Latest / Pod Save America / What Will Democratic Governance Look Like? + Lina Khan (Crooked Con)

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What Will Democratic Governance Look Like? + Lina Khan (Crooked Con) · Pod Save America

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1:47
Speaker 3: Hello, everybody. We are coming to you live from CookingCon.
1:50
Speaker 3: As the voice of God said, I am Alex Wagner.
1:55
Speaker 3: It's a great week to be doing this. It's a
1:57
Speaker 3: great week to be talking to you guys. So thank
1:58
Speaker 3: you in advance. Democrats are about to spend the next
2:02
Speaker 3: 12 months and many squajillions of dollars trying to convince
2:06
Speaker 3: voters to give them the majority. But here's the real question.
2:10
Speaker 4: What would they do with.
2:11
Speaker 3: It if they got it? That's actually what we're going
2:13
Speaker 3: to dig into today. What would America look like? I
2:17
Speaker 3: can't even say this sentence. I'm just... What would America
2:19
Speaker 3: look like with Democrats back in charge of one or
2:22
Speaker 3: both chambers?
2:23
Speaker 4: Just.
2:24
Speaker 3: Manifest it. What big ideas should define that vision and
2:30
Speaker 3: how do you sell that vision to a country that
2:33
Speaker 3: is exhausted and divided and maybe just a little cynical
2:36
Speaker 3: about Washington? So joining me to tackle all of that
2:39
Speaker 3: are Senator Brian Schatz of Hawaii, down there. Senator Ruben
2:46
Speaker 3: Gallego of Arizona, next to me. And the inimitable Congresswoman
2:51
Speaker 3: Pramila Jayapal of Washington. So before we get to the
3:00
Speaker 3: sort of meat of the issue, as a matter of housekeeping,
3:04
Speaker 3: I have to bring up sort of where we sit
3:06
Speaker 3: right now. And the two senators on the panel, I
3:08
Speaker 3: would ask you, there has been some renewed optimism and
3:12
Speaker 3: enthusiasm in the Democratic Party because of the victories sizable
3:17
Speaker 3: this week. And it has led some people to say,
3:21
Speaker 3: maybe we shouldn't just set our sights on the House
3:24
Speaker 3: turning blue in 2026. maybe we should think about the
3:28
Speaker 3: Senate turning blue. And I ask you, as creatures of
3:35
Speaker 3: the upper chamber, is that misplaced optimism? Should Democrats try
3:40
Speaker 3: and envision a near-term future where the Senate falls back
3:43
Speaker 3: into Democratic control? Brian, why don't you start?
3:47
Speaker 6: First of all, thank you for having me. Very exciting.
3:49
Speaker 6: I can't see any of you, but it sounds very loud.
3:53
Speaker 2: And.
3:55
Speaker 8: And so, yeah, I think it is reasonable to have optimism.
3:58
Speaker 8: And here's the way I would look at it. I mean,
3:59
Speaker 8: I could take you through all the races, but that's
4:01
Speaker 8: not the purpose of this panel. Statistically speaking, we have
4:05
Speaker 8: roughly the same chance of taking the Senate that we
4:08
Speaker 8: did before John Ossoff and Raphael Warnock gave us the
4:11
Speaker 8: majority in the Senate.
4:15
Speaker 6: Nobody knows what's going to.
4:17
Speaker 8: Happen, but I think Tuesday just increased the likelihood that
4:20
Speaker 8: we're gonna be able to recruit excellent candidates. We already
4:23
Speaker 8: have two seats that I think we are actually favored
4:25
Speaker 8: to win. That obviously doesn't get us all the way
4:28
Speaker 8: to a majority, but we just are going to need
4:31
Speaker 8: one or two more after Maine. We got to win Maine.
4:34
Speaker 8: We got to win North Carolina. After that, there are
4:38
Speaker 8: multiple pathways. And I wouldn't have said that three months ago.
4:42
Speaker 8: I would have said there's still a chance, but I
4:44
Speaker 8: wouldn't have said multiple pathways because we have got some
4:48
Speaker 8: excellent candidates already. And we've also got a couple of
4:50
Speaker 8: candidates that I think are going to announce that can
4:53
Speaker 8: that can really do this for us.
4:54
Speaker 3: Close the deal. OK, Senator Gallego. How are you thinking
4:58
Speaker 3: about the Senate?
4:59
Speaker 9: I've always thought about we have no choice. Democrats have
5:03
Speaker 9: to win. We have to keep winning because we're about
5:05
Speaker 9: to hit some really hard periods, right? What does that
5:08
Speaker 9: look like? Well, in about 2033, 2034, Social Security is
5:13
Speaker 9: not going to pay 100% of its benefit, right? If
5:16
Speaker 9: you don't have a Democratic-held Senate, White House, and House,
5:20
Speaker 9: you're going to see these Republicans screw Social Security. We
5:24
Speaker 9: have Medicare that is also going to start running out.
5:26
Speaker 9: What do you think they're going to do if we
5:28
Speaker 9: don't have control of all three? They will find a
5:29
Speaker 9: way to screw Medicare. This is what they've been trying
5:31
Speaker 9: to do forever. They would love nothing more to be
5:34
Speaker 9: able to have it. And if they have the opportunity,
5:36
Speaker 9: they will do it. So we have no choice but
5:40
Speaker 9: to put some Senate seats on the board that maybe
5:42
Speaker 9: we're not even close to, we hadn't even thought about.
5:45
Speaker 9: But I do see some inklings of hope, not just
5:48
Speaker 9: in some places. Like in Iowa, man, if you go
5:50
Speaker 9: out to Iowa... And talk to some of these voters
5:53
Speaker 9: who have been voting Republican for a while. They are ticked.
5:56
Speaker 9: They're ticked about the economy. They're ticked about the fact
5:58
Speaker 9: that they have no markets to sell their stuff. They're
6:00
Speaker 9: ticked about health care being slashed in these rural areas.
6:04
Speaker 9: You have some great candidates running. But we have to
6:06
Speaker 9: figure out how to start winning in places that we
6:08
Speaker 9: aren't normally winning because that's how you end up governing.
6:11
Speaker 9: And we have to figure out how to govern, which is,
6:14
Speaker 9: I guess, is what we're all here talking about. We'll
6:15
Speaker 9: get to that later then.
6:19
Speaker 3: Congresswoman Jayapal, the House seems distinctly within grasp, and we
6:22
Speaker 3: know that because Donald Trump is trying to use every
6:24
Speaker 3: lever at his disposal to ensure that Democrats don't get
6:27
Speaker 3: a majority, some of them, I would argue, undemocratic. We
6:32
Speaker 3: look at what Speaker Johnson is doing, refusing to seat
6:34
Speaker 3: Adelita Grijalva, which also seems like something that is unconstitutional.
6:40
Speaker 3: I don't know. And I guess when you think about
6:43
Speaker 3: a Democratic majority in 2026 in the House.
6:48
Speaker 3: Are you worried that Republicans may decide to just not
6:53
Speaker 3: hand the gavel over? I mean, I feel like we
6:54
Speaker 3: are now being forced to reckon with ideas that previously
6:59
Speaker 3: seemed unthinkable, right? Like, if it's a narrow majority, what
7:03
Speaker 3: says that Speaker Johnson just doesn't decide not to seat
7:08
Speaker 3: the people that won?
7:09
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, hi, everybody. It's good to be here.
7:12
Speaker 3: Thank you.
7:16
Speaker 4: Look, I think we shouldn't take anything off the table.
7:18
Speaker 4: We all lived through January 6th. We know what happened there.
7:21
Speaker 4: We've been living through the last nine months and seeing
7:25
Speaker 4: things that we thought were untenable that we would never see,
7:28
Speaker 4: including incredible violence towards our people in cities across this
7:34
Speaker 4: country in different ways, violence on health care, violence on immigration,
7:39
Speaker 4: violence in so many places. And so I don't think
7:42
Speaker 4: that we should go into something scared, but I think
7:46
Speaker 4: we should be prepared. And the best way to be
7:48
Speaker 4: prepared is to make sure we are doing the work
7:51
Speaker 4: on the ground. And just like Ruben said, we've got
7:54
Speaker 4: incredible candidates in multiple places across the country. We just
7:59
Speaker 4: endorsed an incredible young woman named Afton Ben. Bain in Tennessee. And, um,
8:06
Speaker 4: I think it's a special election and I think we
8:09
Speaker 4: have a chance. Yes, it's a Trump plus 20 district,
8:11
Speaker 4: but you know what, after what happened on Tuesday night
8:14
Speaker 4: and in a special, I think we have to show
8:17
Speaker 4: power and hope to win, but show power because that's
8:21
Speaker 4: how you build for the next one. But also I'm
8:24
Speaker 4: going to Iowa and Nebraska next week. We've got incredible
8:27
Speaker 4: candidates there, including John Kavanaugh, who we endorsed yesterday. So
8:31
Speaker 4: I think that this is the work that we have
8:33
Speaker 4: to do. And it is absolutely illegal, undemocratic, unconstitutional to
8:41
Speaker 4: gerrymander districts. But it's all Donald Trump knows how to
8:46
Speaker 4: do is to cheat to win. And so we've got
8:50
Speaker 4: to make sure that we are preparing. And I think
8:54
Speaker 4: what California did with Prop 50 was incredibly important because...
9:05
Speaker 4: It just shows we're not gonna take a butter knife
9:08
Speaker 4: to a gun fight, even though I speak from nonviolence.
9:13
Speaker 4: But it really shows that we're gonna force them to,
9:16
Speaker 4: we're gonna play on the same playing field, and when
9:18
Speaker 4: we get power back, we gotta make it all fair again, right?
9:21
Speaker 4: We have to figure out how to have real voting
9:25
Speaker 4: rights that people can rely on, no gerrymandered districts, all
9:29
Speaker 4: those things we've gotta do. But right now we got
9:34
Speaker 4: to fight them on the same battlefield and we've got
9:37
Speaker 4: to make sure that we are doing the work in
9:40
Speaker 4: every place. And I think the house, we feel like
9:43
Speaker 4: there's a real possibility of doing that. And certainly looking
9:46
Speaker 4: at Tuesday night, thank you everybody for Tuesday night. I
9:51
Speaker 4: think that just gives us, it's like the first time
9:54
Speaker 4: we were saying to somebody, it's like the first time
9:55
Speaker 4: we've kind of felt a little bit of joy in
9:58
Speaker 4: our step when we answer the question, how.
9:59
Speaker 9: Are you doing?
10:00
Speaker 4: You know, because usually we say, good, good. How are
10:02
Speaker 4: you doing? Like, can we move on from that question?
10:05
Speaker 4: But now we're like, good, I'm good. Because of how
10:10
Speaker 4: people took power into their own hands at the voting box.
10:15
Speaker 3: Okay, I think, you know, to some degree this should
10:18
Speaker 3: answer itself, but there are plenty of people in this
10:21
Speaker 3: country who think of power and they think of it
10:24
Speaker 3: almost uniformly as being held in the executive branch, which
10:27
Speaker 3: is understandable seeing as we have an autocrat in power.
10:31
Speaker 3: But the balance of power in the legislative branch really
10:34
Speaker 3: truly matters. So, Senator Schatz, if you could, like, Do
10:39
Speaker 3: you have a 30-second sales pitch to why a Democratic
10:43
Speaker 3: majority in the Senate matters?
10:46
Speaker 6: The courts. The courts.
10:52
Speaker 8: More broadly, to constrain Trump, and more broadly, if we
10:54
Speaker 8: do take power to actually effectuate a bunch of policy,
10:57
Speaker 8: which I know is eventually going to be the topic
10:59
Speaker 8: of this conversation, but to the extent that we've been
11:02
Speaker 8: able to constrain Donald Trump's lawlessness, it has been through
11:05
Speaker 8: the federal court system. Yesterday's ruling in Chicago was someone
11:09
Speaker 8: we confirmed. All of these decisions that have been made,
11:12
Speaker 8: that have been compelling this administration to release the SNAP money,
11:17
Speaker 8: that have constrained the unlawful deployment of troops and National
11:21
Speaker 8: Guard's folks to American cities. All of that is because
11:26
Speaker 8: of judges that we churned through. And I get that
11:29
Speaker 8: that is not my most enjoyable part of the job
11:31
Speaker 8: where we're just sort of sitting in post-closure time and
11:35
Speaker 8: just voting aye, aye, aye. But now that body of
11:39
Speaker 8: work is really some of the best infrastructure of democracy.
11:42
Speaker 6: So courts, courts, courts.
11:44
Speaker 8: And by the way, if we do not take the Senate,
11:47
Speaker 8: I am very certain that we will see an Alito
11:51
Speaker 8: and a Thomas retirement and some Mike Lee staffer who's
11:54
Speaker 8: 32 ending up on the SCOTUS for a full generation.
11:57
Speaker 3: Yeah.
11:58
Speaker 6: I'm not kidding.
11:58
Speaker 3: Well, I think you could see those retirements maybe at
12:00
Speaker 3: the end of this term even before there's a chance
12:03
Speaker 3: for voters to decide. But then, of course, you could
12:05
Speaker 3: follow the Mitch McConnell playbook and say we got to
12:06
Speaker 3: wait till there's an election.
12:08
Speaker 4: Just kidding.
12:09
Speaker 3: I mean, we're not. Senator Gallego, I wonder, if you're
12:14
Speaker 3: making the pitch to working class voters in Arizona, are
12:17
Speaker 3: you using the courts argument? Use something else. What's your
12:23
Speaker 3: elevator pitch for why Senate majority matters?
12:25
Speaker 9: Because this administration, the Republicans, are making you sicker and poorer.
12:30
Speaker 9: In everything they're doing, they're just making you sicker and poorer.
12:32
Speaker 9: Inflation's up, you're poorer. Medicaid's being cut, you're sicker. The
12:37
Speaker 9: ACA extension is going to cut off 24 million people
12:40
Speaker 9: from affordable health insurance. 4 million Americans are going to
12:42
Speaker 9: lose health insurance if we don't do the ACA extension sicker.
12:46
Speaker 9: You keep going on up and down, sicker and poorer,
12:48
Speaker 9: making it sicker and sicker and poorer. That's what they're doing.
12:51
Speaker 9: What we're going to do, we're going to make you
12:52
Speaker 9: healthier and wealthier. Very simple. And then just go right
12:55
Speaker 9: into the policy positions of what that is. By the way,
13:00
Speaker 9: courts do matter. Don't get me wrong. Different strokes for
13:03
Speaker 9: different folks. But let's win and then do that, right?
13:07
Speaker 3: Hawaii is a different state. Congressman Jayapal, the same question,
13:11
Speaker 3: but for a house majority, why does it matter?
13:13
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's all, it's similar to Rubens. It's all about affordability.
13:17
Speaker 4: You know, you gotta be able to live. And people
13:19
Speaker 4: in this country, it is rigged for billionaires, for the
13:22
Speaker 4: wealthiest people at the top. And 80% of people can't
13:26
Speaker 4: put food on the table, can't get health insurance, can't
13:28
Speaker 4: afford their housing, can't afford their childcare. This is an
13:32
Speaker 4: administration that rigs things for the billionaire buddies. and we
13:36
Speaker 4: have to work for the people.
13:43
Speaker 3: I'm impressed that they really were like 30-second pitches. That
13:45
Speaker 3: was just kind of a framing mechanism.
13:46
Speaker 5: We care about the courts, too. I mean, we really
13:48
Speaker 5: care about the courts. Yeah, the senator's really tight. I
13:56
Speaker 5: guess let's just get to the getting. Okay, let's assume
13:59
Speaker 5: you get the majority. And I'll ask each one of
14:02
Speaker 5: you to weigh on to this.
14:03
Speaker 3: What is the first piece of business you tackle and why?
14:05
Speaker 3: Senator Schatz, I'd start with you.
14:08
Speaker 8: Well, I think the first business is the business in
14:10
Speaker 8: front of us, which is the extension of the ACA
14:13
Speaker 8: tax credits. And if they don't do that, that would
14:15
Speaker 8: be my first piece of business. We're either going to
14:18
Speaker 8: succeed or not succeed in the next, whatever it is,
14:21
Speaker 8: two months on this question of the ACA subsidies. And,
14:26
Speaker 8: you know, I know people personally who are facing.
14:28
Speaker 6: A $ 1, 200, $ 1, 400 deficit.
14:31
Speaker 8: Monthly increase, and they just literally can't do that. So
14:34
Speaker 8: that's the fight in front of us, and whether or
14:37
Speaker 8: not Trump sees that it is in his interest to
14:40
Speaker 8: solve this problem, I don't know. But if we are
14:43
Speaker 8: unable to solve this problem, we have to have a
14:46
Speaker 8: mechanism to have this healthcare.
14:48
Speaker 6: Fight live outside, inside, but also outside of.
14:52
Speaker 8: The context of a government shutdown because that is an
14:55
Speaker 8: animating force because it's become a bit of a proxy
14:57
Speaker 8: for everything. It is the healthcare fight, but the reason
15:00
Speaker 8: that people are now starting to trust us on the
15:03
Speaker 8: question of cost is that we're out there fighting on
15:06
Speaker 8: the question of cost. So it goes to food, it
15:08
Speaker 8: goes to electricity. It goes to electronics. It goes to toys.
15:12
Speaker 8: It goes to building materials. It goes to labor.
15:15
Speaker 6: Everything is getting more expensive. And that is not.
15:17
Speaker 8: Some like fiscal or monetary policy thing. That is an
15:21
Speaker 8: intentional strategy of the Trump administration, which is to turn
15:24
Speaker 8: the dial up. And the basic premise is that regular
15:27
Speaker 8: people have it too easy and we need to create
15:30
Speaker 8: a little scarcity. That is their actual view.
15:33
Speaker 3: Can I do ask a follow up just because we
15:35
Speaker 3: are obviously in the middle of a government shutdown?
15:37
Speaker 9: Thank you.
15:37
Speaker 3: John Thune for not scheduling a vote right now so
15:39
Speaker 3: that we could have you guys here. It's the only
15:41
Speaker 3: thing I'll thank him for.
15:42
Speaker 4: Yeah, right.
15:43
Speaker 5: Okay.
15:44
Speaker 3: But if a deal is not made on federal subsidies,
15:48
Speaker 3: which I hope is not the thing that comes to pass,
15:50
Speaker 3: do you think that will be a reason why the
15:52
Speaker 3: Senate turns blue if it does turn blue in November?
15:55
Speaker 8: I don't wanna go that far because we're in the
15:57
Speaker 8: middle of this fight because we're fighting for these 24
16:00
Speaker 8: million people. And I don't wanna contemplate what happens if
16:03
Speaker 8: we fail to do that. I think we have to
16:05
Speaker 8: be in this fight. I think we have to see
16:06
Speaker 8: it through. I think the Tuesday election has given some
16:11
Speaker 8: Republicans pause about.
16:12
Speaker 6: The question of the ACA subsidies.
16:14
Speaker 8: I do think that A, they thought we were gonna
16:16
Speaker 8: cave immediately. B, they kinda thought this was a talking point.
16:19
Speaker 6: They thought that we were cooking up the ACA increases.
16:23
Speaker 8: And now an increasing number of them, House and Senate
16:26
Speaker 8: I think is true, on the Republican side are starting
16:29
Speaker 8: to kind of noodle around on like, we kind of
16:31
Speaker 8: thought you were just like, you know, trying to inflame things,
16:35
Speaker 8: but now my constituents are getting their letter. So this
16:38
Speaker 8: thing is real and I think we do have a pathway.
16:40
Speaker 6: To solve it.
16:41
Speaker 8: Obviously it is just a truism in politics, which is
16:45
Speaker 8: you try to win the policy fight and then if
16:47
Speaker 8: you don't win the policy fight, You turn it into
16:49
Speaker 8: an electoral issue.
16:50
Speaker 6: So you can win it in the next round. But
16:52
Speaker 6: I don't want to lose.
16:52
Speaker 9: This policy fight.
16:53
Speaker 3: We'll start with and Godspeed on that policy. Congressman Jayapal,
16:58
Speaker 3: what's the first order of business the House should take up?
17:01
Speaker 3: Should Hakeem Jeffries get the gavel, assuming?
17:04
Speaker 4: Well, he is going to get the gavel and we
17:07
Speaker 4: are going to make him speaker of the House. Is
17:11
Speaker 4: this there's two scenarios here. One is the House election.
17:15
Speaker 4: gets a majority.
17:16
Speaker 3: Let's just say you have the House and Senate.
17:18
Speaker 2: Okay.
17:19
Speaker 3: All right.
17:20
Speaker 2: Great.
17:20
Speaker 4: I love that. So if we have the House and
17:22
Speaker 4: the Senate, I think about this in three ways. One,
17:25
Speaker 4: we have to deliver on affordability. And to me, that
17:29
Speaker 4: is childcare, it's housing, and it's healthcare. Those three things.
17:38
Speaker 4: And we would have done two of them, you know,
17:39
Speaker 4: back when you and I were talking about this on
17:42
Speaker 4: MSNBC a lot. Back in the before times. Yes, in
17:44
Speaker 4: those days. But those three things we've got to deliver on.
17:48
Speaker 4: There's a second bucket, which is around structural reforms. We've
17:52
Speaker 4: got to fix the Voting Rights Act. We have to.
17:55
Speaker 4: We have to. We have to deal in some way
18:02
Speaker 4: with the money in politics. And... To Brian's point, we
18:07
Speaker 4: also have to deal with the Supreme Court. And so
18:11
Speaker 4: I think those three things, and I would put in
18:14
Speaker 4: immigration reform in here, could be either in the first
18:17
Speaker 4: or in the second, but we need to stop allowing
18:20
Speaker 4: people to use immigrants against us. And we need to
18:23
Speaker 4: stand up for immigrants across this country. And then the
18:27
Speaker 4: third is one I really have been struggling with, but
18:30
Speaker 4: I think we have to do it. It's something around
18:33
Speaker 4: the accountability of the pain and the lawlessness of this administration.
18:39
Speaker 4: And I don't have the answer yet around what these
18:44
Speaker 4: things are, but there's a bucket here. And it does
18:47
Speaker 4: involve accountability around January 6th, for sure. But it also, like,
18:52
Speaker 4: we've been a country that I think a lot of us,
18:55
Speaker 4: me included, thought had a lot more in place to
18:59
Speaker 4: stop a lawless authoritarian. And what I've realized is we
19:05
Speaker 4: have a lot more norms and a lot fewer actual tools.
19:10
Speaker 4: And so we've been doing a lot of thinking in
19:12
Speaker 4: the House with Jamie Raskin and others on the Judiciary
19:15
Speaker 4: Committee about what are the structural changes, what are the
19:19
Speaker 4: changes we need to make so that we can get
19:21
Speaker 4: that kind of accountability? And then what is the process
19:23
Speaker 4: we have to go through for the country to heal
19:25
Speaker 4: and for us to actually be able to come together,
19:29
Speaker 4: but for people who have been wronged to really feel
19:32
Speaker 4: like we're addressing that? So that's much more complicated. The
19:34
Speaker 4: first two I feel like I'm pretty clear, but.
19:36
Speaker 3: It was kind of like an Easter egg in there
19:39
Speaker 3: when you said we need to do something about the
19:41
Speaker 3: Supreme Court. Does that mean add some seats?
19:44
Speaker 4: I mean, in my view, yes. But also, that's... that
19:50
Speaker 4: is not a crazy liberal idea that's unprecedented. It's been
19:54
Speaker 4: done numerous times in the country's history where we've expanded
19:57
Speaker 4: the court to match the expansion of the population. But also,
20:01
Speaker 4: Elizabeth Warren and I have an Ethics and Accountability Act
20:05
Speaker 4: for the Supreme Court. Why is it that the highest
20:17
Speaker 4: court in the land does not have any kind of
20:20
Speaker 4: an enforceable ethics standard? And so you can have a
20:24
Speaker 4: bunch of people just paying for RVs and luxury vacations
20:28
Speaker 4: and all kinds of things and then going and arguing
20:31
Speaker 4: cases before the Supreme Court. And it is so obviously corrupt.
20:35
Speaker 4: And when that corruption shows through to the people, it
20:39
Speaker 4: is a very dangerous time if people lose faith in
20:42
Speaker 4: the highest court in the land. And that's happening right now.
20:45
Speaker 4: So under John Roberts' watch. So I think we've got
20:48
Speaker 4: to fix that and we've got to make sure that
20:51
Speaker 4: we have real accountability and real ethics standards for people
20:55
Speaker 4: that are going to be the ultimate judge of the
20:59
Speaker 4: law of the land in this country for life. Senator Gallego?
21:08
Speaker 9: Well, you should always dance for the person who brings
21:12
Speaker 9: you to the dance, right? What's going to bring us
21:15
Speaker 9: to victory in the Senate and the House is going
21:18
Speaker 9: to be cost of living and just in general people's
21:23
Speaker 9: feeling of inability to actually feel comfortable with what they're making.
21:26
Speaker 9: I think what we do first is going to brand
21:29
Speaker 9: the Democrats going also into 2028. And everything they're saying
21:32
Speaker 9: is very important. Don't get me wrong. Totally agree with that.
21:34
Speaker 9: We should do all that. But I think the first
21:36
Speaker 9: thing we should do is pass a They know me.
21:41
Speaker 9: They've known me for a while.
21:42
Speaker 4: Including health care, housing, and child care. Yeah, really important.
21:45
Speaker 2: It's all important.
21:46
Speaker 9: All that shit. Anyway, also. All the shit. But I
21:50
Speaker 9: think actually we should do something very basic. We should
21:52
Speaker 9: pass a minimum wage increase to $ 20 an hour. And
22:03
Speaker 9: one bill, $ 20 an hour, and it should be pegged
22:05
Speaker 9: to growth with inflation so we never find ourselves in
22:08
Speaker 9: a situation right now where working class people are basically
22:12
Speaker 9: doing poverty wages.
22:15
Speaker 5: Right?
22:16
Speaker 9: And that's when we start seeing those voters, those working
22:21
Speaker 9: class voters that we lost, like, oh, that's the Democrats.
22:24
Speaker 9: That's who I remember. And then watch the Republicans argue
22:28
Speaker 9: against that. Then watch this president veto it or not
22:31
Speaker 9: veto it. and then have them get into an internal fight.
22:35
Speaker 9: But then we're known as the people that took care
22:38
Speaker 9: of working class people and having higher wages. And then
22:41
Speaker 9: it's easier for us then to roll into affordable housing,
22:44
Speaker 9: into healthcare, everything else like that. But let's hit this
22:47
Speaker 9: the right tone, right way to make sure that it
22:49
Speaker 9: really sets us up for success going forward.
22:57
Speaker 4: Just to point out, we did pass a $ 15 minimum
23:00
Speaker 4: wage back in 2012 in the city of Seattle, highest
23:03
Speaker 4: minimum wage in the country. We were the first state
23:06
Speaker 4: in the country in Washington to index minimum wage to inflation,
23:10
Speaker 4: and it's why Washington state keeps winning. To Ruben's point,
23:14
Speaker 4: it's why Washington state keeps winning and the only state
23:17
Speaker 4: that didn't go red this last election.
23:20
Speaker 3: And why you keep winning.
23:22
Speaker 4: That too.
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Speaker 3: What, and I'll ask all of you guys this, what
26:56
Speaker 3: is the biggest threat to being able to enact that agenda?
27:00
Speaker 3: And it doesn't have to be Trump. I mean, I
27:02
Speaker 3: just wonder if you think there are structural issues, if
27:04
Speaker 3: you want to talk about the filibuster.
27:06
Speaker 6: The filibuster.
27:06
Speaker 9: I got this. What's that?
27:08
Speaker 6: I mean, my one answer, the filibuster.
27:10
Speaker 9: The filibuster.
27:11
Speaker 3: Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about that. Are
27:14
Speaker 3: we reaching the point now where it's time to get
27:15
Speaker 3: rid of it?
27:16
Speaker 9: It already is gone. The Republicans have already changed the
27:19
Speaker 9: filibuster rules twice since I've been there. It's convenient. Like,
27:23
Speaker 9: and for those who speak Spanish, that's when they use
27:26
Speaker 9: the excuse, like, oh, now they want the filibuster. No,
27:28
Speaker 9: they want the filibuster. Like, they just change how we
27:31
Speaker 9: do nominations, how we do, you know, now, I think
27:34
Speaker 9: last week we voted for, like, 30, like, nominees, right?
27:37
Speaker 9: and one vote. So they've done this already, right? It's
27:40
Speaker 9: just that we end up the ones that screw ourselves, right?
27:44
Speaker 9: Why haven't we gotten immigration reform? Because we used to
27:46
Speaker 9: have two or three Dem senators that said, I'm not
27:48
Speaker 9: going to join you. You know, why didn't we get,
27:50
Speaker 9: you know, more effective things done last time? Because Cinnamon
27:53
Speaker 9: Mansion would not, you know, overlook some of the, would
27:57
Speaker 9: work with the Republicans to stop things such as, by
27:59
Speaker 9: the way, anti-gerrymandering legislation when we try to pass that
28:02
Speaker 9: last cycle. So it's all, it's all bullshit to begin with.
28:06
Speaker 9: And And the other thing is, why don't we have
28:10
Speaker 9: a living wage? Because it's still pegged at $ 7. 25 federally
28:14
Speaker 9: because of the filibuster. Now, when I go and talk
28:17
Speaker 9: to a person and I say, like, why haven't you
28:19
Speaker 9: done anything about the minimum wage? I say, well, you know,
28:21
Speaker 9: there's this filibuster. It's not really in the Constitution. It's
28:24
Speaker 9: actually a rule of the Senate. Do you think they
28:26
Speaker 9: give a fuck about that? They don't. And we look
28:31
Speaker 9: so ineffectual all the time on every issue. So, you know,
28:35
Speaker 9: and you're going to hear the other side, well, what
28:36
Speaker 9: happens when they take over? Well, I believe in the
28:39
Speaker 9: battle of ideas. If we can effectively push our programs,
28:42
Speaker 9: our ideas, our policies, actually take care of people, we'll
28:45
Speaker 9: always win the battle of ideas.
28:47
Speaker 3: Well, and also.
28:51
Speaker 3: And I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but
28:53
Speaker 3: my friend Chris Hayes and I were talking about this
28:54
Speaker 3: on my podcast, Runaway Country on Crooked Media.
28:58
Speaker 10: And....
28:59
Speaker 3: And he was making the point that like part of
29:01
Speaker 3: the reason it's so easy for these Trump Republicans in
29:03
Speaker 3: the Senate to capitulate to Trump and pledge fealty is
29:06
Speaker 3: because they don't actually have to take a vote on
29:07
Speaker 3: any of this stuff. Right. And, like, if you actually
29:10
Speaker 3: made them put their money where their mouths are because,
29:12
Speaker 3: you know, it's a simple majority vote, like, maybe you'd
29:15
Speaker 3: have more resistance.
29:16
Speaker 4: I don't know.
29:16
Speaker 3: Maybe that's optimistic thinking, but... No, I mean, I.
29:20
Speaker 4: Think that, you know, we know all the stuff about
29:22
Speaker 4: the filibuster and how it's a legacy of Jim Crow.
29:24
Speaker 4: Why have they kept it in place theoretically? Because what
29:28
Speaker 4: Rubin said is right. They've taken it away for the budget, right?
29:31
Speaker 4: They can pass their tax breaks. They can do their
29:34
Speaker 4: Supreme Court nominations, whatever. They've done it already, It benefits them.
29:40
Speaker 4: That's the reason they're keeping it. What I don't understand
29:43
Speaker 4: is why we keep it. Because it doesn't benefit us
29:47
Speaker 4: at all. And it literally gives.
29:49
Speaker 9: It doesn't benefit working class Americans.
29:52
Speaker 4: That's what I mean. It doesn't benefit.
29:53
Speaker 9: They're not Democrats, but yeah.
29:54
Speaker 4: It doesn't benefit the people that we are trying to serve.
29:57
Speaker 4: By the way, it doesn't benefit the people they are
29:59
Speaker 4: trying to serve either. because they have states that passed
30:04
Speaker 4: a $ 15 minimum wage and voted for Donald Trump. So
30:07
Speaker 4: minimum wage, affordable childcare, housing, these are not Republican or
30:11
Speaker 4: Democratic issues. They are issues across the country. People are suffering.
30:15
Speaker 4: That's why income inequality is so high. That's why you
30:19
Speaker 4: can use all kinds of wedges to divide people because
30:22
Speaker 4: they can't put food on their table. So I do
30:25
Speaker 4: think that we have to just wake up and realize
30:28
Speaker 4: that they've already gotten rid of it for the things
30:31
Speaker 4: that they want. And they've kept it so that they
30:34
Speaker 4: can continue to gerrymander, not pass voting rights, not pass
30:37
Speaker 4: minimum wage, not pass the things that benefit their billionaire buddies.
30:40
Speaker 4: And we should be really clear that that should be
30:43
Speaker 4: the first thing we get done because otherwise we're going
30:45
Speaker 4: to be having the same freaking policy or sort of
30:49
Speaker 4: esoteric discussions about how some unelected parliamentarian refused to agree
30:55
Speaker 4: to allow us to put the minimum wage into a
30:57
Speaker 4: reconciliation bill. What part of that does anyone in America understand?
31:02
Speaker 4: You know, they want to know, did you increase the
31:03
Speaker 4: minimum wage or did you not? If we are able
31:06
Speaker 4: to pass those things, that is actually the only thing
31:09
Speaker 4: that saves our democracy because people will start to feel
31:12
Speaker 4: the effects of it on day one. And that will
31:16
Speaker 4: mean they have faith again in government that we don't
31:20
Speaker 4: say we're going to fight for something and then we
31:22
Speaker 4: give them a bunch of process arguments about why we
31:24
Speaker 4: can't do it. You know, that's what failed process votes
31:28
Speaker 4: are about. It's like, well, really sorry, can't do it. No,
31:32
Speaker 4: we got to deliver on the stuff. And if there
31:34
Speaker 4: are structural barriers that stop us, we need to actually
31:38
Speaker 4: look at them because they're only benefiting the wealthiest in
31:42
Speaker 4: this country. And they're allowing 80% of this country to
31:45
Speaker 4: not be able to afford to live. And that's not
31:48
Speaker 4: the America that we believe in.
31:56
Speaker 3: Senator Schatz, are you going to be the voice of
31:58
Speaker 3: reason advocating for the survival.
32:01
Speaker 6: Of the filibuster?
32:02
Speaker 2: I don't know.
32:03
Speaker 6: No, look, I think.
32:04
Speaker 8: I'll just add one thing in addition to... I mean,
32:07
Speaker 8: I agree with you that what we need to do
32:09
Speaker 8: is focus on things that people understand. And then as
32:11
Speaker 8: a kind of side effect of that, we say there
32:14
Speaker 8: was an impediment and we got through it.
32:16
Speaker 6: Whether that impediment was... An.
32:19
Speaker 8: Individual senator who was resistant or a Senate rule or
32:23
Speaker 8: procedure like no one's interested in what the impediment was
32:26
Speaker 8: they're interested in us delivering. I will say one other
32:29
Speaker 8: thing that we can where we could stumble is if
32:32
Speaker 8: we get a little too precious in our first couple
32:35
Speaker 8: of months about who's kind of first in line and
32:38
Speaker 8: what goes in the package and some of the. kind
32:41
Speaker 8: of machinations around Build Back Better was exactly that. Like
32:44
Speaker 8: we got, we tried to accomplish so much that it's
32:47
Speaker 8: like cooking, like a lot of ingredients are good, not
32:50
Speaker 8: all of the ingredients are good in the same dish.
32:53
Speaker 8: And so we're gonna have to be pretty disciplined and
32:55
Speaker 8: I love Ruben's sort of approach, which is like, we
32:58
Speaker 8: need to pick the most explainable most palpable things on
33:03
Speaker 8: the front end. And all of those kind of structural
33:06
Speaker 8: reforms as it relates to the bones of democracy are
33:09
Speaker 8: just as important, but they may not be first out
33:11
Speaker 8: of the gate because they're not as resonant, frankly, as
33:14
Speaker 8: the cost of living. The reason people are pissed, the
33:17
Speaker 8: reason we lost last year and the reason we won
33:20
Speaker 8: on Tuesday is the same reason. Everything's too expensive and
33:25
Speaker 8: people are furious about it. And that's what we need
33:27
Speaker 8: to focus on.
33:28
Speaker 9: What he said, but prettier. What I said, but he
33:31
Speaker 9: said it prettier.
33:31
Speaker 3: I was going to go, you're going to say it prettier.
33:35
Speaker 4: One reason that everything got put into that is, again, procedural, right?
33:39
Speaker 4: We had this weird... thing called reconciliation that nobody understood
33:45
Speaker 4: but it was like the one way that we could
33:47
Speaker 4: get certain things done with 50 votes which was the
33:50
Speaker 4: only way we could accomplish and now this isn't so
33:54
Speaker 4: i think that it goes back to why all of
33:57
Speaker 4: us all of us said get rid of the filibuster
34:00
Speaker 4: because we can't deliver on the rest of the agenda
34:03
Speaker 4: if we don't do that.
34:04
Speaker 9: Yeah but just like i would say the one thing
34:06
Speaker 9: like because i was in the house and i remember
34:08
Speaker 9: with the build back better agenda i'm like why are
34:10
Speaker 9: we doing this so complicated, it's this, plus this, like,
34:14
Speaker 9: can we just give people money, like, that's what, that's
34:17
Speaker 9: what Trump did, it's like, oh, yeah, man, here's a
34:19
Speaker 9: thousand dollars, here's a Trump check, like, okay, people are
34:21
Speaker 9: hurting right now, like, why don't we just extend the
34:23
Speaker 9: child tax credit, you know, for another two years, and,
34:26
Speaker 9: and then, because, because we had a couple cracks at reconciliation, right,
34:31
Speaker 9: and said we did it all, like, one thing we
34:32
Speaker 9: should have just done quickly, again, my, my little marine
34:36
Speaker 9: brain works from A to B, which is like, first
34:40
Speaker 9: thing to do, do something that's going to be very popular,
34:42
Speaker 9: and then work on all the other nerdy shit.
34:45
Speaker 4: But one thing about that, it has to be popular
34:48
Speaker 4: for everybody. I mean, one thing about our definitions of
34:52
Speaker 4: who qualifies for certain things, it's all by 400% of
34:56
Speaker 4: the poverty limit, right? And so if we say universal childcare, right,
35:01
Speaker 4: where it's for everybody, because there are people who are just.
35:04
Speaker 9: Over the line.
35:04
Speaker 4: So I do think we've got to think about these
35:06
Speaker 4: universal programs versus ones that just lift up people below
35:11
Speaker 4: a certain poverty line.
35:12
Speaker 9: I mean, I agree, just... I absolutely agree. It's also
35:15
Speaker 9: easier to administer. And also, like, you know, depending where
35:19
Speaker 9: you are, a family making $ 100, 000 is barely making it nowadays.
35:23
Speaker 9: Families making $ 80, 000, at least in Arizona, a family of
35:28
Speaker 9: three making $ 80, 000 is middle class, but they're barely making it. So, like,
35:32
Speaker 9: I do think that there is a universal program to
35:36
Speaker 9: actually help people work out the best.
35:39
Speaker 3: Help me understand. I mean, there seems to be some
35:42
Speaker 3: unanimity on the question of affordability being a priority. Obviously
35:45
Speaker 3: you guys each have separate recommendations just in terms of
35:48
Speaker 3: the dynamics inside the Senate and the house in terms
35:51
Speaker 3: of Democrats actually having together and listening and speaking with
35:55
Speaker 3: one voice right now, it's easier. You're the, you're the
35:57
Speaker 3: minority party and there's a despot in the white house
36:00
Speaker 3: and it's just a sort of reactionary stance in a
36:03
Speaker 3: lot of ways. But if it does come back where
36:06
Speaker 3: you're holding the gavel, where you guys are running the show,
36:09
Speaker 3: Do you think things have changed enough that Democrats can
36:13
Speaker 3: operate with sort of more nimbly and more effectively with
36:17
Speaker 3: the power that they're given compared to the last time around?
36:19
Speaker 3: I mean, what are the dynamics like? You guys, I'll
36:22
Speaker 3: start with the senators, because you're in a big fight
36:25
Speaker 3: right now. And there's been a little reporting this week about,
36:29
Speaker 3: you know, some factions splitting off. Thus far, we've presented
36:33
Speaker 3: mostly a united front to the public. But do you
36:36
Speaker 3: feel like the Democratic caucus is... is, I guess, more unified,
36:40
Speaker 3: more together, more cohesive, and can stay that way if
36:44
Speaker 3: you got power back again? And please answer honestly.
36:47
Speaker 8: So the answer is yes, we are, I think we're
36:57
Speaker 8: totally in alignment about affordability, and I think there is
37:00
Speaker 8: a creeping realization of the kind of, that part of
37:04
Speaker 8: the problem of the Biden accomplishments was its complexity and
37:08
Speaker 8: difficulty in implementation. And that created like multiple political problems
37:14
Speaker 8: because people didn't feel anything. And some of it wasn't
37:17
Speaker 8: just a matter of it being delayed implementation. Some of
37:20
Speaker 8: it frankly never ended up happening. And so I was
37:23
Speaker 8: kind of, because I felt that universal basic income, for instance,
37:26
Speaker 8: was like being proposed by a bunch of tech titans
37:29
Speaker 8: who wanted an excuse to eviscerate employment and just say,
37:33
Speaker 8: we should just do this thing because.
37:34
Speaker 6: That way I can wave away this problem.
37:36
Speaker 8: So I was very resistant to UBI, but the thing
37:38
Speaker 8: that changed my mind was both the kind of failure
37:41
Speaker 8: of implementation of at least part of ARP and part
37:44
Speaker 8: of IRA and part of all those things just kind
37:47
Speaker 8: of didn't happen fast enough. But also back home during COVID,
37:52
Speaker 8: we set up a bunch of programs, but everyone I
37:55
Speaker 8: ran into was like, it was the checks, man.
37:57
Speaker 6: It was the cash money.
37:58
Speaker 8: And so I'm not saying that's the only solution, but
38:01
Speaker 8: that is an example of like specificity, palpability, speed. And
38:07
Speaker 8: so- It is true that we care about institutions and
38:10
Speaker 8: norms and laws and all that stuff.
38:12
Speaker 6: We really do care about that.
38:14
Speaker 8: But if we make an argument in this election cycle
38:17
Speaker 8: or any election cycle in the next 10 years that
38:19
Speaker 8: we are going to restore the status quo, we are
38:22
Speaker 8: going to get smoked again and again and again. And
38:25
Speaker 8: so when we do progressive policy, we should err on
38:29
Speaker 8: the side of.
38:30
Speaker 6: No new programs. No new programs, nothing that has.
38:33
Speaker 8: To go through the Administrative Procedures Act, all self-executing, all
38:37
Speaker 8: right away you feel it.
38:43
Speaker 9: And I guess just like, I also think like there's,
38:48
Speaker 9: there used to be this feeling, I think, that you're
38:50
Speaker 9: insulated as a senator, right? because we're off every six years,
38:54
Speaker 9: it's very hard to knock one of us off. I
38:57
Speaker 9: think the Democratic... I guess I did. I forgot about that.
39:02
Speaker 9: But they're... Humble brag. Not humble, actually. It is a brag.
39:09
Speaker 3: Um.
39:12
Speaker 9: But I think there is a real understanding that Democrats
39:18
Speaker 9: and our supporters, because there's independent support Democrats, want to
39:23
Speaker 9: see results. And they're just not going to be happy
39:25
Speaker 9: with somebody with the D and nothing happens. And that
39:29
Speaker 9: you're going to... going to have problems going and winning
39:33
Speaker 9: a primary or even winning a general if you don't
39:36
Speaker 9: seem like you're actually effectively doing something to make people's
39:40
Speaker 9: lives better. And I think that would put a lot
39:43
Speaker 9: of pressure on us as a caucus to make sure
39:46
Speaker 9: that we're actually doing the things my friend Brian is
39:49
Speaker 9: talking about.
39:50
Speaker 3: I should note that Nancy Pelosi has decided that she
39:54
Speaker 3: is stepping down, retiring after many years leading the House.
39:58
Speaker 3: And I wonder, as you think about the House as
40:00
Speaker 3: this sort of cohesive organism with regards to the Democrats,
40:07
Speaker 3: first of all, just how instrumental it was to have
40:09
Speaker 3: someone like that in leadership. I mean, the ACA wouldn't
40:12
Speaker 3: have been passed without Nancy Pelosi, right? And just someone
40:16
Speaker 3: who's been managing... very ideologically diverse coalition on the left
40:22
Speaker 3: and sort of like the perils that lay ahead for
40:25
Speaker 3: the House, because all respect to the Senate, you guys
40:27
Speaker 3: are the ones most likely to return to power in 2026, right?
40:30
Speaker 3: So like, what does that mean for the current House
40:32
Speaker 3: dynamics and a new generation of leadership?
40:34
Speaker 4: Well, she, I mean, she is a remarkable leader. Like,
40:37
Speaker 4: I don't, I just think she's an incredible organizer.
40:40
Speaker 6: She is, you know, she.
40:43
Speaker 4: She understands power in a way that her experience and,
40:48
Speaker 4: you know, she served a long time too, right? So
40:50
Speaker 4: she knows all the procedures. She's been through this before.
40:52
Speaker 4: And so I think she was, and she gets how
40:57
Speaker 4: to get people on board. as somebody who has gone
41:01
Speaker 4: through that when I didn't fall in line. So I
41:07
Speaker 4: say it with tremendous affection, gratitude, and respect because I
41:11
Speaker 4: respect an organizer who knows how to get things done,
41:14
Speaker 4: and that is what she is. And I think that,
41:17
Speaker 4: you know, a lot of times, like, we're very proud,
41:20
Speaker 4: and you served in the House too, right? No? Okay,
41:23
Speaker 4: so Ruben knows this.
41:23
Speaker 6: I lost my House race.
41:24
Speaker 4: You know, we like to... We like to... We are
41:29
Speaker 4: closest to the people. It's called the People's House. We're
41:31
Speaker 4: very proud of that because we have to run every
41:33
Speaker 4: two years. And so I think we're constantly much more
41:38
Speaker 4: in tune in some ways with what the today problem is.
41:42
Speaker 4: And I really do think that we've been able to
41:45
Speaker 4: do amazing things in the House under Pelosi's leadership. It
41:49
Speaker 4: will be so under the next speaker's leadership as well.
41:54
Speaker 4: The problem has been that everything, forgive me, colleagues, the Senate,
42:00
Speaker 4: the August Senate, where all good things go to die.
42:05
Speaker 4: So that's what we have to change. And I think
42:07
Speaker 4: that's what we're all saying is things are getting blocked
42:10
Speaker 4: and people don't care what the reason is. You have
42:13
Speaker 4: to be able to deliver. And it's not enough just
42:15
Speaker 4: to say, hey, I'm fighting hard for you. No, what
42:17
Speaker 4: are you delivering for us? And the other thing I
42:21
Speaker 4: want to say just about, because I think it's important
42:23
Speaker 4: to learn from the lessons. Yes, we need to have
42:25
Speaker 4: simple programs, all of those things. But listen, we took
42:28
Speaker 4: the easy way out. We went for low hanging infrastructure bill.
42:34
Speaker 4: We should never have divorced it from the housing, childcare,
42:38
Speaker 4: the rest of it. And I'm not trying to relive things,
42:41
Speaker 4: but I'm just saying, we have to be willing to
42:44
Speaker 4: take some big risks and do some big things. Because Yes,
42:48
Speaker 4: people care about roads and bridges, but you know what?
42:51
Speaker 4: My union members can't get out to build them because
42:54
Speaker 4: they can't get childcare. So we've got to just, we
43:00
Speaker 4: need to think about what people need to live in
43:04
Speaker 4: a different way. And I think that's why it's so important.
43:07
Speaker 4: You know, it was called soft infrastructure, hard infrastructure, all
43:10
Speaker 4: this stuff. We just need to think about what's the
43:13
Speaker 4: bills you got to pay at the end of the day.
43:15
Speaker 4: And how do we make those bills less? And what
43:19
Speaker 4: programs can we put in place right away? Let's not
43:22
Speaker 4: spend a year and a half to deliver the stuff
43:26
Speaker 4: that had the prescription drug pricing, the housing, all of
43:29
Speaker 4: those things in it. That didn't get done until two
43:31
Speaker 4: years into the term. What would have happened if we deliver?
43:35
Speaker 4: And then the prescription drug price stuff didn't even go
43:37
Speaker 4: into effect until the new administration, for the most part.
43:40
Speaker 4: Some important things before that. So let's just be strategic
43:44
Speaker 4: about what we do first. Do hard things. We can
43:47
Speaker 4: do hard things. And let's make sure that they are
43:51
Speaker 4: getting done quickly.
43:52
Speaker 9: Yeah. I guess one of the other things I'd like
43:55
Speaker 9: to point out is that let's not lie to ourselves.
43:58
Speaker 9: Because the big lie around infrastructure is like, this is
44:00
Speaker 9: really going to get people jazzed. And I remember talking
44:03
Speaker 9: to the Biden people and talking to other senators like, no,
44:05
Speaker 9: it's not. It's not going to fucking do it. It's
44:09
Speaker 9: like it's not going to get people excited because it's
44:11
Speaker 9: going to take forever to get built. No one's going
44:13
Speaker 9: to know who did it. But it's like it's not.
44:15
Speaker 9: I'm sure you think that's the case. But lying to
44:18
Speaker 9: yourself does not mean that lie is actually going to
44:20
Speaker 9: come true.
44:20
Speaker 2: Right.
44:21
Speaker 9: But we kept saying it. They kept saying it. I'm like,
44:23
Speaker 9: it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen.
44:26
Speaker 9: Over and over and over. And we all knew it.
44:28
Speaker 9: And we also, like, and what do we all do?
44:30
Speaker 9: We're like, well, I guess we're doing infrastructure.
44:31
Speaker 4: It's the easiest thing to get done.
44:35
Speaker 6: Believe me.
44:35
Speaker 9: Just trust us.
44:37
Speaker 4: We know better in the Senate. We'll send it over
44:38
Speaker 4: to you and jam you so that you have to
44:41
Speaker 4: send it back to us.
44:41
Speaker 9: It was just really crazy. Like, we just can't lie
44:44
Speaker 9: to ourselves.
44:44
Speaker 4: I got some anger. I got some anger.
44:46
Speaker 9: Just don't. Just don't. Just don't lie. We, when we're in,
44:51
Speaker 9: cannot lie to ourselves to believe that's actually going to
44:54
Speaker 9: effectively actually change the politics. It was crazy to see.
44:59
Speaker 4: And it was our entire caucus. It wasn't just progressives.
45:02
Speaker 4: It was across the board.
45:03
Speaker 3: Everybody thought it was a bad idea.
45:05
Speaker 9: We hung together.
45:06
Speaker 4: I mean, we really did. We did incredible work. You know,
45:09
Speaker 4: and I always try to remind people, wasn't the majority
45:13
Speaker 4: of the Democratic caucus, 99% of us, wanted to get
45:16
Speaker 4: that passed. And we let two people block us. And
45:19
Speaker 4: that was a huge mistake. And now we have Ruben
45:21
Speaker 4: Gallego in the Arizona State, Arizona Senate.
45:30
Speaker 3: I think I know the answer to this, but is
45:33
Speaker 3: there a place, is there an issue that you definitely
45:35
Speaker 3: do not think you should start with? I feel like
45:39
Speaker 3: you've said infrastructure is not where you want to start
45:42
Speaker 3: if you get power back, but... Senator Schatz, you've been quiet.
45:46
Speaker 6: This might be mildly unpopular. I'm not sure.
45:48
Speaker 8: But I actually think all this democracy reform stuff is
45:51
Speaker 8: not your lead argument.
45:53
Speaker 6: And I think that doesn't mean that it's not essential.
45:57
Speaker 8: And as I rack and stack, you know, there's things
45:59
Speaker 8: in your life that are the most important thing. That
46:02
Speaker 8: doesn't mean it's the thing you're doing this morning. And
46:05
Speaker 8: I think the sequencing very much matters. And people are
46:08
Speaker 8: listening for cues and clues as to whether this Democratic
46:11
Speaker 8: Party gets it. And if the message in the midterms
46:16
Speaker 8: is like, everything's too fucking expensive, will you please fix this?
46:19
Speaker 8: And then we start talking about gerrymandering and all the
46:22
Speaker 8: rest of it.
46:22
Speaker 6: Like, it's really essential. I care very deeply about it.
46:25
Speaker 8: And, you know, my buddy, the former governor of Hawaii
46:30
Speaker 8: who appointed me to the Senate used to say, People
46:32
Speaker 8: vote for you for their reasons, not yours. And so
46:36
Speaker 8: the reason we are going to win next year and
46:40
Speaker 8: three years from now is because Donald Trump has made
46:43
Speaker 8: everything more expensive on purpose, and we have to be
46:46
Speaker 8: laser-focused on reversing that.
46:49
Speaker 4: Look, isn't... Oh, we got a follow-up.
46:55
Speaker 3: I was going to say, yeah, isn't it just like
46:56
Speaker 3: a senator to not give a shit about gerrymandering?
46:59
Speaker 4: I was just....
47:02
Speaker 3: Isn't it just like a senator?
47:05
Speaker 4: I was hoping you would see me putting up my hand,
47:08
Speaker 4: not to disagree in the sense that, aren't I diplomatic?
47:13
Speaker 4: In the sense that we have to deliver something immediately
47:17
Speaker 4: that affects everybody's cost of living. Like, I really believe that. However,
47:22
Speaker 4: the pace at which we work matters. And we cannot
47:27
Speaker 4: talk about the gerrymandering and the Voting Rights Act in
47:31
Speaker 4: ways that are, there are people across this country who
47:37
Speaker 4: are going to have less of a vote than even
47:41
Speaker 4: what the founders put into the Constitution, right? And so
47:44
Speaker 4: I think we've got to be really clear that this
47:48
Speaker 4: is not a year two thing. We actually have to
47:52
Speaker 4: have a very quick, and I don't think Brian was
47:54
Speaker 4: saying that, I just think we have to be very
47:57
Speaker 4: quick at what we get done and we have to
48:00
Speaker 4: make sure that those structural things are at the top
48:03
Speaker 4: because they are affecting massive amounts of black and brown
48:06
Speaker 4: people who are literally getting their votes stolen away from them.
48:10
Speaker 4: And we just, we are not a democracy if we
48:17
Speaker 4: don't allow people with black and brown skin to vote.
48:25
Speaker 9: Why can't we be pushing a minimum wage increase vote
48:28
Speaker 9: and at the same time do the anti-gerrymandering bill? We
48:33
Speaker 9: have multiple.
48:34
Speaker 3: You have to pick one.
48:35
Speaker 9: Why do we have to pick one? That's the craziest part.
48:37
Speaker 4: And they're all written.
48:38
Speaker 9: This actually did happen when I was there. Like, oh,
48:40
Speaker 9: we've got to do H.R.
48:41
Speaker 2: 1 first.
48:42
Speaker 9: And then we're like, why? Why can't we be going
48:45
Speaker 9: at the same time? And then maybe we talk more
48:47
Speaker 9: about minimum wage. And then Jerry, it's the craziest effing thing.
48:51
Speaker 9: You know, Donald Trump has been able to clap so
48:54
Speaker 9: much because they had laws written even before they got
48:57
Speaker 9: into office through Project 2025, right? We should be ready
49:01
Speaker 9: with Project 2029, which is as soon as we get
49:03
Speaker 9: in there. These are the things we're going to pass
49:07
Speaker 9: so that we're not in what happened with the ACA,
49:11
Speaker 9: what happened with everything else. We're in there for months
49:13
Speaker 9: and months talking about a compromise bill that we're compromising
49:15
Speaker 9: among ourselves. And then the American public is wondering, why
49:19
Speaker 9: the hell aren't you guys doing anything? I am hurting
49:21
Speaker 9: right now when all we have to do is pass
49:23
Speaker 9: a couple of simple bills we should have already pre-agreed to.
49:26
Speaker 9: So that's what I'm saying. We should do the anti-Gerrymandering
49:29
Speaker 9: bill at the same time you're running a pro-worker, pro-family bill,
49:35
Speaker 9: and just let them all go and just move them
49:37
Speaker 9: as fast as possible.
49:43
Speaker 3: I do wonder, just to actually follow up instead of
49:45
Speaker 3: making a snide remark about you not wanting gerrymandering at
49:48
Speaker 3: the top of your list, just because this week we
49:51
Speaker 3: saw 8 million Californians come out on the issue of gerrymandering. Like,
49:56
Speaker 3: I am old enough to remember my career in television
49:58
Speaker 3: when I was like, don't do segments on gerrymandering because
50:01
Speaker 3: nobody knows what the fuck you're talking about. And now
50:04
Speaker 3: it's like you can have an off-year election with nobody
50:06
Speaker 3: on the ballot and 8 million Californians will come out
50:09
Speaker 3: to do something that is, you know... Counter to everything
50:15
Speaker 3: that Democrats have been told is the right thing. And
50:19
Speaker 3: to me, that that, you know, is an exhibition of
50:22
Speaker 3: the sophistication of the American public, how engaged they are
50:25
Speaker 3: in efforts to curb democracy and representative democracy. And I
50:30
Speaker 3: just I wonder if you think the landscape has changed
50:32
Speaker 3: at all a little bit on that front when you
50:33
Speaker 3: think about issues of democracy in the sort of post-Trump era.
50:37
Speaker 4: Yeah.
50:38
Speaker 8: Yeah, I think so, but I don't think it takes
50:41
Speaker 8: away the basic sort of, and this is tactics, right?
50:44
Speaker 8: This is the basic tactical point, which is even as
50:47
Speaker 8: these things become more understandable, more talked about among normal people,
50:51
Speaker 8: all of that is true, and I don't think we
50:54
Speaker 8: should run away from that, either on the policy or
50:56
Speaker 8: the politics. I'm just saying that it is not a
50:59
Speaker 8: trivial thing that no matter my temptation to talk about
51:03
Speaker 8: the courts, which I made a mistake to do the
51:04
Speaker 8: first time. But no matter all of our collective temptation
51:10
Speaker 8: to talk about the things that are, frankly, that we
51:12
Speaker 8: think are more important in the end, right, in the
51:14
Speaker 8: sweep of history, that again, people vote for you for
51:17
Speaker 8: their reasons, not yours. And I do think it matters
51:20
Speaker 8: very much that we collectively have the discipline to say, yes,
51:24
Speaker 8: I'm gonna fight against gerrymandering.
51:25
Speaker 6: Yes, we're gonna do democracy reforms.
51:27
Speaker 8: And to your point, Jamie Raskin and others and Dick
51:29
Speaker 8: Blumenthal and Sheldon Whitehouse are going to think about how
51:32
Speaker 8: to constrain a future executive from doing a lot of
51:36
Speaker 8: these unlawful things, or at least un-American things that seem
51:41
Speaker 8: to be between the lines of where the statutes and
51:43
Speaker 8: the Constitution permits.
51:45
Speaker 6: All of that is super essential.
51:47
Speaker 8: I just think that if we want to really respect
51:50
Speaker 8: the voter, and some of this is about that as
51:53
Speaker 8: much as it is about people's material condition, it's like
51:58
Speaker 8: There was just a sense that it was a bunch
52:00
Speaker 8: of privileged people talking about a bunch of stuff that
52:04
Speaker 8: was not relatable. And and I think Rubin has been
52:08
Speaker 8: not to not to do all the senator stuff where
52:11
Speaker 8: we kiss each other's ass.
52:12
Speaker 2: But but.
52:13
Speaker 8: But Ruben has been, I think, a real breath of
52:18
Speaker 8: fresh air in terms of his laser focus on like
52:22
Speaker 8: people he knows, people he still hangs out with. And
52:25
Speaker 8: we have to basically stay there with people, even if
52:28
Speaker 8: our temptation is to get into my housing reform bill
52:32
Speaker 8: or my next climate action, all of that is all
52:36
Speaker 8: enabled by our singular focus on you're just paying too
52:39
Speaker 8: much for everything and we're gonna be laser focused on
52:42
Speaker 8: fixing that. So I don't think this is either or,
52:44
Speaker 8: I think it matters the sequence in which we do
52:47
Speaker 8: it and then we may be passing a bunch of
52:49
Speaker 8: gerrymandering reforms And we may find out that that is
52:53
Speaker 8: compelling for people in this room and not for the
52:55
Speaker 8: rest of the public. And that's okay, right? Like winning
52:58
Speaker 8: is the thing. And that's what this is about. This
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Speaker 3: I have to ask a question that may seem Manchin-esque.
55:54
Speaker 4: But is there, you know.
55:56
Speaker 3: If you, yeah, this is in the audience. Don't say
55:58
Speaker 3: his name, he'll appear in a cloud of smoke. Much
56:02
Speaker 3: respect to you, Senator, wherever you are. I know, I
56:05
Speaker 3: just meant like in the world. I meant in the world.
56:08
Speaker 2: Yeah.
56:09
Speaker 10: Yeah.
56:10
Speaker 3: I know he's alive. I saw him two weeks ago
56:15
Speaker 3: in person. Is there a space where you could envision,
56:24
Speaker 3: either in the House or the Senate, working with the
56:26
Speaker 3: White House on something? And if so, what would that be?
56:31
Speaker 3: Just like stunned... The faces went blank.
56:34
Speaker 2: Oh, no.
56:35
Speaker 9: I mean, like, look. If the White House comes to
56:37
Speaker 9: me right now and says, Ruben, I heard you want
56:39
Speaker 9: to do $ 20 an hour minimum wage increase, I would
56:42
Speaker 9: do it. Okay, wait. Like, okay, fine.
56:44
Speaker 3: Yes, of course.
56:44
Speaker 9: What do you mean, okay, fine? You literally asked me.
56:46
Speaker 5: I mean, like.
56:49
Speaker 3: In the world of earth one, where we know the
56:53
Speaker 3: priorities of this white house in particular, is there any
56:56
Speaker 3: issue where you see common ground? And you can say, no,
56:59
Speaker 3: I just, I do wonder like, have there been moments?
57:02
Speaker 3: I know, I know I'm asking a lot, but.
57:04
Speaker 4: Before the last nine months, 10 months happened, you know,
57:09
Speaker 4: we thought antitrust might be a place where, you know,
57:13
Speaker 4: we have built bipartisan relationships. We've passed, you know, um,
57:19
Speaker 4: You know, a whole package of antitrust bills around big tech,
57:22
Speaker 4: Josh Hawley and I have been on the same page
57:25
Speaker 4: on a whole bunch of things.
57:26
Speaker 3: Unusual.
57:27
Speaker 4: And so I think, yeah. And I think the other
57:30
Speaker 4: one was probably around FISA and civil liberties. But. I,
57:35
Speaker 4: that's not how this administration, like they put a couple
57:37
Speaker 4: of good people in, but what they're doing now is
57:40
Speaker 4: destroying every regulation that existed to take on all of
57:45
Speaker 4: the big companies. And, um, you know, they're even destroying,
57:48
Speaker 4: like not only have the destroyed the CFPB, but they,
57:51
Speaker 4: they actually are reversing a whole bunch of settlements that
57:55
Speaker 4: the CFPB and lawsuits that had been settled for companies
58:00
Speaker 4: that were bilking American consumers, big banks, others, and they
58:05
Speaker 4: are just getting rid of the settlement. Like they're literally
58:08
Speaker 4: getting rid of all of that. So we've been trying
58:10
Speaker 4: to figure out how to talk about that in a
58:12
Speaker 4: way that people see what's happening because it's a bit wonky.
58:16
Speaker 4: These were things that were settled under the Biden administration. Um,
58:20
Speaker 4: so I just don't, I don't know. I'm having a
58:21
Speaker 4: hard time thinking of one.
58:22
Speaker 9: Housing for sure.
58:24
Speaker 3: Housing.
58:25
Speaker 9: So I, you know, I've been a big advocate for
58:28
Speaker 9: using federal land, not national park land, not beautiful, but
58:32
Speaker 9: land like, you know, federal vacant land and keep it
58:36
Speaker 9: under federal control, but build housing on it because it's,
58:39
Speaker 9: it's exempt from zoning laws. And so you can't have
58:42
Speaker 9: the NIMBYs coming in and stopping, you housing. And, you know,
58:46
Speaker 9: one of the ideas that we're working on is, for example,
58:48
Speaker 9: this is not obviously going to happen anytime soon, but like,
58:50
Speaker 9: you know, anytime that, you know, we have a new
58:52
Speaker 9: post office being built is that the first floor would
58:55
Speaker 9: be the post office above that's going to be a
58:56
Speaker 9: bunch of affordable condos that you sell to, you know, young,
58:59
Speaker 9: young families.
59:00
Speaker 3: Right.
59:01
Speaker 9: And I, you know, started the, when this mission started
59:04
Speaker 9: about talking about that, but then they went totally overboard
59:07
Speaker 9: and they basically wanted to sell like beautiful land in
59:09
Speaker 9: the middle of like, you know, forest land. And that's
59:11
Speaker 9: not what we need. And what ends up happening is
59:14
Speaker 9: that land ends up getting sold to like really, really
59:16
Speaker 9: rich developers. And it's not really affordable housing. It ends
59:19
Speaker 9: up being, you know, chateaus for rich people. And they
59:24
Speaker 9: always end up taking the land that is closest to
59:26
Speaker 9: the urban areas, which means if you're poor and you
59:28
Speaker 9: want to go out to, you know, I don't know
59:30
Speaker 9: if you guys are, whoever's a Westerner here, you understand
59:31
Speaker 9: what I'm saying. Like if you want to go out
59:33
Speaker 9: to the nearest trail, you're gonna have to go out
59:35
Speaker 9: further and further because the most valuable land is the
59:37
Speaker 9: one that's closest to the city. So that's why when
59:39
Speaker 9: they started coming with their ideas, like, well, that's not
59:42
Speaker 9: the way you want to go, but you know, that,
59:44
Speaker 9: that could have been an approach. And there is a
59:46
Speaker 9: lot of federal land within these dense urban areas that
59:50
Speaker 9: and federal buildings that we should be knocking down right
59:53
Speaker 9: now and just rebuilding high-density housing and giving it to
59:57
Speaker 9: people on the age of 40. Not giving, selling. People
1:00:00
Speaker 9: on the age of 40. And if this administration did
1:00:02
Speaker 9: something like that, I would be 100% helping out with that.
1:00:06
Speaker 6: Kids Off Social Media Act.
1:00:08
Speaker 9: Yeah, that's a good one.
1:00:10
Speaker 3: I just.
1:00:11
Speaker 8: There's really no, in my view, there is no positive
1:00:16
Speaker 8: use case for a 12-year-old to be on TikTok or
1:00:19
Speaker 8: Instagram or anything else.
1:00:20
Speaker 6: And I think, but Pramila's really.
1:00:24
Speaker 8: I think got to the fundamental point, which is like,
1:00:26
Speaker 8: we're still in a place where that is at least
1:00:28
Speaker 8: theoretically possible on a bipartisan basis, but what ends up happening,
1:00:31
Speaker 8: and hopefully it won't happen on this one, is that
1:00:33
Speaker 8: it's really just a bludgeon for them to like hammer
1:00:36
Speaker 8: their political enemies and make trades that are kind of
1:00:40
Speaker 8: like off the balance sheet and have nothing to do
1:00:42
Speaker 8: with the legislation here in the middle.
1:00:43
Speaker 6: So I'm gonna stay in.
1:00:44
Speaker 8: There on that bill with my eyes wide open that
1:00:47
Speaker 8: if this ends up getting through, it'll be the exception.
1:00:51
Speaker 3: I just want to ask you one more question before
1:00:53
Speaker 3: we wrap it up. And that is, you know, we
1:00:56
Speaker 3: have a president and a party that have expressed a
1:00:59
Speaker 3: willingness to do away with basically the Constitution and all norms.
1:01:03
Speaker 3: There's a real question about whether they cede power in
1:01:05
Speaker 3: 2026 and or 2028. And that sort of begs the question.
1:01:08
Speaker 3: You have prominent conservatives saying. we need to make Democrats
1:01:11
Speaker 3: the permanent minority party. They're no longer the opposition party.
1:01:14
Speaker 3: We need to gerrymander full tilt and deny them the
1:01:17
Speaker 3: opportunity to ever gain the majority again, right? And that
1:01:19
Speaker 3: is not fear-mongering. That's like maybe the plan. So that
1:01:24
Speaker 3: raises a question, like if you were to retain the
1:01:26
Speaker 3: majority once again, and you're fighting not just against the
1:01:29
Speaker 3: Republican Party, but the forces of autocracy, should Democrats go
1:01:33
Speaker 3: to whatever lengths possible including not sunsetting those gerrymandered districts
1:01:39
Speaker 3: in California or in Illinois or where in Virginia, keeping
1:01:43
Speaker 3: them in place for maybe decades to come in order
1:01:47
Speaker 3: to retain a fairer map for Democrats and allow them
1:01:50
Speaker 3: to retain control of the House or doing, you know,
1:01:53
Speaker 3: taking other steps to sort of better cement a Senate majority.
1:01:59
Speaker 3: Should that be on the table? Is it important enough
1:02:01
Speaker 3: for democracy, for Democrats to do whatever they can to
1:02:05
Speaker 3: retain the majority at all costs?
1:02:06
Speaker 8: Look, I'm not running to be the executive director of
1:02:08
Speaker 8: Common Cause. And and God bless them for their view
1:02:13
Speaker 8: about democracy. And but we are in different times. So
1:02:18
Speaker 8: I just think we need to maintain the position that
1:02:20
Speaker 8: everything is on the table as long as autocracy is
1:02:24
Speaker 8: on the table. And if the Republican Party kind of
1:02:28
Speaker 8: normalizes over time, if the fever breaks when Donald Trump
1:02:31
Speaker 8: is no longer on the ballot, then we can recalibrate.
1:02:34
Speaker 8: But until then, we just have to gerrymander back, right?
1:02:38
Speaker 8: We just have to fight back in the ways that
1:02:40
Speaker 8: they are fighting us. And I think there's almost no
1:02:44
Speaker 8: one left in the Democratic Party who's still on their
1:02:47
Speaker 8: high horse about procedural bullshit. The only procedural stuff that
1:02:52
Speaker 8: we should be, that maintain fidelity to is the Constitution
1:02:56
Speaker 8: and laws of the United States. But if anyone is
1:02:59
Speaker 8: talking about norms still, I encourage them to wake up.
1:03:10
Speaker 3: I agree.
1:03:11
Speaker 4: I mean, I think that we're just in a, he's
1:03:14
Speaker 4: so surprised. Have I been hard on you? I'm so sorry.
1:03:20
Speaker 4: It's my empathetic self coming out. I just think that
1:03:28
Speaker 4: we're in these really unprecedented times. I mean, I was
1:03:31
Speaker 4: in Chicago doing a shadow hearing on immigration. We had
1:03:36
Speaker 4: 19 members of Congress come from all over the country.
1:03:39
Speaker 4: And I have to tell you, I I have never
1:03:44
Speaker 4: in my life seen what I saw there.
1:03:48
Speaker 3: Never.
1:03:49
Speaker 4: And, you know, I came to this country at 16
1:03:53
Speaker 4: years old, by myself, because this was the shining place
1:03:58
Speaker 4: on the hill. And because this was the place that
1:04:01
Speaker 4: had figured out something really, really unique, which is this
1:04:04
Speaker 4: incredible tie to our immigrant identity, as up and down
1:04:07
Speaker 4: as it's been, as crazy as it's been. Because we
1:04:11
Speaker 4: were this very unique place in the world where you
1:04:15
Speaker 4: could have that happen. And I think that what we're
1:04:19
Speaker 4: seeing now, I really do think, is fascism, is authoritarian
1:04:25
Speaker 4: takeover of institutions. We teach something called Resistance Lab. It's
1:04:29
Speaker 4: an online course. We've trained more than 16,000 people in
1:04:32
Speaker 4: all 50 states about how democracies fall. And I think
1:04:39
Speaker 4: we just have to be real about the fact that
1:04:42
Speaker 4: that's happening. And it's not that we have to talk
1:04:46
Speaker 4: about it every single day, like I think we have
1:04:48
Speaker 4: to be a party that is not just an opposition party,
1:04:51
Speaker 4: we need to be a proposition party, and we have
1:04:55
Speaker 4: to propose how we're gonna make people's lives better, because
1:04:58
Speaker 4: that is the ultimate answer to fascism and to authoritarianism.
1:05:03
Speaker 4: And so if we can do that, and do it quickly,
1:05:08
Speaker 4: I think we will have a much better shot at
1:05:13
Speaker 4: making sure that we continue to win elections. Do I
1:05:16
Speaker 4: think that that means we're not gonna need to do
1:05:18
Speaker 4: anything to make sure that we continue to be able
1:05:21
Speaker 4: to do that? Especially depending on what's coming at us, right?
1:05:26
Speaker 4: Are people organizing to take down state elections? What's happening?
1:05:30
Speaker 9: I don't know.
1:05:31
Speaker 4: And so I just think everything does have to be
1:05:33
Speaker 4: on the table and we just have to remember how
1:05:36
Speaker 4: deeply dire the situation is and how incredibly hopeful we
1:05:43
Speaker 4: need people to be, otherwise that hopelessness and powerlessness become
1:05:49
Speaker 4: tools of the oppressor. And so that's the work we
1:05:52
Speaker 4: have to do is to create real hope, not like
1:05:55
Speaker 4: false hope, not like we're promising things and then we're
1:05:57
Speaker 4: not gonna do it and you're gonna vote for us
1:05:58
Speaker 4: and we're not gonna deliver anything. No, but like real
1:06:02
Speaker 4: plan for what we're gonna do, our Project 2029, we're
1:06:08
Speaker 4: doing that now for the House, right? Because we need
1:06:10
Speaker 4: to have it for next November so that we go
1:06:13
Speaker 4: into this January and we have a plan with or
1:06:17
Speaker 4: without the Senate. And so I just think it's really.
1:06:22
Speaker 4: No, I just mean if.
1:06:23
Speaker 9: We don't have.
1:06:23
Speaker 4: Oh, come on. There is only one of me up here.
1:06:27
Speaker 4: Did you notice that? I mean, last I checked, last
1:06:30
Speaker 4: I checked, there are 435 House members and only 100 Senators, but, huh,
1:06:36
Speaker 4: there's only one House member up here. But I think
1:06:41
Speaker 4: we've got work to do, and I can't wait to
1:06:43
Speaker 4: do it with you all.
1:06:47
Speaker 5: I mean, I think.
1:06:49
Speaker 9: For those of us that are, we're in the military
1:06:51
Speaker 9: and really a military understand this term, there's escalation of force.
1:06:55
Speaker 9: And I think we have to calibrate like the smart
1:07:00
Speaker 9: word that Brian said, everything we do to the escalation
1:07:03
Speaker 9: of force. So if, if you see them continue to
1:07:06
Speaker 9: move down these autocratic paths, then we have to match that.
1:07:11
Speaker 9: And then once we start seeing a, you know, turn
1:07:14
Speaker 9: down and move down, then we can start coming back down.
1:07:16
Speaker 2: Right.
1:07:16
Speaker 9: So that means we, You know, we gerrymander, gerrymander to
1:07:19
Speaker 9: block their gerrymandering. OK, has things gotten better? OK, now
1:07:22
Speaker 9: let's go to an even playing field that, you know,
1:07:26
Speaker 9: is more reminiscent of what we think of is the
1:07:29
Speaker 9: best of the Constitution. Right. But if they continue to
1:07:31
Speaker 9: be assholes, then we have to match them. Right. It's
1:07:34
Speaker 9: just it's just that simple until we win. And then
1:07:36
Speaker 9: once we win, then we can figure out, like, how
1:07:38
Speaker 9: do we get back to a normal space in this
1:07:41
Speaker 9: country that we're where this country has been in?
1:07:44
Speaker 3: All right. Warriors against the assholes. Senator Brian Schatz, Congressman
1:07:49
Speaker 3: Camilla Diapal, Senator Ruben Gallego. Thank you guys so much.
1:08:05
Speaker 2: We are live from CrookedCon.
1:08:06
Speaker 1: I'm Tommy Vitor, and I'm thrilled to be joined by
1:08:09
Speaker 1: Lena Kahn.
1:08:10
Speaker 2: Give it up, please. All right, let's just jump into it.
1:08:16
Speaker 1: So I'm guessing everybody here is pretty pumped about Tuesday's
1:08:20
Speaker 1: election results. Guessing there's some Zoran Mamdani fans in the house.
1:08:28
Speaker 1: On Wednesday, Lena was named to the Mayor-elect's transition team, your.
1:08:32
Speaker 2: Co-chair, I believe. First of all, congratulations. That's very exciting
1:08:36
Speaker 2: and cool.
1:08:37
Speaker 1: Can you tell us what you'll be doing on the
1:08:39
Speaker 1: transition team and how the work you did at the
1:08:41
Speaker 1: FTC can be applied to New York City?
1:08:45
Speaker 11: First of all, it's so great to be here. So yeah,
1:08:48
Speaker 11: really honored to get to be a co-chair of the
1:08:49
Speaker 11: incoming mayor's transition team. A lot of what we'll be
1:08:52
Speaker 11: doing is very traditional transition team stuff, you know, trying
1:08:56
Speaker 11: to figure out who is the best position to take
1:08:59
Speaker 11: what role. and also figure out how can we make
1:09:03
Speaker 11: sure that this administration is set up to deliver on
1:09:06
Speaker 11: the extraordinarily ambitious agenda that they have set out for themselves.
1:09:11
Speaker 11: You know, coming from the FTC, I'm going to be
1:09:13
Speaker 11: especially focused on things like How do we make sure
1:09:16
Speaker 11: that we have a full accounting of all of the
1:09:20
Speaker 11: laws and authorities that the mayor can unilaterally deploy? I
1:09:24
Speaker 11: think one thing that was really shocking to me at
1:09:26
Speaker 11: the FTC was just how much dormant and unused and
1:09:30
Speaker 11: underused authorities had just been on the books. Like literally
1:09:34
Speaker 11: Congress had passed laws, sometimes saying things as uncontroversial as
1:09:39
Speaker 11: it should be illegal to say your products are made
1:09:41
Speaker 11: in America when they aren't. And sometimes they had just
1:09:44
Speaker 11: been ignored by the FTC and not really enforced. So,
1:09:48
Speaker 11: you know, I want to make sure that to the
1:09:49
Speaker 11: extent that the city has a robust set of laws
1:09:53
Speaker 11: that the mayor can enforce, that we're going and understanding
1:09:55
Speaker 11: what is the full authority. A lot of what he
1:09:59
Speaker 11: is going to be looking to deliver is going to
1:10:00
Speaker 11: be requiring, you know, working closely with other institutional actors,
1:10:04
Speaker 11: be it the governor, be it the legislature. But he
1:10:07
Speaker 11: should also have a lot of ability to do things,
1:10:09
Speaker 11: you know, unilaterally. And so we want to make sure
1:10:12
Speaker 11: he has a good sense of what that is.
1:10:14
Speaker 1: One of the things you did extremely well that excited
1:10:17
Speaker 1: a lot of people was you took on big tech.
1:10:20
Speaker 1: And obviously, obviously that is not happening now under this administration,
1:10:26
Speaker 1: as long as you're willing to donate a couple of
1:10:29
Speaker 1: milli for the, for the new ballroom or whatever, like
1:10:31
Speaker 1: you're good to go.
1:10:32
Speaker 2: If you're a tech company, do.
1:10:34
Speaker 1: You think the New York city mayor's office can be
1:10:36
Speaker 1: used as a perch to take on tech monopolies? Like is, does,
1:10:39
Speaker 1: do they have that kind of power as, as a city?
1:10:43
Speaker 11: So they have a lot of the antitrust work is
1:10:46
Speaker 11: done by the New York AG's office. They do have
1:10:48
Speaker 11: an agency called the Division of Consumer and Worker Protection
1:10:52
Speaker 11: that has a whole bunch of authorities, some of which
1:10:54
Speaker 11: mirror what the FTC was doing. But be it, you know,
1:10:58
Speaker 11: in the context of the technology industry or the healthcare
1:11:01
Speaker 11: industry or food and groceries, they do have a whole
1:11:04
Speaker 11: set of laws that are designed to make sure that
1:11:06
Speaker 11: companies are not abusing their power. And so, you know,
1:11:09
Speaker 11: I'll look forward to them being able to deploy that.
1:11:12
Speaker 1: Trump has been threatening to punish New York City, just
1:11:15
Speaker 1: overtly to punish Zoran. How seriously are you guys taking
1:11:18
Speaker 1: those threats on the transition team?
1:11:20
Speaker 2: And like, to what extent can you mitigate against them?
1:11:24
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, look, he's pulling together a top-notch set
1:11:27
Speaker 11: of people to help him fully scenario plan and make
1:11:30
Speaker 11: sure they are prepared for all potential contingent scenarios that
1:11:35
Speaker 11: take place. So I think, you know, you have to
1:11:37
Speaker 11: be maximally prepared when these sorts of things are even
1:11:39
Speaker 11: being floated.
1:11:39
Speaker 10: Yeah.
1:11:40
Speaker 1: Okay, so one fan of yours that might surprise people
1:11:44
Speaker 1: is a former top advisor to Donald Trump, Steve Bannon.
1:11:47
Speaker 1: He's been very complimentary of you and of your work.
1:11:49
Speaker 1: I actually texted Steve this morning.
1:11:53
Speaker 2: I'm not kidding. And I asked if he had a
1:11:54
Speaker 2: message for you. And he said, love her. That's in quotes.
1:11:58
Speaker 1: And then he pushed me to quote you on implementing your, quote,
1:12:01
Speaker 1: ecosystem of entrepreneurial growth and on your neo-Brandeisian actions. I
1:12:07
Speaker 1: have no fucking clue what he's talking about.
1:12:09
Speaker 2: Maybe you do. But also, I mean, Bannon's been complimentary
1:12:12
Speaker 2: of the way.
1:12:12
Speaker 1: Zoran ran and won his race, not the policies, but
1:12:15
Speaker 1: the way he did it. I mean, any chance you're
1:12:16
Speaker 1: going to broker a little, like, sit down, a little
1:12:18
Speaker 1: beer summit between the two? And, like, jokes aside, like,
1:12:22
Speaker 1: why is it that there you have this kind of
1:12:25
Speaker 1: fan base on the left and the right?
1:12:27
Speaker 11: Yeah, it's a really fascinating question. And honestly, one of
1:12:30
Speaker 11: the most surprising parts of my time at the FTC
1:12:33
Speaker 11: was seeing how extraordinarily positive a lot of what we
1:12:37
Speaker 11: were doing was, even with Republicans, grassroots Republicans. I mean,
1:12:41
Speaker 11: I would get handwritten letters from people saying things like,
1:12:45
Speaker 11: I'm a lifelong Republican, hardcore free market capitalist, but if
1:12:49
Speaker 11: you all ban non-compete clauses or block the Kroger-Albertsons merger,
1:12:54
Speaker 11: it'll be the best thing the government has ever done
1:12:56
Speaker 11: in my life. And I think there's just been a
1:12:59
Speaker 11: recognition that unchecked corporate power really undermines people in their
1:13:04
Speaker 11: day-to-day lives, right? It rips them off. It means they're
1:13:07
Speaker 11: less free, practically. It just corrodes people's day-to-day living. And
1:13:13
Speaker 11: I think for a long time, people have felt that
1:13:15
Speaker 11: the federal government has not always been very forward-leaning in, A,
1:13:19
Speaker 11: calling that out, if there's a bad actor that is
1:13:23
Speaker 11: responsible for why your life is bad, being willing to
1:13:26
Speaker 11: just call that out openly, even if that actor is
1:13:30
Speaker 11: powerful and wealthy, and then B, to make sure that
1:13:33
Speaker 11: we're actually doing something about it. And so I think
1:13:35
Speaker 11: when the FTC.
1:13:40
Speaker 11: I think when the FTC was, you know, bringing a
1:13:43
Speaker 11: lot of actions, be it taking on, you know, big
1:13:46
Speaker 11: corporate landlords that were ripping people off, tech companies that
1:13:49
Speaker 11: were spying on kids, pharma companies that were making people
1:13:53
Speaker 11: ration life-saving medicines, this was all extraordinarily popular. And I
1:13:58
Speaker 11: think there is a burgeoning populist movement on both sides,
1:14:02
Speaker 11: in the Republican side and the Democratic side. And I
1:14:05
Speaker 11: think that's where you see that genuine overlap.
1:14:08
Speaker 1: Any sense of what a neo-Brandeisian action is, what he's
1:14:12
Speaker 1: talking about?
1:14:13
Speaker 11: Yeah, Steve is in really like the deep cuts of anti-monopoly.
1:14:16
Speaker 11: So he's really talking about some of the kind of
1:14:20
Speaker 11: philosophical schools of thought of how to be enforcing the law.
1:14:24
Speaker 2: Steve contains multitudes.
1:14:28
Speaker 1: I probably should have started here, just in case folks
1:14:30
Speaker 1: don't know the basics, like How does the FTC protect
1:14:33
Speaker 1: consumers from deceptive or unfair practices or anti-competitive business practices?
1:14:38
Speaker 2: What was like your day-to-day work? What were the things
1:14:40
Speaker 2: you did and what authorities did you have?
1:14:42
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, the agency has a pretty broad mandate.
1:14:45
Speaker 11: Congress created the agency in 1914 against the backdrop of
1:14:49
Speaker 11: the robber barons. And there was a general momentum to
1:14:52
Speaker 11: make sure that the government was standing up to corporate giants.
1:14:56
Speaker 11: And so the agency is tasked with everything from taking
1:15:01
Speaker 11: on fraudsters and spammers to blocking mergers and consolidation that
1:15:05
Speaker 11: would result in higher prices or a lot of layoffs.
1:15:10
Speaker 11: to things like making sure we're ensuring that companies can't
1:15:14
Speaker 11: trap you in subscriptions, surveil you. And so really the
1:15:19
Speaker 11: breadth of the work was extraordinary. We were especially focused
1:15:24
Speaker 11: on what are the biggest pain points in people's day-to-day lives.
1:15:27
Speaker 11: So we were very focused on healthcare markets, making sure
1:15:31
Speaker 11: that to the extent that high drug prices are being
1:15:33
Speaker 11: driven by illegal conduct, we were taking that on. We
1:15:37
Speaker 11: sued companies. We took on illegal patenting practices that were
1:15:42
Speaker 11: resulting in asthma inhalers, still costing people hundreds of dollars,
1:15:46
Speaker 11: even though they're $ 7 in other countries. We were very
1:15:50
Speaker 11: focused on food and agriculture practices. be it at the
1:15:53
Speaker 11: level of grocery mergers or even things like John Deere,
1:15:57
Speaker 11: making it extraordinarily difficult and expensive for farmers to fix
1:16:00
Speaker 11: their own tractors, which is something that Which is something
1:16:05
Speaker 11: that for a lot of rural states, you know, we
1:16:07
Speaker 11: would have farmers kind of fly in and sit down.
1:16:09
Speaker 11: And some of them would sometimes be literally in tears
1:16:12
Speaker 11: describing an instance where they lost a whole harvest because
1:16:15
Speaker 11: deer didn't, you know, let them fix their tractor in time.
1:16:18
Speaker 11: And so this is, you know, not some abstraction. This
1:16:21
Speaker 11: is really about people's day-to-day lives and the myriad ways that, unfortunately,
1:16:26
Speaker 11: corporate lawbreaking can be a big driver of why people
1:16:29
Speaker 11: feel like they're not getting a fair chance.
1:16:31
Speaker 1: As all of us have dissected the election results from Tuesday,
1:16:35
Speaker 1: it seems clear that from New York City to Jersey
1:16:38
Speaker 1: to Virginia to Georgia, people were pissed about costs and inflation,
1:16:44
Speaker 1: and they were pissed at a system that felt broken
1:16:46
Speaker 1: and rigged against them by political actors, but also corporations, billionaires,
1:16:52
Speaker 1: et cetera. That's, I think, why people have looked to
1:16:55
Speaker 1: the work you've done as such an important part of
1:16:58
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party's messaging and policy agenda going forward. If
1:17:01
Speaker 1: you were to kind of sketch out what a pro-consumer
1:17:06
Speaker 1: political platform could look like for the Democratic Party for
1:17:08
Speaker 1: 2026 and 2028, what does that look like in your view?
1:17:12
Speaker 2: What's like the bumper sticker version and the longer?
1:17:15
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, unfortunately, this problem is now so prevalent
1:17:19
Speaker 11: across the country that you could literally be airdropped into
1:17:22
Speaker 11: any zip code and there would be a story to
1:17:24
Speaker 11: tell about how corporate power is making life worse. And
1:17:27
Speaker 11: so I think a lot of it is going to
1:17:28
Speaker 11: depend on where you live. We have members of Congress
1:17:32
Speaker 11: that are very focused on this issue of private equity,
1:17:35
Speaker 11: buying up doctor's practices, sometimes buying up, you know, housing
1:17:40
Speaker 11: and the real degradation. I mean, there are now studies
1:17:42
Speaker 11: showing that mortality rates have increased after private equity firms
1:17:46
Speaker 11: have bought up ER practices or nursing homes. There are
1:17:50
Speaker 11: places where members are very concerned about consolidation across the
1:17:54
Speaker 11: agriculture market. So the fact that you have four meat packers,
1:17:58
Speaker 11: four chicken processors that control the whole market, and you
1:18:02
Speaker 11: have consumers paying more, even as farmers are making less
1:18:06
Speaker 11: and the middlemen are squeezing more and more. Right to
1:18:09
Speaker 11: repair is something that we see members across the country
1:18:13
Speaker 11: talking about, be it if you're concerned about farmers or
1:18:16
Speaker 11: if you're concerned about local auto shops. that you want
1:18:19
Speaker 11: to make sure that people have the freedom to prepare
1:18:23
Speaker 11: their products easily and cheaply. And so a lot of
1:18:27
Speaker 11: this is just going to depend on what are the
1:18:28
Speaker 11: local issues. I mean, one of the videos that Mayor-elect
1:18:31
Speaker 11: Mamdani first put out as part of his campaign was
1:18:35
Speaker 11: a set of interviews with HalalCart. businessmen. And he was
1:18:40
Speaker 11: just asking them, I've seen that the price of chicken
1:18:44
Speaker 11: and rice has gone from $ 8 to $ 10. Why is that?
1:18:47
Speaker 11: What are the input costs and what is driving this?
1:18:51
Speaker 11: And I think that sense of curiosity about what is
1:18:55
Speaker 11: really happening in the economy and talking to people and
1:18:58
Speaker 11: asking them, that type of learning is just invaluable. And
1:19:03
Speaker 11: it's something we really tried to do with the FTC.
1:19:06
Speaker 11: I think oftentimes in DC, it can be really easy
1:19:08
Speaker 11: to just develop a lot of blind spots, become really insular,
1:19:13
Speaker 11: over index for the views of a narrow class of
1:19:16
Speaker 11: experts and pundits and really lose touch with what are
1:19:20
Speaker 11: the day-to-day struggles that people are facing. And so I
1:19:23
Speaker 11: think modeling that type of basic curiosity, which can also
1:19:27
Speaker 11: just teach you a lot, and then the policy can
1:19:29
Speaker 11: flow from that. I think there's no substitute for that.
1:19:33
Speaker 11: The other thing I'll say is it's been really interesting
1:19:35
Speaker 11: to see a lot of the conversation and reflections from
1:19:39
Speaker 11: Tuesday land on this issue of affordability is what we
1:19:42
Speaker 11: have to focus on. And I think one question for
1:19:45
Speaker 11: me is, great, let's do affordability. But if the drivers
1:19:50
Speaker 11: of high costs sometimes are going to be powerful corporate actors,
1:19:55
Speaker 11: are we going to be willing to call that out?
1:19:58
Speaker 11: And how much can you fix affordability without also demanding
1:20:02
Speaker 11: some type of accountability? Be it for.
1:20:07
Speaker 11: And so I think that needs to be a really
1:20:10
Speaker 11: key question to make sure that we're not leaving the
1:20:12
Speaker 11: accountability portion out of the affordability conversation.
1:20:16
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think what is so important and smart
1:20:19
Speaker 1: about the work you're doing is like Democrats, look, we
1:20:22
Speaker 1: get in our own heads, right? We're like reading too
1:20:24
Speaker 1: many white papers. We're putting forward policies that are like,
1:20:27
Speaker 1: refundable tax credits for blah, blah, blah. And it's like,
1:20:30
Speaker 1: no one knows what we're talking about. And when I
1:20:32
Speaker 1: hear about the work you're.
1:20:33
Speaker 2: Doing or did, it is simple. It's intuitive.
1:20:38
Speaker 1: It seems like obviously the right thing to do morally
1:20:40
Speaker 1: and politically. But I've noticed that the Trump administration is
1:20:44
Speaker 1: starting to wind some of that back. Can you talk
1:20:46
Speaker 1: about click to cancel and what the Trump administration is
1:20:49
Speaker 1: doing when it comes to tax preparation? Because I think
1:20:52
Speaker 1: those are good examples that tell that story.
1:20:54
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean, we've seen stunning levels of just backsliding
1:20:58
Speaker 11: at the FTC, but really across parts of the government
1:21:01
Speaker 11: that are supposed to be standing up for Americans against
1:21:03
Speaker 11: corporate lawbreaking. One of the rules that we finalized at
1:21:07
Speaker 11: the FTC was a rule that said companies have to
1:21:09
Speaker 11: make it as easy to cancel a subscription as it
1:21:13
Speaker 11: is to sign up for one, responding to the fact
1:21:15
Speaker 11: that as we've seen more and more turn to subscriptions
1:21:19
Speaker 11: and everything is a service, we've seen that companies can
1:21:22
Speaker 11: make it extraordinarily easy to sign up, but absurdly difficult
1:21:26
Speaker 11: to cancel, where you have to call somebody, but there's
1:21:29
Speaker 11: nobody there to pick up the phone, or you have
1:21:31
Speaker 11: to do something by certified mail, or even go in person.
1:21:34
Speaker 11: And so we said, you know, this actually violates the
1:21:37
Speaker 11: law under the FTC Act and every business should make
1:21:40
Speaker 11: it easy. That was a rule that the FTC recently
1:21:43
Speaker 11: has basically given up on. They also gave up on
1:21:47
Speaker 11: the non-competes rule, the rule that would have eliminated the
1:21:50
Speaker 11: vast majority of non-compete clauses in this country. which are
1:21:54
Speaker 11: these contractual clauses that basically lock people in and say,
1:21:57
Speaker 11: even once you leave your current job, you can't go
1:22:00
Speaker 11: work for certain other companies. You can't go start your
1:22:03
Speaker 11: own business. And this has meant that you have security guards, janitors,
1:22:08
Speaker 11: fast food workers, people that are now making less money
1:22:13
Speaker 11: because their employer is locking them in. And this was
1:22:15
Speaker 11: a rule that we had extraordinary support for.
1:22:18
Speaker 2: Fast food workers were signing non-competes?
1:22:20
Speaker 11: Fast food workers are often now required to find non-competes.
1:22:24
Speaker 11: I mean, we got a comment from somebody who said,
1:22:26
Speaker 11: you know, I work in a burrito shop and I
1:22:28
Speaker 11: have a non-compete. And if I basically went across the
1:22:30
Speaker 11: street to work at the other Mexican restaurant, I would
1:22:33
Speaker 11: get hit with a lawsuit for tens of thousands of dollars. And,
1:22:37
Speaker 11: you know, the effect of that is that it suppresses
1:22:39
Speaker 11: your wages because one of the best sources of leverage
1:22:42
Speaker 11: that workers often have against their employer is to go
1:22:44
Speaker 11: get another job and then be able to bargain. And
1:22:47
Speaker 11: so this is something they've walked away from. They also
1:22:50
Speaker 11: announced recently that they are going to kill the last
1:22:53
Speaker 11: administration's direct file program, which had basically made it so
1:22:58
Speaker 11: that you didn't have to use these tax prep companies
1:23:00
Speaker 11: to file your taxes. You could actually just do it
1:23:03
Speaker 11: through a government service, direct file, which was extraordinarily well run.
1:23:09
Speaker 11: They had piloted it out last year and got rave reviews.
1:23:14
Speaker 11: And they just nixed that. And it's no surprise, I guess,
1:23:18
Speaker 11: that the tax prep companies like Intuit and H &
1:23:21
Speaker 11: R Block have donated a lot of money to the administration.
1:23:26
Speaker 11: They'd actually been responsible for decades now for basically trying
1:23:29
Speaker 11: to prevent the government from offering this public option. And
1:23:32
Speaker 11: it was great to see the Biden administration be able
1:23:35
Speaker 11: to overcome that pressure. But, you know, basically now everybody's
1:23:39
Speaker 11: going to be stuck having to pay TurboTax again.
1:23:41
Speaker 1: That's just a great example of just pure... legal corruption
1:23:46
Speaker 1: in the system where these tax preparers pay government officials
1:23:50
Speaker 1: to prevent citizens from having an easier time filing their
1:23:53
Speaker 1: taxes and not having to pay exorbitant fees. It seems
1:23:55
Speaker 1: like a story we should be able to tell as
1:23:57
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party.
1:23:58
Speaker 11: Yeah, I think so.
1:24:01
Speaker 2: Okay, so.
1:24:04
Speaker 1: At the heart of the mission of antitrust is the
1:24:08
Speaker 1: idea that economic power can be coercive and harmful to
1:24:12
Speaker 1: businesses and consumers. That was true when there was like
1:24:14
Speaker 1: one railroad. It was true when we were talking about meta,
1:24:17
Speaker 1: consolidating too much power.
1:24:18
Speaker 2: It's true today.
1:24:20
Speaker 1: At the moment, I am very worried about the power
1:24:22
Speaker 1: that seems to be being concentrated in the hands of
1:24:25
Speaker 1: a few AI companies. That is, they are racing to
1:24:29
Speaker 1: consolidate market share, but also to gobble up a finite
1:24:33
Speaker 1: number of chips, a finite amount of electricity, with the
1:24:36
Speaker 1: stated goal of creating artificial general intelligence. That feels like
1:24:41
Speaker 1: a path to some of the most concentrated power we've
1:24:44
Speaker 1: ever seen in the hands of a few corporations.
1:24:46
Speaker 2: Is the government doing anything to regulate this? What did
1:24:49
Speaker 2: you guys begin to do during the Biden administration? What
1:24:52
Speaker 2: should the government be doing?
1:24:54
Speaker 11: One of the most important signals we had started to
1:24:56
Speaker 11: send in the last administration was that there's no AI
1:25:00
Speaker 11: exemption from the laws on the books. I think something
1:25:03
Speaker 11: we've seen historically is that when you have some type
1:25:05
Speaker 11: of new technology come into the market, oftentimes companies will
1:25:09
Speaker 11: try to argue, oh, this is so new, this is
1:25:11
Speaker 11: so innovative. We need a new legal regime. We need
1:25:14
Speaker 11: a new agency, new regulations. The existing laws don't apply.
1:25:17
Speaker 11: And we wanted to make clear at the very least
1:25:20
Speaker 11: that You know, price fixing is still illegal, even if
1:25:23
Speaker 11: you're doing it with AI. Discrimination is still illegal, even
1:25:26
Speaker 11: if you're doing it with AI. Fraud is still illegal.
1:25:29
Speaker 11: You can't have just these huge loopholes because you're doing
1:25:32
Speaker 11: it through AI. What we've seen from this administration is
1:25:36
Speaker 11: basically total amnesty, more or less, for AI. They've said, look,
1:25:40
Speaker 11: you know, we really care about innovation. Yes, also these
1:25:44
Speaker 11: CEOs are making weekly pilgrimages to the White House, and
1:25:47
Speaker 11: so we're not going to be doing much on this front.
1:25:49
Speaker 11: I think it's extraordinarily dangerous. I mean, we talk a
1:25:52
Speaker 11: lot about, you know, one of the real virtues and
1:25:55
Speaker 11: strengths of the American system has been decentralization, both in
1:25:59
Speaker 11: terms of the checks and balances we have in our
1:26:01
Speaker 11: political system, but also in our economy, where competitive markets
1:26:05
Speaker 11: have been such a key driver of innovation and America's
1:26:09
Speaker 11: strength on the global stage. And what we see right
1:26:13
Speaker 11: now is really a form of central planning. I mean,
1:26:15
Speaker 11: you basically have more or less five to seven executives
1:26:19
Speaker 11: that are single-handedly charting the future trajectory of this technology
1:26:24
Speaker 11: in ways that is going to have huge public ramifications,
1:26:27
Speaker 11: and already is. I mean, we're already seeing with, you know,
1:26:30
Speaker 11: where data centers are being built, even the contracts that
1:26:34
Speaker 11: some of these companies are pushing for to keep maximally
1:26:37
Speaker 11: under wraps worldwide. What are the terms on which these
1:26:40
Speaker 11: data centers are being built? A real push for secrecy
1:26:45
Speaker 11: and really try to keep from the public basic information
1:26:47
Speaker 11: about what's happening in their backyards. We're also now hearing
1:26:52
Speaker 11: increasingly a lot of these executives admit that there's probably
1:26:55
Speaker 11: a bubble here, that they're over-investing. And just this last week,
1:27:00
Speaker 11: we heard suggestions from one of the companies that maybe
1:27:03
Speaker 11: the government's going to need to bail us out one day.
1:27:06
Speaker 11: And so- I think all of the concerns around privatizing
1:27:11
Speaker 11: benefits and profits, but socializing risk and pain is something
1:27:15
Speaker 11: that they very much seem headed towards. And we're going
1:27:23
Speaker 11: to need a really assertive government to really stand up
1:27:26
Speaker 11: to that. And I worry that's the last thing we
1:27:28
Speaker 11: have in place right now.
1:27:29
Speaker 2: Yeah, I worry about that a lot too.
1:27:31
Speaker 1: I've also seen you talk about how the consolidation of
1:27:34
Speaker 1: corporate power, historically speaking, can make it easier for authoritarians
1:27:39
Speaker 1: to rise and then concentrate political power. Can you elaborate
1:27:42
Speaker 1: on that and explain whether you worry that's what's happening
1:27:45
Speaker 1: in the US potentially?
1:27:47
Speaker 11: That's absolutely what we're seeing right now. I mean, I
1:27:49
Speaker 11: think the incident that occurred a few weeks ago with
1:27:51
Speaker 11: Jimmy Kimmel was a perfect illustration of how concentrated economic
1:27:57
Speaker 11: power can make it easier for people with authoritarian instincts
1:28:02
Speaker 11: to try to basically have people bend the knee. You know,
1:28:05
Speaker 11: if you have dozens or hundreds of companies in a
1:28:09
Speaker 11: market that You really need a lot of people to
1:28:12
Speaker 11: decide that they're going to surrender before the whole market
1:28:14
Speaker 11: goes your way. When you just have four or five players,
1:28:18
Speaker 11: it's really just up to the four and five individuals
1:28:21
Speaker 11: who are calling the shots to decide, are we going
1:28:23
Speaker 11: to go along or are we not? I think the
1:28:25
Speaker 11: other interesting thing here is there had been some speculation
1:28:30
Speaker 11: in the past that if push came to shove, the monopolists,
1:28:34
Speaker 11: the CEOs, the titans of industry would ultimately stand up
1:28:38
Speaker 11: for democracy. and be on the side of the rule
1:28:41
Speaker 11: of law. And when given the chance these past few months,
1:28:45
Speaker 11: they've all just bent the knee time after time and
1:28:49
Speaker 11: chosen self-enrichment and personal profit over principle and any commitment
1:28:54
Speaker 11: to the rule of law or the public or democracy
1:28:56
Speaker 11: as And I think that needs to be a core lesson,
1:28:59
Speaker 11: and we need to kind of update our priors as
1:29:01
Speaker 11: we go forward. I think there's also going to be
1:29:04
Speaker 11: a key question about what does accountability look like in
1:29:07
Speaker 11: a future Democratic administration? For people who have broken the law,
1:29:12
Speaker 11: for people who have decided, I'm going to engage in
1:29:15
Speaker 11: blatant corruption even when it's illegal because this administration is
1:29:19
Speaker 11: game to play ball. So I think that's something that
1:29:22
Speaker 11: we're going to have to really talk about and figure out.
1:29:26
Speaker 2: Yeah, big time.
1:29:31
Speaker 1: It's always fun when the Trump administration tells us there's
1:29:33
Speaker 1: a firewall between the presidency and the family.
1:29:36
Speaker 2: And then he was on stage.
1:29:38
Speaker 1: Trump was on stage in Sharm el-Sheikh at the peace
1:29:40
Speaker 1: summit after signing the Gaza ceasefire. And I think that
1:29:43
Speaker 1: the president of Indonesia was like, should I call Don
1:29:45
Speaker 1: or Eric?
1:29:46
Speaker 2: He's like, call Eric. He's a good boy. This happened
1:29:48
Speaker 2: on stage.
1:29:48
Speaker 1: I know that the FTCs face some threats from the
1:29:52
Speaker 1: Supreme Court. I believe they allowed Trump back in September
1:29:55
Speaker 1: to fire a former colleague of yours, Rebecca Slaughter, who
1:29:58
Speaker 1: was the last remaining Democratic member of the FTC. Can
1:30:00
Speaker 1: you talk about why that is significant and how concerned
1:30:03
Speaker 1: you are about the courts potentially gutting the power of
1:30:07
Speaker 1: the FTC?
1:30:09
Speaker 11: Yeah, so we've seen an unprecedented assault on the independence
1:30:13
Speaker 11: of federal agencies. There had been a whole set of
1:30:16
Speaker 11: agencies where there had been restrictions on the president's ability
1:30:19
Speaker 11: to unilaterally fire people. The idea being that you wanted
1:30:24
Speaker 11: some degree of continuity, some degree of expertise. And this
1:30:28
Speaker 11: administration has basically decided that they disagree with that century-old
1:30:32
Speaker 11: legal precedent and are now challenging that before the Supreme Court.
1:30:36
Speaker 11: They fired FTC commissioners. They fired people at the NLRB.
1:30:40
Speaker 11: They fired people across these agencies. And so that's clearly
1:30:43
Speaker 11: being teed up for a fight. initial indications from the
1:30:48
Speaker 11: Supreme Court is that they will be comfortable overturning that
1:30:51
Speaker 11: precedent and basically allowing the president to unilaterally fire commissioners
1:30:57
Speaker 11: of independent agencies. One tension that they're running into is
1:31:01
Speaker 11: that they want to do that, but they want to
1:31:04
Speaker 11: create a carve-out for the Federal Reserve. And the initial
1:31:08
Speaker 11: reasons that they've offered for why the Federal Reserve is
1:31:11
Speaker 11: different are, I think, pretty strained. And so they're going
1:31:15
Speaker 11: to have to figure out, you know, how do you
1:31:16
Speaker 11: thread that needle? Because on the merits, you know, if
1:31:20
Speaker 11: commissioners are going down at the FTC, the Federal Reserve
1:31:23
Speaker 11: is really no different in terms of the legal issues. But,
1:31:27
Speaker 11: you know, this isn't new. The judiciary has become increasingly
1:31:31
Speaker 11: skeptical of federal agencies over the last few decades. And
1:31:36
Speaker 11: that really catalyzed during the last administration where you saw,
1:31:41
Speaker 11: you know, the overturning of things like the Chevron doctrine,
1:31:45
Speaker 11: Chevron deference, just much, much more skepticism of federal agencies
1:31:50
Speaker 11: taking action. And practically what that meant was that dozens
1:31:54
Speaker 11: of rules that the Biden administration finalized, including rules that
1:31:58
Speaker 11: said things as uncontroversial as airlines shouldn't be able to
1:32:02
Speaker 11: lie about how much a plane ticket costs, you know,
1:32:05
Speaker 11: certain limits on overdraft fees, certain requirements for overtime pay,
1:32:10
Speaker 11: the FTC's non-compete rule, swaths of these rules just went
1:32:15
Speaker 11: to go die at the door of some Texas federal judge.
1:32:19
Speaker 11: And there have been efforts to try to prevent this
1:32:21
Speaker 11: foreign shopping, but the judiciary doesn't seem very interested in
1:32:25
Speaker 11: really policing that. So I think another big challenge for
1:32:28
Speaker 11: a next Democratic administration is going to be figuring out
1:32:31
Speaker 11: how do we really govern in a way that is
1:32:34
Speaker 11: both making people's lives materially better, but when we have
1:32:38
Speaker 11: a judiciary that is very skeptical, at least of Democrats
1:32:42
Speaker 11: at these agencies. And some of the cases that are
1:32:45
Speaker 11: before the court, including the tariffs one, are going to
1:32:48
Speaker 11: give us an opportunity to see, you know, how one
1:32:50
Speaker 11: sided is this skepticism? Is it OK to have a
1:32:52
Speaker 11: very muscular government when you have a Republican president, but
1:32:56
Speaker 11: not when you have a Democratic one? But this is
1:32:58
Speaker 11: absolutely going to be up front and center in terms
1:33:01
Speaker 11: of challenges that a Democratic administration will face.
1:33:04
Speaker 1: Again, I'm just like the more I hear you talk,
1:33:06
Speaker 1: the more I'm struck by it's like everything they're doing
1:33:09
Speaker 1: will make our lives suck a little bit more. I
1:33:12
Speaker 1: was listening to an article or podcast the other day
1:33:15
Speaker 1: about the way corporations are pushing the bounds on dynamic pricing.
1:33:20
Speaker 2: It's not just you're about to book a hotel room
1:33:22
Speaker 2: and it's.
1:33:22
Speaker 1: Like seven people are looking at this exact book now,
1:33:26
Speaker 1: which is a lie, but we all do and we
1:33:28
Speaker 1: feel that pressure. It's that we could see a future
1:33:31
Speaker 1: where corporations have all this data on us as individuals
1:33:35
Speaker 1: and they charge you a bespoke price based on what
1:33:38
Speaker 1: they think you personally can afford for a commoditized service.
1:33:42
Speaker 1: How concerned are you about that kind of being the
1:33:45
Speaker 1: reality for the consumer?
1:33:47
Speaker 2: And can we prevent that?
1:33:49
Speaker 11: Yeah, hugely concerned. And when I was at the FTC,
1:33:51
Speaker 11: we started an inquiry into this issue of surveillance pricing,
1:33:56
Speaker 11: the idea that we could soon be living in a
1:33:58
Speaker 11: world where all pricing is set based on what the
1:34:02
Speaker 11: company knows they can get away with charging you. And
1:34:05
Speaker 11: some of the initial documents that we found found that
1:34:08
Speaker 11: companies were clearly talking about basically charging people just below
1:34:12
Speaker 11: people's pain point. And so they were very explicit that
1:34:15
Speaker 11: they want to reach the exact level that they know
1:34:18
Speaker 11: you can pay without walking away. And that's going to
1:34:23
Speaker 11: be a radically different economy. And we've already seen studies
1:34:27
Speaker 11: showing that some rideshare companies seem to jack up prices
1:34:31
Speaker 11: when they can tell that your battery is lower than Wow, really? Yeah,
1:34:36
Speaker 11: there's research showing that. And, you know, there are all
1:34:40
Speaker 11: these middlemen, including companies like McKinsey, basically telling retailers, you know,
1:34:45
Speaker 11: hire us and we'll help you do this type of
1:34:47
Speaker 11: surveillance pricing. But I think it's a real risk, the
1:34:50
Speaker 11: idea that an airline would, you know, have data from
1:34:53
Speaker 11: your email inbox announcing, you know, a funeral service and
1:34:57
Speaker 11: then jack up the price because they know you have
1:34:58
Speaker 11: to get across the country quickly. you know, charging a
1:35:02
Speaker 11: family more because they know that there is a nut allergy.
1:35:05
Speaker 11: And so you have to pay more for the nut
1:35:06
Speaker 11: free cereal than, you know, than other families. I mean,
1:35:10
Speaker 11: I think there's just a real potential for exploitation and
1:35:13
Speaker 11: extraction to an extent that we really haven't seen before.
1:35:17
Speaker 2: God, that is monstrous. Last question for you.
1:35:21
Speaker 1: I mean, as you know, there will be people within
1:35:25
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party that say, Joe Biden was too hard
1:35:30
Speaker 1: on corporations. He was too hard on industry. Take crypto,
1:35:34
Speaker 1: for example, right? Gary Gensler was very tough on crypto.
1:35:37
Speaker 1: So the crypto world put a giant pack together and
1:35:41
Speaker 1: funded a bunch of Republicans to send a message that,
1:35:44
Speaker 1: you know, Democrats will be destroyed, right? So the thing
1:35:46
Speaker 1: you will hear from some people in the party is
1:35:49
Speaker 1: if Democrats bite industry too hard, it will bite back.
1:35:52
Speaker 2: We need to learn to play nice.
1:35:54
Speaker 1: What's your argument to those people for why we should
1:35:57
Speaker 1: take a different approach?
1:35:58
Speaker 11: I guess I'm curious what they mean by if we
1:36:01
Speaker 11: bite too hard, right? Because what we were doing at
1:36:04
Speaker 11: the FTC, what agencies like the SEC were doing were
1:36:08
Speaker 11: enforcing the law. We were doing investigations and.
1:36:15
Speaker 11: And if we found that a company was breaking the
1:36:17
Speaker 11: law and it was resulting in harm for people, we
1:36:19
Speaker 11: took action. We didn't then think, oh, is this company
1:36:23
Speaker 11: a powerful donor to the Democratic Party and so should
1:36:25
Speaker 11: we go light? And candidly, at this moment, when we
1:36:29
Speaker 11: are seeing unprecedented levels of corruption from the Republican Party
1:36:33
Speaker 11: and total pay to play, the idea that our response
1:36:37
Speaker 11: to that should be, okay, maybe we should be a
1:36:39
Speaker 11: little bit more corrupt too, is frankly mind boggling to me.
1:36:47
Speaker 2: Well said. Lena Khan, thank you so much for being here.
1:36:50
Speaker 2: Thank you all for coming out.
1:36:55
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