The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 2733 - Republicans Squirm Ahead Of Midterms; Tech Workers Rebelling w/ JS Tan, Clarissa Redwine

Episode Date: September 17, 2026

Welcome back to The Majority Report On today's program: Donald Trump holds a MAGA rally in Gastonia, North Carolina where he insults the state, lies about violent crime statistics and threatens to withhold federal funds unless the Republican wins his Senate race. Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) addresses Speaker Mike Johnson cutting the House calendar to avoid holding a vote on Massie's Epstein legislation and his articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth. JS Tan & Clarissa Redwine join the program for a conversation about their new book, "Against Tech Oligarchy: Workers Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry". JS Tan is a PhD candidate at MIT and writes the Value Added newsletter. Clarissa Redwine is a Kickstarter Union organizer and cofounder of the tech organizing conference, Circuit Breakers. In the Fun Half: Matt Binder joins the show. Rep. Maria Salazar (R-FL) is running campaign ads that mildly express disagreement with Trump over his immigration policy. Keep in mind she voted yes in June of 2026 on the Secure America Act, which appropriated nearly $70B to DHS/ICE. The fallout continues from Ed Sheeran capitulating to billionaire stadium owners and firing Macklemore as his opener for saying "Free Palestine". Stavros Halkias speaks to Pablo Torre about how private equity is ruining everything with the most fitting example Halkias could use. all that and more. On Sunday, October 4, Emma will be in Los Angeles doing a Bitchuation Room Live with Francesca Fiorentini at the Lodge Room. Get tickets here. To connect and organize with your local ICE rapid response team visit ICERRT.com The Congress switchboard number is [phone]. You can use this number to connect with either the U.S. Senate or the House of Representatives. Follow us on TikTok here: https://www.tiktok.com/@majorityreportfm Check us out on Twitch here: https://www.twitch.tv/themajorityreport Find our Rumble stream here: https://rumble.com/user/majorityreport Check out our alt YouTube channel here: https://www.youtube.com/majorityreportlive Gift a Majority Report subscription here: https://fans.fm/majority/gift Subscribe to the AM Quickie newsletter here: https://am-quickie.ghost.io/ Join the Majority Report Discord! https://majoritydiscord.com/ Get all your MR merch at our store: https://shop.majorityreportradio.com/ Get the free Majority Report App!: https://majority.fm/app Go to https://JustCoffee.coop and use coupon code majority to get 10% off your purchase Check out today's sponsors: ZOCDOC: Find and book the right doctor https://Zocdoc.com/MAJORITY WILDGRAIN: Get $30 off your first box + free Croissants in every box. Go to Wildgrain.com/MAJORITY to start your subscription. SUNSET LAKE CBD: Head to SunsetLakeCBD.com and use coupon code 'Left Is Best' to save 20% your entire order. Follow the crew on X @SamSeder @EmmaVigeland @MattLech On Instagram: @MrBryanVokey Check out Matt's show, Left Reckoning, on YouTube, and subscribe on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/leftreckoning Check out Matt Binder's YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/mattbinder Subscribe to Brandon's YouTube channel: https://ww.youtube.com/Th3Discourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here: https:/www.youtube.com/@avaraiza  

The Majority Report with Sam Cedar. It is Thursday, September 17th, 2026. My name is Emma Vigeland in for Sam Cedar, and this is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravaged Gowanus Canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA. say. On the program today, J.S. Tan and Clarissa Redwine, authors of Against Tech Oligarchy, workers' resistance in the world's most powerful industry. Also on the program, Mike Johnson has

sent the House home a day early to avoid a Hexeth impeachment hearing. They won't be back until after the midterms, as gas prices soar, and experts say it's only a good. going to get worse. Yeah, it's not going to say anything to work on. Exactly. The House did pass, though. The Lindsay Graham in memoriam, Russia and Iran sanctions bill. How touching.

UN Commission human rights experts find reasonable grounds to believe the U.S. committed war crimes in Iran in February, bombing the girls' school and another sports complex. The top Democrat on the House Foreign Affairs Committee, the typically pro-Israel, Gregory Meeks, puts a hold on the transfer of 40,000, 2,000-pound bombs to Israel. He's limited in what he can do, but interesting sign. The State Department will again deny entry visas to Palestinian officials for next week's UN General Assembly. On Air Force One, Trump was photographed looking at a large poster board

that says Kennedy Center demolition. curiously place right next to the plane window. I'm gonna do it. Just... Okay, you're gonna block those 2,000-pound bombs to Israel? I know where we can drop one. Don't make me pull the nuclear option. Don't do it.

Trump threatens the EU with, you guessed it. Tariffs over their membership offer to Canada. A Protect Democracy analysis finds that one in ten Americans were redrawn into new congressional districts in 2024 and 26. That's more than 34 million people. The Trump administration moves to strip a core endangered species protection to allow for their killing. This is the only gift he's ever given to Don Jr. For me, a new Emerson poll finds a narrow lead for both James Talariko and Abdul.

Los Ayed in their races. A little too narrow for my liking. And lastly, the Fed votes to unanimously hike interest rates for the first time since 2003 due to inflation caused by the Iran War. Trump is not happy. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome to the show, everybody. It is an majority report Thursday. Hello, hello, hope you are well. Hello to Matt. Hello to Brian. Let's start here. So yesterday, Trump was campaigning in North Carolina for the Republican Senate candidate Michael Watley. He is running against Roy Cooper, the Democrat, former governor of the state. And this race is considered the safest flip for Democrats this cycle, knock on wood. Tilly.

is retiring, the Republican, so this would be technically a flip. Cooper is super popular in the state, as I say, consistently up in the polls. The other flips, of course, that we need to be monitoring Troy Jackson in Maine versus Susan Collins, Tala Rico versus Paxton, taking on the, the corn and seat. We have Alaska. We have Kansas now, which is an interesting race. And hey, I'll throw Florida down there because my girl Angie Nixon is running tough. against Ashley Moody, who has never been elected. She was appointed, so we shall see. But in terms of the potential flips that we're looking at, Iowa too,

this is considered one where the Democrats should hopefully emerge victorious. So that's why I'm a little bit surprised that the bunch of supporters enthusiastically, and maybe I shouldn't say a bunch, some Trump supporters enthusiastically, enthusiastically showed up to another Trump rally because I guess they decided that it would be fun to take a time out of their day to be told by this raving lunatic of a president that their entire community and state is awful.

Here is Trump calling North Carolina now one of the worst and most violent states in the country. Nobody used to think of North Carolina as a dangerous state, criminally dangerous. It was like North Carolina. It was beautiful. It was apple pie, right? And now it's one of the most violent and one of the worst in the whole nation. And it all started with Cooper. And you have a lousy governor right now, too, but it started, it started with Cooper. I remember Cooper was your governor when you had Helene, the, where they call it the biggest water hurricane? It was all water,

and it was brutal. I was here the following day. You remember that? Okay. All right. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Do you see in the top left of the screen, there's just a permanent, these statements have not been verified by USA today. Yeah. Because it's categorically not true that violence is up in North Carolina. It's exactly right. It's, first of all, violent crime is down precipitously across the country since the surge in 2020 and 2021 that we spoke about. Since 2020, the hom- When everyone briefly lost respect for the police. That's why, right.

And now we all respect them again now. George Floyd's death put a permanent hypnotizing haze or no, semi-permanent hypnotizing haze over the country. And then it changed really quickly. Yeah, nothing to do with the giant upheaval and, you know, lack of care given to people and desperate circumstances caused by COVID. Yeah. Homicides over the past three years in the U.S.

have fallen by an average of 16% per year. Trump should have checked in with Cash Patel because he was just in front of that Senate committee bragging and taking credit for the precipitous drop in violent crimes that begun really in 2022. This is all Trump has here. This focus on crime. And in North Carolina specifically, murders are down 12%. Raven aggravated assault also dropping year over year. Violent crime is lower. I don't mean to have the siren on in the background as a part of the soundtrack,

but I think it does add to... I'm liberal. Yeah, they're coming for me for speaking the truth. So he's obsessed with playing up this idea that this is really a crime-ridden state. He invoked Willie Horton, you know, that timely 1988 campaign reference. If you're a boomer, you might get that reference. And so he's not selling any vision here. He's just saying, your life is awful.

And why don't you roll around in this pigsty, you North Carolinians? Now, here he is speaking in very, I would say, hyperbolic terms about what Roy Cooper has done to North Carolina. I don't know if this is people's experience in the state, we shall see. So for years, pro-crime politicians like Roy Cooper have tried to bully you into silence while they turned your cities into blood-soaked killing fields, flooded your communities with migrant criminals, destroyed your schools with gangs and drugs and filled your streets with lawlessness, filth, and squalor. You think Joe Biden could say that? I don't think so. I mean, he could say that? No. He couldn't say that. What? Hitler could. You had a guy couldn't sign his signature.

Would you please sign here, sir? Yeah, I'll send out to an auto pen. Okay. Your auto pen. You're over. We had President Autopin. Now we have President Human Printer. You just dictate what you have to say to your psychotic aid.

So, Natalie. He's not even interested in what he's saying. Blood-soaked killing fields. That is so nuts. And I was recently home in North Dakota talking with a lot of my relatives. and it is this is for an audience of people who never go to cities

and it just terrifies them about cities and people are so detached from reality because of this Nazi rhetoric. Yeah, there was an article this morning I forget if it was in the Washington Post or the New York Times about Republicans panicking a little bit about their rural advantage. So if you're trying

and if you're trying to turn people out who aren't in urban centers in North Carolina where Roy Cooper's going to drive up the number you play up how dangerous the rest of the state is, I guess. I mean, the problem is that Trump is hurting them down ballot at this point. We're going to play probably in the fun half this pretty astonishing clip of this Republican down in Florida, a House Republican, who actually ended up, she won her race by 20 points,

but the new poll has come out showing that she is potentially tied with her Democratic opponent. Maria Elvira Salazar. She put out an ad just the other day, distancing herself from Trump's immigration policies. And I don't know if Trump going out there and talking about how North Carolina is actually a giant killing field is helping turn down the perception

that they are too extreme. But here is a little bit more from this rally because this is actually something that he's done before withholding FEMA funds. This is another threat. He has the carrot, which are the $5,000 checks that he will 100%

give to every American if Republicans retain the Senate and the House. But then you've got to have the stick. If a hurricane comes for you, you're shit out of luck if you don't elect the Republican. Bren's really fixing this place up. And we spent more than $2 billion FEMA funding.

And, you know, you're waiting for some additional money to take care of some of the back. to get that to you, Michael? Now, if Michael loses, I'm not sending it. Okay. No, I'm only kidding. You're getting it. You're going to get it, Michael. So, he's been bugging me. He's been bugging me.

What is? Yeah, he's been bugging you. I'm shocked that even that crowd was like, no. They groaned. Yeah. They groaned. Yeah. Because they don't want, they don't want to be withheld, FEMA funds to be withheld from them. If

the Democrat wins. Like, they're all at the Trump rally. They're going to support him. But they're like, ugh, really? If we don't win, which is out of our control, you're going to punish the rest of us? And this is something that Trump has been doing, really since his first term.

You had the California wildfires multiple times Trump's slow walked disaster relief. You had Puerto Rico in 2017 when Trump was, you know, doing free throw shots. with the paper towels. And Politico had this analysis.

It's a little old from March, but if you could scroll down to this chart where you see in his, there you go. Now this hasn't been updated here because this is from March, as I say. But you see that massive drop-off of FEMA and disaster funds

going to blue states under Trump. So, you know, he's constantly attempting to retaliate against states that don't vote for him. It is really a doubling down of Reagan. It's funny, this goes back to Reagan. And Reagan, you can see he's the only other person to approve less than 70%. And that was for, of course, Democratic states.

It's just repeating the same thing, but maybe with more aggression now. Yep. So there you have it. That is his pitch to North Carolina. Now let's turn to the... Vote for me or else. Yeah, right. Now let's turn to the House.

So Mike Johnson just sent the entire house home a day early because Republicans were worried about having to go on record about the Iran War, but also Defense Secretary, oh, I'm sorry, Secretary of War anti-Pete Heggzeth, Um, Thomas Massey, who is leaving, you know, he was just defeated by record spending in his primary by the Israel lobby. And the Hills have buys extra. I, I, that, that is fair. But like, it is kind of incredible, though, how on the nose it is. The Israel lobby doesn't want to have itself associated with Jeffrey Epstein, despite we, us knowing how close he was to Ehud Barak and to Israeli. intelligence. They still have some plausible deniability there, I think, to a degree, just because

Epstein was such a prolific fixer across capital, global capital, that it's not, you could tie him to other shady foreign governments, but the strongest tie we know is to Israel. It's just like a little bit on the nose to go after the one Epstein files Republican with a canon of APEC cash, if you want to distance yourself from that story. But I digress. Thomas Massey is trying to, at the very least, make some headlines on his way out. And he's right when he says that Hegzs-S should be impeached based on these illegal actions. One, the Iran war needs the approval from Congress, and that's why Trump keeps calling it an operation or an excursion. And then he sometimes slips up and calls it a war.

But Congress is supposed to be able to declare war. And explicitly as well, Hexas should be impeached over the strikes in the Caribbean. Going after boats of fishermen, then calling them drug and narco-traffickers. Narco-terrorists. Sorry! I'm sorry to downplay terrorism. Narco-terrorists because drugs are terrorism because they're destroying our communities, which would make the Sacklers, I think, the number one terrorists in the country,

We should probably get, you know, focused on maybe locking them up. Talk to Mike Rogers. We should. So he should be impeached. And Massey is right about this. Here he is on the House floor speaking about why Mike Johnson is cutting the congressional schedule short. For transparency and justice for the survivors. That's why to cut two weeks off the calendar.

Isn't that ironic? I was called it not a fully participating member of Congress. I'm the one who most wants to be here those two weeks. And they got canceled. And I said they would probably cancel them. And we were told, oh, nope, that's a ludicrous idea. Let me tell you how stupid Thomas Massey's comment is. Those were the words of the speaker. 48 hours later, what did he do?

Exactly what I predicted. He cut two weeks off of this calendar. So why did he just cut another day off the calendar? He had some more choice words for me, because I predicted this as well. On Tuesday, as a fully participating member of Congress, I introduced eight articles of impeachment against Peter Brian Hegseth. Over there, they're leading a little fantasy. They call it the Department of War.

You know, you can't rename things without. Congress. Hell, you can't even rename a post office without us. You think you can rename the Department of Defense, the Department of War? Give me a break. But enjoy your little fantasy. It's the Department of Defense. Here's what's, and let me tell you about the eight articles of impeachment. By the way, Speaker Johnson says I'm not a fully participating member of Congress. Well, it took a long time to write eight articles of impeachment. It didn't take much time to conceive them. If you're looking over at the administrative branch and trying to give an award for the person who's racked up the most illegal and unconstitutional act, there's one clear winner. It's Peter

Brian Heggseth, Secretary of Defense, who has done that. So it was easy to conceive of these articles of impeachment, but it wasn't easy to write them. And that's right. The actions have been immensely illegal. As I headlined, the UN has investigated the bombing of the Minab Girls School in late February at the outset of the Iran War and finds that it's quite likely that the United States committed war crimes. Yeah, by double-tapping the girls' school, it's quite likely that we committed war crimes. There was supposed to be a Pentagon inquiry into this. They said we're really investigating this. Peter Brian Hegzef, as as Massey says, has not released that report.

I would be shocked if it ever comes. And the UN also said that the strike on a sports complex in another part of Iran on the same day is likely a war crime as well. Meanwhile, our media members from Axios to Derek Thompson, rattleshaking babies, are having to freak out over Hassan Piker, say in America is the largest terrorists in the world. America who has killed an estimated of 94,000 or 940,000 people killed by direct post-9-11 war

violence in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, and Pakistan between 2001, 2003. Of these more than 400,000 were civilians. Yeah, and that is what you would constitute terrorism, as Hassan lays out, the deliberate targeting of civilians. Now, Peter... Peter Brian Heggzeth would say that too, right, exactly, would say that, oh, it was a mistake in our outdated AI maps that we killed. Sure, man. People in this girl school.

When you look at the way that they double-tapped and the timing, it was designed, and this is an Israeli tactic, to get the parents to leave their homes or their office buildings, to flee to the school. because according to reporting, a lot of IRGC members had their kids at this particular school to draw them out out of fear that their children are dead and then strike another time to kill them. But killing the children at the beginning

in the first strike is fine with them and killing them the second time as well. And we killed over 120 children and 170 plus people in that war crime attack on. that school. And it's frankly, as horrific it is, a drop in the bucket in the amount of people, civilians we've killed.

Is that 400,000 accidents? But the drugboat thing is so near our shores and so obvious. Right now, some of the families of the victims are suing the United States government because we're claiming that these people were narco-terrorists when they were fishermen or they were laborers trying to go from

one part of the Caribbean to the other. So we'll see how that that plays out and if justice is ever served. But back to Mike Johnson for just a second. This is what he's been doing all the Trump 2.0. Avoiding tough votes, cutting things short. He did so as Massey referenced last summer. Epstein, the Epstein recess, as Massey has previously called it. When in July 2025, if you recall, they left for their six-week recess. early because Mike Johnson wanted to avoid the Epstein files vote. And thankfully, Democrats sort of began to get their crap together at that point and made Epstein an issue once they returned in the

fall. But like the economy is likely about to collapse. We don't know when. And the forces of capital can maintain certain bubbles for longer than, you know, many of us anticipated. Like the AI bubble is still not popped at this point. But gas prices are through the roof. You're seeing gas stations with no diesel fuel at all, cropping up all across the country, which means that the transportation of goods, which is primarily done with diesel fuel,

is going to explode in expense. You already seen in places like Syria, people take into the streets. I think there was a 20 cent increase in Michigan overnight in gas prices, which is really significant. and there's a huge race in that state for Senate. The fact that the House is going on recess early and not dealing with any of these issues,

and Elizabeth Warren made this point, too, as AI safety concerns become this really primarily motivating issue for a lot of voters, what Mike Johnson and the Republicans are prioritizing is covering Pete Heggzett's ass and their own ass from having to defend this incredibly unpopular illegal war. Just to put a pin on it, three quarters of independent voters per the New York Times poll earlier this week,

New York Times Sienna, say that they disapprove of the Iran war. And a quarter of Trump's 2024 voters say the same. The Democrats' numbers are as bad as you would think. But they understand that even giving any airtime to their role in this incredibly unpopular and expensive, a legal war is a, not a benefit to them. And so I don't know how, I don't know how what the value would have been for Democrats, too, to even have the Republicans attempt to own this on the

House floor. I think the American people already really understand who dragged us into this. But we shall see, it's just incredible that we're not going to have any House business until after the midterms. Like, do your goddamn job. Oh, I did want to mention this. The House has cut 28 days this year, added four others. That's a net

loss of 24 days. You want to know how much that is of their scheduled work year? It's a fourth. Dream job. No labels is reporting that it's the fewest House voting days in over three decades. Republicans, they believe in

Hard work. Excited to talk to our next two guests, J.S. Tan and Clarissa Redwine, co-authors of the book Against Tech Oligarchy Workers' Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry. But first, a word from some of our sponsors here. Zock-Doc is the perfect tool for you to stop putting off doctors' appointments. I do it all the time. It's easy to avoid, even though we shouldn't. Healthcare can already be difficult to access and frustrating and discouraging at some points.

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for $30 off your first box and free croissants for life or use promo code majority at checkout. We will put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions and at majority.fm. Quick break and when we come back will be joined by J.S. Tan

and Clarissa Redwine, co-authors of Against Tech Oligarchy, Workers' Resistance in the World. most powerful industry. We are back and I am so happy to be joined now by J.S. Tan, PhD candidate at MIT, who writes the value-added newsletter and Clarissa Redwine, Kickstarter union organizer and co-founder of the tech organizing conference circuit breakers, co-authors of against tech oligarchy workers' resistance in the world's most powerful industry. J.S. and Clarissa, welcome to the show.

Yeah, thank you for having us. So happy to have you. So happy to have you. So happy to be speaking with you. Clarissa, I'll start with you because I'm wondering if you could take us back to organizing at Kickstarter. This is a huge moment for organizing in the tech industry. And you were fired in retaliation. Tell us a bit about your experience and how that informed your work going forward about organizing the industry. Yes, you're absolutely right. That was a pivotal moment for the tech worker movement.

and transformative for myself personally. So I was a tech worker. I got a job at Kickstarter. And we had this moment of turbulence where there was leadership turnover, there were reorgs. And at the same time, there was a rise of the alt-right

and everyone was watching how the tech industry was going to become complicit in that rise. And one day, Breitbart wrote an article saying that Kickstarter was inciting violence for having a project up on the site called Always Punch Nazis. It was a little comic book of a superhero flying around punching Nazis. And leadership was like, we don't want heat from Breitbart or the right. Let's cancel that project. And of course, the workers of Kickstarter,

rose up and said, we demand this project stays up on the site. And that collective action catalyzed a union drive that I became a core organizer of. And you're actually, Absolutely right. There was retaliation for organizing that union. They fired a third of our organizing committee in the same week. And I was the first to go. But we won. And now the workers of Kickstarter have a four-day work week. That's awesome. That's awesome. So that was 2018, if I, if I'm remembering correctly, right, Clarissa? It was 2019. And we won our election in 2020, like a week or two before the pandemic shut down. Gotcha. Well, then I want to talk about the pandemic and its impact on the industry and on organizing as well. But, J.S., could you expand a little bit more on what Clarissa was talking about, about how the first Trump administration impacted tech workers' vision of their role in this country and impacted the desire to organize amongst your,

your colleagues. Yeah, absolutely. You know, I think when most people kind of think of tech workers, especially back in the 2010s, it would be kind of a surprise to think that these are the kinds of workers who are now mobilizing. But the rise of Trump was actually a very integral part of why the tech worker movement started in the first place, right? A lot of tech workers, you know, myself included when we were entering the industry in the

2010s, had these ideas about technology, that technology. would, you know, make the world more open, more connected, more democratic, right, especially with the rise of the Internet. And, you know, many of us found that when we were working in the tech, in these tech companies, that actually, you know, these were the companies that were responsible for things like the spread of misinformation, you know, the, you know, companies start contracting with Pentagon and ICE. And importantly, they played a critical role in sort of, Trump's campaign, right, with Cambridge Analytica.

And so I think that was kind of a huge moment of disillusionment for a lot of tech workers. And in many ways, that really catalyzed the sort of surge in collective actions and political organizing that happened by tech workers. Either of you can take this, but I'm wondering if you could speak about that moment, the Cambridge Analytica scandal for people that don't know or don't remember, this was about tech companies essentially selling sensitive personal information

or collaborating with this group that is now I think the guy who headed it is now heading a pro-Israel lobbying effort here in the United States if that gives you a sense Brad Parscal, there we go I remember the name that they were selling

sensitive data to allow for right-wing groups to micro-target specific voters I think this also played into Brexit as well what's the summary of that scandal for people that may not have remembered? Yeah, I think you covered it pretty well. You know, I think maybe that really, I think, was kind of the beginning of a change in sort of the broader politics of Silicon Valley, actually. You know, following from that moment, we started to see a lot of companies actually work much more closely with the U.S. government, for instance, with the Pentagon.

eventually later on even supporting software for ICE. And by the time between sort of or just before the second Trump administration, in fact, that was, you know, there was kind of this whole shift in the tech industry by the tech bosses towards the right, right? There was kind of this rightward turn of the tech elite. And I think there are many ways to sort of understand that. You know, for instance, Gil Duran's new book, The Nerd Right, traces how it was that, you know, the ideology of the right wing in the tech sector influenced eventually a lot of the tech elite and sort of partly through that mechanism driving them to the right. And, you know, I think part of what we really try to do in our book is argue that the,

The best way to understand this kind of shift in the politics is actually to begin with the issue of class struggle, right? And to see how it is that class politics has transformed the industry over the course of the past decade. And, you know, that's something that we can definitely elaborate on. Yeah, Clarissa, if you don't mind elaborating on that, because as you write in your book, Silicon Valley really starting in the 1980s and then perhaps we could say through into Trump 1.0, but that's when the pivot began,

branded itself as, you know, a democratizing force across the world, a, an optimist, there was tech optimism about what this could mean. The social media was about connecting with people as opposed to,

you know, racist algorithms and, and, and surveillance that we now kind of associate with, with Silicon Valley. But the, the more Democrat, piece really stuck out to me because there's this connection between, I would say,

Democratic representation within Silicon Valley via organizing and democratic representation in this country via voting. And especially given how these tech companies have been so central to the communication of information in political information. I'm wondering if you could just talk a little bit about the concept of a democratic workplace and also how that fits into what the vision was, what you were advocating for in terms of changes about Silicon Valley's approach. Yeah, absolutely.

So, you know, the early branding of Silicon Valley, like you both were saying, was, you know, we are going to be a democratizing, empowering, liberating force in the world. and they attracted workers who believed in that vision. You know, workers who could have gone elsewhere in the tech industry, but chose to join these firms because of their pro-social values. And ironically, there always came a point in the tech worker movement where management would choose profit over the mission. And that was a moment of betrayal that ended up catalyzing class consciousness,

where workers felt that they were on one side aligned with the working class and their bosses were on the other with incentives that did not align with their own. So one really good example is, you know, at Google, they have this famous line, don't be evil. Well, their workers discovered this contract with the military. Project Maven is what we call it. And, you know, they ended up organizing resistance. First, they went through every recognizable channel for feedback in the company.

And when that didn't work, they had the insight to put pressure on the very brand that Google was using to build trust with consumers and, you know, have cushy soft regulation. And what JS and I try to point out in our book against tech oligarchy is that that has changed. the very bosses that would have responded to public pressure and seeing an article in the news will just wait out the news cycle, you know, or they are openly saying things like Mark Zuckerberg, saying, you know, we need to be a more masculine company and no longer advocating for democracy, not only in the workplace. When I think of masculinity, I think of Mark Zuckerberg. That's who I think of off the top of my head. Sorry, Clarissa. No, so funny. Yeah, so funny.

Go on. I interrupted you for a very petty reason. No, no, that was great. We love it. We're for it. Yeah, I mean, maybe JS, maybe you would like to jump in and share a little bit more. I mean, you know, just really quickly, just to get into that point a little bit more and into really one of the core arguments we make in the book, it's that part of this kind of right word shift, this kind of going from you know, embracing DEI to embracing a more masculine culture is, is very much part of the response that tech bosses had to the tech worker movement, right? If you think of initially when the tech worker movement had started, a lot of the activism was actually kind of over the, over sort of these culture war issues, right? Sort of issues of, you know, pushing back against that contract of ice

or rampant sexism in the workplace. And at first, the way. these tech companies respond to that was by doubling down on sort of this progressive facade that they had been putting up, right? Sometimes even seating to the employee demands or expanding their DEI initiatives and things like that. But eventually, you know, the bosses got fed up. They couldn't bear the idea of being told, you know, by anyone, least of all, their own employees, what to be doing, right, how to run their businesses. And so part of that transformation we see of tech bosses is really about crushing the worker movement, right? They wanted to take back control over the workforce that they had believed had become too unruly. And how they go about doing this, I think is

really key, right? In their analysis, the kind of mass revolt of the tech worker movement, you know, comes in large part because they saw these issues as being fundamentally about progressivism or wokeism, as they would call it. And so by way, of crushing this kind of employee dissent, they believed that what they needed to do was target these very progressive values and these very, you know, what they would call the, what Musk would call the woke mind virus, right? And so, you know, just to just to paint a picture of that, when Elon Musk took over Twitter, right? And at the time, you know, Clarissa and I were actually union staffers at that campaign at Twitter. But when he took over the company, it wasn't just about,

you know, gutting, you know, firing or laying off 80% of the workforce, it was very much intentionally a attack on the progressive values of that workforce, right? And so he was targeting the AI ethics teams, the human rights team, the content moderation teams, et cetera. And that is such an important point because when we hit 2020 to the Biden era, the Biden term, there is this. this grounds, well, it's not a groundswell, there is this overwhelming narrative coming out of the tech platforms that the Biden administration is so censorious and you have all of the podcasters on the right lining up with this narrative about COVID misinformation. And at one point in the 2020 race, Biden had reached out to Twitter and had asked, the campaign had asked to get something that was

misinformation taken down. Campaigns do this all the time. This was not in his official capacity he hadn't been elected yet and yet this was treated as like this insane attack on free speech now we see how trump is waging war on free speech in the first amendment and silencing dissent and uh with this the the the CBS news take over etc but it's just like when you think about it in that way that um there was this kind of active campaign to paint content moderation as in some way a free speech issue

within that context it politicized it and it was I would say and perhaps Clarice who you can speak to this a clear indication of where things were headed now that frankly the industry hasn't come up with a ton of new ideas and so they were trying to continue

to maximize shareholder value when they had hit a bit of a ceiling with certain social media products. Yeah, you're absolutely right. One of the reasons that we would love for people to read this book is because we think that getting an inside look at how these tech oligarchs treat their own workers and centralized control within their own empires and platforms is very instructive for understanding what's coming next or how they are shaping society in general. And, you know, the content moderation team or trust and safety team or AI ethics team,

these are all checks on their power internally. And oftentimes union drives spring out of those very teams. That's what we saw across the tech worker movement over and over again. You know, the people who are drawn to keeping the platform safe for its users are the very ones that understand worker power is necessary in order to steer these companies. is. Right. And let's go back then to Elon Musk a little bit there. Elon Musk is famously anti-union at Tesla and he brought that very mentality over to Twitter when he acquired it. I'm reminded of him showing up at the Dave Chappelle show in San Francisco and getting mercilessly booed on stage.

I would imagine a lot of people in the audience work in the industry, work in Silicon Valley, and understood, you know, what this guy was really all about. I guess talk a bit about that period and Elon must take over of Twitter and what that meant for tech workers, JS, if you don't mind taking this one. Yeah, I mean, you know, we tell the story in quite a bit of detail in our book because, you know, like I said, we were both at that time union staffers at 21staffers at 20. Twitter, there was an early campaign that a group of workers that actually was the force behind getting Trump banned from the platform after January 6th. And that group of workers eventually formed into an organizing committee and wanted to push towards a union drive.

And that's kind of how we got involved. And so we got involved pretty much the year in which Elon Musk took over to the company and that was a moment, I think, in which we saw firsthand how it was that Elon Musk really in many ways set the playbook for the rest of the industry for how bosses could treat their workers, right? You know, it wasn't just like, you know, at that time, we started to see some layoffs happening in the industry already, but Elon Musk was really the first to lay off 80% of a company and still have it, you know, continue running. Right after that, we saw, you know, a bunch more layoffs, of course, induced by the new financial environment. But similarly, with the targeting of these progressive values of the tech firms, we saw that happen as well in all these other tech companies, right? The elimination of DEI initiatives, even before Trump too, right, across the tech sector, the targeting of AI ethics

teams. And so, you know, I think as he was taking over Twitter and decimating that workforce, you know, that process, which he did openly on Twitter itself, gave permission to the rest of the tech bosses and the tech elite to do the same. Yeah. How much of the, would you say, Clarissa, the tech I guess oligarchy's emphasis on violent crime in certain cities

and especially this kind of narrative that was crafted about how necessary it was to leave California because of crime. How much of that was really about California having maybe stronger protections

for organizing than Texas or Tennessee or someplace where these other tech oligarchs decide to move their companies. Oh, yeah. I think it's part of the project of these oligarchs to undermine the very concept of democracy. You know, we're seeing that in many different ways across their rhetoric and how they move through the world. Even Elon taking over Twitter itself was in effect an attack on democracy on the public forum. And I think they are targeting states where there is more worker power.

There are more worker protections so that they can make a case for dismantling democracy, which they're doing as quickly as possible. And the pandemic accelerating this is also a really, I think, important part of your book because this allowed for the billionaire class in the tech world, to develop their own kind of perverse class consciousness, where they understood how they could consolidate their wealth. And they really became the oligarchy that is in your title or the broligarchy, this emphasis on consolidating power.

Andresen speaks, Mark Andreessen speaks about this, of course, Peter Thiel, within the context of their workplace, Elon Musk, Sam Altman is incredibly anti-democratic as well. But how did the pandemic specifically, J.S., increase billionaire class consciousness? Yeah, that's a great question. And, you know, we have in our book a whole chapter just dedicated to this very moment in time.

You know, so I think the pandemic sort of had two effects. The first is on worker organizing itself. I think before that, a lot of kind of the magic of labor organizing happened in person when people were meeting up in offices and being able to chat with their coworkers in person and build those relationships. And so the move to remote work made organizing for tech workers quite a bit harder. But at the same time, what also happened during the pandemic was, you know, initially there was this boom in tech because everything was suddenly moving. online and there was this surge in hiring. But by 2022, as COVID, you know, supply chain problems emerged from from COVID, what happened was that inflation started to rise rapidly. And the Fed, as a result, started to hike up interest rates dramatically. And, and, you know, the tech sector

was hit the hardest as a result of that. You know, by the time, by the time of, you know, late 2022 or so, the tech sector had lost some hundreds of billions of dollars in valuation in the markets. And as a result, their response was obviously to cut costs. And being these asset-like tech companies, their largest costs in many ways were their own employees. And so that opened up this kind of new era of the tech sector where layoffs became the new normal. And coming back to the Musk story, that was really. really part of the beginning of that, right? You know, there were some layouts happening already,

but it opened it up to sort of the, the sort of an industry wide pattern of layoffs that continue, in fact, to this day. Including also, I should say, the financialization of the, or the tiering of social media, the pay to play stuff, like, if you buy,

you can buy a blue check and now Instagram is doing it. It's more associated with banking now than it is just, based on getting ad revenue because they hit a limit there. Yeah, that's a great point. And, you know, I think this kind of shift in the financial environment was also a major blow to organizing because this became a moment in which a lot of tech workers lost their leverage in the labor market. And so what the tech bosses were able to do, you know, beyond just laying off workers,

was really engaged in this war on sort of the progressive values that they knew a lot of the employee base had. And you also talk at one point about the walkouts at Google over sexual misconduct. And that's a little earlier, but you can see there, perhaps Clarissa you can weigh in on this, that is a moment of organizing for, better treatment based on progressive values and that's a potentially lesson learned in the years

that follow as the crackdown on organizing in the tech worker space begins. Right, right. Yeah. So I think this is a really good moment to stress the importance of worker power in the tech industry itself. So the start of the tech worker movement was catalyzed by these massive walkouts at Google over sexual harassment, sexual misconduct, at Amazon around climate justice in 2018, 2019. And, you know, the wins that came out of these massive actions were amazing. You know, having Google stop using forced arbitration, where, you know, someone who's experienced sexual misconduct in the workplace is short and loose. That was amazing. That was amazing. amazing. You know, Amazon workers getting their company to release their carbon emissions data and

commit to a zero carbon emissions pledge by 2040, no regulation has been able to force companies to make these changes so quickly. And what we're trying to say in our book is, you know, as the tech oligarchs have driven down working conditions across the tech industry, made workers more precarious, also, you know, manufactured consent for mass layoffs and for, treating workers in this way, they have undermined the very mechanisms for solidarity that gave rise to tech worker resistance in the first place, which is very intentional and something that they're doing all across society. You know, when Elon left Twitter on the weekends to go play around with Doge, he was using the same playbook that he used to undermine our strike threat at Twitter.

And that is sort of the alarm we're trying to sound, is that the, the, most powerful check on these oligarchs power is being increasingly undermined with the rise of automation. And it is, you know, the not ironic. It's not a coincidence, I think, that the tech industry is central to, you know, the AI, the proliferation of AI is a labor replacement tool for that very reason. And Ohio Dad writes in this is a related question. I, I wonder if your guests have any thoughts on the remote work accelerating offshore jobs, if that is something that you both perceived and perhaps something that helped undercut unionization efforts. Maybe JS, you can take this one.

Yeah, I mean, I think this is kind of a, you know, part of a longer trend. You know, throughout the 2010s already, a lot of the big tech companies had sort of been increasingly outsourcing their workforce. even before the pandemic, Google has something like 50-50 in terms of full-time employees and contracted workers. But certainly with the pandemic, that kind of gave us this second excuse

to accelerate that as a pattern. And so certainly a lot more work being pushed out, even outside the country. In terms of unionizing, though, you know, that has always, I think, think been a problem with organizing in the tech sector. And part of what we we try to get at in our book is that when the movement, you know, well, let me step back a little bit. Part of the shift, a key shift in the tech worker movement was that we went as a movement from sort of these

direct actions and sort of seeking demands in a much more direct way to focusing primarily on winning unions. Right. And part of that shift. meant that we focused on what U.S. labor law permitted of a union. And that meant organizing U.S.-based workers of the same role primarily. And so as this outsourcing happened and intensified, especially through the pandemic, that kind of, that in some ways limited the power of a union in the first place. Right. So if, you know, if you're, if you had, if half the workforce was not living in the U.S. even. Right. But you had a union in the workplace. What kind of leverage does that union even have?

Union density is immensely important for leverage and, you know, well, in the country, but also, you know, of course, in terms of just a percentage of the workforce that's a part of the union. The book is called Against Tech Oligarchy, Workers' Resistance in the World's Most Powerful Industry. J.S. Tan, Clarissa Redwine, thank you both so much for your time today. We will put a link down below in the video and episode descriptions for your excellent. book. Really appreciate it. Thank you, Emma. Thank you both. Thank you so much. With that said, folks, we're going to wrap up the free part of this program and head into the fun

half. No Brandon today, but please check out the discourse. As always, he streams before us, which is extremely polite. And he's growing like a weed over there, the discourse. So check it out it's the discourse and the e at the end of the is a three if that helps you look for it. Also just two different plugs for me if you are in New York City tomorrow. My dear dear friend Matt Bernstein is going to be moderating a panel for a film that I now completely lost the tab for. I completely lost it. But it's a documentary about Palestine.

It's called Traces. Oh my gosh. Traces of home, my goodness. So at 7.15 p.m. tomorrow at the Angelica, you can look it up. And I think we'll have a link down below. Not the village East Angelica, the traditional Angelica. Matt is going to, Matt Bernstein is going to be moderating a panel about this documentary. And I'm very excited to see it myself.

So if you'd like to support my buddy Matt Bernstein, you can go check. that out. If you're in L.A., I will be out there pretty soon, less than two weeks. So, or, well, not until the show, but I will be out there at that time. On the fourth, I'm going to be with Francesca Furentini for a live bituation room show. And we now have, are able to reveal who the special guests are, one Tim Hidaker and Jess Craven. So if you'd like to check us out at the room for the bituation room that's on the fourth it's a matinee on the on a sunday uh matt what's happening on the jacobin show and with with uh left reckoning yeah david are going to do another uh lad show uh for jacobin tomorrow just the two of us probably

talking about some of this hasan stuff um and the inability of our press from msnbc the people would just uh interviewed hasan to you know axioles to deviseoes to devs to devs Eric Thompson to understand what kind of country we're living in and their ability to, yeah, let's focus on Mao. Mao's been dead for how long? Like, America is evil right now. It needs to be stopped. So we're going to talk about stuff like that.

But anyway, the people have electoral, electrability concerns about Hassan Pike. I don't know. It's exhausting. All right. Justcoffee. dot co-op, fair trade coffee, tea, and chocolate, and also join the majority report.com. If you become a member, you can IAM the show, you can help support our show,

you can get access to the fun half and more. We might have Matt Binder soon, we shall see, but of course check out his YouTube channel. See you in the fun half. Okay, Emma, please. Well, I just, I feel that my voice is sorely lacking in the majority report. Wait, what? Look, Sam is unpopular. I do deserve a vacation at Disney World.

So, ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome Emma to the show. It is Thursday. I think you need to do it over for Sam. That's good. I'm going to pause you right there. Wait, what? You can't encourage Emma to live like this. And I'll tell you why.

So it's offered a twerk, sushi, and poker with the boys. Boys, what? Twerk? Sushi and bids. Twerk? Sushi and. Sushi and ties. I just think that what you did to Tim Poole was mean.

Free speech. That's not what we're about here. Look at how sad he's become now. You shouldn't even talk about it because I think you're responsible. I probably am in a certain way, but let's get to the meltdown here. Oh my God. Wow. Sushi.

I'm sorry. I'm losing my fucking mind. Someone's offered a twir. Sushi and poker with the boys. Logic. Dwerp. Sushi and poker. Like a little kid.

I think I'm like a little kid. A little kid. I think I'm like a little kid. I'm not trying to be a dick right now, but like, I absolutely think the U.S. should be providing me with a wife and kids. That's not what we're talking about here. It's not a fun job. That's a real thing. That's a real thing.

Willie Walker. That's a real thing. That's like the weight of the world on the shoulders. Sam doesn't want to do this show anymore. It was so much easier when the majority report was just you. You were happy. I want people saying reckless things on your program. That's one of the most difficult parts about this show.

This is a pro-killing podcast. I'm thinking maybe it's kind of we bury the hatchet. Left is best. Trump. Violet twerk? You are to the right of the answer. We already fund Israel. Incredible theme song.

I bumbler. Emma Viglin, absolutely one of my favorite people. Actually, not just in the game, like, period.