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That's P-L-A-U-D dot A-I slash Daily Beast and use code Beast for 10% off. Hi I'm Andy Levy, former Fox News and CNN HLN guy and current cable news conscientious objector. I'm a former libertarian who now sits pretty comfortably on the left. Hi I'm Danielle Moody, former educator and recovering lobbyist but today I'm an unapologetic woke commentator on America's threats to democracy.
And I'm producer Jesse Ken and I'm here to make sure things don't go too far off the rails. We're here to have fun, smart conversations with some of the most knowledgeable and entertaining people in politics, media and beyond. Our goal is to try and make sense of our current crazy world, our new abnormal, and hopefully even make you laugh through the tears. Strategic dialogue, Jared Holt joins us to talk about the growing threats of hate, extremism and disinformation and what we can do to tackle these challenges head on.
Dan, editor and reporter of the letter, Lucy Dean Stockton, is here to tell us all about her recent peace. The Biden reforms that will be the first to go. Thanks to Republican deregulatory frenzy and Democratic gambles, many key consumer protection initiatives could soon be wiped away. But first, let's have some fun.
So we are, I guess, just about two weeks in since the re-election of Donald Trump. We're already seeing some really, really, really bad signs. And one of them happened over the weekend where a bunch of people marched through the streets of Columbus, Ohio, carrying swastika flags and screaming the N-word and wearing masks to cover their cowardly faces. Look, it was a couple dozen people, I think, maybe even less than that, fewer than that, maybe a dozen people.
But it's, I think, the third thing like this that I have read about in just the past two weeks. And it's very clear to me that these people already feel emboldened by the election results. We are going to have to be on guard for stuff like this in the coming years because Trump's election has, as many people pointed out, Trump lets people show a side of themselves that they were maybe smart enough to realize should be kept hidden. But now they feel like they don't have to keep that side hidden anymore.
And I'm talking about the dark underbelly of America. I'm talking about the racism, the anti-Semitism, the homophobia, the transphobia, the misogyny. Y'all know what I'm talking about. And we are going to see, as we have seen since 2016, we are going to see all this continue to rise because these people feel like Trump is their guy.
He's the president. He's got their back. And there's going to be stuff that gets really bad over the next few years. And everybody, I just think, needs to be on guard for that.
You know, it's funny because these people feel like Donald Trump has their back because Donald Trump has their back, because everything that he has been stating since his win has been geared to bolster the confidence of white Americans in his presidency and in the fact that he is in it for them. From the appointments that he is putting together through the statements that he is making on social media, it signals all things point to the South is risen again. And you're going to see more marches in cities and an escalation of violence. And, you know, governors and mayors need to be prepared because there isn't going to be any protection from the federal government.
There isn't going to be any investigations into hate crimes. They're going to eliminate, you know, various departments that would be in charge of these things. We've seen this happen in Tennessee. We've seen it in Charlottesville.
We've seen it happen in New York and in other places. And it's going to continue. Donald Trump will either be absolutely silent when violence happens, or he will use it as an excuse to roll in the military to temper those that want to protest against white supremacy. Buckle up.
Yeah. And I want to give a special shout out here to Ohio's Republican governor, Mike DeWine. He came out and condemned this march and said that this kind of thing. He said there's no place in the state for hate, bigotry, antisemitism or violence.
I want to point out that Republican governor Mike DeWine also had some harsh words for Donald Trump and J.D. Vance when it came to the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. I also want to point out that governor Mike DeWine still backed Donald Trump for president. So I'm not really interested in you saying there is no place in the state for hate, bigotry, antisemitism or violence when you supported a guy for president who represents all of those things.
And I'm sick of these mealy-mouthed Republicans who can sit there and think that these things that Donald Trump, you know, to sit there and condemn Trump and Vance for outright lying over the Springfield Haitian migrants eating your pets thing, but still back him and still say, yeah, he's still my guy. And then to sit there and pretend that you're outraged when people march with swastikas. No, I'm sorry. You're not outraged.
You're not getting to pass on this is what I'm saying. I mean, you know, here's the thing is that these governors that have supported Donald Trump and they think that they are going to get some type of special privilege and special coverage, like from him and from his administration, when acts of violence happen, which they will, and they're the ones that have to deal with this. And Donald Trump will say, oh, I'll just roll in the military, which is going to cause more damage, more violence, cost more money. They are going to see the ripple effects of their ignorance.
And unfortunately, the rest of us are also going to pay the penalties, but you're going to see this happen. It has happened in our history before. Particularly, I will say this, as we move into this regime and they start with their mass deportations, and you're going to see, again, violence escalate against undocumented people, against people that you presume to be undocumented or from a certain ethnic or cultural group. This is my biggest concern.
It's like, what are local police, our National Guard, what is going to be their role? And I don't think that it's going to be to protect people. What Donald Trump and this administration is signaling is that the American people are the enemy within. So if that is the vision and perspective that you're going into this administration with, then no one is going to be safe.
And it doesn't matter if you fall into one of the first targeted groups, but the fact is that no one is going to be safe. And you're also going to see like neighbor turn on neighbor, people turn on people so that they can protect themselves. And it becomes like an everyone for themselves situation. Yeah, absolutely.
And look, let's talk about this deportation thing that Trump is still promising, because on Monday morning, Tom Fitton, who is the head of a group called Judicial Watch, which is an absolutely awful conservative organization, he posted on Truth Social, he has been told that Trump is, quote, prepared to declare a national emergency and will use military assets to reverse the Biden invasion through a mass deportation program. And Trump reposted that saying true in all caps. So there's a couple of things here. I know Donald Trump thinks that if you declare emergency powers as president, you can then do whatever the hell you want.
That's not how it works, or it's not supposed to be how it works anyway. Unfortunately, he may be right that it de facto will work that way because nobody will stop him. But there's nothing in the Constitution that says if you declare emergency powers, the Constitution is suspended and you can do whatever the hell you want. So I hope there are people out there.
I hope there are Republicans out there who understand that. Setting that aside, look, there may be people out there, I think we've talked about this before, who think he is not serious about this mass deportation thing. And, you know, people who voted for him will say, oh, I don't, you know, I just want my eggs to be cheaper. I don't think he's really going to do that.
He intends to do that. Hopefully he can't pull it off. I think he's going to find out that it's not quite as easy as he thinks it is. But regardless, just by attempting to do it, a lot of people are going to get hurt, and some people will probably get killed.
So this needs to be taken, again, very seriously. And we can't talk about, oh, he's being hyperbolic, you know, he's exaggerating. No, he made it very clear that this is what he wanted to do. His, basically, last two months of the campaign focused on only this and transphobia.
That was pretty much it. So to think that he somehow was not serious about that, let's dispense with that right away. We need to move forward with people. And look, I guess I sort of mean you and me, Danielle, but we don't have any power.
It's like, you want me to do what? Stop the mass deportation? No, I mean, look, it's important, I think, for us to keep getting the message out that he's serious about this. And not just us, you know, people like us in these kinds of professions.
But it's really important for lawyers and people like that to really start preparing for what's going to be, for what's to come with regard to this whole mass deportation thing. You know, what concerns me the most? And I mean, God, I don't even know why I just said what concerns me the most, because there are so many things that are competing for number one. But Tom Homan, who is going to be the de facto border czar, his direct threats to blue states and blue state governors was, you know, we will send double the amount of agents into your states because we're coming for these people, whether you want to or not.
And so the reality is, a lot of folks who have concentrated their work in the immigration space have been saying that places that were sanctuaries, which are not just sanctuary cities, but schools, hospitals, churches, synagogues, right? You know, these places that have long been off limits, but they've been off limits in this idea that you can designate a place as a sanctuary and then, oh, folks will follow the rules. This regime is not going to do that. And so my fear is too, is that people that try and protect folks, that teachers, that now children are being pulled out of school or people are being pulled out of hospitals, people that are being pulled out of churches, services being disrupted and military barging in.
Like these are images that we have not seen in this country. And it is about creating a climate of fear and a climate of fear that then will have folks who have historically stood up and protected these individuals to turn their backs on them for fear of what will happen. And so this chain of retribution, this chain of cruelty, I fear is very long, we'll have a very long reach and the damage is going to be catastrophic. And on top of what we will see, you know, in our day to day, because a lot of these things, you know, most of us are very, you know, hands off.
It's like going into the supermarket and you're not seeing like the slaughtering that happens at farms. You're just going in and you're getting your food. When you start to see the harm that is taking place, like that is when it's going to send shockwaves across this country. And that is what I'm most fearful of on top of the economic impact that we are going to see when we lose millions of people from our labor force that are needed in order for us to get our basic needs met, like food, like agriculture, et cetera.
While we hope that they have bitten off more than they can chew. I honestly, Andy, don't think that they care. No, I don't either. And the fact of the matter is, if he is somehow successful or even partially successful in deporting millions of people out of whatever number he's throwing out this week, whether it's 10 million or 20 million, it's going to crater our economy.
We know that. But you've already got, look, you've already got people like Elon Musk out there talking about how, you know, all the measures that are going to be put in place are going to lead to short-term pain. So when you say they don't care, absolutely they don't care. You know, it's more of a feature than a bug for them.
I want to point out the Daily Beast had an in-its piece about what Trump said on Truth Social also had a good roundup of other reports and sources who are familiar with the deportation plans told CNN over the weekend that Trump aides are already plotting how to expand detention facilities, including in metropolitan areas. And Politico reported on Monday that the Trump team is already brainstorming to come up with ways for Trump to issue executive orders that will hold up to legal challenges from human rights groups. So all of this is in the works. He's not even president yet, and all of this is in the works.
So again, this has to be taken incredibly seriously. And we can't let people walk around saying, oh, he didn't mean it, or oh, he can't deport 20 million people. It'll never work. It doesn't have to be 20 million people for whatever efforts they do use to cause extreme pain and death.
So this is happening now. It's starting now. And the other thing that is starting now is the amping up of the threats around the media. And with Donald Trump, once again, as nominee for the FCC, being one of the authors of Project 2025, you know, the project that he didn't know nothing about, is Brendan Carr.
And Brendan Carr has, you know, while other people come into FCC, and they want to talk about the expansion of broadband and quickening our speed and being competitive in these places, his whole plan is around shutting down opposition to Donald Trump, is about rescinding licenses, is about going after quote unquote, big tech and their DEI programs, and signaling that this is about free speech and reining in big tech. And so we are going to see what I mean, what's funny is that you and I've talked about for how many years now that the corporate mainstream media has been complicit in the moment that we're in. And yet, and I couldn't understand why people were not calling out how dangerous Donald Trump is running wall to wall coverage on how dangerous Donald Trump is. And instead, they normalized him.
And now they are going to be the very targets, as we've been saying for years of his retribution, which is that he's going to go after all of these networks and these places who are already beginning to bend the knee, and he hasn't even had the inauguration yet. So our entire communications landscape is now going to be, I mean, dramatically, dramatically devastated because of people like Brendan Carr. Yeah, this is really bad. You know, on its face, it doesn't sound as bad as RFK Jr.
being in charge of health policy or, you know, Matt Gaetz being in charge of the Justice Department, but it's bad. I swear to God, I see one more thing referring to Brendan Carr as a free speech advocate or free speech warrior. Nothing could be further from the truth. This is a guy who is a strong ally of Elon Musk, another fake free speech champion.
This is a guy who thinks that, oh, for example, people who are advertisers that refuse to advertise on Twitter are part of an illegal cartel that have to be broken up because they don't want their ads running next to, you know, at Hitler lover 69 tweets. So this guy is not a friend of free speech. As you said, he wants to go after broadcast networks that don't bend the knee enough to Donald Trump or that air reports that might be critical of Donald Trump or that air a show like Saturday Night Live. Brendan Carr is very upset that Kamala Harris made that surprise appearance on the show the Saturday before Election Day.
He is a really, really, really bad guy. And if he gets his way on the FCC, he could absolutely destroy what's left of the broadcasting infrastructure in this country. And actually, I mean that in both a metaphysical and a physical sense, because the FCC is supposed to be dealing with things like broadband access for people and stuff like that. And you could be damn sure he doesn't give a damn about that.
All he cares about are his little MAGA pet projects. And you're right, Danielle. The thing you said about how they're already starting to bend the knee, you know, there's a phrase that's been going around. I've seen it a lot on social media.
The phrase is don't obey in advance. And there's a lot of obeying in advance going on. I'm not an online activism kind of guy, but the don't obey in advance thing, I think it's crucial for everyone to think about in their own head and to think about things that way. And don't stop yourself from doing something because you think Trump is going to make it illegal down the road or something like that.
You can't think like that. And so I actually do think don't obey in advance is very, very good advice. I mean, it's one of the ways people can resist what is about to happen. For those that study fascism and authoritarianism and dictatorships, it's the thing that they repeat often, because you think that if you do obey, then you are going to be safe.
And the reality is no one is safe in this type of situation. Not even the people inside of Trump camp are safe. The fact is, is that we have more power in numbers and more power as a collective to push back. Then I wish that more networks and outlets would decide to rally together rather than exist in their own fiefdoms and think collectively about how you continue with the free press and free speech moving forward.
But sadly, I do not think that that is what is going to happen. Yeah, I just want to give a shout out to Snyder, who's a professor of history at Yale, incredibly well respected and writes a lot. about issues like this. He's written a thing called On Freedom, another thing called On Tyranny.
And I want to point out that on the first page of his pamphlet, as he calls it with the title On Tyranny, page one is Do Not Obey in Advance. So I just want to give a shout out. That is, I think, where that's coming from online. America and the world are absolutely rife with hate, extremism, and mis-slash-disinformation.
And it's not a bold case to say that it's going to get even worse during Trump's second term. Here to talk about some tough questions for those who seek to combat all those things is senior research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, Jared Holt. Jared, thanks so much for being here. Hey, it's good to be back.
It's good to have you back. You've been at this for the best part of a decade, you say. Fighting the fight against hate, against extremism, against mis- and disinformation. And after the election, you wrote a piece at your sub-stack, which is called Post Through It.
And it had a headline, A Better Way Forward Starts With Hard Questions. And one of the things you say in this piece is that this moment calls for self-criticism and reflection, not scapegoating. Before we get into what's called for from the people like you who fight against this stuff, let me ask you what the usual way that you've been working is. You know, there's disinformation out there, there's extremism out there.
What's been the standard way of combating it? So the route that I have taken historically for the better part of a decade has been in the form of research and reporting. There's a million and one ways to fight back against this stuff. Some of it is less effective.
Some of it is more effective. Some stuff is more effective at certain times and less effective at other times, right? I mean, really, it is ultimately a product, social sickness and like a social disorder to some degree. So it's a wide ranging thing.
My approach, just based on the skills that I have and the way that I can think to apply them, has been investigative reporting. It has been news analysis. It has been original research. So what I try to do is take on the role of a quasi current moment historian of sorts, some days or a cartographer the other days, is trying to shine light into the darker corners and hopefully give people information that is not just kind of interesting or whatever, but on my best days, potentially useful for them as they make decisions on how they want to go forward, whether that is taking a fight to extremists or whether that is thinking about ways to better protect themselves and the people they care about.
So that has generally been my approach. But as I'm sure we'll talk about soon, I think there are some points where things could be seen to change or at the very least there should be some questions about the way that generally the approach has been taken for the last decade or so that I've been in at least. Yeah, one of the things you said in your piece, which I thought was a really, really strong metaphor, is you said of all this stuff, this hate, this extremism, you said, while the symptoms are receiving care, the underlying sickness still ravages our body politic. And you sort of are saying, and I think you actually do say it directly, you're basically saying, look, I'm out there, there's a bunch of other people out there doing the work, alerting people about this hate, this extremism, but it sort of is not stemming the tide of it.
Please understand, I'm not bagging on you when I say this because I don't do what you do, but I do talk about this stuff a lot. So in that sense, I lump myself in with you is that we're all sort of talking about the symptoms and not the underlying sickness. I think that can be a tendency. And it's not to say that that underlying sickness is not recognized.
But there is an environment present where they can flourish. But talking about that environment is a much bigger question. And the answers to that are less clear. It can be easier to tell the story of something through a series of vignettes, whether it is looking at this hate group or looking at that movement.
But the conditions in which these groups or these bad actors, whoever they may be, operate in is a broader social problem. It starts to get beyond the scope of what any single researcher or reporter can do. I am not under the illusion that I am one report away from changing the world or anything. When you zoom out enough, it starts to be a question where the answers start to become so numerous and wide-scaling that it becomes a lot more difficult.
But as I know in the piece, I think that difficulty should be something that we try to lean into, right? I think the tendency, at least in the field I work in, is to think about those problems and say, they're so abstract. They're not really in our scope of work. They're not really in our lane.
But I think trying to understand those better or come up with, you know, not just a criticism, but like a different positive vision forward is an important step in healing society. And, you know, there will be pessimists who say it's too late, it's too far gone. You can't do that. Jared, are you suggesting social engineering?
No, not really. But like, it's just, it's a more difficult question. I think ultimately that's what I'm getting at is underneath this layer of stuff that is still a bit kind of out there and confuses people at first of understanding the landscape of hate, extremism, disinformation. That landscape exists on top of a foundation that is in kind of rough shape.
And I think we would do well to make sure that we're at least giving some thought to that foundation and whatever our own personal roles may or may not be in making that foundation stronger or weaker. Does that make sense? Yeah, absolutely. Along those lines, I want to talk about, like you say in the piece that you have, you know, again, you have these, some ideas for initial steps to sort of go forward to improve what y'all are doing.
And the first one you talk about, you say we need to audit assumptions made about these topics. So what do you mean by that? I think a lot of research and reporting on hate, extremism, misinformation, the whole bucket. A lot of it, whether it is from big think tanks or reporters at different publications or advocacy groups, there's a lot of sort of, I hate this term, but like groupthink that goes on.
There is a general sense working in this space as somebody who started as one of the few dozen people running around banging pots together trying to convince people that the internet was actually way more important than they gave credit for. It's now being surrounded by all kinds of startups and research organizations and offbeat media coverage. There's this general sense in the field that it's like of camaraderie. And I think that is part of what makes doing this work nice and unique, all things considered.
But I do worry sometimes that that has meant that certain assumptions about work, whether it is what we consider impactful, is that something that got a million views? Well, sometimes something can get 10,000 views and depending who viewed it, it could be even more impactful. It could be even the most basic assumptions like stuff we saw in the lead up to the election this year. All this coverage of the Proud Boys and their supposed plans to rock the polls and do another January 6th.
I look at these guys every day and I was scratching my head wondering why we're talking about this group and not like a dozen different ones. It can even be as baseline as like what is important. I think there's this general tendency to not want to rock the boat too much. But I think that rocking the boat, if there's a purpose to it, can actually end up being pretty productive.
And you might take on a little bit of water in the process. There's some risk, could be terribly wrong about something. You could attract the attention of people who want to pull the thread until you come unraveled. But ultimately, I think we have to think about stuff.
There's all these best practices about so-called amplification of extremism. But me as a sometimes journalist, former investigative journalist, years ago, the amplification thing doesn't totally square with the whole sunlight is the best disinfectant mantra that you learn in journalism school. It's just thinking about identifying what kind of assumptions we're making about these problems. Spending the energy to question those assumptions, I think it's a worthwhile exercise, especially as we all sit around and we think, you know, there's more research and writing being done on this stuff than maybe ever before.
But it's not really moving the needle and questioning those assumptions as part of the process of hopefully getting to a better answer of what it would look like to do this differently or to do this in a way that is having more impact. That's such a great point. And I think it plays right into your second sort of idea. And that is, you say, we need more imagination and curiosity among research groups.
And it sounds like that's sort of what you're saying about auditing assumptions, in a sense, because you say that many groups are focused on the same sets of topics and that they approach them from almost identical angles. And what you're saying is, well, you know what? There's a lot of groups out there doing that already. Do something different and see where that leads you.
And I think that's such a great thing to say, I think. Thanks. I would like to say the next four years of this work being a little bit more exploratory than I've allowed myself to be in the past. The internet is such a huge place and because these problems are ultimately social problems, they express themselves in a variety of different communities in so many different ways.
As a research field, there's still so many blind spots that exist out there. Like one that comes to mind immediately is how true crime media products, whether that's podcasting or documentaries, have a tendency to inspire a small group, but these weird fandoms around serial killers and all that sort of thing, you know, historically have not shown a lot of interest in it. One of my little pet interests is about firearm influencers online, people that dedicate their lives to producing various training materials or informational materials about firearms and how to use them. There have been a couple of manifestos where people have, you know, in leaving instructions to a would-be copycat are like, you should check out this video.
I watched this video and that's how I picked this gun. It's not to say they're responsible, but, you know, that's another node of influence that I feel has been underexplored, right? My point is that there is this big landscape, big field of stuff out there that is just ripe for, you know, an enterprising researcher or reporter to go try to develop a better understanding of because I fear that the way the research field has been set up, at least in the last three or four years, it's been very sort of tunnel visioned on groups like the Proud Boys or militia groups. And while those groups are important, there's so much out there that's important to understand to get the full context.
And a lot of researchers, you know, especially some of the, you know, more experienced ones, I would bet have a lot of this stuff kind of tucked away in the back of their head, but I think there's a value in exploring that, you know, in turning that into material that can further public understanding. Yeah, that is so true. And the Proud Boys are just such a perfect example of that because as you say, everyone was like so focused on what are they going to do at the polls in 2024. And then the answer turned out to be not much, which doesn't mean, you know, it's not something to pay attention to, but surely we don't need every researcher or every organization focused on the Proud Boys when there's other stuff out there.
And it got me thinking, as you were talking just now, I guess a month or so ago, I talked to Jessica Pitchko who wrote a great book about the rise of the constitutional sheriffs. That's sitting in the back of my office. That's a great book. It's a fantastic book.
And it's something, it's such a crucial thing, I think, for people to know. And it's not the kind of thing that it feels like her book and a couple of other people have really started a conversation about the role of sheriffs in America. And that to me is something that hadn't been going on for a long time and probably should have been. So, you know, I feel like that's not obviously specifically what you're talking about, but it does seem to me that that kind of thing is needed more where it's like, okay, hold up.
There's a lot of stuff we're not focusing on that really get to the systemic roots of a lot of what's going on. And I'll just, because I only have two minutes left, I'll take this into the last idea that you put forward. And you say that we need new anti-hate investigative groups and that they need to be well-funded, well-lawyered, and willing to pick uncomfortable fights with powerful people. And then you say the number of organizations that consistently meet all three conditions has dwindled to near zero today.
And that is wild to me and kind of scary. What's going on there? Yeah, that's probably the most controversial line in this piece. Okay.
That's the one that picks fights with other researchers. But yeah, there's a lot of research groups that have a lot of money. There's some research groups that have, you know, a strong legal arm. And then there's some research groups that make no bones about picking fights with some of the most powerful people on earth like Elon Musk.
But as people like Elon Musk have sued some of these groups or as some groups have been deluged with negative media coverage or been dragged in front of Congress to testify about how they are the, a lot of groups that have historically led this work kind of retreating into this defensive posture. And I want to be very clear. I'm not saying that their work has degraded. I'm making no value judgment here about the quality of work they're able to produce.
But I think they are not picking the same kind of hard fights and really going to war in the same way that we saw a lot of these groups do so in the first Trump administration. Thinking of groups like the ADL congratulating Trump on his degree, right? I think a lot of groups are scared. And if you're running a business that's based on this stuff, I don't run ISD or look at the spreadsheets or anything like that.
I'm sure those fears come from a good place of wanting to protect the people that work for them. But I don't think this is the moment to retreat to the sidelines. I think a lot of people, the public, you know, affected communities need people to step up and speak truth to power in that kind of fearless way. And after this election and seeing these results and sort of how the field has reacted, I'm not seeing like a really clear leading voice on that.
So I think there's an opportunity for that. Donors and that sort of thing are part of this too. They just need to find a group or start a new group that's willing to, you know, take the fight and just make sure that they have everything they need to not explode and burn up in the sky. Before you brought it up, I was going to sarcastically say, well, at least we still have the ADL because man, what a disappointment they've become.
But Jared, I just think all of this is so great and so important and so necessary. Thanks for coming on and talking about it and thanks for continuing to do what you do. And hopefully at some point enough people will start listening. Jared, thanks, man.
Thanks for having me on. I think about this stuff all the time. I think it would be good. Like thinking through some of this, like I say in the piece, it involves asking some hard questions that might have answers that are kind of uncomfortable.
But I think the way forward through this has to be sustainable and impactful at the same time. And we can't get there by kind of like glazing over things. I think we kind of have to confront some of the more uncomfortable things and work our way through it. So I appreciate the conversation and it's always good to be back on the show.
Folks, I'm very happy to welcome back to the new Abnormal editor and reporter at The Lever, Lucy Dean Stockton, whose recent piece entitled The Biden Reforms That Will Be First to Go. Thanks to Republican deregulatory frenzy and Democratic gambles, many key consumer protection initiatives could soon be wiped away. Lucy, let's get into this. We have probably around two months until this transition is complete and Donald Trump and the second regime take hold of power.
And we know that Joe Biden over the course, particularly over the summer in the last several months, has issued a lot of different initiatives, a lot of different plans that are easily overturned, but that went a long way to protect Americans, you know, from lead poisoning, from, as you write in your piece, methane admissions, strengthening child care programs. Talk to us about these policy measures and why we kind of need to be paying attention to this and understand this 1996 legislation called the Congressional Review Act. Sure, yeah, I'm happy to. I mean, yeah, we have about two months and so much of the focus has been on Trump's cabinet picks, which all seem to be the worst guy you know and then appointing him to federal office again and again.
Much of the other reporting has also focused on Trump's policy priorities, but I want to pay special attention to this 1996 bill called the Congressional Review Act. It's a somewhat obscure federal law that's been increasingly weaponized by Republican lawmakers in recent years and it has the potential to repeal hundreds of probably thousands of President Joe Biden's final regulatory initiatives and it may repeal them forever but basically the law 1996 law passed in the clinton era it has the possibility to repeal any rule passed since august 1st 2024 and that includes like you said lead poisoning productions environmental energy efficiency rules child care labor laws anti-money laundering rules so the law of the congressional review act was passed by a republican congress but signed by bill clinton and it basically creates what's called a 60-day look-back period where republican lawmakers in congress can use a simple majority to repeal any agency rule passed at the very end of the last president's term it technically allows 60 days for any rule to be repealed after it's released but it really is effective during these cost administration periods because it needs to be passed by congress and then signed by the president and what we'll see right in this incoming congress is a republican governing trifecta the republicans they won the house the senate and obviously the presidency and this rule also goes one step further than what most legislation needs to go through usually to reverse an agency rule it requires a filibuster-proof majority of 60 votes but this super powerful tool only requires a single majority vote of 51 senators republicans as you know are set to have at least a 52 member senate majority so they can really use this governing sweep to overturn much of the last administration's final rules so explain to me why biden if there are 800 or so or a thousand of different policy initiatives that he put in place that could easily be overturned what were the guardrails or what were the things that were put in place in order to make it so that these initiatives couldn't be over couldn't be overturned couldn't be repealed so easily in an incoming administration like to me it's almost like what is the point you issue these things knowing that unless you have a democrat that is following you then it is most likely going to be null and void i'm curious as to your thoughts around that i would say many experts are actually divided on this there is some complications right and i think it's worth saying that agency rules take years to develop and it's part of what makes all of this like such bullshit is that a congress maybe five years ago could have passed legislation that required the epa to issue new methane rules and then the epa goes through years and years of rulemaking process you know they have public comment periods they have focus groups they they write policy and they rewrite it and then it like jockeys back and forth between congress and the agency and finally when it comes out years later the executive branch basically empowers these agencies to enact rules and suddenly with the cra 51 senators can basically just repeal that you know they take away five years of agency's work and so it's tough to say it's just biden because i mean there there were basically uh you know thousands of agency rule makers working on this but i do think that it's bringing up questions on why this wasn't done sooner and i know that some experts i spoke to were like biden's administration had been thinking about this you know he actually passed a record-breaking slate of significant final rules in april long before this look-back period would have started with i think the thought of trying to protect these rules but there are still so many rules coming down the pipeline that it's hard to guard them all and i think there's also a lot of frustration and fear because of this extra catch with the cra the cra has this sort of like nuclear fallout button i guess that is how i'll describe it which when it was implemented there's a special aspect of the law that not only repeals the law or the rule but it prevents the agency that issued it from ever instituting a rule that is i quote substantially the same ever again let me ask you this before you go into the deeper explanation so anything like it ever again or something that is worded exactly the same when you say that stops the reintroduction of something what are we talking about in terms of specificities what can it not have yeah totally another good question and i think it's like part of the problem of what is this unexplored dynamic of the cra which is that the cra has only been used like i think a little more than 20 times and 16 of those times were donald trump's first presidency which is also notable biden when he became president only repealed three of trump's rules using the cra just because he didn't want to make a habit of using this rule but the question of like what makes a rule substantially the same hasn't yet been mitigated in court it's worth pointing out that for for some of these rules it would be hard to issue the same rule in different language like for example the lead pipe rule this is one that has really been keeping me up at night it's a landmark ruling that the epa said for the first time in american history that there's no safe level of lead in water how can you say that in different words you know if you try to reword that you'd immediately be running into the problem that any rule that prohibits lead from being in water is substantially the same got it okay so disaster lucy disaster danielle i would call that a disaster i can also point to this one cautionary tale that i think is also quite haunting one person i spoke to he has pointed to an incident that has become sort of a paradigmatic lesson for democrats but basically in 2004 president george w bush employed the cra for the first time ever to repeal this clinton era ergonomics rule from osha the ergonomics rule like required employers to prevent repetitive stress injuries which are still like the biggest cause of workplace injury today and when george w bush repealed it osha took it back and here we are 25 years later it's still the biggest cause of workplace injury and the agency that was created to prevent workplace injuries has never released a similar rule so what does it look like now here we are two months donald trump is getting ready to go in political norms be damned rules be damned you lay out the ways in which this has not truly been used biden only used it a handful of times donald trump was the one to use it the most and we know that like his entire regime is about deregulation right his entire regime is about the people be damned clean water lead like all of these things the people be damned it is about deregulation so that companies are able to and his donors the ceos are able to make as much money as possible is there any reprieve here or this is this is just like what we're in for personally i'm fearing that this might just be what we're in for and in some ways like we're lucky that there has only been about 830 rules since august 1st in the in the thousands and thousands of rules released in the biden administration but there is not that much you can do to prevent this area from being used and i think we know it's going to be used a lot in the past few years republicans have passed 111 different cra resolutions even though they knew that biden would be to them you know so they were just sort of signaling these were messaging exercises and signaling what they would be opposing the lever found that vance himself co-sponsored 24 pieces of legislation and these are all aimed at repealing significant biden rules that again wouldn't go anywhere but were sort of an interesting messaging exercise to say the republicans know how to use the cra and they're going to if this is just what we're in for and democrats apparently did not think further enough ahead in order to figure out how to pass these regulations that would not immediately be repealed in a new regime then what does this look like moving throughout this administration it's going to be heavily used as you're saying is there even a way to slow it to slow down what it is because i think one of the things that you write in your piece is that this takes up considerable floor time so we know that they have a lot of initiatives a lot of things that they want to get done and get done quickly we know this from following project 2025 so is there any way that you foresee democrats being able to gum up the works in the way that republicans notoriously have done in the past in order to slow down this onslaught yeah it would be amazing if they could repeal the cra i don't know if that's a political possibility i think democrats are really taking a gamble that cooler heads will prevail and like i think back i know a few sources said you know john mccain was obviously a republican but i would say a little cooler head of that of the republican majority he didn't like the cra in part because he really didn't like the the permanent consequences of it and the way that it could be weaponized so easily so he actually prevented the republicans from using the cra in a few different cases throughout his time uh in in congress but i think that probably a lot of it would be democrats using floor time to make sure that this can't that the cra can't be used frivolously and yeah trying to fight other fights where republicans again may not want to use their resources i think that the cra is a really dangerous weapon of legislation and i think it's also necessarily a politically asymmetrical one you know it's an anti-regulatory tool and even though it can be used by both parties if it prevents future regulation then of course republicans are going to want to use it so it is tough to sort of see it be so easily accessed and i would imagine that probably the best way for for democrats to fight that is to keep it from being used and for the biden administration and the agencies to try and make their rules as legally strong as possible so that they could they could defend themselves better do we know how many policies or initiatives were issued from august 1st on because that's in that that's in the 60 day sure yeah i mean the other thing is it's really weird it's 60 working days so these are like pro forma days when the senate is sort of gaveling in and that's why it goes all the way back to august first but at the time that i published the article last week there were about 830 rules that could be repealed and i think a little over 100 of them were very significant they had gone through an internal rulemaking process that sort of brought more attention to them because they'll have significant economic impacts or require coordination between different agencies yeah and all these rules you know there's one i talked about with protecting against lead poisoning which includes that landmark statement from the epa saying there's no safe level of lead in water but there's also rules around requiring methane emissions reductions there's environmental energy efficiency rules for commercial appliances strengthening child care programs specifically by bolstering salaries for head start programs to address the child care crisis across the nation there's a rule from the national labor relations board outlawing captive audience meetings where employers force employees to listen to anti-union informational sessions there's also anti-money laundering rules which i think is kind of a crazy one these rules are designed to force big companies and financial advisors to basically like fight terrorist financing and money laundering activities but republicans have claimed that it costs too much in paperwork so they want to get rid of those and then i think there's the really embattled automatic flight refund rule which i know the lever has reported on a lot but that one was released i think just last month and it requires airlines to automatically refund customers when their flights are delayed or canceled and it's allowed airlines to pocket billions because it takes so much work for passengers to try and get their refunds now they have to give it automatically it's going to cost them you know it's going to cost the industry just a huge huge sum of money and that rule which was just released from the department of transportation is again in jeopardy because it was passed after august 1st oh lucy you know i hope the next time that you come back you got better news me too honestly this story has been really troubling i report on all kinds of things and this one is troubling because it's just this weaponized piece of legislation and i worry a lot about the permanent consequences of it that could affect will making for decades to come yeah i mean these are things that we knew were on the chopping block we knew uh we're going to be targets of a trump administration and here we are and we knew that the next term was going to have effects for generations to come and now it has arrived and we're going to need to deal with the consequences which haven't even begun yet but they are impending lucy dean stockton thank you so much for making time again for the new abnormal folks the pieces at the lever right now the biden reforms that will be first to go definitely check it out really appreciate you and your reporting thank you so much for having me on danielle moody andy leaving danielle it's a new week i don't know how the vibes are yet i suspect i know where they're going but hit me with your fucking gun yeah so you know there's always a lot to choose from particularly as cabinet appointments get announced also side note anybody know i read recently that this is the fastest announcements of any administration in 12 days 12 announcements have come out and that is thanks to project 2025 and being prepared and ready to go on day one which is what donald trump has been saying so now over the weekend because we know that he doesn't pause these announcements to give anybody any air he selected chris wright the head of a fracking company called liberty energy which just also is i mean these people it's like find new words but the way that you know it's run by right-wing folks is that if it has liberty or freedom in the title it is anything but that so he has been tapped to serve as the head of the department of energy and to serve on the energy council nothing screams i don't give a fuck about the environment than a man that has been in charge of fracking and what i realize again about all these people when donald trump signals let's make america great again everything is about the past and nothing is about the future because if you actually care about the future then you would be looking into technologies and different industries that are growing as our environment is battling the effects of climate change sooner than scientists thought that we would be dealing with these ravages but everyone that donald trump is putting up is past thinking not forward thinking chris wright is one of those people what makes me really sad is like what is going to happen to young people who didn't have a voice in this election i'm talking about generation alpha that like will barely have a planet to live on because these people do not care about clean air clean water there's gonna be a massive land grab of federal lands so that they can frack it's so sad and sick and that's what america is going to be sad and sick moving forward because of people like chris wright so yeah fuck that guy but you know he is he's next up to bat to destroy our environment there is no climate crisis oh okay well that's something chris wright said last year yeah that seems right and this is the guy who's gonna be running the energy department you run out of words to describe these cabinet nominees was it steve bannon who talked about throwing a bunch of shit at the wall flooding the zone yeah that's what this is flooding the zone with shit people like that's what he's doing so every single pick has the potential to be the worst person in that job in the history of this country it could absolutely be a clean sweep and don't get me wrong we've had our share of horrible federal department heads in this country's history in this country's recent history but this could be a clean sweep of the worst group of people to ever head federal departments it's absolutely wild fuck that guy and all the rest of them andy how are you kicking off this week with your fuck that guy i'll talk about another cabinet appointment although he himself is not my fuck that guy this time and that's matt gates and my fuck that guy this time goes out to the republicans in the house who have made it very clear they don't want the house ethics committee's report made public for those who don't remember matt gates was being investigated by the house ethics committee for a bunch of things involving underage women i guess girls would be another way of describing them and house speaker mike johnson has come out very strongly saying he doesn't want this report being made public jim jordan house judiciary committee has also said it should not be made public now these are the people that are constantly talking about groomers and here we have in the form of matt gates a guy who is basically accused of of grooming and of having sexual relations with minors and now they can't wait to stop this information from becoming public there were some reports over the weekend from i think one of the lawyers of one of the women who testified going into details about witnessing him having sex with underage people at parties that were also described i think as drug-filled orgies and now all of a sudden mike johnson jim jordan and a whole bunch of others don't want this report being made public and they are very very okay with a guy who is being accused of doing these things becoming our attorney general Matt Gaetz, I guess he gets a little bit of a break this time because he's not the focus of my fuck that guy, even though it's his behavior that led to it. But no, the people who want to bury this report are the ones who get my fuck that guy for being A, enormous hypocrites, which we already knew, and also B, for just being the worst people in the world. So fuck that guy.
Fuck those guys. I honestly, I'm just praying for a leak. I really am. Yeah.
I think that the American public deserves to know what is inside that report. And the thing is, is that like, it doesn't even need to be leaked by Democrat because there are plenty of Republicans that hate him. So to me, it's just like, why are you suppressing this report? If there's nothing in it and he is good to go, then let it air out.
But the fact that Johnson and others are doing double, you know, contortionism to try and protect Matt Gaetz, who will most likely not be approved, confirmed, is wild to me. It's like, let him go down. But for whatever reason, they always circle the wagons around the worst people. So I have no idea.
Fuck those guys. Yeah. And look, I agree. It doesn't have to be leaked by Democrat.
I mean, if Kevin McCarthy can get his hands on this report, it would be leaked in a heartbeat. And it might actually stiffen his gavel enough to make him do that. Hope you enjoyed checking out this episode of The New Abnormal. We're back every Tuesday, Friday, and Sunday.
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