Transcript 0:00 [upbeat music] You're listening to the Oklahoma Memo podcast, the fastest way to get smart on Oklahoma news, politics, business, and sports. 0:15 Welcome to another episode of Grant and Ryan, part of the Oklahoma Memo podcast. My name is Ryan Welton, the founder of Oklahoma Memo, your daily local news recap that hits your inbox six days a week at 7:00 a.m. 0:25 And this is Grant Herms of Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms, national podcaster. He's on Substack, and he's on YouTube. All you gotta do is look up Make It Make Sense. 0:35 And we're gonna try to make some sense today of things going on. How you doing, Grant? I'm good, man. I'm good. My folks are in town this weekend. 0:41 We're gonna head out to do the, uh, the, the sand dunes on the west side of Michigan- Mm-hmm... which I've never actually done for all the years that I've lived up here. So I'm excited to go do that. 0:49 Uh, it's, it's a beautiful weekend up here, so I'm excited to have them in town. I haven't seen them in a long time, which is nice. So yeah. Lu- lucky. 0:57 It's hot down here still, but we're about to get a whole bunch of rain, because as you know, Grant, when the Oklahoma State Fair rolls into town, so does the weather. 1:05 Yeah, exactly, 'cause who doesn't wanna be in a Tilt-A-Whirl when it's thunderstorming? [laughs] Man, I don't know, uh, 'cause we both used to have to work the, the fair booths at News 9, [clears throat] 1:14 and I low-key did not hate it at all. It was just a- Yeah... sort of a salt of the earth people coming by. 1:20 But I will tell you, there was one year when a storm real bad I thought was gonna take us and the tent right to the sky. 1:27 There's nothing worse than sitting under that vinyl, like, awning tent that we had, and then realizing that the bubble of water is hanging right over your head, and if, 1:39 if you sit there long enough, it's coming down on you. It's like one of those dunk tanks, and you're just waiting for it. Totally. 1:45 [laughs] And where we were always positioned was right next to an area where they were doing karaoke. Yes. And it could be really good, or it could be so awful you could not- Mm-hmm... think. Yeah. So- Yes... 1:56 good times, uh, yeah. A- also, sometimes good, sometimes bad for both reasons, right? Sometimes distractingly- Right... good, sometimes- Yeah... distractingly bad, which could be good. So, like, yeah. 2:05 [laughs] Yeah, yeah. No, no, totally, man. Good times. And I'm, w- I'm planning to get out to the fair just to stuff myself with corn dogs, turkey legs, and, uh, whatever that jug of root beer is, so. Yes, obviously. 2:16 We have a lot to talk about, and we're going to talk about, uh, AI. AI's, AI's a lot in the news this week. Mm-hmm. But let's start, um, with the Supreme Court's decision this week on mail-in voting. 2:25 Basically, they've reversed whatever the president wanted to do here. Yeah. They, they blocked it basically. 2:31 Uh, this has been the thing that I have been covering tip to tail since June when the, you know, uh, March when the president put out this executive order, but really June when this thing came out from the post office. 2:41 So 2:43 w- what the Supreme Court did on Monday was after 10, 12 days almost of waiting around and kind of deciding what was gonna happen here, as absentee ballots had already been going out, was say that a l- lower federal court's decision to put a block on this new mail-in ballot rule for the United States Postal Service, that block that was in place can stay in place. 3:09 Give me one second here. I have to, um, put my thing I Do Not Disturb. Um, my wife is- Yeah. Oh, yeah... my, Becca's home right now, and is up texting people in a group chat, and it is exploding. Oh. Okay. Jesus Christ. 3:22 I'm usually the group text offender. Uh, it's fine. She's just usually at work when we do this, and so she's here, and it's like, ah. All right, uh- All right, hold on. I'm gonna... Let me jot down the time. 3:32 Uh, it is- Yeah... 3:20... yeah, 3:20, yeah. Okie dokie. All right, three, two, one. 3:39 And really quickly for listeners who, like, haven't been steeped in this thing for the last, f- I don't know, what is it, it is f- three months or whatever, uh, is this rule, what it would've done for USPS, it would've forced USPS to create what's called a federal ballot portal and new envelopes and new barcodes for the states to use, that the states would've then had to, like, throw out the, the envelopes they use for absentee or mail-in ballots, and then get brand-new ballot envelopes, which were, like, new colors and new barcodes and all these things. 4:11 Uh, and then take a list of all their eligible absentee voters, send those t- through this federal portal that USPS was going to use, that that list was then gonna get checked against a DHS list of citizens and eligible voters, which DHS has been told by a judge that they also cannot use because it is illegal to use and to build, which is a thing we'll talk about in a second. 4:36 And then all of that together was gonna have to get done before the election for every single state. And a federal judge said, "Yeah, that's can't happen." And the Supreme Court said, "You're right. 4:47 That can't happen," because this was likely gonna disenfranchise millions of voters and was just gonna throw a general wrench into the entire system here. And a question. 4:58 So, uh, in the opinions, did, did the Supreme Court, uh, explicitly say the part about disenfranchisement, or were they just saying, "It's not possible right now"? 5:08 So what they said was, 'cause it was a shadow docket ruling, so it's unsigned. We know that it was seven to two, uh, because of how we got different o- opinions on this. 5:19 So there was one concurring opinion, which is Brett Kavanaugh, which means he agrees with the overall opinion but has thoughts about it. Uh, yeah, as he is want to do right now. 5:30 Uh, and then we had two dissenting opinions, which are, uh, Justice Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. Uh- I could've guessed that from a billion miles away. Sure could. Sure could. Uh, and 5:42 what the overall opinion was is that the government was just unlikely to win this case on its merits, and so the original block stays in place, meaning that they just didn't think that this thing was gonna work in general. 5:53 This rule wasn't gonna stand up in an actual court case. 5:56 But they didn't hear this court case, so that means this thing could come back in 2028 Brett Kavanaugh said straight up he thought that this rule could probably go through, but thought that trying to do it now was just not in line with the timing. 6:13 Basically saying, he said, he used the words arbitrary and capricious, which in judge speak basically means, like, there's no need to do this now ahead of the election so close, and is basically telling the White House, "Hey, you're showing your hand a little bit too much. 6:28 But if you want to do this ahead of 2028, go ahead, and I might be on your side in, like, a broader oral argument for this thing." A much bigger case, not an emergency case. 6:39 The administration knew that this might be a thing where they can't win in court in a big oral argument, so they wanted this thing in a shadow docket. 6:48 They thought maybe they can sneak this thing through in an emergency ruling where the justices don't have to actually explain their reasoning in this way. 6:56 And, you know, then everyone can kind of hide behind, "This is an emergency," and do this thing. Alito and Thomas, uh, just, you know, both thought that, 7:08 that this, this whole thing was fine and, and, uh, were just on the side of the administration, which they have at, at every single turn here, uh, because that's their mission now as they are in the twilight of their years on the bench. 7:20 That's this other thing. They, uh, like my mother, my late sainted mother, mother, she could, uh, finally tell you what she really thinks. Mm-hmm. Exactly. I mean, like, you know, um, you know, T- Thomas, uh, uh, is 7:36 basically on this revenge tour where he has said that he has thought that American liberals have made his life a living hell, and so he is going to do the same to them from the bench. 7:45 He said that publicly I don't know how many years ago now, and has made that very clear in his rulings. Um- And for tho- those who don't know, the reason why is because when he was being confirmed 7:57 almost 40 years ago now- Yes... it's actually probably about 30, 35 years ago now, um, he was raked through the coals, and there was an Oklahoma tie because it involved University of Oklahoma law professor, Anita Hill. 8:08 Mm-hmm. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, it, it was a huge, huge, huge, uh, watershed moment of, of American history and, and, you know, the court's history. 8:18 And wasn't exactly the, the turning point for when the court gets politicized, but it's maybe- Yeah... maybe the final straw of when this moment happens. 8:27 Uh, from the Revolutionary War, I believe Lexington was the first shot, the first- Yeah... I mean, this, this is, I mean, it, I think when we, I think you're right. 8:35 Yeah, I mean, like, I, you could really argue that this is when, this is when the gloves come off in this way, and when everyone is sort of, like, talking past each other about politicizing the court. 8:45 At that confirmation hearing, that's when this thing sort of just is out in the open at that point, and we spend the next f- 30, 40 years just doing that. Um, and it's pretty naked after that. 8:58 But now this mail-in voting rule is not gonna happen, and the USPS has been told, uh, that they have to send out memos to all of their people that says, "You don't follow this rule. 9:12 Act as normal, so act like you did two years ago." Um, a memo had to go out previously when this first block came down from the federal judge. That stays in place. So if you're gonna vote by mail, you can vote by mail. 9:27 Uh, if you're worried about it, go check with your clerk. That's totally fine to go do. Uh, go check your registration at vote.gov or vote.org. 9:38 Those are, vote.gov is the official one from the Election Assistance Commission. 9:42 Vote.org is a nonprofit that is excellent, uh, and they do the same kind of work, and they will direct you to the right places to go where you can check your registration, if you can vote early, what you need to vote, uh, if you can drop off your absentee ballot in person. 9:56 Uh, if you're worried about all of this stuff by voting by mail, that is totally fine. Uh, but you should be able to vote by mail without a problem if that's how you're planning to vote. 10:06 There is another thing that is happening, we likely think this coming week, where DHS, which is building this citizenship list, this voter database, I... 10:17 They've been using what's called the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement system, which is called the SAVE system, which, as I said before, sucks because there's also the Save America Act. 10:29 They are different, but they deal with similar things. 10:32 The SAVE system is a Citizenship and Immigration Services system that is used to check immigration statuses to see if someone is eligible for certain entitlements or benefits within the federal government. 10:44 Uh, that is a terrible way to check if somebody is a citizen. DHS has known that for a long time, and we know that through internal documents that have been released according to a lawsuit that has been filed recently. 10:57 It's, like, you know, two weeks ago. They've known that for a lot longer than that, uh, because the data there is flawed. The system for this thing is huge, and citizenship lags, right? 11:08 Someone gets naturalized, it has to go through a lot of processes to get into the SAVE system. The SAVE system itself is kind of like one of the last things that this stuff gets through. 11:16 It's got to go through, you know, IRS, Social Security, uh, o- other DHS stuff, other c- like, you know, USCIS stuff, and then it gets into SAVE, and, like, because it's just the last thing, right? 11:27 There's state stuff involved. It's just a whole thing. But DHS has been building this list off of the SAVE system for more than, you know, nine months now. And, 11:38 well, a judge, many months ago at this point, told DHS, "You cannot build this list off of the SAVE system because you know that it's terribly flawed, and you've been hap- haphazardly putting this stuff together, so you know that it's worse than flawed because the original stuff is flawed, and the stuff you're putting together is flawed." 12:00 And then they've been sharing that data between themselves and DOJ and Social Security in ways that violates several federal laws, including the Social Security Act and the National Privacy Act and a couple other privacy laws, and potentially is a violation of the Fourth Amendment And the judge said, "You can't use this data." 12:20 And DHS, according to at least a lawsuit that got filed, has been quietly building this list with that data anyway because they said, "Oh, so we just can't use the SAVE system, we can use its data," which is clearly not what the judge said. 12:32 And so now there's been another lawsuit to stop all this work in general, and that's gonna get ruled on next week. 12:39 We'll see if the court rules in the administration's favor to continue to build this citizenship list, because now without a mail-in voting rule, there's no need for them to build this list. Mm-hmm. 12:52 Uh, it's just a citizenship list at this point and not a voter list, and that is a different thing. Uh- Yeah... 13:01 so it's hard for the government to argue that they need this list in order to have some kind of election integrity thing, because what, what do you mean? Uh, there, there's nothing for you to check it against. 13:12 You're also losing court cases, uh, the DOJ is right now, by trying to get state voter roll lists, and 13:22 you don't have access to those things, so there's also nothing there to check against this other list you're building. And then there's real evidence right now that the list they do have is still deeply flawed. 13:33 Texas just announced that they, 13:37 you know, had found, they, like, are referring, like, 117 cases of alleged non-citizens that they think are either on the rolls or might have voted, uh, to first their attorney general and then likely the DOJ. 13:49 That happened on the 15th. Is that, what was that? Tuesday? Uh, and 13:55 they also say in this press release from the secretary of state this week that in the fall of last year they found more than 2,700 alleged non-citizens, and of those non-citizens, uh, they were immediately able to prove more than 570 of them were citizens, which is an error rate of 21%, which is astronomical when we are talking about something as important as the right to vote. 14:21 And I understand that someone's gonna say, "Well, there's still 80% of those people that, you know, were, that couldn't prove that." We're just talking about what they could prove, like, right away. 14:29 Like, someone- Right... gets a letter and they're like, "What are you talking about? Here's my passport." Uh, and that's how bad this data is, and they're trying to put this across the country. 14:38 And so I don't know if the Supreme Court's gonna rule in DHS's favor for a lot of these reasons. Uh, the privacy thing is a big thing for a lot of the conservatives on the bench. 14:47 You know, Gorsuch has ruled in favor of privacy. Roberts has ruled in favor of privacy, the chief justice. Uh, so has Kavanaugh, although Kavanaugh may again lay out some kind of way- [laughs] He'll, um- Yeah... 14:58 he'll vote against it, uh, you know, uh, but he'll have some concerns. Yeah, he'll vote, yeah, he'll, he'll, he'll say that you can't do this, but he'll be like, "If you wanna do this, here's how you do it." 15:07 [laughs] Right? Right. [laughs] He, he's the, um, he's the justice instructor. It's, it's OJ's, you know, "If I didn't do it, but if I did, here's how" thing. Oh, right, right, right. Like, it's, it's been his thing. 15:18 Oh, that's... Well, didn't, didn't he have a documentary- Yes, he did... where he was like, "If I did do it"? He wrote a book, he wrote a book- Yeah... basically doing that. Yeah. 15:24 Like, that's been Kavanaugh's thing this- Ugh... this last whole term. Yeah. But, like, I don't know. 15:30 And so the, what I said, you know, before we were rolling is basically what the president got leading up to this mail-in voting decision was a bunch of, you know, spoonfuls of sugar, of rulings, you know, that were the ballroom and I, you know, the arch and a couple other things that were, like, in his favor, and then this one, which were, you know, the thing that he actually really wanted but they couldn't give him, that was the medicine, and so does he get another dose of medicine or does he get another spoonful of sugar on the back end of that? 15:59 And I don't know. Maybe- I've al- Yeah, I've, I've always likened this shadow docket concept to, uh, mom and dad when you're a kid. 16:08 You've bugged mom, you've bugged dad over and over, and there's a point where they're just tired of it, um, and you just, you know they're worn down, and you ask them one more time. 16:18 Um, and then maybe then they will capitulate. Yeah. 16:23 It, it's almost, or it's like, uh, it's like, you know, at Christmas when your aunt and uncles are around, and, like, Mom and Dad say no to the extra piece of candy or whatever- Mm. Mm... 16:31 but, like, your uncle slips you one under the table. Right, right. And it's kinda like that. Right, right. Uh- The uncle slips you one, but the mom is Brett Kavanaugh. She has some concerns. Right. Exactly, yeah. 16:41 And she's like, "You know, I wouldn't do that, but next year if you want that, if you ask nicely- [laughs]... maybe I'll..." Yeah. Or, you know, or go for this one because it has organic ingredients. [laughs] Right. 16:48 Right, exactly. Exactly. Man. So we'll see. But for now, you can vote by mail, and that is a big win for a lot of American voters. And honestly, it's some good news, uh, for once, to be honest. Right. So, yeah. 17:01 Right, right. Yes. And, yeah, r- uh, good news for sanity, for those who are Team Sanity. Yes. Um, let's talk about AI, because, uh, last week when we talked, it was, um, Team We All Gonna Die Now. Yeah. 17:12 Uh, and this week it is the AI companies themselves, not altogether altruistically, coming together to say, "Look, maybe we need to slow down development a little bit." 17:22 Before we started rolling, uh, you kind of outlined the reasons why they're doing this, but can we just sort of, like, start at the beginning? What did the AI companies say this week? Yeah. So 17:33 l- late last week into the weekend, uh, the head of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, um, wrote an essay basically saying, "Hey, we need help. 17:43 We need government regulation because we are building things that we can't get our arms around, and we think that it, there's a non-zero chance that this thing could wipe out humanity." 17:55 And by we, he means specifically Anthropic and OpenAI, a little bit of xAI, which is Elon Musk's Grok, um, and then kind of Palantir, but not Palantir, which is its own AI surveillance thing. 18:14 That's separate from this conversation. It's really these three. 18:17 And- What he wants is in this essay, he basically lines up three things, but he says at the end that we, you know, are gonna try to slow down on our end and have better guardrails in place, and that we also need better guardrails from the government in place. 18:33 And it's frightening, uh, in this statement, right? It is, uh, d- a, a unusual thing for companies to, especially of this size, to come forward and say, "Hey, we need government regulation, uh, here." And Anthropic 18:51 is one of the companies that has been better about acknowledging that they don't know how to peer into these black boxes of the things that they're building, and that is frightening, uh, I think for a lot of people. 19:04 They are kind of, you know, they're creating Mr. Hydes out of Frankenstein monsters, and then they're also doing it blindfolded, and that's tough, I think, for a lot of people to understand what... 19:19 Like, why continue doing that? I have a hard time understanding why continue doing that. If you don't understand what you're making, why continue doing it? And then also if like you think there's a non-zero chance of a, 19:31 a species erasure, why, why continue doing it? Um, I, uh, like, people compare it to the Manhattan Project in a way, which is w- how they developed the, you know, nuclear bomb. Uh, I think that's a little different. 19:43 That's a time of war. Uh, go watch Oppenheimer if you have half a workday- Right... uh, to go watch it. Right. [chuckles] Uh, but like, uh, it's excellent. But like, uh, uh, but like, you know, this is different. Um, 19:58 and then the other two AI companies, uh, and the heads of those, Sam Altman at OpenAI and Elon Musk, uh, those two guys famously don't get along. Um, they sign on to this essay and say, "I agree with, with Dario on this. 20:10 I think, you know, we could use some help." 20:12 And at first it feels like what in the tech world they call effective altruism, which is just like, you know, out of the goodness of our hearts, but because it's Silicon Valley, they can't just say that. 20:21 They have to like s- make altruism optimized, which is gross. Uh, but like there's that. But that's not really what this is, right? 20:30 What this is, is yes, I think some of that, I think they want, uh, uh, some government regulation on this because they want help, but that 20:39 is needed because then what that does is it ties these AI companies and the government so tightly together that they can't be undone. 20:48 And that means that then these companies are, you know, one-to-one with the government and they're embedded in everything. And that's good for them because it means that they have money for life. 20:58 And it's good for them because both, uh, 21:02 Anthropic and OpenAI need to go public, which means that they need to have public stocks on, in the stock market, and that's gonna net them a lot of money if they can tell their shareholders now and their future shareholders that they're going to have a ca- net cash flow of a bunch of government money because the government and them are so intertwined because of these guardrails. 21:23 And then also this thing which is like saying you're real dangerous has always been sexy, right? Like it, like it's never not sold. Right. Can you imagine if Philip Morris had come out and said... 21:35 They had it all wrong in Mad Men. They should've just come out and said, "Yeah, there's a good chance you're gonna end up with a lung cancer." 21:42 Yeah, man, I mean, like, like there, like there, there's a reason that like- Living on the edge... Christine and like, you know, Bonnie and Clyde were always sexy, right? Yeah. Like it's a thing. Uh- Yeah... 21:51 so like yeah. It like, it, it's this sell point for them to be like, "Our stuff is so powerful and so smart, it's dangerous. 22:00 And look how cool it is, but it's so dangerous it could kill humanity," and it's them sort of like trying to build hype for their thing so that the AI bubble doesn't pop, and so that they can get more people into this thing so that when they do go public, their share price or whatever is huge and they make a lot of money. 22:19 And because money has kind of been leaving AI because people have doubts about this thing, because there are real fears from regular people about AI, you know, they can like sort of goose this whole system. 22:29 Uh, there's, there are real legitimate things I think that they're trying to get their arms around because the president, uh, is... 22:39 They feel like in bed on the wrong side of this, um, and, uh, we'll get into that in a second. But these companies also wanna make sure that there isn't an emerging kind of AI company which is... 22:53 This is k- really weedsy, but there's like an open source sort of AI company, and Palantir- Mm... is kind of like this, but like kind of, um, where you can like go into the coding of an AI and sort of- Mm-hmm... 23:04 do it on your own. It's very like Windows, uh, early stages of Microsoft stuff. Um, and, 23:13 and like that's sort of this new frontier of some of these people who wanna put a lot of money into these smaller startup AI companies, and that's where like people like Trump's AI czar, David Sacks, people like Peter Thiel, who is, you know, uh, uh, JD Vance's m- mentor, Svengali, money backer, right? 23:36 Uh, those people want this stuff to rise to the top, and these big AI companies, th- which they call the frontier companies which are on the bleeding edge of AI, uh, they don't want those companies to rise because they wanna maintain their power at the very top here. 23:51 And that's also part of this too. So if they're at the very top, they can sort of pick and choose who wins and who loses. 23:58 They can be on the inside of what regulations do happen when AI becomes, you know, the thing that we all use all the time. And that's this way for them to, you know, have this set place in 24:13 true American modern life in a way that like seems to be coming. Uh, and so it's all these things bundle up all at once, and if you make a bunch of people afraid about extinction, that's a good way to do it. 24:28 It's not that that's not a real fear. There are real people out here right now saying real things, and, like, that's possible. It's just these other things are at the beginning. Can, can you give us an idea? 24:39 So I, uh, when I think about, uh, the, the real fear in terms of, like, a wipeout of humanity, uh, the way I understand it is, is that there are, uh, jobs that can be sort of replicated over and over and over- Yeah... 24:51 and over. 24:52 And largely would be things like, uh, you know, intercepting health records to ensure that that next prescription doesn't come, um, to ensure that, um, um, you know, anything that the hospital might have known about you isn't there when you're rushed into ER. 25:06 Um, just sort of... Or is it the creation of some sort of, like, Wuhan virus? Well, so it's more like, uh, like, 'cause this is the thing too, right? 25:15 On our day-to-day basis, you and I interact with more, like, large language models, LLMs. Um, think ChatGPT, think Claude. Even the stuff that you interact with at work really isn't what we're talking about here. 25:30 What we're talking about- Hmm... is these companies racing to build a super intelligence, a what they call AGI which is, um, artificial general intelligence that outpaces human intelligence. 25:44 And to do that, they have a bunch of individual AI models that aren't LLMs. They're not, it's not ChatGPT, uh, 'cause those things are just like predictive, 25:57 uh, text basically that's high functioning, that is just answering questions, that's scraping the internet and human knowledge to answer a question you put to it, uh, or create an image or whatever. 26:08 These things are algorithms also scraping the internet and human knowledge to do these things, but they are focused on one task, and what they've got is a bunch of these little models, these AI agents is what they're called, working towards one task. 26:21 And, and then that's to build a super intelligence, and then that, that next level of that thing just keeps building and building and building, and then you can put that towards one other task. 26:32 And so whether that's, you know, uh, one experiment, uh, you know, I, I can't remember what exactly they were trying to do, but one experiment broke out of the containment because they hadn't done what's called alignment training, which is like giving this thing morals. 26:47 Uh, to be very crude about it, I know there are people who might know a lot more about this, but, like, not to be very weedsy about this or technical, like, it, it wasn't given morals. [laughs] Right. Right. 26:57 It's Pinocchio, right, without Jupiter. But it almost... Yeah. Uh- [laughs] Oh, it, yeah, it almo- It sounds like Frankenstein, Pinocchio. Yeah. It's like the, almost they have to inject some sentience in- Yes. 27:07 Well, y- yeah, or just like, basically it's just like, uh, like for the sci-fi people, like it's, it's Isaac Asimov's or it's I, Robot without the three laws, and, like, the, it's, 27:19 uh, because this is what these people are obsessed with too is, like, these sort of b- '30s, '40s, '50s, '60s sci-fi stuff. It's how they view the world, and it's less humanistic of those things. 27:29 It's, uh, they, uh, think about these things this way. But, like, it's not the stuff that you were talking about that is like this, the real fear. 27:37 It's like there's, you know, um, Dario Amodei talks about these agents, these AI agents escaping containment and then shutting the internet down because their task is to, uh, uh, uh, keep humans healthy 27:51 is broadly speaking. 27:52 And, like, they see the internet as bad for human health, which, like, arguably sure, or they, they shut down cell phone lines and planes fall out of the sky, or they shut down power plants because their goal is to keep human health, humans healthy, but pollution and climate change is, you know, the number one driver of, of human- Politicization plus that capability- Right. 28:17 Right. So it's like it's this thing. Uh, and, like, they, they don't even see it as politicization. They just see it as like, 28:24 as like, uh, well, we know that X number of deaths come from pollution every year, and we're just gonna shut down, you know, four power plants in India, and that's a billion lives, right? 28:37 Because that's electricity, power, running water, whatever. Uh, and like it's that kind of a thing that people are worried about. Uh, hospitals go dark, that kind of a thing. Uh- It's a problem... you know? 28:50 Or yeah, networks go down, pacemakers go out, things in people's bodies go out, that, that kind of a thing. Um, there's a real fear there, and again, some of this is hype, some of it's not. But the, the thing is, like, 29:07 they don't know, and that's the problem is that they can't see into their own boxes of how these things are operating or why, uh, and why or how they... 29:18 You know, recently, uh, OpenAI had a big one where these little AI agents, uh, broke out of containment, 29:26 created or took over like a message board basically, and were talking to each other about how to hack into another AI company, did that thing, covered their tracks, and then covered their tracks on the message board, and they didn't find this thing out till months later. 29:42 So that's not great. Uh, [laughs] that they also know how to, like, reward hack, which is cheat, and then to just finish the experiment 'cause they have no alignment training, right? 29:54 They don't, they don't have any morals. They have a goal, and they're Terminators, and, uh, that's it. And so that's the kind of thing we're talking about here. Right. 30:03 Um, and I, I think when we're talking about AI regulation, which there are actual laws or bills that have been put forward about this, the government currently is unwilling to do this because the president is unwilling to do this because he has different things at stake, which means Republicans who are in control of our government currently have different things at stake. 30:23 Because the president after this stuff starts to make the rounds and it's talked about all weekend Comes out on Monday and says, "We're not gonna do AI. We don't need guardrails. 30:32 All we need is a high IQ president, which the country has in spades," which is a direct quote from what he posted. And- Do we? Apparently so. I mean, he's passed every IQ test they've ever given him, right? 30:43 They keep giving him those dementia tests or, or IQ tests or whatever they are, and he keeps passing with flying colors. Uh, even though they keep- MenSA plus 100. 30:50 Yeah, they keep giving him those tests, though, because they just wanna, they just wanna keep seeing him pass those tests. Uh, talk to any doctor about why they would keep giving him those tests. Um, but 31:01 the thing with that is that the president doesn't like the AI companies, and also I have a theory about his AI stuff that I'll get to in a second. But, uh, he is deeply aligned with the head of the company NVIDIA. 31:16 And- Yeah, Jensen Huang... Jensen Huang, uh, who is a Taiwanese-born, uh, CEO. And NVIDIA is not an AI company, but they do make AI chips. 31:28 They're the world's largest producer of AI microchips, and, or the microchips you use to do AI work. And Trump has made a lot of money off of NVIDIA personally. 31:40 It's one of his big trades, uh, and trading companies, uh, in his stock trades that he made this year. The president has traded more stocks this year than all of members of Congress combined, uh, which is crazy. 31:54 Um, he has traded $50 million in just what's called the Magnificent Seven, uh, tech companies alone. NVIDIA is the top one of those Magnificent Seven companies right now. And Trump likes Huang a lot. 32:09 Uh, and I think Huang understands that having this personal connection to the president is good for him. And NVIDIA needs these AI companies to not have regulations on them because NVIDIA needs to sell AI chips. Mm-hmm. 32:22 The president also needs NVIDIA and these AI companies, uh, to do well because NVIDIA has been useful to the president in the Middle East because earlier this year, the president was able to 32:37 undo some regulations about selling these American chips to the United Arab Emirates, to their s- we- he's called the spy sheik, but he's essentially their, like, spy chief over there, um, which we previously had a moratorium on because the UAE occasionally works with some not so savory people, we'll say- Mm... 32:56 uh, in the Middle East. And the president lifted this ban, sold a bunch of these AI chips to UAE, and then UAE turns around and buys half a billion dollars in Trump family crypto. 33:11 And, you know, lo and behold, that's just how these things happen in sequence. They say they're unrelated, but you know, it's kinda hard to ignore the timing of this. 33:21 It's also really advantageous for the president to be able to pick up the phone and call Jensen Huang, which he did this week. 33:29 He called his personal cellphone while they were taping a podcast, which, uh, means the president was watching the livestream of this thing, uh, which is crazy. But like, like in the middle of the day- That is insane... 33:39 uh, yeah, um, it's insane. 33:41 But like, he ne- Like, it's advantageous because the president can pick up the phone, call Jensen Huang, and say, "Hey, I need you to make, cut a deal with Saudi Arabia or UAE or Qatar for some more AI chips because they're talking about maybe backing down, uh, or backing out of the war in Iran or war with Iran. 34:02 And, 'cause they're getting hit the hardest right now. And so can you like, I don't know, maybe sweeten a deal with them a little bit?" And that's helpful for Trump as leverage. So that's good for him. 34:13 And then on top of that, Trump needs NVIDIA to do well because if, if NVIDIA does well, the rest of the Mag Seven do well, and these AI companies do well, and that keeps the economy from crashing. 34:25 And because the Mag Seven basically hold up the economy, and it's the same- Yeah. It's-... sort of like $100 billion- Just-... floating around the economy... 34:32 I want people to understand this because I've heard Scott Galloway talk about this on- Mm-hmm... uh, Pivot, um, uh, Scott and Kara Swisher, of course. 34:41 Um, but the economy, the entirety of the economy is being held up by this group of Magnificent Seven companies. Yes. 34:50 It, it's essentially the same IOU for like $100 billion or whatever being passed around these same seven companies and like their subsidiaries or whatever. 35:01 But like it's the same n- note being passed around to them- Yeah... uh, in class, and that's holding up the economy. And if NVIDIA has to take a hit on that because OpenAI and Claude, or, and, and Anthropic and, and xAI 35:17 are pumping the brakes, the economy's gonna dip. And Trump's massive fear about the economy is that he gets compared to somebody like Jimmy Carter or Herbert Hoover. Yeah. Yeah. 35:27 He talks about it all the time, and Trump is nothing ex- except for an over-communicator and is terrified of this idea, uh, that he is on the precipice of being a recession or depression president and, uh, as a businessman president, right? 35:42 And, and like he needs NVIDIA to do well. 35:46 So he can't be on the side of AI regulation because of this one massive company for his own personal wealth reasons, his own personal ego reasons, and also like real, real political reasons. 36:00 I also think the president doesn't want AI regulation because the president doesn't understand how AI works. 36:07 When he, when put to the test of this stuff, he doesn't understand the difference between an LLM and this other stuff they're doing. I said on the show this week that I also think the president needs AI 36:21 personally, like on an ego level, because he finds AI useful to prop up his own... fantasies about himself. 36:31 It's, it is this thing that when he hears regulation on AI, he thinks, "I won't be able to put out a picture of myself as a fit golfer- Right. Yeah... when someone catches me in a golf cart and I don't look so great. 36:43 Or like, I get a bad poll, does that mean I won't be able to put out a r- list of ranking the presidents with my face at the top? What, what happens now?" 36:51 Like, and I don't think he worries in those, that same linear order, but I think he finds the, the ability to put, you know, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries in sombreros funny and soothing, or he f- you know- 37:05 Right, right... it's, it's this thing for him. Well, does he not know that he could have hired a designer to just build that in Photoshop or Canva? I think he does, but I, you know, I, I'm sure he could, right? 37:14 But like, I think the, the at-his-fingertips thing of AI has been very helpful. He needs an app- he needs an app to do it. 37:21 Well, yeah, and then there's this thing too that, and I'm taking this from somebody else, and I can't remember who it is, but like, there's this thing too that like, AI has been very beneficial to a lot of people, specifically on the right, some on the left, but more so on the right, in which a lot of the moral panics or just the, the policy panics of things like waves of migrants flooding over the southern border, uh, or, you know, people, uh, stealing from c- convenience stores or, or, uh, you know, videos of people, uh, you know, committing SNAP fraud or what- uh, pick your thing, right? 37:58 Um, or, or, or even like good things that the, the president does, uh, that aren't real. Um, 38:05 but like it's easy now to make those things real with AI, and so you can put that out into the world and then make the narrative true, and it only works if you make this fake thing. 38:18 Even though none of the numbers work, even though none of the actual reality of it works, you can now create an unreality and make that look real to a lot of people, and that's been useful for the president. 38:30 And I think the idea of regulating that for him sounds like tamping down on that ability, and somewhere in his brain that hits a nerve, that h- that clicks a thing for him. Yeah. 38:43 And I, that has to be true, because- So I, I-... this has been a very useful tool for him. 38:47 I, just for the, the Oklahomans out there who are like fighting against data centers and fighting against AI, I'm not a, an AI catastrophist. I'm fascinated by it. 38:56 I've gotten into recently MCPs, Claude, and then using ChatGPT work. Um, it, folks, your productivity just... You should, you should learn about it. But we are being held hostage economically by this, because 39:13 in, in fact, it's sort of another what's the matter with Kansas? We're out there protesting against AI, protesting against data centers, and look, if these companies fall, oh, the depression we're gonna feel. Yeah. 39:24 And like that's this thing too with all of this, is that the, 39:28 the odd thing about the president pushing back against the regulations, and that then Republicans have to as well, although we're seeing a lot of Republicans in races in a lot of tight places, and then some not so tight places as well, um, in some rural parts of, of America as well, uh, 39:45 you know, ignore the president's demands on this. Um, but like a lot of people, including the president's base, are just not with him on this. There's a lot of anxiety about A- AI. There's a lot of distrust of AI. 39:57 Um, and it's not just data centers. Most of the anxiety, though, is about being replaced at work. Um, it's risen about 10% over the last 10 years. 40:06 It's about, I think it's like 27% of Americans right now believe that they're gonna just get fully replaced at work by AI. That goes up, uh, if you look at people ages 18 to 44, which is a pretty big span. 40:18 That's Gen Z and, and most millennials, um, but that's the bulk of the workforce right now. 40:23 So it's about a third of those people think they're gonna get replaced, which is a lot of people, and that means their spending is down because they're worried about their futures. 40:30 They're delaying starting families and buying houses, um, and saving for the future 'cause they don't know what's gonna happen in the future, uh, which I, I know sounds like an oxymoron, but that's not how people live their lives. 40:40 Um, you know, people are rallying against data centers, and those things are failing all over the place. Uh, it's, it's a real thing. 40:49 And then, and then people come around to the, like, existential threat idea and, you know, are, you know, is my data being used in war machines and those kinds of things. 40:57 That happens later, but the immediate stuff is what people want. And, 41:03 and then this folds right into how bad corruption feels to people right now, and their anxieties about their livelihoods, and then watching the president be like, "Data centers make people rich," which is what he said on the phone to Jensen Huang in that podcast. 41:21 Uh, 41:23 and said that, you know, this is the, the gold and the oil of the next 25 years, and it's gonna make people rich, and people are worried about their own livelihoods, and it does not feel like the president means people like them. 41:36 That kind of thing shakes people. Yeah. And it does feel like corruption to them, and it's not a winning political message for Donald Trump or Republicans when this is kind of a ready-made issue for them, 41:52 and it's interesting that they're not just taking it. And Democrats aren't much better at this either. They're trying to find their way, but they're also trying to like, you know, not feel behind the times either. 42:04 It's the same stuff you were saying right now, right? They wanna be in this place too, but like, voters are where they are, and so they're trying to figure out how to, how to navigate this. 42:13 But like, as Democrats tend to be, they cannot get on the ball. Uh- I, I, I've tried to explain to people over the years, and a lot of people say, "Feelings are always value, uh, valid. 42:25 I, I, you know, if you, if you really feel these strongly, again, I can't tell you you're wrong. Your feelings aren't wrong." 42:30 But I wa- I wanna ask you about this, 'cause you mentioned this to me, and I think this is fascinating It's not as if the leaders of these frontier companies are being altruistic. No. 42:40 There's a reason why they want regulations now. They wanna kind of be inside the process. Yeah. I mean, that's what I, I said a little, a little bit ago too, is that like- Yeah... they wanna be inside this process. 42:51 They know regulations- Yeah... are coming. Certainly, you know, Democrats win the House. Uh, I think, uh, Decision Desk gives a Democratic House and Senate win at like 50%, 48% now. 43:01 So like, you know, you've got an entirely Democratically controlled Congress, uh, and legislature coming up. Uh, 43:09 push comes to shove, the president's probably gonna get on board with some of this stuff as public opinion gets, you know, higher and his approval rating gets lower. He's gonna have to be forced to do some of this stuff. 43:21 Um, and like, you know, im- impeachment investigations continue. Uh, he can only rage against the dying of the light so much. Uh, so some of this stuff, yes. Uh, [laughs] yeah, I know, I know. Uh, so like yeah, I, I... 43:36 They wanna be inside on this process of what regulations look like, and it's gonna benefit them. 43:41 And there is, uh, there's a thing that they wanna do which kind of sounds like what's called the, the Phoebus Cartel, which is light bulb makers at the turn of the 1900 century, right, the, the 20th century, that helped set prices and helped set regulations for like, you know, not burgeoning electricity, but like electrifying lights in homes and cities and these things. 44:06 And we would consider that illegal collusion now in a way that, uh, wasn't back then. These were, you know, robber barons kind of people. So they want that. And will they get it? Maybe. 44:23 Partly because the people who are in charge right now, most of them said they don't use AI, uh, and they don't understand it. We are running into like- It's-... the social media hearings from a few years ago- Yeah... 44:33 on steroids. And- Oh... that's gonna be a problem. Well, and it's, uh, you know, uh, a lot of conversation about the need for age gating. Uh, you know, we do it at the front end. Why not at the back end? 44:45 I'm borrowing from Pivot again. Uh, but uh, you know, it's a... I mean, y- you gotta get educated about this stuff. Uh, and you, you... 44:53 I mean, if you're in a position of leadership, you have to be using it for the, for the purpose of knowledge just to know how it works. Yeah. 45:01 I, like I've always wondered, and I, this is a thing that I just don't know 'cause I've not read it in like the Senate rules, the House rules. But like if you're at a House or Senate hearing, 45:10 I don't know if you can have someone like pinch hit for you in a hearing. I, like I truly don't know. But like if, if I'm... I know, I'm not even sure. I don't remember who sits on these tech committees now. But like, 45:23 like let's just say it's, uh, just 'cause something on my brain from writing a thing this week. I, I'm Peter Welch, Senator Peter Welch from, from Vermont. Mm-hmm. 45:30 And I sit on the tech committee, and uh, I, I just don't know enough about AI. And so you know what I'm gonna do? 45:38 I'm gonna have the leading, uh, technical ethicist from Cal Poly come in or Stanford come in, and he's gonna be my or she's gonna be my, uh, 45:54 my chair for this hearing. Right. I'll be in the room, uh, to, you know, do whatever but like the ceremonial senator stuff. But like they'll be asking questions in my stead of these people. And like I, I don't know. I... 46:10 That feels like a thing we can't do, but like I don't know if we ever have tried, and I don't know if it's a thing that is allowed. Like- Because they're always on the other end of the questioning. Right. 46:20 And so b- if the questions are ridiculous, then the answers are going to have to be, uh, working from the bottom up. Right. And so like I don't know if that's how this can work. 46:31 Uh, but like it feels like a thing that if we can't get these leaders briefed well enough because they just don't have the knowledge at their fingertips or they can't absorb it well enough, then like can we stick the people who do have that knowledge in a position with some em- actual empowerment to ask these questions like in those places? 46:52 I don't know. That feels like a thing that I... might be a bridge too far. 46:56 I'd, I have never looked into it, but like, uh, it's a thought that just came into my head now, so I thought I'd say it into a microphone for- Right... you know. 47:02 [laughs] Well, I appreciate that because, Grant, that's essentially how I've made my living. I have thoughts. I'm going to say them now. It's not a... It's smart. 47:12 That's why I'm asking you the question about, uh, you know, them wanting to be on the inside. I don't know what I was daydreaming about when you were talking about that. No, no, no. 47:19 I, I- But I'm sure I was imagining, you know, a zero-sum game, mutual, you know, world destruction. No. Yeah. I knew what you were getting at though. I know. Well- I knew. I knew. Yeah. You're good. 47:29 So we, I have a handful of other topics to talk about. Let's... Can we touch briefly on Lance Sroyer- Yeah... his nomination being withdrawn yesterday? Yeah. 47:36 And it's not so much about him, and it's not so much about the, uh, uh, you know, uh, who's going to head up ICE. Mm-hmm. Um, it's about Markwayne Mullin- It is... 47:47 and what this says to the president about this guy that he picked who is struggling at this point. Yeah. So Sroyer, uh, OHP trooper. Was he a major? I can't... Uh- Uh... lieutenant. I forget. 47:59 He was with, yeah, he was with the Oklahoma Highway Patrol. Yes. Yeah. OHP. Uh, and he did run several like immigration, uh, liaison sort of task force stuff with, alongside DHS. So he wasn't like devoid of this. 48:13 It was dubious about whether he actually met the criteria for ICE director. Um, but it, likely that was gonna slide. Uh, it, it... He probably did, but like it was unclear-ish. 48:29 Uh, murky enough where they were probably gonna be fine. But this was... He's a buddy of Markwayne Mullin's, right? Lance Sroyer. And- When Mullen comes into DHS, it's pretty clear that Kristi Noem had been 48:41 running DHS as her own little fiefdom and had really turned this thing into, you know, uh, she's the queen and this is her court, and, uh, people are, are loyal in a way that was odd. Um, and Mullen is not 49:00 super savvy to that. Um, and he's not that kind of a guy in the Senate either. He's not a player like that. 49:08 He's picked because Trump likes the way that he is on TV, because he's sort of brash and he's, you know, a fighter, and Trump's... Trump likes his physicality as a guy. Um, and like- Trump, Trump likes tough guys... 49:20 I, look, man, I, like, I don't, yeah, I don't know what to tell you, right? And he wants the opposite- Muscly guys. Right. 49:25 He wants the opposite of Kristi Noem in there, and Mullen is kind of a guy who Trump thinks he can sort of, uh, put in his place a little bit too, and Kristi Noem took up a lot of air, uh, and a lot of air time, um, with a lot of costume changes and everything else, right? 49:38 So Mullen's not gonna do that. And 49:42 Mullen, though, needs somebody on his side, and what better person to have on his side than the guy who heads up the most public-facing agency right now of DHS, which is ICE, and that becomes Shroyer. 49:55 Um, Shroyer sits in limbo for a long time here, and then yesterday Trump pulls his nomination, which is not good for Mark Wayne Mullen, because Mullen has not been on the right side of the president for quite some time. 50:07 DHS has not been doing the arrests and mass deportations that Trump wants. 50:12 When ICE has been talked about publicly, uh, they've made headlines for all the wrong reasons again, uh, which they're gonna continue to do because of the way that ICE is operating right now anyway. 50:22 But, like, uh, every time that ICE is sort of let out of the, out of the penalty box a little bit here, not to belay a hockey metaphor, I guess, but like, uh, you know, like it's... They, they shoot someone, right? 50:35 Like, maybe they don't kill someone, but like a, a violent altercation happens against a person or a US citizen. Like, it's just this thing happens. 50:46 Uh, and then, you know, they announce they got, they arrested 50,000 people in July, and it turns out that most of those people had had no criminal record, so they're just rounding up people, which is, uh, 50:58 horrifying, terrifying. Uh, and then Mullen still needs this guy to go through, and it doesn't happen. 51:06 Mullen is also still pushing this idea that he wants to close down international travel at sanctuary cities, um, which, you know, is New York and [chuckles] LA and, uh, Chicago. 51:20 Uh, and I believe Miami is one, maybe not now, but like, uh, like just major ports of travel, and like Trump's rich friends hate that, and the donors, Republican Party hate that. 51:32 And so, like, you know, Trump's getting calls from his friends being like, "Hey, what is your guy doing?" Yeah. Right, right, right, right. 51:37 And so Trump's in Mullen's ear, but Mullen would bring it up at every meeting, in every cabinet meeting and like private meeting with the president and like, you know, just... 51:45 And Trump is sick of hearing this thing, and then Mullen gets on camera and is kinda not doing a great job lately, and in- Yeah. 51:53 Well, there was the, the video, uh, from yesterday where he, uh, was trying to say the word precedent- Mm-hmm... uh, but I think he said president and press something and- Yeah... it just, um... 52:03 But I mean, cav- caveat emptor, we knew this. Yeah, he's not a eloquent dude. He's never been that. And so, like, yeah, I, I mean, like Trump liked the cowboy hat and liked the look. Like, it is a thing, right? But like, 52:17 so, you know, all that's happening right now, and then Mullen doesn't have a friend on the inside, and then ICE doesn't have a leader still. 52:27 They have an acting, you know, leader right now, an acting director, which is workable for the president. I don't remember how long that acting director's been there, but they don't have much more time, uh, to be acting. 52:37 Um, but he has to pull Shroyer really because the Senate says, "Hey, we're not gonna vote for this guy. We, we just don't think he's got the juice for it." 52:44 And likely because, like, Shroyer isn't really what these people want when they think of a director of ICE. The director of ICE is an administrator, not a law enforcement agent. Not really. Um, 52:56 and like, you know, while Shroyer has some administrative experience, like he's a highway cop, and that's not what senators are thinking of when they think of like leading this agency. It's a more serious position. 53:09 Needs a more serious person. Much, much more. Much, much more. And, and like, it's bad news for Mullen, and then it is now the sixth withdrawal for the president in this term, which is a record. 53:24 Um, he already had set a record at five among presidents for withdrawals or rejections. 53:28 Um, technically this is a sub-cabinet level position, so, you know, what I'm talking about too is cabinet level positions, but it is rare across presidential history for presidents to have to withdraw or have their nominations rejected. 53:41 Usually these things go through, partly because they're vetted, uh, and they know what's gonna happen, but also partly because presidents get what they want. 53:50 But all of Trump's have been withdrawn while his party has been in control of the Senate, which is- Hm... crazy. Uh, it is a sign both of what the Senate feels like his judgment is, but also what his judgment is. 54:05 Like it's, it's really interesting, and some of, in the past, you, if you look at this list, and I like, uh, I'll post this on Instagram a little later today, um, too, but like 54:19 if you look at the list over the modern history, there's more of these withdrawals and rejections. Part of that is, uh, a polarization of the Senate. 54:28 Um, so as you get closer to where we are now, you know, Obama has to withdraw some because Mitch McConnell's like, "Hey, we're just not gonna vote for this person, and we're just gonna put up a roadblock." 54:39 And like they're either, "There's no movement on this thing, so he withdraws," or, uh, you know- Like, he withdraws because he's just told this thing. Um, and so, like, there's that, but, like, 54:49 o- over the long tail of history, like, this doesn't happen. Like, it's, like, one, and it's... And there's, like, 40 years, and, like, maybe another one, and, like, it just doesn't happen, and Trump has had six now. 55:02 It's, it's unprecedented. Uh, and Troyer is now a part of that history now. Now, let's speak to the, uh, sort of kind of... I don't know if it's the opposite. 55:12 You gotta get confirmed, but you can also get removed- Yeah... via impeachment and whatnot. Um, the House went home early this week, and you're telling me it's for a pretty specific reason. 55:22 Yeah, so the House was on a five-week recess, which was the summer recess, which is normal. 55:27 Uh, they take that time, uh, to go back to their constituencies, their districts, uh, and in a midterm year, that is to campaign for everybody in the House 'cause it's, it's election season for everybody in the House. 55:40 And they came back for exactly two days of work, and then Mike Johnson was like, "Hey, we're gonna actually break two weeks early." 55:47 And, uh, and then he actually said, "We're gonna book, book out one day early from that," because Thomas Massie, the outgoing Kentucky representative, uh, brought articles of impeachment against Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of Defense, and he brought eight of them, and they are detailed. 56:06 Um, four of them have to do with the war in Iran. One of them has to do with the extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and, uh, East Pacific. Uh, s- yeah, East, uh, sor- sorry. It's our West Coast. 56:19 It's the East Pacific. Yeah. And, uh, one of them has to do with, uh, his trying to mess with the retired rank of Senator Mark Kelly, uh, and go after him. 56:31 Uh, and then there are a number of other ones that have to do with, uh, the war in Yemen currently as well. Um, but, like, you know, 56:43 m- basically it says that the war in Iran is illegal, and, and the DOD is waging this war outside of the War Powers Resolution, uh, and then, like, not doing enough to, 56:54 to mitigate civilian deaths in Iran, and those are the first four. And Mike Johnson, 57:01 uh, sent everyone home a day early because it's pretty clear that the votes are there to send these articles of impeachment to the Senate, and so they're gonna come back on November 9th, and they'll, they're gonna have a whole host of other things to deal with, plus whatever happens- Hold on... 57:17 after the election. They're, they're, they're off until November 9th? Yeah. Whoa. That's, that's, like, six weeks. Yeah. Is that... That's not normal. That's, that's about right. 57:29 I mean, like, I mean, they, they would've been in at work for another two weeks, but Johnson- Oh... extended their break for two weeks, so they come, they- And they just take October off? Yeah, basically. Okay. 57:38 Uh- Huh... so, like, they're, they're off for five weeks. They come back for, like, a month and a couple days, and then they, they're off again for, like, an election break. 57:46 Uh, and then they come back, and then it's the sprint to the holidays, and then they're off for the holidays, and then they're back. Yes. I know. And then the new Congress- I need to-... convenes on January 3rd. 57:55 But, like- I need to remember my West Wing because that, that, you know, uh- Yeah... I remember how those things happen. Um- But, like, it's... Yeah, it's crazy. 58:04 There's a- Like, it is- There's a good chance that Hegseth could get removed from office, I mean, if Democrats win, and prosecuted? I mean, uh, uh, he would have to... Removed from office is a lot, right? 58:16 Like, the, the articles of impeachment, and, like, think about articles of impeachment like an indictment, so these are the, the indictments or the charges, uh, and the charging document are the articles of impeachment. 58:27 Uh, that gets sent to the Senate, which then holds- Yep... a trial. There's a, a trial. Yes. And then he could be re- But I'm- He could be removed. I mean, like, it- Afterward, criminal prosecution? Maybe. P- possible. 58:38 Um, it depends on, uh, those things are separate from an impeachment process, right? Impeachment is purely political. So, if there are, you know, if there's a federal investigation under this DOJ, likely not. 58:52 But also, you know, if Pete Hegseth becomes a civilian, uh, and technically the DOD, you know, Secretary of Defense is a civilian position, but, like, he's protected by 59:03 this current government who's not gonna turn him over to, like, the International Criminal Court. 59:07 But, like, if he gets impeached, and if he gets impeached at all, that's a f- feather in the cap for the ICC, who might be doing an investigation into members of the Trump administration right now over the war in Iran and certainly the 59:24 judicial kill- or extrajudicial killings in the Caribbean and East Pacific, uh, which w- we have not talked about in months, but are still happening. Um, you know, 59:36 if Hegseth gets punished by his own Congress and gets, you know, removed by the Senate, uh, from his position by his own Senate, that's, that's a thing that they'll use in that trial, um, over there. 59:51 [laughs] So, like, uh, you know, we wouldn't extradite him out of the United States to The Hague, but, like, I, uh, if I was Pete Hegseth, I certainly wouldn't travel abroad, uh, kind of a thing. 1:00:02 So, yeah, you know, that's... It's more of a sign of what's to come rather than, like, looking down the line of, like, those kinds of prosecutions. 1:00:11 It's more of, like, this is the f- probably the first shot across the bow of members of the Trump administration of, like, like, "Your lives are about to get really, really tough really fast." 1:00:25 Um, if, if Thomas Massie, a Republican, is gonna do this, Democrats, who are about to win the House and are likely are about to win the Senate, uh, are gonna do this out of the gate. 1:00:37 And you can- And they're not just going to be, uh, sort of, like, fringe threats. I mean, uh, Al Green, God bless him, but he would [laughs] put up articles of impeachment, and you're like- Right... 1:00:46 "Eh, that, that's got no chance." Right. Right. You know, like, I think Sri Thanedar From here in Michigan. Also put up some against, uh, Pete Hegseth a while ago. 1:00:54 But, like, it'll be different, uh, and it'll be real, and, like, the, the cases are strong, and, like, someone might just take Massies and, and just, like, put their name on him again to, to re-put them back in, um, 1:01:10 in the new Congress in the new year. And, you know, expect that against Rubio. Expect those against JD Vance. Expect those against, uh, you know, l- likely Kristi Noem, um, uh, you know, in a, in a different capacity. 1:01:25 Expect them against Markwayne Mullin. Um- But- You know, it's, it's- This is b- Yeah, right, right, right, right. And politically- You know, expect them against Kash Patel. Like, it's, it's- My gosh. Yeah. 1:01:34 We didn't even talk about Kash Patel and the troops at, uh, uh, polling places. Um- Yeah... but, uh, so I, I wanna get to one last thing here real quick, and it's, it just speaks to the value of what you do, Grant. 1:01:46 Um, "Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms" is, is all about sort of educating people on what's going on in the news, but also helping them understand civics and politics a little bit better. 1:01:55 And Grant, there was a story in Tulsa Flyer. I'm a big fan of Tulsa Flyer. Uh, they-- There's the Tulsa Flyer arm, there's the Oklahoma Eagle, there's La Semana, there's Focus. 1:02:05 All of these things come together to, to be this digital newsroom. And they have a story from Ginny Graham, formerly of the Tulsa World. I really enjoy her work. Mm-hmm. 1:02:14 But she covered an appearance by, uh, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor. It was at the University of Oklahoma. She was speaking, uh, at the Judge Stephanie K. 1:02:25 Seymour Lecture Series, sponsored by the Northern Eastern Oklahoma Chapter of the Federal Bar Association. 1:02:31 And the headline, "Ignorance of civics in government is the biggest US threat," says Supreme Court Justice Sonia Mayör. Uh, S- Sotomayor. Um, and, um, h- a couple of the quotes I wanna read you here. 1:02:45 "Well, now I don't always write 'I respectfully dissent,'" as she said. 1:02:49 Um, but, uh, she says, "If, if you look at the world not through what affects you, but look at it through the lens of what is happening to others and whether or not you can play a role in helping others, that's where I find my courage." 1:03:00 Um, so, uh, what I wanna do here is let's, um, uh, get to the point. "I am terribly worried that people don't understand that our Republican form of democracy..." 1:03:10 I find that I, I'm always having to explain that to people, especially it's code to me, Grant, when people say, "We're a republic." 1:03:16 I'm like, "Okay, I get where you stand politically, but we're a Republican form of democracy." She says, "I'm terribly wor- worried that that will not survive unless we keep it. 1:03:24 We have to work diligently every day to protect our values and to protect our government and its system of government. It's not something that just happens." 1:03:31 Um, but she also sits on the, uh, a board for something called Nonprofit ICivics- Mm-hmm... uh, founded by Sandra Day O'Connor, um, to modernize civics education. Mm-hmm. 1:03:41 That's a lot of what you're-- I mean, you should be working with them also. "My greatest fear," she says, "is that people don't understand our system of government. They don't understand what the First Amendment means. 1:03:50 They do not understand what our system of government presumes. Some of my colleagues don't either, by the way, and I'm not joking about that." Wow. Grant, throwing bombs, Sonia Sotomayor. Yeah. 1:04:03 I mean- What, what do you think? I mean, look, as, as, like, the court itself has gotten a little bit more vocal about things, uh, she has as well. Like, I, like, I couldn't agree more, right? 1:04:12 This is why I write Things You Forgot From Civics Class. I, I've-- In my daily life and, like, certainly as being a journalist, like, 1:04:20 it's a lot of things that people just, you know, never thought was gonna be useful to their lives and just don't understand the basics of the government. And that's not a knock. Like, that's not to be condescending. 1:04:29 That is, like, this stuff never felt tangible to you. It felt boring to people. It felt boring to learn when you were 15, 16, 17, if you learned it at all. 1:04:38 Uh, and it didn't feel like we needed to know it, because things were generally on the rails. And, uh, if you did, you know, follow it, you were, like, a giant nerd. 1:04:49 And if you knew anything about it at all, it was the fight, or it was the salacious stuff, or it was whatever. 1:04:55 And really now what we are in the middle of is exactly what she said, is this thing where, like, we have to fight about this stuff. 1:05:01 But it's hard to fight when you don't know what you're looking at and you don't understand it. And I find the importance of this stuff is understanding that it is-- We are in this together. 1:05:14 And I've been thinking about this idea a lot, and I've been talking about this a lot, and it's kind of been a summer of this thing for me, and I think I mentioned this maybe last week on the show or the week before, of, of, like, a kind of a, an end of the summer of, like, the, the things we owe each other, which is a sort of a bastardization of a, a philosopher named T.M. 1:05:34 Scanlon, whose book, which is by the same name, meant a lot to me. 1:05:38 Uh, and it's, you know, it, it's the same sort of theme, which is in The Odyssey this summer, but it's also, you know, how someone like Dolly Parton lived her life. 1:05:47 Uh, and it's how I approach civics and why I think this is important. 1:05:50 And what I think the justice is saying in her speech here too is that this project that we've undertaken in the United States, this, this Democratic-- this Republican-Democratic experiment, right? 1:06:02 Uh, is about the things that we owe each other, and it only works if we understand it and work towards a goal in the end that is about working to better lives for each other, which also benefits lives for ourselves, and that only works if you understand how it works. 1:06:18 And that's, that's my approach to it. It's like a humanist sort of civics approach. But, 1:06:25 uh, yeah, I, like-- I agree that the biggest threat to this stuff is that if you don't understand how it works, someone can take it from you because you don't know what you've lost. And, 1:06:36 and, like, it's hard and it can be boring, but it doesn't have to be, and it can be kind of fun and be kind of interesting. And I think, 1:06:44 I think hopefully when I write this stuff, I try to bring enough energy because I think this stuff is interesting. So a lot of times as I'm doing the research, I'm learning things that, like- Yeah... 1:06:52 either I'd forgotten or didn't know. That's one of the fun things about doing this, is that- Yeah... we get to learn on the fly the things we don't know. Yeah. 1:06:58 And so, like, I try to bring that little bit of, like, excitement to it that, like, it's like, "Hey, did you know this thing? Like, isn't this neat?" Right. Right. Kind of a thing. 1:07:05 Uh, and, like, that stuff I like, and I like to- To play in that and, and try to bring that to this, uh, because this is all stuff we could and should use. 1:07:14 And I also think that it makes us collectively more patriotic in a time when a lot of people aren't feeling that way about the United States, that these are the things that actually make us patriotic. 1:07:24 That, you know, the, the reason that I write and cover so passionately the things about access to voting, and why I was so on about this mail-in voting rule for the last three months or whatever, even if it's boring and kind of weedsy, and I know more about the post office than I ever thought that I would now, is because this stuff matters from a civics level because this is how America should operate. 1:07:47 And this is-- it's about the, the patriotism and the civics and the idea that, uh, we have a duty in these things, and that should light us up, not, you know, snuff it out. 1:08:03 And I, and, uh, the- I just, I think that is so important, and it's cool to hear her talk about it in this way. 1:08:09 It's just, that's for a room of lawyers who also feel that way because they're lawyers, and a lot of lawyers get into law because of those things. 1:08:16 And even if they're corporate lawyers, they still feel that way about the law, capital L Law. 1:08:21 Um, even if they're like, you know, paper lawyers or whatever, even if they're like accountant lawyers or whatever, they still feel that way. 1:08:28 Uh, and it's, getting that to regular people is hard, but I think right now, when things feel out of control, it's a little bit easier 'cause people frequently are asking, like, "Is that how it's supposed to work? 1:08:41 Is that how it's supposed to work? Then how come it's not working the way it's supposed to work?" 1:08:45 And so, hopefully, if there's a silver lining to the moment we're living in, it is this thing that, like, people are looking for ways to, you know, re-understand how our processes work and where 1:08:59 the weaknesses are, which are, you know, fundamentally a lot of our weaknesses in, in the United States Constitution and the civics of all this has been 1:09:09 people were fundamentally good, and we just didn't bu- didn't think that somebody would take advantage of these things in the way that we're seeing them being taken advantage of now. 1:09:16 And there are ways to shore those things up and fix these things in the future without fundamentally eroding the basic ideas of these things. Uh, and like, I write about that all the time, but I, it's, it's cool. 1:09:27 It's neat to, like, have someone that big talk about these things, yeah. Well, I, right, right, uh, it's validating. Uh, I like that you mentioned patriotism. 1:09:36 I consider myself patriotic, but I consider myself patriotic in the sense of I do understand h- what America was founded upon, the struggles it's had. I understand the original sin. I get all of it. 1:09:50 Um, but yet still, we strive to be the beacon on the hill. Mm-hmm. And that means all. That means everybody. Um, there's a reason why Lady Liberty is up there saying, "Welcome," you know, "Bring me your poor." 1:10:03 Uh, America stands for that. And even the conservative Ronald Reagan, who wouldn't really be considered very conservative in 2026, he's an idol to Republicans. He was all about that. Mm-hmm. Absolutely. Like, it's, 1:10:16 I mean, like, and all of those things are there. Like, all of our big symbols are, uh, open door gateways, and they're about inviting idea, and they're about inviting, uh, uh, you know, not competition in a, like, 1:10:32 business sense, but about, uh, you know, competing thought and about understanding and a- and about general tolerance in not the way that we think about it now, but in the way that we, you know, think about it in the idea that we can all coexist in this same place, uh, and that everyone has a right to speak. 1:10:53 Uh, maybe not to be always accommodated and heard, uh, and, and, you know, catered to, but those things are built into our system be- through fairness, and outcomes then happen. 1:11:05 And like, it's, which I know sounds weird, and, like, those things are built into the way that the, the Constitution is, but the fairness is built in. 1:11:12 And when we get it wrong, we've tried to right those wrongs, not always well, not always fast, and not always on, you know, in the way that everyone would like, but we have tried to right those wrongs throughout history, and that's the project of civics, too, which I think also we don't think about. 1:11:28 We think about this thing as stagnant and stale and, you know, historical, when it's actually these things are alive, and we have to keep them alive. 1:11:39 Uh, and so I also find it to be a living, breathing thing, which I think the justice does, too, and which is why she talks about it like this, uh, which is interesting. Yeah. Good stuff. 1:11:50 Um, we covered a lot of topics today. What might you have for us on a Friday afternoon? This afternoon, I have an interview with the, uh, head of policy over at Issue One, which is a fantastic pro-democracy civics group. 1:12:01 Um, they are partnering with a bunch of members of Congress right now at the Problem Solvers Caucus. It's a bipartisan caucus, and they have a framework of bills out right now to 1:12:12 basically end gerrymandering across the country. It's a bit of good news. Uh, it would be as close as we can get to a federal ban on gerrymandering and stop this sort of gerrymandering Armageddon we're racing towards. 1:12:27 It's a fascinating interview with Michael McNulty. Um, I've had him on the show before. 1:12:30 We get a little bit into, on the back end of this thing, what the president is doing now after the mail-in voting rule has, has been blocked and, like, the DHS stuff and, and, you know, what we can expect for election workers moving forward. 1:12:41 But really, it's about this bit of good news that for once we might be getting some bipartisan movement on a thing that will make voting more fair for lots of Americans. 1:12:52 Um, it's a thing that we all need [chuckles] right now is a little bit of uplifting news. [laughs] Man, it's just, uh, we've seen gerrymandering happen in Oklahoma. 1:12:59 They haven't been immune to it, what they've done with District 5 over the years. Yeah. Um, and uh, so between SCOTUS and the mail-in voting decision and this, man, things are looking up. Yeah. 1:13:09 Hey, man, it's, there are, there are bright pockets of this stuff, and we don't get them very often, and, you know, we are 46, 45 days out from the midterms as you and I are talking right now, so 1:13:21 we're just gonna white-knuckle this for the next six weeks. We got it. That's right. Uh, remind folks, you can find Grant at Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms. He's on Substack. He's on YouTube. 1:13:32 Just look up Make It Make Sense with Grant Herms. You will find him. H-E-R-M-E-S. Not, not Hermes like mercury. It's Herms. So anyway. I'll answer to anything. Yes. Hey, you, throw something at me. I'll turn around. 1:13:44 Oh, same, same. It's, uh, it's fine. Yeah, it's fine. William, Bill, Ryan, buddy, pal. Um, anywho, we gotta get out of here. We appreciate you watching. Please leave a comment. 1:13:53 Please share this with a friend who you think might enjoy it. Uh, and until next time, for Grant, I'm Ryan. We will talk to you later
