Speaker 1: Hey, guys, ready or not, twenty twenty four is here,
Speaker 1: and we here at Breaking Points, are already thinking of
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Speaker 3: All right, Good morning, and welcome to Counterpoints. Today is
Speaker 3: the kind of show that presenters live to be a
Speaker 3: part of. We've got theater, we got spectacle, and nobody's
Speaker 3: really getting hurt. And we're talking, of course about all
Speaker 3: the drama over in the house yesterday.
Speaker 4: But first, if.
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Speaker 3: Get your spectacle an hour early. We all do that.
Speaker 3: I always watch it, make sure that we did as
Speaker 3: well as I thought we did.
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Speaker 6: Super appreciate the premium.
Speaker 5: Subscribers because on days like today, you let us come
Speaker 5: in and hopefully fill a gap that the corporate press
Speaker 5: is not filling.
Speaker 6: And there's just so much, so much news.
Speaker 5: We say that every week, but yesterday Ryan was on
Speaker 5: Capitol Hill. We were both working the phones all day.
Speaker 5: Legitimately one of the craziest, craziest days in Washington, DC.
Speaker 6: At least that I've ever experienced.
Speaker 3: We're also going to be talking about a seventy five
Speaker 3: thousand worker walkout at Kaiser Permanente hospitals, clinics, and other
Speaker 3: healthcare facilities around the country. It's a three day strike,
Speaker 3: the pressuring management to come to the table and you
Speaker 3: know it, make a decent contract. So this is an
Speaker 3: expansion of the class war that we've been seeing raging
Speaker 3: across the country. Hunter Biden pleading not guilty to a
Speaker 3: thing that he did do, but.
Speaker 6: See how that goes for him.
Speaker 3: CFPB was in court, was in the Supreme Court yesterday
Speaker 3: basically arguing Fritz Life. It seems like the justices are
Speaker 3: going to toss out an argument made by payday lenders
Speaker 3: that they ought not to be regulated by the CFPB
Speaker 3: and that the CFPB ought not to be able to
Speaker 3: regulate anybody. We'll talk about that and more what else
Speaker 3: we got.
Speaker 6: Well, we're going to be.
Speaker 5: Talking about North Carolina and your block. I'll be talking
Speaker 5: about how much McConnell's sort of got quietly outmaneuvered by
Speaker 5: conservatives and his sort of weekend state. And then Nina
Speaker 5: Turner will be with us to talk about a new project.
Speaker 3: Yes, we're going to have exclusive reporting. A lot of
Speaker 3: people have been wondering what is Nina Turner's next thing
Speaker 3: going to be. We will answer that question for you
Speaker 3: at the end of the show.
Speaker 5: Stay tuned for that. First, let's start on Capitol Hill yesterday.
Speaker 5: We have a whole lot of video because basically the
Speaker 5: cameras were trained on every member of Congress who was
Speaker 5: essential in this negotiation process yesterday. And I'm going to
Speaker 5: tease right now that actually we have some video potentially
Speaker 5: that suggests Donald Trump might be interested in taking the speakership.
Speaker 5: That's not a joke. We'll get into that in just
Speaker 5: a moment. But let's start with Kevin McCarthy after he
Speaker 5: was voted. If you were following along yesterday, there was
Speaker 5: a vote on what is called the motion to vacate.
Speaker 5: The motion to vacate is what Kevin McCarthy agreed to
Speaker 5: bring back.
Speaker 6: Nancy Pelosi did away with it.
Speaker 5: It had always been there, but Nancy Pelosi did away
Speaker 5: with it after watching actually what then Congressman Mark Meadows
Speaker 5: tried to do to John Bagner.
Speaker 6: Bayner steps down, right.
Speaker 5: This goes to twenty fifteen out right, and so Nancy
Speaker 5: Pelosi sees that gets rid of it when she takes
Speaker 5: over again in twenty nineteen, and Kevin McCarthy agreed to
Speaker 5: bring it back in order to secure the support of
Speaker 5: people like Matt Gates in January, he would not have
Speaker 5: been the speaker.
Speaker 6: This is the catch twenty two. He would not have
Speaker 6: been the speaker.
Speaker 5: Without bringing back the motion of vacate, he never would
Speaker 5: have been the speaker. And now he is the first
Speaker 5: speaker to ever be ousted. Ever, this is a first.
Speaker 6: In American history.
Speaker 5: A lot of times we think things are unprecedented and
Speaker 5: they actually aren't. This is really unprecedented. It only happened
Speaker 5: once in nineteen ten that there was an attempt, but
Speaker 5: never successfully.
Speaker 6: Joe Cainin survived that.
Speaker 3: Attempt and he got an office building.
Speaker 6: That's right, he did.
Speaker 5: I don't think there's going to be a McCarthy office
Speaker 5: building because well, for a number of reasons that we'll
Speaker 5: get into, but let's play this first clip of Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy talking after the vote.
Speaker 7: My goals have not changed. My ability to fight is
Speaker 7: just in a different form.
Speaker 3: You need two eighteen.
Speaker 7: Unfortunately, four percent of our conference can join all the
Speaker 7: Democrats and dictate who can be the Republican speaker in
Speaker 7: this House. I don't think that rule is good for
Speaker 7: the institution, but apparently I'm the only one. I believe
Speaker 7: I can continue to fight, maybe in a different manner.
Speaker 7: I will not run for speaker again. I'll have the
Speaker 7: conference pick somebody else. I think today was a political
Speaker 7: decision by the Democrats, and I think that I think
Speaker 7: the things they have done in the past hurt the institution.
Speaker 7: And they just started removing people from committee. They just
Speaker 7: started doing the other things. And my fear is the
Speaker 7: institution fell.
Speaker 8: Today because you can't do the job if eight people
Speaker 8: you have ninety four percent or ninety six percent of
Speaker 8: your entire conference, but.
Speaker 7: Eight people can partner with the whole other side.
Speaker 3: How do you govern.
Speaker 5: And when you look back, is done differently to what
Speaker 5: does members.
Speaker 7: Yeah, a lot of them I helped get elected, so
Speaker 7: I probably should have picked somebody else.
Speaker 6: He was trying to put on a brave face.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and he took a lot of questions basically until
Speaker 3: there are almost no more questions. If we can put
Speaker 3: up a one, we can run through the list of
Speaker 3: people who bailed on Kevin McCarthy. Some of these are
Speaker 3: the obvious ones, but then let's talk about a few
Speaker 3: of these anyway. For people who are not watching this,
Speaker 3: it's BIG's Bucks, Bigs Bucks, Birchett, Crane, Gates, Good Mace, Rosendale.
Speaker 3: Burchette said, do you know the backstory on this? That
Speaker 3: Burchette told McCarthy that he was going to pray on
Speaker 3: how he was going to vote, and McCarthy made fun
Speaker 3: of him for that, and he was like, I don't
Speaker 3: have to pray on it anymore. There you go, I'm
Speaker 3: a yes, you're out. Nancy Mace told him that she
Speaker 3: had been misled by McCarthy on how House Republicans were
Speaker 3: going to deal with the abortion rights issue, and in
Speaker 3: other words, she thought that there was some way she
Speaker 3: could drag Republicans back from the brink out of the
Speaker 3: wilderness on abortion. McCarthy in that press conference that we
Speaker 3: just played later in it, he was asked about this,
Speaker 3: and he said, I spoke to Mace's chief of staff
Speaker 3: and he assured me that I never misled them on anything.
Speaker 3: And if he gets fired for me revealing that he
Speaker 3: told me this, I'll find him a job. Kind of
Speaker 3: a free wheeling, weird press conference.
Speaker 5: Yes, and there was a lot of that yesterday. Did
Speaker 5: you notice that it was? You know, it was such
Speaker 5: It was so chaotic that all kinds of things seemed
Speaker 5: to be getting revealed and dripped out left and right.
Speaker 5: And that's one of the interesting things about McCarthy's press conference.
Speaker 5: He didn't lead with this, but he actually revealed in
Speaker 5: the press conference that he has quote seen the text
Speaker 5: This is a quote from him. I have seen the texts.
Speaker 5: And for Matt Gates, it's all personal. So Matt Gates
Speaker 5: leads this charge, which ends up in a two hundred
Speaker 5: and sixteen to two hundred and ten vote, getting people
Speaker 5: like Nancy Mace. And to this point about Nancy Mace,
Speaker 5: it looks a lot like she was looking for a
Speaker 5: reason to vote against Kevin McCarthy, which is very surprising
Speaker 5: because she's not a Freedom Caucus member. She's not hardcore
Speaker 5: at all. I don't know how the heck this is
Speaker 5: going to play in her district. But it sounds like
Speaker 5: she came up with the reason that she voted against
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy, not that that reason was genuinely weighing on her,
Speaker 5: but that she decided she had to vote against Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy and this was going to be the reason.
Speaker 3: Yeah, she represents Charleston and Democrats have thought that they
Speaker 3: have had a shot at taking her out in the past.
Speaker 3: She's won fairly comfortably, but she's kind of on the radar,
Speaker 3: whereas the freehom Caucus folks in general, like they're nowhere
Speaker 3: near the Democrats' radar. They're like, we're not touching you, guys.
Speaker 3: Tell us a little bit more about that. What he
Speaker 3: means by I've seen the texts. Yeah, so McCarthy basically
Speaker 3: saying this is some somewhat related to an ethics complaint
Speaker 3: against Gates and that Gates is trying to take out
Speaker 3: the speaker to block that investigation, or something like what
Speaker 3: is what is McCarthy alleging there?
Speaker 5: Or the other theory that I have heard is that
Speaker 5: Gates has his vendetta against McCarthy because McCarthy didn't do
Speaker 5: enough to stop the ethics investigation into Matt Gates as
Speaker 5: it has been transpiring. And so it's interesting because everyone
Speaker 5: is being very cagey about the potential contents of that
Speaker 5: ethics investigation, about where it stands, and the Ethics Committee.
Speaker 6: Is always like that. It's it's pretty closed up in your.
Speaker 5: Experience, right, Yeah, it's impenetrable, and so we don't totally
Speaker 5: understand what's going on here.
Speaker 3: So the one clue there I've seen the tech are
Speaker 3: these allegedly incriminating text messages that Gates is involved in.
Speaker 3: Is that what we're supposed to be led to believe
Speaker 3: by this cryptic allegation that the ousted speaker dropped in
Speaker 3: his press conference.
Speaker 5: I'm assuming what he's saying is that Gates was texting
Speaker 5: other people, other members to suggest that his personal problem
Speaker 5: with Kevin McCarthy is the reason he led this ouster. Now,
Speaker 5: the ostensible reason, of course, is that McCarthy went along
Speaker 5: with the stop gap continuing resolution over the weekend. He
Speaker 5: came to a deal to prevent a government shutdown only
Speaker 5: for the next forty five days. By the way, it's
Speaker 5: very likely that the government would still at least be
Speaker 5: on the brink of a shutdown around Christmas time, if
Speaker 5: not totally shut down around Christmas time. And Matt Gates,
Speaker 5: Matt Rosendale, Bob Good those other folks were saying he
Speaker 5: should have shut the government down. And from the perspective
Speaker 5: of conservatives, especially if you think of this from the
Speaker 5: perspective of like grassroots conservatives, you're just being asked to
Speaker 5: pick your poison, right, And Matt Stoller had a great
Speaker 5: tweet where he was like, good for Republicans, Like Congress
Speaker 5: deserves to go up in flames. I'm paraphrasing here, but like,
Speaker 5: and I don't mean that literally, I don't think Stolen
Speaker 5: even said that, but like Congress deserves to, you know,
Speaker 5: be turned into this chaotic scene. Good for Republicans for
Speaker 5: doing it. And I completely understand that sentiment. I think
Speaker 5: it's it's absolutely true, and that's what people have been
Speaker 5: saying on the right.
Speaker 6: Since the Tea Party. But that's what they already did
Speaker 6: to Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 5: I mean, they went through fifteen ballots in January. They
Speaker 5: went just about as far as they felt they could
Speaker 5: with the debt ceiling back in May. That is where
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy lost their trust. They thought he should have
Speaker 5: pushed further on the debt ceiling. So after that summer
Speaker 5: comes and goes, they feel like he doesn't push far
Speaker 5: enough right now, they thought he should have pushed it
Speaker 5: to a shutdown instead of going with that cr So
Speaker 5: again it's pick your poison. Do you want these like
Speaker 5: sort of little victories with Kevin McCarthy where you're reforming
Speaker 5: the House and you're getting the House back into a
Speaker 5: situation where you have the motion of a Kate where
Speaker 5: you have these appropriations bills on single subjects, which is
Speaker 5: one of the things that they're.
Speaker 6: Still fighting over. Do you want that?
Speaker 5: Or do you want to shut down the government and
Speaker 5: sort of take a shot across the bow and send
Speaker 5: a message to sort of the Republican establishment.
Speaker 6: Either way, there's nothing happening to spending.
Speaker 5: Spending is going to continue to Neither of those options
Speaker 5: actually seriously impacts what they want to deal with, which
Speaker 5: is Ukraine aid money, which is.
Speaker 6: The size of the federal budget. None of this is
Speaker 6: going to deal with that.
Speaker 3: And let's play a little Gates color And then I
Speaker 3: have a question about Gates a strategy for you that
Speaker 3: I think probably a lot of viewers have as well.
Speaker 3: So here's a little flavor of Gates speech making on
Speaker 3: the floor right before the vote.
Speaker 9: The opening line of my colleague speech was that Speaker
Speaker 9: McCarthy always overperforms expectations. But after tweeting bring it, and
Speaker 9: after engaging in profane laced tirades at House conference, he
Speaker 9: just lost a motion to table. So I wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 9: consider at over performing expectations in time. And again, I've
Speaker 9: heard my colleagues say that, well, he deserves it because
Speaker 9: he went through a tough speaker contest.
Speaker 4: Let me let everyone know he prevailed.
Speaker 9: In that speaker contest because he made an agreement to
Speaker 9: fulfill certain commitments to make this an open and honest process,
Speaker 9: and he has failed to meet those commitments. And that's
Speaker 9: why we are here.
Speaker 3: I reserve to whose benefit. People have called you a narcissist.
Speaker 5: People say this is to your benefit alone, is to
Speaker 5: the benefit of you and to Donald Trump.
Speaker 9: It's the benefit of this country that we have a
Speaker 9: better Speaker of the House than Kevin McCarthy. Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 9: couldn't keep his word. He made an agreement in January
Speaker 9: regarding the way Washington would work, and he violated that agreement.
Speaker 9: We are thirty three trillion dollars in debt. We are
Speaker 9: facing two point two trillion dollar annual deficits. We face
Speaker 9: a d dollarization globally that will crush Americans, working class Americans.
Speaker 9: Kevin McCarthy is a feature of the swamp. He has
Speaker 9: risen to power by collecting special interest money and redistributing
Speaker 9: that money in exchange for favors. We are breaking the
Speaker 9: fever now, and we should elect a speaker who's better.
Speaker 3: McCarthy then said, look, this is personal, this wasn't political.
Speaker 3: Matt Gates just doesn't like me. Nothing I did wrong,
Speaker 3: He just doesn't like me. Gates later said that if
Speaker 3: Scalise became speaker, that would be a wonderful thing. He
Speaker 3: likes Scalise. Scalise is McCarthy's deputy basically, and not a
Speaker 3: whole life, you know, the Republican Conference better not a
Speaker 3: ton of daylight between McCarthy and Scalise, And everything that
Speaker 3: McCarthy did over the past eight months, nine months was
Speaker 3: done with his deputy at his side, Scalise, who's also
Speaker 3: a swamp creacher. So if so, how are people who
Speaker 3: are loving what Gates is doing? And hey, who doesn't
Speaker 3: love good spectacle? Supposed to feel about what happens if
Speaker 3: you just rotate in Steve Scalise at the end of this,
Speaker 3: which we're going to get to who is going to
Speaker 3: be rotated in, but let's say it's him, But that's yeah.
Speaker 5: So you have the same question as Nu Gingrich, and
Speaker 5: maybe this is the first time that's happened, but he
Speaker 5: was on Hannity last night and his quote was basically,
Speaker 5: why did they think this was better? And that's what's
Speaker 5: so frustrating. We'll play in just a minute Jim Jordan
Speaker 5: and Thomas Massey essentially saying the same thing.
Speaker 6: You are not going to.
Speaker 5: Get a better Speaker of the House for Freedom Caucus
Speaker 5: goals than Kevin McCarthy. And that's not because Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 5: is a Freedom Caucus light member. It's simply because he
Speaker 5: was so transactional that he gave them a lot of wins,
Speaker 5: knowing that he could do that over and over again.
Speaker 5: So that's where this frustration is bubbling over to the surface,
Speaker 5: and that's where we can roll a five. This is
Speaker 5: Jim Jordan and Thomas Massey on the floor of the
Speaker 5: House after the motion to table the motion.
Speaker 6: Of vakate failed.
Speaker 5: They all got to come in and give speeches on
Speaker 5: the motion to vacate itself. Matt Gates had to use
Speaker 5: the Democrats microphone because the Republicans weren't giving him the microphone.
Speaker 5: There was so much petty nonsense and squabbling going back
Speaker 5: and forth yesterday.
Speaker 6: But here's Jim Jordan and Thomas Passey.
Speaker 3: I thank the gentleman for yielding.
Speaker 10: On January third, we said the one hundred and eighteenth
Speaker 10: Congress is about three things. Pass the bills that need pass,
Speaker 10: do the oversight work that needs to be done, and
Speaker 10: stop the inevitable omnibus that comes from the United States
Speaker 10: Senate right before the holidays. Kevin McCarthy has been rock
Speaker 10: solid on all three.
Speaker 11: Mister Speaker is the only still serving co author and
Speaker 11: co sponsor of the motion to vacate. Speaker Bayner, I
Speaker 11: can tell you this motion to vacate is a terrible idea.
Speaker 11: Is the only member who's serving here who took every
Speaker 11: chance to vote against Speaker Bainer and to vote against
Speaker 11: Speaker Ryan. I can tell you that this Chamber has
Speaker 11: been run better, more conservatively and more transparently under mister
Speaker 11: McCarthy than any other speaker that I have served under
Speaker 11: as a member of the Rules Committee, one of three,
Speaker 11: one of three Conservatives who were placed there out of trust.
Speaker 11: The Speaker gave us a blocking position and by putting
Speaker 11: three of us on there to keep an eye on
Speaker 11: the Rules Committee to make sure the process was fair.
Speaker 11: And even I can tell you it's been fair. And
Speaker 11: even none of us are voting against the Speaker today
Speaker 11: regular order is at odds with predetermined outcomes. Yet the
Speaker 11: Speaker is being accused of not holding to regular order
Speaker 11: and predetermined outcomes at the same time.
Speaker 5: And Ree, maybe we should chase that with our last clip,
Speaker 5: which is Chip Roy reacting after the vote.
Speaker 6: Let's play a six come out.
Speaker 3: Me and called me a rhino. You can kiss my ass. Look,
Speaker 3: I've spent a lifetime fighting for limited government Conservatives. I
Speaker 3: have laid it all on the line. I've not seen
Speaker 3: my family but for two days in the last thirty days,
Speaker 3: you go around talking to your big game and you
Speaker 3: thumping your chest on Twitter. Yeah, come to my office
Speaker 3: and come out of debate.
Speaker 12: Mother.
Speaker 3: You know why, because I'm standing up with this country
Speaker 3: every single day. Right, So let's peel back. I love
Speaker 3: that you can't beat this. Let's peel back Massy's substance
Speaker 3: that he was laying out there, because he makes an
Speaker 3: interesting point, and I think if you don't follow Congress,
Speaker 3: it would be easy to miss what he was saying.
Speaker 3: So he's saying, Matt Gates wants regular order in the House,
Speaker 3: which means all of these bills go through all of
Speaker 3: these different committees, everybody gets involved, and whatever the final
Speaker 3: product is, you put that on the floor and then
Speaker 3: you move that over to the Senate. He wants individual
Speaker 3: spending bills. That's been the that was his mantra on
Speaker 3: the floor yesterday. That's been the thing that he's been
Speaker 3: calling for. Massy also says that Gates once a predetermined outcome,
Speaker 3: which is cutting spending to this, you know, to this
Speaker 3: specific level or whatever level you can. And Massy rightly
Speaker 3: points out those are not the same thing, and to
Speaker 3: demand both of them is just completely incoherent. And in fact,
Speaker 3: if I were going to be an advisor to the right,
Speaker 3: say look, you want to cut a lot of spending,
Speaker 3: CRS are your way to do it? Yeah, because it
Speaker 3: takes a hatchet all across the top, you just say
Speaker 3: this is the number. Figure it out. Interesting, if you
Speaker 3: go in with every committee and let everybody sort it out.
Speaker 3: Every one of those people is interested in their own
Speaker 3: kind of spending projects, and so it goes to the
Speaker 3: question of whether or not this was a coherent political project,
Speaker 3: or whether it was like a personality thing or or
Speaker 3: just a kind of long term power building for a
Speaker 3: far right faction.
Speaker 5: And I think the CR and you you know, I
Speaker 5: think the CR thing is a for people like.
Speaker 6: MASSI, who's a hardcore libertarian.
Speaker 5: It's to sort of weed out those de facto ear
Speaker 5: marks that people will pack into a big bill. If
Speaker 5: you do single subjects, then it's harder to do poison pills.
Speaker 5: It's harder to add, you know, kind of quasi ear
Speaker 5: marks into these things and stuff them.
Speaker 3: We got rid of ear marks for fifteen years, and
Speaker 3: government spending's going up.
Speaker 5: So I think it's a totally fair point that's there.
Speaker 5: But that would be their argument. And it is really
Speaker 5: interesting that you have people like Jim Jordan and Thomas Massy.
Speaker 5: So you can think that Jim Jordan and Thomas Massey
Speaker 5: have been sucked into the swamp and are now totally
Speaker 5: co opted by special interests and the Republican elite.
Speaker 6: Or you can think that you.
Speaker 5: Matt Gates and Jim Jordan are at odds for a
Speaker 5: legitimate reason, and that Matt.
Speaker 6: Gates and Chip Roy are at odds for legitimate reasons.
Speaker 5: Some people have issues with Jim Jordan because he's been
Speaker 5: close to Kevin McCarthy for years, and I mean some
Speaker 5: people in the conservative movement, they've seen that as sort
Speaker 5: of suspect because Kevin McCarthy intentionally reached out to Jim Jordan.
Speaker 6: He was talking to me about this last year.
Speaker 5: He was actually almost bragging about how clever he had
Speaker 5: been at reaching out to Jim Jordan years ago. He
Speaker 5: step after he stepped into the minority leadership post. He
Speaker 5: was really intentional about reaching out to Jim Jordan. People
Speaker 5: feel like he's done the same with Thomas Massey. People
Speaker 5: have sort of been annoyed by Thomas Massey for being
Speaker 5: so defensive of Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 6: Either way, these are guys who led the charge against Bayner.
Speaker 5: They're not going to and Chip Roy is somebody who's
Speaker 5: basically like untouchable from a conservative perspect as you can
Speaker 5: see his frustration boil over. He knows that, and so yeah,
Speaker 5: I mean I think that's the point. Like they worked
Speaker 5: really really hard to have a transactional relationship with Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy that worked for them, and they got a lot
Speaker 5: of leverage. They extracted a lot of concessions out of
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy, and that relationship was just completely blown up. Again,
Speaker 5: I get the stolar sentiment in there too, Like either
Speaker 5: way the UNI Party's winning. Matt Gates is wrong that
Speaker 5: they just broke the fever. That didn't happen, but it
Speaker 5: is a shot across the bile, for sure.
Speaker 3: It's every and every single revolution that you read about.
Speaker 3: You find Massy and Roy characters who were on the
Speaker 3: leading edge at the beginning of the revolution and stay
Speaker 3: kind of where they are politically throughout the revolution. But
Speaker 3: the revolution drives, it eats its children, as a phrase
Speaker 3: it came from the French Revolution, but it also pushes
Speaker 3: people to more extreme positions than just the nature of it.
Speaker 3: And then people like Roy and Massey find themselves outflanked
Speaker 3: to the right by new people who have come in
Speaker 3: who weren't part of the original revolution. And so people
Speaker 3: like Roy and Mask like, where were you when we
Speaker 3: were storming the best steal? Get out of town, don't
Speaker 3: tell And the new people are like the besteel. There
Speaker 3: was nothing even in there. So what's amazing to watch
Speaker 3: is that now there's a speaker pro tem, but we
Speaker 3: need a new speaker, and so who might become our
Speaker 3: new speaker. Well, Sean Hannity has some news on that.
Speaker 13: Carthy will not seek the speakership again now, sources telling
Speaker 13: me at this hour Somehouse Republicans have been in contact
Speaker 13: with and have started an effort to draft former President
Speaker 13: Donald Trump to be the next speaker. And I have
Speaker 13: been told that President Trump might be open to helping
Speaker 13: the Republican Party at least in the short term if necessary,
Speaker 13: if it's needed.
Speaker 3: Okay, So Handy we know is in touch with Trump. Yeah,
Speaker 3: we know that from lawsuits. And so if this was untrue,
Speaker 3: Handy had a way to check with Trump and find
Speaker 3: out that this wasn't true. So clearly Trump is that
Speaker 3: minimum interested in having us talk about that. So always
Speaker 3: happy to do Trump's bidding. Let's do it, Let's talk
Speaker 3: about it.
Speaker 5: And he knows Donald Trump is watching, by the way,
Speaker 5: is absolutely that hour on Fox News. He knows Donald
Speaker 5: Trump is watching. And Hannity was actually asked by somebody
Speaker 5: by Jim Jordan. He was talking to Jim Jordan, and
Speaker 5: Jim Jordan was he was. He was repeatedly trying to
Speaker 5: get Jim Jordan to say whether or not he was
Speaker 5: interested in being speaker. Jordan kept saying he kept hunting
Speaker 5: and saying, that's a decision for the conference to make,
Speaker 5: et cetera, et cetera. Hannity then floated what he had
Speaker 5: heard about Trump, and Jordan asked, well, I want him
Speaker 5: to be President of the United States. It basically was like,
Speaker 5: that's where I think he should.
Speaker 3: Right the job and his overqualified.
Speaker 5: Hannedy said, well, it would just be temporary. So that
Speaker 5: tells you what's circulating right now. Is this suggestion or
Speaker 5: this idea that Donald Trump step in as Speaker of
Speaker 5: the House temporarily while he's running for president, but not
Speaker 5: stay in the position that long. And we actually have
Speaker 5: let's put this next element up on the screen. Marjorie
Speaker 5: Taylor Green coming out, and again, this tells you what's
Speaker 5: happening behind closed doors. This is not that long after
Speaker 5: the speaker was the chair was vacated. The only candidate
Speaker 5: for Speaker I am currently supporting is President Donald J.
Speaker 6: Trump.
Speaker 5: Marjorie Taylor Green wrote on X he will end the
Speaker 5: war in Ukraine. He will secure the border. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 5: She said, we can make him speaker and then elect
Speaker 5: him president.
Speaker 6: He will make America great again.
Speaker 5: Ryan, pretty clear sign right here that Donald Trump is
Speaker 5: in the running first Speaker of the House.
Speaker 6: I don't know how much support he would have.
Speaker 5: There are a lot of you know, members who are
Speaker 5: now jockeying for the position, and we'll get into that
Speaker 5: in just a second, but clearly his name is in
Speaker 5: the running.
Speaker 3: I mean Trump loves the story, and I clearly he
Speaker 3: was watching television yesterday. He's like, oh wait, the House
Speaker 3: of Representatives can be on TV, and that means I
Speaker 3: could be on TV running the House of Representatives.
Speaker 6: The Sea spin things seems fun.
Speaker 3: Now Mike Kevin is gone, so somebody somebody's got to
Speaker 3: run it. Whether or not that actually happens, you know,
Speaker 3: we'll see because there are a bunch of other people
Speaker 3: who are jocking for it. And so, as you said,
Speaker 3: Jim Jordan was on handy last night, not not knocking
Speaker 3: down the idea that he was interested. So basically, if
Speaker 3: the conference is if he can round up support, he'll
Speaker 3: want to go for it. Yeah. Steve Scalise has been reported,
Speaker 3: you know, was you know, making some calls. Matt Gates
Speaker 3: had said, Hey, if scalise gets it, that's wonderful. Tom Emmer, Ye,
Speaker 3: is there a difference between these people that that viewers
Speaker 3: should care about, like Emmer Scalise Jordan.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think the biggest difference is between Emmer and Scalise
Speaker 5: and Jim Jordan, because Jim Jordan is we talked about
Speaker 5: this earlier, absolutely hardcore conservative. He's somebody who went after
Speaker 5: John Bayner. He's very focused on oversight now. But I
Speaker 5: think it was a really big deal. He usually says
Speaker 5: no when people are asking if he wants to be speaker, and.
Speaker 6: It's happened before.
Speaker 5: It actually happened when he decided not to run against
Speaker 5: Kevin McCarthy for the speakership after Paul Ryan or for
Speaker 5: the leadership position after Paul Ryan left, and so he's
Speaker 5: he doesn't really want it. And interestingly, Matt Gates said
Speaker 5: yesterday that they need somebody for speaker who doesn't want
Speaker 5: to be speaker, and Steve Scalisee then starts making calls
Speaker 5: and it's Steve Scleze, by the way's battling blood cancer,
Speaker 5: so physically there's a question of whether he's able to
Speaker 5: do this insane job of Speaker of the House, where
Speaker 5: there's a lot of fundraising involved, there's a lot of travel,
Speaker 5: and it's a lot of long hours. It's just it's
Speaker 5: a ton of work, it's a lot of stress. Obviously,
Speaker 5: now access Or I'm sorry Politico is saying that yes,
Speaker 5: Tom em Or, Steve Scalie, and even elist Stephonic are
Speaker 5: in the running.
Speaker 6: I have not heard Stephonic's name.
Speaker 5: Emmer is somebody that I've been told by sources to
Speaker 5: look at that that's the m or space is potentially
Speaker 5: somewhere that Freedom Caucus members might be interested in moving towards.
Speaker 5: Because Emmer has sort of quietly in the background. He's
Speaker 5: not always had a good relationship with conservatives. He's very
Speaker 5: much like a transactional Kevin McCarthy type figure.
Speaker 6: He's from Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Emmer is has been quietly negotiating in the background to
Speaker 5: help the Freedom Caucus score substantive wins in all of
Speaker 5: these negotiations, Speaker battle, debt limit shut down, emmer has
Speaker 5: sort of took them under his wing. Maybe that's maybe
Speaker 5: that's a little bit too sort of condescending or patronizing.
Speaker 5: He's helped them sort of negotiate with the establishment in
Speaker 5: ways that people will feel good about. So you need
Speaker 5: you obviously need support of the Freedom Caucus. And that's
Speaker 5: where this gets crazy in that you have these eight
Speaker 5: members voting against Kevin McCarthy, who was good to the
Speaker 5: Freedom Caucus. So who are you passib all going to
Speaker 5: agree on that's moderate enough to keep the support of
Speaker 5: the moderate members and then also hardcore enough to get
Speaker 5: the people who were not who McCarthy wasn't hardcore enough
Speaker 5: for right?
Speaker 3: Good luck, Yeah, because you've introduced a new way of
Speaker 3: electing a speaker. Basically for the entire history of Congress,
Speaker 3: you would have a vote within your caucus or your conference.
Speaker 3: The long story. Democrats call themselves a caucus, Republicans call
Speaker 3: themselves a conference. You don't want to know why. And
Speaker 3: so you'd have a closed door vote, and let's say
Speaker 3: Pelosi wins or you know, geb Hart wins and it's
Speaker 3: a close race. Then you go to the floor and
Speaker 3: every single Democrat votes for whoever won. Like that was
Speaker 3: how it was always on Republicans, the same way Banner
Speaker 3: wins a close race or whoever. When you get to
Speaker 3: the floor. Republicans back the person that won the race
Speaker 3: behind closed doors, because if you don't do that, it
Speaker 3: allows the minority party to come in and side with
Speaker 3: the people who refuse to go along with the party
Speaker 3: and kick him out. And so what Gates discovered here
Speaker 3: and what you Democrats could have done in the past,
Speaker 3: is if you team up with the other party, you
Speaker 3: can block your party from appointing somebody. But your question
Speaker 3: is an excellent one, then what right, right? If they
Speaker 3: can do it, then other people can do it as well. Right,
Speaker 3: So how do you get a speaker?
Speaker 5: And you remember this, Jim Jordan's problem has long been
Speaker 5: that he's not you know, the moderates, the centrists in
Speaker 5: the Republican conference will have a hard time getting behind
Speaker 5: Jim Jordan. Now that may not be the case. I
Speaker 5: suspect it wouldn't be the case anymore because Jordan has
Speaker 5: proven himself a capable leader of various committees, and he's
Speaker 5: proven that he's you can work with Jim Jordan. And
Speaker 5: that's in some ways why people in the conservative movement
Speaker 5: are like, huh, what's going on with Jim Jordan. But
Speaker 5: I think basically everybody would get behind Jim Jordan. He's
Speaker 5: a pretty like to the Ecten. There's a consensus candidate.
Speaker 5: I think it's probably Jim Jordan. I'm surprised, but it's
Speaker 5: it's I'm surprised that Gates has been so willing to
Speaker 5: float Scalise and Emmer's names. And he has floated both
Speaker 5: of those names, honestly, because they're so obviously at least
Speaker 5: the same as McCarthy, if not worse. And I think
Speaker 5: that really gives Gates's critics some some serious ammo because
Speaker 5: and it puts weight on their side of the argument
Speaker 5: that this was personal, because if you're suggesting you get
Speaker 5: rid of Kevin McCarthy and go to Steve Scalise or
Speaker 5: to Tom Emmer, it looks like maybe your problem was
Speaker 5: just with McCarthy and not McCarthy's ideology. Met Gates was
Speaker 5: out yesterday tub thumping about special interests and people wanting
Speaker 5: to be speaker and spending their whole careers building up
Speaker 5: to that. Tom Emmer and Steve Scalise embody the problems
Speaker 5: that he was raging against yesterday. So it's it's quite
Speaker 5: amusing that he would float their names.
Speaker 3: And we got to move, We got to move on
Speaker 3: pretty quickly, but curious for your take on this. McCarthy
Speaker 3: suggested that the reason that Democrats didn't back Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 3: like didn't bail him out. Yeah, and Democrats have publicly
Speaker 3: said that it was because McCarthy lied about you know,
Speaker 3: he hurt their feelings over the weekend by saying that
Speaker 3: they were part they wanted a government shutdown. That's just
Speaker 3: like transparently not a credible claim to make, Like, you
Speaker 3: don't make major decisions based on whether your feelings are
Speaker 3: hurt what somebody says on a Sunday show. So the question, well,
Speaker 3: Emily does, but the question remains open. Then, so why
Speaker 3: didn't Democrats help? McCarthy's theory was that he's a very
Speaker 3: good fundraiser. Democrats want to take back the house. If
Speaker 3: you take a if you take tens of millions of
Speaker 3: dollars off the table, that hobbles them a little bit.
Speaker 3: And if Scalise, like you said, replaces him and can't
Speaker 3: travel because he's getting chemotherapy for blood cancer. I mean,
Speaker 3: this cynical grows stuff. But that's tens of millions of
Speaker 3: more potentially off the table. Because rich people often don't
Speaker 3: just hand over mine like they ought to if they
Speaker 3: care about the project, but they have to be wined
Speaker 3: and dined, and it takes work to extract that money
Speaker 3: from their bank account. Y just not wiring it over.
Speaker 3: So does this help Democrats take over the House.
Speaker 6: That's a really good point.
Speaker 5: And this is another one of the things that Kevin
Speaker 5: McCarthy just dripped out yesterday. We were talking earlier about
Speaker 5: how it was so chaotic yesterday that these you know
Speaker 5: what would be like huge pieces of information, revelatory information.
Speaker 3: He said he got this from sources inside the Democratic Caucus.
Speaker 5: He told a story about when he took over, he
Speaker 5: was talking to Nancy Pelosi or when he was going
Speaker 5: through these fifteen ballots, and she was like, well, what
Speaker 5: do they want?
Speaker 6: What's wrong? And he said, they want the motion of
Speaker 6: a Kate and she was like, just give it to them.
Speaker 5: This is Kevin McCarthy saying this yesterday at a press
Speaker 5: conference after he lost the vote, where he is just
Speaker 5: like the sour grapes are exploding. I mean, he's he's bitter,
Speaker 5: but he's also trying to convince people that he's totally fine.
Speaker 3: It's like after the New Favors that I'm mad he's like.
Speaker 5: You know me, like I'm an optimist, but screw this place.
Speaker 5: Everything is going to burn down. He was doing both
Speaker 5: of them at the same time, but he said Nancy
Speaker 5: Pelosi basically promised that Democrats would back him up if
Speaker 5: Republicans had a motion to vacate Hakim Jeffries.
Speaker 6: You made this point yesterday. Maybe Kevin McCarthy.
Speaker 5: Should have made his deal with Akiem Jefferies and not
Speaker 5: Nancy Pelosi.
Speaker 6: Ananty Pelosi missed the vote.
Speaker 5: She's in California for Dane Feinstein's funeral, and acting Speaker
Speaker 5: Patrick McHenry from California who is now the interim speaker
Speaker 5: because of a post nine to eleven law for the
Speaker 5: security of government and all of that took away her hideaway,
Speaker 5: which is another crazy like one of the first. Yeah,
Speaker 5: so the stuff is getting crazy. But basically, Kevin McCarthy
Speaker 5: revealed that yesterday.
Speaker 3: He should have made a deal with Jefferies, should have
Speaker 3: made a deal with Jeffries. Having a deal with your
Speaker 3: old landlord.
Speaker 5: That it's not superwful, the last guy said, but you
Speaker 5: know it's funny because you know, like Pelosi still holds
Speaker 5: a lot of power over on the the dem side
Speaker 5: in their caucus.
Speaker 6: And you know, she's obviously.
Speaker 5: Was very close with Dane Feinstein, and I imagine is
Speaker 5: not involved in the drama as much as she would
Speaker 5: be if she were here in d C.
Speaker 6: And not Morning Diane Feinstein.
Speaker 5: But it's quite interesting that she didn't step in and
Speaker 5: tell Jeffries not to whip that vote, because clearly he
Speaker 5: was whipping that vote.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh yeah, it was.
Speaker 8: It was.
Speaker 3: It was a discipline party, amazing in contrast their public party.
Speaker 3: It's weird, sure.
Speaker 5: Is well, and there was just my last thought would
Speaker 5: be there's a Jake Sherman tweet yesterday from punch Bowl saying,
Speaker 5: you know, it's amazing you look back and you see
Speaker 5: that House Republicans have been at war with their leadership
Speaker 5: for like the last fifteen years.
Speaker 6: And my response to that was like, the.
Speaker 5: Senate is slouching, and we'll talk about that later in
Speaker 5: the show, but it's you know, my boss. Only Hemingway
Speaker 5: turned it around. She was like, actually, it's really you're
Speaker 5: seeing this wrong. It's it's really or my bos Jon
Speaker 5: Davis said, it's really that the leadership has been at
Speaker 5: war with the Republican voters for fifteen years and what
Speaker 5: you're seeing are these occasional sort of breaking po to
Speaker 5: use a phrase with the.
Speaker 6: Base, because the base wants it.
Speaker 3: Good time.
Speaker 5: All right, Let's move on to another huge story. Seventy
Speaker 5: five thousand nurses medical professionals now striking over Kaiser. Contract
Speaker 5: negotiations failed on Saturday, so the contract ran out. They've
Speaker 5: been negotiating until this morning. We didn't know if the
Speaker 5: walkout would happen, but it did. Tens of thousands of
Speaker 5: workers on the line here, nursing staffing shortages one of
Speaker 5: the sort of quietly one of the biggest problems in
Speaker 5: labor right now. It hit the just absolutely hit the
Speaker 5: forefront of the discourse and this huge labor conversation that
Speaker 5: has been roiling the country for at least the last year.
Speaker 6: Seventy five thousand jobs.
Speaker 3: Ryan, we can put up a one here. Yeah, So
Speaker 3: if you are a patient with Kaiser, I used to be.
Speaker 3: Kaiser's actually pretty cool, kind of vertically integrated. You know
Speaker 3: much about Kaiser perponent. It's this like vertically integrated, integrated
Speaker 3: healthcare system where you know, when you're in they've got
Speaker 3: everything for you, like they've got that's where the specialists are.
Speaker 3: That's where your GP is and it's all owned by
Speaker 3: it's all the same company. Basically trying to be not
Speaker 3: just single payer but also kind of nationalized healthcare but private, privatized.
Speaker 3: It's the vision that a lot of people on the
Speaker 3: left have, they say, except it shouldn't be profit oriented.
Speaker 3: The healthcare professionals are demanding a minimum wage of at
Speaker 3: least twenty five dollars to start, along with increases of
Speaker 3: sixty seven percent. Kais are currently pays in twenty one
Speaker 3: dollars to start, and it's offering four percent year over
Speaker 3: year increases. But the major demand, and the thing that
Speaker 3: I think everyone across the board supports, is that they
Speaker 3: want more staff. Because anybody who's been to a hospital
Speaker 3: or any any clinic in the last couple of years,
Speaker 3: are almost a decade, knows that they're short staffed. And
Speaker 3: what you're seeing is that that leading to burnout, which
Speaker 3: leads to mistakes. Mistakes cost tens of thousands of deaths
Speaker 3: every year. And then the more burnout, the more people leave,
Speaker 3: and the more short staffed you are. And so we've
Speaker 3: got to do something to turn to turn that around.
Speaker 5: That is the big, the big question that is hanging
Speaker 5: over this again, this is the largest healthcare strike in
Speaker 5: the history of the country.
Speaker 6: So that's seventy five thousand.
Speaker 3: It's only scheduled for three days, but still, if you're
Speaker 3: involved in that, that's life or death.
Speaker 5: That's exactly yeah, right, and that's a very big deal.
Speaker 5: And the problem is Kaiser itself is between a rock
Speaker 5: and a hard place because they can't just create more nurses.
Speaker 5: They can't just create more radiology and X ray attacks.
Speaker 5: They are ultrasound tax This is this is a big
Speaker 5: problem for healthcare in general, and what nurses particularly want
Speaker 5: is more scheduling flexibility. In fact, that's why a lot
Speaker 5: of people pursue the nursing career, especially women. It allows
Speaker 5: you to have a really meaningful career and then also
Speaker 5: to have this flexible schedule where you can take care
Speaker 5: of your kids and you sort of do both if
Speaker 5: you want to. It's actually why a lot of people
Speaker 5: pursue that line of work. And COVID, the COVID burnout
Speaker 5: just exacerbated existing trends there was already because baby boomers
Speaker 5: are aging to this point where we knew this was
Speaker 5: coming for a long time.
Speaker 6: You have this.
Speaker 5: Explosion in the need for care and this explosion the
Speaker 5: need for medical professionals. A lot of boomers are needing
Speaker 5: more and more doctors as they get older and older,
Speaker 5: and so we knew this was coming. COVID exacerbates everything
Speaker 5: and now you have it puts Kaiser honestly in a
Speaker 5: tough spot. It's not I wouldn't want to be in
Speaker 5: Kaiser's spot because if the problem is wages, it's to
Speaker 5: the point you made which obvious.
Speaker 6: So they are asking for higher wages.
Speaker 5: That's one thing you can, you know, maybe do some math,
Speaker 5: figure out how to make that work. You can't fabricate
Speaker 5: new X ray technicians. You can't just create new nurses
Speaker 5: out of thin air.
Speaker 3: Right. What this country needs it's interesting, is we need
Speaker 3: more housing, and we need more workers and the one
Speaker 3: potential and we at the same time we're faced with
Speaker 3: what is being described as a migration and as a
Speaker 3: migration crisis. Like there's got to be some way that
Speaker 3: on a hemispheric basis, you could solve this problem, whether
Speaker 3: it's whether it's building more nursing schools here in the
Speaker 3: United States or in Guatemala ondors Venezuela. Like what we're
Speaker 3: doing isn't working, and we have we have serious needs
Speaker 3: that everyone needs met. So just from a selfish perspective,
Speaker 3: like if we do have a staffing problem when it
Speaker 3: comes to constructing new housing and when it comes to
Speaker 3: nursing and medical care, there are people that want work,
Speaker 3: that need jobs, and people that need housing, Like, we
Speaker 3: could actually do this, but it would require us to
Speaker 3: kind of be a little bit more kind of we'd
Speaker 3: have to get out of the cages that we've built
Speaker 3: around what we're able to think about when it comes
Speaker 3: to constructing a society.
Speaker 5: Well, another really big part of this is higher education. Now,
Speaker 5: a lot of nurses have four year degrees, not all
Speaker 5: of them do, and there are a lot of people
Speaker 5: with four year degrees right now who are underpaid. And
Speaker 5: I'm not just talking about nurses, I'm talking about people
Speaker 5: who have liberal arts degrees and went to work in
Speaker 5: what was a tech bubble, what was a social media
Speaker 5: bubble that we are now seeing contract in ways that
Speaker 5: have been very disruptive for people who have these degrees.
Speaker 5: We're making really comfortable livings or in some cases weren't
Speaker 5: but had the hopes of making really comfortable livings who
Speaker 5: are now out of a job or potentially out of
Speaker 5: a job, feel very insecure about their job status. Who
Speaker 5: had they not? You know, our system pushes you down
Speaker 5: the four year degree paths so incessantly that you know,
Speaker 5: you get all of the student loan debt, you're not
Speaker 5: making enough money, or you make some money, and then
Speaker 5: you get fired and you can't find another job or
Speaker 5: get laid off. You're not going to find another job
Speaker 5: where you make that much money and have that much
Speaker 5: you know, have such a relaxed profession and you know what,
Speaker 5: honestly a lot of people could have been making more
Speaker 5: money with less debt going down the nursing path too.
Speaker 5: Like we just have these weird gaps in our workforce
Speaker 5: because of the four year degree push over.
Speaker 6: And over again. This is your ticket to the middle class.
Speaker 6: And then people get it.
Speaker 5: They have eighty thousand dollars in debt and aren't making
Speaker 5: nearly enough to pay that off for twenty years. These
Speaker 5: are good paying jobs, and so I mean good for
Speaker 5: the good for the medical professionals, not just nurses, but
Speaker 5: the texts for pushing for higher wages and for pushing
Speaker 5: for more flexibility.
Speaker 6: Hopefully they get it and it.
Speaker 5: Makes it more attractive to other people who could just
Speaker 5: they could have better lives.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's a great point. The more attractive you can
Speaker 3: make it to get into either teaching or nursing for me,
Speaker 3: the better. My brothers. My brother's a nurse, and it's
Speaker 3: just it's a it's a brutal profession. So it's so hard,
Speaker 3: also so rewarding. It's heroic. So thank you to him,
Speaker 3: and thank you to everybo. He's coming to visit this
Speaker 3: weekend thing, so shout out to him and also to
Speaker 3: everybody else in the nursing and healthcare field. And I
Speaker 3: hope that they get what they wants. That you get
Speaker 3: more support from people coming in. It does appear like
Speaker 3: the country is supportive of not just these workers, but
Speaker 3: workers across the country. If we can put up B
Speaker 3: two here. This is a poll from Navigator Research finding
Speaker 3: a couple of interesting things. Key takeaways here, UAW and
Speaker 3: Writers Guild, even after these long strikes, are viewed more
Speaker 3: favorably rather than unfavorably for people who are kind of
Speaker 3: new to labor conflict, and that's basically everyone in this
Speaker 3: country because we haven't had serious labor conflicts for a
Speaker 3: long time. That's kind of new. Like the American public
Speaker 3: generally supports striking workers in theory, but the second they
Speaker 3: actually strike, support for them collapses. So the fact that
Speaker 3: even amid the strikes you're seeing support for them is
Speaker 3: unusual and is hopeful. Now Partly that's because union density
Speaker 3: is so low that it doesn't affect a whole lot
Speaker 3: of people. So you know, once it gets if you
Speaker 3: could get to thirty or forty percent, then you start
Speaker 3: to see people complaining again. So it says four and
Speaker 3: five Americans support right to bargain collectively. That's like kind
Speaker 3: of reaching record levels more than three and four support
Speaker 3: the employees are on strike in both of these cases.
Speaker 3: And then interesting their final takeaway on the two parties here,
Speaker 3: half of Americans say Democratic Party and Joe Biden are
Speaker 3: more supportive of labor unions than Republicans, and three in
Speaker 3: five say that Trump has always looked out for big
Speaker 3: corporations and rich people like himself instead of American workers.
Speaker 3: Is that a surprising finding, You.
Speaker 6: Know, it's probably worth mentioning.
Speaker 5: This is a less leaning poll with I actually think
Speaker 5: the firm has some ties to the UAW and that
Speaker 5: question I would have to see how it was written.
Speaker 6: It seems kind of loaded, but it's.
Speaker 3: Really people like himself that loaded up.
Speaker 5: Yeah, a little of a leading question, but no, I
Speaker 5: don't think that's particularly the.
Speaker 3: Particularly if you ask the American public, does Trump care
Speaker 3: about only himself? You would think, yeah, like we're not dumb,
Speaker 3: we all know.
Speaker 6: But you know that that's a great first.
Speaker 5: Maybe Republican candidates should be looking at polling like this.
Speaker 5: I've seen, you know, other polling to this extent too.
Speaker 5: We talked about a recent American compass pool. You know,
Speaker 5: Republicans in a recent it was I think it was
Speaker 5: Gallup Pool, it may have been Pew said that they
Speaker 5: trust Republicans in the economy more than Democrats.
Speaker 11: Now.
Speaker 5: Labor issues how they factor into that as a fascinating question.
Speaker 5: But Republican candidates who have no chance against Donald Trump
Speaker 5: at this point, maybe a tiny chance and we could
Speaker 5: have egg on our face six months from now, but
Speaker 5: their odds of beating Donald Trump are slim to none,
Speaker 5: even though there's still but they're trying really hard. They
Speaker 5: should pay attention to the public sentiment on labor. If
Speaker 5: they are going to be those types of politicians that
Speaker 5: sort of just go wherever the wind blows, they probably
Speaker 5: will want to weigh in on one side of this.
Speaker 5: It might hurt them with their donors, but it doesn't
Speaker 5: make any sense to keep talking about unions in the
Speaker 5: way some of those candidates have talked about unions because
Speaker 5: of this.
Speaker 3: Moving on to our man Hunter Biden. Hunter Biden, we
Speaker 3: can put this up here. Pleaded not guilty yesterday to
Speaker 3: charges to basically his gun charge. And for people who
Speaker 3: haven't followed this, Hunter Biden was charged with buying a
Speaker 3: gun and checking on a form that he was not
Speaker 3: currently using drugs, which you have to do in order
Speaker 3: to get right, and it would be so it's a
Speaker 3: federal it's a felony. I guess it would be amazing
Speaker 3: if he tried to say, well, I wasn't on drugs
Speaker 3: that second when I checked that form, and the last
Speaker 3: time I gotten high. I swore it was going to
Speaker 3: be the last time I ever got high. And then
Speaker 3: I got high later that day and that was a relapse.
Speaker 3: But relapse is part of recovery, and so you cannot
Speaker 3: prove that I was high the second that I checked
Speaker 3: that form. That would be an amazing thing to put
Speaker 3: in front of a jury. Now he has written in
Speaker 3: his memoir and there's been plenty of reporting that he
Speaker 3: was kind of in the middle of a long time vendor.
Speaker 3: But it's it's the question is actually worded in a
Speaker 3: funny way on the form the form yeah, like are
Speaker 3: you on drugs at the moment? Doesn't say at the moment,
Speaker 3: but it's like it suggests present tense.
Speaker 5: Right right, as opposed to are you battling a long
Speaker 5: term drug addiction?
Speaker 3: And he maybe probably was at the time high, but
Speaker 3: you do we know beyond a reasonable doubt that he was,
Speaker 3: So I'm here he is heading into court. So this,
Speaker 3: of course also is the fallout of that plea deal
Speaker 3: fault that collapse.
Speaker 5: Yes in July, right, So the plea deal collapsed in
Speaker 5: just spectacular fashion in July where a Trump appointed judge
Speaker 5: looked at the plea deal that Hunter Biden that actually
Speaker 5: the prosecutors so the government we're bringing to Hunter Biden
Speaker 5: and said, wait one second, what on earth is this
Speaker 5: and basically made them go back to the drawing board.
Speaker 6: It was a crazy plea deal. To be fair, like, she.
Speaker 5: Was not wrong in that case because they were letting
Speaker 5: him just plead guilty to tax charges and then he
Speaker 5: wouldn't get prosecuted on the gun charge, or they'd let
Speaker 5: him off the hook on the on the gun charge.
Speaker 5: So obviously he's violated numerous tax laws because he was
Speaker 5: going to plead guilty on those counts, and we know it.
Speaker 5: I mean, we have enough records at this point to
Speaker 5: see that he at least was engaged in.
Speaker 6: Some tax evasion.
Speaker 5: The gun thing, though, is really interesting because this Jonathan
Speaker 5: Turley had a blog post on this. If you move
Speaker 5: back the timeline on Hunter Brden's sobriety to the point
Speaker 5: where he can plausibly plause claim he's pleading not guilty,
Speaker 5: so the point where he can plausibly claim he was
Speaker 5: sober at this point in his history, so in twenty eighteen,
Speaker 5: it takes away that excuse for a lot of the
Speaker 5: influence pedaling that the Biden family has used about how listen,
Speaker 5: my son was battling a drug addiction, he was battling
Speaker 5: his demons during this influence peddling scheme twenty nineteen, twenty twenty.
Speaker 5: You can't really have that excuse if you're claiming you
Speaker 5: got sober in twenty eighteen. So that's a legitimate question
Speaker 5: for the Biden defense.
Speaker 3: More broadly, couldn't greed just be enough of an explanation
Speaker 3: for guess why you're cashing in on your last name Greed.
Speaker 5: And I mean, honestly, Hunter Biden's best defense is that
Speaker 5: this is normal normally, this is literally how.
Speaker 6: Business gets done.
Speaker 5: This is how foreign policy is made, and I didn't
Speaker 5: know anything else.
Speaker 6: I've ever known.
Speaker 3: One of my favorite clips ever is Donald Trump Junior
Speaker 3: getting on TV and saying, it's so shocking that somebody
Speaker 3: would use their last name profit. Can you imagine? Wow?
Speaker 3: Can you imagine Donald Trump Junior? If somebody ever did that, well,
Speaker 3: that would be outrageous. And if they did it while
Speaker 3: on drugs?
Speaker 7: Wow.
Speaker 6: He earned his spot on Celebrity.
Speaker 3: Apprentice, he did. He fought for that. Celebrity Apprentice Junior, Yeah.
Speaker 6: He fought for that spot.
Speaker 5: Celebrity Apprentice was a great show. But anyway, this is
Speaker 5: the end of the Reuters article on the Hunter Biden thing.
Speaker 5: They say some legal experts have said that any firearms
Speaker 5: related charges against Hunter Biden could be vulnerable to a
Speaker 5: constitutional challenge after the US Supreme Court last year, in
Speaker 5: a landmark ruling, expanded gun rights under the US Constitution's
Speaker 5: Second Amendment, which protects the right to bear arms This
Speaker 5: is another story that can scramble all the existing ideological
Speaker 5: fault lines.
Speaker 6: Hunter Biden Second Amendment champion. It's a serious.
Speaker 5: Problem for Joe Biden if Hunter is fighting for I
Speaker 5: really like the rights of gun owners.
Speaker 3: And if I were a constitutional lawyer, which obviously I
Speaker 3: am not, I'd be like, look, how can you have
Speaker 3: a well regulated militia if everybody's high. You know, you
Speaker 3: got to be able to regulate the drug intake of
Speaker 3: your militia. Somehow they've just like scratched that part of
Speaker 3: the Second Amendment out, the well regulated militia.
Speaker 6: If this goes to the Supreme Court, I mean, I
Speaker 6: don't even.
Speaker 3: Yeah, of course they just they would toss this out absolutely,
Speaker 3: So yes, you could walk in completely blasted, yeah, and
Speaker 3: just walk out with whatever with an RPG.
Speaker 5: The single best litigation of the Second Amendment remains the
Speaker 5: It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia episode where they sort of
Speaker 5: respectively test their positions on the Second Amendment. Dennis and
Speaker 5: d try to prove that it's really easy to buy
Speaker 5: a gun. Charlie and Frank and Mac or I think
Speaker 5: maybe just Charlie Mack try to prove that it's really
Speaker 5: hard to buy a gun and everything just gets thrown
Speaker 5: up in the air. It's really amazing. So check that
Speaker 5: out if you haven't. But hunter Biden's attorney has said
Speaker 5: that he's going to file a motion to dismiss the case.
Speaker 5: He's Bill thinks the July agreement is an effect. He
Speaker 5: believed the statute was unconstitutional.
Speaker 6: Man.
Speaker 5: This is, you know, obviously a serious case for hunter
Speaker 5: Biden because could it could actually potentially involve prison time.
Speaker 6: Obviously we're talking about a felony.
Speaker 5: There are many other charges against hunter Biden could that
Speaker 5: could be pending. He still has not been charged with
Speaker 5: a fair of violation which partially sent Paul.
Speaker 6: Manafort to jail.
Speaker 5: What foreign lobbying, right, Yeah, the Foreign Agents Registration Act.
Speaker 5: He clearly is in violation affair. It is just like
Speaker 5: the most obvious fair of violation, like multiple fare of
Speaker 5: violations that you can imagine, but he hasn't been charged
Speaker 5: with it, and that's a big looming problem for him.
Speaker 6: Nobody had really gone to prison.
Speaker 5: I think there was like one case of somebody who
Speaker 5: went to prison for a fair of violation, which is
Speaker 5: a felony before Paul Manifort ended up going to prison
Speaker 5: for it. But Paul Manaphort went to prison for it,
Speaker 5: and Tony Pedesta did it. So that's a I think
Speaker 5: also a really big problem for the FBI, for the
Speaker 5: DOJ in general when he's still not charged with that.
Speaker 3: So let's move on to the Supreme Court. Yesterday, So
Speaker 3: in the Supreme Court, Payday lenders took the CFPB in
Speaker 3: and said, the way that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau
Speaker 3: is structured is unconstitutional and we can put up D
Speaker 3: one here and ought to be ruled as such, basically
Speaker 3: invalidating not just the CFPB but actually also the Federal Reserve,
Speaker 3: which is which is not funded through the regular appropriations process.
Speaker 3: The PAIDA lenders had come up with this kind of
Speaker 3: arcane and novel legal theory that Congress is only able
Speaker 3: to fund things certain ways. And so the way that
Speaker 3: Congress funds the CFPB is it says, CFPB gets six
Speaker 3: hundred million dollars plus you know right, you know, cost
Speaker 3: of living increases, and it is funded through the Federal Reserve.
Speaker 3: The Federal Reserve, so that is the way. So you
Speaker 3: can't come in through the regular appropriations process and cut
Speaker 3: that off. But what you could do if Republicans had
Speaker 3: control of Congress and the White House. They could say
Speaker 3: it's four hundred million from the federal reserve. Like Congress
Speaker 3: still maintained some control over it. We've got we've got
Speaker 3: Alena go ahead.
Speaker 6: Well, I was exactly.
Speaker 5: I think that was because there already was a challenge.
Speaker 5: I think mcmulvaney mounted a challenge when he was the
Speaker 5: head of the CFPB, and so I think it actually
Speaker 5: changed the funding mechanism, had some congressional oversight after the change.
Speaker 6: I don't know that it originally did. I think it
Speaker 6: was originally all derived from the FED.
Speaker 3: It was, But what I mean by congressional oversight is
Speaker 3: that they can change the laws, right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: So here's Alana Kagan going back and forth at the
Speaker 3: Court yesterday.
Speaker 14: Just sort of I mean, this is six hundred million
Speaker 14: dollars and this is a rounding error in the federal budget,
Speaker 14: honestly six hundred million dollars and says up to six
Speaker 14: hundred million dollars. I mean you say, oh, it's it's
Speaker 14: impossible to need it. I mean, if the CFB, it's
Speaker 14: a pretty new agency, and presumably its regulatory programs are
Speaker 14: going to develop over time. Congress thoughts six hundred million
Speaker 14: dollars was a pretty good number. Maybe that will prove
Speaker 14: to be too high and Congress will cut it back.
Speaker 14: Maybe over time the CFPP actually will hit six hundred
Speaker 14: million dollars because they'll create new programs that But anyway,
Speaker 14: six hundred million dollars four hundred million dollars the CFPP.
Speaker 6: There was a.
Speaker 14: Statement that the Chief Justice made one of his year
Speaker 14: end reports, talked about how great it was that we
Speaker 14: returned moneies to the Federal Treasury, because that meant that
Speaker 14: we weren't wasteful. So the CFPP is not being wasteful,
Speaker 14: and it's using what it should be using in its
Speaker 14: view and generously, you know, basically saying.
Speaker 4: Not the rest.
Speaker 14: What is is what is so constitutionally, so.
Speaker 15: A couple of things you honor first of all, respectively,
Speaker 15: I probably push back on the premise that the CFPB
Speaker 15: is being parsimonious. I think what they are doing is
Speaker 15: asking for large amounts and rolling over a good chunk
Speaker 15: of that into their endowment. But I'll put that to
Speaker 15: the side. When you look at the caps, I think
Speaker 15: you have to look at it both from the back
Speaker 15: end and the front end. On the back end, I
Speaker 15: think most of us seem to agree, and I think
Speaker 15: sort of the government agrees that there has to be
Speaker 15: some kind of upper limit, and if there is an
Speaker 15: upper limit, it's got to be meaningful. The fact that
Speaker 15: they've never actually hit that upper limit is pretty good
Speaker 15: evidence that it's not that meaningful limit. But I think
Speaker 15: the other thing you have to look at it is
Speaker 15: it from the front.
Speaker 14: Maybe it is good evidence that the CFPB should be
Speaker 14: doing more sexy stuff.
Speaker 5: We know, like this is juicy, but it actually is
Speaker 5: incredibly consequential. And I'm going to ask Ryan in a
Speaker 5: second to give us some sort of flesh out why
Speaker 5: this is so important. What the CFPB does a little
Speaker 5: bit of its history. But Vox had a This is
Speaker 5: from Ian Milheiser. I think we already put it up
Speaker 5: on the screen, so you can check out that article
Speaker 5: if you want. But Ian Milheiser points out, having listened
Speaker 5: to these oral arguments while chaos was enveloping the capital
Speaker 5: just a few blocks away, that Kavanaugh and Amy Coney
Speaker 5: Barrett both quote showed little patients for Francisco. So that
Speaker 5: is the Trump solicitor general who's going after this case
Speaker 5: to his attacks on the CFPB, so little patients. Now,
Speaker 5: my favorite quote here is actually from Clarence Thomas, who
Speaker 5: asked Francisco to complete the sentence. Quote, funding of the
Speaker 5: CFPP violates the approach appropriation's clause because and it did
Speaker 5: not go well. So you are getting basically piled on,
Speaker 5: they said. Ian Milheuser said basically after listening that it
Speaker 5: seemed like only Alido was strongly in the anti CFPB
Speaker 5: camp in this case, but basically all the Trump appointed
Speaker 5: justices and then Clarence Thomas, who a doesn't speak that
Speaker 5: much in these questions back and forth much more now
Speaker 5: than he used to, but b is obviously a staunch conservative,
Speaker 5: going back and forth and losing their patients with Francisco
Speaker 5: who's litigating this case and basically tearing apart the substance
Speaker 5: of the argument in front of him, to the point
Speaker 5: where Clarence Thomas comes in says funding of the CFPB
Speaker 5: violates the preparations clause because and Francisco didn't come back
Speaker 5: with a clean answer.
Speaker 6: That's a really brutal situation.
Speaker 5: Can you tell us a little bit about the quick
Speaker 5: history of the CFPB and why all this matters so much?
Speaker 3: Right? This was Elizabeth Warren's baby she wrote about it
Speaker 3: in a Law Review article, and then and then came
Speaker 3: to Congress. Before she was in Congress and was kind
Speaker 3: of like the lead champion of it. She was running
Speaker 3: the Bailout Oversight Committee that got her a bunch of
Speaker 3: viral moments. She was on John Stewart, So she became
Speaker 3: this like big consumer advocate in the wake of the
Speaker 3: financial crisis. And then she used that political capital push
Speaker 3: for the creation of the originally called the CFP A
Speaker 3: age it to the CFP B. And one of the
Speaker 3: things that they fought for was this was this fed
Speaker 3: funding stream that would then make it harder for kind
Speaker 3: of future Congresses to come in and cut funding because
Speaker 3: often what Republicans or Wall Street back democrats would do
Speaker 3: is they would say, you know, you can't use any
Speaker 3: funding for X thing.
Speaker 6: So circumvent that.
Speaker 3: Right. So it doesn't completely circumvent it, because like I said,
Speaker 3: Congress can still come in and change that law, but
Speaker 3: they it's harder for them to do it. And if
Speaker 3: you make Congress work a little harder, then they do
Speaker 3: they do fewer things because then they have to do
Speaker 3: it in public and that requires more public support. And
Speaker 3: so that was the thing what what Warren wanted was
Speaker 3: a public fight over this question, because she knew she
Speaker 3: didn't have Wall Street on her side. They were going
Speaker 3: to lose if it was you know, money it was
Speaker 3: it was a moneyed, inside baseball fight. She wanted it
Speaker 3: to be fought in public. She had this famous quote
Speaker 3: or said, if they try to weaken it, I'd rather
Speaker 3: have a bunch of blood and teeth on the Senate
Speaker 3: floor and get nothing at all, because she felt like
Speaker 3: in a battle between you know, people swinging clubs on
Speaker 3: the Senate floor with the public watching, that they were
Speaker 3: going to win. And so they ended up winning this
Speaker 3: particular provision which gives it a fun a streaming amount
Speaker 3: of money from the Federal Reserve every year that they
Speaker 3: can then count on, and the Federal Reserve is also
Speaker 3: kind of itself funded that way. So it would create
Speaker 3: this weird situation where you wouldn't have a FED either,
Speaker 3: which some people will be like, oh, that's a great idea,
Speaker 3: but okay, well go look up what things were like
Speaker 3: before the FED. The FED was actually a creation of
Speaker 3: the populist movement, which people forget. And it's so interesting
Speaker 3: that one hundred years later, the populist movement hates the FED.
Speaker 6: Here we are, well, like, that's an important point.
Speaker 5: Like one of the reasons I think, especially some of
Speaker 5: the libertarian wings of the broader conservative movement or people
Speaker 5: in the liberty hering win of the broader conservative movement
Speaker 5: want to use some muscle to go after the CFPB
Speaker 5: is precisely because the Fed. You could be going after
Speaker 5: the FED in and of itself, like that's uh. And
Speaker 5: that's why this is important that if you know, this
Speaker 5: had been a really strong oral argument for Francisco, you
Speaker 5: then actually do have to start questioning how the FED
Speaker 5: is funded constitutionally. If it looked like Trump's justices were
Speaker 5: going to go in one direction, like like Thomas was
Speaker 5: going to go in one direction, like Alda was all
Speaker 5: going to go in that direction, then yeah.
Speaker 6: We're I mean.
Speaker 5: And and the case that's on the table right now
Speaker 5: is Chevron. That can absolutely uproot the way the government functions.
Speaker 5: And so there's still some room for that to happen
Speaker 5: the Supreme Court.
Speaker 6: Now.
Speaker 5: Conservatives argue that the CFPP makes decisions for consumers in
Speaker 5: some cases, not all, but in some cases that consumers
Speaker 5: are better off making than the federal government. That's the
Speaker 5: broad conservative argument against the CFPB, But there is also
Speaker 5: this existential question of whether the funding mechanism just invalidates
Speaker 5: the existence of the CFPB and whether that the constitutionality
Speaker 5: of that arrangement would then cont question.
Speaker 3: Things like the fact and turns out even according to
Speaker 3: Clarence Thomas, it doesn't, which raises this. This is a
Speaker 3: an appeal of a Fifth Circuit ruling which went for
Speaker 3: the payday lenders, which means we ought to shut down
Speaker 3: the Fifth Circuit until we can figure out what is
Speaker 3: going on, like how they could possibly come up with
Speaker 3: a ruling that would be this wild that even Clarence
Speaker 3: Thomas loses patience with it, suggests that we need a
Speaker 3: reform of the circuit court. Then we could just skip
Speaker 3: the Fifth like the Fifth, and people like plaintiffs go
Speaker 3: shopping to get into the Fifth because it's filled with
Speaker 3: so many nut jobs that are going to produce rulings
Speaker 3: like this that if they try to get into there,
Speaker 3: and it just wastes everybody's time, because then even Clarence
Speaker 3: Thomas is like, guys, are you serious with this.
Speaker 5: Good free speech rulings out of the Fifth Circuit Circuit recently?
Speaker 5: There you go, But That's the point that Ian Miilheiser
Speaker 5: brought up, is that it shows that there's daylight between
Speaker 5: the Trump Justices and Clarence Thomas and Alito and the
Speaker 5: Fifth Circuit. Maybe not Aledo on some questions, which is
Speaker 5: actually again like I know, the sun's weedy stuff.
Speaker 6: That is a big deal.
Speaker 3: We should let Aledo go serve on the Fifth Circuit.
Speaker 6: Just swap them out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And to take some beleaguered democrat from the Fifth Circuit,
Speaker 3: it was just like down there shaking her head and
Speaker 3: all of these rulings. Let her come to the Supreme
Speaker 3: Court and then Alito can go down there.
Speaker 6: You see what happens. That'd be fun experience free Bill.
Speaker 5: All right, let's move on to an intercept story actually
Speaker 5: about Apple about privacy, Ryan that was published this week.
Speaker 5: Tell us a little bit about the reporting that you
Speaker 5: guys published, you.
Speaker 3: Would put this element up here. So this is a
Speaker 3: really wild investigation from Sam Biddle, new group attacking iPhone encryption,
Speaker 3: backed by US political dark money network. And so to
Speaker 3: give a little bit of the backstory here, this is
Speaker 3: about an organization called the Heat Initiative, which calls itself
Speaker 3: a nonprofit child safety advocacy group, so people might remember that.
Speaker 3: Back in twenty twenty one, Apple announced that it had
Speaker 3: developed a way to kind of crawl through all of
Speaker 3: its user's photos and it was going to look for
Speaker 3: It was going to look for child pornography content, and
Speaker 3: then it was going to then alert the FEDS that
Speaker 3: it had found this. And there were one you could
Speaker 3: kind of have an algorithm that tries to figure out, okay,
Speaker 3: is this The other is you can match it against
Speaker 3: a database of known kind of child pornographic content. That is,
Speaker 3: we probably won't even put this video up on YouTube,
Speaker 3: will just get nuked by the algorithm. Speaking of which,
Speaker 3: and so they announced that they were going to do
Speaker 3: this as a way of fighting kind of child chex trafficking.
Speaker 3: People immediately pointed out, like, hey, wait a minute. If
Speaker 3: you are going to be having Apple crawling through everybody's photos,
Speaker 3: even for a cause that everybody you know supports in principle,
Speaker 3: who else can crawl through Apple's photos? That means any
Speaker 3: hacker who can you get inside this tool that you're using,
Speaker 3: would then have access. So you're creating a new window
Speaker 3: for people to crawl in. It means any foreign government
Speaker 3: or domestic government that wanted to get access to your
Speaker 3: your iCloud storage data could get in there as well.
Speaker 3: And then if you're going to do that for child
Speaker 3: sex trafficking, why wouldn't you do it for other things.
Speaker 3: Let's check if you're a fentanyl dealer. Let's check to
Speaker 3: see if you're a tax dodger.
Speaker 6: Let's check to see if you're spreading disinformation.
Speaker 3: Let's see if you have guns that are not registered.
Speaker 5: Right, Well, I mean, what if you had memes that
Speaker 5: spread disinformation. There's a guy who's like getting locked up
Speaker 5: for a meme that did legitimately spread disinformation, but he's
Speaker 5: like in prison.
Speaker 3: It's like an election thing.
Speaker 5: Yeah yeah, so what if they start scraping your phone
Speaker 5: for memes?
Speaker 3: Yeah? So, Apple, to its great credit, said you know what, actually,
Speaker 3: we're not going to do this anymore. So that's that's
Speaker 3: the backstory to this Biddle investigation. What's wild is that
Speaker 3: so this organization, the Heat Initiative, has been pushing since
Speaker 3: then to push Apple to return to that. What he
Speaker 3: discovered is that this Heat Initiative is linked to a
Speaker 3: democratic billionaire backed dark money operation that is the biggest
Speaker 3: basically democratic operation in the country. They spent like a
Speaker 3: billion dollars on the election, and so then you're like,
Speaker 3: wait a minute, what does a democratic billionaire have to
Speaker 3: do with this question? Like now, now it turns out
Speaker 3: there's there's some Google connections, So maybe you've got some
Speaker 3: kind of int corporate warfare going on where you know,
Speaker 3: Google wants to hurt Apple or something weird like that.
Speaker 6: Isn't it fun when that happens?
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's always fun. But what what is going on here? Why?
Speaker 3: Like why? And so it then goes back to the
Speaker 3: question of encryption.
Speaker 6: Mm hmm.
Speaker 3: And one of the everything is falling apart in this world,
Speaker 3: but one of the few things that's going well has
Speaker 3: been the ad the successful kind of proliferation of encryption
Speaker 3: technology and the inability in some cases of governments to
Speaker 3: crack it. We were talking about Signal last last week. Yes,
Speaker 3: everybody should be using signal if they're not, just just
Speaker 3: because privacy is a value doesn't mean that you're committing
Speaker 3: crimes that but the journalism that I do, for instance,
Speaker 3: that involves you know, whistleblowers and sources who are taking risks,
Speaker 3: is is basically impossible to do without encryption technology. The
Speaker 3: FBI and that our government and foreign governments have been
Speaker 3: have been deeply hostile tocryption, you know, since its advent.
Speaker 3: James Comby in twenty fourteen, twenty fifteen was saying, it's
Speaker 3: going to take us into a very very dark place
Speaker 3: in the world. The old argument used to be that
Speaker 3: terrorists are going to use this right like that was
Speaker 3: the thing that law enforcement was using to say, you
Speaker 3: need to give us a key, you need to give
Speaker 3: us a backdoor into this encryption. They've now shifted to
Speaker 3: sex trafficking, child sex trafficking. You need to give us
Speaker 3: a key into the encryption because of child sex trafficking.
Speaker 3: And so far, Apple and other encryption organizations have pushed
Speaker 3: back against this. But Biddle's reporting that there are links
Speaker 3: to a democratic dark money operation should be deeply frightening
Speaker 3: to everybody who cares about their privacy.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and I was actually just going to say so.
Speaker 5: Douglas Mackie is who I was referring to. He faces
Speaker 5: ten years in prison. I don't think he's in prison.
Speaker 6: I don't know. He hasn't been sentenced yet.
Speaker 5: To my knowledge, it was except for except for August sixteenth,
Speaker 5: but I don't know if that's actually happened. But the
Speaker 5: point remain that this has actually this software. Here's the
Speaker 5: New York Times headline. A dad took photos of his
Speaker 5: naked toddler for the doctor. Google flagged him as a criminal.
Speaker 5: This is we have real life examples of the abuse
Speaker 5: of these systems happening already.
Speaker 6: And so on the one hand, this.
Speaker 3: Is an insane story when you're talking about people can
Speaker 3: find this. But yeah, like especially during COVID, people were,
Speaker 3: you know, doing telemedicine, and if you're doing tell a
Speaker 3: medicine with a child, like, how else are you going
Speaker 3: to say, like, hey, doc, can you take a look
Speaker 3: at this right and tell us like is this does
Speaker 3: this infection need to be treated immediately? Right? Is this
Speaker 3: an infection? Can can it wait? Like what should we do?
Speaker 3: And the robot just flagged that and like ruined this
Speaker 3: guy's life.
Speaker 5: Well, of course it did. Like there's no way for
Speaker 5: a robot to differentiate right between child, doctor, parent, and
Speaker 5: whatever else. And so it's like this huge you are
Speaker 5: transferring this responsibility again to a robot into massive tech conglomerate.
Speaker 5: So it's really fascinating that there's billionaire support for this to.
Speaker 6: Be brought back.
Speaker 5: I imagine you're right, that there's some sort of like cronyism,
Speaker 5: and watch what happens legally on this because if there's
Speaker 5: cronyism involved in that, where you have billionaires lobbying to
Speaker 5: force companies to do things like this, that's going to
Speaker 5: be really interesting too. I mean, that's a and this
Speaker 5: is a huge problem. Like we've talked on the show
Speaker 5: many times about pornography laws and about pornography Internet, pornography
Speaker 5: in general and the proliferation of it. I'm one of
Speaker 5: the people that thinks you can walk in chew gum
Speaker 5: at the same time and you can have tighter controls
Speaker 5: or pornography with like creative laws for that target children.
Speaker 5: But at the same time, the concerns about those laws
Speaker 5: are extremely valid. The privacy concerns about those laws are
Speaker 5: extremely valid. It has to be done in a way
Speaker 5: that doesn't invade people's privacy to the agree. And this
Speaker 5: is a really similar I mean it's they're different issues,
Speaker 5: but it's a really similar thing. Like can we use
Speaker 5: digital tools to monitor potential child pornographers while also allowing
Speaker 5: for people's privacy. Obviously yes, But at the same time,
Speaker 5: when you give the government these tools, when you put
Speaker 5: your life in the hands of a company the cloud,
Speaker 5: whether it's Apple or Google. You're giving so much up,
Speaker 5: and you're giving the government something that it's almost impossible
Speaker 5: for them to resist using that tool once it exists.
Speaker 3: And to wrap this up, let's tied into one other
Speaker 3: viral story recently, Biddle Wrights. The Heat Initiative is held
Speaker 3: by Sarah Gardner, who joined from Thorn, an anti child
Speaker 3: trafficking organization funded by actor Ashton Kutcher. Earlier this month,
Speaker 3: Kutcher stepped down from Thorn following reports that he'd asked
Speaker 3: to California court for leniency in the sentencing of convicted
Speaker 3: rapist Danny Masterson. Thorn has drawn scrutiny for its partnership
Speaker 3: with Palenteer and efforts to provide police with advanced facial
Speaker 3: recognition software and other sophisticated surveillance tools. Critics say these
Speaker 3: technologies aren't just uncovering traffic children, but in staring adults
Speaker 3: engaged in consensual sex work, and more than that, there's
Speaker 3: a lot more going on here than just concern for
Speaker 3: the children.
Speaker 6: All right, Ryan, what are you looking at today?
Speaker 3: Well, so, the North Carolina legislature recently passed a new
Speaker 3: law that would exempt from the public public information. Basically,
Speaker 3: they rewrote their transparency laws to allow the government to
Speaker 3: sell public information to private entities and even potentially to
Speaker 3: foreign governments, but to also destroy that information and keep
Speaker 3: it from the public. Rather scandalous new law that kind
Speaker 3: of slipped through in the dark of the Dark of Knight.
Speaker 3: Journalists d L. Anderson and Sarah Sloan of DLA Anderson
Speaker 3: Productions produced this report for us.
Speaker 1: I mean the provision, Lad, When I saw the words sell,
Speaker 1: I just could not believe it. The custodian of any
Speaker 1: General Assembly record shall determine in the custodian's discretion. So
Speaker 1: that's saying, if I'm the person, I have it in
Speaker 1: my record, it's my discretion whether a record is a
Speaker 1: public record and whether to turn over to the Department
Speaker 1: of Natural and Cultural Resources. So it's my choice, is
Speaker 1: it public or not? Do I turn it over to
Speaker 1: the State Archives? Is essentially what that's saying. Or to retain, destroy, sell, loan,
Speaker 1: or otherwise dispose of such records. We are being given
Speaker 1: explicit permission to destroy or sell public records in law.
Speaker 1: So it came from the Corner Offices, came from Senator
Speaker 1: Burger and Representative More and they are giving themselves permission
Speaker 1: to cover their tracks on the heels of the failure
Speaker 1: of a major piece of legislation that they both actively
Speaker 1: pushed to legalize casinos in the state, about which there
Speaker 1: have been rampant rumors of public corruption. I don't know
Speaker 1: if those rumors are true, but if they can cover
Speaker 1: up their tracks by destroying or selling their previously public
Speaker 1: records about what happened there, then the public will never know.
Speaker 4: Do you think it needs guard rails? I mean, at
Speaker 4: this point there is no checking balance for this.
Speaker 16: So I think the checking balance basically is that we
Speaker 16: work within the General Assembly by majorities, and if there
Speaker 16: are suggested changes that folks would like to see or
Speaker 16: think are appropriate, I'd like to hear what they are.
Speaker 3: We'll look at them.
Speaker 1: I should not be able to sell the public records
Speaker 1: for personal profit from my public service. And then who
Speaker 1: do you sell them to? To people who want to
Speaker 1: cover up wrongdoing, to economic interests who want to be
Speaker 1: able to have a competitive advantage, to foreign governments that
Speaker 1: want to be able to know what's happening for their
Speaker 1: own advantage, whatever that is. I don't think there's any
Speaker 1: other state in the country that has had this level
Speaker 1: of power.
Speaker 3: Graph So this is a pretty incredible response to a
Speaker 3: scandal bubbling around a casino around you know, casino and
Speaker 3: gambling that how about we just destroy all the public
Speaker 3: records they're involved here. And if you caught the reasoning
Speaker 3: from the assembly member there for why there actually are
Speaker 3: checks and balances here, he basically said, we operate here
Speaker 3: by majorities in the General Assembly, and his point to
Speaker 3: the public is, hey, you don't like it, then you win.
Speaker 3: You win a majority here in the Assembly and you
Speaker 3: rewrite the laws. Of course, they're using their majorities there
Speaker 3: to redraw districts so that it's almost impossible Republicans have
Speaker 3: a luck despite North Carolina being a swing state, like,
Speaker 3: they really have a lot of these legislative districts locked in.
Speaker 3: So the check and balance, according to them is the public.
Speaker 3: But the public is then also systematically drawn out of
Speaker 3: an ability to kind of elect a new majority. So
Speaker 3: wild story.
Speaker 6: It is a wild story, and I always think it's wild. Win.
Speaker 3: What's your point today.
Speaker 5: Well, I want to read from a Federalist report this
Speaker 5: week that actually sheds light on something that went largely
Speaker 5: unnoticed by the legacy media, which is that Mitch McConnell,
Speaker 5: so the Republican leader in the Senate for a very
Speaker 5: very long time, years and years and years, who's obviously
Speaker 5: faced some health problems, has faced mounting skepticism actually of
Speaker 5: his sort of a ability to do the job, both
Speaker 5: on a level of competence, of sort of ideological commitment
Speaker 5: to the Conservative project in general, and then also in
Speaker 5: terms of like this, this health conversation kind of got
Speaker 5: rolled over the weekend when Senate Republicans forced him to
Speaker 5: take a different look at Ukraine aid in the deal
Speaker 5: that averted a government shutdown. So we can put this
Speaker 5: element up on the screen. My colleague Jordan Boyd has
Speaker 5: this reporting, she writes. One source familiar with the situation
Speaker 5: told The Federalist that even McConnell quietly acknowledged to his
Speaker 5: colleagues that any spending bill, including the Ukraine funding was
Speaker 5: not a winning issue for the party. Jordan Wrights, Senate
Speaker 5: minority leader Mitch McConnell suffered a stunning blow this weekend
Speaker 5: when Republicans in the upper Chamber disregarded his repeated calls
Speaker 5: for prioritizing Ukraine funding by passing the House GOP short
Speaker 5: term spending bill, which included no provisions for Zelenski. Publicly,
Speaker 5: McConnell pretended his move to find out the war in
Speaker 5: Ukraine was temporarily tabled for the convenience of avoiding an
Speaker 5: imminent government shutdown. Behind closed doors, he had a different story. Now,
Speaker 5: another source told Jordan, when I came in on Saturday morning,
Speaker 5: I was convinced we were not going to win. The
Speaker 5: headwinds were totally opposed to us, and then by one
Speaker 5: o'clock we had decisively defeated McConnell. You didn't hear this
Speaker 5: story in the legacy press because the legacy press's sources
Speaker 5: in the Republican among Republican senators are friendly to McConnell.
Speaker 6: That's why you didn't hear this story.
Speaker 5: But when you are able to sort of broaden and
Speaker 5: talk to different people and you don't rely on the same.
Speaker 6: Sources over and over again, you get a different story.
Speaker 5: And I think that's really important because we saw, for instance,
Speaker 5: Rick Scott unsuccessfully try to challenge Mitch McConnell just last year,
Speaker 5: and you know, he had more than ten conservative Republican
Speaker 5: senators voting for him. Now, maybe they would have voted differently.
Speaker 5: They thought, actually, Mitch McConnell was in jeopardy. Nobody thought
Speaker 5: Mitch McConnell was in jeopardy. That was an anonymous vote.
Speaker 5: We actually don't fully know all of the people who
Speaker 5: voted against McConnell and voted for Rick Scott. Rick Scott
Speaker 5: is not seen as like a serious contender to take
Speaker 5: to take the leadership position if something happens to McConnell.
Speaker 5: And by the way, it seems like the only way
Speaker 5: McConnell steps down from his leadership post is if something
Speaker 5: happens to him at this point, because despite all of
Speaker 5: these different health challenges, despite freezing up and glitching in
Speaker 5: front of reporters in the public, however many times now
Speaker 5: in ways that are so obvious that he is no
Speaker 5: longer able to function in the way that you Republicans
Speaker 5: should want their leader of their group in the Senate
Speaker 5: to function. He's obviously not able to do that anymore.
Speaker 5: He still hasn't stepped down, So the only thing that
Speaker 5: would cause him to step down, I mean, I don't know.
Speaker 6: He might be trying to wait it out.
Speaker 5: So that there's an easy Republican If Kentucky has a
Speaker 5: Republican gouver, then you're more easily able to appoint a
Speaker 5: Republican et cetera, et cetera to replace McConnell. Maybe he
Speaker 5: wants to make sure that he has a good backup
Speaker 5: in place, that you know, either one of his his
Speaker 5: kind of deputies, either John Thune or John Cordon, all
Speaker 5: of the Johns Barasso, are able to step in, and
Speaker 5: that the vacuum doesn't get filled by what did this is?
Speaker 5: John McCain called Ted Cruiz and Rand Paul the Looney Birds,
Speaker 5: something like that all the way back in twenty fourteen.
Speaker 5: Maybe Mitch McConnell wants to make sure that Rick Scott
Speaker 5: doesn't step into the power vacuum, or you know, someone
Speaker 5: like Ted Cruz doesn't step into the power vacuum. Right now,
Speaker 5: it doesn't seem like there's any way for one of
Speaker 5: those people. There's no real path for one of those
Speaker 5: people to become a leader if something were to happen
Speaker 5: to Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 6: But the guy got rolled. Nothing is more.
Speaker 5: Important to him than Ukraine funding. He's basically said as
Speaker 5: much in public. He's not really trying to hide that,
Speaker 5: but even in private, let me read this quote one
Speaker 5: more time. A source familiar with the situation said that
Speaker 5: he quietly acknowledged to his colleagues that any spending bill,
Speaker 5: including the Ukraine funding, was not a winning issue for
Speaker 5: the party.
Speaker 6: So he knows that.
Speaker 5: He's still publicly saying it's one of the most if
Speaker 5: not the most important things for Republicans to be dedicating
Speaker 5: their spending to right now. And what this highlights is
Speaker 5: the war between McConnell and voters. We talked about this
Speaker 5: earlier in the show when it comes to Kevin McCarthy,
Speaker 5: My boss, Sean Davis tweeted when Jake Sherman of punch
Speaker 5: Bowl said, it's remarkable to think about how Republicans in
Speaker 5: the House have been at war with their leadership for
Speaker 5: the last fifteen years. Well, actually, it's Republican leadership that
Speaker 5: has been at war with its voters for the last
Speaker 5: fifteen years, because voters don't want these massive continuing resolutions.
Speaker 5: They're against the expansion of spending, They're largely against this
Speaker 5: kind of unchecked money going to Ukraine.
Speaker 6: You can go on down the line.
Speaker 5: There are the Republican leadership in the House is at
Speaker 5: odds with sort of the Republican voter base, and that
Speaker 5: goes back, you know, fifteen years, you go back to
Speaker 5: the t Party.
Speaker 6: Of course, there's.
Speaker 5: Only so much that Republican leaders in the House can do,
Speaker 5: but there's also only so much that they're willing to do.
Speaker 5: And the same is absolutely true of Mitch McConnell, who
Speaker 5: was able to survive the Obama era and the Trump
Speaker 5: era because of well, one word, judges.
Speaker 6: We all know that.
Speaker 5: But now that Donald Trump is out of office, the
Speaker 5: judges have all been confirmed. Mitch McConnell's record on other
Speaker 5: things downstream are all coming to the surface, bubbling to
Speaker 5: the surface. His war with Trump, they're sort of ongoing feud.
Speaker 5: Doesn't help him, that's obviously true, although it does endear
Speaker 5: him further to the establishment into elites.
Speaker 6: In Washington, d C.
Speaker 5: The bottom line, though, is that Mitch McConnell is in
Speaker 5: real trouble.
Speaker 6: Because this is a great example and you're not hearing
Speaker 6: it in the.
Speaker 5: Legacy press of how the guy in back room negotiations.
Speaker 6: Is just getting rolled.
Speaker 5: And if you've talked to people that have been involved
Speaker 5: in those negotiations, one of the more interesting things that
Speaker 5: you hear is that when McConnell has had his medical
Speaker 5: leaves of absence, people feel like the Senate has been
Speaker 5: working better. Conservatives feel like they've been able to negotiate
Speaker 5: even with McConnell's deputies better in his absence.
Speaker 6: That's a really big problem for Mitch McConnell.
Speaker 5: It's a really big problem for his ability to hold
Speaker 5: on when he has health problems.
Speaker 6: It becomes an untenable arrangement.
Speaker 5: Now he is doggedly clinging to power, and so it
Speaker 5: does seem like nothing is actually going to unseat him.
Speaker 5: But what you can end up having is sort of
Speaker 5: shadow leadership where Conservatives are not negotiating with McConnell so
Speaker 5: much as his deputies, and those things start to go sideways.
Speaker 6: We'll see how where it lands.
Speaker 5: But certainly when you have Matt Gates talking about breaking
Speaker 5: the fever, the establishment, the swamp fever by taking Yankee
Speaker 5: and Kevin McCarthy from the chair. You know, whatever you
Speaker 5: think of that this is these leadership positions are consequential,
Speaker 5: and for conservatives, Mitch McConnell has the highest unfavorables of
Speaker 5: basically any politician in the country. In certain polls, he's
Speaker 5: really unliked by republic voters. So it would be a
Speaker 5: big deal if something were to happen to Mitch McConnell
Speaker 5: in terms of actual legislative maneuvers or procedural maneuvers, or
Speaker 5: someone else steps into that void. Ran, have you heard
Speaker 5: any of this from Democrats about McConnell.
Speaker 3: Former State Senator Nina Turner is launching a new organization
Speaker 3: called We Are Somebody that will be supporting striking workers
Speaker 3: around the world. She joins, is just in a moment
Speaker 3: I wanted to play a little clip from her launch video.
Speaker 12: First, everybody is somebody. Most people want the ability to
Speaker 12: afford housing, healthcare, provide for their family, and be able
Speaker 12: to take a vacation every now and then. While most
Speaker 12: corporations are seeing in record profits, they aren't leading to
Speaker 12: record wages. Imagine that CEO pay has skyrocketed over one
Speaker 12: thousand percent since nineteen seventy eight. CEOs are paid three
Speaker 12: hundred and ninety nine times as much as a typical worker.
Speaker 4: Workers deserve better.
Speaker 12: From the Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King Juniors supporting sanitation
Speaker 12: workers in Memphis, to Fanny lou Hamer's work for black
Speaker 12: farmers in the South, to Ace of Philip Randolph's work
Speaker 12: organizing the Brotherhood of Sleeping car Porters and organizing the
Speaker 12: March on Washington. The fight for liberation has always been
Speaker 12: a fight for workers' rights. It is in this robust
Speaker 12: tradition that I am launching We Are Somebody, a capacity
Speaker 12: building organization for the working class.
Speaker 3: Well Center, jur thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 4: A pleasure to be here.
Speaker 3: So can you tell us a little bit about We
Speaker 3: Are Somebody and what gap you think this new organization fails.
Speaker 12: Well, there's nothing quite like it, Ryan, where you have
Speaker 12: a nonprofit out there to compliment what workers are doing.
Speaker 12: It is indeed acity or a capacity building organization for
Speaker 12: all workers, not just unionized workers, because we do understand
Speaker 12: that most workers in this country are not unionized.
Speaker 4: But to the extent that we can.
Speaker 12: Bring unionized and non unionized workers together, we create a
Speaker 12: type of synergy that cannot be stopped.
Speaker 4: There is a need for.
Speaker 12: This organization to both be a bridge for union and
Speaker 12: non union workers, but also to be out there on
Speaker 12: the front lines, to amplify, to help the fund and
Speaker 12: support these workers, to educate, and to provide technical support
Speaker 12: where necessary. And what comes to mind for me is
Speaker 12: our first big venture, which is going to be with
Speaker 12: the one and only Christian Smalls, the president of the
Speaker 12: Amazon Labor Union. As you know, they are a new
Speaker 12: labor union and so they don't have robust strike funds
Speaker 12: and they could benefit from that kind of help all
Speaker 12: the way to helping organizations like one Fair Wage, which
Speaker 12: is trying to do away with the sub minimum wage.
Speaker 12: So there is a gap there and we are somebody
Speaker 12: aims to fill it.
Speaker 5: So interesting, and can you tell us a little bit
Speaker 5: more about the funding. Obviously you have a non profit structure,
Speaker 5: so are you mostly looking for a small donor small
Speaker 5: dollar donors that kind of crowdfunding thing, or looking to
Speaker 5: just get funds from people who want to support workers.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thanks Srett, Emily. It will be a multitude of
Speaker 12: those options. It will be grassroots donations, which I certainly
Speaker 12: have become a pro at doing in my two runs
Speaker 12: for Congress.
Speaker 4: It will be foundational support.
Speaker 12: We will see grants from foundations that care very much
Speaker 12: about economic and social equality, and.
Speaker 4: Institutional donors are well.
Speaker 12: There are some wealthy people out there who ultra wealthy
Speaker 12: people actually say out there who understand that there is
Speaker 12: an imbalance in the economy and that the pendulum has
Speaker 12: swung too far over that we are really engaged in
Speaker 12: the second version of the Gilded Age, and that must
Speaker 12: be corrected.
Speaker 4: So I'm also going.
Speaker 12: To help ultra wealthy people who want to do the
Speaker 12: right thing do the right thing and make investments in
Speaker 12: trying to help workers level the playing field.
Speaker 3: So later today you were telling us before we started taping,
Speaker 3: that you're going to be heading to a parts plant
Speaker 3: where UAW workers are striking. As you also know, seventy
Speaker 3: five thousand Kaiser workers walked off the job this morning.
Speaker 3: So walk us through if the organization were up and
Speaker 3: running and fully funded at this point, and I guess
Speaker 3: there is no such thing as fully funded because of
Speaker 3: the depth of the need here. But let's say funded
Speaker 3: in a greater capacity, what would we are somebody be doing,
Speaker 3: either for say the Kaiser workers or for the UAW.
Speaker 12: Well, first of all reaching out to those workers and
Speaker 12: the leaders of that work or those workers to find
Speaker 12: out exactly what they need. But on the foundational point,
Speaker 12: it would be to organize, to fund and to amplify
Speaker 12: their messages to get that message out deep and wide.
Speaker 12: One of the concerns that I have Ryan and Emily
Speaker 12: as I talked to workers all across the country.
Speaker 4: And let me be more pointed. I went to.
Speaker 12: Streetsboro here in Ohio where they were the part plant
Speaker 12: that has about one hundred and twenty two workers there
Speaker 12: when they walked off the job about two weeks ago.
Speaker 12: And one of the things that the president of Local
Speaker 12: five seventy three, when I asked them, what do you
Speaker 12: want the American people to know? He said, we want
Speaker 12: them to know that we're doing this for them. And
Speaker 12: talking to other workers, they were explaining that some people
Speaker 12: think that the uaw FO example, workers may be asking
Speaker 12: for too much, and they're not asking for too much.
Speaker 12: So this is as much about organizing the workers who
Speaker 12: are on the front lines and also educating the people
Speaker 12: who may be out there and have some misnomers about
Speaker 12: why workers are asking for a living wage.
Speaker 4: It's not too much to ask. And I think that
Speaker 4: we are navigating.
Speaker 12: A society in American culture in particular, where folks think
Speaker 12: it's okay for corporations to dominate and that working class
Speaker 12: people don't deserve to live a good life. They do
Speaker 12: deserve to live a good life. And so we are
Speaker 12: somebody is going to be a bridge. We're going to
Speaker 12: amplify we are going to lift We're going to help
Speaker 12: workers get their message out and hopefully all workers will
Speaker 12: unite based on what they have in common. And the
Speaker 12: fact of the matter is that this is immoral and
Speaker 12: it is not working for everyday people in this nation.
Speaker 5: It's always odd to kind of be living through history
Speaker 5: because it's a hard time to you have a hard
Speaker 5: time seeing the forest for the trees. So I wanted
Speaker 5: to ask the clip that we just rolled is so
Speaker 5: full of history. You talk about the robust tradition of organizing.
Speaker 5: Where do you see this current moment where you know,
Speaker 5: just today you have the largest healthcare strike in American history.
Speaker 5: Where do you see this current moment fitting into that
Speaker 5: robust tradition.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for that question.
Speaker 12: I mean, there is a synergy that is palpable, and
Speaker 12: the more things change, the more that they stayed the same.
Speaker 12: If we saw those historic images that you made reference to,
Speaker 12: that was really about moments when people are being treated
Speaker 12: unfairly in their places the work, and we find ourselves
Speaker 12: repeating that same sad song again in the twenty first century.
Speaker 4: And what we can do is.
Speaker 12: Draw on the past to animate us right now in
Speaker 12: the present and to help to build a better future.
Speaker 12: Workers are crying out, and that's why you have what's
Speaker 12: happening at kaiser UAW, the teamsters, Amazon, Starbucks, nurses, teachers.
Speaker 4: You name it. There are multitudes of workers all over
Speaker 4: this country from.
Speaker 12: Different backgrounds who are stepping up and stepping out and
Speaker 12: saying we're not going to take it anymore. It is
Speaker 12: absolutely untenable to have three hundred that have CEOs make
Speaker 12: three hundred and ninety nine times.
Speaker 4: The average worker.
Speaker 12: The scales are in balance, they are not balanced, and
Speaker 12: we aim to try to bring some more balance.
Speaker 4: So I am very much touched and was very much motivated.
Speaker 12: From that past, from that history, and then also the
Speaker 12: coal miners for present day reference, who went on strike
Speaker 12: for almost two hundred excuse me, two years, about six
Speaker 12: hundred days, and they went back to work without a contract.
Speaker 4: Over a thousand of.
Speaker 12: Them went out and they went back because the corporate
Speaker 12: interests of black Rock was able to wake them out.
Speaker 12: They lost the motivation for workers, and they spent almost
Speaker 12: thirty five million dollars. They had a strike fund. They
Speaker 12: spend almost thirty five million dollars in trying to supplement
Speaker 12: salary wages and also healthcare, and that shouldn't be A
Speaker 12: corporation should not be able to wait workers out when
Speaker 12: all they are asking for is for better wages, better
Speaker 12: work conditions, and better benefits.
Speaker 4: That is not too much to ask.
Speaker 3: Just so people understand how these fights unfold. A union
Speaker 3: uses some of its dues to build up a strike fund.
Speaker 3: They hope that they'll build a big enough strike fund
Speaker 3: so that they can, you know, inflict enough damage on
Speaker 3: the corporation before the corporation inflicts more damage on them.
Speaker 3: You know, it becomes a game a chicken. It becomes
Speaker 3: a waiting game. As you said, with those with those miners,
Speaker 3: Blackrock was able to wait them out and eventually, you know,
Speaker 3: was able to break the strike. That's one of the
Speaker 3: kind of the extreme versions for how long those striking
Speaker 3: workers fought and so the strike fund becomes the flash point.
Speaker 3: And so companies are always trying to figure out what
Speaker 3: is the size this strike fund, how long will it last?
Speaker 3: Unions are trying to make it last longer. The UAW
Speaker 3: is doing these kind of strategic, timed and targeted strikes.
Speaker 3: It's only hitting particular plants so that other workers can
Speaker 3: stay on the job and continue to get paid by
Speaker 3: the company, which then stretches out their strike fund because
Speaker 3: they say, if they all struck at once, their strike
Speaker 3: fund would be done in like three months, and the
Speaker 3: big like, oh three months, okay, fine, we'll wake that
Speaker 3: out and then you'll starve and then you'll come back
Speaker 3: to work. And so I'm curious, are you going to
Speaker 3: be trying to supplement in a targeted way some of
Speaker 3: these strike funds? In other words, if people are like,
Speaker 3: you know what, I really support these kays are workers,
Speaker 3: and I want to give twenty seven dollars that I
Speaker 3: want to go directly to a nurse to try to
Speaker 3: keep him or her on the picket line against the
Speaker 3: company that's trying to wait them out. Or are you
Speaker 3: going to be doing more kind of political work to
Speaker 3: support them in a political fashion rather than the direct aid.
Speaker 12: No, it's both, Ryan, because really what I want people
Speaker 12: to know is that the question you asked me earlier,
Speaker 12: if we are somebody was fully you know, fully up,
Speaker 12: we're at the genesis, what what would we be doing?
Speaker 12: That is one of the things that we would be doing,
Speaker 12: providing direct money to these workers in real time to
Speaker 12: help supplement any strike funds that they may have and
Speaker 12: for some like Amazon Labor Union, they have nothing. But yes,
Speaker 12: that money needs to go straight to them so that
Speaker 12: they can stay one day longer, another day stronger, as
Speaker 12: they say in the House of Labor, to be able
Speaker 12: to push back. And the point that you gave about
Speaker 12: the UAW, they have a strike fund that is over
Speaker 12: seven hundred million dollars and that is a lot of money.
Speaker 12: You know, when you say it, it sounds like a
Speaker 12: lot of money. But as you laid out, Ryan, if
Speaker 12: they had the one hundred they have one hundred and
Speaker 12: forty five thousand workers too, it would not last. And
Speaker 12: so we the people need to come out and help
Speaker 12: to supplement those workers so that if they're paying for
Speaker 12: medical benefits for example, and not exactly what they're doing
Speaker 12: with that money, and then paying five hundred dollars a
Speaker 12: week to the workers who are already striking, we can
Speaker 12: help to supplement so that maybe that money could last longer,
Speaker 12: they can aim it somewhere else to do something else.
Speaker 12: It is vitally important that all workers see themselves in
Speaker 12: these strikes, and that's why another important point that I
Speaker 12: want to make Ryan and Emily is that we are
Speaker 12: somebody is here for all workers, whether they're unionized or not,
Speaker 12: because I believe, I firmly believe that all workers deserve
Speaker 12: that support. But we do know that workers who are
Speaker 12: in unions help to amplify and lift workers who are not.
Speaker 12: Look at what is happening with Tesler, for example, they
Speaker 12: got a raise.
Speaker 4: One of the reasons why.
Speaker 12: They probably got to raise is the fear that they
Speaker 12: would try to unionize. That is compliments to their sisters
Speaker 12: and brothers and family and friends at the UAW. So
Speaker 12: there's an indelible linkage between all workers unionized or not,
Speaker 12: and we are Somebody is going to be is in
Speaker 12: place to help those workers, no matter who they are
Speaker 12: and no matter where they hail from. So both political
Speaker 12: and direct support from we are Somebody.
Speaker 3: I could see it driving press coverage too, And so
Speaker 3: in some ways the direct aid would also then be
Speaker 3: political support in the sense that let's say you're up
Speaker 3: and grassroots donors kick in five million dollars too, we
Speaker 3: are Somebody for kaiser workers, like that's something that makes
Speaker 3: the news, and then the CEOs on the other side
Speaker 3: of the negotiating table will see, oh, like they have
Speaker 3: the entire country kicking in money to them, So that's
Speaker 3: going to be a harder for us to wait out.
Speaker 3: B makes us look bad, and so much of these
Speaker 3: strikes is about perception.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, that's right.
Speaker 12: It's leverage, that's what we're talking about. The miners in
Speaker 12: Alabama had more leverage for the gallant fight, and they
Speaker 12: fought gallantly. If they had more leverage, they would have
Speaker 12: been able to go back to that table with a
Speaker 12: sign contract. So this is that definitely, trying to balance
Speaker 12: the scale and give the workers the leverage that they
Speaker 12: need to keep on fighting.
Speaker 3: And people are looking for ways that they can fight.
Speaker 3: I know that, Like that's that's one of the things
Speaker 3: I think that has people so kind of torn up
Speaker 3: in this in this time that you know, for several
Speaker 3: years there was a sense of like, Okay, this this
Speaker 3: is the direction that we're going, and these are the
Speaker 3: things that we're fighting for, and you know, in the
Speaker 3: Biden are that's kind of been cast to the wind,
Speaker 3: and so this does I think, kind of reorient people
Speaker 3: around the north star of a pro worker agenda. So
Speaker 3: really looking forward to seeing how you know, we are
Speaker 3: somebody takes off as I think we are somebody dot org.
Speaker 3: Anything else people should know.
Speaker 12: Yeah, that's right. We are somebody dot org. And certainly
Speaker 12: they can follow my social media Nina Turner on Twitter,
Speaker 12: Nina Turner Ohio on on the gramd, so just follow
Speaker 12: in on Facebook too, So just follow my social media
Speaker 12: platforms and also yes, they can go directly to we
Speaker 12: are Somebody dot org.
Speaker 3: We'll send her Turner. Thanks so much for joining us.
Speaker 3: That'll do it for us today. Really appreciate it. Best
Speaker 3: of luck out there. Any closing thoughts.
Speaker 5: Just make sure to subscribe to the premium version, so
Speaker 5: if you can give.
Speaker 3: To we Are Somebody then.
Speaker 5: But it's there is synergy so that we can do
Speaker 5: interview exactly that bring.
Speaker 3: You the news that we're we're leveraging so that she
Speaker 3: can leverage.
Speaker 6: Yes, and so that workers can leverage.
Speaker 3: There you go, that right, see you soon