8/27/25: Spam Email 2026 Election Takeover, Taylor Lorenz Debates Phone Bans In Schools, Serbia Mass Protests

Summary

Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar

Episode Date: August 27, 2025
Themes: Political fundraising "spam" and the 2026 election, debate on school phone bans with Taylor Lorenz, and mass protests/anti-corruption movement in Serbia.

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Overview

This episode explores three headline topics:

1. The deepening issue of aggressive email/text fundraising in US politics and its effect on the 2026 Senate race, specifically in Maine.
2. A wide-ranging, nuanced debate with tech journalist Taylor Lorenz on the surge of phone bans in American schools, addressing civil liberties, mental health, and generational divides.
3. A field report on the explosive student-led mass protests in Serbia, following a deadly railway station collapse linked to high-level corruption.

The episode is packed with reporting, analysis, and direct debate, all with Breaking Points’ trademark skeptical and conversational tone.

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Segment 1: Spam Email Fundraising & the 2026 Maine Senate Race

[02:38–23:05]

Key Points & Insights

• Mothership Strategies’ Role in Fundraising:

  • The Democratic fundraising firm Mothership Strategies is profiled for its "hair-on-fire" fundraising tactics (mock bills, manipulative messaging) that raise vast sums, but direct only a sliver to actual candidates.
  • Out of $678 million raised since 2018, only $11 million reached candidates, while $159 million went directly to Mothership.

    "The firm pioneered the hair on fire fundraising tactics that often send more money to political consultants than to political candidates." – Ryan Grim [03:00]

• The Jordan Wood Candidacy:

  • Jordan Wood, a Democrat running for Senate in Maine, is deep in the Mothership ecosystem; his husband is a co-founder.
  • Wood denies that his campaign is currently working with Mothership, insisting he’s hired a competitor.

    "Jordan for Maine, has not and will not hire Jordan's husband's firm. We are working with a competitor." — Sarah McCarthy, Wood’s spokesperson [09:08]

  • Wood was a key figure in several PACs tied to Mothership, which continue to endorse and fundraise for him, often before major other candidates even entered the race.

• Circular Money Flows & Endorsements:

  • Describes how PACs like Progressive Turnout Project (PTP), Defend the Vote, and Democracy First route money through Mothership, blurring lines between field operations and consultant profit.
  • Even Wood’s "independent" affiliated PACs often circle back to Mothership for fundraising operations.
  • Other candidates are emerging, such as working-class challenger Graham Platner, who aims to challenge billionaire influence and the revolving door of consultant money.

• Grassroots Donor Fatigue:

  • The aggressive, fear-based fundraising tactics are driving away traditional grassroots engagement. Both Democratic and Republican voters are growing to hate constant spam texts and emails.

    "It drives people crazy... Mothership was the pioneer of all this stuff." – Ryan Grim [16:11]

  • High-profile politicians like Bernie Sanders and AOC raise funds with inspiring messages, not predatory ones.

• Market Saturation & Voter Backlash:

  • In Maine, the sheer volume of spending has reached the point of absurdity—local ad space is exhausted, voters are bombarded, and mailers become literal garbage.

    "There's only so much space in somebody's mailbox to cram flyers." – Ryan Grim [21:46]

  • The discussion hints that at some point, the tide could turn, and candidates who run against these tactics may gain new appeal.

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On Voter Cynicism:

  "You hit a tipping point when people catch on... we're not yet at peak text or email, but we will at some point." – Saagar Enjeti [20:19]

• Joking about spam:

  "We will be texting him 10 times every hour until he agrees to come on. That's right. Yes. We emailed him 155 times..." – Saagar Enjeti & Ryan Grim [22:44]

• Policy Takeaways:

  • The political fundraising arms race is unlikely to resolve until there is clear voter pushback, as the current structure pushes ever more money to consultants over actual campaign work.

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Segment 2: Taylor Lorenz Debates School Phone Bans

[25:56–49:38]

Main Discussion Threads

The Bans in Schools

• The Policy Context:

  • A wave of schools and states are enacting blanket bans on student phone use, with enforcement often left to school police/resource officers.
  • Students overwhelmingly oppose these bans; Lorenz argues their views deserve more weight.

• Taylor Lorenz’s Stance:

  • Strongly opposes legal/codified bans enforced by law enforcement, but supports individual teachers/schools managing phone use via rules, routines, or classroom policies:

    "No one wants any kids on their phone during class... My opposition is specifically to the laws." – Taylor Lorenz [27:25]

• Civil Liberties Concerns:

  • Drawing parallels to the "beeper ban" moral panic of the ‘90s, Lorenz argues phone bans will disproportionately expose students to policing and criminal records, especially in marginalized communities.

    "It ends up just being this quite discriminatory policy where they just sort of harass kids and it just leads to more interactions with kids and police." – Taylor Lorenz [29:08]

Debating Impacts: Mental Health and Research

• The Research Dispute:

  • Hosts press Lorenz on studies correlating increased screen time with higher anxiety/depression.
  • Lorenz emphasizes the research consensus is that links are unproven or much weaker than widely believed, and that panics about technology have repeated for generations without support in data:

    "All of the top researchers on this topic... issued an 82 page report... debunked this." – Taylor Lorenz [38:20]

  • Points to other leading causes of stress (poverty, social issues), not phone use per se.

    "One in six kids is growing up below the poverty line... They're growing up in a pretty stressful world..." [36:16]

• On Social and Equity Impacts:

  • For many kids, especially in lower-income or marginalized groups, the smartphone is their only computer and connection to community—total bans risk leaving them more isolated.
  • The issue of teaching digital self-control, rather than blanket bans, is emphasized as a vital modern skill.

    "We want to teach kids restraint and control... Otherwise you're just prolonging the inevitable." [40:07]

• Slippery Slope Toward Surveillance:

  • Lorenz warns widespread bans are often paired with expansion of surveillance tech in schools, such as facial recognition and biometric data collection.

Moral Panics, Parent Rights, and Nuance

• On Moral Panic:

  • Lorenz argues anti-phone politics resemble historic panics about video games, beepers, or baggy pants—scapegoating technology for wider societal ills.

• Parents’ Right to Restrict?

  • Hosts ask about parents who want a phone-free childhood. Lorenz points out social inclusion pressures and research now suggest kids with earlier phone access sometimes fare better mentally—largely via connectivity with friends.

    "We know actually that the mental health of kids that have the smartphone sooner is actually more positive... they're able to get in touch with friends." [44:29]

• Policy Nuance:

  • Lorenz supports balanced, individualized parental control, nuanced digital literacy education, and real privacy/data reforms over outright bans.

    "Join me in advocating for privacy laws and data privacy specifically... if this political effort to ban the phones and age restrict everything is successful [those laws won’t happen]." [45:25]

Notable Quotes & Moments

• Memorable:

  "The issue is very tied to a broader moral panic about cell phones where people are convinced that they're... making kids sort of mass unalive themselves..." – Lorenz [33:20]

• On Student Perspective:

  "If you polled the students in high school, it'd be roughly 99% if not 100% opposed to these bans." – Ryan Grim [26:28]

• Hosts' Take:

  "I'm a much, much different side of this than you are, Taylor. But we appreciate you coming here and allowing us to have this discussion." – Saagar Enjeti [49:13]

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Segment 3: Mass Protests in Serbia – Field Report

[52:12–68:07]

Story Overview

• Tragedy at Novi Sad:

  • A deadly collapse of a newly renovated railway station canopy kills 16. The renovation was plagued by cost overruns, corruption, and false official claims denying responsibility.
  • Subsequent student- and citizen-led protests erupt, demanding transparency, accountability, and systemic reforms.

• Grassroots Uprising:

  • Protests began with weekly tributes, escalating after regime thugs assaulted student mourners.

  • Student-led blockades shut down over 60 universities, organized along direct democracy principles—demands include document release, accountability for assaults, release of arrested students, and increases for higher ed funding.

    "Decision making within the movement is based on the principles of direct democracy. Resolutions are adopted at general assemblies by a majority vote of those present." – Serbian Reporter [57:10]

Broader Political Context

• Corruption, Authoritarianism, and Foreign Influence:

  • The report details President Vučić's 13-year rule—formally pro-European, but increasingly autocratic, balancing ties with Russia and China. Explains how international and domestic pressures are sidelined by global crises and interests like the EU-backed lithium mine.

• Escalation and Repression:

  • Reports include violent attacks on students by regime loyalists, the resignation of the prime minister, and subsequent pardon of thugs by the president.
  • Students organize long-distance protest actions to European institutions, culminating in massive rallies—one protest draws 300,000 in Belgrade, the largest in Serbian history.

• Emergence of Authoritarian Tactics:

  • Government reportedly deploys sonic weapons (LRADs) to disperse crowds, denies claims despite evidence.

    "During the event, some form of sonic weapon was reportedly used, a claim supported by testimonies from over 3,000 citizens. The government denied all such allegations..." [64:12]

• Final Demands & Ongoing Struggle:

  • As original demands are unmet after six months, students call for early elections (without running themselves), intensifying despite growing political repression: arrests, surveillance, and international apathy.

Quotes & Moments

• On the movement:

  "The students advocate for the rule of law, the fight against corruption, strong institutions and respect for the legal system. They demand accountability. They distance themselves from political parties..." – Serbian Reporter [57:00]

• Sarcasm about endemic corruption:

  "Corruption in this society, in our country, so deep it reach all the way down to dinosaurs." – Serbian Reporter [58:13]

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Selected Timestamps

• [02:38] – Spam email fundraising deep dive begins
• [08:16] – Challenger Graham Platner introduces working-class platform
• [14:15] – Mothership’s controversial impact summarized
• [19:08] – How fundraising emails rely on Facebook targeting
• [27:21] – Taylor Lorenz lays out her position on school phone bans
• [29:08] – Civil liberties and policing dangers of bans
• [33:20] – On the "moral panic" around phones and mental health
• [40:07] – Teaching self-control vs. blanket bans
• [44:29] – Mental health outcomes for early phone users
• [52:12] – Serbia student protests coverage begins
• [58:13] – Gravity of corruption highlighted
• [64:12] – Repressive measures and sonic weapon use documented

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Summary

This episode delivers Breaking Points’ investigative and irreverent style on three fronts: exposing the self-dealing structure of political fundraising, facilitating a genuine left/right/cultural debate on school phone bans, and bringing international focus to a major anti-corruption movement in Serbia. Between references to “spam” emails, social panic, and grassroots revolt, the episode questions who really holds power—and who pays the price—in modern politics and society.

Transcript

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[Ryan Grim]

A Democratic Senate candidate running in Maine on a platform of getting money out of politics has spent his career entangled with controversial PACs created by the notorious email fundraising firm Mothership Strategies. The firm pioneered the hair on fire fundraising tactics that often send more money to political consultants than to political candidates. Mothership was recently the subject of yet another viral investigation that revealed that of the $678 million that the company's core political action committees raised since 2018, just $11 million went to candidates. $159 million made its way to Mothership Strategies. Meanwhile, the firm's spammy approach to email and text messaging, mock overdue bills, sky is falling rhetoric, and so on has left the grassroots commons desiccated, draining email fundraising of its potency and driving many campaigns toward sms, which is in the process of being destroyed itself. Most fundraising firms, in order to find businesses, in order to find business, pitch themselves to political action committees, which are known as PACs, and they pitch themselves to candidates. Mothership does that, but also innovated on the notion by simply making its own PACs and then turning them into clients. As long as the PACs spend some of the money they raise on political purposes, contributions to candidates, canvassing operations, producing ads, and so forth, they are perfectly legal enterprises. Now Mothership has pointed its money vacuum at the Maine Senate race, a true motherlode for fundraising consultants. In 2020, Democratic Senate candidate Sarah Gideon raised just under $75 million directly to her campaign before losing to Susan Collins. Yes, $75 million. Outside groups raised and spent another $55 million to boost her or attack Collins and Gideon even finished with more than $10 million unspent in the bank. Collins and the Republican side and the Republican side raised and spent equivalent fortunes. Even a reasonable percentage of that haul adds up to a small fortune, and Mothership has never been accused of taking too small of a cut. Now the candidate in this case is named Jordan Wood and he's been executive director of of two packs in the Mothership ecosystem. His husband, Jake Lipsett, is a co founder of Mothership and remains a partner. Wood and Lipsett bought a home in Maine not long after Gideon's loss. In March 2021, Lipset and Wood bought a 4,000 square foot lakeside home in Bristol, Maine for $2.15 million, now valued at more than $3 million Quote Jordan was born and raised in Lewiston, Maine, and always dreamed of of moving home to Maine to raise his family. When Jake and Jordan began planning to start their family, they moved home to Maine, unquote, said Sarah McCarthy, a campaign spokesperson for Wood's campaign. Now out of the gate, Wood was quickly endorsed by Progressive Turnout Project PAC and Defend the Vote PAC, both mothership PACs widely derided for their predatory fundraising tactics and minimal level of genuine political activity. In 2019, the Washington Post reported that Mothership's, quote, lightning quick rise also has sparked consternation in Democratic circles, where Mothership is sometimes derided as the M word because of its aggressive and sometimes misleading tactics. Now, Defend the Vote, since launching in the 2020 cycle, has raised and spent just over $11 million, according to FEC records. Of that, 3.8 million has gone to mothership. Spending well over 30% of a total organization's budget on a single fundraising consultant is considered highly unusual. PTP, meanwhile, has raised and spent more than $310 million since its launch in 2015. Of that, $39 million went to Mothership. But even that large number is deceiving. As FEC records show, PTP got nearly $90 million of its cash from affiliated committees. Those committees use Mothership for their fundraising and then move the money to PTP. A budget of PTP size the organization raised $90.3 million for the 2024 cycle would typically make a political organization a significant player in Democratic politics. But Progressive Turnout Project has left barely any visible footprint outside of your email inbox. In fact, go search for Progressive Turnout Project in your inbox. You probably get their emails now. A spokesperson for PTP rejected that characterization. Quote, Mothership Strategies has helped power our efforts since day one. The funds we've spent on our digital fundraising program have allowed us to become the largest Democratic field organization in the country other than the presidential campaign, said PTP. Now the two PACs have already deployed their massive email lists in the service of fundraising for Jordan Wood, whose campaign said he has already raised more than $2 million. From a political perspective, the early endorsements were puzzling as 77 year old Maine Governor Janet Mills has yet to decide whether to run, which had the effect of largely freezing the field of candidates the PACs endorsed before knowing who else would run. In the meantime, a new insurgent candidate, Oystermen and veteran Graham Platner, has emerged as a credible challenger, running on a platform of taking on the billionaires on behalf of the working class.

[Graham Platner]

At its core, it's a working class ideology that is built in movement politics. So I take my inspirations from the labor movement. I take my inspirations from the civil rights movement. I American history is not a history of working people asking permission to get things from those in power. Every good thing that we have gotten, quite frankly, for working people in this country does not come from writing a strongly worded letter to someone in power and then they just give it to you. We need to build power. We need to build organizational power, both in communities and workplaces. We need to build a much deeper structure of power through our political apparatus in a way that we can leverage it far after campaigns come and go.

[Ryan Grim]

So a spokesperson for Wood said that his campaign would not work with Mothership. Quote Jordan for Maine, has not and will not hire Jordan's husband's firm. We are working with a competitor, said Sarah McCarthy, the spokesperson for Wood's campaign. Quote Jordan is running for Senate because he believes our representatives should be accountable to regular folks, not billionaires or the elites, which is why he won't take a dime, and from corporate PACs or lobbyists, unquote. Now, Wood began as the political director for End Citizens United, which was birthed by mothership in 2015 as a campaign finance reform project. Wood helped get it off the ground, becoming its finance and PAC director in November 2015 and later its political director and vice president, leaving in January 2020, according to an ECU spokesperson. While Wood was there, ECU paid mothership more than $9 million while raising $73 million, the spokesperson said. The Wood campaign said Wood recused himself from ECU's dealings with mothership once he and Lipset began dating. The PAC eventually became independent of Mothership, completely cutting ties in 2023, and mothership now deploys Defend the Vote as its election integrity related PAC rather than ecu. Now, notably, while Defend the Vote has endorsed Wood for Senate ecu, his former organization has not, despite the fact that he served as its executive director, strengthening ECU's claim to independence from the mothership network in the 2022 cycle. The mothership ecosystem grew with the advent of a new PAC. Democracy First PAC, which made Wood executive director in September 2022, would step down in April 2025 to run for Senate. While Lipset remains a partner in Mothership, which now boasts on its website of having raised nearly a billion dollars for clients. That was billion with a b. The PAC under Wood's leadership did not initially hire Mothership for email fundraising and instead relied on a handful of major donors, including $3.5 million of the first cycle from philanthropist Lynn Schusterman. But as he left but as he left, Mothership came in and Democracy first ended up shoveling huge amounts of money their way. The month he left, the PAC funneled more than $500,000 to Mothership first, followed by another two payments nearing $100,000 total in May and June of this year. Wood's campaign did not address Dropsite's specific questions about these payments and I asked them a follow up question about these payments specifically and they ignored it again. Mothership, for its part, did not respond to a request for comment. So then Jordan transferred control of Democracy first to Progressive Turnout Project, which subsequently endorsed him in March 2023 before Wood left, according to filings with the FEC. March 2025, democracy first named Harry Pascal, co founder of Progressive Turnout Project, as its treasurer and custodian of records, switched its mailing address to the same address used by PTP, and named a slew of mothership PACs as, quote, affiliated committees. Progressive Turnout Project's co founder, Hannah Giltner, now runs Democracy First. Quote, Progressive Turnout Project was inspired by the work Democracy first was doing and wanted to fold it into their operation to augment their existing state and local work, said wood's campaign spokesperson McCarthy. Now, in March 2025, democracy first became affiliated with Progressive Turnout Project. She went on, they went on. We're proud of the work Democracy first has done on the ground, electing pro democracy candidates with field support in key battleground states like Pennsylvania. And Progressive Turnout Project wanted to ensure that work would continue into the 2026 cycle. Democracy first and Progressive Turnout Project were two of the only organizations to provide support to Pennsylvania State Senator James Malone in his upset special election victory in March. Currently, Democracy first is on pace to spend $1 million in field support for local elections in Pennsylvania this fall and is preparing 2026 plans for Arizona, Michigan, Nevada and Wisconsin, unquote. Progressive Turnout Project, the sister PAC to Woods Democracy First PAC is likely going to raise tens of millions of dollars from people hoping to oust Susan Collins, much of which will be funneled to Lipset's Mothership. Progressive Turnout Project, in a statement, said that it stands by its early endorsement of Jordan Wood. Quote, we've been familiar with Jordan's work for years and we also understand the importance of fielding a strong competitor and against an entrenched Republican incumbent as early as possible, the statement read. We believe Jordan continues to be the most formidable candidate to take on Susan Collins, unquote. Now Emily, what's what's so wild about this? Mothership story is that the world's known about them for a very long time. If you have this next element, we can put this HuffPost article up on the screen. This is 2016. I edited this story back in 2016. The headline is, this group raised $11 million to defeat Citizen Business United. Why so why do people hate them?

[Saagar Enjeti]

Is that your headline?

[Ryan Grim]

Probably. I'm sure that was my headline. Paul Story by Paul Blumenthal. Good piece. Go back and read it. And it looks, it's like, wow, look, all of this money is being raised ostensibly for campaign finance reform, and then it's getting moved to this fundraising firm. And the emails are completely insane and they're driving everybody crazy. And everyone in the election reform space hated them. Soon after that, a new president of the board came in and actually ECU starts then moving away from mothership. Then in 2019, you put this next element up. Washington Post comes in with this, which I mentioned briefly at the top, how a little known Democratic firm cashed in on the wave of midterm money. This look into their practices. Again, this had the effect of getting campaigns like Ossoff used them in 2018 for his house race. Doug Jones used them in Alabama. And they do raise enormous amounts of money. Those emails work. But then Mothership keeps an enormous percentage of it and it churns through people's inboxes. People are like, okay, fine, I give you money. Go away. It's like, ah, you gave us money. You're getting emails forever.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, you just made it so much worse.

[Ryan Grim]

So after that Washington Post article, the party basically stopped using them, but they still had all these packs that they've made. So they make a pack, progressive turnout project, whatever. And then they raise money for the pack. Then they take money from the pack for raising money for the pack. And then they do some, you know, voter turnout stuff or whatever. They do.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It's financialization of politics.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah. And it's good money. They're making enormous sums of money. To think that you're, you know, if you talk to voters, one of the things they don't like about the party, and I wonder if this is true of Republicans as well, because I don't know what their email habits are, is the text messages in the emails.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, everybody hates those.

[Ryan Grim]

It drives people great. And Mothership was the pioneer of all this stuff. And then Mothership's this guy and he's gonna run for Senate.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, I mean, to be fair, that strategy got Kamala Harris elected president.

[Ryan Grim]

There you go. Just carpet bombing your. Yeah. Text messaging it worked on Saturday Night Live.

[Saagar Enjeti]

And I, of course, control the Senate and the House right now. So you can't argue against the strategy.

[Ryan Grim]

Was it her husband who on Saturday Night Live was like, kamala, can I get off these text messages at least?

[Saagar Enjeti]

And she's like, no, hell no, it's not happening.

[Ryan Grim]

You absolutely cannot. So, okay, the argument for it is that it works to raise money, but the argument against it here is that these PACs are not doing much with all of that money.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And it's denuding the comments.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. It's a vicious cycle because the more you fuel the strategy, the more the money is going to go lining the pockets of the consultants who do the strategy rather than actually getting back to a better point where you can have the money going to the candidates. Actual campaign efforts themselves, not entirely unlike the Washington Post story this week that revealed the Harris campaign or the DNC agreed to cover the debts of the Harris campaign so long as Harris herself was fundraising in the background and trying to raise the money. So Kamala Harris would raise the money if the DNC covered the costs. And it's like a shocking amount. It was like one and a half billion dollars, and it made like, I don't know, 20 million, something like that, which is good numbers for the dnc, But a lot of that, you can go back and look, was spent on things like this.

[Ryan Grim]

And you can do it.

[Saagar Enjeti]

More money.

[Ryan Grim]

You can do it another way that the two biggest email fundraisers in Democratic Party politics are Bernie and aoc.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And if you read Marjorie Taylor Greene, too, and I don't know what hers are like, but if you read. I'm curious, tell me if you read AOCs or Bernie's. They're not this.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yep.

[Ryan Grim]

They're. They're trying to be inspirational. And they don't say, like, if you don't give $5, like, you, you know, I'm going to be thrown in prison tomorrow.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Oh, you're talking about the pitches themselves. I was talking about small dollar donors in general.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, but, but so the two biggest are AOC and Bernie, and they managed to raise the money without begging. Predatory stuff in your inbox.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right.

[Ryan Grim]

So it shows that if you have. If people are invested in. In you, believe in you, they will give you money to do that project. The problem for the Democratic Party is nobody's bought into them.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

Because what do they stand for? So they have to. Then the only thing left is fear. But what is that? What is. Do you know what the. Do you get her emails?

[Saagar Enjeti]

No, I. Yeah. I shouldn't have spoke because I didn't. I don't know what the tone of her fundraising pitches are. My guess would be that they're more similar because she has a really similar rate of small dollar people are into her. Yeah, yeah. It's actually she's even higher than some populist Democrats among small like percentage of your donations that are small $. I think actually higher than AOC.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, you can get a lot of emails and contacts off of Facebook. Like that's where. So the way that this whole scam works, basically this is a little Cambridge Analytica E. Yeah. You run Facebook ads to basically attract people onto your email list and then you email them. Democrats are not on Facebook as much as Republicans are nowadays is my. Is my sense.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And so it. And certainly Bernie AOC supporters are under 40 and 50, so they're definitely not on Facebook. So it's actually much harder than to, to collect their emails. So it would stand to reason that Marjorie Taylor Greene's people who are on Facebook and still on email. But anyway, the idea that this like maybe Jordan Wood is like the greatest Canada ever, but like he's part of this ecosystem that people don't like and.

[Saagar Enjeti]

It'S part of an arms race and that's exactly like you just end up in this arms race for out fundraising and then the money keeps going disproportionately in higher increments to the fundraisers instead of to the campaign. And that is absolutely. I mean I have a friend who's a consultant who has a super flaming hot take on this, which is actually like we spend way more money annually on Halloween candy than we do on presidential elections. And like we should be spending way more money on presidential elections. And that's the like I just think that's completely crazy. I feel like we spend.

[Ryan Grim]

Political consultants believe that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, of course, yeah. But like a sincere ideological belief that we should be spending way more money. It's self serving, of course, but it's a sincere argument because we do just spend a lot of money in this country and hey, if our priority is Halloween candy, like why not actually spend so much money on, you know, it doesn't have to all go to ads. I disagree with that and I think most Americans disagree with that. And I'm really curious how the Platner campaign talks about it because at a certain point, and I guarantee you the consultants and fundraisers know this, you hit a tipping point when people catch on in the emails, get sick of the emails. We're not yet there we're not yet at peak text or email, but we will at some point, and then it will not work anymore, and they will have to pivot to something else, and we'll see what that is. But it's not going to always work. And I think at a certain point, the Platters of the world, it becomes valuable to them to actually campaign on these process things.

[Ryan Grim]

And in Maine, at least, you can't put any more money in. I had a member of Congress from there predict to me that she's like, sarah Gideon won't even be able to spend this money because there are only so many hours of, like, local television ads that you can buy.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

There's only so much space in somebody's mailbox to cram flyers.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

And these glossy mailers. And people are sick because a lot of people in Maine, you have to pay to have your garbage picked up, or you have to drive it to the dump, and you have to pay by the weight. And now you've got. Every single day you're getting half a pound of these political mailers. It starts to tick people off. So that's one reason she's finished the race with 10 million bucks. And in her bank, it's like Brewster's Million. It's just impossible to spend. And that's why the fundraising consultants are like, all right, well, how about we just take a little bit more from you, since you can't spend it anyway. I could use another boat. What good is a lakeside house without a boat?

[Saagar Enjeti]

We could all use another boat.

[Ryan Grim]

We invited Jordan Wood on to respond to this. He did not take us up on that offer. So we would be texting him. We're not trying to be biased here.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right. But we will be texting him 10 times every hour until he agrees to come on.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right. Yes. We emailed him 155 times, despite him.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Unsubscribing from the headline, all caps urgent.

[Ryan Grim]

Definitely signing him up for drop site emails.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yes. Oh, that's a good idea.

[Ryan Grim]

Graham Platner, speaking of which, did take us up on the offer. He will be here tomorrow.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That's right. So make sure to stay tuned tomorrow for that. Now, Ryan, let's get to Taylor Lorenz, who is joining us to have a little bit friendly debate.

[Ryan Grim]

They're gonna be so disappointed. It's not Taylor Swift. No.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, we started with Swift. Then we thought about rearranging the block so that it said Taylor Swift on the bottom bar. But.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, let's bring in Taylor.

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[Today Show Co-Host]

Good morning, welcome to today.

[Today Show Host]

From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all along.

[Commercial Announcer]

As the forecast calls for football all.

[Today Show Host]

Across the country, blockbuster stars, live concerts and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

[Today Show Co-Host]

We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together.

[Today Show Host]

Watch the Today show weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Ryan Grim]

Joining us now is Taylor Lorenz, who as often is at the center of some Internet discourse this time around. The moves by schools that are opening up this week and next to ban phones inside their walls. I told my 14 year old that we were gonna be talking about this and she is utterly shocked and appalled that I think that they should actually have to put their phones away when they go into the school. She's team 10 and that I disagree with you on this.

[Krystal Ball]

She.

[Ryan Grim]

Just apoplectic 100% supportive of your position from talking to other friends of hers as well as like I was reading the Jackson Reed like student newspaper about it last year when they introduced the band. I think if you polled the students in high school, it'd be roughly 99% if not 100% opposed to these bands. So like they have a view on this that I think does need to be considered. It's unusual that kids would be wrong and adults would be right. I think that they are wrong. I think that we're right. I want to hear out your, you know, the best arguments for my daughter's case because she frankly wasn't making it. She's like, I want to be able to text my friends in class. I'm like, that's not a good argument.

[Krystal Ball]

No, we don't want that. We don't want that.

[Ryan Grim]

She's like, only when we have breaks though.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Uh huh. Well, of course.

[Krystal Ball]

Okay, so here's the thing. First of all, no one wants their kids or no one wants any kids on their phone during class distracted. Like no one, no normal person would make that argument.

[Ryan Grim]

She agrees with that.

[Krystal Ball]

That's. Yeah. And, and there's a big sort of a wide range of options between laws that are often enforced by campus resource officers, police and we can get into that verse rules or norms or you know, other ways of sort of like curtailing cell phone behavior use during class. So my, my opposition is specifically to the laws. You know, if schools, if teachers want to have certain policies, if they want, you know, everyone to put their phone in a basket or these little pocket things that they make now for classrooms, you know, that's totally fine. I think that's great. I would encourage teachers to kind of cultivate their own learning environments. But I think once we get into these blanket laws there can be a lot of unintended effects and I think that we are not discussing a lot unattended effects. And specifically I'm concerned with the sort of civil liberties implications with some of the laws.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So yeah, if you could flesh out what some of the civil liberties implications of that might be. I think Ryan and I are both on the same page. Particularly Ryan has done reporting on this over the years about how some of the unintended consequences of sweeping laws that are. They're able to be implemented. They get the political permission structure to be implemented by lawmakers because they're addressing a serious problem. And then the attempt to address a serious problem has unintended consequences. Because they were able to do the power grab, everyone was sort of desperate for some type of solution. So I don't object to the idea that there may be unintended consequences here. Tell us a little bit about what you think they might be, Taylor.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, so we've had tech bans in the past, and I would say the closest corollary to this is actually the beeper ban. This was a little before my time, but back in the early 90s, there was this really big panic about beepers. Kids had the beepers going off in class. Like pagers were a new thing. This was a big distraction at school. And there was a lot of concern about beepers. And, you know, it was. The implication was that people use beepers for, like, drug use. So there was this moral panic around them. We saw how those laws played out where basically hundreds of kids ended up having interactions with police. Some kids ended up with criminal records. In one Chicago school, dozens of kids were arrested and kids were just having these. These regular interactions with the police already. I talked to a parent in LA just last week who was talking about this exact issue where the teachers rightfully, in certain environments don't want to enforce these bans or the admin. And we have an increasing number of police in school campus resource officers, which has actually skyrocketed since the days of those beeper bans. And those are often the people that are sort of tasked with enforcing these bans. So it ends up just being this quite discriminatory policy where they just sort of harass kids and it just leads to more interactions with kids and police. So I'm sort of against that. I also think that we have to look at this law in the context of this broader legislative and political effort that we're seeing right now to restrict kids from access to the Internet. And I can get into that more broadly, but I think a lot of people have been sort of talking about things like age verification and these other things. And this law is very much tied. Like these laws, rather are very much tied in this broader political effort to sort of censor the Internet.

[Ryan Grim]

And before we go into some of that, I wanted to get you to address the related controversy that you're inside now. You've been going back and forth with a couple people on Twitter, including Rachel Cohen Booth, who, who flagged. Maybe we can put up.

[Krystal Ball]

What do we decided to say that I was paid by a phone company. I am not paid by a phone company. Never have been paid by a phone company. I don't know what like that really bothered me.

[Saagar Enjeti]

You did put up the tag pedsponse.

[Krystal Ball]

No, I didn't. No, no, no.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, let's, let's put out her in their case and then have you respond to it. Their case. Is that. So you did a TikTok about bark, which is a.

[Krystal Ball]

You can tell us child safety software. Yeah.

[Ryan Grim]

In the post it said hashtag ad and it had a link that had a long code at the end of it. And you said the tracking code. Tracking code. And you said you're doing this in partnership with Bark.

[Saagar Enjeti]

So people, the screenshot we had right there did have the tag paid partnership.

[Krystal Ball]

Which I think I know. Oh my God.

[Saagar Enjeti]

No, no, no.

[Krystal Ball]

That's all we wanted to do. Railing things the way that on TikTok, and I understand for people that don't use TikTok, they don't understand this. There's only one way to tag promotional content. So you click promotional content on TikTok, it comes up as paid. And that just means that the brand can put money behind it. Doesn't mean that you got money. I've been extra, extra careful where even things that I'm not paid for. I'll mark it as promotional because I am making something promotional like, hey, I really like this product. But me making a free promotion for child safety software that I use that by the way is completely is unrelated and is actually on the same side as you guys on these bans is just so absurd and ridiculous. And I think it just shows the, the attempt that people will go to, to sort of smear and attempt to discredit anybody that even raises issues with this. I have been reporting on this topic for eight years. Like I've been writing about all of these laws, the broader political effort I've been talking about, people like Jonathan Haidt, whoever are going into these school district specifically lobbying for these laws, the interest groups around that. This is something that I've covered for a long time. And I'm actually, you know what who's actually paying me is this, is this program, this reporters in residence program that I'm in right now. Where I'm specifically, I got into the program talking about covering these laws. That's what I like am being paid for is basically this fellowship program. So it's just very silly. But. But yeah, I mean, I would say.

[Ryan Grim]

That you did post screenshots or somebody posted screenshots of the company saying, yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

The company has said many times on the record she's not paid. But. But it's like, I think people will just jump to anything where they just kind of want to make up a narrative because they want to discredit this issue. And this is very normal in moral panics. I write a lot about moral panics and I'm not saying that necessarily kids being on their phone in class is moral panic, but this issue is very tied to a broader moral panic about cell phones where people are convinced that they're, you know, making kids sort of mass unalive themselves and things like that. Not to use YouTube learning, you could.

[Ryan Grim]

See why people thought from the way that it was presented.

[Krystal Ball]

Sure, of course, of course. But also like, well, of course I can understand like people getting confused, but at that point you have me responding and I was at a funeral that day, so I didn't have the chance to respond quite so quickly as people might have liked.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But.

[Krystal Ball]

And then the company issuing multiple statements saying, you know, this is just not the case. You've misunderstood the situation. But, you know, okay, well, so the.

[Ryan Grim]

Question on the moral panic, yes, it's just, it does seem to me, well, first of all, just in my own life, I'm not a kid anymore. My brain is better formed than kids that are still developing. But even myself, since smartphones have come around, I think I read less, I do more audiobooks. I used to be able to sit down and read 10, 20, 30 pages at a stretch and then take a little break or something. Now it's like a page and a half and I find myself distracted or scrolling. Combine that with the rates of anxiety and depression that we're seeing society. Why are we like, why are we wrong to link these?

[Krystal Ball]

Well, you could combine that with the rate of baggy pants, Ryan, and you would find also a correlation that doesn't.

[Ryan Grim]

Mean that the guys actually skinnier in.

[Saagar Enjeti]

That period of time.

[Krystal Ball]

Skinny pants. So what I would caution people against is making these broad based sort of conclusions.

[Ryan Grim]

We actually had quite literally distracted from the book to like, look at my baggy pants distracted.

[Krystal Ball]

But you are making that correlation that just does not exist in research. And we have the top, top, top researchers, people like Candace Odgers who wrote a great piece for the Atlantic on this exact topic, Alice Marwick. People that have studied this issue in depth for years and years and years coming out and saying, hey, we actually do know the cause of some of these broader issues. Anxiety, all of these other things, we know those causes, and they're not related to phones. There is no correlation between those things. And it is just a fact based on the research that we have that that is just not a sort of a clear correlation. That's not to say that.

[Ryan Grim]

Ryan, what does she say they are?

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, gosh, you have to read her piece. It's kind of long and I don't want to mess it up. But all sorts of things. I mean, one in six kids is growing up below the poverty line. Like, I don't know, just all of these other things that kids are dealing with, like, they're growing up in a pretty stressful world and they're told just the way that I was told that video games were, you know, destroying our lives. Back in, you know, when I was growing up, we had the video game sort of panic where people were like, oh, these kids spend hours and hours on the video games. It's destroying their mental health. It's making them violent. Like, we've seen these moral panics play out over and over and over again. That doesn't mean that. That doesn't mean that everyone has a healthy relationship with their phone. And you shouldn't worry about. What we know is that the way that you are can often inform your behavior. So if you are already depressed and you go down a rabbit hole, that can exacerbate it or whatever, but it is sort of like it is more a symptom rather than the problem. And when we're treating it as the problem rather than the symptom of the problem, we don't ever get to address the sort of core issues. And often, and there are core issues that sort of lead to these mental health issues among children. And again, that does not mean that they should be able to sit on the cell phones all day. But what I would say is a lot of this moral panic is tied to content. So you'll see these people saying, like, they're gonna sit on TikTok all day, right? They're gonna sit in class all day, like on TikTok. And the concern is more about the content and the sort of villainizing of short form video content.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, yeah, I was gonna say, I don't disagree with you because you shared a substack that's been going pretty Viral, I think from somebody who like disagrees with you on a lot of different things. And someone had sent that to me separately as well. And it is that these bans are a way to shoehorn sort of content bans. And I don't actually disagree that that's probably the case with some people, that it's kind of a gateway to age verification laws and certain things that do genuinely encroach on civil liberties and creativity and freedom and all of that. I wanted to get your take though on. I mean I'm looking at, I have three studies pulled up. One from PLoS One, one from Scientific Reports and this other one is from.

[Krystal Ball]

I don't know, I just want to say before you pull up any studies, studies, we have to look at the body of research and we have to look at how. And I don't, I can't speak to these specific studies. Sure. But what I would say is that all of the top researchers on this topic, this specific topic, got together last year and issued an 82 page report surveying the overwhelming amount of sort of studies on this topic and debunked this. A lot of misleading studies pushed by this man, Jonathan Height, which is sort of these most popular.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'm not even going to get into Height here. The other one here is from the Journal of Association for Consumer Research. And I'm not, I mean I'm not an expert on this. So I'm just saying these are studies not about anxiety or any of that. This is a study that shows this is particular to the phone ban issue. I think it's salient separately that show the kind of brain drain phenomenon. I think we all probably feel this intuitively or maybe you disagree, which is that as you're doing studies, even having a phone near you, even if it's flipped down, reduces cognitive capacity. And so on the question of whether or not it's proper for school districts to say we're locking these guys up in yonder pouches from the beginning of the school day to the end of the school day. It seems to me that addresses the very specific question of whether kids cognitive capacity is harmed while they're learning because.

[Krystal Ball]

Their phone's in their backpack. Yeah, but like these studies are so dubious. Like often these are industry studies or they're funded by people with specific political agendas like et cetera, et cetera. You also have to consider this.

[Saagar Enjeti]

I can say that about the big tech funded studies that go in the.

[Krystal Ball]

Other direction, but there's tons of non big tech funded studies. And again you have to look at the overwhelming body of research and the overwhelming body of research on the cognitive capacity question.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What about the cognitive capacity question?

[Krystal Ball]

The cognitive capacity question is a good question. But here's the thing that you have to consider. All of these school districts are different. And this is again, I'm not saying that this means kids can be on their phone all day in class. I'm just against these laws where certain places you put the phone away, but you're on a laptop, you're on a really high functioning great laptop and that's totally fine. And you're sort of connected. A lot of school districts, the phone is the only word processor people have when you start to block them away. 15% of kids are disabled. A lot of kids use these as learning aids. And I know that's hard to believe, but a lot of times the phone is the only sort of computer that kids have in school. And we haven't even gotten into this yet. But because of big tech lobbying and other things we have had and because we just are trying to prepare kids for the modern world, we have integrated technology into every part of the learning process and so sort of, sort of enter our lives and sort of, sort of take this one piece away without addressing and without having any funding. These laws don't come with like funding initiatives or whatever to fix the broader infrastructure. It sort of just leaves kids less prepared. I would also say we want to teach kids restraint and control. We want to teach kids. What we don't want is for them to go off when they're 18 to college and not know how to self regulate their own technological use. Right. We want to give them a safe environment where there are guardrails, where they're not allowed to sit on the phone all day long, but, but where we can teach them restraint. Otherwise you're just prolonging the inevitable. Because phones, as much as this political effort is trying, are not going to be banned from public life, hopefully anytime soon for adults or the workplace. And so we want to encourage a healthy relationship with tech, if that makes sense.

[Ryan Grim]

It always has struck me as odd that schools are filled with all of these different electronic devices and they focus on this one thing still, on the other hand, you don't think there's. So from your perspective, what do the studies say about the effect of screens on developing brains and on kids?

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, well, there's a big question, right, because you have like, if you talk about screens on developing brains, like you don't want to put a one year old in front of a screen all day, like YouTube all day or something. But, but, but overwhelmingly, I mean, I think Candice Hodgers has really just been the best and I encourage people to seek out her work. And Alice Marwick, these are two brilliant researchers that have really spoken about this at length. But this idea of like screen time and the panic over screen time is just very imprecise. And the reason that the studies don't show anything is because it completely depends what your screen time is. You could be using your screen time to consume content that is making you feel bad or something, or you could be using your screen time to text your friends and be creative and make creative work. We want people to do the latter. We want to teach kids to use their phone in healthy and creative ways. And when we tell the kids, especially when the primary way that kids use their phone is through texting, the primary way that kids use social media is actually dming with each other. It's not scrolling the feed. Adam Massari came out and even said that. So we don't want to villainize communication. We want kids to stay in healthy, productive communication with each other and not bully each other and have positive experiences with each other and have social interaction. Especially queer kids, you know, kids that are from marginalized groups who rely on these online connections a lot more than other kids. But we just want to give them a healthy way to do that and teach them boundaries. And the best way to do that is to teach it to them when they're young, not to completely ban devices until they turn 18 and then it's a complete free for all. It's just that's not an effective way to teach anybody healthy media consumption.

[Saagar Enjeti]

What about parents who. Let me try this one out. What about parents who say they don't actually they don't give their kids phones, they don't want their kids to have phones. They worry, they read the studies differently, they have different perspective on it and they don't want their kids to be exposed to phones at all. So the bans then allow those parents to allow their kids to have a phone free childhood without then getting shown something in between classes that actually from the content perspective may be harmful. Maybe take your example of maybe it's a queer kid and someone shows something on the phone between classes that that is harmful to their mental health and their parents want to be able to prevent that. How would, why not allow parents to let their kids make that decision for their own kids? Because you can't control that between classes.

[Krystal Ball]

No, but what I would say is that you should Be careful with that decision. We know actually that the mental health of kids that have the smartphone sooner is actually more positive. Like they have better mental health because they're able to get in touch with friends. And ironically, it's also been found that poor kids have access to phones much more easily than richer kids. So it's not explained by income. And that is because they're able to keep in touch with friends. There's a study that came out that recently found that as well that kids actually spent more time outside with friends because they're able to make plans. So you want kids to be able to communicate with friends. This idea of this phone free childhood, again, we live in a world. I know that there's these political efforts, the people that are selling the phone free childhood idea, they're also pushing a lot of other reactionary political efforts that would censor adult adults from content too. They want to go to a world before phones and before the Internet.

[Ryan Grim]

And I admit to that.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Yeah, me too.

[Krystal Ball]

And well, guys, let me tell you, there's a lot of bad about the Internet and I've written about bullying and trust me, I am. No one is saying, I just have to reiterate this again, that you should have unmitigated access to, you know, your cell phone all day when you're 13 years old, you have to teach healthy Internet use. But we live in the world. And if you want your kids to be competitive and if you want your kids to be able to function and have a job and make it through college, you do need to teach them these skills. And I understand the fights that come with it. But the way that we can fight these addictive, you know, algorithms, and I think the problems that a lot of people have with the phones in terms of the content is through comprehensive data privacy reform. You want less addictive algorithms, you want less predatory apps, you want less control of big tech and more nonprofit driven online spaces that are about community. Join me in advocating for privacy laws and data, you know, data privacy specifically. We will never get those laws if this political effort to ban the phones and age restrict everything is successful. Because. And let me just say one other thing. At the same time that they are banning phones, they are, you know, do these schools are doing partnerships with surveillance software companies that will do facial recognition to determine who's allowed to be on campus and who's not harvesting detailed biometric data on children. Like all of this stuff that could have significantly worse consequences for them down the line.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, I saw a couple of months ago you write about those studies that you just referenced. And that was one of the first times where I was like, oh, this is kind of interesting. You did a piece about how the studies were showing that kids that didn't have access to phones at all, like, had worse mental health outcomes.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But that's also the collective action, right? Because if you need to have a cell phone to make plans with your friend, it's because your friends.

[Ryan Grim]

Right, right. So.

[Krystal Ball]

And I think there's a balance. I just think there's a balance here. And I just think before we jump to laws that will be enforced by campus police officers, we should have a more balanced discussion of what we're trying to achieve and what the realistic trade offs are. Because there are realistic trade offs here. You know, not to mention the problems with parents and shift work and school. You know, there's just so many down the line.

[Ryan Grim]

So from your perspective, final question. What should, what should parents do?

[Krystal Ball]

Oh, God. I think it depends on the type of school that you have and it depends on your child's educational environment and who your child is and how they're using their phone. I am against, against, like, I am against, you know, again, just like giving your kid completely unsupervised Internet time and unsupervised phone time forever. Obviously you want to slowly introduce. And the reason I was talking in the first place for free about like child, you know, protection software is because it sort of allows parents to have a little bit more control over their kids online experience. I think it's good to introduce kids to phones. I think having restrictions, parental restrictions, taking it away during certain times of the day, teaching them moderation and how to work with phones and use their phone in a healthy way and communicate in a healthy way is helpful and just that's broad. The Internet, that's the other thing is that like these phone conversations are going to be irrelevant. Kids have Apple watches, smart glasses. The Internet is getting more and more integrated into every part of our life. We're going to have wearables soon. So we have to help kids have this healthy relationship with the Internet while they're still young.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Ryan is an elder millennial, but as.

[Ryan Grim]

A, I was in school during the beeper thing and yeah, it was like pitched largely is about drug dealers and it's like kind of drug dealers like getting pinged in class about.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But I was just gonna say as a junior millennial, my high school was cut in half by the smartphone. And I fully, fully concede to being part of a moral panic. And this one probably could seem to be a moral panic. I'm a much, much different side of this than you are, Taylor. But we appreciate you coming here and making the case and allowing us to have this discussion.

[Today Show Co-Host]

Yeah.

[Krystal Ball]

Thank you for having me. And please don't, please don't destroy me online. I'm just trying to add a little.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Nuance to tell people where they can find your work.

[Krystal Ball]

Yeah, I'm on YouTube. Aylorlorens. I have a series called Free Speech Friday where I talk about civil liberties concerns and tech policy. So I talk about this stuff specifically and I'm everywhere else, just at Taylor Lorenz.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Well, thank you so much for coming on.

[Krystal Ball]

Thank you.

[Commercial Announcer]

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[Today Show Co-Host]

Good morning. Welcome to today.

[Today Show Host]

From back to school to tackling your to do list, the Today show is your best start to the day.

[Ryan Grim]

It's a new season and every morning we're here to help you take it all on. As the forecast calls for football all across the country.

[Today Show Host]

Blockbuster stars, live concerts, and so much more. Wake up to where it's all happening.

[Today Show Co-Host]

We're getting back to all of it and the best way to start is together.

[Today Show Host]

Watch the Today show Weekday mornings at 7am on NBC.

[Commercial Announcer]

Happy dance. Empty bowl, tail in overdrive. That's the Ollie effect. Fresh human grade dog food your pup will love. Ollie delivers clean nutrition in five delicious recipes made with real ingredients. In the US no fillers, no preservatives, just real food that supports your dog's health from the inside out. Start with a quick 30 second [e-mail] gopup to create a personalized meal plan based on your dog's age, weight, activity level and health goals. New subscribers get a welcome kit with two weeks of meals, a free storage container and a step by step guide to help with the transition. With Ollie, you'll see more energy, shinier coats, healthier weight and yes, easier cleanup. Dogs deserve the best. Go to ollie.com thrivepup and use code thrivepup to get 60% off your first box. That's o l l I e.com thrivepup it's backed by a happiness guarantee, so if it's not the right fit, you'll get your money back.

[Ryan Grim]

Slightly different kind of segment here we have new reporting from Dropsite on the ground in Serbia, from journalists there. Let's go ahead and rol.

[Saagar Enjeti]

This is.

[Serbian Reporter]

The Novi Sad railway station in Serbia, built in 1964. After a recent renovation, it was officially reopened in July 2024. Just a few months later, on November 1, 2024 at 11:52am, a concrete canopy weighing over 300 tons collapsed, killing a total of 16 people. Following the renovation, the station building had neither an occupancy permit nor a completed technical inspection. The initial estimate for the works was 3 million euros. In the end, the cost rose to 16 million. The station was renovated as part of the construction of the high speed railway from Belgrade to the Hungarian border, a project of national importance carried out under the Serbia China Agreement. In Serbia, such deals are commonly made behind closed doors. In the aftermath of the tragedy, the investor, Chinese partners Serbian Railways and President Aleksandr Vucic all stated that the collapsed canopy had not been part of the reconstruction. It would later emerge that each of these claims was false. Modifications to the canopy had inflicted been carried out in the first days following the collapse. Those responsible were largely neither detained nor held in custody, with most released pending trial or allowed to remain under house arrest. Fifteen days after the tragedy, tributes to the victims begin across Serbia. Held Every Friday at 11:52am, 22 days after the collapse, students were assaulted by officials and members of the ruling party while paying tribute in front of a university building in Belgrade. The protests swell in size in the days that follow. Students initiate blockades at the more than 60 universities and colleges across the country. To the public, this marks a completely unexpected response from a student population long seen as apathetic and disengaged from politics. The students advocate for the rule of law, the fight against corruption, strong institutions and respect for the legal system. They demand accountability. They distance themselves from political parties and refuse to meet with the president, stating that their demands do not fall under his constitutional authority, but under the jurisdiction of other institutions. They receive support from the public in Serbia as well as from students in neighboring countries of the former Yugoslavia. Decision making within the movement is based on the principles of direct democracy. Resolutions are adopted at general assemblies by a majority vote of those present. Every voice can be heard. Every proposal can be put to a vote. As they occupy their university buildings, students put forward an initial set of four demands. First, they call for the full release of all documentation related to the reconstruction of the Novi Sad railway station, records that are currently unavailable to the public. Second, they demand that the relevant authorities confirm the identities of those suspected of physically assaulting students and professors, and that criminal proceedings be launched against them along with their dismissal if they hold public office. Third, they call for all charges against arrested or detained students to be dropped and for all ongoing criminal proceedings against them to be halted. Fourth, they demand a 20% increase in the budget for public universities.

[Ryan Grim]

Well, corruption in this society, in our.

[Serbian Reporter]

Country, so deep it reach all the way down to dinosaurs.

[Krystal Ball]

How could you translate Khumpai in English?

[Ryan Grim]

Keep adding the positive energy. Don't stop and don't lower the tension.

[Saagar Enjeti]

D.

[Serbian Reporter]

Students organize gathering gatherings in multiple cities across Serbia, reaching them through multi day protest marches which, as many have said, in some way sent a pulse through the country. President Vuci has ruled Serbia for 13 years. While the country is formally on the path toward European integration. Vuti continues to cultivate ties with both Moscow and Beijing. His rule is described by the Serbian opposition and as increasingly autocratic. Serbia remains one of the few countries that has not imposed sanctions on Russia, even as negotiations over the status of Kosovo continue under close international supervision. Meanwhile, Serbian ammunition is being sent to both Ukraine and Israel. The European Commission has included the lithium mining project in Serbia, Serbia, led by the company Rio Tinto, among the projects of strategic importance for the European Union. There is a growing sense that Vucic enjoys the backing of all major world powers who, preoccupied with their own crisis, pay little more than lip service to concerns over Serbia's internal political situation. At the end of November 2024, during a commemoration for the victims of the Novisad tragedy, an incident occurred in the town of Pozarev.

[Krystal Ball]

Automobile.

[Serbian Reporter]

In late January, after four young men emerged from the offices of Vutic Sparty in Novisad and and fractured a female student's jaw in three places using baseball bats. Serbian Prime Minister Milos Vuchevic submitted his resignation just over Three months later, President Vucic referred to those same party members as heroes and later pardoned them. Butic and members of his ruling party label the protesters as foreign paid agents, accusing them of working on behalf of outside powers to overthrow both the government and the state. In their pursuit of justice, the students visited European institutions, cycling for 13 days to Strasbourg and then running a relay ultra Marathon for 18 days to Brussels. On March 15, the largest gathering in Serbia's history took place in Belgrade, with some 300,000 people responding to a call from the student movement. During the event, some form of sonic weapon was reportedly used, a claim supported by testimonies from over 3,000 citizens. The government denied all such allegations, dismissing the public's reaction as staged and orchestrated. Just a day after this statement, a photograph surfaced showing a police vehicle equipped with an LRAD 450XL acoustic device in front of the Serbian Parliament during the protest. The Minister of Internal affairs then offered an explanation.

[Ryan Grim]

This is a test of the long range acoustic device.

[Serbian Reporter]

As their original demands remain unmet after six months of protest, on May 5, the students issue a new demand. Early elections in Serbia. They state they will not run as candidates themselves, but will vote on a candidate list through their General Assemblies. Meanwhile, repression against dissent in Serbia is intensifying. There are political arrests and persecutions, widespread surveillance, raids on civil society organizations, and the expulsion of foreign nationals.

[Ryan Grim]

All right, that'll do it for us today. You around on Friday?

[Saagar Enjeti]

I'm around on Friday. You're around on Friday?

[Ryan Grim]

I'll be here on Friday.

[Saagar Enjeti]

But I think we're off Monday. I think the show's off Monday because it's Labor Day weekend.

[Ryan Grim]

So that is correct. So no show. Bunnies, you really gotta be there for Friday if you want the whole show on Friday, not just the first half. BreakingPoints.com, become a premium member supports everything we do here. I've also been arguing that we should do the Friday show live for premium members.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Right?

[Ryan Grim]

Cause why not? Like, we got nothing to hide.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The sneakiest thing Ryan does is just talk about some of our internal discussions on air so that he can then use viewer feedback to fuel his.

[Ryan Grim]

People are demanding it now.

[Saagar Enjeti]

The people are crying out for the Taylor Switch Swift segment. But no, I think live would be fun. We don't really edit it anyway.

[Ryan Grim]

No, it just goes up.

[Saagar Enjeti]

Although sometimes our DMs open when we share our Twitter live.

[Ryan Grim]

Yeah, that's got to be on us. We just got a better opsec. Like, do what Griffin does, which is log out Twitter.

[Saagar Enjeti]

We can all learn from Griffin. Well, so we'll be here Friday. Maybe we'll because we'll be off Monday. Shove some extra stuff in. So great to make up for being off on Labor Day. So maybe we'll do that. Make sure that you're subscribed [e-mail] but other than that, Crystal and Soccer will be here tomorrow. We'll be with them or some combination of them Friday or and if you, if you're not there Friday, you got to be there Friday. But if you're not, we'll see you back here next Wednesday.

[Ryan Grim]

That's right. See you then.

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[Today Show Co-Host]

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[Krystal Ball]

This is an iHeart podcast.