The Daily Beast Podcast - How Long Until Ben Shapiro Becomes CEO of Facebook? w/ Kevin Roose

Episode Date: September 28, 2021

New York Times tech columnist Kevin Roose explains why Mark Zuckerberg and Facebook just can’t seem to let its high-performing conservative talking heads go, NBC News Reporter John Allen breaks down President Biden’s infrastructure plan for normal people, and USC law professor Franita Tolson retells how she avoided a Ted Cruz “gotcha” moment. If you haven't heard, every single week The New Abnormal does a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast’s membership program. where Sometimes we interview Senators like Cory Booker or the folks who explain our world in media like Jim Acosta or Soledad O’Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner and sometimes its just discussing the fuckery. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you’ll support The Beast’s fearless journalism. Plus! You’ll also get full access to podcasts and articles. To become a member head to newabnormal.thedailybeast.com Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Molly Jong-Fast and welcome to The Daily Beast, The New Abnormal. I'm a left-wing pundit and an editor at large at The Daily Beast. We're here to have fun, sharp conversations with some of the smartest people in media, politics, and science that help make what's happening in the country and the world clearer. Our world has been turned up day down. On The New Abnormal, we'll talk about the people who got us into this mess and figure out how to get ourselves out of it. And I'm producer Jesse Cannon. I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails.

Today we have an excellent show. New York Times tech columnist Kevin Ruse will talk to us about Facebook's conservative bend and how to see that. Then for Anita Tolson, a law professor at the University of Southern California, will talk to us about voting rights. But first, we have NBC News reporter and author of Lucky, how Joe Biden barely won the presidency, John Allen. Welcome to the new abnormal Jonathan Allen. Hello. Good to be back. You're getting like serious frequent flyer points here. So it's all happening.

I want to talk to you first about the sort of traffic jam in legislation that's going on right now with reconciliation and infrastructure happening basically in the same week, right? I want to like take away the snooze factor for a minute. Yes. Here's what's happening. Joe Biden's trying to take money from people who have it. and give it to people who don't have it through a whole bunch of programs. And one of the things that they do to do that is called budget reconciliation. And then in addition to that, he's trying to use some of that same kind of money from the halves

to build bridges and roads and do some things that are beyond that sort of traditional infrastructure. But basically, it's like, how do you make more for the people who have less and for society broadly by taking a little bit a bigger chunk from the people who have. I mean, really what it is is that he's improving, you know, he wants to do high-speed drains, he wants to do, I mean, there's climate stuff in there that would give to everyone. Broad-based benefits in the infrastructure bill funded by taxes on the wealthy corporations, but also on an individual level, expanding the social safety net by doing elder care and more in terms of child tax credits and things like that funded by taxes on upper income earners.

But it's over $400,000 a year. I mean, it's not... For the most part, that's the case. It's not entirely true. I mean, some of the taxes they're looking at include taxes on cigarettes, which disproportionately tend to hit the poor, right? So it's not even like just under $400,000. You're talking about anybody who buys a pack of cigarettes. And whether you like the morality of that or not, it is taxing a lot of people under $400,000.

The Joint Tax Committee just came out with the distributional analysis. That's a really fancy word for saying, like, who pays what. Basically, what you'll see is people at the very top end, the vast majority of people at the very top end, will see their taxes go up by more than $500 a year. They'll be okay. I'm not so worried about those guys. And then what you'll see is, at the lower ends, you'll see large percentages pay less in taxes, or in some cases for people who don't pay tax, effectively pay $0 in taxes a year.

they will see more refundable credits or, you know, sort of direct assistance through tax credits. So that, you know, the lower end will do better. And then, you know, the sort of interesting group, I think politically is that Biden is essentially targeting the same group that Trump targeted in his tax cut bill, which is people making like in the, and this is a wide range, but like from, say, like, $100,000 to $500,000. And the reason that they squeeze more money out of those folks is because there are a lot of those folks. And so it's where the money is. Oh, interesting. You can only tax the rich, like the super wealthy so much, like, and it only produces a certain amount of dollars. But if you've got, you know, a broader

base, you've got millions and millions of people who make between $500,000, you can actually get more money out of taxing them a little bit more. I want to talk about why it does strike me. And Brian Stelter talked about this yesterday on his show, which I thought actually was really, really good. He was talking about why when we talk about these kind of spending bills, we don't talk about what's in them. We just talk about that top line number. Among other things, it's easy shorthand. But one of the reasons we talk about it in this, I have been talking about it in this case,

is that the president and the Democratic leaders in Congress talked about it that way to start. Right. They've started to recognize that that's not necessarily effective for their messaging. It's not... Wait, you're saying Democrats are bad at messaging? I'm saying that they have had a change in their view of what would be the most... effective messaging. Really?

Because they found out that it wasn't working. What they found out is when you tell people about the stuff that's in it, they like all the stuff that's in it. But when you throw them to their, you're doing a $3.5 trillion bill, they don't like that. Even if you follow up and say it's not that you're putting debt. If there are so many paid fors and you have a tax increase, then it's not debt. I mean, it's quite literally taxed and spend. I say that without any sort of pejorative connotation, but like that's what's going on.

some people are being taxed to spend for everyone and to spend, you know, more specifically for other people. And like, that's essentially what the Democratic platform is now and has been for, you know, largely since the beginning of time. And the Republican platform is fascism. So let's talk about that for a minute. Because the Republican platform is, for a while, it used to be smaller government. It's not smaller government anymore, right? What is it? It's the Republican platform is now Trump. Well, it is smaller government. To be specific, it's most Republicans believe that you should fund the military, you know, with every single dollar that's raised through taxes. And, you know, effectively, I should, it's not entirely true, but I'm broadly brushing here, but effectively nothing else should be paid for by the government.

So if you can up the military spending by enough, like there's no real ceiling, you know, where Republicans are going like, no, no, no, you're funding the military too much. That's okay. Right. One of the moments I thought this weekend that really struck me as like peak Republican Party was Greg I overturned Roe v. Wade. Abbott saying that he would hire the guy who the, the, um, ice guy on the horse who was whipping the Haitian refugees. Asylum seekers. Asylum seekers. It all means the same thing here. I mean, like, here's people who are, like, it doesn't matter. who they are. Right. You shouldn't be beating them. Right. But the fact that then Abbott was like, I'm going to hire those guys. Like, that struck me as like peak Trump Republican Party. Well, this is also the guy that said that he was going to eliminate rape in the future. But like, Ched Sheldon up to this point not to do that, given his powers to eliminate rape. Which, if he can do that, he should run for president. I think it would be a winning.

If he could do that in Texas, run for president because I think that would be a winning message. Abbott, though, is interesting because he has gotten, while we're in this horrifying Trump vacuum, which is just waiting for the return of him, which seems imminent, we are really, you know, the people who are popping up as the celebrities in this universe are just sort of the worst of the worst. To whom might you be referring? Not to be putting to find a partisan point on it, but I mean, DeSantis, Abbott. I mean, the people. people who you think of as sort of like leading the Republican Party right now, Jim Jordan. Matt Gates? Matt Gates. Right?

I mean, it strikes me that these guys are like they are being elevated because of their Trumpiness. No doubt. And, you know, look, I mean, the popular thing to say among Trump supporters these days is, oh, well, you know, I like Trump and I voted for Trump and I would support Trump. But I'm not in it for Trump. I'm in it for the Trumpism. Right. Which is nothing. Get out of jail free card on being pro-Trump. But like that's essentially what you're seeing. None of these people would survive a Republican primary if Donald Trump ran for president again.

Right. Which it seems like he will. I assume none of them would be dumb enough to get in. So these people are all running for Veep. Well, they're all running for president until Donald Trump announces he's running for president, at which point they're running for Veep. Do you, I mean, what's your guess? I suspect it will not be Mike Pence on a Donald Trump. Safest money in gambling these days.

What's your guess on how this goes down? You know, when Trump announces. I mean, it strikes me, like, I thought we'd get, you know, that he wouldn't announce before the midterms, but I'm getting the sense that he will. He's running until he's not running. I don't know what his timing would be. I mean, if you listen to him at his rally the other night, you know, and really since Biden took office, I mean, he hasn't departed the stage. He hasn't done what other defeated candidates do, which is go home and lick their wounds.

I mean, he is running for president right now. He's raising money. He's attacking the other party. You know, what are the things you would do to run for president that Donald Trump's not doing, right? He's picking candidates in Republican primaries, and people are begging for his endorsement. Right. I'm so depressed. So this is sort of interesting, right?

the cyber ninjas also think Trump is a loser. They found that Joe Biden won by more votes in Arizona. So it's so funny because all of these months of thinking that the cyber ninjas were just totally incompetent. But actually, they're competent, question mark. Well, they did the thing that you would like to have seen them do. So, you know, I mean. I mean, what happened to the bamboo? Remember the bamboo?

Yeah, yeah. I mean, but look, there's, like, Biden obviously won. Anytime you do a recount, there's a possibility there will be a small, small marginal shift. But nobody who's been doing this for a long time thought that, like, you know, 11,000 votes or 15,000 votes or 20,000 votes in a state we're going to shift based on any sort of recount or analysis. You have to be crazy to think that. It's just, it's a statistical impossibility unless there was, you know, widespread fraud. I mean, that's really hard to coordinate. You think about like tens of thousands of votes or even in the close, you know, the case of the closest states, you know, 10,000 votes.

It's inconceivable without meddling. But Republicans are now planning on doing, the lesson they have learned from this is to do more audits. Well, I mean, no one said there was shame in politics. But I mean, the game here is to audit the vote to make the Republican base no longer believe that the votes are. right to so discontentance and so discord to convince Trump supporters that they should cheat because everything's rigged against them. Well, it's the natural outgrowth of like what you've seen from Trump over the course of the last, I guess, six years or so now, which is something is only legitimate if it benefits

Trump, right? Right. This is how you do propaganda and sort of, you know, I don't want to go so far as to say mind control, but definitely this sort of heavy end persuasion where people. people, you know, start to deny reality because they, you know, at some level, are so invested in it. And what, you know, what Trump's goal is is to get them, like I said, to believe that things are only fair and just if they benefit Donald Trump. And if they don't benefit Donald Trump, they are inherently false. Right. And that's it. Yeah. And look, I mean, I think our politics

generally is trending in that direction, but like what we've seen from the Republican Party and from Trump in the course of the last six years is the on steroids version of partisanship. It's beyond partisanship toward that place where you're denying reality, no matter how hard it hits you in the face. But it is interesting to me that we are never, ever, ever, like, the Republicans are never going to come to their senses. Like, this is just going to keep getting worse and worse and worse. I mean, we're in a crisis in the country and that we have one party, the Democratic Party that effectively is the only one that stands for both small D democracy and small our republicanism. And the other party is like questioning whether our government. which it exists as it does.

Right. Even more, it's irrelevant to them. The government exists as it does. The only thing is relevant is that Donald Trump or a disciple of Donald Trump is in charge. So how do we cover real news in a bipartisan way or nonpartisan way when one side is batched? It is nonpartisan to say Joe Biden won the election. It is nonpartisan to say the idea that the election was stolen as a fever drink. That's not a partisan thing to say.

That's a non-partisan objective thing to say. I think the key for the media in terms of reliability, and it's impossible because the media is so large and it's not directed, much as some of the political folks would tell you the media is directed in some way. The key is to do as much hard reporting as possible and make sure that things are right when they're right and make sure to correct them when they're wrong. And do your best to you, as a journalist,

do your best to use independent judgment. as to objective truth because, you know, it's very easy to get swept up in moments and having an ability to pull out from, like, what one side is saying versus what the other side is saying and giving them equal weight. They do not necessarily have equal weight. But it's hard with a situation like redistricting or like reconciliation, what's happening right now, or the debt ceiling, like to say, like this has to happen in order to, for Joe Biden's presidency to be successful. And a lot of media outlets are saying that, but in fact, the other guy wants to end democracy. So, like, it's hard for me to see, you know, like, it's hard to report on the Biden world in the high stakes way when, in fact, the Trump world is such an existential danger to democracy.

Well, Biden has always loved to say, don't judge me against the almighty, judge me against the other guy. It seems to be like Democrats seem very comfortable with that right now. Well, I feel like they have to be. I mean, the other guys are a complete lunatic. I mean, you might not like Biden on taxes. You may not like Biden on, you know, electric cars. You may think electric cars are stupid, but you want to still have elections. I mean, me personally, I definitely want to have elections.

And I don't dislike Joe Biden based on any of his policy preferences, or, by the way, any other serious politician based on their serious policy preferences. It doesn't make me like dislike them. But as far as the broader set of people, yeah, like there's a huge difference between, look, I guess it's a legitimate position that we shouldn't have this republic that's been like sort of the shining beacon for the world for the last 200 plus years. But I'm shocked at the degree to which, I guess I'm shocked at the number of people that are willing to like entertain that idea or believe that idea that like perhaps we shouldn't

have this republic. crazy. I feel like I'm seeing some redistricting stuff. Can you talk about redistricting for two seconds, and then we'll stop talking? Yeah, absolutely. It's the way every 10 years that the two parties fight over, yeah, who gets to fix the house for the next 10 years. Although usually whatever they do runs only about six years before things revert a little bit. So it looks like Republicans are doing their usual of trying to gerrymander, and there's a lot of partisan gerrymandering going on. That's on both sides, though, Molly. I mean.

Right. No, I know. There's a lot. Yeah. And I'm very excited for Democrats to redraw New York and get rid of Staphanic for once and for all, which hopefully they will do. But I'm curious to know, it looks like these Texas districts are coming in and that actually this might be what Dave Wasserman was tweeting was that it might actually be a wash. Yeah, I think that I haven't seen the shape of the districts yet, but I think what you're going to see is the Republicans. try to get a little bit of advantage by packing Democrats as hard as they can into some more safe districts.

Yeah, it seems like something important. Yeah, I just, I haven't seen the maps yet, generally speaking. I mean, it's a huge state that is probably, you know, over time going to trend bluer. And the question is, are the Texans going to be able to, you know, are they going to be able to fight against that? I mean, you know, I think what they're looking at is maybe picking up two seats. So Texas gets more districts based on increased population relative to the other states. So I think what you're going to look at with this map is likely, I'm looking at it now, is likely going to be a hold for Democrats of 13 seats,

and then Republicans would get, you know, get two more seats would be the likeliest outcome. Or at least that's what they're going for. But this redistricting will mean that it's going to be harder for Democrats to keep the House, ultimate lie, and the midterms. Yes. Yes. The things that are working against the Democrats are the sort of history of midterms where the president's part, a new president's party usually loses in the first midterm after he's elected. And redistricting, which, you know, Republicans control the redistricting process in more states than the Democrats do. the thing that's in the Democrats favor is that the Republican Party remains a party that's denying reality with regard to Trump. And you know, you will see the Democrats campaign against Trump as hard as they possibly can and try to tie candidates the craziest parts of things that Trump

has said over time. Whether that's effective or not, I don't know. Thank you so much for joining us, John. Please come back soon. Of course. Hey folks, if you haven't heard every single week we do a special bonus episode for Beast Inside, the Daily Beast membership program. Sometimes we interview senators like Corey Booker or the folks who explain what's happening behind the scenes in media like Jim Acosta or Soladad O'Brien. Sometimes we just have fun and talk to our favorite comedians and actors like Busy Phillips or Billy Eichner. And sometimes we just have friends around to analyze what's happening in the news. You can get all of our episodes in your favorite podcast app of choice by becoming a Beast Inside member where you'll support the Beast. fearless journalism, as well as getting full access to podcasts and articles.

To become a member, head to New Abnormal.com. That's New Abnormal.com. Kevin Ruse is a tech reporter at the New York Times, as well as the author of Future Proof. Welcome to New Abnormal, Kevin. Thank you for having me. We're so excited to have you. Why is Facebook so bad? Well, define bad. Which definition of bad are we talking about here? Evil, but also bad at what it does, but also really evil. I think there are a couple layers to this. One is that Facebook is really sort of an unprecedented experiment in human history. Like we have never had a service, a religion, a country, anything, any grouping of human beings at the scale of Facebook.

It just hasn't been tried before. And so all of the sort of issues, I think, flow from that. that, right? Because that's, you know, that scale is why, you know, it's so hard for them to get a handle on problems on the platform. That scale is why it has to rely on these algorithms to curate content and rank people's news feeds and things like that, and that they often don't find out that it's gone horribly wrong in some, you know, far-flung part of the world until, you know, people are accusing them of abetting genocide and things like that. So, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I I read that this weekend, yes.

I shouldn't laugh because genocide is not hilarious, but it is the definition of really, really, really bad. Right. And it's part and parcel with this strategy that Facebook has had where it wanted to grow as fast as possible. And that meant pushing itself into corners of the globe where it didn't have people who were on the ground and didn't have people who spoke the language sometimes

and had woefully inadequate systems for protecting people. And so, you know, people debate all the time whether, you know, their actions are malicious or incompetent. And I say, you know, why choose? But I think a lot of it comes back to this problem with scale and the fact that even though there are people at Facebook who are doing good work, who are trying to make things better,

they're just, they're bailing out, they're trying to bail out this boat that is just too big for them to effectively manage. But you think the scale is too hard to manage as opposed to that the problem is that what is good for their profits is not necessarily good for their keeping users on the platform?

Yeah, I mean, I think if they could push a button tomorrow that would reduce their profitability by, say, 50%, and that they would never be criticized ever again for a content-related issue on their platform, and that they would be viewed as heroes and innovators and not as, you know, criminals or destroying democracy or whatever. I think a lot of people at the company would take that trade. I think that they are so sensitive to the perception that they are doing more harm than good that I think, you know, it's not just about the money at this point.

They also have a chip on their shoulder and they want to prove that Facebook can be good, that it can do more good than harm. Right, but it can. But it is interesting that they want that at all because, I mean, I always think about Mark Zuckerberg's wife is doctor. Right. I mean, she is a doctor. She's a, you know, health educator. You know, they've been trying very hard in their personal lives to kind of stop the pandemic. And yet Mark Zuckerberg oversees this gigantic platform that has, you know, been just overrun with content about the harm and the vaccines pose and things like that. So it really does conjure this metaphor of like, you know, trying to bail out, you know, a cruise liner with a leak in it and all you have is like a little teaspoon or something. It's just not going to do it.

It is. I mean, it is so fascinating. Another thing that I want to talk to you about are these top, these lists of the top 10 sites that are compiled by CrowdTangle, I think, right? CrowdTangle is a data tool that is owned by Facebook and that allows you to kind of take a bird's eye view of. of what is getting lots of engagement on the platform. So most weeks, it's Ben Shapiro, Ben Shapiro, Dan Bonino, Dan Bonino, the Dodo, and then, Fox News. Right. I started compiling these, like, a few years ago.

And at the time, Donald Trump was still on the platform. He had not been banned yet. He was still the president. And I was just fascinated at how sort of Trump dominated these top 10 lists were. and I was just kind of making them for myself. And then people started sort of being really interested in them. And so I started putting together a daily list on this Twitter account that I started Facebook's top 10. And you're right.

I mean, most days, you know, for much of its existence, my job on that front involves sort of figuring out, did Ben Shapiro have five of the top 10 or seven of the top 10? You know, did Dan Bongino? Was Dan Bongino number one or number two? and where did Sean Hannity and other people like that come in? So it really is sort of has been skewed toward the sort of Trumpist right. And, you know, that's been a big contentious issue with Facebook. They don't like that I've been doing this,

and they've tried lots of times in lots of ways to discredit them. Some of this is because Ben Shapiro spends a lot of money advertising on Facebook. Well, yes and no. I mean, yeah, it's true that they have been. aggressive about growth hacking and doing all kinds of tactics to increase the size of their audience. It's also true that this is not unique to Facebook. Look at AM Talk Radio. It's dominated by right-wing commentators. For that matter, look at cable news where Fox News and the opinion programming on Fox News is by far the most popular content in cable news. So the difference with Facebook is that

it doesn't want to admit that it's AM Talk Radio or that it's, you know, that it's a cable company that's, you know, whose biggest show is Sean Hannity. They really want to believe that they are promoting diverse opinions from across the political spectrum and, you know, even when the evidence says that that's not true. But there is this report. We talked to Max Chaffkin earlier today who wrote the book on Peter Thiel and he said that Peter brokered this agreement between the Trump administration and Zuckerberg to be a little softer on conservatives, do you think observing this that there's evidence there? A lot of people see those lists you put out as the evidence that this is true.

You know, I don't know. You know, Max has done better reporting on this than I have, it sounds like. And so I'm not sure exactly what the nature of any agreement was or if there even was an agreement. But I do think it reflects that Facebook, you know, sort of holds some of these publishers to a different standard because of their size and their influence. I mean, Ben Shapiro's daily wire has been caught inflating its engagement with the use of sort of these coordinated networks of pages that all promote their stories at the same time. For another smaller partisan publisher,

they might get kicked off Facebook for doing that, or at least have some of their pages suspended. For Bench Bureau, you know, they just sort of got a talking to you and then went back to business. So I think, you know, not just for partisan publishers, but in general, what we know about Facebook is that the bigger you are, the harder it is for the platform to take action against you. Yeah. Wow. It's so interesting because it is, it's such a problem. And I'm curious to know, are they, where are they with like letting, I mean, it strikes me this weekend. We sort of learn that Trump is going to run again. And it seems pretty clear that that, it was. we're looking down the barrel of that. Do we know what Facebook's, I mean, is Facebook going to let him back on?

Well, the latest on that is that the oversight board, which is this sort of quasi-supreme court body that Facebook set up for itself, so Mark Zuckerberg didn't have to make these decisions himself. They upheld Facebook's decision to ban him for at least two years. But they're not saying that they're going to ban him permanently. And, you know, I wouldn't be shocked if, they end up letting him back on in time for 2024.

But there's nothing as big as Facebook or coming close to it or that could usurp that. Depends what you mean. I mean, if you're talking about Facebook Inc, their whole suite of products, which would include Instagram and WhatsApp and things like that, then, yeah, they are not impossible to topple, but they are pretty dominant. But if you look at just Facebook, the app, the big blue app, as they call it, you know, there's a lot of evidence that that's actually been struggling to keep people interested, to keep their attention. There's less organic sharing happening there. And I think people feel that.

I mean, young people don't use Facebook by and large. And if you talk to them about what apps are on their phone, they'll probably tell you about TikTok and probably Instagram, but they're probably not spending a whole lot of time on Facebook itself. I mean, I think there's a funny evidence of this is that when I go to a lot of like marketing talks. And, you know, people joke that, like, if you're spending money to target people under 30 on Facebook, you're burning money. Right. I mean, you know, it's a great place to target, you know, people in some demographic categories, especially older people. But, you know, that's not where culture is being created.

I mean, if you look at something, even like Instagram, it has this reels product now. And it's sort of like short form video. And, you know, it seems like half the reels I see. are just people reposting TikToks. Well, and TikTok has a billion users now, right? Yeah, and yeah, TikTok is big and still growing, and it's got a lot of sort of culture being created on it. And I think that drives Facebook a little crazy

because that used to be them. Particularly good evidence of, like, how bad their scale is between them and TikTok is when you click on the hashtags that are popular and you see how many people are posting to them. It's like 10% of what TikTok's getting on. any number since they both have that publicly available. Right. And I suspect that a lot of metrics are, you know, favorable to TikTok. I mean, Facebook is still very powerful.

Like, I don't want to overlook that, even though it's maybe not the platform of choice for, you know, young people. It is still the dominant media platform in America and around the world. And so its decisions have huge implications. And so I think we need to, you know, pay attention to it even while acknowledging that, like, it's not the only game in town. But it is interesting to me, they did originally want to do sort of more real news, and they sort of pivoted away from that. Facebook sort of constantly goes back and forth on its approach to news.

They set up this news tab, and they tried to get publishers to post content directly on Facebook. If you remember, the instant articles thing that happened maybe five or six years ago. They were sort of saying, you know, we expect publishers will be publishing directly on Facebook. and the pendulum swings back and forth on that every few years. Right now they're trying this sort of substack competitor, this sort of email newsletter thing that they've signed up all these fancy people for. Who knows whether that'll work, but it's clear that Facebook, I think one of the biggest perceptions,

sort of perception differences, when you talk to people inside Facebook versus outside Facebook, that outside Facebook people tend to think of it as sort of this impenetrable fortress. And inside Facebook, they constantly feel like they are minutes away from death and irrelevance. Like there's this real fear and paranoia that animates a lot of their decisions. This was so great. Thank you so much for joining us. So interesting. Thank you for having me. So much fun to talk. Franita Tolson is a law professor and vice dean for faculty and academic affairs at the University of Southern California.

Welcome to new abnormal professor Tulson. Thank you. Very happy to be here. We are very excited to have you because we spend a lot of time, or at least we know we should be spending a lot of time talking about voting and voter rights. But sometimes that topic is not as exciting as other times. I would argue this week you made voter rights exciting. It was definitely a week. Anything I can do to bring attention to this issue because it's one that I spend my academic career studying,

but I also care about just on a personal level. I just think that with everything going on in our political system, it's really important for people to pay attention. So I'm glad I helped with that this week. So you testified before the Senate. Give me the background. So the hearing was about the new coverage formula for the Voting Rights Act. In 2013, the Supreme Court invalidated a portion of the Voting Rights Act that required certain

jurisdictions, mostly in the South, to preclear all changes to their voting laws with the federal government before those changes could go into effect. The Supreme Court invalidated it, basically finding that it infringed on the sovereignty of the state. So there were federalism concerns and concerns about federal overreaching, particularly in light of the fact that, at least in the Supreme Court's opinion, we live in a post-racial society. And so Congress really needs to justify that type of legislation. Last week, I was trying to help justify this legislation by illustrating that we still need a newly reauthorized Voting Rights Act and that racial discrimination in voting is still with us. And Senator Ted Cruz, most famous for microwaving fish, did not agree. Actually, I can't tell from the hearing if he disagreed.

Let me be clear. I view my role as educating Congress, right? Not educating the Democrats, you know, just educating Congress. So I go there and I come with the relevant information that I need to come with in order to establish that there needs to be a new, new coverage formula for the Voting Rights Act. His question, and this is probably inadvertent on his part, I think it helped to show that we need a reauthorized Voting Rights Act. That might not have been his intent, but I certainly think that was one of the takeaways from our exchange last week. Can you explain that a little bit? Yeah, sure. So the question that Senator Cruz asked me was if I thought voter ID laws were racially discriminatory.

The question itself is pretty open-ended, right? He tried to make it into a yes or no question. But it's really not that, right? One of the things that I think get lost in our conversation about voter ID laws is that every voter ID law is not the same. He wanted me to say that, yes, I thought voter ID laws are discriminatory. The real answer is it depends. It depends on the type of law. It depends on the demographics of the state. It depends on the politics on the ground.

There are all of these different factors that go into whether or not a voter ID law is discriminatory. And Texas is actually a pretty easy case because a federal district. court found that it was passed with discriminatory intent. So once intent is found, none of those other things really matter. But you can easily imagine a voter ID law in another state that doesn't have a significant impact on minority communities because it's more flexible. Texas's law, even the law that exists today is fairly restrictive. And so it has a disproportionate impact on communities of color. You know, he didn't care about that. He was just trying to get a soundbite. Right. But it's interesting because the soundbite was, you got the soundbite.

I'm curious to know what states are you seeing the most racist voter registration laws because it strikes me that there's a lot of fuckery going on. Well, the interesting thing is that it's not just voter ID. So there's proof of citizenship laws that were heavily litigated in the last few years that cropped up in Kansas and Arizona that have a disproportionate impact on Latino voters. The Texas law that just passed, as well as the Georgia law that passed a couple months ago, the change is there. If you look at how they've changed your laws, it's going to have a racially disproportionate impact on communities of color. So both states, what they did was they increased early voting, early in-person voting in mostly smaller counties, right?

They're really targeting smaller counties while increasing restrictions on absentee voting. And the reason that they're doing this is because it has a disproportionate impact on communities of colors who use. absentee voting at a rate higher than white voters in the 2020 election cycle. White voters actually prefer in-person early voting. But if you look at the law itself, it just seems like they are expanded some options while restricting others. But when you look at the politics on the ground, you get a sense of what the law is really about. Another example that I hate, but I love to use, because I hate it so much. No, good. Good. North Dakota's voter ID law was another example of a law that if you look at it, it seems quite unremarkable. North Dakota's law required that IDs have

addresses, which most people would say, okay, you know, that's fine until you realize that North Dakota has a huge Native American population who live on reservations without street addresses, right? So the facts on the ground really matter and thinking through whether or not these are suppressive measures. What could Democrats do? Ideally, it wouldn't be Democrats. It would be bipartisan kind of good government group that would make sure that voting is not discriminatory. I mean, but the Republican Party isn't like that anymore, but what could they do? What they have to do is kill the filibuster because it's no longer, as you mentioned, Molly, it's no longer a bipartisan thing anymore, voting rights. And I never thought I would have to say

this in a year of our Lord 2021, that voting rights is not a bipartisan issue anymore, but it's not. And so what that means is that if they really want to pass federal legislation, they have to kill the filibuster. But I do think, and something I've wondered about, these new voting restrictions, this is a bit of a gamble for the Republican Party. This is part of the fact that they recognize they are a shrinking party and they're trying to keep the electorate narrow. But it's unclear right now the extent to which this will affect their voters. Right. It's very difficult to tailor laws to where you can just affect one demographic. you're going to capture some of your voters in there. And so I wonder if in the long term, they realized that having a voting system that works more fairly and is more inclusive could actually be a bonus for them as well. But I don't see that happening in the short term, that type of realization. Right. If you killed the filibuster, what would the legislation you would pass be?

HR1 and HR4, I think, are the proposals currently on the table. And I think that they are important. So HR4, which is the bill I testified about. last week would create practice-based pre-clearance. So it's a response to the Shelby County decision because it doesn't single out any jurisdictions, right? The prior coverage form was singled out mostly southern states. Instead, it focuses on practices that have been used and are still being used to impact the political power of minority groups. So the closing of polling places, reduce the vote ID laws. Like we've been talking about proof of citizenship requirements, things like that would have to be pre-clear with the federal government before they can make changes or adopt those types of laws. And so by focusing on practice-based preclearance, you really

get rid of the federalism concerns that plague the prior coverage formula. And of course, HR1 is really a fundamental reworking of our system of federal elections because it adopts automatic voter registration. And probably my favorite provision is it adopts independent commissions to draw congressional districts. It also has some campaign finance changes in there and changes with respect to ethics and things of that nature. But by far, at least in my view, one of the most important changes is trying to get rid of partisan redistricting, which is a huge problem in our system. The partisan redistricting that's going on right now, it's pretty wacky stuff, especially I'm not sure if you saw what's happening in Texas right now. They're drawing up possible

maps and trying to keep as many, you know, there's a partisan redistricting going on in Texas where they're trying to keep all their seats. But in order to do that, the Republicans are. Yeah. Texas is, so this is the interesting thing about Texas, and this is unsurprising. You'll see this is the fallout from the Supreme Court's decision in Roocho, which the court basically said it wouldn't intervene, no matter how partisan things got. You know, states like Texas, if you look at the last presidential election cycle, seems to be trend in purple.

Right. You know, states like Wisconsin, even blue states like Maryland, which was sued in the last decade over their partisan redistricting plan, it's going to be really, really bad because the courts have basically said we don't want any part of this. Let me just tie that into our prior conversation, though. This is why HR1 is really important. Congress is literally the last hope for addressing this issue because the courts have been explicit that they are not. But Congress isn't going to intervene because they can't. Well, Congress has to pass the legislation requiring independent commissions to draw off congressional district. Right. I mean, they need to kill them.

the filibuster, but I feel like that's unlikely. I don't know. I still have hope. Otherwise, I'm wasting my time. Good. Tell me hope. No, you're not wasting your time. And honestly, I mean, everything you say is so important. And tell me why you have hope, because that's interesting. I do the work. And part of the motivation and doing it, so I run on anger and caffeine. I run on anger and caffeine. I read the news. I see what's going, what craziness is happening in that particular day, and that sort of motivates me to put my head down and write something that can help. But I also realize that you have to have hope to do this work, too. And, Molly, you may be entirely correct that the Democrats won't kill the film. I hope I'm wrong. I hope I'm wrong.

Right. Yeah. But, you know, if you look historically, stranger things have happened, especially in this space. You know, we spent almost 100 years in this country where African Americans have won the right to vote and they couldn't vote despite that. Despite the 14th and 15th amendments, it wasn't until the Voting Rights Act of 65 that they could actually effectively cast ballots. But African Americans then just sit quietly for, you know, eight decades. They continue to fight, right? And so that's why I realize you have to have hope because without those battles, the Voting Rights Act probably would have never happened. That's why I remain hopeful. And, you know, it's not a matter of not knowing what to do. We know what needs to happen. And they just have to do it. And if they don't,

don't do it. Then we have to continue to fight and come up with our alternative way of achieving the same goal, which will be difficult. It might take longer, but you have to continue to fight and be hopeful. Yeah, I think that's absolutely such a good message, especially for those of us who are just crushed under the weight of another four years of Donald Trump possibly running for president. And again, oh God. So really, these voting rights acts have to pass. They do. Democracy is always a work in progress, right? Like, to me, it's an ideal that we'll never achieve, but that's not a bad thing because we should always aspire. It's our baseline, right?

It's something we should always aspire to. And I'm totally okay with working towards it, but I am not okay with backtracking. I get tired of fighting the same thing over and over again. I feel like, you know, we are litigating things that in the voting rights world, we call first generation barriers or things that prevent people from casting a ballot in the first instance. This is very similar to the literacy test and poll taxes of the 1960s, right? First generation barriers. And we are litigating this stuff again, right?

And I get tired of having the same conversations and litigating the same battles over and over again, in part because if democracy is aspirational, we should be moving towards it, not away from it. But the reality is that there always be shifts and starts. You just kind of have to have a piece about it, but it does get frustrated. Yeah. Oh, so important. Thank you so much for joining us. Please, please, please, please come back. Of course.

What's crazier than QAnon, more outlandish than Pizza Gate, and scarier than a Mexican getaway with Ted Cruz? The answer is what the American right wing has planned next. Be one of the first to listen to Fever Dreams, new podcasts from The Daily Beast, tracking the conspiracy slingers, orange acolytes, and straight-up grifters pushing to retake power. Every Wednesday hosts Swin Subisang and Will Summer,

checking in on the movement of the Radical Right, Head to the DailyBeast.com slash podcasts or your favorite podcast player to catch the first episode and get subscribed. That's fever dreams, which you can subscribe to wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, Jesse Cannon. Hi, Molly John Fast. So, who is it today? Give it to me. So I had a weekend of existential angst because I usually don't start fuck that guy by talking about my mental health challenges.

But today, let's go. This weekend, it occurred to me, or I don't know if it occurred to me or a friend. to mind who's a political journalist wrote to me and she was like, you know, Trump is going to run again. And that rally this weekend, it became, it's really hard to see a world where Trump doesn't run again. And so I am like very unexcited for another fucking four years of this goddamn nightmare of like, is democracy going to survive? and I'm not thrilled. Now, I think that, I mean, I don't know what this is going to look like, but this is clearly happening. So for that, Trump is forever and always my fuck that guy, but especially today.

Agreed. Jesse, who is your fuck that guy? My fuck that guy's a little bit more whitehearted than this. I like to be a nice contrast sometimes. So for the audience who does not know who Ben Garrison is, you've probably over-tour. time on your social media scene, some cartoon where you're like, this is incredibly well drawn, but really doesn't get it. And why is this guy so horny for Trump? Jesus Christ.

Show me the lie, Molly. Come on. That cartoonist would be one Ben Garrison. And I mean, let's be honest, he's got a little crush on Trump. You know, he always draws him a little more. Actually, I shouldn't say a little, a lot more muscular than he is, a lot more good looking than he is. But talented cartoonist in the pen, not so much in the message. Yeah. He's insane.

I mean, he's out of his mind. Yeah. So the point being, Ben is another in a line of conservative commentators who decided not to get the vaccine and instead got COVID. And now I want to give a quote on his regimen that he's treating COVID with. One is beet juice. Oh, beat juice. Now, my, I can't really demean this because, as you know, you all. And I'll call me and I'll say, what are you doing?

I say, I'm going to get a green juice, a little beet juice, you know. I'm a big fan. But not for treating COVID with that ivermectin and a lot of zinc. Let's have a minute here on anti-vaxxers. You know, Laura Lomer, Lomer, whatever, failed congressional candidate and total and incomplete lunatic took many, many, a panoply of different, quote-unquote cures. But the one that worked, of course, was the monoclonal for all of the people who DM'd me to say that I mispronounced it.

Antibody therapy. Like Joe Rogan, Laura Lomer said the same thing where she said, you know, I'm taking ivermectin and an actual proven treatment for COVID. I wonder which one did it. And so, you know, these fucking conservative lunatics who are shopping the horse dewormer but getting well on the actual medical cure really deserve their own special fuck that guy. I agree.

You get Garrison's quote of saying, we will never take their foul spike protein producing jabs, which are neither safe nor effector. They're not real vaccines. It's really just like, when you talk about the most unhinged thing you can do this day at age at this point when like millions of people are living their lives every day with no side effects from a vaccine,

it really shows how detached from reality and how screwed up their brains are. But this is, you know, this is Trump's Republican Party. This is where we got to. On that note, we'll wrap this episode of the new abnormal from The Daily Beast. In future episodes, we'll be talking to smart folks from the Daily Beast and beyond from media, culture, politics, and science. We'll help us understand what's happening to our country and the world.

We hope you'll subscribe to us on your favorite podcast app and share the show on social media. Thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you again on the next episode. Want more great listens? Check out our comedy podcast, The Last Laugh, and our star-studded The Daily Beast podcast at the Daily Beast.com slash podcasts. If you enjoyed this episode, consider becoming a Daily Beast subscriber. Subscribing is the best way to feed the beast and support all of your podcasts as we cover what might become the darkest timeline.

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