned, these decisions are being adopted in the context of investigations that look into violation of precedent laws.

PHIL GAYLE - HOST, DW NEWS: It's an odd decision anyway, because censorship or not, You would think , that working within a particular jurisdiction, you would just follow the law. So is there something more going on there? Why does Elon Musk, think that it's okay to disregard the laws [01:56:00] in Brazil where he wouldn't do that in the United States or even the European Union.

FABIO DE SA E SILVA: I believe, Phil, that, not only Mr. Musk, but others around the world look at Brazil nowadays as a potential, case in which a stronger push to regulate social media has been, attempted, so far not successfully, but, not only through the actions of Justice Moraes, but also through, Congress that was deliberating over a bill, last year.

There have been attempts to, place some limits on what social media platforms can do and what kinds of obligations they should have to, for instance, moderate content and avoid that misinformation as well as hate speech be disseminated on their platforms. I also think, in the case of Mr.

Musk, there is a commercial interest because, apparently his, his business wasn't doing well in Brazil, so he was already trying or planning to moving that away from the country. and there seems to be also [01:57:00] some kind of political, you know, sympathy, on the part of Mr. Musk for the Brazilian far right.

PHIL GAYLE - HOST, DW NEWS: It's interesting you say that it's not doing well commercially in Brazil. I saw an estimate today that something like 40 million Brazilians, roughly a fifth of the population, access X at least once a month, which sounds like a massive market for Elon Musk. Sacrifice in this way.

FABIO DE SA E SILVA: It is. It is a, reasonable or sizable market for any social media platform, which is a reason why many people doubts that Musk would take things as far as he did the information that we need.

Listen to here is that the branch here wasn't doing well commercially in terms of the ad that they are able to sell, for example, right? But yes, you're right that the platform is widely used in Brazil. it happens elsewhere as well. It's a platform that, that's a kind of niche platform.

So it's very much used by journalists [01:58:00] or by some, internet businesses. Yes. Or by some academics to engage in exchanges of ideas, but yeah, it's a decent number and, I think Brazilians are going to miss, X if it's really banned in the next couple of days.

PHIL GAYLE - HOST, DW NEWS: And so tell us about the judge at the center of this case, Supreme Court Justice Alexander de Mores.

Who is he?

FABIO DE SA E SILVA: He is actually, you know, relatively conservative, lawyer. He was a prosecutor in the state of San Paolo, before entering politics. I think he brings some of that, knack for investigation from. His, origins in the public prosecutor's career. He got to the Supreme Court during the term of President Temer, who replaced President Dilma Rousseff after she was impeached.

And, you know, he's always been seen as, a very conservative judge, tough on crime judge or legal scholar which he also [01:59:00] is. that makes things very interesting because nowadays the Brazilian far right suggests that he's working in line with the president when they actually come from very different camps politically.

The Battle for Truth: Social Media, Riots, and Freedom of Expression - Institute of Economic Affairs - Air Date 8-16-24

MATTHEW LESH - HOST, INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS: The latest reporting about, their response is that, they're gonna let the existing online state jackal into force, but they're gonna review it down the track with this idea and with a particular focus on Twitter, on X, on Elon Musk, on this idea that, we need to some kind of clamp down and to reduce the spread of that miss or dis information.

I'm wondering what you make of that, Clare.

CLAIRE FOX: Well, one of the difficulties is definitions and when you come to the law, this matters because the, way that dis and misinformation is treated, it's as though we all understand this is fake news, posed truth, lies, malicious lies at that.

In the riots situation. it's worth reiterating here that Hope Not Hate put forward, well, you know, I assume, by the way, tweeted or posted [02:00:00] in good faith, that there were, Muslim women having acid thrown in their faces in the height of the riots, and I was absolutely horrified, and I believed it to be true.

I thought, oh my god, things have got so out of hand that I was just thinking of the horrors of it. Only to discover, you know, the police just said the next day. Oh, no, that wasn't true and hope not hate aren't being rounded up as we speak, right? so, you know, it was like, oh, that was an honest mistake and the hundred Riots as were predicted one night and the next day hope not hate actually said, oh, yes We think that probably was a hoax, but you know, it did lead to very positive headlines and lots of anti-racists on the streets.

So I think that the difficulty we've got with the term like this or misinformation is what do they mean?

KRISTIAN NIEMIETZ: Yeah. I think a lot of people, on the pro. clamping down on this information side, seem to think that this is just another form of content moderation, that this will be the equivalent of, say, having a spam filter.

but the difference, of course, is that we can all agree what spam [02:01:00] is, and the definition of that doesn't change over time. It doesn't depend on, information that may change or, on political leanings, whereas this is very much not like that, and it's inevitably any rules about that are going to get, weaponized and, it's going to be just a social media equivalent of de banking, where with de banking, the issue is just that banks are being, hyper cautious and rationally so, finding out, verifying that a transaction is not dodgy, that it is not money laundering, is very costly, and no individual customer is super important to them, so it's just rational to say, well, I'll just shut down the account, and it's going to be just like that. It's, it would be very difficult for a social media content moderator to verify, did you maybe make an honest mistake, is the claim definitely false, all that kind of stuff, it's just far easier to say, well, This particular, post is not that important to me or to the company in the grand scheme of things.

We will just shut it down. We will just be, out of an excessive, but rationally excessive caution.

MATTHEW LESH - HOST, INSTITUTE OF ECONOMIC AFFAIRS: But obviously exception here being [02:02:00] Elon Musk who, and, and the current version of X where there, it does seem kind of a philosophical, ideological, bulwark, at least to some extent against this. I mean, I'm always reminded in terms of this just misinformation, mate, just How much our idea of what the truth was changed through COVID, and even what the authorities were telling us changed.

So, you know, very early on in the pandemic, it was the WHO repeated the Chinese lines that COVID 19 wasn't actually spreading between humans. You know, there's all this stuff about how masks were useless, and then they were compulsory, and then maybe they were useless again. There were all these instructions about wiping down groceries, despite the virus being airborne.

And this is, you know, That's all legitimate in a way, and assuming the authorities are telling you the best information they have at the time, maybe they weren't at all times, but for the most part, you know, even if you give them the benefit of the doubt, it's very difficult to manage a process around disinformation because there is no, like, one final truth and authority, so therefore you have, it's inevitably a politicized process, as you see with all these fact checkers, And then you, and in order to deal with this information, you have to give somebody the power over you.

[02:03:00] I think there's a second element to it as well. it's not just about who has the power over you, but sometimes allowing false information to be spoken about is actually important. this is actually why I think, Twitter X is doing very well, which is the whole community note situation.

the crowdsource truth finding. rather than we're taking down this information, you think it's false. We're going to, users are going to come together respond to it and make a vote to figure out what is a truer claim or what is an added context claim I found that extremely useful because.

You're not going to stop people from having a bad idea in their head, but you might be able to, give them an alternative viewpoint, and have that debate, rather than just saying, what we need to do is stop having any kind of debate in the first place.

KRISTIAN NIEMIETZ: It's also more effective, this self regulation mechanism through community notes, because, people who are getting a community note attached to a tweet are embarrassed about it, you know, it's like getting ratioed, and that's, possibly more effective than just trying to withhold default information, seeing it, but being invalidated by the community note, that's a stronger way of making the case there is a factual error here.

CLAIRE FOX: I think that's right. I think it's a sort of [02:04:00] bottom up, you know, form of intervention that's very helpful. Okay. because there's this notion that the, government are also pushing that from the age of five, you know, all teachers are to tell pupils how to identify disinformation and misinformation.

And I did a debate for a teacher's group the other night. when I posed to them various queries of what was true, what wasn't true, and so on and so forth. They couldn't handle it and I said now you think the five year olds are going to deal with this, right? they had a worldview that when I challenged their worldview They wanted to say was it misinformation disinformation that they couldn't do that in the end I pointed out these are matters of contentious politics point about community notes And this was the point I made to them was young people seeing that there are different arguments about facts, what is factually accurate or not.

Actually, that's how you learn what critical thinking is. Because you actually, if you do get community noted, as you pointed out, I [02:05:00] think I might be a bit more careful about checking my sources in the future. You're going to think about it much more. But the main problem with the way of approaching misinformation, disinformation, of removing it is that suppression leads people down rabbit holes.

It's precisely the suppression of speech which drives a conspiracy mongering, which makes people cynical about everything they hear that actually undoes the authority of truth in a genuine sense, so that it doesn't matter what you see, you don't believe it, you know, and you sort of say, Oh, well, I've, you know, the government have said that or the police have said that I don't believe them because they've tried to manipulate things.

So it's much better to have this kind of atmosphere where you have competition going on between different versions of events, that's not to be relativistic about truth, but so that you can piece together as an individual what it is you think is the case. When you were talking about community notes though, one of the things that struck me when you kind of got this collective, [02:06:00] all together we'll come up with the is Wikipedia.

I mentioned Wikipedia because Wikipedia is kind of well regarded by the establishment, it's certainly a legal entity. and I can safely say that there's been missing disinformation on my Wikipedia page since Wikipedia started. And it gets on my nerves, right?

And I can go and speak at a conference and people can read out my bio from Wikipedia and I'm mortified, right, because I sound like some complete lunatic. They haven't checked it because they believe it's true and many young people do the same. They think Wikipedia gives them a version of the truth.

Anyway, I mention this because I'm not trying to ban Wikipedia. I'm not trying to encourage the government to lock them up. But they do spread misinformation all the time, even though it's collectively done and the world has not collapsed as a consequence.

Governments Are Suddenly Shutting Down The Internet - Here’s Why - ColdFusion - Air Date 8-15-24

DAGOGO ALTRAIDE - HOST, COLDFUSION: It seems so unbelievable that the internet could be completely shut down, but the world's second largest [02:07:00] economy did that in one of its regions, for almost an entire year. We all know about China's Great Firewall. It's an advanced system for filtering the internet for population control.

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: China runs the world's most complicated censorship machine.

The government actually requires Chinese internet companies to employ armies of human censors to police user generated content on their platforms.

DAGOGO ALTRAIDE - HOST, COLDFUSION: But the Chinese government also has control over internet service providers. This allows them to enforce national or regional shutdowns as needed. In 2009, the internet was cut off for 312 days in the Xinjiang region in response to riots.

Meanwhile in 2019, Russia passed the quote, sovereign internet law that gives the government the power to isolate its internet from the rest of the world.

JOHN HEIDEMANN: Telecommunications companies are large corporations and there's usually only a few of them. It's very easy for the government to reach out to the heads of those corporations and we think it's in the interest of the nation to [02:08:00] The internet has something called routing, which is how we decide where to send traffic.

And routing is managed by telecommunications companies. Other countries sometimes have very sophisticated means of routing. Intercepting some communications, but not all.

DAGOGO ALTRAIDE - HOST, COLDFUSION: But where does the USA stand in all of this? The Obama administration tried to pass an internet kill switch. Bill called the quote, protecting Cyberspace as a National Asset Act of 2010.

It was introduced to the Senate, but was heavily criticized and never passed. In the United Kingdom, if there's an emergency that can cause, quote, serious damage to political, administrative, or economic stability, the government can shut down the internet. The Communications Act of 2003 and the Civil Contingencies Act of 2004 gives emergency powers to the government to suspend the internet, and this is done by ordering service providers to shut down internet operations.

A UK government representative said, quote, Quote, it would have to be a very serious threat for these powers to be used, something like a major cyber [02:09:00] attack. These powers are subject to review, and if it was used inappropriately, there could be an appeal to the Competition Appeal Tribunal. Any decision to use them would have to comply with the public law and the Human Rights Act.

End quote. And the passing of this act hasn't been without its detractors and critics. But as usual with government power, there is the risk of abuse, and some governments flat out just abuse this power. After Libya's devastating flood disaster in 2023, Derna, one of the cities hit hardest by the floods, experienced a significant communication blackout and complete internet shutdown.

Initially, some people thought it was because of the natural disaster, but the real reason was to stop online criticism and potential riots against how badly the government was handling the crisis, and this was at a time when 11, 300 were reported dead and 40, 000 displaced. The government obviously didn't have their priorities right, and if this isn't an absurd abuse of power, I don't know what is.

JOHN HEIDEMANN: A lot of countries have proposed we should have a kill switch. The United States, the UK, [02:10:00] Australia, have all proposed kill switches, and I was just looking before joining you. What I saw was a news report saying Australia actually has a kill switch.

DAGOGO ALTRAIDE - HOST, COLDFUSION: In Australia, an internet shutdown mechanism exists under Section 581 of Australia's Telecommunications Act of 1997.

It grants the Australian Government significant authority over telecommunications networks. Including the power to stop internet access in the interest of national security. In 2003, in the wake of the War on Terror, the Act was amended so that the Attorney General, who was the Chief Law Officer of the Commonwealth of Australia, could direct a telecommunications carrier to kill the internet, quote, either generally or to a particular person or particular persons, end quote.

Before executing the Act, He must ask the Prime Minister and Minister for Communications approval first. The amendment was rushed through, giving only four working days for anyone to raise concerns. Concerns were indeed raised, so the language was changed. The law now couldn't be used to turn off the internet for an individual or [02:11:00] organisation, only the internet as a whole.

So, that's comforting, I guess. In 2024, Malaysian Minister Azalina Othman Syed recently announced the government's plans to implement an internet kill switch. The minister issued a statement that the, quote, new legislation that includes the provisions regarding the procedure and enforcement of a kill switch, end quote, is for the purpose of analysing digital security.

That's probably as thinly veiled as it gets. The legislation will reach the Malaysian parliament in October. As mentioned earlier, around 39 countries around the world have in one way or another completely shut down access to the internet. We, as citizens of nations, need protection, if only in the interests of being prudent.

In 1948, the United Nations General Assembly adopted something called the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, an international legal document that outlines fundamental human rights and freedoms, such as the right to life, equity and non discrimination, right to freedom of work, freedom of education, [02:12:00] and so on.

But what about a right to the internet? Just 15 years ago, this might have sounded absurd, but today, the internet is the infrastructure on which modern society is built. Because of this, it's no wonder that the UN has declared internet access a human right and deemed internet kill switches as illegal, and this was in 2016.

In practice, however, while there's significant international pressure against internet shutdowns, there's no binding international law that bans governments from doing such actions. In Bangladesh, the primary reasons to shut down the internet, as cited by the government, was to stop misinformation and rumours from spreading.

But does it actually help?

ARCHIVE NEWS CLIP: The busy streets of Dhaka are deserted with burnt vehicles and bricks strewn across the roads. And the protesters have gone on a rampage at many police stations and government establishments. There's a complete internet and telecom shutdown that is in effect in a move to curb the violence.

JOHN HEIDEMANN: So misinformation is a real challenge. And I guess if you shut the internet off, nobody's looking at Facebook. In [02:13:00] that sense, it's quote successful. It's a very heavy handed maneuver though. The other thing I was thinking about in misinformation, I mean, In the United States right now, there's been some debate about what role the government should have in intervening in the spread of misinformation on social media.

I don't think anyone's proposing shutting down the internet, but people are talking about the role of interactions between the government and social media sites. And how do you label misinformation on social media? And I think those are things we all have to grapple with. And there's different points of view about that.

DAGOGO ALTRAIDE - HOST, COLDFUSION: Shutting down the internet to curtail protests like in Bangladesh, Egypt in 2011 during the Arab Spring, and for election periods in Venezuela, like in 2019. are the more common excuses to kill the internet. But there's a very strange reason why some countries might end up doing it. In 2024, from May 26th through to June 13th, the internet in Syria went dark.

The reason? High school exams. This is actually a common tactic used in many countries [02:14:00] including Syria, Iraq, Algeria, and many others. The purpose is to stop students cheating in exams by using online methods. If this method really is that effective remains to be seen, but it hasn't stopped 12 shutdowns recorded in 2023 alone.

But the question is, what does everyone else in the country do at that time? I guess they just sit around and twiddle their thumbs. But it does bring up an interesting point though. What is the cost of an internet shutdown?

Beyond the tragic loss of life and injuries, the recent internet shutdown in Bangladesh has seen immense economic damage as you can imagine. According to NetBlock and their cost of shutdown tool, the total financial impact to Bangladesh has been around 393 million for five days of internet shutdown.

For the United States, daily e commerce trade is valued at 2 billion and the daily digital economy is about 5. 5 billion. So a complete internet shutdown for one day in the United States could amount to losses in the range north of 7 billion at a bare [02:15:00] minimum. But back to Bangladesh and the internet shutdown.

It's estimated that there's over 1 million freelancers that operate out of Bangladesh. That's a million people who depend entirely on the internet for their careers. And this isn't just for work within the country, but to deliver projects abroad. And suddenly, Their entire livelihood is gone, and the worst part is that they have no idea when it's coming back.

And this isn't to mention the impact on hospitals, banking, and other critical industries that rely on the internet to operate. So it's not just the dollar value, but humans and their daily life is at stake with internet shutdowns.

JOHN HEIDEMANN: Imagine the economic damage that would have if your internet was shut off for five days, you know.

I think a government's got to think very carefully before they take such a decision because of the economic implications, much less the social implications.

Enshittification Part 2: The Mechanisms That Helped Big Digital Go Bad - On the Media - Air Date 5-12-23

CORY DOTOROW: I grew up going to a great little company in Toronto called the Canadian National Exhibitions, the CNE. By 10 a.m., and there'd be someone walking around with a giant teddy bear that they won by throwing three balls in a peach basket. [02:16:00] As hard as you tried, you could never match the feat. So how did they get this giant teddy bear and why? Well, basically, the company made sure they won. The first person who came along and looked like a likely mark, they'd say, Tell you what, I like your face. You got just one ball in the basket. I'll give you a keychain. And if you do it again, I'll let you trade two keychains for the giant teddy bear. And the point was that if you carry that giant teddy bear around all day, other people are going to go, hey, I can get a giant teddy bear too, and put $5 down and fail to win the giant teddy bear. They may not even get the keychain. This guy is lugging around this conspicuous teddy bear doing the marketing for the rigged game where you see Joe Rogan getting $100 million for his podcast or you see TikTokers have these incredible success stories. Or back when Kindle was getting off the ground, there were independent authors who went to Kindle and reported these incredible findings. Substack. All of those early Substack writers who are guaranteed a minimum monthly. We're talking about how Substack [02:17:00] was the future of journalism. And really all that was happening is they were being given these giant teddy bears, same as those Uber drivers who are filling Uber social media with accounts of how much money they make driving for Uber. They're just luring people to go through the picker to ant pipeline.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And you say the big teddy bear theory plays out big on TikTok.

CORY DOTOROW: So the thing that even TikTok's critics admit is that it's pretty good at guessing what you want. That's why most people who use tech talk just tune in to the recommendation feed. People find themselves going viral because so many people have tuned in to this algorithmic feed. And the assumption had been this is what America wanted to see right now. And so America saw it. But then a reporter from Forbes revealed the existence of something called the heating tool. And it's just a knob that's someone at TikTok twiddles to say, we're going to stick this in front of a lot of people, even though the algorithm doesn't think they'll like it. This is a way of temporarily allocating a surplus, giving goodies to the [02:18:00] kind of performer that they want to become dependent on TikTok. So maybe they want sports bros, they find a few of these guys and they give them giant teddy bears. You're viral. 10 million views every video you post. Are you really going to make like two different videos, one for YouTube and one for TikTok, especially when you're getting ten times the traffic on TikTok? And remember, you know, TikTok's got this like, idiosyncratic format. You really got to customize it for TikTok. So it's not really practical to make it for Instagram, YouTube and TikTok. Maybe you'd become a TikTok first performer, right? And then they can take it away from you if they decide they've got enough sports pro content and now they want to got, I don't know, astrology influencers. They can stop promoting, stop heating the sports bro content and start hitting the astrologer content. But also, it's impossible to tell whether a performer or a writer or creative worker on one of these platforms like Substack, is getting a giant payout. Whether they've been given a giant teddy bear, whether they even know. And in fact, if you [02:19:00] and now we're getting into counter twiddling, if you get aggressive enough and trying to figure out how they're determining whether or not your videos will be shown to your subscribers. Right. If you start to reverse engineer their tools, start to pull apart their app to see if you can find the business rules, they will start to come after you for violating Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, which broadly prohibits reverse engineering, violating the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act for tortious interference with contract for trademark violation, patent violation, copyright infringement. And again, this just boils down to felony contempt to business model.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: I don't know what that is.

CORY DOTOROW: That's just the idea that even if Congress never passed a law saying never displease a shareholder, that you can mobilize existing laws like copyright law to say that displeasing a shareholder becomes illegal. So, like, let's talk about iPhones just for a second. I make an app for an iPhone. You own an iPhone, you spend [02:20:00] $1,000 on that iPhone. I made the app and I hold the copyright to it. I don't want to share 30% of all my revenue with Apple. And you don't think I should have to. So I give you the app and a tool that allows you to install it on your iPhone, which belongs to you. I the copyright owner, by letting you use my copyrighted work, violate copyright law. Section 1201 of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act, punishable by a five year prison sentence and a $500,000 fine.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Mm hmm. It's amazing that people who talk about the free market lock it up so tight that it can't be responsive to the consumers that are supposed to operate it.

CORY DOTOROW: Oh, you know, it's even worse, right? Because it's not just that Apple, like all capitalists, hates capitalism when they're on the pointy end of it. It's that Apple did the thing that they would now sue you for two other companies. So if [02:21:00] you think about when Microsoft Windows reigned supreme in the office and Macs were getting harder and harder to use because word for the Mac or office for the Mac was so bad, the way Steve Jobs resolved, that was by having some of his technologists reverse engineer Microsoft Office and make AI work that read and write Microsoft Office files. When Apple did it, that was progress. When you or I do it, that is theft that it it's allowing maximum twiddling on the incumbent side and preventing any twiddling on the new market entrants side. You know, ad blocking is the most successful consumer boycott in history. That's what Doc Searls says. And it's only possible because the web is an open platform. But if you wanted to make an ad blocker for an app, the fact that you have to first reverse engineer the app that you have to bypass digital rights management makes it a felony. And so the ads on apps are a lot more obnoxious, not just. In terms of their presentation, but in terms of the data [02:22:00] that they gather and target with, we're all familiar with the stories about people being targeted by ads based on visiting mosques or abortion clinics and all of the other terrible abuses. That's because without the constraint of counter twiddling, the sky's the limit in terms of how much they can tell you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The FTC has lawsuits against Facebook, and the Department of Justice has an antitrust case against Google where twiddling resulted in undetectable fraud. So is there some accountability afoot?

CORY DOTOROW: I think that there's an attempt to do it. But let's go back to the best time to fight monopolies was 40 years ago, and the second best time is now. You know, there are people who say that the monopolies that we have in tech, the winner take all are winner take most monopolies that they come out of tech exceptionalism. There's just something about the great forces of history that have made tech so powerful. But, you know, Occam's Razor says we should [02:23:00] look to the simplest explanation first. And the simple explanation here is that we used to do anti-trust and we didn't get monopolies. We stopped doing antitrust and we got a lot of monopolies. I think the world of the antitrust enforcers in the Biden administration, Lina Khan, is extraordinary.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: The head of the Federal Trade Commission.

CORY DOTOROW: That's right. She was a third year Yale law student just a couple of years ago. And she wrote this paper that was a direct answer to Robert Bork. So Bork's book was called The Antitrust Paradox. Her law review paper was called Amazon's Antitrust Paradox. And it was such a stinging rebuttal to Bork that it set the whole antitrust theoretical world on its ear. And just a few years later, she is the youngest ever chair of the Federal Trade Commission, and she found things like Section Five of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which wasn't that hard to find. It's right between Section Four and Section six, but hasn't been used in 40 years. And it's the article that gives the Federal Trade Commission broad latitude to act against deceptive and unfair [02:24:00] practices. And that's the basis on which she promulgated a rule banning non-compete agreements. We are seeing in Khan what a skilled technocrat can do. If you know where the levers are, you're not afraid to pull the levers. You can make incredible things happen. And we are in an incredible moment for antitrust. And it's not just her, it's Jonathan Kanter at the Department of Justice. It's other commissioners like Rebecca Slaughter. And it's the whole of government approach that Tim Wu crafted when he was in the White House, where every department is now being asked to use its legislative authority to go ahead and act to reduce monopoly and monopoly power across the entire economy.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at 202-999-3991 or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from the PBS NewsHour, Pillar of Garbage, Disinformation, Tech Won't Save [02:25:00] Us, Decoder, Commonwealth Club of World Affairs, the Daily Zeitgeist, DW News, Institute of Economic Affairs, ColdFusion, and On the Media. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks 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 Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. And remember, we are looking for a new transcriptionist. Please send me an email if you're interested. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular [02:26:00] 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 is Jay, and this has been the Best of the Left podcast coming to twice weekly, thanks entirely to the members and donors for the show, from BestOfTheLeft.com.

1 reaction Share

#1657 Modeling Positive Masculinity: Between Tim Walz and the Manosphere, boys are looking for guidance (Transcript)

Posted by · September 24, 2024 8:20 AM

Air Date 9/24/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast.

The positive dad vibes of Tim Walz came onto the national scene in the middle of an ongoing crisis of masculinity that stretches from the youngest generations to the oldest. Both positive and negative aspects of masculinity tie in with the general election, basically divided it right down the partisan line. And the next generation of voters, not to mention humans, are often feeling stuck between the two, with insufficient guidance from the men in their lives.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes Hysteria, Some More News, The Brian Lehrer Show, Amanpour and Company, Dear Old Dads, and What Fresh Hell.

Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in five sections, some of them quite short. Section A. Tim Walz. Section B. [00:01:00] J.D. Vance-branded masculinity. Section C. The fallout of stoicism. Section D. Dating life, containing discussion of sex, including violence. And finally Section E. Social emotional development.

Tim Walz is The Perfect Model of Masculinity Which Contrasts Weird, Blowhard JD Vance - Hysteria - Air Date 8-15-24

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: It's been such a wild summer. But I think that the moment that the vibes went from the worst vibes possible--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: The worst!

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: --to among the best vibes possible.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Because we needed it.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Because we needed it, which was when Minnesota governor Tim Walz, like a breath of fresh air, comes breezing in from Minnesota. And he changed the entire course of the presidential election with his just like positive Santa Claus energy. People immediately noticed that Walz reminded them of dads and uncles and relatives that they had.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah!

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Wish [00:02:00] they had. And the more we see him on the stump, the more we're seeing an example of somebody who is fully a man. Nobody would be like that guy's girly, because he is very, very much--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Most decidedly not girly.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Exactly. But it is a model of masculinity, of kindness, cheerfulness, helpfulness, usefulness that is such a good counterexample to what we had been seeing from Team Trump, and even from in among the Democrats. Like I think we have Jamie Raskin is one person who sort of has this vibe.

But yeah, Alyssa, you're nodding.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: No, I just-- you know what it is? It's like we have been surrounded by people who are keen to tell us about all the problems, but not a lot of fixers. Like, you know, when Mr. Rogers is like, always look for the helpers, where have the helpers been? And the Republicans, more than anybody, are like, let me tell you why things are broken and who's to blame and why you should have grievance. And Tim Walz [00:03:00] just shows up with a tool belt. He's like, let's fix it. And I think that that's something that we just haven't heard in a long time. And that's no ding on Biden or anything. It's just a totally different energy, and someone who is bringing fresh eyes and fresh legs to this race.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah. So this is something that was written into our outline by Fiona, our associate producer.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: And I want to ask you this question verbatim, because I think it's so funny. I don't know--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: I'm going to be honest.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: "Is this a hopium high that will last through November?"

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: So can I ask a question? Is that like a reference I'm not missing?

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: There's no "hopium" in the Urban Dictionary. This is just like opium and--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Hopium instead of opium.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: It's a brand new portmanteau.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Well, yeah, I just like to make sure, because we all know I'm a little Gen X sometimes.

This was what we needed. Erin, I don't think that any of us could have felt sadder or worse for a gambit of reasons [00:04:00] after the debate. And I personally, my estrogen levels aside, not sleeping, not feeling good, not feeling joyful, feeling total despair about everything.

And we needed this. And I think, look, there are going to be pitfalls. Bad things are going to happen between now and election day. You and I both know it. But I think that we've got to take the hopium for what it is.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Mm hmm. You know, I agree with you and I find myself getting caught up in it. And, you and I have talked about this, that politicians aren't for stanning. They're--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: No, they're people.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: They're people. They're your employees. But I think during the campaign, it is okay to get excited about the people that are trying to get the jobs that you are eventually going to criticize them when they are in it. Because--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Of course!

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: That's what democracy is. And I find myself really, really falling hard for the Tim Walz vibe. I think a friend of mine on Instagram referred to himself as being "Walz pilled", [00:05:00] which I think we are. We're Walz pilled.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: It is. You know what, though? I think it's also because he is such a contrast. Trump aside -- we've been listening to him drone on for eight years at this point, twelve years, however long.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Too long.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: J. D. Vance, though, is such a poser, like he's such a poser. Like when he-- Look it -- I want someone who I can look at on Instagram and is like, you know what? I'm gonna bring the same smarts to fixing America that I brought to fixing this carburetor. I don't want some fucking broed out douchebag to be walking on the tarmac assaulting Kamala Harris's plane, to be like, I'm just here to see what my plane looks like.

It's like, are you in a 1985 gang movie? Who are you?

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Oh my God. It reminded me of Gaston going over to Belle's house and being like, we're getting married. And she's like, no, we're not.

I've found the archetypes that are at play [00:06:00] within the election I guess impossible for me to resist.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Cartoonish?

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah. So we have Kamala Harris, who suddenly is leaning into the kooky aunt who you can call her if you're at a party and she'll come and pick you up and she will not tell your parents but you better not do this ever again.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: See, I think I really relate to that. That is my role in life. I am the one who tells my niece, and my sister always listens, I'm like you listen JJ, someday you're gonna get in trouble. And I'm going to be the one you call. And I'm going to show up. Just remember that. And that is how I feel about about Auntie Kamala.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah. And, she'll drive you to the airport. You can stay with her for a week. She lives in the city. She's got an apartment in a tall building. Like she's got a boyfriend. I mean, the real Kamala is married, obviously, but that's the aunt I'm thinking of.

And then we have Tim Walz, who is like the guy who can fix your car and clean the gutters and cares deeply about public education. He reminds me so much, and he reminds a lot of people, of male relatives. He's like my grandpa Ryan.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Like he's my uncle Dieter.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah. 100%. And then we have [00:07:00] J. D. Vance, who is the guy your husband is friends with and they've been friends since high school, and so before he comes to town, your husband is like, look, I know he's a lot to bite off--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: But we've been friends forever--

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: And he just needs to stay at our house for a couple of days. And he goes out and gets blasted and comes back and pees your couch.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: I was just gonna say his nickname is Detox.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: It's like the type of person who brings the mood down wherever he shows up. Like he's just--

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: A blowhard.

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Yeah, but he feels also vaguely threatening. And watching, I just think having Walz as this example of somebody who could --

And he's not just up there spreading good cheer by singing loud for all to hear. He's saying things that are aggressive. He is being the vice president attack dog that he needs to be.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: There is something about him that is like the reason I think that he feels so trustworthy to me is because he has lived the life that most Americans are living right now and he can actually relate to [00:08:00] it. And I think that there is also something about him in the reclaiming of patriotism, like I think you and I have talked a lot over the past, how many years have we done this? Five years?

ERIN RYAN - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: So long.

ALYSSA MASTROMONACO - CO-HOST, HYSTERIA: Democrats are not great at fighting back. It's like either they go so low, like they're just not good at it. And he has really threaded the needle in a way that's like, hey, guess what? You're not gonna fucking say, you're not gonna try to make indictments or proclamations around my military service. You're not gonna do that, and I'm gonna tell you why. Because you shouldn't do that to anybody who has served, because they have given of themselves, they have made a sacrifice. And like, when he ended, when he was speaking at AFSCME, and he defended himself, which is someone who lived through the Kerry campaign, when John Kerry got swift boated by Republicans, and couldn't believe it, so didn't fight back against it because he's like Americans are never gonna believe this, but they did. And Tim Walz not only defended [00:09:00] himself, but said, you know what? I also salute and appreciate and respect your service, J.D. Vance. He's just got like the 360 response that I think a lot of people have been missing on stuff, or have not had the ability to do, because he had the actual lived experience.

Are Men Okay – SOME MORE NEWS - Air Date 5-22-24

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Are men okay? You see, because most men have balls. Not all of them, but on average men have 1.4 balls. According to me, just making up a number. Anyway, here's some news in the form of the question we just asked: Are men okay? I only ask, because, well...

CLIP: Move forward. I'm a man. Move forward. I am a man! I am a man! I am a man! Move forward! I am a man! I am a man! Move forward! I am a man!

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Okay, so the short answer is no. Men are not [00:10:00] doing okay. Or rather, that man isn't. But to be fair, I have been known to scream, "I'm a man" repeatedly and through sobs, but that's usually while moving heavy furniture or taking a dump. Anyway, that clip is apparently from one of those wildly expensive and so-called alpha male bootcamps that have become recently popular, if only to mock on the internet. There are so many of these now, even Jesus is getting in on the fun.

CLIP: Welcome to the Stronger Men's Conference. What God did in your life, it's meant to impact the world around you. It's meant to be multiplied, that's the plan of God for you! We can change and impact the world because we serve the strong man, Jesus Christ! He says, I will go with you, but hold on with you always! I'm gonna give you strength!

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Aw yeah! Monster trucks, wrestling, fire, and Jesus! Boy, as a man, that felt [00:11:00] both insulting and chilling to watch. And while it's fun and easy to make fun of the many clips from these camps, this of course speaks to a larger problem happening right now. And, honestly, before now. Which is that men everywhere are struggling with their mental health as it relates to their gender identity.

Nearly three out of four of every death of despair, as in a suicide or overdose, is committed by a man. I mean, look: we're all pretty bummed out right now. Probably because of the Queen's death. She had so much life left in her!

But men, specifically young men, are even more bummed. While there was a 4 percent rise in suicides across the board, for young men, that rise was double. And that's probably in part due to men not seeking help nearly as often as anyone else. Here's a survey from Cleveland Clinic that found over 80 percent of men feel stressed, but also 65 percent of them feel hesitant to seek professional counseling. Here's another survey of [00:12:00] 1,001 adult males that found nearly 50 percent of them were, quote, "more depressed than they admitted to the people in their lives." Here's an insurance survey where one in four men admitted that they've never talked to anybody about their mental health. You get the point. Insurance ghouls don't screw around with this stuff.

But it's not just depression. Men are struggling socially, too. They are lonely. I mean, I'm not. I have tons of friends who aren't puppets. Right, Friendulous?

FRIENDULOUS: That's right, Cody!

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: See? I'm not lonely. But for example, dating is far more difficult for men. That's probably why they are having less sex than they used to. That, and their living arrangements. Since the 60s, the rate of men living with their parents has steadily gone up, to the point that there are now more men living with their parents than living alone, or with a partner, or a roommate, or like, a quirky Mediterranean cousin, or two hot chicks, or a zany source of increasing [00:13:00] sexual tension.

For women, that rate of living with your parents is lower. But they are catching up. Good for them!

We don't know exactly why men are struggling socially, but it's probably somewhat related to the fact that they aren't making enough money anymore. I mean, yeah, we're all hurting there, but men aren't going to college as much as they used to, either. Their employment rate has either stagnated or gone down.

And since 1979, men's average wages have fallen 10%, while women's wages have gone up 25%. Although I'm guessing that's in part because women were paid less than men and have to catch up. Because despite everything I just said, men still rule the world? It's still a patriarchy? Everything is still dominated by men. The richest and most powerful people are still men, just not most men. So we have a bit of a pickle dilly, a dick pilly, a seow [00:14:00] mess.

Society is run by men and largely designed for men, but the majority of men don't feel like they are in charge of anything. And so their anxiety around that is uniquely related to their gender identity.

That's why if you were to ask, let's say, certain men if there's a patriarchy or if women have problems worth considering, you'll probably get a response that strips all nuance and just gives a laundry list of various issues that men have, like this.

NEWS CLIP: Do you believe that we live in a patriarchy and it negatively affects women?

No.

CHARLIE KIRK CLIP: Yeah, so for example, men are more likely to commit suicide.

NEWS CLIP: Yeah.

CHARLIE KIRK CLIP: More likely to die at work. More likely to declare bankruptcy. Women are far less likely to be in credit card debt. Far more likely to graduate from college. Far more likely to get a high paying job.

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: Ah, you know how the left is all about victimhood and their victim mentality? Claiming that they're the victim, and Ah, I'm just sick of it! Because actually, the real victims are men? [00:15:00] Hey, quick question. All these problems that men apparently have, who made the society that created those problems? Is it the women who make you do all the wars? But these types of weirdos can frame it as a woman problem because women are more often supported and boosted in the interest of equality, because of this patriarchy that continues to screw over both men and women.

Boy, if only there were a movie about this exact dynamic, perhaps involving a magical doll world and multiple musical numbers.

I'm not saying that women have it easier, quite the opposite. We've had decades of women being told to be subservient baby cannons, and have only recently begun course correcting from that error. Women are redefining themselves beyond that role. And while the efforts to do that are extremely difficult, the message there is somewhat clear.

But with men, the message hasn't really changed much. For generations, the concept of masculinity has always been presented one specific way. Men are expected to endure physical and emotional pain with little complaint, lest we get [00:16:00] soft! Men hate being soft! in multiple ways, aha! You can trace this all the way back to the 1800s, when writer Washington Irving complained that Americans too often send their kids overseas to become luxurious and effeminate in Europe and claimed that, quote, "a previous tour on the prairies would be more likely to produce that manliness most in unison with our political institutions." You got to do that trad Little House on the Prairie life, bros!

Dating Amid Gender Differences in Politics - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-30-24

MATT KATZ - GUEST HOST, THE BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Some important background is that voters under 30 have been a pretty unwavering pillar of the Democratic electorate since the late eighties when Reagan left office. So it's pretty noticeable that young men have recently been defecting. They're becoming more conservative and the Wall Street Journal gets into a whole slew of reasons for this, including a response to wokeness, a sense that white men are [00:17:00] demonized, men specifically are demonized.

So listeners, especially young people, we want to hear from you. How has this dynamic affected your dating lives or romantic relationships? Maybe your friendships. Have you seen a noticeable difference over the past few years?

It's also important to know this shift toward Trump among young men isn't among just white men who have historically leaned Republican. It also includes black and Latino men before Biden ended his bid for reelection earlier this month. The Wall Street Journal found that Trump was winning support from a majority of men under 30. And if that stays true on election day, it would be the first time the Republican Party won that demographic, young men, in over two decades.

The Trump campaign has found a lot of success in framing Trump as something of an anti-hero, and that's clearly very appealing to a lot of young men who feel like they've been left out of the narrative or marginalized by progressive politics, by what [00:18:00] they would call "woke politics", those who feel abandoned by the Democratic Party for that reason and others.

Several of the men who were quoted in this Wall Street Journal article, they said they hide their conservative views when looking for a partner because women they know have said that they won't date right-leaning men.

Also listeners, if you're a Democrat who will date a Republican, but maybe only if they repudiate Trump, or maybe you're a Republican who will date a Democrat if they, let's say, oppose socialism. Are any of those folks out there? We're opening this up to anybody who wants to talk about what it's like to be in a relationship to date at this time of such hyper partisanship.

Give us a call, 212-433-WNYC. 212-433-9692. And, one other thing -- we have the calls are flowing in, I'm told.

But one other thing before we get to the calls is the issue involving [00:19:00] reproductive rights. The headline of this Wall Street Journal article was "America's new political war pits young men against young women" and one of the main reasons it cites for women moving further left is reproductive rights. So women are leaning more to the left on issues like LGBTQ rights and childcare. So Democratic messaging on these issues appears to be resonating more with women than men. And the Trump campaign is definitely appealing to a kind of traditionalism, when it comes to gender dynamics, a return to masculinity as a thing to be celebrated. This was something that was evident at the Republican National Convention.

We've heard some rhetoric to this regard from Vice Presidential nominee J. D. Vance, so this is a dynamic out there and our lines are open for a highly informal poll to figure out if this is a dynamic that is occurring here in the New York area. Again, give us a [00:20:00] call, text us your story, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-WNYC, 9692.

I want to quote one piece of this article here. "Young men now favor Republican control of Congress and Trump for President after backing President Biden and Democratic lawmakers, just four years ago in 2020. Meanwhile, women under 30 remain strongly behind Democrats for Congress and the White House. They're also far more likely to call themselves liberal than they were two decades ago.

“BoyMom” Author Looks at Raising Sons in an Age of “Impossible Masculinity” - Amanpour and Company - Air Date 7-9-24

MICHEL MARTIN: You know, this is a quote that stood out to us when we read the book. He wrote that, "For boys, vulnerability and privilege coexist in a complex relationship. Masculine norms and expectations confer countless advantages, but they also bring significant harm. The two come together in male socialization to create a [00:21:00] contradictory and strangely destructive combination of indulgence and neglect". Can you talk a little bit more about that? Like, what do you mean by that? How do we see that?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah. So, I think this is going back to the whole thing about privilege. Um, so obviously there are real advantages to being male in this world and we know that, but there are real harms to it, too. So the system of patriarchy that, you know, tells women to behave a certain way and oppresses women also oppresses men in certain ways, too, and cuts them off from their emotions, tells them that they have to be strong and masculine and makes people project masculine qualities onto boys right from birth. And so, in some ways, boys get very indulged, you know, there's all this research that shows that they do less chores than girls, and that they get paid more for them. And all of these things.

So, parents do indulge boys in some bad behavior, they let them get away with things, they somehow sort of give them this idea that they're kind of special, and they don't have to do these difficult things, [00:22:00] but there're also ways that they really, you know, that they're under-cared for. They don't get that engagement with emotions. They don't get hurt. Their feelings don't get heard in the same way that girls feelings do get heard. You know, we spend a lot of time listening to boys and male opinions, but a far less time listening to their feelings. And I think that this sort of under-nurture thing is where the neglect part comes in, you know, and there are very real harms to that. And we see that with adult men, we see that they're lonely. We see that they're disconnected. We see that they're disconnected from their emotions. And so, you know, this is the same system. It is complex. It's not simple. It's not like, being a man is all benefit and no downside, you know,? There are very real harms built into the system.

MICHEL MARTIN: Well, you point out that, you know, there really is a difference between, sort of neurologically, between male and female infants, how their brains develop and also just the impact of exposure to stress [00:23:00] and negative parenting, which I think was maybe... it was a shock to me. Was it a shock to you?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: It was a real shock to me, 'cause when you sort of look at the science of sex differences and you know, people co-op this science quite a lot, it's quite sketchy. So, there's this idea that boys will be boys. So, boys are rambunctious, they're tough, they're sturdy, they're angry, they're badly behaved. But actually when you look at the research, a baby boy is born about a month to six weeks behind a baby girl in terms of right brain development. So, that's the part that governs emotions and attachment and emotional regulation. So, because their brains are more immature, they're actually more emotionally vulnerable and sensitive. So, all of the kind of stereotypes, you know, really go against what a baby boy actually is. And a baby girl is born more resilient, more independent, more able to regulate her emotions. So, because of that brain fragility, it means that any kind of adverse [00:24:00] circumstances—so, you know, poverty or neglect or poor circumstances—has been shown to have a greater impact at a population level on boys than it does on girls. But because of our ideas of masculinity, you know, what we think a baby boy is, we tend to treat them with less kind of nurture and less of that intense emotional caregiving than we do with girls. So, it becomes this double whammy. They need more care, but they end up getting less, in a sense, you know, we masculinize them. There's all this research that shows that parents use a different vocabulary when they talk with girls, that they use more emotional language, they listen to their feelings more. Whereas with boys, it's more of this like physical roughhousing and wrestling type play. And so maybe boys and boys all the way through childhood really kind of miss out on that emotional engagement. We don't teach them the skills in that way.

MICHEL MARTIN: Do you think this is a new feeling? This feeling of having [00:25:00] to constantly be on your guard. Do you think that that's new?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: I think that that is an old feeling. I think that comes from very old systems of masculinity, but I think what makes it more acute now, there are various cultural forces that I think are making it harder to be a boy now. So, I think that they still have these... you know, those are old stories. Men always had to kind of man up and be tough and not be vulnerable. But I think that now there's just so many different kinds of cultural forces. I think there's this idea, that it's time for them to be quiet, from the left. They're feeling like people are talking about them as if they're toxic and harmful. I think since #MeToo, you know, quite rightly, there's this whole conversation about consent, which is great. But I think it means that they Also feel at the same time that they have to be extremely cautious that they can never overstep. So at the same time, they're kind of expected to be dominant and aggressive and to kind of make the first move and be, you know, um, the sort of [00:26:00] masculine appearing one with girls.

But at the same time, they also have to be extremely cautious and to never overstep. And otherwise they'll be seen as creepy. So I think a lot of them were just feeling like I don't know how to be. I'd rather just be on my own in my room and watch porn by myself.

MICHEL MARTIN: Oh gosh. So, what reaction are you getting? What reaction stands out to you?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Well, I've been really surprised by actually how many men have got in touch with me and said, Oh, I feel really seen and really heard by this. And they've actually read the book, you know, I thought the book because it's called BoyMom that it would appeal mainly to women, but lots and lots of women have been getting in touch with me as well.

But also I was surprised to see men saying, you know, this is exactly what my childhood was like, you know, all these pressures of masculinity, I feel very shut down. I don't know how to be thank you for seeing this and hearing it. So the response has been mostly extremely positive. I think some people are concerned that there's like a little bit of both sides ism, you know, in the sense of like, centering boys and men [00:27:00] somehow takes away from the work that we're doing to support women and girls. And my view on that is that actually, you know, we're all trapped in this system together. That, you know, raising emotionally healthy men and boys benefits everybody in society. You know, this is not a zero sum game.

We Love Some BDE Part 2 - Big Dad Energy - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-23-24

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah, it's really interesting if you think about Andrew Tate or whatever that guy is his name and you think about Tim Walz, it's so clear that one is a real man and one is not. Just imagine those two guys meet and we're gonna have that typical, they're staring each other down, they're gonna have some sort of measuring contest, and then you think what's that going to mean? Short of, I don't know, fighting, what is Andrew Tate going to do that Tim Walz can't? Tim Walz will fix your car. He'll have repaired every door in your house. He's got WD 40. He's got a special, like a holster for it that he carries around all the time. And let's like, and anything that you would need in your real life and any reason you would think, "Hey, I sure wish I had a dad type person, a typical [00:28:00] masculine figure in my life." for anything you'd really need them for, he's just the best.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah, there are a hundred reasons to have Tim Walz in your life. There are zero reasons to have Andrew Tate in your life. Unless you're like, I gotta get rid of this hornet's nest, but I want them to take someone with them when they go! I would use him to dry toxic waste maybe, or if I had a bunch of poison I needed eaten.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: just did

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: an oil change. And you're like, we're not allowed to throw this in the trash.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Exactly. Can I throw it into an Andrew Tate? And he'd be like, "I'll rub it all over my body. And then Lithuania," and I'll be like, yeah, go ahead and do that.

And I think it's so funny that we feel the need to caveat, " except if it were a fight," because Tim Walz is never going to fucking fight Andrew Tate. Andrew Tate orders his third drink at the bar. And Tim Walz is like, "that guy's gonna try and fuckin fight someone in a bit. I'm gonna leave. Doot de doo. Hun, I'm on my way home. Oh, did I have fun? Oh, I had a great time. Me and the boys were driving around," and Andrew Tate's just getting beaten to death by a cop on the front step of the TGI Friday's where he started to fight. [00:29:00]

There's no universe where Andrew Tate is useful to anybody except Andrew Tate's mental illness. That is the only person who wants more Andrew Tate, it's Andrew Tate's psychosis. And again, the reason we are sold Andrew Tate is because Andrew Tate is the version of masculinity you can buy. You can buy a gym membership. You can buy a fancy haircut. You can buy oil to smoosh all over your

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: abs.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Buy your

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: way out of those

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: rape charges.

Well, it turns out not so much, but you can buy a lawyer to move you to Lithuania or whatever it is, but you have to earn the Tim Walz. You have to be there, you have to show up for people, you have to care genuinely, you have to have something to say. And Andrew Tate will never have that. God comes down to Andrew Tate tomorrow and it's like, "Andrew, you're a douche change your ways and try to be as much like Tim Walz as possible."

He [00:30:00] physically will never be able to do it. He does not have the things inside capable of it, which is why he has to constantly be selling his version of masculinity to everyone else. Because if you aren't selling it, if you weren't constantly pitching that commercial capitalistic version of masculinity, people recognize it as worthless, which is the thing you're most afraid of being.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Fucking 100 percent all of that, Eli. And the other thing that this brand of particularly toxic And violent masculinity does is once you've believed in and created yourself as a solution for a violent and conflict-full world, when that's the world that you have been training for and sold yourself and all your buddies have sold each other on, what you're going to do is look for and create conflict.

So you're creating a more violent space so that your tools will be used. Because you're not going to say, [00:31:00] these are the things I value about myself as a man, and then live an entire life where none of those things actually come in handy. What you will do instead is create an environment around you where those tools, those tools of violence and aggression, are, at least in your own mind, useful. So you'll actually create a more violent world and create violent situations because that's the only tools in your toolbox, and you don't want to walk around being like, "did I waste my whole life? The whole thing?"

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: That's really interesting insight. I wouldn't give him credit enough to be doing that intentionally, but I feel like no unintentionally.

Yeah.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah. I think it's entirely unintentional. And then you compare that to what I feel like is this service driven mindset around masculinity, where it's like, how can I be useful to others? How can I be competent and useful to others? And how can I be of service to the people that I love? And how can I extend that idea of loving service into the world in ways that [00:32:00] reflect my values and in ways that reflect my competencies. That is so much of what I see reflected in that sort of Tim Walz-esque stereotype, or prototype rather. It's so much better. It's so much better.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I don't consume any of this stuff, but I just absorb enough of it from Reddit and whatnot, but you see all the things those Tate Taints care about, and they'll be like, "you're a cuck if she's got a big body count," and it's all stuff that if you peel it back for two seconds, which these guys never do, it's all insecurity. They're all worried about the purity of the girl, that's just insecurity. You're worried that if a woman has ever found pleasure in another man, that's a threat to your entire ego as a person. It's all so weak and frail and fragile and the opposite of what you would think masculinity should be.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And again, I think that goes back to the idea of focusing on building a masculinity based on threats and what we find threatening and what we find we are insecure about, and trying to change the [00:33:00] world to fix our insecurities rather than fix our insecurities in ourselves. There's this idea that if I'm insecure about something, that is something you have to fix about yourself, your life, society, an entire gender, whatever, rather than being like, "hey, I'm just insecure about that."

And that's part of the human condition is to not be perfectly secure, and "I have work to do." That side of the aisle, that side of the world, I should say, like that idea, it's got no solutions. There's no solutions there.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And I think it can't be, because I think deep down, people like Andrew Tate know they're not capable of being a Walz. And I know as a humanist, I'm supposed to think that given the right circumstances and bur ba bur ba da, and maybe I would love to be proven wrong about that, but I think that people like Andrew Tate and Donald Trump are so far gone down a version of poison that all they can do is poison the pool around [00:34:00] them and hope no one notices we shouldn't be swimming in poison.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah. And there's also a total unwillingness, I think, reflected in that to ever experience vulnerability of any kind. I think you look at somebody like Tim Walz or Doug Emhoff, and you see people that are very demonstrably okay, with feeling things and being vulnerable, and I think you look at the stated goals of this Tate esque model of masculinity, and it's like, there's no vulnerability available to those men, so if you buy into that worldview, You buy into a worldview that I think just necessarily is lonelier, necessarily lacks love and lacks connection and lacks the ability to open yourself up in ways that allow you to be hurt because being hurt doesn't fit that aggressive worldview that men have to be this constantly armored stoic persona. And you look at Tim Walz, that's a guy who just [00:35:00] unabashedly loves. Doug Emhoff, who unabashedly loves. And I don't think you can like unabashedly love and accept the vulnerability that's a part of that and also have this aggressive worldview.

Rethinking Boyhood What Moms Should Know (with Guest Ruth Whippman) - What Fresh Hell Podcast - Air Date 6-17-24

AMY - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: The point you make in the book, Ruth, that really was eye opening to me is that we encourage girls to break free of stereotypes, we encourage parents of girls to raise them to subvert stereotypes and raise them without the stereotypes we might have, and then we don't do the same thing for boys at all. We don't encourage boys to subvert the masculine idea of what it is to be a friend or what it is to care about people. That's not something that we ask them to question.

"You be like a boy, and girls, you be more like boys, I guess, and then also be a girl." We don't ever turn it around and they're missing out when we don't consider that they have stereotypes too.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah, and I think in some ways, girls are [00:36:00] encouraged, we talk about girls in this really inspirational way, which is great, " You can be anything, sky's the limit, you can do whatever you want, the future is female," and somehow we talk about boys in this quite essentializing way. So I hear a lot of, "Oh, boys will be boys, boys can't sit still. Boys are reluctant readers. Boys don't like school." All of these quite essentializing things, and it's just almost like boys are just biologically limited by these certain things, and this is just what boys like and what they like and what they are like. And we just have to work around that, and that's the best we can hope for.

And I thought that really sad in a way, because I think it's stereotypes around masculinity, around not expressing your emotions, around connection, vulnerability, the so called emotional labor piece of it, these things are really limiting for boys. And you're seeing now down the line with adult men, that there's this loneliness epidemic with men at the moment in America. One in four young men [00:37:00] says that they have no close friends at all.

And there's all these horrible statistics on loneliness. You've probably heard them all. Read about them in the news and, I think we are not giving boys a fair shake. We're not saying, you can be a full expansive human being in the way that we're saying to girls. And these are progressives who often use this kind of language about boys. You're not talking about some sort of trad wife situation. You're talking about the progressive conversation. It's still, we talk about boys in these very limiting stereotypes.

MARGARET - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: I think it's interesting talking about this idea of what we put on boys. You hear all sorts of different things about this. Some people would say, and some media certainly says, "boys are becoming completely feminized in this generation and, oh, they're soy boys" and talking points about how we're losing boys because we're trying to make them more female somehow.

Other people are seeing this side of these [00:38:00] statistics saying loneliness and lack of friendships, and I guess my fundamental question there is how much movability do you find there is, how much can we really affect outcomes here? Is it something that has to happen on a national conversation level, or is it something that happens within our own homes, or both?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: I think it's both. We can do a lot in the home to change norms and to open things up for boys. And I think a lot of it. It's about naming the problem, seeing the problem for what it is, seeing the stereotypes, because sometimes they're really invisible. I spent four years working on this book and looking at these things and they still pass me by and I'd be like, "Oh yeah," and then I'll think back to something and think, "Oh yeah, that's quite sexist or limiting." So it's quite invisible in the culture.

And I think we have to do it at all levels. We have to be having conversations like these, we have to be working within our own homes, but on a personal level, how changeable is it? I think this is one of the things that I [00:39:00] explore in a lot of detail in the book because obviously I'm like, "okay, great. After my third son was born and the whole Me Too thing was happening. And I was like, great, I'm going to just change everything, and I'm going to be able to control this really, really easily. And great. I just need to do a few things," and obviously my boys are actual people with their own ideas and their own preferences.

MARGARET - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: We always have that problem. These children are actual people. It's so frustrating.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: I think that's not a reason to give up. I think we're very comfortable when we're talking about girl socialization, we're like, there are so many harmful messages in the culture about body image or about subservience to men or about, princess culture, all of these things. And I think we can hold two truths at once. We can hold, we don't have complete control of this and they will get cultural messages that are harmful. And we can talk about them and they will probably succumb to some of them, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't address them or think about them critically.

AMY - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: Ruth, you tell a story at the end of the book about your youngest son arriving for his first day of kindergarten, [00:40:00] and it's an example of these things aren't writ large, but they're tiny and they happen all the time. And so tell that story.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: So when my third son went to kindergarten, there was this male volunteer, I think, possibly a teacher, possibly a parent who was standing by the gate and greeting all the kids as they walked in. And we were in a line of kids and there were two girls in front of my son. And the guy was like, "hi, sweetheart," and then they were, the next one would be like, "hi, sweetheart," and then my son walks in and his voice goes down like two octaves and he puffs up and he goes, "hi, buddy," and gives him a high five.

And I was like, that buddy sweetheart thing. It's so well meaning. It was so sweet. It came from such a good place, but. Sweethearts and buddies are really different. A sweetheart is a sort of nurturing, protective term, whereas buddy is like, "you're my peer." And it's almost just like a tick away from Hey buddy before you get in a bar fight.

And people already at the age of five, he's [00:41:00] this little kid who's scared going for his first day at kindergarten, he needs nurture and protection in the same way that any girl does. And buddy, it's like it's lifting him up and you can see why it's sexist both ways around. You can see why sweetheart could be patronizing or it can exclude girls from those channels of power where all the buddies get together in the locker room and slap each other on the back and make important decisions, but it really also excludes boys from that kind of nurturing.

And that was one of the huge themes that came up in the book, like right from babyhood, baby boys get less nurture than baby girls. And actually biologically at birth, baby boys brains are born more emotionally vulnerable and immature than baby girls brains. So they actually need more of that loving, supportive nurture to thrive.

And girls are generally more resilient and independent and so I think, this kind of like masculinization of boys can, be a very, very subtle form of [00:42:00] neglect in a way.

That's My Gus Walz - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-30-24

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Guys, we talked about this a little bit in the intro, but I want to talk about it just straight out and out. We saw Gus Walz's just absolutely lovely expression of affection for his dad. And so I thought in the spirit of the news media, we should go over some of the Republican reactions to that.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Can we talk more about that though? What's funny is we did the masculinity episode, and I put this in the show notes, but we had recorded on Walz and Emhoff before the DNC. We had gotten a little ahead cause time that different dads needed off. And we recorded that and, which was a great episode—stand by all of it, before having seen the just incredible displays at the DNC by both those gentlemen.

Like I thought Doug Emhoff speech was so good. It was so fucking good and relatable in a [00:43:00] real way. Like I love this election cycle for being the first time, really the first time, that I felt like there's a bunch of normal people on the top of the ticket. It like never happens.

I love Obama, but I wouldn't say he's like a normal guy. He's great, but he's a professor. Doug Emhoff, Tim Walz, and even honestly, even like Kamala somewhat, like she, they're pretty normal ass people. And I absolutely love it. And I got to say, I don't know if any of you gentlemen did this, but Lydia and I had this nice week last week, where after working our asses off and barely being awake, we would at 11 PM, grab a glass of wine and put on the DNC top couple speeches on 1.7 speed, whatever we could find time for, and we just sit and watch " Oh, this is what people that don't fucking suck are." it was great. It was so much fun.

And in that process, Man, Tim Walz's speech happens. It's funny. The different things we see, like how we perceive the world differently for so many reasons, Lydia and I, so many [00:44:00] reasons, and one of them is obviously my history with my dad and all that stuff. And I saw Gus Walz, the minute they showed him, I saw that he was already teary and I was losing. I was like, I can't cause I could just tell I could just absolutely tell right away. And then they show him crying even more. And I just lost, I was crying all fucking night with how sweet this kid is.

I didn't know anything about any whatever neurodivergence. I don't even think that matters. I didn't even know that at the time don't care. I just saw a kid that was so proud of his dad in a way that, again, to my brain, I'm like, I didn't know that could be. I'm keeping it together right now, but I spent the better part of two days, if I see like a still shot of that, I have a hard time not getting super emotional because being able to see the possibility of a relationship between father and son like that is just, to me... It's not just Oh, it's so sweet, it cracks something cold and dead in my heart, and it's just Oh my God.

And so I love this so much. I want to say this, I can't wait to roast these Republicans. But here's [00:45:00] a rare thing, when you love something so much, this happens to me pretty rarely, you love something so much it's critique proof. I was going to use Anna as an example for Eli, but now you'd still probably murder him, but there's certain things that I love so much that if somebody made fun of them, I'm like, boy, I feel bad for you. No reaction of oh, I'm mad at you, cause there's zero insecurity there. When it comes to Gus Walz, that was one of those things. I was like, boy, I just feel bad for those people. I don't even, I feel bad if Gus is seeing any of that, but there's nothing anyone could say that would take away the perfect sweetness and purity of that moment.

It's the most pure thing I've ever seen in my life.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah, look, I was joking in my intro, but literally, I wouldn't muster a punishment that bad to look at that beautiful thing and be like, "stupid" even though they're lying. And I know they're lying and there's this meta layer of everyone's lying and the social internet has destroyed our brains. Nobody knows that better than me. But underneath it, the character you've chosen on the social internet, the one that other people think [00:46:00] is you, Is one that looks at that and is like, "gay". That sucks for you. I wouldn't do that to you. I wouldn't do it. And these are some bad people. These are some shitty fucking people. We're going to talk about Ann Coulter and Dinesh D'Souza. And if again, were I hovering my pen over the death note book of Dinesh D'Souza's Twitter, I'd be like, "I'm not going to make him tweet what he tweeted. That's not nice. He went to jail. He's done his time. He doesn't deserve this."

I also think that one of the things that we really wanted to do when creating the show is not just talk about positive masculinity and dunk on negative masculinity, but also just acknowledge how fucking weirdly masculinity is portrayed versus life, because I don't know if you guys have had this experience, but I have cried with joy multiple times in my life. I cried with joy yesterday. A friend was getting married and I was doing the ceremony and I had to practice [00:47:00] so many times so that the officiant wasn't crying at my friend's wedding because I was so joyful for her and her now husband. I had to do that work.

The fact that I had lived most of my life and had to make it to, genuinely, especially when it comes to non fictional representations of healthy joy I can't count on one hand the amount of Gus Walz showings of joy and affection I have seen in popular media, and that's fuckin crazy. Do you know how many murders I've seen? Do you know how many people kicked out of helicopters I've seen? So many more. So many more people have been kicked out of helicopters in popular media that have cried with joy.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Probably seen more people specifically killed by being put in one of those wood chippers. Specifically something horrible, more of that than Gus Walz.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Why do you think that is? I'm curious why, cause I don't [00:48:00] disagree at all, but I wonder what is at the root? Because I think in real life, many of us have been moved to joy, but we don't want to show it in our media? We don't want to reinforce it?

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I think it just makes people massively uncomfortable. I'll tell you this, I'm gonna do y'all one better. Because Eli, I think, I won't shame Eli. There are men who are like, "Oh, yeah, I shed a tear," and what they mean is sometimes I moved to shed that single masculine tear and my eyes get a little bit red and then I can cry in a totally masculinely acceptable way.

And I'm like, "Oh no, I ugly cry. I can't chill about it because I also have some sort of depression brain chemistry. Like the minute this happens, I'm like, "Oh, God!" And I'm crying in a completely socially unacceptable way. There's the old timey "men never cry," and then there's the next level of " okay, but it has to be in this completely masculinely acceptable way. It has to be like a manly cry." Sorry, I've blown past that completely. I just can't even keep it in and that no one will ever show because it's [00:49:00] uncomfortable. I grant that's uncovered. I try to not do it around people because it's incredibly uncomfortable.

“BoyMom” Author Looks at Raising Sons in an Age of “Impossible Masculinity” Part 2 - Amanpour and Company - Air Date 7-9-24

MICHEL MARTIN: Given that you've described what a deep stem this has, how do we get out of it?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: We have to do things in the home and in the wider culture, the way that we talk about boys and men.

So I think in the home, it's really about showing boys that nurture and emotional engagement that they need. So really naming the problem in terms of they're excluded from those emotional role models from those kinds of emotional conversations and trying to correct for that and to give them that nurture to talk to them about their feelings, to listen to them, and to not just see them as tough, uncomplicated. And I think we need to recognize male interiority and male emotions and to listen to them.

And I think similarly in the wider culture, when we talk about boys and men, rather than having this conversation, which is it's a gender war time for men to shut up. I think we need to start listening to men's feelings as well, and making [00:50:00] space for that. We spend a lot of time listening to men's opinions, but a lot less time listening to their feelings.

MICHEL MARTIN: Has the way you interact with your boys changed since you started doing this work?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah, I think it really has.

It's subtle. It's actually, it's not like I've done these five things differently. It's more of a change in my orientation towards them in our relationship. So I think it's helped me to see them better and to see them as these complex, emotional creatures, rather than... There's this stereotype of boys I hear, "Boys are like dogs. All they need is food and exercise and discipline," and actually I think seeing them as these creatures that are vulnerable and fragile and in need of more nurture rather than less has really helped me approach them in that way. And rather than trying to punish them or discipline them out of their bad behavior to see the kind of emotions driving them and to try to engage them with them in a more nurturing way.

Note from the Editor: 3 top takeaways on and for boys and men

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting [00:51:00] with Hysteria discussing Tim Walz and breaking down the masculine archetypes. Some More News looked at men being very much not okay. The Brian Lehrer Show looked at the gender political divide. Amanpour and Company dove into the complicated work of raising sons. Dear Old Dads discussed and mocked the manosphere style of masculinity. What Fresh Hell broke down how gender stereotypes influenced parenting styles from the very beginning. Dear Old Dads discussed vulnerability and repressed emotions through the lens of Gus Walz at the DNC. And finally, Amanpour and Company described the need for this to become a widespread discussion on all levels of society. And those were just the Top Takes—there's lots more in the Deeper Dive section.

But first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, trying to have some fun along the way. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes [00:52:00] delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support, there's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple Podcast app.

Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes I provide in the show notes to jump around within the show, similar to chapter markers. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, 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, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half of the show, these are my three top top takeaways for this topic that I want you to now. Here we go.

The first one is mentioned in the show today. Just in a different phrasing, and I really like this phrasing I once heard. This is for any adult dealing with boys. Here's what you need to remember.

They just got here. [00:53:00] They weren't here for the last several decades of feminist progress, and to understand all the fighting that went on to make the progress that has been made, and they need to be understood in that context of ignorance. But I just love the phrase "they just got here." It creates this image in my mind of the war of the sexes raging bitterly for decades, and these young boys show up and they're like, "hi, I'm new here? How does this place work?" And then some people. trying to be helpful, but, saying something, not literally this, obviously, but kind of effectively this, welcomes them and they're like, "Hey, yeah. There's this war of the sexes going on and your side has been winning for a long time, but the other side is starting to make some real progress and you need to be happy about that, or you're a bad person." And then the boys are just like, "But I just got here. What are you talking about, what is all this?"

That ignorance runs deep and I feel like the [00:54:00] history of the progress of women over the past several decades is so ingrained for all the people who lived through it that it's hard to. Understand what it would be like to not know all of that stuff.

Anyway, the second top takeaway is to be directed at boys themselves. So maybe you are a boy listening in which case welcome, or you know, one and you should definitely say this to them. Here's what you say, "just because someone has correctly diagnosed a problem. Doesn't mean they understand the solution."

And to expand slightly. It is much, much, much easier to identify a problem than to correctly identify the best solution to that problem. So to expand slightly more, there are plenty of stupid people on the internet who can sound smart by correctly articulating a problem related to you, your boyhood, your masculinity, how you [00:55:00] feel about life, but that in no way means that they have any good ideas for solving those problems you're having.

To me, that one piece of information given to a teenager, young teenager, someone who's spending time on the internet unsupervised, that is as good of a piece of information for them to have as any I can think of to arm themselves against the seeming siren call of the manosphere and all of the bad advice that comes with it.

And the last top takeaway for the day, I got this one from an Atlantic article, it's about the bad men in the world. And the main argument is it's better to pity than revile them. This is from the article Pity the Bad Men, or Sometimes Consider the Boar, because publications like to change titles on a whim on the internet now. From the article, quote:

The problem with pity is that it's so often [00:56:00] interpreted as a soft emotion, a synonym for empathy or compassion. Asking women to pity men is like asking the subjugated worker to pity his greedy boss. But pity, crucially, is also a weapon. It makes its object smaller and weaker while casting the pityer as solicitous and tender.

Now, it's not exactly the same, but I would argue that there's a striking similarity between that vision of pity and the current accusation of a weirdness being directed at Trump, Vance, and company. Which makes perfect sense because much of their weirdness stems from their deeply confused and self-defeating ideas about masculinity. I for one, have pitied Trump for years. He is a twisted, miserable person because his father didn't love him enough. He's some amount of wealthy, he has millions of adoring fans, and actually became president of the United States. Yet, he seems completely [00:57:00] miserable basically all of the time. How is that a model of masculinity to aspire, to? Look at the end result, it is clearly not the path to happiness.

SECTION A: TIM WALZ

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: For a better chance to find that path to happiness, we will continue to the Deeper Dives section in five topics. Next up, Section A: Tim Walz; Section B: JD Vance-Branded Masculinity; Section C: The Fallout of Stoicism; Section D: Dating Life; and Section E: Social-Emotional Development.

We Love Some BDE - Big Dad Energy - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-23-24

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I do think we have to talk about this fucking Big dad energy moment that is like infusing American politics right now. The Tim Walz, Doug Emhoff, just wonderfulness of it all.

Have you guys seen all the, like Tim Walz backs into his parking spaces, Tim Walz measures [00:58:00] twice cuts once look at all this, this stuff, all this like Tim Walz stuff, and this is like a quintessential. Guys, guy, like a quintessential, like man's man in all the ways. I think that remind me of the kinds of masculinity that I think the three of us value with like none of the lack of empathy and cruelty and indifference and like inflexibility.

That is oftentimes, like, valued on the right and on the other side of this sort of, like, political spectrum.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah. He was created in a dear old dad's laboratory of, like, It feels like it, right? It's perfect. I love him.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yes. I saw a quote, which I have thought about a billion times a day since I saw it, which is that Tim Walz is the dad that Fox News stole from the country.

That's so good. That dad who got fucking turned into a slobbering, mean spirited, [00:59:00] racist idiot by Rush Limbaugh, who should have just been Tim Walz, that's Tim Walz. Tim Walz is just the guy who, like, was middle of the road. And I also think this, like, I think Tim Walz feels the way most Americans feel Especially if they haven't been brainwashed by the social internet, right?

Like I think Tim Walz is where I

MUSIC: think if you're gay and you want to marry another fellow, well, you know, I might not want to marry you cause I'll never look that good, but I, I don't want to do any planks. So that's why I'm not gay.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: They just want people to be well. And when their vegetarian daughter says they're vegetarian, they're like, you can have Turkey.

They are harmless. in their sweetness. And I, and I think that, again, one of the reasons we started this show is that masculinity has been so poisoned. And I think that Tim Walz just demonstrates the positive way that that masculinity can actually present itself.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Our guest on OA on Monday show had a really nice quote that stuck with me, where she said like, [01:00:00] he's utterly unintimidated by a changing world.

I was like, that's so, yes, exactly. Like all these fucking terrified little weak cowardly ass men, like Vance and Trump, there's it's such weakness. That's what's so frustrating is like, it's not even a manly thing. It's just weakness and overcompensating for it and being mad and being heartless. It's weakness and being cruel is translated as looked at as like, Oh wow.

He's a man. He's a macho. But like what Tim Walz is doing is my idea. If any such thing needs to exist of what a dude should be. That's, that's masculinity. Again, unconcerned with the changing world. Cause that's, let's be real. That's where the reactionary politics comes from. It's the entire thing. Yeah.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And let's also point out the bar is so low.

Yeah, it is. Right? Tim Walz isn't like, well, after I got my sex. 17th doctorate from Harvard. He's just like I think if you spend most of your time thinking about which Children with [01:01:00] which genitals should go to the bathroom. That's a little weird. That's the bar That's the bar of what's expected of men not just to be like good men But to be great men to be great men who represent us nationally You have to be like I think you should

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: talk about children's genitals less So much of like the examples out there about masculinity that have kind of become part of the social internet.

They are this performance of masculinity for other men. They have no prescriptive value. Other than like, perform this for other men, like here's how to get other men's approval. Yeah. If we all

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: do this, then none of us have to do anything. Right. Like if we all act like this, then no one can make us be considerate for a moment.

And it is focused

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: so much on like what they find threatening. Yeah. Rather than any positive values toward, you know, actually building, creating. Supporting, empathizing. There's this like really beautiful [01:02:00] service and family driven version of masculinity that I think I see so much in my dad that I've always admired.

Like jokes aside, like my dad is a service and family driven person. The meaning that he finds from his life, allowing people to cut off his son's ears. But it's about being of service to other people. My dad would never be like. Late somewhere late to the ear chopping up money. He would never like give unsolicited advice or like be judgmental about other people's lives.

Like what? He's not perfect, but like he is service driven. Like his life is a, is a service and family oriented life. And I think that that's this view that is getting lost in the social internet about how we externalize our masculinity. It's become this horrible, toxic externalization. To sort of swim upstream against feminists, you know, and like more plates, more dates, like all this kind of like really hyper aggressive, [01:03:00] not at all appealing version of masculinity.

There's this great quote from like this WAPO article that I read that I'll summarize. It said something like, this is a version of masculinity that women would run into a burning building for. This is what's actually really appealing. Not just. To other men, but to women, which is a lot of what the performance of masculinity is for when it's performative.

So it's really funny to me. And I think it's like really worth noting that like this performance of masculinity that Tim Walz is embodying is actually far more attractive. Then this sort of tate level performance that's being sold to young men. Right. I was gonna say

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Andrew Tate. Yeah.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Also, I like the way Tom said Wao.

I thought it was a slur for a good 20 seconds, so it was like, yeah, well give it

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: a second. Maybe we'll find out

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: this

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: WaPo

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I just think that that contrast is just really important and like the. The [01:04:00] kids on the social internet, they're seeing this version of masculinity embodied in these tates and these Rogans and these other assholes. That's not what people want. That's not what women are asking for. Women are asking for more Tim Walz.

Look at the response. If you want to know how to get laid. Look at the response from women. Oh, he's for Tim wall. So

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: many chicks right now. That's for real.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And isn't that what a lot of this performance is around? Like it is when it's performative around this idea.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And I think it sort of is the porn star effect.

There is a social agreement that men want blonde hair and quadruple D boobs in a tiny ways. and big plumped up lips because that's what porn stars have, right? Generally speaking, and obviously I'm, I'm speaking in generalizations cause that's what culture does. It's what reality

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: stars have, which is kind of the same thing now.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Right. Exactly. Tomato, tomato, right? These ideas. And there are women who sell other women this idea [01:05:00] that, Hey, I am close to this thing or I am this thing. thing that your husband, that your boyfriend, that your son, that your brother wants. And if you want to be desired, you need to be like me. Right. And I think as a culture, we've gotten better, though, certainly not good at recognizing and addressing that.

And I think the male version of that is the Andrew Tate's right. Who are like women. What? Night. Teen pack abs, and they want you to be ready to fly into a murderous rage at a moment's notice, right? But because men are so unreflective, because men are so un self aware, that when those conversations about body positivity try to happen in men's spaces, We shut ourselves down in the same way that we saw like a lot of the toxic fat shaming In like the 80s and 90s and then obviously still today as well But like with less of a response than it had and so it's interesting to watch these two [01:06:00] Or in this case of Walz, just the one example of positive masculinity and positive response to it, because I think it does trickle down, right?

I think it does trickle down in a positive way that will inform young men. They can be kind and caring about the people they love and the less protected in society without losing this. Sense of manhood.

That's My Gus Walz Part 2 - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-30-24

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And let's, let's get back to Gus Walz because it's so sweet. And that is a situation where I feel like that, you know, you can ugly cry in that situation. A whole room of people is like, just loving what your dad's doing.

And your dad

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: is running for vice president of the United States. Like what, what are you fucking saving it up for Eli?

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: That's actually what I wrote down.

If not now, when, when, like, I can't imagine the sense [01:07:00] of like, And to be in that room with the energy of that room and the people and the support and the, the cheering and the clapping and you're like, and that is the guy who like loved me through riding my bike. That is the guy who made me waffles last night.

Like that's my guy. And he's standing up there. I would fucking fall apart if it was you. Like if it was you, like if it was just somebody that I knew at an intimate level and it's like, that's my fucking guy. That's my wife. That's my kid. That's my bud. Like whatever. I would, I think I would be, I don't know that I would ugly cry like that, but I don't know that I wouldn't.

I certainly would have feelings about it. Right? Like, yeah, I think if you're stoic in the face of pure joy and pride and like, That overwhelm. If you are so fucking broken inside that you're like, I must remain stoic. I am not allowed this moment of free joy and expression, like. Holy fuck, have we done a [01:08:00] bad job raising you as a society.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I think Eli and I have made this point, but like, what are you doing here then? What are you doing here? If this is not doing it for ya, if it's like, peak, I, I, I literally put on the Facebook after this, I was like, I think we might all be NPCs in a life simulator where Tim Walz gets to live the best life.

Like, like genuinely.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: It's just amazing. I hate my programming.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah, I don't know why they put Eli in there.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Nobody

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: debugged your program at all, they're just like, ah, slap it out there, it's fine. I know we're trying

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: to balance out Tim, but Sad Boy 7 is real sad. Do we want to I mean, it's real weird, like, do we need to do

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: that?

Okay. It's part of the realism, alright. Did

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: you hear him on the bonus talking about cum covered tennis balls? I really,

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I think Nope, it's necessary. To Tim Walsh, living the perfect life. It's, you know, complicated systems, you know, emergent properties. Do you want him to

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: be head of the hunting club and the gay club?

Or just one of them? Because we need to make Sad Boy 7 that sad.

We Love Some BDE Part 3 - Big Dad Energy - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-23-24

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: [01:09:00] We should talk about the Doug Emhoff part of it because I was interested in that. I think before the VP announcement, I want to talk about that just because he had a pretty high powered career.

He was a entertainment attorney and he had to resign that so there wouldn't be conflict of interest. And now, you know, it's like he's. Obviously there's notoriety with being the second gentleman, but to most men, I don't, I think that's insane. I think probably most men couldn't handle that or maybe at least a large group of them.

Oh, for

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: sure. A hundred percent. I do still think that we are enculturated. largely in a space that sort of requires men's idea of themselves to include a work at a certain level that is at least on par, if not in some measurable, or at least like conceived ways of being. More than their spouse there, if they're heterosexual,

MUSIC: right?

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Of course, that's an enculturated space [01:10:00] that we have not walked away from. We are still asking of men that they think of themselves in this way and reinforcing and rewarding that.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah. How would you guys feel about that? I would be a fan. That'd be fun. Yeah. I mean, I, I would love to take a little, little vacay.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Yeah. I mean, you know, it's hard because I don't have a wife who is the forefront of my career. Obviously Anna does what I do and she's a part of what I do, but like, I definitely understand what it is to have an incredibly talented wife who is often the forefront of attention in her field. So like when I watch Anna, Yeah.

Yeah. In the folk music world, which is where Anna thrives. Obviously she's amazing on our shows and people adore having her at live shows and stuff, but that's the thing we do together. So it doesn't appeal to the sort of fragility that might come up where I not involved in the podcast, but in the folk music scene, I do see that.

It often gets brought up in sort of a roundabout way because Anna is such a, [01:11:00] like a well known player in the spaces where she plays music. And so people never mean it in like a negative way, but they do sort of hint at, are you mad about that? Or are you intimidated by that? You know, the example that I think of all the time is my friend, Rachel who both of you have met is like a pretty well known and pretty successful magician.

And she was talking to an interviewer. for like a pretty well known press outlet that she was being interviewed for. And they asked her, is your fiance mad that you're gone so many nights a week? And she was really blown away by the idea that like, cause you would never ask a man that right. You'd never be like, Senator, just, is your wife mad that you're not home for dinner by 5 PM?

But because she's a woman, it was just like, man, how about, how is the man who owned you feel about that? Right. And so. Yeah, I think, I think it's a really, I did have

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: to swallow an air tag. So, you know, I would raise my hand and say it would be a struggle for me. It shouldn't be, [01:12:00] I'll admit that. But like a big part of how I've perceived my value to the people around me is as the provider financially.

I know that that's insane. And I don't think that that's a entirely net positive, but it's also still true. If Haley tomorrow found some career or occupation, and it meant that I was, that she was all of a sudden the primary breadwinner in the house. I think that I would be lying to you if I said that I wouldn't quietly struggle with that.

I would be smart enough to make that a quiet struggle and to go and see a therapist. Well, you know, like, because I know inherently that that's fucked up. So I, like, I admit like fully that I think two things can be true at the same time. And that is that like, I have ideas that are probably not good, but that have benefited myself and my family.

And I think my family looks to me to fill that role and they are grateful that I fill that role. And that's a dynamic that we've [01:13:00] always had. I think if tomorrow it were reversed, it would at least be an acclimation about how I think I'd have a hard time being like. Okay. So what am I here for? And I know that that's bullshit.

I know I bring a lot to the table as a person and as a partner that is not connected to my paycheck. I'm here purely for sexual pleasure, baby. I've always said that about him. I bring a lot of energy there to the table at the very least. But like, yeah, you know, I can't pretend that like, as a 46 year old man, that I could turn on a dime in my head.

I would do it. Nobody would, I would not tell a fucking soul about it except for a therapist, but I would be like, awesome. I'd be the most outwardly supportive, a hundred percent rah, rah. But I think in my head, in my heart, I'd be like,

SECTION B: JD VANCE BRANDED MASCULINITY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: JD Vance-Branded Masculinity

Are Men Okay Part 2 – SOME MORE NEWS - Air Date 5-22-24

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: After all, [01:14:00] they want to make men great. Again, not to mention that conservative men are often the ones lamenting that they can't find a romantic partner. Probably because they want to take away their reproductive rights and treat their partners in this skewed, unbalanced way that eventually catches up to itself.

Meanwhile, noted January 6th coward Josh Hawley wrote a book literally called Manhood, The Masculine Virtues America Needs. Because manliness is often treated like a necessity for civilization. This is tied directly to nostalgia and the hard times create strong men meme you see going around. Once again, it's the same concern we've always seen.

That men need hardships like war and labor to keep them tough. It should be noted that there's actually not much evidence that men are becoming more conservative, but rather apolitical. Which, I would argue, just means that they don't realize it when they see it. They are conservative. Ultimately, the divide seems obvious.

We have these conservative leaning men who believe the generations long [01:15:00] propaganda about manliness, who also feel a resentment toward modern, liberated women who have absolutely no interest in them. And so they lost for the better days when women were To them, more tame. This is not exclusively right wing, mind you.

The internet has especially boosted nostalgia for pre 911 days. TV shows had 20 episodes a season. Mel Gibson wasn't a racist yet. We had malls and physical places to exist. And all the Gallagher we could ignore. And no one was struggling. I mean, that last one isn't true. But that's how a lot of people look at the past.

And like, yeah, you were a kid. That's why you weren't struggling. Wow, I'm so nostalgic for the carefree days of when I was a literal child and didn't need to care for anything. Anyway, undoubtedly, things got economically worse in America. But the thing about nostalgia is that it makes a tremendously effective dog whistle.

Because this decades long economic erosion just happened to take [01:16:00] place the same time that minority populations were expanding their own rights. And so people like Tate and Peterson can point to these two things as if they are related. By lamenting the good old days, they are often implying that Flying that things were better because women had fewer rights, and that feminism is why things are worse now.

It's just like how dummies like Elon Musk will look at crumbling infrastructure or airline companies and blame DEI. And so this is why the Manosphere is a pipeline to Nazi . Going back to that Beefcake fetishist Bronze Age pervert, well you see right in the name that the account is glorifying a.

mystical before time. It's no wonder that account was specifically popular with Trumpers. At first glance, you might see that his admiration for past civilizations is tied to his beliefs that men need to build strong friendships and brotherhoods like ancient Greece. Then, if you look a little closer, you might learn that this guy, under his real [01:17:00] name, wrote an entire book about eugenics.

And in fact, has proposed selective breeding as a policy. Because again, Nazi shit. It always goes back to it. And when you see right wing influencers, or right wing influencies, or moderate liberals, or why I left the left types mocking this idea by saying, Oh, so Fitness is right wing now? It's Nazism to be healthy?

We can safely and reasonably assume that they either didn't read the thing they're complaining about, or they did, and they're speaking broadly and vaguely and incorrectly about it in order to confuse the issue. Exercise is fine. It's actually good for you. Go outside, work out, stay hydrated, eat well, fall into wells, find pirate treasure, get good sleep, stick to a solid routine, develop good habits.

This is all fine. It's not man stuff, it's person stuff. It's all recommended by most people, regardless of ideology. But [01:18:00] there are elements of this, a certain viewpoint and perspective about these kinds of things that can lead to, Yes. Some Nazi stuff. Or, at the very least, just general women hating. In fact, the idea of a toxic pick up artist is almost quaint now.

A bunch of MIT researchers actually looked at the manosphere and found four distinct groups. Quote, Men's rights activists claim that family law and social institutions discriminate against men. Men going their own way. take this feeling of grievance further, arguing that society can't be amended. They often avoid women, blaming them for their problems.

Pick up artists, meanwhile, date and harass women. They believe society is feminizing men. And then there are the incels, the most potentially violent of the group. Incels abide by the Black Pill, a belief that women use their sexual power to dominate men socially. For that, incels want revenge. You can sort of see how each of these [01:19:00] manosphere types can melt into the other, and why it's so closely tied to white supremacy as well.

And this all starts with these self help grifters. Jordan Peterson isn't overtly a Nazi, but he's the first step in that direction. We actually made a quick explainer about that guy if you want to check that out and just take a few minutes of your time. Ultimately, it's an extremely enticing pitch to tell young men that all of their problems aren't actually their fault.

And then point to leftists and women and Marxists as the enemy inflicting these hardships upon them. They don't need to change, you see. It's the world that's wrong! Skinner meme! No, the other one. Take your pick, I guess. Of course, the problem is that the world isn't going to change for you, despite what the masterpiece ladyballers might want you to believe.

And so, resentment is the answer. Isn't a useful tool. There's nothing helpful in it. These people are basically saying hey young men I can help you if you listen to me and then their help is to just get mad at women It's like offering swimming lessons and then spending the [01:20:00] entire class Complaining about the ocean and of course the beauty of stuff like this is as you get madder and madder You're still going to need to tune into those god awful swimming lessons And like, hey, all you men out there, if you want to endure hardships and be strong, then maybe you need to endure the fact that women are not subservient drones and learn how to actually communicate with them.

Maybe it's actually manly to adapt. Where do you think your Y chromosome came from? And so when you think about the resilient futility of this manosphere message, the only use it has is to frustrate and indoctrinate young men. They want you to be bitter and isolated so you keep following them. It's a grift and a tool for extremists.

At the very least, it's a way to sell you crap. Heck, for some, that's the main goal.

That's My Gus Walz Part 3 - Dear Old Dads - Air Date 8-30-24

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Should we mock some of these weirdos before we sign off? All right. I'm going to start with my [01:21:00] favorite. This is Mike crispy head of America. First Republicans of New Jersey. Who tweeted the photo of Gus that we're all so familiar with with the caption Tim Walz stupid crying son Isn't the flex You raised your kid to be a puffy beta male congrats does baron trump cry Does he love his father of course That's the types of values.

I want leading the country doubt it

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: I, part of me is like, yeah, he doesn't cry cause he's not proud of his dad. Yeah. Yeah. Like there's a big difference, right? Like if my dad was like, I accept the nomination for the Nazi party. Tom, when you get

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: that 34th guilty count, it's like, wow. Yeah. That's a lot.

That's impressive. You know? Okay. Let me say

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: something brave and from my heart. You could shoot Donald Trump through the face with a harpoon gun and then remove it using your foot as a lever against his [01:22:00] chest and Barron Trump would step back so as not to get splashed. That is the emotion Barron Trump feels for his.

Well,

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: forget about the older two. There's absolutely nothing. What happened? They don't care.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: No. No. Well, they are unfeeling robots. Yeah. They've never had care in there. They get programmed into the uncanny valley. That is their The smooth, smooth faces.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: All right. Next up communicator and revised hair model for an off brand, like a Sheehan brand of toothpaste and culture brought back one of my favorite things that Republicans are mad about saying, quote, talk about weird and quote.

And I love that. And let me say why I love this, right? Because it's not just her once again, right? Because she is broken character a couple of times in her life. She actually did it once on Bill Maher. She was just like, hey man, like, I'm just a horrible, [01:23:00] evil this for a living. Like, I don't know what you want me to do, right?

Nobody wants to buy my children's book, Bill. And he was like, ah, good point. Uh, but like the thing that's amazing about them being mad about the weirdness thing. Is that Tim Walz so beautifully communicated that they know that this is a, that they've gone haywire.

MUSIC: Yeah.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: That they like, somehow we were following, we were grasping the iron rod of conservatism.

It's like you're

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: playing a game of werewolves and you're the werewolf and you know that they're, oh fuck, they're going to get, and you're like, oh no, but that person over there is looking really Exactly.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: This is exactly what it is. It's the desperate cry because you just you're at the end of your rod and you're like, Oh, I'm talking about cat litter.

Like I'm a crazy person talking about cat litter. This is not where I started. So when Tim Walz, the social studies teacher is like, it seems odd that you're focused on this. He's like, your kid loves you. Like I [01:24:00] just love Yeah. Fucking weird. How mad they are.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: But to be fair to them, it is very weird in those circles to have your kid love you.

They must be like, that is fucking weird. Right? Everybody. Y'all are. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. No, my kid, I actually had a heart

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: attack in front of my kid and he did this funny bit where he didn't call the police. So yeah, normal. You

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: have to wonder too, like how much they like focus group and workshopped. I know you are, but what am I as a response to this?

Like, uh, what about, uh, no, uh, no, we tried. I'm rubber in your glue. It's good. Again, when you're the werewolf, you're all of a sudden

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: you're trying to do too many calculations at once. You know, fucking no illusions knows you're the werewolf at the, at the pajama party. And you're like, yeah, but, but Lydia, did you see her?

She's, she's lying. She's lying. Liar.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Or if you're a Heath's, uh, fiance, we just automatically assume you're [01:25:00] here. So, uh, next up is convicted felon, Dinesh D'Souza, who said the kid might have mental problems, but he's acting just like Tim Walz. So what's

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Walz's

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: excuse?

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Now wait a minute, just for clarity, did he write that himself or did he plagiarize it?

Yeah, no, it's hard to say who wrote

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: that one.

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: He's a plagiarist, guys.

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: And then, and I obviously, I didn't include any of the just fuckin rando blue checks who gave Heil Hitler six dollars or whatever it is. Uh, Jay Weber? Conservative radio host who I think is going to lose his job over this, which is super funny.

Yeah. Oh, really? Uh, yeah. Said, sorry, but this is embarrassing for both father and son. If the Walz is represent today's American man, this country's screwed. Meet my son, Gus. He's a blubbering bitch boy. His

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: mother and I are very proud. Jesus fucking Christ. So, what I love about this, and I say that, uh, ironically, obviously, but I do think [01:26:00] it's important.

Again, I think it's okay to be uncomfortable by the ugly crying, as somebody who ugly cries. I get it. Sure! That's okay. But I do think that there's an important point to be made, that It's one thing to say, Oh, yeah, his neurodiversity may be a reason that this happened. Sure. Sure. I think there's a level that people are explaining that away in a way that makes me uncomfortable, where it's like, this guy, for example, went from that, that horrible fucking hate crime of tweet.

Oh, I didn't know he was neurodivergent, my bad. I didn't know he was neurodivergent. Right. Which tells me like. That's not it, man. I don't think, I don't think it's like, okay, any behavior like this is downright just something you can mock and ridicule in horrible terms, unless you find out there's a label you can put on the person and then you got to begrudgingly be like, Oh, I guess I'll just think those things and not say them out [01:27:00] loud.

You know, I thought I was being cruel to a,

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: uh, perfectly neurotypical teen person. Yeah. I thought I was just attacking a 17 year old, just a normal

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: child. Also, I almost created a subcategory, but we didn't have time for it in the episode and I didn't want to divert us. The followup that all of these people have done is there's a clip of Walz kind of pulling Gus.

Out of the way of a camera because Guz is so overwhelmed and so excited that they're on stage He brings the whole family and so he sort of like yanks him very gently out of the way because he's about to walk right into a fucking standing cam And they have sped that up, right? The same thing they did with the reporter lady, right?

We've sped it up to make it look like he's trying to fucking judo toss sure his son, and they're like, shame on you for treating your disabled son that way.

MUSIC: And the fact

ELI BOSNICK - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: that, and like that first guy I read has done it. And like the fact that every single one of them have then tried to switch a roux [01:28:00] around to be like, he's not very nice to that son, you all apparently don't like it when I'm not nice.

Yeah. He's not

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: being nice to this person. I'm actively being in a public space.

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: Like I love that. We just don't give a shit about that anymore. Sorry, Tom. Go ahead. I just love that. I feel like as a society we've been like, Oh no, you're being a fake piece of shit. We don't care about your fake arguments.

Yeah. Yeah. I, but

TOM CURRY - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: like I, when I watched this, I was thinking like, God, I would love to live my life such that my kids were this proud ever. That's all any healthy person should think. Like what a win. What an incredible win as a dad to have ever done anything in your life to where when you're being honored for it, or you're being noticed for it, or you're being seen for it, that your kids are this full of pride because they love you that much.

Like if we don't live our lives, not just as Gus, but as Tim to be examples like that, like that should be what we're all working toward. Like I have no idea if my kids will ever see me and [01:29:00] feel that much pride, but like, I'm gonna really try. I'm going

THOMAS SMITH - CO-HOST, DEAR OLD DADS: to really give it hell.

Are Men Okay Part 3 – SOME MORE NEWS - Air Date 5-22-24

CLIP: I can tell you right now, they talk about why does men not want to get married anymore. Men don't want to get married anymore. They come up with all these elaborate reasons. The main reason men don't want to get married anymore is because their girlfriend was with me.

for free. So why are they gonna marry her? That's that's the bottom line of it. Why would you? A white dress means virgin. Marry who? A girl from the club who your friends have been

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: with? Oh yeah, you know how when men are like, I can't find a good woman to be my wife. They're talking about women who go to the club and have sex with Andrew Tate.

You know how like, there aren't any women who aren't those women. But also, what does it say about Andrew Tate that he considers himself some kind of blight on women that degrades their value if they come in contact with him. Like a social canker sore they should warn kids about at school. So, what Clearly not someone you should [01:30:00] listen to about meeting women.

And yet Andrew Tate has managed to take this grift to a cult like level. He offers his Hustler University that gives paying members access to special chat rooms that do nothing but create an echo chamber of men complaining about women. This language of simps and betas and alphas and cucks. This isn't how most of the world speaks.

Like yes, you might hear people using it at first ironically to make fun of you, And then it kind of seeps into their real language, but unironically, it's this weird esoteric terminology designed to isolate men further from mainstream society, almost guaranteeing that they will never successfully find a partner and be forever caught in their manosphere.

And if they do, they'll probably resent the word partner because it implies some sense of equality. So I guess more accurately, Almost guaranteeing that they will never successfully find a pet slave. There's a pretty telling article about a reporter who took one of these [01:31:00] Manosphere programs who noted, quote, Despite paying for a course dedicated to meeting more women, few of the men I talked to in LA seem to enjoy their real life company.

What they want more than anything is to be admired by other men. This, in the end, is the true purpose of all this acquisition and abundance. Women are viewed as a resource on a par with sports cars and infinity pools, something to show off and deploy to convey your alpha status to other men. So basically, these men sign up because they are lonely, and join a cult designed to make them more lonely.

This, in turn, makes them even more susceptible to the cult and its spirals. Meanwhile, they're pushing crypto almost as their own internal economy, and heavily tying this manosphere to the promise of economic prosperity. In fact, did you know that Hustler University offers commissions to their members if they get their friends to sign up?

I'm sorry, let me rephrase. In fact, did you know that [01:32:00] Hustler University is a pyramid scheme, as in, it's very explicitly that. It's a cult. Did you know that for the low, low price of 5, 000, you can join Andrew Tate's special war room, his secret club where you can, I don't know, prepare for some kind of war.

War, I guess. It sounds silly, but it's made Tate millions of dollars doing this, which is probably why that YouTuber Sneeko also got in on this, selling a creativity kit for 50 bucks a month to help other people go viral.

CLIP: It's time to stop scrolling and start monetizing. These are the sheep, the bots I yell about.

This is the clientele that give all their money to the people at the top advertising while we sit here and scroll. Do you want to waste your time and sit here? I don't know why these people are here. Do you want to sit here all day or profit off of them? That's all I know how to do from scripting, writing, live streaming, being comfortable talking in public, vlogging.

That's what I want to teach you

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: on this [01:33:00] course. I'm sorry, but before we get into stuff that is way more relevant. You don't know why people are there? I don't even know. It's a crowd of people sitting in like an arena type environment. Look for a sign, dude. I bet there's a sign that says why people are there.

I don't want to harp on this. There are more important things to talk about, but I'm going to because man, this guy is so f ing silly. I don't know why people are even here. Look around. Ask somebody. Hey, are you tired of being online all the time? Well, you got to get out in the real world. So here I am, but why is everybody else also here?

Oh well, hey online people out there, I don't know why these people are out in the real world, but they're sheep. Like, this is just a theory, but maybe men are lonely because they're incapable of asking a stranger Hey, what's this crowd of people doing here? Anyway, the actual point of me bringing up this Creativity Kit from a [01:34:00] guy who I don't even think could define the word creativity, and if he were to ask someone why a bunch of people were sitting in an amphitheater, it would only be for content with a capital C, because he capital sucks s Well, the actual point of showing you that is that it's just scam stuff.

It's scam, it's just scams. It's that Riddler guy you saw in 3AM infomercials. They aren't actually good with money or even women. There are sex workers who have talked about how these guys will hire them to pretend to be their sexual conquests. One of these grifters, a Twitter account called Shades of Game, even admitted that he would go to clubs, pay for a VIP table, and invite women to take pictures with him.

It's just. A grift. It's so laughable and obvious, but according to these guys, the fact that I'm saying this is just another victory. To quote this article about Andrew Tate, In one guide, Hustlers University students are told that attracting comments and [01:35:00] controversy is the key to success. What you ideally want is a mix of 60 70 percent fans and 40 30 percent haters.

You want arguments. You want war. It's a war, you see, for attention. Though to them, it's for the culture. And by framing it this way, by working the haters into your grift, you've made yourself bulletproof from anyone laughing at your obvious lies and bulls t. The more people laugh, you see, the more Successful you are, after all, a huge portion of this manosphere economy is simply attracting any attention as we just talked about in our last episode, they ultimately just want engagement and they absolutely don't care how they get it.

In fact, I'm not sure they even think about the harm they are doing to young men and they are doing a lot of harm. Like, get ready for the saddest clip in the world, sadder than the ending of Homeward Bound where Shadow gets trapped in the hole.

CLIP: What did you take? F the woman. [01:36:00] F the woman. What? No, no, no. No, no.

Wait, wait, wait. We love women. We love women. But not, not like transgenders. Yes,

CODY JOHNSTON - HOST, SOME MORE NEWS: sir. We love everybody. No, no. F it. That there is Sneeko, meeting some of his fans, and perhaps realizing the extent to which he's ruined these extremely young boys. For money. The culmination of his grift. His legacy is a handful of shitty children screaming hate at him at a baseball game.

And I don't know, if that doesn't haunt him for life, I'm not sure what would. So, you know, f k that guy. His name sounds like a Star Wars alien, and that's the best thing about him. Also, f k Andrew Tate, obviously, and f k all the other weird Manosphere grifters. Or rather, don't f k them. They're gross. Young men are lost, and they are selling them maps to nowhere.

SECTION C: THE FALL OUT OF STOICISM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, Section C: [01:37:00] The Fallout of Stoicism.

“BoyMom” Author Looks at Raising Sons in an Age of “Impossible Masculinity” Part 3 - Amanpour and Company - Air Date 7-9-24

MICHEL MARTIN: It seems like what you have found out, um, in both in your book and in an excerpt that has appeared in the times that has gotten.

A lot of attention is that boys are hurting sort of describe kind of like the top line surprise for you about just what, how much boys and young men are hurting.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah. So I interviewed many boys of different backgrounds, you know, economically, racially, uh, geographically, and The theme that kept coming up over and over again that really surprised me was just how lonely they were.

Um, and partly that was to do with like actual isolation and that showing up in a lot of data as well about boys spending a lot of time on screens and replacing that kind of real life socializing with, um, with a screen based socializing. So boys are becoming material and materially more isolated. Also, even [01:38:00] the ones who did have a lot of friends who did hang out with them felt that they couldn't really find that kind of intimate connection.

They couldn't talk to their friends about those intimate, personal, sort of more, um, you know, more vulnerable things. And those were kind of the old scripts of masculinity that were very much still in circulation. So I think the top line was kind of learning this, but also I think these boys felt very shut down.

You know, they felt shut down from that old system of masculinity, which was like. Man up be tough. Don't show your feelings. But also from these new kind of more progressive voices where it was like, you know, you're a man, you're privileged. It's not it's not your turn to speak. You need to be quiet and let somebody else have a turn.

So they kind of just really didn't know. How to be how to express themselves. Tell me some about some of the boys that you met. There's a really, really wide range, not just in terms of, you know, economic and social and racial backgrounds, but also just in the kind of type of kids that we're talking about, young men, you know, some of them were.[01:39:00]

very sort of isolated and slightly socially awkward. Some of them were, you know, these popular cool kids. But what was really interesting was more of the similarities in what they were saying than the differences. I think they all felt quite hemmed in and quite oppressed by these ideas of masculinity that were being forced on them.

So they all felt that it was very hard for them to, like, express their emotions. And Even for them to kind of name their own emotions to themselves. So it wasn't even they found it really hard, even to get to the point where they could figure out what they were feeling, let alone, um, tell their friends about it.

So that was one thing. They felt kind of isolated. They felt like they couldn't talk to their friends. A lot of them used the same expression. You know, kids from very different backgrounds used the same expression with me, which is, you can never let your guard down. They used the exact same phrase to describe what it was like to be a boy amongst male peers.

You know, that you were always on the verge of, like, getting knocked down or saying the wrong thing [01:40:00] or saying something that would, like, emasculate you in some way.

MICHEL MARTIN: So is there a particular age group that you found? To be sort of most in distress.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah. So I think what I was looking at was this kind of micro generation of boys that were really hitting puberty, right?

As me too happened and then went through the COVID pandemic, which obviously accelerated a lot of these kinds of trends, but you know, they were in evidence before. And that sort of micro generation is now of voting age there of college age, you know, so if you were 11, um, when me to take off, you're 18.

And I think that generation we're showing that they're moving to the Right. Politically, they're becoming isolated. They're becoming resentful. I think they don't know their place in the world. They're dropping out of college or not going to college. Um, in the same way that girls are, there's this whole problem with failure to launch that this is becoming increasingly serious.

You know, that, um, while kind of young women are doing things like finding partners and going [01:41:00] to college and leaving their parents houses. Young men are increasingly being left behind, so it was that generation that I really wanted to look at and just see, you know, what's it like to grow up in this moment, you know, this very complex and very fraught cultural moment.

MICHEL MARTIN: One of the points that you make is, is that a lot of these constructs just don't mean anything to kids that age,

RUTH WHIPPMAN: right? So I think this idea of privilege, you know, it's a very real thing. And we need to educate our boys in the history of patriarchy, the history of privilege, the history of gendered violence, and all of these things.

But they are children, you know, they're not actually responsible for those things. things that happened. They didn't do this stuff. And so I think, you know, when they look at their female peers, the concept of privilege doesn't really mean so much to them. They're sort of like, well, where is all this power that we're supposed to have?

You know, this idea that you need to be quiet because you're so privileged. And they're looking at themselves, their high school kids, they have no economic capital. It doesn't really mean so much to them that [01:42:00] somebody on wall street. Who's male will get a better job or a better salary than somebody who's female on Wall Street, you know, is just so remote to them.

And I think that those those very blunt, very sort of broad brush ideas of like privilege and power and oppression. I don't necessarily apply to teenagers in quite the same way.

SECTION D: DATING LIFE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section D: Dating Life, containing discussion of sex as well as violence.

Rough Sex is the New Normal Nearly 2/3 of Women Have Been Choked During Sex! - Rena Malik M.D. - Air Date 5-10-24

RENA MALIK, M.D. - HOST, RENA MALIK, M.D.: Let's talk about porn How is porn contributing to this rise of rough sex and how is the availability and accessibility of porn in your opinion?

Or based on science and some I know you've looked at how people learn about sex through porn. How is that affecting?

DEBBY HERBENICK: Pornography is so widely available and just like many parents don't know that rough [01:43:00] sex is increasing. Many parents, not all, but many parents don't know what today's porn looks like. When they think of porn, they might think of something that they saw in the 80s or 90s or early 2000s.

It's a

RENA MALIK, M.D. - HOST, RENA MALIK, M.D.: really good point.

DEBBY HERBENICK: And porn has changed. And even though there is still porn, still some really nice high quality stuff out there. I mean, 14 year olds are not looking for like queer feminist porn. And even if they're finding it, they're not, they don't have the credit card to pay for it. Right. So there are differences with what is available on the internet, freely available, freely available in really being like pushed on you.

Right. And so the sort of free widespread mainstream stuff is really, really important. really aggressive. And so there's lots of research showing like, lots of aggression, especially directed toward women, um, for like porn that features men and women having sex. Like women again are often going to be the targets of like the choking and the hitting and the punching and the spanking and the name calling, like the really, [01:44:00] really, um, derogatory names that some of the women in our studies.

Say has been more harmful to them than some of the physical stuff that's happened because they may be called a name that triggers up memories of being abused either physically or sexually when they were younger, or that it just suddenly, even if they don't have abuse histories, they might, the name might feel so bad to them that it suddenly like it like flips a switch and things, wait, is this like an okay hookup or is this person going to hurt me?

Because why would like a. Person who liked me called me this horrible name. So there's all these things that they, that are happening in pornography and pornography is seen at really young ages. There was a common sense media report that came out in 2023 that showed that on average, kids are seeing porn at around age 12.

And I think we really have to think about that. Phrase on average, it's even earlier if it's on average, that means there's lots of seven, eight, nine, 10, 11 year olds too. And yes, there's 13 and ups also, but there's a [01:45:00] lot of children, elementary age school children who are seeing pornography. And we also know that teens are waiting on average longer to have partnered sex.

So what does that mean? If you start seeing porn when you're eight or 10 or 12, But you don't have partnered sex till you're 16, 17, 18, 19, 20. Well, it may mean that you are watching pornography and kind of soaking in these like lessons and scripts about how to have sex for five to 10 years before you ever kiss somebody.

So what we hear from a lot of young people is that those early experiences when they do have partnered sex are often really rough. They are sometimes scary. They are sometimes very much what many of us would consider to be assault. You know, it can take time to realize like what you want. It can take a lot of experience and education and confidence to feel like you can assert, I don't want this anymore, or I don't like this, or here's how I would rather be making out or having sex.

[01:46:00] So even though some young people are standing up for themselves and saying, I don't like this, it can take time. So they may have experiences that really don't feel well for three months, six months, a year, two years, five years, you know, before they really develop in a way that they can create a better sex lives for themselves.

So I really, you know, and I want to say, know much about that path yet. We are starting to see some studies. There was a study out of Sweden a couple years ago where they interviewed 16 and 17 year old girls about pornography. It wasn't about rough sex. It was about pornography. And the authors came at it from the perspective of, Hey, this is like, Sweden's a feminist country.

What does it mean to be a young woman in a feminist country? Feminist, like very feminist identified country and yet to be like watching porn. And so it was really focused on that. It was really interesting, but you could see some evidence in those, these young women's interviews where they would say, yeah, I mean, my boyfriend and I, when we start, you know, when we got together, we were doing all of these things.

And in one young woman's own words, she [01:47:00] said, you know, that we're not normal, like choking, and then they kind of looked at each other at some point and said, We don't want to do this anymore. Like this doesn't feel good to us. So I think we've got to keep in mind that pornography is very widely and freely available.

It is often seen by young children. It's often seen by accident by young children. They're not always looking for it when they are looking for it. They're sometimes finding it because they just wanted to learn about sex. Like maybe somebody told them like really good information about like how babies are made, but they were like, I can't figure it out, right?

So they wanted to see like, how does that happen? Or they wanted to see breast or vulvas or penises. But for lots of reasons, kids are getting access to adult materials and not just adult materials, but ones that are really aggressive. And we need to think about that. I think, you know, one of the things I advise and yes, your kid for parents is even for like, elementary school age kids.

If you're dropping your kid off for a play date or a sleepover, talk with the other parents about what device access is going to look like during [01:48:00] that play date or sleepover. If you're getting kids dropped off at your house, make sure that they're not on devices. You don't need them to be like accidentally, you know, stumbling upon porn and getting a phone call later from the other parents saying, why did my kids see?

So we have to like have these conversations with kids and often at younger ages than many of us who are parents thought we would be having those conversations, but it's better for it to come from us for us to prepare them and so that they can know like, Oh, if I see this, I can walk away. I can talk to you because even though you didn't want me to see this, I'm not going to get in trouble.

You know, I can come to you with questions like we want that. for our kids, that they can come to us and we can help them sort it out and answer questions about what they might have seen and how they feel about it. But we can't pretend it's not out there and that it's not happening.

The emotional toll of dating apps and why they're no longer about finding love - The Conversation Weekly - Air Date 9-5-24

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: So now we're talking today about dating apps and the way they're influencing [01:49:00] the behavior of the people who use them.

This is based on a story that you worked on a little while back, but what got you thinking about

NIHAL ELHADI - EDITOR, CONVERSATION: this topic? I was interested in the ways masculinity and what it meant to be a man was changing, mainly through social media. The internet. So I commissioned an article from Trina Orchard, who's an associate professor in the School of Health Studies at Western University in London, Canada.

And Trina's book, Sticky Sexy Sad, looked at her experiences in online dating. And she does this particular

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: type of research called self ethnography. Some people might not really know what that is, so how would you

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: describe it? So Trina is trained as an anthropologist and ethnography is a research methodology that examines how a specific culture engages in their particular customs and practices.

Self ethnography centers the researcher with it and locates them within that culture. And so what [01:50:00] Trina was doing was using her own personal experiences. with online dating and dating apps and then using her critical skills as a researcher to analyze and explore what she was experiencing in real life.

And she had some fascinating

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: findings, so we're going to hear about them, but thanks Nahal for coming on and introducing her. Thank you for having me.

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: I started using dating apps in late August of 2017. I had been I've been single for over a year by my choice, and had done a lot of personal healing. I had been sober for about three or four years by that point, and was ready to get back out in the romance situation, environment, and that's why I began using dating apps.

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: At 45, Trina found herself in a position where few of her friends had tried dating apps. I am such an

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: old fashioned stone age person, and it was quite terrifying thinking about doing dating in a totally different way than I had for the [01:51:00] majority of my life. So it took a lot of courage to make that decision to even download an app.

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: Over the course of her dating life journey, Trina had to learn to adapt to the social codes that people use to communicate with on dating apps.

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: And people were advising me to develop a thick skin because it's just a game and people are terrible and don't take it too seriously. But I wanted to connect and so I was taking it

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: seriously.

Trina's day job as an anthropologist quickly proved useful. Rather than simply participating in online interactions, she started to see them as a valuable opportunity to study online dating culture.

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: I'm trained to look for patterns as a scholar, and I just found it so bewildering and fascinating that it quickly became a situation where it was, yes, I was on these apps to meet people, but I was also very fascinated by them as a culture in the palm of my hand.

And so I began to Look at it also as [01:52:00] a kind of project and that helped me, um, survive it, frankly, because I stayed in the game longer than I probably should have, because I was really dedicated to understanding as much of this cultural environment as I could.

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: Her experiences eventually led her to publish her book where she shares and analyzes her interactions and sheds light on online dating culture more broadly.

So you recently wrote a book called Sticky, Sexy, Sad, Swipe Culture, The Darker Side of Dating Apps. What do you mean in that darker side of dating apps phrase that you've used in your title?

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: The darker side of dating apps refers to the widespread misogyny. It's streamed through these platforms and the people who use them, it refers to the way that the algorithm really shapes users experiences and it's quite addictive using these things, swiping and the way that users are rewarded for being extra productive on dating apps and also punished when we're not, [01:53:00] because you're getting people you've already said no to, as opposed to all the fresh kind of new matches in the area.

Yeah. And in terms of the darker side of dating apps, the profound amount of labor, emotional, technical that is required to find success on dating apps. At least that certainly was my experience. Yeah, it was bewildering because they're a microcosm of our society. You know, they're not. a totally different enclave or this little distinctive bubble that's just fun and games and love quite to the opposite.

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: Some of these experiences left lasting impressions both for better and for worse.

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: A couple of the men I met, they'd morphed into really significant relationships. I didn't fall madly, deeply in love with all of them, but there were shades of love, and that was really important to my evolution as a woman who was coming into herself, as a sober person, who was also finding different kinds of success [01:54:00] in my intimate life.

GEMMA WARE - HOST, THE CONVERSATION WEEKLY: To protect the identities of the different men she stated as part of her auto ethnographic research, Trina uses colours to refer to them throughout the book.

CAROLINA BANDINELLI: The book is full of different vignettes, 13 different men who I feature as a way to trace the evolution that I went through in my dating app experience, from the first time I got ghosted to what dating was like during the pandemic.

Tell me about that first time you got ghosted. Well, it was mortifying, wasn't it? Right? Being ghosted is terrible. In the vignette, I traced The first hot kind of interactions that I had with this individual and how I was very excited and hopeful, also a little bit of trepidation, but I wanted to go for it and I wanted to meet this individual.

And then he vanished and I have no idea why, but in this instance, I was able to gather a little bit of additional information because he then matched with me three more times in the course of a month. And [01:55:00] I kept matching with him because. I wanted to meet him. It was the only way that I could connect with him to try and ask him, why are you doing this?

And I mean, the answer was woefully unsatisfactory. It was just like, Oh, I'm still in something with my ex. And it's like, yeah, but why are you connecting with me then? That has nothing to do with me in a way. I didn't get any kind of good answer. And then they just disappear and you have no recourse. You can't even text them or ask them why, because they don't exist anymore.

And a lot of people laugh about ghosting. Oh, yeah, it's just, you know, part of the game. And it's true. It is part of the game, but it feels terrible. And so that vignette is funny. And it's also really embarrassing because when it happened, I emailed Bumble customer service. Because I didn't know that I had been ghosted.

And people laugh whenever I read this one, but then they also, they remember the first time it happened to them too.

Rough Sex is the New Normal Nearly 2/3 of Women Have Been Choked During Sex! Part 2 - Rena Malik M.D. - Air Date 5-10-24

RENA MALIK, M.D. - HOST, RENA MALIK, M.D.: [01:56:00] This is, I mean, I'm, I'm just, I'm, my mind is a little bit blown today. Um, you know, you did do a study in 2021 where you looked at how children and, Teenagers used porn for education and I want to share the stats. So in terms of learning about sex when it was adolescent age, it was about 8. 4%, which is still a high number, but it went up to almost a fourth, 24.

5 percent in the 18 to 24 year old group. One in four young adults who don't have fully formed brains are learning sex from porn alone. Like, that is insane.

DEBBY HERBENICK: Or primarily from porn. Primarily. Yeah, like that's a big influence. And it's, it is, it is astounding because we always say too in sex, in sex education, like, who is the best person to teach you, like how to have sex with them?

It's that person. It's not pornography because everyone varies. And what one person likes in terms of how they are kissed or how they're touched or how they're licked or how you have intercourse or whatever. It will [01:57:00] vary from person to person. And so, so many young people, I think, feel like they have to be, you know, a great partner, right?

They have to be impressive. And there's a lot of pressure on young men to be, like, really good at sex and to somehow have this knowledge just, like, naturally imparted. Like, right away. And it's, it's not how it works, right? And so, so we really need to have, make more space for development, for trial and error, but for people to feel figure those things out with the support of books of like really good sex education because porn is something that many young people will go to or rely on or somebody sends them a link and they check it out.

I mean, I've, I remember one of the most heartbreaking ones, and I think I wrote about this and yes, your kid, cause it was so impactful to me. Was a young woman who shared in an interview that we did. It was about choking and rough sex. Pornography came up and it turned out she had started to look at it like an elementary school.

And it would be because there was a boy that was like, you know, her boyfriend, they weren't sexually active at the time, but he had shared with [01:58:00] her that he addicted to porn and elementary and elementary school. He felt like he was addicted to porn and she was so curious in her words, kind of like what these pornography actresses had that she didn't that elementary school elementary school that she went online to learn this.

And that was her introduction to porn. And it just blew my mind like that. She was a kid, you know, I think like fifth or sixth grade or something. And she was a kid and thinking, What does this adult pornography actress have, you know, that I don't, and she was comparing herself to those women who are actresses, I mean, who are adults and her and, you know, sexually explicit, you know, pornographic films and, and just, I mean, it broke my heart and, you know, and she was like, uh, Really smart kid from actually a very like wealthy like highly educated like somewhat conservative community that I'm familiar with.

So I mean, I knew where she was from. And I thought, you know, there are a lot of people who would say, Oh, no, like, you know, not [01:59:00] my not my kid. And that's actually why like, the book is Yes, your kid, because so many people think that whether it's choking, or rough sex, or pornography, or taking sharing images, many of us aren't familiar with the world as it is today, because it's not the world as it was when we grew up.

Yeah. And it is. It's so easy to think, Oh, it's just kids who are vulnerable to exploitation or abuse. And we have to say, you know, this is the world and we need to be a part of these conversations so we can support our kids.

RENA MALIK, M.D. - HOST, RENA MALIK, M.D.: Yeah, it is. It is so important. And I think, again, digging your head in the sand and acting like it's not there is not going to fix the problem.

I always share this because I think it's so important. It's really impactful for people who grew up our generation or older when we grew up watching porn was challenging. Like you had to find a tape, find a VCR, find a room where no one was and actually be able to watch that. Right? That was one. Two was you'd have to find a magazine, hide it somewhere where nobody would find it.

Find it, be able to again, find a quiet room where no one is going to walk in on you and [02:00:00] look at it. Whatever it is. It was extremely challenging to obtain, whereas now it is so easy, so easy to find freely accessible porn that is also very alarming. And you talk about this in your book, but it will talk about like incest and we'll talk about with siblings or mother in laws or whatever, like just very things that are, you know, Not normal and not appropriate, right?

Like incest is not appropriate and there's a reason that it's not appropriate, but like it's wild to me, right? And I get that some people like they see the forbidden thing. I think when you're an adult, you can see that this is not, this is just for entertainment. It is not real life and you can differentiate that.

But when you are not fully formed in your brain, you can't, you don't know. It's wild.

DEBBY HERBENICK: Yeah. And you know, I have not seen a lot of this here in the U. S. yet. There's also not really good research on it, so I don't know. But I do have colleagues in, you know, Australia, New Zealand, who have shared that in terms of the incest issue, that they have seen increases.

And, you know, they're hearing this from [02:01:00] counselors who work with kids and teens, that they've heard it from like youth workers, from law enforcement, who have seen increases in the number of young people that are, are having kind of, you know, incest experiences and non consensual ones, and that. you know, having watched incest porn seems to be connected to those.

And so they are doing, you know, some of the, my colleagues are doing a really good job of trying to like educate parents and communities and schools around these issues around like pornography. Cause it is, it's a, it's a popular genre for some people. And, um, and so what messages that sends kids that that's who you're supposed to, you know, explore with sexually, like it's, it's not healthy.

It's not. Okay. Um, it's really harmful to a lot of young people. And so we have heard, I mean, I've heard a little bit about this in the U S, but I don't think we've had enough attention on it. Um, here. So I don't know how much it's happening here, but I think it's so important to be mindful of because yes, the genres are things like that.

There's other genres, genres that are like, some people can't believe these things are real, [02:02:00] but they are. You know, like gagging somebody with a penis to the point where like you vomit. Um, and I had a very small role in working on the documentary Hot Girls Wanted, like a, you know, nearly a decade ago. And that was one of the genres, you know, that came up and, um, and I think one of the things again, being like in the sexuality field for so long, like I have met people who were involved either as like onset photographers or as actresses in pornography in the eighties and nineties.

And when you hear those people's stories, they say like, We weren't doing any of these things back then, right? Those of us who, you know, anybody who did like happen to see a magazine or a video in the 80s or 90s and stuff, like that stuff wasn't even being shown. And many of those actors will say, yeah, we were never asked to do those things.

Or even if you did, like you might've been paid such an extraordinary amount of money because it was so And so stigmatized and not Oh, you know, in some of these things just didn't happen. So whereas now there's such a competition and like the online doing it for free. [02:03:00] Yeah. And that like a lot of people who work in that industry now say, Oh yeah, we've had to like be sort of harder and rougher and more shocking to get the views.

And so the stuff that's out there. is trickier than it was 20 or 30 years ago.

SECTION E: SOCIAL EMOTIONAL DEVELOPMENT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section E: Social-Emotional Development.

Rethinking Boyhood What Moms Should Know (with Guest Ruth Whippman) Part 2 - What Fresh Hell Podcast - Air Date 6-17-24

AMY - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: You talk about the social time that boys have when they play with each other, that, um, as screen time has taken over more and more of our kids lives, that, uh, boys are even more likely to displace social time with screen time.

Um, and having two boys and a girl, that's definitely true in my house, I would say, that the, the two children who are more married to their screens, um, are my two male children. And again, do you think that's something that's essentialist or do [02:04:00] you think that's something that's socialized or is it a little bit of both?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: I mean, I don't, I think, I, I, I can't say for sure, but I know that the socialization piece is a big one and that's the one that we have control over. But the essential piece, you know, the nature piece, we'd. You know, we don't really have a lot of say over that, but there is a big socialization thing in the screen time thing.

Cause I think it's very easy for boys to use screens as a social crutch. So I don't know how old your boys are, but I think in like teenage culture, it's like playing video games online and like, um, having a friend over and being on the PlayStation. Cause I think that kind of face to face contact is quite hard for boys.

They're not socialized to do it. They're not given the skills to kind of really like talk. In that kind of emotional face to face way that girls are taught. And so these screens come along and it's really easy to just like, Oh, okay, a screen, this is going to smooth the kind of anxiety of the situation.

So you are seeing this like displacement phenomenon [02:05:00] is like quite significantly worse with boys at the moment than it is with girls. Boys are spending more time on screens than girls are, and they're spending much less time socializing. And I think it's something we really need to correct for.

MARGARET - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: So in the book, you have a lot of practical suggestions about, um, What we need to be, especially modeling, I think, right?

For our boys, a lot of this work, unfortunately, as we always say, we'd love to just tell them something or give them a pamphlet. We need to model this stuff for them. And one of the big things we need to model is, um, emotional intimacy. So let's talk about that a little bit. Why boys need it. And what it looks like from, from our

RUTH WHIPPMAN: model.

Yeah. So I think this, this starts right from birth. There's all these, this research that shows that parents sort of unwittingly project all these like masculine qualities onto boys. So when a baby boy cries, the parents [02:06:00] and people are more likely to see him as angry. Whereas when a girl cries, they see her as sad and that sort of fascinating.

Yeah. And like people handle boys more roughly. They sort of rough house with them. You know, and people have, mothers especially, have much more kind of emotionally involved conversations with their daughters than they do with their sons, right from the beginning. And they tend to speak to boys in these like shorter sentences, even a different vocabulary.

They don't use so many emotion words, they use like competition words, winning words, those kinds of things. This is frightening because as you're

MARGARET - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: saying it and my house, I'm like, yeah, that tracks, that tracks. It's all perfect.

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Yeah. And, and me too. I mean, and I, I don't have a daughter, but I can imagine it would just be so much because this is what's been modeled to us.

And most of these things that we do are unconscious. So I think the first thing is like becoming aware of those patterns and just thinking like, Oh, do I do that? Looking inside ourselves and thinking, Oh yes, that, you know, that seems right. And then trying to correct for it. So I think really [02:07:00] engaging with boys about their emotions, which means listening to them.

And I think, you know, especially in this time of this sort of the culture wards and it's sort of like, Oh, you don't want to listen to any of boys problems because you know, they're so privileged and actually we should be listening to girls, but it's. It's really about hearing what they actually say, empathizing with them, talking to them about feelings, using that emotional vocabulary, exposing them to role models of good friendships and relational stuff between.

Boys and men, so whether that's in life or in art, you know, art being, you know, books, TV shows, movies, and just sort of keeping this all in mind. And then the other thing is just kind of nurture, you know, as I say, I think, um, it's settled, but there's like a real measurable difference in the kind of like nurturing care that baby boys and young boys get and young girls get, you know, it's like, we tend to see, you know, boys as sort of bad, not sad.

You know, that's one of the [02:08:00] phrases that I use in the book, but it's like, that starts, you know, from the angry baby boys and goes on through discipline problems in school and, you know, behavioral issues and the way that teachers deal with kids. Um, you know, and I think if we can actually look at the emotions that are driving boys behavior and sort of see them as these emotional relational beings and see ourselves, you know, as part of that, then I think that's, You know, a huge part of it.

AMY - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: There's a quote, uh, from this book that I, uh, put in Borg's. I loved it so much. He said, I'm willing to be annoying in service of this project. And the project that you're talking about is sort of questioning. Now, why is the boy not the one who can, uh, you know, be the good friend to the girl who's lonely, you know, that you question the little things and you're willing to be annoying.

You're willing to have your kids sort of roll your eyes at

RUTH WHIPPMAN: you. You become a bit of an eye roll with all this stuff. And, you know, my mom is like a feminist in the seventies and eighties. [02:09:00] You know, there was a lot of conversation about, you know, that sexist and, you know, I couldn't have Barbies and I couldn't have pink and all of that.

And I, I'm not that extreme with my boys, but I think it's like calling these things out, like just naming them. You know, we were watching the babysitters club on Netflix the other day. I don't know if you know that series and it's like, you know, all the babysitters are girls and they sort of say quite a lot of negative things about boys just in passing.

And it's like, you know, if Netflix were making a show about, you know, that was like Based on a book from the eighties that was called like science club and it was all about boys. Um, you know, so they were like four boys in science club in the like 2023 or 24 reboot of it. There would be some girls in science club But like in babysitter's club, there's no boys.

So I think, you know, I want to say to my boys, look, you babysitter, you know, it's a great way to earn money. It's a great way to care for kids. It's really fun. And like, why do you think there are no boys in here? Why do you think they're saying these negative things about [02:10:00] boys and just like pointing out because otherwise it just passes by, you know, just applying that critical lens.

MARGARET - HOST, WHAT FRESH HELL PODCAST: I really like that approach because it feels sometimes when you have these conversations, it feels like. Well, someday all of society will change or we'll just be stuck here. And, and those kind of conversations feel to me very accessible. Yeah. Very, I mean, I, I'm definitely having conversations about gender and expression that I never had as a child with my kids.

Uh, the world changing and the conversations are changing, but also just modeling that you are available to question things, I think is so smart for kids in such a wide range of areas because it says, I'm not even sure the answer, but let's ask this question together about whether this role is correct, because I think you talk about in the book, uh, which we haven't [02:11:00] really touched on.

Some of the, like Andrew Tate influence the kind of masculine influence that is starting to affect boys, that boys are kind of falling under the, uh, influence of some influencers who are far right in cell. And I think one of the solutions is the constant willingness to have conversations about masculinity and what it looks like.

Because if you don't have them, these conversations are going to come to you at some point, because I don't know many boys who haven't at some point come home and said, actually, what if the world is this other way?

RUTH WHIPPMAN: Oh, absolutely. And you can understand why they think that, you know, it's like, why don't we have men's history month or, you know, what, you know, it's a complicated time to be a boy.

It's like, they didn't know the history, you know, they weren't there for the whole history Patriarchy and oppression against women. And I think it's like, we've got to treat those conversations [02:12:00] kindly. I think it's, um, you know, that, that I think that you can kind of panic and be like, well, you know, shut up, you know, that, that isn't open for debate and, you know, a good, and, and I think, um, we should listen to those feelings, you know, I think it probably is quite hard right now to, to be a boy and hearing about everybody else's like marginalized experience and not your own.

We have to give them the context and help them to understand why it's happening like that, but also I think there is a space for their feelings as well.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in, I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from Dear Old Dads, [02:13:00] Some More News. Amanpour and Company, Raina Malik MD, The Conversation Weekly, and What Fresh Hell. Further details are in the show notes.

Thanks 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 quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bone 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 [02:14:00] 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

#1656 How Far He Will Go: Election lies, intimidation, interference, insurrection (Transcript)

Posted by · September 17, 2024 7:44 AM

Air Date 9/17/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award winning Best of the Left podcast. It's not just the threat of the electoral college handing the presidency to the loser of the popular vote, nor the specter of a repeat of January 6th-like event hanging over the election; there's also copious lies and disinformation, including a new and improved Nazi-to-Republican talking point pipeline and fresh new intimidation and voter suppression tactic experiments underway in the laboratories of democracy.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes Alex Wagner Tonight, The Thom Hartmann Program, Democracy Docket, The Political Scene Podcast, Amicus, All In With Chris Hayes, Brian Taylor Cohen, and Jamelle Bouie.

Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections:

Section A: Intimidation,

Section B: Interference,

Section C: Lies, and

Section D: Election [00:01:00] Integrity.

Ignore your lying eyes: Republicans attempt to overwrite living memory to rewrite history - Alex Wagner Tonight - Air Date 8-14-24

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: This campaign of rewriting recent history is built on a foundation of pernicious pillars. The first is a wholesale indifference toward reality. The second is the absence of shame. The third is the role of allies. And finally, there is the importance of repetition. It's such a clear breakdown of how this is happening. I guess I wonder, the motivation as you see it, is it purely to stay in power? Do you see something broader in their goals?

STEVE BENEN: A little of both, actually. I mean, I think clearly there is an electoral element to this. Clearly, Trump wants to regain power, and he thinks that the way to do that is to fool just enough people by rewriting recent history, hoping he can just overpower our memories into submission and convince them that he deserves a second term, despite his failures, despite his scandals, and so on.

But I also think that there is a larger concern related to democracy. I think that there are a lot of Americans right now [who] are concerned about the rising authoritarianism in the United States. That's a legitimate concern. I share that concern. But, with that in mind, we have to forget that as long as there have been [00:02:00] historical records, there have been authoritarians engaging in all kinds of tactics to rewrite history, to eliminate enemies, to cover up crimes and so on. And so it's unsettling at a minimum to see Donald Trump and his allies borrowing a page from those same playbooks.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Yeah. You use such important, such... first of all, I don't know whether it's a testament to Trump's tactic and their tactics and the Republican Party's tactics that I'd forgotten about how many important, like staggering examples there are of this. You talk about his, you know, cry that he was going to rebuild the wall or build the wall and have Mexico pay for it. And the fact that he contends that the wall has been built and Mexico has paid for it. You talk about Russia and Russian interference and the denial of that reality. What stands out to you as one of the more forgotten but most sort of pernicious and useful examples to focus on?

STEVE BENEN: You know, one that came up just today, as a matter of fact, I mean, it was timely and generous to help bolster my book, I think...

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: You're welcome?

STEVE BENEN: ...to see Donald Trump today, making the [00:03:00] case that his economy, the economy under his presidency was extraordinary. It was historic. It broke all the records. Human eyes have never seen an economy like Donald Trump's, except it's not true. Even if we exclude 2020 from the picture altogether—of course, when the economy was hit a recession that was related to COVID—even if we exclude that, for the first three years, the numbers are not nearly as good as the last three years of Obama era. And so really, the last three presidents, he ranks third when it comes to economic performance. And so the idea that somehow he was this economic genius and mastermind, if only we returned him to the White House, everything would be great in the economy: it's nonsense.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Well, and what's I think most disturbing about that is that as a sentiment that has, I mean, it is filtered from the, like, hardcore right-wing corners of MAGAland to the center of the American electorate, right? Even some Democrats believe that the economy shepherded under Republicans is better than under Democrats.

STEVE BENEN: And I think that my book goes a long way in trying to set this record straight here, because [00:04:00] really when you look at the data, job growth actually went down in the first three years of Trump as compared to the last three years of Obama. And that is just lost to history because the history has been rewritten by pernicious figures who believe that people shouldn't know the truth.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: You make a real distinction between history, right?, which is always subject to argument and relitigation, and recent past. Can you talk a little bit about why it's more damaging to a democracy to try and rewrite recent past as opposed to this sort of broader debate that we tend to have about historical events?

STEVE BENEN: Right. I mean, clearly the Republican culture war is targeting all kinds of things from generations past, history before our lifetime. And that's an important element. And my heart goes out to the culture warriors who were involved in that fight. But going after recent history is so much more ambitious. It's telling you that you don't remember things that you saw. Your lying eyes should be just discounted and discredited altogether because you should replace those memories with the brute force rhetoric that Republicans prefer. And it's extraordinary. It takes our breath away. And it's also a classic [00:05:00] example of gaslighting. It's telling you that if you believe the truth, if you believe what actually happened, then somehow you're nuts.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Or you're a stooge of the liberal elite, the media, technology, whether it's AI-generated crowd sizes or whether it's Democrats rigging an election. It's 'the system is broken and it's rigged against you'.

To that end, JD Vance, right?, a clip from 2020 has surfaced wherein JD Vance is talking to a podcaster about his beliefs about women and their role. And on this podcast, he explains how his mother in law, Usha Vance's mother, left her job as a biologist to help raise their newborn son. And then the podcast host says, "That's the purpose of post-menopausal females". This is the clip.

JD VANCE: It makes him a much better human being to have exposure to his grandparents...

ERIC WEINSTEIN: Well, I don't know...

JD VANCE: ...and the evidence on this, by the way, is like super clear.

ERIC WEINSTEIN: That's the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female.

JD VANCE: Yes.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: "Yes". Can we play? I don't know if we can... he literally says, "yes", [00:06:00] that is the whole purpose of the post-menopausal female, says the host, uh, Eric Weinstein. And then JD Vance says, "yes". This is not a good data point for JD Vance. The Vance campaign is, their response to it is, Steve, "the media is dishonestly putting words in JD 's mouth. Of course he does not agree with what the host said".

STEVE BENEN: Well, you know, one of the lines I use in the book a lot is that Republicans want us to discard our lying eyes, discard your lying eyes.

ALEX WAGNER - HOST, ALEX WAGNER TONIGHT: Yeah.

STEVE BENEN: Well, in this case, we're supposed to discard our lying ears, too? I mean, because the tape isn't lying here. We heard him say yes. We heard this ridiculous and offensive and insulting comment, which normal healthy people would say, No, I don't believe that. I completely reject that. And yet here we are.

Trump Admits He Lost 2020 Election?!? - Thom Hartmann Program - Air Date 9-5-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: There's this really interesting, uh, a couple of days ago, Trump did an interview with, uh, I think it was somebody on Fox News, but in any case, he did this interview where he basically admitted that he lost the 2020 election. He said, you know, 'we just lost by a little bit', or words to that [00:07:00] effect. And remember Nick Fuentes? Nick Fuentes is the, uh, Hitler-loving, racist, misogynistic, antisemitic, homophobic, Christian nationalist, fascist. He might be an incel, too. I don't know. But anyhow, he's got a podcast and he just went nuts on this yesterday. He said, Oh, I lost by a whisker. So, what was the point? What's the point of any of it? You lost in 2020. Seriously, what are we even doing anymore? Then you're a loser. You just lost. You lost to Joe Biden. He goes on to say Trump deserves to be charged by Jack Smith. He said 'that actually vindicates the DOJ charge against him because the charge is that he knew he lost, but he lied to defraud the people. So, why did we do Stop the Steal? Why January 6th? Why is anyone sitting in jail? Why did anything bad happen to anybody? Why did everyone get censored?' You know, he's really on a tear here. He says, 'why did everything bad that has happened to the people who were involved, why did that [00:08:00] need to happen if you're just going to walk it all back and say, Oh, I lost?'

And then he gets personal, Nick Fuentes. He said, 'it would have been good to know before 1,600 people got charged. It would have been good to know that before I had all my money frozen, before I was put on the no-fly list, before I got banned from everything, lost my banking and payment processing. Just feels like a big rip-off. It just goes to show what a tremendous betrayal Trump is. It's just like a callous, just a callous indifference to the sacrifices that his supporters made on his behalf'. Poor Nick.

How Pro-Trump Election Officials Could Refuse To Certify The 2024 Election - Democracy Docket - Air Date 8-15-24

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: What exactly is election certification? What is the purpose of this process? And can election officials simply refuse to participate in certifying election results?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Of course they can't refuse to certify election results. It's literally like you had one job, right? Your one job was to take, if you're on the certification board --it's called different things, different places--but if you're on that certification board, your one job [00:09:00] are to take the results from the precincts, put them onto a document; make sure that there are no uncounted ballots like provisional ballots; that those get added into the total; that there's no--that if people have cured ballots, those get added into the total. And then you add up the numbers.

If we came up with a system today, do you know what we would call the certifiers of election? Microsoft Excel, right? This is an old process where people did this hand math, and it became part of the pageantry of our democracy. People congratulated themselves across the aisle on a job well done.

But what the Republicans are trying to do is to insert into that arithmetic process, their job is not to be players on the field. Their job is to be the scoreboard operator. Someone scores and they put it up on the scoreboard. But, they are trying to weaponize that to give Republicans an advantage.

But [00:10:00] here's, Sophie, what I'm going to tell them: it's not going to work. You've tried this before, you got sued, and you lost. And if you try it again, you're going to get sued and you're going to lose.

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Mark, in one of your many pieces about this topic on Democracy Docket, you wrote the following: "From experience, we know two things about Donald Trump. He's completely transactional, and there was always another transaction. He didn't give a verbal seal of approval to the three Georgia state election board members simply to gain advantage in a single new rule." So what do you think is next year? What is Trump's larger goal with this whole election certification operation?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Yeah, look, I think that Donald Trump expects that he's going to win these states, by whatever means necessary. I think Donald Trump is happy to get a rule that gives some wiggle room here and there, but Donald Trump is after a result. He's not after a process.

Donald Trump--this is where I think people underestimate him--he is not interested [00:11:00] in just rigging the rules, he is interested in rigging the outcomes. And until people accept that, they fail to understand just how far Donald Trump will go, and how much loyalty he will expect along the way.

So, in 2020, he wanted the rules rigged before the election to make it harder to vote by mail in the middle of a pandemic. When that failed, he expected loyalty from people certifying election results in places like Wayne County, Michigan, and at the state board. And when that failed, when he was unable to tamper with that, he expected loyalty and having state legislatures disregard the will of the voters and simply try to pass their own electors. When that failed, he tried a fake elector scheme. When that failed, he tried to get the courts, including the US Supreme Court to intervene. And when that failed, Sophie, he instigated a violent insurrection in the nation's capital on January 6th.

Donald Trump knows no bounds, and loyalty will get you [00:12:00] nowhere if you're a Republican with him. He expects absolute loyalty from Republicans and delivers none in return.

So what is the next step for Donald Trump? He's going to want every rule rigged in his favor. When those fail, he's going to want the results rigged in his favor. When those fail, well, we know what happens next.

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: On a practical level, if some county officials refuse to certify their jurisdiction's election results, what happens then? Can they just get away with it? What happens?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: They get sued, and they lose. I mean, look, Democracy Docket covered this extensively in 2022. We saw Cochise County, Arizona, try not to certify their election results. And my law firm--

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: We have maybe 50 different news alerts on our website, just about Cochise County, Arizona.

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: The reason why Democracy Docket covered this so many times in Arizona with Cochise County is because this was a real threat to the outcome of the [00:13:00] elections in Arizona, right? If you don't certify Cochise County, how do you certify the Senate election in 2022? How do you certify the governor's election? The AG election? The Secretary of State election? All elections, by the way, won by Democrats, which may tell you some reason why Cochise County didn't want to certify. They got sued by my law firm and they lost. And then they got indicted by the state because they failed to do their minimum duty.

And my law firm, we had to sue a county in Pennsylvania, and we saw these efforts to refuse to certify around the country. That is what Republicans, I think, are planning for 2024. That is what the same outcome will be in 2024 that we saw in 2020 and 2022, if they try it. But, look, it's not to be taken lightly because it does have a disruptive effect on people's confidence in the outcomes, and it can delay things. And obviously, in presidential election years, the timetable for certification is much tighter, and so we all need to be prepared.

What Does “Election Interference” Even Mean Anymore? - The Political Scene Podcast - Air Date 9-4-24

JON ALLSOP: [00:14:00] Clearly the kind of overwhelming narrative around election interference in 2016, I think was one of foreign interference, specifically on the part of Russia, right? And it was an umbrella term, I think, at least in popular discourse for all the things that Russia was doing or was alleged to have done from the hack and leak operation of Democratic campaign emails and people in Hillary Clinton's inner circle through to troll farms and fake news and the Internet Research Agency and all those terms that were lingua franca back then have become an artifact of that time, I guess.

It wasn't just limited to that, but I think that was how the idea crystallized, most commonly when people were talking about election interference.

TYLER FOGGATT - HOST, THE POLITICAL SCENE PODCAST: And how would you say that, eight years later, that we are using the term election interference now? What are the ways in which you've seen it being invoked in reference to the upcoming presidential election?

JON ALLSOP: So I guess "we" depends on who you are, because there is a huge kind of [00:15:00] cleavage now between how it's used by Democrats and how it's used by Republicans. And again, I want to stress that kind of subjectivity has always been there. There's never been one unified meaning. And indeed, it's not a specific term of art, as it were.

TYLER FOGGATT - HOST, THE POLITICAL SCENE PODCAST: Let's split it up then. How would you say that Democrats have been using it?

JON ALLSOP: Yeah, so I think it probably, again, mostly, not entirely, has to do this time with things that Trump himself has done, specifically, his efforts around the 2020 election to dispute the result, to refuse to accept the vote totals, the phone call to the Secretary of State in Georgia, the false slates of electors put forward by his allies, those sorts of things.

It's become shorthand, often, for the various criminal cases that he's faced more recently, both at the federal level and in Georgia, and also it should be said in Manhattan, the case in which he's already been convicted, that there's a debate about whether it's accurate to call that an election interference case or not. But, there are Democrats and liberals who firmly believe that it is about [00:16:00] election interference. This is the case where he was convicted of paying hush money to Stormy Daniels and then covering it up using fraudulent accounting devices.

TYLER FOGGATT - HOST, THE POLITICAL SCENE PODCAST: And the argument was that it was election interference because it was keeping the American public away from information that could have influenced the election. So it was interference in the sense that they didn't have access to everything that they could have used to, basically, inform their votes.

But then Trump is saying that the trial itself is election interference because the Democrats are trying to lock him up as opposed to letting him run against the Democrat in the race. Is that how he's invoking it?

JON ALLSOP: That's exactly right. So Trump has been really majoring on this phrase "election interference." Again, I'm not entirely sure when it started but it's very easy to trace it at least to April of last year around the time that he was first indicted in the New York case and then obviously in the other ones after that. He calls these cases "election interference" because, as you say, they're keeping him off the campaign trail, at least to some extent, because obviously they affect his ability to participate in the election. If he were to be sentenced [00:17:00] and to go to jail before the election, that would clearly have an influence on how the election plays out, if not on obviously his ability to stand in it, as Eugene Debs can attest.

This is something that he's used as a repeated talking point about those cases. Actually what was interesting is he's returned to Twitter, or X, as it's now called, quite recently and is now posting there again like it's 2016 all over again. But between Twitter banning him in the aftermath of the insurrection at the Capitol and him returning actively to use it recently, he tweeted I believe only one time, and it was last year after his mugshot was taken in Georgia and it was to post almost like a Microsoft Word document-type image of his mugshot with, in Times New Roman or a similar font, "election interference/ never surrender" in all caps.

So Trump says a lot of things, but this is clearly something that is an actual talking point for him, rather than just parts of the normal word salad that comes out of his mouth.

He also, it's worth noting, has not only used this phrase to refer to the criminal cases against him, [00:18:00] he recently described it as election interference when he tweeted falsely that Kamala Harris--or I think put on Truth Social, actually--that Kamala Harris had been doctoring images of crowds using artificial intelligence. Clearly, this is not something that actually happened, but Trump described that as election interference. He's accused Google of election interference fairly recently. It's becoming an all-purpose catchphrase for him at the moment, I guess.

TYLER FOGGATT - HOST, THE POLITICAL SCENE PODCAST: It's interesting, because Trump's catchphrases up until this point have included "fake news" and "rigged," which to me seem like they're in conversation with the phrase election interference. It's almost like election interference is the more scientific or formal way of talking about something being rigged. And I guess I'm wondering if you think that--that's if you see that as a strategy, or if there is really a distinction between the election interference and then fake news and rigged.

JON ALLSOP: There's always a tension in discussing Trump between things that appear to be masterful strategy and probably would be considered as such if we were talking about anyone who presented [00:19:00] as more considered and tactical, whether it's just something that he's saying because he truly believes it looks, he likes how it sounds on online or on TV or whatever.

But yeah, I think, I think it certainly appears to be, or at least it has the aesthetic of being a strategy, or at least a talking point. And it does, play into this much broader idea associated with him which is, I am the crusader against the deep state. I am the crusader against the people trying to stand in my way. They're trying to stop me. It really plays into that broader idea.

I think there's also--and this was something I read and heard a couple of times while reporting the piece --there's this idea of I'm rubber, you're glue. Trump loves to, or at least has a habit of, turning accusations that are made against him back on the person who is making the accusation. I think you see something similar to that going on with him co-opting fake news. And I think initially that was an idea that disinformation was being propagated to help Trump win election. I think it's now much more associated as a phrase as something that Trump says to disparage accurate reporting often on him.

[00:20:00] And with election interference, you know again, this is a shorthand that's been attached to the charges that he faces in New York and in Georgia and on the federal level. It's not written in, I don't think, to any of these statutes, the specific words "election interference." But Alvin Bragg, the DA in Manhattan, for example, has described it explicitly in those terms. So I guess in that sense also, it's not surprising to hear Trump now appropriate that language and turn it back on the people who are going after him in the courts.

Subvert the Election, But Make It Legal - Amicus With Dahlia Lithwick | Law, justice, and the courts - Air Date 9-7-24

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: It seems that that is the through line of the book that you can't talk about voting as a political question, right?

Because it's a democracy question. And I think, I don't think I'm overstating this, I think the whole theme of the book is that this has been a two century battle. This is not new. About this really existential question of, are we going to be committed to democracy, or are we going to be committed to rule by white majorities who make good decisions in lieu of democracy because the masses don't know what they want?

And [00:21:00] that's been a fight from the founding. And as you say, this is baked into not just the debates that were had at the Constitutional Convention, but the products of the Constitutional Convention. This is how you end up with the Electoral College. It's how you end up with the Senate.

I really want you to link up those debates, which as you say are shot through. Throughout history, it doesn't matter where you land on John Calhoun, it doesn't matter where you land. Those debates about, "Wait, we don't actually want to be a democracy when we talk about protecting minorities. The minorities we want to protect are the ones that the framers wanted to protect, which is wealthy, white, privileged elites." And so when Mike Lee says things like that now, that's got a long pedigree. In fact, that is the fight we've been having for over 200 years.

ARI BERMAN: Exactly. I mean, there's been a 230 year debate about who should participate in [00:22:00] American democracy.

So the debates that we're having today go all the way back to the founding of the country. And there's this fundamental contradiction, which is that the Declaration of Independence lays out this very utopian rhetoric about democracy and political participation that says that democracy is based on the consent of the governed, which I think is still the best definition for democracy that we have today.

It says that all men are created equal, leave aside that women were not included in that, but that's still a very utopian idea at the time. And then you have the realities of the constitution that was created a decade later, in which most people were excluded. from participating in democracy, and the founders had some legitimate concerns.

They were concerned about anarchy and in the States, they were concerned about creating a strong republic. But the fact is that they were concerned first and foremost with protecting their own power and understanding that they were a distinct minority in society. They were a white male property [00:23:00] holding elite, many of them who were slaveholders, and they wanted to protect their own interests first and foremost.

And that is not the story of the founding that we're taught about in school if we're taught about it at all, right? And even now we're taught about this Hamiltonian version of American democracy where there are these geniuses in wigs who are rapping, right? And the fact is, You had a lot of great thinkers, but they wanted to protect their self interest.

And then even when they wanted to do more democratic things at the convention, they were essentially outvoted by these powerful minority factions. And again, not minorities as we tend to think of them, not women or African Americans or Native Americans, but these powerful minority factions where the small states get more power in the U. S. Senate, right? So each state gets the same level of representation regardless of population in the U. S. Senate, which then lays the groundwork for minority rule. James Madison says it at the time, this is going to lead to minority rule, but if [00:24:00] they don't adopt it, it's going to lead to the dissolution of the Constitution.

Same thing with the House of Representatives. It's the only Democratic elected part of the government. The slave states do the same kind of thing. They say, if you don't give us more representation through the three fifths clause, so we're going to treat African Americans as three fifths of a people, not for actual rights, just for purposes of representation, then we might leave the Union too.

And of course, we're not going to have the President be directly elected. We're going to have it be this electoral college system that factors in representation in Congress. So if the slave states have more power in the house, the small states have more power in the Senate, that means that those factions are going to have more power, not just to choose the President, but to choose the Supreme Court, right?

And we're still living with that system today. I think that's what people don't understand that. Yes, we have extended voting rights to a lot of people. We no longer have the three fifths clause. We still have the electoral college. It's still based on representation in the Senate, which is dramatically skewed in terms of who it [00:25:00] benefits, and we still have a Supreme Court that's a product of these two dysfunctional institutions and that creates a system where Trump has never won a majority of votes. Ever, in American politics. I think that's really important to understand. And while he was President, Senate Republicans never won a majority of votes either, but they were able to create a situation where they controlled the Presidency, they controlled the Senate, and they created a super majority on the Supreme Court.

And I think that's where the structural stuff bleeds into the tactical stuff we've been talking about, because it's a lot easier for voter suppression or elections aversion and those kind of anti democratic tactics succeed when it's already built on a fundamentally anti democratic system that violates the most basic notions of one person, one vote.

And, to me, that is the biggest mistake that Democrats made [00:26:00] after 2020 was thinking that they could uphold democracy in a broken democratic system. If we don't reform the broken democratic system, you can pass all the well intentioned policies that you want, but it's going to be swallowed up by the anti democratic elements of the system, whether it's An anti democratic way of electing the president, an anti democratic way of electing the Senate, or a fundamentally anti democratic Supreme Court that will just keep striking down these policies over and over because they have no fear that there's going to be any accountability for their actions.

DAHLIA LITHWICK - HOST, AMICUS: I do want to stay for one more minute on the Supreme Court, Ari. I think you're saying two related, but different things, and I want to unpack them. On the one hand, what you're saying is, look, this is a Supreme Court for the first time in history, all but one of the conservative justices in the supermajority have been appointed by a President who lost the popular vote and then ratified by a Senate that represents a minority of [00:27:00] the people, right?

That's never happened. So this is fundamentally, structurally, anti democratic and not in the good way, right? Not in the way that when we talk about minority protecting Supreme Court. But then there's this other thing that you're saying implicitly, which I think is just incredibly important too, which is that that Supreme Court conservative supermajority has gone on to break voting in this country and to break it at both those two tiers we've talked about, which is at the state level, right?

Whether it's blessing gerrymandering, whether it's blessing voter ID, whatever it is, right? That the court has made it harder to vote, but then also. Shelby County, right? It's also, you know, Rucho. It's case after case after case in which, let's be very clear, partisans who worked on Bush v. Gore to break voting are now breaking it at a doctrinal level.

And those two things combined are the thing that makes this so lethal. It's a structural [00:28:00] problem that is compounded by that structural entity, making it harder and harder to vote.

ARI BERMAN: That's right. I mean, there's this chilling anti democratic feedback loop where the anti democratic parts of the system reinforce each other.

And so you have an undemocratically constructed Supreme Court. And then that Supreme Court makes the country less democratic through things like gutting the Voting Rights Act and legalizing partisan gerrymandering or refusing to strike it down. That's what's so dangerous about this moment is you have the undemocratic parts of the system reinforcing each other.

And I think to me, the really scary part of the Supreme Court is not just, of course, how it's constructed, but what they're doing and the fact that they're doing things that are anti democratic, they're doing things that are anti majoritarian, radically at odds with public opinion on things like abortion and guns, for example.

And [00:29:00] then, the third thing, which I think is relatively new, and very scary, is just how open to authoritarianism outright they are, and how much they are acting themselves like they are above the law. The way that Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito are acting, for example. That is also something that's relatively new.

You never had that in the 1950s or 19- Earl Warren was never flying a "Stop the Steal" flag outside of- there was always a belief that justices were somehow removed from the political process, and I feel like they are as close to the MAGA political process or as close to political process writ large as they've ever been, and so much more sympathetic to the authoritarian elements that we believed.

I mean, I don't know about you, Dahlia, but I think myself and a lot of people were thinking, "There's no way they're going to buy Trump's immunity argument. Like, that's crazy. It's going to be an [00:30:00] eight to one or seven to two decision. You're going to six to three at worst. You're going to get some angry dissents by Thomas and Alito."

It's like, no! this is the opposite. They are full throated on this stuff. And that's what makes me nervous about, just to bring it back earlier about the whole contesting of the election, the faith that people have in the courts, I don't have that level of faith in a six to three conservative court, and I don't have that level of faith in courts where Donald Trump has made 230 appointees to the lower courts and where Republican governors have constructed state Supreme courts in places like Georgia and Arizona. I don't have that faith in the courts right now. I don't want it to go to the courts. I want it to be settled by the mechanisms of democracy that are accountable to the people, as opposed to the mechanisms of democracy that Republicans are using to do all the anti democratic shit that they can't accomplish with the normal political process.

‘Intimidation’: MAGA Texas AG orders raids on homes of Latino Democrats - All In with Chris Hayes - Air Date 8-29-24

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: It's basically [00:31:00] right out of the mid-20th Century descriptions of authoritarian life, particularly in America, as compared to 'America, land of the free', right? Here, your political activities are protected. You could vote for everyone. You can speak freely. There's not going to be the knock at the door. It's almost iconic, right? The state comes to do something to you in retribution if you cross them. And that's really what it looks like Paxton's doing in Texas.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Yeah, Chris, I'm glad to be with you and I'm glad you're giving attention to this story because this is incredibly ominous. When you hear that woman, 87 years old, describing what happened to her, describing how she was surrounded by police officers, it's unconscionable and it is anti-democratic.

But I have to say this, Chris. This is a play that has happened before. This is something that Republicans did in Alabama, as you know, against, voters, folks who were helping folks [00:32:00] register to vote and helping elderly voters, Albert and Evelyn Turner. That time, Jeff sessions was the US Attorney and brought charges against them.

And what was so important to me in listening to your report just now, Chris, was hearing her say that she's afraid that it will interfere with them doing their work because what happened in Perry County, Alabama, when Sessions did what he did, was that it intimidated elderly voters from voting absentee, which is what they wanted to do.

In this case, this is LULAC, the oldest Latino advocacy organization in the country working to register voters, and this is an effort to frighten them from doing that critically important work, and the only upside of this, Chris, is this is how we know Texas is in play. We know that Texas is in play because they're starting to panic.

But we've got to get serious about this. I think a number of us have reached out to the Department of Justice. It's very, very serious indeed.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah, and [00:33:00] your point there, just to stress for a second, because I want to sort of make two points. One is sort of the idea of, you know, these authoritarian states that are over there, right? This is our nightmare. But also the deep American tradition here, and as someone who is versed in this. Thuggish intimidation, whether through the courts, through local police, or just the thuggish violent mobs is the story of voter intimidation and anti-democratic rule in the United States through the years, particularly in the wake of the Civil War and Black liberation in the aftermath of it. And that is, at this point, to me, the sort of huge unifying element of the Trump Republican Party in this moment.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Yeah, I mean, he's pulling a thread that already existed. He didn't create it. And they are returning. We should also remember, Chris, that I think it was 2018 was the first election we had where the Republican Party was removed from a consent decree that had covered [00:34:00] it for 30 years for its activities in the 1980s engaged in its ballot security program.

So, sometimes, with all respect, I mean, Trump is a nightmare, but I want to be very clear that he did not create this, that this has been part of the playbook of the Republican Party that has had to be constrained by courts, by advocacy, by litigation and by the Justice Department. Trump has just re-upped something that exists in the playbook that we had hoped was put on the shelf.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah, and I want to highlight a story out of Virginia where again, these sort of, I think you have a kind of combination of fusing of the old and the new, right? These sort of old tactics, but the kind of, the more toothsome menace, frankly, of the sort of Trump era version.

So, Republicans have a goal now of identifying 5,000 volunteers to serve as poll watchers for every precinct during all 45 days of voting in Virginia. National Party Chairman Michael Whatley says volunteers are thoroughly trained about the mechanics of how poll watching should happen. When asked about concerns Republicans might try to block certification, [00:35:00] he says Republicans won't have issues with certification if he says "the election is free, accurate, secure, and transparent". What do you make of that?

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well, again, for some time, organizations like True the Vote, right-wing organizations, have been engaged in this process of attempting to kind of develop an army to challenge folks at the polls. This particular training was co-sponsored by the Trump Campaign. So, one thing that's different about it is that it's not only the Republican Party, it's also the Trump Campaign that's engaged in this training.

And again, this is about intimidation, and we're seeing this around the country, too. Remember Georgia's voter suppression law now allows for unlimited challenges. You can challenge anybody, any voter can challenge anybody who they think is not a legitimate voter. So, the purpose of this is to muck up the gears, is to intimidate people, is to... I mean, you know, the Virginia, trainer said, "If you see something, then something's wrong", and you have to do something [00:36:00] about it.

So, this is the idea that every single person is deputized to tell that something is wrong. And all you have to do is think about Rudy Giuliani accusing Shaye Moss and her mom, you know, of exchanging flash drives when they were exchanging ginger mints, you know?

So, but this is what they want is to create some plausible way of suggesting that the election was stolen or that there was some fraud.

CHRIS HAYES - HOST, ALL IN: Yeah, and I'll just say, as a last point, and I imagine you agree with this, the solution to that is to refuse to be intimidated, is to organize and to go out and to not let them intimidate folks as much as is possible.

SHERRILYN IFILL: Well, this is where the Nebraska case is a little bit different, because in the case of Nebraska, it's formerly incarcerated people who had their vote restored to them by a 2005 law that was expanded in 2024 and the state AG instructed—all of the [00:37:00] county officials decided that both of those laws were unconstitutional and instructed county officials to stop registering formerly incarcerated folks to vote. That case was heard in the Nebraska Supreme Court yesterday, and we'll see what happens.

And Chris, just last thing, you'll remember, Nebraska is one of the few states, in fact, one of two states, that splits their electoral votes by congressional district. And that's why this is so important, because of that second congressional district near Omaha, where Biden won in 2020, Trump won in 2016, where every vote literally counts. So, if people think Nebraska is not a swing state, and that it has something to do with the national election, it does.

Republicans caught in BOMBSHELL lie - Brian Tyler Cohen - Air Date 9-9-24

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: [BRIAN TYLER COHEN] If you've had the misfortune of logging on the internet today, you might have seen something about Haitian migrants eating pets, including dogs, cats, and ducks. So, I took a look at some of the most trusted voices on the right, and we've got future Pulitzer Prize winning account EndWokeness, who posted, "Springfield is a small [00:38:00] town in Ohio. Four years ago they had 60, 000 residents. Under Harris and Biden, 20, 000 Haitian immigrants were shipped to the town. Now ducks and pets are disappearing". And they include this very trustworthy screenshot from Facebook.com, which reads, "Warning to all about our beloved pets and those around us. My neighbor informed me that her daughter's friend had lost her cat. She checked pages, kennels, asked around, etc. One day she came home from work. As soon as she stepped out of the car, looked towards the neighbor's house, where Haitians live, and saw her cat hanging from a branch like you'd do a deer for butchering and they were carving it up to eat. I've been told they are doing this to dogs, they have been doing it at Snyder Park with the ducks and geese, as I was told that last bit by rangers and police. Please keep a close eye on those animals". He then posted a photo of a random Black man. Only, small problem, the Springfield News Sun reported today that the Springfield Police announced that they've received zero reports related to pets being stolen and eaten, and reaching out to the police might just be a priority if this was actually happening.

There was, however, a [00:39:00] woman named Alexis Farrell in Canton, Ohio, 175 miles away, who reportedly ate a cat and was arrested. I watched the footage of her arrest and, first of all, I don't recommend doing that. Second, this woman is clearly abusing some horrific drugs, which was made clear by the footage and by those calling the police. And third, there is no indication that she's an immigrant. In fact, even a family member of hers called the police, on her, and that person was clearly American. I also called the Stark County jail in Ohio to confirm her nationality, but they weren't releasing any further information at this time, but there has been zero reporting that this woman is from Haiti.

So, I have no reason to believe that this is confirmation of the bogus story that's pervading the right. And when I say pervading, that may actually be an understatement, because this disinformation was already posted by Charlie Kirk, who wrote, "save our pets, secure our borders". Elon Musk, to the surprise of exactly no one, responded, "apparently people's pet cats are being eaten". Elon then went a step further, because why not perpetuate some more disinformation, as he's known to do, in response to this [00:40:00] video.

VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS: [VICE PRESIDENT KAMALA HARRIS] That is why, also, starting with our administration, we gave TPS, Temporary Protected Status, to Haitian migrants, 55, 000. And then more recently we extended Temporary Protected Status to over 100, 000 Haitian migrants for that very reason, that they need support, they need protection.

[BRIAN TYLER COHEN] To

BRIAN TYLER COHEN: which Elon wrote, "vote for Kamala if you want this to happen to your neighborhood". The Republican U. S. Senate nominee for Ohio running against Sherrod Brown wrote, "Kamala Harris and Sherrod Brown are responsible for flooding Springfield, Ohio with thousands of illegal Haitians who are sucking up social services and even reportedly killing and eating pets. We need to deport illegals, not invite them to wreak havoc on our communities". Known Russian disinformation peddler Benny Johnson wrote, "Thousands of Haitian migrants terrorize Ohio, eat family, pets, dogs and cats, and ducks". Ted Cruz weighed in with a photo of kittens with the caption, "Please vote for Trump so Haitian immigrants don't eat us". Trump's deranged speechwriter and advisor [00:41:00] Stephen Miller wrote, "In this century, America can either explore space, land on Mars, and lift our citizens to the highest standard of living the world has ever known, or you can vote for Kamala and import illegals who steal and eat household pets". Trump's own running mate weighed in, writing, "Months ago, I raised the issue of Haitian illegal immigrants draining social services and generally causing chaos all over Springfield, Ohio. Reports now show that people have had their pets abducted and eaten by people who shouldn't be in this country. Where's our border czar?"

In other words, effectively the entire right-wing media ecosystem has shared a story that is based on some random, unsubstantiated Facebook post, all because they're just that desperate to gin up some spooky story about immigrants and Kamala Harris. The potential next vice president of the United States even perpetuated this lie because there is no scruples, there is no integrity, there is no adherence to the truth on the right. They will say or do anything if it will help them politically. They will lie to the very people gullible enough to trust them, turning their [00:42:00] closest supporters into abject fools. But hey, if it means they can scare grandma and grandpa, then I guess it's worth it, huh?

And by the way, to that point, let's look at just how dangerous Haitian immigrants actually are. And this is according to the Cato Institute, which is on no planet some liberal outlet. But even Cato says that the incarceration rate for illegal Haitians is 918 per 100, 000, while the incarceration rate for all native born Americans is 1, 477 per 100, 000, which, to be clear, is 46.6 percent lower for Haitians than actual native born Americans. Legal Haitian immigrants also have an incarceration rate that's 26% lower than all legal immigrants, which again is lower than the incarceration rate for native born Americans by a massive degree. So, if Republicans are actually worried about crime, maybe they wanna worry about the people committing it in exponentially higher rates, unless, of course, American crime is fine by them, because it's White people doing it.

And therein lies the real issue. Republicans aren't actually worried about crime because if they [00:43:00] were, they would be worried about it when anyone does it, not just non-White people. But they only focus on migrant crime or immigrant crime because that helps them perpetuate a political narrative. They can find anecdotal instances of crime, or even non-existent anecdotal instances of crime, like Haitian immigrants eating their dogs and cats for dinner, and use that to scare their largely older White base into thinking that it's not even safe to go outside in Joe Biden-Kamala Harris's America. Of course, it's all based on a completely imaginary story, cooked up in their imaginations, but the rubes who listen to Republicans don't know that. They just think that their tabby cats are going to get eaten because Ted Cruz shared a stupid meme on Twitter.

And by the way, If you're wondering why I advocate relentlessly for a strong left-wing media ecosystem, one that doesn't just try to beat back disinformation but actually goes on the offense, it's because this is what happens when the right is able to control the narrative. And then on the left, we're left swatting back disinformation that inevitably some people are going to believe. This is what they do. Again, [00:44:00] lying isn't a bug, it is a feature. It is what they're there to do. Why they exist. They do it for money, and influence, and power. Benny Johnson, Tim Pool, and others just got caught accepting hundreds of thousands of dollars to perpetuate Russian propaganda only days ago, thanks to a DOJ indictment. And they don't care. They got paid.

this is also ominous foreboding for what these people will do in office - b-boy bouibaisse - Air Date 9-13-24

JAMELLE BOUIE - HOST, B-BOY BOUIBAISSE: So on the one hand, I think that the "they're eating the dogs, are eating the cats, eat the cat, eat the cat" meme is very funny. I think it's hilarious. But I also find myself worried that people aren't taking seriously enough what Trump and Vance are doing here. What they're doing is called a blood libel. It is smearing a group of people with the accusation that they are killing, you know, in the case of Jews in medieval Europe, killing children, in the case of Haitian [00:45:00] immigrants in 2024 United States, killing pets and eating them, using them for some malign purpose. And the purpose and the point of a blood libel is to incite violence. There's no other point to it. There's no other reason to do it. The point of it is to incite violence, to drive people to commit violence against others out of fear, anger, and hatred. And JD Vance, who got the ball rolling with this on Monday, Donald Trump, who broadcasted it to 67 million people on Tuesday, Trump and Vance who have doubled down on it on Wednesday and Thursday, what they are doing is trying to incite violence against Haitian immigrants in Springfield and really Haitian immigrants anywhere. And really anyone who people might think is a Haitian immigrant. That's the whole thing about these libels, about these smears, is that the people who they are targeted towards, the people who they want to incite are not going to make any particular distinctions. They're going to go after [00:46:00] whoever they think fits the bill, whether that's Haitian immigrants, whether that's immigrants from Mexico or South America, whether that's someone who is brown-skinned or Black, dark-skinned or Black and who is just assumed to be an immigrant. It's a dangerous and ugly stuff. And the memes are funny and I don't want to rain on anyone's parade about the memes and having their fun. But I think it's important to say that Trump and minions are trying to start a race riot. It's what they're trying to do. And I always say I don't want to get into any media criticism, but I don't even think that the coverage of this from the national press, which has been pretty decent, is really getting at the core of what's happening: an open attempt to incite the kind of violence that destroys communities and that leads to people losing their [00:47:00] lives. That's what they're doing. It's very ugly, it's reprehensible, and I think you should recognize that.

Note from the Editor on what puts democracies at risk

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Alex Wagner Tonight explaining that election lies are all about power. The Thom Hartmann Program looked at the moment Trump admitted to losing the 2020 election. Democracy Docket explained the plan for Trump-supporting election officials to refuse to certify votes. The Political Scene podcast discussed election interference. Amicus described how our election system was designed to be anti-democratic. All in with Chris Hayes reported on the intimidation and voter suppression tactics being used in Texas. Brian Tyler Cohen explained the latest Nazi lie to be amplified by Trump and company. And Jamelle Bouie described the depth of the danger of these kinds of lies targeted at immigrant communities.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives section. But first, a reminder [00:48:00] that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes featuring the production crew here discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often trying to make each other laugh in the process. To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes, through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. Members also get chapter markers in the show, but I'll note that anyone, depending on the app you use to listen, may be able to use the time codes that are in the show notes to jump around the show, similar to chapter markers. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, 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, before we continue on to the Deeper Dives half of the show, I thought it worthwhile to take a big step back and understand at its very core what [00:49:00] makes democracy work for humans? Like, not just for Americans, or not just under our system. What makes the idea of democracy work for humans, as well as what can make it break?

The New Yorker magazine has an article, "Democracy needs the loser", and the writer is an expert in contested elections in deeply divided democracies all around the world. They point out that it is "a rich field with experts who have analyzed enormous amounts of data. We know the ways in which an election loss can spark violence, and we know what risk factors make unrest more likely".

And so we'll start with the factors that keep democracy going in a healthy way. " The first rule is that. In order to accept defeat, citizens need hope. Hope, the belief that every election will not be the last, is the glue that binds citizens to the democratic process. It drives them to vote, to run for office, and to care that the [00:50:00] system survives. When people in parties believe that they can win in the future, they are more likely to accept temporary setbacks". So demonstrating the alternate route, just one example, "In Northern Ireland, many Irish Catholics eventually backed to the IRA and its violent methods when they became convinced that Protestants using gerrymandering, voter suppression, and London's military support would always win". And the article provides other examples as well, but there are other factors. So, I'm going to skip to that. " We know what political conditions make populations vulnerable to losing hope. Majoritarian systems with strong presidents, such as Nigeria's, create a winner-takes-all dynamic in which the party that wins the most votes assumes all or nearly all the power. And conversely, "In a parliamentary system, power is often shared by different parties, making cooperation essential. Majoritarian-style [00:51:00] systems are more dangerous. Losing an election may leave significant portions of the electorate without representation, reduce incentives for inter-party collaboration, and allow the winning side to impose its agenda on the losers".

Of course, it's not just being a winner-take-all presidential system that puts a country at risk. We have had basically that system for a long time. There have to be other factors involved before things get dangerous. " Elections are particularly dangerous in democracies whose institutions are weak or under attack. If citizens believe those in power can manipulate the outcome of an election, then some will come to believe that violence and even war may be justified". Now, luckily, you know, only people with no real understanding of how our elections work could be tricked into believing that they're easily hackable and, you know, how many people like that could there possibly be? "Demagogues and would-be dictators anticipating a potential loss can groom their supporters [00:52:00] to reject the results using claims of fraud and calls for retribution". Well, shit. Um, continuing... "it's now impossible to ignore that America has all the characteristics of a country at risk. We have the exact type of political system—presidential winner-takes-all—that is most vulnerable, various democratic norms are being degraded by gerrymandering and voter suppression, and long-harmful features of our political system—the electoral college, corporate money, lifetime appointments for judges—show little sign of reform. We also have a candidate for president who is actively sowing mistrust in the upcoming election".

Now, you know, years ago, I started saying that I believe in making radical reforms to some of the structures of our government, like many of those just listed in that paragraph. But the point was actually to de-radicalize [00:53:00] the nature of our politics. It may seem radical to call for major reform of institutions that are hundreds of years old, but if you can see in real time the damage they're causing and predict with a relatively simple logic where the current systems will take us on their current trajectory, then major reforms start to look anything but radical. Frankly, the same goes for climate change, but yeah, that for another day,

Looking at societal level phenomenon with sufficient data is a really fascinating thing. Though we cannot look into the minds of any individual or predict their actions, it's much easier to predict how large groups of people or subsections of them will react to a given stimuli in a given set of circumstances. And it actually reminds me of epidemiology. I've been watching a show recently that is portraying the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic and the [00:54:00] way that the data scientists who specialize in the field were able to predict with great accuracy how the pandemic would play out, given the data that they had, is very similar to the predictions of violence to come when a destabilized society holds an election and the right collection of detrimental factors are in place. Back to the article, "What would violence look like if Trump loses? It would likely start with protests against the election results, which could turn into riots far-right militias may join in. They would not begin by attacking Democratic voters. Instead they would first target those they perceive to be traitors within their own party, Republicans who are deemed too moderate, those who have reached across party lines, refused to support MAGA, or who have enacted laws with which these extremists disagree. This is what happened in Nigeria in 2011. Buhari's most ardent supporters didn't start by killing Christians who happened to [00:55:00] live in the north. They attacked groups seen to be collaborating with the federal government, police, party officials.

And just one small example from our last attempted coup, it says, "Rioters chanted 'hang Mike Pence' for his role in refusing to certify the election of Trump". Now, to be fair. They also shouted 'where's Nancy?'. So, you know, equal opportunity insurrectionists. But when it comes to everyday folks who may find themselves in the line of fire, no surprises here. "Extremists would likely then target minorities living in red and purple states, attempting to marginalize supposed interlopers in their communities. When people feel insecure, they seek to cleanse their communities of those they deem a potential threat. If the White Christian males who make up the core of the MAGA base no longer have the votes to control the federal government, then they will ensure that they have the votes to control many of the red and purple states in which they [00:56:00] live".

Now, interestingly, it goes on to point out that the most violence can actually be expected in states with a fairly equal balance of White and non-White Americans. It says, " Experts have found that some of the most volatile countries are the ones whose societies are divided into two relatively large groups, Some of the greatest racial tension in the United States has occurred in places where the White and non-White populations were relatively even. This included several former Confederate states during Reconstruction, after Black people were given the right to vote and hold office, as well as cities such as Birmingham, Memphis, Cleveland, Gary, and Newark, which experienced bursts of violence as they became minority White starting in the 1960s. It is the mixed cities, states and regions just like Kaduna in Nigeria, where the declining side feels most threatened".

Now, that last line—"where the declining side feels most threatened"—it [00:57:00] reminds me of the article that I was sharing in the last episode on a very different topic, "The advancement of cyber warfare". In that case, the writer turns to game theory to sketch out likely scenarios. One of the biggest takeaways was that when one side feels that they have an advantage, but that their advantage is slipping away, that is when they are most likely to commit to a first strike against their perceived enemy. And the article predicts based on the theory of generally equally split populations, being the most susceptible to violence, that "In the United States today, this means that places like Georgia, Florida, Nevada, North Carolina, and Arizona could become hotspots of violence".

Now, I will leave you with some hope though. It's more long-term hope than short-term, but we'll take what we can get. It says. " One reason to maintain hope is that numerous places in America have already completed the demographic shift, with White majorities becoming [00:58:00] minorities. California, for example, began to embrace its diversity as its minority population amassed enough support to wield political power. The state shed its reputation for anti-immigrant activism to become a forward-thinking model for policies on inclusion. And, in many cities that elected Black mayors for the first time, tensions declined. When it became clear that non-White leadership would not hurt Whites, White fear of a Black mayor in Los Angeles, greatly diminished after Tom Bradley's highly successful 20 year tenure". Which, of course, brings us to the place where we spend So much of our time on the left exerting so much of our effort: trying to convince terrified White people to chill the fuck out. Stop being so scared. It'll be fine.

SECTION A: INTIMIDATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A: [00:59:00] Intimidation. Followed by Section B: Interference, Section C: Lies, and Section D: Election Integrity.

Meet the county official debunking & dismantling Elon Musk's election lies - AYMAN - Air Date 9-9-24

AYMAN MOHYELDIN - HOST, AYMAN: Stephen Richer is the Maricopa County Recorder in charge of maintaining voter files for more than 2. 6 million active registered voters. And in this position, he's had to fend off attacks from some of Trump's most unhinged allies, including failed Arizona gubernatorial candidate, Carrie Lake, who baselessly accused him of sabotage that led to her loss against Governor Katie Hobbs. And Shelby Bush, chair of the state's delegation to the Republican convention, who said this.

SHELBY BUSCH: But if Stephen Richer walked in this room, I would lynch him.

AYMAN MOHYELDIN - HOST, AYMAN: His most recent adversary, ex owner and infamous Trump suck up Elon Musk. Back in April, Musk reposted a totally false claim that more than 200, 000 illegal immigrants had registered to vote in Arizona. Richer took Musk to task, politely eviscerating him with facts on his [01:00:00] own platform, pointing out that there is zero validity to his suggestion.

Then in July, Musk continued his voter fraud obsession, posting electronic voting machines and anything mailed in is too risky. We should mandate paper ballots and in person voting only. Once again, Richard responded, this time with a more than generous offer to give Musk a tour of the Maricopa County election facility to show him the security steps that are already in place.

He even offered to take recommendations from Musk afterwards, writing, Would be pretty neat to put one of the world's best entrepreneurial brains onto election administration. Probably more productive than just social media analysis. And then finally, just this past week, more trolling from Musk who asked on X, Arizona is refusing to remove illegals from voter rolls?

Referencing a baseless lawsuit filed by Stephen Miller's MAGA law firm against all 15 Arizona counties. Once again, and by this point, he has the patience of a saint. Richard responded. [01:01:00] Hi, Elon. This is a lawsuit. You're very familiar with them. Lawsuits can allege anything. An has not been proven. He went on to explain that more than 50 lawsuits alleging voter fraud have been filed against him and his office since he took the job, and they have not lost anything.

A single one Maricopa County recorder, Steven Richard joins me now. A pretty impressive record. I have to say with all the victories that you've managed and I have to give you mad props for being, for having this stamina to respond to all of these people. But, but it really speaks to a Testament. So I think to a lot of the people who work in this country on the front lines of protecting our democracy, but I want to get you, I want to get to the lawsuit first.

I got to ask what made you want to take on Elon Musk in this way?

STEPHEN RICHER: Well, it was just flabbergasting. that he would just take as complete truth, a lawsuit that had been filed by a very partisan, very politically motivated group [01:02:00] that has lost many lawsuits in the past without even bothering to look at our response or any of the things that we post to social media.

And so ordinarily I would say that's not problematic, but when it comes from an account that has 2 bazillion followers and some people take it as gospel.

AYMAN MOHYELDIN - HOST, AYMAN: So tell us a little bit about the lawsuit that's been launched against you by America First Legal. Why is your county, along with these 14 other counties in Arizona, being sued?

Why are they so obsessed with you and Arizona?

STEPHEN RICHER: Well, I think they're obsessed with Arizona because Arizona is a battleground state, and Arizona was the locus of so many of the allegations that there was a stolen election in 2020. Now, I'm sure that they would say, Well, Arizona is a border state. And so we have a particular interest in maintaining the integrity of the process.

Well, fortunately, and something that must fails to note. Arizona is one of few states in the country that has a documented proof of citizenship law [01:03:00] in order to be able to vote a full ballot. So while Arizona, according to Musk, is way behind every other state and is refusing to do these basic securities, we're actually ahead of most states.

And the numbers that were cited in Musk's post were just wildly inaccurate. So aside from that, I guess it was a productive week.

AYMAN MOHYELDIN - HOST, AYMAN: Yeah, I mean, you bring up such a good point. I'm so glad that you kind of just dismantle it like the way that you just did, and it raises the point that, I mean, it's one thing for Republicans to be spreading these voter fraud lies, but when you're one of the richest men in the world and you have a platform, as you said, hundreds of millions of followers, Elon Musk platforming these conspiracy theories, not to mention the attacks from people like Stephen Miller, it actually is not just about the disinformation.

I mean, what kind of danger does this put you and your colleagues? Well,

STEPHEN RICHER: I don't remember whether it was Spider Man or George W Bush who said with great power comes great responsibility. But I [01:04:00] think there's some truth to that. And when people like Mr Musk Post on Twitter or speak to various news outlets and it's just filled with innuendo or filled with lies or filled with inaccurate information.

Then it's offices like mine. and the 150 full time employees that are in my office who see the downstream effects of that. And I will tell you that while some downstream effects take the form of, hey, I'd like to know more about what Mr. Musk is posting. Some take a very ugly and very violent form. And I'm just here to say to those leaders and people like Mr.

Musk, Please be a little more judicious. Please do a little more information on the front end so that we don't have to witness this ugliness and these attacks on our institutions on the backend.

AYMAN MOHYELDIN - HOST, AYMAN: And I want to talk to you more broadly about the attacks, because as I mentioned, uh, you're a Republican. You famously have stood up against Trump's election lies.

And for that, you have become a target in the [01:05:00] MAGA world. In 2021, he accused you of deleting files from the 2020 election. We played that clip of Shelby Bush. The Maricopa County Republican Party vice chair saying that she'd lynch you, an act of political violence, a threat. Tell us what it's been like for you as a Republican becoming a major MAGA target.

STEPHEN RICHER: It's disappointing, it's disillusioning, it's bizarre. I would say I line up with traditional conservative values on at least, you know, 18 out of 20 items. But the reality is, is that the facts, the truth, the law was never on the side of the people who want to allege mass fraud in our electoral system, was never on the side of the people who want to say that the 2020 election was stolen.

And you said at the outset, very kindly, thank you, that my office has faced more than 50 lawsuits and that we've won all those. And it's not because we're brilliant or [01:06:00] we went to, you know, I went to University of Chicago, which I like to think is the best law school, but it has nothing to do with that. It has to do with the Facts and the law being on our side, and it's really just that simple.

And I have been stubborn in pointing out those facts. And for that, it has, of course, provoked much ire, and it is just saddening to see what it's become.

Confederate Voter Intimidation 2.0: The GOP's Dark Strategy for Winning - Thom Hartmann Program 8-27-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THOM HARTMANN PROGRAM: The Republican Attorney General of Texas sent armed police officers after black voters in their 80s to intimidate, threaten, and destroy them financially by forcing them to hire lawyers to defend themselves, even though they're perfectly legal voters.

It's a manifestation of the new unofficial Republican slogan, If you can't win on the issues, cheat. And if cheating doesn't get you over the top, intimidate. As is the case with so many bad Republican ideas, you know, like outlawing labor unions, ending welfare programs, banning [01:07:00] abortion, gutting women's voting and economic rights, etc.

This one started during the failure of the reconstruction in the 1870s. White supremacists had taken over the federal government and in the states, black voters were routinely threatened with violence and imprisonment when they tried to vote. You know, we thought those days were over, but in August of 2022, three months before he would face voters for reelection, Florida's Republican governor, Ron DeSantis reprised the neoconfederate federate strategy of using the levers of official state power to intimidate black voters.

Voters to Santa's put together a special police force to go after so called voter fraud, and they executed a number of arrest warrants against black voters who'd been told by various state officials that they could vote even though they had a felony conviction. They all believed they were eligible, and apparently most were.

There was absolutely no effort to commit voter fraud involved. Here's the side story here. With a 64 percent margin of victory, [01:08:00] Florida's voters had approved a ballot measure in the 2018 election, giving voting rights back to the roughly 20 percent of Florida black citizens. 1. 5 million potential voters who'd had a felony conviction.

The Republican controlled state legislature then, quietly, essentially overturned the ballot measure in 2020, although many black voters never got the memo. With cameras rolling, around 20 black former felon voters were arrested for illegal voting and paraded before the media in shackles. As a result, many black voters that November concluded showing up at the polls just wasn't worth the risk.

As the Palm Beach Daily News noted shortly after the 2022 election, quote, in 2018, before the new voting laws were enacted, the state had a 63 percent turnout among registered voters in the midterms. This year, turnout dropped to 54%. DeSantis brutal intimidation strategy was so effective at suppressing the black vote in Florida [01:09:00] that year that he even won Miami Dade County, which had been a Democratic stronghold since 2002, and Palm Beach County, which had not voted Republican since 1986.

But what starts in Florida rarely stays in Florida, particularly if it helps a white Republican administration stay in power in a state with a large minority population. Now, the notoriously corrupt Republican Attorney General of Texas, desperate to hang on to his party's majority in this 2024 election, has picked up on DeSantis strategy of intimidating minority voters in August to keep them away from the November polls.

After putting two million people on the suspense list, forcing those mostly urban voters into provisional ballots, which won't be counted unless they take time off work to show up at a county office to confirm their identities in the week after the election. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton is now sending police officers into Hispanic neighborhoods to kick in doors.

[01:10:00] In 2021, Paxton bragged a right-wing hate purveyor and now imprisoned criminal Steve Bannon that he'd successfully prevented Harris County, home to Houston and its 2. 4 million mostly Democratic voters, from voting by mail in 2020, thus keeping Republicans in charge of the state. That's right, the Texas Attorney General bragged that Republicans only held power in Texas as a result of voter suppression.

And added that if voter suppression were to end, Republicans would never again seize power in that state. His effort forced the few willing brave souls among Houston's citizens, fully 14. 5 percent of the entire state's registered voters, to navigate crowded polling places in person during a deadly pandemic before vaccines were available.

If we'd lost Harris County by allowing people to vote, Paxton crowed, Harris County mail in ballots that they wanted to send out were 2. 5 million. And we were able to stop every one [01:11:00] of them. Had we not done that, we would have been one of those battleground states and Donald Trump would have lost the election.

After purging millions of Texas voters, most from big cities, off the voting rolls over the past few years, putting 2 million on the suspense list, and then preventing Houstonians from voting by mail in 2020, Paxson's newest trick to keep the GOP in charge of Texas is a naked rip off of DeSantis minority voter intimidation strategy.

One of the members of LULAC Texas, the League of United Latin American Citizens, one of the oldest Latino voting and civil rights groups in the country, retired school teacher, 87 year old Lidia Martinez, had publicly spoken out against Paxton when he forbade Texans from getting mail in ballots in 2020.

He got his revenge this past week. At six in the morning, according to the New York Times, nine officers, some with guns, showed up at her home after having broken down a door to raid the home of Manuel [01:12:00] Medina, the chair of the Tejano Democrats. Martinez asked who was at the door, and as the Times noted, The officers then pushed open the door and invaded her home.

Quote, Mrs. Martinez said that the officers told her they came because she had filled out a report saying that older residents were not getting mail ballots. Yes, I did, she told them. For 35 years, Mrs. Martinez has been a member of LULAC, the civil rights group helping Latino residents stay engaged in politics.

Much of her work has included instructing older residents and veterans on how to fill out voter registration cards. Two of the agents went to her bedroom and searched everywhere. For My underwear, my nightgown, everything. They went through everything, Ms. Martinez recalled. They took her laptop, phone, planner, and some documents.

All across the state, apparently, police were raiding the homes of Hispanic voters. The LULAC, Gabriel Rosales, who was on my radio TV program yesterday, told me and the It's pure intimidation.

Elon Musk is Trying to Rig the Election - ethan is online - Air Date 9-6-24

ETHAN CASE - HOST, ETHANISONLINE: [01:13:00] It is a fact about the United States of America that billionaires love getting their greedy, grubby little hands all over our national elections. This just in, breaking news, Fox News Alert. The wealthiest business owners of America have historically influenced our elections and our politics in general, consistently to the fatal detriment of the working class.

Elon Musk might try really hard to seem like a regular guy, but he's still so rich it will for sure send him to hell. That's not even counting any of the things he's actually done. Just being that rich, God doesn't want you. Jesus said that, and I'm not even joking. Elon Musk, the world's favorite failure, has officially started a political super PAC exclusively to bankroll the Trump 2024 re election campaign.

ELON MUSK: What I have done is I've, I have created A pack, a super pack, whatever you want to call it. Yeah. Which, uh, You know, it's something called the America Pack.

ETHAN CASE - HOST, ETHANISONLINE: This follows a pattern of more and more Silicon Valley billionaires [01:14:00] and big tech interests falling in line with Donald Trump and supporting him for 2024.

Doesn't seem good to me. But as far as Elon goes, we've had some, you know, funny election misinformation from his stupid AI chatbot. A disorganized, phone sex call that, for some reason, we were all allowed to listen to.

DONALD TRUMP: Congratulations, because I see you broke every record in the book with, uh, so many millions of people, and it's an honor.

We view that as an honor. And then, uh, you do want silencing of certain voices. And

ETHAN CASE - HOST, ETHANISONLINE: consistent suppression of information Elon finds politically inconvenient, he's doing the most he can to make sure that Trump returns to the White House. Which, for a billionaire, can have serious consequences. Why would you, as an electric car manufacturer, want to elect the candidate that might hurt your business?

Well, 5. 5 trillion dollars in tax cuts, that's it. Someone wasted a lot of money to be the admin and most addicted user of the worst website in the world. Someone did that. In fact, just [01:15:00] recently, the Washington Post released an analysis of Twitter's fidelity reports and the eight largest investors in the company and just how much they've lost.

Hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars. Gone. For the Everything app. So needless to say, that tax cut, Probably sounds pretty great to someone like Elon Musk who can just make money. I don't know vanish gone everything at but it also probably Appeals to any big tech CEO that's run their company at a loss for the past 10 years to undercut competition and maintain monopolies They're probably gonna like the idea of 5. 5 trillion dollars in free money. I think they'd want it regardless But they're desperate for it, and Elon is a great example. So, if you don't know, a PAC is a Political Action Committee. It's an organization that works to lobby the government for a specific interest. And there are a lot of different PACs for different purposes.

But a Super PAC is a PAC that's allowed to be openly run by corporations, and are also allowed to donate unlimited amounts of money to political candidates. Everyone else has to play by, you know, election rules. Super PACs get a pass. [01:16:00] Elon Musk's Super PAC is called America PAC, which I keep shortening in my head to AmeriPAC, which is a different PAC.

America PAC was founded shortly after the Washington Post reported insider information that Elon Musk was planning to donate around 45 million dollars a month. This would have been among the largest individual donations across the political aisle this election. And before you know it, Elon said, No, actually, I'm not doing that.

I'm doing something else. And while Musk's name is nowhere directly on the Super PAC, he has claimed to have created it, and is apparently funding it with lower level donations. Only he knows when any of that will happen. Fuckin shit means. AmericaPAC seems to be bankrolling a lot of different aspects of the Trump campaign, but it seems to be mainly focused on campaign events, advertisement, and canvassing.

The SuperPAC itself is being funded by venture capital, big tech, as well as capitalist billionaire entrepreneurs like the Winklevoss twins and Antonio Gracias. And millionaire entrepreneurs, like Joe Lonsdale. AmericaPAC is also seemingly being run by ex Ron DeSantis campaign a aides, which is a really funny [01:17:00] reminder that Elon Musk initially supported Ron DeSantis for president.

For president. I just want everyone to make that clear. Elon Musk thought Ron DeSantis would be a good president. They should've nominated him, they should've done it. It would've been so funny. So far, it seems like AmericaPAC has spent 44. 8 million in total. 11. 9 million against Harris, 8. 8 million against Biden, and 24 million for Trump.

According to OpenSecrets. The AmericaPAC website is bare bones. So, not a lot of information there, but there is an AmericaPak YouTube channel, which is not the same YouTube channel that the website links to, but the channel I found has multiple videos, including multiple versions of the same video. Who did they hire to run any of this?

So let's take a look at where this money is actually going. What do the ads look like? If the website looks like this, what else are they doing?

DONALD TRUMP: Republicans must make a plan. Register and vote. We've got to elect Republicans, and we're gonna do it. We're gonna have the greatest victory in the history of our country. Thank you very much. God bless you.

ETHAN CASE - HOST, ETHANISONLINE: I don't know what that [01:18:00] nasty yellow tie is, but it's cursed, and he shouldn't wear it. Absentee voting is voting by mail.

I thought he didn't like any of that stuff. What the hell? That's how elections get stolen. We know this. So those are the ads that they YouTube to not seemingly a lot of success. It's just an attempt to get people, specifically in battleground states, to register to vote and vote for Donald Trump. But AmericaPAC also financed a blitz of ads on Facebook.

And these ads would take you to a different version of the AmericaPAC website that now doesn't exist anymore. That's why the website looks like that now. Because originally, you would register to vote on the website. But according to CNBC reporting and testing, depending on what zip code you entered and whether or not you were in a battleground state, the website would give you different forms.

If you weren't in a battleground state, it would direct you to your state's voter registration form. But if you were in a battleground state, they presented this form that says start here. Will direct you to the right place to register to vote in your state. Now this is sneaky [01:19:00] because this isn't a voter registration form.

It might say at the top in really big letters, voter registration, but this is actually the first step before they help you. Except they never followed up on that step and instead stole the information that people entered. And this was part of a massive ad campaign directly in the wake of the Trump shooting.

So yeah, I think that's like, super illegal. I'm not a lawyer, but I think that's super illegal. I don't think you can have a webpage that says voter registration in giant text that isn't a voter registration page and then not help people register to vote. AmericaPAC paid for 900, 000 worth of these ads, mostly in battleground states.

In March of 2024, the Federal Election Commission passed a decision allowing Super PACs and campaigns to coordinate ground operations, allowing Super PACs to openly share data with the presidential campaign. And I think that's exactly what they're doing. But yeah, they don't have those ads anymore currently, and they scrubbed the webpage, so I'm sure it's fine.

It's fine. No one will notice. Facebook ads aren't the only way AmericaPAC was trying to collect people's data. [01:20:00] They also launched on the ground canvassing operations, which is another way of manually data harvesting. But, unfortunately for the Trump campaign and for AmericaPAC, their canvassing operations haven't exactly gone according to plan.

They hired a vendor called Infield Strategies to help them with on the ground efforts and spent 15 million dollars by the time they decided to abruptly cut ties. Literally stranding campaign staff across the country, and that's hilarious. I mean, that's just funny. If you're volunteering on the ground door knocking for Donald Trump, you kind of deserve that.

You should think about what you're doing. God is mad at you. And so it seems that AmericaPAC wants to restructure their canvassing operations internally, even though they already hired somebody to help them and spent 15 million dollars on that. But I can't help to understand the multi dimensional machinations of the world's smartest business genius.

He's too smart for any of what he does or says to make sense or happen ever. I personally think. The entire purpose of America PAC is Elon Musk angling for a cabinet position in the potential Trump administration. And Trump has seemed pretty [01:21:00] open to the idea. After picking JD Vance, I guess he has to go with literally anyone he can get to get people excited about his campaign again.

Even a guy who was polling at 2. 8%.

JD VANCE: You weren't ever on Jeffrey Epstein's jet, were you?

ETHAN CASE - HOST, ETHANISONLINE: Uh, I was on Jeffrey Epstein's jet two times. Get him on board. Let's see what happens. It reeks of desperation. And that kind of desperation, combined with the kind of power Elon Musk already has, and the kind of power Trump is seeking, is a recipe for disaster.

SECTION B: INTERFEREANCE

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Iinterference.

NAR Watch Ep 4: They Are Already Stealing the Election - Straight White American Jesus - Air Date 8-19-24

DR. MATTHEW TAYLOR: The Courage Tour is led by Lance Wallnau, who we talked about quite a bit in Charismatic Revival Fury, one of the major NAR Apostles.

In fact, I would argue that Wallnau is the most effective spiritual propagandist for Donald Trump. I mean, he's the one who has been driving a lot of these messages that evangelicals have picked up on and have become very [01:22:00] mainstream. And, and he's, he's partnered up with an evangelist named Mario Morillo.

If anybody's ever seen the lamentably terrible show, uh, Flashpoint, Morillo used to be a panelist on there with Wallnail. And so the, the whole thing presents itself as a revival tour. Right? So I went to the stop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. And then there's a big megachurch and they've got a giant white tent set up on the lawn of the megachurch and it's presented as a revival and come in here preaching and come and be renewed in your spirituality.

And so the, but it's, it's a whole day event. Um, and what's fascinating is that the first 45 minutes or so really lived up to the advertising. And so it starts off with. charismatic worship and people dancing with flags and Lance Wall now gets up and invites people if they've never been filled with the spirit, which is kind of Pentecostal charismatic speak for spoke speaking in tongues.

If you've never been filled with the spirit, you need to come forward and we're going to pray over you. And so they [01:23:00] have a time of like ministering to people and people are getting slain in the spirit and falling over backwards. And if you've ever been to a charismatic revival, that's what it feels like for the first 45 minutes.

And then the rest of the day, they pivot straight into electioneering, messaging about Donald Trump, conspiracy theories. And so it's very patently clear that the veneer of the whole thing is this revival, but the reality of it is a voter mobilization election. Oriented scheme. And, and I, when I say scheme, I really mean scheme there.

This is very clearly coordinated with the America first policy institute, which is a think tank that was created after the Trump administration that Trump administration officials went into and are leading is really kind of going to be part of the seabed for, People who will be employed in a second Trump administration.

So this is very, uh, in close coordination. This is the, the, [01:24:00] the, the revival tour is targeted only at the swing States. They're only doing stops in the seven swing States. And it's obviously oriented around this political messaging and mobilizing people, Trump. In fact, at one point in the day, Lance Walnoe said, if by the end of today, We don't have every person on the set and there are about 2, 000 people there under the tent and another 50, 000 people watching online live with this.

But if, if we don't have every person here signed up and ready and to volunteer to be an election watcher, a poll watcher, the people who show up to observe the counting of the votes or an election worker, the people who are doing the counting of the votes or people who are mobilizing votes, and this is very implicitly for Donald Trump.

Then we have failed in our, in our goals. So clearly this is not about saving souls. This is not about renewal and getting people filled with the spirit. This is about the election and the [01:25:00] whole day was premised on a denial of the reality of the truth of the 2020 election. In fact, at one point, as he's pivoting away from this worship time into this more political messaging time, Lance will know, says, January 6th was not an insurrection.

It was a vote. It was an election fraud intervention. This is a man who was there, a man who I have argued was one of the most influential Christian leaders mobilizing people for January 6th. And he was outright denying the truth about January 6th, denying the truth about the 2020 election. And so this whole thing is, is, is geared up as this very targeted, very savvy voter mobilization effort made that in, in like hand in glove coordination with the apparatus of the Trump campaign.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: So a couple follow up questions for you here. Uh, first of all, I saw you tweet out that quote, and that's just an. It's a chilling quote. Uh, just [01:26:00] chilling. And I, I actually made the mistake of reading it before bed one night. Uh, I couldn't sleep the couple things I want to follow up on real quick. I think people who've paid attention to the courage tour may remember that there was talks of, um, Charlie Kirk getting involved with, with our folks.

Um, would you update us on that? Did that ever happen? Um, whether it was with lands or with Dutch sheets, um, There were, there were kind of rumblings about the Courage Tour involving the TPUSA apparatus. Uh, whatever happened with that?

DR. MATTHEW TAYLOR: Uh, TPUSA had a table there. They were, they, they had staffers there. They were recruiting people for their various programs.

There were a number of, um, Christian political organizations that, um, were there, um, very much signing people up. Help with different campaign endeavors and, and trying to get people mobilized. So yeah, TPUSA was there, the funding of this tour is, is [01:27:00] opaque. And, and I would be very interested if anyone could dig up exactly how, um, they are getting funding because, um, at one point they do, uh, an offering collection.

And that's it. They didn't charge anyone. I signed up for the thing. They didn't charge me anything. You just, you just show up. So I'm guessing they're getting some pretty heavy outside funding, whether that's coming through TPUSA. There's this whole, we can't even get into it, but there's this whole fundraising scheme, major donor scheme that is targeted towards charismatic donors.

That's coordinated through the council for national policy called Ziklag that Lance Walno has been very involved in. That is, Ziklag is all about focusing on the 2024 election and even quote election fraud, which is how. Um, things are often framed on the far right, uh, in terms of election denial. Um, and so I, I'm guessing there's, could be some Ziklag money flown in here, but it's very clear that there's these, this is a sponsored event.

This is not [01:28:00] just kind of happening out of the organic resources of the, the church that's hosting it, or the people who are attending. There, there are people bankrolling this whole thing.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Ziklag, there's concerns about Ziklag that Ziklag is breaking campaign laws, uh, and, and that if you, yeah, anyway, we don't, as you said, we, we probably don't have time to go into Zik, friends, just stop for a minute.

Ziklag's a real thing. We're not making it up. So if you think there's a

DR. MATTHEW TAYLOR: ProPublica article about it that just came out, I think last month or the month before, go, go and read it, excellent journalism and deep dive into it.

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: Yeah, this is not like the New Zima or, uh, some weird alcoholic beverage, uh, this is not like the children or the teenagers are calling vaping.

No. Ziklag is like a real thing and, uh, for some reason it's called Ziklag. Um, anyway. I can tell you why if you want. Please, please, please do. I'll be honest, I cannot remember why. So go ahead.

DR. MATTHEW TAYLOR: So this is, it's actually a fascinating backstory. It's not [01:29:00] mentioned in the article about it. But the, the back, Ziklag is a city in ancient Israel.

That's right. Yeah, it's kind of a city, as I recall, kind of on the border between Philistia and Israel. And so the Philistines, it kind of goes back and forth between the Philistines and the Israelites in biblical narrative. And at one point, many of the David and his men, their wives and families are kidnapped and taken.

From Ziklag. And so they come, David and his men come and fight a battle to bring back, to steal back their families. And so, the way, the reason it's called Ziklag is there's a claim, they are stealing our families away from us. They, right, the left, the liberals are stealing. Our civilization and our families away from us.

And we need to go back and fight a battle to bring it back. So it is a, it is a militant vision of, um, using major donor funding channeled directly into election denialism and mobilization around

BRADLEY ONISHI - HOST, STRAIGHT WHITE AMERICAN JESUS: [01:30:00] Donald Trump.

Missouri Supreme Court SURPRISES US ALL, Keeps Abortion Rights on the Ballot in November! - Brittany Page - Air Date 9-10-24

BRITTANY PAGE - HOST, BRITTANY PAGE: You remember all that, we're sending the issue of abortion back to the states stuff? Well, we have more evidence that's a lie, and it's not what Republicans want. They want abortion banned, period. And somehow this story also involves Rush Limbaugh's cousin, who's a judge. So buckle in. As we know, after Roe was overturned, states across the country moved to either restrict or protect Access to abortion, activists across the country jumped into action to get abortion on the ballot so that voters could have a say in whether they wanted to protect the right to abortion in their state.

And reading briefly from KFF on the results of these efforts, quote, since the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision, overturning Roe v. Wade, voters in six states have weighed in on constitutional amendments regarding abortion and the side favoring access to abortion prevailed in every state. In four of these states, California, Michigan, [01:31:00] Ohio, and Vermont, measures amending the state constitution to protect the right to abortion were approved by voters.

And in the other two states, Kentucky and Kansas, measures seeking to curtail the right to abortion failed. In 2024, up to 10 states may have abortion measures on their ballot, seeking to either affirm that the state constitution protects the right to abortion, or that nothing in the constitution confers such a right.

And one of those up to 10 states with abortion on the ballot this year? Missouri. And it's a state with an extreme ban on abortions. Abortions are banned in almost all circumstances. In an organization there, Missourians for Constitutional Freedom, they worked to get 380, 000 signatures on a petition to get Amendment 3 on the ballot in November.

Amendment 3 would give Missourians a voice, a say, in whether the current abortion ban is what they want. Reading from the Missouri Independent, Amendment 3 would [01:32:00] establish the constitutional right to an abortion, up until fetal viability, and grant constitutional protections to other reproductive health care, including birth control.

It would also protect those who assist in abortion from prosecution. And this quote, if amendment three is ultimately on the November 5th ballot and wins by a simple majority. Missouri could be the first state to overturn an abortion ban. So this is big, and Republicans are scared. And it's strange because, again, Republicans, they love to send the issue back to the states, right?

They love freedom and self governance, right? Like JD always says, JD Vance, California will have a different law from Ohio, right? No. Their election interference on this issue has been a long time in the making, but it was sent into overdrive on Friday when, here it is, Rush Limbaugh's cousin, Missouri Judge Christopher Limbaugh, quote, ruled [01:33:00] against an abortion rights ballot measure in the state.

agreeing with a lawsuit that alleged the petition violated state law by failing to provide voters with a list of Missouri laws that would be repealed directly or by implication should it pass. So the claim here being basically that Rush Limbaugh's cousin doesn't feel voters were properly informed during the signature gathering process for the petition that amendment three would overturn the total abortion ban in the States.

And what the further implications for that would be. But the thing is, there are no further implications. This is about, this is about abortion. And Republicans do not want people voting on abortion because they know what they're going to get. So they went even further with Republican Secretary of State in Missouri, Jay Ashcroft, releasing this letter, decertifying Amendment 3 from appearing on the ballot.

He wrote, quote, please be advised that the Secretary of [01:34:00] State's office has rejected the above-referenced petition I, administratively certified Amendment three for inclusion on the ballot. On the backdrop of serious concerns about whether the proposed petition satisfies the legal requirements for adequate notice to the public.

On further review, in light of the circuit court's judgment, Rush Limbaugh's cousin, I have determined the petition is deficient. Therefore, this office has decertified the petition for the November 5th, 2024 ballot. Just one month ago, he certified it to appear on the ballot. Now, he's decertifying it. Just one day before Missouri's deadline to print the ballots, to finalize the ballots.

It's no longer listed on the Secretary of State's website as appearing on the November ballot. But ultimately the issue is with Missouri's Supreme Court, who again is meeting the morning of Tuesday, September 10th. This morning to make a decision just hours [01:35:00] before the deadline to finalize ballots for November, which is also today, Tuesday, September 10th.

Do you see this desperation? Do you see these games? Do you see this interference in democracy? Republicans want to sidestep democracy. They do not want you to have a say. If they did, they would be expanding voting rights, making it easier to vote, and ensure that the work of voters who collect almost 400, 000 signatures is protected and that voters have a say.

But they're afraid. Because they know the numbers are not on their side. They know the vast majority of voters in Missouri do not want the current abortion ban, which doesn't even offer exceptions for rape or incest, where nearly all abortions are banned.

Texas Attorney General Paxton Sues To Block Voter Registration Efforts - Democracy Docket - Air Date 9-11-24

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Taxes ensued two of Texas's most populous counties. Bexar [01:36:00] County and Travis County, which are home to San Antonio and Austin, respectively, for their voter registration efforts.

The Republican official first sued Bexar County last week after the County Commissioner's Court voted 3 1 to hire a third party vendor, Civic Government Solutions, or CGS, for 392, 700 to print and send out 210, 000 voter registration applications to residents who are eligible but not yet registered.

According to the complaint in Travis County, the contract tasks CGS with identifying any current Travis County resident that is 18 years of age, a U. S. citizen, and not already registered to vote. Paxton's lawsuit alleges that Bexar County is violating state law by sending voter registration forms to residents unsolicited.

In a press release, the state claims that sending these forms could allow felons and noncitizens to register and ended with it is more important than ever that we maintain the integrity of our voter rolls and ensure only eligible voters decide our elections during a [01:37:00] public meeting at the Bexar County Commissioner's Court.

Several members of the county also echoed these claims, saying that this third party vendor is a partisan organization based on comments that CGS's CEO made on a podcast. The plan to send these registration forms will cause immense amounts of voter fraud and will illegally add non citizens to the rolls and disapproved of using taxpayer money for this purpose.

COUNCIL SPEAKER 1: A highly partisan group and they have no safeguards built in their um, purchase order to prevent non citizens. In the illegal aliens, which we know have come across the border in millions from receiving voter applications.

COUNCIL SPEAKER 2: That we uphold, not just the election integrity, but protect the taxpayer funds that were not meant for partisan issues would be a very different story if all of a sudden we had one side of the political spectrum being considered to go out there and harvest, um, election, um, uh, Transcription by CastingWords [01:38:00]

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Let's first make one thing clear.

Just because someone was sent a voter registration application does not mean they will be allowed to register and vote. At the meeting, Bexar County Election Administrator Jacqueline Callanan testified that every voter registration application goes through numerous steps at both the local level and state level.

And the state level scrutinizing every aspect of the application to ensure the integrity of the application and the eligibility of the voter.

JAQUELYNN CALLANEN: I want you to understand when we receive a voter registration card, our office processes that card, and we're required to send it up to the secretary of state and they are the ones that check the data.

They check for SSN, they check for TDL, they check birth dates, and they check citizenship. If they pass all of those, they send it back to us with a voter unique identifier, that voter registration number. We [01:39:00] cannot assign a voter registration number until it has gone through all of those checks and balances.

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Caledon expressed concern over the proposal, not because it would facilitate fraud in any way, but that the process of verifying and approving voter registration applications has so many steps that she fears it will be burdensome on election officials to carry out so many requests in a short period of time since Texas's registration deadline this year is October 7th.

JAQUELYNN CALLANEN: Or my ask for you is if you go forward with this, I would like you to also authorize staff money to pay the staff money for postage as we have to reach out to these people again and again.

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Nevertheless, Paxton's lawsuit asked the court for an emergency ruling to block Bexar County from Giving a partisan organization in violation of state and local procurement procedures, hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars to mail unsolicited voter registration applications to an untold number of Bexar County residents, regardless of whether those residents have requested such [01:40:00] an application or are even eligible to vote.

Defendants actions will create confusion, facilitate fraud, undermine confidence and elections and are illegal acts because they exceeded statutory authority. Days after filing the lawsuit in Bexar County, Paxton's office sued Travis County to block a similar registration effort. Travis County's plan, which was passed last month, involves hiring the same group, CGS, to identify eligible voters who aren't registered yet.

Similar to the Bexar County lawsuit, alleges that this plan will create confusion, facilitate fraud, undermine confidence and elections, and that the county doesn't have the legal authority to use taxpayer money for this purpose. In a statement to Democracy Docket, a spokesperson for Travis County said, It's disappointing that any statewide elected official would prefer to so distrust and discourage participation in the electoral process.

Travis County is committed to encouraging voter participation, and we are proud of our outreach efforts that achieve higher voter registration numbers. Paxton has also sent a letter to Harris County, home to [01:41:00] Houston, threatening legal action if officials approve a similar voter registration effort. Just weeks before Paxton filed these lawsuits targeting voter registration, his office raided the homes of several Latino civil rights activists on the false premise of investigating

voter fraud.

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: In the pantheon of despicable people, I mean, Texas has got a lot in the running. I mean, you've got Ted Cruz, who, you know, might be the most despised member of the United States Senate. You've got, you've got Greg Abbott, who could be the worst governor in the state, but I have to say, pound for pound, the worst statewide elected official in the state of Texas is definitely Ken Paxton, the Attorney General, who is no friend of democracy and Who is office launched these raids against civil civil rights workers and volunteers and activists who are doing nothing wrong.

They are simply trying to register people to vote. I mean, 1 of them, according to news reports was an 87 year old woman. Who who has been registering people to vote and [01:42:00] that is who they are targeting in the state of Texas. That is how Ken Paxton is running his office in the state of Texas. It is an

SOPHIE FELDMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: absolute disgrace around the same time that these raids were taking place.

Texas is Republican Governor Greg Abbott announced that the state has removed over 1 million people from the voter rolls after Republican lawmakers passed a massive voter suppression law years ago. As we discussed in a previous video, this was likely mostly just routine list maintenance, but instead of focusing on the huge number of new voters that Texas has registered in the past few years, Abbott decided to issue a press release boasting the number of voters that his administration had

removed.

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: And this is the tragedy of our democracy today, because here you have a Republican governor. Of one of the fastest growing states in the country, one of the most diverse electorates in the, in the country who is celebrating. The fact that they have removed a million people and not celebrating how many people they have added to the rolls.

[01:43:00] And you have to ask yourself, why is that? Why wouldn't Greg Abbott want to celebrate the, the, the good news, which is the growing, the growth of Texas, the growing expanded electorate in Texas. And the answer is because the voters who are registering in Texas are not his voters. voters. They are younger than, than the average voter in Texas.

They are more likely to be Hispanic and Latino than the average voter in Texas. They are likely as a whole to be, uh, uh, uh, diverse voters or minority voters rather than white voters. This is the tragedy of the Republican party of Texas is, and we've seen this in redistricting where, you know, For the last two cycles, you have seen the addition of congressional districts in Texas and almost entirely based on the growth of the Latino population.

Yet, you have Republicans who continue to gerrymander and gerrymander and gerrymander. It should be a national scandal on the front page of every [01:44:00] news outlet right now. What is happening in the state of Texas between Greg Abbott's announcement and taking pride in, as you say, what is likely a lot of routine maintenance, but he wants to seem like he is purging voters.

And then you have Ken Paxton actually engaged in activity that should shock any decent person's conscious that 70 days or so before an election, this is how the AG is conducting itself. This is how they are spending taxpayer money in Texas.

RNC Targets Swing States in New Lawsuits - Democracy Docket - Air Date 9-9-24

PAIGE MOSKOWITZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: In the past few weeks, the RNC has filed three new lawsuits, two in North Carolina, one in Michigan. Before we get into the details of these lawsuits, why are Republicans targeting those states?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Because they're swing states, right? We know why they're challenging these states. Why are they filing so many lawsuits in in Arizona? Why are they? Why are they changing the rules of the game for certification in Georgia? Why are they out of their mind nervous that the [01:45:00] Pennsylvania Supreme Court may uphold a recent decision to count undated and misdated ballots?

Why do they keep attacking? Voting in Wisconsin because these are all swing states, right? Nevada Why do we see the republicans file lawsuits in nevada? Because because all of these states are the states in which the presidential election are going to be decided so when you look at um, michigan, and when you look at north carolina, you are See 2 states that are critical to the path for victory in Michigan in Michigan.

It is, you know, 1 of the blue wall states along with Wisconsin and Pennsylvania that if Kamala Harris wins those 3 states, she's the next president United States. Uh, you can take that to the bank and in North Carolina. Where all of a sudden Donald Trump is playing defense. And let me tell you this, if Kamala Harris wins North Carolina, it is game [01:46:00] set match.

We're talking about a landslide, uh, electoral college victory. And Donald Trump is trying to stave that off in a state that is quickly closing against him.

PAIGE MOSKOWITZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: And it's not just the presidential election in North Carolina. There is a tightly contested governor's race this fall. Michigan has a major Senate race.

So it's not just the White House on the line here. It is also Congress. It is also the governor's mansion, Mark. But let's start talking about these North Carolina cases. They have filed two of, Republicans have filed two of them. Both of them having to do with voter registration and the voter rolls.

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Yeah, so both were filed in Wake County, which is the county for the suit of government.

It's where Raleigh, uh, is. Um, and the first one of these claims that there are non citizens on the voter rolls, uh, that, uh, that need to be removed. They are claiming that, uh, that, uh, the North Carolina State Board of Election has not enforced a rule that has to do with, uh, [01:47:00] People being called for jury duty duty, and when they are excused for being a not not a citizen, they need to be removed from the roles.

The State Board of Elections says the RNC doesn't know what the hell they're talking about and has this wrong. My money is that the State Board of Elections is right because the RNC usually doesn't know what it's talking about and is wrong. And also the RNC likes to demagogue on this issue that involves virtually no voters.

The 2nd lawsuit actually involves potentially a lot of voters, right? It is challenging essentially 225, 000 voter registrations. And what it is claiming is that prior to December of last year. Um, that North Carolina used an application form that did not inform voters that that a driver's license or Social Security number was required.

They claim that, um, that the state processed 225, 000 voter registration applications without collecting [01:48:00] this information and. As you might imagine, their remedy is essentially to purge 225, 000 otherwise lawful voters because of what they say was a screw up in the form by the state. Right? So they're not claiming this stuff.

Voters did anything wrong here. They're claiming the state did something wrong here again. This is going to be hotly contested on the facts, but it says a whole lot about the Republican National Committee that in the first case, they want to demagogue an issue that involves almost no, no voters. And in the second where they don't really have anything to claim negatively about the voters, they just want to kick people off the rolls.

Kudos for the DNC for intervening in that second lawsuit. Uh, my law firm has, uh, represent some plaintiffs who are intervening in the first lawsuit. Uh, uh, and we will see where those two cases go.

PAIGE MOSKOWITZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Mark, and what's also interesting about these cases is that Republicans have chosen to file their lawsuits in state court as opposed to federal court.

What's your take on that?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Yeah. So they filed these cases in state court, [01:49:00] um, because the state, uh, courts have flipped at the state Supreme court level have flipped from a majority, um, uh, Democrat to a majority Republican. And, and, and I use those terms, those party identifiers on purpose because, um, North Carolina Republicans in the state legislature mandated a few years ago that, uh, state Supreme Court justices run for election on in partisan elections.

Previously, they had been nonpartisan elections. And in, you know, one of these head scratching moments, other than for sure, yeah. politics, the Republicans forced the justices to run with partisan identifiers. So it is now a 5 2 Republican court, and it has proved itself to be pretty hostile to voting rights in the rulings it's had so far.

So, you know, they have filed these cases in Wake County, which actually has a very reasonable set of trial judges. So I don't expect they're going to get very far at the trial court level in these [01:50:00] cases. But I think they filed them in state court because they, they're going to try to quickly get these cases, uh, run up the flagpole to the state Supreme court, where they think that given the partisan advantage they have, um, on, on the bench, they may be able to get some, some, um, purchase, uh, in these cases there.

PAIGE MOSKOWITZ - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: The RNC in their own lawsuits has been saying that these problems have existed for a while now in North Carolina. Why are they suing now? Why file the lawsuit in August 2024, two months before a major general election, when by their own standards, these problems have allegedly existed for months, if not years?

MARC ELIAS - HOST, DEMOCRACY DOCKET: Yeah. So, uh, you know, Judge Moskowitz I hope you asked that question of them, right? Because, because, I mean, you know, all we ever hear about from Republicans and by, from a conservative U. S. Supreme Court is the so called Purcell principle, or the idea that like, you don't, you can't wait until, you know, right before an election to bring election litigation because it can [01:51:00] affect, you know, how, how, How voters, what their expectations are.

It can make it harder for the administration of elections.

SECTION C: LIES

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, Section C: Lies.

WATCH: Actual Nazi Who Started Racist Haitian Rumors - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 9-12-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: There may be people out there who do not spend all their time online looking at what, let's say, the right-wing lunacy is in the darkest, creepiest corners of the internet, or for that matter, what the Republican vice presidential nominee is tweeting about multiple times. There was a video of a woman stopped by the police who had killed the cat.

That video is not from Springfield, Ohio. It turns out from, uh, from Canton, Ohio, two and a half hours away. The woman, as far as, uh, I can tell is not of Haitian descent. She is definitely not a Haitian immigrant because she has been voting for over [01:52:00] six years. And the Haitian immigrants who have been brought in to Springfield have been done so under the temporary status, uh, protected status program, which is a function of all the, uh, the, the political and, um, uh, the political disaster situation in Haiti and also the massive The, um, uh, natural disasters and so all of it was sort of made up, but it wasn't made up by, uh, Donald Trump.

It wasn't made up by JD Vance. It wasn't even made up by Charlie Kirk. We have video of the guy who made it up. Here it is. This guy is, his name, uh, is. Nathaniel, and he is the first person who seems to have brought it up in the city of Springfield, uh, Ohio, and he is at a city commission meeting talking about Haitian migrants.

[01:53:00] Nathaniel is a, um, uh, a fairly well dressed young man who also happens to be a member of the neo Nazi group Blood Pride. Oh.

NAZI: Nathaniel of Blood Pride. I was at the head of the Anti Haitian Immigration March earlier this month. I'm sure the Honorable Mr. Rob Rue recognizes me, considering he supposedly knew of our action before we even arrived.

NEO-NAZI: First of all, I would like to dispel the myth that you knew of our march and intentionally had no reaction or made no forewarning about it as a preventative measure. You had no more idea than the police officers or Haitians. And it's frankly insulting to our organization to make such a claim. Second, I've come to bring a word of warning.[01:54:00]

Stop what you're doing before it's too late. Crime and savagery will only increase with every Haitian you bring in. And with it, public frustration and anger. Based on the comments tonight, I'm sure I don't need to tell you that. These people didn't ask for this. And they deserve better than to have to put up with violent, unruly outsiders.

so much. You're done. That's all. Thank you so much. Not really thank you, but

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Boom. Um, that's the guy it's, uh, attributed to, apparently, for, uh, helping, uh, Stoke, if not, uh, develop this, uh, this, this meme. Um, and it, now, to be fair, that was, uh, what was it, in August, I think, uh, the, uh, late August. So it took, you know, a full two weeks before, uh, Donald Trump was announcing it on the national stage.

By Elon Musk. [01:55:00] Uh.

EMMA VIGELAND - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And immigration is supposed to be the issue where he can, like, I don't know, at least run up the numbers. That's his best polling issue in the economy, too, but she's closing in on that. He could, he, he went to the most unhinged place that he possibly could after getting in, like, taking the bait on the crowd size and then not addressing her, her attack at all.

And, putting forward the most insane conspiracy theory that anyone has ever heard in their lives that was funneled in from a neo nazi group.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And to be fair also, 4chan apparently, there was a lot of promotion of this on 4chan, which is also, you know, not terribly surprising, but you sort of want your president, or would be president, to have enough people around him And him himself to have the sense to like, maybe not push this.

But the point is, this is what his people want. JD Vance is not out there because he's [01:56:00] concerned about the pets in Springfield, Ohio. He's not like, you know, some type of like, uh, you know, uh, ASPCA, uh, zealot who is afraid of what's going on with the pets there. He is pushing it to his people because this is what they believe is going to drive.

This is what is a big part of it, and this moron, Donald Trump, was stupid enough to remind people of, of that, like of the sheer, sort of like, hatred of immigrants, and again, these immigrants are here legally, these immigrants are not undocumented. They are here legally, they are refugees, and on top of which, and I don't know why this needs to be said, but, but it's helpful.

[01:57:00] They are, um, great additions to the community.

From Russia With Money; Cheney endorses Harris; GOP voter purge in NC - The BradCast w/ Brad Friedman - Air Date 9-5-24

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: This news, which broke on Wednesday, underscores directly what I have been trying to warn so many of our listeners about for so long, particularly many of our liberal listeners who have been conned by this stuff coming from Russia and the right, but being sold to them as, uh, you know, some sort of liberal point of view.

It isn't. You're being conned and duped by both people who know better and some people who do not. So, because of that, I need to sort of at least wave at it here momentarily, Desi Doyen.

DESI DOYEN: Yes, I know.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: If only because it is so blatant and so gross, and even includes people that we know. [01:58:00] And that we used to work with, Dez.

DESI DOYEN: I know.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: So.

DESI DOYEN: It's weird.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: The Department of Justice on Wednesday seized dozens of Kremlin run websites and charged two state media employees in its most sweeping effort. To push back against what it says are Russian attempts to spread disinformation ahead of the november presidential election according to AP the measures which in addition to indictments also include sanctions and visa restrictions represented a U.

S. government effort just weeks before the november election to disrupt a persistent threat from russia That American officials have long warned has the potential to sow discord and create confusion among voters. One of the criminal cases disclosed by the Justice Department accuses two employees of R.

T. A Russian state media company of covertly funding [01:59:00] a Tennessee based content creation company with nearly 10 million to publish English language videos on social media platforms like TikTok and YouTube with messages in English. In favor of the Russian government's interests and agenda, including about the war in Ukraine.

The nearly 2, 000 videos posted by the company have gotten more than 16 million views on YouTube alone, according to prosecutors, and I actually think that's low balling it. The, uh, two defendants here, Konstantin Kalishnikov and Elena Afanasyeva are charged with conspiracy to commit money laundering and violating the Foreign Agents Registration Act.

The Justice Department says the company did not disclose, this media company in Tennessee, did not disclose that it was actually funded by RT. [02:00:00] The Russian media outlet and that neither it nor its founders registered as required by law as an agent of a foreign principal under the so called Foreign Agent Registration Act or FARA.

If RT, which, uh, used to be called Russia Today, now it's just called RT. If, uh, RT was a legitimate media source, and many, yes, even on the left, seem to think that they are, well, then why would they secretly fund a supposed news site in the U. S., secretly base it in Tennessee, Kremlin propaganda on their, uh, Uh, for example, their war against Ukraine and so much more.

Why would they do that in secret? If they were a legitimate media outlet, say what you wish about RT. But if the facts of this indictment indictment are true, it does [02:01:00] suggest they are not an actual media outlet. Or at least not a real one. Moreover, why would they hire American social media influencers on the right to launder those messages for them?

Though the indictment does not name the company in question, it describes it as a Tennessee based content creation firm with six commentators and with a website identifying itself as quote, a network of heterodox commentators that focus on Western. political and cultural issues. For the record, uh, because I didn't really know what it meant, heterodox is defined as, quote, not conforming with accepted or orthodox standards or beliefs.

You know, as many both on the right And on the far left describe themselves these days. At least when their beliefs happen to be in direct contradiction with actual [02:02:00] independently verifiable facts and evidence to the contrary of whatever their belief may be. In any event, that description exactly matches A company called Tenet Media, which is an online company that hosts videos made by very well known right-wing Republican social media influencers like Tim Poole, Benny Johnson, David Rubin, And I should note that, uh, Dave Rubin used to call himself a progressive back when, uh, Desi and I, but mostly Desi, worked with him over on the, on the Young Turks.

DESI DOYEN: Yes.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: Where he was a co host along with you for a while.

DESI DOYEN: Yes, yes, it's true.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: And, of course, before he took his hard right turn, Once, apparently, I guess it became clear that, you know, the right, and now Russia, apparently pay much better than folks on the U. S. progressive left.

DESI DOYEN: Yes, it was a remarkable and [02:03:00] fast

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: transformation.

It was, wasn't it?

DESI DOYEN: It was.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: He was a big lefty, now he's a hard right-winger. Funny what, uh, hundreds of thousands of dollars will do because they were highly paid, these people. Millions of dollars, in fact, for producing, you know, a video or two each month. Like, a hundred thousand dollars or more for a single video.

Wherein, uh, these folks would say exactly what it was that Russia was doing. Wanted them to say remember without disclosing that they had anything to do with russia It would be one thing if they said hey here we are in a russian media outlet and here's what I believe but uh They would repeat this stuff Not say that has anything to do with russia And then of course in hopes that others would then repeat that propaganda on both the right and the left and so discord Among the american public stuff like stuff like this Here's, here's right-winger, right-wing [02:04:00] influencer, Tim Poole.

A guy who is frequently cited and, and retweeted by no one less than Donald Trump and Elon Musk, et cetera, in one of those videos. This is psychotic.

TIM POOL: Ukraine is the enemy of this country. Ukraine is our enemy being funded by the Democrats. I will stress again, one of the greatest enemies of our nation right now is Ukraine.

Ukraine is the greatest threat to this nation and to the world. We should rescind all funding and financing, pull out all military support, and we should apologize to Russia.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: So, I'm sure Tim Poole just happens to feel that way. You were, when you recorded that video, you said he was actually reading from something?

Yes,

DESI DOYEN: you could clearly see that he was reading from something.

BRAD FRIEDMAN - HOST, BRADCAST: Anyway, uh, does that sound familiar? What he was saying there? Of course it does, because you have either heard folks on the right repeating that exact nonsense, or you have heard folks [02:05:00] who have fallen for it as well on the far left. Even, I suspect, on some of the stations that air the broadcasts, which, uh, repeating the same, yes, literally Kremlin funded propaganda.

So I'm hoping, and I'm praying, that broadcast listeners have not been duped enough to fall for it, or if they have, hopefully I'm able to help, I don't know, just a few of you understand how you are being played by these people.

SECTION D: ELECTION INTEGRITY

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Election Integrity.

How the National Popular Vote could change presidential elections Part 1 - Democracy Works - Air Date 9-2-24

CANDIS WATTS SMITH - HOST, DEMOCRACY WORKS: I think this is a good time to think about why we have the system. Is it possible to change? Is it necessary for change? And what, you know, what are the what? What is the potential, the possibilities and the perils?

CHRIS BEEM - HOST, DEMOCRACY WORKS: The only thing I would add is, you know, [02:06:00] in 1787, to my democracy was a very scary concept, and what came out of the Constitution was a fairly radical document in terms of how much power it gave to people, to the, you know, as a as a democracy. However, there are plenty of ways in. Which the framers worked to bracket or to ameliorate the power of the of the people to directly rule. And a lot of the things that you you talked about, I mean the Senate having not just six year terms. But what's the word I'm looking for, indirectly? Well, every two years you had a third Senate. So even if you had this kind of, you know, rabid movement by the by the populace, to vote all the bums out, they could [02:07:00] only vote out a third of the Senate. So that's one thing, and then you had indirect election of the Senate by the state legislatures. So I mean all the power. And then, of course, you had the electoral college too, but all of this power, ultimately was in the hands of the people, right? The people could determine who was in the state legislature, and thereby determine who was in the Senate, but the but the idea was that if you kept that, you made it harder to sustain any kind of crazy notion that got into the into the into the body politic, you could control it, and so you would have less danger associated with democracy. And electoral college is probably, well, first of all, it's one of the few remaining right. We have expanded the franchise. We've got we have direct election of senators, but we still have this really [02:08:00] weird thing called the Electoral College, and it was designed to take the power out of the hands of the the people and put it in the hands of this elite group, right in Federalist 68 I did not know that, but I looked it up, since they Hamilton wrote, and Hamilton was by far the most elitist of the founders, the sense of the people should be part of the process, but would be taken as an advisement by the Electoral College. And the electoral college was going to be composed of quote, men most capable of analyzing the qualities needed for the supreme office, educated and discerning gentlemen who would meet under circumstances favorable to deliberation there. I don't think there are any good reasons outside of, you know, partisan advantage to argue for the Electoral College, right? I mean, [02:09:00] you could argue for set of procedures in which the states had, you know, some kind of standing in terms of their votes, but the idea that this is going to electors who are only elected for this decision, and yet they can't. The states can make their they force them to vote for the for the candidate who won their popular vote. It's there's just a step here that A is anti democratic and B was never, has never operated the way it was supposed to. I mean that it was never this, uh, what Hamilton says it was, what Hamilton said it was supposed to be, which is this, you know, separate group of wise white property holding men who are going to make this decision on behalf [02:10:00] of the body politic, that has never been.

The Georgia Election Laboratory - What Next | Daily News and Analysis - Air Date 8-26-24

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: Want to look back at the accusations of election fraud in Georgia, Biden narrowly won that state in 2020, and it became the center of false claims of voter fraud. Could you just take us back and remind listeners how the 2020 election played out there?

SAM GRINGLAS: In 2020, Georgia had not gone blue in a presidential election since 1992, uh, when Bill Clinton was on the ballot, so this was a really big shift when Joe Biden, uh, won the electoral votes here, and that spurred it.

Many voters, uh, in certain segments of the Republican Party who were supporters of then President Donald Trump to assert that there had been widespread election fraud, and a lot of those claims were spurred by, uh, the then President himself. Famously, he [02:11:00] made a phone call to Georgia's Republican Secretary of State, Brett Raffensperger, asking him to find 11, 780 votes, the number of votes he would have needed to top Biden in Georgia.

And there were Many examples of activities like this from, uh, Trump and also from many of his allies. So many so that it ultimately led, uh, to a DA here in Fulton County, uh, launching a criminal investigation and asking a grand jury for indictments. And, you know, Those actions, uh, at the end of 2020 continue to shape politics today.

Uh, splits in the Republican party are still very much fueled, uh, by how people came down in those moments, uh, after 2020.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: Yeah, and it's worth reminding people that two election workers brought A successful defamation suit against Rudy Giuliani after he falsely accused them of fraud.

SAM GRINGLAS: That's right. And these were just two regular people who signed up to do their civic duty [02:12:00] to work in election and faced an onslaught, a torrent of harassment and threats when they were called out by, um, top officials, uh, connected to former president.

Trump. And, you know, this is something that when I've talked to election workers here, potential election workers here, something that's giving them, you know, maybe some trepidation about working election, but also fueling their, their willingness to, to serve.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: Yeah. I mean, one of the election workers, Ruby Freeman said she faced death threats and had people coming to her house.

She had to sell her home and was living out of her car, I think for a certain amount of time.

SAM GRINGLAS: Yeah, um, Ruby Friedman and Shea Moss, uh, mother daughter, uh, these two election workers testified in front of Congress during the January 6th committee hearings.

RUBY FREEDMAN: There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere. Do you know how it feels to have the President of the United [02:13:00] States to target you?

The President of the United States is supposed to represent every American, not to target one. But he targeted me.

SAM GRINGLAS: The testimony that they gave was so visceral and I think really helped people, um, around the country, uh, see this, the stakes of this conversation and the effects on, on regular people, not just politicians.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: Immediately after 2020, Georgia's laws began to change. In 2021, Georgia Republicans passed the Election Integrity Act. You might remember that as the bill that banned handing out food or water to voters in line at polling sites. It also did things like decrease the window for requesting mail in ballots, increase ID requirements, and limit the number of ballot drop boxes.

SAM GRINGLAS: So it was kind of a grab bag. Um, some elements, uh, did make voting more accessible, um, such as requiring weekend voting in some places that didn't [02:14:00] previously have it. But many of the rules did make the process more restrictive, uh, when it comes to absentee ballots, to drop boxes, and, you know, This rule has been cited by Democrats, uh, like Stacey Abrams, the former gubernatorial nominee, as an example of Republicans moving, uh, to restrict the, the votes of Georgia's diversifying, growing, uh, population.

And, you know, the results of it, um, is something that we're still trying to understand, uh, we 2022 election cycle under these rules, but this will be the first presidential election cycle where we'll really get a better sense of how they're going to play out.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: Voting rights groups and experts have criticized the changes as basically being attempts at voter suppression.

You know, who did these changes impact the most?

SAM GRINGLAS: So let me just take a specific element of this law that I think helps illustrate what we're talking about [02:15:00] here. In 2022, in the lead up to the midterm elections, I worked on an investigation that looked at the provision related to the availability of ballot drop boxes, which have been a frequent target for false claims of widespread fraud in the process.

And while this Law codified, um, that counties have to have these drop boxes. It did restrict how many, uh, counties could have based on, on their population size. And we did find that the restrictions affected urban and suburban communities more than rural communities. And these urban and suburban communities tended to have more voters of color.

However, we did see that this didn't necessarily result in wholesale disenfranchisement of Populations of voters. People adjusted. They found new ways to cast their ballot, but we do see people having to maybe jump through additional hoops to cast their ballots. In March, I was at a roller skating rink in Atlanta, and I talked to one [02:16:00] voter.

I think it was her first time going to the polls, and there was a problem with her being able to cast her ballot, and she said it really discouraged her and made her feel like it wasn't worth trying again.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: So the state legislature passed this pretty massive bill in 2021. How have they continued to raise issues of election security?

SAM GRINGLAS: Every cycle, there has been another round of proposals, uh, to change Georgia election law, whether it's related to how election offices are funded, uh, with outside grants to using voting machines. Uh, there's a lot of pushback to electronic voting machines that continues to crop up, um, continued efforts to restrict drop boxes, you know, not all of these pass.

Um, But there are always proposals every election cycle. And I don't see that going away after this cycle.

MARY HARRS - HOST, WHAT NEXT: And there was just a law that went into effect earlier this summer, right? About voting rules and removing people from the voter rolls.

SAM GRINGLAS: This is [02:17:00] a rule. That I followed really closely this past legislative session, and, you know, for a while, any individual can challenge an unlimited number of voters to challenge their eligibility in their county.

This has been in place for a while, but a proposal came up in the legislature this year. That put specific reasons into the code that would allow a challenge to be sustained. Republicans said that this was putting guardrails on these challenges. Democrats worried that codifying these rules into law would result in more of them in them being sustained more regularly in recent cycles.

We've seen tens of thousands of challenges to the eligibility of voters. Most of them end up being tossed out. Um, but they do sometimes trip up voters and, uh, overwhelm election offices who are already really busy keeping up, uh, with all of the other things on their plate.

How the National Popular Vote could change presidential elections Part 2 - Democracy Works - Air Date 9-2-24

ALYSSA CASS: [02:18:00] the reason I came to this issue is because I'm someone who believes in politics, and believes in politics ability to improve law, to improve lives, but, but I need to be joined by by other Americans who feel the same. And I think that there is nothing more we could do, nothing bigger we could do to enhance our democracy, improve our elections, and restore faith in the system. Then, to get to a principle that I think we all that everyone can agree on of one person, one vote, this is a this isn't a pipe dream. It's not a academic wish list. It is something that's imminently achievable. It's been, it's been imminently achievable. So I'm here because I really believe in the issue I care about politics, and there's no better way to improve, to improve our democracy than through a national popular vote.

PAT ROSENSTIEL: The president of [02:19:00] national popular vote approached me in 2007 as a Republican. I was I was pretty sure that I wasn't going to be liking this idea very much. So I had them send me their one pager in their book, which is about 800 pages, made the mistake of reading the book. Everything I thought they were doing was kind of wrong. You know, I'm a Reagan baby, so trust but verify is a real thing, but that means trust but verify. My own instincts, not trust but verify what you're telling me. So I read the book came out the other side as a what I would consider an original intent guy. I like the fact that they were using the United States Constitution to move the presidential election to a national popular vote for president. I certainly knew that when we were running for president, or when candidates that I supported were running for president or worked with or around, you know, they were polling in just 18 states, which means, you know, [02:20:00] two thirds of the voters, we didn't even care what they had to say. And so I was interested in the national popular vote for president, so every voter in every state would be politically relevant in every presidential election as a Republican trap behind the blue wall in Minnesota, you know, look, we're the only state that voted for Walter Mondale. You know, I felt like I should be courted in presidential elections, or at least have an equal voice and them to a battleground state voters, and frankly, I feel the same way about a liberal in Oklahoma City.

JENNA SPINELLE - HOST, DEMOCRACY WORKS: Yeah, that's great. And I want to come back to some of the political ramifications that that both of you mentioned, but let's just walk through some of the nuts and bolts of how this process works. You mentioned 18 States have signed on to this compact so far, I guess first, if you could explain for listeners who might not be familiar with what an interstate compact is, and then those states that have already signed on, what exactly have they [02:21:00] agreed to do.

ALYSSA CASS: I'm happy to kick it off the national popular vote. Interstate Compact is an agreement. Meant among states to award their electoral votes to the winner of the popular vote across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. You know, with the compact, the candidate winning the national popular vote would always be awarded at least the 270 electoral votes necessary to become president. In other words, the compact would ensure that the presidential candidate who receives the most popular votes would win the office, just like other elections in our country. And some important things to know about the about the national popular vote Interstate Compact is that it preserves the electoral college. It's fully allowed by the US Constitution without an amendment, making this a really achievable reform, as I said, it ensures a popular vote winner becomes President every time. It injects [02:22:00] the fundamental principle of one person, one vote into our presidential elections. It resembles interstate compacts on other issues. This is a structure that's familiar to our system, and it would go into effect when passed by states containing, you know that majority of electoral votes,

PAT ROSENSTIEL: Yeah, and just to put a fine point on that, the 18 states you asked, what's different for them right now? Nothing's different for them right now, but they're 18 states with 209 electoral votes, right? And so when states with 61 more electoral votes join those states, it then triggers and becomes effective for the presidential election. And to the idea that this isn't a science project, you know what I mean? Anybody who knows anything about election reform, when you can get 18 states to agree on anything must be a pretty good idea and a pretty popular idea. That's true of the national popular vote interstate compact. You know, 67% of the American people want a national popular [02:23:00] vote for president. But I would also point out that we've passed in one chamber or the other, a house or the senate in eight states with 78 more electoral votes, more than the electoral votes required. So I can tell you that national popular vote, the interstate compact, is not a Republican or Democrat idea. It's not a partisan issue. Frankly, it's for anybody who believes that every voter in every state should be politically relevant. And I think it's for any voter who thinks we can have a better politics in this country, if the principle of one person, one vote applies to presidential elections, last thing I'll say about interstate compacts. Every state's in dozens of these things. These aren't experiments. I think the one that most people know the most about is Powerball. Right? That's an interstate compact where people go buy a lottery ticket. The states get the resources, but what holds that all together is called an interstate compact. So what those are is contracts amongst the states, or agreements amongst the states, and they're absolutely enforceable. [02:24:00] They're older than the Republic, and they're not exotic things in American government.

JENNA SPINELLE - HOST, DEMOCRACY WORKS: Alyssa, you mentioned that the national popular vote maintains the Electoral College. I wonder if, if one of you could speak a little bit more to that, like, Why? Why keep it around? Is this just a more convenient way to go, as opposed to trying to do I don't know if it would be a constitutional amendment or, you know, whatever the the procedure would be to eliminate the Electoral College.

PAT ROSENSTIEL: I'll take this first, which is, it's not a matter of convenience. I mean, anybody who thinks this reforms convenient should follow me around in my shoes for a day. You know, the bottom line is, it takes time to change, and should take time to change. The reason the interstate compacts the way to go is because it's allowed under the United States Constitution. Any of your political science listeners you know can open up their pocket copy of the Constitution and read article two, section one, it says each State [02:25:00] shall appoint, in such manner as the legislature thereof may direct a number of electors. Okay, so different states have used different methods to award their electors right. Maine and Nebraska do it by congressional district when they change their statute. Didn't require a constitutional amendment. So what we do is we use the power as it exists within the constitution to have a national popular vote election, which is what people want. There's no reason to amend the Constitution if the power exists to do it within the Constitution. And you know, the bottom line is, we don't change a city charter to fill a pothole, right? The city has the power to fill a pothole, so let's just use what's in the system. Now, I will say, you know, anybody who's like, Oh, I'm for a national popular vote for president, but think we should have a constitutional amendment. They're part of the problem. You know what I mean? Because we need a national popular vote for president. [02:26:00] There's one way we're going to get one. There's one way that's been vetted, you know, by 18 states and has. Bipartisan support that way, is the plan at national popular vote.com so if you do want a presidential election system where every voter in every state is relevant, where the candidate with the most votes is guaranteed the presidency, get on board, because this is the way it's going to get done.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The additional sections of the show included clips from AYMAN, The Thom Hartmann Program, ethan is online, Brittany Page, Straight White American Jesus, Democracy Docket, The Majority [02:27:00] Report, The BradCast, Democracy Works, and What Next. Further details are in the show notes.

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 Quartet—Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew—for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 the 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 [02:28:00] 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

#1655 A Pivotal Moment for Big Tech, Both Old and New: Google Search, the A.I. Boom, Antitrust, and Regulation (Transcript)

Posted by · September 13, 2024 9:46 AM

Air Date 9/13/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast.

We've been living through the modern equivalent of the oil boom, back when poking a hole in the ground would make one of the world's most valuable substances upon which entire economies would be built, simply bubble out of the ground. But in our case, it's not oil—it's data. Now, we are at a pivotal moment as the old, unchallenged master of data, Google, has been found guilty of illegal anti-competitive behavior, at the same time as generative AI companies are in a new, desperate rush to stake claims on every last piece of data they can find.

Sources providing our Top Takes in under an hour today include Andrewism, Your Undivided Attention, the 80,000 Hours Podcast, POLITICO Tech, The Hartman Report, and The Socialist Program. Then, in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more in four sections. Section [00:01:00] A, the threat. Section B, big tech lobbying. Section C, regulation. And section D, thinking through solutions.

The New Colonialism of Big Tech - Andrewism - Air Date 9-3-24

ANDREW SAGE - HOST, ANDREWISM: Colonialism never ended, it simply evolved. Historically, colonialism involved the capture of land and labor. Between 1800 and 1875, on average, 215,000 square kilometres were added as colonies every year, or approximately one Guyana. Between 1875 and 1945, 620,000 square kilometres were added as colonies each year, or approximately one Ukraine.

By 1945, one in three people lived under colonial rule. In the decades following World War II, despite the waves of independence, we are still dealing with the consequences of colonialism. It has taken on many forms over its time span, from exploitation colonialism to settler colonialism. In their book Data Grab: The New Colonialism of [00:02:00] Big Tech and How to Fight Back, which you absolutely should read, sociologists Ulises Mejias and Nick Couldry explore one of colonialism's latest forms.

Data Colonialism, which captures not land, but data, and has quietly grown to threaten new dimensions of our lives and futures.

Just to be clear, we're not saying that today's digital wars are equivalent to the brutality of colonial life in previous centuries. That would be absurd. Land and data are two very different types of assets. Rather, the framework of colonialism makes it possible for us to understand our current digital lives and power relations with the corporations that define them. including how those power relations came to be and continue to exist.

Data colonialism is a social order in which the continuous extraction of data from our lives generates massive wealth for the few and suffering for the many on a global scale. This process is extensive in its appropriation of human life, as it captures and monetizes nearly everything about [00:03:00] the way we live, move, consume, and converse, with worrying implications on education, healthcare, housing, agriculture, policing, and more. With 3 in 8 people using Facebook and 1 in 8 people using TikTok, with 329 million terabytes of data harvested per day and projections for 2025 estimating 181 zettabytes of data being gathered, the conquistadors of the cloud are pillaging nearly everywhere and everyone.

This isn't to condemn the mere concept of collecting data. That would be as absurd as condemning the telegraph for the role it played in British colonialism, or condemning modern medicine because many of its earliest breakthroughs were appropriated from indigenous peoples. Data's not bad in and of itself. We need data about the world around us, how it affects us, and how we affect it, so that we can understand and change for the better.

The issue is really how data is extracted: from what, from whom, and on what terms. When data is merely a tool for generating profit in the hands of corporations, that's when we have to stand up and challenge those terms and [00:04:00] conditions.

Data colonialism is not separate from other forms of colonialism. It is an evolution, a continuation of their compounding effects. By understanding the meaning and consequences of data colonialism, along with the civilizing mission used to justify it, we can determine ways to resist its rule and decolonize data for a better tomorrow.

Like other forms of colonialism, data colonialism is deeply intertwined with capitalism. Far from being separate stages in some teleological process, capitalism cannot be understood without its connection to colonialism. The wealth generated in the colonies financed the factories, it enriched and empowered Europe's proto capitalists, and innovated methods of rational management that would be taken from the plantation ground to the factory floor.

The divisions of our capitalist world cannot be properly contextualized without a colonial framework, and by understanding that connection, we can recognize the resemblance between the land grabs of the past and the data grabs of today. Colonialism and capitalism are continuously mutating and [00:05:00] adapting, though their core mission remains the same. Of course, colonialism will look different today because the kind of violence it establishes in the first place set up the social relations that enable it to continue through less overt and more symbolic forms of violence. As Mejias and Couldry put it, "Your dispossession, your loss of control over the data that affects you, and the impact that this has on your ability to control the terms on which you work, get loans, educate your children, and so on, may be no less absolute."

But no violence is needed to persuade you to click the box that says "I agree to the terms and conditions" before installing an app. That click alone, by virtue of the vast legal and practical infrastructure of capitalist social relations, is enough to plunge us into endless spirals of data extraction. In other words, today's forms of extraction are almost frictionless, although that doesn't mean their long-term repercussions are entirely non-violent.

Despite being an ardent decolonialist, one of the video game genres I used to enjoy the most was the 4X sub genre of strategy games. I spent many [00:06:00] hours of my youth playing Civilization V and later Civilization VI. A few years ago, I quite enjoyed playing Humankind. I was never particularly good at these games, mind you, but they were certainly designed to help you grasp and internalize the 4Xs of colonialism: explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Historical colonizers explored to find places to control; expanded their holdings by forced, appropriate labour and resources; exploited the colonies for all the wealth they could squeeze; and exterminated any opposition through direct violence, or indirectly, through the suffocation of social and economic alternatives to colonial life.

Data colonizers also explore, expand, exploit, and exterminate. Rather than exploring land, With the rise of internet use, data colonizers establish and explore data territories, also known as platforms like Google, Amazon, and Facebook, where interactions can be mediated and harvested. Within such territories, the innocuously-named "cookies" have [00:07:00] become one of the most powerful means of capturing massive amounts of data about internet users.

Data colonizers further seek to expand computers into every interaction and expand the platforms and connections between platforms to gather even more data. Everything from your phone to your vacuum to your fridge to your doorbell to your watch can now gather data about your habits, interactions, opinions, and spaces. Data grabs are taking place in the data territories of agriculture, education, health, and especially work. John Deere tracks its tractors. Google Classroom and other edutech services are expanding into more classrooms and doing who knows what with the data. Fitbit information is being fed to insurance companies. Surveillance, while always being part of capitalist management, has expanded significantly within workplaces, punishing desperate gig workers with lower wages, keeping warehouse workers scanning continuously, and tracking every office worker's keystrokes.

Of course, simply having the data is not enough. Data colonizers must exploit that data. Google's vast data territory is among the [00:08:00] most lucrative sites for exploitation. They have "pioneered" -- cloning language very much intended -- new ways to sell ads using previously untapped swathes of data. Data colonizers convert data into wealth and power through targeted advertising, user manipulation, and predictive, often discriminatory algorithms.

Finally, data colonizers exterminate, not through physical violence, but symbolic and systemic violence, by eradicating alternative ways of thinking and being, and by creating monopolies that are so powerful that they shape the course of genocides and health crises.

Tech's Big Money Campaign is Getting Pushback with Margaret O'Mara and Brody Mullins - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-26-24

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Okay, so Brody, I want to set up this conversation with a bit of historical context. There's so much in the press about lobbying and dark money, and people might forget or don't realize that lobbying actually has a long history in American politics, right?

BRODY MULLINS: Yeah, lobbying's been around for a number of years. In fact one of the things I found interesting in researching for my book is that the Founding Fathers envisioned a day in which there would [00:09:00] be lobbying. They called lobbyists "factions", and they thought they'd be a pro-industry faction and a pro -worker or consumer faction. But they thought those factions would be about the same size and strength. They'd battle each other to an equilibrium to create laws and regulations that both sides supported. The problem that we've had that we document in our book is in the last 50 years, companies have gotten so powerful and spending so much money in Washington that they've really outflanked, outgunned, outspent the consumer side, so that right now in Washington, big companies, particularly the tech companies, have all the power and influence over shaping our legislation, and the consumers, the rest of us, the little guy, have no influence.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: What changed over the last century in lobbying?

BRODY MULLINS: Yeah, basically from the New Deal to the Great Society, companies actually had very little influence in Washington. Companies did not spend much money trying to influence public policy. Business was good, profits were high, companies cared about their employees. And everything changed in the 1970s. In the 1970s, the economy cratered with [00:10:00] stagflation. We had inflation. Oil prices, gas prices quadrupled. And that really dragged the economy into the tank.

And what business people did is they look around and said, Hey, what's the problem? Well, what's going on with our profits? Why is our business not doing well? And they saw the incredible growth of the federal government in the last 50, 60, 70 years had created so many rules and regulations that were required to comply with and spend money complying with.

As a result, companies for the first time in the 1970s started investing in Washington. And when I say investing, I mean hiring lobbyists, making campaign donations. And from that period until now, corporate America has been incredibly powerful in Washington, more powerful, as I say, than any other interest group in town.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: I believe it's a quote from your book that from 1967 to 2007, the number of registered lobbyists in Washington exploded from some five or six dozen to nearly 15,000. Is that right?

BRODY MULLINS: Absolutely.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Margaret, your thoughts?

MARGARET O'MARA: Yeah. I think that, just as Brody said, lobbying has in some form been around since the founding of the [00:11:00] Republic. There have always been people trying to persuade the legislature and the president to do their bidding.

The other thing that was happening in the 1970s or at the beginning of the 70s was that big business was not very popular. If you go to a college campus that's where students are mobilizing against the Vietnam War, they're also mobilizing against big business and defense contractors and any part of the establishment. And so part of this was also trying to make business great again and bring it back in favor, as an American enterprise was core to the American project.

So, yes, there's active lobbying on particular pieces of legislation. But there's also broader PR that is maybe Washington-focused or policy-focused, but spills out into something that everyone notices and sees, that the public image of a company or an industry is something that plays a big role. And certainly that's played a big role in the story of tech.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, I think that's really important, actually. It's so easy to look at lobbying and just synonymize it with pure greed or pure influence peddling. And I think that's what's confusing about lobbying is it both is an [00:12:00] influence peddling game and it's also a public relations game.

BRODY MULLINS: Yeah, to go back to make one point again, a good detail here is that in the 1970s, or right before the 1970s, companies had so little influence in Washington that General Motors found itself in a fight with Ralph Nader. You know, Ralph Nader was a individual consumer advocate who took on General Motors -- is the General Motors as in, "What's good for GM is good for the country." and Ralph Nader beat them on auto safety regulations. And what that shows, one, is how much influence consumer groups and Ralph Nader had in that period, but also how little influence companies had. General Motors got beat by a consumer group, and therefore everything is switched after that. General Motors and other companies realized they needed to get in the game.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, and Margaret, what was Silicon Valley's relationship with D.C. and lawmakers during this period?

MARGARET O'MARA: Yeah. In some ways, Silicon Valley benefited from the broader sentiment against big business or old economy business in the 70s and even into the 80s, not really a great time for the US [00:13:00] economy. This is part of the reason Ronald Reagan was elected, promising "morning in America" and a really fundamental turnaround and which also included business deregulation.

But for tech companies, while Republicans were, certainly in the Reagan area a very clear champions of business and a more deregulated business, that the tech companies were something that both Republicans and Democrats could get behind. This is the beginning of a more centrist Democratic Party with centrist leaders like eventually Bill Clinton and Al Gore who were elected in 1992, but also many others in Congress of their generation. They're trying to signal that, hey, we care about American economy too and business flourishing as well.

There was a real embrace of this tech industry. And they didn't have to work very hard, initially, to have organized lobbying efforts, because lawmakers loved them. They thought they were great.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, and Tristan and I were both in Silicon Valley in the aughts, which is a little later than what you're talking about. But I remember being there and there was this mentality that said, you really don't want to get caught up in the traditional games, that all we needed to do was to [00:14:00] build things and the government was too stuck, or too captured, or otherwise too corrupt to deal with it. One shouldn't play that game. You should just build great things. And then, Margaret, what was it that convinced Silicon Valley that they really had to start paying attention to this lobbying game?

MARGARET O'MARA: The first moment that starts the mobilization is actually one that didn't happen in Silicon Valley itself, and one that Silicon Valley interests were cheering, which is the US government's antitrust lawsuit against Microsoft, which happened in the late 1990s, and it ended with a decision that ruled that the company had to be broken up, and for various technical reasons it didn't actually have to do that, but it did have to effectively slow its role significantly. And that moment was, for Microsoft as a tech company, a real watershed, moving it from being a pretty inattentive to anything that was going on in Washington at all, they were really, truly heads down. Bill Gates famously, when the FTC brought a motion against Microsoft for predatory [00:15:00] monopolistic behavior in in 1994, Gates's famous reaction to that was like, Ah, the worst thing that could happen to me in Washington is I fall down the steps of the FTC and die or something like that. It was kind of this old-style Bill Gates kind of brash, like, I just don't care about what they do. This has no bearing on our business.

And what the DOJ lawsuit showed Microsoft, and then in turn showed the Valley later, they realized they can't blow off regulators, that antitrust is a real threat, and this is a constituency that needs to be worked with, and they can't just take that support for granted.

Before the DOJ lawsuit, Microsoft's entire Washington lobbying operation was one guy working out of their Bethesda suburban Maryland sales office, and it was a drive between Suburban Maryland and Capitol Hill, and he was it. And after the lawsuit, and after the DOJ decision, Microsoft starts building a fundamentally different, and now what is, perhaps the most, one of the largest and most sophisticated and very successful [00:16:00] lobbying operations in D.C.

Nathan Calvin on Californias AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy - 80,000 Hours Podcast - Air Date 8-29-24

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: I basically want to dive right into SB1047. Can you start by saying what kinds of risks from AI the bill is trying to address?

NATHAN CALVIN: I think it's very much trying to pick up where the Biden executive order left off. And so I think there are three categories of risks that the EO talks about in terms of risk from chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear weapons and ways that AI could kind of exacerbate those risks or kind of allow folks who were previously not able to weaponize those technologies to do so.

And then another one is very severe cyber attacks on critical infrastructure. And then another one is AI systems that are just autonomously causing different types of havoc and evading human control in [00:17:00] different ways.

Yeah, so those are the three categories of risk that the Biden executive order lays out. And I think that this is very similarly trying to take on those risks.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: What can you say about how the bill came to be, including any involvement you've personally had in it?

NATHAN CALVIN: I think that Senator Wiener got interested in these issues himself just from talking with a variety of folks in SF who were thinking about these risks. And I think for people who have spent time at SF get-togethers this is a thing that people are just talking about a lot and thinking about a lot, and it's something that he got interested in and really taken with. So, yeah, then he put out the intent bill and then was looking for organizations to help make that into a reality and make it into full detailed legislation. And as part of that process got in touch with us—the Center for AI Safety Action [00:18:00] Fund—as well as Economic Security California Action, and then Co-Justice, and we really worked on putting additional technical meat on the bones of some of those kinds of high level intentions that they laid out, and working really closely with the Senator's legislative director and the Senator himself, who's been, yeah, I think, really... I think there are some authors in the representatives who I think, you know, defer a lot to staff and other folks they're working with. But I think Senator Weiner was just, like, very deeply in the details and wanting to make sure that he understood what we were doing and agreed with the approach. And I think that [has] really been a pleasure to work with him and his office and kind of the amount of involvement and interest he's taken in the policy.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: Cool. Okay. So, in just incredibly simple terms, what does the bill say?

NATHAN CALVIN: Yeah, I think the way that [00:19:00] I think I'd most straightforwardly described the bill is, you know, there have been a lot of voluntary commitments that the AI companies have themselves agreed to, of things like the White House voluntary commitments. There was also some additional voluntary commitments that were made in Seoul, facilitated by the UK AI Safety Institute, and, you know, it's saying a lot of things around testing for serious risks, taking cybersecurity seriously, thinking about these things, and what I really view this bill as is taking those voluntary commitments and actually instantiating them into law and saying that this is not something that you're just going to decide whether you want to do, but something that they're actually going to be legal consequences if you're not doing these things that really seem very sensible and good for the public.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: Hey listeners, a quick interruption. So, to give ourselves more time to chat through objections to the bill, misunderstandings about it, and so on, Nathan and I [00:20:00] didn't dive any deeper into the details of the bill during our actual interview.

So, I wanted to jump in and give a few more concrete details about what's actually in the bill as of August 23rd. So, first, it's worth emphasizing that all of the provisions of the bill only apply to models that require 100 million dollars or more in compute to train, or that take an open source model that is that big to start with and then fine tune it with another 10 million worth of additional compute.

At the moment, there are no models that meet these requirements, so the bill doesn't apply to any currently existing models. But for future models that would be covered by the bill, the bill creates a few key requirements. So, first, developers are required to create a comprehensive safety and security plan, which ensures that their models do not pose an reasonable risk of causing or significantly enabling critical harm. Critical harm is defined in the bill as mass [00:21:00] casualties or incidents resulting in $500 million or more in damages.

That safety and security plan has to be able to explain how the developer is going to take reasonable care to guard against cybersecurity attacks to make sure that the model can't be stolen; how it would be able to shut down all copies of the model under their control if there were an emergency; and how the developer would test that the model can't itself cause critical harm. And the developer then has to be able to publish the results of those safety tests.

And finally, that plan has to commit to building in the appropriate kind of guardrails that would make sure that users can't use the model in harmful ways. In addition, developers of these advanced models are required to undergo an annual audit. If a developer violates these rules, And their model, in fact, causes critical harm itself, or is used by a person or group to cause critical harm, the developer can [00:22:00] be held liable for that harm and fined by the attorney general. For fine-tuned models that involve $10 million or more in expenditure, the fine-tuner bears responsibility for all of these things. For those spending less, the original developer holds responsibility.

Finally, the bill creates protections for whistleblowers. So, in other words, employees of AI companies who report noncompliance will be protected from retaliation. There are a few other bits and pieces in the bill, but those were the things that struck me as most important.

This Moment in AI How We Got Here and Where Were Going - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-12-24

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: One of the weird things about wandering around the Bay Area is the phrase, can you feel the AGI? That is the people that are closest... I know, right?

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Seriously?

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Feel the AGI. There's t shirts with it.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: There's t shirts with it on?

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: I've walked into dinners and the first thing that somebody said to me is like, [00:23:00] you're feeling the AGI. He looked at my face. I was really concerned. I actually hadn't been sleeping because when you metabolize how quickly everything is scaling up and the complete inadequacy of our current government or governance to handle it, it honestly makes it hard for me to sleep sometimes and I walked in, he looked at my face, and he's like, Ah, you're feeling the AGI, aren't you?

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: This is AGI as in artificial general intelligence, which some people outside of the Bay area don't ever think that we're actually going to get to. So you're talking about something which is, you know, it's just normal in the Bay Area to be working towards that and thinking about it.

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: And I should be really clear here, because there is debate (inside of both the academic community and the labs} of does the current technology—you know, this transformers-based large language model—will it get us to something that we can replace most human beings on most economic tasks as the sort of the, [00:24:00] like, the version of AGI, the definition that I like to use. And the people that believe that scale is all that we need say, Look, if we just keep growing and we sort of project out the graph of how smart the systems have been—four years ago, it was sort of at the level of a preschooler, GPT4, level of a smart high schooler, the next models coming out, maybe it'll be at PhD levels. You just project that out and by 2026-2027, that they will be at the level of the smartest human beings and perhaps even smarter, there's nothing that stops them from getting smarter. And there are other people that say, Hey, actually, large language models aren't everything that we're going to need. They don't do things like long term planning. We're one more breakthrough away from something that can really just be a drop in human replacement. Either one of these two camps, you either don't need any more breakthroughs, or you're just one breakthrough away. We're very, very close. At least that's the talking side of Silicon Valley.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: You [00:25:00] know, if you talk to different people in Silicon Valley, you really do get different answers and it really feels confusing sometimes. And , I think the point that Aza was making is that whether it is slightly longer, like closer to, I don't know, five to seven years versus, you know, one to two years, still not a lot of time to prepare for that.

And when, you know, artificial general intelligence-level AI emerges, you'll want to have major interventions way before that. You won't want to be starting to figure out how to regulate it after that occurs. You want to do it before. And I think that was the main mission of the AI Dilemma, was how do we make sure that we set the right incentives in motion before entanglement, before it gets entrenched in our society. You only have one period before a new technology gets entangled, and that's right now.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah. I mean, it's hard sitting all the way over here in the suburbs of Sydney, Australia. And I do have a sense from my perspective that there's been a little bit of hype, you know. Some of the fear about AI hasn't [00:26:00] translated. I mean, it hasn't transformed my job yet. My kids aren't really using it at school. And when I try to use it, honestly, I find it a little bit crappy and not really worth my while. So, how do you sort of. take that further and convince someone like me to really care? And what's the future that I'm imagining, I guess, even for my job five or 10 years into the future?

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: I think one thing that's important to distinguish is how fast AI capabilities are coming versus how fast AI will be diffused or integrated into society. I think diffusion or integration can take longer, and I think the capabilities are coming fast. So, I think people look at the fact that the entire economy hasn't been disrupted so quickly as, you know, creating more skepticism around the AI hype. I think certainly with regard to how quickly this transformation can take place, that level of skepticism is warranted . But I do think that we have to pay attention to the raw capabilities. If you click around and find the corner of Twitter where people are [00:27:00] publishing the latest papers in AI capabilities, you will be humbled very quickly by how fast progress is moving.

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: I think it's also important to note there is going to be hype. Every technology goes through a hype cycle where people get over excited.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: And we're seeing that now, right? People are, OpenAI is supposed to be potentially losing $5 billion this year. You know, there's a but of a feel of is there a kind of crypto crash coming, you know, with the energy around AI at the moment?

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Right, exactly. So, and that happens with every technology. So, that is true. And also true is the raw capabilities that the models have and the amount of investment into the, essentially, data centers and compute centers that companies are making now. So, you know, Microsoft is building right now a hundred billion dollar computer super center, essentially.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Okay, I do want to move on now to questions around data because there's been a huge amount of reporting recently about how large language [00:28:00] models are just super hungry for human generated data and they're potentially running out of things to hoover up and ingest. And there's been predictions that we might even hit a data wall by 2028. How is this going to affect the development of AI?

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: I mean, it's a real and interesting question, right? Like, if you've used all of the data that's easily available on the internet, what happens after that? Well, a couple of things happen after that. One, and we're seeing this, is that all the companies are racing for proprietary data sets, sitting inside of financial institutions, sitting inside of academic institutions is a lot of data that is just not available on the open internet. So, it's not exactly the case that we've just run out of data, like the AI companies may have run out of easily accessible open data.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Free data.

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Free data. The second thing is that there are a lot of data sources that require translations. That is, there's a lot of television and [00:29:00] movies, YouTube videos, and it takes processing power to convert those into, say, text. But that's why OpenAI created Whisper and these other systems. There's a big push in the next models to make them multimodal, that is not just speaking language, but also generating images, also understanding videos, understanding robotic movements. And it is the case with GPT 4 scale models that as they were made multimodal, they didn't seem to be getting that much smarter. But the theory is that's because they just weren't big enough. They couldn't hold enough of every one of these modalities at the same time. So there's some big open questions there.

But when we talk to people on the inside, These are not like the folks like the Sam Altman's or the Dario's that have an incentive to say that the model search is just going to keep scaling getting better. What we've heard is that they are figuring out clever ways of getting over the data wall, and that the scaling does seem [00:30:00] to be progressing. We can't, of course, independently verify that, but I'm inclined to believe them.

Newsoms AI dilemma To sign or not to sign - POLITICO Tech - Air Date 9-6-24

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: So the California legislature has passed a hotly debated AI safety bill, just as the session comes to a close. What made it into the final version of the bill?

JEREMY WHITE: This bill would require the largest artificial intelligence model, so called 'frontier models', to undergo safety testing before they are released onto the market, essentially ensuring that they don't pose a risk for catastrophic harms like bio attacks and that type of thing.

Companies would essentially be exposed to civil penalties if the state finds that they are not doing their due diligence on these models that they're seeking to release into the market. And the mechanism for enforcing this became a central point of contention with this bill. The message from a lot of the tech company foes all along was, rather than apply liability at the front end before we release these [00:31:00] models, punish us if harm occurs. If our models go out into the world and they wreak havoc, then yes, we deserve some accountability. And the response from proponents has been, you wouldn't wait to regulate nuclear energy until you had a Chernobyl. And essentially that we need to be proactive and preemptive about preventing these harms.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Got it. And so with all of that debate, the legislature still passed it. And that bill now needs to be signed by Governor Gavin Newsom. And there's a lot of pressure on him to veto it. Do we know what he's expected to do?

JEREMY WHITE: The governor has, as he generally tends to do with legislation, not said specifically where he's leaning. I do think, given the governor's history of being close to the tech industry, and his record of having rejected some bills that passed the legislature that the technology industry did not like, such as regulation last year on autonomous vehicles, I think the even money is on him being more likely to veto this than to sign it. That said, the [00:32:00] governor has, again, been pretty diligent about not giving a clear indication either way, beyond saying that he believes that artificial intelligence, while it merits regulation, is an important industry and one that helps California maintain its competitive edge.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Right. Well, and that's always the tension there in California when it comes to regulating tech. And as you said, Newsom, in particular, has relationships with these tech companies going back many, many years and through many, many different roles that he's had. What are companies saying now that the bill is heading to his desk?

JEREMY WHITE: I think all along, there has been a hope among people in the industry that the governor would be an ally and a backstop on this one. That certainly isn't to say that they didn't try to stop it or substantially amend it in the legislature, but I do think there's been this dynamic for a while in which groups see that when it comes to regulating tech, they're more likely to have an ally in the governor often than in a majority of democratic legislators. People are continuing to bend his ear, [00:33:00] [unintelligible] the people warning that if he doesn't sign this and there's some sort of catastrophe that's on him; to people warning you're gonna be the one who's responsible for sort of killing the golden goose that, not just California, but San Francisco, a city that he was mayor of, don't forget, is looking to drive its economic engine.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Some other pushback has also come from Washington, which, you know, Washington has not passed any meaningful AI safety legislation of its own, and yet we have seen California lawmakers like Nancy Pelosi, Ro Khanna, Enzo Lofgren, all kind of come out against this California bill. How is that message being interpreted there?

JEREMY WHITE: Certainly the fact that these lawmakers represent the Bay Area, Silicon Valley, and adjacent districts, I think it is a strong signal from them that they have heard from folks in their districts and in this industry. In Congresswoman Lofgren's case, she had her staff talk to people and make a recommendation that this is going to be bad for innovation. This is [00:34:00] going to hurt these businesses that again, are major economic players in this area. I think Congresswoman Pelosi's intervention was also read in some quarters as sort of putting a marker in a succession fight. The state senator carrying this bill, Scott Wiener, is known to be all but certain to run for Nancy Pelosi's seat when she leaves. Some people saw this as perhaps the speaker emerita creating some space for her daughter, Christine, in that race. That aside, I think clearly these members of Congress represent a lot of the executives and workers and headquarters of these companies, and so they are channeling some of those very significant industry concerns.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Got it. So, some policy behind it, but also it sounds like politics being played as well, which is not, I guess, unexpected.

You know, we have seen this dynamic, though, where Washington fails to regulate or fails to act in tech and so the California legislature kind of steps in to regulate. We saw that with [00:35:00] privacy, you know, kids online safety. Is that dynamic involved here as well? Have we heard from any federal lawmakers that they don't want to be preempted again by California on tech regulation?

JEREMY WHITE: That is absolutely a dynamic in play. I've heard over and over again from California lawmakers, whether it's Scott Wiener or one of the many others doing AI bills that they felt they had to act because it was clear to them Congress was not going to.

There has been some back and forth between Sacramento and Washington on this. When I spoke to Congresswoman Lofgren, she told me that's nonsense, we have been working on it. And she said there are some areas in which she thinks there's an appropriate role for California to move ahead, things like data privacy and clean car regulations. But on this matter, which she cast as a matter of national security and importance, she was adamant that this is Congress's turf and they should be the ones to move first.

So, there has definitely been some tension between Democrats in different levels of government on this one.

At Last Big Tech's Free Ride May Be Over - The Hartmann Report - Air Date 9-4-24

THOM HARTMANN - HOST, THE HARTMANN REPORT: [00:36:00] I have spoken on many occasions here and also written over at Hartmann Report about back in the day when, back in the late 70s, early 80s and through the mid 90s, when, Nigel Peacock and I were running, and Sue Nethercote was in another area, but, you know, we were all working with CompuServe forums. Nigel and I ran some 30 of them. We had the IBM forum, we had the Macintosh forum, we had the ADHD forum, we had the JFK assassination forum, we had the international trade forum, we had a bunch of them. And, you know, the two of us and about a dozen other people that worked with us were paid— specifically I was paid and I shared that revenue with all of them—we were paid to monitor the forums on CompuServe. Because this was all before 1996. And CompuServe, at that [00:37:00] time, was the internet actually up until the mid 90s. AOL and CompuServe were pretty much all there was. And they were viewed legally the same as the New York Times, essentially. They were a publisher, or as a bookstore. They were a distributor of content. Now, the content was being created by individuals, you know, people who were participating. But, just like if you were to write a letter to the New York Times threatening to kill the president, or send the New York Times a photograph of, you know, somebody being murdered or somebody being tortured or raped or something, and they published it, they could be held responsible for that. The New York Times could be held responsible for it. And if a bookstore was selling, you know, for example, child pornography, they could be held responsible for that.

And so as a consequence of that, because CompuServe and AOL were [00:38:00] viewed as bookstores or as, you know, publishers, they had to hire people like Nigel and me to run and police these forums. And we made a good living doing it, by the way. I mean, you know, it was not inconsequential amount of money. And then in 1996, Congress got together and said, you know, we really want to turn this internet thing into something. We think it has great potential and we want to encourage companies to jump in. And so, we're going to pass a law—it's called Section 230 of the Decency and whatever it is Act, which is a subset of the Telecommunications Act of 1996—we're going to pass Section 230, which says that these publishers, you know, AOL, CompuServe, and then what came after 1996 was Facebook and Twitter and everything else, that they no longer have liability, they no longer have responsibility for what they publish. So, if somebody puts [00:39:00] child pornography on their site, or somebody puts, you know, a call to murder the president on their site or whatever, they can remove it if they want, and they probably should, just as good business practices, but we're not going to punish them, we're not going to prosecute them, we're not going to fine them if they don't. So, you can have the Wild West.

And it succeeded in jump starting the Internet. Between 1996 and 2005, the Internet went from basically, you know, AOL and CompuServe, which was small and limited, to just exploded, worldwide. And I have been saying for some time that Section 230's time is past. That you could argue that it was useful to have there for five or ten years, but we no longer need these big companies. They're multi billion dollar companies. I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is the richest millennial on earth. He has, I mean, he's worth, you know, hundreds of [00:40:00] millions of dollars. I don't know his exact net worth. He's worth a pile of money. And he can afford to pay somebody to monitor what's going on on Facebook. Just like CompuServe used to pay Nigel and me. I mean, CompuServe, you know, Facebook is, I mean, some of these companies are showing like 40 percent profit margins. They're spending off billions of dollars in profits every single month. So, you know, if they have to hire a small army of content moderators, and/or change their algorithm to make sure that the kind of stuff that they're pushing out isn't getting pushed out, they can afford to do that. And they should be doing that, both morally and under the law, except that section 230 says they don't have to do it. So, they don't, they just take the money.

Well, things got really bad for a family. The family of 10 year old Nylah Anderson. [00:41:00] And this was on TikTok. And TikTok has an algorithm that decides what to push to people. And little ten year old Nylah got a blackout challenge pushed to her. It's where you hang yourself and then try to save yourself just before you blackout. You cut off the blood to your, to your brain and then, and Nylah died, she hung herself, as a result of this thing that TikTok had actually sent to her. She did not follow this person. She did not solicit this. She did not ask for it. She received it and she did it and she's dead. And so her family sued TikTok. You know, TikTok, they argued in court, they said that TikTok knew that such videos were causing kids to get into tragic accidents, yet their algorithm targeted children nonetheless. They sued under Pennsylvania state law for product liability, negligence and wrongful death. [00:42:00] And this court, it's been through a couple of courts, and then it finally went to the Third Circuit, the Third Federal Circuit of the Appeals Court, and three judges, two of them Trump appointees, one of them an Obama appointee, wrote, this is what one of the judges wrote: "Today, Section 230 rides in to rescue corporations from virtually any claim loosely related to content posted by a third party, no matter the cause of action and whatever the provider's actions". And they basically said, you know, we're not going to let this happen anymore. They blew up these provisions of Section 230.

Now, this is just a major rollback to Section 230. They said, because "TikTok's algorithm", I'm quoting now from the decision, "TikTok's algorithm curates and [00:43:00] recommends a tailored compilation of videos for users FYP", that's, you know, a homepage or whatever they call it, "based on a variety of factors, including the user's age and other demographics, online interaction, other metadata. It becomes TikTok's own speech". In other words, if somebody were to simply post some terrible thing on TikTok and only the people who follow that person saw it, that would be one thing. But because TikTok has this algorithm, and they're not unique in this, of course, this is true of all the social media sites, they have this algorithm that decides which posts to push out to people who haven't asked for them, this court ruled that this is not the speech of the person who posted it on TikTok, it has become the speech of TikTok itself. And TikTok is responsible for this. They are liable for this.

Now, oddly enough, Clarence Thomas agrees with this. [00:44:00] Proof that a broken clock is right twice a day. He wrote, Back in 2022, he said, "The reason for this use and misuse of Section 230 is simple: advertising money. In particular, the kind of advertising facilitated by large swaths of personal data depends on Section 230 immunity. Otherwise, dominant platforms would have to spend large amounts on content moderation". He goes on to say, actually this is Matt Stoller writing about what Clarence Thomas is saying. Matt Stoller goes on to say, "He pointed out that Facebook refused to do anything to stop the use of its services by human traffickers", now this is a quote from Clarence Thomas, "because doing so would cost the company users and the advertising revenue those users generate".

Where AI Isn't a Four Letter Word China Builds Robots to Aid Workers - The Socialist Program - Air Date 9-4-24

RICHARD WOLFF: Imagine we have an enterprise, a workplace, with a hundred workers, and they make shirts, let's call it, for lack of a [00:45:00] better one. They make shirts. These hundred workers make shirts. And along comes a new invention, whatever it is, automation of one kind or another, and it is now possible to get the same number of shirts coming off the production lines every day or every week as you used to but you no longer need 100 workers. Fifty workers can do it because the new machine, the new technology, the new software, whatever it is, allows those 50 workers to be doubly productive compared to what they used to be, and so the employer, whoever that might be, fires half of the workers because they don't need them to produce the same number of shirts.

Now, here follow the example, the simple arithmetic. If you're producing the same number of shirts, you're [00:46:00] getting the same revenue. Let's assume, simply, the price is the same. Whatever you got for shirts before, you get for shirts now. You make the same number of shirts, the hundred workers in the old days made, now you only need fifty workers, you make the same number of shirts. Okay, if the price is the same and you're producing the same amount of shirts, you're gonna get the same revenue. But the employer claps his hands together because he may be getting the same revenue, but he has fired half of his workforce. He is saved on labor costs, the way those people put it. Half of the revenue he got that he used to have to pay to a worker, he keeps for himself. So whatever his profits were before, his profits now are much higher because he's keeping, for himself, what he used to have to pay to the workers. No wonder he [00:47:00] will spend the money to get that machine installed that will make his workers more productive, because he's going to end up with more profits.

That's the story. That's the way it's carried in the textbook. That's the way it actually works. Notice in this story, nobody seems to be worried about the 50 workers who got fired. What happened to them? What happened to their husbands, their wives, their children, the elderly who depended on them? What happened to the stores in the community that depended on these people having money to spend for their groceries, for their clothing, for their amusements? All of that damage done by technical progress, we're not supposed to think about. And that's not because it's bad news. It's because it highlights that technology is installed [00:48:00] if and when and to the extent that it is profitable, not for any other reason.

And so let me now conclude my little example by giving you the other reason. What could have happened in this shirt producing enterprise is something completely different. The people there could have utilized the new technology in an altogether different way. And it's really very simple. Here's what they could have done. They could have said to the 100 workers, stay right where you are. You are not going anywhere. We are going to have you come here and produce the shirts the way you always did. However, we're going to cut the labor day, the working day, from eight hours a day to four hours a day. And why? Well, it's very [00:49:00] simple. In four hours, with these new machines we're going to get, you are twice as productive as you used to be. The company will produce the same number of shirts with you working half time as we did before. We'll sell them, we'll assume the same revenue comes in, and we will pay you as we always did, but you will have to do only half a day's work, five days a week. In other words, the technology frees up human labor. The technology helps everybody have half as much time to work for the same income they got before.

Is that possible? Of course it is. Has that been done in history? Yes, it has. You know who would do that, [00:50:00] who has done it? A worker cooperative, because they are workers who together decide what to do about new technology. A worker co-op has the workers being their own boss, so they make the decision. And of course, this decision is a no brainer, because for the workers as a whole, the hundred workers, it would take them exactly one second to choose between half of them losing their job while the others continue, versus all of them getting half time off for the same salary they got before. That's easy. Which one of those is better? Well, if you're a democrat, with a small d, you would obviously favor the second one. Why? Because a hundred workers [00:51:00] getting half a day off every day from now on is serving the majority, whereas firing half the workers so that the employer can make a bigger profit, well, that's serving the minority with more profit at the expense of one half of the majority. No democratic decision making. would ever end up that way.

And now let me simply apply this to the story about the Chinese robots. China calls itself 'socialism with Chinese characteristics'. Well, this is a very old problem. And what the robots enable the Chinese to do is to make a really big decision. Are you going to go down the capitalist road, sacrificing workers to make more profits for the [00:52:00] employer, whether that employer is a private individual or a company on the one hand, or a state operated and owned enterprise on the other? Or are you going to use the exploding technology in China to give people a quality of life that the rest of the world has only dreamed of? Put people on half time. Imagine with me, if the Chinese choose, and it's an open question, which way they're going to go, but if they choose to do what the worker co-op would do, to utilize the new technology, the robots, that they are already the number one producer of in the world—the Chinese are, they're also the number one market for robots already—but if they were to choose to really do this, to make use of robots on a massive [00:53:00] scale, and not just robots to produce shirts and ice cream cones and all the rest of it, but robots to produce the robots so that we really don't need people to do hard drudgery labor, eight hours a day, five out of seven days a week, you know, what we're all used to. Then, the struggle between China and the West will be won—not by a war, not in the old ways, not by saber rattling against each other, not by tariff wars or trade wars, all of it—the war will be won because the whole world will watch while Chinese workers work fewer and fewer hours per day while earning the same amount of money, and the struggle between systems will be resolved that way, and no [00:54:00] war will be tolerated by either side. It'll be a no brainer which way to go.

Tech's Big Money Campaign is Getting Pushback with Margaret O'Mara and Brody Mullins Part 2 - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-26-24

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: So in this conversation, we've diagnosed a bunch of problems. You know, we've diagnosed that there's a complexity gap. Technology's moving faster than, you know. the law and when technology companies see Ted Stevens say the internet is a series of tubes that's not them just advocating for their position that's realizing that there's a lack of understanding in government and we want to preserve the kind of lobbying that's educational, right? But we don't want the kind of lobbying where there's let's say a thousand to one difference in the amount of resources that companies and private interests can deploy compared to that which might be good for people. So, when you think about this perspective, what are the kinds of mechanisms or interventions that would lead us to a more humane world with a better balance of power? Brody?

BRODY MULLINS: Uh, that's a tough one. You know, I feel like reporters are really good at pointing out the problems, but not very good at coming up with solutions. [00:55:00] But in what we've talked about, you know, these companies, as we've said, are spending far more money to get far more influence than regular Americans. But at the end of the day, regular Americans do have the power. They have the votes. They're the ones who send members of Congress to Congress in the first place. The problem is that, you know, most consumers and Americans are not mobilized and organized. There's not one big organization that's pulling people together. But if there was, if the American people can come together and talk to their members of Congress in an organic way, you know, similar to the shutdown the internet day that Google and the tech industry organized, if there was an organic movement like that, the American people would have far more power than corporate America. It's just that they're disorganized right now.

MARGARET O'MARA: Yeah, I think for so long Silicon Valley or the tech industry in DC have kind of seen one another through a glass darkly, not quite understood and appreciated the role of the other in the broader project in which all are engaged. [00:56:00] Silicon Valley, you know, has its origins in government spending and defense spending during the Cold War. The government policy towards higher education, research and development as well as spending on tech and buying tech things and encouraging the development of them, has been foundational to the Valley from the Manhattan Project to today. And that's something that isn't fully appreciated, and I think kind of drives some of the antiregulatory feeling in the valley, when we move beyond the kind of C suite of these biggest companies, but it's kind of this feeling like, Oh, if you regulate us, this innovation machine is going to stop. And actually the longer history shows that is not the case, that there has been a real robust government role that has encouraged the growth of the Valley.

So, I think that's one thing. I think the other thing, Tristan, you point out this growth and balance in expertise and resources, which is, I think, a result of, this is something where government itself, it's the reflection of this dismantling of the expertise from within the government at the federal level, where you have [00:57:00] industry, you know, agencies like the FTC that are kind of operating on a shoestring and tin cans between them and basically with very little expertise, and where, particularly in the last 15 years, there's been this giant sucking sound that has drawn expertise from academia and from government towards industry because the paycheck is just too good.

So, we have this real severe imbalance. So I think part of it is Washington or the public sector, the public building up its capacity to be good partners, be good regulatory partners, and to understand how the tech works and to do smart regulation that may well cut into profits, but actually will ultimately benefit the consumers and market competition, which is the point of the whole business.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Well said.

MARGARET O'MARA: And actually, when you look over time, you see kind of a swing towards less regulation, more regulation. You see, you know, change happens slowly, then happens all at once. And so the kind of political dysfunction of Capitol Hill will not be [00:58:00] forever, if history is any guide. History doesn't repeat itself, nothing's inevitable, but we generally have some good proof points. And also, if you again go back to the early 20th century and kind of the extraordinarily concentrated wealth and power, what dismantled that, and it took a long time, but it involved government, it involved citizens mobilizing together in interest groups of their own, lobbying groups of their own, and the voters, the voters voting, and voting for pro-regulatory policies and lawmakers, and gradually things do shift.

Note from the Editor on a possible future for humanity

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with Andrewism describing the elements of neocolonialism inherent in big data. Your Undivided Attention described the dawn of the big tech lobbying era. The 80,000 Hours Podcast looked at the proposed regulation in California. Your Undivided Attention described the difficulty of balancing AI growth and safety. Politico Tech dove deeper on proposed [00:59:00] legislation. The Hartmann Report discussed the lawsuit against TikTok that put the danger of Section 230 in stark relief. The Socialist Program spoke with professor Richard Wolff about the options for using technological advancement to relieve people from the drudgery of work. And Your Undivided Attention explained the need for public mobilization to demand regulation of Silicon valley.

And those were just the Top Takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dives section, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics. To support our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members-only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at bestoftheleft.com/support (there's a link in the show notes), through our Patreon page, or from right inside the Apple podcast app. If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, shoot me an email requesting a financial hardship membership, because we don't let a lack of funds stand in [01:00:00] the way of hearing more information.

Now, before we continue to the Deeper Dives half, I have just a couple of notes to add. The first is a great reference that I don't think it's mentioned in the show today. It's regarding the phenomenon of training AI models on any data it can get its hands on. Inevitably leading to the model ingesting data that itself was created by other AI models, leading to the degradation of the AI generally. One metaphor that gets used is mad cow disease caused by feeding dead cows to other cows. Bad practice. Don't do that. Another metaphor is inbreeding and the genetic defects that can come from it. Stemming from the inbreeding idea, and this is my favorite reference, one writer coined the term "Habsburg AI", which is a wonderfully deep cut to the old Royal family of Austria that's famous for having deteriorated [01:01:00] genetically due to generations of inbreeding. So, I enjoyed that. There's also something extra poetic about referring to a family dating back to the 11th century to describe potential problems with AI. So, nicely done.

Secondly, Yuval Noah Harari wrote a piece in The Guardian that makes some fine points. It's titled "Never summon a power you can't control. Yuval Noah Harari on how AI could threaten democracy and divide the world". So, you know, nothing too heavy. It's a breezy 18 minute read if you want to check it out. He starts with a couple of old stories meant to warn humanity away from harnessing power that it can't control. The first, a Greek myth, took this pretty literally as it was about a mortal attempting to harness the chariot of the sun and drive it across the sky with predictably disastrous consequences. The second story is a lot more whimsical thanks [01:02:00] to Walt Disney and Fantasia: The Sorcerer's Apprentice, in which Mickey Mouse unsatisfied doing menial work, conjures magic to have a broom do the work for him only to have the situation get wildly out of control. So, Harari points out that these stories don't have any suggestions for how to get yourself out of a predicament like this, other than to have like a God or a magician on hand to set things right. So, the real lesson is just don't do that. Don't get yourself in that situation.

Toward the end of the piece, he turns to game theory to describe the degree of danger we may be in. After describing the mutually assured destruction dynamic of the nuclear age, he points out that those same dynamics do not apply to cyber warfare. "Cyber weapons can bring down a country's electric grid, but they can also be used to destroy a secret research facility, jam an enemy [01:03:00] sensor, inflame a political scandal, manipulate elections, or hack a single smartphone, and they can do all that stealthily. They don't announce their presence with a mushroom cloud and a storm of fire, nor do they leave a visible trail from launchpad to target. Consequently, at times it is hard to know if an attack even occurred or who launched it. The temptation to start a limited cyber war is therefore big and so is the temptation to escalate it".

So, it makes carrying out a first strike a little bit more tempting and then he points out, "Even worse, if one side thinks it has such an opportunity, the temptation to launch a first strike could become irresistible, because one never knows how long the window of opportunity will remain open. Game theory, posits that the most dangerous situation in an arms race is when one side feels it has an advantage, but that this [01:04:00] advantage is slipping away".

Now earlier in the piece, it's described that the data systems of the world previously thought of, even if this wasn't exactly accurate, sort of thought of basically as an interconnected web. that paradigm would begin to Balkanize as different nations begin using data protectionism as a way of sort of jockeying for power on the international stage. This could end up leading to a very siloed digital experience of the world and of reality for all of the people in the world, driving people's farther apart without them necessarily even knowing it. So he concludes, "The division of the world into rival digital empires dovetails with the political vision of many leaders who believe that the world is a jungle, that the relative piece of recent decades has been in [01:05:00] illusion, and that the only real choice is whether to play the part of predator or prey. Given such a choice, most leaders would prefer to go down in history as predators and add their names to the grim list of conquerors that unfortunate pupils are condemned to memorize for their history exams. These leaders should be reminded, however, that there is a new alpha predator in the jungle. If humanity doesn't find a way to cooperate and protect our shared interests, we will all be easy prey to AI".

Sort of makes me think of all those people back in the sixties, watching the Jetsons and following the space race, who just couldn't wait for the future to arrive. Well, here we are.

SECTION A: THE THREAT

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper on four topics. Next up, Section A:. More on the Threat. Section B: Big Tech Lobbying. Section C: [01:06:00] Regulation. And Section D: Thinking Through Solutions.

The New Colonialism of Big Tech Part 2 - Andrewism - Air Date 9-3-24

ANDREW SAGE - HOST, ANDREWISM: Data colonialism shares six distinct similarities with colonialism's past and present.

First, it is also founded on the appropriation of resources, with the shared mindset regarding that appropriation that the resources are cheap and unbound from ethical or environmental considerations. The spice must float. Historical colonialism's focus was on appropriating land, as the savages weren't using it properly, and labour, as the savages were predestined to servitude.

But data colonialism is focused on appropriating human life in the form of data, as clearly, every detail of our lives exists to maximize shareholder value. In any case, it's free real estate. And unlike land, data is a non rival good, so it's ripe for exploitation by multiple parties at once. The second similarity to the appropriation serves to build a new social and economic order that benefits the colonizer, [01:07:00] whether Britain or Big Tech.

The default position is now to extract data from whatever people do, no matter how trivial. Platforms and apps organized around the collection and exploitation of data are now the near inescapable infrastructure of daily life. Third, colonialism continues to be a private state partnership. It was never solely the domain of Church and Crown.

Chartered companies and enterprises have always played a role. Today, various players in the data extraction game form what Mahias and Couldry call the social quantification sector. Opaque and utterly unaccountable companies like Palantir quietly work hand in hand with governments to maintain smart borders and predictive policing that terrorize vulnerable populations.

The more famous Big Five of Google, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are just as collaborative with the state and carry on colonial legacies of dispossession and injustice. Data harvesters and data aggregators, large and small, have coalesced into a parallel of the old colonial [01:08:00] administrations. As a few thousand coders, designers, managers, and marketers control the lives of billions.

Fourth, both forms of colonialism devastate the physical environment. Historical colonialism set the precedent for the natural world being viewed as cheap and ripe for large scale extraction, while today's data colonialism continues to devour precious minerals, energy, and water to sustain itself, expanding its data centers across lands in the global North and South while expelling metric tons of carbon with every Amazon package delivered, Bitcoin verified, or satellite launched.

Fifth, all forms of colonialism generate deep inequalities between colonizers and colonized, exploiters and exploited. On its face, data colonialism may not seem as physically violent as historical colonialism, but it certainly creates asymmetric data relations that deepen existing inequalities of class, race, gender, and more that affect people's ability to live, and it relies on the continued exploitation of historically colonized people to mine its much needed materials, thus [01:09:00] enabling systemic violence.

Furthermore, these data relations are absent of physical limitations in size, connectivity, depth, and transferability, thus opening up new forms of colonial power and control. Sixth, historical colonialism was justified with the civilizing mission, or white man's burden, of evangelizing Christianity and asserting racial, scientific, and economic superiority.

These days, such narratives have been thoroughly discredited, so data colonizers have turned to new justifications. Data colonizers speak of ushering in the inevitable progress of a new machine age or fourth industrial revolution and extol the convenience and connection that their extraction enables.

When you put it that way, why would anyone oppose convenience and connection? When cloud storage and WhatsApp groups make it easier than ever to save and share, why resist? This is precisely how big tech wants us to see things. They're not calling out the [01:10:00] costs of our convenience. They're not bringing attention to the asymmetric relations that our data empowers.

They won't raise the alarm on the new forms of exploitation that their extraction brings, especially when it impacts the workers, or contractors, and not the end users. They'll sell you convenient solutions to the problems they create, if you can afford that convenience, of course, and you'll have to accept it, because you're not able to opt out without significant consequences once these platforms have accrued enough power.

When they become THE social operating system, you kinda have to click I agree. But hey, at least it's convenient, right? Don't even get me started on the convenience offered to the Global South, when a combination of these countries weak infrastructure and tech corporations massive resources has enabled the continuation of our dependence on the Global North.

How can we ever gain our independence and truly decolonize when we're reliant on the external provision of WhatsApp, to facilitate our day to day existence? We should really be asking if the only form that convenience can take just so happens to coincide with [01:11:00] the extractive ambitions of tech conglomerates.

These companies also love to sell us on connection, but do we as a social species need social media companies to connect when we've been connected on small and large scales for tens of thousands of years? Obviously, as a writer who has chosen to distribute my work on social media, I can recognize that such platforms offer some value.

I know that they've empowered political mobilization for better and for worse, but they also make it easier to surveil and suppress dissent. While echo chambers aren't nearly as common as is commonly believed, since being exposed to dissent and opinions is what keeps people hooked online, radicalization has certainly proliferated thanks to the profits over facts model of social media.

Fractures have long existed in our society, but social media certainly enhances those fractures. Meta wants us to believe that it represents the inevitable progress of human connection. But I'm sorry, how could a safe, global community ever be created from the exploitative, profit driven model of meta?

Why [01:12:00] should we accept their implicit claim that continuous data extraction is necessary for the human community to flourish? Don't we deserve to connect in ways that aren't dictated by their business model and disconnected from reality? But perhaps I'm asking too many questions. Maybe I just need to connect my toilet to the grid so that Amazon has a continuous reading of my stool samples for targeted probiotic advertising.

Maybe I should digitally bind every inch of my home to the global data colony. Maybe I should just hush from out and plug into the Internet of Things. I've been told that my data, in combination with that of countless others, has enabled the development of artificial intelligence, which as we all know is way smarter than any of us.

Or is it? As it turns out, the hype train of AI is simply a parade in praise of an over glorified, pattern recognizing parrot that replicates the racial and gendered biases of its massive dataset and still needs to be taught and corrected constantly. AI serves as a convenient cop out for folks who don't want to challenge inequality and would rather give it a neutral face while relying on marginalized [01:13:00] folks globally to actually teach the computer what to do.

Even the efforts to counteract these concerns with AI ethics boards fall flat, because their ethics codes are uselessly abstract, isolated from the levers of power, and thus utterly toothless. Particularly when these boards get their checks cut by the very same corporations they're supposed to be regulating.

There may be some real scientific value in AI for sure, but much of it is just marketing and party tricks. It might get really good at detecting cancer, but it shouldn't be clogging the internet with SEO optimized slop, and it certainly shouldn't be deciding the fate of real people. Whether it's Europe bringing progress and salvation to the savages, or Facebook graciously running internet infrastructure in over 30 African countries, colonialism often excuses itself with virtuous, civilizing missions that serve to justify or erase the reality of their exploitation.

Alternatively, following the shock doctrine, data colonizers use crises like the pandemic as an excuse to expand the territories of data extraction. In any [01:14:00] case, they need these alibis to distract us from the truth and capture the social imagination so fully that we can't even consider that there are alternative means of convenience and connection.

Just click I agree. Or don't. Maybe it's time to unaccept these terms and conditions. It won't be easy. Clonalisms past and present love to make us feel as though their power is incontestable. There's a lot of deception, exploitation, and coercion that gets us to accept this way of the world. But that doesn't mean we're completely helpless.

With the mental health impacts of big tech, the ongoing loss of workers rights, the ever growing authority of algorithms, the manipulation of populations for commercial and political purposes, the rising threat of disinformation and hate speech, and the decimation of environments by data centres, the threat of data colonialism seems insurmountable.

Yet data colonialism can be resisted. Once we identify our shared interests, build concrete solidarity, and develop our understanding of these issues.

This Moment in AI How We Got Here and Where Were Going Part 2 - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-12-24

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: [01:15:00] Some companies are turning to AI generated content to fill that void. This is what they call synthetic data.

What are the risks of feeding AI generated content back into the models?

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Right. Generally, when people talk about the concerns of synthetic data, what they're talking about is sort of these models getting high off their own exhaust, which is that if the models are putting out hallucinations and they're trained on those hallucinations, you end up in this sort of like downward spiral where the models keep getting worse.

And in fact, this is a concern. Uh, last year, Sam Altman said that one out of every thousand words that humanity was generating was generated by chat GPT. Right. That's incredible. That is absolutely incredible. Incredibly concerning, right? Because that shows that, um, not too far into the future, there will be more text generated by AI and AI models, more cognitive labor done by machines than by humans.[01:16:00]

So that's, in and of itself, scary. AI is generated and what they didn't, and they're trained on that model, you might get the sort of downward spiral effect. That's the concern people have. But when they talk about training on synthetic data, that concern does not apply because they are making data specifically for the purposes of passing benchmarks and they create data that are specifically good at making the models better.

So that's a different thing than sort of getting high on your own exhaust.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Right. But it leaves us in a culture where we're surrounded or have surround sound of synthetically created data or non human created data, potentially it's non human created information around

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: us. And this is how you can get to, without needing to invoke anything sci fi or anything AGI, how you can get to humans lose control.

Because this is really the social media story said again, which is everyone says like when an AI. starts to like, control humanity, just pull the plug, [01:17:00] but there is an AI in social media, it's the thing that's choosing what human beings see, that's already like, downgrading our democracies, all the things we normally say, um, and we haven't pulled the plug because it's become integral to the value of our economy and our stock market.

AI start to compete, say, in generating content in the attention economy, they will have seen everything on the internet, everything on Twitter. They will be able to make posts and images and songs and videos that are more engaging than anything that humans create. And because they are more engaging, they'll become more viral.

They will out compete the things that are sort of bespoke human made. You will be a fool if you don't use those for your ends. And now You know, essentially, the things that AI is generating will become the dominant form of our culture. That's another way of saying humans lost control.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: And to be clear, Aza's not saying [01:18:00] that the media or images or art generated by AI are better from a values perspective than the things that humans make.

What he's saying is they are more effective at playing the attention economy game. that social media has set up to be played because they're trained on what works best and they can simply out compete humans for that game. And they're already doing that.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: It's terrifying. Um, we'll, we'll still have art galleries in places that are offline though, that don't have um, AI generated content.

It'll,

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: it'll be art, artisanal art.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah. Artisanal art. Yeah.

SECTION B: BIG TECH LOBBYING

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Big Tech Lobbying.

Nathan Calvin on Californias AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy Part 2 - 80,000 Hours Podcast - Air Date 8-29-24

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: So we'll come back to more about what specifically is in the bill, uh, in a little bit, but I actually want to talk about kind of the proponents and the critics of the bill because it's become so incredibly controversial over the last few months and even just last week that I want to kind of look at that right off the bat.

So I guess, [01:19:00] who supports the bill? Who's in favor?

NATHAN CALVIN: There's a, uh, a really wide variety of, of supporters. I think some of the most high profile ones have been Jeffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio and Stuart Russell and Lawrence Lessig, kind of some of these, uh, you know, scientific and academic luminaries of the field.

I think there's also just a wide variety of, of different nonprofit and, uh, startups and different organizations that are supportive of it. Uh, SEIU, one of the largest unions in the United States is supportive of the bill. There are also some. AI startups including, uh, Imbue and, uh, Notion that are both in support of the legislation and wide variety of others, you know, like the Latino Community Foundation.

Like, there's just a lot of different kind of civil society and non profit orgs who have formally supported the bill and say that this is important.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: I think from memory, like the vast majority, or maybe it's like three quarters of Californians also in a poll really support the bill, which [01:20:00] that quite surprised me.

I don't think of basically any legislation ever having that much support. And probably that's wrong, but it still seems, it still seems just intuitively high to me. But yeah, let's talk about some of the opponents. Um, I guess naively, I guess naively, It's hard for me to understand why this bill has become so controversial.

Yeah, in particular, because my impression is that nearly all of the big AI companies have already adopted some version of this kind of exact set of policies internally. And you can correct me if I'm wrong there. But yeah, who AI companies? The bill's big opponents.

NATHAN CALVIN: Yeah. So I think maybe the loudest opponent has been Andreessen Horowitz, um, A16Z and some of their, their general partners have come out just, um, really, really strongly against the, the bill.

Um,

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: and just in case anyone's not familiar, they're like maybe the biggest investor. Ever, or, or at least in, in these technologies.

NATHAN CALVIN: Yeah. Yeah. I think that [01:21:00] they're in their category of VC firm and they're probably different ways of defining it. I think they're the largest, you know, I'm sure you could put it in different ways such that they're lower on that list or something, but they're extremely large venture capital, um, firm.

So I think there's a mix of different opponents. I think that's definitely one really significant one. I think there are also folks like Yann LeCun who has. called kind of a lot of the risk that the bill is considering, you know, science fiction and things like that. I think there has also just been kind of more quietly, but just like a lot of the kind of normal big tech interests of, you know, things like Google and the, uh, you know, tech net, like the trade associations that really kind of advocate on behalf of, of companies.

in legislative bodies have also been quite strongly against the bill. I think we've also seen some folks in, in Congress weigh in and, you know, most recently and notably, uh, Nancy Pelosi, which is a little bit painful to me as someone who's a fan of her [01:22:00] and then has a, you know, a ton of respect for her and everything that she's accomplished.

And, you know, can talk a little bit about that specifically as well, but yeah, there's a mix of, of different folks who have, who have come out against the bill. And I think they have. some overlapping and some different reasons and I agree that I'm a bit surprised by just how controversial and strong the reactions have been given how like relatively modest the legislation I think actually is and kind of how much it has been amended over the course of the process and even as it's been amended to address different issues it feels like the intensity of the opposition has kind of Increased in volume rather than decreased.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: I actually am curious about the Nancy Pelosi thing. Did she have particular criticisms? What was the opposition she voiced?

NATHAN CALVIN: I think it's a, a mix of things. I mean, I, I do think that she, she talked about the letter that, um, Fei Fei Lee wrote in opposition of the bill and [01:23:00] cited that. I do think that that letter has one part that just is false.

Like talking about how the. The shutdown requirements of the bill apply to open source models when they're specifically exempted from those requirements. I think that the other sense of it is just, you know, I think they're pointing to some of these existing kind of. Processes and convening that are happening federally and just, you know, saying that it's it's, you know, too early to really like instantiate these more specifically in law and that this is something that the the federal government should do rather than having states like California move forward with.

And I think our response is really that California has done similar things on. Data privacy and, uh, on green energy and lots of other things where Congress has been stalled and they've taken action. And I think we do this similarly, and obviously they have a, have a difference of opinion there. But I do think that if we wait for Congress to act itself, we might be waiting a very long time.

Tech's Big Money Campaign is Getting Pushback with Margaret O'Mara and Brody Mullins Part 3 - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-26-24

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: [01:24:00] So one of the things that we think a lot about at the Center for Humane Technology, I mean, we have so many obvious issues with social media degrading the quality of discourse, causing addiction, doomscrolling, skyrocketing mental health issues for, for youth, teen suicides. And we know the cause of it. We know that it's driven by this engagement based business model, the monetization of our attention.

And so given the sort of obviousness of this, one of the things that we've noticed is that you see tech companies saying, we're for regulation. We definitely need regulation and they'll say that publicly. And then behind the scenes there, they'll do every tactic possible to kind of block things. Um, I was at Senator Schumer's, uh, AI Insight Forum in front of all the CEOs, you know, Jensen Wong and Eric Schmidt and Bill Gates and everybody was there in one room, Zuckerberg, Elon.

And Schumer opened the meeting by having people raise their hand if they agreed that the federal government should regulate AI. Literally every single one of the CEOs hands went up. And yet, the next day, all of their policy teams went to work saying, well, yeah, but not these kinds of regulations. We've seen Meta come out publicly in [01:25:00] favor of Section 230 reform, for example, and other social media companies who support kids online safety.

So I'm just curious, how are you seeing the companies evolve their strategies in this sort of backroom opposition?

BRODY MULLINS: Yeah, you know, it's a fascinating area because, uh, unfortunately, you know, Congress is just so, they're, they're so ill equipped to passing any law on any topic at this point. And I think the tech companies and the AI companies are taking advantage of that.

I mean, Facebook has realized Congress is dysfunctional. They're not going to pass a law. So let's just say we support it and say, hey, you know, go for it. They basically challenged Congress to regulate them and Congress can't get its act together.

MARGARET O'MARA: Yeah, and this is not the first time in American history this has happened, you know, where, where industries say, Oh, yeah, regulate us.

Um, but also there's, you know, it's a good reminder too that Silicon Valley is never, there are many Silicon Valleys, right? There, and every company and every part of the tech world has its own, um, policy priorities, and they may not be in sync. You know, if you go back to the 1980s, the chip makers and the [01:26:00] PC makers didn't have policies in sync with one another.

Chip makers wanted to retain their market advantage. The PC makers wanted to have really cheap chips from Japan, so they didn't care if the market was flooded. Um, and we see the same thing playing out now, so, and, and yes, I think what Brody's point about the level of dysfunction. Um, this again was, was pertinent in the Gilded Age.

It's one reason he didn't have much regulation, business regulation coming out of the late 19th century either when you are able to play on those partisan differences and the fact that the two parties have different ways, different means towards the same end or have different priorities even within something like social media regulation or privacy regulation.

And so where the lead has been. taken or where, where regulations come has come from other geographies, notably from Europe.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: So I, we hear this a lot, obviously, that Congress is dysfunctional, it's never going to pass anything. I just want to add to that picture that there are deliberate ways that companies will sow division about an issue so that it [01:27:00] prevents action from being taken.

The example that I'm most familiar with is Facebook turning the argument about what's wrong with Facebook. Facebook. Facebook. into a question about whether it's free speech or censorship, because they know that that philosophical question literally will never resolve. There is no conversation that will ever say the answer is clearly one side or the other.

And they by doing so distracted people's attention from their core business model, which is monetizing maximum engagement and attention, which is what's driving the amplification of polarizing content, oral outrage, et cetera. And so I'm curious if you have reactions to that, that one of the further strategies companies are developing is finding ways not to, uh, to sit back, but actually frame debates, actively use communication to, um, stall by using a false dichotomy.

MARGARET O'MARA: Well, these, these are companies that are very good at, uh, very persuasive, and they're to have the very persuasive tools at their disposal. And yeah, that's right. Sort of changing the conversation is a, is a key, uh, a key tactic here. It's not something the tech industry invented. And the, the tech industry [01:28:00] has, has always positioned itself for a very long time as different a different kind of business, kind of higher, kinder, gentler capitalism, um, don't be evil capitalism.

Right? And that has been part of its great appeal. Um, and, and it's genuine. I think it's earnest. It comes from a, from a genuine place. It has a history. There's a reason behind it. But at the end of the day, These are companies, these are, you know, a C suite that's accountable to its shareholders. These are publicly traded companies, they're accountable to their investors, they're accountable.

So they aren't that different from any of the other lobbying industries in Washington. Wouldn't you agree, Brody?

BRODY MULLINS: Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, this could be a good point to talk a little bit about how lobbies change also that, you know, You know, these are not companies that are hiring, uh, connected lobbies to go up to Capitol Hill and try to get a member of Congress to support them.

They're running basically presidential campaigns on behalf of their issues. And the one of the first things that you want in a good presidential campaign or a good national campaign is a good, easy to understand motto or slogan. And you know, that's what, why these companies seem to have these, these good arguments.

I mean, [01:29:00] back to the SOPA PIPA fight that we talked about earlier, the 2012 shut down the internet day. Okay. Okay. Okay. Um, you know, the company's slogan was these bills will kill the Internet. SOPA, PIPA will kill the Internet. That absolutely was not true. But it galvanized Americans. All of a sudden, Americans who don't pay attention to Washington, don't pay attention to policy, who certainly couldn't tell you what PIPA or SOPA stood for, you know, were saying, what?

You're going to shut down. You're going to kill the Internet. You can't do that. And you're calling and say, don't shut down the Internet. Um, you know, I mean, that's a tactic that, that, that was being used even before then, but it's certainly something that tech companies have gotten better at now.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: And just to, well, just to slow you down for a second, because when you're saying they're running presidential campaigns, I think what you mean is that, like, a presidential campaign is a nationwide thing that takes hundreds of millions of dollars to sway public opinion, and I hear you saying that each of these campaigns about certain regulations or about certain things are, these aren't subtle things, these are multi hundred million dollar campaigns sweeping the entire nation.

BRODY MULLINS: Is that right? Absolutely. Uh, and what these companies [01:30:00] do, particularly when they're in a big legislative or policy fight is sort of set up, uh, legislative war rooms and they run these presidential campaigns not to elect a individual, but for a public policy issue. Um, so they have pollsters and they have grassroots organizers and they have poll tested messages and, you know, television ads.

Um, I mean, one of the reasons that some of these Uh, antitrust bills got killed in the Senate is that the tech companies went out to key, uh, states and ran ads saying, you know, don't let these bills pass. And that scared senators who thought that, uh, the tech industry could turn those ads against them in their reelection bids.

Um, so, uh, yeah, I mean, these, these tactics and campaigns and strategy are way more sophisticated than they used to be and, and much more like a presidential campaign than what most people think a lobbying campaign is about. Um, I

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: mean, that's wild to me. Even as an industry insider, it's wild to think about.

And I think when you, when you think about lobbying, you think about backroom deals, you think about, oh, you scratch my back, I scratch yours, you [01:31:00] pass this law. Not a hundred million dollar coordinated multi year influence campaign across, you know, I mean, it's just the scale is, is just unbelievable.

MARGARET O'MARA: And this is a story of money.

I mean, this is reflecting that these companies, the industry and its largest companies have just piles and piles and piles of money. It's money they're throwing into building AI and they're throwing into these public policy campaigns. I mean, we think about the industries that are the biggest Washington lobbyists, um, by spend.

Um, they also happen to be the most profitable, um, pharma, oil and gas, and now tech.

Nathan Calvin on Californias AI bill SB 1047 and its potential to shape US AI policy Part 3 - 80,000 Hours Podcast - Air Date 8-29-24

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: Yeah, actually, can you give more context on that? Anthropic submitted a letter that basically said they'd support the bill if it was amended in particular ways. Is that right?

NATHAN CALVIN: Yeah, and I think one important clarification that is I think some people interpreted a supportive amended to imply that they are currently opposed.

Uh, that's like not technically what it [01:32:00] was. They were currently neutral and they were saying that if you do these things, we will support.

LUIS RODRIGUEZ - HOST, 80,000 HOURS PODCAST: We will actively support it. Okay. That is reassuring to me. I did, I did interpret it as, uh, we, we oppose it at the moment.

NATHAN CALVIN: Yeah. Yeah. And again, there's some vagueness in it.

Yes. In this instance, that was not, not what was happening. Um, and I still think there are. These are large companies who I think have some of the incentives that large companies do, and you know, I think Anthropic is a company that is taking these things really seriously, and I think is pioneering some of these measures, but I also think that they're, they're still a large company are going to deal with some of the incentive issues that large companies have.

Um, and yeah, I, I really, you know, I think it's a little bit unfortunate, I think, how some of their engagement was interpreted in terms of opposition. And I think they do deserve some credit, I think, coming to the table here in a way that I think was, was actually helpful. But I think, you know, stepping back from Anthropic specifically and kind of thinking about folks who are opposing this, it's not like Anthropic is in any way like lobbying [01:33:00] against the, the bill, but there are other ones that certainly are.

And to some degree it's, it's not surprising. And it's a thing that, you know, I think we've seen before. And it's worth remembering of, you know, like Zuckerberg in his testimony in front of Congress, you know, said like, Oh, I want to be regulated. And, you know, it's a thing that you, you hear from lots of folks where they say, I want to be regulated, but then what they really mean is I want to regulate it in the exact way.

Basically, I want you to mandate for the rest of the industry, what I am doing now, and I want to just like self certify that what I'm doing now is happening. And that's it. That, that, that, that is, I think often what this really, um, And so there's some way in which it's like easy for them to support regulation in the abstract, but when they kind of look at it and, and again, like, I think there's some aspect here of, I think even within these companies of folks who care about safety, I think there's a reaction that says, you know, I understand this much better than the government does.

I kind of trust my own judgment about, you know, how to manage these trade offs and what is [01:34:00] safe, kind of better than, than some, some bureaucrat. And. You know, really it's ultimately good for me to just kind of make that decision. And there are like parts of that view that, that, you know, like, I guess I can understand how someone comes to, but I just think that it ends up in a really dysfunctional place.

You know, it's worth saying like, I am quite enthusiastic about AI and think that has like genuinely a ton of promise and is super cool. And part of the reason I work in this space is because like, I find it extremely cool and interesting and amazing. And just think that like, Some of these things are just some of the most remarkable things that humans have created and it is amazing.

And I think there is just a thing here of that this is a collective action problem where you have this goal of safety and investing more and kind of, you know, making this technology act in our, in our interests versus like trying to make as much money as possible and release things as quickly as possible and left to their own devices.

Companies are going to [01:35:00] choose the latter. And I do think that you need to Government to actually come in and say that you have to take these things seriously and that that's necessary. And I think that if we do wait until a really horrific catastrophe does happen, I think you might be quite likely to get regulation that I think is actually a lot less nuanced and deferential than what this bill is.

And so I think there's some level where they are being self interested in a way that, you know, that that was not really a surprise to me, but I think maybe the thing that I feel more strongly about is that like. I think they are not actually doing a good job of evaluating their long term self interest.

I think they are really focused on like, how do I get this stuff off my back for the near future and get to do whatever I want, and are not really thinking about what this is going to mean for them in the longer term. And I, I think that that has been a little bit disheartening to me. Um, I guess like one, one last thing I'll say here is I, I do think that there is a [01:36:00] really significant sentiment.

Among parts of the opposition that it's not really just that this bill itself is, is that bad or extreme that when you really like drill into it, like again, it is, it's, it's kind of a feels like one of those things where you like read it and it's like, this is the thing that everyone is. Screaming about, it's just like, I think it's like a pretty modest bill, um, in a lot of ways, but I think part of what they are thinking is that like, this is, you know, the first step to shutting down AI development or kind of that, like, if California does this, then lots of other states are going to do it.

And that kind of, we need to like really slam the door shut on model level regulation or else, you know, they're just going to keep going. And I think that that is like a lot of. What the sentiment here is it's like less about in some ways like the details of this specific bill and more about the sense that like They want this to stop here and that they're worried that if they like Give an inch that there will continue to be other things in the future And I don't think that is going to be tolerable [01:37:00] to the public in the long run And I think it's a bad choice, but I think that is the the calculus that they are making.

SECTION C: REGULATION

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Next up, Section C: Regulation.

The DOJ beat Google in court. Now what - POLITICO Tech - Air Date 8-19-24

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Can you set the stage for us a little bit, Doha, and tell us why this ruling is so important?

DOHA MEKKI: Sure, so the Justice Department has been enforcing the antitrust laws on behalf of the United States for a very long time, more than a century, and there are certain cases that are just synonymous with antitrust enforcement, um, standard oil.

AT& T, Microsoft, and now we have a fourth, which is United States versus Google, and the reason this is a really big deal is this is the most important case about the Internet since the invention of the Internet, and it's not very often that you get dense, meaty, [01:38:00] Opinions from federal courts. This one happened to be 277 pages, clearly outlining how a company can use its dominance to illegally maintain its monopoly power.

And the last time we did this was actually United States versus Microsoft, which is a case that was filed in 1998. And as I'm sure we'll get a chance to talk about, there are a lot of really important ways in which. United States versus Google, which is about Google's power in Internet search as all of us know it today and certain advertising markets that it uses to monetize its search functions really rhymes with Microsoft and you see it up and down the opinion.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Well, we will get into that. It has been reported that breaking up Google is now a next step under consideration. I know this litigation is ongoing and you are limited in how much you can talk about it, but we do have to ask, you know, is that something actually on the table?

DOHA MEKKI: You correctly predicted that that is [01:39:00] not something that I can talk about because this is live litigation.

What I can say is that there is a process. Um, what the court did last week was hand down what is called a liability opinion, right? It found that Google is in fact a monopolist and that it had violated section two. And the next step is to, um, work with the court to, um, figure out a process for what a remedy looks like.

And so the last thing I would want to do is get out ahead of the court.

JOSH SISCO: So, I mean, that is where. The rubber meets the road on this case is what happens next. Now we have to see how Google's business will change. Whatever ends up happening, if it doesn't force meaningful change, is this case, is this all for not?

DOHA MEKKI: So I have to challenge the premise. The liability decision means a lot. And as public enforcers, um, we attach significant meaning to the [01:40:00] liability phase. And that's because that is when the public gets a full accounting of what we thought the problem was. It's when the public gets to hear from witnesses that get to tell the story of not only how, but potentially why Google maintained.

It's monopoly power and ways that were ultimately found to violate the law. And so there's a lot of power and public accountability. And of course, we are very gratified that the court agreed with us that Google did, in fact, violate section 2 of the search Sherman act and is a monopolist. I think it's too soon to say exactly.

What a remedy might look like again, that is up to the court and we look forward to our role in helping to inform that, but I would not undercount or understate the power of a decision like this to transform not only how Google conducts itself, but how. These markets may evolve in the [01:41:00] future. And I think that without talking about this specific case, I think you can look to examples from other Section 2 cases like Standard Oil, like AT& T, like Microsoft to understand the power of a case like this, right?

A monopolization case to affect innovation going forward.

JOSH SISCO: You brought up Microsoft and there's a long history there that we can't really get into all those details, but this was the last time that the government took on a company of this stature. The government tried, came close, ultimately didn't break up Microsoft, but you went through this whole very prolonged convoluted remedy proceeding there.

Um, how was that informing what you guys are going to do now?

DOHA MEKKI: So I think there are potentially a few Lessons to draw again [01:42:00] without speaking about USB Google specifically, it's it's good to be a good student of history about Microsoft. And so you might recall that when the USB Microsoft case was filed, the government did consider.

Breakups, right? Those were on the table. And what ultimately changed was decisions by new leaders. Uh, specifically, Charles James became the assistant attorney general, um, and ultimately made a decision, uh, to, uh, work out. What is essentially behavioral remedies with Microsoft as opposed to a breakup and so, um, you know, I, I can't sort of comment on that decision, but we can learn really important aspects of the Microsoft decree that again, many people will tell you were effective in making sure that Microsoft could not continue to abuse its monopoly power.

There is a monitor. There is a technical committee. There were affirmative and negative. [01:43:00] Obligations on Microsoft, um, in terms of how it engaged in these markets. And I think that there are, um, very obvious ways in which it was successful, right? It, um, ushered in different browsers. Um, companies like Google were able to offer search engines.

Um, and I, again, I think nobody would dispute that those were good things. I think what does become hotly contested is how much markets might have changed on their own apps and intervention. versus the efficacy of the actual decree.

Newsoms AI dilemma To sign or not to sign Part 2 - POLITICO Tech - Air Date 9-6-24

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: You know, this isn't the only AI bill in California. Lawmakers introduced more than 60 of them this session. What other bills passed?

JEREMY WHITE: So to an extent that I think surprised some observers, a lot of the major bills actually did not make it to the governor's desk.

I'm thinking, for example, of a bill to outlaw automated decision making systems that display bias and [01:44:00] choices around Things like housing and hiring a bill to watermark or identify AI generated content. Um, so there were, there were certainly some big ticket items that did not make it to the governor's desk.

I think that's a reflection of the industry's, um, engagement on this one. There are a couple I'm watching, however, uh, dealing with elections, one of which would require companies to. take down deepfakes when they're flagged, another which would criminalize people who intentionally share misleading deepfakes in a campaign context.

The governor responded a few weeks back to Elon Musk sharing a deepfake of Kamala Harris by saying he would sign a bill outlawing what Elon Musk had done. Not a lot of detail about what bill the governor was talking about, either from the governor's office or from lawmakers, but the governor certainly signaled that he intended to do something on the sort of election interference and misinformation front.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: The California [01:45:00] legislature has such an interesting relationship with Silicon Valley, because, you know, tech drives a huge part of the state's economy, and yet California regulators, like, tend to be quite heavy handed. With the industry, how does a I kind of fit into that dynamic?

JEREMY WHITE: I would say that in recent years we have seen a shift in the dynamic in Sacramento, where lawmakers have been increasingly willing.

To regulate these industries to say, look, these might be economic drivers, but we have to think about the societal impact. You've seen that with the gig companies like Uber, you've seen that with the social media companies like Meta, and now you're seeing it with AI. The consistent message from these lawmakers is we don't want to stop this industry.

We see that there are many benefits. We want to regulate it responsibly, and they see a cautionary tale in areas like social media where there's a widespread consensus that it got out of control before [01:46:00] lawmakers had the ability to regulate it. I think it's notable that the state senator carrying this bill Major safety bill.

Scott Wiener represents San Francisco and has certainly seen a lot of people, including people who have supported him politically opposing this bill. And so that dynamic has been there for a while. And I do think that tension between lawmakers wanting to regulate these society transforming technologies and lawmakers seeing that there are, um, Real economic benefits and a lot of political clout with these companies.

Um, I, I think there's a real collision there and it's, it's a needle that they're, they're always trying to thread. And I would just add that, again, this is one where there is a widespread perception that Gavin Newsom falls a little more on the side of the economic benefits, not to mention the tax revenue that these industries bring.

STEVEN OVERLY - HOST, POLITICO TECH: Right. What is the significance, you think, of all of this now? going forward. Obviously, it will depend on whether Newsom signs the bill or not. But what impact do you ultimately think this could have?

JEREMY WHITE: That's a great [01:47:00] question. I think part of why these bills are so contested is that everyone recognizes if California does something here, it's essentially setting a standard for the country.

On the other hand, I think if Gavin Newsom vetoes it, it'll be interesting to see to what extent that motivates Washington to get more into this. On the other hand, I have no doubt that Scott Wiener, um, who's a pretty dogged legislator, is going to try again, even if this one gets vetoed. And so it'll be interesting to see if, uh, the governor's decision here resolves that tension between Capitol Hill and Sacramento or ramps it up.

The DOJ beat Google in court. Now what Part 2 - POLITICO Tech - Air Date 8-19-24

JOSH SISCO: So I wanted to sort of broaden out a little bit here at, uh, you guys have a number of other cases. The FTC has a number of other cases against large tech companies. You have another case coming up against Google. How are you sort of thinking about the impact of this case going for on, on your other matters?

DOHA MEKKI: So I think it validates the approach. [01:48:00] We worked very hard to put on a trial that was clear eyed and persuasive about market realities. Um, one of the things that makes antitrust kind of hard to understand for ordinary people, even the policy wonks and, um, folks who are really comfortable with technical stuff here in DC is that it seems very econometrically focused.

It's technocratic and it's difficult to understand, but here's a product. That almost all of us use and by explaining to the court with people who have real experience trying to bring these products to market. In many cases, Google's own executives, we were able to be more persuasive and kind of marry up the goals of the law with how these markets actually function.

And I think that that's something that you will see. In a lot of our cases, you know, you mentioned the Google ad tech case. That is a separate [01:49:00] litigation. That trial is starting in a courthouse in the eastern district of Virginia, um, on September 9th, but remember that that case is about digital advertising technologies, right?

So that case is about. Um, how Google owns a lot of the infrastructure that advertisers and publishers rely on to show you what's called open web display ads. And that's, that's different from the products that were at issue here. Um, but again, without, um, prejudging that recognizing that it's a, uh, live litigation, have, I think.

People should expect a very similar approach, which is to be experts on how these markets actually function and to, um, Do the best job we can possibly muster to tell persuasive stories about what monopoly power looks like, what it feels like, what it sounds like, but also how the effects of it [01:50:00] really reverberate for ordinary people.

And so when I think about a case like Google search, we told a story about, um. All of the innovation that we really lost out on and how the markets could have been more vibrant but for, um, some of the conduct that we saw and so like to put this in real terms for some of your listeners, you know, imagine a world in which we had, um, five or 10 different search engines, um, maybe.

You know, someone compete on privacy, right? Some would be particularly good for, um, I don't know. People have a particular interest. Um, there has been really interesting writing about, um, how the ability to conduct Internet searches empowers women to make decisions about. Their lives, including in the context of reproductive freedom and choices about their bodies.

And so again, [01:51:00] that restriction of consumer choice is a really important value and antitrust. And when companies resort to a legal means to maintain that power and maintain that control really limits our ability to make decisions about how we want to live our lives.

JOSH SISCO: You've been at the division for about 10 years, I think that's maybe a little bit less than I've been up than I've been on this beat when I first started on, you know, covering this, it was a fairly sleepy technocratic area of the law.

Uh, it wasn't, it didn't get anywhere near the attention that it has now, and that has changed over the last four or five years. And so I'm wondering, like. What do you think are the biggest differences in like the administration's approach to antitrust and how that shift has been for you?

DOHA MEKKI: Yeah. So this is my third administration.

And so I've been really pleased to see bipartisan interest in antitrust. But I'm also not surprised to see it. I think there are many, uh, [01:52:00] really smart people who have tried to unpack why antitrust is having a resurgence or whether, you know, why the public is more interested in antitrust and I think an explanation that I've often found.

Really compelling is that, you know, after the financial crisis, there was, you know, the two tiered recovery. Um, there were concerns about wage stagnation. Um, there was concern about the hauling out of the middle of the country. And I think that brought questions about political economy kind of to the fore and antitrust is not a great tool for answering.

All of those questions, but it does speak to things like economic coercion and the power of corporations over citizens. And what happened, I think, is that there was more research and more scholarship. That really reoriented all of us with the roots of antitrust and concerns. The founders may have had about corporations that [01:53:00] wield their power in ways that hurt citizens.

We're putting ourselves, you know, at bird's eye level with the corporate executives and market participants that are making decisions and trying to understand markets as they are, and then syncing that up with the facts. And so I think that's been the change. Um, I think there are ways in which we've been very successful and telling those stories, but no doubt there's more for us to do.

Um, and we're always learning about how markets actually work, um, and ways that corporate conduct may be hurting people and hurting innovation.

SECTION D: THINKING THROUGH SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally, Section D: Thinking Through Solutions.

This Moment in AI How We Got Here and Where Were Going Part 3 - Your Undivided Attention - Air Date 8-12-24

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, well, that's a really good segue into what I wanted to talk about next, actually, which is that the work that CHT has been doing on AI is really on a continuum to the work that The organization first started to do on social media and you [01:54:00] know, I think that's something people don't always understand very well, so I'd love for you to have a go at explaining that.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah. The, the key thing to understand that con, that connects our work on social media to AI is the focus on how good intentions with technology. Aren't enough. And it's about how the incentives that are driving, how that technology gets rolled out or designed or you know, adopted leads to, you know, worlds that are not the ones that we want.

You know, a joke that I remember making ISA when we were at AI for Good was, imagine you go back 15 years and we went to a conference called Social Media for Good. I could totally imagine that conference. In fact, I think I almost went to some of those conferences back in the day because we were all.

Everyone was so excited about the opportunities that social media presented and me included. I remember hearing Biz Stone, the co-founder of Twitter on the radio in 2009, talking about someone sending a tweet in Kenya and getting retweeted twice and suddenly, everybody in the United States saw it within 15 seconds.

And it's like, that's amazing. That's so powerful. And who's not intoxicated by that? And [01:55:00] those good use cases. Are still true. The question was, is that enough to get to the good world where technology is, you know, net synergistically improving the overall state and health of the society? And the challenge is that it is gonna keep providing these good examples, but the incentives underneath social media we're gonna derive systemic harm or systemic weakening of society.

Shortening of attention spans more division, less of a. Of, uh, information commons driven by truth, but more the incentives of clickbait, uh, the outrage economy, so on and so forth. And so the same thing here. Here we are 15 years later, we're at the UN AI for Good Conference. It's not about the good things AI can do, it's about are we incentivizing AI to systemically roll out in a way that's strengthening societies?

That's the question.

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: It's worth pausing there because. It's not like we are anti AI or anti technology, right? Like, it's not that we are placing attention on just the bad things AI can do. [01:56:00] That's, it's not about us saying like, let's look at all the catastrophic risks that's, or the existential risks.

That's not That's not the vantage point we take. The vantage point we take are, what are the fragilities in our society that we are going to expose with new technology that are going to undermine our ability to have all those incredible benefits? That is the place we have to point our attention to. We have a responsibility to point our attention to, and I wish there were more conferences that weren't just AI for good, but AI for, you know, making sure that things continue.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Just one metaphor to add on top of that that I've liked using re recently is that you, you've, um, mentioned a few times is this Jenga metaphor. Like, you know, we all want a taller and more amazing building of benefits that AI can get us. But there's, imagine two ways of getting to that building. One way is we build that taller and taller building by pulling out more and more blocks from the bottom.

So we get cool AI [01:57:00] art that we love, but by creating DeepFakes that undermine people's understanding of what's true and what's real in society. We get new cancer drugs, but by also creating AI that can speak the language of biology and enable all sorts of new biological threats at the same time. So we are not people who are, you know, we are clearly acknowledging the tower is getting taller and more impressive exponentially faster every year because of the pace of scaling and compute and all the forces we're talking about.

But isn't there a different way to build that tower? than to keep pulling out more and more blocks from the bottom. That's the essence of the change that we're trying to make in the world.

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: And this is why, just to tie it back to something you said before, half lighting is so dangerous, because half lighting says I'm only going to look at the blocks I placed on the top, but I'm going to ignore that I'm doing it by pulling a block out from the bottom.

That's right, exactly.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Okay, so what are some solutions to these problems? What kind of policies can we bring in [01:58:00] on a national level?

AZA RASKIN - CO-HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, there are efforts underway to work on a sort of more general federal liability coming out of product law for AI. And I just wanted to have a call out to our very talented policy team at CHT, uh, You know, our leaders there, Casey Mock and Camille Carlton, they're often more behind the scenes, but you'll be able to listen to them in one of our upcoming episodes to talk about specific AI policy ideas around liability.

And another just sort of very common sense solution, and we can tie this back to the Jenga metaphor, is how much money, how much investment should be going into upgrading our governance. So we can say that at least, you know, like 15, 25 percent of every dollar spent of the trillions of dollars going into making AI more capable should go into upgrading our ability to govern [01:59:00] and steer AI as well as the defenses for our society.

Right now, we are nowhere near that level.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah. But who makes the decision about what should be spent on safety? I mean, is that something that happens on a federal level? Is that something that happens on an international level? Or do we trust the companies to make those decisions for themselves? ,

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: you don't, you can't trust the companies to make decisions for themselves because then it becomes an arms race for who can hide their costs better and spend the least amount on it, which is exactly what's happening.

It's a, it's a race to the bottom. As soon as someone says, I'm not gonna spend any money on safety, and suddenly I'm gonna spend the extra money on GPUs and going faster and having a bigger, more impressive AI model so I can get even more investment money. That's how they win the race. And so it has to be something that's binding all the actors together.

We don't have international laws that can make that happen for everyone, but you can at least start nationally and use that to set international norms that globally we should be putting 25 percent of those budgets into it.

SASHA FAGAN - PRODUCER, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: So this conversation, like a lot of the conversations we have on the show can [02:00:00] feel a little bit disempowering because it can be hard to get a sense of progress on these issues. But there have actually been some big wins for the movement and I'd love to get your guys thoughts on these, especially on the social media side.

TRISTAN HARRIS - HOST, YOUR UNDIVIDED ATTENTION: Yeah, um, there's actually a lot of progress being made on some of the other issues that CHT has worked on, including the Surgeon General of the United States, Vivek Murthy, actually issued a call for a warning label on social media. And while that might seem, like, kind of empty, or like, what is that really going to do, if you look back to the history of big tobacco, the Surgeon General's warning was a key part of establishing new social norms, that, that cigarettes and tobacco were, were illegal.

And I think that we need that set of social norms for social media. You know, another thing that happened is, you know, this group, Mothers Against Media Addiction, that we talked about the need for that to exist a couple years ago, uh, Julie Scalfo has been leading the charge. And that has led to, you know, in person protests in front of Meta's campus in New York and other places.

And I believe Julie and Mama were actually present in New York when they did the ban of infinite [02:01:00] scrolling. Recently in New York State legislatures, there's been 23 state legislatures that have passed social media reform laws and the Kids Online Safety Act just passed the United States Senate, which is a landmark achievement.

I don't think something has gotten this far in tech regulation in a very long time. And President Biden said he'll sign it if it comes across his desk, and that would be amazing. You know, and this would create a duty of care for minors that use the platform, which would mean that the platforms are required to take reasonable measures to reform design for better outcomes.

It doesn't regulate how minor search in the platform, um, which deals with the issue that would have a chilling effect on, on free speech, or especially issues on L-G-B-T-Q minors. So this is, I think, progress to celebrate.

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: That's going to be it for today. As always keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected]. The Additional Sections of the show included clips from Andrewism, Your Undivided Attention, [02:02:00] The 80,000 Hours Podcast, and Politico Tech. Further details are in the show notes.

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 Quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew, for their volunteer work helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being no ads and chapter markers in all of our regular episodes, all through your regular podcast player. And 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 [02:03:00] 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

#1654 Demographics of Democracy: Decoding cohorts of voters that will decide the election (Transcript)

Posted by · September 10, 2024 5:30 AM

Air Date 9/10/2024

[00:00:00]

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left Podcast. It's said that we live in a melting pot here in the US. Perhaps it's more of a salad bar, who knows. In any case, there are a lot of people coming from a lot of different backgrounds, cultures, histories, and geographies, all about to vote in a few weeks. Today, we try to understand at least roughly how people's backgrounds influence their vote.

Sources providing our top takes in about 50 minutes today, include the NPR Politics Podcast, What A Day, The Wall Street Journal State of the Stat, AJ+, Brown University, and Vox. Then, in the additional deeper dives half the show, there'll be more on three cohorts, or give or take. Section A is a bit of a mixed bag actually, including discussions on LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish, and Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. Section B [00:01:00] is on Latino and Black voters, and section C is White and rural voters.

A conversation about how demographic changes could impact the 2024 election - The NPR Politics Podcast - Air Date 9-3-24

SARAH MCCAMMON - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Let's start with a group we hear a lot about, white voters without college degrees. Domenico, they're a key group because they're just a really big group in this country, right? How have their numbers changed?

DOMENICO MONTANARO - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Yeah, they are a big group in the country. In fact, in all of the seven swing states that we're paying attention to—the three blue-wall states: Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, the four sunbelt states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, and Nevada—they are the largest, single group, but they're on the decline everywhere, which makes the job for Trump and his campaign to turn out these voters a lot more difficult.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: They're a key group for Trump, and they're a shrinking share of the electorate, essentially, right?

DOMENICO MONTANARO - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Yeah, they are. And when you look at all the seven states, they've gone down a couple points just since 2020, and if you zoom out and go back to, 2008, [00:02:00] take Wisconsin, for example, was 66 percent non college, white voters. Now it's only down to about 58-59%. So that's a big shift. And you're also seeing an increase in those blue-wall states of white voters with college degrees, which is a group that's now moved more heavily toward Democrats, a group that had been pretty heavily Republican in years past. And now Trump has really traded out those white college educated voters, who tend to vote in higher numbers, for these lower propensity voters. And that is a big warning sign potentially for his team, especially when their turnout operation is also a big question mark.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: But one interesting and important thing about this group, the white, non college voters, these voters are actually quite different depending on where in the country you're talking about.

DOMENICO MONTANARO - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: Yeah, that's absolutely true. Voters without college degrees who are white in the blue-wall states, for example, vote very differently than those same [00:03:00] voters in North Carolina and Georgia, the two Southern states that are part of this group of swing states.

When you look at the voters in North Carolina and Georgia, they voted something like 78-79% for Trump in 2020. When you look at the blue-wall states, they're only about the high 50s 60% for Trump, and that really makes a big difference. And that's something that Kamala Harris is continuing to try and do, which is reduce the margins with some of these heavy Trump groups.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: What I find most interesting about all this is yes, college educated voters are more likely to vote, so therefore this is a net positive for Democrats, but I would argue this does present a optics challenge for Democrats, right? The party has long promoted itself as the party on the side of the working man, so to speak, so it's not surprising that there is some concern that non-college, white voters having slipping support there is a problem. That's why you see so much jockeying for the union vote, for example. But I think this [00:04:00] concentration of college educated folks in the party is going to present an interesting issue as the party tries to tackle its elitism problem.

I think overall it is going to be interesting to see if this is a high turnout election or a low turnout election, because what we've seen is because so many higher education white voters are concentrated in the Democratic Party, it has been easier for Democrats to overperform in low turnout like special elections, but if this is a high turnout election, I'm curious to see what this would mean.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: And Domenico, when it comes to the white voters with college degrees, I think I heard you say they're becoming higher propensity voters. What's happening with that group?

DOMENICO MONTANARO - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: White college educated voters are among the highest propensity voters, about eight in ten of them vote in every election, as compared to white voters without college degrees, only about six in ten of them vote in these elections. The Trump folks see that as an opportunity, but in an election like this one, when turnout experts say it's going to be lower turnout than 2020 because of the lack of mail in [00:05:00] voting everywhere in the same way that it was during the pandemic, that these lower propensity voters tend to then go on the decline in those lower turnout elections.

But what we're seeing is in the blue-wall states in particular, the white population in those states is more educated than at any other time. Whites with degrees are up eight points in Pennsylvania, six points in Wisconsin, five points in Michigan since 2008. In Wisconsin alone, they're up four points just since 2020. And this really has to do with sort of the reshaping of the rust belt, where the jobs are.

There was a time, obviously, when people could have jobs in factories, have two cars, own a home, maybe even have a vacation house somewhere. That's no longer the case, and the younger population knows that they need to get college degrees, and we're seeing that. Help increase the college educated white population in those states and that's helping Democrats.

SARAH MCCAMMON - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: So interesting. How does that translate into messaging from the campaigns and a turnout strategy? I'm thinking back to 2016 when we [00:06:00] heard Trump talk about I'm for the educated and the not so educated. He clearly knew who some of his constituency was, but what does it look like now?

DOMENICO MONTANARO - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: The fact is, when we're talking about who these groups are appealing to with Democrats appealing more to white college, educated voters, and Republicans and Trump specifically appealing to white voters without college degrees, that means it's going to be a lot harder work for the Trump campaign to turn out their voters. And generally, now that we're past Labor Day, this is the time for mobilization. And the Trump folks have had a real question mark around their turnout operation.

The Democrats have way more staffers on the ground. They have more volunteers that more offices. Of course Trump bucked those trends in 2016 as well, so we'll see what happens cause he has a very devoted and loyal base.

ASHLEY LOPEZ - CO-HOST, NPR POLITICS PODCAST: This is also why they're trying to increase support among groups that Trump has been doing a little better with compared to Republicans in the past, like Latino men and Black men in particular, because [00:07:00] there's only so much electorally you can draw from with just white, non-college educated.

The Gender Gap Is Widening In The 2024 Election - What A Day - Air Date 9-4-24

Juanita Tolliver: There is a growing gender divide among voters who support Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, and a lot of the movement is happening among white voters. According to a recent ABC Washington Post Ipsos poll, Vice President Harris has a 13 point advantage among women voters, and Trump has a five point advantage among men, and that’s an 18 point gap between the two groups.

Priyanka Aribindi: Wow. Okay. Very stark here. You mentioned that most of the movement has been happening with white voters. So how have they been shifting?

Juanita Tolliver: Yeah, the biggest change since the Democratic convention has been among white women, as Trump dropped from a plus 13 advantage among white women pre convention to now only plus two, which is within the margin of error for this poll. And then there are the white men who are flocking to Trump as his numbers jumped from plus [00:08:00] 13 to plus 21 in the same time period.

Priyanka Aribindi: Wow.

Juanita Tolliver: Now, when we consider these numbers, we have to keep in mind the reality that according to the US Bureau of the census, current population reports, women have registered and voted at higher rates than men since 1980. So when it comes to voter power, it’s important to watch how women move.

Priyanka Aribindi: Listen, based on what you’ve told me, that sounds A-okay to me, but really, such a divide here. How much weight should we give this gender gap as we get closer and closer to November?

Juanita Tolliver: Like I always tell you, with every poll, this is merely a snapshot of the current moment. But there are reasonable questions to ask about the gender gap in the context of which issues motivate these splits, like the Supreme Court’s decision in Dobbs that overturned the right to abortion access. Also, how the divide is impacted when you consider race, age, and more.

To dig into all of this. I spoke with Zack Beauchamp, senior correspondent for Vox, covering challenges to democracy and [00:09:00] author of the book The Reactionary Spirit: How America’s Most Insidious Political Tradition Swept the World. Here’s our conversation.

So you wrote a piece back in March where you questioned the idea of a growing political divide between men and women, but given the recent polling that shows the gender gap growing between Harris and Trump voters, do you still think that divide’s overstated, at least when we’re talking specifically about American voters?

Zack Beauchamp: The honest answer to that question is I don’t know. I don’t know because pre-election polling when it comes to demographic subgroups it can often be very unreliable. Right now, men and women are a sort of different case because they’re pretty large sample sizes. But also when you look at the attempts to try to figure out where this gender divide is coming from, you often end up looking at really small demographic sub slices like Gen Z men and women. There you’re going to run into significant sample size problems, and there’s going to be a lot of variation in each individual poll. And so you end up getting these polls, you’ve seen them a lot in this cycle, that showed Trump getting an [00:10:00] improbably large percentage of Black voters, for example, one that would defy anything close yeah–

Juanita Tolliver: Cough cough. Yes. Yes. I see that all the time.

Zack Beauchamp: Some of those things are just not happening, and they’re probably a result of there being statistical noise in the sample randomness can generate random stuff, that’s how it works. That’s all a big caveat, though. It’s entirely possible that there is a growing gender divide in American politics. And when I wrote that article that you talked about a second ago, my conclusion wasn’t, this isn’t happening, it’s we don’t have enough evidence to know for sure that it’s happening. There’s some evidence. It’s very preliminary, it’s very new, and we don’t know how durable these patterns are. We don’t know how significant they are, and we know, based on past elections that the gender gap is typically overstated and, generally speaking, dwarfed by gaps inside of genders.

White women and Black women vote much more differently than men and women do. Same thing with white men and Black men. We could go on down the list— race, [00:11:00] religion, sexual orientation, age, all of these tend to be more important than gender, historically. Again, that might change, and there’s some reasons to think it may in fact be changing, but I’m still on the cautious side, just because of how often this kind of thing gets overstated.

Juanita Tolliver: I appreciate the caution, but I do want to focus on the evidence around this election in which gender has become a major issue. Polls show Harris has increased her margin over Trump with women voters by about 13 points, but that divide was there when President Biden was the presumptive nominee. So, we know reproductive rights has been a big issue driving women to Democrats in particular. But what else is pushing women voters to the left right now?

Zack Beauchamp: A few of the plausible guesses include first, there’s a growing educational gap among women and men. Women are increasingly more likely to enroll in and graduate from college than men are. And we know that education tends to make people... well, I should be cautious about that. We know that people who have college degrees are [00:12:00] more likely to be Democrats. We don’t really know why. That’s another one of those fun puzzles that we’ve got in American politics. Where you look at these things and you have a bunch of different theories, you don’t really know why it’s true. But if it’s the case that women are increasingly making up the ranks of college graduates, men are less likely to graduate. That means that women are probably more likely to become Democrats disproportionately.

Another theory is that it’s generational. Like Dobbs is part of it, maybe a really big part. But another part would be that a lot of women who are younger now were socialized in a moment where gender politics and conflict over gender became really salient, a really important part of their experience. I’m talking Donald Trump running for president after the grab them by the pussy comments, the MeToo movement that came after that, the rise of a lot of young men paying attention to misogynist influencers, people like Andrew Tate.

If you’re a young woman in high school and the men are listening to a guy who is, there’s a lot of very good evidence that he’s an actual sex trafficker, and [00:13:00] that’s who they’re looking to for dating advice and advice about how to be a man in the modern world, it would make sense that a lot of women would come to see politics through the lens of gender. And that’s why a lot of the arguments about this, they tend to focus on younger women, because the divide is not very evident in older generations. But there’s some preliminary polling that you pointed to that tends to suggest a massive divide between young men and young women in political preferences. Again, we’ll see if that’s borne out in November. It may or may not be.

Juanita Tolliver: I do want to go to the flip side of that and hear your theories as it relates to men, because American men have been riding with Trump and Republicans.

Zack Beauchamp: But the thing I want to add, this is like a little fun wrinkle, is that it’s actually not that young men are more conservative than older generations. There is some evidence that a fringe of young men listen to these Andrew Tate type figures, but actually, on average, a Gen Z man is more likely to be left leaning than someone in older generations. Maybe not [00:14:00] millennials, but certainly older than that. But what’s really happened is that young women have swung really hard to the left. So a lot of the explanation is less what happened to men then what’s going on with women and why again if the state is right, why are women so left wing. That’s one of the things that we have to puzzle through right now.

Juanita Tolliver: Let’s start to dig into it, because you mentioned a couple of things already. You mentioned the recording where Trump talked about grabbing women by their genitals. We talked MeToo movement. There’s Dobbs that we’ve already discussed as well, and a lot of that came up after Donald Trump’s victory in 2016. So how do you see these kinds of events exacerbating, gender divide in American politics?

Zack Beauchamp: There is a sense that the feminist movement and its gains are under attack in a way that they haven’t been in a really long time. And it’s not just a sense. Dobbs wasn’t just one political development among many. A lot of people treated it like that at the time, that it was just one [00:15:00] of those things that’ll happen and then people forget about it by November. We know that’s not what happened. We know it was one of probably the two most decisive issues, maybe the single most decisive issue in Democrats well overperforming in the midterm elections.

This was an epical event for the way that a lot of Americans see their politics. And before that, abortion politics weren’t actually that polarized on gender lines. Men and women were similar when it came to abortion. But I have this theory, and I feel like it’s been borne out by a lot of recent events, that people don’t really appreciate something when it’s going to happen, it’s only when it actually happens that it changes the way they think about politics.

Juanita Tolliver: Oh come on. I feel like Trump’s full administration was a case study in that reality check. Yeah.

Zack Beauchamp: Yeah. It’s like people were like, "okay, maybe this bad thing could happen, but you know, that’s could. That’s that’s a future problem. Maybe it will, maybe it won’t." But once the constitutional right to abortion was gone, and [00:16:00] you started getting states banning abortion altogether pretty much, or doing six week bans that were functionally the same thing, people really changed the way they thought about this, and it wouldn’t surprise me if a gender gap emerged as a consequence, a durable and consistent gender gap, because it’s women whose rights are being taken away. Of course, like historically, people would puzzle why don’t women care more about this? And I think the answer we may have is they didn’t think that it was going to be under threat in the way that it is

Why So Many Young Men Are Leaving Democrats for Republicans in 2024 - WSJ State of the Stat - Air Date 8-19-24

NARRATOR: In 2008, 58% of young people lean Democratic. 2012, 53%. And in the last two major election years, that percentage held steady at 55%. But in 2023, that number dipped below 50% for the first time since 2005. And you'll notice right here, they've started to lean more Republican. And that's partly because of one specific group, young men.

Young men have increased their support of the Republican Party from 35% to [00:17:00] 48%, a 13 percentage point increase in just seven years, and this is a new trend. While 2020 exit polls show that young men backed Biden by 15 percentage points, a February 2024 Wall Street Journal poll found they favored Trump by 14 percentage points. And this loss of young male voters is a major issue for the Democratic Party going into November. The question now, can Kamala Harris bring some back?

Here's what's driving young men to support Republicans and what it could mean for the presidential election to come.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: When we ask young voters, "what issue is most important to you when you go to cast a vote?" Among young men, it's the economy. Among young women, it's abortion.

NARRATOR: 17% of men say the economy is the most important issue, followed by democracy and immigration, whereas for young women, the top issue is abortion, by a lot.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: Why is this happening? Well, we put the reasons [00:18:00] into two different buckets. One is the life experiences that young men and young women are having. Those life experiences are diverging.

NARRATOR: Young men without a college degree have seen the greatest decline in labor force participation. Meanwhile, a record 87% of college educated women are in the workforce. And today, women make up 60% of college graduates.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: This division that we're seeing between young men and young women, it goes beyond who they're going to vote for for Congress or President. It goes to a range of policy issues. So then let's look at what is offering. The Biden administration has moved to forgive federally funded student loans. That affects young women more than young men.

NARRATOR: During the 2019 2020 school year, 49% of female undergraduate students took out loans, compared to only 42% of male undergraduates. And 66% of all student debt is carried by women.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: The young women favored forgiving student loans by [00:19:00] 45 percentage points. The young men were about equally divided. That's a big difference.

NARRATOR: Meanwhile, young men support extending Trump's tax cuts by 23 percentage points, which cut the corporate tax rate and reduced some individual income tax.

DONALD TRUMP: And now because of our tax cuts, you can keep more of your hard earned money.

NARRATOR: But women oppose the proposed extension by 20 percentage points, a full 43 point difference.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: That's data that goes like this. Young men headed in one direction and young women in the other. That's a big difference. Data does not usually segment young voters that remarkably. This is something new.

NARRATOR: Which brings us back to this chart. 22% of young female voters say abortion is their number one issue in this election, a key aspect of Harris' campaign.

KAMALA HARRIS: We trust women to make decisions about their own body.

NARRATOR: Only 3% of young male voters said the same. And young men and women stacked up differently on other issues [00:20:00] as well. With immigration, Trump's policies are much more likely to be supported by men than women. Men support deploying troops at the border by 10 percentage points, whereas women oppose this policy by 15 points. And when it comes to building the wall, one of Trump's key immigration policies, men are only slightly leaning towards opposition, but women overwhelmingly oppose it.

These gaps are hard to explain just by differences in lived experience, which brings us to the second thing that explains the gap between young men and women.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: What are the candidates and what are the parties saying to young voters? Donald Trump and the Republican Party are putting out a lot of messages expressly intended to appeal to young men. Donald Trump has gone to ultimate fighting championship matches. He recently appeared on the podcast of Logan Paul. He went to a sneaker convention to sell his own brand of sneakers.

DONALD TRUMP: We gotta get young people out to vote.

AARON ZITNER - WALL STREET JOURNAL REPORTER: These are audiences that are overwhelmingly male and overwhelmingly filled with young men. And it's a way that [00:21:00] Donald Trump and his campaign have been saying, "Hey, young men, I'm with you. I'm on the same page as you. I understand you."

A lot of the messaging from the Democratic Party has been towards issues that are more salient for women.

KAMALA HARRIS: When I am President of the United States, I will sign into law. the protections for reproductive freedom.

NARRATOR: So what does this mean for November? Young women historically vote at higher rates than young men, but experts say that with a tight election, the Democratic Party will need to draw in as many votes as possible. The next challenge for the Republican Party will be figuring out how to turn these young male supporters into actual

What Will Black Male Voters Do In 2024? - AJ+ - Air Date 7-7-24

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: The US's next president may be chosen inside sanctuaries like this. Detroit's Bethel AME Church is the largest precinct in Michigan. It had the highest number of voters registered and the highest number of ballots 2022 midterms. This year, Michigan is one of the most [00:22:00] important states in the election.

CHAD KING: Say hello to Coretta.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Is that the name of your gun?

CHAD KING: Yes, Coretta.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Coretta. As in the civil rights activist?

CHAD KING: As in Coretta Scott King, yes. I name all of my guns after historic Black women.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Gun rights are central to Chad's political views.

CHAD KING: They always say you vote with your heart in the primaries, but in the general election, you vote with your brain. I haven't gotten to a point where I feel like I can confidently say, yes, Joe Biden is the person I should vote for.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: What are you iffy on him about?

CHAD KING: I'm iffy about him, certainly on the firearms issue.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Gun ownership is almost universally seen as an issue for conservatives, white conservatives. It's a tenet of the Republican platform.

CHAD KING: I think that gun rights are just as important as voting rights in my opinion. In fact, I think they're inextricably linked.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: But Chad, who is the legacy of Black people's historic relationship with gun ownership, is no Republican. He's a self described moderate voter who never views his ballot solely through the lens of gun rights.

CHAD KING: The [00:23:00] economy is a significant issue for Black men because without economic sustainability for themselves, they cannot sustain a family. If they can't sustain a family, they can't build communities.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Chad's focus on the economy echoed what I'd hear from so many Black male voters I spoke with in Michigan.

BLACK MALE VOTER: We need economic balance amongst us.

The economy, obviously.

Economy.

Just talked to a brother the other day and he said, I can't hear anything that a politician Is saying with the echoes in my pocket.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: This reflects Black voters concerns nationally. The economy has ato, their list of priorities along with improving education, reducing healthcare costs, and dealing with problems in impoverished communities.

CHAD KING: We aren't being heard about what the issues are that are important to us as Black men. The ad is that what one won't do another will. That may be, some of the cause for a small migration over to another party.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Who do you plan to support this year?

CHAD KING: I have no clue yet. I know I can't, in good conscience, support Donald [00:24:00] Trump. That's a non starter.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: US establishment news media continually has said Republicans are successfully courting large numbers of Black male voters.

NEWS REPORT: The recent New York Times Siena poll shows 23% support among Black voters for former President Trump. That's up 19 points. I think that what you see is a decline, especially Black men, in support for President Biden.

Basically, it's Black men under 30 that are moving towards the Republican Party.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: The reality is, Black people, including Black men, are the Democratic Party's most loyal voting bloc. In a May 2024 poll of registered Black voters, 83% were Democrats, or leaned that way. Here's the caveat. US citizens actually vote for the Electoral College, and then it votes for the President. The Electoral College distorts the vote because it's disproportionately weighted, and it lets a winner of a state take all of its votes. Only six states effectively will decide this year's election. This is [00:25:00] why who turns out to vote is so important.

Kermit Williams is a progressive organizer canvassing a Detroit neighborhood.

KERMIT WILLIAMS - CO-DIRECTOR OF OAKLAND FORWARD: So I used to tell people if they didn't vote, shut up, you don't have anything to say, because I thought that it was laziness, really. But I had to realize that not voting is just as much of a choice as voting. I think that a lot of people are making that choice right now, not if they're going to vote Republican or Democrat. What I'm concerned about mostly is that there's a number of Black men that won't vote.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Kermit says he's seen Black men targeted on social media with specific talking points.

KERMIT WILLIAMS - CO-DIRECTOR OF OAKLAND FORWARD: And so I started noticing that the algorithm and their YouTube clips or everything else used to have a commercial that was really leaning toward that conservative or culture war thing to say that Black men don't have a place.

They had one social media influencer going so far to say, "Oh, the president doesn't make any difference in your life. So you should just vote for your state representatives and others."

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT: Black people, pull, pull your minds out of the [00:26:00] presidential election. Don't entertain that president talk. That's a distraction because you don't pick it.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: This is an example of what Kermit says Black men are seeing online. He sent it to me. He also sent me this as an example of social media parroting conservative talking points to Black people.

SOCIAL MEDIA ACCOUNT: We're giving one party our vote because they've successfully gone about the business of convincing our community that the other party, the Republican party, is completely against the interest of the Black community.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: What do you think the GOP and Republicans are doing to woo Black men?

KERMIT WILLIAMS - CO-DIRECTOR OF OAKLAND FORWARD: They're spending the money, and they're paying attention to Black men, and I think their messaging is working with some, because they've been intentional in spending dollars.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Trump supporters have even doctored and shared fake AI images online. None of these Black people exist because they aren't real.

NEWS REPORT: There's at least a dozen images like this going around on social media. They found it's been dating back at least since back in October.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: [00:27:00] Then there's the fact. Trump debuted $400 sneakers at Sneaker Con in February, 2024.

NEWS REPORT: This is connecting with Black America because they love sneakers or into sneakers.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Many viewed it as a racist trope.

KERMIT WILLIAMS - CO-DIRECTOR OF OAKLAND FORWARD: At the end of the day, offering tennis shoes with a sprinkle of racism is not the way to get people out and encouraged to vote.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: Trump even uses his criminal indictments as an anecdote to relate to Black voters.

DONALD TRUMP: And then I got indicted a second time and a third time and a fourth time. And a lot of people said that that's why the Black people like me because they have been hurt so badly and discriminated against.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: One thing that I've consistently heard from Black men who plan to support Donald Trump is that their primary issue is the border.

KERMIT WILLIAMS - CO-DIRECTOR OF OAKLAND FORWARD: And that's because they've been targeted with it. I've got at least 17 social media videos sent to me about the border, but I don't really believe that that is a major issue.

IMAEYEN IBANGA - HOST, AJ+: All this targeting is important because voters of color make up a third of the electorate, though [00:28:00] they only cast 22% of the ballots. You'd think any increase in their participation would be influential, but that's not exactly accurate. More than half of Black people live in the South, but thanks to policies like gerrymandering, voter restrictions, and the Electoral College, the presidential voting power of a Southern Black voter is diluted. It's far less influential than that of a in a Midwestern battleground state like Michigan.

Ian Haney López, "Dog Whistle Politics: Coded Racism and Inequality for All" - Brown University - Air Date 8-23-17

Ian Haney López: So, here's Mitt Romney. 2012, here are the campaign themes, he's saying, "Vote against Barack Obama, he's all about welfare and giveaways," even if it's not true. "Vote for me, I don't care about half the country, but I do plan to cut taxes for the very rich, allow corporations the freedom to write their own regulations, and slash social services that might help anybody who's poor, or at least in the bottom half."

And how'd he do? Now, most of you know. [00:29:00] He lost. How about among whites?

This is what the electoral map would look like if you only counted white votes in 2012. Mitt Romney won three out of five white votes across the country. It wasn't just old white men. He won among white women as well. He won among every age cohort of whites. Three out of five whites voted for a candidate who warned them, who lied to them about Barack Obama and welfare, and who promised to give control of the government over to the very rich.

And this is where we are today. This is a sort of dog whistle politics. A couple of points. This is not a story of race declining in influence since 1964. If you want to find [00:30:00] presidents who've done better than Mitt Romney among whites, than Mitt Romney did, you have to look to Reagan's re-election in 84, or Nixon's re-election in 72.

Mitt Romney won 59 percent of the white vote. 62 percent of whites voted Republican in 2014. We are deep in the heart of dog whistle politics. A politics that is wrecking the middle class through racial themes.

Okay, I'm out of here. Oh, no, wait. I guess we should talk about what to do, maybe. Okay, let's talk about what to do, and this is where I'm gonna wrap up.

First, demography will not save us. Listen, you know how I was saying the Democrats have said we should stay silent? They're saying we should stay silent again, right? They're saying, don't talk about race in politics, don't worry about it. Why not? Because, take heart, America, whites will soon be a minority.

Right? So the Democrats are saying to themselves, hey, you know, whites are 65 [00:31:00] percent of the country now, but by 2043 they will be a minority and dog whistle politics will stop working then. And there's two reasons why that's ludicrous. Reason number one, it turns out when you tell white people that are declining share of the population, they don't get more liberal and they don't get more racially tolerant.

They go the opposite direction. Levels of racial anxiety among whites goes up, and conservatism among whites goes up. It is not helping for Democrats to be saying, we're not worried about this sort of politics because whites, your time has passed. Right that's not helping.

Second, the idea that whites are going to be a minority in 2043 depends on the white category remaining stable. And indeed, more than that, it depends on the white category remaining the white non Hispanic category. But [00:32:00] already, half of all Latinos think of themselves as white. Now, that's different from how many whites think Latinos are white, but half of all Latinos think they're white. And when you look at the census numbers, and if the census includes among whites, not just non Hispanic whites, but Hispanic whites, Then in 2043, what will be the percentage of the white population in the country?

We're 65 percent now. What will it be in 2043 if you include Latinos? 72%. If, over the next 30 years, a significant segment of the Latino population comes to be accepted as whites, we may be in the midst of a historic expansion of white identity, not a move to whites as a minority in this country. And believe me, The Republicans/Ted Cruz/Marco Rubio understand this, right?

And this is why it's so important to understand this is not [00:33:00] about racism. They don't care if they win votes by bringing in Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz, Herman Cain. They don't care. They care about winning. They care about power. And if dog whistle politics can succeed by wrapping in new groups who can be made racially anxious, that's exactly what it'll do.

And at least within, among Latinos, and also among certain Asian communities, East Asian communities especially, but I think also South Asian communities, there is a receptivity to the idea that a chance of racial upward mobility is possible, and that they are under racial threat from poorer and darker and more recent immigrants.

This sort of politics will remain available couched primarily in terms of immigration and darkness, in terms of language [00:34:00] proficiency, in terms of professional credentials, this sort of dog whistling will continue. So what are we to do? Three quick things. We need to reclaim government. And this is just so foundational, and yet so many people have given up on government.

So I attend sort of progressive social justice conferences. I love all the conversation about creativity, and social media, and volunteerism, and new NGOs, and sharing. I got that. In our society, we will not have a broad, fair, and inclusive society. Unless government's on our side. If government remains on the side of the 1%, we're doomed.

All the volunteerism and creative NGOs and whatever, notwithstanding, we need government on our side. We're not going to win government on our side in the last two weeks of a campaign, right? We need a broad social movement that demands that government return, that government help everybody. So that's number one.

Number two. We need to reject racism. The minute we [00:35:00] begin to talk about government that helps everybody, we're going to be met with dog whistle narratives that say, "Don't you just mean give away stuff to minorities?" Because that's exactly how conservatives have been fighting, and Democrats themselves have been fighting this effort to make government meaningful for all of us.

So we need to reject that sort of racism. We need to surface dog whistling, we need to call it out, we need to repudiate it. This is just an aside. Think about what has happened with Indiana and Arkansas in the last week. That was dog whistling, right? Those states said, hey, religious freedom as code for homophobia.

And they got hammered, and they're backing up, right? This is what we need to do around race. I'm happy to talk about why it's much more difficult around race. I'll do that during Q& A. This is the sort of thing we need to do.

Third, take pride. Democrats, progressives, for the [00:36:00] last 50 years have been saying, "Hey, people are being bamboozled by these identity issues. We just need to talk to them about how important this is to their checkbook, to their retirement, to their children's future. Let's talk to them about the hard reality of finances."

And how's that worked? Because people, they think in different terms. They think about their pocketbook. They do. But they also think about themselves, their sense of self, their sense of social position, who they are, whether the work that they've dedicated their life to is esteemed, whether their values are respected.

People think in those terms, and that means we need to respond in those terms. We need to respond in terms that give people pride in who they are when they resist divisive dog whistle politics. What would that look like? I think a campaign that focuses on Americans as hard working, [00:37:00] Americans as patriotic, Americans as generous, most importantly, tolerant.

Right? 90 plus percent of Americans identify tolerance as a quintessential American value. Now, I know, in lefty circles, "tolerance" is not such a great word. We would much rather "esteem" or sort of "inclusion," because tolerance implies this sort of mental reservation. I'll tolerate you, but the truth is I don't really like your kind.

I got that. But people don't need to like everybody. They need to tolerate them, and they specifically need to tolerate them in the sense that they need to refuse to be divided by dog whistling. By this sort of coded demagoguery that is so constant.

Last point. I like the phrase "take pride" because take pride also has this sort of activist element and also this sense that we're taking it from someone, that we're taking it in opposition to someone. It's just not enough to [00:38:00] tell people let's hold hands and feel good about ourselves. You also need to tell people, especially people in crisis, who did this?

Who's doing this to you? Who is the threat in your lives? Because clearly things aren't going right. Who's doing this? And so take pride, not only in the sense of collaborative, shared effort, but also in the sense of who's not generous, who's not tolerant, who isn't hard working. Who are these people, the Koch brothers, who are doing this to us, right? We need that affirmative sense.

Last, and here's where I'll end. Maybe this seems like it's at this sort of high level of abstraction, and in a sense it is, 40 year, 50 year phenomenon and how are we going to respond, broad social mobilization that reclaims government, rejects racism, takes pride. I get that that's abstract.

What does that mean for you as individuals? Dog whistling has skewed just about every area of American life. [00:39:00] Education, immigration, welfare, incarceration, the environment, the infrastructure. Every area. Pick an area. Whatever area you care deeply about. Get involved. Join an organization. Commit to shared mobilization and commit to building bridges.

To helping others in your area see that this is part of a larger practice, a larger pattern, in which government has been hijacked by the very rich through manipulations of status.

How Michigan explains American politics - Vox - Air Date 1-11-24

Adam Freelander: This chart shows how many people voted in Detroit in different elections over the years. You can see that turnout in presidential elections is typically higher than turnout in midterm elections, and that's true pretty much everywhere. But, look at the turnout in 2016. It's almost as low as, for example, the midterm election of 2006.

Now, two things are happening here. Detroit is getting smaller during this time. Its population is shrinking, so [00:40:00] fewer voters. But Trump had a role here, too.

DONALD TRUMP: "Look how much African American communities have suffered under Democratic control."

Unknown Speaker #1: The thing that I think Trump did effectively as far as interacting with African American voters is not getting them to become Republicans or switch their vote to the Republican Party. It's to get them to not be comfortable voting for anyone.

DONALD TRUMP: America must reject the bigotry of Hillary Clinton, who sees communities of color only as votes, not as human beings.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: Republicans don't have to move the needle that much in those communities to, to have a incredible impact on election outcomes.

Unnamed, WXYZ: I'm not convinced African Americans like Hillary Rodham Clinton as much as they liked Barack Obama.

Unnamed, Detroit Public TV: No one in this race, on either side, has that same pull.

Adam Freelander: If you don't like either side, maybe you don't vote. Now, there are of course other factors, [00:41:00] too. That outcome is just one more of many that take us from blue Michigan to red Michigan.

But remember, after 2016 is when Michigan starts to swing back. In 2018, the state elected a Democratic governor by a big margin. In 2020, it voted for Biden. And to see how we got there, we have to talk about white women.

This chart comes from exit polls of white women in Michigan over 10 years of presidential and gubernatorial elections, and it shows us in the early 2010s, including 2016, white women in Michigan were voting more for Republicans.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: In 2016, white women across urban, rural, suburban, educational level gave Trump a chance.

Adam Freelander: But after 2016, something changes, a big swing among that demographic towards Democrats. Now this chart doesn't tell us the reason for that, but there was something big [00:42:00] happening around that time. A kind of adjustment in the way that many women in the US were participating in politics.

Demonstrators: "I'm Vice President! I'm Vice President! We will not be ignored!"

Unnamed News Anchor: Millions of people around the world marching for women's rights today.

Adam Freelander: One part of Michigan was particularly energized during this period.

Unnamed News Anchor: The largest of all was in Washington, D. C.

Kimberly Gill: Everywhere we turned, we ran into somebody. From Michigan.

Various Demonstrators: "I'm from Huntington Woods."

"Michigan."

"Waterford, Michigan."

"Franklin."

"We're from Ferndale!"

Adam Freelander: Huntington Woods, Waterford, Franklin, Ferndale. All in Oakland County. Women, especially white women in places like Oakland, were a big part of what drove the Democrats to their victory in 2018 and led to Trump losing the state in 2020.

Oakland County Voter 1: I didn't think I'd ever have to worry about whether or not the president of the United States was a good [00:43:00] role model, and I do now.

Oakland County Voter 2: I spent every day from 2016 through now, making sure I did everything that I could to make sure he's not re elected.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: In some ways, Oakland is the mirror image, or maybe a 180 from Macomb County.

Adam Freelander: Oakland is the wealthiest county in Michigan and the second most well educated. And at one time, those things made Oakland a very Republican county. But those types of voters,wealthy, well educated, they vote differently than they once did. And you see that in exit polls, too. This one shows how college educated voters across Michigan have voted over the past few elections.

They've been trending heavily towards Democrats. You can really see the backlash to Trump in the raw voter turnout numbers in Oakland County. Turnout in 2016 was kind of unremarkable, basically in line with earlier years, but look at how many people voted in the first election after Trump won, the midterm election of 2018.

Almost as many as in a presidential election. And the 2020 count [00:44:00] was unprecedented.

Okay, we finally made it to 2022. Democrats win it all. Okay, so sorry, one more thing.

News Anchor 2: Proposal 2, the anti gerrymandering proposal.

News Anchor 3: The state overwhelmingly passed Proposal 2.

Adam Freelander: In 2018, by a big margin, Michigan voters approved an anti gerrymandering measure that took redistricting out of the hands of the legislature and gave it to an independent commission.

Over the next three years, that commission would replace these maps with new maps. And the first year that these maps would be in effect was 2022. In 2022, if you added up all the elections for Michigan state representatives, Democrats won every 51 percent of that vote. And under the new district alliance, they won 56 out of 110 seats, which is 51%.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: Michigan's independent redistricting commission gave Michigan Democrats the [00:45:00] opportunity to finally have maps that weren't overly biased to Republicans.

Adam Freelander: Redistricting unlocks a big part of how this happened. But there was more going on here. To really understand 2022. We have to look at these two stories.

One started with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in June of 2022. In Michigan, activists responded to that by putting Proposal 3 on the ballot that year, a measure that would enshrine abortion rights in the state constitution. The measure was really popular and passed easily by more than 10 percentage points.

The other big thing was something happening in the Michigan Republican Party.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: By the time 2022 gets around, the Trump wing of the Republican Party had taken over entirely.

Adam Freelander: These are photos from a Stop the Steal protest at the Michigan State Capitol just after the 2020 election. By May of 2022, a poll found that a majority of Michigan [00:46:00] Republicans supported overturning the 2020 presidential election.

Among Michigan voters as a whole, though, only around a quarter agreed with that. But Republicans running for statewide office in 2022 largely endorsed that idea.

Ralph Rebandt: How many of you believe that the widespread election fraud was enough to swing the election toward Biden? Raise your hand with me.

Adam Freelander: That is Tudor Dixon, who Michigan Republicans nominated for governor in 2022.

Kristina Karamo: The city of Detroit has been plagued with election corruption for years.

Adam Freelander: And that is Kristina Karamo, the Republican who ran to be in charge of Michigan's elections. Both Dixon and Karamo would lose to Democrats by more than 10 percentage points. One place you could really see the reaction to abortion rights on the ballot and to the Republican focus on election fraud was the Michigan suburbs, which exit polls tell us had historically voted Republican until 2022. And the next year, Michigan Republicans met at their convention and they [00:47:00] chose Kristina Karamo as their new party leader.

Kristina Karamo: We have to fight to secure our elections. It's the reason I did not concede after the 2022 election.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: It's almost like that's all you hear from them.

Adam Freelander: It's tempting to think that Michigan is just a blue state now, but it won't take much to make it swing back. For example, Michigan is about 3 percent Middle Eastern, North African, doesn't sound like much, but that actually makes it the most Arab American state in the country by far. And that would be worth paying attention to if, for example, something were to happen that made Arab American support for Joe Biden go way down.

News Anchor 4: President Biden shows unwavering support for Israel with the civilian death toll in Gaza rising.

Wayne County Voter: I did vote for Joe Biden in

CNN Reporter: Do you plan to vote for him in 2024?

Wayne County Voter: I do not.

Adam Freelander: Still, if we look back at some of the big moments in this story. You might notice two things. First, it's Donald Trump who's actually [00:48:00] been the main character in Michigan politics going back almost a decade now.

And second, you probably saw some of these things happen outside of Michigan, too. This chart shows how every state voted in the most recent presidential election, 2020. If you put how the whole US voted onto this chart, it would go here. And here is Michigan. In other words, by at least one measure, Michigan is the state closest to the country as a whole.

Redistricting battles like Michigan's are happening all over the country. National exit polls show that college educated Americans everywhere have been voting more Democratic, just like in Michigan. And that non college educated Americans are doing the opposite. That's pretty indicative of where the parties are headed.

Unnamed Vox Interviewee: I do think that you're seeing party coalitions shift.

Adam Freelander: There's also evidence that the overturning of Roe v. Wade has been a powerful motivator everywhere, not just in Michigan, with voters rejecting abortion bans in surprising places like Kentucky, Montana, Kansas, Ohio. [00:49:00] So, you know, Michigan can make or break a whole national election.

But, there's a better reason for Americans to be watching Michigan really closely. And it's that when we do, we're looking at ourselves.

Note from the Editor on the nature of demographic cohorts and the movement of the Democratic Party

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with the NPR Politics Podcast, breaking down college versus non college educated voters. What a Day look at the growing gender divide among white voters. The Wall Street Journal State of the Stat zeroed in on the gender divide among the youth. AJ+ focused on how Black men are being targeted to either vote Republican or stay at home. Brown University featured a lecture explaining dog whistle politics and VOX focused in on what can be learned from Michigan.

And those were just the top takes. There's a lot more in the Deeper Dive section. But first, a reminder that this show is supported by [00:50:00] members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of important and interesting topics, often making each other laugh in the process. Sometimes just trying to make each other laugh.

To support all of our work and have those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members only podcast feed that you'll receive, sign up to support the show at BestOfTheLeft.com/support. There's a link in the show notes. Through our Patreon page or from right inside the Apple Podcast app.

If regular membership isn't in the cards for you, 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, before we continue onto the Deeper Dives half of the show, I have a couple of thoughts. The first came to me as we were putting this episode together. Breaking down the United States population into all of these different cohorts and trying to understand where everyone is coming from, this is a perfect example of exactly what Republicans try to criticize about the left. Right? Why talk about all of our [00:51:00] differences. It's part of their sort of mirror world vision of how racism works. They argue that acknowledging differences actually exacerbates them. And therefore the left are the real racists in the country, trying to drive people apart. As with all of the best propaganda talking points, there could be a kernel of truth in that, but in this case only if you take that logic to absolutely absurd lengths. You know, they say the left recognizes differences between groups of people, and so did the Nazis, right?

But just because taking this idea of dividing and categorizing people can be taken too far, even catastrophic, dangerously too far. Doesn't mean that the best path forward is to attempt to paper over or ignore differences either. If we do that, we end up not being able to actually see people for their full selves. There's a huge amount that all people have in common. But it's often the [00:52:00] small differences in background geography, gender, race, and all the other factors we're talking about today, that help define our personal and collective culture, helps define how we think. It sort of makes us who we are.

So seeing the differences in people, whether it be individuals or large demographic groups and trying to understand how all of these factors play into how people think, what they value and then ultimately how they vote. Isn't patronizing or insincere. It's a genuine attempt to see people more fully.

Republicans by the way are completely full of shit about this. They'd like to claim that the only honest political message is one size fits all because we're all the same and you shouldn't divide us. But they obviously target different demographics with different messages as we're hearing about in the show today, even. So I'm giving this argument more credence than it really deserves, but sometimes it's nice to explain ourselves more fully, even if we shouldn't have to.

The [00:53:00] second thing I wanted to mention today is about another cohort of voters, but a political rather than demographic cohort. Progressive's like me. There was this article that I came across as part of our research, "Bernie’s DNC Speech Sounded Like Everyone Else’s. That’s Astonishing." And it reads in part, "When on Tuesday night, Sanders said his vision was not a radical agenda. He was absolutely right. Much of it has become the actual agenda of the democratic party. There were very few themes in Sanders' speech that other democratic speakers hadn't already covered on Monday and Tuesday. Senators and governors and members of Congress alike made explicit mentions of class driven policy designs to help the working and middle class." And then the article goes on to describe a few more details and policies of the democratic party that are clearly Bernie influenced. And then it goes on , "It's an astonishing amount of influence for a man who [00:54:00] has never won the Democratic presidential nomination and doesn't possess once in a generation or a torical skills still in the eight years in Sanders failed to become the nominee the first time and the four years since he failed the second time he has managed to push the party toward dramatic policy and rhetorical changes. The substance of the 2024 DNC is a testament as much to his political legacy as to the party's actual presidents."

Now, I don't want to dampen the mood too much. I want Bernie to get his due. I'll just also mention that what's being described here. Is also evidence of the macro shift in the culture, moving us slowly away from the failure of neo-liberalism into a new, as yet not fully defined form of economic populism that people are clamoring for across the political spectrum. Just coming at it from very different angles. So, Bernie didn't do it all on his [00:55:00] own, but he certainly helped push that change along.

And it is his vision much more than, you know, Trump's bullshit vision. We did a whole episode about this recently. Go check out "Republican Nonsense, Populism" episode about JD Vance for more details. So clearly Bernie's vision is the one that we need to be sort of following the path on. But it is very exciting that this change is happening. I am very grateful to Bernie and the degree to which he helped bring it about. And for this entire confluence of events, we should all be happy.

SECTION A - THE MIXED BAG

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to dive deeper in three sections. Next up, Section A, is the Mixed Bag, including LGBTQ, Muslim, Jewish and Asian American and Pacific Islander voters. Section B is about Latino and Black voters. And Section C, White and rural voters.

'Impossible to be biracial in America'- Harris nomination shines light on mixed-race Americans - Morning Joe - Air Date 8-30-24

This was a fascinating conversation, just to [00:56:00] say the least. We talked to six people across a range of different racial, ethnic, and political backgrounds in my home state, the swing state of North Carolina, and many of them said that, look, the census forms and the boxes on polls, they give them pause, sometimes even panic because of the choices that those boxes force them to make.

But even though they said those boxes are getting better and a little bit more inclusive over time, people's perceptions politically can still be pretty narrow. Take a look. Identify as Indian American and white, Hispanic, Haitian. They're the face of a changing nation. When anybody asks, I just say I'm black and Puerto Rican.

All my grandparents are from a different ethnic background. Multiracial Americans are now the fastest growing racial or ethnic group in the country over the last decade. And their voting power will be significant. In six battleground States, the population with two or more races has surged by more than 200%.

Including here in North Carolina's Mecklenburg County. Can you raise your hand if you are a Republican, [00:57:00] Democrat, Independent? Does the way that you identify racially impact your politics or specifically how you plan to vote this election? Absolutely. How so? I'm not going to lend my support behind someone.

Who does not support people who look like me. I don't think he sees me as a who I am. Former President Donald Trump. Yes. What about the rest of you? I just don't think that Kamala Harris has anything vested in the air finger quote black or hispanic experience in so much as it would be identified by anybody that lives in those communities.

You're saying you don't think that she can help black or brown people. No, I mean going to Howard don't make you black. A conversation that quickly turned to this moment in a July interview at the National Association of Black Journalists. I didn't know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black and now she wants to be known as black.

So I don't know, is she Indian or is she black? What did you think when you heard those [00:58:00] comments? Highly offensive. I mean, I think Probably every multiracial mixed race biracial person has had the experience of someone else telling them that they are not something enough. I think it's kind of triggering, right?

I think it is. impossible to be biracial in America. And I think that it requires that you're covering all bases at all times. And um, it requires constant recognition of both identities. And I think when Donald Trump says stuff like that about Kamala Harris and implies that she's like picking a race for political advantage, it's tapping into an incredibly familiar sentiment that I think everyone on this panel can understand.

Lemarie and Adul, as Trump supporters, when you heard that comment, As mixed people, how did it register with you? Well, my first thought was, no, that wasn't very well thought out. At the same time, though, when I heard it, I didn't hear it as an attack on blacks or Indians. I heard it more so of him commenting towards [00:59:00] identity politics and the appeal that some take.

to play up one side of their race over the other. Adol, I see you nodding your head. I agree with him. I didn't know, I didn't know she identified as black because everything I saw was first South Asian, first Indian, there's none of that identified as black. Regardless of her parents, I mean She was born in this country, and she identifies as a black person in this country in an American way, in a uniquely American context.

I've never heard her identify herself as a black woman. She said multiple times she's a black woman. I've never heard it. But I'm black. Yes. And I'm proud of being black. Politics sometimes becoming personal this year, with mixed race Americans having representation on both tickets. I don't agree with anything J.

D. Vance has to say. I mean, almost nothing. But, um, I think it's incredible that we've gotten to a point where The vice president of the United States can have a wife named Usha Chilakari and a son named Vivek. That doesn't mean I won't vote against him in November. Even though you disagree with Kamala Harris politically, do [01:00:00] you feel some kinship towards her as a mixed person?

Not personally. I find a lot of her trajectory to not be my brand of woman, leader. We've got three major international crises going on and someone applying to be commander in chief. As a woman. I want to see you do more than, you know, appeal to giggling and having a girl moment on the stage. Was there ever a moment that sort of forced you to confront the concept of race?

For me, it's more about ethnicity. As you guys can see, I have an accent, right? And I speak with an accent. I don't think when an accent, you just learn to be comfortable in uncomfortable situations. A conversation with implications beyond the ballot box. I think every time we see polling, it's about race.

Um, and, you know, as a candidate of color, you put a lot of, uh, stake into how this candidate represents, say, the black experience or the indian american experience. I think we will never ask Donald trump or joe biden. [01:01:00] Clinton or George Bush to do the same thing. I think white people are expected and people of color aren't.

To do what? To be in the highest office in the United States.

Plugged In: How LGBTQ voters could shape the upcoming presidential election - WABE - Air Date 6-21-24

You spent some time looking at how the presidential campaigns are engaging LGBTQ voters. But before we get there, can you tell me a little bit about what we know about this voter demographic in Georgia? Sure, Sam. So LGBTQ voters are a highly engaged and a growing voting bloc in Georgia as they are nationally.

They're reliable Democratic supporters, so much so that they might have made the difference for President Joe Biden in the 2020 election. Nearly 90 percent of LGBTQ voters in Georgia voted for Biden in the 2020 election. That's according to an analysis of AP voter data. And of course the state was decided by less than 12, 000 votes that year.

So getting those voters to come out again and force [01:02:00] this year, as they did four years ago, will be a key to Biden repeating his success in Georgia. And that's what Georgia Equality Executive Director Jeff Graham reiterated to me in an interview. There's been so much talk about people just being dissatisfied with the status quo, being dissatisfied with, um, the choices that they have before them, and they're just going to sit this election out.

We want people to understand that that too has very serious implications for the LGBTQ community. And, you know, LGBTQ voters, of course, care about a lot of the same issues as other voters. You know, cost of living, housing, healthcare, but maybe could you talk to me about a couple of specific policy issues that touch the LGBTQ community really directly?

So, LGBTQ people are strongly affected by non discrimination laws, and that's especially as it relates to housing, employment, and public accommodations. There's a long [01:03:00] history of LGBTQ people being discriminated against in those areas, whether it's getting evicted, or fired, or refused service because of their sexual orientation or gender identity.

And there's been a movement in recent years by local cities and counties in Georgia to pass such a non discrimination law, as Gwinnett County did earlier this month. Thank you. But there are no statewide non discrimination protections in Georgia, which is something that LGBTQ advocates and groups like Georgia Equality have been really been pushing for recently.

Another issue is protecting and empowering LGBTQ youth. Now, here we're talking about anti bullying measures. There's also been a growing number of restrictions or bans on books in school libraries that feature LGBTQ people or themes, and transgender youth have been targeted by policies when it comes to playing in a sport that matches their gender or getting gender affirming medical care.

Okay, so let's stick with healthcare for a minute, Patrick. Tell me more about that. Yeah, I mean, taking a look at the HIV epidemic, you know, getting [01:04:00] access and funding for prevention, testing and treatment of the virus, you know, this is something that heavily affects LGBTQ folks, gay men and trans women in particular.

And it's an issue that's not gone away, Sam. It's still a major pain point, you know, and Atlanta has the third highest number of new HIV infections of any city in the US and while it might be hard to imagine since this has been law for nearly a decade, uh, Uh, same sex marriage rights is another, uh, big issue.

We have a very conservative US supreme Court now. And after the fall of Roe v. Wade, uh, LGBTQ folks are very nervous about a similar fate for the Obergefell decision that legalized gay marriage. Patrick, before we get to Washington, D. C., many of these policies that we're talking about are shaped under the gold dome at the state capitol here in Atlanta, where Republicans currently control the levers of power.

What have we seen pass in this space in recent sessions? Sure. So in 2022, as you and I closely followed, Sam, the legislature passed a law that empowered the Georgia High [01:05:00] School Association to ban transgender boys and girls from playing on the school sports team that matches their gender. And shortly after Governor Kemp signed into law, that's exactly what the GHSA voted to do.

Um, in 2023, the following year, the legislature passed a ban on most gender affirming healthcare for transgender children. And in this year's session, uh, Republicans in the legislature tried to expand that to a ban on puberty blockers for transgender kids. But that measure failed, and in fact, In fact, all the proposed measures that caused alarm among LGBTQ advocates in Georgia this session failed to pass, which was surprising considering the ramping up of such measures targeting LGBTQ folks in recent years.

All right, so let's extend that to Washington DC. What are some of the ways that control of the White House, of Congress and the US Supreme Court shape life for LGBT people and communities? Yeah, let me count the ways. So with presidency, a lot of [01:06:00] that power to shape life for LGBTQ people comes from their decision whether to sign or veto legislation passed by Congress.

A president can also throw their weight around in Congress as a measure is making its way through the process, either to help it pass or squash it. An example of that is a hate crimes measure that President Obama signed into law that protected LGBTQ people and ban on the don't ask, don't tell policy that prevented gay and lesbian people from serving openly in the military.

Um, there's also executive orders. The president can also enact a slew of executive orders, protecting LGBTQ employees and protecting LGBTQ kids in schools, and they can appoint pro or anti. LGBTQ federal judges who have lifetime appointments to the courts. And the Supreme Court's actions are, of course, huge.

As I mentioned, the same sex marriage ruling in 2015, the concern over that being stripped away, and in recent years, the court passed landmark protections for LGBTQ workers. And you know, Patrick, I think you're [01:07:00] right. The court's ability to shape American life in fundamental ways is so huge. I was actually a Supreme Court runner for a network news correspondent on the day that the Supreme Court handed down that decision on same sex marriage in 2015.

And the crowds that were gathered outside and around the country, as I'm sure you covered here in Atlanta, Patrick, reacting to that decision and such a sea change in American life in a snap was Pretty striking to

How could Arab and Muslim voters' disaffection with Democrats impact the US election? - DW News - Air Date 7-23-24

Beyond campus protests, how big an issue is the Gaza war amongst voters? I think it's one of the main primary issues, um, that for Muslim American voters, um, on their current like agenda.

But I will start by saying that the concept of the Muslim American vote is a bit reductive, um, considering that it's a very diverse community in the United States. Both in terms of racially, economically, with regards to foreign [01:08:00] policy, and with regards to domestic policy. Um, just to give an example, to a study that was done in 2017, about a fourth of the Muslim American community identified as Black and African American, a fourth identified as White, where White has been conflated with many different groups like Arab, Persian, North African, and so on.

About a fifth identified as Asian, a fifth identified as Arab, and like, The remaining were mixed across the board for Hispanic and Indigenous American as well as other groups. So it's difficult to pinpoint a single Muslim voice on Harris as a presidential candidate. Um, but also with the issue of Gaza, um, that is still one of the main concerns for the Muslim American community.

Okay, so, I take your point about we're not dealing with a monolithic block here. Talk to us about How disaffection with the US position on this Gaza war has affected or has [01:09:00] swayed Arab or Muslim voters? And how that might affect November's outcome? Yeah, um, so based on what I'm hearing on the ground, um, there are four major perspectives with, um, Harris as a candidate, which this is only unfolding in the last couple of days, but, um, the first perspective I've heard the most commonly is this sense of apathy because Harris is viewed as basically an extension of Biden.

Um, and this segment is mixed across those. across the board wanting to vote third party or independent. Some of them are hoping for another Democrat to run against her. And in some cases, some people are choosing to be rational non voters. Um, and, you know, keeping in mind the Abandon Biden campaign that was taking place.

Um, so in order to win this group's, uh, vote, Harris really needs to showcase that her policies are her own and not Biden's, particularly with regards to race. Um, [01:10:00] so back in March, that was quoted earlier, she had called for an immediate temporary ceasefire on the one hand, while at the same time declared that Israel had a right to defend itself.

And for many Muslim Americans, this would be considering, like, batting for both sides of the team, or for, you know opposing sides of the team in that it will be difficult for Harris to win this group over as someone who was in the room during the Biden administration. But in order to do so, she'd have to have a clearer policy agenda with advancements made immediately moving towards peace with regards to Gaza.

Right. Okay. I know you had a list of, forgive me, right? Yeah, that's quite a long list. But let's stick with some of the points that you made there. Um, If her problem, if, um, Harris problem is that she's effectively more of Biden, if the, if, when it comes to a choice of more of Biden or Trump, [01:11:00] what's, what are people telling you?

Yeah, so that was actually the second main group that I've been hearing on the ground and this idea of like, pardon the way I say this, but this lesser of two evils or this rhetoric of that she's better than Trump. Um, so some people, um, this is a smaller group, but some people see Harris As a solid replacement for Biden, given the abandoned Biden campaign, um, as a vote against Trump, um, in the upcoming elections, um, it's a kind of cut your losses type of mentality because people are seeing it, uh, the presidential race as exclusively two party, um, rather than, you know, viewing third parties or independents as having a potential to win.

And so in this case, if the Democratic Party wants to win this group's vote. Um, they'd have to be really strategic in selecting Harris's running mate, um, and her policy platform. Um, but again, like was [01:12:00] noted, Harris is already on the campaign trail, and I listened to her, um, virtually deliver her speech in Milwaukee, Wisconsin earlier today, and she's contrasting herself with Donald Trump, um, using her record as an attorney general, juxtaposed to Trump as a criminal or a felon.

And this positioning may be effective for the second segment of the Muslim American population. Um, but, um, again, I think the first group, um, still does not see her. As a viable candidate until she can clearly state her policy platforms, particularly on the issue of Gaza, as well on mass incarceration within the prison system.

Okay, they want to hear more definite policies from her. And given the US's long history of siding with Israel, when do you think that the Biden administration Um, realized, uh, the potential for a backlash from Muslim and [01:13:00] Arab voters, uh, over Gaza. Um, I would say that the Biden administration probably started to feel, um, the backlash when mainstream media started to cover the Abandon Biden campaign.

Um, I don't, Michigan is a swing state and And really, there was a poll that was done. Um, I can't remember who conducted the poll, but there's a stronger leaning towards, uh, Trump in the Republican party currently, and that was done at the end of June. Um, so I'm not 100 percent sure, but what I'll say is that, um, for Biden, And for many Muslim Americans, they see that Biden stepping down isn't only about what the media has talked about with regards to his age and his health, but also a response to the mounting pressure through the Abandon Biden

Trump Trashes Jewish Voters During Unhinged Speech - The Majority Report w/ Sam Seder - Air Date 8-4-24

[01:14:00] I've seen some, leftists for Trump, supposedly, uh, claim that Donald Trump has really stuck it.

To Netanyahu versus Kamala stuck it, you mean stuck his tongue in his mouth? I mean, pretty close. Here is, uh, President Trump. Now you may have seen footage or heard audio of Donald Trump six to eight months ago, pre Miriam Adelson basically giving him money. To annex the West Bank. And saying, uh, annex the West Bank for this hundred million dollars pack, money.

Here is president Trump after that fact meeting with Israeli prime minister in Florida I guess in a, in the, the, uh, study room at Mar a Lago or somewhere. I don't know where it is cut. And, uh, I think her remarks were disrespectful. They weren't very nice. Can you pause it? Can you pause it?

We should say he's, he's referring to Kamala [01:15:00] Harris's uh, remarks that were, from our perspective didn't go nearly far enough but, uh, Donald Trump is going to characterize them as having gone too far. I wonder how much BB agrees with that. Probably a lot. That's what he told Axios.

Apparently, uh, they were very unhappy with how cold Harris was in comparison to Biden in that meeting. Probably because the bear hug Netanyahu strategy has been a disaster. Yeah, and from a policy standpoint, Trita Parsi pointed out, like, I think the rhetoric may get overplayed, but she did point out to Netanyahu as the impediment to the ceasefire talks, which is different than Biden.

Exactly. And, uh, I think her remarks were disrespectful. They weren't very nice pertaining to Israel. I actually don't know how a person who's Jewish can vote for her, but that's up to them. But she was certainly disrespectful to Israel, in my opinion. Mr. Trump has your relationship with the prime minister repaired [01:16:00] at all?

It was never bad. We was, uh, I would say it was over president is never bad. Oh, that's good. He was a little bit upset that Netanyahu recognized Biden as the president in 2020. Yeah, it took him a while to get over that. I cannot tell you how sick I am of other Jews or Gentiles, uh, explaining to me, uh, whether I'm a good Jew or not.

I saw somebody say this about like, if you're against Shapiro as the VP to pick, it's anti Semitism. But I didn't know that. Honestly, like it was the first time I even contemplated swearing on uh, on Twitter in years. I think I, that what I was going to quote tweet, it was like a pardon, fucking me. But uh, I didn't, but here is Donald Trump going even further.

I'm going to tell you something 65 to 75 percent of Jews in this country vote for the Democratic presidential nominee. That is both a historical fact. [01:17:00] And I get, I get some very bad news for Donald Trump. It is also a fact in November. It is not going to change. It is not going to change. Wait, let's hear about it.

But let's hear what he's got to say. I mean, maybe this pitch will work. The Democrats hate Israel. The Democrats largely hate the Jewish people. It's time for the Jewish people to stop. Step up and vote for Republicans and vote for Donald Trump. Savior you. We love you, Stanley. We love you Stanley. Thank you.

will you be the Jew that steps up, Sam? I gotta get my Coones go and, or my, uh, my, I gotta get my matza balls in order and step up and, uh, vote for, uh, Donald Trump. Now Kanye will be looking as someone that saved the Jews. the idea that this is going to motivate any Jews to vote for Donald Trump, I think it's really just [01:18:00] honestly about Miriam Adelson and a couple other maybe like a right wing Israeli supporters.

Yeah. Trump giving it to Netanyahu, is that, does he mean, they mean like giving the embassy to where he wants it, Jerusalem? That's what. Adelson's ask was last time. And Trump meeting with Netanyahu, I know no one cares about the Logan Act and it's vi it's invi it's violated all the time, I mean, including, I guess, a few weeks ago by Donald Trump meeting with Viktor Orban, but.

If you're not in government, you're not supposed to be doing any kind of meetings with foreign dignitaries that would approach some sort of official promises as it relates to United States foreign policy. Especially once taking a massive outlays from our military industrial complex.

Yeah. Some sort of top recipient of our military aid. It's technically against the law, but I guess maybe that's why the lighting in the room was so damn dim in that clip. It's under the cloak of

What Matters to AAPI Voters? - Woke AF Daily - Air Date 5-21-24

[01:19:00] You know, with such a vast and rich community, how do you go about, and I know that I ask you this, but particularly as we're heading towards, you know, the most consequential election I think of our lifetimes, how do you part and parcel out what issues Are most affecting this very diverse population and how your community kind of measures against with what let's say the larger democratic priorities, values and such are for this term, it's so important that you're bringing this up because it certainly requires research and polling, right?

Which is which is done in politics every single day. Our community doesn't have the robust Yeah. Amount of polling as say mainstream politics. But that being said, when, when we are able to get access to research and data on what is moving the AAPI electorate, and frankly, and [01:20:00] frankly, we really have to segment it by the ethnicity to know because, uh, certain ethnicities feel stronger or weaker on, on issues.

But I'll give you one example. Gun violence, which is one of the key issues that we're working on in our community has risen to the top. Some polls have it number one as the number one issue going into this election. So think about it for a second. This is not an issue that was even in the top 10 three years ago, four years ago.

And now it's risen to number one. And we believe we have a little bit of data to, uh, to back this up, but the numbers started to really move in terms of the importance of this issue after Uvalde. In Texas, you know, two and a half years ago. And it was the intersection of historically important, uh, theme and issue education and schools.

Right. And the, the fact that this was a shooting in an elementary school, it [01:21:00] really was the, I would say the nexus point for when the numbers started to rise in terms of issue of importance. And we've seen similar parallels in the Latino community as well. And, and that's not something you hear about. I would say.

When you, if you're reading political news or you're reading about, you know, Biden, Trump, or, or the fall matchup is how far this issue has come. Now, reproductive freedom is going to be front and center, part and parcel, like central to this election. And a sleeper issue, I believe is it's going to be gun violence and these issues, they don't get talked about.

In an election without an impetus, without a push, just like the crime narrative is being pushed very hard on the other side right now that, you know, Democrats and the left are weak on, on crime, frankly, they're making that up, but the core of the issue for our community is gun violence. And if we decide to [01:22:00] put some money behind this messaging and this narrative.

I think that we can win on this issue as well. And I believe once again, that this is a once in a 50 year, once in a hundred year opportunity when you have two very galvanizing issues, like the, the, the basic rights that women have had in this country for 50 years, just taken away as well as You know, gun violence.

And I think a lot of API's view, view gun violence in the frame of crime. And so it may not be the winner issue that the Republicans are, I think, really trying to hit us on. They're going to view it in the issue in the framework of gun violence, and they're losing on that issue. And I like this issue specifically because the Republicans don't have a message.

Right now they don't even have a response. They decided that they don't even want to respond at least on reproductive freedoms. They're kind of trying to figure out what the magic number of weeks that might be palatable to restrict abortions, right? It's like pick a dart [01:23:00] and choose on, on gun violence.

They've chose to unilaterally disarm. And I, I like that political equation from, uh, from a math perspective. I wonder, too, as it pertains to gun violence, I mean, the, you know, community was visited upon, right, by a mass shooting, you know, God, what was it, maybe three or four years ago at this point, and I wonder that since that time, coupled with Uvalde, um, and that being a, you know, children being targeted, You know, has there also been a rise, or would your polling show, in gun ownership?

Like, because, you know, on both sides, as violence, you know, escalates when it is directed towards a particular community, like the AAPI community, both people want gun reform. Right, but then they also tend to actually go ahead and purchase guns. So what is, what does that look like for you all? What have you seen in, in your research?

So we went from [01:24:00] being the demographic with the least amount of gun ownership to now on a per capita basis, one of the fastest growing communities of guns. And it all started, frankly, with this cycle that really started with Donald Trump and his. Um, spewing of vicious rhetoric and hatred that led to sort of the next, you know, part of this was that it led to, you know, mass acts of hate and violence all across the nation.

And correspondingly, it led to the direct marketing by the NRA. Uh, because they saw their gun sales starting to flatten in the latter half of the Trump years and they were looking for new markets. They said, Hey, the Asian American community, they've got high net worth income. They've got high incomes, they're low ownership, and they started marketing.

In all their magazines and doing some advertisements, uh, centrally [01:25:00] towards the API community. So we responded in kind by buying guns now at very high rates. And now where we are, and everyone knew this was going to happen, that we have some of the highest suicide by gun rates in the country. 60, 60 percent of all the suicides that happened in the API community are suicide by gun.

Right. So we also know that by any measure that when a gun is in the home, that it leads to a number of negative consequences, intentional homicide, accidental death, accidental injury, intimate partner violence, all of that. And, and so this is what it's. Led to, and it started with the vicious rhetoric and I would say sort of the white supremacist, frankly, the white supremacist elements of not only the NRA, but I would say the gun industry, they, they use this and they capitalize on this fear and we respond because we think this is the only way [01:26:00] we're going to be able to protect ourselves and our protector

SECTION B - LATINO AND BLACK VOTERS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Latino and Black Voters

Why Are More Latino Voters Supporting Trump? - The New Yorker Radio Hour - Air Date 8-16-24

Back in 2013, after Mitt Romney's loss to Barack Obama, a Republican autopsy of the campaign said that Latino voters were being turned off by the party's hardline stance on immigration. The report said, if Hispanic Americans hear that the GOP doesn't want them in the United States, they won't pay attention to our next sentence.

Well, that turned out to be wrong. Since 2015, Donald Trump has said any number of false, misleading, and racist things about people from Mexico and Central America. He put in place policies like child separation at the border. And yet, his share of the Latino vote increased in 2020, and the trend continues.

Comparing Trump and Biden back in July, Latino voters were split evenly. All [01:27:00] of this was on Geraldo Cadava's mind when he covered the Republican National Convention for the New Yorker. That sound you hear is Maracas for Trump and people at this Hispanic leadership coalition event have been instructed to shake them on the convention floor tonight.

This is a subject very close to Cadava's heart. He's the author of a book called the Hispanic Republican. Jerry, there have been a lot of headlines about Donald Trump's support among Latino voters, that it's increasing. And that's a phenomenon that Democrats, a lot of them find utterly baffling. And we'll get to that.

But before we get into the whys and hows, what's the scale of this? What do we know about the numbers and how the vote has shifted? What we know for sure is that Donald Trump increased his share of Latino support between 2016 and 2020 by about eight points. That's [01:28:00] the consensus view. And that was surprising to many because of everything that Donald Trump had said and done, especially in the arena of immigration, all of his anti immigrant policies that were seen to be a real turnoff for Latinos.

I think there's a real debate about how much Latinos are becoming conservative or whether that lower share of Democratic support had to do with Latino dissatisfaction with the candidates. Now, you went to talk to Latinos at the convention, the Republican convention in Milwaukee. Now, these are not your average voters.

They're very engaged political people, and some are truly liberal. Trump supporters, like a guy named Bob Unanwe, who's the CEO of Goya Foods. Why did you want to talk with him specifically? I wanted to talk to him specifically because I wanted to ask him directly about his experience of giving that talk in the Rose Garden at the White House in [01:29:00] the summer of 2020 because he said that we are blessed to have Donald Trump as our president.

First of all, I never knew Donald Trump until July 9th, 2020, when I was in the Rose Garden. I was appointed by him to be a commissioner on the White House Commission on Hispanic prosperity. He was very concerned. about prosperity for Americans and Hispanics. So he appointed a group of commissioners. After he said that we were blessed to have Donald Trump as a president, there were just widespread calls to boycott Goya beans.

And I really thought that Democrats, by going down the rabbit hole of boycotting Goya, really took their eye off the ball. What the event at the White House was about was about Donald Trump announcing new initiatives, including investments in Hispanic serving institutions. And those kinds of things are Core elements of his appeal to Latinos.

Meanwhile, Democrats just got [01:30:00] carried away with this story about boycotting Goya foods. When I said we were blessed, I'd hit home as, as a positive who were offended by that was, uh, Alexander Ocasio Cortez, Julian Castro, Lin Manuel Miranda, you know, the elites who are not, if you ask me, not, not truly Latino, because they, they have a privileged life.

Whoa. He said that Castro and Lin Manuel Miranda and AOC are not really Latino. Why not? Yeah, I should first say that I'm not really comfortable with the language of who is and is not a real Latino because I think, you know, there are 65 million Latinos in the United States and all of them have different ways of relating to their Latino identity, whether it's about family traditions or language or music or anything like that.

So I think that. It doesn't make sense really to talk about who is or is not a real Latino. And it's something you see the Republican party [01:31:00] doing right now. You know, not too long ago, Donald Trump also, uh, said that Kamala Harris was Indian before she was black and she might not be a real black woman.

And I think the Republican party is trying to scramble our concepts about ethnic and racial identity. This question about what people mean in the words they use came up in another conversation that you had with a woman named Betty Cardenas. Now, tell us who she is before we listen to her. Yeah, I find Betty Cardenas fascinating.

First of all, she is part of this kind of, power family in Latino Republican politics because her son is named Abraham Enriquez, and he's the founder of a group called Bienvenido US, but she has also served as national chairwoman of the Republican National Hispanic Assembly. And now she's also the president of the Bienvenidos Action Group.

Let's listen to your conversation with her. As you see Trump coming in, you see a message of more diverse, a little bit more [01:32:00] inclusive in the, in the platform. You even see it. Um, I think there's a, there's still a lot of work to do within the history. I mean, you see Trump, I think he will do a phenomenal, I hope he does a phenomenal job for the America First agenda that, that President Trump has, which America First means it has so much inclusivity and a lot of stuff.

I had never seen these signs. I mean, I'd seen build the wall, things like that. I had never seen a sign that said mass deportation. Now, how do you feel about those signs? Um, I can tell you, I mean, as a, as a, you know, coming from immigrant parents, I think when you see mass deportation, like I think you would, you won't see me raising one of those massive because there's so much significance behind there.

And I know where Trump's policies. That I know the policy makers behind that are going to be behind. And I know what mass deportation he's talking about. He's talking about [01:33:00] the criminals, you know, deport those criminal, those high risk criminals. And I think that's what's missing if they could specify, but also, I mean, it's a message of the, of the campaign.

I know in my heart what it means. I know who's going to be sitting down doing the policy, so it doesn't, I see it and I know it. It would be more like, Oh, mass deportation. Everybody, you know, even the students, the DACA students, everybody that here, I mean, it wouldn't be possible. And you and I know that it's not, it's not true.

So here she gets to a very crucial slogan of the Trump campaign, mass deportation now, which is a sign that you saw at the RNC quite a lot. And she says it just means deporting some criminals. How accurate is that where the Trump campaign is concerned? Well, I don't think it's very accurate if you take him at his word in terms of what he said publicly.

I mean, they're talking about deporting 15 million to 20 million people, which he [01:34:00] believes is the true number of undocumented immigrants in the United States. And it, and it has, it has echoes of, 1954, right? What happened? That's right. Well, it has echoes of 1954 when there was an operation called Operation Wetback that deported some 1.

3 million Mexicans from the United States. And now Stephen Miller and Trump together are calling for mass deportations that would be something like 10 times that, more than 10 million, 12 million deportations. I got this a lot from a lot of different people is that they think, first of all, that we are taking Trump's comments out of context, that what he really means is he's not talking about all Mexicans.

He's only talking about high risk, high threat criminals. And if you think about it, that's not all that different than what Obama was advocating to when he talked about like selective prosecution, he was going to go for the criminals. He wasn't going to prosecute the [01:35:00] people who'd been here for a long time and were just trying to make a better lives for themselves.

So when it gets down to it, I don't know that her vision of how this is going to work and Obama's are all that different, but she says that she has been in rooms with Donald Trump where he has talked to her about his views of immigration. And she knows that mass deportation is not in his heart. It's not what he means.

And she even brought out her phone. She had captured screenshots of old tweets that Donald Trump had sent that were in support of the dreamers. And she thinks that Donald Trump would still like to find a pathway for undocumented citizens, including dreamers. He would still like to fix things for them.

Well, it's striking. It's striking that she mentions the word diversity and inclusiveness as aspects of the Republican party. Those are usually Democratic Party buzzwords. And I almost wondered if she were, um, trolling you in a way, although she doesn't seem to have that kind of [01:36:00] personality. She means something different?

Yeah, I mean, I think that that's what all, you know, not only Latinos, but I saw many Asian American Trump supporters, many Black Trump supporters, Native American Trump supporters there. They really want to believe that because the Republican Party, um, Aligns with their values that it is a truly inclusive message.

And in fact, they will say that Democrats are the ones that like to kind of divide and conquer all Americans by appealing to particular ethnic groups by having messaging that appeals to, you know, divides up the electorate and, uh, sees us all as a compilation of various interest groups. So I think she thinks that her message, the Republican message is more kind of all encompassing and all American

What the Harris campaign is doing to earn the support of Latino voters - PBS NewsHour - Air Date 8-20-24

AMNA NAWAZ: there's been a little bit of a reset with Latino voters in just the last month.

And your own polling from Voto Latino shows that Kamala Harris has 60 percent support in polls.

That's up from Biden's [01:37:00] 47 percent in April.

There's another Equis poll that shows that Harris is up 19 points in battleground states, when Biden led by just five.

What are you attributing that shift to?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: One is, is that she has been cultivating a lot of young Latinos since her president -- she ascended into her vice presidency.

So people are very familiar with who she is.

The biggest challenge, though, is that they like her, but they want to get to know her better.

But the poll -- what was really fascinating to us, the poll was with GQR.

It was 2,000 Latino voters in key battleground states.

And the biggest takeaway was not only was Kamala leading among the Democrats, but she was taking away roughly 17 points away from Kennedy.

And believe it or not, she was also taking away from Trump.

He is now -- so if you -- a head-to-head today, Trump right now is at 29 percent versus, with Biden, he was at 38 percent.

GEOFF BENNETT: And it's the younger voters, the younger Latino voters that account for that?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Disproportionally, yes, [01:38:00] and Latino women.

GEOFF BENNETT: Wow.

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: So, to give you an idea, since he was -- since there was a changing of the guard, at Voto Latino, we had registered 36,000 individual voters.

As of today, we have registered over 100,000.

We're -- 65 percent of them are under the age of 25.

I have been doing this, Amna, for 20 -- Amna and Geoff, for 25 -- 20 years.

I have never seen anything like it.

AMNA NAWAZ: Well, she -- we should also note, she's at 60 percent in your latest poll, right?

But Biden in the last election was at 65 percent.

So she's still polling behind where he was.

Where is the gap?

Why are Dems having trouble shoring that up?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Because we haven't had the convention.

I will tell you... AMNA NAWAZ: This is going to be the difference maker?

Because, in August of 2020, Biden was at 50.

So we don't see the surge of enthusiasm until post-convention, after Labor Day, when all of a sudden Americans are going back to school, going really back to work, paying attention.

And for whatever reason, she has captured our imagination.

There is an opportunity for the Democrats to [01:39:00] cement states, even like Arizona, where Biden went by 10,000 registered voters.

Kamala Harris has the opportunity to capture the 163,000 Latino youth that have turned 18 since Biden was elected.

GEOFF BENNETT: There was a pretty significant ad buy we saw from the Harris campaign a couple of weeks ago that was focused on Latino voters.

And she really leaned into her personal story, talking about the fact that she is the daughter of immigrants and really trying to make inroads with that community based on her identity and personal story.

How resonant is that?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: When Biden -- joined the Biden campaign last time, she gave him a 15-point lift just on that story alone.

And because she was the mother -- she was the daughter of an immigrant single mother, it's really resonates.

What they're going to ask her next, though, is, what are you going to do differently than Biden did for us?

The biggest challenge Biden has had with the Latino community is communicating how he has changed their everyday.

They were [01:40:00] skeptical.

With her on top of the ticket now, they're very open to what is the possibility for an extended - - possibility with an extended four-year term.

AMNA NAWAZ: There has been this sort of long-term trend, though, weakening of enthusiasm among Latino voters, who we should underscore here are not a monolith, right?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Right.

AMNA NAWAZ: Yes.

But there has been really since Obama a weakening presidential election by election.

What do you attribute that to?

And what do you want to see from Harris and Walz that could possibly reverse that trend?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: So what we have found is that the way Latinos vote isn't that they're trending to the Republicans, is that they're not enthusiastic necessarily, so they stay home.

So what they want to be able to demonstrate is that not only is there a vision for the present, but also for the future.

The more that the Harris, the Harris/Walz campaign can talk about economy, small business, that she, yes, is for small business capitalism, because there's so many young Latinos and Latinos in general that are [01:41:00] entrepreneurs, that will penetrate in action, sound, letter, because the Republicans have been trying to pick people off and say, well, the Democrats are anti-business.

She says, no, I'm small business capitalist.

That will all of a sudden open up a whole different conversation.

GEOFF BENNETT: We should say the convention has gaveled into session, and we should apologize for talking through the national anthem, but this timing is sort of out of our control.

The Harris/Walz campaign has said that they see multiple paths to election through the blue-wall, but also through the Sun Belt states, Arizona, Nevada in large part because of the large number of Latino voters.

Are there other states where -- other states that might now be in play because of a similar population?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: I would say that there is an opportunity even in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, but perhaps not for the top of the ticket, but in growing the electoral base.

You have the potential Senate pickup in a place like Texas because of the volume of young people that are anxious now to jump in the game, but there has to be a real strategic investment there.

AMNA NAWAZ: [01:42:00] There is, of course, the key issue of immigration that we know is really resonant, particularly with some majority Latino populations in border communities, where we saw many of them actually go for Trump in the last election.

How should this ticket message on this issue that has bedeviled the Biden/Harris administration?

MARIA TERESA KUMAR: Well, I think we saw it when the vice president went down to Central America and convinced business to go to the root of the problem and start creating investments.

The more that she couches what is happening at the border as a Western Hemispheric issue and that we need more people involved, not just government, but our Canadian friends, our Mexican friends, our Colombian friends, for example, and great business, then we could have a conversation with the American people of, how do you actually talk about the undocumented people that have been here for 20, 30 years?

What the president did in June, where he provided and granted authority to stay for spouses of undocumented immigrants goes a long way.

That was roughly two million family households that were impacted.[01:43:00]

There is now a narrative of, we have to fix the border, we have to be tough on it, but we do have pathways to safeguard the folks that are already here.

AMNA NAWAZ: Maria Teresa Kumar... GEOFF BENNETT:

‘¡Sí, se puede!’- Latino voter enthusiasm for Harris skyrockets over issues like housing - The ReidOut - Air Date 8-30-24

It is kind of one of the puzzles that this is the largest nonwhite group in America, full stop, more than black voters. But the voting turnout is really low. It's almost like half their voting strength. Why? Yeah. I mean, even looking at 2022 now, there was this real sentiment of disillusionment among a lot of Latinos, right?

There was a lot of skepticism towards president Biden and a lot of that had to do and was rooted in this idea that. But according to many, there were a lot of broken immigration promises. And then suddenly, in the last two weeks, I've started to hear the si se puede again. And that is once again this idea that perhaps what was missing, the yes we can, but the si se puede in Spanish is so intentional.

And it points to this idea that it wasn't that the Democratic Party was fractured. You know, it was [01:44:00] at what was missing was injecting the inspiration, you know, the hope and change that Barack Obama did. And it is working. Now you do see Latinos being mobilized. That's sort of the messaging standpoint. And then on the other flip side, it's Republicans.

The moment that this country turned into majority minority. Majority minority, no? The understanding that Latinos are at the heart of the multi ethnic coalition that is leading to that change. There is a concerted effort to stop that growth and all of that is also being fueled by this conspiracy theory that is overshadowing everything.

Which is this idea that non citizens Exactly. Great replacement theory in this idea that non citizens are voting and you put those things together And the thing about it is, and let me actually get Mike Madrid in here, because some of it is, is people believe, misunderstand the demographics of Latinos.

They assume that most, I remember a poll back in many, many years ago that showed that Americans believe that like 75 percent of Latinos are undocumented, which is [01:45:00] insane. It's literally like 80 percent are citizens, right? And, and, and so there is this misunderstanding of who this constituency are and assuming, well, they're all undocumented because they may speak Spanish at home.

And so can you give us the real numbers and the real stats on this constituency and also how different it is across the country? Cause it's regionally very different. Yeah, it's it's actually not as different as we think it is. What is happening? This latinization of America is an extraordinary demographic transformation.

That's what I try to explore in the book here. You actually mentioned a lot of it in your intro with this 7 percent growth over just the past decade. It's overwhelmingly US board. right? A lot of this is what is happening with this balancing between the two parties. It's there's a demographic explanation for it as much as there is a political explanation for it.

So I think you accurately pointed out this is the largest ethnic group in America at this point. Yes, our voter participation is lagging every other [01:46:00] racial and ethnic group. I believe that there are strong demographic reasons for that. The fact that we're so young, by the way, is one of the main reasons.

Younger voters have a less propensity, regardless of race or ethnicity, to vote. We're working on that. Uh, Maria Teresa's group specifically has been working to address that for many years successfully. It is happening. The trajectory is on the right path. There's a lot of people who argue that simply by aging into the, into the, um, And to the electorate, Latinos will start to grow into greater numbers.

But of course, with so many eligible citizen eligible folks, we want to make sure that there are people not only registered, but mobilized and showing up to demonstrate that strength. But again, there's a lot of, there's also this endemic poverty problem that we have to recognize, which is also a function of youth, poor people, it doesn't matter whether you're black in the deep south or white in Appalachia or Latino in East LA.

If you're poor and young, you don't vote. They don't vote. Fair return. We've got to look for those policy [01:47:00] explanations as much as looking for these political solutions because it's pretty widespread. It's pretty deep. There's over 70 years of census data telling us that a lot of this is demographic.

Absolutely. And MTK, you've been in votes. I want to bring you in here because you've been working on this project of Increasing that both strength because again, you know, I, we had a guy on, uh, you know, earlier this year who made a really great point that America sort of styles itself as like a quasi European country, but we're really much more a Latin American country.

Our history, our demographics, a lot of it is much more like Brazil, right? That it is like England. And, and, but we just don't, we try to fool ourselves into saying that's not the case, but it kind of is right. And so how do you break that, that cycle? Because part of it is age and part of it is that people aren't voting.

But how do you bring more Latino voters online? So I think it's all it's all intentional. I mean, you cited what happened in 2022. I'll tell you that from 2022 compared to the 2018 midterm election, Latino vote participation [01:48:00] down was 37 percent down 37%. But if you look at who turned out in 2022, it was people over the age of 40 years old, and it was disproportionately Latino voters.

Individuals that were Republican, because what the Republicans did was invest in older Latino voters for turnout. However, when it came down to young voters under the age of 40, turnout was abysmal 24%. And that was because the Democrats read the headline, internalized it and said, Oh my gosh, Latinos, maybe they are going, they're fleeing Republican.

So there was a major lack of investment. When it came to communicating to young Latinos that the issues that they cared about in 2022 were on the ballot, and I think what we're seeing now with Kamala Harris is that she's meeting voters where they are. I can tell you anecdotally just from our work since the moment she came on the ballot, we have registered over 110, 000 registered voters.

But the key is, is that 65 percent of them joy are under the age of 25. I've been doing this for a minute. [01:49:00] I have never seen that type of enthusiasm. But it's not just because of what she represents. It's to Mike Madryn's point is that she's talking about policy they care about. The number one issue for 18 to 29 year olds in this country who are Latino in North Carolina, in Georgia, in Texas, in Arizona, The number one issue is housing.

It's rent. And so when she came out with a policy just last week, meeting people where they are, talking to them about providing affordable rent, affordable mortgages, that all of a sudden perked their interest because like, wait a second, she's someone who identifies me as an immigrant, you know, a child of immigrant experiences, but at the same time understands that what's making me struggle is whether or not I can balance the budget to feed myself or make them or make my ends meet at the end of the month.

And that is transformational

I spent a week with Black Republicans - Mother Jones - Air Date 8-13-24

In talking to Black Republicans, I found that their most consistent ideological North Star was an emphasis on personal responsibility. For those I spoke to, there was a real [01:50:00] value for rigid individualism as opposed to collective progress and identity. Take Topher, for example. He's a Christian rapper, has millions of followers online, and believes, according to him, in an individualistic approach to progress.

And that's one reason why I'm pro Trump and I'm a conservative is because I truly believe in the individualistic approach to the problems that we see within the black community or in America. As a whole, and you can think about it, black Wall Street, Harlem, Renaissance, all that time we was doing great, but when the policies came in and started destroying the black community slowly and slowly.

Matter of fact, it was supposed to get rid of poverty or at least lessen it. But we have more poverty now than we had back then. I think you'll notice a theme of dissonance present in these interviews. On the one hand, for example, Topher endorses and individualistic approach to solving the problems we face as a community.

But on the other hand, he points to Black Wall Street or the Harlem Renaissance. Communities that I would consider on the Mount Rushmore of black collective power, and he points to them as times we should look back on with [01:51:00] admiration. The question is, which one is it? Is it rigid individualism where we get it out of the mud on our own?

Or is it about creating communities where we work together to build our collective resources? What's also interesting is that somehow for him, these communities no longer exist because of liberal or progressive. Policy decisions when the policies came in and started destroying the black community slowly and slowly.

Matter of fact, it was supposed to get rid of poverty or at least lessen it, but we have more poverty now than we had back then. I think it's worth pointing out that this more poverty now than back then line is verifiably false. It falls in line with a theme that people like Byron Donalds have advanced continuously throughout this election cycle.

The idea that we were better off in any way during the Jim Crow era. During Jim Crow. The black family was together during Jim Crow, more black people were not just conservative, because black people always have been conservative minded, but more black people voted [01:52:00] conservatively. It's worth noting that the black poverty rate Has been falling ever since black people started receiving civil rights protections.

It's almost as if these progressive policies worked. Now, you mentioned Black Wall Street, brother, and I want to be very real with you. Yeah. Black Wall Street was Tulsa, Oklahoma, the Greenwood District, where black people built their own community. Right. Had their own self sustained community. Beautiful economy making it for themselves and white people destroyed it.

Yeah, it wasn't policy. It was white people Well white people it was no. No, no, let's be very let's be very clear. It was white people. Let's be but let's no No, no, it was those white people. It was white people in that community. Absolutely And you know, let me just say this Elaine, Arkansas, Rosewood in Florida, Atlanta, Georgia, Sweet Auburn District, North Nashville in Nashville, in Nashville, Tennessee.

Each one of these communities were booming black economies where white people, not in the same place, but it was, it was the same group of people every time destroyed those communities. So you can't say it's policy when these booming, when [01:53:00] black people do what they need to do and build for themselves and white people destroy it.

So why is it that you would frame it as a policy thing? I didn't, I didn't frame it as a policy thing. We can rewind it, but you said it was white people. You meant something. I said it wasn't white people, it was those white people. And the reason why I'm saying that is because now we're trying to categorize all white people as evil.

No. And what I'm trying to say is back then, because a lot of people don't know this, I'm gonna put this on record. Black Wall Street, we built themselves out of that. Four years after that, Black Wall Street, we built everything they had and they paid for it. Process for the next 40 years until policy came in and destroyed it because they decided to build a freeway over the town and that destroyed.

So what I'm saying is if we look at policy and, and the cultural essence of most things, right? It's not just policy, it's culture. I was trying to draw a distinction between the nature of progressive policy, like. The Civil Rights Act or Supreme Court decisions to overturn segregation and white supremacist policy like destroying black communities.

But the subject kept changing. Lucky for you. I actually made a video about [01:54:00] Tulsa, Oklahoma's Greenwood district was definitely white racism that destroyed black Wall Street and other black communities through explicitly racist acts of state sanctioned violence. This is why an accurate full telling of history is so important.

Black oppression and black. Progress have always had a collective quality to the black people have been throughout American history targeted As a group from slavery to black codes to Jim Crow to mass incarceration to anti inclusion efforts today. But we've also made progress by harnessing the power of collective action during reconstruction and the civil rights movement.

And even today, during the black owned business boom, LBJ, that's why you say we have the Negroes voting Democrat for the next 200 years, but all those policies have not done what they promised. Would you agree? I would not agree. So you think we're better off as black people now than we were before LBJ passed those policies?

Yes, brother. We, we can vote without the threat of violence. Are you [01:55:00] talking about the Civil Rights Act of 1964? Is that what you're describing as, as, as a negative thing? I'm not saying the Civil Rights Act of 1964, it was, I'm talking about That's LBJ, I just want to be clear. That's LBJ who you said, were we better off before LBJ?

LBJ signed the Civil Rights Act of 1964. I'm talking about the War on Poverty. I just want to answer that one. I want to answer that specific one first. Was the Civil Rights Act of 1964 a bad thing? I agree with the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Thank you. But at the same time, I'm also I prefer dangerous freedom over peaceful slavery.

I don't know what that means. Explain more. What it means is I would rather, given the fact that even back then we still had our families together, communities were stronger back then, I would rather deal with the dangerous freedom of not knowing and controlling people with policies as much as possible, versus the peaceful slavery of being married and tied to the government.

Um, given Trump's well documented history of saying and doing racist things, I wanted to know how these black people could be drawn into Trump's political orbit. So I talked to Pastor Lorenzo Sewell. Yeah, so [01:56:00] anyone that wants to come to church, they're able to come. So when President Trump called, I thought about it like you calling me and saying, Pastor, I want to invite a friend to church who has 34 felonies.

Hey, Pastor, I want to invite a friend to church who is a womanizer. Hey, Pastor, I want to invite a friend to church who could be a racist. He's the lead pastor at a black church in Detroit that Trump visited earlier this year. And he was also a featured speaker at the RNC. To all my friends back in Detroit who are Democrats, I want to ask you just one simple question.

You can't deny the power of God on this man's life. You can't deny that God protected him. Could it be that Jesus Christ preserved him for such a time as this? Could it be?

Why should black people support the Republican ticket and Donald Trump specifically? That's a good question. You know, what I would say to any black person is this, specifically about the Republican platform. I would say, look, do your research, right? I would say, look [01:57:00] back. 270 years ago in this state, where a group of patriots stood up and they started that grand old party to stop the expansion of slavery.

If a black person said, well, Pastor, Donald Trump is racist, the Republican Party is racist. Well, let's play that theme out throughout history. Let's look at who was the party of slavery. Who was the party of Jim Crow, right? Who's the party of, um, you know, the slave codes? Well, well, you know, Those are Democrats.

Let's have that conversation. And when you look at when the Senate was integrated, those were black Republicans. When we look at Frederick Douglass, black Republican. So that's on the political side. Why believe that a black American should be willing to look at the Republican platform in terms of my convict my political conventions as a pastor, my conviction in my heart.

A black woman's womb is the most dangerous place for a black child to be. So, if a black American, specifically a [01:58:00] black woman, my conversation would be, give our black babies a chance. Look at the Republican Party in terms of President Donald J. Trump. This is what I would say. Don't look at the container, look at the content.

Right? Don't look at the man, look at the mission. Right? Don't look at his past. Look at what your agenda is for your community in the future. Conservatives are leading the charge to remove protections for voting rights, protections for maternal mortality, um, interventions in California, affirmative action, diversity, equity, and inclusion.

These are all issues that pertain directly to the people that I know that you serve as your community. Why should they support the party behind the hindrance, the advancement of the very things that I know you stand for? Sure. Black people that I know, that I represent, that I've had these conversations with, they don't want to be put in a position because they're black.

There's not one black person I know that, that will say to me, Lorenzo, I deserve this [01:59:00] position because I'm black. But, but, but I want to, you, you, you know that that's not what DEI is. DEI is about fair, fair hiring practices, opening up opportunity, like creating pathways, like. But you're smart. You're, you're an intelligent man.

And those that would say this, I believe they're very intelligent. It costs more money not to hire the person who's the best than to be racist. It actually costs more money. So if you're the best at what you do, right. And I, let's just say I'm a racist. So I'm, let's just say that let's play that out. Right.

And let's just say, Hey, there are 20 white guys that are not as competent as you, but I'm not going to pick you. Because you're black. It's going to cost me more money. They don't even know that this qualified person exists, right? Sure, I hear you. The pathways are the problem. And a lot of what diversity, equity, and inclusion is doing is creating those and helping to clarify those pathways.

And so framing it as an unqualified person getting the job when we know, you and I both know, that there are [02:00:00] plenty of qualified black people or Latino people or women who don't end up with jobs. 100%. 100%. And I agree with you. I do think relationships and proximity matter. In his book, The Grift, Clay Cain details the history of how Black conservatives have thrown Black people under the bus to get ahead personally.

From Black Republicans like Isaiah Montgomery and Booker T. Washington, to modern Black Republicans like Clarence Thomas. Clay Cain makes the case that the modern Black Republican is likely, if not assuredly, a grifter. A person who is doing that which is politically. Expedient rather than doing what is right, doing whatever they need to do to get that all expenses paid trip to fancy places.

I couldn't help but wonder if some of the folks I was talking to fit that description

SECTION C - WHITE AND RURAL VOTERS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section C: White and rural voters.

Keith Boykin on Why White Voters Stick with Trump - Miss Jones Inc - Air Date 8-30-24

The overwhelming majority of black people. are not going to vote for Donald Trump. They're definitely 90 [02:01:00] percent of black people are not going to vote for Donald Trump. Uh, and, and the real issue, I think we should be asking, instead of pointing the finger at black people, why aren't we doing this or that we should be pointing the finger at white people.

Why is it that the majority of white people plan to vote for Donald Trump? Why is it that the majority of white people voted for Donald Trump in 2016 and they didn't vote for Barack Obama in any of his elections? Why is it the majority of white people voted for Donald Trump again in 2020 after all the chaos he created?

Well, what I say is why do birds suddenly appear? What? Because the thing is is like why the rainbows? Why is water wet? Like you understand what I'm saying? Like they Why does everything have to be about race? It's exactly right. Why, why, why? It's, it's, it's like white people are invested in protecting whiteness.

And that, and that's the thing we need to be focused on. Everybody's, everybody's focused on Joe Biden, not getting Muslim support or black support. Yeah, I get that. But you know what, the real [02:02:00] question we should be asking is why is it that white people continue to support Donald Trump? Why is it after, after being twice impeached, quadruple indicted, after having 91 charges against him, after six bankruptcies, after being convicted, after having his company convicted of fraud, after his, two of, three of his lawyers have been, have been convicted, after, Several of his top aides have been convicted after he's run a country for four years with chaos after everything he said about creating a dictatorship, pulling out of NATO, not willing to support our allies.

After all of this stuff that white people Who've been lecturing black people and Brown people for years about what we should be doing and how we should be respectful of our country. And we should be electing serious leaders. Why is it the majority of white people still want to vote for this guy? And that's the real issue that America's facing.

It's not about black and Brown people, not showing up for Joe Biden. It's about white people, racist, white people showing up to support Donald Trump. That's the [02:03:00] problem that America's facing. At the end of the day, they're, they're literally still the majority that gets to decide which way this thing tilts.

Well, yes, and, and, and that's, and that's part of the problem because there has, there has, there's not all white people who feel this way, fortunately, because there has to be some critical mass of white people who don't. That's the reason why Barack Obama was able to get elected because even though he didn't win the white vote, he got enough white votes to be able to support him.

But Donald Trump won the white vote in both of his elections. Barack Obama lost the white vote in both of his elections. What does that say about white people in America? White people in America. I think that you keep asking very rhetorical questions. Because it's all about race. White people are invested in protecting racist white supremacist policies.

That's the reason why they are voting for Donald Trump. That's the reason why they voted for Donald Trump in the past. That is, ladies and gentlemen, that [02:04:00] is the answer. But the reality is we're going to all continue to be gaslit. That that is not what we're talking. That's not the situation. So when we talk about voting, it's always protected in this thing of a civil duty that we don't talk about because it's my right to vote and I, you know, I vote personally and you don't have to discuss it and blah, blah, blah.

Meanwhile, you're living next door. To a Trump supporter and don't even know it. And they're going to blame us and say, well, black people, we only voted 85 percent for Biden instead of 88%. You know what, that's, that's, what the hell, that's how a lot of people are voting for him. But they're not, they're not, they're not pointing the finger at white people who are voting overwhelmingly for Donald Trump.

That is, that is, that is some twisted logic to make us to blame. We are the ones that have to rescue the country from white people who are ruining the country by supporting Donald Trump

How can Democrats win back rural voters? - The 21st Show - Air Date 8-22-24

A highlight. If you want to stay focused on rural America for a moment is Tim walls.

[02:05:00] A little background on my relationship with him. I was first elected to Congress in 2012. I live in Moline, Illinois. The district I represented was until last until a year ago. January included the Quad Cities, the only Quad Cities, Peoria and Rockford, but any in between there, 85 percent of the towns had 5000 people or fewer living in them.

And 60 percent have a 1000 people or fewer living in them. So a very rural district. So I'm elected in 2012. and at the time leader Pelosi had this mentor program where she would look at sitting members of Congress who had similar politics. Or similar districts to the new brand new members coming in. So she assigned Tim walls to me.

And so we started our relationship in 2012 before I was even sworn in in January of 2013 as my mentor in Congress. And so his district, as I [02:06:00] just described the 1 in Illinois that I represented, his district was similar. We have in the 17th congressional district that I serve, we have close to 10, 000 family farms.

He has family farms throughout the district he represented and obviously throughout the state of Minnesota that he served is serving as governor and a lot of manufacturing, not as many college educated voters as many other congressional districts. And so, um, when you saw the video about him leading into it, talked about him growing up on a, on a farm, um, signing up for the military right after he turned 17 and Glenn, you know, this as well, but, um, the military is represented in larger numbers percentage wise by people from rural America than urban America.

And so I think that people all over America could watch that and listen to Tim Walz's speech last night and say, you know what, I get this guy and I think he's going to get people like me. Well, Glenn Bouchard, same question to you and take it where you will. What do [02:07:00] you think about how the Democratic National Convention has been going so far, I guess, in terms of appealing to those rural voters?

Brian, I think this is my convention that I've attended over the years. And this is by far the best organized enthousiastic crowd that I've ever been to. Uh, the people are enthused, particularly the young people. There's a lot of young people here as delegates. And so I'm, I'm very pleased with the way things have turned around.

Uh, I think it's good that we've applauded the courage of President Biden. And, uh, giving up the presidency so that, uh, he could make way for Kamala Harris, who I think is very intelligent, very articulate, uh, is going to make a great president of this country. And I think she's going to get elected. And I think everybody at this convention thinks we got a great shot at this.

Let me, let's, let's now dive into then some of the, [02:08:00] uh, the issues that, that have, or what has changed, I guess, in, in rural and downstate Illinois in the past decades, Sherry Bustos, you are one of a relatively small number of legislators in both parties who won a congressional district that the other party's presidential candidate had won.

You were a Democrat elected in the Trump majority district. How did that inform your approach to politics? Well, in Brian, if I can offer a little more perspective to on the congressional district that I represented, um, it was 1 of the biggest swings in the entire country from Obama to Trump at congressional district.

The 1 I just described that goes. Up to the Wisconsin state line, the Mississippi River on the Western border of the congressional district, and then goes into central Illinois into Peoria. 711, 000 people I already described. It's very agricultural John Deere's world headquarters is in Illinois. So we do have a lot of manufacturing that supports that [02:09:00] caterpillars world headquarters had been in Peoria.

Um, we have a major UAW plant right outside of the district in Belvedere, Illinois. So many of the people in the Rockford area work there. So that's a that's a description, but it swung 17 points. From when Barack Obama won in his 2nd reelect. So, in the 2012 election to then when Donald Trump won in 2016, it was a 17 point swing.

So, um, I could feel it on the ground and Glenn, you can talk a little bit about what you were seeing in more Southern Illinois. Um, I'm a downstater, but you are in southern Illinois, but but I can feel it on the ground. And interestingly, that election that Donald Trump 1, our congressional district that I represented, I want it by 20 points.

So, what that means is about 1 in every 5 voters. That went into the, the voting booth that on that election day, um, 1 [02:10:00] in 5 voted for Donald Trump and then went down ballot a little bit farther and voted for me. Um, and so what what did okay so back to your question. I mean, you, if you, if you're representing a district like this.

That is truly a swing district. Um, you bet you better not be extreme. And, um, because that is not what the, a swing district is looking for. Um, we can talk a little bit about what I think was what proved to be successful for me. Um, but, um, you know, I'm a moderate Democrat, but that's, that's how I, how I was raised.

I come from a long line of family farmers. And teachers, and, you know, we're just we're pretty regular middle class folks. Um, but, um, I, I'm a moderate and that my politics. I don't know if they're always in style. I would say if you fast forwarded to 2018, being a moderate Democrat probably wasn't exactly in style.

I think is. Maybe back in style now, [02:11:00] because I see us as the pragmatists, the, the folks who, while we can always shoot for major change, it is really, really difficult, uh, legislatively to, to have major change. So, I do believe in, in order to make changes that are necessary, sometimes that does have to happen incrementally.

And over

Crossing the Rural-Urban Divide (with Governor Tim Walz) - In the Bubble with Andy Slavitt - Air Date 1-11-23

Minnesota for people who aren't familiar with the state, like a lot of Midwestern states has a lot of democrats and a lot of republicans. That's right. It's got an urban urban center with a lot of, you Democrats, it's got a lot of rural communities with, with, that are with fair amount of Republicans.

You represented in the US congress, a very rural area with, of course, with some nice cities in it too. And, and, you know, you ran against someone who, uh, Scott Jensen, who is sort of out of MAGA central casting. That's right. Yet, The election wasn't, to be honest, it wasn't close and not only that, but you flip the Senate blue.

And for the first time in a decade, [02:12:00] you've got a full democratic governing coalition across the legislature and the governor's office. What happened? Tell us what this tells you about the state of the electorate . Yeah. It's a big deal. And Andy knows Minnesota well. And I think you're right. The one thing in there too, Andy, there is a big chunk of, you know, capital I independence, you know, Jesse Ventura's people, some of those are still there.

So right. Minnesota kind of represents that, that quintessential purple state out in the Midwest. You're right. I represented a district that when I won my last congressional race in 2016, Donald Trump won by 20 percent there. But I think it was the Minnesota, again, it's not, You know, Minnesota exceptionalism, but I think there was just a more grounded focus that the issues of the day coming out of a pandemic, the way we handled it, you know, that was the debate home to the Mayo Clinic, home to the, you know, the heart of the medical research and medical device industry.

And we had folks that were blatantly telling people this was a hoax and things like that. And as you said, you know, my opponent being a [02:13:00] medical doctor of all things and, and falling into that, I think that was. Well, you know, for what it's worth, my pro tip of the day was don't run on that. People were relatively happy.

We had pretty low death rates and things. And then I do think the, uh, the decision on row that came, um, it, there was an energized, you could feel it. You know, it's not, again, you, if you're counting on young voters to win for you, we've always been, all of us have been through this. It's hard to get them to the polls for different reasons.

They showed up this time and, and women again, we're speaking. And so I think what it was is there was a. Uh, basics about, you know what, we handled COVID the best we could. We're coming out of this thing pretty well, you know, focusing on that issue around on women's rights and reproductive rights. And then here in Minnesota, again, one of the things we're very proud of, and we rank very near the top on public education was a full frontal attack from the other side on, on the, just the whole concept of public education, that, that we should just quit funding them.

Right. That we should defund it and that we should go to vouchers for parents. So I think it was a [02:14:00] combination on this. You know, I, it's not the campaign that I would have run against me, um, if I was doing it. But I, I, I think in this, that both the mood out here. The general nature of, of the electorate, it did split on those things that you talked about, Andy, I run on one Minnesota and I, it breaks my heart to see our state so polarized, but you can take our state, just like you can the map of the United States.

And it's, you know, that red and blue as a geographer, there's been no bigger damage done to this country, but my, whoever put that on TV the first time showing these splotches of red and these splotches of blue, when we know that it is not that uniform, you know, right. The city of Rochester, Mankato in the middle, or sure.

So I think it was just voters knew they were there and then I do think it came to this that the candidates I, I think I got a pretty good draw on the candidate that I had, but I'd also like to think we did a pretty good job during covid we listened to experts. Um, we listened to the folks who cared and then I think we tackled head on a generational [02:15:00] reckoning on race after the murder of George Floyd.

So it was a, well, I'll tell you if, if, if you put a list of things together in a first term and thought that you were going to get reelected by a fairly comfortable. Well, margin, I would have bet against us. I think, yeah, that's a lot of challenges. I do want to go back to talk about some of the things that unite us because, because I think you make a really important point, you know, I think all of us are used to seeing elections where people have policy differences, you know, you're, you're used to running against people who you just adamantly disagree with from a policy standpoint, yet at some level.

It's okay because you know, they're being truthful with the public. That's right. What felt new and what feels like a new phenomenon is this cycle. You and a number of other, you know, national candidates for governor and for Congress were running against people who basically premised a lot of they're willing to premise a lot of their campaign on a lie.

That's right. Whether it's the lie of the 2020 election, whether it's just boldface, um, lying and telling [02:16:00] mistruths that worries a lot of us. I don't know how much it worries you. It was, it's, it's certainly confirming to see people like you who play it straight, whether the truth is good or whether the truth is bad, win against someone like that.

But how do you run against somebody who just is willing to invent their own playbook like that? Yeah, it was hard because I say this, I've run against really good people and I would have to say this. My, my first term for governor in 2018, I ran against a man who honorable, good guy, good father. I mean, lives up just, I think tells the truth every day, you know, kind of lives the life you'd like to see.

We just disagreed on tax policy, disagreed on some of those things, and we had a good spirited campaign on the issues. This one was just. You know, just wild out of nowhere, accusations, you know, I don't know if you followed it asking how you run against it. You have a good team around you to keep you from losing your mind on some of this because it was just, you know, I'm in a debate arguing that it wasn't COVID that killed [02:17:00] people.

It was the ventilators, you know, it was the vaccine and things. But I also was getting, I did 24 years in the military and someone who didn't do time, they came right at you that I somehow. Quit and deserted my people type of thing. You know, I don't know where it comes from. And now you're in the public who is predisposed for these massive attacks and massive lies.

We needed to be talking about how are we going to, in Minnesota and aging population,

And so what I said is how you run on this is, is my team did a great job of staying focused on the issues. What are we going to do to improve the lives of Minnesotans? I think, you know, the thing that my team and I remind myself is talking about the issues and talking about solving them and being as honest as you could with the public is That

Credits

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [02:18:00] That's going to be it for today. As always, keep the comments coming in. I would love to hear your thoughts or questions about today's topic or anything else. You can leave a voicemail or send us a text at (202) 999-3991, or simply email me to [email protected].

The additional sections of the show included clips from Morning Joe, WABE, DW News, The Majority Report, The New Yorker Radio Hour, Woke AF Daily, The PBS NewsHour, The Reid Out, Mother Jones, Ms. Jones incorporated. The takeaway the 21st show and in the bubble further details are in the show notes. Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks to Deon Clark and Aaron Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet, Ken, Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her bonus show co-hosting. And thanks to those who already support the show by becoming a member [02:19:00] 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 that we get instant access to our incredibly good and often funny weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 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

Add your reaction Share

#1653 Money-N-Politics: SuperPACS, Crypto, Billionaires, and Public Funding of Elections (Transcript)

Posted by · September 06, 2024 12:02 PM

Air Date 9/6/2024

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: [00:00:00] Welcome to this episode of the award-winning Best of the Left podcast. We're living in a world that dark money in politics and Citizens United built. But since that Supreme court ruling in 2010, we've also invented cryptocurrency. That promises to be a brand new source of opacity and financial power built on smoke and mirrors.

Sources providing our Top Takes in about 50 minutes today includes CounterSpin, Robert Reich, The PBS NewsHour, The Brian Lehrer Show, The Majority Report, Democracy Now!, CounterSpin, and Bernie Sanders. Then in the additional Deeper Dives half of the show, there'll be more on four topics:

Section A: The System,

Section B: Funding Republicans,

Section C: Funding Democrats, and

Section D: Solutions.

Steve Macek on Dark Money - CounterSpin - Air Date 8-23-24

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Let's start with some definition. Dark money doesn't mean funding for candidates or campaigns I don't like, or from groups I don't like. In your June piece for The Progressive, [00:01:00] you spell out what it is and in terms of where it can come from and what we can know about it. Help us, if you would, understand just the rules around dark money.

STEVE MACEK: Sure. So dark money -- and I think Anna Massaglia of Open Secrets gave me, I think, a really nice, concise definition of dark money in the interview I did with her for this article. She called it funding from undisclosed sources that goes to influence political outcomes such as elections.

Now, thanks to the Supreme Court case in Citizens United versus Federal Election Commission in 2010 and some other cases, it is now completely legal for corporations and very wealthy individuals to spend unlimited amounts of money to influence the outcomes of elections. Not all of that independent expenditure on elections [00:02:00] is dark money. Dark money is spending that comes from organizations that do not have to disclose their donors. One sort of organization, I'm sure your listeners are really familiar with, are super PACs, or what they're more technically known as IRS Code 527 organizations. It can take unlimited contributions and spend unlimited amounts on influencing elections, but they have to disclose the names of their donors.

There is this other sort of organization, a 501(c)(4) nonprofit, which is sometimes known as a social welfare nonprofit, who can raise huge amounts of money, but they do not have to disclose the names of their donors. But they are prevented from spending the majority of their budget on political activity, which means that a lot of these 501(c)(4) organizations spend [00:03:00] 49.999 percent of their budget attempting to influence the outcomes of elections, and the rest of it is spent on things like general political education or research that might in turn guide the creation of political ads and so on.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: When we talk about influencing the outcome of elections, it's not that they are taking out an ad for or against a particular candidate; that doesn't have to be involved at all.

STEVE MACEK: Right. So they can sometimes run issue ads. Sometimes these dark money groups, as long as they're working within the parameters of the law, will run ads for or against a particular candidate.

But take, for example, Citizens for Sanity, the group that I talked about at the beginning of my Progressive article. This is a group that nobody knows very much about. It showed up back in 2022 and ran $40 million worth of ads in four battleground [00:04:00] states. Many of the ads were general ads attacking the Democrats for wanting to erase the border or for over kind of woke culture war themes. But they're spending 40 plus million dollars on ads, according to one estimate. What we do know is the officials of the group are almost identical to America First Legal, which was made up by former Trump administration officials. America First Legal was founded by Stephen Miller, that xenophobic former advisor, and sometimes speechwriter to Donald Trump. No one really knows exactly who is funding this organization because it is a 501(c)(4) social welfare nonprofit, and so is not required by the IRS to disclose its donors. It has been running this year in Ohio and elsewhere, a whole bunch of digital ads and putting up billboards, for example, attacking [00:05:00] Democratic Senator Sherrod Brown for his stance on immigration policies, basically saying he wants to protect criminal illegals, and also running these general anti-woke -- they're very snarky, kind of anti-woke ads saying basically Democrats used to care about the middle class, now they only care about race and gender and DEI.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Right. Well, I think rich people influence policy. It's almost like dog bites man at this point, right? Yeah, it's bad, but that's how the system works. And I think it's important to lift up If it didn't matter for donors to obscure their support for this or that, well then they wouldn't be trying to obscure it.

And the thing you're writing about, these are down ballot issues where you might believe that Citizens for Sanity, in this case, any other organization, you might think of this as like a grassroots group that scrabbled together some money to take out ads. And so it is meaningful to know, [00:06:00] to connect these financial dots.

STEVE MACEK: Absolutely. It is meaningful. And since you made reference to down ballot races, one of the things that I think is so nefarious about dark money and these dark money organizations is that they are spending a lot on races for things like school board, or, as I discussed in the article, state Attorney General's races, right?

There is this organization that was founded in 2014 called the Republican Attorney General's Association or RAGA, which is a beautiful acronym. And they have been trying to elect extremely reactionary Republicans to the top law enforcement position in state after state. And in 2022, they spent something like $8.9 million trying to defeat Democratic State Attorney General's candidates [00:07:00] in the 2022 elections.

Now they are a PAC of a kind. They're a 527, so they have the same legal status as a super PAC, so they have to disclose their donors. But the fact is, one of the major donors is the group called the Concord Fund, which has given them $17 million. Concord Fund is a 501(c)(4) that was founded by Leonard Leo, the judicial activist affiliated with the Federalist Society, who is basically Donald Trump's Supreme Court whisperer, who is largely responsible for the conservative takeover of the federal court.

His organization, this fund that he controls gave $17 million to RAGA, and we have no idea who contributed that money to the fund. We can make some educated guesses, but nobody really knows who's funneling that money into trying to influence the election of the top law enforcement official in state after state around this country. That's alarming. [00:08:00] Because of course, some of these right wing billionaires and corporations have issues, have a vested interest in who is sitting in that position, because if it comes to enforcement of antitrust laws or corruption laws, if they have a more friendly Attorney General in that position, State Attorney General in that position, it could mean millions of dollars for their bottom line.

Why Big Money Supports Trump -Robert Reich - Air Date 8-27-24

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: Fascism, backed by big money, is one of the most dangerous of all political alliances. We saw it in 1930s Germany, when industrial giants bailed out a cash strapped Nazi party right before Hitler's election, thinking that Hitler would protect their money and power. We're seeing something similar now.

Earlier this year, the GOP was running out of money. So, Trump turned to his wealthy backers for help. Many super rich donors, who once criticized Trump for stoking the violence of January 6th, have since had a change of heart, deciding their profits are worth more than our democracy. Trump has promised them that if [00:09:00] elected, he'll extend his 2017 tax cuts that went mainly to the wealthy, beyond 2025, when they're scheduled to expire.

And he's hinted at even more.

DONALD TRUMP: The rich as hell, we're gonna give you tax cuts?

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: He promised oil executives he would scrap regulations favoring electric vehicles and wind energy if they would give his campaign $1 billion.

The Trump White House is for sale. And the wealthy are buying. 50 billionaire families gave at least $600 million in political donations as of May, with over two thirds going to support GOP candidates and conservative causes.

Elon Musk, one of the world's richest men, who also controls and manipulates one of the world's largest communications platforms, has committed to spending millions of dollars a month to elect Trump, and Trump has promised to make it worth Musk's while.

DONALD TRUMP: We have to make life good for our smart people, and he's as smart as you get.

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: In previous [00:10:00] videos, I've highlighted alarming similarities between fascist regimes of the past and Trumpism. The alignment of American billionaires with Trump's anti-democracy movement. is one of the most dangerous parallels.

The billionaires want the rest of us to fight each other so we don't look up and see where all the wealth and power have gone, so we don't join together and raise taxes on the super rich to finance childcare, better schools, our healthcare system, everything else we need.

They fear democracy because there are far more of us than there are of them. We need to see through their fear tactics, and vote in overwhelming numbers this November.

We can learn from history and spot the danger. We are not doomed to repeat it.

Trump shifts stance on cryptocurrency to win over new bloc of voters and mega-donors - PBS Newshour - Air Date 7-29-24

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: The incredible rise of Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies have created a new block of megadonors that voters and presidential candidates are now trying to win over. Former President Trump, who initially denounced cryptocurrency as [00:11:00] "highly volatile and based on thin air" back in 2019, reversed himself in his speech to the conference last Saturday by promising to make the US the crypto capital of the world,

DONALD TRUMP: if crypto is going to define the future, I want it to be mined, minted, and made in the USA. It's going to be. It's not going to be made anywhere else. And if Bitcoin is going to the moon, as we say, it's going to the moon, I want America to be the nation that leads the way. And that's what's going to happen. No, you're going to be very happy with me.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Joining me now to discuss the ramifications of all of this is David Yaffe-Bellany from the New York Times. David, thank you so much for being here. Help set the table for us for people who have not been following this that closely. Remind us of where crypto was after its big fall, and now it's sort of resurged in the marketplace.

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: The last time most ordinary people tuned into the crypto industry, you know, top [00:12:00] executives were going to prison, the market was in free fall, and a lot of these kind of risky investments had been widely dismissed as worthless or scams. But a lot has changed since then. In January, the federal government approved a new investment product that's tied to the price of Bitcoin. And when that product started trading, it kind of opened up access to the crypto market to a whole lot of people who hadn't invested in it before. And as a result, the price of Bitcoin surged. It reached its record high a few months ago, and the prices of some of the other big crypto tokens have followed suit. And so the industry is in a much healthier state today than it has been for the last couple of years.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: So, as we just heard, the former President Trump made this very explicit pitch to the crypto world, saying, I might have been a skeptic before, but now I'm in full bore. What is his pitch, and why is this happening now?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Look, the crypto industry is furious about the way that it's been treated by the federal government. The Securities and Exchange Commission has [00:13:00] embarked on a pretty aggressive crackdown on crypto companies, a crackdown so severe that it's essentially an existential threat. It could drive the industry out of the United States if it's successful. And so the embrace of Trump is really a response to that. And, you know, a cynical reading of this is that Trump is kind of opportunistically seizing on what's happening, you know, under the current administration. Seeing an opportunity to attract donor dollars from the crypto industry, and that's why he's making this pitch, promising that he's going to turn the US into a kind of inviting sort of capital for crypto companies, rather than the sort of aggressive cop on the beat that it's been over the last couple of years.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: Let's talk about that 'cop on the beat'. Currently, that's the Biden administration's cop on the beat. What is it that they're doing, and what is their argument about why they need to be such a tough cop?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: Sure. So, the leader of this push is the chair of the SEC, Gary Gensler, and the argument that he has made over and over is that most [00:14:00] cryptocurrencies are essentially securities, which is to say that they're just like stocks and bonds that are traded on Wall Street and that they ought to be regulated as such and that crypto companies should have to make all the sorts of disclosures and follow all the same rules as people do, people who offer those traditional investment products. That is a legal argument that the crypto industry hates. You know, they're fighting back against it saying that if the SEC beats them in the courts on this issue, then they'll be driven out of the United States. So, that's sort of the crux of the debate. And, you know, Trump went in front of a crowd of Bitcoin supporters over the weekend and said, one of my first acts as president will be to fire Gary Gensler. And it got probably the biggest cheer of the day.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: So, do we know what vice president Kamala Harris might do if she were elected? Is it safe to say she would just continue the Biden administration's current approach?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: It's hard to say for sure. She hasn't said a ton publicly about her views on crypto, but obviously she's part of the current administration and so a lot of crypto [00:15:00] insiders are kind of assuming that if she wins, it'll be more of the same that they saw under the Biden administration. With that said, both the Biden campaign and now the Harris campaign have extended something of an olive branch to crypto companies, sort of invited them to come to the table and sort of talk about the policy changes they would like to see. But, the reaction among crypto executives has been pretty skeptical. Essentially it's been 'your talk means nothing to us, we've seen what you've done over the last four years and, frankly, we don't trust you'.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: We're talking about crypto here, but there has been in the broader tech world, as well as in the VC world—the venture capital world—this seeming move towards Trump and supporting Republican candidates. Is that all about this concern over too-strict enforcement as they see it?

DAVID YAFFE-BELLANY: That's really probably the key part of this. You know, even tech people who aren't directly involved in the crypto industry or see what's going on and say, you know, this is an administration that's cracking down on [00:16:00] innovation and there's a fear that there might be a crackdown on the AI companies that are proliferating now. And so that's a lot of what's driving the kind of rightward shift of the Silicon Valley elite toward Trump, but there are other factors as well. A lot of these top figures in the tech world have kind of bought into concerns about cancel culture and wokeness run amok. And so there are some of those kind of cultural issues at play here as well.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM - REPORTER, PBS NEWSHOUR: And I'm sure it's also true that billionaires like tax cuts, which Donald Trump is promising more of as well.

Silicon Valley's Impact on the 2024 Elections - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-31-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: Erin, you used this term before the break that I loved. You said 'liberaltarian' was a good way to describe the folks in the tech industry. And, you know, the splintering that we see in Silicon Valley right now has a lot of people speculating on why a powerful liberal, sometimes libertarian, group has gone so far right.

Recently, US secretary of Transportation, Pete Buttigieg, a Democrat who's stumping for Vice President Harris, weighed in. We've got a clip that I want to share with [00:17:00] you. Let's take a listen to what Buttigieg said on Real Time with Bill Maher earlier this month.

PETE BUTTIGIEG: I know there are a lot of folks who say, What's going on with some of these Silicon Valley folks veering into Trump world with JD Vance and backing Trump? What are they thinking? Silicon Valley is supposed to be, you know, they're supposed to care about climate. They're supposed to be, you know, pro science and rational and libertarians. Normally libertarians don't like authoritarians. What's up with that? I think it's actually, we've made it way too complicated. It's super simple. These are very rich men who have decided to back the Republican Party that tends to do good things for very rich men.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: A lot of texts are coming in saying basically the same thing. That it all kind of comes down to money. So, Erin, what are your thoughts on what Buttigieg is saying? It's to what extent is this just all about money?

ERIN GRIFFITH: I mean, I don't think, I'm not going to argue with that. That's a very, first of all, it's a great message, political message for him to be putting out there on the left. [00:18:00] And I think it's hard to argue with that. And one point that I'll just add to that is that if you look at Marc Andreessen's comments about his political journey and how he switched from having supported almost every Democratic candidate for president over the last couple decades to now supporting Trump. He pointed to this journey that people tend to go on in his industry where you make a lot of money, you're very successful in business, you're mostly left alone by regulators, and then you become a philanthropist. And he even made the point that, like, then you get a lot of praise for giving a lot of your money away. And he was really struck by the fact that philanthropists started getting criticized. And he even pointed out that when Mark Zuckerberg announced his Chan Zuckerberg [00:19:00] Initiative, there was some criticism around it and he was just like really taken aback by that. And so part of it is, I think these guys are surprised to find themselves as the villain and kind of bristling at this criticism.

And so I think there's a little bit of almost sensitivity or 'how dare you' kind of about it, too. And so, I think that's just worth playing into this, that it's not just money, but it's also like they're kind of like ego a little bit. I found that really striking.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: So, it is not just about money, maybe legacy? Is that fair? Maybe about the ego, the point that they're making in the world. Once you make enough money, what else can you do? So they start looking at politics. Is that kind of what you're suggesting?

ERIN GRIFFITH: Well, yeah. And if you just think more broadly, the tech industry has been really villainized in the media and by politicians on both sides over the last few years. You know, even Trump is calling for breaking up big [00:20:00] tech and putting Mark Zuckerberg in jail, and so I think that kind of villainization is also playing into this a little bit. And I'm not, you know, weighing in on whether or not this is deserved or good, bad, whatever, but I'm just saying this is what I've observed when I talk to people, is that they take it a little bit personally, like, We're innovators, we're building the future for society. And they're a little bit dismayed at the fact that there's this aggressive regulation, there's lawsuits, there's some villainizing going on. So, I think that does play into it a little bit too.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And it makes sense timeline-wise, right? Because if you go back, you know, 10, 15 years ago, back to 2010, tech was kind of, in many circles, seen as a panacea, almost. You could fix it if you lathered tech on top of whatever you were talking about. I'm sure moving on from there, 10, 15 years later, it's kind of a little bit of a 180 with AI, crypto, all of these things kind of seen as taking away from society. [00:21:00] Does that timeline make sense there?

ERIN GRIFFITH: Well, yeah. I mean. Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton had very cozy relationships with the tech industry. And it wasn't seen as, you know, politically toxic in some ways that it is a little bit now, taking tech money. But that's, I think, partly because of how powerful the tech industry has become. It used to be this kind of quirky thing that happened over on the West Coast. And now it is, you know, a part of every single industry in our economy. It's these companies are among... the top five most valuable companies in the world are tech companies, mostly, and, you know, the tech industry is extremely powerful. And so it has become, you know... there's been a lot of criticism around the tech industry and a lot of scrutiny and a lot of regulatory scrutiny. And so all of that is a part of this.

Dem Donors Want Harris To Bail On Biden's Best Decision - The Majority Report - Air Date 7-29-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Harris is getting pushed [00:22:00] by folks who are against genocide, who are against a, open air prisons and ethnic cleansing and killing of tens of thousands of children. On one side she's getting pressure in that way, on another side, on a big money and corporations and donors, she's getting pressured to roll back and undermine the antitrust gains that have been made at the FTC with Lena Kahn.

Here is from yesterday, CNN's Matt Egan on with Reid Hoffman, who is the LinkedIn co founder, apparently giving $7 million to Harris.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: And there was one donor who was quoted in the New York Times piece about this who said that they think essentially she'll dump Lena Khan, and the source was one major Democratic donor

I don't know this for a [00:23:00] fact...

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: This is the point We don't know what she's gonna do.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We don't know, but it could be him.

REID HOFFMAN: Trump wants tariffs, which is anti business. Makes this a very strange election indeed, because I think actually vice president Harris is much more of the pro-business candidate than Trump and Vance.

CNN ANCHOR: But vice president Harris wants to raise the corporate tax rate. The, Biden Harris administration has imposed tariffs, so aren't there some anti-business concerns there as well.

REID HOFFMAN: I think what's most important for business is stability of a country, unity, rule of law, and a percent difference in corporate tax, or two percent or three percent difference in corporate tax, is far less important.

CNN ANCHOR: Now the Trump campaign of course has argued otherwise, saying that Former President Trump is the one that's going to put more money in the pockets of American families and blaming the Biden Harris administration for the high cost of living.

Now, even Reid Hoffman conceded that he's not thrilled with [00:24:00] all parts of the Biden administration. In particular, he strongly criticized Lena Khan, the FTC chair. He said that Lena Khan is "waging war on American business," and he went so far as to say that he hopes that a President Harris would replace Lena Kahn at the FTC.

Now, the agency pushed back, telling CNN in a statement that Chair Kahn is honored to work in this administration where she has worked to protect consumers, workers, and entrepreneurs from corporate abuses. And it's worth remembering that Lena Kahn, she's won some fans on the left for her efforts to fight monopolies, to try to Push back against big oil and big tech.

And interestingly enough, she even has a fan on the,

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on the Republican side. I think he was about to say. This is an attempt, by the corporate interests on the Democratic side of things [00:25:00] to influence Harris and lay down a gauntlet, do these sort of like vague, passive, aggressive threats on some level tied him with somebody who's got the 7 million and whatnot, and we'll see what happens here.

They know, or they think that they know that she's pushable on this. Does that mean that they're gonna succeed? No. This is the same dynamic I think that we're in terms of Gaza and the Biden administration's policies. In fact, I'm not convinced that Elizabeth Warren's coming early in this process and endorsing her, when there was still talk of some type of mini primary wasn't a function of her trying to get there first and make sure that she's in Harris's ear, and maintaining if not building upon the gains that Warren part of the party looking for antitrust is not carried forward.

Here's IAC Chairman Barry Diller [00:26:00] talking to Andrew Ross Sorkin on CNBC, this all come from the business press, as to what he would do in terms of lobbying Harris.

DILLAR: Everybody flip flops because conditions change. You run in the primary to the left or to the right in order to get it. Then when you get the nomination, you cove towards the center, which is sensible to do. It's all pragmatic.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Let me also just weigh in on this. This is not so, so relevant to this, but this conventional wisdom, it's not really the case as much as it used to be. Joe Biden, when he was in trouble, when he was facing calls to be pushed out, he did not tack to the center folks. He came out and said 5% a cap on rent. He came out and said, expansion of, Medicaid and Medicare. He came out and said...

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: ...canceling medical debt...

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: ...canceling medical debt. These are tacks to the left, not tacks to the center. And [00:27:00] clearly this was him in the general election mode, although it turned out he wasn't in any mode.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: That's what we were saying, is part of the frustration was he was in a fight for his life for the Democratic nomination, and that's why he was pulling all that out. Harris now is actually in the general election, so it'll be fascinating to see without abilities to influence her throughout a long protracted primary process, who gets their way.

DILLAR: When you get the nomination, you cove towards the center, which is sensible to do. It's all pragmatic. Let's not talk about honesty in these contexts.

CNBC ANCHOR: But there have been reports that a number of prominent Democrats have been lobbying Harris to drop people like Lena Kahn. Do you think that it's going to happen? And would you lobby? Yeah, I would. You would? Yeah, I think she's a dope.

EMMA VIGELAND - CO-HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Of course you do. And to your point about Warren, Lena Kahn is the chair of the FTC because of Elizabeth Warren, because Elizabeth [00:28:00] Warren endorsed Biden and dropped out, and was a part of that coalescence of candidates that dropped out to defeat Bernie Sanders. I think those were some of her asks, right?

So if she's as close with Harris as she says she is, perhaps she's an influence on the other side, but the stuff about Harris that's going to be the most, I think, problematic and stuff to watch for is her relationship to antitrust. She's going to be a bit more of an Obama type, closer with Silicon Valley than perhaps Biden is, maybe less willing to be an antitrust, break up big business type of person. And, she's probably closer with Wall Street than Biden has been, at least over the past four years.

So those are the pressure points they're gonna try to push, but it remains to be seen what the end result is of that pushing, in the same way with the Gaza policy as well.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: We'll [00:29:00] see.

Andy Levin, Pushed Out of Congress by AIPAC, Calls for Change in U.S.-Israel Policy - Democracy Now! - Air Date 8-21-24

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, “War, Peace and the Presidency: Breaking with Convention.” I’m Amy Goodman, here in Chicago with Juan González.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: We turn now to look at how AIPAC, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, has spent millions targeting Democrats who have criticized U.S. support of Israel. In June, AIPAC and the affiliated super PAC spent almost $15 million to defeat New York Congressman Jamaal Bowman. And then, two weeks ago, Missouri Congressmember Cori Bush lost her seat after AIPAC spent $8 million to defeat her.

We’re joined now in Chicago by former Democratic Congressmember Andy Levin of Michigan. In 2022, he lost his House seat after AIPAC spent millions in dark money to defeat him. Levin is a former synagogue president and self-described Zionist. Despite this, AIPAC labeled him as, “arguably the most corrosive member of Congress [00:30:00] to the U.S.-Israel relationship.”

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Andy Levin is a former Democratic congressmember from Michigan. He’s part of a political dynasty. We thank you so much for being with us.

If you could start off by talking about— when we hear about Bowman, we hear about Bush, you came before them. And talk about the race that unseated you—might surprise many that you were a synagogue president and a congressmember—and how you were driven out.

ANDY LEVIN: Had been a synagogue president until I went to Congress, and I felt I should stop doing that, because you have to devote all your time to Congress. And I had, mezuzahs, the little things that Jewish people hang on their doors, on all my doors in Congress. I’m a really joyous Jewish person.

And, I think they felt particularly threatened [00:31:00] by that, Amy and Juan. The idea—and plus, my dad and my uncle had served in Congress before me—my dad in the House, my uncle in the Senate. My dad was the president of the high school class of 1949 at Central High School in Detroit, right? They were from the bosom of the Jewish community there. And I think that these right-wing-on-Israel people can’t stand the idea that a Jewish person like me, who is fully for self-determination for my people in the Holy Land, was the loudest voice in Congress saying, “Well, that’s not going to be sustainable, and we’re not going to have peace there, until and unless we fully realize the human rights and the political rights of the Palestinian people, too.”

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I just want to talk about your family dynasty, the political dynasty.

ANDY LEVIN: We don’t talk about it like that. Yes.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: Your father, Sander Levin, the congressmember; your uncle, Carl Levin, head of Armed Services in the Senate —

ANDY LEVIN: Yes.

AMY GOODMAN - HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: —at the same time your [00:32:00] father was head of Ways and Means Committee?

ANDY LEVIN: Yeah, my—these two Jewish boys from Detroit. And my uncle, who passed away, never left the city of Detroit. They each served 36 years in Congress. They served 32 years together. In the 235-year history of our elected democracy in the United States, they are by far the longest-serving siblings, and even more than three Kennedy brothers, more than anybody. And I’m so proud of them and, their contributions to our democracy.

But, Uncle Carl got crosswise with AIPAC in the '90s, when Yitzhak Shamir was, I think, the secondly couped prime minister of Israel, and he said, “Land for peace? We're not doing land for peace.” And Carl, it may feel naive today, but he was like, “Oh my gosh! That’s the basis for any hope of peace.” And he wrote a letter to Secretary of State George Shultz, I think it was at the time. And he got [00:33:00] 30—on a Friday afternoon, he got, I think, 30 senators to sign this letter. It was supposed to be private. And they sent it to him, saying, “We have to have land for peace. Do something about this,” something like that. And one of the other senators or their staff made it public. Carl had shown the text to AIPAC beforehand. But when it went public, AIPAC went crazy, said, “This can’t be Carl Levin’s letter.” They demanded he retract it. They said, “It must have been the work of some staffer.” Uncle Carl totally stood by his staffer, who helped him write the letter. He said, “No, that’s my letter.” And anybody who knew Uncle Carl knew he went over every line, himself before they sent the letter.

And this is—look, if you are a Jewish person and you really want to be true to your faith, you have to treat the other as yourself. You have to love your—you the stranger, the neighbor. The most oft-repeated mitzvah, or requirement, [00:34:00] in the Torah, I think 36 times, which is a very significant number for Jews, is some version of that. Who is the most important other for us, honestly, if not—OK, a homeless person, someone who looks different than you, yes, treat them well. But, really, I think the acid test for Jewish people is how do we treat our Palestinian cousins. And so, we have to treat them as we would want to be treated. They are from the land. They’re there on the land. And if you come from Michigan, you know so many amazing Palestinian Americans who are your neighbors, your colleagues, your doctor, your friend, and we need to all get along there, and we need to work together here to make that happen.

And I don’t care what AIPAC does. The fact—it’s outrageous that they’re using money from Republican billionaires to decide who wins Democratic primaries. [00:35:00] That’s a problem for democracy, and it’s a threat to the soul of the Democratic Party, even from a kind of a dry political science point of view, right? If you are in a political science class and your professor says, “Well, there’s multiple parties, right? And they each have to choose their candidate that represents that party’s values or beliefs, to go up against some other party, right?”—if any party lets a different party, interest groups from a different party, billionaires from a different party, come and choose its candidates, it’s finished.

JUAN GONZALEZ - CO-HOST, DEMOCRACY NOW!: I wanted to ask you—you mentioned, obviously, Michigan, where you’re from. Talk about the rise of the “uncommitted” movement and what kind of impact it’s had on the Democratic Party and on the process of choosing a president.

ANDY LEVIN: Juan, I am so proud of this movement. These are young people. This is a true grassroots movement. I remember when I went to a phone bank that they had during the Michigan primary, which [00:36:00] our primary for president was way back on February 27th. The energy in that room, the beautiful rainbow of people in that room, the food that someone had cooked, you know—if you’re an organizer in the social movements of this country, when you walk into a situation like that, you know if something has life, is authentic, has power. And not only did they get over 100,000 people to vote uncommitted in just a few weeks in Michigan to say to President Biden, “We want to vote for you in November, but you’ve got to change course on Gaza to help us do that,” it obviously went national, too.

And I’m so proud of these young people, because I don’t want Donald Trump to get anywhere near the White House ever again, but even now, in late August, I feel like Vice President Harris—I hope that she can reach out more. And it’s difficult as a vice president, right? But I think she has plenty of space to say, “Look, under a [00:37:00] Harris administration, we’re going to follow U.S. and international law on military aid to Israel and all of any other military aid,” right? And she could say—she has a lot of room to say different things that would win the support of the uncommitted movement, which I think it would be very helpful to win Michigan, which is necessary.

Steven Rosenfeld on Election Transparency, Ian Vandewalker on Small Donors - CounterSpin - Air Date 5-17-24

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Well, I will say when I first saw the headline of your report, Do Small Donors Cause Political Dysfunction? I thought, Huh, who would say that? It turns out it's a number of folks, including author and New York Times writer Thomas Edsel, who wrote, "for 200, a person can fuel the decline of our major parties." And then David Beiler at the Washington Post wrote, "small dollar donors didn't save democracy, they made it worse." So this is not a subreddit, obscure line of thought, so before I ask you to engage it, putting the best face [00:38:00] on it, what is the argument here?

IAN VANDEWALKER: The argument is this contrarian line that you think small donors are democratizing because anybody can be one, but if you look at who gets a lot of small money, it tends to be people who engage in disruptive antics like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Matt Gates. People who try to attract a lot of attention with whether extremist rhetoric or polarizing rhetoric. And so the argument is what small donors are really doing is they're encouraging these people who are showboating and not engaged in serious moderation or governance.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: So the idea, is it that these small donors aren't real, that they're orchestrated, that these, folks are trying to get folks to just give $12 to make some kind of point, and it's not that actually it's people who can only give $12?

IAN VANDEWALKER: I think there's something here in that the media ecosystem that we live in, both the mainstream [00:39:00] media and social media click bait does gravitate towards outrage and controversy and people screaming at each other. We all get these fundraising emails with all caps, the world's going to come crashing down if you don't send me $12. So I think there are incentives in the media system that say to certain people, I can engage a national small donor fundraising base by saying crazy things. That exists.

Now, one of the critiques is that most small donors don't actually respond to that. Small donors tend to give to competitive races where they think they can help their party win control of a chamber of Congress or the White House.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: So first of all, I like how you're go right to the media ecosystem. I think a lot of folks won't. There's a political system and there's a media system and they're different. You're already saying, no, these things are intimately integrated.

IAN VANDEWALKER: Yes, campaign fundraising doesn't happen in a vacuum. The internet has been a [00:40:00] huge Beneficial force for fundraising and allows people to connect across the nation to things that they believe in, but one of the other effects of that has been this click bait world of say, the most outrageous thing in order to get the clicks and get the small dollar fundraising. There's a question whether these candidates that engage in this kind of extremist rhetoric, are they doing it for the small dollar fundraising or would they be doing it anyway, given who votes in their district, I think is a question we should also look into.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: There is a reality, there is a foot we can keep on base, and so what do you say in this piece about when you actually investigate, are small donors causing political dysfunction? What did you find?

IAN VANDEWALKER: So first of all, there's lots of reasons for polarization, people moving farther to the right and left and other kinds of dysfunction. They have to do with gerrymandering and the media ecosystem and the parties making strategic choices about how they're going to engage their [00:41:00] voter bases and things that have nothing to do with campaign finance. As I said, small donors, they give to people they've heard of. So one way to get heard of is to say crazy things, but it's certainly not the only way. Some candidates are trying to find, policy solutions to the problems that face us. And the other thing we haven't mentioned yet is big donors.

Even though the amount of small money in the system has dramatically increased, the money from big, the biggest donors, people who give millions, 10 million, has increased even faster. So that's actually the biggest part of the campaign finance system. It's this big money and those people give to extremists as well. So it's hard to say, when you look at all those facts together, that small donors are causing dysfunction or polarization, even though there are these notorious examples of extremists who raise lots of small money.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: It just sounds weird to say that people who can give less, people who don't have a million dollars, they're throwing in their [00:42:00] money wherever they throw it, is throwing off the system. It makes you ask what's the system? Is the system that only people who can afford to give tens of thousands of dollars should be included? It just sounds weird.

IAN VANDEWALKER: Yeah, that's right. I think one of the things, the thought experiment I like to do with these arguments is replace small donor with voter, right? If small donors give a lot of money to a candidate because they believe in that candidate, that's just like voters voting for a candidate because they believe in that candidate, and it's hard to say that that's, as you say, a problem with the system itself.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: Obviously every election year is important, but who, boy 2024. Thoughts for reporters who are gonna be engaging this?

IAN VANDEWALKER: Yeah, I think for reporters it's important to get away from the high profile anecdotes. It's easy to say, oh, Marjorie Taylor Greene raised a bunch of small money, but there's data out there that can show you what are small donors actually doing across the entire system and that's a very different story.

And it's for reforms. The [00:43:00] Brennan center supports a small donor public financing system that matches donations so it amplifies those amounts from regular people to make them competitive with the big donors, and that changes the way the candidates fundraise and makes them fundraise by essentially asking people in their communities for votes. And so it amplifies those regular people's voices and engages a kind of connection between elected representative and constituent that's good for representative democracy because politicians are listening to the voters in another way.

We need to move to the public funding of elections - Bernie Sanders - Air Date 8-29-24

HASAN MINHAJ: I believe at times you've been framed in the media as this kind of radical person.

BERNIE SANDERS: Good point.

HASAN MINHAJ: But I want to talk about your Guardian article. Because what you did is you conducted your own research and you showed that these progressive policies are actually super popular, ten toes on the ground. This is not a Twitter position. This is not an Instagram stories position. Real IRL Americans care about these issues.

BERNIE SANDERS: What we did is we said, look, I'm called a far left guy, right? [00:44:00] Trump has decided that Kamala Harris is a communist. I mean, totally insane. So we asked the American people a lot of simple questions about some of the major issues facing this country. Republicans, Democrats, Independents.

So we said, Do you think that the wealthy and large corporations should pay more in taxes? Shock of all shocks, over 70 percent of the American people said yes, including a majority of Republicans. Should we be surprised? No. No. All right. Yeah, of course.

Question: Should we raise Social Security benefits by lifting the cap on taxable income and extend life by 75 years? In other words, asking the wealthy to contribute more to Social Security. Over 70 percent of the people said yes.

Should we raise the minimum wage to a living wage? American people overwhelmingly said yes.

Should [00:45:00] we expand Medicare? Right now, Medicare is a good program. It doesn't cover dental, hearing, and vision. Should we expand it over 70%? In all these instances, a majority of Republicans.

So your question, I think is, if the American people feel that way, , why a haven't we done it? Why?

HASAN MINHAJ: Yeah. Why haven't they been implemented?

BERNIE SANDERS: And the answer, gets back to what I said a moment ago: it's money. The insurance companies don't like the idea. The rich don't like the idea of paying more in taxes. The insurance companies don't like the idea of expanding Medicare.

HASAN MINHAJ: Is there a realistic path for my generation to remove money from politics? Is this something --

BERNIE SANDERS: God damn right there is.

HASAN MINHAJ: You think so?

BERNIE SANDERS: Yeah. Yeah.

HASAN MINHAJ: I'm 30. I have, hopefully I have a long way to go.

BERNIE SANDERS: Alright. The answer, of course there is. Money has always played a role in politics. But it was greatly accentuated by this disastrous Citizens United Supreme Court decision. So we need legislation to get rid of Citizens United, and to move to public funding of elections.

If you do that, there will no more be super PACs, [00:46:00] billionaires will not be able to play the role they're playing right now. And again, not a radical idea. This exists in many other countries around the world.

Note from the Editor on the changing sense of urgency to address money in politics

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: We've just heard clips starting with counter spin, breaking down. Super packs. 5 0 1. And so on Robert Reisch looked at big money supporting Trump. The PBS news hour explained to Trump's embrace of crypto. The Brian Lehrer show discussed to the libertarian strain of Silicon valley. The majority report looked at pro democratic yet antibusiness regulation, mega donors. Democracy now explain to the role of AIPAC, the rabidly pro Israel at any cost organization. Counter spin discuss the media's perception of political influence.

And Bernie Sanders laid out the importance of publicly funded elections. And those were just the top takes. There's more in the deeper dive sections, but first, a reminder that this show is supported by members who get access to bonus episodes, featuring the production crew here, discussing all manner of interesting topics, often making each other, laugh in the process to support our work and [00:47:00] have all those bonus episodes delivered seamlessly to the new members.

Only podcast feed that you'll receive sign up to support. The [email protected] slash support. There's a link in the show notes through our Patrion page or from right inside the apple podcast app.

If regular membership isn't in the cards for you. Shoot me an email request. Any financial hardship membership. Because we don't let a lack of funds stand in the way of hearing more information. Now, before we continue onto the deeper dives half, I have just quick thought, we're keeping this episode a little tight and I'll follow that trend. I've just been thinking about the nature of the discussion of money in politics. From the time I started paying attention just after the turn of the century, around the, uh, Iraq war invasion. And back then, I was able to feel pretty cutting edge to be able to identify big money in politics as one of the major sources of our political discontent.

Then the 2010 citizens United Supreme court decision brought that perspective more into the mainstream.

There was a [00:48:00] major backlash for the ruling and much hand ringing about the inevitable conservative tilt our politics would take after unleashing billionaires, who themselves tends to be more conservative, to pour effectively unlimited amounts of money into supporting Republican candidates. But with the rise of Trump things. I didn't go exactly.

As we thought they would not quite as smoothly towards traditional Republican politics. Uh, , or even for the fight against big money from the opposition, but just didn't go that way. And I realized that one of the many casualties of the Trump show has been. A concerted opposition to money and politics.

It's just sort of fallen off a lot of people's radar.

Not because people stopped believing that it was an important problem, but because the emergency of Trump was just more pressing. Then the emergency of big money, swamping democracy, something that would have been nearly impossible to imagine in the early 20 teens, before Trump came on the [00:49:00] scene. And the biggest irony of course, is that as we're hearing in the show today, Trump actually used the public's anger at the corrupting power of money. To ingratiate himself with voters claiming to be self-funding his campaign and therefore immune to corruption himself. In order to get elected in the first place. And. What turned out to be laying the initial foundation that would become the cultish belief among his followers, That he is the only person in politics working selflessly on their behalf. And now he'd like to offer you a worthless NFT trading card for a hundred dollars.

SECTION A - THE SYSTEM

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And now we'll continue to the Deeper Dive, on four topics. Next up Section A: The System; Section B: Funding Republicans; Section C: Funding Democrats;, and Section D: Solutions.

Trump and the Billionaires Part 2 - The Socialist Program with Brian Becker - Air Date 7-16-24

NICOLE ROUSSELL - CO-HOST, THE SOCIALIST PROGRAM: I want to bring up. One other thing that I think is another piece of evidence for your argument, essentially, that these are new capitalists funding Trump versus, you know, some of the old capitalists who are [00:50:00] mostly funding the Democratic Party, although I think there's a mix of both, but Project 2025, I think, is another example for me.

This is a right wing elite political program headed by the Heritage Foundation, Which is a very entrenched Washington, D. C. far right think tank. They've been around and they've been supporting, you know, the capitalist elite now for a very long time and we're on the Republican side of things. But different, different parts of the Republican side of things.

And Heritage has put out something like this, something like Project 2025 before every presidential election. But because Trump is so extreme in his willingness to smash people's rights, These, you know, disgusting, repulsive measures that Project 2025 is proposing are getting much more coverage and taking on much more significance.

And, again, just to connect this to what you're saying, some of the measures that they are proposing include abolishing the Department of Education, abolishing the EPA, the Environmental Protection Agency, getting rid of the Occupational Safety and Health Administration, OSHA, essentially tearing apart [00:51:00] any of the checks on corporate capitalist greed.

And the fact that this, you know, platform is supported by, and you know, Trump has disavowed it publicly, but it's very clear, you know, there's a lot of His former advisors, his former staff who are working at the Heritage Foundation or who are working with Project 2025, you know, it's very clear that they're, that they're tied.

So this seems to me like yet another piece of evidence. But these new capitalists, these billionaires, these venture capitalists, these investors where all the capital is now moving are doing this because it is in their economic favor and that is all they're thinking about.

RICHARD WOLFF: Yeah, I think also, if I may, encourage people beyond getting caught up in the horror of all of this, which is so easy to do, is to take a step back and to ask yourself, Every person listening to this, thinking about the important issues your, your program brings up every week, in any case, take a step back and ask, why would this be happening?

[00:52:00] Why would we be seeing, in 2024, the United States hitting out like an angry bear at China, at the rest of the world, punishing big countries, little countries, or at least trying to?

Why is this happening? Why is the United States isolating itself from the rest of the world more and more? The rest of the world is currently trading electric vehicles, mostly made in China, because they're the best vehicles at the lowest price, but not in the United States, which has closed itself off and not permitted them to come.

And the same is true with solar panels. And the same is true with all kinds of micro chips and on and on more and more each day. Why are we making statements that insult our allies? It's driving what remains of the NATO alliance closer and closer to [00:53:00] breaking up. The elections in England last month are frightening not only Mr.

Vance, but are underscoring they don't want to go in the direction of the United States. The British just voted the other way, and even more so the French, whose second round of their election on the 7th of July has placed into the governance of France. The most left wing socialists. That's who runs France from now on.

You know, they voted against the direction the United States is taking. We're becoming more and more isolated. What is going on? And the answer, I think, is that we are living through, and we ought to start facing it, we are living through the decline of the American empire. [00:54:00] That which began when World War I destroyed all the other countries and World War II finished the job.

And after that, starting in 1945, the United States was king of the hill. The rest of the world recovering from a war that did not happen on the soil of the United States after the initial bombing. Pearl Harbor. The United States came out on top. That was an anomalous historical situation. Couldn't possibly survive.

It never has in the history of the human race. The dominant position then had to be one that declined sooner or later. And sooner or later has now arrived. We are in decline, and instead of facing it and trying to come to some accommodations with [00:55:00] the rising part of the world, and in case anyone is wondering, the rising part is called the BRICS.

It's India, it's China, it's Brazil, it's all of those places that are now demanding their places in the sun. Or, in terms of the history of human civilizations, they are returning to positions of power and influence they once had and then lost for a while. It's not fun to be in a declining position, but you don't help it by pretending you're not.

By talking as if you were what you once were, but you aren't anymore, and it is shifting from scaring people to becoming laughable. These gestures are the gestures of a declining power. Yeah, you could hurt China if you do that, but it's [00:56:00] gonna cost you as well. That's what an out of control declining situation often gets people to do.

Busy holding on at their own expense without understanding it. I'm pleading here, for the kind of understanding that you get if you take a step back and ask why this theater at this time. You know, we are losing the protections that we spent the last century and a half putting into place. OSHA.

Protections against child labor, protections against extreme inequality, protections against spreading homelessness. We're losing them all because those at the top, who know that the system is declining, are using their wealth and their power to hold on. to the wealth they accumulated. Well, if you're holding on to the wealth and [00:57:00] power of the top, as the whole society goes down, you know who feels the going down the most?

The middle and the bottom. That's what's happening to us. And that's why the vast majority of Americans, in their interest, we should be sitting down with China and India and the others to work out a livable planet. So, they have their room to grow, and we have our space in which to decline without tearing ourselves apart.

If we don't do that, we will decline, we will tear ourselves apart, and the rich who hold on will be holding on to a ship that is sinking. The first class of the Titanic is sinking. also went down when that ship hit the iceberg. We are hitting an incomparable iceberg, and the crazy [00:58:00] thing is that those at the top want to pretend that nothing happened.

They're driving the rest of the people to anger and bitterness. Nothing that Trump and Vance administration proposes can solve the problems of the United States. In fact, things like a 60 percent tariff against the Chinese will make life harder in the United States. It will make the inflation much worse, and they all know it.

And that's gonna make the mass of people realize that going to the right, because this country is floundering, is not a solution. However full the symbolism might make you feel. And then they will discover what that they better find a solution on the left. Because the right has none. And I'm confident in that because that's exactly what just happened in Britain and France.

Steve Macek on Dark Money Part 2 - CounterSpin - Air Date 8-23-24

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: so here come [00:59:00] media.

And we know that lots of people, including reporters, still imagine the U. S. Press Corps as kind of like an old movie, you know, with, you know, the, Press cards in their hat band or, or, you know, Woodward and Bernstein, connecting dots, holding the powerful to account and the chips are just falling where they may.

And you make the point in the progressive piece that there has been excellent news media, corporate news media, you know, exposés of the influence of dark money connecting those dots. But you write that news media have. Missed or minimized as many stories about dark money as they have covered. What are you getting at there?

STEVE MACEK: I absolutely believe that so it is true as I say that there have been some excellent reports about dark money Here in chicago. We had this reclusive billionaire industrialist barry side who made What was most people say is the largest? [01:00:00] political contribution in American history. He donated his company to a fund, Marble Freedom Fund, run by Leonard Leo.

Again, conservative judicial activist. The Marble Freedom Fund sold the company for 1. 6 billion dollars. It's hard for the corporate media to ignore Political contribution of 1. 6 billion. That's a 1. 6 billion trust fund that Leonard Leo, who engineered the conservative takeover of the U S Supreme court is going to be able to use.

He's a very right wing conservative Catholic to put his particular ideological stamp on American elections and on American culture. And so that got reported. Okay. And in fact, there have been some really excellent follow up reports by ProPublica, among others, about how various Leonard Leo affiliated organizations have influenced judicial [01:01:00] appointments and have influenced judicial elections.

So you have to give credit where credit's due. But the problem is That there are so many other cases where dark money is in play, whether or not you can say it's determining the outcome of elections or not is another story, but where dark money is playing a role, and it is simply not being talked about.

Think about the last month of this pandemic. Current presidential election. There hasn't been much discussion about the influence of dark money and yet open secrets just came out with an analysis where they say that contributions from dark money groups and shell organizations are outpacing all prior elections in this year and might surpass the uh, 660 million in contributions from dark money sources that flooded the 2020 elections.

So they're projecting that could be as much as a billion. billion dollars. We haven't heard very much [01:02:00] about this. I don't think necessarily dark money is going to make a huge difference one way or the other in the presidential race, but certainly can make a difference in congressional races, attorney general's races, school board races, city council races.

That's where it can make a huge difference. And I do know that Open secrets, among others, have done research and they found that like there were cases where over 100 different congressional races, more money, there was more outside spending on those races than were spent by either of the candidates, which is a scandal that outside forces, in some cases, do not have to disclose the source of their funding, can spend more on a race than the candidates themselves.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: And it's It's disheartening that the idea that, well, you're swimming in it, like it's too big of an issue to even lift out. It is. And I think

STEVE MACEK: that's also part of the reason why it's sort of accepted, sort of like the weather. And I think that's part of the reason why. There isn't as much reporting in the corporate media as there ought to be [01:03:00] about legal struggles over the regulation of dark money.

JANINE JACKSON - HOST, COUNTERSPIN: That's exactly where I was going to lead you for a final question, just because that we know that reporters will say, well, they can't cover what isn't happening. But it is happening that legal and community and policy. pushback on this influence is happening. And so finally, what should we know about that?

STEVE MACEK: State level Republican lawmakers and state legislatures across the country are pushing legislation that would prohibit state officials and agencies from collecting or disclosing information about donors to nonprofits, including donors to those 501c4 social welfare organizations that I spoke about that spend money on politics.

So they're trying to pass laws to make dark money even darker, to make this obscure money influencing our elections even harder to track. And I will say there are Republicans in Congress who have [01:04:00] introduced Federal legislation that would do the same thing. Now, the bills that are being pushed through state legislatures, not probably going to be a surprise to anybody who follows this are based on a model bill that was developed by the American legislative exchange council or Alex, which is a policy development organization that is funded by the Coke network of right wing foundations, millionaires, and billionaires, and they need every year to develop.

Model kind of right wing libertarian legislation that then is dutifully introduced into state legislatures around the country. And since 2018, a number of states, including Alabama, Arizona, Iowa, Kansas, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia have all adopted some version of this Alec legislation that criminalizes disclosing [01:05:00] donors Two nonprofits that engage in political activity and In Arizona, where this conservative legislation was made into law, in 2022, there was a ballot referendum by the voters on the Voters Right to Know Act, Proposition 2011, that would basically reverse The ALEC attempt to criminalize the disclosure of the names of donors, it would require PACs spending at least 50, 000 on statewide campaigns to disclose all donors who had given more than 5, 000, a direct reversal of the ALEC inspired law.

Conservative dark money groups spent a lot of money trying to defeat this, and yet they lost, and then they Spent a lot of money challenging the new law in court, Proposition 2011 in court, and it has gone to trial, I think, three times and been defeated each time. Now, the [01:06:00] initial battle over Proposition 211 was covered.

To some degree in the corporate media, the New York Times, Jane Meyer in the New Yorker, who does excellent reporting on dark money issues, discussed it. But since then, we have gotten very little coverage of the court battles that continue to this day over this attempt to bring more transparency to campaign spending in the state of Arizona.

SECTION B - FUNDING REPUBLICANS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: Now entering Section B: Funding Republicans.

Silicon Valley's Impact on the 2024 Elections Part 2 - The Brian Lehrer Show - Air Date 7-31-24

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: So Aaron, the wealthy group of tech executives who are splintering along the political divide, the folks that you write about are sometimes called the PayPal mafia. Can you tell us more about who they are, how they know one another?

ERIN GRIFFITH: Sure, and those are certainly some of the most prominent people that are kind of involved in this political infighting, and it has expanded to encompass many others, but the PayPal Mafia is kind of this iconic group of tech founders and [01:07:00] investors who all work with each other.

together at PayPal, you know, formed some very deep and lasting bonds there. And then they all went on to create very successful companies and firms. And they, they're kind of known for investing in each other's businesses. And you know, many of them are ones that you've heard of. I mean, Reid Hoffman is the co founder of LinkedIn.

Um, Elon Musk, obviously. He has created SpaceX, Tesla several other, uh, very successful companies. David Sachs founded a couple of companies that sold for billions of dollars and is now an investor. Peter Thiel very well known in political circles as well, but he, you know, is a founder of Founders Fund, which is a very successful venture capital firm.

And there are many, uh, that you know, Rulof Botha is the head of Sequoia Capital, which is one of the most well known venture capital firms. So it's this very interconnected network, and they've always had, divergent political views, but they still, come together around business and have [01:08:00] supported each other's businesses for many years.

And so, it's kind of crazy to watch them really fighting and their relationship starting to kind of unravel in public as they have around this upcoming election.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: There are some names that a lot of people will probably recognize that you just said, there's Musk, Teal, Sax. There's that second part of the moniker mafia.

Where does that come from? Can you unpackage that a little bit?

ERIN GRIFFITH: I mean, I think this is a term that is now kind of common in Silicon Valley where when you're the alumni of one company all go out and end up starting their own companies and invest in each other. We call it, you know, the Uber Mafia or the Twitch Mafia, which is a company that sold to Amazon that, several of their, uh, founders and alumni have started another successful companies, and so and they all kind of invest in each other, and it's kind of like all interconnected may hire from each other and and it's kind of the way Silicon Valley works.

It's this interconnected ecosystem where they're all helping each other with talent [01:09:00] and money and strategy. And you know, that's part of the magic of this place, so in a way. And so, the mafias are certainly you know, numerous now, but PayPal is the original one.

KOUSHA NAVIDAR - GUEST HOST, BRIAN LEHRER SHOW: And you write kind of about the splintering that you were referring to before you've written that quote.

Quote, while tech leaders often criticize one another in private, they rarely do so publicly for fear of upsetting a potential deal partner or future job prospect. Erin, can you talk a little bit about some of the higher profile public battles happening? Some things that we could actually point to?

ERIN GRIFFITH: Yeah.

And a lot of this is playing out on X formerly known as Twitter, but, but yeah, the industry is, Has always been sort of insular where it's like, okay, well, we can, you know, privately have our little debates about business and strategy and we can disagree on things but outwardly, we're going to present a united front because especially in the startup world, it's like we're the underdogs and it's us against the world.

We're disruptors. We're the pirate ship, et cetera. [01:10:00] Um, but, you know, we've seen like the node Kostla, who's, This very famous and successful investor and entrepreneur has been bickering on Twitter with Elon Musk, Kosell is, Democrat or a liberal and has been supporting Biden and now Harris.

And Elon has been arguing with him over the reasons of that. Roger McNamee, who's a well known investor and also has been a very vocal critic of Facebook over recent years came out and criticized Mark Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, who are the founders of Andreessen Horowitz a very well known venture capital firm.

And, Ben Horowitz kind of slapped back on Twitter and was like, We've known each other for 25 years and we disagree on this and you're gonna take to Twitter, you know, instead of instead of calling me and David Sachs and Elon Musk have been attacking Reid Hoffman their former colleague and Over his support of Harris and [01:11:00] previously Biden you know, Hoffman and Peter Thiel got into a little spat apparently on stage at Sun Valley, which is the kind of elite gathering of, dealmakers that happened in Idaho recently where, they were accusing Hoffman of, uh, Essentially causing the assassination attack on Trump.

You know, it's it's been kind of ugly

'The White House is for sale' Mega-rich donors race to back Trump - MSNBC - Air Date 6-8-24

STEPHANIE RUHLE - ANCHOR, MSNBC: In the week since Donald Trump was found guilty of 34 counts in a New York courtroom, some of the wealthiest Americans have come out to announce their support for him. Steve, I really, really want to talk about this because just in the last week, Donald Trump has this new crop of not even your average Wall Street business guys.

I mean, The top of the top, most successful coming out, throwing parties for him, supporting him. And they're even making arguments that aren't true, right? In the last 24 hours, I've heard some of these guys say, well, when Joe Biden passed that last COVID relief, which, you know, killed us in terms of inflation.

[01:12:00] Unemployment had already completely recovered. Right. That's a lie. It's a lie. And an uninformed voter might not realize that. Right. But I'm talking about the most successful guys in business, are pushing Trump lies on their, in a field that's their own expertise. Why is that?

STEVE LIESMAN: It's quite extraordinary.

I mean, in the most cynical answer, you say they're protecting their tax cuts, right? The corporate tax cuts are going to be on the table in 2025. If you end up supporting Trump, you're most likely to keep those corporate tax cuts and lower tax brackets, because, by the way, I don't think Trump is going to address the deficit at all, either.

The record shows that Perhaps some of the fiscal spending had a part in the inflation, but it was more about supply shocks. The inability to get stuff into the country. The, uh, reduction in the ability to spend on services. So we all this money to buy patio furniture and barbecues and stuff like that.

All of a sudden that shot up and then we had problems with some of the food distribution and that's come off in a very big weight has been extraordinary progress. On the [01:13:00] inflation rate, but not brought down the inflation level. Um, by the way, don't overstate it a little bit step because Biden has plenty of very, very wealthy supporters in the business community, but you're right to point out how extraordinary it is that some of these folks, especially in tech land, are the ones who are out there saying, I'm going to vote for, for Trump or support Trump.

And to read like, for example, David Sachs, uh, tweet today on the economy is just to be, um, amazed that a guy with that much money, uh, is so ill informed.

STEPHANIE RUHLE - ANCHOR, MSNBC: But here's the thing. I get that inflation is difficult. These people who are now supporting Donald Trump. Have had extraordinary, extraordinary last years.

I mean, Bill Ackman this week, what was it announced? He's worth 8 billion. Sure. Everything president Biden has done for electric vehicles, a huge win for, for, for Elon Musk yet they're railing against this disastrous economy when it's been a perfect one for them.

PABLO TORRE: Yeah. I think first off like taxes, let's start with that.

And then get to realizing that for these [01:14:00] guys in Silicon Valley, especially, um, shame feels like a market. Inefficiency, right? Like, yo, wait, hold on. If I don't have to care about the judgments of people who are paying attention to the news, maybe I can do the thing that Donald Trump offers uniquely in my memory of American presidents, which is the ability to dictate actual policy, the ability to get favors.

I feel like this is the other part of the Trump administration that goes underrated because we're talking about the bed of nails that is every single scandal. He is for sale. Yeah. Look at the Adelson family. Look at what, I mean, go down the list of donors and what you get. And so if you're a tech billionaire, CEO, philosopher, king, right, that's what these guys really want to be.

They know better. They may think Trump is an idiot, and I think they do, but they also think they can puppeteer him in ways and they can help run the country. And that is something that Joe Biden does not offer them.

STEPHANIE RUHLE - ANCHOR, MSNBC: The White House is for sale. Then in some way, is this like recreating Putin's oligarchs, [01:15:00] but here?

TOURE: Oh God, you know, I, I'm listening to you and I'm like, I can't believe we're here again talking about Trump again and again chance that he might win. And it reminds me of something I read that criminologists talk about the reason why jail does not work as a deterrent. Because a lot of people do a stint in prison and they come out and they go, Oh, I can do that.

I have, you know, so now I'm going to go back to the street cause like that wasn't that bad. And it's like, for a lot of people, they're like, we survived Trump. Like it wasn't that bad. Like the COVID does not count on his record for some reason. And they're like, we could do this again. And, and it doesn't make any sense.

Can

STEVE LIESMAN: I give a footnote to the oligarch story? A lot of those guys ended up exiled and dead. And I don't know that all of the people who are supporting Trump understand the, uh, final end result of kleptocracy.

Faux Populist Trump Promises Rich Donors He'll Cut Their Taxes at Private Fundraiser A Closer Look - Late Night Podcast - Air Date 4-9-24

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: Throughout his political career, Donald Trump has tried to cast himself as some sort of anti establishment, populist outsider, but this weekend, he held a fundraiser with a bunch of rich Wall Street [01:16:00] donors where he promised to cut their taxes. For more on this, it's time for A Closer Look.

When he first launched his campaign in 2015, one of Trump's big talking points was that he was unlike because he could use his own money to fund his campaign, so he would never owe anyone else any favors.

DONALD TRUMP: Here's the good news. I'm very rich. I don't need anybody's money. It's nice. I don't need anybody's money.

I'm using my own money. I'm not using the lobbyists. I'm not using donors. I don't care. I don't want their money. I don't need their money. I'm turning down millions of dollars for the campaign. Millions. Everybody's offering me money, and I don't want it. So I'm turning down millions of dollars.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: I'm sure I've said this before, but really rich guys don't walk around telling people they're really rich.

They say things like, Look Seth, you're not good in sketches. Also, there's no way Donald Trump has ever turned down millions of dollars in his life. If you tied a 5 bill to a Roomba and let it loose in Mar a Lago, it would keep him preoccupied for the [01:17:00] rest of his life. Also, he'd get stuck in a corner. Of course, even back then, it was obvious that Trump's act was all bulls t.

He was a billionaire serving the interests of billionaires who had spent decades immersed in the grimy back rooms of Wall Street and Washington politics. Sadly, the only people who were willing to say that back in 2016 were far left, woke, America haters like this guy.

TED CRUZ: Donald Trump is not an outsider. He is pretending to be an outsider.

Donald Trump has been supporting the Washington establishment, the Washington corruption. So to all the folks at home who are Donald Trump supporters, who are furious with Washington, I get that. But Donald has been funding and supporting everything you're furious about. Donald is going to cut a deal that favors Wall Street and big business and leaves the working man out in the cold.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: Whoa, I don't have my glasses on. Is that Chris Hayes or Rachel Maddow? Ted Cruz looked so much younger when his conscience [01:18:00] was clean. The second he endorsed Donald Trump, he aged like the picture of Dorian Gray. The point is Donald Trump is a creature of the establishment and always has been. He's a billionaire serving the interests of other billionaires.

After he won in 2016, one of the first things he did as president elect Was make a surprise appearance at a fancy Manhattan restaurant where he promised the wealthy patrons he would cut their taxes.

NEWS CLIP: President-elect Donald Trump seen here alongside his family at his gilded apartment in Trump Tower last night, ditched the press to head to the Opulent 21 Club restaurant in Midtown Manhattan.

Keep going.

DONALD TRUMP: Thank you. Thank you. Have a good meal. Thank you. Thank you, sir. President-elect. Thank you. Thank you, sir. We'll get your taxes down.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: Oh, look at that down and dirty populist out there shaking hands with the common clay of America, people who eat 100 steaks on a weeknight with cufflinks on. The only way Trump could have been any happier is if he went table to table and took a bite of everyone's meal.

We'll get your taxes down, hopefully to as low as 5%, which, [01:19:00] incidentally, is the same amount of your cheeseburger I'm now gonna eat. Trump's anti establishment schtick was a scam back then. It's even more of a scam now. Over the weekend, Trump rubbed elbows with some of the richest people in the country at a Palm Beach fundraiser, where he took in 50 million of that money he claimed he would never accept.

NEWS CLIP: Billionaires flocked to Florida last night for a glitzy fundraiser to bolster Trump's campaign coffers. Donors were invited to give upwards of 824, 600 per person. Trump's campaign said it raised a whopping 50. 5 million last night alone. Now, no reporters were allowed and Trump didn't take any questions, but he did address the media before heading in.

DONALD TRUMP: People are just wanting change. Rich people want it, poor people want it. Everybody wants change. Our country is really doing poorly. We're a laughingstock all over the world, and we're gonna get that change very quickly. And this has been some, uh, incredible evening before it even starts.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: It's been an incredible evening.

Just look at how thrilled Melania [01:20:00] is to be here. I know she looks super bummed, but trust me, that's her in a good mood. What's a 3 out of 10 happy face for most of us is a 9, 9. 5 for Mel here. Show us a smile, Mel.

I was worried that was going to happen. Also, can we go back to this? People are just wanting change. Rich people want it, poor people want it. I love Trump's little shout out to poor people. Like, he knows he's at an elite fundraiser with millionaires and billionaires, so he throws a little sop to the rest of his supporters.

Let's not forget the poor, especially the mouth breathers who come to my rallies. They could be here, but unfortunately the dress code says flip flops and American flag shorts are not allowed. Trump continued to drone on about the fundraiser.

DONALD TRUMP: The election is going to be in now a little more than six months, and it's going to be the most important, I believe, election we've ever had.

I think it's going to go down as The most important date in the [01:21:00] history of our country, that's November 5th, will be the most important date in the history of our country.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: I think he's saying it's the most important date in our history because he doesn't know any other dates in our history. If you asked him what happened on the 4th of July, there's a good chance he'd say, that's when Tom Cruise was born.

And just to give you an idea of how elite this fundraiser was, check out the food they serve. The evening's menu included an endive and frisee salad. Filet a poivre and pavlova with fresh berries for dessert. That menu had so many foreign words, I'm surprised he didn't have it deported. There's also nothing on that menu Donald Trump would ever actually eat.

Or maybe those are secretly his favorite meals and his love of fast food is just a ruse for his supporters. After all, we've never seen him eat fast food. He just takes pictures with it, like some kind of reverse Instagram influencer.

And just as he did in 2016, Trump once again promised behind closed doors that his real priority was making sure his wealthy donors could keep more of their money.

NEWS CLIP: The former president made a policy promise to his donors [01:22:00] last night, tax cuts. But what else? Yeah, tax cuts among other things, Allie. It was a big night for the former president.

Off the campaign trail and into a big night of fundraising in Palm Beach, down the street from his Mar a Lago golf course. He did speak with some of the nation's wealthiest donors, around a hundred of them, saying that he's going to extend these tax cuts.

SETH MEYERS - HOST, LATE NIGHT PODCAST: Of course he did. When he's talking to his supporters at rallies, he's ranting about bull like voter fraud or windmills killing birds or woke libs turning Christmas gay.

But when he's behind closed doors, with his rich buddies, he knows what they really want to hear. What happened to, uh, I don't want their money, I don't need their money? Trump's gonna have to go back and edit some of those old clips to make them more accurate.

DONALD TRUMP: Everybody's offering me money. I want their money, I need their money.

SECTION C - FUNDING DEMOCRATS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: You've reached Section C, with one clip on Funding Democrats.

AIPAC Spending Truckloads Of Money To Replace Katie Porter - The Majority Report - Air Date 3-6-24

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Other big stories, obviously California, we've talked about that, uh, shift got protested twice. It's a, it's a big loss to both lose Porter and Lee in the house [01:23:00] and to not have them in the primary. Because they need to step down because of California law, but in that Orange County district running to replace Katie Porter, talk about this AIPAC dynamic because AIPAC is going to be the big story in a lot of these primaries.

They dumped like something like four or 5 million into that race. You wrote a piece about

DAVE WEIGEL: 5 million. Yeah.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Wondering why? I mean, I. I think there is, they, they do stuff to set an example in many respects. And I suspect they chose this one because even though Andy Min didn't necessarily show that he was, uh, Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib about this, they want to like set an example.

We'll come after you. If we even get a whiff that you could potentially be in, in some way, uh, a dissenting view on Israel, but he still won.

DAVE WEIGEL: He still won. It hasn't been called yet.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Dave Meads, sorry I said Andy. Yeah, Paul. Dave,

DAVE WEIGEL: oh yeah, I [01:24:00] know who you're talking about, yeah. Yeah, but I was in the district, uh, a week ago, really, with, with Mead and with Joanna Weiss.

And. Min said to me, I, I, I'm not entirely sure why, why he, why they did this. I asked him, what would you say to apac? I said, my first question, why'd you do this? The backstory as I know it is that yes, Minh did not call for a ceasefire. No one did Min's position on the war is basically identical to the Biden position of two weeks ago.

So I would say he's not, he, he might be to. Even talking less about the need for a ceasefire than Biden is right now. But, candidates have questionnaires, they have policy papers and position papers, and AIPAC asked for them, DMFI asked for them, J Street asked for them. My impression is that what Min said about his Israel positions did not check every box for AIPAC, and that worried them.

And that is how, that is how they prefer to operate, is by saying you, you need to, you need to be loyal, on these sets of issues you need to be [01:25:00] completely trustworthy. You're not going to bend on israel to get this kind of pressure So he wasn't out there endorsing bds or anything or you know putting up a leila khaled monument or something he just wasn't as adamant that he was going to support Israel in every decision that the current government made.

And based on that, based on their lack of confidence, they said, well, we have a candidate who is, and they went all in. They also had in that district, uh, Emily's List was supporting Joanna Weiss. So they had a credible Democratic candidate who agreed with them a hundred percent and also had a different story to tell.

Also, Min was, uh, vulnerable on the fact that he got a DUI during the campaign which he was telling me the fact that they spent 5 million mostly on that, on that attack. he thinks maybe inoculated him. He's apologized many, many times for it. He quit drinking after it. Voters have been forgiving of some things, not of others, but his thought was that, yeah, this was crazy that they were doing this, but it might help him.

But the reason AIPAC, etc. targeted him is that he just didn't, he was there on 90 percent of things, not [01:26:00] 100%, and they didn't like that he was. He's also, talking to him, he's a very confident guy. He doesn't genuflect. He might've come off as the sort of person who might, could be independent minded at some point down the line.

And they don't want that.

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: Okay. Here's the most important part of this though. How many losses does APAC have to have until their ability to raise this kind of money? You know, when you've got a hundred million dollars to drop 5 million in one of these races, because the person's a little bit iffy. You're doing that so that you don't impart so that there are other races in the future that you don't have to drop money into because you are disciplining lawmakers in that way.

But the question becomes when they start losing some of these races where they put five million dollars in, I'm thinking, you know, Summer Lee in the last cycle, but if there are three or four or five or six, you know, six Dave Mins out there. Where they lose their ability to [01:27:00] go back to their funders and say, Hey, we need to do this is going to be diminished because people are going to lose faith in them.

Do you have a sense of what that figure is and you know, where the other big races for AIPAC are going to be?

DAVE WEIGEL: Well, yeah. And you mentioned Summer Lee. She lost, uh, they lost to her last cycle twice, lost in the primary, lost in the general. And she's still being targeted this year. She's actually, if she backed out of a care event.

In part because of pressure from APAC and from local Jewish leaders Saying that that we were they were worried their congressman wasn't was embracing people who'd said crazy things about october 7th so they When I talked to and you talked to the same same folks when I talked to activists on the other side of this They just assume there will be a cornucopia of money that never stops that there's never going to be a point where APAC, DMFI, etc.

Say You Oh, we're tapped out and we look kind of embarrassed because of this, this one loss this cycle. They're not saying they're going to beat everyone who has called for a ceasefire [01:28:00] taking out one or two members of Congress and Jim Bowman, Jamal Bowman in New York, uh, inquiry Bush in Missouri.

It looked like the most vulnerable for again, external reasons. These are both people who, um, have had. You know, in bonus case, the fire alarm story and Bush's case, you know, spending money on, on, on their family and security. These are stories that have hurt them locally, kind of like what happened with Dave Mint.

So they, they look for the member that is beatable for other reasons. With a credible candidate in the district. They've got that in new york, too They've um, it's it's debatable if they have that with with summerly I don't think that if they're lost if their win record is three for a hundred that's still three people that they took out.

I mean the justice democrat Not to make a i'm not making a one to one comparison obviously, but justice democrats lost most of its races in 2018 but It elected four squad members and it beat Joe Crowley and it beat Mike Capuano. You don't need to have that many shots connect.

And I, so I've not detected and talking to Mark Melman of DMFI and people over in this orbit, they're not [01:29:00] worried. If they, if they put money in a race and lose, that people know, look how much money we can, we can burn on a race without winning. It doesn't mean we're going to stop. You can, you can not stop.

This strategy so yeah, it's a good question. I don't I don't think they are actually looking at their budget and looking at their win loss record Will we notice a win loss record certainly, but if you're a member of congress just in a vacuum Would you prefer to have five million dollars spent against you or not have five million dollars to spend against you prefer to not?

Have it at all and just the threat of it remains really potent Even if they don't win everything

SAM SEDER - HOST, THE MAJORITY REPORT: on some level losing and then being able to continue to spend is is almost more terrifying than winning in a couple instances

SECTION D - SOLUTIONS

JAY TOMLINSON - HOST, BEST OF THE LEFT: And finally Section D: Solutions.

How Citizens United Got Us Trump - Robert Reich - Air Date 12-30-2019

ROBERT REICH - HOST, ROBERT REICH: We're coming to the end of what might be called the anti democracy decade. It began January 21st, 2010, with the Supreme Court's shameful decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, opening the floodgates to big money in politics, with the absurd claim that the First Amendment [01:30:00] protects corporate speech.

It ends with with Donald Trump in the White House, filling his administration with corporate shills and inviting foreign powers to interfere in American elections. Trump is the consequence, rather than the cause, of the anti democratic surge. By the 2016 election, the richest one hundredth of one percent of Americans 24, 949 extremely wealthy people accounted for a record breaking 40 percent of all campaign contributions.

That same year, corporations flooded the presidential, senate, and house elections with 3. 4 billion of donations. Labor unions no longer provided any countervailing power, contributing only 213 million. That's 16 corporate dollars for every 1. Big corporations and the super wealthy lavished their donations on the Republican Party because Republicans promised them a giant tax [01:31:00] cut if they won.

As Lindsey Graham warned his Republican colleagues, financial contributions will stop if the GOP didn't come through. The political investments paid off big. For instance, groups supported by Charles and the late David Koch and their Koch Industries spent over 20 million promoting Trump's tax cut. which will save them and their heirs between 1 billion and 1.

4 billion every year. And courtesy of the tax cut, the number of companies paying 0 in federal taxes doubled in 2018. Corporate profits are now at an all time high, but almost Nothing has trickled down. Companies have spent most of their extra cash on stock buybacks and dividends. Stock buybacks alone hit a record breaking 1.

1 trillion in 2018. This has given the stock market a sugar high, but left little for workers. Not even a sizzling [01:32:00] economy could match these returns. The anti democracy decade has been hard on American workers. Despite the longest economic expansion in modern history, real wages have barely risen. The share of corporate workers Corporate profits going to workers still isn't back to where it was before the 2008 financial crisis.

Never in the history of economic data have corporate profits outgrown employee compensation so clearly and for so long. The so called free market has been taken over by crony capitalism, corporate bailouts, and corporate welfare. No wonder confidence in political institutions has plummeted. In 1964, just 29 percent of voters believed the government was run by a few big interests looking out for themselves.

But by 2013, 79 percent of Americans believed it. Enter Donald Trump. Big business, elite [01:33:00] media, and major donors are lining up behind the campaign of my opponent, Because they know she will keep our rigged system in place. That was what Trump proclaimed in his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention in 2016.

And then he rode the rigging all the way into the Oval Office. It doesn't have to be this way. Even if Citizens United isn't reversed by the Supreme Court or defanged by constitutional amendment, a principled Congress and decent president could still rescue our democracy. House Democrats have already begun with their For the People Act, the first legislation introduced when they gained a majority.

It expands voting rights, stops partisan gerrymandering, strengthens ethics rules, and limits the influence of private donor money by providing 6 of public financing for every [01:34:00] 1 of small donations, up to 200, raised by participating candidates. A new Senate And a new president could make these reforms law.

On the other hand, a second Trump term could make the anti democracy decade a mere prelude to the wholesale destruction of American democracy. Trump himself couldn't care less. As he said in 2016, I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me.

And that's a broken system. These might have been the most honest words ever to come out of his mouth.

Credits

The additional sections of the show included clips from The Socialist Program, [01:35:00] CounterSpin, The Brian Lehrer Show, MSNBC, Late Night with Seth Myers, The Majority Report, and Robert Reisch further details are in the show notes.

Thanks to everyone for listening. Thanks Judy, on Clark and Aaron Clayton for their research work for the show and participation in our bonus episodes. Thanks to our transcriptionist quartet to Ken Brian, Ben, and Andrew for their volunteer work, helping put our transcripts together. Thanks to Amanda Hoffman for all of her work behind the scenes and her 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 weekly bonus episodes, in addition to there being 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 [01:36:00] 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

#1652 Denial, Delusion, and Devastation: Israeli genocide made possible by a nurtured ignorance and deft dehumanization (Transcript)

Posted by · August 30, 2024 5:30 AM

Air Date 8/30/2024