The Young Turks - Counter-Protestor Programming

Episode Date: May 2, 2024

There were 300 pro-Palestinian protestors arrested in New York as police were called to other U.S. campuses, says mayor. Debunking myths on nuclear energy with John Kotek, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. FBI data shows America is seeing a ""considerable"" drop in crime, but Trump says the opposite." HOST: Ana Kasparian (@anakasparian), Cenk Uygur (@cenkuygur) SUBSCRIBE on YOUTUBE: ☞ https://www.youtube.com/user/theyoungturks FACEBOOK: ☞ https://www.facebook.com/theyoungturks TWITTER: ☞ https://www.twitter.com/theyoungturks INSTAGRAM: ☞ https://www.instagram.com/theyoungturks TIKTOK: ☞ https://www.tiktok.com/@theyoungturks 👕 Merch: https://shoptyt.com ❤ Donate: http://www.tyt.com/go 🔗 Website: https://www.tyt.com 📱App: http://www.tyt.com/app 📬 Newsletters: https://www.tyt.com/newsletters/ If you want to watch more videos from TYT, consider subscribing to other channels in our network: The Watchlist https://www.youtube.com/watchlisttyt Indisputable with Dr. Rashad Richey https://www.youtube.com/indisputabletyt The Damage Report ▶ https://www.youtube.com/thedamagereport TYT Sports ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytsports The Conversation ▶ https://www.youtube.com/tytconversation Rebel HQ ▶ https://www.youtube.com/rebelhq TYT Investigates ▶ https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCwNJt9PYyN1uyw2XhNIQMMA Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You're listening to The Young Turks, the online news show. Make sure to follow and rate our show with not one, not two, not three, not four, but five stars. You're awesome. Thank you. Gettysburg, wow. Oh, my God. The God! Live from the Pollymarket Studio in L.A. It's the Young Turks.

It must be Wednesday, and it's going to be a fantastic show. We've got a huge show ahead for you today. I'm actually super excited, not only because of the topics that we worked really hard to research and produce and prepare for you all today, but also Also because of the fact that we're going to have a rare interview, a topic that I have brought up on this show before, does nuclear energy make sense? Is that a good option to close the gap that we're currently experiencing with renewable energies, not really making up for the needed replacement of fossil fuels? So lots of myths about nuclear energy, I think it's important to talk to an expert about

it so we will be having an expert on the first hour today to discuss some of the myths, some of the possibilities for nuclear energy. I have some tough questions in regard to a lot of the concerns that some of you have shared with me, including what do we do with nuclear waste? So really looking forward to that conversation. And look, I'm no expert on nuclear energy, so I'm really looking forward to asking an expert as a curious normie who really wants to find some solutions to ensure that we get to continue living modern lifestyles without damaging the climate and, you know, basically continuing to

propel us to a future that would be completely disastrous if we go in the direction that we're currently going in. We're also going to give you updates on the college campuses and the protests that have been squashed by a police presence to say the least. I'm also going to get into why it is that you should not be a sucker by citing FBI. crime data. Don't be a sucker. Now I'm going to get into why FBI data is flawed, why it's incomplete, why it's inaccurate. And then we're also going to give you some good news today because there is in fact some good news coming out of states like Arizona. Without further ado, just want to encourage you all to like and share the stream if you're watching us live.

It's a great free way to help support the show. And if you want to do a little extra, you can become a member by clicking on that join button if you're watching us on YouTube or you can go to TYT.com slash join to become a member that way. Members get exclusive content. They get our Operation Joy content on Tuesdays, which I really love. It's really made me happy, to be honest with you, and I think it'll be something that audience members who aren't members, paid members of the show would benefit from. So check that out as well.

Now, unfortunately, we don't begin with good news, there was some violence on college campuses last night and early morning. And it is worth getting into what happened over at Columbia as well. Hundreds of New York City police officers in riot gear moving into Columbia University. SWAT teams rolling in. One by one, police officers seen filing in on an extended ramp into the second floor of Columbia's Hamilton Hall. In the late night hours, police forming a line around the perimeter clearing protesters

blocking the entrance. Once inside, going floor by floor, room by room. NYPD using flashbangs, at least a hundred people arrested. Let away, hands tied behind their bats with zip ties. Well, as you can see from that footage, Columbia University's president, Manus Shafic, gave hundreds of NYPD officers the green light to storm Hamilton Hall and arrest demonstrators who had broken into and occupied the building. The building's occupation came after Columbia's administration began suspending demonstrators without due process, of course, demanding that the peaceful pro-Palestine encampment be dismantled. That was when some demonstrators, who organizers referred to as an autonomous group, broke into Hamilton Hall.

Columbia administration now telling students and faculty to avoid campus and warning that access to other buildings may be restricted. Colombia had started suspending students who remained in the pro-Palestine encampment outside their past Monday afternoon. Some of them had been leaving. But shortly after midnight, a student smashed a window of Hamilton Hall with a hammer. The group Columbia Students for Justice in Palestine says that dozens have barricaded themselves inside Hamilton Hall. You can see them here in these images using furniture and other objects to blockade the doors. The people who are already inside Hamilton Hall decided to smash the windows and then put bike locks like around each door handle. And look, I don't want to completely minimize what some people experience during the occupation of the building.

Right wing media has been playing this one instance over and over again involving a custodial worker within the building who claimed that he was held hostage. He was let go and released from the building within 10 minutes, but nonetheless, you know, those are the types of instances that have been cited over and over again to kind of paint a picture of these protesters being super dangerous. Columbia has received the bulk of media attention, mostly due to the fact that their administrators bungled things from day one, which sparked more protests on campuses across the country, but we'll revisit Columbia in a bit because it is worth getting into what happened in Los Angeles last night. After UCLA's administration declared that the encampment on their

campus was illegal, clashes broke out between pro-Palestinian protesters and counter-protesters. It's important to be 100% clear on who and what sparked the violence at UCLA in the first place. According to the New York Times, around 200 pro-Israel counter-protesters stormed the pro-Palestinian encampment and attempted to pull its barricades apart. Video shows them assaulting pro-Palestinian protesters with sticks and more. Los Angeles Times reporters were also on the scene and managed to capture the moment the encampment was violently attacked. Wow, wow, real brave guys jumping one jumping one person.

While this isn't the case on every campus with demonstrations, dueling protests have been particularly intense at UCLA, where Jewish activists have had a larger presence than at other campus demonstrations. The exact same New York Times report published this unbelievably dishonest excerpt about previous scuffles that occurred at UCLA earlier this week. On Monday night, a fight broke out between two groups of protesters after about 60 pro-Israel demonstrators attempted to enter the pro-Palestinian encampment. It was not immediately clear who was responsible for the violence on Wednesday morning.

I don't know, how about the pro-Israel group that insisted on forcibly and violently entering the encampment, which is exactly how things escalated. And look, making matters worse, the UC Divest Coalition at UCLA, which has been organizing pro-Palestinian protests at the university, said that students at the encampment had been attacked by fireworks, tear gas, pepper spray, and more. That's the way that they treated unarmed protesters in this UCLA pro-Palestinian encampment. And by the way, those are some serious allegations. So far, we have only heard about how unsafe Jewish students feel.

So these claims about the angelic pro-Israel protesters can't be real, right? It's only pro-Palestinian protesters who pose a danger or a threat. Well, I'm sad to report that these accusations are true based on video evidence that's gone viral. I want to cue that video up again, just for emphasis, okay, especially the second clip in what we're about to show you. Imagine, imagine the pro-Palestinian protesters doing that and what the reaction would be. Take this in, these are the pro-Israel counter-protesters throwing fireworks into the pro-Palestinian encampment. Let's watch.

Free Palestine! Free Palestine! I want to reiterate, we've been endlessly hearing about how unsafe I reiterate, we've been endlessly hearing about how unsafe Jewish students feel on college campuses across the country over signs, over slogans, over statements, and look, I get it. They feel their identity is under attack. I also concede that there are a few examples of protesters saying terrible, hateful, and inflammatory things, which should be condemned in the strongest sense.

But at UCLA, we have clear evidence of counter protesters violently attacking the encampment with fireworks and chemical agents. But the New York Times is somehow confused about how the violence started. One would have to work real hard to pretend like the media bias against the pro-Palestinian protesters isn't a problem here. It's a huge problem. While the students throwing fireworks, well actually let me ask, will the students throwing the fireworks face any criminal charges? Is anyone concerned about that? How about the ones beating pro-Palestinian protesters at UCLA with sticks? Or is punishment simply reserved for demonstrators who offend Israel's prime minister?

You know, Netanyahu, the same guy who propped up Hamas, the terrorist group, that he's now using as an excuse to carry out a brutal war that has killed far more civilians in Gaza than actual militants. Getting back to Colombia, things didn't need to devolve into violence. Mnush Shafik's decision to get police involved and break up the encampment led to an escalation. And look, don't take it for me. Take it from Columbia University professor Marianne Hirsch. We do not want police to be entering our campus. We think this is putting the entire campus community and the neighborhood in Colombia, where I live, at tremendous risk to bring

police in riot gear. I think there are many different ways that this could have been. been resolved with further negotiation. It did not have to be done at this speed. How would you have like to have seen it handled? Well, there's professional mediation. There's further negotiations. We've seen building occupation and student protests over the history of education since perhaps 1968

and maybe before that. And there are ways to resolve this with mediation and some patients. Yeah, right, right, but you know, finding a nonviolent way to resolve the issue takes time, patience, effort. It's much easier to just call the cops and have them dismantle a peaceful encampment, which doesn't really solve anything. This unrest doesn't simply dissipate when protesters are met with police force.

There needs to be a resolution. And Professor Hirsch is also right about students occupying buildings on campus as a form of protest for many, many decades. In fact, in April of 1968, hundreds of Columbia students seized Hamilton Hall in protest of the Vietnam War, specifically the university's involvement in research for weapons of war. Let me just be clear about that, so it had to do with some funding related matters. They also were protesting racism. Now, similar to what just happened at Columbia, students back in the 1960s barely

barricated themselves inside the building. But the protesters of decades past went further than that by literally preventing Henry Coleman, the acting dean at the time, from leaving his office for a full night. They even used furniture to trap him in his office. And I want to be clear, I am not advocating for people to do that. But it is important to differentiate the intensity of those protests in 1968 versus what happened on Columbia's campus recently. And by the way, in regard to the occupation of Hamilton Hall back in 1968, a week later, the police entered the building through underground tunnels,

which seems to be a reoccurring theme when it comes to stories involving Israel and, you know, Gaza, but nonetheless, underground cut tunnels and cleared the students. Police officers trampled protesters, hit them with night sticks, and drag some down concrete steps. More than 700 people were arrested and look, if you can believe it, the school back then actually had more patience with the demonstrators than what we just witnessed at Columbia's campus. Democracy Now's Juan Gonzalez was actually one of the student protesters in 1968. And he reflects on the differences between then and now. I think what is really unusual about this process is that here the university moved in very

quickly and also these students were not disrupting classes. We occupied buildings, we did not allow classes to go away. forward in 1968 but classes were going forward the students were camped out peacefully on the lawn so the disproportionate nature of the response of the university the quickness with which it responded without even consulting or listening to the faculty is really astounding and the other aspect of it is that when we were suspended and there were many of us suspended we were before we were suspended, we were allowed to appear before a tribunal to plead our cause. There was at least the rudiments of due process.

Here there is no due process. The university is already within 24 hours saying that the students are suspended, even though there is yet no legal proof that any of these students knowingly participated in illegal actions. Look, my personal belief is that Manus Shafik is terrified that she'll be forced to resign. And so she wants to lay down the law and act aggressively against the protesters, hoping that it will somehow save her job by placating right wingers who are already calling for her to resign. And while Columbia is unwilling to move on the divestment demands that are driving these campus protests, there is another college that has taken a different and more admirable approach.

Brown University announced today it will vote on divestment this fall. What Brown has agreed to do is that the Brown Corporation vote on effectively a proposal that's based on a 2020 proposal that called for the divestment from just 11 companies. Those 11 companies would be divested from part of the direct investments of Brown University, which accounts for less than 10% of Brown's entire endowment. Columbia is saying we're not going to engage in that right now. We need to see what the situation is over the next weeks and months before we even have this conversation. Candidly, we need to have a graduation. So it's it's two different approaches.

Part of the reason why Brown may be interested in having this conversation is because of how narrow the approach is. When we look at these encampments across the country, what we're seeing as students are asking for divesting from three different areas, weapons manufacturers, businesses in Israel, and businesses that do business with Israel. Brown's just looking at 11 institutions. So in other words, the students at Brown definitely had a more specific and narrow demand. And that strategy has seemed to be pretty fruitful. Although we should wait and see how the Brown corporation votes in the fall.

However, because of the fact that they're willing to take a vote in the first place on divesting from those 11 companies, student protesters at Brown have been dismantling their encampment. No violence, no police involved. By the way, I should also note, a second university has agreed to consider divesting from some companies that they're invested in, tied to Israel, and that's Northwestern. Now, Columbia's students had broader demands, which are articulated by one of the student protesters here. My name is Floyd Appalat. I'm a student organizer. I'm a graduate student at Columbia University.

I study human rights here. I'm also part of the negotiating team. of the negotiating team. And if you can tell us, what is it exactly you're demanding? Simple. We don't want to trade in the blood of Palestinians, and that means divestment from all direct and indirect holdings that this university has, whether that be weapons manufacturing, companies that operate illegally in occupied territory, companies that produce information technology for the occupation army, complete divestment. We're also requesting disclosure. We don't have transparency on this university's investment, and we need that to be

able to push the movement further. We're also requesting amnesty. Hundreds of our students have been disciplined over the past six months on unfair promises. So clearly Columbia's students had broader goals, which is both admirable and admittedly harder to accomplish. The way these investments work can be pretty tricky as well, especially when you're referring to indirect divestment.

Let's watch. The vast majority of university endowment funds are not investing. invested in direct stocks like stock pickers. We're not running e-trade accounts as endowment managers. What they're doing is investing in hedge funds or private equity. And oftentimes, with the vast majority of institutions, they're looking at index funds. Now, that's a lot of different businesses packaged in these funds, and it's difficult to know at any given time what those businesses are doing.

The way I'd like to talk to think about it is, you may invest in, say, Pepsi, but not know that Pepsi is about to buy soda stream, an Israeli company as they did in 2020. 2017. If an endowment manager wanted to completely divest from Israel, that would mean once that deal is closed, divesting from Pepsi altogether. And there just aren't index funds that have that ability to move quickly and that complete knowledge of how deeply tied companies are to the Israeli case. Now look, I'm not here trying to dictate the way in which these protesters craft their demands against their university or toward their university. I'm just trying to be helpful and show the differences because I want these students to

accomplish what they're attempting to accomplish here. And maybe protesters can learn from the success that Brown students have had and recalibrate future demands that might be a little more easy to accomplish. But to be clear, we're not even sure what Columbia's endowment is. invested in because the administration decided against being transparent with the students, which of course, as you heard from the student earlier, is something that the pro-Palestinian protesters want to change. That's one of their demands. Overall, more than 300 students were arrested last night during police raids at Columbia and City College of New York. Those with power can arrest the

protesters, sure, but you can't arrest ideas and you can't ignore the immorality of funding Israel's brutal war on Gazans. More than 33,000 people have been killed in this tiny enclave with two-thirds of the deceased consisting of women and children. As more than a million displaced Palestinian shelter in the southern border town of Rafa, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declared yesterday that he intends to carry out a ground invasion despite the resulting civilian casualties and regardless of whether a ceasefire deal is reached, which clearly means he himself isn't a good faith actor and is a massive obstacle to any ceasefire resolution. It says something about our country and its power players when they'd

rather crack the skulls of American citizens of students as they assemble in protest, Rather than question whether giving Israel military support with no strings attached with no conditions makes any sense. Just yesterday, Israeli national security minister, Itamar Ben-Gavir, someone I wish I'd never had to think about, called for executing Palestinians held captive to alleviate overcrowding in prisons. Mind you, a lot of these people never even had any due process. Anyway, the Israeli Defense Forces Chief of Staff, Lieutenant General Herzi Halavi briefed ministers at a security cabinet meeting last week about recent operations in Gaza. During the briefing, he said that hundreds of Palestinians were recently arrested after surrendering to the military. Now, in response, Ben Gavir asked, quote, why are there so many arrests?

Can't you kill some? Do you want to tell me they all surrender? What are we to do with so many arrested? It's dangerous for the soldiers. Okay. Now, I don't want to lump in all Israeli government members as the same evil type of person that Ben Gavir is. Because luckily, luckily, he did receive pushback after he made that statement. Halevi was perplexed at the question, according to the times of Israel, responding,

dangerous for who? We don't shoot people who come out with their hands up. We shoot those who fight us, the IDF official reportedly told Ben Gavir. There's no dilemma here. Those who surrender, we arrest. But it seems like Ben Gavir is committed to just executing Palestinian captives or Palestinians in general. That wasn't the first time Ben Gavir. called for executing Palestinian captives.

Earlier this month, the minister posted on social media that applying the death penalty to some captives would help address the issue of prison overcrowding. The comment came after his proposal to build nearly a thousand additional prison places for Palestinian captives was approved. In February, Ben-Gavir also called for the IDF to shoot Palestinian women and children, mission accomplished, in Gaza in order to protect the troops. troops. There cannot be a situation in which children and women approach us from the wall, he told, Halevi, according to Israeli media. Anyone who approaches in order to harm security

must receive a bullet. Otherwise, we will see October 7th again. If you're concerned about the possibility of October 7th happening again, maybe bolster security a little bit. Maybe don't have all the IDF soldiers guarding illegal settlements in the West Bank. You know, maybe fortify your border, something that they failed to do when October 7th occurred. Never takes any responsibility for their failures, right? And by the way, maybe we should focus on the root of the problem, which is the endless death and destruction carried out by Israel's far right government. This is the violence that the United States supports so much that they bankroll it. That's the violence that student protesters were trying to put an end to, whether the media

wants to validate them or not. And one final thing that I'll say is if you have a problem with people not wanting their hard-earned money to be funneled to a foreign government so they can carry out a brutal war, a war that has many examples of international laws being broken, war crimes being committed, I think there's a bigger problem with you. The entitlement of us sending money to Israel blows my mind of us being invested in Israeli companies that are tied to this war is insane to me. If you find it totally moral to funnel your money over to Israel, great.

But don't come like, don't start cracking skulls of American citizens who do have a problem with that, who do find that immoral and want to make their voices. heard. That's what was happening on college campuses. I think that this effort to squash the protest is going to fail. And I think that there's going to be more unrest moving forward because there hasn't really been a resolution. But it is amazing to me that rather than just being patient, seeing if negotiations can continue, you know, as Columbia decides to dismantle that encampment, and that's what led to an escalation of violence. That's what led to the occupation of that building.

We could learn lessons from this, but of course we won't. All right, we got to take a break when we come back. We're going to dive into nuclear energy and whether that could be a solution to climate change. Come right back. Welcome back to TYT, Anna Casparian with you, and now we're about to have a conversation that I've been looking forward to having for a long time now. It has to do with the topic that I'm certainly not an expert on, but lucky for us. We have an expert joining us to talk about nuclear energy.

Joining us now to talk about some of the myths surrounding nuclear power is John Kotech. John Kotech is the senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute. John, thank you so much for joining us. Anna, thanks for having. So let me just start off by saying, you know, I kind of bought into a lot of the myths and fear mongering about nuclear energy up until someone challenged me on it, to be quite frank, not personally, but I was listening to a news broadcast about the topic. And then that made me want to investigate a little further. And then I learn about Germany decommissioning its very last nuclear plant and transitioning to the dirtiest form of energy, which is coal.

And I was pulling my hair out of my head because, you know, the climate emergency is very much real and switching over from nuclear energy, which is considered a clean energy source to coal sounds like a bad idea. Do you think it's a bad idea? And if not, why? Yeah, it is a bad idea. And certainly keeping nuclear power plants operating on the grid is the simplest way and the most cost-effective way of holding carbon emissions down. And that's why we've been so happy to see first state governments here in the US and then more recently Congress take action to provide financial backstops to ensure that we don't shut down any more nuclear power plants.

And they've also been taking very strong steps to help get some new ones, Bill. Yeah, you're right about that. You know, in California, the governor, Gavin Newsom, was planning on shutting down a nuclear power plant. And he actually backed out of it, which I thought was a good thing to do. But let's talk a little bit about the myths surrounding nuclear energy. Because, you know, let me start off by asking you to steal man the argument from your opponents. What do they say about the dangers of nuclear power? Well, I mean, certainly you'll hear folks bring up concerns about nuclear safety.

They'll talk about radioactive waste, and you'll hear questions raised about the nuclear proliferation and the cost of nuclear power. And, you know, and all of those things, of course, have good answers to them. Don't know which ones you want to take on first, but what I will say is kind of a big picture statement is the challenges associated. with nuclear, same thing you have with any other energy supply. You look at any source of energy in isolation and you can find a lot of things to not like about it. But when you look across the board on the full life cycle impacts of nuclear versus other sources of energy supply, you see that nuclear has a whole lot to add, particularly as you're looking to transition to a lower carbon energy system. And so if you want a system that's reliable and affordable while getting to lower carbon,

you want something that is what we call firm clean, like nuclear that can run around the clock and is there when you need it. Nuclear also has the advantage of creating a whole lot of very high paying long-term jobs in communities where they're most needed. And so that's a big part of the reason why you've seen such strong bipartisan support for nuclear power, both in the states the end at the federal level in recent years. So I want to tackle all of the concerns about nuclear energy one by one in just a moment. But before we do, I think it's important to talk about where we are in regard to the development of renewable energy, right? Wind, solar, because I think that there's been, for a long time,

this thought that wind and solar renewables could essentially completely substitute the fossil fuels that we've relied on. But that doesn't seem to be true, at least not so far. Yeah, that's right. And as my old boss, Ernie Moniz, who was Secretary of Energy when I ran the nuclear energy part of the DOE and during the Obama administration. As he would say, it doesn't violate the laws of physics to decarbonize the grid going 100% renewables. But it's going to cost you a whole lot more, right? It's going to be a whole lot harder. The reason is, of course, renewables are distributed, and so you have to go to where, you know, the

on or the wind are best and those particularly with wind, those tend to be remote locations where you've got to transmit power over great distances to where the load centers are, right, on the coast. And that's really expensive. And as somebody who has worked to cite both nuclear power plants and long distance transmission lines in my career, I can tell you long distance transmission is harder, right? Because you're talking about linear projects with a lot of impacts we've seen a lot of pipeline proposal uh opposition in recent years well transmission lines unfortunately engender the same sorts of opposition and so what happens with a system with 100 percent renewables is you need a lot of long-distance transmission

and you need a lot of storage and you have to overbuild those things because you don't build the grid to serve power supply in an average day you build a grid that can serve power supply when conditions are worst, right? Because we rely so much on energy, as a result, it just costs you multiple times more than if you include a healthy share of nuclear power in your system. So, you know, there are so many different factors at play here that concern me, because on one hand, of course, the climate emergency needs to be responded to substantially, it is a real emergency, at the same time, and I don't know how audience members are going to feel about

me confessing to this, I don't really want to change my lifestyle and I don't want to take on the financial burdens associated with transitioning to other technologies. And so far, you know, in the state of California, even though you'll hear, no, no, no, they're making sure that working people aren't impacted by some of these transitions. They absolutely are, financially speaking. You know what I'm saying? So with nuclear, you keep mentioning the affordability. Can you get a little more specific or elaborate on what you mean by that? Yeah, you bet. So when you are talking about adding some of this intermittent generation, like solar or wind onto the system, that when you add a small amount of it, it's really good because you're not able to pay for fuel, right? You're getting sun or you're getting wind. And so you can have very low production costs. The problem is the more and more of that that you add onto your system, right, the less and less useful it becomes. Because when it's, you know, when the sun's, when you're getting solar power, you're getting it all at once.

You're not getting it when people go home at night, for example, when you really need it and when electricity demand goes up. And so when you bring that nuclear power into the mix, for example, like they're doing in California by keeping their nuclear power plant online, you wind up having to overbuild less of that solar and less of the storage that you would need to otherwise make your system reliable using just. just renewables so what you're going to find to your point about paying more you know let's say a new generation is going to cost more than continuing to run a coal plant that you've been running for 40 years right just the way it is but we need to make this transition to a cleaner energy system what we found over the years is that when you do things like California has done like the federal government has done to provide strong incentives for things like wind and solar you can help those technologies come down the cost curve and so while solar for example was

quite expensive 15 years ago solar production costs have dropped by like 10 times over the last 15 years now we need to do the same thing for these firm clean technologies like nuclear to ensure that they can also move down that cost curve and provide even more and more reliable and affordable generation as we get further and further down this deep carbonization curve that we're pursuing. So you mentioned new technologies, which is a perfect transition to some of the concerns that people have had in regard to nuclear. So let's start off with the biggest concerns, the biggest argument that you'll hear from people. You know, they'll usually reference the disaster that transpired in Chernobyl, or they'll reference

a more recent, you know, accident, the Fukushima nuclear power plant that, of course, you know, was threatening due to an earthquake and, you know, subsequent tsunami that happened in March of 2011. So what is your response to people who are concerned about that? Yeah. So what you see in the new designs that are coming to the market now, and some of these have already been built. In fact, the two new reactors in the state of Georgia incorporate a lot of learnings like I'm about to describe. We've been running nuclear power plants for more than 60 years in the U.S. You learn a lot over that period of time. And one of the things that's

been learned in that time is you can have even safer nuclear power if you move away from from active systems, you know, things like pumps and valves and you rely more on natural phenomena like gravity or natural heat convection. And so what you'll find is a lot of these new designs incorporate we call passive approaches to ensuring safety so that you don't wind up in a situation like Fukushima where frankly the reactors survived the earthquake and the tsunami just fine. The problem was they lost their connection to the electric grid and all their back up power supplies got wiped out, right? But if you had these passive systems available in a situation like that, you wouldn't run into that same challenge. So these next generation

technologies that are coming to market now are even better than the frankly very safe technologies that we've been running for decades. Have the newer nuclear power plants been implemented anywhere in the world yet? Yep. So the two in Georgia, so Vogel 3 and 4, which uniform just came online. There are multiples of those that have been built or are being built overseas. There are other technologies that are being implemented now. So for example, a company that Bill Gates founded called Terra Power is building an advanced reactor that happens to be cooled with liquid metal in the state of Wyoming. That's a very passively safe design, as is a gas-cooled reactor that a company called X Energy is building alongside Dow in Texas

to provide both power and heat to help decarbonize production at a chemical facility. And that's important part of the decarbonization challenge it's often overlooked. We tend to think about the grid, which of course is important, but it's also in many ways the easiest part of the decarbonization challenge. When you start looking at decarbonizing heavy industry or along distance transportation, you know, oftentimes you can't do that with renewables and there's a particularly valuable role for nuclear to play in those sorts of challenges. And you know, one of the other concerns, of course, has to do with the waste that's produced at nuclear power plants.

How do you dispose of that waste? It's polluting and harmful to the environment. What is your response to that? Yeah, so I'm glad you asked about that. In fact, I was responsible for the federal program to address nuclear waste when I was in the Obama administration. And the good thing about what we call spent nuclear fuel is that there's a very small amount of it in it's straightforward to manage.

So nuclear fuel stays in a nuclear reactor for about five years producing power. And when you take it out, it's both physically and radioactively hot. And so you'll first cool it in a pool for a couple of years, and then you'll move it into something called a dry storage container. And those have been proven, shown by our nuclear regulatory commission, to be safe for more than 100 years of on-site storage. And we know where it all is, right? Unlike, you know, carbon emissions or other air pollution emissions that go up a stack and other forms of electricity generation with a nuclear power plant, you know where the spent fuel is.

It's easy to manage on site at the nuclear power plants. Over the lifetime of a nuclear power plant that might run 60 or even 80 years, the amount of spent fuel that you store and you put into what we call dry storage casks for long-term storage, they'll fit on a concrete pad about the size of a hockey rink, right? So you're generating clean electricity for hundreds of thousands or even millions of people for decades using a facility that can store all of its waste in a footprint that that's small. That's that small. So, you know, when you when you do the math and you compare nuclear and the challenges of nuclear with the challenges of other energy technologies, nuclear starts to look really good. And that's why you're seeing so much interest, not just here, but overseas in building new.

Yeah, I mean, I think oftentimes you have to do a cost benefit analysis with, you know, new technologies and when it comes to energy. A good example is the EV batteries. And, you know, you have to get rid of those batteries. And there's been some arguments about how polluting those EV batteries are. But, you know, I think all of this stuff is so, so fascinating. The final question I'll ask you is more about geopolitics. Because, you know, when you look at a country like Iran, you know, the United States. and its allies, U.S. allies, would argue that they were enriching their uranium. Iran argued that they were doing so for nuclear power in their country. And so does enriched uranium have to be utilized for these nuclear power plants or there are other methods to do this? Yeah, so certainly in the types of reactors we use here in the U.S., that fuel is enriched, but it's enriched to nowhere near the level that is used in a nuclear weapon. So the uranium that's enriched here in the U.S. is enriched to a level of about 5% of the isotope uranium 235.

When you dig uranium out of the ground, it's about 7 tenths of 1% of that isotope. So you have to concentrate it in effect. And so, yes, you'll always have a need for uranium enrichment for the types of facilities that we're talking about here, But they don't use weapons usable material. And in fact, that that's something that all designers here in the U.S. stay away from is anything above the 20% cutoff that is generally viewed as getting into that weapons usable range. That distinction is fascinating. Well, John, thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us about nuclear energy and the myths surrounding it. John Kotech, senior vice president of the Nuclear Energy Institute.

Thank you so much again. Thank you, Adam. All right, everyone, we're going to take a brief break. And when we come back, I'm going to talk a little bit about the crime statistics that are reported by the FBI and why you should take those statistics with a grain of salt. Come right back. What's up, everyone, welcome back to the show. Before we get to our next segment, I wanted to read a few comments, starting with one about our conversation.

Constantine says, in my opinion, most news coverage, including TYT, lack hosts with backgrounds that can give fitting insight on science and technology. You are so correct about that, that is not my wheelhouse. I loved seeing an expert on nuclear power and would love to see more guests or even hosts with a science background, well done. Thank you, and I'm glad you enjoy the conversation. One of our members wrote in and also said, you know, that they're not a fan of nuclear power.

So this is Newfie Dragon. I was not a fan of nuclear reactors, but I need to look at it again also. Definitely do because I was 100% against nuclear power because I just kind of bought into, you know, the fearmongering about it. And I hadn't looked into how the technology had been enhanced or, you know, improved in recent decades, recent years.

So you might still not want to transition to nuclear power or use more nuclear power. But definitely keep an open mind and look into it. And I'll do my best to stay on the topic because I do think it's important. It is a clean energy source. And it could be one of the many solutions to combating climate change, which is super important. Just a few more comments here. I wanted to read about how you guys are feeling about the segment on the student protesters. One of our super chatter says, Anna is this is from supercalifragilistic exeologous who says,

Anna is the civil disobedience of Palestinian protesters at Columbia following the civil rights movement, unlike trans protesters as you proclaimed. Well, look, I'm not a fan of holding people hostage. So, you know, when we were referencing the protests from 1968 and how they barricaded the dean in his office overnight, I don't love that, to be honest. I don't think that that's going to win people over. You will lose the moral high ground with some people. So I think it's best to remain nonviolent and not make anyone feel threatened. And as violence is used against you, as you're basically righteously protesting U.S. support for a brutal war that's killed a lot of civilians, you know, again, that tends to win people over a lot more than engaging in violence yourself as a demonstrator. So that's where I stand on that issue. Don't hold people hostage. It's a bad idea.

With that said, though, let's talk a little bit about this annoying thing I keep getting confronted with. And I need to not be annoyed because the biggest mistake I think I make on this show is sometimes assuming that everyone knows what I know. But it's my job to inform people, to research issues and give people as much information as I can. And so when it comes to FBI reporting on crime in the country, there are some serious flaws and we should talk about why. So in an effort to campaign on both the migrant crisis and violent crime. Former President Donald Trump appeared on a local Fox affiliate in Detroit and confidently declared that Venezuela was very crime-ridden. They announced the other day a 72% reduction in crime. You want to know why? They moved all the

criminals from Venezuela right into the good old USA. That's what Trump claimed. But the anchor, Rup Raj, wasn't buying it and luckily asked for receipts saying, quote, but sir, where are those numbers coming from? Trump obviously didn't expect that follow up and kind of flailed in response saying, I guess I get them from the papers. In this case, I think it's a federal statement. Not only is it absurd and false to claim that Venezuela has some sort of government program to empty its prisons and send their criminals to the United States, Trump would also be incorrect if he did in fact get this information from the papers or from a federal statement because they're both wrong as well. In fact, most of our news media relies heavily on one of the most

incomplete and inaccurate crime reports, as Jake Tapper did just yesterday. He talks about surging crime rates, how horrible the crime rate is, and look, any crime is horrible. But your reporter notes that the FBI statistic shows a 13% drop in homicides in 2020. In 2023, Trump responds, the FBI gave fake numbers. I don't believe it. No, it's a lie. It's fake news. Look, while it is absolutely true that the right wing likes to fearmonger about crime for campaigning purposes,

Trump is actually kind of right in dismissing the FBI numbers, as did the appeal, which is a news site focused on pushing criminal justice reform. According to their website, the appeal is a non-profit news organization that envisions a world in which systems of support and care, not punishment, create public safety. All right, you familiarized yourself with the appeal, not a right-wing organization, But they put out a report just last October, highlighting all the issues with FBI crime reporting and just how incomplete it really is. First, it's worth bearing in mind that a lot of crime goes unreported by victims. Surveys conducted by the Bureau of Justice statistics suggest that more than 50% of violent crimes and around 70% of property crimes are never reported to police.

For certain types of offenses, such as sexual assault, upwards of 75% of incidents may never be officially documented. Another pro-criminal justice reform organization called the Marshall Project put out a similar report stating that around half of all crimes, both property and violent, never get reported to the authorities. The Department of Justice collects crime in, or crime statistics in two separate ways. Okay, we've talked about this on the show before. I'm gonna reiterate again how this data is collected. So they do it through the FBI's crime reporting program and the Bureau of Justice Statistics Crime Victimization Survey, where they literally survey Americans about their experiences with crime. And that tends to have a more holistic look into the crime that people are experiencing,

the crime that occurs in their communities, with the exception of homicide rates, because as we all know, you can't really survey someone who's been killed in a homicide. Now, while the FBI tries to collect crime data directly for more than 18,000 police agencies through its uniform crime reporting program, the National Crime Victimization Survey, NCBS, interviews 150,000 families across the country. The NCBS asks questions that capture crimes that were not reported to police, as well as ones that were. So that survey tends to be more accurate, since it finds instances of

of crime that were never reported. In other words, when you compare the numbers to the FBI's report, which collects the data from the police agencies, well, you see this major disparity between the survey and the FBI's data, okay? Now the Justice Department's crime victimization survey shows millions of violent and property crimes were never reported to the police, often because the victim reported the incident to another authority like a school official or because they don't think police would take the matter seriously.

Some crimes that are reported to the police never end up in the police report and would not be counted by the FBI's crime stats. Now let's pause there for a second because there's some other issues as well. Now keep in mind the police agency, not all police agencies are willing to cooperate with the FBI, meaning that they never provide the data for their department. So they're not included in the statistics to begin with. There's also an issue with the self reporting coming from the police. Now police can manipulate data from their own departments in either way.

They could manipulate it to make it seem as though crime is lower in their jurisdiction. So they're not held accountable for failing to improve crime in their jurisdiction. Or they might want to make a point by manipulating the numbers and making it seem like crime is higher because they want to make a point about how the department needs more resources. The problem is the FBI does not audit the local police department submitting this data unless the local police departments submitting the data ask for an audit, which, why would they do that? Now, things actually got a lot worse beginning in 2021, as the Marshall Project also notes because the way in which the FBI collects data changed and some law enforcement agencies

were slow to adapt to the new system. The Marshall Project notes that nearly 40% of law enforcement agencies around the country did not submit any data in 2021 to a newly revised FBI crime statistics collection program, leaving a massive gap in the information that was collected, a massive gap in the data. In an effort to fully modernize the system, the FBI stopped taking data from the old summary system and only accepted data through the new system. Thousands of police agencies fell through the cracks because they didn't catch up with the changes on time. More than 6,000 law enforcement agencies were missing from the FBI's national crime data in 2022, representing nearly one third of the nation's 18,000

police agencies. This means a quarter of the U.S. population was not represented. in the federal crime data. Reporting actually did improve a little bit the following year with an additional 2,000 agencies submitting their crime reports. That's a good thing. But that means that 4,000 of them still had not, meaning the FBI's data was still incomplete. The two largest police agencies in the U.S., the New York Police Department and the Los Angeles police department are still missing in the federal data.

Politicians like Florida governor Ron DeSantis take full advantage of the incomplete data to declare that look at what I did. Crime rates are down in my state. I'm such a winner. I'm such a great leader. But less than 10% of agencies were included in their 22 FBI crime report. Of course, the left also relies heavily on this inaccurate data for its own purposes. Crime may be up in your neighborhood, but that's not what's happening nationally.

It's kind of the equivalent to remember when Senator Inhoff brought the snowball onto the Senate floor to say, hey, climate change isn't happening. Look at this snowball. Right. I can look out my window and see that it's cold. And now I know climate. change's not happening. So if you can conceptualize of statistical trends as it relates to climate change, you can conceptualize of trends as it relates to crime and maybe just try to get over some of your preconceived notions about certain kinds of people in order to get there and put that

in the recycling thing. All right, look, I don't know if climate change is a great analogy here because unlike our rapidly warming planet, which leads to extreme weather events and of course, sea levels that impact everyone living on said planet, crime spikes in cities impact those living in the cities. Honestly, who cares about the national data, especially if it's concealing the clusters of crime spikes in the country. It's as dishonest as pointing to national polling for the general election rather than focusing on the swing states that ultimately

decide the election. And of course, it's incredibly insulting to those worried about crime in their communities, in their areas, by painting them as hysterical lunatics who base their views on anecdotes. City-specific trends exist. And they tend to be more accurate than the FBI's incomplete national report. Let's check in on Los Angeles, shall we? Let's take a look at this. Murder rates dropping across the country, that's good.

But not in Los Angeles. That's bad. Is it okay to say that, or is that ignorant copaganda that doesn't focus? enough on the inaccurate FBI stats that keep getting tossed around as the holy grail of data. Data from the Los Angeles Police Department shows as of mid-March, the murder rate had climbed to about 30% above the same period in 2023. And the number of people shot, comprising both murders and people who survive shootings, also crept above early 2023 numbers. LAPD chief Dominique Choi told the board of police commissioners this week that since mid-March, the 30% increase

had dropped to about 9.3% with the city recording 81 murders compared with 74 during the same period in 2023. So obviously, the number of people getting shot, the number of homicides, is a problem specifically in Los Angeles. In other parts of California, like in Oakland and San Francisco, other forms of crime have seen a spike. Homicides are low in San Francisco, but property crime is through the roof. Washington, D.C. has an issue with carjackings, something Detroit has managed to decrease by actually hiring more cops while reforming policing overall, something that we should have done from the very beginning. Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said in 2013, the city had the highest homicide

rate in the nation and was known nationally as carjack city with 782 carjackings that year. Then police chief James Craig was nearly carjacked in an unmarked car. But since then, the mayor said that the city has hiked officers paid to make it competitive with other cities and hire 230 more officers in 2023. Duncan said homicides have dropped from 386 in 2012 to 252 in 2013. The from the fewest since 1966. Look, different jurisdictions have varying laws and respond to crime in different ways. So again, focusing on federal data,

especially when it's deeply flawed to begin with is useless in both living in a fact-based reality and addressing crime in specific locations. So in some, please don't be a sucker and don't cite FBI crime reports. Find city specific crime trends that apply to you and don't let anyone gaslight you about what's happening in your neck of the woods because their political agenda is more important to them than your safety is.

Got to take a break, second hour is next, I'll see you there.