Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/20/25: Fed Says Recession Risk High, Tesla Investor Wants Elon Out, Iran Nuclear War Plan & MORE!

Episode Date: March 20, 2025

Krystal and Saagar discuss the fed chair saying recession risk is high, huge Tesla investor wants Elon out, revealed nuclear war with Iran plan, Elon donates to Republicans who support judicial impeachment, Trump punishes Maine after fight with Gov, is abundance the liberal answer to MAGA.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at BreakingPoints.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Thursday. Have an amazing show for everybody today. What do we have, Crystal? Indeed we do. Many big stories as per usual. So recession fears continue to mount after some comments from the Fed chair, Jerome Powell, yesterday. A significant Tesla investor is now calling for Elon to step down as CEO. So a lot that's interesting going on there with Tesla. Ground invasion officially begins in Gaza. We'll take a look at what is going on there and the U.S. response. We've got a bunch of updates on the various court battles that are playing out, including how Elon is now giving money to Republicans who back his calls to impeach judges. Some new data is revealing the details of how exactly Democrats lost and some really stunning information there to parse through. I'm taking a look at how Trump is punishing the state of Maine and what it could mean for you specifically in this new era. And we are officially entering Abundance Discourse. Derek Thompson is going to join us for an interview about his new book and the political theory that he is sharing here with Ezra Klein.

Yeah, I'm excited to talk to him. This book, there's a lot of discourse around it. If you're not aware of that discourse, God bless you. You know, you're actually, you're doing the right thing. You're staying out. We're going to force you to be aware of it today. That's for the nerds like us. You can enter in just a little bit and that can be your own introduction. But like Crystal said, let's go ahead and get to the recession watch.

So there have been some very interesting comments here from the Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell about the possibility of recession, some worrying data. Let's take a listen. There's always an unconditional probability, possibility of a recession. It might be broadly in the range of one in four at any time if you look back through the years. It could be within 12 months, a one in four chance of a recession. So the question is, is whether that whether this current situation, those possibilities are elevated. I will say this. We don't we don't make such a forecast. If you look at outside forecasts, forecasters have have generally raised a number of them have raised their possibility of a recession somewhat, but still

at relatively moderate levels, you know, still in the region of of the traditional because they were extremely low if you go back two months people were saying that the likelihood of a recession was extremely low so has moved up but it's not high so let me say that it is um going to be very difficult to have a precise assessment of how much of inflation is coming from tariffs and from other. And that's already the case. You may have seen that goods inflation moved up pretty significantly in the first two months of the year. Trying to track that back to actual tariff increases, given what was tariffed and what was not, very, very challenging. So some of it. The answer is

clearly some of it, a good part of it. So that was Federal Reserve Chairman. He's trying to tamp down any talk of recession, but he is saying that it is going up higher. Also talking there about inflation, key because, of course, Federal Reserve policy is deeply tied to inflation. This comes on the heels of a major announcement from the Trump administration, the readying of the biggest tariff regime now yet. Let's put it up there on the screen from Jeff Stein. Trump aides are prepping new tariffs on imports worth trillions for, quote, Liberation Day. So you'll all recall this was Donald Trump's promise from the State of the Union. He will be doing reciprocal tariffs, quote. But this quote from him was that it will be Liberation Day. He's doing it April 2nd and not April 1st because he doesn't want anyone to think that it's an April Fool's joke. The question is what exactly this is going

to look like. And in implementation, it's genuinely all matters. So the idea behind it, I actually think is one I could get behind. The idea behind it is we will charge anyone a tariff that they charge for us. But the question is about, like with the USMCA and the automakers, is how much of a tariff and how many times? Because part of the problem is we live in a hyper-globalized economy where parts will often move across our border some 15 to 20 times before it will end up in a finished vehicle. Is it like the whole assembly will be subject to the tariff, or will it be one that is, you know, applied every single time? There's also, I mean, there's bigger questions

here where even if in principle you could support a reciprocal tariff, there are some tariffs where reciprocity is eaten on the back end. So like for a car, for example, but we'll still have a trade surplus in another good. The idea is to try and equalize everything here. But the implementation of it is just almost certainly going to lead to a lot of tariffs. And that's just one where it comes on the heels of a story from the Trump administration so far, which has been chaotic. This one, I do think they have a better narrative on their side, instead of like, we're bullying Canada to be the 51st state. We're like, listen, we're going to charge everybody what they charge us. But as I always say, it has to be

charged with this paired with a story. It cannot be one where people think that it's just going to lead to higher prices. We need to see some serious movement. There's been some, I mean, Nvidia announced yesterday, they're going to onshore some stuff, but it's not just about, you know, talk. You actually have to see some action. You really need to have a lot of faith and a lot of trust. And considering how things have gone now for the first 60, 70 days of the Trump administration, by the time those go in, they are losing a lot of trust with the American public right now. Yeah. I mean, they've already kind of given tariffs a bad name. And so if they had started with like, yeah, we're doing, you know, tit for tat, they have tariffs on us. We're

going to do the same thing. I do think that that probably narrative would have landed better with the American public. But at this point, and I find this to be unfortunate because I'm actually worried about this just like killing the good name of tariffs for all time, because they are an important tool in order to build up, you know, your industrial capacity or, you know, emphasize key industries, et cetera. So important tool to have in the arsenal. And they've sort of poisoned the very word tariffs already, in my opinion, in these early days of the administration. Either way, however you feel about them, it is, to Sager's point, going to be, if he follows through, et cetera, et cetera, a significant increase in the tariff regime.

I'm really not sure that Wall Street has entirely grappled with this because I think they've always had this sense of, oh, he doesn't really mean it. He's going to back off. And they have some reason to believe that at this point, since he has gone in and backed off partially, et cetera, multiple times at this point. So there could be, you know, a huge reaction if he goes forward with, quote unquote, Liberation Day. I'm calling it L Day on April 2nd. Another thing I was reading about this morning is just in terms of the bigger picture of where we are economically. You know, the Trump administration is betting that there is a decent amount of sort of economic buffer because some of those macroeconomic numbers, you know, coming out of the Biden

administration were in fact good. You knowemployment was really low, for example, and consumer sentiment was coming back up. But we know, because we've been covering this the whole time, there were significant warning signs in the housing market. The housing market has not been normal in a really long time. Things have been just kind of frozen in place for years at this point. You also had a situation where consumers, yes, they were maintaining their spending level, but they were increasingly having to rely on credit cards in order to be able to do that. So that indicates that they aren't really in a position to absorb much of a shock at all if there is an economic downturn, if hiring does begin to freeze, if layoffs do start,

if the stock market does continue its downward trajectory. So they may not have as much of a buffer zone as you might think if you were just looking at those top line macroeconomic numbers. On the other hand, consumer sentiment was pretty low during most of the Biden administration, and it didn't actually represent, it did not actually lead to a decrease in consumer spending. So last time, Sagar and I were talking about, oh, this consumer sentiment index, it's really important. It's falling off a cliff. People are really nervous.

Their inflation expectations are high, et cetera. Sometimes, oftentimes, that can lead to a sort of like self-fulfilling prophecy where because consumers are nervous, they pull back and retailers are looking at that consumer sentiment and they're pulling back as well. But that is not always, always the case. So, you know, there's a lot of mixed signals here, but I don't think there's any doubt that if they move forward to the full extent on April 2nd, there is going to be a significant blow. And I mean, Jerome Powell said as much, you know, in his very like Federal Reserve chairs, their whole thing is to be as sort of like

neutral and non-inflammatory as possible because they know how closely everybody parses every single word. But basically, he's like, yeah, tariffs lead to more inflation and lower growth. That's what we are increasingly expecting is growth to be lower than what was previously projected. And for us to have to worry more about inflation. I just saw Sagar this morning. Trump is out. Of course, he's very upset. He wants the Federal Reserve to cut rates, et cetera, to help him with his tariff policy. And right now, the Fed is not going along with that. Fed's still in a, quote, wait and see policy. And yeah, I mean, I am worried, too, just about all these crazy shocks to the market because what you'll have is like, you know, stocks were up

yesterday on the Fed chairman's talk about not lack of recession, about possibility of cutting rates, but then you could have a major tariff regime and then the Federal Reserve would try and come in, maybe save the economy and cut rates low. We just have this just chaos. That's what people don't want to see. And you're starting to see some pushback. I mean, mainly it's not just Wall Street, I would say. It's really the financial press itself is just having a lot of difficulty dealing with all this. So here's Maria Bartriomo from Fox Business, by no means somebody who is adversarial, usually, to the Trump administration. But, you know, you got to watch this versus her, the Treasury Secretary, Scott Besson. Let's take a listen. And they have substantial tariffs. And as important as the tariff are some of these non-tariff barriers where they have domestic content production, where they do testing on our whether it's our food or products that bear no resemblance to safety or anything that we do to their products. See, these are the things that people are really worried about,

because they first thought it was just about trade. Then they thought it was just about fentanyl. Then after that, we talked about, well, maybe it's currency manipulation, and maybe it's now you're talking about food testing. And when I bring up the issue of clarity, that's what I'm talking about, and that's what I'm hearing from corporate America, that we're not sure where this is going. But of course, we will get resolution on April 2nd, rather. So you can see there, that's about as light pushback, I think, as you're going to get, but it's still important. And keeping with this, you have the chief economist

here of Moody's, who has recently been giving an interview. Now, why does it matter? Remember, everybody, Moody's, everybody on Wall Street looks to them, downgrading of debt, their forecast. Those forecasts get incorporated by the analysts. The analysts then put that into their overall projections. And then sometimes projections can be fulfilling because it will cause people either to sell off or to pare back or to hoard cash, a la Warren Buffett style. So here he is, the chief economist of Moody's, talking about recession. Let's take a listen. There's a lot of talk about reciprocal tariffs. That's broad-based tariffs coming into effect in a couple of weeks, I think, early April. If that actually happens and those tariffs stay in place for any length of time, a couple, three, four,

five months, I think that's enough to push the economy into recession, given everything else that's going on. So, you know, this would be a really weird recession, right? I mean, it's recession by design. You know, the economy came into the year rip-roaring, exceptionally strong, and we're pushing it in because of policy. It just doesn't feel like, you know, that's the direction we need to go. Look, that's Wall Street. It could be wrong. We also could have the old Trump like, yeah, we're doing this, we're doing this, we're doing this, and then we're not doing this. So we have no idea. They could pull back. I mean, that's part of what I always think is that the danger always is that if you have a tariff regime and you go to the bat for tariffs, but then you pull back, you both get the market reaction to tariffs and then you don't get any of the benefit

of tariffs. That's the problem. So I am worried about this just in the sense of this has to be implemented properly. It needs to have a plan and it needs to be paired with something real. Like it's not just NVIDIA and OpenAI giving talks. Look, I think it's great that NVIDIA is going to onshore hundreds of millions of dollars, but like, let's look at reality from the CHIPS Act and all that. Yes, it definitely helped. But a lot of that money did not go to a lot of the declining states. It's states that were already open for business and that were kind of booming, places like Arizona, right? Look, I have nothing against Arizona. I'm glad.

But part of the whole idea behind tariffs, why the UAW and others support them, is also to revitalize areas that are economically declining. And we have not seen that as of yet from the states of Ohio, you know, Pennsylvania, of Michigan. A lot of the economic growth, if you look like in Pennsylvania, a lot of it is health care, which that's a problem, I think, as it's not really a tariff thing that you can necessarily solve without some direct government intervention. So look, they're playing with shaky ground. And if you screw with people's money, they're going to get mad. And it's one of those where you could do damage to yourself in the future. And you may both go to the bat for something and then end up losing, which in my opinion, puts you in all the worst worlds. I mean, in terms of the politics of this, we are in very unusual territory with

regard to Donald Trump, where his numbers on the economy right now are some of his lowest numbers. Yes. And it comes at a time when the economy, cost of living, inflation, the importance of that to Americans is only going up right now. So the fact that he is being seen right now increasingly is failing to deliver on what was one of the core promises of his campaign. And what has always been one of the core promises of him as a leader and as a political candidate. Yeah, it's a, you know, it's a big issue for him. And you couple that with talking about, you know, the reconciliation coming down, big tax cuts for the rich, cuts probably to Medicaid, a tax on Social Security that people are very concerned about, very concerned about. In fact, the data segment that we'll probably get to today, assuming that we don't talk too long in these

other blocks, one of the things they found is that the most effective message right now about Trump is he is cutting taxes for the rich and cutting your social security and your Medicare. So a lot of perilous political ground that he's on right now. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024.

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All right, let's get over to Tesla. This is really interesting stuff happening with the stock. Now, you might even ask, why does it matter with the stock? Well, if Elon's going to be a major player in our government, actually, maybe we can edit this in later. This is maybe an ask to our producers. The Commerce Secretary late last night literally went on television to encourage people to buy Tesla stock. I mean, I can only assume that it's not even just about personal interest there, but they see that as an existential threat to Elon, to Doge, and their ability to be able to carry their things out. So the fate of this company does obviously matter, not only in terms of that. Not only that, I mean, Trump was hogging Teslas in the White House lawn. So this is like a whole of government effort to prop up the stock of, yes, of the richest man on the entire planet.

So there you go. All right. Makes a lot of sense. Sticking with that, not only prior to Doge, Elon, we often saw Tesla, the most successful American car startup of all time, especially in modern history. So what does that matter? Well, we had bet that electric vehicles are going to be part of some of our future, maybe not be everything, but we want to have some leadership in the area. And at the very same time that we're seeing troubles in our electric vehicle market and in our companies, BYD is

leaping bounds of what is possible. So let's start off here. This is a major investor in Tesla who took to the airwaves and basically publicly said, I think there needs to be a new CEO because he's just not spending a lot of time on this company. This is Ross Gerber. Let's take a listen. I think we all make choices with our time and Elon doesn't get more than 24 hours a day just because he's Elon. So we make choices. All of us do. Do we make choices with our time and Elon doesn't get more than 24 hours a day just because he's Elon. So we make choices. All of us do. Do we spend time with our family? Do we go golfing? Do we work? And how we do this is, you know, each individual chooses. And so Elon chooses to work, you know, all the time, but you can only work so many hours a day.

So it's 24, right? And he sleeps. So there's no question he's been committed to his job at the government. That's where he's spending his time. He is not running Tesla. And that's why I'm going to say it. I think Tesla needs a new CEO. And I decided today I was going to start saying it. And so this is the first show that I'm saying it on. It's time for somebody to run Tesla. The business has been neglected for too long. There's too many important things Tesla is doing. So either Elon should come back to Tesla and be the CEO of Tesla and give up his other jobs, or he should focus on the government and keep doing what he's doing, but find a suitable CEO for Tesla. So you are saying essentially if he's not prepared to quit that government job, he needs to go? Yeah, I think it's time.

So the reason why that matters is he's a major investor in Tesla. And there are a lot of Tesla investors who are upset. I'm looking at the stock right now. It's flat basically on the last six months. Let's go and put that tariff sheet, please, up on the screen here, because it fits with the broader pattern of people inside of the company are deciding that they're going to sell off. So put the next tariff sheet up, B2. Tesla board members and executive are selling off over $100 million of stock in recent weeks. It's never a good sign.

Not a good sign, yeah, usually. Together, the four top officers of the company have offloaded $100 million in shares just since early February. It's likely that this is a result of the fact that it bumped so high immediately after the election. But the truth is, is that if it's flat on the last six months, it's erased all of its pre-election gains. And broadly, like,

the company does have issues. I mean, if you look not only at the demand, but you've got the brand stuff, which is currently happening. Put B3, please, on the screen so people can see this. Yeah, I mean, if you look at the decline overall, the year-to-date decline specifically, that's from January. So that was really where elections are at. We're talking about a 37% decline in the overall stock value of the company. And there are issues both with their current sales, their branding right now. You also have to think, like, who are the people who are buying Teslas? They're mostly like rich people. And like rich people are usually liberals in this country, especially the type of people who are going to be attracted to an EV. So I've been seeing people like, we need to make buying the Cybertruck like a major

part. And I'm like, well, you know, it's like an $85,000 vehicle. Not to say that there aren't a lot of poor people out there driving $85,000 Ford F-150s or whatever. They shouldn't be doing that either. But my point is just, if you look at the general demographic of who their customer is on top of the political brand hit that they're taking, and if you also see, if Tesla's a global company, Elon, you know, he might be popular or whatever with Republicans here. That's 50% of our country. But, you know, we have to think about Germany. We have to think about the global marketplace. And the biggest problem they face there is while his brand is becoming polarizing, BYD cars are only getting better. And in those countries, you can buy a BYD car. You can buy a Xiaomi car. You can't buy one here. So in a way,

he's actually protected a little bit in the United States. But their stock value depends very much on sales globally in China, in Germany, in the European Union. In fact, I mean, the use case for an EV in every other country but the United States is much better just because it's small. You don't have to drive that much. Right. And they have better infrastructure than us too. Yeah. So, yeah, you really have to think just about what that future value is. And, I mean, it makes sense if you're Ross Gerber.

Like, purely from a financial perspective, you're like, listen, I mean, it makes sense if you're Ross Gerber, like purely from a financial perspective, you're like, listen, I mean, you're literally, I mean, he gave me an interview to Ted Cruz and he's like, I sleep six hours a night and I wake, I work every single other hour. And he's like, and this is all I'm working on. It's on Doge. It's like, okay, but you're literally the CEO of one of these companies. So how much attention can you realistically give this here? I mean, people have always said that about Elon, but it's a little bit different when you're focused on government as opposed to running two or three other kind of interconnected businesses at the same time. Yeah. And that's one of the knocks on Tesla is that the inventory right now is stale, that Elon's attention is

elsewhere. And so, you know, it's not his baby anymore the way that it used to be. It's not his like glorious obsession of the moment. And this is a man who's known for glorious obsessions. And so that's part of it. I mean, but the biggest part is just how toxic he's become and how polarizing he's become. And not just in the U.S., but, you know, we tracked before the sales in Europe have fallen off a cliff. In Germany, I saw a stat, they did a poll. It was like 94% of Germans said that they would not even consider buying a Tesla. And as Sager said, there are other options. And it's not like in Europe in particular, people are buying fewer EVs overall. Quite the contrary. The percent of new vehicles that are being purchased that are

EVs continues to be on the rise. And yet Tesla sales like in Germany are down 60%. I mean, it just, at some point, it becomes a real problem. Also, just to flag something to keep an eye on something I'm going to keep an eye on. The Financial Times has an article today calling into question some of the accounting with Tesla flagging a sort of $1.4 billion that is questionable of what's going on and where it went, etc. So there may be a lot more going on there. But the bottom line is Elon is a toxic figure. The car has become itself very polarizing. And most people are not looking to make a political statement with the vehicle that they're driving.

They just want to, like, have a car that's good and drive it and not get dirty looks from whoever while they're driving it. And, you know, then they've got this increased competition issue as well. I do think it's, like, to me, it's very funny. Republicans, the new party, the working class, organizing themselves around supporting the stock value of the company of the richest man on the planet is an entertaining subplot to all of this. Sure. I mean, look, we can do hypocrisy all we want.

I'm not doing hypocrisy. I just think it's funny. Like the senator trading in his Tesla for a Chevy gas-powered vehicle, which is not even a hybrid. What's up with that? It's like, look, I'm not saying it isn't all like somewhat amusing, but I mean, I care. I like electric vehicles and I think they're cool. So, you know, I actually drove past a sick EV9 today.

I got to give it to Kia. They are nailing their electric cars. I think they're really cool. But this sticks with what we were talking about earlier with BYD. Look, I mean, again, any just casual observer who has no, like, politics aside, you just have to admit, BYD's sick. Let's put this up there on the screen. Look at what they just announced. They got a five-minute charge time. that, according to them, the platform now has a charging power of 1,000 kilowatts. It takes up to 1,000 amps, which means it can charge batteries at a rate of 2 kilometers per second.

It can give you 400 kilometers in range in 5 minutes. The equivalent charge time on a Tesla would be about 200 miles in a range of 15 minutes. That's if all the stars align, like your battery's low, you're at a 250-kilowatt charger, there's nobody parked next to you, which means that your wattage or whatever is going down. I mean, a lot of this is just about the engineering marvel of what BYD has been able to accomplish,

and also in terms of the regulations and design that they're allowed to build over there in China. I'm genuinely convinced if we were able to do, or even regulatory allowed, the types of cars that they build over there, they would be huge sellers. Like in China, the concept of a vehicle with a 500-mile gas tank and a 300-mile battery, it's everywhere. And actually, they're interconnected. I mean, think about it. That's 800 miles of range. Who would not buy that?

It's one of those where it's a daily driver. As far as I know, our plug-in hybrids don't even go up to like 40 or 50 miles. I think 40 is as good as it gets here. That's just not enough, you know, if you think about that. So their market, not only heavily subsidized by the Chinese government, they built their infrastructure and all that over time, but they've laid such a framework that their Elon, the founder of BYD, who himself, again, is a genuine engineering genius, for him to be able to create this product that is just going exponential now with everything that is available to him. And if you think about the global marketplace, again, people in Germany or wherever, they don't care if it comes from China. We care here for the integrity of our U.S. auto market. But in a lot of other countries, they don't think that way. Or they just want to buy whatever is

the nicest car. Or they have friendlier relations with China. And so that is a direct threat to Tesla's ability in the future because their whole growth project was not just America, it was the whole world. That's absolutely the case. And I mean, the only thing that is saving our EV market right now is protectionism. Yes. Like otherwise, forget it. It'd be over because this development is so significant. I mean, one of the primary things that keeps people from buying an EV is, look, we're Americans. We love the long road trip. And it's a pain in the ass to have to like, you know, first of all, you're nervous about,

am I going to find a charger? Is it going to be broken? Like, you know, did I have the heat on too much and now my range is too low? Whatever. What do they call it? Range anxiety. That's one of the big issues. And then, okay, you get to the charger and then you got to sit there for 20 minutes.

At best, if you have a Tesla and it's a supercharger and whatever, to get a significant, you know, range charge. And that's a pain in the butt. Like, you want to get where you're going. You got your kids. They're being annoying, et cetera, et cetera. So if you can charge up 300 miles in five minutes, I mean, now we're getting to where it's comparable to how long it takes to fill the tank of gas. Not to me.

This actually ties some into the abundance conversation we're going to have later, too. You know, our charging network is not nearly sufficient. And then the thing that really jumped down at me in this article, too, is that they say that the key challenger to BYD, it's not Tesla or any other, you know, American or European car company or whatever. It's another Chinese battery company, so CATL. Last year, they unveiled a new battery with a charge time equating to one kilometer of range per second or 600 kilometers in 10 minutes. So this is part of what we're seeing with the AI development as well, that obviously we have strong competitors in the AI field.

But China has strong competitors just internally, domestically. So they have, in a very short period of time, leapfrogged to where now, technologically, with these frontier technologies, they are not just competing with us in many instances, actually. They have surpassed us, and they're kicking our butt. Their model, in terms of innovation, is working better than our model, which is sort of sclerotic and financialized and monopoly-driven and et cetera. So this is one instance of that that is really incredibly striking. And yeah, if we are unable to figure this technology out and catch up to them, every American EV maker is going to be toast globally. They will only be able to compete within the protectionist regime of the United States of America, and that will be toast globally. They will only be able to compete within the protectionist regime of the United States of America, and that will be about it. And Tesla, not Tesla, sorry, BYD is

concerned about our automakers stealing their technology. Let's put this up on the screen. This wasn't the only concern, but this was part of it. They're delaying approval, Beijing is, for BYD to build a plant in Mexico because they're worried that that tech is going to leak across the border to the U.S. in some sort of like, you know, corporate espionage situation. Now, they have other concerns, especially with regard to, you know, there's the trade war going on. And so they're, you know, nervous about some of that and how that will impact it as well. But that was apparently a primary consideration, which is quite funny how the shoe is now on the other foot, Sagar.

Yeah, it is, except they're smart enough to actually think about that beforehand and not figure it out 20 years later. It's amazing, actually, when you have smart people who run your country. You can do amazing things. Personally, I'm a Yang Wang guy. That's the BYD luxury SUV.

That thing is incredible. It can float on water, literally, according to them. Really? Yeah, it's one of those. You should look into it. I've seen some videos of people driving around and they're just, they're awesome. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal.

It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves.

Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Yes. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives.

With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something

much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day. It's for the families of those who didn't make it. I'm J.R. Martinez. I'm a U.S. Army veteran myself. And I'm honored to tell you the stories of these heroes on the new season of Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage from Pushkin Industries and iHeart Podcast.

From Robert Blake, the first black sailor to be awarded the medal, to Daniel Daly, one of only 19 people to have received the Medal of Honor twice. These are stories about people who have distinguished themselves by acts of valor, going above and beyond the call of duty. You'll hear about what they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Listen to Medal of Honor on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. So Israel has quickly moved from a bombing campaign in Gaza to now a new ground invasion. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is their defense minister warning the residents of Gaza with total devastation. He says, this is your final

warning. The first Sinwar destroyed Gaza. The second Sinwar will bring upon it total ruin. The Israeli Air Force's attack against Hamas terrorists was only the first step. What follows will be far harsher and you will bear the full cost. Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before. Take the advice of the U.S. president, return the hostages, kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you, including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose. The alternative is destruction

and total devastation. So, I mean, obviously there's no real choice being offered here. They are headed towards that total devastation. And we already know that, you know, they've been preparing for this ground invasion and it has in fact begun. We can take a look at this map up on the screen. This will be familiar to some of you. You've got them bisecting Gaza in two. Once again, he warned there, you know, that people are going to have to be forced to flee from the rubble that's left of their homes. Once again, displaced. There has been a siege in place now for, I believe, over two weeks. So no food, no fuel, no medicine is coming in. Yesterday, I saw an eyewitness report on the ground about seven children at a single hospital having to have amputations with no anesthesia whatsoever. That's what we're talking about here.

So Sagar returned to absolute full force. There are some domestic political ramifications in terms of Israel. You have a good number of the population that want the Israeli government to focus on return of the hostages. Obviously, when you have this sort of all-out assault and ground invasion with massive death tolls, death tolls like what we saw at the beginning of this war, that is not only putting Palestinians at risk, it is also putting the remaining hostages at risk as well. So yesterday there were protests in the streets. We can put this up on the screen from the New York Times. Thousands of Israelis gathered on Wednesday outside the parliament building to renew a ceasefire deal in Gaza to protest political moves by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu,

including firing the head of the Shin Bet intelligence agency. The convergence of popular anger over both domestic and national security issues came a day after Israel carried out deadly aerial attacks across the Gaza Strip in what Netanyahu said was only the beginning. The strikes ended a temporary truce with Hamas that began in January and added to uncertainty over the fate of hostages still held there. Bibi has his own, you know, I mean, obviously his own domestic political concerns, but he has this long pushed off corruption trial that was about to begin, was about to have to give testimony again. Oh, whoops, now we're at war again, so won't have to do that. So it's very naked to a lot of Israelis how much of the war plan is about Bibi's own personal interests versus, you know, like I said, a lot of them, it's not that they're worried about the brutality versus vis-a-vis Palestinians, predominantly not,

but they are worried about being able to get their own hostages back in one piece. Yeah, there's also a scandal in Israel right now where Bibi fired the head of the Shin Bet, like their domestic agency. And that was, it's actually causing some similar court battles between the Israeli courts saying that it was done illegally, which has now led to some deep state convo, which is genuinely hilarious. Let's put C3, please, up on the screen from Benjamin Netanyahu. He says, in America and in Israel, when a strong right-wing leader wins an election, the leftist deep state weaponizes the justice system to thwart the people's will. They won't win in either place. We stand strong together. Right. So tying himself directly to our own

domestic political situation, I guess fairly considering how much influence they have over here. But people should always remember, you know, look. I think Elon replied to that, too. Oh, did he? He's like, cool. Something like that. Yeah, that's one of his favorites. It's like, oh my God, dude, you are the deep state.

Like, how much of the new, like, revealed redactions in the JFK files are, like, about Israel and Israel? Well, yeah, yeah. We're going to have Jefferson Morley on. He's a great journalist about the JFK files. But overall, it's kind of disappointing. And it is something I always tell people because they're like, oh, the files are... And then I'm like, guys, with 9-11, with JFK, with the UFOs and all that, we almost kind of...

Like UFOs maybe aside, there's a lot more we could learn. But there's no government document that's like there are visiting aliens. There's no government document that says we shot JFK. A lot of the circumstantial evidence and all that, it's all out there, just in terms of the fact that the official narrative is completely BS. And for the CIA elements and all of that, the story's been effectively known since the 1990s, I would say. And it was obviously popularized and a lot of people really paid attention after Oliver Stone's movie. And, you know, it was obviously popularized and a lot of people really paid attention after Oliver Stone's movie. But even before that, the whole Jim Garrison investigation,

Americans, by and large, didn't believe the story and thought it was a conspiracy very, very early on. So, anyway, it is kind of disappointing just the way that it's all shaken out. On the BB Deep State thing, I mean, why wouldn't he say this? Because it's worked so well. Even, like, you know, SBF going on. Yeah, that's right. On

Tucker's show. Yeah, on Tucker's show. And, you know, certainly the Tates portraying themselves as some victims of some deep state witch hunt. Russell Brand comes to mind as well. Eric Adams in New York comes to mind as well. So tried and true strategies. So why wouldn't B.B., who certainly understands domestic political strategies here within the U.S. context, why wouldn't he also go ahead and make himself a victim of the deep state as well? Just incredible. He knows what he's doing. Yeah, absolutely incredible. Put C4 up there on the screen as well. This is from Ken Klippenstein. This was actually really interesting. It's basically about the, quote, Iran war plan. And what Ken can report, according to some of his sources and others, is that inside of the Pentagon, some war game plans are now beginning to take shape. Now,

obviously, that's not something that means it's going to happen. And of course, there's war plans for everything. But, quote, the new war plan construct is itself new in that multilateral components, including Israel working in unison with the Gulf partners, either indirectly or directly, are now part of it. And the plan also includes many different contingencies and levels of war, from crisis action, meaning response to events, to, quote, deliberate planning, which will set scenarios that flow from the crises out of control, including and up to, obviously, like invasion, full concept plan, full operations. Look, obviously somebody ordered those plans to be renewed.

For what purpose? We don't know. It does bring to mind, gosh, I'm blanking on the guy's name, Wesley something. He was the general. He was the general after the war on terror who came out and talked about war plans that were for Iraq and for all the rest of the Middle East. People often point back to that one as evidence of foreplanning for multiple invasions going forward. But anytime you see something like this, you should, of course, take interest. Why has this been ordered? For what purpose? Because the alternative could be to order some revolutionary diplomacy at the very same time.

We do know that Trump has apparently sent a letter to the Ayatollah being like, we want to deal within the next two months or something. But we haven't seen any movement on that yet. No, quite the contrary. I mean, I think because they're also re-implementing the maximum pressure strategy. And so I think that has, I mean, I don't know that Iran was going to be that amenable to making a deal at this point anyway, given that they already made a deal and it backfired because we pulled out, you know, Trump 1.0 pulled out of the deal. Biden failed to get back in or really show that much interest in getting back in. And now you've got even more sanctions being applied to them and threats coming from the White House.

So it's not looking great. But listen, you never know. The other thing that was really troubling that Ken was able to report, we can put this up on the screen, is as part of those war plans, they include a nuclear option. And he points specifically to this comment that Trump made. And Trump said this thing, he said, we can't let Iran have a nuclear weapon. I would rather have a peace deal than the other option, but the other option will solve the problem. And Ken thinks this may be an allusion to, like a sort of vague allusion towards this nuclear war plan, which has been developed as part of this larger menu of options with regard to an all-out war on Iran. So obviously all of this is deeply troubling.

And just to give you the latest few updates from on the ground in Israel as well, just to be as current as possible here, you did have some, Hamas was able to fire some rockets at Tel Aviv, which obviously it's wild that at this point, given how much destruction across the entire Gaza Strip, that they still have that kind of capability. And per Haaretz, you also have updated death toll, just massive numbers of Palestinians being killed this week by Israel. Over 710 Palestinians killed, 900 wounded in Israeli strikes in the Gaza Strip just in the last 48 hours. Some of the patients died due to a lack of medical equipment, says a spokesperson for one hospital and thousands of Israelis continuing to march and protest in the street as this ground invasion has officially begun in northern Gaza. The bombing campaign obviously

is all out and kind of no end in sight here. I mean, at this point, there isn't even a pretense of looking to negotiate a new ceasefire deal or looking to get back to phase two, etc. As we said when we covered this earlier in the week, Bibi always made it clear he didn't really intend to go to phase two. The question mark was whether the Trump administration was going to actually apply pressure to force them to go to phase two. And at this point, it's pretty clear we have our answer there. Yep, that's right. All right, let's move on to the courts. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that

exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high.

And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. With guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull, we'll take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms,

even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to everybody's business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets.

Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe

today. A bunch of updates for you this morning about what is going on in the court system, but let's go ahead and start with this. Elon Musk continuing his attacks on judges, this in a rather ill-informed tweet. He says, quote, this is a judicial coup. We need 60 senators to impeach the judges and restore rule of the people. Okay, this is where his South African roots are really coming out because, first of all, impeachment happens in the House. Second of all, to convict in the Senate, it takes 67 senators. So nice try on that one. Obviously, community noted on his own platform. But more significant than that, I mean, this is part of a broader push towards impeaching the judges, towards putting pressure on the judges.

The president of the United States has echoed some of this language as well, put D7 up on the screen here. Elon has also donated to Republican members of Congress who have directly supported impeaching judges. He's given the maximum allowable direct contribution. It's something like $6,600. So we're not talking about millions here, Sagar. It's more about the message he's trying to send. And this has been, you know, one of the core things, again, that has been different about Trump 2.0 is Elon, from the very first fight, made it clear he is perfectly willing to use his billions in order to enforce conformity from the Republican Party. And lo and behold, you know, I mean, you combine that with the fact that Trump has just completely subsumed this party at this point, but you have so much less actual dissent this time when it comes to vote taking than you did in Trump 1.0. And Elon again here signaling the direction

he wants Republicans to go in with this increasingly hostile view towards the federal judicial system. Well, I am glad you agree with me, Crystal, that many foreigners don't have a civic understanding of America and should perhaps keep their mouths shut a little bit whenever they come here. Just an idea, maybe, if you're a campus protester or something like that. Listen, I would— You know, maybe keep your bullshit to yourself. I would bend a lot on immigration if we're going to deport Elon Musk.

See, there you go. All right. Well, he actually is a good example about interlopers and all of that. But anyway, coming back to the Musk point, it is important for people to understand here that it is not like he's giving them a ton of money. It's $6,600. It's really about sending a message. And I would say that the most important thing is generating the headlines for all of the other Republicans who are in the House and in the Senate to know that you're not just getting a donation from Elon. And obviously that will help in the future with respect to America PAC and his other super PAC organizations. But it's really about the boost that you're getting within the Republican base and on their media, which is predominantly, at least the thought leaders and others getting them from Twitter, people like us are covering the story.

And if you're a Republican legislator, the message is clear, go along with this, and I'm going to get a tongue bath from Elon on Twitter, which is very useful to them whenever they go back to their district. It helps them get on Fox News, gets some media publicity and elsewhere. So it's really just about moving the incentives more towards like Elon's particular approval of you and your ability to then thrive in the Republican Party in the future. It's that and it's also if you get rewarded, if you do what I want you to do, and the threat is also hanging over that of if you don't, then there's going to be infinite money basically put towards a primary challenger if you get crosswise.

So, you know, it is definitely intended to send a signal to all. And so far, it's really worked. Actually, Lisa Murkowski was giving some speech back in Alaska where she was talking about, like, yeah, he could fund a primary challenger. I could be done tomorrow if he, like, you know, just drops however much he wants to drop. So they're definitely— So she thinks that's true because she survived multiple— She might be one of the rare ones that could survive because Alaska is so unique. You know how insane that is? Yeah. But, I mean, that is definitely—they're definitely thinking

about it given how central money in politics is. And it's not just the money. Like you said, I mean, he's got the president. He's got Twitter. They have so much power and control over this party at this point that even someone like Lisa Murkowski has to at least be worried that it would be a problem for her. Let's go ahead and put now D1 up on the screen. This is the very latest with regard to the Alien Enemies Act deportations. So a judge warned of possible consequences after DOJ pushed back on questions about the deportation flight. Let me read you a little bit of this here so I can make sure to get the legalese correct. So it says a federal judge Wednesday warned of the possibility of consequences after they pushed back. U.S. District Judge James Boesborg had ordered the Trump administration to

submit answers to his questions about the timing of the deportation flights and custody handover of deportees, giving the government until noon Wednesday to respond. The government submitted a filing Wednesday morning asking for a pause of that order to answer his questions. It contended that the answers could expose negotiations with foreign countries to serious risk of micromanaged and unnecessary judicial fishing expeditions and potential public disclosure. The judge was not impressed with this. The government basically threatened that they may invoke state secrets doctrine to keep this all private, even though, you know, we talked the other day about we actually all know now because of public flight tracking information,

where the flights were, when they took off, when they landed, all that stuff. Not to mention that they themselves released and amplified these videos of the detainees and having their head shaved and all that sort of stuff. So in any case, the judge said the government's motion is the first time it's suggested that disclosing the information requested by the court could amount to the release of state secrets. To date, in fact, the government has made no claim that information is even classified. He continued, for example, the Secretary of State has revealed many operational details of the flights, including the number of people involved, many of their identities, the facility to which they were brought, the manner of treatment, time window during which these events occurred. Court is

therefore unsure at this time how compliance with its minute order would jeopardize state secrets. He gave the Justice Department until noon Thursday, that's today, possibly after this even gets posted, to either answer his questions about the flights or invoke the state secrets doctrine and explain the basis for such invocation. So TLDR is they're still trying to stonewall and the judge is getting increasingly impatient. Yes. And they may get held in contempt. Even if they do, it's going to go on a rocket to the appellate court. And then from the appellate court, it's going to go to the Supreme Court. So there's still quite a bit to happen here. Bringing back to the judge conversation, it is just becoming clear that there are so many of these things. I have spoke to one friend who said that

this might actually be packaged with a multitude of the other judges' orders so that SCOTUS tries to get ahead of like the, I mean, you know, what, in the last 48 hours, we've had the USAID court decision, the transgender decision, there was USIP, and there's also this one. So it is one that, no, I actually am missing one. I'm forgetting exactly what it is. But that's five literally just in the last like 72 hours that these questions of temporary restraining order in the role of district appellate and timely process and all of that could be picked up by SCOTUS ASAP in order to head off future like showdowns like the one that we're seeing right now. Yeah. You referenced the USIP one. Let's see.

This is D4. We can put up on the screen is just the latest info here. A judge has denied a restraining order to block Doge from its takeover of the US Institute of Peace, saying that despite being offended by Doge's hostile and threatening treatment of American citizens, there are issues with the merits of the lawsuit. So that one, you know, no final ruling here, but a temporary restraining order in this instance was denied. And then I believe they'll begin to weigh in on the merits next week, Monday, if memory serves. So that's basically the latest. But, you know, I mean, the campaign around pressuring the judges is a central part of their strategy at this point. And, you know,

floating impeachment for judges, Elon floating, like putting his money behind it. Trump was asked, Ryan and Emily played this, was asked about like, oh, would you ever justify their court orders? And he said, no, but you need to look at some of these judges. You need to look into some of these judges, what seemed to be sort of like tacitly backing this direction to put pressure on them. You know, do I think that any of them could actually get impeached given that as Elon apparently doesn't know, it takes 67 votes in the Senate in order to impeach. I think that is not going to happen, but you know, they again are trying to send a message and make it uncomfortable. I think in some of these instances, it could backfire. I mean, these are human beings. If you're aggressively threatening them, et cetera,

sometimes people get their backup and it makes them even more determined. But, you know, the other thing with regard to this particular judge, Boasberg, is like, if you look at his case record, he's definitely not like a lib. He was actually put in place first by George W. Bush. He's had a bunch of decisions that actually went in favor of Trump. And so, you know, the caricature of him is certainly not accurate in terms of the way he's being portrayed as some, quote unquote, radical left judge. Yeah. I mean, it is annoying to see them try and paint that as both people pointing out his wife or his daughter or whatever i do just i mean look we talked about this in our debate i think it's crazy the idea that a judge could take a u.s

military aircraft and to turn around or well it actually it actually wasn't a military aircraft it was a ice chartered flight um but you know the there's many instances of judge rulings having an impact on things that happen overseas because your ruling applies to the agency. The agency is giving the direction. And so this is not, it's not crazy. It's not unprecedented. It's happened many times. I was about to zoom out a little bit and not just talk about the flight, but like, for example, the transgender order, you know, it's like, this was a policy implemented by executive review by the Obama administration, then flipped by the Trump administration. And now the judge ruling that actually this violates the law is literally citing Hamilton in their footnotes.

So like, let's all also be like a little bit honest here. Yeah, but that's fine. But that's why you have an appeals process. No, I'm not disputing that. But I'm just, I get very annoyed at this idea that, like, there's this worshipfulness of the judges and the courts when anytime some crackpot judge in Texas rules on myth of Pristone, it's like, oh, the courts are illegitimate. This is ridiculous. When the Supreme Court rolls on SCOTUS, it's like, oh, we got to pack the court. It's like, let's be honest here about like reverence and annoyance for judges, both on sides of the political spectrum and for where that appeals process comes in. I mean, I genuinely do think many of these judges' orders are patently insane, like the transgender one in particular. I'm like, what, like under what rule are you allowed to say that this is some, like, civil rights violation when it was an executive policy from the very beginning that was put into place by Obama, flipped by Trump, and now basically put back into place by Biden and then flipped by Trump again?

It is just so obviously within the Article II powers of the commander-in-chief under the U.S. Constitution. Now this is going to take forever in terms of pushing things to the court. Like, that's why, if anything, I'm cheering for, like, a fulsome decision because this is not the way that a government should be run, like literally constantly being changed by some district court. We saw the same thing in the first Trump administration. Some Hawaii judge will rule that this is not legitimate and the travel ban is off.

I haven't acquainted myself really with the transgender, just to say I haven't dug into the legal merits of the case, etc., so I don't want to opine on that one. But the reason that there are so many court decisions is because they're violating the law so frequently. That's the reason why. You've had judges that Trump appointed rule against Trump. You've had George W. Bush appointees.

You've had, you know, across the spectrum because what they're doing is so extreme. Now, much of this will, I mean, will go through the appeals process and will go up to the Supreme Court. That's the way that this is supposed to go. But, you know, I mean, to discuss that this is a concerted strategy for them to try to intimidate the judges, put pressure on them. And they also, you know, they're playing this game where they are in defiance of court orders. I mean, with the with the planes is probably the most brazen example, but also with USAID and a bunch of these other decisions. The judge will issue a very clear ruling and they'll just be like, no. And they'll come up with some right. Oh, well, we didn't understand or we thought you meant this

or actually we're doing it under this other power, whatever. But it does stack up to persistent defiance of the courts in a way that is extraordinary, in a way that we have not seen before. And that does represent a sort of new era, a new approach

where he's trying to consolidate and very effectively sell all of this power in the executive so that he and Elon can basically do whatever they want. They've already destroyed that, like the Congress has given up their power. They don't even want to have power anymore. So that one's dead and gone. And the only thing that's left is the judiciary to serve as any sort of check on an executive. And that means, you know, not just

Trump, who you feel more comfortable with, but if there is another, you know, election with a Democrat elected, then it would, they could easily take up that same approach for ends that you would not be excited about. It would not approve of. So, yeah. So, I mean, that's why these battles are significant and important and why their approach to them truly is different. I mean, we haven't had, for 200 plus years, we've had a consensus that you don't try to impeach a judge over a ruling you don't like. And that's something they're seeking to change. That's really noteworthy and it's really different. Well, I mean, I wouldn't take it. It's not like there weren't calls in the FDR era and all that to impeach, actually during Lincoln as well, to impeach judges for people who they disagreed

with. It's just that usually they don't rise to that level because you need 67 people to do it and it's not going to happen. So I think I agree with you that it's not going to happen. I just am saying at a philosophical level, in a certain sense, like what is happening here is kind of like a left fever dream that was under the Biden administration where they just desperately wanted Biden to defy the courts on student loans, or I talked previously about like maximum stretch executive power. This is basically an idea of like seizing government as opposed to, or seizing government in this case for the sake of dismantling government, and probably the left case is seizing government in the case of actually trying to exercise the power of the government.

But in both, they're trying to invest more in the executive authority under that president. And as always, this district judge thing, I think we also have to take a step back. I saw somebody make a good point, is that a single district judge, and there's 700 district judges, actually has more power than a single Supreme Court justice, in the sense that a single district judge can issue a temporary restraining order that applies to the entire United States federal government, whereas it takes five out of the nine justices to actually implement a policy that basically is the ultimate ruling of the Supreme Court of the United States. And death by process is a Washington thing as old as time, throwing

the wrenches. Now, I don't disagree that the Trump administration or them have taken extraordinary action on USAID and all this other, many of which I disagree with, and I actually think it's quite stupid. But the district judge point about governance by judiciary, where it's just this constant judge shopping both left and right for where they're looking at, that system is genuinely kind of insane. Now, is it better to have some dictator in Elon and Trump? No, not necessarily. But I do think that people should look at this and say, this is not really the correct way, or at least I think, how judicial review was supposed to be put into place, where there's this constant back and forth. And then this district judge is invested with all this power.

And then sometimes we have to wait months for an appellate process or whatever to go through the Supreme Court. On a timely basis, you know, there is genuinely like a criticism, I think, to be had of the way that this is playing out on a practical level. The time benefits Trump. No, I don't think so at all. Oh, 100%. Why would it benefit him? Because think about, I mean, this is their strategy. This is what Bannon and others talk about is flood the zone and overwhelm these institutions. And while it's having to slowly work its way through this process and appeals court and eventually maybe go to the Supreme Court, et cetera, USAID is destroyed. CFPB is destroyed.

Like there is, that is what they're counting on is for it to take a long time. And in the meantime, you know, as we've said before, federal government agent, like it's not a switch you can flip on and off. In the meantime, incredible damage is being done that no court will be adequate to undo. Now, can they forestall some of the worst damage? Potentially. But, you know, we've already seen the way that this unfolds. So I view it quite the polar opposite. Number one, the time that it takes only benefits Trump. You know, even if we just look at this discrete example of the planes that were able to take off while a judge is having to like just give the most basics of deliberation, you know, that's already, it's done and dusted

and those people are gone and like, that's that. So, you know, even in that discrete example, you can see the way that they're able to accomplish some of their objectives just by taking advantage of the fact that it takes time with the courts. But I also think that what they're doing by violating so many laws and constitutional and, you know, the constitution at once is they are overwhelming the court system and seizing so much more power from it and betting that it's going to be effectively inadequate ultimately to be able to, you know, forestall them achieving their objectives. So quite to the contrary of like the court system being so powerful, I think the court system looks pretty weak right now in terms of being able to, you know, stop what many lawyers across the political spectrum, like I said, Trump appointees, Obama appointees, George W. Bush appointees, all across the board have said

looks to be illegal, unconstitutional violations of the law. So, you know, I guess I see it like polar opposite rather than thinking these individual district court judges are like so powerful. I think the whole judiciary put together is really, it's the only institutional check on this administration, but I'm under no illusions that it's like sufficient. I take your point, but I think it's because you see, you know, what they want to do, like let's say the Department of Education, they want to eradicate the Department of Education. It's like, okay, well, you can't literally do that. So they're going to try do 50%.

Or USAID, even better example. Yes, you can stop the funding, but if they order you to get it back and it's back in a year, sure, you've caused some chaos in the interim, but you have made no substantive real change to the overall like arc of the U.S. government. You might have knocked it off like a little bit in terms of all of this funding, but it'll heal and it'll go right back to funding the same NGOs, let's say, five years from now under a Democratic president. And in the district judge case, for example, you're talking about the Plains. It's like, well, you could see it in that sense. It's like, yeah, all those people have been deported.

But if you wanted to continue to make this a longstanding policy, it's literally not happening. I think that's probably a good outcome if you're some liberal ACLU immigration lawyer. So the point is, is that you may are not getting everything that you want, but like on balance, you are actually putting a stop to a lot of the policy or even the implementation of longstanding ones. So I do want to see a resolution to this because in a sense too, the chaos becoming the story, it's like what we were talking about with tariffs. With the chaos becoming the story, you get all the political backlash of something and not even any of the so-called intended benefit

that was supposed to come as a result of this. So you may get all the political backlash of deportation, something like that, and not actually even have any deportation. So in a sense, you don't even really get what you voted for and the policy while at the same time you're inviting all of this court and district battle after over every single executive action. And I will grant you that there are many I think are wrong and are unconstitutional, whatever. But the point is, is that by this district judge process of all of this happening, there is no confidence, I think, on either side here, because in the way that I'm taking your view

of the situation, that actually any coherence is happening in the government at all. And I don't think that that chaos works at a small d democratic level, especially increasing confidence in both the judiciary, where people think the judiciary is failing, and the people who think the judiciary is overreaching, if any of that makes sense. It does. And I think you're right. Obviously, it's not popular. It's not going well for them

from a political standpoint. But that's not the only goal. Like maybe they care about that. Maybe some of them care about that, but the ideological goal is to break government and they're doing that pretty effectively. The ideological goal is to, you know, for them to push the limits of the amount of power that Trump can claim. And, you know, they're doing that and Elon can claim. And they're doing that very effectively. The ideological goal for Elon is, you know, I think a number of different things. But he's certainly been able to use his power to get rid of investigations that are targeting his companies. He's in position to hurt competitors. He's in position to, you know, take contracts and

funnel them towards his companies, et cetera. So from that perspective, yeah, I think, you know, I think it's working to serve some of the ideological goals that they have that like the Russ votes of the world have where, you know, they, they hate government. They don't want government to work because if government doesn't work, that gives you more of a cudgel to further cut and destroy government. And so, you know, I mean, he's, what was his quote? He wants to make the bureaucracy miserable or make them suffer or something like that. You know, he wants them to self-deport. Yeah. Hey, they're doing, you know, that's. But they're not self-deporting, not quitting enough. They're digging in. They are digging in their heels in a certain sense,

but I am quite, from speaking with, you know, plenty of government workers, they are definitely being made miserable, uncomfortable, etc. So that part is succeeding. One of my buddies has to go in at 5.30 a.m. to an office that they hadn't been to for years. There's not even enough desks for everybody, but they all have to be there. And they have to stagger their time. And he's like, look, this is not more efficient. This is actually obviously stupid. Yeah.

It's not about efficiency. I'll bring it back though. That's not really the goal. You know, Curtis, again, Curtis Yarvin actually made a pretty good point where he's like, look, if you don't do this properly, the bureaucracy will become roaring back and will actually become 10 times more, both entrenched in our institutions. I think he's actually right. Did you see the Tim Walls quote on this? No, what did he say? Finish your point and then I'll look it up. Curtis's point was basically if you don't do it effectively, then you're actually just ensuring not only a restoration of the regime, but the regime on steroids. I think he's right in the sense that right now, Doge has successfully what? Cut a few programs. Okay, that's cute. That's nice. The Pentagon

still exists. Medicaid still exists. Social Security still exists. All of the genuine, like, capital B power of the bureaucracy is effectively untouched. The Department of Education, look, we can argue all day long. I'm sorry. It's a joke. Like, it's just not even powerful, absolutely at all, especially considering the vast majority of school funding does not even come from the federal government. And the policies at the state level are the people who actually are the people. Trust me, that funding from the federal government matters. Yes, I'm not saying it doesn't matter. Especially in poor districts, it matters a lot. And that money's not going anywhere, or at least according to them for right now. But the policies at an individual school district level are in the school district and the state. Those are the

people who mostly rule what actually happens inside of that building. So my point is that if you keep doing this slap shot approach and you have the vibe of cutting the government, but by doing that, you're actually making government institutions and all that more popular. You could, in effect, see a rise of a much more powerful and dangerous deep state in the future. What's the Tim Walz? I can't find it. But basically, he got asked about, you know, this question of how do Democrats think about rebuilding the federal government? And, you know, his response is like, we need to think about, he called, he said it could almost have a silver lining because it could allow them

to build back better. That's not what he said. But that's the idea. It's like basically, you know, we can, okay, no one says the federal government is like perfect and not sclerotic and doesn't have these issues. It does. So, okay, you've like devastated this. We get to rebuild potentially from the ashes and make it better, stronger, et cetera. So there is some of that thinking going on

in the Democratic Party. But, you know, I was looking at the numbers of just in terms of the immediate term impact of the corporate enforcement actions that were previously occurring under the Biden administration. A quarter of them have been dropped. So like, it's just open season for, you know, all these

corporations, whether they were, you know, under investigation from the CFPB or the SEC or the National Labor Relations Board, et cetera. It's huge numbers of those enforcement actions have been dropped. You know, in terms of talent, you have had, I'm not sure the numbers at this point, but you've had significant numbers of federal employees who have either taken the fork in the road or they've been fired, pushed out, etc. And some of those people, a lot of those people are the types that they had another opportunity in the private sector. They were the more valuable federal government employees. Getting that talent back is very difficult because it's, you know, it's a hard sell. You're going to make less money working for the federal government. Public servants have just been like completely vilified. And the idea of even being a quote unquote public servant is sort of like under attack.

So that expertise isn't something that's easy to return. So in any case, in my estimation, they're doing a lot of significant damage that's going to cause a lot of long-term problems. And, you know, Democrats may have aspirations to be able, like Tim Walz said, to be able to build it back more effective, stronger, better expertise, etc. But, you know, better expertise, et cetera. But, you know, that's a big ask. So we'll see. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind VoiceOver, the movement that exploded in 2024. VoiceOver is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times, it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover,

to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other. It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room.

You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding. But the price has gone up, so now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin.

And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams, and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain.

I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye.

Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and re-examining the culture of fat phobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. A little while back, an extraordinary scene played out in the White House. During a gathering of governors, Trump singled out the governor of Maine, Janet Mills,

to chide her for that state's policy with regard to trans athletes. Take a listen. The NCAA has complied immediately, by the way. That's good. But I understand Maine. Is Maine here? The governor of Maine? Are you not going to comply with it? Well, we are the federal law. Well, you better do it. You better do it because you're not going to get any federal funding at all if you don't. And by the way, your population, even though it's somewhat liberal, although I did very well there, your population doesn't want men playing in women's sports. So you better comply because otherwise you're not getting any federal funding. Every state, good, I'll see you in court. I look forward to that. That should be a real easy one.

And enjoy your life after governor because I don't think you'll be in elected politics. So what happened next? Probably not going to be a big surprise to you. In short order, the state of Maine found itself under assault by Trump's federal government bureaucracy. So first, the Department of Education announced it was investigating the state in a specific school district where a trans athlete had been allowed to compete. That investigation threatens the $4.8 billion that Maine public schools receive from the federal government. Now, maybe you think, look, it's an education-related issue. Agree or disagree, not out of bounds for the Department of Education to investigate.

But the retaliation did not stop there. Not even close. Next, the Department of Health and Human Services began investigating the Maine education system to include the main university system. Four days later, that quote-unquote investigation was completed, finding they violated Title IX, placing their funding in doubt. They even took the extraordinary step of referring the matter to the Department of Justice and as part of this investigation, not a single witness was interviewed, not a single data set requested. Shortly thereafter, Attorney General Pam Bondi did threaten the state with a lawsuit. Then came a Department of Agriculture investigation threatening the $100 million Maine land-grant universities, that amount that they received from the Agricultural Research

Service and National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Next, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration pulled the Maine Sea Grant, which supported thousands of jobs over decades in coastal communities focused specifically on the fishing industry. And finally, in maybe the most bizarre move of all, the Social Security Administration terminated the, quote, enumeration at birth process. Now, that allows new parents to get a social security number for their babies simply by checking a box on a form while they're still in the hospital. Instead, exhausted new parents would have to tote their newborn to one of the now beleaguered social security field offices where they would likely have to wait hours to accomplish something that previously took seconds. They also ended the auto-processing for funeral homes for people who had died, cruelly forcing grieving loved ones to spend hours working to inform the government that their spouse or dad or mom or whoever had in fact died. Now, when first confronted over this

particular attack, Leland Dudek, who's the stooge put in charge of the Social Security Administration as a reward for helping out the Doge hackers, he originally claimed this was all just an innocent mistake. This was, of course, always pretty hard to believe given the overall targeting of Maine, and now Dudek has just out and out admitted that he was lying and did, in fact, do it all out of spite. Asked Tuesday why he singled out Maine, whose Democratic governor, The Washington Post, notes Janet Mills has fought the White House ban on transgender athletes participating in girls' sports, Dudek acknowledged, quote, I was obsessed with the governor's treatment of the president. Now, in some ways, the fact that Dudek may not have been instructed directly to take that action makes it even more extraordinary.

This is why lackeys like him are put in charge. They follow the lead of the king, punishing his enemies without even needing to be told exactly how. That is the entire reason they're there after all. He understands the assignment. Now, the punishing of Maine is a case study in their broader strategy to crush political opponents and scare people into compliance. That's why California's wildfire relief funding was threatened, why judges are being threatened with impeachment, why media organizations are being sued, investigated, and branded illegal. It's also likely the reason why Trump is attempting to fire the two Democratic members of the FTC board. The FTC has a lot of power. It can give favored companies the go-ahead for their mergers and deals, or it can make life hell for them,

causing them financial issues. He was likely fearful that the Democratic board members would be interested in fairly applying antitrust law, not using those powers as a cudgel to punish or reward on his behalf. Now, this abandonment of even the appearance of an independent bureaucracy means we are entering a new era in American politics. It used to be a great scandal when bureaucrats were suspected of using their powers to punish the political enemies of the president. Does the name Lois Lerner ring a bell here? Saga remembers. He was at the center of a giant Obama-era scandal that centered on whether or not Tea Party groups had been targeted by the IRS. This was huge news at the time.

Under Trump 2.0, it's just kind of taken for granted that friends of Trump and Elon, they're going to be helped, and political and ideological enemies, they're going to be screwed. Cross them, and you can kiss your disaster relief goodbye. If you're a loyal servant, though, maybe he'll tweet about your favorite shitcoin or even pump it up through the new crypto reserve. Who knows? Now, some of you might believe that aspects of the federal government were weaponized against Trump under Biden, most specifically the Department of Justice. Now, you know, I don't agree with that assessment. But let's say you feel that way. It should actually give you an even greater appreciation for why it is so important to try to keep the functions of our government as neutral as possible. Because while the government has never held to this ideal perfectly, let's be clear, what we're seeing now with Trump is something else

entirely. In typical Trumpian fashion, his weaponization of the government, it is brazen, it is heavy-handed, it is out in the open, and it is so much worse than anything we've seen in modern history. So much so that in a few short months, he has demolished even the expectation of an even-handed bureaucracy, and replaced it with an expectation that it will be wielded to crush anyone who intentionally or accidentally stumbles into his disfavor.

Now, the oligarchs, of course, they instantly understood this new order. That's why they all were lined up behind Trump at the inauguration, showering him with cash and with flattery. If you think through that this whole of government retribution system will only be applied to large organizations, states, media organizations, law firms, that sort of thing, though, Mahmoud Khalil's case should prove to you that any individual who gets cross-vies with this administration can find

themselves destroyed. In fact, a French scientist was just blocked from entering the country because he had some critical comments about Trump on his phone when it was searched by DHS. They said his private messages were hateful and conspiratorial and could be deemed terrorism. He was deported the following day. Just think of all the ways you rely on the government to not screw you. Maybe you need your social security check or your passport renewed or prefer not to get audited every single year. They can make you miserable without even breaking a sweat. Now, weaponized bureaucracies like this, they're pretty common around the world, though they're typically associated with some developing world strongman type. It's a good way to get ordinary people to just keep their heads down, try to avoid earning the ire of the king. But there's also reason to believe that in this age of Doge and AI, it could actually get so much

worse. There's reporting to suggest one goal of Doge is to consolidate all of the disparate datasets that various government databases hold into one place. Business loan applications, mortgage applications, student loan data, child support payments, tax payments, income, every bit of it. There is also reporting that this administration is already using AI to crawl through social media profiles to identify people who have engaged in wrong things specifically on the issue of Israel. Put all of this together and the possibilities for abuse are endless. In the same way that Israel's use of AI accelerated

its genocidal attacks by generating mass lists of targets that they could then assault, AI unleashed on the entire data set of the federal government could vastly accelerate the ability to punish anyone who expressed a negative opinion about Trump or Elon or Doge or Tesla or Israel or indicated any sort of liberal inclination whatsoever. It could actually be done automatically. No cumbersome bureaucracy required. We have seen the way that this government has already approached mass removal of documents, grants, historical records, programs, et cetera, that happen to include some word from a list of banned words that they think code liberal, like how they deleted all of the information about the Enola Gay, the bomber that dropped an atom bomb on Japan, simply because

it contained the word gay. Now imagine that approach applied to the entire population. You better not chat about diversifying your portfolio or trading equities. Better not be helping your kid with their inequalities math homework. Say Gulf of Mexico once and those doge boys will mark you dead in social security before you can say Latinx. It's kind of funny, I guess. It's completely crazy. But the possibility for crushing speech is way too real and for punishing dissidents. Governor Mills of Maine sounded exactly this alarm after seeing the way the government launched an assault on her entire state over her audacity to challenge the president. She wrote, quote, you must ask yourself, who and what will he target next? And what will he do? Mills continued,

will it be you? Will it be because of your race or your religion? Will it be because you look different or think differently? Where does it end? Now, Maine got lucky in a certain respect. They happened to have a Republican senator. She was able to plead the state's case to the king. Some of the retaliation was rolled back, like, for example, that Maine Sea Grant thing. Over at Social Security, Dudek says he came to regret his actions there. But I bet Governor Mills, she's going to think twice before she displeases Trump again, isn't she? I bet every governor in the country knows the set of facts I just laid out. It's going to think twice before they speak out on any issue and earn the ire of this president. I bet there are plenty of would-be protesters who see Israel returning to its

genocide in Gaza, greenlit by the Trump administration, who are going to think twice about protesting because of how Mahmoud Khalil was targeted. And this is just the beginning. The whims of a dictator combined with a fully compliant bureaucracy backed by the world's richest man and finally turbocharged with the extraordinary power of AI. The tech-enabled strongman possibilities are limitless. And the main example, like, however you feel about the issue is not really important. She pissed him off. And there are a million reasons that you could end up pissing off Trump. And he has already demonstrated how he will use the USDA, the National Oceanic Administration, the Department of Education, the HHS, Social Security, every tool in the toolkit to make you pay.

Trump's, what Trump has done is he's unsubtle, I guess. Like you were talking about the lowest learner thing. I mean, it is complicated because at the same time, federal funding is genuinely to the discretionary of the unitary executive and the bureaucracy. Like states are not owed money. For example, the University of Pennsylvania just got itself cut off over transgender sports policy. People are like, oh, this is horrible.

It's like, well, you don't have a right to federal money. You know, the federal government has very often used its money as a cudgel to force laws on the books. Speed limits is the most famous example. Same with seatbelts. Right. But the point is that this has always kind of been there. And the problem is that no executive has used this before in a less unsubtle way.

No executive has done this before out of a norm's respect. But it doesn't actually stop you ever from having been able to do this from a legal perspective, if that makes sense. And this has long been a conservative argument is that the left uses the government as a tool of its own social engineering policy, DEI and all that other stuff. Perfect example. Why would we not do the same? And in a sense, I'm like, I'm somewhat sympathetic to that argument. Right. I hear what you're saying, but you have to acknowledge like this is not even so much about policy. It's about punishing people, institutions, groups that are political opponents to you and political, alternative political power centers. It's the same, you know, this is part and parcel with using, quote unquote, anti-Semitism to defenestrate the university system. He doesn't care about anti-Semitism, but he sees this is a thing out there that he can use to hurt universities, and he doesn't like universities. California, they didn't come to the White House and say a

thing about trans kids that he didn't like. They vote the wrong way. And so now maybe he's going to do their wildfire funding. Maybe he's not. There's disaster relief. I mean, that one in particular, you have to admit, is it's such a break from we've always had the view of doesn't matter if your state is red or blue or purple or whatever. Like when you need help, the federal government is going to do it for you. Yeah, I know. It's like maybe. And so I'm not help, the federal government is going to do it for you. Now it's like, eh, maybe. And so I'm not saying that the federal government has never been weaponized against anyone and they've been perfect. I'm not saying that. But what I am saying is that that was the baseline expectation.

There was an expectation that if you are an individual going in to, you know, get your Social security check issue resolved. They're not going to be looking up in some database to see if you said something mean about Donald Trump or about Tesla or whatever to decide whether they're going to help you or not. And I think those sorts of possibilities are very much on the table now, especially when you look at that case of the French scientist. They looked at his phone and were like, oh, you were mean to Donald Trump.

You can't come in the country. That's new and different. You have another case similar to Mahmoud Khalil of a professor here in Georgetown whose wife is an American citizen and he is now being detained because of her, the American citizens, suspected beliefs with regard to Israel after he was targeted on a list from these pro-Zionist groups. So all of these things together, it has created already, I think, a totally different understanding and framework for the federal government bureaucracy that truly is a break from the expectation of the past that it would be more or less neutral in terms of day-to-day interactions,

how they handle things like disaster relief, et cetera. No, I mean, disaster relief is the one where you're 100% correct. I mean, the Israel one is just—that, to me, is always, again, the most ridiculous, because we're literally talking about criticism of a foreign government. I also think there's a big First Amendment, a lot of justification there, because beyond even as you and I, we disagree on deportation, et cetera, especially like, my thing with Mahmoud Khalil is I don't think he should be deported for what he said, but I still think he's going to get deported. The bigger problem for me is actually these Columbia

students who are getting expelled because of pressure from the federal government because of their own speech. That is one where you are a United of pressure from the federal government because of their own speech. That is one where you are a United States citizen and the federal government itself is actually using a cudgel to infringe upon your ability for the education that you are accepted and that you have been enrolled in this institution. And they're effectively depriving you of that ability through the cudgel of their government. Same with Social Security, right? The same thing. It's like you are a United States citizen. You've paid within the system.

You literally have earned your right. That is not subject to your political wins. I would say the same with California. I mean, California's paid way more into the federal government than anything they've ever taken out of it, which they'll never forget in reminding you. But they're not wrong.

I mean, if your house burns down, yeah. You better help us out. So that's where I think, you know, that's the real danger I think that they're for. I mean, the Social Security thing in Maine was crazy. And then he just admitted, like, yeah, I did it because I was mad at the governor. Well, like, I mean, first of all, we shouldn't be thinking in terms of, like, punishing the entire citizens of any state because you don't like the action. You don't like what their leader said to the president. It's crazy.

But, I mean, to Trump's point, I looked it up. Forty five percent of Maine did vote for him. And you're punishing you're punishing all those people. It is like a reddish state. It's genuine. I mean, usually goes blue in the presidential. But like they've got, you know, Susan. They had that crazy Republican governor. I'm forgetting his name. Page. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That guy was that guy was wild. So, yeah, Maine can go all kinds of ways. I like politically. I consider myself a Mainer in spirit. They're interesting people. Anyway, we have, are looking forward to this conversation with Derek Thompson. If you've been anywhere online, you may have seen this abundance discourse that we wanted to dig in

the book that he just published alongside Ezra Klein. So let's go ahead and get to that. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. To most people, I'm the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024. Voiceover is about understanding yourself outside of sex and relationships. It's more than personal. It's political, it's societal, and at times it's far from what I originally intended it to be. These days, I'm interested in expanding what it means to be voiceover, to make it customizable for anyone who feels the need to explore their relationship to relationships. I'm talking to a lot of people who will help us think about how we love each other.

It's a very, very normal experience to have times where a relationship is prioritizing other parts of that relationship that aren't being naked together. How we love our family. I've spent a lifetime trying to get my mother to love me, but the price is too high. And how we love ourselves. Singleness is not a waiting room. You are actually at the party right now. Let me hear it. Listen to VoiceOver on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

A lot of times the big economic forces we hear about on the news show up in our lives in small ways. Three or four days a week, I would buy two cups of banana pudding, but the price has gone up. So now I only buy one. The demand curve in action. And that's just one of the things we'll be covering on Everybody's Business from Bloomberg Businessweek. I'm Max Chavkin. And I'm Stacey Vanek-Smith. Every Friday, we will be diving into the biggest stories in business, taking a look at what's going on, why it matters, and how it shows up in our everyday lives. But guests like Businessweek editor Brad Stone, sports reporter Randall Williams,

and consumer spending expert Amanda Mull will take you inside the boardrooms, the backrooms, even the signal chats that make our economy tick. Hey, I want to learn about VeChain. I want to buy some blockchain or whatever it is that they're doing. So listen to Everybody's Business on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States. Recipients have done the improbable, showing immense bravery and sacrifice in the name of something much bigger than themselves. This medal is for the men who went down that day.

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or wherever you get your podcasts. Joining us now, great friend of the show, Jarek Thompson. And he is out with a new book, which is just seemingly everywhere, Abundance, that he co-authored with Ezra Klein. So the theme of the book is, quote, to trace the history of the 21st century so far, to trace the history of unaffordability and shortage after years of refusing to build sufficient housing. America has a national housing crisis. He goes on that abundance explains our problems today are not the results of yesteryear's villains. Rather, one generation's solutions have become the next generation's problems. The book actually seeks to put forward some solutions. So Derek, just at the top here, for people who aren't familiar with abundance discourse, there's been quite a bit here that is online.

First, just tell us why you guys felt compelled to write the book, and then how you feel the book, how the book is intended to be received. Is it a Project 2025? Is it a political answer? Is it all of the above? What is your guys' conception of it? It's a great question. I love this way

of beginning. So we started writing this book two and a half years ago when we were motivated by and scandalized by exactly what you said, the crises of manufactured scarcity in the 21st century. Why aren't there enough homes? Why isn't there enough clean energy? Why is governance often in blue cities and blue states so bad that it seems to be driving many people away? Why doesn't the Democratic Party have an invention agenda, given how central science and technology are to human progress? These are the questions that really animated the project. But I think it's really important to ground the fact that the book came out in March 2025, because you look back over the last six months of news, why did Donald Trump just win

the election? If you ask Pew, if you ask Gallup, if you ask David Shore and the 28 million people that he surveyed, the answer is all the same. It's affordability, affordability, affordability. People feel like there's an affordability crisis in this country. And the biggest part of anybody's budget is housing. So at the center of an affordability crisis is a housing affordability crisis. You know, Donald Trump won because of an affordability crisis. And my feeling is he came into office and could have said, like, I'm going to govern as a Texan Republican. I'm going to make it as easy as possible for us to build homes. I'm going to do everything I can to drive down the cost of housing. But instead, one of the first things he does is to raise tariffs on Mexico

and Canada. That's a 25 percent bump on the cost of lumber and drywall gypsum, which we get from Mexico. The lumber comes from Canada. This is a plan to treat scarcity of housing with yet more scarcity. So I really want to emphasize that agree to which we strongly believe that there is a totally different way to think about growing the supply of the most important things in this country. Got it. So you have a lot of critics on the left. You also have some fans on the left, but you have a lot of critics on the left. I'm not a hater of abundance, but my own assessment is that it misses some things. And maybe it's not meant to be a complete ideology, which is part of what I want you to respond to. Because, you know, with housing in particular,

I'm in favor of a more yimby mindset of reducing these zoning regulations, et cetera. But we can put this tear sheet up on the screen, guys. Zephyr Teachout had, I think, a good response to the abundance to your book and some of the ideas offered therein. And she says basically, like, look, some of these things have been tried and it hasn't really solved the problem. She points to a study from the Urban Institute of Land Use Reforms across 1,100 plus cities from 2000 to 2019, found that those sorts of reforms increased the housing supply by only 0.8 percent within three to nine years of passage. So when I look at that, I think, okay, well, what is missing from this picture? And I think part of what is missing is this overall landscape of inequality, corporate consolidation

of power, money in politics, because even when you strip away the regulations, guess what? The people who have money in this country are overwhelmingly the super rich. That's who companies want to cater to. You have massive consolidation within the industry of developers. So they're, you know, giant monopolies at this point. And so even with the regulation stripped away, they're like, yeah, but I'm going to build luxury mansions because that's who has the money. I'm going to build luxury condos. So that's who has the money. So, you know, do you mean for this to be a sort of like complete theory of what's going on? Or is it like, you know, this is

one piece that we're looking at seriously so that if Democrats get back in power, we have these governance pieces kind of ready to go? It's such a good question. And there's so much there. I'm going to try to touch on as much of it as I can keep in my head. Yeah. I'm trying to usher in a paradigm shift. We think that liberalism of the last 50 years has become consumed by process and not consumed by outcomes. And that's how you get a world where in San Francisco, if you want to build a new apartment building with public money, there are so many riders attached to that public money that in fact, developers have essentially pulled out and said, we don't want to build social housing at all. It's a world where in 2021, when there was a development that was being discussed to put up

500 units in a Nordstrom Valet parking lot, 100 of which would have been below market rent. In fact, the Board of Supervisors of San Francisco voted it down because it didn't pass sufficient environmental review. There is a thicket of laws and reviews and customs that have grown up in the last 50 years. They're environmental laws, they're legal norms. Sometimes they're just a sense of empowered gentry, empowered homeowners who want to stop any new development that could possibly threaten their home values. This set of rules and customs of laws has, I think, accumulated over the last 50 years without a sufficient counterpunch. We've become so process-obsessed that we haven't sort of cleared the brush and thought, wait, this is about building houses for people to live.

You mentioned the fact that we live in a time, I think, of concerning income inequality, absolutely, and even incipient oligarchy. But I would frame it a little bit this way. Is oligarchy worse in Utah than in California? Is oligarchy worse in Texas than California? Is oligarchy worse in, say, Georgia than Massachusetts? The problems of oligarchy are national. And yet we very clearly see that different cities and states have tremendously different outcomes when it comes to the ability to add housing.

So I would say I would say actually to respond to that directly. I actually do think the problem of oligarchy is worse than a place like or at least inequality is worse than a city like San Francisco, New York, Miami, places that are magnets, just not just domestically, but globally for the richest of the rich. You know, you end up with this sort of superclass of people who can spend the millions of millions of dollars that it takes. And then an underclass of people who are there to serve them, who can't afford rent. So I actually, this, which gets to another one of my questions to you. And one of the critiques that I've seen of the book and the paradigm shift contained therein is that there's a couple of assumptions that are taken here. One is that the right way to organize our society is having these giant megalopolises, the San Francisco's, the L.A.'s, the New York's of the world, where, you know, it wasn't always the case. We used to have thriving manufacturing and other industry throughout the L.A.'s, the New York's of the world, where, you know, it wasn't always the case. We used to have thriving manufacturing and other industries throughout the country.

So people were more widely spread out. Obviously, that helps with being able to afford housing because you just have a more dispersed population. That's number one. And then number two related to that is, is the focus too much on these cities? So, and this gets back to the question of whether this is a governing agenda, a political, like electoral political agenda or both, because obviously, you know, Democrats have slid a little bit in the cities, but they still perform really well in these giant cities. We don't really need their Democratic Party to do better in San Francisco. So is the project also a little too focused on these giant urban city centers and taking for granted that that's where the core of, you know, American innovation and prosperity and just population density should really be?

I love this question. There's so much here. Let me let me let me try to consolidate it into into an answer that that matches everything you put on the table. Let's say the outcome that you cared about, because we believe in an outcome-based liberalism. Let's say the outcome that you really cared about was income inequality. Well, of course, you would want there to be a tax and spend redistribution policy, right? You might want to expand the EITC. You might want to expand child tax credits. You might want to expand welfare. All of these are important. But if you're really interested in reducing inequality, I think you should be absolutely obsessed with urban housing policy. The Harvard economist, Ross Chetty, has pointed out that upward mobility in this country, when you build a map of it and see, you know, who has the

best chance of being born into a lower working class and working their way into the upper middle class? It's in these cities. It's close to these cities. If we want to give more Americans a chance to move forward in their life, we should make it easier for people to live where they want to live, especially if those are some of the highest, most productive, most highly productive cities in the country. And in fact, Crystal, for much of the last century, this is how American migration worked. If you were working class, you would move closer to these cities, and it would benefit you because the housing costs wouldn't overwhelm the income benefits that you would gain from moving to a high-income place. But something has unwound very, very much in the last 50 years, where it's the cheapest

places in the country that have the lowest upward mobility. And it's the most expensive places in the country that have the highest upward mobility. And so in a way, you can say it's like the American dream has been torn apart. People have to choose between affordable living and the chance of moving forward in their life. That's a terrible, terrible thing for any country that considers itself the land of free opportunity. We want to build a place where, build a country where people can move to where they want to move and people can stay where they want to stay. That's not the world we have in San Francisco and New York and Boston and Washington, D.C. and Los Angeles and Seattle. And some people don't want to live there. And that's totally fine. And our project is like not some grand design to force

everybody to live in a skyscraper. People should live where they want to live. But part of freedom is being able to live near these cities if you want to stay there or work there. And that's where it's unbelievably urgent, I think, for the liberals and the Democrats who hold so much power in these places to use that power as an advertisement for our cause to say, look what happens when you give us the reins and you give us all of the authority. We produce outcomes like affordability and upward mobility and low crime and fantastic living arrangements for people. Instead, right now, what's happening is that many blue cities and blue states have turned into anti-advertisements for the liberal movement. And as we say in the book, I think this is Ezra's line, I have to say, you know, Democrats should be able to say, vote for us and we'll make

America like California. And what's happened in the last few years is that Republicans have found advantage in saying, vote for Democrats and they'll make America like California. This is not the world we want to live in. And frankly, if these are the results that liberals are getting, they don't deserve to win at the national level. What we want to change is we want to change the meaning of the Democratic Party, the valence of the Democratic Party, starting with effective governance where we hold power the most. Do you worry, Derek, that this leads to a bit of a cultural imbalance? Because part of what, you know, make America more like Texas or make America more like Georgia is not, you know, like you said, living in skyscrapers or even smaller. It's really about space.

And abundance there also comes along with a cultural element of, like, you just can kind of do whatever you want to do without monolithic, like, beliefs being shoved in your face. So I think those two things do go hand in hand. Let's say for the 500,000 people who left the state of California for Texas and for Florida, that obviously was very important to them. How do you think about that question whenever you're thinking about making California, San Francisco great again as a template for why somebody in Milwaukee, Wisconsin would want to vote for you? Yeah, that's right. You know, no one's asked that question before. That's a really interesting question. So, you know, you're talking about this idea of like cultural freedom, of people being

able to live the way they want to live. I think that's fantastic. I consider myself essentially a social libertarian, even though those ideas aren't particularly present in the book. But when I think about like the most famous expressions of sort of laissez-faire, live how you want to live, sort of cultural libertarianism, I honestly think of cities. I think of like New York in the 1960s or San Francisco in the 1960s. I think of these places where all of these new ideas were bursting forth and colliding with each other, where people were having new concepts of poetry and music and, you know, different ideas about, you know,

living arrangements and romantic arrangements. You know, if what you're interested in is a world where people have this extraordinary freedom to explore their identity in a world where other people are exploring their identities, I think any honest look at American urban history from the last 50, 70 years shows it's cities that have been the cauldron of exactly this type of freedom. And of course, if people want to live in Georgia with their lawns and their single family houses, there's nothing in this book telling them that they're wrong to do so. What we're trying to say at a very basic level is there are some cities in this country, at least for the housing part, because the book is capacious. In the housing part, there are some cities where the rules that we have created have made it impossible for market conditions to work.

And while markets are not perfect, one thing they're very good at doing is matching supply and demand. And right now you have this enormous demand to live in places like Washington, D.C., and New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, but you have constraints to supply. And in macroeconomics one-on-one, the only thing that happens when demand goes like this and supply stays flat is prices go to the moon.

Prices are going to the moon. And it's not just a problem for Los Angeles. It's a problem for Democrats nationwide. We just lost, Democrats did, an election that was all about affordability. And so being obsessed about the inputs to affordability, I think, is essential to any liberal movement making the public feel like we care about them again. So the three major components, in my opinion, I think in your opinion too, of the affordable crisis, our affordability crisis, are housing, education, and healthcare. These are, you know, huge ticket items that are central to sort of like middle class prosperity

and have been skyrocketing over years and years. And again, when I look at what is causing the massive price escalations and each of those, I agree that the story you're telling is part of that story. But when I look at, you know, like to take healthcare as an example, which is probably the one of these that I've thought the most about, the biggest problem in healthcare, and we can see it with how much more efficient Medicare is and how, you know, compared to private insurance, it's the profit motive. And so, you know, where is that in the story? Because some of the, um, some of the suggestions you make about how to make healthcare more affordable, it sort of reminds me of back during the Obamacare debate,

when Republicans were like, we've got a healthcare plan too. You can sell plans across state lines and that'll fix everything. It's like, well, that might make things a little bit better. But really, the profit motive and the fact that you've got all these middlemen who are taking their cut and, you know, we're getting screwed on drug prices and we're getting screwed in, you know, every the pharmacy benefit managers, every single step of this process, that's really the core of the story here. So, you know, I was listening to Ezra in one of his interviews and he was sort of chiding the progressives in the left for looking at models overseas and say, oh, we want to be more like them. He's like, well, you should want to be better than them. Okay, fair enough. But it's also true that if we just were doing as well on health care as the rest of the developed world, we would be in a much, much better place. And while I'm sure that, you know, you want to have more doctors be able to come in the country, more H-1Bs for this, and you have additional reforms that you offer, I'm sure those things would help. But they would help in the way that sort of like Obamacare have made a little better, but the problem is still at its core unresolved. The way I think about this, again, I think there's a lot of use to being really clear about what outcomes you're looking for. So let's say for

the purpose of this conversation, because healthcare is a big, big topic, that what we care about for American healthcare care is that health care be universal, that it be affordable, not only for individuals, but frankly, also for the state, because you don't want our deficits to reach like $5 trillion a year in Medicare, and also high quality. And high quality is very, very important because let's say America had universal health care in 1943. That'd be wonderful. From an equity standpoint, you would have absolute universal coverage. But penicillin didn't exist in 1943. GLP-1 drugs didn't exist. Practically no modern cancer therapies existed. Liquid IV plastic bags

didn't exist. Oximeters didn't exist. CAT scans didn't exist. MRIs didn't exist. A part of our book is about the centrality of science and technology to progressive ends, because what makes a healthcare card valuable isn't just the paper itself or the fact that you have access to a doctor. It's the services that the doctor can provide you as a patient. And enlarging the value of those services, I think, is a huge part of what progressives should focus on if they care about health care. That's just the first point. The second point is that if you ultimately care about managing prices, you're right that there is a lot that we can, the czar of Doge, one of the first things I would do is dive directly into Medicare Advantage, because it is so clear that the Medicare Advantage program, which allows seniors to use private insurers, is bilking the federal government of

not just a few million dollars here and there, like a lot of the Doge savings are, but maybe tens of billions of dollars a year, over $100 billion a year. If what you care about, again, is equity and affordability, we should be obsessed with Medicare Advantage. The other point I would absolutely grant you is that while I don't consider antitrust, anti-monopoly policy to be utterly central to and core to my vision of progress in America, there is no debating the fact that in many healthcare industries like dialysis and healthcare consolidation, we have very clear evidence that economists have made quite plain that consolidation in these industries and market concentration is driving up costs for patients and driving quality down. So this is a place where when it comes to process, when it comes to the

tools at my disposal, I don't feel particularly jealous about any one set of tools that is more popular in the left or the center of the right. What I'm focused on, and one thing I think this book is trying very hard to get people to see, is outcomes. If you want healthcare that is equitable and affordable and high quality, there are different levers you can pull in different ways. And it's not as if there's going to be one policy that fixes all these things at once. Another question I had for you, Derek, we can put G3 up on the screen. This was, I thought, an important sort of like contextual critique, given that it is coming out in March of 2025, and we are watching the, you know, Doge onslaught,

like destroying key functions of the government, et cetera. This was from someone who gave a pretty favorable review, actually, to the book in Democracy Journal. And he said, listen, it's too early, but Doge onslaught poses a unique challenge on both sides, saying you can do efficiency, but right, concedes the thing we shouldn't, that Doge is something other than a billionaire and a ketamine bender plundering and dismantling the government. Indeed, I say it in the piece, but worth emphasizing as Doge takes place. The idea that quote unquote good governance is some democratic protection here against right wing forces feels pretty flat. The CFPB was designed very well. That didn't matter. And, you know, what he's gesturing towards there is the fact that, OK, but then when you have the richest man on the planet come in and say, yeah, but I don't like this, all of the planning and the good governance and the fact that the CFPB billionaire and corporate interests are far more represented by our political parties than the interests of the people that you're,

you know, that you want to serve and that you want to make life better for. And I do too. Yeah. I love Mike. Mike is an absolute genius. I do not agree with the sentiment expressed in those tweets. I agreed with so much of his review. I just don't agree with the sentiment expressed in those tweets. I agree with so much of his review. I just don't agree with the sentiment expressed in those tweets. Saying that government should do efficiency but right does not in any way grant Elon Musk any kind of credit at all. It is very easy to put two things on the table. Number one, that Doge is an absolute disaster. And number two, that as an entirely separate matter, government should be obsessed with efficiency. So Doge is a disaster. Yes. I mean, they tried to reform the Department of Energy to be more about nuclear security and accidentally gutted the only administration within DOE that has the words nuclear security in the title.

They tried to reform the FDA and fired some of their most talented probationary employees. I think Doge is a mess, period. Close the door there. Let's talk about government efficiency for a second. The Biden administration and the bipartisan infrastructure bill allocated and authorized $42 billion for rural broadband, right? Biden and Buttigieg called this bill the most important infrastructure bill passed in something like 40, 50, 60 years. But what happened with rural broadband? They authorized $42 billion to extend Internet coverage for America's most underserved communities. And now, four calendar years after that bill was passed, practically nobody has been hooked up to the service.

And it's in part because the government created a 14-step process for 56 different states and localities to fill out. And it was so cumbersome and so impossible and so damn annoying that today, only three of the 56 have actually gotten all the way through the process. And now Trump's going to come in and gut the entire program

and just hand the whole thing to Starlink. That's not government working well. That's government associating success with how much money you can tell people you've authorized or spent with rather than associating success with how much you actually build, right? That's the world we talk about over and over again in this book. It's a world where California authorizes $33 billion to build a high-speed rail system in California that does not exist. It's a world where the Chicago mayor, Brandon Johnson, bragged on Twitter two weeks ago that he spent $11 billion building 10,000 affordable housing units in Chicago. That's $1.1 million per affordable housing unit in the Midwest.

That's pathetic. That is government at its most inefficient. That's government as an ineffective disaster. Yeah. And what Democrats need right now. I don't, I don't just, sure, yeah, go ahead. I was just going to say what, I don't disagree with any of that.

I'm just saying that, like with the CFPB example, I think it's a really good one because Democrats, you know, Elizabeth Warren was sort of the ideological architect. Democrats built out this new agency. Like, yes, it's not a train or a railroad, but it's the real thing that had to be built from scratch. And they did a great job. But it didn't matter because Elon Musk could spend a quarter of a billion dollars in a presidential election and come in and destroy it.

So that's what I'm saying is just I feel like that piece is missing and it's important. And so if it's gonna be a complete paradigm shift and a sort of like guidebook for how Democrats should approach both politics and governance going forward, I just feel, I just personally looking at the data, that part feels so central to me that it's notable that it's not there. Yeah, I want to make sure that I understand what piece you don't think is there. Because when I look at this situation, the reason that Elon Musk

is destroying CFPB is not that people in the center left are giving Elon Musk too much credit. He's destroying CFPB because Donald Trump won the election, and he doesn't give a damn about CFPB. That's what's happening. We're having an ideological purge of the federal government because Donald Trump has won an election, and the government is now a centralized expression of his personality, and his personality is, I don't want to see anybody around me who disagrees with me. And I want to destroy every semblance of my predecessor's record. So CFPB is in existential danger right now, as I see it, for one overarching reason, Donald Trump won. So then you get to the next step of the analysis. Why did Donald Trump win? And if you ask voters,

why did Donald Trump win your vote if you ask voters, why did Donald Trump win your vote? Why did you switch from Biden to Trump between 2020 and 2024? Over and over again, you get the exact same answer. It's affordability, affordability, affordability. And in many cases, I think this issue of affordability is intimately intertwined with the issue of effectiveness of liberal governance in the places that we have the most power. So when I look at saving administrations like CFPB from the wrath of Elon Musk, what I become obsessed with is how do we take a liberal movement, a Democratic Party that right now is scratching and clawing for the 48 percent and trying to broaden this movement to win not just the 48.1%, but a 52, 53, 54% coalition in this country. It means, I think, enlargening what people think of when they think of liberalism in

America. I want them to think of growth. I want them to think of affordability. I want them to think of an absolutely maniacal obsession about how to improve government to make your life better. And finally, I think that that paradigm shift is the sort of thing that allows Democrats to hold power at the federal level so that madmen like Musk don't come in and burn the whole thing down. So I would add to that, you know, part of how Donald Trump is able to win that election is that he's able to raise a quarter of a billion dollars and once at one, you know, stop shop from the richest man on the planet. And the fact that you have both the vast inequality and the system of money in politics

that we do helps to enable that, not to mention the level of control that people like Elon have. I mean, he's, you know, beyond anything we've seen before, but we certainly had billionaire influence in government before, is an important part of why government fails to deliver, whether it's Democrats or Republicans, when they're in power. But, you know, and related to that, this is my last question for you, Derek. I appreciate you being a good sport as I, you know, ask my questions here. But, you know, when I think about the core story of why Democrats lost and why Donald Trump was able to win, I think the story, I think that's absolutely part of it. But I think a central issue was that Donald Trump had a very clear story,

a very clear narrative with heroes and villains of what went wrong in this country, right? Immigrants and trans people and cultural elite, they're screwing you over. They're destroying your way of life. Immigrants are the reason why things are not affordable, and I'm going to fix it. Okay, so very clear cut. It's wrong, in my opinion. Sorry, you can disagree with me as before, but it's wrong. And do.

But, you know, it made sense to people, and it was clear cut. Democrats don't have a similar sort of hero-villain narrative that makes sense to people. Bernie Sanders does. And I think it's one of the reasons why people are flocking to his town halls, why people are going to Republican town halls and chanting at them, tax the rich, why he continues to be one of the most popular politicians in the country. Because he has a very clear-cut narrative of what went wrong and who the villains are. So, you know, my last question for you, just to summarize your philosophy here and the paradigm shift you're trying to achieve, like, who are the villains in your story? Are the villains the, like, liberal do-gooders who mistakenly put in all the regulations? Like, is that who you're pointing the finger at as the ones that we need to sort of like chide and check and get in line? And if not,

how is that really that, if that is the sort of, you know, villain of your story, how is that that different from the Republican narrative and frame, which would also point the finger at the left and say these people are the reason that things are bad in the country? I think this might be the easiest question you've asked so far. But I'm worried that my thinking that might mean I'm on the wrong track. The villain is easy. Look at Donald Trump. Look at Elon Musk. Look what these people are doing to our country and to our government. The liberal enemy is the easiest thing to define here at the national level. And it's very easy to find specifically in the language of abundance. Donald Trump does not believe in the concept of a positive sum outcome. He doesn't believe

cooperation is possible at all. He thinks any cooperation that he sees overseas, like the mere existence of the EU, is an insult to America. He doesn't think trade, which is the definition of a positive sum outcome, can possibly lead to mutually good outcomes for both sides. Every single time Donald Trump identifies some problem with America, he identifies something he wants to take away from America. He says America doesn't have enough housing, so we need to take away the immigrants. Or we don't have enough manufacturing, so we have to take away the trade. Or we don't do enough good science. What we need to do is reduce the amount of scientific funding. This is a scarcity mindset across the board. And in juxtaposition to that, I think an abundance mindset and an abundance book and an abundance message rings very, very

clearly with this sort of hero, clear-cut hero-villain dynamic that you're drawing, right? The distinction could not be more crystalline. But to your point, you know, I don't want to hide the ball here. This book and our critique absolutely forces liberals to take a look in the mirror. And it does so not because we want to give aid to Republicans or because we want to, you know, sell books by looking like we're apostates from within the liberal movement. We just fundamentally believe that it is the sins of modern liberalism and the problems of modern progressivism that got us to this point, that allowed someone like Donald Trump, who's frankly not a popular political figure, to nonetheless dominate

the political scene over the last decade. Where is an opposition movement that is popular and effective? What we have instead is an opposition movement, the Democratic Party, that is historically unpopular, polling at 29% in the last CNN rating, and ineffective in the places we hold the most power. So when we do this friendly fire critique, it's not in any way designed to allow us to cozy up to the center right or the right to get them to bring us on their podcast or something. We're trying to win. And to develop winning strategies, sometimes you just have to look very clearly in the mirror to ask, why do we keep losing? Not just arguments, but people. People are leaving California.

They're leaving New York. They're leaving Minnesota. They're leaving Oregon. They're leaving Illinois. How are we losing people and elections at the same time? You can't answer that question honestly, unless you're willing to tell hard truths about your own side. So we are trying to tell hard truths about our own side, but it is in service to a broader message. And that is stopping a political revolution on the right that we think absolutely hurts America by putting scarcity over abundance. Derek, really appreciate your analysis as always.

Everybody go buy the book. We'll have a link down in the description. And I'm excited to finish reading it. So thank you very much, Derek. We appreciate you. Thank you, Derek. It's great to see you. Thanks to both of you.

Thanks so much. All right, guys, we will see you all later. But quick programming announcement from Crystal. Yes, my kids bring breaks. So I'll be on next week. Ryan will be in for me. I know you guys will be excited about the bro shows. Lots of bro shows. So I'll see you back the week after that. Yes, that's right. All right, we will see you all later. Have you ever thought about going voiceover? I'm Hope Woodard, a comedian, creator, and seeker of male validation. I'm also the girl behind voiceover, the movement that exploded in 2024.

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