Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - CounterPoints #2: Putin Escalation, Big Tech Fight, Israel-Palestine, Surveillance Capitalism, Railway Workers, & More!

Episode Date: September 23, 2022

Ryan Grim and Emily Jashinsky discuss Putin's military mobilization, a ruling against big tech, Shireen Abu Akleh, Dem fight on Israel, surveillance capitalism, FTC hearing, & railway 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/Chicago Tickets: https://www.axs.com/events/449151/breaking-points-live-tickets Ryan Grim: https://badnews.substack.com/ Emily Jashinsky: https://thefederalist.com/author/emilyjashinsky/ Max Alvarez: https://therealnews.com/author/maximillian-alvarez https://www.orbooks.com/catalog/the-work-of-living/  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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in American history. So what are you waiting for? Go to BreakingPoints.com to help us out. Welcome back to CounterPoints. We're excited to be back for this Friday morning. Ryan, how was your week? Week was good. Glad to be back. Looking forward to another show. Well, you wanted to talk about something that we didn't have in our rundown, because we have a great rundown. We're going to start with talking about developments in the invasion of Ukraine. We're then going to talk about an FTC hearing, or actually a grilling of Jonathan Cantor and Lena Kahn from the FTC by Congress that a lot of people missed. That flew under a lot of people's radars. Ryan, you're talking about all kinds of stuff, but particularly you have a lot of evidence in the monologue that you're laying out as it pertains to... Yes, there's been another really close look at the killing of Shereen Abu Akleh, and we'll also talk about the fight that erupted this week among Democrats

over, again, over anti-Semitism. That's right. Accusations flying back and forth. And then we'll talk a little bit about Walmart. They want people to get naked? Walmart wants people to pose in tight-fitting clothing, that's a quote, in order to try on clothes virtually. So I'll talk a little bit about that. And we're going to talk about... An update in the posting wars.

That's right. The Texas trolling law around big tech that basically said you can't censor people was upheld by the Fifth Circuit. So we're probably headed to the Supreme Court. It's a really— The meme wars are really headed all the way to the top. I mean, it's more than meme wars. We're talking about getting into nationalization territory, which, I mean, it's a big deal. So we'll talk about that case. And then we're really excited to have Max Alvarez here. Couldn't fit him in last week. So Max is back. He's giving us an update. In the ongoing negotiations, the media sort of moved on and acted as though they're totally over.

The negotiations with the railway workers are completely over, but Max knows better than that and will give us some insights on everything as it pertains to those negotiations. So, Ryan, you wanted to start actually, though, by talking about a bill that was passed in the House last night. A lot of people weren't paying attention to it. It created an interesting rift among Democrats that a lot of people missed. Tell us what happened. Yeah, major drama yesterday all throughout the day in the House of Representatives. And we'll see whether this moves from symbolic to real, because the Senate is trying to do a police funding and police reform bill. It's not impossible that this could happen, because a ton of House Republicans

ended up voting for this. So this could become real. For now, the bills that were passed by the House are going to be seriously modified before they come law. But all sorts of drama. And so in order to get these bills to the floor, you have to pass what's known as a rule. And so the parliamentary procedure is, this is the rule under which we're going to debate this. And you have to get a majority vote in order to move that forward. Republicans generally, the minority doesn't help the majority pass the rule, which means that Democrats have to be united in order to get it through. The squad does not like this funding bill. Because we went from passing the George Floyd Policing Act in 2020, but not through the Senate, to now passing more funding for police. And so to them,

this is a real betrayal of the movement that burst onto the scene in 2020. And by the way, for the sake of politics, they're doing this in an election year with, in the fall of an election year. To show that we're not defunding the police, we're funding the police, just like Biden said. Because they're getting hammered in ads on policing and crime. The squad is not here for that. And so they vote no on the rule. And without the margins they need, it's about to go down.

And so here Pelosi the hammer comes out. The speaker doesn't usually vote. Nancy the hammer Pelosi. She starts twisting arms. And she does two things to get the bill through that are pretty extraordinary. One, she gets Ayanna Pressley to switch her vote from no to present. And so now Republicans are within one vote of being able to take it down. And there's one Republican who hasn't voted yet. She's on her way to the floor.

The custom is you're on your way to the floor, you let the person vote. That's the camaraderie that has developed over 200 plus years in the House of Representatives. That Republican who McCarthy's waiting for, Liz Cheney. She's late getting to the floor. She had too much snooping on the American people to do. And Pelosi says, you know what? Boom, and she gavels it. And so it passes 216 to 215

with one person voting present and one person not voting. Amazing. So that's like some $60 million worth of funding to local police departments. Billions, really. It would be each police department under 125 officers gets $60,000 to go toward training or it can go toward body cams. And so since a lot of them are already doing training in body cams, the opposition is saying, well, now they're just going to use this money to fund

the things that they were already funding. It's fungible. And you're going to use the money to go buy a tank or whatever. Right, right. Because the tanks are cool. Right. Well, and this is obviously a huge midterm theme. It's a recurring theme for Democrats. The president's State of the Union address this year, he said, we are going to fund the police. And they're getting clobbered on crime in a lot of different places. Crime has not just gone up. Certain crimes have not just gone up in certain cities. It's also rural areas. The Wall Street Journal did a good report on that particular rural areas. Speaking of tanks, though, Ryan, actually, our first topic

of the show today is what's happening in Ukraine, what's happening in eastern Ukraine. Vladimir Putin ordered a mobilization of reservists. He gave about a 15-minute national address this week where he said he's not bluffing. He said he is not bluffing. That's how you know when somebody's not bluffing, if they say that they're not bluffing. I mean, but that's the problem. Literally nobody knows. Nobody knows whether or not he's bluffing, and we can all game it out from the sidelines and say X, Y, and Z. Nobody knows whether or not he's bluffing. And we can all game it out from the sidelines and say X, Y, and Z. He has this reason not to do it and this reason to do it. But nobody at the end of the day knows except for Vladimir Putin. This comes on the heels of

some victories for Ukraine, which is being heavily supported by the United States in eastern Ukraine. What did you make of the developments this week? Putin has been resisting this mobilization, this huge draft the entire time because it takes the war from the kind of spectacle that it is for the Russian people into something real. It would be as if the support that you had for the Iraq war in 2003 to 2004, and then all of a sudden you say, you know what, actually not going so well, we're going to start drafting everybody under 55 to go over to Iraq. How do you feel like at that point support for the Iraq War would go? And that has been the big fear, why he didn't want to go. Egor Kotkin, who you remember from, we used to have on at Rising. He lives in Moscow, a fun commentator. I would suggest people

follow him on Twitter. He tweets in both Russian and English. And so you can kind of keep up with where the politics are. And what he's really been flagging is that, and he flagged this immediately, if you compare the speech that Putin and Shoygan gave about this mobilization to the actual mobilization itself, the speech was just shot through with lies. The speech said, we're going to call up 300,000 people. We're only going to call up people who have military training and who have recent combat experience. So don't worry. We're not calling up guys who are over 50 years old who've never served in the military. And the American news media too, global news media, called it,

as he did, a partial mobilization. Edgar was like, there's nothing partial in this document. There are absolutely no limitations. And now the reporting that's coming out of Russia is that it appears like there is nothing partial about it, that they're sweeping up extraordinary numbers of people. And there was one estimate that appeared in a European paper citing Kremlin sources saying that they're actually looking for a million draftees. Well, and this caused, I think, a lot of what we saw, I'm assuming, this week. I think we have some elements of that. Yeah, the New York Times and Others gleefully reporting this. Right. So some men flee Russia fearing they could be called up to fight. That's from the New York Times.

There's also an article in The Guardian that had some interesting details as well. We can get that up. It's a 100% mobilization. That's the quote from the headline of The Guardian article. Day one of Russia's drive to build up its army. What stood out to you, Ryan, from these reports of the,ening article, day one of Russia's drive to build up its army. What stood out to you, Ryan, from these reports of how Russian people are reacting? Right. I mean, you saw flights to Istanbul immediately sell out. You're seeing people head overseas before travel is cut down,

before travel is stopped for military-age men. You saw a lot of reports of men as old as like 52, 53 years old getting these draft papers. And, you know, we do 10 weeks of basic training, and that's the start here in the United States. For counterpoints, we do. Right, 10 weeks of basic training. And that's the start here in the United States. For counterpoints. We did. Right. Ten weeks of basic training.

And for counterpoints. Sager and Crystal put us through ten weeks of basic training. Did the ropes course. No weed. Yeah. Yeah. It was rough. But that's why we have the Christmas that we have here. We're methodical and we're ready.

You're right. In Russia, it's a couple days. Like the reports on what the training is, it's like, here's how you clean a weapon. Here's how you load it. Here's how you pull the trigger. Go. And just throwing bodies. I don't know how that works in modern warfare.

Like just throwing bodies at Ukraine. I just don't. And I think what you're seeing is a lot of people in Russia are like, no, thank you. Because like, you could be a 52-year-old man just sitting at home on Tuesday, and by like Saturday, you're in the trenches. Right. Like fighting Ukrainians. Right. Who you never wanted to fight in the first place. And so, Egor thinks that the best possible scenario here is that what this represents is Putin's effort to throw a ton of force into stopping the Ukrainian advance so that he's in a better negotiating position. So then he can kind of crank things up on Europe in the winter and then negotiate an end to the war. Like, that's Egor's best-case scenario, that this is not his effort to create some massive army that's going to steamroll its way through Ukraine and Europe,

but this is actually his move to try to get a little bit of advantage right before going to the negotiating table. And he's trying to lock down these— he's trying to annex these provinces that they're currently occupying. But that's what it all comes down to, is what would a negotiation of an end of the war actually look like? Because for a lot of people in America and, you know, the Ann Apple bombs of the world, it seems like nothing short of regime change is an acceptable end to the war. And in America, again, there's a lot of cheerleading for what seems like a weakened Putin.

It does seem to be that. That does seem to be the case, absolutely. But you also have to be completely clear-eyed about the reality that a weakened Putin can be a more dangerous Putin. And the cheerleading, I think, is at times a little bit distasteful because you're cheerleading, painting Vladimir Putin, somebody who has, and we've heard this again, strategic, the deployment. I think it was Medvedev who said that this week, the deployment of strategic or targeted nuclear weapons. Right. That is a, that level of escalation and when you start approaching nuclear tit for tat and there are serious conversations about that happening, whether or not we know what will transpire, which we don't is the bottom line. Again, I find some of the satisfaction distasteful because painting Vladimir Putin into a corner is never a good place to be, period.

Right. Right. And so it raises the question of what risks are the world willing to take here? Because you said there is a potential of actual nuclear strikes, the potential of nuclear meltdowns at power plants. Yes. There are two power plants, actually, that are in kind of areas which are experiencing shelling. There is the political collapse of Europe to consider, which we're already starting to see. There's all the suffering that that entails. Then there's the suffering of the tens of millions of Ukrainians. There was some really good reporting, I think it was in the New York Times, about how so many people don't have windows and can't get glass. Because even if you haven't had your actual apartment unit shelled, there's a good chance that it blew the windows out.

It's now you're heading into the winter with no windows. This is terrifying stuff. We've got to put a stop to this. And so if it winds up with Russia having legal control of some areas that it already had de facto control of, okay. And I also think that Putin, because people will say, okay, well, you have to pay a price for this type of aggression. I wouldn't think I'd—who is it, Modi? I wouldn't think I'd be agreeing with Modi. But Modi says publicly to Putin, this is not an era of war.

So there have to be consequences for war. Mr. Putin, have you not heard about the end of history? I've told you on the phone. I love that you said that. Read your Fukuyama. Read your Fukuyama. Read your Fukuyama. It's over. We're not doing wars anymore.

We're not invading each other. Azerbaijan, by the way. That's right. Right. And so there have to be some consequences. But I feel like he has felt those consequences. I think other countries who are looking at this and thinking, like, maybe I should invade another country would say, no, maybe this is not such a good idea. Now, the Azerbaijan example doesn't really make my case.

No. So, you know, you're always going to have people. Azerbaijan is always going to be firing missiles and messing around with Armenia. Like that situation is its own thing. What if they each had a McDonald's? If they both had a McDonald's, then it wouldn't happen. So, yeah, I think if Putin is seriously making one last push before getting to the table, I think we've got to get to the table and end this war. And this idea that Ukraine has that

they're not going to stop until they take back Crimea or they take back everything that Russia was kind of illegally holding. Like, come on. We're going to put the world at risk for that? Yeah, I mean, exactly. There has to be more serious consensus about what an end to the war would be among Americans funding it to the tune of, I mean, just an incredible, incredible amount of money. And I don't think that exists. And when John McCain wanted to go to war over Crimea, everybody recognized that as crazy. And so I think, yes.

And yet, I mean, yeah, it's just there's never been, it's just this sort of piecemeal, what constitutes escalation, what constitutes aggression, and you can go back and forth. Well, the United States did this, NATO did that, well, Russia did this, and Russia did that. And there's just, Ukraine is being used as its pawn, and people are suffering and dying, and the people who are funding the war don't have a clear consensus on what a victory actually looks like other than regime change, which is clearly unacceptable to Putin. Right. So I think if Russia can be pummeled back to the table by this Ukrainian advance and you can get an actual truce, negotiate peace here, it's time to do it.

Well, let's move on to the FTC. Let's move on. Or I'm sorry, let's move on to the Fifth Circuit. We're doing two tech segments, one about the FTC and but one now we're going to talk about a major decision out of the Fifth Circuit this week. Fascinating, actually. The NetChoice v. Paxton case has been a really interesting one to watch. puts wind into the sails of the conservative challengers. And it's very odd to see conservatives making the case that they are about Twitter and about social media companies in general. What did you make of what happened with the Fifth Circuit this week? Our friend Rachel Bovard was really happy about it. Maybe we can put her tweet up on the screen. Rachel said that it had, she had a, yeah, here she goes.

The Fifth Circuit just kicked big tech right where it hurts because NetChoice is a trade association of tech companies. And so basically responding to conservative outrage that they're being censored on Facebook and on Twitter, Texas passed a law basically saying that big tech can't censor people, right? And that if you censor somebody unfairly, I think they allow some exceptions, like, right? Death threats, like, very, very narrow exceptions. And this is companies that have over, what, 50 million users? Active, yeah, active users. So it's the biggest of the biggest tech platforms. They're saying that you're not a publisher, you're a platform, and therefore you have to allow people to speak. now has upheld it and said that they don't have a right to censor on their platforms, which cuts fully against Section 230 and the law as we understand it now, which gives

tech platforms carte blanche. It says, it's your platform. You can do whatever you want with it. You can scrub whoever you want for whatever reason. You're not a publisher. It's not as though- And you can't be sued for the things that people say on your platform. Right. Ryan Grimm is not an author on the Twitter newspaper, right? So Ryan Grimm can flame Sagar and Jetty and it's not their fault. And that's what Section 230 essentially says. And I do, like conservatives to me, to a frustrating degree, obsess over censorship when the problems with tech are so much more vast and serious than just the economic status. It's about the status as corporations that we give. I mean, the special privileges that the government gives to these corporations to be run differently than other things. And partially, one of the dissenting opinions from the Fifth Circuit was

saying, listen, none of the precedent applies seamlessly. So your common carrier precedent doesn't apply seamlessly to big tech companies. And that's true. That doesn't mean it can't, though. Right. This is tricky stuff because all platforms need some form of moderation. If you've ever been on a forum that is completely unmoderated, it will just devolve into basically just like porn and fighting and bots. Right. Right? And that's kind of where the internet gravitates towards. You just described America in the 21st century.

Porn and fighting and bots. And then nobody wants to be on that platform. And so if you want a platform where you can have discussions, and actually Twitter, total sideshow, Twitter does allow porn. But they're, like, extremely good at, like, just keeping it out of people's faces. Unless people want it in their faces. But you're not. Anyway. So then the question is, like, how do you allow a platform to moderate the conversation in a way that enables a conversation to take place

without putting their political thumb on the scale in a way that's going to tick enough people off. Because the other thing I mentioned there is bots. So now if this rule went into place and there was a $100,000 fine for every account that you censored unfairly, their attempts to root out bot farms and bots are always going to catch some people. Because sometimes you'll dig deep into an account and you'll be like, I promise you this account is a bot. And you get to the bottom of it, it's like a person. Yeah, it's real. Which is almost scarier. I mean, it's life imitating, yeah, life imitating AI. And so if that person got swept up in kind of a bot sweep, then they could sue for $100,000.

And so then the companies then really pull back on their bot sweeps. So like, we don't want to catch it. We don't want to access. We got to be, we got to very narrowly go after this. And then all the bot farms just grow like weeds. And so I think you do have to be careful about what you wind up with. So I'm like, there's a Vox article that I read on this, and I have it pulled up right now where they call this an astonishing opinion.

And I think, you know, it is astonishing to the extent that it takes a really big legal step forward. It makes these like very robust legal arguments in the direction of more regulation for Twitter and Facebook. And it really has rolled the ball down that hill. But it's interesting to me that the Vox article is lamenting this. It's just odd to see this from the left, right? Because they end their article saying, the law is technically, in effect, endangering the entire world's ability to openly debate ideas online. The tech companies are endangering the entire world's ability to openly debate ideas online. And for the sort of center-left in the

form of Vox to lament what I don't think is a perfect framework. And I don't think anybody would argue this is the perfect solution to the problem so much as like conservatives are challenging, are mounting these legal challenges in order to test what the law, how the law should apply to these companies. But to just sort of say that the decision itself is what's endangering the entire world's ability to openly debate ideas online, I think is absurd because there was a period of time on the internet, pre-2016, when whatever you think of characters X, Y, and Z, of Alex Jones, of whomever, the internet, I would argue, was clearly a much better place for the open exchange of ideas than it is now. It was after the crackdown that things started to

get worse and worse and worse. And there is a solution to this. And it's more speech and not hyperventilating and acting like an individual tweet is violence or that people are too stupid to say, oh, this conspiracy guy in a tinfoil, literal in a tinfoil hat is probably someone I should double check. I think it has less to do with the censorship crackdown and more to do with the way that powerful algorithms fueled social media in a way that didn't exist in, say, like 2010, 2011. And so back then, you had Stormfront, you had Alex Jones, you had all of these, like, you had white supremacist forums. But in, you know, 100 years ago, you had white supremacist newspapers that would circulate around.

But the white supremacist newspapers and the white supremacist forums didn't have the algorithmic capacity to get in the faces of tens of millions of people in a matter of hours or days. And that's what social media did. Is it kind of, in a good way, broke down the gates and broke down the barriers, but that allowed everything else to flow through too. And so now all of a sudden you start seeing, and it's easier also to get traction on the algorithm with something that's not true. And it's also easier to get traction with something that's hateful because the algorithm wants engagement. People see something hateful, they engage with it. Boo this or yay this. And so the algorithm favors things that are false and favors things that are toxic.

But that's why I think the, well, Elon Musk has proposed this with Twitter, but I think being able to look at the algorithm and look what it's doing is important. But the problem at the end of the day is about algorithms that prize addiction, division, and hate. But we already know, like we already have this, the old school, like ACLU sentiment, old school ACLU sentiment that everybody was always familiar with. More speech is always better than less. I mean, the South tried to censor anti-slavery pamphlets through the postal system during the Civil War. And so, yes, there were absolutely white supremacy pamphlets that were being passed through the Postal Service, but it was also a method that abolitionists used to reach people. And that sort of tension,

I mean, there's always going to be people who have bad ideas. And if we have platforms that are basically monopolies, there can be no other version of Facebook because then there's no point to Facebook because the whole point is your network is in one place. Same thing with Twitter. Then we should probably have them operate like we've traditionally had the American public square operate. But at the end of the day, that's why this is always just like tinkering around the edges because we cannot operate our public square anymore because we don't, for a million different reasons that we can get into at a different time. But that's what's at the bottom. And we can talk about that more actually later in the show when we talk about the hearing with Lena Kahn and the FTC and Josh Hawley and the big tech. For now, let's move to a couple of different issues related to

Israel-Palestine. The first one is this one here. So over the last several months, there have been a number of impressive examinations of the forensic video, audio, and eyewitness testimony related to the killing of Palestinian American journalist Shireen Abu Akleh. But the most thorough to date was released this week and got almost no attention here in the U.S. Now, that's probably because it wasn't done by a U.S. media outlet, but instead through a collaboration between the London-based forensic architecture and the Palestinian human rights organization Al-Haq. Now, the full video is worth a watch. You can find it easily by googling Shireen Abu Akleh and Al-Haq. That's H-A-Q. But what makes it so superior is their full access to the critical Al Jazeera coverage from the scene, combined with their

comprehensive reconstruction of the neighborhood using drone footage. They were also able to combine bystander footage with media footage like this. At 6.31, the video shows the journalists, including Shirin, slowly walking towards the IOF position following standard press protocols for self-identification. Less than a second later, the first round of shooting begins, with six single shots fired at them in rapid succession from the IOF position. Seconds later, the Al Jazeera camera starts rolling.

After the first round of shooting, this camera shows Ali running and shouting that he has been wounded. Now, Shireen wasn't hit by this first volley, but she'll be struck and killed by the next one. The question then is who did it? Al-Haq was able to reconstruct the Israeli convoy that was 200 meters away and found the lead truck turned sideways with a hole for a marksman to fire. Now, next, they identified the weapon and the scope that was being used. Now, the scope magnifies things by four times. And so they were able to reconstruct what the marksman would have seen through the scope. Here it is. And for those listening on the podcast who can't see this, the image

makes it clear the shooter was close enough with the scope to easily be able to identify the people as noncombatants and journalists. Now, we also know that the shots weren't fired randomly. They weren't warning shots that went tragically wrong. Several of them hit the tree, which shows how clear it is that they were shooting directly at them. And if you can't see this, they put little red dots on the tree to show right where they were.

All the shots, if you notice, were above the shoulder. The clear intent here was to shoot to kill. Now, the analysis also reconstructs what the shooter would have seen after the shooting. And this next part is perhaps even more disturbing than the last because it shows the incredible bravery of a citizen on the scene who exposes himself to the shooter in order to try to drag Shireen's body to safety and the shooter fires at him. Take a look. No shots are fired when he is out of the shooter's field of vision. As he approaches Shireen a second time, the shooter fires two more shots at him. The level of courage on display here is moving on such a deep level. He just witnessed the attack on Shireen, but is still

willing to put himself in the line of fire on the slim chance he can pull her to safety and save her life. Perhaps the shooter missed the man on purpose, but he fired multiple times. Shada's position behind the tree at this moment shields her from the shooter's view. Here, as a civilian approaches Shirin and enters the shooter's field of vision, the shooter immediately fires at him. What's even more impressive about this investigation by Al-Haq is the conditions under which they've been working. Repression of Palestinian civil society groups is a constant feature of the occupation, but on August 22nd of this year, Israeli occupation forces took it up a notch, drawing international outrage for raiding seven Palestinian human rights

organizations, including Al-Haq. And if you're watching on the podcast, what we're showing here is CCTV footage of kind of nine armored carriers coming up to the Al-Haq headquarters, kicking a door in, marching through, rifling through a bunch of different things. You can find that video on their website as well. Other human rights organizations have posted similar videos of raids on their offices. So previously, Israel had designated these organizations called terrorist groups in an effort to block the EU and US and other organizations here from working with them. So the EU demanded evidence to back up Israel's claim. And after reviewing what Israel sent, the EU rejected the designation, saying Israel hadn't even come close to showing that the organizations were linked to terrorism. In a related controversy that I want to get your take on, Representative Rashida

Tlaib kicked off a controversy this week within Democratic circles by saying that you cannot be somebody who holds progressive values and also support Israel's apartheid government. She said, didn't say Israel, said Israel's apartheid government. She said, didn't say Israel, said Israel's apartheid government. Very quickly, and let's put up Jerry Nadler here, very quickly, the ADL and a number of her colleagues in the House Democratic Caucus kind of twisted her words and came at her this way. So Representative Nadler is saying, I fundamentally reject the notion that one cannot support Israel's right to exist as a Jewish and democratic state and be a progressive. There's a ton to unpack in the gaps between these two comments. You wrote a whole story on it.

I did. We'll get to that one in a moment. I basically did a fact check of whether she had made this claim that Nadler and ADL and others are saying that she doesn't support Israel's right, quote, right to exist. She never said that. What she said is that you can't be a progressive and support Israel's apartheid government. And so here's the part that is deeply troubling to me about Nadler's response here. It feels like assuming Nadler heard or read her quote, what Nadler is saying here is that Israel's apartheid government, that phrase, is synonymous with Israel, which to is not an apartheid government. And that is the vision that lots of progressives hold, that that is the place that Israel needs to go to live up to its responsibilities to the globe and to human rights and to dignity and to the people that live within its borders, to say that the only potential Israeli government is an apartheid government, to me, is selling the country short.

Far be it from me to defend Jerry Nadler, although I do think he's making the comment in the context of Rashida Tlaib being somebody who supports the so-called one-state solution, which members of the Jewish community say is basically undermining the existence of Israel. There is no one-state solution, the argument goes, without undermining the existence of Israel. I also think it's in the context of, I mean, again, there is a lot of unfair hay made over comments that are not explicitly anti-Semitic, although I understand why people are sensitive, of course. So everything that people have said Rashida Tlaib is, you know, over the line or anti-Semitic for saying just, I could go through it and say that these are, you know, that's being overbroad. And there are, you know, fair arguments that should be in the realm of reasonable debate. I think she's had a hard time recovering from that retweet of from the river to the sea. And I do think when you're operating in that context, it's going to be very hard for members of the Jewish community to then take what you say at face value without also

knowing that all of this other stuff is going on. Yeah, I asked Richie Torres, who's one of the most kind of strident defenders of Israel in the Democratic Caucus yesterday about this, and he said that exact thing. He said, you have to take this in context. The only Democrat that I saw who stood up for Tlaib was actually Marie Newman, if we can put that up. She said, as a proud wife of a proud Jewish man, I'm deeply disappointed by those twisting Rashida Tlaib's words. At no point did she say Israel should not exist, nowhere. She and I support freedom and prosperity for the Palestinians and Israelis. That is progressive. She was actually taken out by AIPAC and DMFI in a Democratic primary this cycle. And so she's soon to be former Congresswoman Marie Neumann, but I didn't

see anybody else kind of come out. And what you saw was a lot of people sort of flock to the opposition. And I thought your story was really interesting and valuable. And I think we can put it up on the screen and folks should read it over on The Intercept, where you actually really parsed what she said and said, like, this is, you know, let's say we take all the context we just talked about away. This is the actual meaning of the point because to me that's valuable because it's sort of dispassionate in a sense that like let's actually listen to the words and understand what they're saying and then come back with more nuance instead of just saying X or Y or Z because then you get into a place where the overly broad stuff weaponizes, I think, you know, accusations of bigotry to suppress speech. So I thought your story was really interesting. I do think though Tlaib struggles when, you know, accusations of bigotry to suppress speech. So I thought your story was really interesting.

I do think, though, Tlaib struggles when, you know, there's no way around the context in her case. The point about the one state is interesting, gives equal rights to everybody who lives within that state, then Arabs will outnumber Jewish Israelis, and therefore it will no longer be a Jewish state. Right. Therefore, you're advocating for the end of Israel. So, first of all, why wouldn't you be able to embed into a constitution some Jewish characteristics into the state? Like, just whatever basic tenets of Judaism you want kind of embedded into the state,

do that, and then end the apartheid and give everybody equal rights? I don't know if anybody believes that's plausible without a lot of pain and violence. And that's not to say there isn't a lot of pain and violence going on right now, but I don't know that anybody believes that you could plausibly accomplish that without. But like, what, what, what, what's so important? Like, like what are the things that would no longer be like, would no longer make Israel, Israel, if you allowed Palestinians to vote, all Palestinians to vote in elections? I mean, I feel like I shouldn't take up the argument on behalf of, because I mean, I shouldn't argue on behalf of members of the Jewish community to whom Israel is a safe haven and an essential place. Write that into the Constitution.

Write it right in there. But again, that's where, like, how is that plausible? How would you, in a one-state solution, how could you plausibly write that into the Constitution if you have these Palestinian voting blocs, for instance, that could outnumber Jewish voters? We have voting blocs in this country that, majorities of which support all sorts of policies that don't get enacted because we say it's not in the Constitution. Right, but we're not a small state that was meant to protect a historically incredibly discriminated against minority. So I understand why.

On the other side, I'm not the best person to make this argument. Yeah, because the other problem, and I talked with Torres about this as well, the appropriate and acceptable kind of, and I'm putting that in air quotes, solution here in the United States is you have to be for the two-state solution. Yes. Yes. The politically correct. Right. That's the politically correct one.

And AIPAC and others insist on that. At the same time, Israel is doing everything it can every single day to make that on the ground an utter impossibility. Because of the settlement activity, because of the expansion of settlement activity, you've so kind of annihilated any possibly contiguous second state in those borders that you've made that impossible. And you're saying that the only other possibility is anti-Semitic and is the end of Israel. Well, that's the problem. Yeah. I mean, the problem is where the, I think that the overly broad definition of what constitutes bigotry, even when it's coming from entirely, that's not to say this is describing everybody who supports a so-called one-state solution, but even when it's coming from people who are entirely just trying to operate within the boundaries of reasonable debate and solve a deep problem, it makes it harder to do that.

But at the same time, people are rightfully very, very sensitive, especially in Israel, about the threats of anti-Semitism. And so it's just weird. There's no way. That's why this is such an impasse, and it's been an impasse for decades, of course. So maybe what we should do is host two people to have this conversation. I invited Representative Tlaib. We should get her on as soon as we can. Yeah. And anybody else who wants to come on.

Yeah. Yeah. Let's do that. I think that's a great idea. So something to look forward to. Because, yeah, I think the more that you can have these conversations in good faith, which is difficult to do when you've treaded in from the river to the sea territory, honestly, although she did delete that retweet. But the more that you can have the conversation in good faith,

the better off we are. And what about you? What's on your monologue or whatever we say? Oh boy, this is really something. And I have my backup glasses on because I left my real glasses here this week. So bear with me if you're watching. But starting going to have my backup glasses on because I left my real glasses here this week. So bear with me if you're watching. But starting this week, you can try on Walmart clothes virtually, all for the small cost of a near-naked picture of yourself. What a deal. You might assume Walmart rolled out its new try-on feature with the utmost regard for consumer privacy concerns.

Given increasing awareness of such issues, I figured at least they'd have some sort of visible statement about privacy when users interact with the feature. But on the contrary, there's basically no information about privacy at all when you go to use the feature. I did a quick test yesterday, and the Walmart app pretty much just said to put on tight-fitting shorts and tops and shoes, and recommended heels, find a bright space, and take a picture. There's a little question mark in the upper right-hand corner of the screen, but when you click on it, there's also no information about privacy. So I reached out yesterday, and a Walmart spokesperson got back to me

and pointed to the company's very, very broad general privacy policy and then added, quote, the app does not cache slash store any images or metadata. So that would be your app on your phone. And that could mean a lot of things. Like I said, I went and read their privacy policy. It's extremely broad. But let's just, for the sake of argument, put the best possible spin on Walmart's claim and say your pictures just go nowhere. The point remains, this is not only about Walmart, but about a huge new swath of the economy where business models rely on collecting and selling our information. Whether or not Walmart ultimately provides more information,

consider how insane it is for a massive corporation to roll out this feature without bothering to explain how people's privacy will be protected. I had to ask as a journalist for that information. We've given our data up willingly for so long, big business feels entitled to it. But who cares? It's just a picture, not unlike what women take in swimming suits and post to Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok already. We're all smart enough at this point to know there are risks involved. So if people are willing to trade the picture for a better shopping experience, what's the big deal? Well, the problem is that's not always the tradeoff. Our data has implications far beyond what we think it's used for in any one exchange of personal information for convenience.

I can sit here and predict different ways Walmart might use and abuse that data, but to some extent, we can't even know how our pictures might be repurposed for profit years into the future on this app or a similar one. Shopping online for clothing is super efficient. Personally, I love it. I hate shopping in general, but I especially hate trying on clothes in weird, uncomfortable dressing rooms and hate being hounded by people who need to hound me because they work on commission and have families to feed. I just don't think that's ideal. Now, when I use glasses, I use a virtual try-on feature because the experience is much easier. I can't imagine how much easier online shopping makes life for parents and people who work third shifts or multiple jobs. Nick Clegg, the president of global affairs at Meta, wrote a really interesting medium post this week on how a collective,

quote, misunderstanding of data is fracturing the internet. Data, wrote Clegg, has both a commercial and societal benefit, but it is not as simple as more data equals more value. Data is not as a non-rivalrous good, which is a technical way of saying it doesn't get used up when it's consumed. Burn oil and it's gone forever. Make use of our data point and it still exists to be used. Again, that's from an executive at Meta. Indeed, people's sexualities have been outed thanks to data they provided for very different purposes. Others have been falsely implicated in crimes. The FBI, ICE, and other law enforcement agencies can subpoena companies for your information. Your DNA may actually already be accessible if close family members have used 23andMe. Imagine if the picture you uploaded to Walmart's app, thinking it was just for an algorithm to help you figure out if a sweater would fit well, showed a tattoo that was later used as evidence against you for something you didn't do.

Or imagine if the database were hacked and private information from your body or from the room you took the picture in was exposed, like say prescriptions or other people's belongings or private documents. What if you're dealing with self-harm and you didn't expect anyone to see the picture? You thought it stayed on your phone. It recalls the lessons of FaceApp's meteoric rise

a couple years back when people raced to upload pictures of themselves to see how an algorithm would guess what they would look like in the future, then realized the app's terms hilariously gave its random Russian parent company, bear with me, quote, a perpetual, irrevocable, non-exclusive,

royalty-free, worldwide, fully paid, transferable, sub-licensable, licensed to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, publicly perform, and display your user content and any name, username, or likeness provided in connection with your user content in all media formats and channels now known or later developed without compensation to you. None of this even gets into the possibilities of hacking or abuse by people with authorized access to the data, which is an equally huge problem. In a press release about the feature, Walmart actually bragged about how it was

using software originally designed for land. Quote, our technology accomplishes this key differentiator with algorithms and intricate machine learning models, techniques originally utilized in developing highly accurate topographic maps to show how an item of clothing will look on someone the company boasted. So you're basically just a slab of concrete with a credit card. Obviously, we all need to be smarter consumers, but we've already forfeited so much data at this point that surveillance capitalism, as Shoshana Zuboff calls it, will always know a lot about us. Over at Meta, Nick Clegg is urging the government not to, quote, throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to big data. Clegg acknowledges this is

self-interested, but sincerely argues that internet guardrails will suffice in lieu of, quote, internet roadblocks. He suggests roadblocks would lead to an authoritarian internet. But the public-private collaboration of big business and big government is actually what has us on a very slippery slope right now towards an authoritarian internet. Asking either big business or big government to police itself is quite a request. The incentive would have to involve pleasing voters and consumers, assuming big business and big government don't suppress that information as Clegg's own company did when the intelligence community flagged the New York Post's Hunter Biden laptop story as disinformation. And think of Hunter Biden himself.

If his data had been stored on the cloud, his laptop need laptop needn't ever have been the issue. All of those emails and pictures and receipts and texts and calls and videos could have been hacked, taken out of context, and used against him even if they showed no wrongdoing. In this case, of course, they showed plenty of wrongdoing. But like roads, our digital infrastructure is much like our physical infrastructure, increasingly designed to make it nearly impossible for the average person to participate in daily life if they don't want a car or don't want to become modified by surveillance capitalists risking hacks and abuses along the way. Now, Clegg might be right about one thing. It's possible guardrails will, in some cases, suffice. Walmart, for example, already had a feature that let people choose models who looked

similar to them and see how items of clothing looked on those models. That should be just fine. Big businesses' eternal ownership of your body is not worth the efficiency of avoiding a return or eating the cost of a sweater, no matter who you are. If a major corporation asks for a picture of us without supplying privacy information, we have to train ourselves to pause, and we have to have a government that keeps up with regulatory work before those changes hurt people. We're slouching towards dystopia with each new point of so-called progress. There was a fascinating series of exchanges between Lena Kahn, mostly Lena Kahn. FTC chair. FTC, Lena Kahn. Producer of many Wall Street Journal tiers.

Yes, yes. And Jonathan Cantor was there as well. Also a producer of many Wall Street Journal tears. Fascinating, fascinating exchanges between Kahn and Republican senators, actually. Some of the most interesting exchanges were between Kahn and Republican senators like Josh Hawley, who initially supported her. We have a clip that, again, like a lot of this went under the radar. People weren't talking about it, but let's play that clip here. What concerns we should be looking at involving data privacy that might come about from either this acquisition or more broadly about mass consolidation, particularly when you have technology companies that are purchasing health care companies? Yeah.

I mean, again, speaking more generally, I think especially when you have firms that are integrated across multiple lines of business, there are a whole set of conflicts of interest that can emerge. Oftentimes, there aren't any limitations on how data being collected in one line of business is being used in other lines of business. And so we've heard concerns both from consumers but also from market participants about just the deep conflicts and asymmetries that that can create. Very good. Let me ask you about the FTC's work and relationship with regard to big tech, and in particular, something that you and I have discussed in the past, and you alluded to this earlier today, is that the FTC's historic practice has been to levy what appear to be large fines on paper. but we know that the technology companies, Facebook,

for example, the FTC leveled, I think, a $5 billion fine. Facebook stock went up when this happened. They don't regard it as particularly significant. They don't change their behavior. Tell us about the need to take on these companies when it comes to the remedies in a more meaningful way. What are you doing about that? What do you see the right approach being? Yeah, I couldn't agree more. We're taking a more fulsome look at our remedial toolkit. In addition to naming individual executives where appropriate, we've also started requiring deletion of data. So we really want to make sure with a remedy that the lawbreaker is not benefiting from the fruits of its misconduct. And so in instances where data is unlawfully acquired, we're requiring that it be deleted as well as any algorithms.

We have a whole set of really terrific technologists on board that are making sure that our remedies are actually being effective, especially in these types of instances. This is a level of digital literacy that has not been seen in Congress. Just as I was re-watching that now, it's striking. That has not been seen in Congress, like ever probably. And the importance of that is when you lack the digital literacy, whether you agree with Josh Hall or not, people get their talking points from special interests and from big tech. And if your understanding of big tech comes from big tech, as it has for so many different members over the years, that's bad. And to have an exchange like that, where

the level of literacy and understanding is detailed and granular, that is a great sign. And the full hearing showed that I think the confusion over particularly on the conservative side, there's lots of confusion on the Democratic side, but they keep it a little bit more mum because they know they're not supposed to be. You know, they know they're supposed to all agree basically on antitrust, even though lots of them are in the pocket of big tech. Whereas the Wall Street Journal has really brainwashed a bunch of Republicans, not just the Wall Street Journal, but it's the forces that control the Wall Street Journal, which is big business, you know, have still in their grips a substantial portion of the Republican caucus. And you saw that on display in the hearing. So Marsha Blackburn, for instance, in questioning Lena Kahn, did the old school, ridiculous partisan stuff where she dragged out, you spoke to a Marxist group. Are you a communist? You know, when was, you know, when have you, you know, are you now or have you ever been associated, you know, just like pulling some weird joseph mccarthy stuff it's like why have i never asked you that

and so what was so interesting is that normally it would be a democrat who would then take the podium and say hey i'd like to give you a chance to respond to this mccarthyist assault that you just got from uh the the clown on the other side of the aisle. Instead, it was Hawley who said, I'd like to give you a chance to respond to my colleague Blackburn, and gave Lena Kahn the floor, and Lena Kahn said, this was a student group. I speak to different student groups. Student groups believe lots of things. I don't believe these things. And then they went into a conversation about ideology, which raises real questions about what the Wall Street Journal's ideology is. Because for Hawley, he's like, look, I'm a free market capitalist.

And I believe that a free market needs antitrust protection. Because without antitrust protections, there's no free market. You're going to wind up with one behemoth who just controls the market. You no longer have a free market. Why is the Wall Street Journal okay with that? And I think we know the answer, because they're in the pocket, as a lot of these others are in the pocket, of big companies that have full control of these markets or have massive control of these markets. They don't want a free market because that means they have to give up market share. I think that's a really interesting debate though, because I see it more, less as them being in the pocket of big business, that is certainly it, but also that people who

are in the pocket of big business have this very sincere, reflexive trust for business over government. And that is a reflex that in this era of surveillance capitalism, as we just talked about, and these tech behemoths, Josh Hawley actually did his PhD thesis on Teddy Roosevelt. And it's sort of the progressive movement of the early 20th century when you had railroads and, I mean, all of this new infrastructure that was being built up and companies with vast power that had been inconceivable previously to like the last 20 years at the time when Roosevelt takes office. And so there has to be a new path forward. ideologues who in some cases aren't even consistent with their own ideology because they believe in cronyism or they will sort of reflexively support cronyists over people who say that.

There's this tending to the garden of free markets that involves weeding out monopolies because they impede consumer choice. And it's an obvious, obvious thing to do in this case. But because tech companies are so new, they're able to muddle the water. Because they're so new, because they're so unprecedented, as that person who dissented in the Fifth Circuit case we talked about earlier in the show said, none of the precedents apply seamlessly. She's right. I mean, that is absolutely correct. And so tech companies are able to come in, make that very valid point, muddle the waters, and exploit that reflexive free market terrorism that really desperately needs to be checked. And even

Marsha Blackburn, after she asked Khan that question, was very, very favorable to her in other questions in the hearing. Right, because she doesn't want to be looked at as a toady to big tech. And she's not. Which is why the politics are interesting here. Blackburn is one of the most interesting examples of this because someone, a lot of people would say is a very mainstream red meat conservative who is very, very good on tech issues in the way that Hawley is good on tech issues. And our friend Matt Stoller basically live tweeted this entire congressional exchange and he pulled a lot of really good stuff out of it. He said it's notable that Hawley, who's considered a rabid right-wing partisan, probably had the friendliest and most substantive discussion with Lena Kahn, who's called a, quote, callow radical law professor on antitrust. I think it's a Wall Street Journal quote. Yeah, probably. Sounds like the Wall Street

Journal. And Zed Jelani also jumped in with a story that he wrote for the Washington Examiner, where Josh Hawley said he defended voting for Lena Kahn as the head of the FTC and said, what I particularly appreciate for her is her emphasis on competition, which gets to your point, Ryan, that if you are a free market capitalist, or if you are somebody who believes in free markets because they should serve free people, isn't that the Wall Street Journal slogan, like free markets, free people? Is it? But it's one of those things where it's like, markets exist for the flourishing of people. People don't exist for the flourishing of markets. And that gets totally turned around on the right a lot. On the left too, actually. Yeah, for sure. And I mean, if it makes Holly feel better, it makes me a little uncomfortable, like all of this celebration of markets and competition.

And because there are such significant limits to how much human flourishing they do actually end up serving. and beyond, the left liberal kind of old line liberal consensus was kind of pro-concentration, that basically that the United States needn't go socialist. Instead, what they would do is they'd have GE, they'd have GM, they'd have Ford, they'd have these major companies that would control the commanding heights of industry, and the countervailing forces against them would be big labor and government regulation. And that way you would set up kind of a static and peaceful, harmonious industrial society. That was the vision. Now the big business got broke out of that that mold, broke out of that cage. So did government.

Yeah. Well, in the 70s and 80s, big business kind of smashed both government and labor. Government was willing to be bowled over. Yeah, yeah. They captured it and put it right to sleep. Bring it up. Yeah. Ronald Reagan, the whole Reagan revolution, started with, you know, starting under Carter with deregulation.

And so, like, there's still on the left that, some of that tendency to say, like, you know, well, sometimes bigger is better, depending on the industry that you're in. Well, that's, it's actually interesting because what Reagan was doing was a reaction to a lot of what big labor had done. And so if you're talking about consolidation and bigness being better, if you have big government, big business, and big labor, that trifecta as your ecosystem, you're probably not in a super well checked ecosystem. Like that's all of those, the checks and balances that aren't of course constitutionally, you know, sanctioned in an arrangement like that. You still are going to be like, when you have that many big interests sort of butting heads, you'd think, you know, maybe this can work out.

But in fact, you end up getting cronyism. You end up getting big government in the pocket of big labor and then big government also in the pocket of big business. And sometimes you have labor in the pocket of business. It just goes in weird directions. Yeah. And if people want to watch somebody struggling with this whole concept, go back and watch the Ted Cruz and Lena Kahn exchanges. Because Ted Cruz knows very clearly, he's like, I need to be against big tech. Like that's, like, that's who I am. But he's also a, a hack partisan Republican who spends a whole bunch of his time whining that the two Republicans

on the FTC are not voting with the three Democrats in the FTC. He wants there to be unanimity on these issues before she pushes forward with them. And he complains about some procedural stuff about who's able to vote. He can't kind of break out of the partisan thing in a way that Hawley can, where Hawley can be like, you know what? I like what you're doing. That's funny because Ted Cruz was called one of the wacko birds or the cuckoo birds or whatever. Yeah, by John McCain. Right. And in 2012, 2013, 2014, around that time period when the Tea Party wave had sort of settled into Washington, D.C., and nobody would ever accuse Ted Cruz at that time of being partisan. What's interesting, though, is Josh Hawley coming in. You know, newer members can get away with a lot.

And I think what they do is start bending norms. And the way that Ted Cruz bent norms in 2012, 2013, 2014, I think you're seeing. And Marshall Blackburn is not new to Washington, but is a new senator. You're seeing some norms get bent with a fresh crop of people on tech. And I think I understand why it makes people on the left uncomfortable, even if they agree with it. But at the end of the day, we desperately have to come up with something that works. And the government needs to be a part of that. Our culture needs to be a part of it. Consumers need to be smarter. But consumers also need the tools to

make good decisions. And our government is not giving consumers those tools. Instead of what they're doing is allowing meta to be the digital real estate kingpin in the metaverse. Right. Like this is all happening. And all of our land, if we just completely succumb to the metaverse, will be owned by meta for the most part. And, yeah, I don't know that we'll completely succumb to the metaverse. We'll be owned by meta for the most part. And yeah, I don't know that we'll completely succumb to the metaverse, but if we did, Zuckerberg is just the real estate kingpin, essentially. That's true. He owns the whole thing. And like Lena Kahn kept telling Josh Hawley,

I couldn't agree more. Max Alvarez is going to be up next. He was supposed to be here last week. We bumped him. Because we were talking so much. We've got him this time. The railroad and union negotiations are still ongoing. A strike is not out of the question. Max is going to have more details on what the actual offer was. Last week, they just said we have a tentative deal, but nobody knew exactly what the deal was. We're starting to learn a little bit more about what it is. So we'll have that up next. And we are joined now by Max Alvarez, who is editor-in-chief of the Real News Network. He is host of what is Working People, right, Max? The Working People podcast.

And is author of the great book, The Work of Living, which is sort of like an update to Studs Terkel in a lot of ways in the modern economy. Great book, highly recommended. Nobody better here to talk about the ongoing negotiations between the railroad union and the railroad bosses. Joe Biden put the railroad workers in a bit of a bind about a week ago when he came out and said, we have a tentative deal. We have a great deal. Congratulations to everybody, which sort of says everyone, we're done with this. It's over. Everybody move on. The media has mostly moved on. It's the best deal. We have a great deal. It's the best deal. It's a beautiful deal. I mean, I had a beautiful call with the railroad bosses.

I told them, give them the best deal. And so the workers were saying, okay, well, what is the deal? Now details are starting to emerge from it. Max, what's in the deal? What did workers win? And what do workers feel like they still need to fight for? Man, well, thanks for having me on, guys. And congratulations on the new show. Great to see you there. Excited to have you on. they still need to fight for. Man, well, thanks for having me on, guys, and congratulations on the new show. Great to see you there. Excited to have you on. Yeah, no, I'm pumped, even if I am very, very tired.

But, you know, I'm glad that we're doing this segment, right? Because as you mentioned, you know, last week was just yet another test case for, you know, how far we have to go to understand you know like labor struggles in this country which our existing kind of corporate media ecosystem does not really help us to do like you mentioned uh we were rapidly approaching the deadline last friday after which um strikes initiated by the 12 unions representing railroad workers on the Class 1 freight railroads could begin, or lockouts could begin initiated by

the rail carriers, the companies that own the railroads. So we were rapidly approaching that deadline. And in the hours before that deadline came, the announcement on Thursday of last week was that, you know, the Biden administration, Labor Secretary Marty Walsh, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, the union presidents and the rail carriers had hammered out, you know, a last minute deal to avert a rail shutdown. The media celebrated it like George W. Bush's mission accomplished speech. And everyone felt like, okay, well, the crisis averted, we can move on to the next thing.

And yeah, no, that's not what's happening right now. In fact, there's a lot that people need to understand about what's going on here. As I mentioned on many an interview and in the coverage we've been doing for the Real News Network, it took a long time for us to reach this point at which a national rail strike or rail lockout could legally happen under the terms of the Railway Labor Act. All that momentum had built up, all that frustration and anger had built up, and we were a day away from that deadline. And at the very last second, the balloon has popped, this deal that no one got to see for a number of days was reached, and the cooling off period was extended while the unions eventually reviewed the terms of that tentative deal. And in fact, like what was nuts was the people who were in that room who hammered out that deal said that they couldn't release the details for a few days because they were recovering from the marathon bargaining session, which is kind of tone deaf when we're talking

about a workforce that is complaining about not having any time to spend with their families, being run into the ground by their work schedules and draconian attendance policies. So that kind of didn't really land with a lot of the membership who were saying, well, we're tired, you know, I'm sorry that you had to do your job, but like, what's in the actual deal? And so we've started to finally get the details of that deal. I can go on if you want, but I feel like I've been talking for a long time. I actually want to keep pulling at that thread. What is right now the sentiments among the workers and the union representatives who have been trying to hammer out this negotiation? Are they happy with the representation they have at the negotiating table? What is that dynamic like right now? You know, it's always hard to say in these situations because obviously

the most disgruntled factions are going to inevitably be the loudest. And so, you know, folks who've been covering this for a long time, like myself, Jonah Furman at Labor Notes, Mel Buer, you know, who works with me at The Real News and you folks over at Breaking Point, in the Breaking Point studio, Crystal's covered this a lot. We're hearing a lot of dissatisfaction from the rank and file right now, right? And there are numerous reasons why people are pissed off about how this whole process has unfolded.

And now, you know, they are also pissed off about the contents of the tentative agreement that was reached last week. But it also remains to be seen what the rest of the membership has to say because frankly, a lot of people are worn out by this process.

A lot of people have kind of resigned themselves to the fact that nothing significant is gonna change on the railroads and the problems that have caused a real crisis in our supply chain by running the workers who make that supply chain move into the ground. A lot of folks have resigned themselves to the fact that they may just have to quit. This is not necessarily the career that they thought it was. So there is a lot of disgruntlement

and the workers may end up kind of voting these tentative agreements down, in which case we'll be right back to where we were last week when a potential rail shutdown could happen. And I think that they have good reason to be disgruntled. You know, I'm a side observer. Obviously, I wear my politics on my sleeve. I want workers to get a good contract. I want working people to get what they deserve

and to stop being taken advantage of. But this is ultimately up to the membership, and they are the ones who are going to have the final say on whether or not to ratify this tentative agreement. And so far, two of the craft unions out of the 12 that, again, represent over 100,000 workers on the Class 1 freight railroads, this is the Transportation Communications Union and the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, have so far voted to ratify the tentative agreement. However, the rail division of the Machinist Union rejected the tentative agreement and are back into bargaining at the moment. The big news that came, I think, just 48 hours ago is one of the two biggest unions representing workers on the railroads.

That's the Transportation Division of the Sheet Metal Air Rail and Transportation Workers released the tentative agreement language to its members. They are current, and like the details that we have found in that tentative agreement are really nothing to write home about. I mean, essentially, it is just a slightly nicer version of the PEB, Presidential Emergency Board recommendations that workers were prepared to reject and strike over last week, right? The only movement that has really happened on that front, which is kind of laughable, is that workers would now have three unpaid personal days per year for medical

appointments. However, the catch is that those medical appointments need to be scheduled between Tuesday and Thursday, at least 30 days ahead. So if folks are going to get sick and need to go to the doctor, they need to be planning a month ahead for that. And the other one is that we've talked a lot about the draconian attendance policies and how workers have no paid sick days and staff has been cut so deep on the railroads that, you know, there are no real reserve workers left, which is why workers are always on call and always working long, arduous hours and get penalized for taking any time off whatsoever. So the new sweetener to this deal is that there will be no penalizations or penalties for workers who are hospitalized or actively in surgery. And just think about how dystopian and Orwellian that sentence is. Like, oh, wow, we hammered out a great deal

where you won't get fired for going into surgery. Like, thanks, I guess. But the other thing that I would say, a lot of this is really in the weeds and would take more time to unpack. I've been talking to railroaders over the course of the week. But there are other things that were points of contention in the Presidential Emergency Board report that are cropping back up in this tentative agreement because the PEB essentially kicked these issues down the road or said like, you know,

you guys have 60 more days to negotiate. Otherwise you go into binding arbitration. And if you go into binding arbitration, the lawyers who oversee it are going to go with past precedents. So workers kind of see the writing on the wall when it comes to, you know, things that are very in the weeds, but are actually very consequential for their lives. Like what you'll hear this term self-supporting pools. And what that essentially means, right, is that you have workers, engineers who are assigned to trains. And if any one of those engineers or conductors can't make that assignment, then there is a reserve pool of workers who will fill in that assignment. Essentially what

the self-supporting pool system which is already implemented in two of the class freight railroads means is it eliminates that reserve pool and makes it harder for people who are assigned to trains to actually take that time off. So it just accelerates this long-running trend that we've been seeing on the class one freight railroads where there were over 500,000 workers on these railroads in 1980. Over the course of the past four decades, that has been reduced to under 130,000. And since 2015 alone, the rail carriers have collectively eliminated over 30% of their workforce. So they've been slashing and burning, which is why workers have no reserves to pick up their shifts for them if they call out sick, which is why they're being run into the

ground and why they're going to work sick and why they are unable to take the time off that they need. So a lot of the issues that workers are ready to strike over because the PEB recommendations fell so short are still here in this tentative agreement. So it is very possible that we didn't avert a strike, we just delayed one. And your point about how hard it is to know how the full membership is feeling is a really good one and an important one to remember. It's something you pick up covering strike negotiation after strike negotiation, because as you say, the most militant workers also happen to be the ones that are most likely to be talking to reporters. And so, you know, you're not a militant worker worth your salt if you don't trash whatever

deal is made, like as soon as it's struck. And so you're right that, you know, when you first start coming, you say, oh, well, the workers I'm hearing from absolutely hate this deal. This thing's going down. And then you see it get ratified by 70% or 80%. You're like, well, what happened here? So I think you're very right to say that we don't know. Now, the union is arguing that these moves in the direction that you talked about, these modest, kind of almost laughable moves, are actually significant because they set a precedent. The companies had resisted negotiating over days

off forever. That was a red line for them. That's up to us. You cannot negotiate over sick days. And so breaking that red line and getting this concession around hospitalization, which maybe you could tweak internally to say that's urgent care. So if you go to CVS, that counts. So you can't fire me because, look, here's my receipt. I went down to urgent care at CVS. that the union is saying this is a great step forward because we broke their will on this question of whether we can negotiate around this, so let's ratify this contract. And then when the next contract comes up, now these things are on the table and we can negotiate around them. Also, a lot of money was thrown at workers because that's how much they care about this corporate strategy of stripping the workforce to the bone. They'd rather give raises and give ratification bonuses than actually negotiate around time off.

So what do you think of the union's argument to its members that by setting this precedent that it's a significant enough victory that it ought to be ratified? So it's a great point and an important one for folks to consider, right? Because, yeah, I mean, it is significant that the rail carriers actually budged even a centimeter on bargaining over scheduling and attendance policies, right? Because that has really been the core of the stalled negotiations that have been going on for two and a half years. And speaking of which, that's another point that is important to note is I think what a lot of rail workers would say and what a lot of them have been telling me is that there is a significant difference between what is written on paper and what happens in practice with these

policies, right? So the wage increase, the deal that was reached is being hailed as a historic wage increase for workers on the railroads, a 24% increase compounded from now until 2024, including yearly bonuses. When you average in inflation and stuff like that, and you factor in the fact that the unions have had essentially a stalled, nullified contract, and have been working without an updated contract for like two to three years, right? That is the last period at which, you know, the wage increase counted. So like they've been going without those for these past couple of years. So that kind of like, you know, makes the numbers seem a little bit bigger, you know, like, again, this is kind of in the weeds. But the thing that

I would really kind of say from what I'm hearing from workers is that, yes, the precedent is important, but the crisis is here. And, you know, this is like really like throwing a pebble at a tank because, you know, the past precedents that were set that allowed the rail carriers to continue forward with this cost cutting, profit maximizing, service diminishing, you know, like a policy that has taken root across the class one freight railroads. Like this has already ruined, has already ruined the supply chain. It's already ruined the job itself to the point that workers are already quitting in record numbers because what rail carriers say on paper often doesn't translate to what workers experience in practice.

So I'll give you one example. In the current tentative agreement, this is again very much in the weeds, but there's something you may hear workers bring up, which is the automated bid scheduling system. This is a system by which workers submit their requests for days off. Seniority plays a factor into it. Again, I won't go into the details, but essentially one of the examples that was given to me is that when you utilize this system and you sort of choose which lines you're gonna run,

when you're gonna be able to take your vacation or days off, what may happen is like your vacation may be set to start on a Saturday, but you get called in for a job on a Friday and you don't get back home until like late Sunday. You don't get, that doesn't push your vacation time back. That counts like in your vacation time. And so, you know, it's because of the frantic scheduling,

the unpredictable scheduling and all the delays and so on and so forth, that you may not actually get what, you know, the contract says and you may lose out on vacation time. You may not get approved time off, even if you submitted the request. So as Ron Kamenko of Railroad Workers United loves to say, the devil is really in the details. And there are a lot of details to go over here.

And that's exactly what the rank and file is going to be doing over the course of the next couple weeks. Yeah. And Max, what is the timeline that we're looking at? So this is kind of, again, where it gets hairy is there are multiple overlapping timelines right now. So the Smart TD tentative agreement, again, this is one of the two largest unions representing workers on the freight railroads. So they have a timeline right now of sort of reviewing the tentative agreement. They will be able to kind of submit formal questions to the rail carriers in a couple of weeks. And the voting process for the membership is expected to take place over the course of a few weeks beginning later this month. However, as I said, we already have two of the craft unions that have voted to ratify, but the machinists have voted not to ratify. And so that kicks the timeline for them. I think the

machinists are currently have the next timeline to ratify coming up. And if they decide to reject it, that could trigger a national rail shutdown because that's kind of what happened in 1992. It wasn't all the unions that went on strike. In fact, it was one carrier who initiated lockouts. And so the rest of the unions couldn't cross picket lines and couldn't get into their terminals. And so that triggered a railroad-wide shutdown, even though it was initiated by one carrier. This could happen this time around where if one union rejects the contract, the tentative agreement, and decides to go on strike, that will effectively trigger a railroad-wide strike because the other unions

have clauses in their contract that say they will not cross a picket line if they feel it's hazardous to them. So you could, in effect, have a national rail shutdown if one union votes to go on strike right now. So the next month or two is going to be very interesting. Right. Well, Max, thank you so much for the update. And again, Max's book, The Work of Living, very much worth watching. Max Alvarez, editor-in-chief of The Real News Network, thank you so much for joining us. Thanks, guys. It's so interesting because the media really just wanted to move on, right? The deal was reached, and they just this week ducked out. We're good with this.

Blushed our hands of it. The Biden administration's good with it. We're good with it. And it may work out. We'll see. They also only jumped in when the deadline was set into a crunch time. And it's one of those that people on the left will sometimes complain about the media being right-wing.

And the point is generally taken on foreign policy, but it's also taken on labor issues. And I will say, to see President Biden come in on the side of railroad workers, like if you know the history of the railroads and particularly Democratic presidents, they're much more likely to send in the National Guard or the Army to break railroad strikes and kill workers than to call up and yell at

railroad bosses. So that was fun to see. It's a new era. It is a new era. Well, thanks everybody for watching. As always, Brian Grimm, DC Bureau Chief over at The Intercept. My newsletter over at Bad News over at Substack. You can check that out. You're a Substacker. Well, I was a proto-Substacker. I started the newsletter in like 2014, 2015. Wow. Yeah, that's a long time. Substack came around in 2017. I used to pay. To host. Every month, yeah, to send the newsletter out. And then Substack comes around and they're like, you can use this for free. I'm like, okay. That's good to me. That beats paying.

So, yeah, so I've been actually, I've had it over at Substack for like five years now. Check out Bad News over at Substack. You can check out Federalist Radio Hour where I am every day. We're so grateful to everybody for... When is that? Every day? Like, when's it on? Or is it just...

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But it is, like, booking a guest every day is a whole thing. But anyway, and you can see some of our – I'll have some of the people we talk to here at CounterPoints on the show to sort of even go into more depth. So that's always fun. But really, thank you so much, everybody, for listening. Make sure you're liking and subscribing everywhere you download your podcasts over on YouTube.

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