Pod Save America - "Josh Hawley’s Masculinity Press Tour."

Episode Date: November 9, 2021

 Democrats finally pass the $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Bill, climate reporter Dave Roberts joins the pod to talk about week two of the COP26 Climate Summit, and Tommy and Lovett break down some of the most annoying non-headlines from the weekend including Josh Hawley's masculinity crisis and Ted Cruz's presidential endorsement of Joe Rogan.For a closed-captioned version of this episode, please visit crooked.com/podsaveamerica. For a transcript of this episode, please email [e-mail] and include the name of the podcast.

The Supreme Court has had a busy summer loosening gun restrictions in states, overturning Roe versus Wade, and severely threatening our Miranda rights. I'm Leah Lippman, and each week on Strict Scrutiny, I'm joined by my co-hosts and fellow law professors, Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, to break down the latest headlines and the biggest legal questions facing our country. It's more important than ever to understand the repercussions of these Supreme Court decisions and what we can do to fight back in the upcoming midterm elections. Listen to new episodes of Strict Scrutiny every Monday, wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor.

I'm Jon Levitt. Jon Favreau is not here today. So what happened was he was walking on the street and there was a little piece of keto pizza. And he went to grab it and then it moved a little. He broke. And he kept following it, kept following it, kept following it. It was a trap. Jon is out because he's sick. and then it moved a little. He broke. And he kept following it, kept following it, kept following it. It was a trap. John is out because he's sick.

No, it is not COVID. He's just good old fashioned under the weather with the plague. Smallpox. Sure. Did Pundit just cough in solidarity? Sure. Anyway, we have an amazing show for you today. We are going to talk about the infrastructure bill, how it got passed, how the vote came

together and the political road ahead for Joe Biden as he tries to pass his larger economic plan. Then we will be joined by Dave Roberts, who writes the Volt Newsletter about clean energy and politics to talk about the climate summit happening right now in Scotland, the climate provisions in Biden's Build Back Better Bill, and what else Biden can do to prevent the planet from burning. I'm going to try not to say Build Back Better Bill today a lot, but whatever you want to do, it's going to be hard. Also don't miss the latest episode of offline with Jon Favreau,

where he's joined by Peter Hamby, the host of Snapchat's good luck America. They talk about how Twitter ruined political journalism and how to fix it. Also love it. New York comedy festival, love it or leave it. Match made in heaven. We have, today, as you're hearing this on Tuesday, the show is Friday night in New York.

There are a few tickets left. We have a great show, some very special guests, some surprise special guests. Big guests. Big guests. Crooked.com slash events. Last chance. They're almost gone. It'll be very fun to do a big live show.

I'm excited about it. Everyone should go. Okay. Let's talk about the Biff. Love it. And we'll try not to use the word Biff a lot. So late Friday night, the bipartisan infrastructure bill finally passed the House of Representatives by a vote of 228 to 206. Third time was the charm here in terms of this bill for President Biden, Speaker Pelosi.

Third time was the charm here in terms of this bill for President Biden, Speaker Pelosi. And to get it over the finish line, Pelosi needed 13 Republican votes after six progressive Democrats voted no. We're going to get into how all this came together in a minute. But let's first start with the substance because we're substance guys. We're substance guys. We're substance people. We start with the substance. We are trying to improve the media we complain about so much. substance. We are trying to improve the media we complain about so much. So this bill includes the biggest investment in roads, bridges, public transport, tons of stuff in decades. Unfortunately,

the recent polling says that voters have no idea what's actually in it. You are famously fond of infrastructure, John. I am fond of infrastructure. What are your favorite parts of this bill? What should people be excited about? I'm going to run you through a few. First, California, a state run by Democrats, has been so far unable to build high speed rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles, a route that is roughly the same distance as Barcelona to Madrid, but would serve 10 times as many people. Instead, we've just been trying to connect Bakersfield and Merced, which is a pathetic, desperate capitulation to American decline.

This pool of money has the chance to unlock this project and other projects like it in rail. The Times also did a good look at a lot of the ways it impacts California and the West. Funding around disasters will help California bury power lines in rural areas where sparks have been setting off wildfires. That is huge. That's good. Also some good water conservation in there. I'm also excited about the money that expands charging stations for Musk mobiles and other electric cars, especially for people who got Teslas before he became so toxic and still think Teslas are good. Also money to get rid of lead pipes like the ones that ravaged Flint. This is also an example of a larger trend. Cities and towns across the country are trying now to figure out how to invest in projects that unwind some of the worst decisions we made in the history of infrastructure that wrecked a lot

of cities like interstate highways, cutting through cities like Hartford. Connecticut has a plan to invest in transit and connect parts of Hartford where the interstate had like sliced it in half like a rusty ax. And there are projects across the country that are trying to figure out ways to like where we built multi-lane highways and acres of parking that could be more like kind of communal spaces so there's lots of projects like that that are interesting also the bill's passage means we'll hopefully finally get a new tunnel between new york and new jersey important for the entire northeast and just my usual reminder that being a trump sycophant who shut down a bridge to punish a mayor are actually not the worst things that ch Christie ever did. The worst thing Chris Christie ever did was killing

the tunnel when he was governor. It was a despicable act. And finally, there's 16 billion for major projects that are large and complex. This is a fund that will be controlled by Secretary Pete. Yes. Here we go, Pete. To try to figure out how to unlock big, complicated projects that are sometimes between states that just get stuck pretty early. We have a huge problem, which is, yeah, we need money for infrastructure. That's on the supply side. On the demand side, projects take forever and cost way too much. I don't know if this will help, but I think it's an interesting attempt to try to get things moving faster.

And I like electric ferries. Yeah, they're very cool. Electric ferries. They're the future. That's the future. You might do one in Alaska, I read. Yeah. This is a big win for the bridge and tunnel crowd.

Hey. Talking to you, Long Island. Billions for water quality, billions for climate change measures, environmental cleanup. In terms of the political impact, Biden says we'll start to see the impact of the bill in two to three months. Mayor Pete, like all the interviews Mayor Pete was doing about this bill, he was like jumping out of his chair. He was so excited.

You know, he just has like a farm of nerds like pouring over grant applications and other projects. He's going to green light as fast as possible. So it's exciting stuff. But also this money will play out over years when you're talking about like expanding the northeastern corridor for Amtrak or the rail project you talked about in California. It's going to take a while. So lots of stuff that will pay dividends for years here. Okay. Love it. So when something big happens in Washington, this bat signal goes up over the city that says, uh, tells all the news bureaus, Hey, time to write your Tik TOK stories about how it all came together. That's where you

get the juicy details, right? What was in the Starburst bowl, Kevin McCarthy, et cetera, et cetera. So let's walk through what we learned. The issue, as we've discussed ad nauseum, was that progressives in the House refused to vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill unless that vote was somehow tied to passage of the larger Biden economic plan, the BBB. Politico says what finally got a vote on the infrastructure bill was when the moderates put out a statement saying, if we can get a cost estimate for Biden's bigger economic plan from the Congressional Budget Office, and it's basically in line with what the White House told us this thing's going to cost, we'll agree to the vote on the economic plan no later than the week of November 15th. The New York Times reported that the Congressional

Black Caucus was really the key to cobbling together that final agreement. We've also seen reporting over the last few months that Pelosi and the House leadership were frustrated that Biden wasn't engaged enough. They said he wasn't pressuring Democrats enough. This time, Biden, the vice president, they were working the phones, they were pressuring moderates, they were begging progressives apparently on a conference call with like 50 people in a room. Biden put out a statement specifically asking the House to vote in support of the BIF. So it's also clear that the election results in Virginia and New Jersey last week scared the shit out of Democrats. And the message was get it done. So, John, if the Biff got 13 Republican votes in the House and it got 19 Republican votes in the Senate, is this vindication of Biden's whole message that he can actually do stuff across party lines?

Were we wrong to be a touch cynical there? What a question. Did he show us? Yeah, sure. Absolutely. Yes. No, I don't know. I think on the House side, you saw kind of what the Republican Party has become running into what politics used to be just for 13 members, several of whom are retiring. But Axios talked to one Republican, Don Bacon, who said, if you vote one way, you get hurt in the primary.

You vote in vote the other way. It'll hurt me in the general. And basically, he said, I helped draft the bill to do a flip. Wouldn't have been appropriate. Wouldn't have been right. And he said, if I face a primary, I can still win. What was remarkable about that is like that was old politics. That's just the way it used to be done. And people would just vote for a bipartisan infrastructure bill because everybody recognized that we need these kinds of projects. And it is what Biden said he wanted to do from the beginning. Now, at that at that moment, you have Kevin McCarthy basically whipping votes against this from happening, saying it's tied to the Build Back Better plan. And you have Marjorie Taylor Greene and Matt Gaetz calling it a communist takeover of the United States.

So I think of it I feel like it's a little bit less about kind of I mean, it is Biden delivering and it is Nancy Pelosi delivering. But it's also just, I think, the kind of last gasp of of normal politics. And some of these people may not be here. Some of them are retiring. Some of them may get primaried and picked off. Yeah. Like Kinzinger is retiring. He voted for the bill. I was listening to, um, you know, my favorite show, Steve Bannon's podcast, the war room, and they were putting, you don't need to say the name. You're plugging it. If you say the name, listen, the guy knows content. I'm just kidding. Um, but I was, I do listen because I want to know what the hell they're talking about. And Marjorie Taylor Greene and Bannon were putting up the names of all these moderates on the screen, putting up their phone numbers, saying, call them, pressure them, tell the Democrats who are moder right way? You want to call or write, give them an attaboy, attagirl, attarep? We'll let one through. Yeah. You know, when this, when we were right before the vote, I think there were some people that were watching it unfold and

were a little bit confused because they saw the progressives falling out of the vote and they were wondering like, well, what are we doing? It's just wait. Neither one of these can happen right now. And then all of a sudden you're like, wait a second, there are 13 Republicans that are going on board. It was kind of a surprise. Yeah, I was surprised. I did not think they'd get that many. So the problem for Biden and Pelosi is that things get more difficult from here. So here's what needs to happen. The Congressional Budget Office is going to provide this analysis of how much they think the Build Back Better economic plan costs. Punchbowl News reported that that process could take until Thanksgiving week to get them that score, the price tags, but it could be faster. So that's a lot of time for things to kind of erode.

If the CBO score is in line with what the moderates wanted to be, they said they will move forward with the vote. If there are some changes or the things that need to be worked out in the price, then they'll work on that, but that could take a little extra time too. Then it goes to the Senate where we know Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are eager to cut down the price tag and make it harder. For example, Manchin could again object to paid family and medical leave being in the bill. Then it goes to the parliamentarian for that whole Byzantine process. And then if the Senate makes any changes, it goes back to the House for another vote. Oh, and by the way, in early December, Congress will have to vote on another vote to fund the government. Yes, the government could shut down again. The Byrd Rule, which is about what can fit inside of reconciliation, may kill immigration.

over SALT, which is the state and local tax deduction that a lot of Democrats from wealthier parts of the country and the coast really want, but is fundamentally not a progressive tax. Bernie hates it. Bernie hates it. It's just not good policy. Terrible. Terrible. And a lot of people that we like, man, are they full of shit on this issue. It's just how it is. It's politics. They want to get this tax cut. And on top of that, you have questions about what this promise from moderates really means. I think you see the squad saying, hold on a second. These were supposed to go together. Now we're going based

on a promise and around costs. There's a lot that can go wrong if the costs come back differently, if there are changes that make it look fundamentally different than the framework we have now. I think Biden and the Congressional Black Caucus got a deal. And I think what a lot of people went along with this deal were saying is we are trusting the Biden administration. We are trusting this deal. We are trusting their ability to see this to the end. And I think that there is just some skepticism on the part of the squad for how much we'll have to ultimately give if they've now given up their biggest piece of leverage, which was passing this bill. That's right. I mean, AOC did this 71 minute Instagram live explaining her no vote on the infrastructure bill. And it was really

interesting. She walked through some specific policies, concerns she had about the BIF without the BBB and how it could increase climate emissions. And there's some other specific things, but the gist of her concern was basically that there had been an erosion of trust with her camp and the moderate camp who have slowed down the process because, you know, she talked about how there's all these procedural votes and how, you know, they had an agreement that one part would go first, but then something else. So, you know, I guess my question basically is what is your level of anxiety about the BBB actually getting voted on given all the hurdles we just talked about and given the reality that progressives don't really have that much

leverage anymore? We voted the infrastructure bill through. I think we all should be concerned about it. There's a lot of ways that this can fall apart. There's a lot of ways that now that they have this infrastructure bill, that some of these monitors can get squishy. They want to negotiate it down again, that they take some objection to what comes from the congressional budget office as an excuse for lowering our sites even more. It is already a compromise. My hope is that what the squad did, I think if something ultimately passes, it will say, see, you were wrong. It all worked out. But also, I do think it lays down a marker and says, we're watching.

We're paying attention. This is what we don't want to see happen. You know, there is, I think, I think that ultimately getting this infrastructure bill done is a really good thing. I also think we really need to do build back better. There are, I think, legitimate concerns about saying, okay, we have $500 billion of policy that will help fight climate change. And then we need to get that done right now. What this bill does is invest in things like highways and invest in things that actually will in some ways make this problem worse. Now, I think as part of a larger agenda,

that makes a ton of sense. But if we don't get these climate pieces through, that's not a great record and they're not wrong about that. Yeah. Yeah. They're, they're definitely, they need to be coupled together. I mean, the other challenge is just for Biden that there's a USA Today poll out today that found Biden's approval rating down to 38 percent. Now, that polling, the calls done for that poll were done between Wednesday and Friday. So they would not have captured the momentum coming out of this infrastructure vote and the signing ceremony on Saturday. And, you know, that I'm sure that Mayor Pete and everybody else will hit the country and, you know, try to sell this thing in states. But, you know, 38 is a tough number.

Yeah, I think there's a lot of things that have to happen to get out of this moment. It has to we have to see a successful legislative agenda. We also have to see a shift in what's happening with COVID. And there's just a lot that has to happen. We have to see. I think people really are worried about based on what they're seeing on the news every day. You know, they're like, you know, Twitter can spend a day saying, actually, the cost of milk isn't so high.

But then in reality, what is on the news are people worried about the economy, worried about inflation, worried about worried about the supply chain. There are legitimate worries about the supply chain as well. So like all of this, we've talked about this just adds together to a moment where it doesn't feel like the buy. Like this is what the news portrays, that he does not have his arms around the challenges facing the country he was put in place to kind of set things right and so they just need to get momentum and need to get i think this this is an important pivot between that these approval of the vaccine for ages five and up the fact that there's this

great news from pfizer about these antivirals that can really help and make sure we can get out of having another wave and another round of masks and restrictions. So I think like a lot of things have to change. And this number is not just because the Biff hadn't passed. I will take whatever jab you give me or wear whatever mask is required if it gets rid of the milk discourse. If you don't know what we're talking about, consider yourself lucky. But a lot of people on Twitter decided to get really mad about a CNN segment. And I just can't care. I don't know. It's milk.

We don't care. It's milk. There's no crying over spilled milk. Hey, there you go. As John Favreau wrote in the State of the Union famously. Famously. He wrote about, yeah, he really set Barack Obama up there to fail. Okay.

When we come back, we'll take a quick break. And when we come back, we are going to talk about the major climate change summit happening right now in Scotland. Climate change provisions in Biden's economic bill. And all things climate with Dave Roberts. So stick around for that. He's a climate reporter and the author of the Voltz newsletter about climate and politics. David Roberts, welcome to the show. Great to be here, guys. Thanks.

So the COP26 climate change summit is happening in Glasgow right now, Scotland. The political leaders were there last week. Now it's mostly negotiators, technocrats, board ex-presidents named Barack Obama. They're all negotiating a new agreement. What should we all who like living on earth hope will come out of this summit and what do you make of it so far? I don't know how popular this answer will be, but the real answer is that as a normal civilian, you probably don't need to care that much about what happens at COP26. Most of what was significant was the Paris Agreement, and most of what COP is about now is playing that out, is fiddling with the rules, tightening up the rules, boosting the ambition of various countries, figuring out reporting methods, figuring out how often to raise national ambitions. Right now, it's every five years. There's some discussion of making it every year. So it's a lot of very technical wrangling right now. You should hope

that it doesn't fall apart in acrimony. But as you guys, I'm sure sure remember quite well from Paris what's going to happen is about midway through this week there's going to be a bunch of headlines saying COP26 might fall apart in total acrimony it might be a disaster and then Friday Saturday Sunday there will be headlines oh at the last minute leaders came together and pulled through with this sort of half-ass agreement that's pretty good, but not great. And we're going to make it to the next COP. It's basically every COP. So what did you make of the Washington Post had a story that looked at the way countries

have been reporting their climate emissions. And they basically found just huge exaggerations around the amount of carbon that they're absorbing into forests, that they're claiming that they're reducing. And so much of what we're seeing in these conferences depends upon voluntary and honest reporting of information. So what do you make of that story? Well, I think it's been a slightly open secret for a long time that there's been a lot of exaggeration. I'm not sure people appreciated how bad it was. But yes, it's mainly about fuzziness around the carbon accounting for plants, forests, mangroves, things like that.

And the science itself is fuzzy. So there's a lot of room for shenanigans. And so this is one reason why one of the most contentious sort of negotiations that go on in every one of these cops is about monitoring and verification. People don't want UN monitors coming into their country with total access. But at the same time, a report like this, I think, is going to really put the screws on having some standards and having some actual verification because as you say a lot of this is is shell games sort of the closer we get to you know the more it becomes clear that we've kind of bungled our way to the point that we're not going to be able to hit our target the more forms of denial arise to dodge grappling with that but that's what this is about.

So you got 105 countries agreed to cut methane by 30% by 2030. 130 countries said they would stop deforestation by 2030. Interesting sounding, exciting sounding pledges, but critics again would say, well, they're voluntary. And past summits, by the way, have included pledges to stop deforestation. And then, oh, by the way, Indonesia signed the pledge on deforestation and then said, but we won't do it at the expense of economic development, which seems like quite the loophole. What do you make about the significance of these pledges, especially when it comes to methane, hydrofluorocarbon, black soot, and the fact that, you know, the impact they might have, but the fact that they are also voluntary? Well, it's sort of, you have to have a certain perspective on these things. It's obviously better than not having a bunch of countries agree to reduce methane, right? And like, what you get out of these voluntary agreements is

everybody starts paying attention. Everybody starts tracking at least a little bit. And what you often find in these areas is that once people start paying attention, relatively easy and cheap ways of reducing pollution are everywhere around you. And so you can get action going. You don't have an enforcement mechanism, but that's just true across international politics. You just don't, you just can't. There's no alternative, I guess, to the voluntary agreements. So getting people on record is about the best you can do in this international context. Do you see so far based on Paris that these voluntary agreements have made a difference? I was sort of in some ways ways heart heartened. And I think the only way to appreciate climate progress is to

be both heartened and terrified. But I like the Times did this great piece looking at, all right, where are we before Paris? Where are we because of Paris? Where do we need to get to to not hit one point five? And I was surprised by how many of the predictions had us in that middle band of having actually really bent the curve in a significant way. I don't know how much the reporting about these numbers being fake and someone saying, you see that tree over there? I didn't chop it down. So that counts.

But how do you think of these voluntary measures have been playing out so far since Paris? Yeah. How do you think of these voluntary measures have been playing out so far since Paris? Yeah, well, you have a real trick of analysis here since everything's based on counterfactuals, which is how fast would progress have moved if this voluntary agreement had not been in place? And no one knows the answer to that. So it's really difficult to answer. We have moved.

We are moving. And I think this is an under told story of climate is that a lot of the really super apocalyptic eventualities or possibilities have been ruled out by concerted action. And we are bending the curve. So it's all about speed now. It's all about making it move faster. We're going to end up somewhere in the middle of the range. The question is, is that low end of the range that we think of as safe, is that still within reach? And we're not moving fast enough to do that. One of the

interesting aspects that's really become clear at this COP, and I think it's becoming clearer and clearer over the last few years, is that governments are in a lot of ways the caboose of this effort. And banks and corporations and cities and sub-state actors of various kinds are moving much faster and are arguably driving bigger changes than national politics at this point. It looks like we're just going to sort of belatedly, national politics is going to adjust to facts on the ground, I think, is how things are going to work. I mean, that was one of the saving graces of the past four years was that the reason we're still on target for Paris is because a lot of other municipalities and and and local governments and corporations did kind of continue to strive toward the grieving, even as Trump was trying to pull us out of it. Right. out of it, right? I mean, yes. And it feels weird for me to say as a dyed-in-the-wool lefty, but the corporate procurement movement in the US is a real thing. It's responsible for about 20%

of total renewable energy built at this point. Look at Elon Musk over here. Look at this guy. Hey, neoliberalism comes for all of us. When are you going to Barry Weiss's university? Yeah, but I resisted the conclusion, but I'm watching it happen that corporations like Google are dragging utilities and state governments along with them. So speaking of sweet, sweet cabooses, Joe Biden's Build Back Better economic bill includes $555 billion. I thought he was talking about Joe Biden's ass. No, no, no. The bill, the bill. His sweet caboose. Half a trillion plus for climate change. Can you give us a sense of like, it's an enormous amount of money. I'm sure you can't detail all of it, but like, is there an overview of where that money might go and what you think the impact would be of

that kind of spending on climate? Yeah, I think it would be transformative. I think it's easy for this to get lost in the endless and wildly frustrating back and forth that we've been going through all together over these last few months. And the serial disappointments and the just bile that Joe Manchin causes in all of us can cause us to lose sight of the fact that this would be transformative. It's an enormous amount of money. I mean, Obama's stimulus had $90 billion for clean energy and sparked market revolutions in those markets and solar and wind and batteries that have brought the cost down by many, many multiples since then. And this is six times that. So it's going to be huge.

And it's also distributed quite widely. There's a lot of it going to clean electricity, as is right and proper. But there's stuff for resilience. There's stuff for carbon capture that's really comprehensive. The one thing I would say about the bill is if you're sitting down with a clean sheet of paper and making carbon policy, you want a mix of carrots and sticks, right? You want incentives and subsidies, things like that, tax breaks. And then you also want some regulations, some rules that you can't exceed. What Manchin has basically succeeded in doing is taking all of the sticks out of the

bill so no one no entity is punished or forced to do anything by this it's all it's a giant giant bucket of carrots yeah but but if like here's the thing if i'm i i don't even know who the original carrot and stick was aimed at a donkey uh but but if i'm if i see like a really amazing carrot like i don't need a stick all the time you know i just i'll be cool going for the carrot yeah yeah carrots absolutely cause change like the modeling the modeling shows that they have in the past causes change so so we don't have modeling of the very latest version of the bill yet, so we can't say precisely how many carbon emissions will be reduced. But you lost the SEP. That took about a 20% chunk off the emission reductions. But all that SEP money was preserved and put elsewhere in clean energy tax credits, which are going to get a lot of those emissions back.

energy tax credits, which are going to get a lot of those emissions back. So it's plausible that the final product is going to reduce emissions more or less as much as the $3.5 trillion original. And when you think about it, when you're cutting back from 3.5 to 1.7 or whatever, almost everything is getting cut and whacked or thrown out the window completely or dialed back. is getting cut and whacked or thrown out the window completely or dialed back. Climate money was just about the only thing where there's just as much of it now as there was in the original bill, which means democratic policymakers behind closed doors rallied to protect the climate investments, which I think in that alone is quite heartening and ought to be a sort of feather in the cap of the climate movement. So a lot of this, what you're describing is like kind of modeling about what the impact of some of

these incentives would be, whether carrots or sticks. Do you feel just based on looking at how, you know, let's say the Obama era investments, how they impacted the market, do you think of those models as being conservative? Do you think that there's a significant possibility that actually there's a kind of resonance in the direction the market is going and actually these kinds of investments have a bigger impact than expected? What do you think? My prior is that the models are almost always conservative in this respect. They're almost always conservative about these things. Because what you get is, I hate to use the word, what you get is synergies, right? You get a bunch of research. Lots of synergies. Pushing the swing at the right time.

Exactly. So you get multiple different strands of research, multiple different markets going, and then they start interacting and you get social and political effects you can't predict. And basically, all you're trying to do now with clean energy is rolling in the right, the boulder is rolling downhill. We just need it to go faster. So this is all about just pushing and pushing and pushing it, but it's gaining momentum on its own. So I think there will be emergent effects that are bigger than what the models will show. But you don't know. That's why they're the models. Yes, exactly. Models are always wrong, as they say. And generally, when it comes to clean energy, it has gotten cheaper, faster, and grown faster than people predict.

That's exciting. So when Congress won't pass some sort of stick to reduce emissions, you might hope that administrative action could fill that void, potentially the EPA. What do you think the prospects are that Joe Biden's EPA could take steps to reduce emissions? And how worried should we all be that the Supreme Court is considering or hearing a case that something could gut the EPA's power on climate change? You know, it's like everything else you guys say on your show. You should be very concerned about it, but don't panic. I mean, the limits of what Joe Biden can do with executive power on clean energy are solely in Joe Biden's hands, right? So he can get as ambitious as he wants. EPA is already going after methane to compensate for the loss of the methane fee in the bill. And they're going to go after cars. They're going to tighten standards on cars, on power plants, on all these things.

So that could be where all the sticks come from. And then you could get this sort of carrots and sticks and moving everything much faster. If the Supreme Court rules the wrong way in this current case, which you just kind of got to assume they're going to, that would be absolutely devastating to EPA's ability to do this. It would take EPA's ability to regulate carbon dioxide directly off the table. Basically say they can't do this unless Congress specifically says they can do it. And as you guys know, Congress is not going to say that anytime soon. So it would be a very big deal if they did this. But on the other hand, them gutting federal environmental enforcement powers was basically inevitable from the moment the court became a 6-3 conservative majority.

It's just what shape will it take and what excuse will they use? Now we see your dog behind you. Very cute puppy behind you. He's 10 years old. Far from a puppy. He appears to be a very good boy from what I can tell from here. You've got a keen eye. So one thing you mentioned was the carbon sequestration in Build Back Better. Can you talk a little bit about that? Because I feel like right now there's sort of, I don't know, two ways that carbon sequestration is being described. One is

capturing it as it's being emitted and sequestering it in some way underground or in some sort of substance. And then you see these kinds of startups times just did a writeup of one, I believe cold play is somehow involved where they, where they really are. Aren't they always where there's a plant and it really kind of acts like it kind of pulls the pulls carbon dioxide out of the air and it, and it turns it into some kind of solid and deposits in a way. And on the one hand, I find that really hopeful.

I have joked about it on the podcast and they don't think I'm a serious scientist. When I say I look at the numbers and I say the only hope is we got to reach up into the air and grab it and bury it because none of this other shit is working. And then at the same time, I see people say, wow, it took this long for a bunch of fucking tech people to invent a tree yeah it's more powerful than a tree but it is it is just about the most expensive way extant to reduce a ton of carbon like it's a lot easier to just make energy efficient buildings or just not emit it in the first place. Shut up, nerd. I'm going to pull it out of the fucking air. The background fact here is that even if we went to zero net emissions, we still have a lot more in the atmosphere than is compatible with a stable climate. So we need to remove a bunch from the atmosphere no matter what.

So what you don't want carbon capture to become is an excuse to build more polluting factories. That's how Joe Manchin thinks of it. Joe Manchin thinks, I got all these coal and natural gas plants. I'll just clean them up. I'll stick something on them that cleans them up and they'll keep rolling. That is delusional. All those plants are going to have to close. You're going to have to use carbon capture to go negative emissions. So you do need to develop it. It's good to do the R&D. It's good to do the development, but you need to watch the fossil fuel industry like a hawk because they are going to try to use it disingenuously to their own benefit. Shock and surprise to everyone. But there are also, and another background fact to keep in mind, is there are also industrial facilities that are doing things that we don't know how to do without creating emissions. So our only real option for those like steel plants or cement plants, things like that, our only real option for those is to capture the emissions after they come and bury them because we don't know how to make that stuff without emissions yet. And that technology could get cheaper, right? I mean, yes, of course it's very expensive now, but for the same logic you have for clean energy generally, you could see carbon sequestration becoming a cheaper technology. Yeah. Scale, scale makes everything cheap. Deployment makes everything cheap. That's what the, that's what the Obama energy bill should have shown. Like deployment is the number one best R and D method. He needed more of that Coldplay money.

Yeah. You know, this planet, we're going to fix you. Back then we only had you two. Back then we only had you two. We didn't have Coldplay, so. So, okay. I don't know a hundredth as much about this topic as you do. You live in this.

You write about it all the time. You're a bona fide expert. What is your level of hopefulness or anxiety that we can actually meet the 1.5 degrees celsius threshold that everyone's talking about is the is the gold standard we need to avoid climate catastrophe uh you know it's always tough to answer this question, but I guess I'll just be blunt and say the chances of us limiting warming to 1.5 degrees are slim to nil at this point. That would be, I mean, if you can just, you can still torture your model and make your model do it. But what the model shows is what if every system of any kind on the planet turned on

a dime tomorrow and sprinted in the opposite direction? Then we could get where we need to go. But if you look around, there's no real reason to think that's going to happen. So 1.5 is probably off the table. We can still do two. Yeah. Right? We can still hit two.

We can still hit two. Two is the new 1.5. And I'm obliged contractually to say every increment of a degree matters. So like 2.1 is better than 2.2, et cetera, et cetera. There's never any reason. There's no cutoff point here, right? You just got to keep it as low as you can. Two is still reasonably within reach.

1.5, I think, is probably gone. within reach. 1.5, I think, is probably gone. And if anything saves us, it's going to be this sprinting forward of technology and it's getting cheaper and cheaper and cheaper. And the engineers are engaged now with building clean grids and what's required for clean grids. And the whole world nerd community is now engaged in this subject there's a lot of nerds on it so so insofar as i have any faith it's mostly in the nerds politicians as i said will will fuck around until we're all dead and there'll be the caboose of this whole thing but but it's gotten enough momentum of its own now that i think we can have some hope in that what if i put on fix you and then i asked you that question again could we air and sork in this thing and maybe get a more hopeful answer yeah i feel like i had i should have had a mournful

ballad of some kind behind me as i was saying that stuff look i got a way to get to 1.5 all right and it's called reaching up and pulling out of the fucking air and i keep saying it and everybody tells me everybody laughs at me that. And also I assume you're not a huge fan of filling the atmosphere with some kind of particulate matter that we'll have to do every six months until humanity is dead. Yeah. I look around at the competence we display in much more mundane matters.

And I try to project that onto some sort of grand atmospheric experiment. And I'm just not a fan. I think, you know, like, let's, let's just try to keep let's try to get everybody fed. Right? That's a tractable problem. We know we have the technology to do that. If we can nail that competently, then I'll have more confidence in our ability to engineer the entire global atmosphere. That's a good point that's a really good point i'm gonna reach you're gonna reach up i'm gonna pull it out of the fucking air i'll keep saying it or some like algae or something yeah i'll get some algae going okay what do we get some algae going get some algae and some buoys i got we got lots of ideas here

do you know that we um create more co2 than we create any other man-made material on the planet. It is the number one material we generate. There's a lot of it up there and it's just way, way easier on every possible score not to put it up there in the first place than it will ever be to try to reach up and pull it back in. It's very dispersed up there in the air, John. It takes a lot of energy to pull those molecules back together when they've been dispersed. Yeah, that's what they said about, I don't know, probably some stuff. You got nothing there, did you? You got nothing. You started that and you didn't have anywhere to go with it.

Listen, visionary. Visionaries are always laughed at. That's what they said to Gandhi. If listeners out there want to hear more of your very smart uh answers and fewer of our very dumb questions where can they find you on twitter and how can they subscribe to your newsletter uh twitter i'm br volts and uh on the interwebs i am volts dot wtf great website great website how'd you get the w i was just looking through domains and i was like what that's available boom good one yeah mark maron's pissed volts.gay that's been my option

that was taken that's taken uh well thank you so much for being here that was a great conversation yeah thank you for uh thanks guys having fun with us about a tough topic. Woo. All right. Thank you. There are a lot of very important news stories that deserve our time, attention, and deep focus. These are not them. It is time for a segment we call If That Wasn't Bad Enough. We're going to cover three stories today. First, Tommy, during a keynote speech at the National Conservatism Conference in Orlando, United States Senator, lifestyle vlogger, and guy who pretended to be a guy who pumps his fist in a manly way so that he could buck up some insurrectionists at the Capitol, more and more men are withdrawing into enclaves of idleness and pornography and video games. Josh then took his masculinity press tour to Axios, where this exchange took place. A viewer is watching this and they're thinking, really what the liberals are doing are going to push me to watch Pornhub

more or play Donkey Kong more. Do you mean that literally? Well, what I mean literally is that I think the liberal attack, the left-wing attack on manhood says to men, you're part of the problem. It says that your masculinity is inherently problematic. It's inherently oppressive. What's your basis for linking that to what liberals or the left, as you would say, do? Is that based on data or based on a hunch? Well, it's policy over many years. I mean, if you look at the policy of deindustrialization,

those are policy choices Mike pursued over many years. Wait, wait, how does that connect to porn? Tommy, two points. One, if your search terms are right, your porn problem can also be a Donkey Kong problem. Second, do you consider yourself one of Josh Hawley's idol masturbators adrift in a sea of femme socialism? I love my guy. I'm just dropping some porn brands on him. It's like a pornhub mic. Oh, right, right, right.

Wow. Like Josh Hawley, his Missouri Senate colleague might soon be a guy named Eric Greitens, who is accused of sexual assault, sexual violence and of taking photos of a woman naked to hold as blackmail in case she talked about the things he'd done to her. Like, maybe he could call his future colleague and have a conversation and not worry about, like, video games and pornography. And presumably that's, like, not the kind of manliness he's looking for. Is that good manly or bad manly? I can't tell. I've lost the thread. Right.

So Mike Allen asked him, what is a man? Is that good manly or bad manly? I can't tell. I've lost the thread. can there's no good answer for which is what are the good qualities that men should have that women and others shouldn't have and what are the good qualities that women and non-binary people should have that men shouldn't have that is the discourse about masculinity what is it if it's something only men should have and i'm sorry it makes people like josh well he's not really uncomfortable he doesn't care he's just an endless hole of fucking ambition and i'm performing i'm sorry that josh thinks it's valuable to perform for people who find that idea threatening but that's all it is yes you're right you're absolutely correct there is a challenge for men because we our economy has changed and left a lot of people behind there is a challenge around masculinity

because we are actually having a really big cultural shift about how we think about about gender but that's not he's not offering any kind of answer for either of these uh challenge he just wants to make both work he just lumped every sort of current right-wing bugaboo under the framework of masculinity and included crt and like all the things we've been talking about lately were in this masculinity yeah it's like de-industrialization yeah no like i i agree like that's a really serious problem. Like it is a problem that rural parts of the country are in a state of permanent recession. Who on the earth is helped by claiming that is caused by like the woke left macho NAFTA. I don't think like college professors

didn't de-industrialize the Midwest. It's not, that's not what happened. But like, why do you think Josh thinks this is good politics for him? I really don't know. I watched the whole speech, which I was kind of pissed about after 25 minutes of it were over. And like I saw some I don't know. I think it just gives him a chance to talk about to criticize, you know, transgender rights. I think he did the the attack on how the left wants to attack women's sports and let transgender athletes play. And I think that was his attempt to get into that sort of cultural war. Yeah. And I have a feeling that gay men do not figure into his thinking about masculinity. I don't think he's imagining,

I don't think he's trying to stop gay men from masturbating and playing video games because when he's asked what a man is, it's a husband and a father and i don't think he means ryan murphy you know what i mean like i don't think that's like top of mind like as good examples i don't know yeah next story in a new edition of her sub stack former times columnist and current person who has a massive platform in reach where she decries being silenced barry weiss announced that she is opening up a college to fix higher education weiss's university of austin texas already has a website but it does not have in reach where she decries being silenced. Barry Weiss announced that she is opening up a college to fix higher education. Weiss's University of Austin, Texas already has a website,

but it does not have accreditation, complete with a FAQ that includes an offer for students to start next summer in the Forbidden Courses program. Tommy, can you imagine a more obnoxious group of matriculating students than the people that will select to spend their time learning about cancel culture from Neil Ferguson, Larry Summers, Steven Pinker,

Andrew Sullivan, Caitlin Flanagan, David Mamet. No, that's an incredible list of people. Barry, you're such a good example of someone who takes it so far. I agree that there are times when I'm sure the Twitter and the online discourse, and I'm sure campus discourse can feel constrained. People can feel intimidated out of saying what they want to say. And there's real examples of teachers and students getting disinvited from stuff and that's not great. But what frustrates me about Barry Weiss being at the vanguard of this movement is that the early part of her career when she was in college in particular focused on getting Arab professors fired who criticized Israeli politics.

Glenn Greenwald, ironically, wrote a really long comprehensive piece about this back in 2017. So she she has every right to think and say what she wants about U.S. policy, Israel policy. Like it's not about freedom of speech. I just don't think this is like a blanket commitment to intellectual or academic freedom. I think this is a business opportunity. Yeah, I have a feeling that that's right. I also it's like a lot of times when they decry cancel culture, I feel like there's two ways that can be broken down. One is to say, I don't like the way people are criticized by the public these days and the way

in that which that leads to repercussions. Okay. But who are the repercussions actually being delivered by? They're not being delivered by Twitter users. They're being delivered by institutions, corporations, organizations that are choosing to listen for reasons that are, I think, often quite good and then sometimes not good. They're choosing to listen to the noise and making decisions based on it. Now, sometimes outcries are extremely valid. Sometimes they aren't. But the problem people like Barry Weiss have is with corporate corporate decision making being too short-sighted caring too much about about social media and i do wish that more people would think of uh uh some kinds of storms online as like the food in the movie hook with robin williams which is like it only

makes you full if you think it's real you know what i mean and like sometimes you can just you can just like you don't have to you don't have to imagine it being these such powerful. You don't to give it such force. Yeah. And a lot of these problems aren't they don't don't deserve the level of attention who were told they couldn't testify in a voting rights lawsuit against Ron DeSantis because presumably some powerful donors pressured them out of doing that. That's a real academic freedom question. Or the kind of endless campaigns, as you mentioned, that people like Barry Weiss launch against professors that they think do not hold a position on Israel that should be acceptable, or the endless proposals from right wing legislators across the country to ban certain words in schools, to ban certain books in schools like there is a real threat to to intellectual freedom.

But they don't care about those. And also Barry came out of like the New York Times opinion page, which sort of range from the center left to the center right, right between the 40 yard lines of political discourse. Yeah, that's true. Next up, Senator Ted Cruz teased his plans to secede from the U.S. during a talk at Texan A&M about Texit. Cruz cautioned that he's not there yet. Wow, that's nice. That's nice, Ted.

Love to have you. Welcome to America. Don't let the door hit you on the way out. But if there comes a point where it's hopeless, then I think we should take NASA. We take the military. We take the oil. Adding that Joe Rogan should be president of Texas. When asked by an audience member what might make him want to actually secede from the U.S., Cruz responded, look, if the Democrats end the filibuster, if they pack the Supreme Court, if they make D.C. a state, if they federalize elections and massively expand

voter fraud. Tommy, if Joe Rogan is the president of Texas, how quickly would the U.S. have to send in humanitarian relief and some kind of peacekeeping operation? God, that is just the lamest. Like, I don't think that that kind of sucking up is going to work with Joe Rogan. You know, I think, like, I bet Joe Rogan thinks Ted Cruz is a fucking loser and can't stand him.

I think that's probably right. I think that's probably right. Can I add a little someone to our little grievance pile real quick? Sure. Aaron Rodgers. You know him? NFL quarterback. Green Bay Packers.

Yes. Got COVID. The thing that drives me a little bit crazy about all of the people we've talked about today is like Aaron Rodgers, get vaccinated. Don't get vaccinated. I don't give a fuck what you do.

And I'm not going to complain at you because you're not going to listen to me and it's not going to help and blah, blah, blah. But what I'm so sick of is the language that he uses and Ted Cruz and Barry Weiss, like the language of the whining and the victimhood. You know what I mean? Because Rogers, like he was allergic to the mRNA vaccines. And then when he was trying to figure out what to do about COVID, the other option was J and J. And he didn't want to take that because it got recalled for the clotting reasons. Like, that's a perfectly good reason to be hesitant. But instead, you come out of the gate when you get busted

because you got COVID and you said you were immunized and you had lied about it and claim that the woke mob is coming after you, that this is some sort of broader cultural fight. And it's like, no, man, it's just that all the guys in the sort of like, I'm just asking questions crowd tend to ask questions that they could find answers to if they wanted to hear them but they don't yeah i mean the the

what i often think with people like that is it's like when people say like actually you know nothing is real and it only exists in my own mind it's like okay but you still are pretty careful when you cross the street right because you don't want to get hit by a bus. And like these, especially the athletes, there's that other famous athlete, Kyrie, Kyrie Irving, Aaron Rodgers and others. And I find it really frustrating because I'll tell you what kinds of medicine they don't doubt, sports medicine, right? They take great advantage, the luxury that these celebrities live under provided by the scientific method that they cast aside when they when they have a kind of intuition that they're not testing against facts is so frustrating like you live in a world that science creates for you and you have so little

regard and respect for that creation because you don't see it with your own eyes it's like it's like so childish it's such it's like it's like, they don't have the, uh, what's it called when you play peekaboo with a baby object permanence, they don't have object permanence for science for reality. Yeah. It's like, Hey, like, I know you didn't see the test being done, but you trust it when it helps you. You got the treatment you needed when you got sick, but you won't get the vaccine because peekaboo, right. You don't know how every medical procedure works. Cause of course you don't, you're not a doctor. But then he says things like if the vaccine is so great, how come people are still getting COVID? Aaron, there's answers to this because the

vaccines aren't perfect. Just like your homeopathic immunization process that you went through, your DIY vaccine is also not perfect because now you are out for 10 games because you went to a Halloween party dressed as John Wick and we're fucking around without a mask on you got covid you got busted so don't claim don't don't act like you're being you know harmed by the woke mob like you made dumb choices now you can't play in two games jerk that's the masculinity that uh josh holly's looking for yeah exactly final story this morning pundit the dog woke me up an hour early because she does not observe standard time. She lives on daylight saving time. Switching time zones twice a year is deadly.

Standard time has been reduced to four months as it is. 19 states have already voted to move to daylight saving time permanently, but are blocked by the federal government. Now, the Sunshine Protection Act, backed by a partisan group of senators and introduced by Marco Rubio, would make daylight saving time permanent, except in places that do not observe daylight saving time. Now, Patty Murray is one of the co-sponsors. She's also been looking for other potential workarounds, including a waiver from the Biden administration. It is going to get dark at around five o'clock. If you're in Massachusetts, enjoy the sun being gone before five o'clock. And if Maine, it's basically Alaska

over there. Tommy, how do you feel about standard time versus daylight saving time? Okay, I'm sincerely, I've talked to you alone about this. Can you give me like the 30 seconds on why people think we should keep it and why they think it should go? Yes. Okay. So basically, so there's two parts of this debate. Should we be switching?

And if we stop switching, should we be on standard time versus daylight saving time? Now, the arguments against switching are pretty strong. The changing of our circadian rhythms, the shifting of traffic patterns causes premature deaths from heart attacks from people not getting enough sleep. It causes traffic accidents. Kids get hit by cars because people are driving home in the dark. There's health consequences for this time switch. Now, the argument in favor of it is that what people really say when they like daylight saving

time is they like the summer and the days are longer. When the days are shorter, there is an argument for why you'd want to shift back to standard time. That being said, I think the evidence for stopping the switch is pretty strong. And one problem you have when you are switching every few months is localities don't really adapt to the way the natural rhythm of the sun is in those regions. We do see that a bit. So places on the western edges of time zones tend to have later start times just naturally than places on the eastern edges of time zone. Like work just starts a little bit later when you're closer to the border of the time zone because the sun comes up a little bit later. a little bit later when you're closer to the border of the time zone because the sun comes up a little bit later. But those kinds of effects would be easier to produce if people kind of lived in the reality of their time year round and didn't have the switch. So the switch should stop.

Now the question is, should you have daylight saving time or permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time? Now, what do we got? I think this requires a little bit more nuance than what Marco Rubio and several others are proposing. There are a lot of states that have already passed laws that would move them to permanent daylight saving time if the federal government allowed it. And we adapted, we amended the Uniform Time Act. However, one of the issues is in places like Michigan, the sun actually sets almost an hour later than it does in places like Massachusetts. And one of the challenges of permanent daylight saving time. So in the summer in parts of Michigan, the sun sets so late that

actually has negative health repercussions because people go to bed later and work doesn't start later. And so people get less sleep and that causes everything from heart issues to diabetes. So my view is every state should be given the option to switch to either permanent daylight saving time or permanent standard time. And then each individual state should end up having the chance to decide because states on the current eastern edges of time zones are probably best suited to stay on permanent daylight saving time. But states which naturally already have slightly later sunsets because they live on the western

edges of time zones might want to think about permanent standard time. But my view is give everybody a window where they can decide. And at the end of that period, we'll just have new permanent time zone maps where people have chosen basically when they want their noon to be. It's like a bunch of referenda. Yeah, sure. I mean, well, actually, it can be right referenda. Some states have already done this and had passed bills. You just want to leave it up to legislatures or the states to make a choice during a window. And the end result is this doesn't end up being more complicated. We just have new time zone maps. Or just move to California where no one starts work until like 10. And think about how late work will start when we go to daylight

saving time permanently, which our senator is one of the co-sponsors. Alex Padilla is one of the co-sponsors. I approach this from a purely dog walking perspective. And now basically, if I don't walk Luca before dinner from now until the spring then i'm not gonna walk her she doesn't like walking at night i would much i prefer a dark morning walk than to a dark evening walk absolutely well we solved that one we solved that one but uh shame that involves marco rubio getting a win reason enough to give up on my dream so you're a fan now no yes i am i'm a huge fan of Marco Rubio. You should do an interview with him. I would like to do an interview where I stop, fight every fiber of my being to go off topic.

You should interview him at Barry Weiss University. What is it? University of Austin. University of Austin, Texas. I'm taking a class called anti-white fragility for dummies. The thing about choosing Austin is it's famously home to like one of the cooler places you could go to college already. UT Austin. I mean, of all the schools, when I look at myself in hindsight, if I could go back in time and shake myself as a 17-year-old and say, don't go to a tiny liberal arts school in the middle of Ohio where it's gray 10 months a year. Love you, Ken, in college. But come on, we're talking about the weather. I would say, hey, have you heard about UT Austin? And I would say,

hey, John, you closeted 17-year-old, your decision to go to a tiny, freezing cold sports college in Northwest Massachusetts was good. Oh, good. Do that.

Do that. See, we both learned something. Hey, I funded. And that's our show. Thank you, Dave Roberts. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you, Marco funded. And that's our show. Thank you, Dave Roberts. Thank you, Tommy. Thank you, Marco Rubio. Thank you, Marco.

Thank you, Barry Weiss. Thank you, Aaron Rodgers. Thank you, Josh Hawley. You manly man. One note on Josh Hawley. One note on Josh Hawley. Remember that story that he did not deny about the fact that he had a poster on his wall

in his college drawer called L'Enfant, which shows a fucking A-plus hot guy without a shirt holding a baby. And he said it because it was pro-life. Okay, pal. Pro what kind of lives? Hot gay lives? Josh, weird poster buddy.

Manliness. Not implying anything. L'Enfant. Classic manly teen guy poster. Hot, hot 80s men. Shirtless. Holding babies. End of show.

Hot Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive producer is Michael Martinez. Our senior producer is Andy Gardner Bernstein. Our producer is Haley Muse, and Olivia Martinez is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our associate producer. It's mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somanator, Sandy Gerard, Hallie Kiefer, Madison Hallman, and Justine Howe for production support. And to our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, and Amelia Montooth. Our episodes are uploaded as videos at youtube.com slash crookedmedia.