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Speaker 4: All of a sudden, these floods just ravage through all
Speaker 4: of these neighborhoods in Valencia and left hundreds, if not
Speaker 4: thousands dead as a result.
Speaker 5: So completely reckless response from the government.
Speaker 6: What happens when the greatest threat during a natural disaster
Speaker 6: isn't the storm itself, but the response. My name is
Speaker 6: James Lee, and you're watching Beyond the Headlines on Breaking
Speaker 6: Points here in the United States. Hurricane Helene devastated communities
Speaker 6: across western North Carolina in late September of this year.
Speaker 6: While official reports list just over one hundred fatalities. Survivors
Speaker 6: and volunteers on the ground believe the true death toll
Speaker 6: is far higher. Allegations of mismanagement, delayed aid, and a
Speaker 6: lack of transparency have left many questioning whether the government
Speaker 6: truly has the public's best interests at heart. But are
Speaker 6: these failures unique to America, because across the Atlantic Spain
Speaker 6: faced its own catastrophic disaster just a few weeks later.
Speaker 6: The floods in Valencia were some of the worst in
Speaker 6: the country's history, and like Hurricane Helene, they've exposed deep
Speaker 6: flaws in the government's response, from ignored warnings to suppressed
Speaker 6: death tolls and widespread mismanagement of aid.
Speaker 1: The parallels are striking.
Speaker 6: So today we're going to explore what we can learn
Speaker 6: from these disasters and if they reveal a deeper crisis
Speaker 6: in government corruption in countries around the world. So joining
Speaker 6: me today is Ierra Modarelli. She's an investigative journalist and
Speaker 6: associate editor at twenty first Century Wire, and she was
Speaker 6: recently on the ground in Valencia. Her reporting has uncovered
Speaker 6: shocking details about what really happened during and after the floods,
Speaker 6: something the mainstream media has failed to do.
Speaker 1: Ira. Thank you so much for joining us today.
Speaker 5: Thanks so much for having me. James.
Speaker 6: What I want to start off saying is I think
Speaker 6: Americans we often only focus on domestic stories in our media,
Speaker 6: But when I came across your reporting, I noticed that
Speaker 6: there were so many parallels between what happened in Spain
Speaker 6: and what happened in North Carolina with Hurricane Helene, which
Speaker 6: we're going to get into. But for our audience who
Speaker 6: may not know too much about what happened in Spain
Speaker 6: and Valencia, can you give us a brief recap of
Speaker 6: that disaster.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: This happened over a month ago, So on the twenty
Speaker 4: ninth of October, there were some really devastating bloods over
Speaker 4: here in Valencia, particularly in flood prone areas, very urban areas.
Speaker 4: The government was very aware that these were blood prone areas,
Speaker 4: but over the years, they just kept building out in
Speaker 4: these areas and pushing people towards this region of Valencia.
Speaker 4: This was, you know, marked as as the worst natural
Speaker 4: disaster that's ever hit Spain before. And one of the
Speaker 4: things that really compounded the tragedy massively was the fact
Speaker 4: that the early warning systems failed. So we have just
Speaker 4: like you guys in the US, we have a Spanish
Speaker 4: meteorological agency called imet here issued a red weather or
Speaker 4: in the morning of the floods, but the Valencian President,
Speaker 4: Carlos Son kind of dismissed it, ignored it and told people,
Speaker 4: you know, that there was there was nothing to be
Speaker 4: worried about, downplayed it, and people went about their days
Speaker 4: and all of a sudden, these floods just ravaged through
Speaker 4: all of these neighborhoods in Valencia and left hundreds, if
Speaker 4: not thousands dead as a result. So completely reckless response
Speaker 4: from the government, very similar to what happened with Hurricane Helene.
Speaker 6: Yeah, when you speak, when you mentioned the failure of
Speaker 6: the early warnings, that kind of brought back memories of
Speaker 6: what happened in Maui with the wildfires that happened. There
Speaker 6: many people on the ground saying that they got no
Speaker 6: warning of that. And then you also just mentioned the
Speaker 6: death toll being very high into the thousands, which I
Speaker 6: don't believe is the actual death count. And I know
Speaker 6: that when you actually went on the ground and talked
Speaker 6: to people and recorded exactly what they saw. You know,
Speaker 6: one of the most shocking parts of your reporting was
Speaker 6: this discrepancy in death toll. So can you tell us
Speaker 6: a little bit about what the locals are saying and
Speaker 6: why they think the number is so much higher and
Speaker 6: what kind of evidence is there to support those claims.
Speaker 4: Yeah, one prefacing this with I will be in violence
Speaker 4: here for five days my first visit there, and then
Speaker 4: for another two days. I just came back last weekend.
Speaker 4: I've spoken to about thirty or forty neighbors, maybe more
Speaker 4: when I was on the ground, kind of just start conversations,
Speaker 4: and every neighbor wants to tell you what they saw.
Speaker 4: And every single person I spoke to had told me
Speaker 4: that they'd seen more than one body being either pulled
Speaker 4: out of a garage or people being stuck on the
Speaker 4: highway on the night of the floods, and just hearing
Speaker 4: how all these cars were being washed away on the highway,
Speaker 4: and you know, they were all beeping, and the beeping
Speaker 4: sounds got more faint and less and less cars were beeping,
Speaker 4: So in other words, people were literally dying and and
Speaker 4: and these people that were trapped there were watching this
Speaker 4: horrifically happening in front of their eyes, unable to do
Speaker 4: anything about it. And I spoke and saw a bunch
Speaker 4: of things myself when I was there. So let's start
Speaker 4: with the government is reporting this as two hundred and
Speaker 4: twenty plus deaths right now. The missing toll is in
Speaker 4: the one eight hundred to two thousand. Initially was at
Speaker 4: that count, but I've spoken to various neighbors who had.
Speaker 5: And I go through this in my investigation too.
Speaker 4: Who had identified either family members as dead, or friends
Speaker 4: or neighbors or such as dead effectively steamed the bodies
Speaker 4: and identified them, and yet family members were marked as
Speaker 4: missing instead of dead. And one of the reasons I
Speaker 4: believe why this is happening is because for every deceased person,
Speaker 4: the Spanish government needs to allocate around seventy two thousand
Speaker 4: euros to the family members. And one of the big
Speaker 4: clues that I got when I was on the ground
Speaker 4: was I went into a garage that was flooded. The
Speaker 4: floor below, I later found out, had a bunch of
Speaker 4: bodies still in it. So I was on the first
Speaker 4: floor and the floor below that was completely inundated. Still
Speaker 4: on my first visit, there were three body bags in
Speaker 4: that one garage that I went into, and I filmed them.
Speaker 5: I went in and I filmed them, and then.
Speaker 4: I talked to the locals about what they saw, and
Speaker 4: they saw people being called out of this garage specifically.
Speaker 5: And I went back.
Speaker 4: Two weeks later, and the state forces, whether that be
Speaker 4: you know, the military or whoever is pulling these bodies out,
Speaker 4: needs to mark these areas garages mostly of tunnels or
Speaker 4: so they need to a little mock on the garages
Speaker 4: an s specifically, which means sa gala, which means we
Speaker 4: remove bodies from here. And so I asked the neighbor,
Speaker 4: where is that, because we can clearly see the body bags,
Speaker 4: but we can't actually see that they've not They said
Speaker 4: they don't do that because then you could obviously kind
Speaker 4: of go around all these towns, count the numbers and
Speaker 4: see that massive discrepancy. So neighbors on the ground believe
Speaker 4: that there are thousands of people that have perished, and
Speaker 4: that most of these bodies are in the sea at
Speaker 4: this point, they've been washed into the sea, and every
Speaker 4: single neighbor I talk to shaw bodies. So it's much
Speaker 4: much higher, I believe than what they're saying.
Speaker 6: Wow, so you're saying that there's actually a financial incentive
Speaker 6: from the government's perspective to classify people as either missing
Speaker 6: or just forget about them completely, because if they are
Speaker 6: reported as dead, there's some coverage that the government needs
Speaker 6: to provide for the families. And I think in the US,
Speaker 6: you know, we witness complete dysfunction, some would say corruption,
Speaker 6: kind of like what you're talking about in terms of
Speaker 6: the federal government's response. You had people like yourself, you know,
Speaker 6: or volunteers, aid organizations going in and having to step
Speaker 6: in and help, and we also heard reports here of
Speaker 6: those organizations being turned away. It was kind of a
Speaker 6: complete mess. And I think you talked about something similar
Speaker 6: happening in Spain as well. Can you tell us a
Speaker 6: little bit more about.
Speaker 5: That, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 4: I mean when I first heard about FIEMA turning away
Speaker 4: volunteers and hurricane, and then I was completely stunned at
Speaker 4: that happening. And then I saw it for myself when
Speaker 4: I went to Valencia, a different organization, this case, the
Speaker 4: Red Cross. I spoke to an interviewed also in the investigation,
Speaker 4: an interview with an independent aid worker that was on
Speaker 4: the ground at a distribution center that was next to
Speaker 4: where I was sleeping.
Speaker 5: So I was in this distribution.
Speaker 4: Center quite a lot gathering things for neighbors and so,
Speaker 4: and I came across her and she said, I want
Speaker 4: to tell you, you know, what's been going on here,
Speaker 4: because she was really visibly upset, and she said, every
Speaker 4: day I come here independently, I just want to hand
Speaker 4: out things to the neighbors, and the Red Cross follows
Speaker 4: me around and monitors what I'm doing and impedes me
Speaker 4: from handing these donations out to neighbors. So you know,
Speaker 4: these these items are being flown away. The Red Cross
Speaker 4: is instead asking people for financial donations, seems what they're
Speaker 4: most interested in. And when I was on the ground,
Speaker 4: I saw a couple of Red Cross cars kind of
Speaker 4: just fitting tightly there and not doing much, and not
Speaker 4: once did I actually see the Red Cross handing something out.
Speaker 4: And another volunteer that I was there with told me
Speaker 4: that she saw the Red Cross putting a big camera
Speaker 4: on their car and filming themselves handing something out to
Speaker 4: the neighbors, something that we've never seen on the ground.
Speaker 4: But you know, they were doing this for their social
Speaker 4: media channels to show that they're they're helping, but they
Speaker 4: weren't the big majority of people that were there on
Speaker 4: the ground helping were mostly volunteers. And this is also
Speaker 4: something that a neighbor tells me about in another interview,
Speaker 4: that not neither the state forces nor these human rights
Speaker 4: organizations or NGOs are actually helping. That it's mostly individuals
Speaker 4: and volunteers and nobody else. And on top of that,
Speaker 4: we have a massive media blackout around the story too.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so I wanted to ask you about the media
Speaker 6: because I think, at least from our perspective here in
Speaker 6: the States, we have very very high I think media
Speaker 6: distress is probably at an all time high, perhaps warranted
Speaker 6: writing in relation to some of these natural disasters, the
Speaker 6: reporting that they've done right always see you know, it's
Speaker 6: funny because we see these fact checks right people on
Speaker 6: the ground are saying, hey, FEMA is blocking aid, and
Speaker 6: then they would do these short segments or articles saying, oh,
Speaker 6: we fact checked that we've called FEMA. They said, that's
Speaker 6: not happening, and then they just kind of move on.
Speaker 6: I know that you're on the ground there, so and
Speaker 6: I read like some of the stuff that you talk about,
Speaker 6: like claims of the media actually misinforming people or even
Speaker 6: sometimes staging events, can you or staging certain events to
Speaker 6: portray a certain narrative. Can you go into that a
Speaker 6: little bit?
Speaker 1: And also what's the.
Speaker 6: General public sentiment that people have towards mainstream media in Europe?
Speaker 5: Well, I mean in Europe, as in the entire world,
Speaker 5: people don't trust the mainstream media anymore, very rightfully, so
Speaker 5: I should say on this particular instance, there were a.
Speaker 4: Couple of different instances that we can go into that
Speaker 4: kind of went viral, and then one that I saw myself.
Speaker 4: So a couple of things that went viral around this
Speaker 4: was reports and videos of journalists or a journalists in
Speaker 4: this case kind of ducking down covering himself in mud
Speaker 4: after being completely clean in a you know, zone full
Speaker 4: of mud everywhere, completely clean, meaning he had just arrived,
Speaker 4: so covering himself in mud real quick, and then grabbing
Speaker 4: the microphone and saying, you know, I'm ready, let's go.
Speaker 4: And this this was caught on camera. So that was
Speaker 4: one for a big outlets here called.
Speaker 5: Bodies on It. And then to what I saw, you know,
Speaker 5: minutes twenty minutes or.
Speaker 4: So after I had left this garage and see lead
Speaker 4: bodybags and just you know, spoken to completely traumatized neighbors.
Speaker 4: I see another big outlets in the street with their
Speaker 4: microphone kind of waiting and setting up and I start
Speaker 4: of seeing what's going on here? What are they setting
Speaker 4: up for? And the neighbors tell me this is the
Speaker 4: police is about to march down the street together with
Speaker 4: the military kind of in a in a show of
Speaker 4: you know, we're helping so much here and look at us.
Speaker 4: And those are the stories that they were covering when
Speaker 4: we were seeing, you know, not that much military on
Speaker 4: the ground, very little police, to be honest, and when
Speaker 4: we were seeing them, they were often seen smoking, growing
Speaker 4: on their phones, kind of chilling while volunteers we're doing
Speaker 4: the heavy lifting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it's so disturbing to hear all of these stories
Speaker 6: and where my mind goes and when when a population
Speaker 6: deals with something like this, there's almost no other path
Speaker 6: them to start going down other than to think, okay,
Speaker 6: is there some sort of you know, conspiracy going on here?
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 6: When you talk about these certain powerful, nefarious figures or
Speaker 6: institutions taking advantage of these disasters here, you know, we
Speaker 6: have stories about maybe there's deeper motives at play, real
Speaker 6: estate interest covering up you know, the mismanagement that's going on,
Speaker 6: or facilitating a land grab, something like that. So I'm
Speaker 6: just curious what is your overall opinion about these kinds
Speaker 6: of ideas and is there anything on the ground that
Speaker 6: would suggests any truth to these things.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, not to get too conspiratorials here,
Speaker 4: but I think that of course, there was a lot
Speaker 4: of money that was made out of this tragedy, and
Speaker 4: the governments very obviously could care less. There's massive protests
Speaker 4: on the ground that are not being covered by the
Speaker 4: media because people want both the Valencian president and Philip Sancheus,
Speaker 4: who's the president of Spain, to step down. That this
Speaker 4: could have really easily been avoided, and they chose not to.
Speaker 4: They chose to play party politics. Even the Valencian president
Speaker 4: was at an award ceremony on the day of the bloods.
Speaker 5: Oh.
Speaker 4: You know, it just gets worse and worse the more
Speaker 4: you talk about it. But I think, of course, in
Speaker 4: this instance, it's opportunity and money that was available that
Speaker 4: they made that's not going to get handed out. So
Speaker 4: where is that money going to go?
Speaker 5: Who knows?
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, we appreciate you for going on the ground,
Speaker 6: and I think, you know, between all of us independent media,
Speaker 6: I think is the future. I think mainstream media has
Speaker 6: shown that they're going to they've they've abdicated their duty,
Speaker 6: so it's kind of up to us to pick up
Speaker 6: the pieces there. So before I let you go, I
Speaker 6: do want to I do want you to tell the
Speaker 6: audience about the kind of reporting that you do and
Speaker 6: where they would be able to go to find more
Speaker 6: of your work.
Speaker 5: Yeah, thanks so much.
Speaker 4: So I work for twenty plus century. Y. You can
Speaker 4: find all that work on my profile. You can find
Speaker 4: the investigation link to my Twitter and yeah, I'm mostly
Speaker 4: active on Twitter, and you can see a catalog of
Speaker 4: all my investigations and work on the twenty first century.
Speaker 5: Why.
Speaker 6: Well, thank you so much Eric for joining us today
Speaker 6: on Breaking Points and look forward.
Speaker 1: To talking to you against sin.
Speaker 5: Thanks for having me me.
Speaker 1: That's it for me today.
Speaker 6: If you want more stories that the mainstream media is
Speaker 6: unwilling to tell, please check out and subscribe to my
Speaker 6: YouTube channel fifty one to forty nine with James Lee.
Speaker 6: The link will be in the description below. As always,
Speaker 6: thank you so much for your time today and keep
Speaker 6: on tuning into Breaking Points.
Speaker 7: On November fifth, twenty twenty four, right after voting for
Speaker 7: Donald Trump, millions of people turned their ballots over and
Speaker 7: voted for things on ballot measures that Trump will almost
Speaker 7: certainly never give them, abortion as a constitutional right, or
Speaker 7: higher minimum wage, paid leave. These are all promises of
Speaker 7: the Democrats, and clearly people want them. Yet when it
Speaker 7: came time to vote for the candidate who supports those things,
Speaker 7: millions of people chose the other person.
Speaker 1: So why is that.
Speaker 7: Alaska, Missouri, and Nebraska all had ballot measures having to
Speaker 7: do with paid sick leave. If you are, for example,
Speaker 7: a part time worker in Nebraska, you probably don't get
Speaker 7: sick leave, since, as of twenty twenty, only eleven point
Speaker 7: six percent of part time workers there have any kind
Speaker 7: of paid sick time. So if you're not in that group,
Speaker 7: you will probably at some point have to choose between
Speaker 7: staying homesick and earning rent money, and hopefully you don't
Speaker 7: have a job handling people's food. Let's look at Trump's
Speaker 7: position on paid sick leaf. There is nothing from his
Speaker 7: campaign website and there is nothing in the official GOP platform. Conversely,
Speaker 7: Tim Wallas recently signed a bill establishing a statewide paid
Speaker 7: sick leave program. During Harris's campaign, she listed paid medical
Speaker 7: leave as priority, and medical leave would generally include sick days.
Speaker 7: So if you're one of the thirty four million workers
Speaker 7: who lack paid sick leave and that was your concern,
Speaker 7: Harris gives you a lot more to work with. These
Speaker 7: states obviously went for Trump, they also voted for Republican governors, senators,
Speaker 7: and Alaska gave their one congressional district to a Republican.
Speaker 7: Yet after sixty percent of Nebraska voted for Trump, up
Speaker 7: seventy four percent voted for paid sickly, as did Alaska
Speaker 7: and Missouri.
Speaker 8: When we think about politics through a two party lens,
Speaker 8: there's this sort of assumption that you can categorize all
Speaker 8: the issues in one or the other, and then there's
Speaker 8: this assumption that goes along with that that if people
Speaker 8: are voting for candidates from one party, they necessarily would
Speaker 8: vote the way that you would assume on all those issues,
Speaker 8: and that's just not true. I think that's never been true,
Speaker 8: but I think that's increasingly. You know, the sort of
Speaker 8: affiliation of the parties with what they stand for is
Speaker 8: becoming destabilized. So I grew up, for example, in northern
Speaker 8: New Jersey, just outside New York City, all Democrat in
Speaker 8: local politics, and so functionally you have a one party
Speaker 8: system there so ballot initiatives present an opportunity to vote
Speaker 8: on a policy directly apart from the party politics of
Speaker 8: wherever you live.
Speaker 7: So let's take minimum wage. Since two thousand and two,
Speaker 7: there have been twenty six measures for statewide wage races.
Speaker 7: Democrats have talked a lot about raising the minimum wage
Speaker 7: and if you want to hire minimum wage Harris again
Speaker 7: made the most sense because she supported raising the minimum
Speaker 7: wage though on her campaign website and only said that
Speaker 7: she'll fight for a higher minimum wage. She eventually committed
Speaker 7: to a fifteen dollars minimum wage on October twenty second,
Speaker 7: which is still lower than the living wage in most places,
Speaker 7: and it was probably too late for enough people to notice.
Speaker 7: But Trump is decidedly worse on minimum wage. His website
Speaker 7: and not to mention, the official R and C platform
Speaker 7: does not mention minimum wage at all. Despite this, people
Speaker 7: went to the polls and voted for both minimum wage
Speaker 7: and Trump, such as the case with Missouri and Alaska,
Speaker 7: which both voted to raise the minimum wage after first
Speaker 7: voting for Trump. In fact, out of the twenty six
Speaker 7: minimum wage measures so far this century, all have passed
Speaker 7: except for California.
Speaker 8: This last election in California, I think is a is
Speaker 8: an outlier that it does bear some consideration. For a
Speaker 8: long time, California has been kind of like the ballot
Speaker 8: initiative Dystopia the minimum wage and cree.
Speaker 6: It was a very small.
Speaker 8: Minimum wage increase, was one to two dollars, and they
Speaker 8: already have a minimum wage that's tacked to inflation, so
Speaker 8: they're going to see a raised in January anyway. So
Speaker 8: the specifics around that, I think have more to do
Speaker 8: with the with the sort of broader political culture and
Speaker 8: what's going on in California than a specific vote against
Speaker 8: wage increases.
Speaker 7: But generally this is a winner.
Speaker 8: Because most people work for a living and lots of
Speaker 8: people make low wages. So if you ask people, should
Speaker 8: you make more money, most people are going.
Speaker 4: To say yes.
Speaker 7: But no issue exemplifies this more than the issue the
Speaker 7: Democrats drive the hardest in the fight.
Speaker 1: For reproductive rights.
Speaker 6: You mentioned reproductive rights, abortion.
Speaker 7: Abortion, reproductive rights, reproductive rights and freedom.
Speaker 1: What do you want to say, Madam Vice President, I'm
Speaker 1: just so sorry.
Speaker 7: Why is it that in the state of Missouri fifty
Speaker 7: three percent of voters voted to put abortion in the
Speaker 7: state constitution, but forty percent of those voters voted for KAMLA.
Speaker 7: That means over one point five million people voted in
Speaker 7: favor of protecting reproductive rights, but against the part which
Speaker 7: is most passionate about it. And just to recap, Trump
Speaker 7: has said abortion should be left to the states. Every
Speaker 7: Trump Supreme Court justice voted to overturn Roe v. Wade,
Speaker 7: and his VP Vance stated in twenty twenty two.
Speaker 5: I certainly would like abortion to be illegal nationally.
Speaker 7: The VANCE has walked back that claim recently to fall
Speaker 7: in line with Trump's position, and the official party position
Speaker 7: is to protect and defend a vote of the people
Speaker 7: from within the states. Essentially, they're shifting their attack on
Speaker 7: reproductive rights to focus on action at the state level,
Speaker 7: where ballot measures play a critical role in codifying those rights.
Speaker 7: So to be clear, it's not that conservatives feel so
Speaker 7: strongly about states rights. Rather, it's their way of rolling
Speaker 7: back reproductive rights in their entirety. Out of ten states
Speaker 7: that had abortion on the ballot, seven of the measures
Speaker 7: passed New York, Colorado, Missouri, Arizona, Nevada, Maryland, and Montana.
Speaker 7: Only three South Dakota, Nebraska and Florida did not.
Speaker 8: If we looked at polls going back years, we would
Speaker 8: see that a majority of American support did some measure
Speaker 8: of abortion rights. What ballot initiatives do is they sort
Speaker 8: of bring that reality to the foe. So in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty two, when the Supreme Court issued their Dobbs decision,
Speaker 8: when they overturned the Roevwade abortion protections, the Republican legislators
Speaker 8: in Kansas rushed a vote onto the ballot to allow
Speaker 8: them to ban abortion, and you know, they got crushed.
Speaker 8: They lost by something like sixty percent.
Speaker 7: And actually a majority of Florida voters also chose to
Speaker 7: put abortion in the state constitution, but didn't meet the
Speaker 7: sixty percent threshold. And so even Florida is mostly in
Speaker 7: favor of protecting abortion rights, even though Trump won that
Speaker 7: state by a large margin. And wait, why does Florida
Speaker 7: require sixty percent? So in two thousand and six, Florida
Speaker 7: passed an amendment to the constitution that would require a
Speaker 7: super majority or at least sixty percent of the vote
Speaker 7: to pass all future ballot measures. And that amendment passed
Speaker 7: with ironically only fifty seven percent of the vote, the
Speaker 7: same amount of people who voted in favor of protecting
Speaker 7: abortion rights in Florida. Their states also have some sort
Speaker 7: of supermajority rule on the books. For instance, New Hampshire
Speaker 7: requires two thirds of the vote to pass an amendment,
Speaker 7: and Arizona currently requires a supermajority only to pass tax
Speaker 7: related measures. But in addition to the issues I've already
Speaker 7: talked about here, with increasing frequency, ballot measures have been
Speaker 7: used to take up causes like marijuana legalization, redistricting, expanding medicaid,
Speaker 7: and so what would seem to be a direct response
Speaker 7: to the success of these ballot measures are amendments requiring
Speaker 7: a supermajority to pass ballot measures in the first place.
Speaker 7: They've been popping up all over the country. Ironically, these
Speaker 7: amendments are being voted on through the same ballot measures
Speaker 7: legislators are trying to make harder to pass, and so.
Speaker 8: We see an increase in the past few years of
Speaker 8: legislative moves to try to limit the direct vote by
Speaker 8: raising the threshold to win, raising the threshold to qualify,
Speaker 8: you know, making it harder to gather signature is making
Speaker 8: you gather them in more places.
Speaker 7: All these ballot measures have something important in common. They're
Speaker 7: all dealing with material issues. And in particular ones that
Speaker 7: voters might find it hard to have a saying through
Speaker 7: other means. So minimum wage hikes and paid sickly are
Speaker 7: pretty obvious material issues, but reproductive rights are as well,
Speaker 7: because unfettered access to abortion is often framed as a
Speaker 7: right to autonomy over one's body. My body, my choice.
Speaker 7: Being denied necessary emergency care, especially in red states where
Speaker 7: providers may be reluctant until or unless the life of
Speaker 7: the mother is actually in jeopardy, that is a critical issue.
Speaker 7: But one of the most common reasons people and pregnancies
Speaker 7: wanted or otherwise are financial. Thing about the couple, for example,
Speaker 7: who are barely scraping by with one kid and they
Speaker 7: know a second child would just be a financial burden
Speaker 7: they can't do so. Having the right to self determination
Speaker 7: over one's body is obviously human right, but you can't
Speaker 7: separate that from one's material conditions. So my takeaway from
Speaker 7: this is that people want material change and will vote
Speaker 7: to affirm this when it's presented with clear and predictable outcomes.
Speaker 7: Voters are less interested though, in campaign promises that may
Speaker 7: or may not come to fruition if the candidate wins,
Speaker 7: or in declarations of theoretical support, neither of which help
Speaker 7: working people pay their rent or feed their kids, and
Speaker 7: ballot measures are one of the few ways for people
Speaker 7: to engage with direct democracy. So if the Democrats ever
Speaker 7: want to see the inside of the White House again,
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Speaker 9: Not obvious why this case would be limited to TikTok
Speaker 9: or limited to China. Once you accept the idea that
Speaker 9: the government can protect us from foreign manipulation by preventing
Speaker 9: us from access saying foreign media, there are lots of
Speaker 9: other platforms the government might become concerned about.
Speaker 6: Do national security interests outweigh your constitutional right to free speech.
Speaker 6: My name is James Lee and you're watching Beyond the
Speaker 6: Headlines on break Points in April of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 6: Congress passed a law that would ban TikTok if their
Speaker 6: Chinese parent company, by Dance, refuse to sell the app
Speaker 6: to an American buyer, and just a few weeks ago,
Speaker 6: a federal Court of Appeals upheld that law. The government
Speaker 6: claims that it's protecting Americans from foreign manipulation and data theft,
Speaker 6: but critics warn the decision weakens the First Amendment and
Speaker 6: sets a dangerous precedent for free expression. So to help
Speaker 6: us understand what's at stake, I'm joined today by Jamil Jaffer.
Speaker 6: He is the executive director of the Night First Amendment
Speaker 6: Institute at Columbia University. Jamille, thank you so much for
Speaker 6: joining us today on breaking Points.
Speaker 1: Sure, thanks for the vization absolutely.
Speaker 6: I guess just to catch people up, can you summarize
Speaker 6: for us what the recent ruling was from the DC
Speaker 6: Circuit Court? Specifically, why do the judges decide that banning
Speaker 6: TikTok does not violate the First Amendment of the Constitution.
Speaker 6: A term that I've heard being used is something called
Speaker 6: script strict scrutiny. That's tough to say, strict scrutiny. So
Speaker 6: can you break that down for us in layman's terms,
Speaker 6: so we can all understand what is going on here.
Speaker 9: Yeah, So, I mean, the first thing you have to
Speaker 9: recognize is that, you know, this is sometimes characterized as
Speaker 9: a ban on a foreign company operating in the United States,
Speaker 9: and that is not actually an accurate characterization of what's
Speaker 9: going on here. The effect of the ban is to
Speaker 9: prevent one hundred and seventy million or so Americans from
Speaker 9: accessing a media platform that they would like to access.
Speaker 9: So it's a restriction on the rights of US citizens
Speaker 9: and US residents who want to consume particular expressive products
Speaker 9: but also participate in the conversation that takes place on TikTok,
Speaker 9: you know, share their own videos, watch other people's videos,
Speaker 9: engage with the various communities that have been built on
Speaker 9: that you know, on that platform, the d C Circuit
Speaker 9: understood that the law restricts American's First Amendment rights, and so, uh,
Speaker 9: you know, started with basically the premise that you know,
Speaker 9: this law is subject to scrutiny undo the First Amendment. Now,
Speaker 9: you know, in some ways that's unremarkable, but worth noting
Speaker 9: that the bind administration did argue that the law shouldn't
Speaker 9: even be subject to First Amendments scrutiny that basically the
Speaker 9: First Amendment was not implicated here at all, which is
Speaker 9: kind of a crazy argument. But the court rejected that argument.
Speaker 9: Then the question became, well, what kind of scrutiny, like
Speaker 9: how how closely should the court examine the government's motivations
Speaker 9: here and examine the law itself. And that's the debate
Speaker 9: that you reference, you know, this debate about strict scrutiny
Speaker 9: versus intermediate scrutiny. There were judge two judges on the
Speaker 9: court who believe that strict scrutiny was the right standard.
Speaker 9: Another judge thought that intermediate scrutiny was the right standard.
Speaker 9: But ultimately all the judges concluded that the band satisfies
Speaker 9: First Amendment.
Speaker 1: Requirements.
Speaker 9: So that you know, this dispute over the level of scrutiny,
Speaker 9: it didn't turn out to be consequential. You know, the
Speaker 9: the ban was upheld by all three judges. Basically the
Speaker 9: argument so there were really two arguments for the ban.
Speaker 9: One has to do with data collection. The theory is
Speaker 9: that TikTok collects a lot of data about its usual
Speaker 9: It obviously does collect a lot of data about its users,
Speaker 9: just like other social media platforms do, and so one
Speaker 9: justification for the ban as well, this is a way
Speaker 9: of limiting data collection by TikTok. The other justification that
Speaker 9: the government offered was that TikTok is controlled by a
Speaker 9: Chinese corporation. That Chinese corporation, Byte Dance is under the
Speaker 9: influence of the Chinese government, and at one point or another,
Speaker 9: the Chinese government might decide, well, we want to use
Speaker 9: byt Dance and TikTok as a means of propagandizing or
Speaker 9: manipulating Americans. And there's a kind of degree of speculation here.
Speaker 9: I mean some people would say a large degree of speculation.
Speaker 9: Even the government conceded there's no evidence, they have no
Speaker 9: evidence that TikTok is actually being used in this way.
Speaker 9: But this was the fear that motivated, or at least
Speaker 9: the government said in court, this is the fear that
Speaker 9: motivated the ban.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I know that.
Speaker 6: You co wrote an op ed in The New York
Speaker 6: Times recently where you talked about this a little bit.
Speaker 6: You argued that the court gave quote near categorical deference
Speaker 6: to the government's national security claims. Like you said, we
Speaker 6: haven't been shown evidence of these claims. The dj did
Speaker 6: release that report, I believe a couple months ago, almost
Speaker 6: the whole thing was redapted, so we didn't really actually
Speaker 6: see any of the evidence that they were talking about.
Speaker 1: So is that normal or can the government.
Speaker 6: Just use national security if they want to pass laws
Speaker 6: that basically push up against what's permitted by the Constitution.
Speaker 9: Yeah, well, I mean, unfortunately, there is a long history
Speaker 9: in this country of the courts deferring to the government
Speaker 9: in national security cases. Now there is a kind of
Speaker 9: counter history, or at least a thread of of case
Speaker 9: law that is inconsistent with that sort of larger body
Speaker 9: of the national security case law, and that thread of
Speaker 9: case law involves the First Amendment. So when you know,
Speaker 9: while it's true the courts generally defer to the government
Speaker 9: in national security cases, they have tended to be less
Speaker 9: deferential in First Amendment cases because the courts understand that
Speaker 9: free speech is so important to our democracy and the
Speaker 9: integrity of public discourse is part of what gives legitimacy
Speaker 9: to the government's national security policies. In other words, you know,
Speaker 9: the only reason we have faith to the extent we
Speaker 9: do have faith that the government's national security policies have
Speaker 9: democratic legitimacy is because we believe people can debate those
Speaker 9: policies openly and that the debate is informed. And so
Speaker 9: when the government invokes national security as a means of
Speaker 9: constraining that debate, the courts have been less deferential. So
Speaker 9: in this particular case, the judges were very deferential to
Speaker 9: the government. They basically accepted at base value that the
Speaker 9: government was motivated by those two concerns I mentioned data
Speaker 9: collection and foreign manipulation, even though the legislative record makes
Speaker 9: it very very clear that many legislators were motivated by
Speaker 9: disagreement with particular categories of content. There were lots of
Speaker 9: legislators who said this quite candidly. They said, look, I
Speaker 9: don't like the videos I see on TikTok, but they
Speaker 9: are encouraging our kids to do terrible things. They are
Speaker 9: calling into question our government's policies. They are pro Russia,
Speaker 9: they are pro Palestine or programs is the way that
Speaker 9: they put it. And the justification, the actual justification for
Speaker 9: the law, which legislators were quite open about, was let's
Speaker 9: suppress stuff that we disagree with, and the court dismissed
Speaker 9: all of that in one phrase. The court said, oh,
Speaker 9: there were some It's true, there were some stray comments
Speaker 9: in the legislative record. It wasn't straight is the whole
Speaker 9: legislative record is replete with those kinds of those kinds
Speaker 9: of comments. So that's one sense in which the court was,
Speaker 9: you know, extremely deferential to you know, the government's factual
Speaker 9: assertions here, even though the evidence was inconsistent with those assertions.
Speaker 9: Another sense is when when it came to so both
Speaker 9: under strict scrutiny and intermediate scrutiny, the court has to
Speaker 9: look to what other ways the government would have had
Speaker 9: to achieve its stated goals. And here there are lots
Speaker 9: of obvious ways the government could achieve its stated goals
Speaker 9: without banning Americans from accessing this app So, for example,
Speaker 9: when it comes to foreign manipulation, the government says that
Speaker 9: the concern is that Americans are being covertly manipulated. In
Speaker 9: other words, the Chinese Communist Party is or may at
Speaker 9: one point manipulate them covertly by you know, fixing the
Speaker 9: algorithm or or or screwing with the algorithm so that
Speaker 9: Americans see only what the Chinese government wants them to see. Now, again,
Speaker 9: it's highly speculative. But if that is the concern, it's
Speaker 9: not obvious why transparency doesn't address So why can't the
Speaker 9: government just tell Americans we think this is propaganda.
Speaker 6: Yeah, if we were to stealman that argument a little
Speaker 6: bit in terms of the TikTok ban, even if the
Speaker 6: government hasn't provided this concrete evidence for us, and we say, okay,
Speaker 6: let's go with a more precautionary approach to this. And
Speaker 6: let's say TikTok is controlled by China. They're using it
Speaker 6: exactly how we say. They're using it for manipulating us
Speaker 6: to collect our data, this and that, and there are
Speaker 6: other apps that US Americans can use devoice our opinion.
Speaker 1: Just do that. How do you respond to that kind
Speaker 1: of argument.
Speaker 9: Well, I mean, I think it's a fine argument for
Speaker 9: the government to make to Americans. Like, if the government
Speaker 9: wants to say to Americans, use those other apps rather
Speaker 9: than this one, there's no reason the government can't do that.
Speaker 9: But I think that, you know, sort of core to
Speaker 9: the First Amendment, Like at the very center of the
Speaker 9: First Amendment is this idea that individuals get to decide
Speaker 9: for themselves which ideas are worth listening to, which media
Speaker 9: to consume. I mean, this is the center of the
Speaker 9: First Amendment, and the government can participate in public discourse
Speaker 9: about the platforms or about media. The government can say,
Speaker 9: you know, don't watch MSNBC, it's you know, it's propaganda.
Speaker 9: The government can say don't watch Fox News, it's propaganda.
Speaker 9: That's you know, fine. But what it can't do is say,
Speaker 9: you know, we're going to shut down MSNBC because we
Speaker 9: think you're being manipulated. I mean, this is just First
Speaker 9: Amendment one on one, and I think the government's arguments
Speaker 9: are inconsistent with it. But I just wanted to say something.
Speaker 9: But the data collection argument too, because here, you know,
Speaker 9: the court was also extremely deferential to to the Justice Department.
Speaker 9: The Justice Department was saying, well, this is this is
Speaker 9: about you know, preventing to from collecting data, but every
Speaker 9: other social media platform is collecting the same data or
Speaker 9: even more data about about Americans, and this law doesn't
Speaker 9: do anything about those those other actors. To the extent
Speaker 9: the concern is, well, those other actors aren't controlled by China,
Speaker 9: and they're not you know, effectively puppets for the Chinese
Speaker 9: Communist Party. Well, the government itself that the Office of
Speaker 9: the Director of National Intelligence has observed in formal reports
Speaker 9: that China doesn't need TikTok in order to collect this
Speaker 9: kind of information in that Americans. You can buy this
Speaker 9: kind of information on the open market. You can buy
Speaker 9: it from data brokers. And we've seen very recently that
Speaker 9: China can also collect information, much more sensitive information, just
Speaker 9: by hacking into American databases. And so it's not clear
Speaker 9: that this law really makes even a dent in the
Speaker 9: ability of the Chinese Communist Party to collect in about Americans.
Speaker 9: The much more direct way of restricting data collection is
Speaker 9: by restricting what data corporations can collect.
Speaker 6: And I'm not sure, yeah, how much interest Congress has
Speaker 6: in doing that, in particular, given some of the lobbying
Speaker 6: around you know, big tech and things like that. But
Speaker 6: let's say, okay, so let's try to chart a path
Speaker 6: forward here. At this point, I know Trump has talked,
Speaker 6: you know, verbally about doing something. He said he's going
Speaker 6: to take a look at I'm not sure exactly what
Speaker 6: that means, but I guess one avenue that is clear
Speaker 6: going forward is that if this case does get picked
Speaker 6: up by the Supreme Court, how do you think the
Speaker 6: justices are likely to rule, given on historical precedents, some
Speaker 6: of the past cases, and given some of the comments
Speaker 6: that you just you referenced before about you know, members
Speaker 6: of Congress explicitly stating that we're banning this app because
Speaker 6: of the content on it we don't like.
Speaker 1: So how damaging are those statements to the governments?
Speaker 9: I mean, I guess I'm not ready to make predictions,
Speaker 9: but I accept that I will say that I think
Speaker 9: that TikTok will get a more sympathetic hearing in the
Speaker 9: Supreme Court than it did in the DC Circuit. I mean,
Speaker 9: there is case law in the Supreme Court. There's a
Speaker 9: nineteen sixty four case called Lamont versus Postmaster General, which
Speaker 9: involved a law that restricted Americans from receiving foreign propaganda
Speaker 9: in the mail. It basically required them to register with
Speaker 9: the Post Office if they wanted to receive communist propaganda
Speaker 9: from abroad, and the Supreme Court struck down that law
Speaker 9: in nineteen sixty four. Is actually the first time the
Speaker 9: Supreme Court struck down a federal statute under the First Amendment.
Speaker 9: Struck down that law because the Court said it imposed
Speaker 9: a burden on Americans right to receive information from abroad
Speaker 9: and that was the case in which there was no
Speaker 9: dispute that what Americans were receiving from abroad was foreign propaganda.
Speaker 9: And even then, and even though it wasn't a ban,
Speaker 9: it was just a burden, the court struck that statue town.
Speaker 9: So I think that's a really a really strong precedent
Speaker 9: for TikTok here and for TikTok's users, and if the
Speaker 9: court departs from it, it'll be a pretty big deal.
Speaker 9: I guess I'll just say one more thing, like just
Speaker 9: just getting away from doctrine, even apart from doctrine, these
Speaker 9: kinds of bans, like there's no precedent for the US
Speaker 9: government banning Americans from accessing a media organization like this.
Speaker 9: There's no precedent, Like there are cases in which the
Speaker 9: government tries to ban people from accessing certain information. And
Speaker 9: the Pentagon Paper's case was like one of those cases
Speaker 9: where the you know, the government tried to get the
Speaker 9: court to restrict the New York Times and the Washington
Speaker 9: Post from publishing this classified history of the Vietnam War
Speaker 9: or stories about this classified history, and even then the
Speaker 9: court struck it down, right. But here we're going a
Speaker 9: step further and saying it's essentially the government saying, well,
Speaker 9: don't just for the time from publishing that story, shut
Speaker 9: down the Times because they might publish that story. These
Speaker 9: kinds of bands, I think, for good reason, have historically
Speaker 9: been associated with autocratic and rights abusing regimes like that's
Speaker 9: when we think of these kinds of bands on foreign media,
Speaker 9: those are the regimes that come to mind. And I
Speaker 9: think that the Supreme Court is going to be very
Speaker 9: wary of going down this road because we don't want
Speaker 9: to be in that company, and the First Amendment is
Speaker 9: supposed to keep us keep us out of that company.
Speaker 6: Yeah, well, we'll see what happens there. Oftentimes there's no
Speaker 6: precedent unless until there is a precedent, there is, you
Speaker 6: know what I mean. And I think you know, the
Speaker 6: last question I want to ask is around this more
Speaker 6: broader context of you know, we're kind of living in
Speaker 6: an age of information warfare, right, because it used to
Speaker 6: be that publishing used to be controlled by just a
Speaker 6: few people, a few institutions, and now it's much more democratized.
Speaker 6: So it's hard for me not to think of a
Speaker 6: slippery slope where today maybe they get rid of TikTok.
Speaker 1: And those users. Let's say they migrate to other platforms.
Speaker 1: Let's say one of them is X.
Speaker 6: Now, let's say they start saying stuff on there they
Speaker 6: don't like and X, I know, has a significant foreign
Speaker 6: ownership in this case Saudi Arabia. So let's say one
Speaker 6: day they decide, okay, well we don't like Saudi Arabia anymore.
Speaker 6: That's a foreign adversary when we get rid of X. So,
Speaker 6: you know, reading the tea leaves a little bit what
Speaker 6: do you see as the future of the First Amendment
Speaker 6: in the United States, you know, the attacks on it,
Speaker 6: and what kind of effect does that have on democracy overall?
Speaker 9: Well, I mean I at first I think that you're
Speaker 9: you're absolutely right, that not obvious why this case would
Speaker 9: be limited to TikTok or limited to China. Like, once
Speaker 9: you accept the idea that the government can protect us
Speaker 9: from foreign manipulation by preventing us from accessing foreign media,
Speaker 9: you know, there's there are lots of other platforms the
Speaker 9: government might become concerned about. And you know, as you mentioned,
Speaker 9: like Musk has business interests all over the all over
Speaker 9: the world. I mean that's true of Soccer Org too,
Speaker 9: any of these you know, the people who own Bezos
Speaker 9: has business interests all over the world. And if your
Speaker 9: concern is well, uh domestic, uh, you know, Americans might
Speaker 9: be consuming media that has been influenced by foreign pressure.
Speaker 9: You know, why why stop a TikTok? You know, why
Speaker 9: not give the government the ability to restrict our access
Speaker 9: to the Washington Post or to to x or. I
Speaker 9: really do think that you know, once you once you
Speaker 9: open this store, not obvious, how you how you close it,
Speaker 9: how you close it again, and then your you know,
Speaker 9: your broader question. I mean, you're right, you know, for
Speaker 9: a variety of reasons, including the rise of sort of
Speaker 9: autocracy around the world, but also technological change and these
Speaker 9: new communications platforms that have emerged over the last twenty years.
Speaker 9: You know, we're really in a totally new world. And
Speaker 9: you can't take for granted that the First Amendment precedents
Speaker 9: that the courts you know, set in the nineteen sixties
Speaker 9: and seventies will be adhered to today. And you know,
Speaker 9: to be fair, you can't take for granted that those
Speaker 9: precedents are the right ones for this new world we're
Speaker 9: living in today. And I suppose that you know, in
Speaker 9: some ways, it's kind of exciting because we're kind of building,
Speaker 9: you know, we have to build this kind of new,
Speaker 9: new system to account for all of these changes. But
Speaker 9: it does it does feel like some of the freedoms
Speaker 9: that we've taken for granted are suddenly you know, fragile,
Speaker 9: and you know, these these cases, like the TikTok case,
Speaker 9: will have a huge effect on what the free speech
Speaker 9: landscape looks like in five ten years.
Speaker 6: Yeah, we'll have to see how that all plays out.
Speaker 6: Thank you so much today for your insights, Jamal. Is
Speaker 6: there anywhere you want to point the audience to if
Speaker 6: they want to learn more?
Speaker 9: H Yeah, the Night Institute, so at Nightcolumbia dot org.
Speaker 1: All right, awesome, Well, thank you so much again for
Speaker 1: coming on the show. And we'll see how all this
Speaker 1: plays out.
Speaker 9: Thank you,