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The Majority Report with Sam Seder
3686 - Why Big Tech Wants Age Verification; SCOTUS Corruption w/ Caitlin Vogus, Alex Aronson
01:19:06
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- [00:00]
Emma Vigland
Hey folks, is your dog a picky eater? That can be really stressful. You've tried mixing things in the food. You tried different brands. You've even sat next to them and tried to make them feel calm as they're eating. You tell yourself they'll eat when they're hungry, right? Or maybe, just maybe, your dog knows the difference between processed brown pellets.
- [00:19]
Brian
Ugh.
- [00:20]
Emma Vigland
And real food. Sundays for dogs is different. Founded by Dr. Tori Waxman, Sundays was created to make her high standards as a veterinarian and as a dog parent. Or to meet them rather. Sunday starts with 80% plus all natural meats and then add superfoods such as kale, ginger and blueberries. No fillers, no nutritional benefits, no chemicals, just simple complete nutrition. And I got to say, I have cats now, but I grew up only with dogs and I'm reading these ingredients and Sam can speak more to how great the this dog food is. But this, that's all stuff I remember from growing up, like how to make your dog's coat better, how to make their digestion better, blueberries, kale, ginger. That's, I mean that's the real stuff here, folks. Sundays is gently air dried include instead of using high heat so it doesn't look or smell like dog food. It looks like high quality human grade jerky. And the best part, Sundays. It requires no fridge, no freezer, no prep and no mess. You get the quality of a home cooked meal with the scoop and serve. Ease of kibble. It's what dog food should have been all along. And Sunday's just launched a brand new fish recipe. It's made with 80% whole and minced fish, including eco friendly invasive carp source from American rivers for a naturally rich flavor. In fact, did you know that many dogs naturally prefer fish flavors? So Sunday's fish recipe is especially great for your picky eaters, canine friends. Plus it's packed with omega 3 fatty acids that help support healthy skin, shiny coats, joints and brain function. It's complete and balanced nutrition for all life stages. It really is phenomenal. And these are the kinds of ingredients that you can get for your dog to make sure that they're as healthy as possible. Make the switch to Sundays. Go right now to sundays4dogs.com majority and get 50% off your first order. Or, or you can use code majority at checkout. That's 50% off your first order at Sundays for dogs.com majority Sundays for dogs.com majority or use code majority at checkout. And now time for the show. It is Monday July 13, 2020 26. My name is Emma Vigland in for Sam Cedar and this is the five time award winning Majority Report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, usa. On the program today, Caitlin Voges, senior advisor to the Freedom of the Press foundation, which partnered with the Intercept to publish her piece of online age verification law could kill Whistleblowing. And later in the show, Alex Aronson, co founder and executive director of Court Accountability, joined Sam for a conversation about the Supreme Court's endless corruption. Also on the program. Well, we were on dead Republican Senator watch. The gods threw us a curveball in what has been a bad week to be named Graham. Bloodthirsty ghoul Senator Lindsey Graham died suddenly at the age of 71. And we are partying.
- [03:50]
Sam Cedar
He will be missed. Why are you lying? Because Sam's not here to raid on the parade every time somebody dies. He's always like, I just regret that they were never held accountable for their actions.
- [04:01]
Emma Vigland
Oh, yeah, no, we can party. I mean, he died pretty young, which is awesome. Speaking of Sam, no one's accounted for his whereabouts, have they?
- [04:08]
Matt
Nope.
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Emma Vigland
He might be joining us in the fun half. Mitch McConnell has provided photo evidence that he's alive. Dang it. Ice kills again. This time in Maine, just days after killing a father in Houston. The story is still developing. IDF soldiers and armed settlers detained Congressman Ro Khanna in the west bank over the weekend. We will also have a friend of the show, Jasper Nathaniel on this week to discuss the escalating violence there and a separate attack he and his reporting team faced. The US and Iran continue to exchange fire in the Strait of Hormuz as oil prices rise once again. Trump says blockade back on. It's just like it feels like the same headlines, just recycling him. The DOJ subpoenas several New York Times journalists for reporting on the Qatari donated Air Force One. The New York Times also reports that Marco Rubio is effectively in control of Venezuela. 1 in 5 Texas Hispanic business owners say they've had an employee deported in the last year. And among those surveyed, Talarico has a seven point lead.
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Brian
Hmm.
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Emma Vigland
The bipartisan housing bill automatically became law over the weekend after Trump refused to sign it. Veto proof majority. Multiple blue states are preparing to file a lawsuit to block Paramount's acquisition of Warner Brothers. And lastly, wildfires rage near Paris and at least 12 people have been killed in southern Spain. This is Europe's third extreme heat wave of the summer. All this and more on Today's Majority Report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is Monday, Fun day Monday. And we can actually say that with a little bit of gusto. Now, you may be wondering where Sam is. He's still out as a Hollywood bigwig, but this, these upcoming days, at least this week, he's gonna be able to join for some parts of the show. So he will be joining us in the fun half for a little bit, unless, you know, he gets scheduled to do something else, you know.
- [06:34]
Brian
Yeah, we're not some kind of lunch meeting with a Hollywood executive.
- [06:39]
Emma Vigland
Exactly. We're too small time for him now, so we're partying. Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, arguably the military industrial complex's favorite creature of Washington. And when I say creature, I mean creature. He died on Saturday from a tear in his aorta. Oh. So he was chairman of the Budget Committee, Former chairman of the Judiciary Committee. You might remember him spitting and fuming and getting all red in the Kavanaugh hearings. You know, people might not remember that Lindsey Graham, despite being the most obvious closet case in America, ran for president in 2016. Yeah, yeah, he ran for president. He was one of those guys.
- [07:33]
Sam Cedar
Right.
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Emma Vigland
It's like. It's like remembering that Kirsten Gillibrand ran in 2020. You're like, what? That happened? Cory Booker did, too.
- [07:41]
Matt
What?
- [07:41]
Emma Vigland
We'll get to Cory Booker. His hagiography about Lindsey Graham in the fun half. Probably. But, you know, he ran for president then, and he lost pretty handily. And during that period, he was going on cable news and calling Trump a bigot and a xenophobe and said he represented the worst of America. He was against the Muslim ban. But it's a good reminder, I think, for people that any expedient rush to appear human by a senator that is this corrupted and is this okay with slaughtering children on behalf of moneyed interests can never be interpreted as anything more than aesthetic, because as soon as Trump won that nomination, oh, Lindsey Graham bent the knee, and he was essentially Trump's biggest cheerleader for the rest of his life. One of the biggest Zionist plants supporters in. In Congress. Look, it was an open secret that he was a gay man. But you have to wonder, given Mossad's extensive blackmail operation, if they had anything on him. I guess it doesn't really necessarily matter because what he supported stood on its own.
- [09:00]
Brian
He's a war pig.
- [09:01]
Emma Vigland
Yup. Boeing, Lockheed Martin, north of Grumman and more were some of the major donors to him throughout his career. And they got what they paid for, baby. His last Public appearance was at a Ukrainian drone factory posing with weapons of war like a kid on Christmas.
- [09:20]
Sam Cedar
Such a funny way to go.
- [09:21]
Emma Vigland
I know, right? Oh, and also, like, apparently refusing medical attention because he was more interested in going on Meet the Press, which would also match his record of loving to be on camera and television.
- [09:34]
Brian
Also having this sort of a secret, as you alluded to earlier with Graham, that's just sitting with the Senate seat he took over from white supremacist Drom Thurmond, who had a secret black daughter himself. So, yeah, this sort of secrets. Yeah, it's. It runs in the Republic.
- [09:50]
Emma Vigland
I mean, and in South Carolina. What's up with Tim Scott, the other senator from. The normal guy from South Carolina. Right, the normal guy who just got engaged anyway.
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Brian
Lucky lady.
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Matt
So.
- [10:03]
Emma Vigland
But, you know, he was a. Like, Lindsey Graham was not really interested in delivering for the people of South Carolina. His whole career is about committing wars and genocides overseas. That is his most consistent through line in terms of ideology. He was reportedly one of the people in Trump's ear pushing for this Iran war. He supported the Iraq war vigorously. He was furious that Biden withdrew from Afghanistan. He was a maximalist on Ukraine and one of the most vocal supporters of the genocide in Gaza. Here is Lindsey Graham in an interview from earlier this year, in February with Sky News Arabia, defending Israel's genocide in Gaza. Just to give you a sense of how rabid this freak was, when you look at the last few years since October 7th, many people in this part of the world say what happened in Gaza does not align with Christian values. Killing children, killing mothers.
- [11:06]
Alex Aronson
Well, be honest with you.
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Emma Vigland
Killing families who are not militants.
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Caller/Listener
Yeah, I don't buy that at all. Why? Because what did we do in World War II? Did we think one minute about starving the Germans? Did we bomb every city into smithereens? So this is a war, October 7th
- [11:24]
Emma Vigland
to World War II?
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Caller/Listener
Yes, I am. This is an absolute existential threat to the Jewish people. What happened on October 7th? 1200 people were slaughtered, raped and murdered and filmed by radical Islamists who would kill every Jew if they could. To the world. If you don't understand, this is a threat to Israel.
- [11:42]
Emma Vigland
And then they flattened Gaza, just flattened it.
- [11:44]
Caller/Listener
We flattened Berlin, we flattened Tokyo. Were we wrong to drop an atomic bomb to end the Japanese reign of terror? Were we? So my view, if I were Israel, yeah, I would have probably done it the same way. Without military victory, there is no hope of breaking radicalism. We flattened Germany, we flattened Japan.
- [12:09]
Emma Vigland
How many Americans?
- [12:10]
Caller/Listener
Wait a minute, wait a minute. Out of that we.
- [12:12]
Alex Aronson
The way that.
- [12:13]
Emma Vigland
How many Americans think the way that you do?
- [12:15]
Caller/Listener
I think most Republicans think the way I do.
- [12:17]
Emma Vigland
Even young ones.
- [12:19]
Caller/Listener
You're just out of touch if you don't understand Republicans when it comes to radical Islam is on Israel's side. It's not even close.
- [12:29]
Emma Vigland
Well, in terms of the political constituency that still supports Israel, he is right that that is solely based in the Republican Party. And not for nothing, this is the kind of thing that he wanted to cement ironclad support for death and destruction abroad. You know, we keep calling him a closet case, but, like, we're kind of seeing in real time that perhaps people are a little less afraid of NDAs. Now, we can't verify any of this, but you could just look on the Internet what some people are claiming. He was also a vigorous opponent of LGBTQ rights. So the hypocrisy of that is, you know, not lost on me here. And it's especially disgusting in that way because he had immense wealth and privilege and knew that he could live his life in the way that he wanted to, supporting death and destruction while other people's rights were being stripped away from them. So, you know, and he overcompensated constantly by trying to prove his masculinity by being in favor as much of as much death as humanly possible. So he's a pathetic figure in a variety. Or was. He was a pathetic figure, I say with a big smile on my face in many different ways. And so he's in death now being used exactly as he would have wanted as a political football for two of his favorite people on the planet, Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. Here is Trump in the immediate aftermath of, like, was Lindsey Graham even brought to the morgue at this point? How warm was his body when Trump calls in to push for the Save America act and, you know, using Lindsey Graham as a way to do so.
- [14:31]
Matt
Anybody like him, he was so intent. I mean, he literally called me about the Save America Act. That's why he's, you know, that's where I heard. Think of it. He's traveling for many, many hours. That's a long flight. That's a long trip. And he, you know, calls me about the Save America Act. He thought we were going to get it passed.
- [14:53]
Emma Vigland
Do you remember the very.
- [14:54]
Matt
This is a big. This is a big blow to the Save America act, let me tell you.
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Emma Vigland
Do you remember, Mr. President, what was the last.
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Matt
To him?
- [15:03]
Emma Vigland
What was the last thing he said to you?
- [15:06]
Matt
I said, we'll see you soon. Come over anytime you want. He came into the White House a lot because I liked him. Can't do that with everybody, but he come in.
- [15:16]
Emma Vigland
There's another part of this interview where he talks about Lindsey's golf game. They were frequent golf buddies and has a critique of one of his swings.
- [15:24]
Sam Cedar
Not a great striker of the ball.
- [15:29]
Emma Vigland
You know, we got to be honest about people, even in death. This was even more brazen. Benjamin Netanyahu went on Fox and Friends over the weekend to react to this as well.
- [15:47]
Matt
And
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Emma Vigland
this is how he characterizes his last conversation with Lindsey Graham or whatever.
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Random Guy
Okay? And I think once or twice he got his way. But let me tell you, the last conversation I had with him, I said, lindsey, we've come of age. We have a robust economy. We can. We can take care of our own financing, our own weapons for the defense of Israel and defense of our common interests with America. So I'm going to phase out the support, the military support for Israel over a period of years and bring it down to zero. We can do it. And he went ballistic. He said, no way. You can't do that, because he was so concerned with our security, which he believed was your security, that he actually fought the Prime Minister of Israel on keeping America's aid or actually increasing it. And that tells you what kind of a person this extraordinary, extraordinary friend was.
- [16:51]
Emma Vigland
You know, you can't accuse Lindsey of being a slacker or not passionate about politics, because even as perhaps he felt his health ailing, he made a point to have two conversations about his political priorities. One with Trump about the Save America act, which the Senate Majority leader says, we can't pass because we'd have to nuke the filibuster. But Lindsey was on Trump's side, says Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu, coincidentally, they had a conversation in which he was saying, hey, we get it. We don't want any more US Military aid from the United States. And Lindsey said, how dare you suggest that endless military aid from the. From the United States to Israel. That's how. That's how on the ball he was and how his priorities were always at the front of his mind.
- [17:41]
Brian
How on message it is for people. Netanyahu, this is the most important thing going on in the. At least the imperial relationship between Israel and America right now. Is this head fake of, oh, yeah, we actually want to be independent from y', all when the exact opposite is the case. This is from Responsible State graph. Congress quietly moves to integrate US And Israeli militaries in first steps towards shifting aid further into the shadows the House's 2027 NDAA would all but fuse the two countries Armed Forces together. This is insanity. And it's, I mean, of course, like somebody like Bibi Netanyahu would, you would isn't going to waste an opportunity to use the death of somebody who was his servant in life toward his own ends. Of course.
- [18:27]
Emma Vigland
And this is so controversial that in, later in that interview we'll play that probably in the fun half, he, Benjamin Netanyahu was saying to the, the Fox and Friends crew that we're moving from an aid situation to a partnership, which is exactly what you're saying. So they're trying to do this head fake because Netanyahu is quite adept at understanding American public opinion and he sees that like perhaps, yeah, we've lost the Democrats and independence, but we need the Republican Party to stand firm on supporting Israel and that you have younger Republicans that have this kind of more America first bent where they don't want all of this money going overseas, they want it. Yeah. Invested in their communities. And I would say that's pretty bipartisan, frankly. It's just interesting that young Republicans are in that more isolationist mind view worldview. So Netanyahu is seeing that and he's trying to head it off specifically also before potentially Democrats take back control in the midterms and wants to move the ball forward on a merging, a permanent merging of the United States with Israel's military and their technology as opposed to the just informal one that already exists because then there would no longer be a question about U.S. military aid to Israel. It would be automatic. It would be funding in the same way that we have taxes that fund for, you know, payroll taxes, not funded in the same way, but like it would be in a bucket where it wouldn't need to even be essentially considered at all. And that's horrifying. So it's interesting that even Fox News had some skepticism about that. But yeah, rest in piss, Lindsey Graham, if there's a hell, he'll be there. Not for the, not, you know, for,
- [20:24]
Caitlin Voges
for
- [20:27]
Emma Vigland
wanting more than anybody in maybe the United States Senate to have as much blood on his hands as humanly possible.
- [20:34]
Brian
It's a shame he got his Iraq war.
- [20:37]
Emma Vigland
Yep. And Iran war, actually.
- [20:40]
Brian
That's why.
- [20:41]
Sam Cedar
Okay.
- [20:41]
Emma Vigland
Yeah, yeah. In a moment we are going to be speaking to Caitlin Voges about the attempts to do this age verification stuff and why big tech wants it. But first, a word from some of our sponsors here. You know, a lot of us have these subscriptions that we just completely forget
- [21:05]
Caitlin Voges
about
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Emma Vigland
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- [25:14]
Matt
Sam.
- [25:47]
Brian
Live.
- [25:48]
Emma Vigland
We are back and we are joined now by Caitlin Vogus, senior advisor to the Freedom of the Press foundation and a First Amendment attorney. Caitlin is here to talk about her piece published in partnership with the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press Foundation. Online Age Verification Law Could Kill whistleblowing Caitlin, thanks so much for coming on the show today.
- [26:09]
Caitlin Voges
Thanks for having me, Emma.
- [26:10]
Emma Vigland
Of course. So let's just start, I guess from a few weeks ago when the House passed the KIDS act and sent it to the Senate. Overall, what is the KIDS act, how did it pass and what is in this bill?
- [26:27]
Caitlin Voges
Sure. So the KIDS act is a package of bills that combines actually a lot of different pieces of legislation and they're all framed around this idea of online safety and protecting kids online. That is, of course, a framing that I think anyone can get behind. We all want to keep kids safe, of course, but the issue with the bill is that buried within it, it also really strongly either incentivizes or actually requires social media platforms to engage in age verification or age gating, saying that social media platforms could be held liable if they offer certain content or certain features to kids. And the question comes up of, well, how could they do that unless they could determine which of their users are Kids and which are adult. And the answer is that they can't. And so the bill would require platforms to use these kind of very invasive measures, invasive of people's privacy, in order to determine their ages. And that's where our concern is coming from at Freedom of the Press foundation, where I work.
- [27:29]
Emma Vigland
So it begs the question, if they're kids, they don't have IDs, so how is age verification going to be implemented? They know that there are different. I mean, maybe when they're 16 or 15. 15, but earlier than that, no, they don't have IDs that they can use. Like, how is this being promoted? And how do they think that they're going to be able to implement this?
- [27:51]
Caitlin Voges
Right, That's a great question. So one of the methods for age verification is requiring a user to produce a government id, as you mentioned. And as you say correctly, kids, you know, below a certain age are not going to have that id. But it's not just kids below a certain age. It also might be people who are in the country and are undocumented, or it might be people who just don't have the. In order to get a government id, things like that. So it could impact a lot of people. If platforms are not requiring a government id, another way that they might try to verify age is through biometric data. So they might take a scan of a user's face and then try to estimate their age based on that scan. But a problem with that is not only is that extremely privacy invasive, I don't want to have to share to go onto a social media platform. It also is not always accurate, and studies have shown that it's especially not accurate when dealing with people of color, for example. So there are different methods, but none of them are foolproof. And I think the biggest problem with all of them is that there's no way to verify someone's age but allow them to still remain anonymous online. And that's a huge issue when it comes to free speech and our ability to speak online.
- [29:04]
Emma Vigland
I'm just also thinking about. So naturally, yes, children of color might be impacted, and it's not accurate for them. But I also think about, say, like, the biometric data for trans kids who are especially vulnerable right now, the idea that they would have to subject themselves to face scans as minors presents a whole host of problems. And also, almost even though it says it's protecting kids, this is a privacy violation and a parental rights violation.
- [29:36]
Caitlin Voges
Yeah, absolutely. And I think the impact on LGBTQ youth is really severe. And groups like Fight for the future have been bringing that argument to the forefront because we know that the Internet has been a place for some of those kids where they can connect with communities of other LGBTQ people to help them navigate what can be a really difficult process for them as they are in communities that might not be supportive for them. And so the impacts on that group in particular can be very problematic. People who want to maybe criticize or speak out against the government, anonymity being impacted is extremely important. And from our perspective at Freedom of the Press foundation, as a press freedom organization, the impact on journalists and confidential sources who might want to speak anonymously online together, it's hugely problematic to require them to verify their ages and therefore reveal their identities in order to get online.
- [30:27]
Emma Vigland
And I want to touch on that huge element as well. But I just also wanted to put a point on the fact that this is kind of a rebranding of an argument that I remember growing up with and that still exists today. Like Texas, I know, is cracking down on the availability of online pornography. But like, this is a way almost like to say we're protecting our kids from this big scary Internet. This is an argument that was said all the time from a more right wing Heritage foundation conservative evangelical corner of our politics. But now it's coming through the, you know, big tech's lobbying, which is an interesting development to me.
- [31:14]
Caitlin Voges
Yeah, absolutely. This is an argument that is rewarmed from the fights in the 1990s when the communications Decency act was passed. That was a law that was about obscenity online. The Supreme Court struck down most of that law saying it violated the first Amendment. Now we're seeing those same arguments being rehashed. And as you said, some of the big tech companies are even embracing this because they know that they might be able to comply with these requirements and they don't really care about users privacy and they could maybe drive their smaller competitors out of business. So that's another reason why these bills are very problematic. If we want a free Internet that's not just dominated by the big tech platforms. Well, this legislation is not going to give us that.
- [31:55]
Emma Vigland
So what are the big companies that are behind this bill? Who are they? Why is it kind of being. I mean, we know why, but I just feel like the national conversation around this has not caught up to the fact that there are tech companies that are pushing this. This isn't a tech regulatory bill in the same way that, you know, in the way that it's being framed as some sort of protection from big tech.
- [32:24]
Caitlin Voges
Yeah, That's a great point. The tech companies have changed their positions at various times. And so I don't want to speak incorrectly as to which ones may or may not be endorsing this particular bill, because also, as I said, this legislation has a lot of different bills that have been kind of smashed into it. In the Senate, there's another version. So it is changing all the time. Who is supporting what. But unfortunately, we have seen some of the big tech companies come out and say that they would be okay with requirements like this, like age verification, and I think that should be disturbing and send the signal that maybe this is not the route we should be going.
- [32:57]
Emma Vigland
So on the journey, on the piece for journalists and, you know, Trump's attacks on journalists, this coming within this context, I mean, largely there have also been bipartisan and attacks on activism, particularly around Palestine, where this could be really, really problematic. But, like, talk about the risk for journalism and for whistleblowers who would need to be able to provide information to journalists, what these barriers would do to that.
- [33:30]
Caitlin Voges
Sure. Well, there's no doubt that the Trump administration has essentially declared war on the free press. Just this past weekend, we saw that the Department of Justice subpoenaed New Times journalists over their reporting about the Qatari jet that was offered to President Trump. And they're trying to uncover the reporter's confidential sources. And this has been a repeated theme by this administration. They want to go after the confidential sources and the whistleblowers who are helping journalists hold them to account. And so the way that these laws could impact that is by essentially chipping away at or even destroying anonymity online. And we know that one of the ways that journalists connect with confidential sources is through online communications. And in the past, we've seen the Trump administration, but also other administrations try to target journalists emails, for example, to see who are they emailing with, who are their confidential sources they're talking with. And so if all of a sudden you have to prove your identity to use a social media platform, that opens up a whole new pot of data that the Trump administration or a future administration could target to try to discover who are journalists talking to on social media, send a legal demand to the tech company and make them tell us. And so that's extremely concerning when we need confidential sources and whistleblowers more than ever to know that we could be opening a whole other avenue for the government to crack down on it.
- [34:54]
Emma Vigland
So it's basically like, you know, if you are a source that's reaching out to a journalist on Social media versus a, you know, secure communications platform like Signal, you that. That you could be immediately targeted by the administration for that purpose. And secondarily, my question would be, how does it impact some of the encrypted communications app like Signal? Would this be difficult for those kind of communications to continue?
- [35:27]
Caitlin Voges
Well, lawmakers are usually careful to say that they don't intend the legislation to impact encrypted services. But I know the Electronic Frontier foundation has taken a look at the K, and they say buried within the bill, there are hints that it could impact encryption as well because of the liability regime, that it could make platforms liable if they don't take action on certain content. And then the issue becomes, well, if you're, if it's encrypted, the platform's not supposed to know what content is being shared, so how could they possibly take action on certain content? So it's complicated. But I think the answer is that there's at least the possibility it could impact encrypted communications, which is very concerning. We always recommend at Freedom of the Press foundation that journalists, journalists use secure communication tools like Signal if they're going to talk with confidential sources. But the truth is that some sources also are not sophisticated. And so they might make their initial outreach to reporters through unencrypted platforms, just on social media. And so in that case, the bill really comes into play again with the issue around age verification and platforms collecting people's identifying information.
- [36:33]
Emma Vigland
We have someone who wrote in and asked more bad news, says, could you ask how VPN usage fits into this?
- [36:40]
Caller/Listener
Sure.
- [36:40]
Caitlin Voges
So with VPN usage, what we've seen with bills around the country, so in different states, they've passed laws that require age verification, maybe banning kids under a certain age from certain social media platforms. And as they have passed those bills, what we've seen is that people in those states have turned to VPNs because they don't want to turn over their private information to tech companies. And so they use a VPN to try to get around it. But now lawmakers are taking notice of that, and they're actually trying to maybe potentially ban VPNs. So recently, Utah became one of the first states to propose banning VPN usage in certain situations to try to crack down on this getting around of age verification. But that's a huge can of worms to open, because VPNs do a lot more than just help people evade censorship and age verification. They also help people keep themselves safe online, keep their browsing private. And so we're really headed Down, I'd say a slippery path where you start cracking down on the platforms. Lawmaker, CEO, that's not working as well as we hope. Now we're going to crack down on VPNs and what's next? I mean, more and more content could be banned and censored. So it's very concerning.
- [37:51]
Emma Vigland
Lastly, just from a big picture perspective, you mentioned how the, it's a very natural impulse right now for people to want their children to be protected online. Right. And so that's why this bill is being framed as the Kids act and protecting children from your perspective. I know this is a little bit a field of the, you know, talking about whistleblowers. Right. But you know, what would be possible as a way for children to be protected from some of the worst parts of the Internet without using systems like this? I mean, I've seen some of these studies about phone bans in schools. That seems fair to me. I know this is different, but like, like, you know, I don't necessarily know if there's a way or if there should be a way to obstruct children from accessing the Internet and outside of, you know, parents kind of getting involved here.
- [38:47]
Caitlin Voges
Well, I think one thing that Congress could do that would protect not only children, but all of us would be to pass comprehensive privacy legislation that governs online services. And what I mean by that is targeting the tech platform's collection of people's data that they then use to run their behavioral ad systems. And that's the engine that's powering all of this. Tech platforms are sucking in people's data and then using it to target advertisement. And that is going a long way towards the harms that we're seeing kids but everybody online encounter. So instead of requiring platforms to collect more data to verify users ages, instead what I think Congress should be doing is cracking down on data collection through comprehensive privacy legislation that covers everyone, children and adults alike.
- [39:34]
Emma Vigland
Because then you would be unable to specifically target children with harmful content because there would not be the mass data collection that would allow for these tech companies to, to, to target them via all the, the information they've collected, essentially.
- [39:50]
Caitlin Voges
Right, exactly. And not just kids, but all of us, none of us want to be targeted with this terrible content. So yes, it would go a long way to protecting kids and adults.
- [39:58]
Emma Vigland
Yes, I'm foregrounding the kids thing because there's this like, you know, this puritanical anxiety about this certain stuff. And look, I'm not a parent yet, so I don't get it. But it is. That is what they're trying to tap into. Regardless, I really appreciate your time today. You clarified a lot about this dangerous bill. Lastly, you said that there's a Senate version. Do you know what the status is of this bill now that it's passed the House? Are they debating it in the Senate? Is it a new version? They're trying to meld with this House version?
- [40:26]
Caitlin Voges
The Senate has its own version of the bill and I think there's actually a lot of competition between the House and Senate. The Senate is dissatisfied with the House version, the House is dissatisfied with the Senate version. So so far they have not been able to make progress on passing a version that they can both agree on, which I think goes to show how problematic the legislation is. Congress can't come together to work out the details because both bills are ultimately extremely flawed.
- [40:51]
Emma Vigland
Well, Kaitlyn Voges, senior advisor to the Freedom of the Press Foundation, First Amendment attorney. You can read her piece published in partnership with the Intercept and the Freedom of the Press foundation called Online Age Verification Law Could Kill Whistleblowing. Caitlin, thanks so much for your time today. I really appreciate it.
- [41:08]
Caitlin Voges
Thank you so much.
- [41:10]
Emma Vigland
Of course. All right, folks, quick break and when we return from our break, you will be hearing an interview that we have a note on from our friend Matt Leck between Alex Aronson and Sam.
- [41:23]
Brian
Yeah, there's a little bit of an issue with Sam's microphone here so we had to sort of doctor the onboard microphone there so it will sound like Sam's coming in over a little bit of a bad connection. But the guest mic sounds great and so just accept our apologies.
- [41:43]
Emma Vigland
Sam didn't pick the right mic in his recording.
- [41:47]
Brian
Trying to finesse that a little bit. But yeah, I think that is basically what happened. But it is legible and there were good questions and even better answers. So yes, here's this.
- [41:59]
Emma Vigland
Yes, Alex Aronson, I should say co founder and executive director of Co Accountability on the Supreme Court corruption and the billionaire backed right wing takeover of the courts. Here's that interview now.
- [42:18]
Sam Cedar
We are back. Sam Cedar on the Majority Report joining me now. It's a pleasure to welcome to the program Alex Aronson. He is the co founder and executive director of Court Accountability and a contributor to Midas Touches Legal af. Alex, welcome to the program.
- [42:35]
Alex Aronson
Thanks, Sam. Great to be with you.
- [42:37]
Sam Cedar
So we're talking literally just hours, more or less 24, I guess technically from the end of the Supreme Court's term. We have seen their, their rulings of that batch before we get into sort of like the more holistic, you know, a problem with the Supreme Court that I think hopefully this audience is pretty familiar with. What was the most disturbing? I mean, I know it's hard to sort of like pick one, but what, what did you find the most disturbing? I guess from a, like, like a broad structural problem.
- [43:17]
Alex Aronson
Yeah, it is, it is really hard to pick one because I think almost the most disturbing thing about the end of the term is the entire end of term ritual itself. This sort of baroque and grotesque process whereby we all sit around and wait to find out which of our rights and freedoms survive the latest John Roberts decree. It really I think shines a spotlight on just how broken the entire system is and how much power we've allowed this court to sort of take on for itself. Of the actual decisions that came down, I think two really stand out. One came several weeks ago, of course, the Calais decision. The real culmination of a decades long project to gut the Voting Rights act that John Roberts, the Chief justice of the United States, has really been at the helm of. Then of this week's decision, I think the one that we must pay extra special attention to is the decision in the FTC case about the independence of the ftc, which really was more about Congress's power to, on behalf of the American people, set up these independent agencies and insulate them from this type of political interference like we're seeing from Trump. And again, just like Calais, this represented the culmination of a decades long project funded by right wing billionaires to basically overturn the administrative state and put in place this tyrannical presidency that Congress simply can't touch. So those two cases really stand out within this broader context of a court that has become masterful at that, dominating the narrative and I think creating the impression that it is a guardrail against authoritarianism when it is in fact authoritarianism's central driver in this country.
- [45:00]
Sam Cedar
Yeah, it's interesting when you talk about Clays and you talk about the ftc, I guess Fed dual ruling, as it were. Those are really structural issues like the 14th Amendment in the, the birthright citizenship is almost feels like that's the project for that, that we provide for chum. On some level. I mean like I, I feel like certainly the Voting Rights act, we know John Roberts, that was his pet project in the 19, early 1980s when he's working in the DOJ for Reagan and of Calais is the sort of like culmination of an assault on the Voting Rights Act. Since 2013, you know, it may have predated Obviously there was a big problem the Republicans had with the Voting Rights act years before that. Of course, since 65 then the naturally born, the birthright citizenship feels like if you had asked a, your typical Federalist Society lawyer Eight years ago, 10 years ago, they would have been like, what? No, like.
- [46:21]
Alex Aronson
Right, of course, absolutely. This came out of, out of thin air. It's egregious overreach. Normally when the right wing legal movement has a target like this, it takes a lot of time to develop a whole doctrinal assault on the existing precedent. Right. This is the work that we did in the Senate, the work that we do at court accountability to expose this multi hundred billion dollar scheme to invest in the development of doctrines and fake facts and an entire apparatus to advance this stuff. And normally that's what we see. It's what we've seen in pretty much every other doctrinal context. And here, this Trump driven attack on birthright citizenship was not similarly supported by that type of, of infrastructure. It was just a couple scholars at the last minute who threw this stuff out. And so I think you're right. On some level it's less structural. I do think there's a structural dynamic here. Right. They're trying to define what citizenship means so that they can start to really continue to shape who gets to be a person in this country and who gets to have political equality. But I think it's striking and jarring that this, this frivolous theory that had no backing even from this movement got four votes from this court, which suggests, and I saw you had Ellie Mistel on the show yesterday, he's terrific. I'm sure he got into this. But this is not over. Right. They're going to continue to hammer at this and Alito or Thomas will retire and they're going to re up their majority. And these projects are far from over on citizenship, immigration, but many other issues also them.
- [48:01]
Sam Cedar
I, I know you're steeped in the, how we got to this point and we've sort of just touched on it a little bit. But let's fill in some of the gaps because I think there's a tendency, first off from the center left, I would say a real problem with fundamentally understanding how powerful the Supreme Court is and how relevant it is. I can be supportive of Medicare for All, I am. But there's no reason to believe that if the House and the Senate and the President were to pass and sign Medicare for All that it wouldn't get struck down. At least with the court as composed today, maybe even less so going forward, and that is by design. Take us back to. I guess this starts really, in many respects, the Powell memoir is the sort of like the opening shot in this assault on the judiciary. What did they understand or what was. What did the right at that point? Sort of like how clear was their agenda in terms of going forward?
- [49:12]
Alex Aronson
Yeah, it was pretty clear at the time. I think what they understood was power. They understood the structure and design of the Constitution, which parts of it were, were susceptible to sort of democratic progress and democratic power that had produced a whole bunch of stuff that these interests really did not like. By the time that the Powell memo was conceived in 1971. Right. We had seen, and this was a bipartisan push towards broad consumer worker rights, social and economic progress, the civil rights movement, these were all the products of mostly congressional democratic action. And they recognized that if they could concentrate and hold power within the less democratic features of our Constitution, such as the judiciary, they would be able to choke off that progress, take us backwards and foreclose future progress. So that was the sort of structural design of the Federalist Society right wing legal project that did really begin in earnest with the Powell memo. But you could trace it back earlier to the reaction to Brown vs Board of Education and racial integration. Right. This was actually, I think, the true origins of political originalism, which was offered as a more palatable alternative to just straight up racist nullification of Supreme Court orders as the court was ordering schools to be integrated. And so right wing thinkers like William F. Buckley and the National Review actually started developing originalism as a way to reach the same outcomes, but under the pretext of neutrality. And the Powell memo really brought in right wing industrial and corporate money to infuse this into a whole movement. And it took power. And I think we have spent a lot. I'm sure your listeners are familiar with much of the story of the investment and of the organization and coordination by Leonard Leo and the Federalist Society toward the installment of these justices with folks like Roberts and Alito in the George W. Bush administration. But I think what we spend less time I'm thinking about, which is just as important, perhaps more important than something we can actually do something about, is the way that the liberal left, the Democratic Party, the media treated this incursion on our Constitution, treated this court capture scheme.
- [51:31]
Matt
Right.
- [51:31]
Alex Aronson
Because I think the main mistake we collectively have made for all of these decades is to think of the courts first and foremost as the place to go for democracy and justice and equal rights rights, and then to mistake what originalism was as sort of a good faith intellectual adversary across the aisle, you know, in terms of this jurisprudence, to go back to original intent, we took it at face value and engaged with it directly rather than acknowledging it as a pretextual vehicle for an authoritarian political project. And along the way, we have been unwilling to call out what has become an untenable concentration of constitutional power within the federal judiciary and particularly at the Supreme Court. And this was the problem that Lincoln recognized with the Taney Court when they were dealing with Dred Scott and slavery. And he understood, and this is a. I'm sure I'll botch it, but I'll try. Lincoln understood and said in his first inaugural address that if the policy of the whole government is to be on vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by the Supreme Court, then, then the people will have ceased to be their own rulers. And that's the condition we're living under now, right? Where even though 80% of America wants the same outcomes on questions like money and politics, even more than that, it's 87% that reject citizens United. We can't have that result because we have ceased to be our own rulers because we are living in a legal autocracy where the Supreme Court, this tribunal with ultimate and exclusive prerogative over the meaning of the constit, has set the terms for our lives. And until we reject their claim to that exclusive control over constitutional meaning, which is not in the Constitution, that is a norm like all of the other norms. Until we reject that, we are stuck in the system because they have the supreme court majority until 2065 at the earliest. And there are ways out, though. There are ways, yes.
- [53:29]
Sam Cedar
And I want to get to those in the. It is fascinating to me having like, been. I spent a year in law school at the beginning of the 90s and the, the just fire hose of originalism and textualism. And as if these were sort of, I mean, like you say, good faith principles that were to be argued and they were. I mean, I just, every time I hear it, I just think of like Breyer, you know, talking about, I, I believe in a living Constitution and trying to debate these questions. And now we hear none of that. There is like, it is, it is, it is, it's identical to sort of like the way that the deficit was used as a, as a mechanism to cut Social Security. And then when it is no longer convenient to talk about the defic. We don't. And it, it, it's. I, I'm really struck by that let's talk about like, I think, you know, hopefully this audience is, is, has some awareness of, of, of the need for a reform of the Supreme Court. And there's a lot of really interesting different ways of doing it that are not terribly radical. And obviously the first thing is to get people to engage and recognize the problem that we're dealing with and how incredibly corrupted the process has been by, by money and by a politicization and this. And before we get into these, one of the frustrations I have is that the legal profession itself, which I think ultimately needs to be on board with this and accept the reality of this. And I'm talking about the legal profession that are theoretically non ideological. They still can't. I mean, and you know, part of this is shaped by like my own dealing with my father who's, you know, in his 80s, but you know, time and time again I bring to him like cases that I'm like, this is garbage. And there's still this sort of like lawyer mentality. These are very smart people, they're very accomplished. And there is a grace that is given that is sort of otherworldly. How do you, how do you deal with that?
- [56:06]
Alex Aronson
I think it's starting to unwind a little bit. I talk to a lot of judges, former judges, a lot of folks who certainly, I think, fall into this camp of people that have looked at people like John Roberts as an institutionalist. They might disagree with his jurisprudence, but they ultimately think he's principled. I do think that in the last few years, with decisions like Trump versus United States, the immunity decision, with leaks out of the Supreme Court, like we've seen, there was this explosive leak showing the creation of the shadow docket in the context of Obama's clean power plan, where John Roberts effectively said, we can't allow this to happen. It would have too negative an impact on the fossil fuel industry. He said that in internal memos that got leaked. And I think, I think as people see these results, the line that this is still a court in any sense, that it is not simply doing the bidding of the interests that put these justices in place is less and less tenable. But I think you're right. What we're working against is decades of entrenched cultural attachment to the idea that the court is above the law and what we must do. I believe, and it's why we started at court accountability with research and investigative work to help uncover the sprawling gold mine of corruption and scandal that had been encircling this court, that the mainstream media didn't want to touch that the Democrats didn't want to touch. But it's by continuing to expose that, to show just how extreme and radical, not only the justices themselves, but the people behind them calling the shots for this agenda really are, that are going to start to do it. And I think the other thing that's happening and Kallei, to my mind, having done this now for over 10 years, working in this space was the first thing that finally seemed to have flipped the switch with the Democrats, the mainstream leadership of the Democratic Party that I think understands for the first time perhaps that there is no future for the Democratic Party unless they take this seriously. And so what that looks like in terms of a reform agenda, I think is the work of the next really like two years. But I think the realization is starting
- [58:12]
Sam Cedar
to dawn on was it not Bush v. Gore, I mean that like that that was the, that was the, I mean not just the canary in the coal mine. That was, that was like a much larger bird in the coal mine.
- [58:28]
Alex Aronson
And then John Roberts's nomination as chief justice just five years later after he had been, you know, a lawyer on that case.
- [58:37]
Sam Cedar
He wasn't he actually I think he, if I remember correctly and I think Kavanaugh was working on that case too, frankly. But I think Roberts or Cabinet, they were in that mob. That was the Brooks Brothers riots. And so I don't, for me, that was the biggie.
- [58:59]
Alex Aronson
And then if you look at the way that Democrats treated John Roberts nomination, he wasn't like a threat. He got a lot of Democratic votes. Barack Obama, I've heard from leaders who were working on that nomination at the time. Barack Obama wanted to vote for John Roberts confirmation and was told that if he, if he did, he would have no chance of being the party's nominee. But this was, I mean this reflects the, I think the Democratic Party's complete miss on what they were up against when it came to judicial power and where this project was headed in terms of the permanent destruction of American democracy.
- [59:33]
Sam Cedar
I think one, I think a turn in that, that I think people can see like a material difference is the judiciary now. And we're seeing it with some executive branch appointments asking the question who won the 2020 election? Just to lay bare how non independent these independent judicial nominees are and their failure to simply say like yeah, it's noontime, the sun is shining is I think indicative and I think it's think it's indicative of where the Democrats have moved, that we're starting to see this on a regular basis. I think that's rather healthy. Let's talk about the reform ideas. There's, there's a lot of them floating out there. What are the ones that you think, based upon your experience working for Sheldon Whitehouse, who's on the Judiciary Committee, and what you've heard in talking to people, what do you think is both, both the most effective and sort of like cross referenced with the most doable?
- [60:43]
Alex Aronson
Yeah, this is a big question. Super thorny. There are so many reforms that are needed to deal with so many problems that have emerged from our courts by virtue of the Federalist Society's capture scheme. We don't have time probably to get into all of the reforms that are needed to restore public faith and to have a court that's a court again. I do think it's likely that if for any pro democracy agenda, like a substantive agenda to survive, some reform will be needed, some aggressive reform to constrain this court will be needed. Something like expanding the Court, putting justices on the court, or deploying other less widely understood talked about reforms like jurisdiction stripping. The Constitution gives Congress significant authority to set the jurisdiction of the federal courts, both the lower federal courts and the Supreme Court, so it could use its powers to carve out jurisdictional exceptions to entire areas of cases where the courts would no longer have jurisdiction to meddle in democratically enacted laws.
- [61:52]
Sam Cedar
How does that work? Like, insofar as we're going to pass a law that says black people can't vote vote, and we have now said that the Supreme Court no longer has jurisdiction over voting issues that we have passed? I mean, how does that work?
- [62:15]
Alex Aronson
Right, right. You have, I, I have in inadvertently, or maybe not inadvertently, and you have taken the invitation, but we've opened the door to the nuclear question in constitutional law and federal courts, which is the scope of Congress's power to strip the courts out of the picture. And the concern that you raise is a very real one for a situation in which sort of an authoritarian majority might want to do something like you describe, and where we would want the courts to maintain a role. Right. And the 20th century is a good proof point for the importance of having courts, particularly in the context of checking state power.
- [62:53]
Matt
Right.
- [62:53]
Alex Aronson
I think we think too much about the good that the Court has done. Done in sort of the abstract, most of the good that the Court has done in the 20th century was in the context of checking state authoritarianism. And so, you know, there are real concerns about what could happen if Congress starts to use these powers to check the court. What I would argue is that it sort of, it tends to be more democratic. There's a reason the Federalist Society and this, you know, faction of billionaires and extremists chose the, the unaccountable power of the courts to drive their agenda is because they couldn't advance it through the Congress. And so we've seen efforts from the right to actually use jurisdiction stripping to advance a national right to life to ban gay marriage nationwide that never took hold. And in fact, those, those efforts in the 2000s were snuffed out by the Federalist Society folks who said this isn't the way, the way to ban abortion nationwide is through the courts.
- [63:49]
Matt
Right.
- [63:49]
Alex Aronson
And so, so these are questions that we need to get right as we think about what we think American democracy should look like. And I think they're not easy to resolve. One last thing I'll say is that whatever reform we need to advance, we have to reckon with the fact that the broken political system this court created is still very much in play within the Democratic Party, which is deeply infected by the unlimited money in politics that Citizens United and before that buckle, Buckley versus Vallejo unleashed. And so while we might know in our community here that something like court expansion is necessary, the chances of the next nominee sticking their neck out to advance that I think are very, very small. And I think we have to, rather than just get upset about that, we have to work with it. I actually think there are real reasons why the next nominee might not want to stick their neck out on something like court expansion, even if it is something that they plan on ultimately trying to advance. Because we enter this fight, fight from way behind. Our adversaries have spent 50 years cultivating a base that understands the power of the courts and we simply haven't. And if we start to advance the most aggressive, far reaching reforms, we're going to walk into a propaganda buzzsaw. You know, we have talked about in this conversation the cultural and mythological attachments that so many in the, even the pro democracy community attach to this court. And I would just simply suggest that, that as we prepare for what must be an ultimate contest station for power against corrupt and authoritarian judiciary, we should be strategic about how to enter that fight with the most legitimacy and the most durable public support behind our cause as we possibly can. And I think in a moment like this where we all know that this is not tenable and we need something like court packing, it might feel good to demand that our elected representatives come out front and start calling for things like that. But I would suggest that there are Actually better ways, ways to approach the challenge.
- [65:45]
Sam Cedar
And let's just talk one of those, because I heard an interview you did with Representative Sean Caston from Illinois who had some interesting ideas on this. And one of the ones that I think really struck me was, and this is part of it, you know, people talk about expanding to 13 because that's the number of appellate courts we have, or the idea of essentially having a much bigger, a rotating Supreme Court, which would include theoretically I guess all the appellate courts or maybe a couple of them, or where the practice of we're going to have somebody go in and try and buy, you know, deny a cake by a gay couple and that's not going to be our test case. And we're sending that out because we know we can rely on these five votes up on the court and now's the time to do this. You'd be unable to do that if you had a rotating crew. Just briefly lay that out. Because one of the things I really like about that is it's so processy sounding that it feels like, like you can't really call it radical because nobody's going to pay attention. Your average voter is just like, you know, whatever, like there's an appellate court, like they don't know, you know, your average. It's much harder gain traction, you know, saying court packing sounds, even though we've seen it in about half, I don't know, half a dozen states, we've seen it essentially under Republican rule. But talking about a rotating nine person Supreme Court where each justice spends six months on the court or a year on the court or whatever it is, seems to me to be something that sounds so weedy to people that it's very hard to argue to, to demagogue against, I guess.
- [67:50]
Alex Aronson
Yeah, I love Representative Caston.
- [67:52]
Sam Cedar
He.
- [67:53]
Alex Aronson
I think he's unique. Not, not unique, but he's one of the few in the House and in the Congress generally who is willing to think creatively and to think about how to address these problems with powers that Congress has, I think, been too quick to ignore or leave collecting dust. He understands the power that Congress has to set jurisdiction limits to create different structures of courts like he has proposed. I think there's a lot of appeal in a proposal like he has laid out or like you are suggesting there. We could have a hundred Supreme Court Justices and random panels. I think we could make a strong, good government case for that. I do, I do have concerns that like it wouldn't. People would see through it. Again, we are up against a propaganda juggernaut juggernaut in a base that really understands the importance of this. And it reminds me a bit of the pretextual justifications that FDR actually offered for his court packing threat, which were that the Justices were too old and overworked and needed support, which the American people didn't buy and really was a threat that only worked because FDR had tremendous political power on his side. He had 76 votes in the Senate. And we simply don't have that type of power. And so what I would offer is that and we haven't done the work to advance court reforms, even sort of good government, super defensible court reforms as a big priority for our base and for the Democratic Party. And so the way we think about it is how can we advance this agenda in a way that brings more people along and that highlights just how obscene and out of control this system has gotten. And where we think the place to start is with the corrupt, broken political system and with money in politics. Citizens United and Buckley vs. Vallejo, the 1976 case that decided that money was speech and that really opened the door for this broken political system that we're all inhabiting. This is a very intentional design of the Federalist Society Project and the Chamber of Commerce's Powell memo. And we've all sort of accepted that to deal with Citizens United, we have to overturn Citizens United by amending the Constitution. Now that is an impossibility. They have broken the political system to foreclose our ability to do that. And we have taken it as an acceptable answer for a democratic reformer, a pro democracy, anti corruption reformer, to say that they are against Citizens United and that they want to overturn Citizens United by amending the Constitution. But people like Hakeem Jeffries who make those promises, they know that those are promises they will never have to deliver because of the broken political system that they are now caught up in. And so what if we just stop accepting that we have to take the Supreme Court's word as final like Lincoln did, And on a question like Citizens United, where every fact that they laid out in that case, supplanting Congress's bipartisan factual findings with their own assertions that independent expenditures could not be corrupting, everything about that decision is wrong. Everything about the 16 now years since it was decided has proven that to 87% of the Americans, that in fact independent expenditures in politics are deeply corrupting and create the appearance of corruption. And so what if we try to just overturn that by statute, rejecting their claim to final exclusive control over the meaning of the Constitution. I think we could build a coalition around that. And I think it would be pretty hard for folks to start saying to say no to a bill that just does that because it's something that 90% of the country wants that we can't have because we live in a judicial tyranny.
- [71:34]
Sam Cedar
And that provides a roadmap, theoretically. Both has material impact on the ability to get more reforms in the future, but also provides a roadmap of how you do it in terms of essentially jurisdiction stripping. It's fascinating stuff. If folks want more information, they can
- [71:54]
Alex Aronson
find court accountability where we are@courtaccountability.org and don't miss our sister research organization, True North Research, led by my partner, the incomparable Lisa Graves.
- [72:08]
Sam Cedar
All right. And we will link to both those and as well as Midas Touch's legal as Alex Aaronson, I really appreciate your time today. Thanks so much.
- [72:17]
Alex Aronson
Thank you so much. Sam.
- [72:27]
Caller/Listener
Live.
- [72:29]
Emma Vigland
Hello. And look who it is.
- [72:32]
Matt
Oh.
- [72:33]
Caitlin Voges
Oh.
- [72:33]
Sam Cedar
Oh. Hello, everyone.
- [72:35]
Matt
Hello.
- [72:37]
Emma Vigland
I'd like to welcome to the show. How do you, you pronounce it? How do you say it?
- [72:41]
Sam Cedar
It is, it's Cedar. It's Sam. Cedar. Yeah. Sam. I've been saying it wrong the whole time.
- [72:48]
Matt
Yeah.
- [72:50]
Sam Cedar
Yeah. Hi, folks. I am still on the road, as you can see, and will be for a couple of weeks. But, but I'm going to be joining the fun half today. I'm still trying to record some stuff remotely. Feels like it was a busy week last week.
- [73:06]
Emma Vigland
Yeah. What'd you miss? What'd you miss?
- [73:09]
Sam Cedar
All the Jaylen Brown talk, of course. Dominant, of course.
- [73:17]
Matt
Yeah.
- [73:17]
Sam Cedar
Obviously missed a lot of stuff. I'm going to talk a little bit about that in the fun half when we got back. I just want to clear up some, some rumors about my involvement with Mitch McConnell falling. I had nothing to do with that.
- [73:36]
Matt
That
- [73:38]
Sam Cedar
as far as other things that have been going on, I think it, I can't really talk about the project I'm working on now. It is a sort of a Hollywood thing, but it's going to create a lot of controversy. Relative.
- [73:59]
Matt
Cut.
- [74:00]
Sam Cedar
Now way Hollywood took you out, took your signal out for a second there.
- [74:05]
Brian
It's going to come controversy with. What did you say?
- [74:09]
Sam Cedar
With the Lindsay Graham passing away. People are going to,
- [74:18]
Alex Aronson
oh, gosh, it's
- [74:20]
Emma Vigland
going great right now.
- [74:21]
Sam Cedar
Don't, don't Sam. Don't admit anymore.
- [74:25]
Brian
Have to refresh Sam.
- [74:26]
Emma Vigland
All right. We'll refresh you.
- [74:28]
Matt
But.
- [74:29]
Emma Vigland
All right, that's the, that's the teaser for Sam then for the Fun Half. All right, we'll fix this, Sam. Going into the Fun half. Matt, what's happening on Left Reckoning and with the Jackman Show.
- [74:40]
Caitlin Voges
Yeah.
- [74:41]
Brian
Ishmael Johnson gonna be talking about a piece on the cost of youth soccer and why it is actually the capitalization of these sorts of youth sports is making us less competitive relative to the rest of the world. And some other great stories. So check that out. Coming up on tomorrow's Left Reckoning.
- [74:59]
Alex Aronson
That's all sports now in this country.
- [75:02]
Brian
I didn't realize baseball was, like, the most expensive because that was like the one that we never had to, like, raise money for as a kid. Yeah, it's nuts.
- [75:10]
Emma Vigland
And tomorrow I am going to be hosting the official launch of DSA's new Workers Deserve More program. It is going to be Tuesday the 14th. You can go to the link go.dsa USA.org WDM for workers to serve more dash Emma. But we'll also put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions. It's going to be at 8:30pm Eastern tomorrow night. It's virtual over zoom. So check it out, folks. If you want to get more involved in DSA and know what their upcoming program is for the 2026, 2027 year, you can join me there. All right, see you in the Fun half
- [75:55]
Sam Cedar
three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months from now, but I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow.
- [76:12]
Matt
What?
- [76:13]
Sam Cedar
What is that going on? It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on. Hold on for a second. Fun Half. Emma, welcome to the program. Fun Half.
- [76:26]
Random Guy
Matt.
- [76:27]
Matt
Boo.
- [76:28]
Sam Cedar
Fun hat.
- [76:29]
Alex Aronson
What is up, everyone?
- [76:31]
Sam Cedar
Fun Path.
- [76:32]
Matt
No. Me.
- [76:32]
Random Guy
Keen.
- [76:33]
Alex Aronson
You did it.
- [76:34]
Sam Cedar
Fun Path.
- [76:35]
Emma Vigland
Let's go, Brandon. Let's go, Brandon.
- [76:37]
Sam Cedar
Fun Path. Bradley, you want to say hello?
- [76:42]
Emma Vigland
Sorry to disappoint everyone.
- [76:44]
Random Guy
I'm just a random guy.
- [76:45]
Sam Cedar
It's all the boys today.
- [76:46]
Emma Vigland
Fundamentally false.
- [76:47]
Caitlin Voges
No.
- [76:48]
Emma Vigland
I'm sorry.
- [76:48]
Caitlin Voges
Women.
- [76:49]
Sam Cedar
Stop talking for a second.
- [76:51]
Emma Vigland
Let me finish.
- [76:51]
Caitlin Voges
Where is this coming from?
- [76:52]
Matt
Dude? But.
- [76:53]
Sam Cedar
Dude, you want to smoke this?
- [76:56]
Emma Vigland
7A. Yes.
- [77:00]
Matt
Hi.
- [77:01]
Caitlin Voges
Me.
- [77:02]
Matt
This thing.
- [77:03]
Sam Cedar
Yes.
- [77:06]
Matt
In this meat.
- [77:08]
Alex Aronson
Is it me?
- [77:09]
Sam Cedar
It is you.
- [77:12]
Matt
It's just me.
- [77:13]
Caitlin Voges
Hello.
- [77:14]
Alex Aronson
It's me.
- [77:14]
Sam Cedar
I think it is you. Who is you? No sound. Every single freaking day. What's on your mind?
- [77:22]
Emma Vigland
Sports.
- [77:23]
Sam Cedar
We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm gonna go throw out libertarians.
- [77:28]
Brian
They're so stupid.
- [77:29]
Sam Cedar
Though common sense says of course.
- [77:31]
Emma Vigland
Gobbledygook.
- [77:32]
Sam Cedar
We fucking nailed it.
- [77:34]
Emma Vigland
So what's 79 plus 21?
- [77:36]
Sam Cedar
Challenge.
- [77:36]
Alex Aronson
Man, I'm positively quivering.
- [77:38]
Sam Cedar
I believe 96. I want to say 8, 5, 7, 2, 1 0. 850-1-1 half.
- [77:44]
Brian
3, 8, 9, 11. For instance.
- [77:46]
Emma Vigland
$3,400. $1900. 5, 4.
- [77:49]
Sam Cedar
$3 trillion. Sold. It's a zero sum game.
- [77:54]
Emma Vigland
Actually. You're making me think less.
- [77:55]
Sam Cedar
But let me say this. You can call it satire.
- [77:59]
Emma Vigland
Sam goes SAT tired on top of it all.
- [78:02]
Sam Cedar
My favorite part about you is just
- [78:04]
Caitlin Voges
like every day, all day, like everything you do.
- [78:07]
Sam Cedar
Without a doubt. Hey, buddy, we see you. All right, folks, folks, folks.
- [78:17]
Emma Vigland
It's just the week being weeded out, obviously.
- [78:20]
Matt
Yeah.
- [78:20]
Sam Cedar
Sun's out, guns out. I, I, I, I don't know.
- [78:26]
Caitlin Voges
But you should know,
- [78:29]
Emma Vigland
people just don't
- [78:30]
Brian
like to entertain ideas anymore.
- [78:32]
Sam Cedar
I have a question. Who cares?
- [78:36]
Brian
Our chat is enabled, folks.
- [78:38]
Matt
I love it.
- [78:39]
Emma Vigland
I do love that.
- [78:42]
Sam Cedar
Gotta jump. Gotta be quick. I gotta jump.
- [78:44]
Emma Vigland
I'm losing it, bro.
- [78:47]
Sam Cedar
Two o', clock, we're already late, and the guy's being a dick. So screw them. Sent to a gulag.
- [78:54]
Emma Vigland
Outrageous.
- [78:55]
Sam Cedar
Like, what is wrong with you?
- [78:58]
Matt
Love you.
- [78:59]
Caller/Listener
Bye.
- [79:01]
Matt
Love you.
- [79:02]
Emma Vigland
Bye.
- [79:02]
Sam Cedar
Bye.