The NPR Politics Podcast - Weekly Roundup: Thursday, July 25

Episode Date: July 25, 2019

This week Senator Cory Booker and former Vice President Joe Biden clashed over criminal justice reform. Plus, the Federal Trade Commission slapped a $5 billion dollar fine on Facebook. This episode: political reporter Scott Detrow, political reporter Asma Khalid, White House reporter Ayesha Rascoe, political reporter Tim Mak, editor correspondent Ron Elving, and business reporter Aarti Shahani. Email the show at [e-mail]. Find and support your local public radio station at npr.org/stations.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This is Nina calling from Pasadena, California, where I'm attending the 9th International Conference on Mars and thinking about 2020. Mars 2020, that is, the next rover to go to Mars. This podcast was recorded at... I love this. It's been a great week for space. It is 1.30 Eastern on Thursday, July 25th. Things may have changed by the time you hear this. Keep up with all of NPR's political coverage on NPR.org, on the NPR One app, and on your local public radio station.

All right, here's the show. We're going to Mars. Did you guys see the Washington Monument and the Apollo 11? Oh, I didn't see that. It was so cool. People said it was amazing, yeah. It was one of the coolest things I've seen on the mall.

Thank you, David Rubenstein. Hey there, it's the NPR Politics Podcast. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover politics. I'm Asma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elving, editor-correspondent.

And sadly, this is not our spinoff podcast where we talk about space the whole time. This is the NPR Politics Weekly Roundup. We are going to get into the politics. And today we're going to talk about the 2020 candidates and criminal justice, plus a look at why the Federal Trade Commission slapped a $5 billion fine on Facebook. But first, and I'm going to read this line exactly as our producer wrote it. I hear a low rumble on the line because Asma, you're out on the campaign trail right now. Is like the rumble a train? Is it a train? I'm told it's a train.

It's interference from the aliens from Mars. That's what it is. It's probably, like, the air conditioning in this hotel room, because I stepped out thinking it would be quieter to be in the hotel room. Okay, where are you, though, for real? So I'm in Indianapolis, and I'm here because the National Urban League is having its conference here, and there are many, many candidates here to speak to people at the National Urban League. And the NAACP had an event earlier this week you were at, and at these two places,

there's been a lot of conversation about policy, about criminal justice reform, but Asma, there was some candidate on candidate sniping happening, too. There was. And what I will point out is that it wasn't happening on the main stage. So that is not what we heard from candidates as they were trying to address these audiences. I felt like, you know, thus far, what we've seen from them is when they're speaking to people, the focus is really on a common foe, which is the president, President Donald Trump. There was definitely some tussling between the candidates. And I should give you a quick backstory that this all began because Joe Biden, the former vice president, came out with a criminal justice plan

earlier this week. And there are some candidates, specifically New Jersey Senator Cory Booker, who feels that that plan does not go far enough and that Biden has some explaining to do because he championed a problematic bill in the 1990s that he feels has led to the current situation that we're in around criminal justice. Right. And that's why we're talking about this, not because we're getting into some some beefing going on with the candidates, because it isn't about an issue that a lot of Democratic voters care about. It is an issue where there is a divide in the campaign. And it is an issue that candidates talk a lot about, partially for a strategic reason, because they are all trying to make a big appeal to Black voters who are such a key

part of the electorate, in the primary especially. What's in Biden's plan? And what is Booker saying? Like, what is Booker saying about the plan that it didn't go far enough? Like, what is it not doing? So the overall goal of his plan is kind of akin to what we've heard from a number of other Democratic 2020 candidates, and that is to shift the focus from incarceration to rehabilitation.

And Biden says that that's what we need to do. I mean, he explicitly focuses on the need to reduce racial disparities in the system. You know, there is a disagreement around the issue of marijuana in particular, but I would say it's mostly the disagreement comes down to a factor of tone. Booker says, and he has explicitly said, that Biden basically was an architect of this failed system. And he believes that because Biden pushed for this 1994 crime bill, that some folks say did accelerate the mass incarceration specifically of African American

men that sort of contributed to that situation. He feels like Biden needs to be extremely bold and offer these huge transformative changes. And he also, you know, sort of is saying like, look, this is coming about at a point in time when Biden is now running for president. Why did he not acknowledge that this bill and some things that he may have pushed for were problematic years ago? You know, Joe Biden back in those days, in the early 1990s, was the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Democratic Party was in control of the Senate at that time. And Joe Biden actually was in a position to largely fashion the 1994 crime bill, not alone by any means. There was also a Clinton administration.

And as a result of this issue was something of an albatross for Hillary Clinton several years ago when she was running for president because a lot of African Americans felt that she and her husband Bill had been pushing for a tough crime bill in an attempt to curry votes with white people, particularly conservative white people, not just in the South, but all through the country. And Biden was part of that effort. And there was a sense of the Democrats feeling it was necessary to look tough on crime. Ron, really quick, what was actually in the 1994 crime bill? There were tougher sentencing guidelines. There were lots of ways for the Democrats to prove they were down on criminals and down on crime.

And a way to not look like they were just the party of gun control. Though gun control was also in the bill. That is correct. And that was also a big issue for them. And certainly 25 years later, it's hurting them with certain communities. So can I ask you, Ron, a question? Because one of the things that we heard from Joe Biden when he spoke at the NAACP was a sense that times have changed and that there were African-American leaders at the time in the 90s who said, like, look, there is an epidemic of violence in our communities who supported him, he says, on this bill. And that, you know, he feels like times have changed and they require sort of some looking at what were the side effects of what this bill actually led to.

But he insists that at the time, there were people within the African-American community who did support him on this piece of legislation. No question. No question. There have always been people in the African-American community who said, we are the main victims of many of these crimes. It's our people who are being subjected to drugs, our people being subjected to violence, and we need tougher enforcement. So yes, there has always been that presence. Jim Clyburn told Susan Davis that exact point about a month or so ago when she interviewed him. And Jim Clyburn is also of a generation that remembers very much what was going on with that legislation 25 years ago. But it has been a generational matter.

In recent years, the younger African-American community, I think, has had the attitude that their elders took the wrong approach here and that a lot came down on them. And they, in particular, were the people suffering the higher rates of incarceration and the lower rates of criminal justice in terms of fairness and equity. And they are the people who have largely driven the pushback. And this is coming to fruition now with Kamala Harris and with Joe, with with Cory Booker being younger candidates who can look at Joe Biden and say our generation of black people feels differently. And Cory, Booker is trying to lead the way on this. And because it seems like now what they're saying is that there needs to be less focus on incarceration, on locking everyone up and throwing away the key because of the damage that that did to communities. And that now is the time to reverse some of that. Yeah. And Booker was one of the key negotiators in the in the bill that

President Trump signed last year. And he's made a lot of broad proposals, among other things. He wants to offer broad clemency to thousands of nonviolent drug offenders in the system very early on, I think almost immediately into his presidency using executive power. So he's out there with a lot of big, broad scale changes to this. But I should point out, you know, look, this is a sort of a fight that I think is going to be ongoing because after Booker made these comments about the vice president, Biden's campaign came out and pretty strongly disagreed. They did not like being called the architect of mass incarceration. They felt like that was an absurd attack and said that basically Biden has been fighting for criminal justice reform for a number of years and has been involved in this

issue for a long time. And what I will say is when I talk to people out in the crowd at the NAACP conference, and keep in mind this is a largely older crowd, there was a sense that some of these attacks feel unfair. There was one guy I talked to who specifically said, look, you know, the situation with drugs was really, really problematic. And I don't know that many of us would have made different decisions than what Joe Biden did at the time. Let's talk about that a little more broadly, the politics behind all this, Asma, because you have a new poll that came out from South Carolina this week showing that Joe Biden continues to hold a wide lead over Kamala Harris, Bernie Sanders, Cory Booker, other candidates in that key early state.

I thought it was notable that the two candidates that Joe Biden was taking some direct shots at this week, and again, it's ahead of a debate where they'll all be on the same stage, was Kamala Harris and Cory Booker. Like what other positioning and strategic attacking did you see on this front this week? I mean, Scott, to your point, the intensity of these arguments speaks to the fact that it is essentially impossible for a Democrat to clinch the nomination without getting a substantial support from African American voters. And they all know that, which is why, you know, 10 candidates were speaking at the NAACP. I'm here now at the Urban League, where there are two days of candidate forums. And we've seen a number of candidates realize that there is no path to the nomination

if they do not convince many, many African American voters that they are going to speak to issues that matter to them. All right. We're going to take a quick break, come back and talk about why the FTC is finding Facebook and what that means when it comes to the broader tension between the government and social media. First, though, Ayesha Asma, we're going to say bye to you, but just for a little bit because you'll be back for Can't Let It Go. Yeah. Talk to you later. See you soon. Support for this podcast and the following message come from ZipRecruiter. Hiring used to be hard. Multiple job sites, stacks of resumes. But today, hiring can be easy and you only have to go to one place to get it done.

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and Zoom phone lets you do business at the speed of Zoom. Visit Zoom online to set up your free account today. Meet happy with Zoom. We're back with a new season of Rough Translation. Yeah. And this time, we are following people who break the rules. I mean, lying is part of the business. In my opinion, the best revenge against ISIS is to be humane.

Am I supposed to punch her? Yeah, yeah. New episodes every other Wednesday. Subscribe. All right, we are back. Ron is still here. We've got Tim Mack in the studio now. Hi, Tim.

Hey there. And we have a special guest, Arthi Shahani, who covers tech in Silicon Valley for NPR. Hey there. Hi. Welcome to the podcast. Great to be here. So you're here because this week the FTC fined Facebook $5 billion. Why did they do that? Yeah, so the

Federal Trade Commission and Facebook, they had an agreement many years ago, okay? Back in 2011 they entered into a settlement and in that settlement Facebook said, hey we're gonna stop handing over users data, all the stuff the users trust us with, to rando third parties without getting proper permission. And then they just didn't do that. They basically signed the dotted line, and as one FTC enforcer put it to me, before the ink was even dry, they were already breaking their promise.

But then Cambridge Analytica happened. You might recall Cambridge Analytica and this firm getting data on Facebook users and then arguably data mining it and using it for election related purposes. Right. For Ted Cruz and then Donald Trump. That's right. Yeah. So basically for political marketing. Yeah. And the FTC then goes back, and it's been looking at Facebook for different reasons. It goes back and it looks at what Facebook has been doing since that original promise it made, and it actually finds a bunch of violations to that promise, new violations, et cetera, et cetera. So basically, the agency, the regulator, and the company came

to an agreement that Facebook was going to pay the government $5 billion. That money goes to Treasury. And that would settle the matter. And that's where the conversation gets really interesting is, is the agreement that they came to with Facebook really changing the company? Or did Mark Zuckerberg just get away with an amazing gift? Arthi, is this FTC fine? Is this the biggest concrete step taken yet? Aside from uncomfortable hearings from Mark Zuckerberg? It is definitely concrete.

Money will be transferred from the company to the government. That will happen. And Mark Zuckerberg, who dropped out of Harvard, has a new regular homework assignment. On a quarterly basis, he has to submit a compliance report to the regulators as well as to his board to say, hey, this is what we're doing with user data. This is how we're respecting privacy. These are the terms that we're actually observing. So he can't claim not knowing. He can't get off the terms that we're actually observing. So he can't claim not knowing he can't get off the hook that way. There's not another major tech CEO who has that kind of,

you know, arguably embarrassing or certainly, you know, extra assignment from a regulator. So that's concrete. Let me ask you, because it's hard for us to understand, $5 billion sounds like a lot of money. When you say that this is one of the biggest ever settlements that any company in America has been forced to make. Can you give us some sense of how big that is in comparison to the power and size of Facebook itself? Yeah, I mean, like in the last quarter, Facebook reported earnings yesterday as well. I mean, the timing of this was also extraordinary, right? Because Facebook got to have this announcement about this very embarrassing and big settlement on the same day as the Mueller hearings. So talk about a gift, right?

Like the entire news ecosystem was eaten up in these hearings. They also reported earnings yesterday. So revenue was, I believe, $16.9 billion yesterday, $16.9 billion. So $5 billion. I mean, when they reported that they were expecting to pay a multi-billion dollar settlement, they actually first disclosed that in the first quarter of this year. In response, after their earnings call, their stock price actually went up. okay? Usually if a company is saying, hey, we're being fined billions of dollars, that's not great for the fundamentals of the company.

But what investors were basically saying was, we have faith in your long-term prospects and we don't believe that this government's action is challenging your fundamental health. We think you're gonna keep growing, right? Growing is key here and that you're going to keep growing, right? Growing is key here, and that you're strong. So, you know, the fact that the stock price responded positively tells you something about how big or really not big it is for Facebook. And that $16.9 billion is just for that last quarter, is that right? That quarter, correct, that quarter. Is that right? That quarter. Correct. That quarter. Now, Tim, this comes in the midst of

a really interesting time span where the government, politicians in general, have gone from embracing Silicon Valley as tight as they can, singing its praises, hanging out there all the time, raising money all the time, to becoming increasingly, at least publicly, skeptical and critical of social media. So over the last 10 years and particularly during the Obama administration, Silicon Valley was kind of looked at a place where you could go and get clean money, non-controversial money. It's not Wall Street money. It's not big oil money. It's these entrepreneurs based in California, and they can donate to your campaign. So there was a real friendliness between tech companies, Democrats, and Republicans. And a lot of that changed in 2016. A lot of that changed after the Russian interference scandals, and this idea that big tech could be used not just to connect people, but also to manipulate the news ecosystem in order to create

and disseminate disinformation, to really create problematic outcomes in our society. That wasn't something that a lot of people foresaw. And now that that's happening, we're having a broader societal reckoning about it. The political establishment and radicals on both sides of the spectrum will say that big tech has gotten too powerful. They'll say it for different reasons, but it's not merely a political establishment view that big tech has gotten too much power, accrued too much ability to control various parts of our lives. And Scott, this fascination with big tech is also a big issue for some of the presidential candidates, isn't it? For sure. Yeah. Elizabeth Warren has been front and center calling for a breakup of Amazon.

She's called for a breakup of Facebook. Bernie Sanders has called for that as well. Kamala Harris has said that she's interested in exploring that as well. I mean, this is a in one way or another, they have different nuances, but most of the Democrats running for president are all about using the federal government to try and scale back some of these companies' giant shares on the markets and the way that they can access so much consumer data at this point in time. What's the Republican view of this world, and how has that evolved and why? Well, everyone from the president on down on the right, Republicans and conservatives in particular, say that these companies have enormous power over how we receive information in the case of Google, over how our information ecosystem exists in the face of in the case of Facebook, what kind of videos and information we get on YouTube. And they just fundamentally mistrust having a bunch of what they would term Silicon Valley progressives making these decisions about what sort of information we're provided. They have a real deep skepticism. And while they may disagree with progressives on why they're skeptical of big tech firms, they share that skepticism. Progressives, on the other hand, they're more concerned big tech firms, they share that skepticism. Progressives,

on the other hand, they're more concerned generally about monopoly power, about privacy. Are these firms getting too powerful as corporate entities? That's a totally different thing. But you have that rare bipartisan interest in investigating these big firms on Capitol Hill that you don't have on very many other topics. All right. Well, Arthi, Tim, thank you to both of you. We're going to let you go, take a quick break and come back with Can't Let It Go. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp. BetterHelp offers licensed professional counselors who specialize in issues such as depression,

stress, anxiety, and more. Connect with your professional counselor in a safe and private online environment at your convenience. Get help at your own time and your own pace. Schedule secure video or phone sessions, plus chat and text with your therapist. Visit betterhelp.com slash politics to learn more and get 10% off your first month. Americans kind of owe recycling to the mafia and a huge mistake by this guy.

Garbage in New York. That was like a controlled substance. There was a cartel that controlled the flow of garbage. Why we started recycling on NPR's Planet Money podcast. We're back and now it is time to end the show like we do every week with Can't Let It Go, the part of the show where we talk about the things that we can't stop thinking about, politics or otherwise. Ron, you've been the constant steadiness of this podcast. You've been here all along and I appreciate that. And we are joined again by Aisha and Asma. Hey, guys.

Hey. Hey there. Aisha, you are up first. Yes. So what I cannot let go of this week, you might have seen or heard this all over the Twitter and all over your podcast and all over NPR this week. But the great Nina Totenberg did an interview with Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and she asked her this question. When you get a cold or a hangnail, there's a substantial portion of the population, a large part of it female, but men too, who go into a complete panic. Well, some are not panicked. There was a senator, I think it was after the pancreatic cancer,

who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months. That senator, whose name I've forgotten, is now himself dead. And I am very much alive. You know, what can you say? Whose name I have forgotten. She forgot the name, but she didn't forget what he said. And I just think when you can brag on your longevity, I'm just impressed by that. And I also, I told my husband, I felt like there was a sermon in there.

I don't know if you ever, you know, if you go to church and they're like, you know, my enemies were plotting on my downfall. They wanted me out of here. But now they're gone and I'm still here. Look at God. Like, that's what I felt. Praise the Lord. It felt a little vindictive for a sermon, though. I don't know.

It was like, look, he's dead. They say something like that in my church. It's one of those, like, underhanded prayers. Yeah, it's like, look, the enemies, they wanted me out. But now they're gone. I'm still here. And then also in the words of 50 Cent, who I don't know if you remember, he got shot like nine times. I do.

He reminds us of that. This is the family version of what he said, but this is my favorite line from 50 Cent. It is, I heard some, put money on my head, gonna get your refund, I ain't dead. That's my favorite line. There you go. Earning her notorious RBG nickname this week. Absolutely, she could have paraphrased that. Ron?

Mine is a little bit more benign. Does it include 50 Cent? It does come via my wife, who was particularly exercised about this reality this week. The price of a particular commodity has doubled in our world, and it's not

oil. It's avocados. Wow. Avocados are up something like 91% from last summer, and you're asking yourself, all that guacamole? Well, yes, in a way, except the real culprit here appears to be the runaway popularity of avocado toast. And don't tell me you don't know what I'm talking about. I am aware of avocado toast. Everyone always talks about it. I've never had it. Yes, it is you people.

You are doing this. You are completely... You people. You people. The millennials' fault, I know. You are running away with all the avocados and slicing them up on pieces of bread and making it impossible for guacamole lovers to afford their favorite snack. But can't you appreciate the taste of avocado toast if you like guacamole? I actually have it rather often.

Often. Oh! So he's a bit of a problem. You eat avocado toast more than any of us. I'm a baby boomer. Did you know, by the way, did you know that it is actually extremely healthy to eat avocado toast? That it helps your body process all kinds of bad things out. Is that really true? And that it lowers your cholesterol.

So that's something all generations can appreciate. That makes me feel so much better about, as I sit here with my Chipotle-dy, my guacamole. My entirely very fattening chipotle meal. Be a little careful what you put in there, but let me just say, avocado toast, big ups. Thank you. This is a moment of generational coming together. I think it is.

I think we're all one now. Asma, what about you? Okay, so what I cannot let go of this week is a very simple fact. That is that J-Lo turned 50 years old. I can't believe it. I know, right? Okay, so I don't really have much more to add to this conversation

besides the fact that you all should just Google a picture of J-Lo and then guess her age. And I really don't think anybody would guess 50. She looks amazing. In fact, I would say she looks like she's, like, what, 38 maybe? So one quick thing about J.Lo's skin care routine, because this has been written about in, like, fashion magazines, because she looks so good.

And there are two key pieces of advice that she has. One is don't drink caffeine. And another is to get eight hours of sleep. And I was like, yes, of course, whereas journalists could, of course, try to live both. I'm with her on one of those. Well-coordinated pieces of advice. Yeah. She has others, of course, try to lift books. I'm with her on one of those. Well-coordinated pieces of advice. Yeah. She has others, of course, you know, like drinking lots of water and whatnot.

But those two in particular. I think she has more than that, but she does look amazing. All right. I will go last. And, you know, we've been doing these candidate interviews all summer, and we've been asking every candidate we talk to. Quick plug, we've talked to nine candidates interviews in your feeds uh we have been ending all the interviews asking the candidates what they cannot let go of and this has actually to me been really revealing

because you can tell who actually has things they really can't let go of and you can tell who was like uh let me scramble and get you something here i will not publicly clump them, but you can listen and make that judgment for yourselves. But I will say our last interview with Julian Castro, he got into this more than any other candidate. And as the conversation continued, it was clear how much he thought about it. He started off by saying he was excited about the Top Gun 2 trailer and was saying, you know, I've been thinking for a number of years about the plot. And we cut in and said, well, you can hear the episode, but basically we teased out of him that he has actively thought through what the plot of a Top Gun sequel would be for years to very specific points and could possibly have written his own script.

But one thing he said was, I imagine that Tom Cruise's character gets drawn into a conflict with China. Turns out, though, there is already a controversy about the new Top Gun movie, and it is the opposite of that. It is that the movie makers might have tried to appease China and that really important Chinese audience now. And that is the fact that there was a shot of Tom Cruise's character's Maverick's jacket, and they had replaced a Taiwanese and Japanese flag,

that's a patch on the jacket from like his previous mission or whatever, with generic shapes that kind of look like the Taiwan and Japanese flags. Out of concern, it is it is it is being speculated out of concern of offending the Chinese government. Couldn't couldn't couldn't he get into some sort of conflict with the Iranians? Wouldn't that be more PC for the moment? We don't know what the conflict of the plot is, but just it's clear that it is not the Julian Castro-envisioned plot of a fight with China. And what about Turkey? Don't we have some sort of beef with Turkey about F-35s?

That would be really timely. I think the fact is, Ron, there's probably a lot of countries you could have a realistic plot line about right now. Well, they have to get that money from the, as you said, very important Chinese market. So, you know, I guess they felt like they had to do what they had to do

if that is the case, yeah. Regardless of what country we are fighting in this new movie, I know there are lots of people at NPR who are as excited as Julian Castro

about this new movie coming out. I don't know if I'm among them because I feel like every nostalgic remake or sequel in the last few years has been kind of disappointing. It's tough to do. But we can talk about that broader problem

in a future Can't Let It Go. Take my breath away. All right, that is a wrap for today. We will be back as soon as there's news you need to know about. And a reminder, we are hitting the road. We have two live shows coming up, one in Boulder, Colorado, on September 20th,

and another in Washington, D.C., on November 8th. You can get your ticket by heading to nprpresents.org. I'm Scott Detrow. I cover Congress. I'm Esma Khalid, political reporter. I'm Ayesha Roscoe. I cover the White House. And I'm Ron Elbing, editor-correspondent. Thank you for traveling this danger zone with us and listening to the NPR Politics Podcast. Take my breath away.