UNBIASED - July 10, 2024: Project 2025 Q&A, $500M Lawsuit Against Elon Musk Dismissed, Another State to Implement Cell Phone Bans in Schools, and More.

Episode Date: July 10, 2024

1. Federal Judge Dismisses $500M Lawsuit Against Elon Musk Filed by Former Twitter Employees (0:32)2. Governor Signs Executive Order to Implement Cell Phone Bans in K-12 Schools (3:43)3. Follow-Up Project 2025 Q&A; Answering Your Questions (6:55)4. Quick Hitters: Biden Administration Announces New Tariffs Targeting China's Goods, Congress Receives Petition for Federal Paid Leave, First F-16s En Route to Ukraine (13:20)Support ‘UNBIASED’ on Patreon.Watch this episode on YouTube.Follow Jordan on Instagram and TikTok.All sources for this episode can be found here.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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call the Conax Ontario helpline at 1-866-531-2600. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. Welcome back to Unbiased, your favorite source of unbiased news and legal analysis. Welcome back to Unbiased. Today is Wednesday, July 10th, and this is your daily news rundown. Per usual, if you love the unbiased approach that this episode provides, you feel more informed after listening, please go ahead and leave my show a review on whatever platform you listen, share the show with your friends, and of course, if you're watching on YouTube, go ahead and hit that thumbs up button and subscribe to the channel if you're not already. All of those things really help me out, so thank you very much. And without further ado, we can get into today's stories, starting with a story about a lawsuit

against Elon Musk. A district judge in San Francisco dismissed a case brought by former Twitter employees against Elon Musk, alleging he owes them at least $500 million of severance pay. So this all started about a year and a half ago, you might remember, when Musk bought Twitter and very soon thereafter fired a large portion of the staff through four different cuts between November 2022 and February 2023. Following those layoffs, there was a class action suit brought in San Francisco federal court alleging that Musk had shorted the employees on severance. According to the lawsuit, there was a severance plan in place, which Twitter had created

in 2019, that promised the majority of the workers two months of their base pay plus one week of pay for each full year of service in the event they were laid off. But more senior employees were entitled to up to six months of pay. The lawsuit says that these employees only received at most one month of severance pay, but many of them didn't receive any pay at all. As a result, the plaintiffs accused X and Musk of violating a federal law which regulates employee benefits. Musk, on the other hand, has said that everyone that was let go was offered three months of severance. Now, before I talk about why the judge dismissed the case, I do want to note that this is just one of many lawsuits filed against not only Musk himself, but also X by former employees.

There's a lawsuit that accuses the company of failing to pay bonuses. There was another lawsuit for failing to pay severance, but that was actually a breach of contract claim, whereas this one is a breach of federal law. And then also there's a series of other lawsuits, including claims of targeting women and workers with disabilities in the layoffs. So this is just one of many. But essentially what the judge said is that the federal law that the employees were alleging a violation of did not cover the employees' claims. The law at issue is called the Employee Retirement Income Security Act. And what it does is it sets rules for benefit plans such as how to pay out the plan, how to communicate about

the plan, two things in which the plaintiffs say Musk and X did not do. Ultimately, the judge's decision came down to the fact that the employees were only promised cash payments in the event that anyone was let go upon Musk's takeover. The judge said that the federal law at issue does not apply to Twitter's post-buyout plan because there was no quote ongoing administrative scheme where the company reviewed claims case by case or offered additional benefits like continued health care and out placement services. The only thing that was promised was cash payments, which are not covered under the law at issue. Now, the plaintiffs can appeal this decision, and they may, so it's not necessarily over. And this dismissal,

of course, doesn't include the other lawsuits, including the other lawsuit for failure to pay severance, because that other lawsuit was filed on an entirely different basis. But that is the latest in this lawsuit. In some other news, Virginia has become the latest state to start the process of banning or restricting cell phones in K-12 schools. The governor yesterday signed an executive order, which directs various agencies within the state government, to take immediate action to issue guidance on the establishment of cell phone-free education policies and procedures. The governor also said that these new policies are to be implemented in schools by January 1,

2025, with a draft of guidelines expected by August 15 and final guidance issued in September. Now, Virginia follows Los Angeles and New York. Specifically in Los Angeles, the school board voted five to two to ban cell phones during the school day by the start of the spring 2025 semester. And New York's governor recently announced that she would be introducing new legislation during the 2025 legislative session to ban smartphones in schools. This all comes as a result of talk about how distracting cell phones are, especially with TikTok and all the social media platforms. So last fall, Pew Research Center actually conducted a poll and asked K-12 public school teachers about their experience with student cell phone use and cell

phone policies. 33% of middle school teachers and 72% of high school teachers said cell phones were a major problem in their classrooms. 82% of all K through 12 teachers said their school or district has some sort of cell phone policy in place. And of those with a cell phone policy, 30% of teachers say the policy is either very or somewhat difficult to enforce and 56% say the policy is either very or somewhat easy to enforce. I want your thoughts on cell phone bans in school because I can see the arguments on both sides. So if you are a Spotify listener or you watch on YouTube, let me know your thoughts in the comments. Do you think that a ban like these proposed bans would benefit students? How would you kind of construct a ban like this?

And would you like to see a cell phone ban like this in your state? Apple podcast listeners, sorry to say there's no comment feature yet for you. Maybe one day. But if you do listen on Apple, you can always head over to YouTube and leave a comment there. That takes us into a little Project 2025 Q&A. Yesterday, I covered Project 2025, which has been by far the most requested topic for me to explain. And today, I asked those of you who follow me on Instagram to hit me with any outstanding questions you may have so that I can answer them in today's episode. And just as an FYI, I'm not going to answer any of the questions that I already covered in yesterday's episode. So just be sure to listen to that explanation. If you haven't already,

it's bound to answer a lot of your questions. First question, who are some of the people in Trump's close circle pushing project 2025? Well, I can answer this by talking about those who were involved in Trump's previous administration that are involved in the project. So some of these people include Paul Danz, Spencer Cretien, Russ Vought, John McKenty, Rick Dearborn, Ben Carson, and Peter Navarro, to name a few. That's not an exhaustive list, but let's talk about each of those individuals' roles in specifically Project 2025 and their tie to Trump. Paul Danz is the director of Project 2025. He's also Trump's former chief of staff at the Office of Personnel Management. He also co-authored chapter three of the Mandate for Leadership, which deals with central personnel agencies and managing the

bureaucracy. And he also wrote the introductory note to the mandate as a whole. Spencer Creshen is the associate director of Project 2025 and was a special assistant to Trump and Trump's associate director of presidential personnel. Russ Vought is an author of one of the chapters of the mandate, specifically chapter two, which deals with the executive office of the president. And he was also Trump's director of the Office of Management and Budget. John McEntenty is a senior advisor to the project and former director of the White House Presidential Personnel Office under Trump. Rick Dearborn is considered a quote-unquote distinguished visiting fellow. He's also a supporter of Project 2025, and he was Trump's former White House deputy chief of staff, specifically for legislative intergovernmental affairs and implementation. He also authored chapter one of the mandate, which is titled

White House Office. Ben Carson authored chapter 15 of the mandate titled Department of Housing and Urban Development and formerly served as housing and urban development secretary under Trump. And finally, Peter Navarro co-authored Chapter 26 of the mandate, titled The Case for Fair Trade, and was Trump's Director of the White House National Trade Council and Director of the Office of Trade and Manufacturing Policy. Now, I will say some of the individuals that are connected to Project 2025 and Trump were part of the Heritage Foundation before even working for Trump under his administration. Yes, some Trump administration officials joined the Heritage

Foundation after Trump left office, but many were actually a part of the Heritage Foundation prior to Trump getting elected in 2016. The second question is, is it odd that former Trump White House employees are involved in creating Project 2025? It depends on what context you're asking. You can obviously form your own opinion as to whether you think it's odd. I'm not here to tell you what to think. What I can tell you from a factual standpoint is that roughly 70 former Heritage employees were working for either the Trump transition team or the Trump administration as of 2018. And even before Trump, Heritage employees were involved in every Republican presidential administration since Reagan. So if you're asking if it's odd from a statistical or historical

perspective, not necessarily considering the Heritage Foundation has been intertwined with Republican administrations since its founding. Third question, I'm queer living in a red state. How scared should I be for Project 2025 and the GOP platform? Well, I can say this. If your governor wanted to enact laws and policies that negatively impact you, he or she could have done that already. Your governor does not need to wait for Trump to become president or for Project 2025 to have any meaning to carry out any actions that you may potentially be afraid of. Remember, the mandate for leadership is a booklet of recommendations for the federal government, specifically if a Republican president gets elected. So let's assume for hypothetical purposes, Trump gets elected.

Trump can then choose to follow or not follow recommendations from the mandate. He has no requirement to follow them, but whether or not he follows them, we're talking about your state government here. And again, it goes back to the idea that if your governor wanted to enact laws or policies that negatively impact you, he or she could do so now and could have done so already if that was something that he or she wanted to do. Project 2025 doesn't have any meaning, the answer is that nothing will happen then that couldn't happen today when it comes to your state government. Fourth question, what is the likelihood of Project 2025 coming to fruition? Again, Project 2025 is not something that Trump, assuming's elected would say okay i'm not the president project 2025 starts now you have to remember that project 2025 and the mandate

specifically recommend actions for the next republican president that's what it's been since 1981 that's what it is today for example when Reagan was in office, he carried out some of the policies included in the mandate for leadership at that time, but not all. So project similar to 2016, by the way, when Trump was in office, some of his policies aligned with the mandate for leadership at that point, not all. So project 2025 doesn't dictate what a president's policies are. The president dictates his own policies. Sometimes those policies will align with Project 2025, but not all the time. Don't forget that this mandate for leadership has been around since 1981, has been provided to every Republican president since then. It's not something that just takes effect one day,

and all of a sudden we're living in a pre-Project 2025, post-Project 2025 America. And the fifth and final question, can you do a quick debrief on the first 180 days of presidency plan? I actually have not seen that playbook. It's not on Project 2025's website. I've tried looking for it elsewhere. I can't find it. So I'm not sure if that's something that they come up with once he's elected, he being Trump, but I unfortunately don't, I can't give you the debrief because I don't have it. The mandate for leadership is the first of four pillars of Project 2025, and that's the

922-page document. But the presidential playbook is the fourth of four pillars, specifically pertains to the playbook for the first 180 days in office. That's what I can't seem to find. So hopefully that answered some of your questions. And now we can finish with just a few quick hitters. In an effort to stop China from routing goods through Mexico and avoiding United States taxes, the Biden administration announced a new 25% tariff on steel and 10% tariff on aluminum that's shipped to the U.S. from Mexico but made

elsewhere. The tariffs will be levied as part of an agreement with Mexico through Section 232 of the Trade Expansion Act, which applies to imports that could threaten U.S. national security. China specifically is a major producer of steel, said to produce more than half of the world's steel, whereas the aluminum tariff will impact more than just China, also impacting Belarus, Iran, and Russia. In some other news, a petition to pass paid leave on a federal level in the United States was delivered to Congress this morning. Does that mean Congress will now pass paid leave and medical leave for all working people? No. Instead, the petition is just a show of support and encouragement from its 55,000 signers. There's also an accompanying

digital campaign happening on social media today where users are sharing what the lack of paid leave in the United States cost them personally, along with the hashtag no paid leave cost me. And finally, the first of more than 60 American-made F-16 fighter jets are on their way to Ukraine and will be flying this summer. This announcement is according to the United States, Dutch, and Danish governments and came on the second day of the NATO summit in Washington. The Dutch have promised an initial batch of 24 warplanes, and Denmark has said it will send 19. That is what I have for you today. Thank you so much for being here. Have a great night and I will talk to you tomorrow.