The Majority Report with Sam Seder - 3625 - Sam LIVE At Las Vegas Mass Torts Conference '26 Day 2

Episode Date: April 17, 2026

It's Casual Friday on The Majority Report   On today's program:   Donald Trump announces that the Strait of Hormuz is now open, just like it was before he started the war. As a part of the deal, Trump says that the U.S. is prohibiting Israel from bombing Lebanon.   An attempt to extend the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) is blocked in a late-night vote.   RFK, Jr. continues to humiliate himself and tarnish his legacy as he offers no criticisms of the EPA relaxing regulations for mercury - something he has long been outspoken about before joining the administration.   Alex Taylor, a lawyer at Levin Papantonio joins Sam to discuss algorithmic price fixing in the health care industry.   In the Fun Half:   Progressive Analilia Mejia wins the special election in NJ-11 for Mikkie Sherrill's vacant seat.   Joe Rogan fluffs JD Vance and rails against a wealth tax. A real man of the people.   Donald Trump holds a No Tax on Tips Event in Las Vegas where he breaks the fourth wall on the door dash grandma stunt.   All that and more   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 AMQuickie 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: NUTRAFOL: Get $10 off your first month's subscription + free shipping at Nutrafol.com when you use promo code TMR10   SUNSET LAKE: Now through April 22nd, when you check out with code 420, you'll save 30% sitewide at SunsetLakeCBD.com Follow the Majority Report crew on Twitter: @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 show The Discourse on Patreon! https://www.patreon.com/ExpandTheDiscourse Check out Ava Raiza's music here! https://avaraiza.bandcamp.com

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The sale ends April 22nd at midnight eastern time. See their site for additional terms and restrictions. And now time for the show. That means Monday is casual Monday. Tuesday, casual Tuesday, Wednesday, casual hump day. Thursday, casual thurs, that's what we call it. And Friday, casual Shabbat. The Majority Report with Sam Cedar.

It is Friday. April 17th, 2006. My name is Sam Cedar. This is the five-time award-winning majority report. We are broadcasting live steps from the industrially ravage, iguanas canal in the heartland of America, downtown Brooklyn, USA, and from a conference room in Las Vegas,

a Las Vegas casino for the Mass Torts Conference. Also on the program today, Iran declares the Strait of Hormuz open. There's a 10-day ceasefire. fire supposedly to go into effect between Israel and Lebanon. We'll see if Israel can stop bombing. Organizer, former Sanders campaign director, and Alia Miajah, Coats in New Jersey 11th special election. House votes to protect temporary protected status for Haitian immigrants.

reports that U.S. naval ships are running out of basic supplies for their sailors. Farrell Judge once again limits Trump's dreams of a beautiful ballroom. UN reports that Israel killed an average of 47 women and girls daily between October, 2023, and December 2025. House in a last minute punt extends Section 702 of the FISA law by 10 days. Four Democrats voting or were prepared to vote on favor of a longer extension, the rest of the Democrats voting against. It was 20 Republicans who revolted. And lastly, the congressional president,

progressive caucus has begun to push for a powers act vote every day in the house going forward. All this and more on today's majority report. Welcome, ladies and gentlemen. It is casual Friday. I am not casual. This is probably the most dressed up I've ever been on a Friday, really, frankly, the most dressed up I am on any day of the week. You are wearing a non-soft-exam. collared shirt.

Yeah, and a suit jacket. Yeah. You're not doing the fetterman with the hoodie, uh, hoodie under the suit jacket and then the tie. The Fred Flintstone tie around his neck. Well, I have shorts on.

So if that's, uh, oh, no one wants to think about that. No. I do. Um, so, uh,

folks yesterday had, uh, was it, four interviews, uh, with, uh, uh,

tort law. here and I had two today that were scheduled and they both canceled. So which is probably just to go through the news. There's a chance we might get one of them. One of the big things I wanted to talk about with an attorney that was here was the big meta ruling the other day because one of the lead attorneys was here. and I just was not able to get a time. But we'll talk about that in the future because it's a fascinating case.

And there's going to be more of this. Last time we're out here, we're talking about social media cases and gaming cases. There was a couple of people here who are working on gambling addiction cases that are a function of the, you know, sort of just explosion of gambling and, market what is it the predictive markets opportunities which i went to the predictive markets thing here and placed a uh a 25 dollar bet on the celtics to win the championship a predictive market wow yeah exactly it's not betting honey it's predictive markets that i'm spending a thousand dollars exactly exactly i mean it it's i just wanted to get the there's a four to one chance

that the Celtics will win the championship, just FYI. But there is a chance over the course of the next hour, so I may get a guest may show up, but if not, let's just go through the news because there's a significant amount of it. Donald Trump had this to, what do you call it, to truth? Oh, yeah. Yeah, truth it out.

And it is the case, according to the Iranians as well, that the Strait of Hormuz is open. Donald Trump says the Strait of Hormuz is completely open and ready for business in full passage. But the naval blockade will remain in full force and effect as it pertains to Iran only until such time as our transaction with Iran. is 100% I don't know what that means 100% complete I don't know what the transaction is maybe the 20 billion that they're giving them the Iran there was an Iranian official that spoke to Reuters and told them that their assets being unfrozen is a part of this agreement which is what the Republicans said was basically aiding and abetting terrorism materially when that was a part of Obama's deal with the JCPOA, which was a successful deal that capped Iran's uranium

enrichment at single digit levels, not the 90% that they would need to make a nuclear weapon. And Trump tore that up to get a worse deal, give Iran more leverage, give them more power in the international market now that they control the straight. And so here we are. And I would also add not just all of those things that Trump does. didn't achieve. Like, you know, everybody's celebrating because we're almost back to where we were a month and a half ago. But, of course, there's a jet fuel shortage that is hitting various places, Europe and other places around the world. We're going to probably have some food shocks in the coming year because of the break in supply of fertilizer.

We may see inflation in chip manufacturing because of the while we try and build back the capacity to create helium. There's a whole host of sort of like downstream ripple effects of this that we are only going to see and probably will there will be very little written or talked about how this was an impact of this war. And of course, we killed thousands of innocent people. And this is all to assume that it ends today or ends in the next week or two. And there's no guarantee on that either. It is still baffling in my mind why Trump did this. I mean, there's some obvious reasons. He's not very bright.

And it was clearly, you know, people advocating on this behalf. Certainly, you know, Netanyahu. did and um i think hegseth too and you heard he's it there it's notorious that he is the kind of guy that can be influenced by the last person that's in the room with him specifically if the last person in the room with him is flattering him and i think nettingahu is very strategic in when he approached trump about this one with the midterms approaching and you we saw even though there's still these horrific, traitorous, fascist-enableder Democratic senators, the seven that voted not to block bombs or bulldozers to Israel and the 11 that voted not to block a thousand-pound

bombs to Israel the other day. Netanyahu still recognizes the sea change in the Democratic Party that over 70% of Democrats think Israel is committing genocide, for example. So the time was now getting Trump when he was feeling himself after kidnapping Maduro. saying you can do the exact same thing to Iran and understanding that Netanyahu felt like he had a 10-month window. So our president being an idiot is a problem. I do think, you know, I mean, you raise a good point in that Netanyahu probably knew on some level this was his last bite at the apple with Trump, or at least that there's a chance of that because the midterms could be so, devastating for the Republicans that if the Democrats take the Senate, it is not hard to imagine

that Donald Trump gets impeached by this time next year. And so, or at the very least, a heggsith or someone like that could get impeached. Articles of impeachment came up for him the other day. But let's see what else we got. Yeah, number three is really important, but we can go chronologically if we want. Did we finish that first truth? Yeah. Yes. Okay, so this is number two. Iran has never agreed, has agreed to never close the Strait of Ormuz again. It will no longer be used as a weapon against the world, President Donald J. Trump. Which it wasn't until now. Yeah, it was not closed until you launched the war, buddy. And now they may be charging tolls. We still don't know the contours of this deal. And I would say if like, say American Israel decide to

strike Iran again, they will probably close the straight of Hormuz once again. Exactly. Or Lebanon. Liars. But or Lebanon, which is key, if we can put up three, because this is actually

kind of unprecedented a little bit from Trump here. You can't listen to what he says. You have to listen to what he does, but this is him scolding Israel in public. The USA will get all nuclear dust, created by our great B2 bombers.

No money will exchange hands in any way, shape, or form. This deal is in no way subject to Lebanon either, but the USA will separately work with Lebanon and deal with the Hezbollah, which... Was that a racist way to write it, or did he actually mess up? I can't tell. Okay. Situation in an appropriate manner. Israel will not be bombing Lebanon any longer.

They are prohibited from doing so by the USA. enough is enough. Thank you, President Donald J. Trump. And so, okay, we have known that the U.S. can yank on Israel's leash whenever we want to. That was true under Biden. It's true under Trump.

It seems like they may actually be doing it right now. If it holds, if Trump has the character or stamina to maintain it, I'm very skeptical of that, but it's just an indication of what is possible. Character, I mean, the stamina. What does he mean by the U.S. will get all

nuclear dust created by our I have no idea what that means. He's saying they bombed the uranium. I think he's saying the enriched uranium has been bombed and that's what I think. Yeah. Okay. I mean, so, right.

Well, but, but. As a fellow idiot. You're trying to translate for us. I mean, but this, but what's key here, though, is like, I just want to lay out the timeline of this because it shows how this U.S. blockade of the blockade of the strait of Form moves was just a face-saving stall tactic by the Trump administration because it didn't make any sense. Iran was blocking the strait to cause economic

pain to the West. That's what was happening. So then Trump's saying we're going to blockade your blockade still enables the objective of the Iranians, which is to make gas prices go up for people in the imperial core to feel some sort of economic. pain. So he announces this blockade on the 13th. On the 14th, Rubio, who he trusts clearly more than Heggseth on this, and I'm

curious if Hegzeth is in the doghouse because of how badly this went. Rubio was tapped with hosting talks between Lebanon, not Hezbollah, the very weak government of Lebanon, and Israel, which is the first time in decades. So the next day, those talks happened

after Trump says we're blockading the blockade. it seems like that period of time, now we're on the 17th in that four-day period, was Trump trying to get the Israelis to accept a ceasefire in Lebanon. And so he wanted to look tough saying, we're blockading your blockade. But all of those 10-point terms that we've laid out that Iran said, these are our terms and we're going to negotiate with those terms, the ones that included Lebanon, Trump initially said that's not included. No, but this week was about getting Israel to agree that Lebanon is included.

So this is a complete and total victory for Iran. That's it. I mean, I would imagine that was a big get for Iran to basically get Trump to pull back on Israel. And I mean, of course, it remains to be seen where it goes from here. but just an absolute waste in many, many respects. And we should also say, like, I think to a certain extent, you know, Trump is, it's, he's, I think he's pursuing some type of, like, madman theory. But the problem is it's unclear, I think, even to him as to, like, what the agenda is.

But he's an actual madman. Like, that's the problem is he's actually. truly a madman. I mean, the madman theory is a tactic. And it seems to be also his strategy and his ends. Like, I'm just going to see if I can do this and act this strange and misspell things. And that's basically it. It's just, yeah, it worked the same way. It didn't work any better for Trump than it did for Nixon. He got called on his bluff. He did the civilizational threat. And then he had to create this fake blockade to create a new stage that. you could get to even though it was nonsensical.

Basically, it was the insane man theory that, like, lost his marbles instead of a madman theory. Because there's, we actually couldn't just kill 90 million people. All right. Let's take, oh, I should just read this ad that we have today

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in the podcast and YouTube description let's update on FISA it doesn't get the same attention it did years ago when a lot of

the issues of surveillance and a spy were, I don't know, I don't know if they were more relevant, but they were definitely more in the news. I think to some extent we have just sort of like accepted that everybody's spying on us. We have no privacy anymore. Yet, there are attempts to add more constraints in terms of how Americans fall within the foreign surveillance, the foreign, what's the I stand for?

Intelligence. Yes, Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. Yeah. And so FISA was set to pass last night. Donald Trump came out for it yesterday. All of the Democrats except for four, and I don't know which four they are, but I imagine we would recognize them.

Oh, I know Godheimer's one of them. I would imagine gold and usual. suspects. Yep. We're going to vote for it. However, about 20 Republicans deserted. And here's the interesting thing. It was being reported that the Congressional Black Caucus was going to support this. Gregory Meeks, who is one of the CBC leaders, is about his corporatist. And a conservative is that you could imagine. And he's from Queens. But this is, you know, this is, you know, part of the problem.

But there was a lot of reporting by the Lever, the American prospect, and Dropside who did great. We had Daniel Boguslaw on on Wednesday to talk about his reporting on the CBC on that. and how it's meeks is not the whip or and he doesn't lead the congressional black caucus but he is the leader of their political action committee so he is across fundraising for the congressional black caucus and yeah he and it jim hymns who is really close he's on i think the ranking member of the house intelligence committee he was also pushing for this and over the objective of a judge that had been reviewing Section 702 and had recommended changes.

Those were Democrats that were at the very least trying to push it through, even without the recommended changes from this judge. And just to clarify, because, yes, it was Golden and Godheimer, I remembered correctly, but it was also Mary Glucen Camp Perez straight off the set of the knockoff 500 days of summer movie and Tom Swazzi of New York and Long Island representing there. We should say, you know, I don't know if this came up in your conversations with Bogus Law, but the CBC over the years has taken some really bad positions. Longtime viewers of the show will remember, I don't know, maybe it was 10, 12 years ago.

I ended up on a set with, and I didn't know who he was, one of the wealthiest black individuals in the country. And we had an argument about the estate tax. And he was telling me the CBC supports essentially a weaker estate tax. And it turned out because he was one of the wealthiest individual in the country. and he wanted to be able to pass down a generational wealth to his kids. Oh, no way. As if it was a way for black people to pass down generational wealth. It was, but it was just a specific black family that he wanted to pass down that generational wealth.

And we can thank Jim Clyburn for this incredibly conservative bent of the Congressional Black Caucus. He's not in leadership anymore, but, you know, he's in his mid-80. and still running for re-election. And, you know, he was quite close with the Biden administration, too, their efforts to kind of put South Carolina at the head of the primary line. The CBC has become immensely, it's a conservative force within the Democratic caucus in the House. I think, you know, part of the problem, I think is that because there is not the generational wealth that you see in the black community in the white community for obvious reasons

and there's not as many economic opportunities for black people in this country as there are for white people for obvious reasons of both historical and in some respects continued structural racism um it there's more of a struggle i think for black candidates to raise money. And so when corporate forces come in or they,

there's more of an opportunity for them. That's basically what it comes down to. But in the meantime, good work by the prospect and drop site and the lever. Their reporting seems to have shifted the CBC

and it came out saying it had very serious reservations about the legislation. that it would allow continued over surveillance in our communities. There was, prior to this, it was expected that there would be a clean reauthorization of FISA, whether it was 18 months or five years or something to that effect. And yesterday, because 20 apparently or so Republicans decided they weren't going to go along this without any type of changes, they were only able to extend it by 10 days.

So this is going to come back up. And we have some sound on this, yes? This is Nick Schorder. This isn't the highest quality of interaction. But it is indicative of what's driving this on some level. Here is Nick Sorter talking to Lauren Bobert and Thomas Massey about why they voted to block a five-year expansion or extension, really, of FISA. Again, this is the Foreign Intelligence

Surveillance Act, and part of the problem, historically, is that it will scoop up too many American citizens' communications that the FISA Act should not be authorized. All right, so you guys have successfully blocked the five-year extension for FISA tonight. You consider this a win. It's a 30-day or one is it? Two week. Two week. Okay, even better. All right. And why is it important not to extend FISA? I mean, like, keep in mind, this is what they use to spy on President Trump's campaign. It's a warrantless spying program.

Keep that money. Why do you think that they're continuing to try to force this through? It's a deep state. It's a deep state. It's what it does. Here's the briefing that we're never going to get. Because, you know, they try to bring us in all. classified briefings and, you know, tell us how dangerous it is to have warrants to spy on American citizens. The briefing that we're never going to get is, hi, our agency has been given too much power by Congress. We need you to take some of it back. And today I went in the SCIF and saw two top secret documents that showed this program is getting worse, not better. Okay, so how does this, I just want to relate this a little bit to like the average American. How could this affect somebody like, you know, your average

Kentucky of the place that you represent. How could FISA being passed again for five years? If you get on the government's shit list, bad list, naughty list,

regardless of who is in the White House, right, they could put your name in this, find things about you, and then go recreate another evidence trail to discover that. Because they're never going to say they use FISA to,

find this stuff out about it. And then they go, you get a random stop, traffic stop. Oh, it's Birchett. Burnton. Yeah, because it is, what happened? They were calling Tim Burchett over Brian's favorite. I mean, he's literally

my favorite congressman because he's so stupid. He's incredibly stupid. But that's the problem that they're alluding to is that it's mass bulk collection so that they scoop up people's texts and their e-mails. and all of their information in a mass database. And even if, say, they're not the subject of the FISA warrant,

and it's only supposed to be for terrorism overseas, there are very few guardrails, and they still have that bulk of data at their disposal. And it was about, we kind of buried the lead about the Boguslaw, Boguslaw American prospect piece. He was specifically calling out the hypocrisy of the congressional black caucus supporting this when it's been used against Black Lives Matter protests, protesters and demonstrators under the Trump administration the first time.

Yeah. And they, the way that they're rallying and frankly, I, you know, let a thousand flowers bloom, as it were, in terms of them rallying. Donald Trump was spied on by the FISA court. It was because his people. were talking to forward people who happen to be under surveillance by a FISA warrant. But if it works for them, great. I just sent you pop this up on the screen.

This is Wyden's statement. Ron Wyden for at least a couple of decades has been the go-to guy on this type of topic. There are times where he shows up and he's like, I'm really alarmed. And he has done this a couple of times over the years. Yes. And it has been very alarming what he gets alarmed about. But a lot of times he can't speak to it specifically because, of course. But he put this out a couple of days ago.

Wyden released the following statement in response, new revelations of major compliance problems with the federal government's use of the surveillance authorized by Section 402 of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. a few weeks ago the FISA court and this is a court that is set up it's outside of sort of the typical judicial

system that ostensibly is supposed to I mean you know issue okays or warrants it's sort of a rubber stamp so when they come up with

compliance issues problems related to the surveillance law known as 702 these compliance problems are directly related to American's constitutional rights, said Wyden. He is the longest serving member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, by the way. The compliance problems are bad enough, but incredibly, rather than fix them, the Trump administration's

considering appealing the court ruling so they can never, they never have to. This is a highly aggressive and unusual move indicative of an administration that would exploit every angle to expand its surveillance at the expense of American rights. We should say Trump came out in favor of an 18-month clean, extension. Instead of addressing these problems, opponents of reform are going to try and jam a straight authorization section 702 Congress next week. Again, this was written last week. While the American people are still in the dark, this is unacceptable. And so that's where we are. You know, this has been about as bipartisan as things get on a contentious bill. And it remains to be

seen if there's going to be any type of reforms. But I don't, you know, if what we saw from Bo Burton and Massey are indicative and these other conservatives, we'll see if they can hold out. I don't think there's anything that's going to sway those four Democrats who are doing it because that, you know, that's their, they're basically, that's where they are. Well, my prediction is that there will be a way. to find just enough Democrats to get this over the hump in the House. You think they're going to be more than the four?

No, I think that they'll get, they'll do the math about the Republicans defecting and it'll be a very close vote just like it was with the war powers vote just yesterday. We have a little bit that if we don't want just idiot conservatives talking about FISA, there's a little AOC sound that Matt pulled up here if you'd like to play that. Yeah, let's do that. We have been a constitutional civil rights crisis since it's drafting in the Patriot Act in post-9-11. We have a huge amount of problems with warrantless surveillance wiretapping against American civilians. And we need to do our job to make sure that they're right.

What about the consequences? I mean, your home says it was hit by 9-11. They say we need this to bend off. This was the genesis of all of it, right? Of course, we want to make sure that we're prioritizing. national security, but we also have to be a check on the use of that excuse of national security to invade and to violate the civil rights of everyday Americans who have debaked in constitutional ability to conduct their lives with privacy and dignity.

Thank you. There you go. Yep. Meanwhile, there were RFK Jr. hearings on the Hill yesterday. And I got to tell you, it is very weird because the reason why I come to this conference basically started when I was doing a radio program with Mike Papantonio, who is one of the nation's most prominent trial lawyers. He is the one who really broke DuPont in the C-8 case.

11 Papintoneo firm was one of the key architects of the tobacco settlement and I did a radio show that he had been doing since Air America Days with Bobby Kennedy and I did a radio show with Mike Papantonio and RFK Jr. And it wasn't like the way that we do it where we're all sitting. in the studio and we, you know, our, it was all remote and it was all audio. And often we wouldn't do segments together. But I did work with the guy. And so that when I'm here, it sort of, I get RFK Jr. associations.

So it's weird to watch how this guy has abandoned everything that he seemed to have stood for for a decade or two. Right. And this one is really, really puts it really into relief. I mean, here is RFK Jr. Who spent at least a decade or two on environmental issues, including like riverkeeper and and we used to have a lot of talks about mercury in the air. I remember the Trump administration, excuse me, the Bush administration passing the so-called Clean Air Act and uh or the clean skies act and it was basically inhibiting states from limiting limiting mercury in their states uh so you actually it forced states to expand how much mercury

could be put into the air and this is because trump's obsessed with coal right and and and and juicing uh like old fossil fuel companies because coal emissions uh uh create sizable amount of mercury pollution. And for people that don't know, Mercury has enormous impact on adults. Yes, you can impact your memory. It can impact, you can get tremors. Well, specifically it's most. Okay. Okay. It's as he trembles. Specifically, it's about, you know, pregnant people and children, their development. Africa. This is your administration making this decision. Are you critical of it? Why have you stayed silent? Wait, I'm sorry. Can we just say what the decision is before we play it just really quickly because uh yeah trump essentially said uh the

the EPA basically said we're going to relax standards and allow for almost like twice the amount of mercury to be put into the atmosphere yeah um and so it maybe it's a coal plant but maybe it's like uh you know some type of other chemical processing plant whatever it is have at it folks and Josh Harder is a Democrat from California is asking Kennedy, like, how do you, like, how are you not critical of this? Yeah, how do you square this? Africa.

This is your administration making this decision. Are you critical of it? Why have you stayed silent on this? You should call Lee Eldon here and ask them about those. That's not. I have a $2.3 trillion. agency. I've got...

Secretary, you had in your testimony. You wrote an higher report. I was not part of the hearings. I was not part of that decision. I'm not going to comment on it because I don't know anything about it. It sounds like pretty convenient amnesia to me, because you wrote a report

where you talked about the damage of oxygen air and water pollution. Mercury is absolutely, it's the most powerful neurotoxin that we know of in the universe. Are you working for an administration that is doubling the amount of mercury pollution in our air and water.

I am running HHS and I'm ending the chronic disease epidemic. I think it sounds like an awful lot. Which is what President Trump wants, and I'm not going to comment on that because I don't know anything about it. Well, I think that's very convenient for you, and it shows a significant degree of cowardice. It's not just mercury. President Trump in July 2025 granted 50 chemical plants. Why don't you ask me something that I'm in charge of instead of other things?

Are you not in charge of health care and human services? Yeah, HHS. And you wrote a report about how we want to make sure that our kids... What you're asking me about, it's not a decision that's being made by my agency. I want to ask me about something, and I won't ask you about something that's happening in the United States Senate. Sir, I'm happy to talk about what's going on in the United States Senate. I'd be happy to talk about the damages that mercury pollution do, did. I think it's pretty disturbing.

I'm telling you what I know, which is mercury is a toxin. We should be minimizing the exposures to that in the environment. I don't know anything about the particular... Running this agency is a big job, and it's pretty consuming. So I don't get into what the other agencies are doing. I think this sounds like a pretty simple story. Why don't you ask me something that's happening in my agency? I think if you're...

Can you ask me about a decision that I've made? You wrote a report, you wrote a report talking about what we need to do to make our kids healthy. We don't need to hear this anymore. I mean, here's the bottom line. The guy is the head of Health and Human Services. He has written reports about the dangers of mercury as an neurotoxin. This is a very easy question for him to answer. Is what this policy is doing by doubling the amount of mercury in the air,

putting 75% more or I don't know, 300% more? Does that work against everything else that you're trying to do by getting these neurotoxins out of our, you know, our supposed, they're in our vaccines, they're in our processed food or whatever it is, wherever else you think they are. We have a perfect example of just across the hall from you. They're releasing, they're okaying releasing more of these neurotoxins into the air. and he is such a coward. And honestly, if he had any principles, if he actually cared about these things, he would speak out against it.

But he's too cowardly to do so because he doesn't really at the end of the day have any principles about this. If you're worried about mercury and neurotoxins and other chemicals being allowed into the air that we breathe, then you should at the very least have the courage to say, like, I think it's a mistake. That's it. You don't have to know the inner workings of, of the other agencies.

He's supposedly expert, right? I mean, yes. And also, you could have, the other question could be, well, what does it say about this administration that you have one agency that is repealing Biden's 2024 rule so that more mercury can be released into the atmosphere. and you are claiming that that kind of that is a toxin that's harmful to people. Does that show leadership or show some sort of consistency? Like where, how are you able to function as an administration if you are that diametrically opposed across agencies that impact one another?

But yeah, as Matt was saying off camera, spoiled rich boy was getting all upset. Like, why don't you ask me about what I do? Blah, blah, blah. Because I actually think that he might be in a little bit of trouble. We're seeing now a lot of panic. I'm reminded of that Tim Pool clip we played yesterday where he's really worried about the female vote. Tim's getting so close with like the Republican circles at this point

that this is probably what they're hearing via internal polling because suburban moms are really pissed about this measles thing. And this came out yesterday. It's a little under the radar, this article that I sent in the New York Times. We can just show the headline. Trump to nominate doctor who has publicly supported vaccines as the CDC director. So this CDC director, this woman, Dr. Erica Schwartz, is somebody who I, it doesn't seem like, I don't know much about her background, but she has degrees, actual degrees in biomedical,

medical engineering, medicine, public health. She served as the deputy surgeon general during Trump's first term, and she's seen as qualified and she's praised vaccines and is somebody who is not a skeptic in that way. So if they're seeing this as RFK as an issue for them in the midterms and Trump is trying to nominate somebody who's actually sane to the CDC director position, his ass is hot right there. Not that I want to picture that. And I'm sure it's disgusting in those genes. Well, the genes get it. Yeah, just just the meat only diet. need to go down this road. But, um, yeah, he's, he's panicked, is my guess. I'd just like to play into the record this audio that, uh, Andrew Kaczynski found of him probably in Trump's a first run,

but he published it in 2024. Here's, uh, some things RFK had to say about Trump. You know, one of the things that you, you, you write, you, you, you write so beautifully, and I, you know, your stuff is so fun to read, but you write about Trump, quote, the way that you build a truly vicious nationalist movement is to, you write so beautifully. a relatively small core of belligerent idiots to a much larger group of opportunists and spineless fellow travelers whose primary function is to turn a blind eye to things. We may not have that many outright Nazis in America, but we have plenty of cowards and bootlickers. And once those fleshy dominoes start tumbling into the Trump camp, the game is up. When you talk about fleshy dominoes, Chris Christie comes

to mind. Yeah, exactly. Oh, yeah, that's Matt Taibi as well. Yeah, it's Matt Taubi's writing. And how ironic that those two would become some of those fleshy dominoes in some respects that fell. I mean, and I should say this, probably from Ring of Fire radio. It is amazing how the level of cowardice. And I do think that they are now in the administration perceiving him as liability. the Maha movement seems to have turned out to be you know

just another sort of like branding exercise you know I got you know a little bit of the soapbox about that in the corn belt 5% increase relative to everywhere else in the youth cancer I lost an uncle to bladder cancer last year and I just found out

that a cousin of mine from the same area six years younger than me has bladder cancer Oh, jeez. We know what's causing this sort of stuff. In that part, it's basically pesticides. We know about the cancer clusters in Louisiana and stuff like that. We should be addressing this stuff.

And Maha has been nothing but a cloak to obscure these actual crimes by corporations and, you know, big agribusiness. I think, if I'm not mistaken, Trump signed a... an executive order that protected glyphosate. And this is a herbicide that Kennedy, as an attorney, was arguing against. And an advocate arguing. YouTube, RFK glyphosate and 4,000 videos come up. 100%. And so you really do get a sense of like how authoritarianism, how fascism works in some way.

I think Taibi wrote about it quite eloquently and was rather predictive. It just who knew that he'd be having that conversation with one of those fleshy dominoes. All right. We're going to head to the fun half. folks. It does not look like I'm going to be getting any guest today, but we will take some phone calls and play some silence in the fun half of the program. Just remember, it's your support that makes this show possible. You can become a member at join the majority report.com. Join the majority report.com. support the show, get the free show free of commercials.

I AMIS on the fun half and keep this show surviving and thriving. Also, don't forget just coffee.coop. It's a cooperative in Madison, Wisconsin that sells some of the best coffee anywhere. They take care of their producers, whether they're in Chiapas or in Eastern Africa, East Africa. They're a co-op, and they have the majority report blend. Use the coupon code majority. Get 10% off.

Matt, what's happening in the Matt Leckian media universe? Yeah, so you ask and we delivered. People want to know about what's going on with Zach Palamski over in the Green Party in the UK. So we had Grace Blakely on one of our favorite commenters to talk about the rise of the green party of labor. And how socialists in America should feel about and how socialists are feeling about it in the UK. Very interesting stuff. Grace is one of the best. So check that out.

That's coming up right after the fun half today at 3 o'clock Eastern Time. Just really quickly, I wanted to make a request to the audience, just because if you listened last week to our interview with Dr. Tariq Lubani, you will understand how horrible conditions still are in Gaza. And the organization that he works on behalf of the Glea Project is doing essential work, providing medical care there. It is my birthday tomorrow, so my request is if anybody... Happy birthday! Yeah.

So I'm using this as leverage. to get the audience to perhaps donate to the Glea project. If they have just $5, $10 laying around, that would be, that's my birthday request. If you don't mind supporting Dr. Lubani and his work in Gaza, that would be great. So it's Glea.org, and you can find out more about their work there. All right.

Late breaking, we're going to not go to the fun, have quite yet because I do actually have a guest. Yeah. So give me one sec and let me just switch this to

this and hopefully it works. All right, if you could just sit in a little bit. Joining me now, Alex Taylor. Alex, you're working, you're an attorney here at the Mass Torts conference. and sorry let me do that tell us the case you're working on so one of the cases we're working on now

a little closer to the bike a little closer yes if you could sure yeah one of the new cases we're working on is related to this company called multi-plan and so the basic idea is multi-plan was a company that was created to help insurance companies process payments to doctors and hospitals and other health care providers when people would go to get out of network treatment. And so they started up, you know, 20 some odd years ago with this idea that they were going to work with all of the big health care plans that you've probably heard of, Etna, United Health Care, all of these huge conglomerates that represent, you know, thousands and thousands of plans across the country.

Well, early on, you know, the idea was we'll process these payments. We'll take a little bit off the top as a service fee. And we will make a nice, comfortable living, doing real work to help doctors get paid for people that are being treated out of network. Well, after a few years of doing that, they realized we are not making enough money. And we want to make not a reasonable amount of money, but an exorbitant amount of money. And so they created a plan along with the health insurance providers, you know, because one of the ways they convinced all these people to let them work together was they would have to see the prices that. they were charging. And all of the insurance companies were afraid if these other companies see what we're paying the doctors that they're going to undercut us. They're going to offer to pay

these doctors more to switch to our network. And so all of the health insurance companies were afraid of this. So Multiplan came with an idea of what if we create a system where we agree across all of the health plans we're going to pay this rate. And we're not going to tell the doctors what it is. they don't get to see behind the curtain of how this number gets arrived at, because we're going to use this AI algorithm that's going to analyze all this data from various health care plans, you know, what doctors in the region charge for particular types of procedures. And so it creates a, you know, kind of a cloudy gray area between the doctors and the insurance companies where they can take money off the top that they're not entitled to.

This is, it seems to me, analogous, to the same thing that was happening in real estate with rentals. And I can't remember the name of the company that was doing. I'm drawing a blank on it too, but maybe real page or something like that. Yeah, real page, exactly. And if there was no technology and people were achieving the same thing, it's called price fixing. Exactly.

That's exactly what it is. And but because we have an algorithm that's doing it, because maybe these two, you know, just to use the real page example, because I'm more familiar that, I'm in building in one area of town and somebody else is managing in the building in another area of town. We no longer have to talk to each other. Right. We just sort of meet in this. We send our information into an algorithm that then coordinates everything.

And that's what's happening there. Yeah. And they all get to raise their hands and be like, well, we're not, it's the algorithm that's doing it. We didn't, you know, create this, you know, unfair system. But really, you know, we believe that once we get into the discovery, there's going to be a lot of evidence they were colluding, basically the way a cartel works. You know, we all get together and agree we're not going to actually compete with each other because that would be, that would lower the amount of money we can make. We're going to collude. We're going to use multi-plan as an intermediary so that we can shift the blame.

But we believe that it's not just multi-plan. They are the primary bad actor. They created the algorithm that prevents the doctors. from being able to see how they're getting to this, you know, much lower number than what they would otherwise be entitled to recover. But the insurance companies, the Uniteds, the Aetna, they're just as culpable in this system because they have all agreed not to compete with each other. And they just offload that, much like the real estate companies did, we're just going to offload it onto Real Page and, you know, say, well, we're not agreeing not to compete. We just

all happen to outsource this work to the same company that also happens to create a huge windfall profit for us. So talk to me about the relationship between, I mean, obviously, I think this audience knows that right now, over the course of, let's say, the past three years, we've gone from perhaps the most aggressive administration regarding antitrust that we've had since, you know, the Bork standard in antitrust. So we're talking, you know, 40-some-odd years to a reversal, at least they've undercut the DOJ and the FTC. The Live Nation deal is a perfect example.

Right. The DOJ just walked away from that case. Fortunately, state attorney generals stuck in there and Live Nation was found to be, and Ticketmaster found to be. an illegal monopoly. What's the relationship between lawyers like yourself is pursuing civil litigation of antitrust, like that dynamic, like what authority, is there any difference between,

are you guys just basically functioning as like a series of state attorney generals in this context or in other administrations, you know, a DOJ. Is there any difference between the suits you're bringing? Will the findings be the same? Could they find it to be an illegal monopoly and have implications for people even outside of your client base? It potentially could.

So DOJ, excuse me, they're an interested party in the litigation, but ultimately the DOJ's criminal potential prosecution of multi-plans, or any of the other companies that are involved in this scheme would be independent of our civil litigation. And so what we are seeking to do here is put the money back in the hands of the doctors and the hospitals that should have been receiving this money to begin with. But what we hope will happen as a result of it is, you know, obviously the goal with criminal prosecutions of these is to get them to stop the conduct.

and because obviously here the risk is the cost don't just disappear. They just get moved around. And they end up on the health care plans and the health care administrators so that, you know, if your local school district has a pension or a union health care plan, their costs go up. If your small business is trying to buy a health care on the open market, your cost of administration go up because the doctors have. have to raise their prices to cover the difference between what they should have been getting

under a fair system and what they're getting here. And so the hope is that if we can create a big enough financial downside for them from continuing the behavior, because they've tried to rebrand now, they're no longer multi-plan, they're clarative. You know, they've changed their name, trying to hide from the bad press around multi-plan, but there's no indication yet that they've truly fundamentally changed the behavior. But our hope is that if we can show that not only are they going to have to give back all that money that they took from the doctors, but they're also going to have to pay all of their attorneys to do it and get all of the bad press that comes with that,

that we can give them a financial incentive to actually do things the way they should have done from the beginning and stop this illegal cartel. But we do lack ultimately the same sort of injunctive force that DOJ or state AGs could do, where they could declare it illegal and then create real penalties to the individuals at the company if they continue to engage in the behavior. So I do think we still need DOJ and state AGs to continue to pursue these claims, the criminal prosecutions, because otherwise these companies are just going to move on to the next scheme. This is just the cost of business and we'll go. Okay. Exactly. How much do your findings?

would imagine in you know maybe in this context that we're talking about state AGs because again the feds at this point seem to have shut down a lot of the deal a lot of the antitrust enforcement but are there uh it's it's conceivable like a state attorney general can look at this after your case if it's successful there's a finding a fact that they're engaging in this type of practice right they can use that as a building block absolutely for uh other actions. Is there ever an occasion where the

a private or a civil litigation about antitrust can actually bring about the same type of remedy that we would see like you know we're going into the remedy phase for ticket master

and and can something like that ever happen in a civil case or as opposed to like just sort of recovering damages, is there other remedies that can go forward? Or is that exclusively to the purview of the state or the federal government because you need to bring criminal charges in that way? So there can be some help. You can get injunctive relief through these civil cases in some situations.

And that is certainly one of the things that we're hoping to pursue here is to get a injunction to not just pay them back what they stole from them essentially. but also to stop the conduct going forward. And if you can get, I'm sure you're probably familiar with like consent agreements between the federal government and, you know, like local police departments where it can create an enforcement structure, you do have the ability in certain situations to make that part of the settlement of these cases is to, you know, build in mechanisms that if they engage in the same behavior, your same clients can go back to the court and say, you know, Your Honor, they're doing the same thing they were doing five years ago when we see.

them, you know, issue a court order to tell them it's a stop, and then violation of that can, you know, potentially result in first civil contempt, and then getting to criminal contempt is a little tough. Those mechanisms are a lot harder and raise a lot of kind of sticky jurisdiction questions. So it's not quite the ideal of putting the bad actors in jail, but there are some mechanisms we have to at least civilly stop them from engaging in the conduct going forward. interesting stuff. Where is it at this status in the case? So the litigation was consolidated in the Northern District of Illinois in front of Judge Canelli last year in July. And so right now we are, there's a lot of the, you know, very large health care providers are already in the case,

like Ascension, for example, is one that I'm familiar with locally. They, you know, run a lot of the hospitals in my area. But there's also still plenty of doctors out there, you know, smaller practices that have an opportunity to get involved. We have not yet gotten into the discovery phase, but we have gotten past the motion to dismiss. So the early kind of attempts that they made to shut the case down early on, the judge has already denied those. So we're going to get into discovery, which means we're going to get a C under the hood and, you know, really get into documents, which, you know, we talked earlier about how state AGs might be able to go after them. well, the documents that we can get in civil discovery are one of the mechanisms that can allow criminal prosecutions to go forward because the same conduct that we may be used to show that they were engaged in a RICO violation.

Well, there's also criminal RICO, not, you know, in addition to civil RICO. And so those same documents can support a criminal case if a state AG were to bring such a case. Are there ever times where a state AG knows that you're doing a case and says, hey, I'm curious about X, Y, or Z, or they provide any type of, like, here's a series of questions, or there's, you know, I'd like to see these documents. Does that ever happen? It can. Certainly.

So, for example, in the opioid litigation, there was a lot of state AG cases going on there. We represented a couple of them where, you know, sometimes it means that you might have like seven days of deposition of one witness because you have the civil plaintiffs and then you have maybe the state AGs. And so different plaintiff groups or. or state actors can I kind of all have their shot at the witness. And so, you know, oftentimes the state AG, they made appear personally. They may hire another firm to represent them in litigation.

But state AGs can absolutely get involved. We would encourage them to get involved, you know, especially to the extent with state AGs, oftentimes they are running, you know, the state Medicare, excuse me, state Medicaid plans. Yeah. And so to the extent that costs are going up from doctors that are attributable to that, there may be state AG claims for direct losses to the state from the money that they're basically paying to subsidize this illegal, you know, price fixing scheme. It's good stuff.

Alex Taylor, thanks so much for your time today. Thanks, Sam. Pleasure to be here. And good luck with the case. Appreciate it. All right, folks. Let me see if I can switch this back here to bear with me. Boom. There we go. Folks, we're going to head to the fun half. We've done all the stuff. I got in my antitrust case. So I'm happy.

Very nice. Yes. All right, folks. See you in the fun half. Three months from now, six months from now, nine months from now. And I don't think it's going to be the same as it looks like in six months from now. And I don't know if it's necessarily going to be better six months from now than it is three months. from now. But I think around 18 months out, we're going to look back and go like, wow. What? What is that going on?

It's nuts. Wait a second. Hold on for, hold on for a second. The majority. Emma, welcome to the program. Hey. On what is up, everyone. No me keen. You did it.

Fun pack. Let's go Brandon. Let's go Brandon. Bradley, you want to say hello? Sorry, disappointed. Everyone, I'm just a random guy. It's all the boys today. Fundamentally false.

No, I'm sorry. Women? Stop talking for a second. Let me finish. Where is this coming from, dude? But dude, you want to smoke this? 7.8? Yes.

Yes? It is you. A freaking day. What's on your mind? We can discuss free markets and we can discuss capitalism. I'm going to go through life. Libertarians. They're so stupid though.

Common sense says, of course. Gobbled e gook. We fucking nailed him. So what's 79 plus 21? Challenge met. I'm positively clivering. I believe 96, I want to say. 857.

210. 35. 301. 1 half. 3-8s. 9-11 for instance. $3,400, $1,900. $6.5,4,

$3 trillion sold. It's a zero-sum game. Actually, you're making anything less. But let me say this. Poop. You're going to call satire. Sam goes to satire. On top of it all,

my favorite part about you It's just like every day. Yeah. Sundow guns out. But you should know. People just don't like to entertain ideas anymore. I have a question. Who cares?

Is enabled folks. I love it. I do love that. Got a jump. You got to be quick. I get a jump. I'm a lose. We're already late.

And the guy's being a dick. So screw him. Sent to a gulaw? Outrage. Like, what is wrong with you? Love you. Bye. Love you.

Bye-bye. Thank you.