Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/10/22: Economic Turmoil, Biden's Speech, Elon Comments, Baby Formula, New Press Sec, Starbucks Workers, & More!

Episode Date: May 10, 2022

Krystal and Saagar break down the economic outlook, Biden's inflation speech, Elon's speech comments, baby formula shortage, the new Biden Press Sec, diesel fuel crisis, lies in the abortion debate, and a discussion of the NLRB lawsuit vs Starbucks with workers!To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show uncut and 1 hour early visit: https://breakingpoints.supercast.com/To listen to Breaking Points as a podcast, check them out on Apple and SpotifyApple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/breaking-points-with-krystal-and-saagar/id1570045623 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/4Kbsy61zJSzPxNZZ3PKbXl Merch: https://breaking-points.myshopify.com/Starbucks Workers: https://sbworkersunited.org/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Indeed we do. Lots of big stories breaking this morning that we want to talk to you about. First of all, market taking a bit of a nosedive yesterday. And some interesting details there about what's going on with crypto, which stocks are sort of leading the decline and what that is ultimately all about. So we're going to lead the show with that. But we've also got in the show today, Biden planning a major speech today. They clearly realize that just like not talking about inflation is not going to work out for them in the midterms, even with the impending decision regarding Roe versus Wade. Democrats are realizing that inflation will be the number

one concern on voters' minds going to the polls. So Biden trying to do some messaging around that. We will break that down for you. Elon Musk making some new not great comments. He needs to clarify. At best, not well thought out comments about his plans for Twitter. So we'll talk about that. This story has escaped notice actually for months now. But there is a massive baby formula shortage. A lot of new moms are really struggling. Oh, this is, I mean, this is really scary stuff. If your baby is wholly dependent on formula and you can't find it at the store at any price,

this is a really major problem that is starting to bubble up to the political level. So we'll talk about that and also some new details about the new press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, who is coming in here, what, at the end of this week, she says? I think, I believe it's May 17th. Yeah, something like that. So coming up soon. We're also going to check in with those Starbucks workers who have been organizing across the country.

New developments there from the NLRB is filing suit against Starbucks, alleging that they have been engaged in a pattern of unfair labor practices. So we will talk to them about that. But we do want to start with this market crash from yesterday. Let's go ahead and put the Wall Street Journal tear sheet up on the screen. They say stocks slide to lowest in 2022 as route continues. Technology energy shares lead declines as NASDAQ falls more than 4%. Here's a little bit of the details from the story.

They say the most punishing market sell-off in years showed no signs of abating. Monday, U.S. stock indexes slid to new lows for 2022. Other assets like oil and Bitcoin tumbled as well. S&P 500 fell 132.1 points or 3.2 percent, adding to losses after closing out its longest streak of weekly decline since 2011. Monday marked the first time the index closed below the 4000 level since March 2021. NASDAQ tumbled for more than 521 points or 4.3 percent. Dow Jones shed more than 653 points or 2 percent. And part of what they point to in this article, Sager, is, of course, you guys know what the landscape is. You continue to have these supply chain issues. You have lockdowns in China,

which are getting even more draconian, if anything. You obviously have the war in Ukraine causing all kinds of issues from food prices to gas prices. And you also have the Fed engaged in significant tightening. Now, last week when we talked to you about the Fed moves, so they had already lifted interest rates a quarter of a point. Last week, they lifted it half a point, okay? And markets were a little bit reassured by Fed Chair Jerome Powell coming out and saying, listen, we're not contemplating going any further, any faster than what we're doing right now. Also giving a look into how they are going to unload the assets that they have accumulated off of their balance sheet, which also has a tightening effect.

So the day after that, we actually did the show, said actually markets responded fine. Yeah, they actually went up a tightening effect. So the day after that, we actually did the show, said actually markets responded fine. Yeah, they actually went up a little bit. Yeah, people were reassured by the fact that, okay, Jerome Powell says they're not going too far too fast. However, now you have a new inflation report set to come out this week. And there are, I think there's a lot of nervousness that if that inflation report continues to be high, that even though the Fed says they're not going to go too far too fast, they might reassess that if inflation is not ultimately getting under control. So that's what they point to in this article. They say later this week, investors will get another read on inflation when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases

its consumer price index. They're expecting data to show that inflation fell a bit from March's level. But if that comes out higher than expected, that is going to be a major issue. And they say that the feeling of reassurance that came from the Fed's comments last week soon gave way to anxiety as investors grappled with the reality that the Fed might be forced to rethink its plans if inflation fails to ease up in the coming months. Yeah. And let's just really stick with the Fed because I think that's, look, if there is a recession, if there is a dive, it is almost entirely a Fed-triggered event. Now let's put this up there on the screen. So the Journal actually does a great job of describing

this. Fed rate hikes are good for banks unless they end in a recession. So they're like, yeah, higher rates are usually good news for banks, but not this year because people are worried that the Fed will push until something breaks. And what they point to is that JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley have all dropped this year despite two years of big pandemic gains and despite the fact that in almost every case in previous history, bank stocks go up whenever higher rates are there because they're set to make more on the interest. But investors worry that rate increases that are too big, too fast, will tip the economy into recession. And I

think an expectations game is very important here. Look, the idea that all of this is, you know, tucked by fundamentals and everything is right under there and it's like you can, you know, go underneath and be like, this is all backed by some real stuff. Almost entirely expectations is half, if not more so, of the way that investors are feeling about the current price of the market. Well, if investors worry that race increases are too big or too fast, could tip the economy into recession, the sell-off itself could trigger a recession, which would then trigger more Fed activity. So there's a self-fulfilling prophecy, which is ideological

and which could very much come to pass in this case. But really what they say is that the current expectation is that the Fed is going to push so far, so fast on high interest rates that the banks will not be able to recoup any of the profits. And if anything, all across the entire economy, we're going to see a downturn. And the reason that this really worries me is, look, we've told you guys this before. You may not make money on the way up, but you will lose money on the way down. And the reason why is that the tightening of capital, I'm already seeing it. I have friends who've already been laid off as a result of the fact that their companies could not raise the amount of money that they were promised. And listen, that's in the private markets in venture capital. They're probably like the tip of the spear who are going to get affected,

but they're just the first. How many more layoffs are coming? And the reason why I say that is, remember the great recession of 2008? Part of the reason we had to bail the banks out was because many companies, corporations, were taking short-term loans in order to make payroll. So if we didn't bail out the banks, these people were not going to make payroll. And they're like, we had to fire everybody on Monday. So these are the types of decisions which very much could come to pass. A lot of people were maybe planning expansions on their investor calls that they won't be able to finance at much higher interest rates. I mean, look at the mortgage interest rate and then consider the commercial ones. I mean commercial interest rates are not necessarily at the same rates, but I was actually just talking to a guy yesterday about this.

The commercial real estate interest rate game is even more murky because they don't have set standards, Crystal. A lot of it is that the loans are so big and the interest that they make is so much that there's a lot of jockeying. And as we've talked here before, a lot of these big firms, Fortune 500s, have been able to just say, just trust us, and the banks don't really do their due diligence. So in a high interest rate environment, if you continue to kick that up, a lot of these corporations, don't underestimate this, will not be able to make basic cash expectations that are just going to have to fire people on a dime in these crazy ups and downs. Like uncertainty is what causes real effects for you. And that's why I think a lot of people should pay attention to this. Yeah, that's exactly right.

I mean the whole goal of the Fed is to be able to engineer a quote-unquote soft landing. Right. This is no easy feat, especially when the only tools the Fed has at its disposal is basically to lessen demand from consumers. So to cool off the hot housing market in particular. And already you've had residential mortgage rates skyrocket, you know, going up at some of the highest rates in history. And you now have the median mortgage price, the cost of mortgage, monthly cost of mortgage, has hit a new historical high because of how much interest rates matter in terms of what that month-to-month payment ultimately is. So you have the Fed trying to sort of tamp down demand and put the brakes on what

consumers are able to spend. And at the same time, you all have all these global forces that really have nothing to do with that. So it's a very treacherous landscape. At the same time, I mean, we just got a jobs report that was actually quite good, you know. But not in pace with inflation. That's the thing. So you have this very mixed picture where, yes, the economy continues to create jobs at a rapid clip. Yes, unemployment continues to be quite low, but people are feeling the pain in terms of what they are paying at the grocery store, what they are paying for housing, what they are paying for at the gas pump, which I know is something that you're covering today, Sagar. And so it is, listen, it's not an easy thing that the Fed is trying to pull off here. And clearly, there is a lot of nervousness in the market about what this is all going to look like.

And listen, the bottom line is this. I mean, the Fed's policy during the COVID recession was to inflate asset points. And the decade prior, Crystal. Well, that's exactly right. I mean, this started with the Great Recession. That was the initial foray into zero interest rates and quantitative easing. They went even further during the covid market crash. There was a minute where the market was just like in freefall, even Treasury bonds, which should be the sort of most stable and most liquid of markets. That was even seizing up. And they looked at that landscape and not incorrectly said, we have to take extraordinary action here. And they did, shooting trillions of dollars to backstop both the bond and the stock markets. Now that inflated these massive asset

bubbles. Before we had basic consumer inflation, you had inflation at this very high level in terms of stock and bond prices. And now what you were talking about, about how much the sentiment matters, like those asset prices were not really based on reality. As we all know, the stock market valuations are kind of fake. So the minute that there's this reckoning of like, oh my God, this constant bull market is not going to last, then you can have panic, then you can have selling off, and that's when the bubble can ultimately collapse. And that's why we're in dangerous terrain here. That's why you continue to see the markets going down and down and down. You'll have one day where they sort of tick back up, and then you go back into this

pattern that we've been seeing for weeks and weeks now. Yeah, let's move on because this is actually a very important part of the story as well. Let's put this up there on the screen, which is that Wall Street is being dragged down primarily by tech stocks. Now, I don't want to overstate this because all sectors of the economy are down. But the reason why tech stocks and the decline in them matter the most is because they make up such a large portion of the index funds, like the S&P 500. And so tech companies, despite the fact that they saw sales go way up during the pandemic, and if you think about indices like QQQ and others that aggregate just tech, they were doing phenomenally well for years and years and years. You basically couldn't lose money if you weren't investing in the big five tech companies.

Well, the broader S&P 500 is now down by 3.2% for the new low of 2020, and it is primarily dragged down by technology. And so the decline in technology and the sector there, which again, I was talking about, there's a bleed in effect here from the private market. So you are seeing major technology companies like Facebook or Meta, excuse me, Meta, Amazon, and others who are declining in both their hiring, in terms of their price. Let's put this up there on the screen about Amazon in particular, which had its worst day since 2006 earlier, Crystal, where they dropped by 11% after posting a $3.8 billion loss in the first

quarter. Now, look, Amazon is going to be fine. Their stock is completely okay. But I don't think that people have really appreciated how much of Amazon and Facebook and technology was dragging the S&P 500 up during the pandemic in particular. And so, I mean, if you think about the set and forget typical middle-class investor 401k person, they're not picking individual stocks. They're almost entirely invested in ETFs or Vanguard or whatever, Vanguard 100, the total market, et cetera. A lot of that because just the sheer amount of wealth that's tied up in technology means that when tech goes up, tech goes down, it's going to drop the whole market. And it will have a massive impact on middle class portfolios. And I think that's the main story that I think we should focus on, which is technology was propping

up all of these indices. It was propping up a lot of people's retirement portfolios, whether they knew it or not. And so when you look at it, it's down by 15%. This is a major part of the reason why. These stocks were part of the reason why. These stocks were some of the best performers during the pandemic, which makes perfect sense. People are stuck at home. Things like Peloton, things like Zoom, things like Netflix, things like Amazon performed extraordinarily well because you couldn't go out and do all the normal things that you do and restaurants were closed and gyms were closed and all of that. But you could be at home, you could watch Netflix. You could do, you know, if you're a PMC,

you could order your little Peloton bike and jump on board there. You could certainly order whatever you wanted off of Amazon. So those stocks performed extraordinarily well during the pandemic. And now we've seen Amazon, I think, is a really important one. I'm going to talk a little bit more about them in just a second. But you see them with, you know, losing money, definitely not living up to their earnings expectations. You see them announcing a hiring slowdown, which is extraordinary and also very different from the dynamic in the pandemic. For years now, actually, the biggest problem for Amazon has been that they could not hire enough bodies because Amazon is, you guys know, if you watch this show, I mean, they basically treat their

workers as disposable. They sort of intentionally burn through them on, I mean, they even have a timeframe. They expect to burn through them in three years timeframe. They never elevate them to management. And so their biggest issue was they're starting to say, ah, we're kind of running out of like a workers that we can even employ in our warehouse fulfillment centers. And so now for them to say we actually have they actually came out and said the CFO said that they have too many workers after hiring so many during the COVID-19 pandemic. Now, I wouldn't expect layoffs again because they have such a like churn and burn model. If they just let workers, you know, if they just organically burn out workers the way they normally do, then they'll get down to the levels that they ultimately want. But that is a significant difference. Netflix also. Oh, got hammered. Yeah, got hammered in there. What was it for the first time? They were losing net subscribers and they're starting to play with, oh, maybe we got to go to

an advertising driven model. So these are all indications that those stocks and those companies that performed so well during the pandemic are facing a bit of a reckoning now. Part of why Amazon is so important, and you guys know we talk about Amazon a lot on this show, is because they really have their tentacles in almost every part of not only the national economy, but also the global economy. So they are very much impacted by consumer spending trends. They're very much impacted by supply chain issues. They're very much impacted, you know, this is also a tech stock and they're very much dependent on their cloud computing services, which by the way, thank you, Joe Biden, for awarding them another government contract in spite of their union busting. But that's why when you look at what's going on with Amazon, it's kind of a leading indicator of where all of these sectors ultimately might go.

Because, yes, it's a tech stock, but they really have their hands in so many aspects of both our national and global economy. So I think that's why this is so extraordinarily significant that they are nowhere near where they were during the pandemic. The tech stock phenomena is going to basically make it so that a lot of the investments, I just read a story this morning about the diamond hands generation. Shout out to my investors, people who are like my age started trading. Guess what? Well, the diamond hands generation has now likely lost more than 100% of their gains during the meme stock era.

This is a Bloomberg article that just came out. Look, you guys knew the risk. And, you know, let's all be honest about what exactly was happening there. Now, that being said, that just shows you about how dangerous this really can be in the, you know, you have boom times and then you also have the down times. And, you know, if you actually did abide by diamond hands, then you probably lost a lot of money. And the reason why that this matters is that when amateur investors and stuff like this get burned, and you also have people, I was talking earlier, a much more traditional 401k investor significantly down, we saw the biggest crisis of confidence of

our economy in our lifetime was 2008. I mean, I remember my dad and other people who wake up and you look at portfolios down by 50%. You're like, this is my life saving. This is it. College, house, future, people made whole plans, and it just evaporates overnight. And a lot of people never came back from that. And people need to realize that we are probably, and this is kind of how I end my monologue, this is not going to end anytime soon. This is not, you know, if anything, the COVID recession was a blip in terms of what we're headed for because the fundamentals of our economy are not good. And everything is really expensive. So a decline in consumer cash, that means all across the board, plus technology. When you have a dry up of high interest rates, you're not going to have cheap

capital, which can at least finance some of the riskiest investments that are happening. So you have a decline in the public markets. The Journal had a piece on its front page yesterday, how to make money when stocks are down and bonds are not returning. So it's like, yeah, actually, how do you make money? And the basic advice is like put it in a savings account. You know what I mean? Hope for a.05 interest rate. Actually, it probably isn't even that high.

But hope for a mediocre interest rate in order to keep pace with 9% inflation about what you're – So no matter what you're hosed. Like you're either down eight, think about this. You're either down eight and a half percent. If you put your money in savings relative to inflation, or you're down by like 20%, if your stocks are down and you have to keep up with inflation. So no matter what, you know, almost every sector of this economy, except for what the top 0.01% is basically hosed right now relative to the last five years, which is a really depressing story. It is a depressing story, especially if you think about what happened out of the Great Recession because the big institutional players, yeah, they took a hit during the Great Recession. But they had the capital reserves to be able to buy distressed assets at

the time. And then the Fed was pumping in all that cheap cash. That's right. And then they made more money than ever off of those distressed assets, in particular housing stock. So if you have the money and the capital to play the long game, yeah, there might be some bargain basement deals coming up in the market. But if you are a regular person and you've invested your life savings, your retirement, whatever it is, into the markets, and you don't have the bandwidth to hold on for a decade until things turn around, it's going to be very, very difficult and very ugly. Absolutely. Okay, let's move on to a topic near and dear to my heart, and I'm very sad to report this news. Let's put this up there on the screen. Bitcoin now down by almost 50% of its all-time high. And according to this, 40% of Bitcoin investors are now underwater.

So it's 55% off the November peak, and 40% of the holders are now underwater of their investments. This is according to Glassnode. So 15% of all Bitcoin wallets fell into an unrealized loss, plunging to the 31,000 level. Now, look, I mean, it definitely tracks with the NASDAQ and with the other technology sector. But look, I just think that this is important. As somebody who is a proponent of Bitcoin, I've been into Bitcoin for a long time. Let me just tell you that being down 50% is nothing compared to some of my losses in the past. I've been down by, I think, 90% at one point. So look, if you're in long enough, you've seen it all. And that's where the true diamond hands come from. But I do think it is indicative of something I was talking about earlier, which is that a lot of people who got into investing in the last two years on Robinhood

and elsewhere, you are probably down. I mean the data shows that unless you sold, which is kind of anti – especially against the ethos of Bitcoin and holding, if you actually do have diamond hands, you almost certainly lost about 100 percent of your gains depending on the type of investments that you're making. And overall right now, the crypto markets are in a complete craziness that is difficult to describe. And one of them is this TerraUSD stablecoin, which I'm trying to think about the best way to explain this to our audience who may not even know about it. Let's put this up there on the screen. The basics of this is that a stablecoin is an online cryptocurrency which is pegged to the value of the US dollar. And the reason why you should be able to use it is you can have this stablecoin and it allows you to quickly enter and exit different types of trades relative to other stablecoins. Now, the reason why you might even use such a stablecoin is that because you hold it, a lot of these stablecoins are paying

astronomical interest rates in order for you to exchange your capital, your actual US dollars. They're paying you very, very high, in some cases, like double-digit interest rates as of recently. So that was kind of a cycle, and it was a way that was a decentralized currency, this one in particular, TerraUSD, which was algorithmically propped up. But, Crystal, yesterday, which caused chaos in the crypto markets, the third biggest stablecoin fell as low as 69 cents, triggering a massive sell-off. Now, I will confess, until recently, I had some TerraUSD. And I didn't conceive that it was possible that stable coins could go unpegged from a dollar. And so obviously, I'm not going to buy more. I don't have any right now. But part of the reason why is because these were seen as ironclad kind of within the crypto markets. And

there was a big promise of the decentralized protocols and could constantly keep it pegged to a dollar. And this is the way that we exit from the Fed, et cetera. So to have this thing plunge and actually become unpegged to the dollar caused a massive sell-off both on the anchor protocol, which is what the stablecoin is kind of propped up as. But it just shows you that the public markets are not the only places in disarray. And if anything, the private markets are even more in disarray with Bitcoin and with the stable coin in particular. So full disclosure, I sort of hate you right now because I spent a lot of time in my life yesterday trying to understand all of this crap. Yeah, so I had to bring Crystal in the future. It happens. It happens. She'll thank me later. But it was, so there's two pieces I think that are really important here. Number one, one of the major arguments in favor of crypto was that it would be a hedge against inflation.

Yeah, that's true. But that's not working out because it's just tracking with the NASDAQ. And it has for quite some time. Yeah, so that sort of theory of the case has fallen apart. And then the theory of the case for stable coins in particular, these ones that are not backed by actual assets, but are supposed to maintain their pegs through these sort of like financial engineering algorithms, that has obviously completely fallen apart. And this particular stable coin had lost its peg briefly before it had gone down to maybe like, you know, it's supposed to always be at $1. It had gone down to maybe $0.93.

But nothing like what happened yesterday. you know, this is a kind of an extraordinary moment in terms of, you know, that's why people are freaking out and panic selling because they're realizing that the promise of this thing, the way that it was rigged up to work is not really actually working out. And the whole promise of stablecoin is because crypto fluctuates so much, it's like, OK, well, this is a way that we can have it be a more reliable currency. And when you have the algorithmically generated peg, rather than actually backing it by some sort of hard assets, this is a way to have it decentralized, sort of like the libertarian. Yeah, it is. Right. That was the promise of this coin.

And so the fact that it lost its peg is, you know, a significant blow to kind of the arguments that have been made about this stable coin and stable coins, I think, in particular. There were also some problems with some of the ones that were supposed to be backed by U.S. dollars. Well, it turns out they weren't really being honest about what assets they were holding. There was a whole lawsuit in New York with the attorney general there, Letitia James. They came to a settlement. Anyway, so some of the shine is off of both crypto generally and off of stablecoins in particular. And then just in terms of the larger market picture, you know, it makes sense that the first part of the crash would be, you know, collapse in some of the most speculative investments. Right.

We covered last week how the NFT market has just like completely. Sounded like almost 80 or 90%. Completely collapsed. The number of people active in the market and the number of people holding NFTs. I mean, it's just like the bottom has fallen out of that thing. And you would put that at kind of like the bleeding edge of most speculative investments. And then you would talk about, you know, crypto alongside of these tech stocks that were dramatically inflated during the pandemic. So that's sort of like the macro picture of ultimately what's going on here. And I think your point about the retail investors, just to bring this back,

is really important because they say, the headline of that article we just put up about crypto is that 40% of Bitcoin investors are now underwater. Well, it's even worse for short-term holders who just got skin in the game in the last six months. I mean, those people have been devastated. They also say basically that the wallets with balances of more than 10,000 Bitcoin, they've been particularly significant disruptive force over the last few weeks, basically meaning that they are all getting out of the market. And meanwhile, the retail investors are still kind of holding the bag here. So again, they're the ones who are likely to get and already have gotten the most screwed. So as per usual, it's the little guy who is getting hurt the fastest and the hardest here. Well, my advice, just hold fast. All right. If you can, guys, if you can. All right. So Biden

is planning a major speech today to try to push back on the sort of Republican narrative about inflation and perhaps lay out his own plan to deal with inflation. Let's go ahead and put up on the screen what Axios is reporting he's planning on doing here. The headline is Biden targets GOP on inflation as prices skyrocket. And of course, as we reported just moments ago, there is a major new inflation report expected to hit this week. So certainly, you know, inflation is on you guys' mind because you're feeling it every single day. And there's going to be some new data coming out. So that helps to explain why he is giving this major address. According to this article, they say he's preparing a major speech to address inflation and will

contrast his plans to lower costs for American families with those offered by congressional Republicans. And interestingly, Sager, the thing that he's going to focus on the most from the Republican Party is that plan that was put out by Senator Rick Scott, which would which calls for raising taxes on middle class and working class Americans. And also could sunset entitlement programs like Medicare and Medicaid. Basically, he calls for every five years having to reauthorize, like basically repass everything that we've ever done. So, you know, five years from now, looking at Medicare and Medicaid and having to pass those things all over again, do you really think that

everything would get through a House and a Senate? I mean, listen, it's I think it's Senator Scott's plan was revealing of what the core of the GOP, what they actually still want. That being said, McConnell has very strongly pushed back and said, actually, what we really want to run on is absolutely nothing. That's going to be more difficult for them now that the whole Roe versus Wade thing is ultimately happening. But I think it's, you know, I think it's smart from a messaging perspective to lean into what Rick Scott, who is in charge of like campaigns for the Republicans in the Senate, to lean into what he's saying the GOP plan is for the economy. My biggest problem with this is that on the spirit, I 100% believe in Biden's plan. There are two ways to fix inflation. Actually, no, there's only one way to fix inflation, the current inflation that we have, which is not monetary triggered. It is triggered entirely by

a massive supply crisis, which has been coming for the last 40 years based upon discrete choices to exit American manufacturing and enter into a highly globalized and financialized economy. And by corporate price gouging. And by corporate price gouging as well. I think that fits with general monopolization, etc. But okay, now do something about it. But you've had over, how long has inflation been in the news? Over a year? At this point, you're the president, dude. Like, you know, you're not doing anything about it. So Biden is now, I'm reading directly from the leaks from his office.

Biden is now trying to convince the American public he has a plan to lower costs. Even as his top economic advisors say, the Federal Reserve has the most powerful tools to drive down inflation. So which is it? And all he's trying to take credit for is stuff that he's done already. So for example, he's going to say, I tapped the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. Thank you, Joe Biden, for lowering gas prices for a week by five cents. You know, I'm really going to remember that, given that the pump is still 440 a gallon where I live. In Iowa, he's going to talk about increased summertime access to 15%. This is all bullshit. At the end of the day, people are paying 8% to

9% more on basic goods than they were the previous year. Have you done anything about that in the last year? No. So why should I believe you that you're going to do anything now? So right now, Biden is saying, oh, it's the private corporations who are gouging you. Okay, then do something about it. Oh, wait, you're not. You called out the meatpackers. Cool. Meat is still meat, actually, has some of the highest inflation in the country.

So guess what? They basically said, we don't believe that you're going to do anything to us. And they're right. Gas, the same that Exxon and Shell and all these people are posting, record profits. They also, as far as I can tell, and I did a lot of research on this yesterday, nobody is building more refinery capacity. Nobody's building or pumping more oil. Nobody is doing new fracking leases. Nobody is trying to spin up anything. So that's one option. The other option is that the Saudis pump more. You have undergone no diplomacy in order to get Saudi Arabia to pump more oil. Same with Venezuela. What happened to that? We sent Ron Klain's ass down to Caracas. What happened? I just don't hear about it anymore. It's like, this is what drives me insane, which is that they're actually giving and almost validating a Republican attack that this is all monetary driven because they're almost convincing the American people that nothing can be done on the supply side with inflation. And then the last thing I just want to say, Crystal, which is right now there is a heated debate inside the Situation Room between Biden's neoliberal advisors and others on whether to remove these tariffs on China because they want to try and lower prices

with tariffs. Guess what, guys? We do not have a problem with Chinese tariffs massively increasing inflation. We've had Chinese tariffs for five years now. So, oh, the tariffs just miraculously in the last six months increased price. Beijing is shut down. Shanghai has been, they don't even get food for the last 40 days. And you're trying to tell me that Chinese tariffs are the reason? No, this is a problem of discrete choices of 40 years. It has nothing to do with that. So now they might even go light on China. I mean, it's just the incoherence and the ineptitude of their policy is shameful. And, you know, he's not going to convince anybody. I mean, they don't have a messaging problem.

They have a reality problem. That's the thing. Like trying to give a speech and persuade people, like they're totally right. The Republicans don't have any answers here either. And their economic program would definitely harm the American people overall. But right now, what are people looking at?

You guys are the ones in charge. And my reality every single day is getting a little bit harder and a little bit harder and a little bit harder. And so, you know, I mean, something else that relates to this is the war in Ukraine, which has caused additional supply chain issues, additional issues with gas, additional issues with food prices in particular and global food prices. And already the administration has made it really clear like they have no interest in the war ending. So that's another area where their affirmative policy of the administration is just making things worse in terms of what consumers, what Americans are dealing with

every single day here. So, you know, there was this debate a few months back within the administration about whether or not they wanted to call out corporations for price gouging because, look, corporate price gouging is not the entire story, but we have the numbers and have the proof that they looked at this landscape and they said, oh, well, this gives us an excuse to charge higher prices and consumers will accept it because they see this overall landscape of inflation. You have so many sectors of our economy dominated by gigantic monopolies, so they have this pricing power. And there was this internal debate within the White House about whether they wanted to do anything or say anything

about that. And ultimately, they landed on basically no. I mean, there were a few little comments about the meatpacking industry and that was that. So yeah, it's, you know, it'll be interesting to watch and see what he has to say. But the reality is if the economic landscape doesn't change by the time of the midterms and people aren't feeling tremendously better than they're feeling now, it's like 70 percent of Americans feel like the economy is getting worse if that doesn't turn around. That's going to be the number one issue on people's minds. And it really doesn't matter what speech Biden ultimately gives because you guys are in power and nobody is going to – no one is going to take this messaging about the Republicans. They're just going to say we're sick and tired of what's going on here and we're going to try something different. There's some polling. There should be.

Right. And there's some polling that I was just referencing. Let's go ahead and put this up on the screen. This is from Gallup. So Americans' confidence in the economy remains extremely low. Mentions of economic issues as the most important problem in the U.S. are at their highest point since 2016. Inflation continues to register as the top economic problem, and it was previously at this level of concern back in 1984. You have actually understated it. 76% of Americans say that the economy is getting worse, 20% say it's improving, and 3% think it is staying the same. Roughly four in 10 Americans name economic issues as the most important problem facing the U.S. So, you know, as we've been talking about what's happening with Roe versus Wade, do I think that that strengthens Democrats'

hands a little bit on the margin? Mitch McConnell can't just totally run on nothing for this midterm, which was what he was planning on doing and which was working out extraordinarily well, yeah. But ultimately, this is going to be the story and the picture that people are looking at when they go to the polls. I couldn't agree with him more. And, you know, Americans are not stupid. They gave Joe Biden a chance.

He had a massive approval rating coming in. They said, give us the vaccine and then let's move on. And then he didn't move on. And then in the meantime, by bowing to Fauci idiocy and a lot of this stuff for a straight year, he did nothing on the global economy. And then Russia invaded Ukraine. And now we are willing to ship billions of dollars of aid to Ukraine. And yet we have no level of commiserate action on lessening the price increases for the American people. Americans are good people in their hearts. They were willing to suffer for one or two months. But there is no indication on the horizon right now that any of these shortages will stop in the next three years, guys. I mean, you can't, and I say this in my

monologue, I'm giving some of it away. You can't just conjure up diesel. Like it doesn't work that way. You can't just conjure up and change your supply chain. It is static, relatively. You can tinker around the margins, but we need a massive program in order to at least assure people we're trying to do something about this, but we're not. And, you know, a lot of people are really going to suffer. And yeah, I just, I think he has no credibility on this issue and he's going to, you know, they're going to get their asses kicked in November and I think they deserve it for delivering nothing. And to your point, people are not stupid and they are good hearted and, you know, we cover the polls of how many people said, listen, I'm willing to pay higher prices. Yes. If this is going to help Ukraine. Of course,

they didn't sign up for the policy of like, oh, actually, we're at war with Russia, which is what, you know, Democratic Congressman Seth Moulton is openly admitting now. But also, you know, there's this idea that people just expect Biden to like wave a magic wand and fix it. And I don't think that that's fair, but they want to see that you have some sort of a plan to move us forward and get us out of this. They want to see not just that you're going to like talk about it, but you're going to do something about it. And this has been really the central failure of the Obama administration, of the Trump administration, of the Biden administration is it the Biden administration, is it is so clear

that we need some sort of major course correction in America. We need a new vision that is going to bring the country together, that people can invest in, that they feel a sense of national pride around. And when you have a slew of national crises that are unfolding, that is precisely the time when you can galvanize people around that type of big picture vision. And so if that took some time to play out and to really feel the benefits of, people will give you the benefit of the doubt if they were invested and understood what that vision ultimately was. But there has been, I mean, Biden is just like, that's just never going to be who he is. And all of his political skills are from a different era. All they've done, this entire administration is, except for the very beginning,

is essentially react to events and be way behind the eight ball. And so, yeah. So, I mean, it is kind of telling that here we are over a year into a major national issue with inflation and you're finally getting around to giving a major address about it. That does kind of say it all. Yeah. No, I mean, look, it's very, very simple. They don't have a real plan. They're basically just hoping that ambivalence and hatred towards Trump will deliver for them. And it's not going to. Not in the midterms. Let's move on to this next block. So I would say generally praiseworthy of some of the ways that Elon Musk has said that he wants to protect free speech and all of that. But his latest foray into the free speech wars actually shows us some of the dangers that you can walk

into. If you are not fully informed, or at the very least, you are not fully aware of the language that you're using when talking about content moderation. So let's put this up there on the screen. Musk was replying to a tweet from Mike Cernovich who said, Here you go, Elon Musk, when Twitter employees invariably lie to you about enforcement policy, maybe they can explain why a Verifoyd account is allowed to incite terrorism without any care in the world about being banned. And so here's what Elon replied. Twitter obviously has a strong left-wing bias. I mean, I think that's probably true.

But he responds this. Liberal bias, not left-wing bias. I mean, I think that's probably true. But he responds this. Liberal bias, not left-wing bias. Liberal bias. He replies, though, to this. He says, like I said, my preference is to hew close to the laws of countries in which Twitter operates. If the citizens want something banned,

then pass a law to do so. Otherwise, it should be allowed. Now, that works in a free society, a democratic society like America. And actually, then it doesn't really work because the First Amendment, you know, trumps all of those things. Yeah, we're talking about a constitutional right. Right. So we have a constitutional right, not an actual democratic right in order to have free speech, but maybe more in a common law type system like the UK or elsewhere somewhere in the West. This would more apply as long as there's a general free idea of the types of things that, you know, Germany, for example, has laws in the books like banning Scientology, given their history,

whatever. You know, we don't have to debate all of that right now. Here's a problem, though. If Elon abides by the standard of we will censor content per whatever the governments say or the laws on the books are in authoritarian or theocratic countries, that becomes a real problem. Yes. So in Saudi Arabia, are you going to censor Shia activists? Well, obviously, Twitter doesn't operate in China, but the Chinese government nonetheless put immense amount of pressure on Twitter in order to remove Hong Kong freedom protesters or Uyghur activists or Tibetan activists. And they spend a lot of money and time going after such people. What about in the Islamic world?

Are you going to crack down on people who are speaking out, you know, on more democratic causes? How about in Israel? I was about to say. Are you just going to take the Israeli government's word for which account should be censored? Which actually that has happened in the past. Yes, specifically with Facebook in particular.

You know, bad about that. Okay, so yeah. Are you going to allow like pro-Palestinian stuff in Israel? I mean, Israel is a quasi-democratic society, right? I mean, so now what? It's like, well, the Nesset passed it. And you're like, or Knesset. I know Israelis.

So, you know, the Knesset passed it. So now what? Or in Egypt, for example, military dictatorships. Like, are Muslim Brotherhood accounts going to be allowed? Anyway, I can go on forever. The point is, is that Twitter and its current policy has actually had very, you know, frankly, has not a huge to this policy at all. This is way worse than current Twitter. Has really, you know, erred more on the side of allowing, you know, something.

Now, look, obviously, you know, a lot of the causes I mentioned are, you know, quasi liberal in the first place. And so they're kind of sanctioned by, you know, elite liberal mindset. So it's not like they were getting censored in the first place. But you're in a—you have a serious problem. You know, actually, Russia is a good example. I think Twitter is still operating in Russia. And if I recall, back in 2014, Twitter, in one of the very first instances of government-issued censorship, began censoring accounts at the behest of the Russian government. The Electronic Freedom Foundation actually wrote

about that back in 2014, about the end of the free speech wing of the Free Speech Party. But there's another one. What are you going to do, Ilan? And just yesterday, he met with the European Union and the head of their whatever regulatory agency is over the internet. And remember, they have very, very different standards than we do over here. So, you know, it just shows you this is a real, it's a pickle in terms of how exactly you do these things. And there's a reason that a lot of companies didn't even buy Twitter in the first place because they never wanted to deal with this. Yeah. I mean, even in Europe, as you're pointing to, this is an issue because you have new laws

in the EU. I'm just reading this article from ABC News where they say if his approach will be just stop moderating Twitter, he's going to find himself in legal trouble in the EU. Musk will soon be confronted with Europe's Digital Services Act, which will require big tech companies like Twitter, Google, and Facebook parent Meta to police their platforms more strictly or face billions in fines. So basically, if you take this at face value, effectively, he's saying, all right, I'm just going to abide by what the EU has passed at this point. I'm not going to put up a fight here at all. So listen, I think at best, it shows a lack of thoughtfulness, a lack of having really engaged deeply with this issue and what it would mean not just here but in a global context. At worst, it signals that he could actually make Twitter worse from a censorship point of view than it ultimately is right now. But between that and what we reported yesterday about his plans, number one, that he is about making that money and he's also, you know, taking money from some unsavory countries like the nation of Qatar, which is not known for its commitment to free speech. I think it ought to give you some pause about whether or not Elon Musk is really going to be your free speech savior here on Twitter.

Well, it can show you, even if you have good intent, you know, if you're from the West, you're like, yeah, well, we'll just abide by the laws of that country. And it's like, well, you know, that's a serious issue. So, you know, Ryan actually replied to this. Ryan Graham, let's put this up there on the screen. And he's like, are you signaling the Chinese government will be allowed to put Chinese post by, will be allowed to censor posts taken down by Chinese citizens? Because if so, that's more censorship than currently done by Twitter. Look, it's a very, very thorny topic, and you actually have to be very well considered. And I would personally advocate for a policy which hews to the American First Amendment globally. And you know, dare the European Union.

Are they really going to ban Twitter in the EU? Honestly, if you're in the EU, you're probably better off. But you know, for your own mental health. But I just don't believe you. Like, I don't believe that they will do it. And look, if Egypt and all these other countries wanna boot them off, you know, go ahead. Life finds a way.

VPNs these days basically make it so that if you want to, you can basically access anything. And we should just set that standard. And that's how I think that it should govern itself. But, you know, it's still going to be tough. He's got a lot of regulatory problems in order to go with. Yeah. Even his comments about like Twitter has clear left wing bias. I mean, like you said, liberal bias for sure. But even that showed a lack of like thought and nuance about the real problems on the platform. So anyway, we'll see how this all unfolds. This is a huge story that has not gotten nearly the attention that it should and which we are just picking up on because neither of us has. I don't have any little babies anymore. So I was

not aware that this was all going on. There's a huge nationwide shortage of baby formula that, frankly, has been going on for months now. It's only getting worse. Government has not been responsive at all. Obviously, for many babies, formula is their sole source of nutrition. So it's not like you can just substitute something else. This is what babies need to eat and to be able to survive. So, this is a major problem. Let's go ahead and put the numbers up on the screen here. This is from NBC. They say, effectively, that you've got the share of baby formula out of stock across the U.S. hit 40 percent on April 24th. That's according to a number crunching group called Data Assembly. That's up from 29 percent, which already seems pretty high to me, back in March. They have an expert here who, you know, is indicating what I was just saying, that unlike other food recalls, shortages in the infant formula supply affects a major or even exclusive source of nutrition for babies and inadequate nutrition

could have long-term health implications for those babies. The states that are seeing the worst shortages include Texas, Tennessee, Missouri, Iowa, North Dakota, and South Dakota, all with out-of-stock rates of about 50 percent. A total of 26 states, so more than half the states have out-of-stock rates that are between 40 and 50 percent. Now, why is this happening now? We have the New York Times with a little bit of reporting. Part of what happened here is there was a significant—go ahead and put this tear sheet up on the screen—there was a significant recall of baby formula that was produced by one of the major producers, Abbott Nutrition. What they say in the New York Times here is,

parents across the country are struggling to keep up with the nationwide shortage. It's a problem worsened by a recent recall by Abbott Nutrition, a manufacturer of baby food. That recall came after at least four babies were hospitalized with bacterial infections and two died after consuming their products. That's according to the U.S. FDA. Horrifying. Horrible, horrible situation.

Just to give you a sense of how central Abbott Nutrition, the company that ultimately had the recall and is contributing to this shortage, although they're not the entire story, they are actually the exclusive supplier for more than half of the WIC agencies nationwide. So they say this is not some isolated issue and that the shortage is particularly acute for infants who require specialty formulas to address allergies, gastrointestinal issues, or metabolic disorders. So listen, for some babies who don't have those allergies and they're not sensitive, they can basically have whatever formula happens to be on the shelf. But if you have an infant who has a specialized need and you need to get a specific type of formula, this is in particular a major issue for you. And then the last part of the story here is that you have effectively every major retail that is putting limits on how much parents can buy. Walgreens, Target, but it's also Walmart.

Costco. Costco. It's also CVS are now placing limits on baby formula due to supply shortages. And the last thing I'll say about this, Sagar, is that formula is also already a really significant expense for new parents. On average, parents spend between $1,200 and $1,500 on infant formula in the first year alone. So when you're talking about those costs going up, which they have, that also is a major financial strain for families and for new parents. Yeah. I mean, I was telling you, I have a friend who's a new mom. I mean, this is a really stressful situation because they don't know what the supply is coming from. And especially, some people like to stick to a single brand. You don't even have that luxury in the

current market. And then Amazon has a two month backlog for generic baby formula. And you know, I mean, the stuff that really scares the hell out of me is every major retailer in America is rationing baby formula right now. If you are a new parent, I mean, that's already a very stressful situation. It's one of those things where you really want to plan for the future and you're just simply unable to do so. You know, imagine just hoping that you're going to be able to get some here. You know, my friend who's a new mom eventually had to, you know, reserve some online at a store, which was several miles away, and then hope that it's there whenever you drive to go. I mean, you know, you have a little infant child, which is relying on this for, this isn't like a shortage of meat. Now look, we all like, most people like meat. You know, you definitely need meat or,

you know, some of the things that meat gives you, you can get it elsewhere, you know, if you are careful about it, but this is the exclusive source of nutrition. Like this is the only thing that some of these kids are able to eat. And like you said, the WIC part of this is also really important because the WIC program is for a lot of moms who are in the lower end of the income spectrum. And also I think single, you know, more disproportionately more likely to be single. So you've got like single moms who are now depending on the WIC program to get their formula and then you've got over half of WIC states where their exclusive supplier is this one particular brand who now issued a recall and they straight up are not able to get the formula that they were reliant on. So look, I mean, this is a catastrophe. There's a lot of problems, obviously, that this exposes. It shows you also part of the problems with some of the ways that we do this, actually. I was reading from a policy level, which is that by exclusively contracting with Abbott

Nutrition, we guarantee a price. But part of the problem with that is actually is that Abbott then doesn't have the flexibility in production because they only plan to produce a certain amount in order to meet that price by WIC. So the basic thing is that the actual infrastructure to spin up baby formula quickly does not exist, period. And now we have a massive shortage. And guess what? There is no, at least from what I can tell, current response from policymakers. I know Jen Psaki was asked about it yesterday, Crystal.

But they got nothing to say, I mean, at a very basic level about what they can do. Yeah, I mean, she said ensuring the availability of these products is a priority for the FDA, and they're working around the clock to address any possible shortage. But she did not outline any steps the Biden administration is taking in addition to what the FDA is doing, whatever they're doing. Unlike with oil, the president can't tap a strategic and familial reserve to offset low natural supplies. She said, I don't believe there's a national stockpile of baby formula. And actually, there is one lawmaker who has proposed something, Abby Finkenauer, who is a Democrat from Iowa. She called on the White House to invoke the Defense Production Act

to force manufacturers to produce additional baby formula. And I think it has come to that. I mean, you can't leave these moms and new parents high and dry like this. I mean, this is absolutely essential, critical supply. It's way more important than any other food source that you can ultimately think of because this is it. If you have a formula-fed baby, this is what they eat. So it really is a kind of a brewing disaster here. And they recount in the New York Times, one mom who was searching online and found like 10 cans of whatever brand of formula for $40 each.

Is that, I don't actually know. It's a lot. That's a lot. Yeah. I mean, formula is expensive, but I think it's more like $25 a can. But yeah got it. But yeah, $40 a can is a lot. And she reached out and was like, please, I have to have it. I can pay in all cash. And that's for someone who had the means to do that. Now, imagine that your budget is already stretched. Formula and diapers are already one of the top items that ultimately is stolen, both because of desperate parents and because of criminals who know that they can ultimately resell it. So it's a bad situation that needs to get more attention. This reminds me too

of the inflexibility of the FDA, you know, at a time when Europeans had rapid tests that we didn't have and unavailability. Listen, I'm a protectionist at heart, but there's a shit ton of baby formula sitting in Europe right now. We have a ban on European imports. Apparently, a ton of U.S. parents already illegally import European baby formula. Yeah, it's like goat milk based and they like it. Listen, I don't know anything about it. I was reading a little bit. More what I'm saying is just waive the damn whatever tariff protection against this thing.

Send a C-47 over there and let's get some baby formula here and let's give it away to anybody who needs it. I mean, these are the basic functions of government. You can't be leaving these new moms in the lurch. It's probably stressful and it's hell enough in order to have a new baby in the middle of an economic crisis, especially if you're single and especially if you're poor. So I would love to see something like that from the Biden administration. But as I learned during COVID, it's not like these bureaucratic rigidity will force them to be like, we're reviewing the situation while everybody is just sitting, suffering, and stressing out at home. I mean, there's literally an entire market over there. It's not that hard to go and get some. And like

I said, I didn't even know this, Crystal. There are Facebook groups where parents are illegally importing European baby formula already. So if the Facebook moms can get their hand on this stuff, it doesn't seem that hard for the government. The U.S. government should be able to figure this shit out. That's my basic response. All right. Let's talk about the new press secretary. Okay. Correct my pronunciation. Karine Jean-Pierre. You got it. Is that right? All right. Let's talk about the new press secretary. Okay, correct my pronunciation.

Karine Jean-Pierre. Is that right? All right, wow, look at me. Okay, so I said yesterday that the press, by focusing exclusively on Ms. Jean-Pierre's sexuality and her race, was covering up the fact that we need to know a little bit more about this woman. What are all of the things that she said in the past?

Has she lied in the past? Has she pushed this? And has she pushed that? And the right-wing ecosystem has responded to my challenge and has moved in. And I actually want to say something about this. It is incredibly sad to me that ideological partisan media had to fill in the gaps here of the mainstream media. Because what I'm about to show you are both from GOP activists or from Fox News, when this should just be the standard

period for all press secretaries. And the fact that it's not being dug up by the mainstream media just shows you why I think the entire alternative ecosystem exists in the first place. So let's go ahead and put this up there on the screen. What has Ms. Jean-Pierre said in the past? Oh, interesting. So back in 2018, she said this, quote, reminder, Brian Kemp stole the gubernatorial election from Georgians and Stacey Abrams. Oh, doubting the democratic election of Georgia. And then in 2016, here's what she said about Trump. Stolen emails, stolen drone. Where did the drone come from? I was trying to figure that one out too. Stolen drone? Listen, it's been a while. Yeah, I was scratching my head about that one too. Stolen emails, stolen drone,

stolen election. Welcome to the world of hashtag unprecedented Trump. Wow. I mean, that is certainly doubting the results of the 2016 election and saying that it was essentially stolen by Russia. And Fox News actually went and compiled 10 of the worst things that she said in the past, put this up there on the screen. And look, I mean, when you go through this, you're just looking at somebody who is clearly somebody who has fallen for the derangements of elite liberalism. So what they point to specifically is that this is a person who has, this is a person who actually protected Kamala Harris whenever she was moderating a debate. Oh, I remember that. Yeah. Physically protected her. That was a good moment. Well, so, okay. Physically protecting,

I think is fine, but I think shielding her from a question of an animal rights activist is kind of— But this was someone who was like rushing the stage. Yeah, it was somebody—it was a little bit of a weird situation. Yeah. I guess I could probably— That was fine. I'll side with you, I guess, on that one. But then she said that Trump could start a horrible civil war.

She doubted the legitimacy of the 2016 election, repeatedly tweeted about Trump with hashtag Putin love affair. You know, this is somebody claimed the 2018 Georgia gubernatorial election was stolen, repeatedly praised Andrew Cuomo during the pandemic, declared that it's racist to cover the Chinese origin of COVID,

accused, you know, listen, more what I could point to is the basic fact that this is a dyed-in-the-wool MSNBC lib, Crystal. Well, that's, I mean, I guess that was my reaction to it. I was like, are you, like, this is standard-ish, cringey liberal stuff. I don't really, none of it's, like, extraordinary.

I would expect anyone who was considered for this position to basically have tweeted hashtag Putin love affair or whatever. By the the way i looked up the drone thing because it was driving me crazy what's happening okay so do you remember this i only vaguely remember this trump accuses china of unprecedented and he spelled it like president um act over u.s navy drone he said that china stole u.s navy research drone in international waters, rips it out of water and takes it to China in unprecedented act. That's what it was about. Okay. I barely even remember that one. They said President-elect Trump has risked further inflaming U.S. relations with China after he used Twitter on Saturday to accuse China of an

unprecedented act in seizing of an unmanned American submarine this week. So that's what that was about. Okay, got it. Anyway, I guess, again, my reaction to these tweets was like typical cringy liberal stuff. A hundred percent. Nothing that was like extraordinarily out of the ordinary or out of bounds. But you also know, you know, if you have a similar situation, you know, from a Republican, probably, you know, let's say the next Trump administration, and they're going to be like, oh my God, the dangerous coup pushed. And look, I'm not equivocating between

saying the 2016 election was stolen and necessarily the stop the steal movement, given what happened with the latter. But I still think some sort of scrutiny on these things and being asked about them is important. And I think, unfortunately, that we already know what's going to happen. Peter Doocy is going to be the only guy who will ask the only one question. And everybody in the press will sneer. This is a legitimate point of inquiry. And looking at least from my perspective, really digging up and remembering that these people are partisan actors who are paid to lie to you by the US government should be ever present for all of these press secretaries. And instead, it's like, oh, she's a queer black woman. It's like, okay,

like, I really don't care if you're going to tell me the same lies that Jen Psaki told me. I think for me, there is a macro problem with media giving partisan actors and powerful people, which Karine Jean-Pierre has been and is about to be even more so, like a celebrity coverage treatment rather than the sort of like serious, you know, news gathering treatment that they would merit. You know, this is certainly the case with like, you know, Andrew Cuomo back in the day got this treatment. Stacey Abrams certainly has received Andrew Cuomo back in the day got this treatment. Stacey Abrams certainly has received this treatment. Kamala Harris has gotten this treatment.

And I guess what I would say, you know, that's particularly important when you're talking about elected public officials. Karine Jean-Pierre ultimately shall be, you know, very influential in terms of the messaging strategy and what is actually told to the American people from the podium that matters, but is not as significant as like the people who are actually setting the policy and setting the agenda. But, you know, even if what your goal is is to like serve your friends in the Democratic Party, did it ultimately help them that, for example,

you didn't really scrutinize Kamala Harris until she was in the job? Because now you have Democrats in a disastrous situation where she's vice president and it's very clear she's not up to the job. And, you know, Joe Biden is not getting any younger or any more sentient and they've lined her up as like the next, you know, the next one to take over the Democratic nomination and potentially the presidency, although I don't think that that's likely to happen. So they didn't really do any favors by this sort of like individualized celebrity treatment rather than a serious inquiry into who is this person? What are their views?

How are they likely to approach the job? Yeah. That's what I would say. I mean, here's another example. You know, her wife works as a CNN reporter. And like, look, I'm not saying that that's corrupt, but that bears a little bit of scrutiny. I mean, should we maybe have a statement from CNN saying, we assure you, her wife will not cover these events. I mean, this is a CNN national political reporter. Like,

you don't know. Look, you tell me if the Fox, if a Fox correspondent was married to the White House press secretary under Trump, whether that would not garner some pretty significant media attention. I mean, from what I can tell, I don't think I've read a single article about it outside of the right-wing press. That just seems very clearly rife for discussion. I have nothing against them being married. Like, okay, God bless both of you, but now you are the paid propagandist of the White House. Your wife works for CNN. Do you have any processes in place at CNN in order to make sure that there's no ethical concerns? Is she going to take a leave of absence? I'm not saying that's fair, but these are all things which I have friends who are actually married to people who are in public office who had to make a choice about putting up a firewall saying, okay, I'm not going to cover

that issue, period. Or I'm going to have to take a leave of absence from my job in order to make sure that there's no ethical concern here whatsoever. So, I mean, again, a real press corps should probably ask that question. But they're going to look at that as like, oh, that's homophobic or something like that. I mean, look, I would say the same for anybody who's married to somebody. There's no boundaries between – I mean, it's just like, you just see with this instance and with a million other ones that there are really no dividing lines between like the press and the people they're supposed to be, you know, holding to account. And so it's just another example of how, look, she's coming directly from being like an MSNBC and NBC contributor as well.

Right. So she's got lots of friends and buddies there. She's certainly got lots of friends at CNN. When I was Trump in charge, of course, there was total revolving door between Fox News and the White House. Here's Sean Hannity, like texting him on the day of January 6th and all of this crap. So it's just important to keep in mind that this idea that there's this like adversarial relationship is just basically total fiction. Right. That's right. All right, Sagar, what are you looking at? Well, I made a comment yesterday I couldn't really get out of my head.

When exactly did we all just accept gas is permanently $4 a gallon or more? In the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there was a lot of talk. The Biden administration said they're going to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. They're going to change the way oil is managed on federal land leases. They're going to work with our global partners. So it's been a few months and they were mostly bolstered by the public. At the time, they said, hey, it's fine. You know, we'll pay more for gas because Ukraine is defending democracy. Well, it's been a few months and the Ukraine war is now going to probably last for years as a mid-grade war. And does anyone have a plan for us at all to pay less for gas?

The AAA average of national gas price yesterday was $4.38 a gallon on average. That's nuts. The cheapest gas in the country is in Georgia, where it still costs $3.80 a gallon. And in California, the average is $5.80. That's crazy. For context, that means it costs almost $50 to fill up a basic car like a Corolla or a Honda Civic. This is a massive tax on working class Americans, and specifically, working class Western Americans who have to drive a lot more than their East Coast brethren. Now, it is an

inelastic product that they literally need to live their daily lives, and they are being drained for it. Is anyone in Washington thinking about these people? You know, I checked. There has not been a national conversation on gas in more than a month. It's like the Biden administration and Congress are like, yeah, that's just how it goes, I guess. I mean, meanwhile, today, they had time to ship $40 billion more to Ukraine in military aid. So they're capable of doing something, just apparently not for our citizens. And cool. I mean, honestly, though, gas may be the least of our worries. Per my investigation yesterday, gas is at least mostly a consumer worry. It is generally flatlined around $4.50 or so a gallon for now. Diesel, though, is a whole other story. In fact, just yesterday, diesel hit the all-time high

price record at more than $5.50 on average a gallon, with reports of crazy highs in both California and on the East Coast. This is actually worse for nearly everything because you purchase stuff from the grocery store and the hardware store that has to be trucked there. Diesel is what is mostly used by our transportation fleet of trucks in the U.S. So we already have a shortage of truckers and a backlog at the ports. And now we have crazy high diesel prices on top of that. All kinds of crazy high inputs also into the food supply chain. Diesel price increase directly translates into even more of an increase that you're paying at the grocery store, which is, of course,

already a record price. The shortage of diesel is the story of globalization in the same way the consumer gas market is. Right now, inventories of middle distillates, of which diesel is a part of, has the lowest inventory on record on the East Coast since 1996. In fact, jet fuel and diesel are currently trading at $200 a barrel in New York Harbor because of the supply chain crunch, which is directly impacted by the European decision to try and stop importing and using Russian petroleum products. So that means that the chase for diesel right now is heating up and the supply is shrinking. Now, of course, we would not have to worry about this

if we could, you know, just refine our own diesel. Except, you already know, we have dramatically reduced our refining capacity in this nation over the last 30 years. And it is made worse by our lack of foresight in investing in R&D and upkeep of our existing infrastructure. Philadelphia Energy Solutions, which was the largest refinery on the East Coast, where the diesel shortage is the most acute, burned to

the ground in July 2019. Still hasn't been rebuilt. We have less refining capacity at a time when we need it more than ever, and a lot more. Worse, we are now competing with the Europeans for the same supply of diesel, which is now cut off from Russia. That means higher grocery prices, higher airplane fares with a rise in jet fuel, and overall, just a ton more expenses that will not go away anytime soon. That's the crux of really what I want to hammer home today, which is I want everyone watching this to really prepare yourself in a way that I think the administration is not. They're not preparing people, nor is the media. This is not going to end anytime soon.

You cannot conjure diesel out of thin air, nor gas, nor jet fuel. Russia is not going to stop invading Ukraine anytime soon. The simple truth is the decisions we've made over the last 40 years to reduce our domestic refining capacity, to not make anything in America anymore, and to allow the critical commodities that we rely on to be priced entirely by the global market have made us incredibly vulnerable. And we are going to pay this price for years to come. Bank of America itself currently estimates food inflation will be approximately 9% by the end of 2022, with inputs going up even higher. Fertilizer is expected to rise by 50%. And get this, even before diesel, we saw a 25% increase year over year from March just in the price of freight. So that's going to increase more. The final sign of a failed state are blackouts and the inability to provide the most basic level of electricity.

And that's where things, look, they may end up. Right now, California, Texas, Indiana, all separate power grids are sounding the alarm that they simply lack the capacity in order to meet the likely surge of demand if there is extreme heat over the summer, leading to both a massive spike in energy prices for all of us and possible blackouts in the middle of the summer. That energy will not only be expensive because of demand, but sky high in surge times, but also because natural gas is priced globally. So as far as solutions, there are many that we've debated on the show. But my really main goal in this monologue is just wake up, everybody, because I want to validate the feeling that you may probably cannot shake. We are really not at the end of this story. It is really the beginning. And fixing it is going to take nearly as long, if not longer, to undo the mess that our leaders have made here. I just couldn't get over it. I was like, why is Diesel so excited?

And if you want to hear my reaction to Sagar's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. Crystal, what are you taking a look at? Well, guys, Nancy Pelosi is out with a new letter responding to the draft leak of the SCOTUS decision that will overturn Roe v. Wade. And in it, she writes, in part, It is urgent and essential that we remain disciplined and focused in sharing with the American people the dangers of the Republican agenda. While Republicans want to punish and control women for exercising their constitutional rights, Democrats believe that a woman's health decisions are her own, and we will fight relentlessly to enshrine Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. even fellow corporate Democrats are blasting them for their inaction. Witness California Governor Gavin Newsom calling out federal elected Democrats and last week tonight host John Oliver

doing the same. Over decades, Democrats have failed to act to codify Roe when they had power. And even now, Pelosi and Clyburn are down campaigning for an anti-choice lawmaker over a pro-choice one in Texas. But the truth is, guys, if I could choose just one issue that I would want Democrats to actually fight for, or one litmus test issue even for the party, codifying Roe is not anywhere close to the top of the list. I want to be honest about that. And I say that as someone who is and has always been pro-choice, because the fierce debate over abortion rights, it ultimately masks an incredible hollowness and a deep well of lies from elites on both sides of this debate.

The real values that are supposedly at stake in this fight will never be won even with absolute nationwide victory by one side or by the other side. So what do I mean by that? Let me lay this out. Well, think about what abortion rights are meant to represent on the liberal side of the debate. It's supposed to be about freedom, about choice, about autonomy. And there is no doubt whatsoever that the ability to choose when and how you become a mother is an essential component of freedom. But there's no reason to believe that abortion rights alone would provide women with true autonomy of choice when it comes to motherhood. After all, we know that 75% of women seeking abortions are low income, and we know that financial hardship is the number one reason that women seek abortions. Many women in this situation aren't so much exercising their right

to choose as they are responding in desperation to the way that their lives have already been constrained by a rigged and exploitative economic system. For many, it's not that they don't want to be a parent. It's that given the way their financial precarity and total lack of support has constrained their lives, they can't fathom how they would pull it off. And it makes sense, actually, that most of these women seeking abortions are already mothers because mothers would know the full cost of raising a child. Mothers would also have to weigh not just what bringing that child into the world means for them, but how it will constrain the life choices for the children that they're already raising. Elites built an economic system with wages that are completely stagnant, where middle-class jobs were shipped overseas, where the costs and burdens of parenting are placed almost exclusively on the

individual. Rather than stand up to the oligarchs who profit off of this system, rather than secure actually meaningful freedom and meaningful choice for women that would allow them to affirmatively select motherhood, it's kind of easier just to give them this out, to keep motherhood as a luxury good for the well-off and give the poor the right to abortion. The only thing worse than this

would be to keep the rigged economic system and add on top of that, forced birth and forced motherhood as well. Which brings me to the conservative obfuscation on abortion. And here it's important to understand that this momentous religious right victory was secured through the power of an unholy alliance with big business. Christian conservatives allied with elite libertarians to vet and promote judges to the federal bench and ultimately to the Supreme Court. While SCOTUS confirmation hearings were being fought on the grounds of gay marriage and abortion oftentimes, the Federalist Society was also guaranteeing that their judges would reliably expand corporate power. Such was the bargain made with Republican politicians as well. Mitch McConnell is perhaps the most sold-out corporate politician who has ever lived,

but Family Values conservatives have re-elected him and kept him in control of the caucus because he was a reliable partner on ending Roe. All this means that just as the liberal definition of freedom is extremely circumscribed, the conservative definition of family values is equally hollow. Forcing motherhood and family on women who don't have the resources or support to really fulfill the role, that is a bastardized form of family values indeed. But a holistic approach to family values, one with wages high enough that buried women who want to be homemakers can do so, well, the oligarchs that the religious right have partnered with have taken that off the table. The communities that support families and help ease the burdens of caregiving, those have been decimated by those same forces. The right is not wrong to feel that the family unit is under assault, but it has nothing to do with gay people

and abortion, and everything to do with corporate trade deals and union busting. As for the rhetoric about being pro-life, I actually find it kind of dishonest. After all, some of the fiercest opponents to COVID lockdown measures were religious adherents, Orthodox Jews in New York, Evangelical Christians in the South. They argued, in in essence that life is a whole lot more than a beating heart. The quality of that life, the ability to live it in accordance with values, traditions, and customs that were central to making that life meaningful, those are also a vital part of being pro-life. Needless to say, forced childbearing is unlikely to result in that kind of life quality either for the mother or for the child. Both the conservative and liberal abortion politics really only work for wealthy women.

If you're well off, then your freedom is more or less intact, and restrictive abortion laws might be one of the only real or hypothetical constraints on your freedom. If you're well off and value the traditional conservative version of family, then you've already chosen motherhood, and it's no threat to you in your life to restrict the choices of other women. And also, you might notice that some of the policy choices which would actually provide meaningful freedom and meaningful choice in the liberal conception and meaningful life and family values in the conservative conception, they're actually the same. Abortion, on the other hand, splits the country almost completely down the middle, 50-50. That makes abortion a perfect culture war issue. While we fight proxy wars over freedom choice and family values that won't actually secure freedom choice or family values, oligarchs keep control over the material politics that could actually achieve our goals.

Issues where there's broad agreement, places like healthcare, affordable housing, and family sustaining wages, those are kept off the table. Now, none of this is to downplay the impact that the end of Roe will have on plenty of women. There is simply no doubt that some women will die as a result, that poor and working class women will lose yet another measure of autonomy. But if you want to understand why these debates are so fierce, why they are made so central to public discourse, it's because narrow issues like abortion are the only thing left after the oligarchs have eaten all the rest of the debates it's a chew toy for us to kick around feel like we have a democracy

and that we're fighting for fundamental critical essential values like freedom like family like choice when the real rules of the game have already been set and so i sort of felt like i needed to lay out why abortion politics and if you want to hear my reaction to Crystal's monologue, become a premium subscriber today at BreakingPoints.com. All right, guys, the NLRB has been making some big moves with regards to Starbucks and their union busting. Let's go ahead and throw the more perfect union tear sheet up on the screen here. The NLRB has filed a national lawsuit against Starbucks over

anti-worker rules. They are saying here that federal officials charge the company is systematically violating labor rights with its employee rule book. Joining us now for an update, we have two Starbucks workers who have been at the forefront of the organizing drive there in Buffalo. We have Gianna Reeves. She is born and raised in Buffalo, works as a shift supervisor at Starbucks, and has been part of the organizing efforts in Buffalo and across the country now since August of last year. We also have RJ Red. RJ's an organizer at Starbucks in Buffalo. They've been with the company since last August, been part of the bargaining committee for their store and contract negotiations, and also helped to draft the joint May Day call to action

released with Amazon Labor Union, calling for nationwide demonstrations against union busting. RJ and Gianna, great to have you both, you guys. Good to see you. Thank you. It's great to be on. Yeah, our pleasure. Gianna, let's start with you. Just give us an update on how the organizing effort is going across the country. How many stores are we talking about that have voted yes for the union? How many workers are we talking about? What elections are coming up? Just give us a kind of lay of the land. Yeah, I mean, there's honestly, it's so much going on now when you look at everything on a national scale that it's almost overwhelming, but in a really hopeful way. I believe the last time I checked when we were going by multiples of 10, it was around 50 to 60 Starbucks locations

have unionized now and voted yes across the country. And I believe today I know of Illinois is planning on voting today and another location. It's honestly sometimes hard to keep up with everything because the momentum just keeps going and going and going. It's fantastic to see. And so, RJ, tell us a little bit about your reaction here to Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz announcing wage increases for non-unionized workers. Like in what context of union busting and warfare is the company waging against you? Yeah, so I don't see the increases as anything other than a union busting tactic. And I know a lot of other people see it the same way. You know, the company has been slammed for extending these benefits to only the stores that are not

unionizing and not to the stores that are unionizing. The argument that they're using is that, well, now that you guys want a union, we can't change your terms of employment or change your benefits or anything because we're forced to bargain about it. So, you know, but that kind of makes it sound like, well, we offer it to you, but the union would turn it down. So, um, you know, but that, that kind of makes it sound like, well, that we offer it to you, but the union would turn it down. So we can't give it to you, but the offer hasn't even been put on the table for us. You know, we're, we're in our, uh, bargaining session right now at my store. And, you know, I would like to have the same offers that the other stores are getting. If it's things that benefit us, um,, obviously, we would still have them.

Can you actually talk a little bit about what that negotiation looks like and how it's going? Because this is something that's really important that we've tried to highlight for our audience, both with you all and also with Amazon, is that even after you win the union, the fight is not over. Because then you have to fight and bargain for a contract. Oftentimes, companies drag their feet. They're supposed to negotiate in good faith, but they find all kinds of ways to basically get around that such that a year after organizing units vote to go union, a majority still do

not have a contract in place. Two years down the road, 37 percent still do not have a contract in place. Two years down the road, 37 percent still do not have a contract in place. So how are those negotiations going at your store? Yeah, there's a lot of feet dragging going on. That's kind of the name of the game, it seems like, is to just waste as much time as possible from the companies, and is what it seems like to me. So a lot of getting on know, a lot of like getting on meetings late, leaving meetings early, taking as much time as possible in caucuses and, you know, not giving us stuff to discuss when we, you know,

stuff that would save time. The new thing is trying to basically make it so that we have to meet in person rather than on Zoom. The company says that it would be more productive. I don't really see how that's the case. You know, we're on a Zoom call right now and we're able to do this interview from across the country or wherever we are. So it's a lot easier than having to fly out there. But it's because we have chosen to have people on our organizing committee who are not in Buffalo,

such as some of the fired Memphis Seven workers who are staying in solidarity with us and we stand in solidarity with them. So I view it as just a way to drag the process out, make it take longer and make it a lot harder for workers outside of Buffalo to actually be on our committee and as a way to silence the workers that they tried to fire for organizing. Gianna, talk to us about what the NLRB's actions have

meant, because there were two big things that I followed, at least last week. You had the national lawsuit that I referenced, which went after said effectively just what's laid out in their employee handbook is illegal. And then you also had the regional director of the NLRB in Buffalo, where both of you are located, issuing a complaint Friday accusing Starbucks of 29 unfair labor practice charges, including over 200 violations of the NLRA. That, they say, stems from claims made by Starbucks Workers United against the company in Buffalo, where the union organizing effort began in August. So what do you make of those moves by the NLRB? I think that it's a great start, honestly, to everything that's been going on. Buffalo workers,

especially, have just been kind of holding their breath hoping that the NLRB would push for something like this and then to have it also go national as well is fantastic but these kinds of charges and these kinds of actions need public action behind them as well we need to see more elected officials also speaking out about this and saying, wow, look at this NLRB region go. We need to do this everywhere. We need our workers' rights protected. And I think it's a synergistic kind of thing. Both need to go together hand in hand to really provide workers' protection and to make worker change possible. And Gianna, when this first started in Buffalo, could you have ever imagined the way that it would spread like wildfire nationwide? And what do you think it says about like what have the keys, what made that happen?

And what does it say about sort of the state of labor movement and how workers are feeling about their jobs at Starbucks? Oh, my God, I could not. You could not pay me enough money to believe that this would have blown up the way it did i had no experience with organizing before this um i was just a 20 something wanting better for my workplace hoping to make a difference and then to see everyone across the country all of these baristas and then to see and look even further to Amazon, to Apple, and they're going, hey, we want better too. We deserve better. And everyone standing together as a collective to fight for that is really, it's what's pushing us forward. We all have each other, and that's a power that cannot be understated because

no matter what corporation, what company you are, you can't take that away from us. Well, it has been very exciting to watch. Please keep us updated with everything that is going on. And great to talk to both of you guys today. Great talking to you. We support you guys 100 percent. Thank you. Thank you guys so much for watching.

We really appreciate it. You know, look, it's really interesting, Crystal, coming up on that one-year anniversary. I know the economy and all the downturn and all that, and it can feel really tumultuous. But we just want you to know how much we appreciate you having our back. I mean, the amount of innovation and stuff that we've been able to do here as a show, the amount of new partnerships that we have coming. We've got some more content coming. Actually, I think this weekend we'll set a single new record for non-Crystal and Saga

partnership content, which is great because that's what building out something really means. We have, you know, Jordan Cheridan, we had him on the ground. It was invaluable in order to have that experience. I just want to emphasize, you know, we really do need your support in order to pay our bills. We have expanded editing and production costs and obviously all of these partnerships as well. And, you know, it's pretty expensive. So if you support us, we could support them. We could continue to build out this ecosystem and we've got expansion plans, which you're going to be hearing about very time soon. And I just got a very exciting piece of news this morning, which I know our premium subs are going to love in particular. So make sure you go ahead and sign up and we will see you all on Thursday. Even I don't

know what that is. I forgot to tell you about it. All right. I'll tell you now. I'm going to pay attention to the newsletter as well. All right. Love you guys. Have a great day. We'll see you here Thursday. I think everything that might have dropped in 95 has been labeled the golden years of hip-hop. It's Black Music Month, and we need to talk. It's Tapping In. I'm Nyla Simone, breaking down lyrics, amplifying voices, and digging into the culture that shaped the soundtrack of our lives.

Like, that's what's really important, and that's what stands out, is that our music changes people's lives for the better. Let's talk about the music that moves us. To hear this and more on how music and culture collide,

listen to We Need to Talk from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English.

I'm Greg Lott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports.

This kind of starts that a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The OGs of uncensored motherhood are back and badder than ever. I'm Erica. And I'm Mila. And we're the hosts of the Good Moms Bad Choices podcast, brought to you by the Black Effect Podcast Network every Wednesday. Yeah, we're moms. But not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much.

And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then but not your mommy. Historically, men talk too much. And women have quietly listened. And all that stops here. If you like witty women, then this is your tribe. Listen to the Good Moms, Bad Choices podcast every Wednesday on the Black Effect Podcast Network, the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you go to find your podcasts. This is an iHeart Podcast.