The Daily Beast Podcast - This Lawsuit Could Roll Back 50 Years of Progress for Women and People of Color

Episode Date: June 11, 2024

Atlanta-based civil rights attorney Kianna Chennault joins The New Abnormal to discuss the importance of fighting for diversity initiatives in the face of far-right pushback. Plus! A conversation with The New York Times’ global economy reporter Peter Goodman about his new book, “How the World Ran Out of Everything,” which unpacks the COVID-era global supply chain crisis that clogged the global economy for months on end. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN-HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits comfortably on the left. Hi, I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist. But today, I'm an unapologetic, woke commentator on America's threats to democracy. And I'm producer Jesse Kedden, and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media, and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears.

One excellent show we have today, Global Economics correspondent for the New York Times, Peter S. Goodman, is here to tell us all about his new book, how the world ran out of everything inside the global supply chain. Then civil rights attorney Keanu-Chinnell joins us to break down the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals decision to put a halt to the fearless fund and what the future looks like in the legal battle to help black women in business. But first, let's have some fun. Danielle, hello, first of all.

Hello, Andy. And welcome to another week of the new abnormal. If I sound like I'm stalling, I'm not. I'm just trying to figure out how to get into talking about a guy that we really don't mention much on this podcast. I think our listeners probably remember him, Donald Trump. Ah, yes. unbelievably he was actually president of the United States for four years. And he's out there trying to be

president again, for those who don't know. He had a rally in Vegas over the weekend. And it was super, super hot as it tends to be in Vegas in June. He made a nice little comment about the weather. And he said, I don't want anybody going on me. We need every voter. I don't care about you. I just want your vote. I don't care. He then followed that with, see now, the press will take that and they'll say he said a horrible thing. So, all right, he was joking, but he wasn't joking. I was like, well, exactly. Exactly. I mean, he said it as a joke and I don't want to pretend that he didn't say it as a joke, but it's also how he feels. And he said a lot of weird things at this rally. He's gone. He's reached the final words of howl in 2001 territory. Go ahead, Daniel. I don't want

to brush over the fact that, yes, it is hot in Vegas. do you know what's extreme? Temperatures like that are starting to get into triple digits in the teens. Yeah. Not fucking normal. Okay. The fact that we are experiencing in varied parts of the country, temperatures that are 115, 110, 120 degrees, and it is only the beginning of June is extraordinarily problematic. and not the norm. And of course, I wouldn't expect Donald Trump to make mention of climate change or actually

talk about any policies that he has or that are going to address, you know, the trends that we are in right now in terms of climate change getting worse and worse every single year and us not doing anything about it. But what's alarming to me aside from the weather is the fact that Donald Trump makes absolutely no sense. And there are no alarming headlines about this. That the man can go off on a fucking tangent talking about God knows what. Like I'm sometimes 30, 40 seconds into a clip where he is addressing his fans or his cult members and I don't know what he's talking about. And I mean literally have no idea what he's talking about. The man does not seem coherent. He does not seem to have a

fucking clue. He can't buy a fucking complete sentence. Um, and this is the man that's running for president of the United States that the Republicans have circled the wagons around telling us that he is the great white hope. And I'm like, how? Are they paying attention? Are they listening to him? Can they decipher the fucking word salads? I don't understand. But more attention isn't paid to this. On top of the fact that Newsweek went out of its way to say like, oh, Donald Trump, jokingly says he doesn't care about his voters, but I'm sorry, where has he ever showed that he actually does care about voters or America or the Constitution at all? Like, where can you point to things that he has said that he is going to do for people outside of retribution for their shared

enemies? Yeah, for sure, but that's all they care about. The rich Trump voters only care about tax cuts and the bulk of the MAGA enthusiasts only care about the retribution. So, you know, know, that's his coalition. And, and you're right, they don't care as much as they talk about Joe Biden's age and, you know, a supposed mental decline. They couldn't care less about Donald Trump's incredibly obvious mental decline. I mean, there's a clip floating around from this rally in Vegas on Sunday of Donald Trump talking about his point is apparently that electric vehicles are bad. And he was talking in particular about boats. And, uh, Jesse, can you play it?

And it must be because of MIT, my relationship to MIT, very smart. He goes, I say, what would happen if the boat sank from its weight, and you're in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery's now underwater, and there's a shark that's approximately 10 yards over there. By the way, a lot of shark attacks lately. Do you notice that? A lot of sharks. I watched some guys justifying it today.

Well, they weren't really that angry. They bit off the young lady's leg because of the fact that they were not hungry, but they misunderstood who she was. These people are crazy. He said there's no problem with sharks. They just didn't really understand a young woman swimming now or really got decimated and other people to a lot of shark architects. So I said, so there's a shark 10 yards away from the boat, 10 yards or here. Do I get electrocuted if the boat is sinking, water goes over the battery, the boat is sinking. do I stay on top of the boat and get electrocuted,

or do I jump over by the shark and not get electrocuted? Because I will tell you, he didn't know the answer. He said, you know, nobody's ever asked me that question. I said, I think it's a good question. I think there's a lot of electric current coming through that water. But you know what I do if there was a shark or you get electrocuted? I'll take electrocution every single time. I'm not getting near the shark.

So we're going to end that. We're going to end it for boats. We're going to end it for trucks. The trucks. So he thinks he's making a point. about why there shouldn't be electric boats. And somehow this devolves into a whole thing about sharks and how he would rather be electrocuted than attacked by a shark. And it's just like he goes off on these wild tangents. And in isolation, maybe they're even a little funny to listen to. But this is a

guy running for president of the United States. And you're right. Like other than the committed people who are never going to vote for Trump, nobody seems to care. Here's something else that I want to bring up, which I think is really important, right? When you look at, again, these voters, these people that are just with Donald Trump, they don't care what he does, they don't care what he says, they know, they just clap like seals at any fucking thing that comes out of his mouth. But I just came across like a posting, which is says, 40 out of 44 former members of Trump's cabinet aren't endorsing him,

including his former vice president of the United States. Yeah. And I like, I want people to let that sink in. If you're going for a job, Andy, and I'm saying, can you give me three recommendations from your last place of employment so that I can assess whether or not you have what it takes to do this next job? And you're like, yeah, so none of those people are actually going to provide recommendations. Do you think that you're getting the fucking job? People who worked for Donald Trump in his last administration, including his first administration, including his first. former vice president have nothing good to say and won't endorse him. That doesn't mean that they're

not going to vote for him, but they're not coming out and like riding his coattails and going to these rallies and hyping up the audience to say like, this is our dude. Like that should speak volumes to people and yet it does not. And I truly, I don't understand it. Yeah. And I would think that, So what is that? That's four out of the 44 have endorsed him? Mm-hmm. I'm going to guess, because I don't know who they are off the top of my head, I'm going to guess that possibly all of them are people who were convicted felons who he pardoned. You know, like a Michael Flynn or a Paul Manafort or people like that.

A, of course they're going to endorse him. He pardon them. And B, it also speaks volumes about the character of the people who endorse him. But you're absolutely right. I mean, I cannot think of another example in fairly recent American history where a guy running for president was not endorsed by pretty much everyone who served in his administration. And we keep saying nobody cares. And I hope we're wrong about that. I mean, I'd like us to be wrong about it.

For real. Like, you know, on the last episode, I was saying, look, I think there are people out there who might have been on the fence. And the fact that he was found guilty on 34 of 34 counts, I think that might make a difference with at least some of those people and hopefully it's enough. I guess my hope is, if we're, you know, blue-skying this, my hope is that all these things start to add up as we get closer to election day and more people start actually paying attention unlike the weirdos like us who pay attention to this stuff 24-7 and suffer mentally because of it. I think the vast majority of Americans don't really tune into the election until it gets closer. And so my hope is that once they

really start paying attention, and once they look at the two guys and they see that, you know, the one guy's got 34 guilty verdicts. And he said 40 out of 44 of his people from his administration are not endorsing him. And all the other stuff that comes along with Trump. I hope that that moves the needle. Joe Biden's not going to win the selection if he wins in a landslide. I'm hoping it moves the needle enough so that Joe Biden eeks out a narrow victory. Yes, I agree. I just, I mean, I pray that it's not a narrow eeked out victory. But like, I don't know how, given everything that we know and everything that Donald Trump says or doesn't say or can't complete a sentence or like has disrespected every single community, marginalized or not in this kind of.

country, like how you, we were still talking about eking out a fucking win is insane to me. The man has disrespected veterans who've served this country. Like, you would have to be stupid in order to, you know, what's in it for you? He has said that to people who, through their patriotism, have decided to join the military in this country. What's in it for you? Imagine if everyone in this country thought like Donald Trump didn't do shit unless they could get something out of it directly for themselves. Because he does, I would say like, or for your family, but he don't give a fuck about them either.

It's just like he has disrespectful people with disabilities. Women. My God, the list is so long. LGBTQ people, trans people, black people, anyone from quote unquote shithole countries. Like, how in God's name do you run through that list? think to ourselves that we are still in crisis and trouble in terms of eking out a fucking win. Well, I guess a couple of things on the veteran front. It's one thing to think stuff like that.

I say this as a veteran. Fine. If that's what you think as a private citizen, that's fine. This is, you know, the beauty of America is supposed to be that you can believe stuff like that. for a presidential candidate slash former president to be saying it and for it not to affect him at all, particularly in the Republican Party, which is supposed to be to support our troops party, is wild to me. And I know he's very mad because Joe Biden is now running an ad talking about

how Trump has reportedly said things like Marines who were killed were suckers and that a American military, cemetery in France was, quote, filled with losers. And he denies that he ever said that stuff. But we all know he said that stuff. And by the way, good for Joe Biden for running an ad. And we need more of this. We need more of Donald Trump, in his own words, being, you know, being made even more public by the Democratic campaign machines.

And hopefully, again, as we draw closer to election day, this will start happening. But I guess to your point, you say, you know, you, read off that list of things and then said, how can this even be a close election? I guess that's America. I don't know how else to say it. Like, there is clearly a large percentage of this population that either doesn't mind that he's saying these things or just straight up agrees with him. And that's the terrifying part.

I guess the thought for me is that I don't want to believe that it's a large swath of America. And I don't know whether that is naive or it is just that. that the squeaky wheel always gets the oil, that these people, while they are in the minority, are really fucking loud and catered to in the media. And so it makes it seem as if there are more of them that think this way than not. That's what I want to believe. And that's what I want to be true. But we won't find out until fucking November or December, which is what I'm really saying. Speaking of things I can't fucking believe. I got a, God bless the people that are doing nonstop coverage of the Supreme Court and Samuel

Alito because like it has now become legit a full-time job. Just not like a beat. It's like a full-time job following his fuckery. Most recently in Rolling Stone, here is this article. Justice Alito caught on tape discussing how battle for America can't be compromised. This is a Supreme Court justice who is making decisions for 330 million Americans in this country based on his misgivings about living inside of a country where people get to have differing opinions. According to Alito, we can't apparently live peacefully, Andy, side by side with our ideological opponents anymore in the face of, quote, fundamental differences that, quote, can't be compromised. This is what they say directly in this piece in speaking about Alito.

He endorsed what his interlocutor described as a necessary fight to, quote, return our country to a place of godliness. Andy, please, take it from there. Yeah, I mean, shout out to Lauren Windsor, who got all this video and posed questions to Alito pretending to be on the same side as him. You know, we should say that she gave this video to Rolling Stone and Tessa Stewart and Tim Dickinson wrote it up. She says, people in this country who believe in God have got to keep fighting for that,

to return our country to a place of godliness. And he says, I agree with you. I agree with you. Again, it's one thing for a private citizen to say something like that. It is wholly another thing for a Supreme Court justice to sit there and say that. and to feel comfortable saying that in a public forum, a forum that was conservative, but my point is he wasn't saying it in his bathroom. You know, it's interesting because she asked many of the same questions of Chief Justice John Roberts,

and he actually answered the questions the way he should have. And he was asked, you know, whether the Supreme Court has an obligation to put the country on a more moral path. And he says, would you want me to be in charge of putting the nation on a more moral path? That's for people we elect. That's not for lawyers. I mean, that's the correct answer from a Supreme Court justice, not the crap that Alito is spewing. And look, he can talk all he wants, Alito, about his wife being the one who put the flags up. But he had the appeal to heaven flag up.

It's a Christian nationalist flag. That's what it is. I don't care what it meant 200, 300 years ago. That's what it means now. And he knows that. and he felt there was no problem with that flag flying proudly on his and his wife's property. This is who he is. But we have reached a point where he is very comfortable with all this stuff being out there in the public because he knows nothing is going to happen to him because John Roberts for all of, you know, he says the right things and probably in cases like this actually believes them.

But he won't stop the Alito's and, you know, some of the other justices. on the right from going out there and doing everything they possibly can to trash the reputation of this court as just calling balls and strikes, as Roberts likes to say. There are a bunch of fucking grifting hacks. There was a time where I had deep respect for the justices that sat on the Supreme Court. Because I honestly truly believed, like I think most Americans believed until the last few years, they looked at the law. And whether or not, their own personal ideology came into play that they were charged with looking at the law and looking at who it affects, how it will affect us, and looking ahead and using the past

as a guide for how we advance equity and justice into the future. That is not what this Supreme Court is about. That is not what Alito is about. Going back to a place of fucking godliness, miss me with the bullshit. You mean the same Bible that you hold up and wave around that justified the enslaving of millions of people for hundreds of years? The same Bible that justified like women being treated as second class citizens? I just, this idea that America was ever this place of godliness is on some bullshit. And also, you missed read what school you should have gone to. He should have fucking enrolled in the seminary if that's what he wanted, as opposed to go to fucking law school.

All of this stuff was supposed to be somewhere else. New York Times Global Economy Reporter Peter Goodman's new book, How the World Ran Out of Everything, begins in October of 2021, with 13% of the world's container shipping fleet stuck outside ports unable to deliver its goods. And while we all know that the COVID pandemic exposed the disruption of the global supply chain, He says that a myriad of factors had been working for years to bring us to this point. He joins me now to talk about it. Peter, thank you so much for being here. Thanks so much for having me.

So I went and looked back and sure enough, you were writing about this very issue in October of 2021 for the New York Times. Was that the immediate impetus for the book? Were you writing about this? And did you say, man, this needs a much longer expose? Yeah. I mean, it was an accidental book. I've been writing about supply chains on and off for 25 years because you can't write about

the economy without writing about supply change. But it's one of those things that we all take for granted. You know, businesses included, the delivery mechanisms, transportation. That's all details, right? We're all interested in like the latest sexy inventions and innovation and productivity. Who brings the stuff to our door seems really inconsequential until it breaks down? I was actually wrapping up my last book, Davos Man, How the Billionaires Devoured the World, which is in large part about what happens when we let billionaires make societal decisions that affect us all. And, you know, suddenly the supply chain breaks down and we can't get ventilators in the middle of a pandemic. Doctors can't get medical gear.

We're entertaining our kids who are stuck at home dealing with distance learning. And we can't get the gizmos and the kitchen appliances we need. And I just found this so mystifying and bewildering that it seemed worth digging further into. That's where the book comes from. No, for sure. The global supply chain, it's such a complex beast. It contains literally every product we can think of, from TVs to bottled waters to baby formula to, like you said, personal protective gear, ventilators.

And it involves every mode of shipping, sea air, rail, truck, etc. So I found it really interesting that throughout the book, you kind of focus on a man named Hagen Walker and his, you know, little company called Glow that makes little novelty cubes that light up when you put them in drinks. No offense to Mr. Walker. This is not exactly of the same worldwide importance as food, clothing, masks, ventilators, etc. But it was such a great idea

to use a quote unquote little guy as the anchor for the bigger picture. What made you decide to do it this way? Yeah, I'm so glad you picked up on that because obviously the world is not going to end if we can't get Elmo-themed bath toys from China to Mississippi were Hagen Walker's warehouses.

I picked it that way because I thought for narrative purposes, it would be helpful to take a non-expert reader. You know, this is not a book written for people who are supply chain geeks and who, you know, browse the business section at the airport bookstore necessarily, though there's plenty in it for those people too. This is a book for ordinary people who are trying to figure out, how did we run out of all this stuff and are we still vulnerable? And I was looking for one container, one box full of goods, made.

in a factory in China, sent across the ocean, stuck in the great traffic jams off the ports of Southern California in the worst of the pandemic. And Hagen Walker was the guy I found. I mean, he's this young tinkerer by heart who's living in his college town in Mississippi where he graduated with a degree in engineering. He's running a startup company. He's got 27 real employees depending upon him for paychecks in his town. And he, like many entrepreneurs, figured out that the best way to make his products. I mean, he wanted to make him in the U.S., but he just couldn't find anybody who could do it, and he ended up in China. And so here was a way to look at all of the industries that are involved, all of the people we usually don't think about who were actually

counting on to get our stuff from one place to our door. The book kind of starts with, you know, talking about one of the main causes of supply chain disruptions, which is an overdependence on Chinese manufacturing. And you talk about how Hagen Walker literally could not find a factory in America that could make his product and had people say to him, look, you just, you need to go to China. And that immediately makes him part of the global supply chain, which is why his product ends up sitting on a container ship that can't dock. Yeah, that's right. I mean, he calls around at one point, he finds somebody who says they can make his product for what seems like a reasonable price. but it turns out they're just themselves sending production to China and collecting a margin.

He wants to do this kind of illustrated pop-up book style packaging for his products after he gets Sesame Street as a customer. And one factory talks to him somewhere in the South. And they say, this is just too complicated. You should just go to China. So it's like the path of least resistance. And he ends up like lots of companies that are sending goods across the Pacific. unable to find basic things like plastics, electronics, and then when his goods are finally made at this factory in Ningboa, China, he can't find a shipping container because, you know, it turns out this is

the part that most people don't really want to talk about when they're talking about supply chain. We are at the mercy of this international cartel. There are three alliances, think like airline alliances that dominate trade across the Pacific. They handle like 95 to 98% of the containers that are being moved across from factory towns in Asia to the west coast of the U.S., which is the gateway, just these two ports in Los Angeles and Long Beach, for something like 40% of the imported products entering the U.S. And so Hagen Walker's box, he's got one box on a ship that's outfitted for 12,000 of them. It's holding the most important order

of his brief company's life, these Elmo dolls for Sesame Street, trying to get him into his warehouse in time for the holiday season of 2021. And suddenly there's 50, 60 container ships all stuck there waiting their chance, pull up to the docks because the docks are just inundated.

They're overwhelmed. The whole supply chain has buckled. And that includes, you know, Lots of industries I get into in the rail, trucking, warehouses themselves. So his stuff is just, Elmo is stuck floating off the coast. Yeah. And as you point out, this over-reliance on China was in many ways a self-inflicted wound. I think you call it inside job by American companies.

Yeah, I'm glad you picked up on that because that's the part that everybody's afraid to talk about, right? I mean, the political dialogue has gone to a place where when we seem to agree about nothing, the one thing we do seem to agree on is that China's our enemy. China's this juggernaut that's intent on stealing all of our jobs. It's this malevolent force. You know, never mind the fact that it's Western companies. I mean, American companies like Walmart that have done the bidding of their executives, of their investors by perpetually looking for the lowest possible place to make their stuff.

And, you know, one of the great ironies of our time is that maybe the greatest joint venture in the history of global capitalism is the people's world. Republic of China, this government that comes from a peasant-led ideological rebellion and Walmart, the world's largest retailer. And together, you know, they've effectively joined forces in this country where unions are banned, where you can get around environmental restrictions if you cut in the local Communist Party official, where there's credit for exporters. And so that has become the recipe by which the Walton family, the founders of Walmart, and lots of other companies. I mean, This is where Jeff Bezos's fortune comes from in terms of Amazon, moving production to China.

Consumers have gotten low-cost stuff, not always the highest quality, they're increasingly higher quality, but we tend not to talk about the costs of those low costs. And my book is really aimed at exposing those costs, and some of them are a loss of resilience. So, you know, we've pretended that when you count on container ships to move goods across oceans, can just pretend that that's free, that the fact that there are no regulations of this international cartel or not a problem, that this will always be the best way to get our study. It will be efficient to use the term that's driven business. Well, it's pretty inefficient when the whole system breaks down when we need it most, the middle of a pandemic. And by the way, this is not a history book.

This is really a book about the future because we're going to get more shocks. And unless we get a handle on these vulnerabilities, we're going to be here again. Yeah. And it's amazing. how, you know, because one of the other big pillars that you talk about in the book, pillars of supply chain disruptions, is this so-called lean manufacturing, which is also known as just in time or jit. Explain what this is because this also is a system that as long as everything is running smoothly, it lets businesses operate more efficiently, maximize profit, etc. But the minute there's a problem, it leads to disaster. I mean, it's a great idea. It's sensible, right? It comes out of Toyota. Toyota, at the end of the second world,

World War in Japan. They're looking at the devastation of the war. They don't have a lot of developable land. They've studied Ford and the rise of mass assembly. And they said, well, we can't do that. We can't just make as much stuff in one shot as possible and figure out how to sell it later. We have to be more efficient than that. So we're just going to make as many cars as we need to replace the ones that have already been sold. And we're going to take the same approach to the suppliers that are sending us our raw materials and our parts. Just give us enough to replace. We're replenish what we've been using up. Great idea, great success for Toyota, a lot to learn for the rest of global capitalism. Along comes financialization, right? The paramountcy of shareholder interests,

delivered in part by consultancies like McKinsey. You know, I tell this story in the book, how McKinsey comes along and they say, well, this is the magic formula to make share prices go up. Hey, corporate executives, instead of wasting money, warehousing parts that you're not going to need, unless there's a problem, you know, forget problems. That'll happen on somebody else's watch. Let's think about the next quarter. Let's lower our costs. Let's take the extra money. Give it to yourselves to congratulate yourselves for being wise enough to hire McKinsey to solve your problems. Give it to shareholders in the form of dividends and share buybacks that make share prices go up. Everyone wins. Consumers will still get low prices unless there's a problem. But by the time there's a

problem, you'll be on, you know, some beach somewhere sleeping under a hammock. Right. And of course, Every time there's a shock, there's some talk. I mean, I detail this in the book. You know, Fukushima, the nuclear disaster in Japan in 2012. People say, maybe we've overdone it with this just in time. Even McKinsey comes around eventually to the idea that we've overdone just in time. But it's just a magical formula for making share prices go up.

And that has been the driving force of our supply chains. And as you point out, they seem to learn these lessons for about four or five, six months. after a typhoon, after an earthquake in Taiwan, after, as you say, Fukushima. But then, you know, a half year later, they're looking around going, why do we have all this inventory? The talking points change, but the incentives haven't changed. And the incentives are still such that if you're running a publicly traded company and you say, hey, I'm worried about, you know, another pandemic or another typhoon or something,

Let's maybe think about more resilience. Let's stock more inventory in our warehouses. Well, you have diluted your earnings in the next quarter, and you could be punished. You could be thrown out of a job. Whereas if you're the corporate CEO who says, nah, let's just drop costs as low as possible. Let's do just in time, go super lean. Wall Street will love it when we hit these metrics that they're craving, like, you know, return on asset. If we lower inventory, return on asset is a racial.

We've increased the return on asset. Our share prices will go up. All the executives are happy. All the investors are happy. And again, by the time there's a problem, that'll be somebody else's problem. Because, yeah, sure, a pandemic will happen again. I'm sure another tsunami will happen. But probably not going to happen this quarter. So let's just keep reaping the beautiful harvest of higher share prices. And that's as true today as it's ever been, even though the conversation has changed around just in time and resilience. Yeah, it's really incredible. And I noticed that when you talked about, you know, McKinsey saying, hey, if you do this, you'll be able to maximize profits. You can pay yourself some more money.

You can give your shareholders more money. The one thing you didn't mention was giving the workers more money. And that's a key part of the book, I think, because it does seem that, you know, people are completely overlooked by all of these philosophies, people like dock workers, Long Sherman, truck drivers, railroad workers. And you spend a lot of time in the book showing how the treatment of these workers has affected the global supply chain issues. So much of it was just simultaneously heartbreaking and anger making. Well, I'm glad to hear that it worked because it is, if you look at it, if you look at these people who were generally invited not to think about at all, right? You go on Amazon, you click your button, you wait for the thing, the package to show up at your door, maybe while

you're at work. You never interact with anyone. Well, a whole army of people, their labors have gone into making that product and getting it to you. And we were told, you know, during the worst of the supply chain disruptions, that we ran out of truck drivers. We've got the shortage of truck drivers as if all of these people have just somehow lost their will to work and the rest of us are suffering. When, in truth, if you look at trucking, I mean, I spent three days riding along with a long-haul truck driver from Kansas City down to Dallas and back in the middle of winter.

and came away with the unmistakable reality that this is a job that no one would do if they had a better way to make a living. I mean, people are stuck. They're stuck in these predatory lending schemes where they're on the hook for the trucks that they've bought because they didn't understand the fine print, like people who got caught up in the mortgage mess that many people remember, they are away from their families for weeks, months at a time. They're missing their children's birthdays. They're missing the deaths of relatives. They're not around what spouses have to go off for surgery. Like, we are counting on a normalcy that depends on exploded labor.

And, you know, I tell the story of Henry Ford, who's a very problematic character for all sorts of reasons, but knew a thing or two about supply chains. And one of the quotes that really stuck with me is he said, you know, this is a guy who doubled the pay of his workers back in the 19 teens and was branded a communist by others in business. He said, look, I just want to make my stuff reliably. In any business that's dependent on low-wage labor is inherently unstable and unreliable. And this is something that we've now all lived. I mean, if you degrade people's jobs to the point where the second they have an alternative, they'll go find something else to do, that's a prescription for shortages of warehouse workers, shortages of truck drivers, not enough people working throughout.

out the rail maintenance system. You know, that's been a big problem that I talk about in the book. Oh, yeah. I don't have time to get into it. But the rail section was incredibly interesting. And I knew a little bit about it from doing some interviews on it and this whole precision-scheduled railroading, which is basically like just in time used in a different way and is really bad. But I want to get into how do we even start changing all this? How do we stop being so reliant on Chinese factories? How do we get companies to understand? that maybe sometimes you're making enough profits. You don't have to endanger the whole goddamn world supply chains by squeezing out a little more.

And how do we stop them from forgetting what they and we literally just went through? Well, we've got to do a bunch of things. You have two minutes. Okay, two minutes. Labor mobilization, hugely important. We should welcome the upsurge of union power as a way for workers to get a piece of the action and make their jobs more amenable so that they'll want to keep doing them. and we'll get the stuff that we need.

We need shareholders to realize that this kind of cultish devotion to deregulation and efficiency has been highly inefficient. I mean, I won't tell the whole story here, but in the book, I tell the story of how rail cargo actually got sent intentionally to the wrong destinations because the monopolies running our rail system figured out that Wall Street will pay for lower dwell time. That's, you know, this fancy way of saying, how much time does a given bit of cargo sit in a rail yard. So better to attach cargo to any train leaving going anywhere to improve that metric rather than think about, oh, it's supposed to be going in this other direction. We need shareholders

to wake up to the fact that they're getting ripped off. We need government to impose sensible regulations. These systems we depend on, they're a lot like utilities, right? Utilities are regulated. They're profit making, but we have a say over how much we're paying. We have a say. We have a say, over what they're building, and we need a similar reckoning over our key transportation systems like rail, trucking, shipping in particular. And finally, consumers, we can't depend upon consumers to fix global capitalism because we're all busy, right? We're not experts. We're not all going to become supply chain geeks. But it would be a healthy thing if we all thought about place more than we have in the past. We've been invited to pretend that, you know, a factory in China is the same as a

factory in Ohio. It's not. And to the extent to which we We have time and bandwidth. We should pay a little bit of attention to our own consumption. No, absolutely. There's so much of this that is sort of on us. And I absolutely include me in that. The book is How the World Ran Out of Everything. It is out today.

And I have to say, I am not a huge economics guy. This book is compulsively readable. And Peter, we've a great narrative and you tell a great story. And as you said earlier, this is not the kind of book where you have to have an economic degree to understand exactly what you're talking about. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Peter, thank you so much for being here. Thank you so much, Adi. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the new abnormal civil rights attorney Keanu to discuss the headline that I don't think that is getting enough attention, which is the fearless fund and the legal battle that a right-wing,

I would say, white supremacist has put into effect to question whether or not a fund that has been put together by black women can present grants and funding to black women entrepreneurs. Kiana, I saw your recent interview in Atlanta and I want to dig into this because the fearless fund has gotten a lot of headlines, but I don't really think that people understand the implications of this case. So can you just present us with the 50,000 foot view as to what is going on with the fearless fund? Yes, sure. So this case is huge because last year, the Supreme Court overturned years and years of president by which they allowed for rights to be one of the factors to be considered in higher education admissions. And so affirmative action that was a staple

within higher education for, I would say, at least 50 years. But with the ruling last year, the Supreme Court basically dismantled that and said now it's unlawful to use affirmative action in higher education decisions. What they did say was this ruling only applies to higher education facilities. It doesn't apply outside of this context. But of course, we know that people are going to try and use this ruling, use that ruling outside of higher education context to see how far we can reduce affirmative action, basically. And so the plaintiff in this case against Fearless Fund, Mr. Bloom, he has basically made it his

mission to dismantle diversity, equity, and inclusion by going after affirmative action. And he's been doing this for several years. And so he basically used the rationale that the court used in the ruling last year to dismantle affirmative action. He used that. same rationale to come after fearless fund to try to eliminate affirmative action being used in the equity funding context. You know, we could talk at length about black businesses and how we're not funded or how, you know, we have a fraction of the funding compared to our counterparts who are of different races. And so if we go down that rabbit hole, we can see just how far this ruling or this case can really impact us as a black community and really as diverse communities, not just

black communities, but if we identify as any person as a minority period, whether it's a woman, a religious background, you know, if you are a minority and you do have access to certain funds or programs because of that minority, all of those programs could be effectively taken away. Yes, and that is the goal of Edward Blum and all of his associates, which is that any advancements that have been made through the last 50 years, whether it pertains to women, whether it pertains to people of color, whether it pertains to the LGBTQ plus community, they want to roll back. And they have made that expressly clear. And I think that what I want folks to understand, too, is that when it comes to funding from venture capitalists, women in general, not even signifying

for race, but women in general, receive zero point, and I don't even know how many zeros to add in before you get to the amount that women receive from venture firms. When you add in black women, it's like zero plus like, oh, I don't know, a thousand points to the right and then one percentage point of what black women are funded in the venture capitalist space, which is why a fund like the fearless fund is so very needed because black women in general are aggressively underfunded in business and in projects. And I think that Keanu to your point, which I think folks need to understand, and you said it in your interview with Atlanta Daily World, which is that when looking at the law, we look to precedent. We look to the past as a way to signify the direction that we're going to take in the future.

So when you saw, right, for instance, this overturning of affirmative action, which had tried to create equity in this country with regard. to access to higher education, access to jobs, access that was readily denied based on race, when we had affirmative action and you saw that case overturned, what were your immediate thoughts? Were you, I mean, because there were some people that were just like, well, they're only talking about higher education, but now you see that the dominoes have started to fall. So as a civil rights attorney, when you look at the makeup of this Supreme Court and you saw that decision, what did it make you concerned about? It was very jarring because as you mentioned, as attorneys, we learned that we have to bring lawsuits and bring rationale, argue our case based

on precedent. And so when you see several years of president being overturned out of, it seems like, thin air, it's very jarring because we want a certain amount of predictability to our law. And so when we don't have that. When we have from term to term from president to president appointee to appointee, the law changing, it is very jarring. And we lose that predictability in our law, which has been one of our strengths, you know, as a country for so long, that uniformity, that consistency is really woven into our democracy. And so when we lose that, we really just lose the integrity of our law because we're like, oh, in four years, the law could be something else. Right. This is similar to what happened with the Road v. Wade case. And, you know, regardless of what side of the aisle that

we're on to see the court overturned 70 years based on, you know, just some new rationale that they have, it just seems like they pull the rationale out of thin air. It certainly wasn't based on president. And so when you see things like that, it's very jarring. And there's just a sense of not knowing what's next. So the 11th Circuit court that just recently made this decision is a three-judge panel, two of whom were appointed by Donald Trump. So just for folks who continue to say, oh, elections don't matter and don't have consequences, and my vote doesn't have consequences, Donald Trump was able to appoint a record-breaking number of federal judges with the help of Mitch McConnell in the Senate.

And this is the panel that Fearless Fund is up against, a two-to-one court for Trump. Where does the case go next? So the decision now has been what, decided that this goes against racial equity, that just providing these kinds of grants to black women businesses is now, according to the 11th Circuit, illegal. And Blum has asked for them to not be allowed to gift in the interim while this decision is being decided. What happens next? Yes. So we're kind of in limbo. So what happened was Blum brought the lawsuit in district court, federal district court. He also asked for an injunction to your point. So he does not want fearless fund to be able to dole out any money while the litigation is still ongoing. So basically he wants to leave the

program open while they litigate. So the district court decided yes, this scholarship, this fund is likely to be discriminatory. Therefore, we're going to allow the injunction, which prevents them from giving out any money. And so, of course, Fearless Fund then appealed that decision for the immediate injunction, and the Court of Appeals reaffirmed the injunction, meaning they have to keep the program open. They cannot dole out any money, again, using the rationale that the fund is likely to be discriminatory. Therefore, we don't really have a final ruling yet. That's just a ruling on the injunction. Now it goes back to the district court to actually be litigated, but they have to keep their program open this entire time. They can't give out any money. And we know litigation takes years.

So we likely won't have a final answer, I would say at least for two to three years. I mean, this is just insane. I just find what is happening with diversity, equity and inclusion in this country and the pushback against it by white supremacist to be absolutely insane. Litigation will take years, they're not going to be able to help the businesses, to help the women that the fund has set out to do. And so what do you think now happens to other funds, to other companies and organizations that look primarily into trying to increase access to wealth and finance that the blums of the world are trying to deny people of? What can we expect from other funds and other institutions while we await on this litigation, do you think?

I think we can expect to see a decrease in programs, funds, and scholarships that are aimed towards increasing diversity in certain sectors. I know prior to this case, Mr. Bloom went after a scholarship that was for Hispanic students and they settled with him outside of court. So presumably, that was probably some kind of financial award or maybe they agreed to change the terms of their scholarship. but my point is he's not limiting this to just one race or just race. I believe that him and other people like him will be targeting all types of diverse programs.

So if I'm somebody who has a diversity program, I would be concerned. You know, maybe I would not have that program anymore or maybe I would have the program open to everyone so that I could remove that target off my back. So I think we can expect to see a chilling effect on programs that are aimed at diversity. So is there an opportunity, though? Like, let me, because I'm not a lawyer, right? I just play one on my podcast. So, like, tell me, is there a workaround?

Because here's what I would say. Venture capitalists who are largely white, who are male, can say that their firms are open for applications from everyone. But it just so happens, funny enough, that the only people that are ever awarded are white and male and from a certain pedigree. certain colleges and institutions and what have you. And they get away with that.

They've gotten away with it for generations. So what could a work around for institutions, individuals, and firms that want to provide access and opportunities to those that have been historically marginalized? What does it look like moving forward? I would say instead of limiting the grant or the scholarship or the fund on its space to or a certain race or gender or religion or sexual orientation. Companies should probably be more strategic in their marketing. For instance, you know, maybe you have a fund open,

but you only go to market that fund at HBCUs, or you only go on, you know, a diversity fair day is when you go to that college to actually market that fund. So I think companies will have to be more strategic in their marketing and make sure that the word is spread to the different communities that they want to reach. And maybe that the word is not. spread, you know, to communities who may have already have an advantage. But as far as legal tactics,

once the court says something is unlawful, of course, the company could keep doing it, but it would be wise to pivot from that. But I think that to your point, what you just mentioned in terms of how you're marketing, who you're marketing to, where you are doing that marketing is what is needed. And it's also really savvy. So you can say, sure, the Fearless Fund is now open to all people who are fearless, all people who are looking to take risks in their lives and build brighter futures. If I'm deciding that I'm spending a good amount of my marketing dollars to underserved, but I'm not going to use that language. I'm not going to say underserved. I'm not going to say diverse. I'm just going to go where I go from a legal aspect. Does that afford you

enough leeway to be able to maneuver in that way? I would say yes. And as a matter of fact, in one of the dissenting opinions for the injunction, one of the judges said that the plaintiffs are basically just crying wolf. Like, they actually would not want to participate in this program anyway, even if they were accepted. And so I think if you open it up, but you still only market to certain populations, there are certain people who are not going to want to be in the room, you know, with diversity. Canada says that's just reality or want to participate in a program with so many people of color or women or et cetera. So I think if we don't limit the language but market and get those type of people

in the room, the people who are not supposed to be there will naturally just not be there. Yeah. And I think that that is the way that people need to move in the future. I don't think that it is about allowing the blooms of the world to win, allow them the ability to roll back. And I think that the clock on progress, I think that this is an opportunity for people to be a lot more savvy and recognize that we're under attack, that there is a party of people who only want white people to achieve, who only want white men to achieve. And they are going to do everything in their power to make sure that that is the case. So whether it is rolling back access to abortion, whether it is rolling back opportunities for historically marginalized groups in higher education

and in the workplace, they're going to do it. My last question for you is just like, what advice, you know, do you give to people who are scared at this moment, who do feel like they have a target on their back, how they can be a bit more savvy? I would say pivot. Laws change, political comments change, and we have to pivot when we see those changes coming. And so if someone is using race or gender or sexual orientation as a way to name their fund or scholarship, maybe just take that part out. You know, maybe name a fine or scholarship after a person that really fits the mode of what you're looking for in terms of a candidate. And so I would say definitely, don't be afraid, but pivot. You know, be wise. So pivot. And I would also say that this is a good opportunity for us to build up our communities.

I recently attended a Black Wall Street event in College Park, Georgia about two weeks ago. And the event, it was celebrating black businesses. And we talked about Black Wall Street, which was in Tulsa, Oklahoma in the 1920s. And that was a community of black doctors, lawyers. The first Black theater is there or was there. And so I believe historians say that a dollar matriculated within that community for two years before it went outside the community. And so if we follow models like that where we are really spending inside of our community, whether it's a community based on, you know, gender, race, or otherwise, then we can build ourselves up to a point where we don't need perhaps funding and scholarships from other avenues. And so I think it's a really great opportunity for us to mobilize our money, but also to mobilize our vote.

To your point, people who say their vote doesn't matter that it couldn't be more untrue. And so, mobilize our money and mobilize our vote and let that do the talking for us. Appreciate you so much. Kiana, thank you so much for making the time for the new abnormal. Thank you so much for your insights and for your call to pivot. It's not a call to quit. It's a call to pivot. I really appreciate that.

Thank you so much for having me. I enjoy talking to you. Andy Levy. DJ Moody. On the ones and two. How are you kicking off this week with your fuck that guy? I'm going to talk about something that we've talked about this before, but it's happening again slash still and it needs to be called out.

And Politico actually had a good piece on it. I'm talking about Republicans who are out there going back. to their districts and talking about how great certain programs are for their district. And guess what? They voted against those programs. Nancy Mace, who for a long time, and I've mentioned this on the pod before, for a long time, she was held up by a lot of the mainstream media as sort of a moderate Republican. They've kind of stopped doing that lately, which is good because they never should have been.

She is out there in South Carolina, which is where she is a congresswoman. woman. And she is touting a $26 million federal grant for a public transit project in her district. Guess what? That was part of the infrastructure law, which she voted against and called a, quote, socialist wish list. And the list goes on and on and on. Michelle Steele in California. She went back and told her district how great an $8.3 million funding allocation for Newport Harbor dredging was. And even in her press release talked about how it was part of the infrastructure bill. She voted against the infrastructure bill. Marionette Miller Meeks. Now, that's a name, by the way. Mm-hmm. She is a congresswoman from Iowa, Triple M, 3M. She attended ribbon cuttings for a new

highway interchange, touted, according to Politico, the modernization of locks and dams on the Mississippi River in her district. All of this, again, part of this infrastructure bill that she voted against. And we have to hold them accountable when they do this. And it doesn't ultimately matter what I say here in New York about these people. But the word needs to get back to their constituents that these people are straight up lying to you. And they are taking credit for things and touting how great these things are when in fact they voted against them. And there's a long list of ways that politicians are shameful. This is near the top, though, to actually go out there and pat yourself on the back for something you voted against. I honestly, I say this about so many

people he days, I don't know how you sleep at night, but I assume when you live your life conscience free, you probably sleep a good eight to ten hours a night straight and wake up. You're one of those annoying people in the commercials who wakes up and like stretches their arms and has a smile on their face. And I hate those people. And I hate those people. And I hate that. I hate. I hate. politicians who lie particularly this blatantly just as much. So yeah, fuck these guys. The only quick thing that I would add is that this is where Democrats need to spend their money. When you pass legislation that gives, that provides jobs, that restores, bridges, tunnels, all of these things are on infrastructure. You know that the motherfucker that is standing

on that stage with you, Biden did not vote for that legislation. you let the people know. Take out a billboard. Take out some ads when they're running for re-election that, like, they didn't bring jobs here. They voted against the thing. They voted against this thing. That is the job of Democrats and they need to be better at it. Amen.

All right. DJM. Yes. Tell us who your fuck that guy is. Well, it's an oldie, but a goody that I love to spin, which is fucking Marjorie Taylor Green. Oh, play a name. Hits.

Playing the hits. You know, I like to play to the base of this here pod, which is Marjorie Taylor Green. Don't know if she can read or has read the Bible, but she loves to compare Donald Trump to Jesus, which leads me to believe that I don't want to worship any fucking God that this woman wants to put in our mouth. Because at the rally that we were talking about with regard to it being 100 and something degrees in Vegas, well, this day. bat takes to the stage, and she also put it on Twitter, that Democrats and the fake news media

want to talk about, quote, Trump is a convicted felon. Let me stop you right there. Trump is a convicted fucking felon. Like that is not fake news. That is just the news, right? That is actual just straight facts. Donald Trump went on trial for election interference. Donald Trump was brought up on 34 felony counts, Donald Trump was convicted on 34 felony counts. Now, weird, because she believes that the man she worships is also a convicted felon. Anyone? What? Are you talking about? Not only is it not good enough for her to compare Donald Trump to Jesus Christ, she also needs to compare Donald Trump to Nelson Mandela and say he too was a man that was persecuted. I'm pretty sure Checks notes. It wasn't for fucking a porn star. And then, you know, paying her off

with campaign money. I don't think that Nelson Mandela did that or Jesus or Gandhi. But, you know, their list goes on of who they would like to connect Donald Trump to. Do you know who Donald Trump is connected to? Other fucking felons. Because. birds of a feather, my friend, flocked together. I just, oh, that bleach blonde. Badly built. Anyway, so for that reason, Marjorie Taylor Green, and for so many other fucking reasons,

is my fuck that guy to kick off this good, good week. A couple of quick points. While you were talking, I did some research, and you were correct, Nelson Mandela was not infamination. in prison for paying off a porn star so that she would keep quiet before an election. Great. Thank you for that. And the other thing is, I got to give some props to MTG.

She gave a whole speech about Jesus and how he was killed and didn't once blame it on the Jews. And I think that is what we call growing, Danielle and Jesse. She's evolving, even though she, I assume, does not believe in evolution. And I do think, you know, we spend a lot of time. hammering her and making fun of her, I think we have to point out when she does something good. And in this case, the good thing was not saying that the Jews killed Jesus. Yeah, well, Neanderthals do evolve into different species. Hope you enjoy checking out this episode of the new abnormal.

We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday. If you enjoyed it, please share it with a friend and keep the conversation going. This podcast is a Daily Beast production with production by Jesse Cannon and Seamus, Calder. 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. Head to the DailyBeast.com slash membership slash podcast and sign up today.