- 3 months ago
This week on The Cameron Journal Newshour, Cameron delivers a tour-de-force that includes his personal thoughts on being a content creator and why it is hard to do the show this week. Then we dive into the headlines include Russia's hack of federal courts amid a shocking meeting Alaska that left Trump administration officials looking ashen. Then we talk about Artificial intelligence and why we need more data centers and more electricity. We explore how the Trump administration is monetizing American hegemony and we finish on Mike Lee's new bill to ban porn.
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00:00:00Music
00:00:30And I think the one that he chose, it's kind of the best, the best of them, it's like one of the best of all times apparently.
00:00:39And also this song was using the Simpsons, one episode on the Simpsons.
00:01:00The Simpsons, one episode on the Simpsons, one episode on the Simpsons.
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00:04:41Hello, everyone.
00:04:49My name is Cameron Cowan.
00:04:52This is the Cameron Jewel News Hour.
00:04:54Thank you all so much for stopping by.
00:04:56I appreciate it.
00:05:02We're getting the start right at the top of the hour tonight because we have a lot of news stories.
00:05:10I want to remind everyone to head over to CameronJewel.com slash subscribe and become a Cameron Jewel Plus member.
00:05:18You can also, at the same time, sign up for the Saturday newsletter where I discuss all sorts of interesting news stories and give you the latest updates from me and all this sort of thing.
00:05:27I am looking into shifting around how we do some content and things around here, which I think will be really cool.
00:05:34Um, I also want to remind everyone that if you are comfortable on Substack, I do repost the newsletter and interviews to Substack.
00:05:48So make sure to head over to CameronJewel.Substack.com and you can follow me there.
00:05:54It's the same content as on the Cameron Journal, but if you're already on Substack, don't want to start another account, I get you.
00:06:00So, I'm on Substack as well.
00:06:02So, feel free to check that out.
00:06:09I also wanted to remind everyone, um, my next book, America's Lost Generation, um, about millennials and our story is coming out in, uh, on September 12th.
00:06:22We've actually picked a date, September 12th, so a little under a month now.
00:06:26And I want to remind everyone to, you can head over to CameronJewel.com slash Cameron's-Books or just go to CameronJewel.com, click on Shop Cameron's Books, and, uh, and you can pre-order that and it will be out on September 12th on Amazon and Target and Barnes & Noble and all those fun places.
00:06:46Because I just recently finished, I think the last one went out Sunday, um, my new 10-part series on kind of the best of, uh, from the book.
00:06:58And so if you also want to stop by and read some of that, you can click on Millennials, and in the navigation bar, it's under Culture, and you can read that whole collection.
00:07:06If you signed up for the newsletter, it would have been delivered right to you.
00:07:10So, I want to remind everyone about that.
00:07:14I am working on, currently, some specific content about America's Lost Generation and Millennials and what has happened, uh, in the intervening 15 years since the Great Financial Crisis.
00:07:28So, um, I, I'll admit, I'm struggling a bit this evening because, um, there are some days when, uh, doing this, going on this journey, is fun and exciting and exhilarating,
00:07:55and I'm so glad that I'm doing it, and there are other days when it is extremely hard.
00:08:07I very rarely cancel the news hour outside of, um, select, uh, select, you know, instances, I'm not feeling well, all this type of thing.
00:08:23I almost cancel today just because sometimes this all feels really pointless.
00:08:30I, I did a video in 2024, it's on the channel, it's called My Creator Journey, and, um, it's two hours.
00:08:41And I kind of tell the whole story of how I got into this industry, how I, uh, you know, started the Cameron Journal, my first iteration of the show,
00:08:55how I learned WordPress and how to do video and do audio and all of these cool, you know, at the time, years ago, these were new tools, um,
00:09:04and a new democratization of making media that had, you know, not existed before.
00:09:11And I, today, and most recently, it's all feeling quite heavy, because I know what I do is incredibly valuable to people,
00:09:25and I am so grateful that people come and, and read my stuff, but the unfortunate reality about this business,
00:09:35and this is true of most content creators, unless you're at the very top end, is there's not necessarily a lot of great money into it.
00:09:43And when I was young and in my 20s, I didn't necessarily care about that as much, um, but now that I am nearer to 40 than not,
00:09:54it really, it really starts to show, you know, where friends are kind of outrunning you and outpacing you and all this sort of thing,
00:10:03and I, I had done a graduate program, um, kind of through the pandemic,
00:10:08and I was hoping that was going to open up a lot of doors for me, and it never, it never really did.
00:10:19And so, I've said all that to say, my heart is a little heavy this evening,
00:10:24because I am, I'm looking at my life, and I'm looking at this situation, and, yeah, it's not necessarily a great day to be me.
00:10:35Um, my, my heart is full, um, and that doesn't necessarily make me the most happy, chipper, upbeat sort of person,
00:10:43it makes me someone who almost cancelled the broadcast this evening, um, just so I could, very honestly,
00:10:54go back to bed and go back to sleep, because I'm also very tired today, and I am, you know,
00:11:04I'm just so mindful and so grateful for everyone that, uh, you know, everyone that comes along and participates,
00:11:17I've always wondered maybe why more people don't interact, or more people don't comment,
00:11:22or more people don't write in, and then, you know, sometimes they do, which is really great.
00:11:29Um, and a lot of times, though, they don't necessarily.
00:11:34Um, but, uh, I've always, I've always wondered that, and I just wish, what do I wish?
00:11:44I, I wish there were more, uh, there were more, you know, just, more people involved, and more people,
00:11:57um, you know, invested in, you know, this whole, this whole thing, and I, I very much,
00:12:08I very much, I very much miss, I think, some of the, uh, some of the interactions that I've
00:12:26had with people, that I'm used to having with people, and sometimes I wonder what the point
00:12:35of it is, you know, what's the point of all of this? Um, and I, I sincerely hope and sincerely
00:12:47wish that people are enjoying this, and that someone somewhere is getting something out of
00:12:54it, but I, I sometimes look at other creatives with a little bit of jealousy, because it seems
00:12:59like their comment sections are full, and people are just obsessed with them as people,
00:13:04and sometimes I kind of wonder, oh, you know, maybe I'm just not that interesting, or, you know,
00:13:13the news is kind of pointless, and all this sort of thing, and, um, and, you know, maybe the time
00:13:23for old-fashioned news broadcasts, like what I do, which kind of lets you decide, um, you know,
00:13:33what you think about all this stuff, and empowers you with information, and news stories, and news
00:13:40narratives, maybe there's just no demand for that, people are unplugged, people are tired,
00:13:45you know, sort of thing, I don't know, it's a, it's an interesting, interesting sort of, sort of thing,
00:13:54and I, you know, it's really hard to spend a lot of years of your life quietly working away on your
00:14:05own thing, you know, and meeting people, and getting new subscribers, and being happy every time someone
00:14:11comes along, and all this type of thing, and then at some point, you're kind of, you look around,
00:14:17and you're kind of like, I'm just not making it, I'm not really living, I'm not able to have fun,
00:14:26I'm not able to take a vacation, I'm not able to do so many things, because I'm, I'm doing this
00:14:32thing, and, and it's, it's really hard, because it's like, you know this is what you should be doing,
00:14:37and, and you get these comments from people that are just so, you know, fulfilling and uplifting,
00:14:45and, or I'll be in an interview, and someone's like, yeah, I went and watched it, I really enjoyed
00:14:49what you do, and it's just kind of like, oh, that's so good, but then, bills come due, life happens,
00:14:57and you're kind of like, wow, I wish doing the thing that I am meant to do paid a little bit better,
00:15:05and, anyway, I'm not here to whine and complain, but my heart is heavy tonight, and so that, I would
00:15:13just want to kind of share what was on my heart, what was on my brain, what was on my mind, um, because
00:15:21this is the type of day when showing up is hard, they always, the old adage, 90% of life is showing
00:15:30up, the part that I kind of tell you is sometimes that's easy, and sometimes that's not, and today
00:15:38is one of the days that is where it's, it's not, and it adds an extra level of difficulty
00:15:53when it's just like, yeah, I really wish that I could just move on with my life, and I kind
00:16:01of laugh, because I, and many people kind of know this, but I was not intending to go back
00:16:14into this business full-time after grad school. We'd gotten through the pandemic, it was, I
00:16:19graduated in February of 23, and I was kind of like, good, excellent, I've applied a bunch
00:16:24of fellowships, the Cameron Journal will be a place for me to do my writing, but a little
00:16:28back burner, and we'll, you know, maybe probably bring the podcast to a close, or, or do it on
00:16:34a very limited basis sort of thing, and, um, but my main energy will be elsewhere. And then
00:16:41when none of that worked out, and I had to figure out some way to make this work, um, that added
00:16:51an extra level of difficulty that I definitely was not prepared for, and it has been a struggle
00:16:58since then to figure all of this out, and I wouldn't say things are in the same place
00:17:07they were a couple years ago, they're definitely not. Um, there's some potentially exciting things
00:17:12happening along the way, but it's definitely, it's hard today. We'll just say that. It's
00:17:21hard today, and sometimes honesty is the best policy, because I like to feel like I'm building
00:17:30a relationship with people who watch these shows, um, you know, with the people that come
00:17:36by to hang out during a live broadcast and watch it later. I, I do feel like a certain
00:17:41measure of honesty is certainly, um, helpful, you know, productive, even. And so I just, I
00:17:49just kind of wanted to share where I was this evening, and why tonight's broadcast will probably
00:17:57be a little bit different. Um, I may not cover all the news stories I have. Um, we, last
00:18:05Monday we were a little short, because I didn't have that much that I wanted to talk about, but
00:18:09I, um, yeah. Uh, let's just dive into the headlines. Um, let me click this button, and we'll, uh, we'll
00:18:21dive into, uh, we'll dive into the headlines. So, um, this one, this was an interesting sort of tweet
00:18:32from a narrative perspective. I'm always very interested in narrative and kind of what people
00:18:38are saying. I enjoy Twitter for that purpose, because it kind of lets me know where people's
00:18:42heads are at, and it says here, I'm not a policy guy, but it seems to me that in the past five years
00:18:48or so, a kind of enchantment, has been lifted from the public mind. The experts used to bedazzle
00:18:52all and sundry with tales of complicated 2D and 3D order effects, such that any straightforward
00:18:58initiative of the state would certainly fail, backfire, or jeopardize other goods. See
00:19:02Hirschman's famous book. Now, however, people are remembering that the main effect of policy
00:19:06matters, that policies often do just work straightforwardly in the public interest, and that vigorous public
00:19:11action is good, actually. Here's the question he's forgetting. Good for who? A lot of those
00:19:24second and third order effects had to do with other communities that were affected by a policy
00:19:29change, or businesses that were affected by a policy change, or the way in which people
00:19:34change living. And now a lot of people are not necessarily affected by these policies, but
00:19:39for the ones that are, they're the ones that are affected by them. And that sometimes
00:19:43can cause people, and there's a French philosopher named Gaston Bachelard that talks about this,
00:19:49any time there's a system, people are going to look for the shortest way to get to their
00:19:55goal. And if it's working through the system, because the system's efficient, they'll do it.
00:19:59The minute the system becomes too big and gangly, they'll find ways around it. That's the
00:20:04second and third order effects that a lot of these people are talking about, is the way people
00:20:08change things, did different things, whatever have you, in order to get around a policy or a new
00:20:17asset of the system that just didn't work for them, or they didn't care about, or a need they
00:20:21still needed to fulfill that the system wasn't letting them fulfill. That's where a lot of this
00:20:26kind of stuff comes from. And I know about what he's talking about, because Freakonomics was very
00:20:33popular for a while, and this is, you know, this is all, you know, kind of part of that
00:20:43understanding, you know, real effects. Like, for example, the big Freakonomics breakthrough was
00:20:48that the reason crime went down after 1990 is because of abortion. A lot of the would-be criminals
00:20:53of the 90s and 2000s were just simply never born. And this top comment kind of echoes that,
00:21:01where it says, I remember hearing not long ago from some fancy PhDs that banning abortion
00:21:04actually increases abortion rates because it sends women who would otherwise have openly
00:21:08discussed abortion with a counselor and perhaps been dissuaded instead to go and get an abortion
00:21:12by yourself without any chance to be dissuaded. There's no empirical evidence for this, of course,
00:21:17an amount of evidence against it, but the Brights said it, so we had to take it very seriously
00:21:20indeed. So, um, it's, yeah, there are lots of things, and I think, you know, it's a commenting
00:21:29on a Christopher Rufo post, which is like, I know it sounds crazy, but arresting criminals
00:21:33reduces crime. Um, only if you arrest the right people. Um, in any given city, most crime is
00:21:38produced by about 300 people. If you arrested all of them, crime would go down by about 60%.
00:21:42Um, and I think, I think there's definitely, I will say this, and we'll move on. There is definitely
00:21:50a hunger in society. People know things are not working. People know the world has problems.
00:21:56They may not know the specifics, but they're, they've got the mood.
00:22:01It's very important for people to feel like someone is doing something. And I think the,
00:22:09you know, kind of most, the odd public policy place we're in right now is that people are
00:22:14willing to get on board with anything as long as someone's doing something. Incidentally,
00:22:18this is how you get to fascism very quickly. And one wonders how we got there. And it's
00:22:24this type of attitude of, well, he's at least doing something, or at least they're arresting
00:22:29the criminals, or at least someone's, rather than, you know, kind of the old regime, which
00:22:34was just standing around being like, yeah, things are bad, but we can't really do anything
00:22:38about that, you know, universal healthcare, you know, sort of thing. And people are kind
00:22:43of like, I'm not interested in universal healthcare, because I have great health insurance to my
00:22:47employer, as do most Americans, but how about the crime, you know, sort of thing. And that,
00:22:54I mean, the, the whole, you know, soft on crime rhetoric sort of thing has been a cudgel
00:23:01used against Democrats for decades. And to be honest, for most people that live in cities
00:23:07and everything, they would say, yeah, and the failure of American cities kind of shows
00:23:12that it wasn't just a cudgel used against Democrats unfairly, it was a real thing that
00:23:17needed address. And I think that, you know, now we're to the point where people are just
00:23:24willing to let anyone implement anything, as long as they're implementing something, because
00:23:30at least it's something. Now, I, I tend to think, you know, especially as someone who's
00:23:37a triple minority, um, just implementing policy doesn't usually end well, um, for certain segments
00:23:44of the population. Um, but I certainly understand people's mood of just being like, yeah, yeah,
00:23:49go for it, you know, sure, go crazy, you know, and being willing to do whatever, try whatever,
00:23:56you know, in, in the hopes of some improvement, and not necessarily caring about who else is affected
00:24:02by it. And I think this, you know, the replies definitely, um, are reflective of that. So,
00:24:13uh, this, so I've, this story, this is good. So I've talked a lot about Christian nationalism.
00:24:21Last week, we watched a video from the Military Religious Freedom Foundation,
00:24:24and I have mentioned in the last couple shows, Doug Wilson, uh, who is very connected to Pete
00:24:32Hexeth and the Trump administration, writ large, and he says here, um, he reposted himself and said,
00:24:39all of Christ for all of life, which is a tagline that we use. This is the first time we've had
00:24:44connections with as many people in the national government as we do now. We're trying to give
00:24:48these people an opportunity to meet with God. I think the 19th Amendment was a bad idea.
00:24:52And, uh, and there's a video.
00:24:55He didn't just repost it, like, oh, here's an interesting thing that these weird people are
00:25:00doing. Uh, he reposted it, and he himself said, all of Christ for all of life, which is the tagline
00:25:07that we use. So he was, in effect, reposting it and saying amen at some level.
00:25:13Pastor Doug Wilson, the network's co-founder, is no stranger to controversy with his church's
00:25:18embrace of patriarchy and Christian nationalism. They are a network of over 130 churches and have
00:25:23recently opened a new church in Washington, D.C., with Hexeth attending its first Sunday service.
00:25:28This is the first time we've had connections with as many people in national government as
00:25:35we do now. But this is not, uh, this is not an ecclesiastical lobbying effort where we're trying
00:25:43to meet important people. We're trying to give some of these people an opportunity to meet with God.
00:25:49Wilson's church and the wider network believe in practice the idea that men and women
00:25:52have different roles, and women should not hold church leadership positions.
00:25:56My wife votes, my daughters vote. If, if people rush to conclusions from what they,
00:26:02they heard on the CNN piece, um, that's, uh, that's a sad thing. Um, at the same time, I,
00:26:10I think that the 19th Amendment was a bad idea, and I had no problem with how Pastor Jared answered
00:26:17the question. I would support that. Our issue is not, is not a problem with the enfranchisement
00:26:24of women. Our problem is with the disenfranchisement of the household.
00:26:32And there you have it. This reminds me of, um, I just came up with it. There was this documentary
00:26:43called The Family. The, uh, organization that started the National Prayer Breakfast, it was
00:26:48started by a man named Doug Coe. I was sitting here racking my brain trying to think of it.
00:26:53Um, and he, he had made quite a name for himself in Washington, D.C. years ago, and how he got
00:27:02the National Prayer Breakfast started, um, by basically evangelizing to politicians, his attitude
00:27:09being, you know, between the wolf and the sheep, who's going to care for the wolf? And his, he viewed
00:27:15himself as a pastor to people who have hard jobs. And hard positions have to make hard decisions.
00:27:22The, the reality is this gave him a huge in to government beginning in the Reagan administration
00:27:28and extending to the beginning, almost middle of the Obama years. He finally passed, I think, in the
00:27:35mid-2010s. His son tried to take over. I don't think that was very successful. But they,
00:27:41they had training programs for young men starting in the 80s and 90s to go to school,
00:27:47get into government, get into power, all to advance this sort of Christian nationalist notion.
00:27:52Everyone's finally talking about Christian nationalism, but as we know from the Military
00:27:56Religious Freedom Foundation, this is not new. This has been part and parcel of the Republican Party
00:28:03and of people within the Republican Party since at least the early 70s, starting with Pat Robinson.
00:28:09And the whole 700 Club crew and, you know, um, what's that dude in Oklahoma? Oral Roberts.
00:28:20You know, this is, this is, all of this stuff that's happening with the Trump administration,
00:28:25be it the Christian nationalism, the white nationalism, the authoritarianism, none of this stuff is happening
00:28:32at this very moment in a vacuum. The reality is all of this stuff builds on layers. For example,
00:28:38I kind of laugh because when we talked about, you know, the Patriot Act after 9-11 and the
00:28:45extraordinary powers it gave the federal government, people at the time said,
00:28:49this will come back to bite us one day. And that day is here.
00:28:53However, there was even frustration on the part of Congress about the, um, authorization for
00:29:02military force, or AUFMs, and Congress actually ended up pulling all of them and caused a bunch
00:29:08of operations overseas to be killed off because Congress finally, you know, got rid of authorization
00:29:14and, and quit, quit funding, um, several overseas adventures. And the, all of this is, is built in
00:29:25layers. All of it comes along as this more like a pervasive way. The problem is that makes it very
00:29:32hard to track because in the, in a news media news narrative environment, we have a story and there's a
00:29:38beginning, there's a middle and then there's sort of an end and we move on. And the reality is a lot
00:29:44of this stuff, there's actually a thread to it all. There, there is something that comes through
00:29:50from it all. So when we talk about federal overreach, we can say, yeah, that started with
00:29:56the Patriot Act, that started, you know, with pandemic regulations. And the same thing with this
00:30:02conversation we're having on Christian nationalism, it's the same, it's the same vibe. All of this
00:30:08stuff adds up over time. And now people feel emboldened, because some people agree with them,
00:30:15to really come out and start saying this stuff out loud and in meaningful ways. And this is on the AP
00:30:21from YouTube. And, you know, this sort of story isn't necessarily going away. And the unfortunate,
00:30:29you know, reality is we now have people in power who are willing to promote this Christian national
00:30:35agenda. And as I've long said, I think I said it last week, Trump is a moderating force on the GOP.
00:30:42They would be farther right and more Christian nationalists without the Trump influence. And
00:30:47I think that's where the party is going to go as soon as Trump is either out of power or dies,
00:30:54whatever that looks like. The party, I think, is going to lurch to the left and lurch in a Christian
00:30:59nationalist direction. And unfortunately, I don't necessarily think people are going to be against
00:31:03that. I saw a survey this weekend that was sent to me by about three people, showing how that the
00:31:11Gen Z is becoming more Christian, more specifically Catholic. The Catholic Church has more adult converts
00:31:18than, I think, the 1950s. And so they are, people are rediscovering religion. I kind of view that as
00:31:29slipping back into superstition and is taking a step backwards as a society. But there's, there's
00:31:38certainly a sort of Great Awakening happening, which happens in this country. When Billy Graham started
00:31:45becoming very popular in the 70s and 80s, even, you know, people like, you know, Tammy Baker and her
00:31:54husband, you know, all those kind of, that big evangelical push that a lot of us grew up in,
00:32:00in the 80s and 90s, was kind of part of a, of a spiritual enlightenment that, that had, was occurring.
00:32:09And now after, you know, people kind of leaving that behind, that version of it behind, at least,
00:32:17and going through a period of, you know, non-religion, all this sort of thing, we're now kind of going
00:32:22back to, religion is back in again, and it's good to be religious, and people are going in that
00:32:27direction. It's, these things have an ebb and flow, and they come and go. My worry is that with people
00:32:37embracing religion more, when Christian nationalism comes to call, and it will come to call in the
00:32:45next several years, a lot of people will not realize how it will change the lifestyle in society.
00:32:53And we're, we're seeing this now, where they're trying to roll back gay marriage, even though
00:32:56it's codified in law, that's not going to work. There's even been talk of getting rid of interracial
00:33:01marriage, loving the Virginia, you know, very basic things that people have come to take for
00:33:07granted, but certain people think is the reason why society is falling apart. And I think the most
00:33:14dangerous thing is that a lot of people hyped up on their new religious fervor will think that
00:33:21their Christian nationalism is going to include them. And I have bad news, if you're Catholic,
00:33:25or anything not evangelical, specifically these churches, they're not going to include you.
00:33:31Just know that. The new Christian nationalism is not going to include your religion just because
00:33:38you believe in God. They want you to be their specific religion, going to their specific churches.
00:33:44And that's the problem MRFF is fighting in the military. Most of the calls for MRFF do not come from
00:33:51atheists. They come from people of other religions who are being intimidated to worship a specific
00:34:00way. And if you think that someone like Doug Wilson is going to be happy, you know, walking in
00:34:06lockstep with the Catholic Church, no. And that's, that's one of the aspects of Christian nationalism
00:34:12that a lot of people are not going to understand. But I also fear they're not going to resist it
00:34:16when it comes along because they don't understand how pernicious the movement is. So. I, I wanted to
00:34:24highlight the video because I had talked about Doug Wilson, and I think, I think I couldn't find this
00:34:29video, and so I wanted to bring it back up so that people have a chance to see it.
00:34:37This story I am going to move through quickly, just because as an academic person, it's quite sad.
00:34:46It says here, for the academic year, well, here's what happened, let's start from the beginning.
00:34:51Here's what I understand is the real catastrophe in all this. It is probably true that PhD cohorts
00:34:55are too large in the humanities. The doctorate predates capitalism, but was once an apprenticeship
00:35:00between prof and student, has been gradually subsumed into capitalist labor relations. This is in
00:35:04reaction to, um, this post where, um, that shows that a university is going to reduce the amount of
00:35:14people studying PhDs in these fields, which includes art history, cinema, media studies,
00:35:21easy English languages and civilizations, English language and literature, linguistics, music
00:35:24composition, and philosophy. It says, universities love to brag about this when they're fighting
00:35:29grad unionization campaigns. You're not a worker, you're a student, but over the 20th century,
00:35:33this model became a convenient way for unis to find cheap labor to teach larger enrollments
00:35:37in the post-war university. True. As many of you know, some programs admit more students than they
00:35:43expect to award degrees. They need labor to teach large intro courses, especially at public
00:35:46institutions, without grant, without giant endowments. I think this is bad, is bad on why
00:35:55they're expanding TT line, uh, tenure track lines, but it contributes, but it contributes. I think it
00:36:00also produces a dangerous feedback mechanism between students who feel, not incorrectly, like
00:36:05they were promised jobs but sent into the mind, so to speak. Again, TA-ing, i.e. being a teacher's
00:36:12assistant, is job training, but nobody wants to tell this to prospective students who idealized
00:36:16that earlier model. So in the, in a lab or some university game, you could try reducing enrollments
00:36:21to get the university back up to speed and working for everyone, but we don't live in a computer
00:36:25model. These are jobs, critical infrastructure. This is how the university has decided to reproduce
00:36:29itself, and it's also where our society has stored knowledge reproduction, so to speak. When you cut
00:36:34enrollments like this doesn't make individual institutions more efficient. It threatens to quite
00:36:38literally, and that knowledgeless ability to be reproduced. This is a world's historic
00:36:42disaster, and there's no coming back from that.
00:36:47I, seeing, and I've written about this, and I'm not going to talk about it for a long time,
00:36:55as someone in the humanities, it is devastating.
00:37:07To see what has happened in the intervening 15 years. Um, and the way arts and humanities have
00:37:25been disincentivized at the K-12 level, and now college, and now PhD programs, it means there'll
00:37:34be less people studying these things, which Molly would say, that's a good thing. Okay, fine.
00:37:41Less people studying these things, less knowledge being reproduced, less new knowledge being created,
00:37:48fewer books, and much more. At the undergrad level, there has been a reckoning for quite some
00:37:57time. I know institutions that no longer have political science majors, no longer have philosophy
00:38:02majors. Um, I was looking at my own undergrad, and the philosophy major is hanging on by a thread.
00:38:10I think they're waiting for the head of the department to depart, um, which should be any time,
00:38:14because he was head of it when I was in college, and that was almost 20 years ago now.
00:38:19And so I think, you know, will they hire another PhD to head a philosophy department in a second-tier
00:38:25state school? Probably not. That department will probably end up being subsumed into something else
00:38:29or going elsewhere. Um, which is kind of what's happened to the political science department there.
00:38:33It's, it's quite, it's quite depressing. And as, you know, we just kind of,
00:38:41one of the jobs of the university, and he kind of talks about this in the thread,
00:38:47is not only knowledge reproduction, but preserving of, of culture. Having someone who studies stuff,
00:38:55finds out stuff, becomes an expert in those things. Once you break that chain, it's very hard to ever
00:39:02pick it back up again. It's, it's hard to get money to invest into it, to get people to study it,
00:39:08to have people with the skills and talents to study it at all, to know about it at all,
00:39:14to have interest in it at all. That's one of the great things about sending people out to talk to
00:39:21kids in school, is to inspire them. And now with everything being, you know, STEM this, STEM that,
00:39:28STEM the other thing, you know, there's no money in any of this stuff, you know, which I totally
00:39:36understand, go listen to my monologue, um, then it's very easy to say, like, well, let's cut back,
00:39:44you know, but the reality is, we'll begin to lose this specialized knowledge, and it won't exist
00:39:52beyond old dusty books that no one reads anymore in 10 years, 20 years, 30 years.
00:40:00Because we are culturally poor for the way the humanities are being stripped out of our higher
00:40:08education system. And unfortunately, by the time people realize what we've lost, it will be too
00:40:16late. And it will take a century or more to rebuild it. Will anyone care to at that time? It's a whole
00:40:24mother matter entirely. But we're, we're making, we're losing something very important that we won't
00:40:30realize what we've lost. And that is a repository of our culture, of Western civilization. This is how
00:40:38you lose it. The fewer people do it, the less of it there is.
00:40:42Ah, yes!
00:40:49I had this stored in my notes, but I don't know that we got to it last week.
00:40:56Um, I don't think we did because I think it came out after I did the news hour. Anyway,
00:41:01Russia is suspected to be behind a breach of federal court filing system. Federal officials
00:41:05are scrambling to assess the damage and address flaws in sprawling heavily used computer system
00:41:09long known to have vulnerabilities. It says here, investigators have uncovered evidence that
00:41:16Russia is at least partly responsible for a recent hack of the computer system that manages federal
00:41:20court documents, including highly sensitive records with information that could reveal sources and
00:41:24people charged with national security crimes, according to several people briefed on the breach.
00:41:28It's not clear what entity is responsible, whether an arm of Russian intelligence might be behind the
00:41:32intrusion, or if other countries were also involved, which some of the people familiar with the
00:41:36matter described as a years-long effort to infiltrate the system. Some of the searches
00:41:39included mid-level criminal cases in the New York City area and other jurisdictions,
00:41:43with some cases involving people with Russian and Eastern European surnames.
00:41:47The disclosure comes as President Trump is expected to meet with his Russian counterpart,
00:41:50Vladimir Putin, in Alaska on Friday, which they did, where Mr. Trump is going to discuss
00:41:54with his push to end the war in Ukraine, which ended up going nowhere.
00:41:59We'll come back to that. Administrators with the court system recently informed Justice
00:42:03Rowan officials, clerks, and chief judges in federal courts that persistent and sophisticated
00:42:07cyber threat actors have recently compromised sealed records, according to an internal department
00:42:12memo reviewed by the New York Times. The administrators also advised those officials
00:42:15to quickly remove the most sensitive documents from the system. This remains an urgent matter
00:42:19that requires immediate action, officials wrote, referring to guidance the Justice Department
00:42:23had issued in early 2021 after the system was first infiltrated. Documents related to criminal
00:42:28activity with an overseas tie across at least eight district courts were initially believed to have
00:42:32been targeted. Last month, the chief judges of district courts across the country were quietly warned
00:42:36to move those kinds of cases off the regular document management system. According to officials
00:42:40briefed on the request, they were initially told not to discuss the matter with other judges
00:42:44in their districts. And so, um, and it goes on to some technical stuff, but this is,
00:42:52this stuff continues, it marches on and on, and you might be asking, okay, Cameron, why do we care about this?
00:43:02We care about this because we're in the middle of trying to do this peace deal for Ukraine. Trump and
00:43:17Zelensky met today with a bunch of European leaders, and Trump has departed from the ceasefire
00:43:25language and is going for an all-out peace deal despite the fact that Ukraine wants a ceasefire before
00:43:30negotiating a peace treaty. Um, I've been told from a source that negotiations are underway
00:43:36and a deal will probably happen, you know, by winter, possibly, which as peace negotiations go
00:43:46is a rather short timeline. But the fact that this is still happening, that Russia's still doing this,
00:43:54and that very little is being done, it's not even being brought up by the Trump administration,
00:43:59they're not even being called out for this, that
00:44:02this is the discordance of our time. On Friday, we had Trump and Putin palling around in Alaska,
00:44:16and, but we also know that the FSB, presumably under Putin's direction, or at least knowledge,
00:44:25is hacking the judiciary. So, we're palling around with a guy that we're also under attack from.
00:44:32Um, we don't know what they said in the limousine when they were driving away.
00:44:39We don't know why they only had one meeting and not two. I have a story about that coming up.
00:44:46But, the reality is, Russia's not our friend. And what's funny is that used to be a Republican position,
00:44:52not a Democrat one. That's the part I always find funny. Mitt Romney, back in 2012 when he was running,
00:44:57said, Russia is the biggest national security threat to the United States. And when you see stories like this,
00:45:03you wonder if Mitt didn't have a point. Ah, here it is. Um, so, the Daily Beast posted this, uh, yesterday.
00:45:14It was an MSNBC story. Is this that? No. That's something else. Um, and it was this story here,
00:45:21um, where it says, MSNBC host Antonia Hilton has suggested that Donald, President Donald Trump's
00:45:28aides, particularly Press Secretary Carolyn Leavitt, may have been frightened by what they'd
00:45:32witnessed during the President's meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin. On Saturday night's
00:45:36episode of MSNBC's The Weekend Primetime, Hilton spoke to former U.S. Ambassador to Russia Michael
00:45:40McFaul, an Obama appointee, about Trump's summit with Putin in Anchorage on Friday. Quote,
00:45:45a lot of the press corps was there. They reported in the minutes and hours after the presser that they saw
00:45:48members of the administration, like Carolyn Leavitt, look ashen, almost frightened after
00:45:53what they'd seen behind closed doors. What did that indicate to you, Hilton asked McFaul.
00:45:57McFaul responded, we should all be glad that we did not go to Alaska because I was in Helsinki with
00:46:01you, and I was in Geneva when President Biden met. They traveled a long way for nothing in return,
00:46:06those journalists. He continued, but that suggests to me that this was a bigger disaster than they're
00:46:10letting on. To your point, they're trying to spin it, although they're not even trying to spin it.
00:46:14That's a really interesting thing. Quote, when I worked at the White House, we would have meetings
00:46:18like this. I was the SAO, senior administration official, and would call up journalists and would
00:46:22call the New York Times to say, this is what was discussed to push it this way. They're not even
00:46:26attempting to do that because they know they don't have anything to work with. The Daily Beast has
00:46:29reached out to the White House for comment. The summit in Alaska was largely considered a failure
00:46:33as the highly anticipated peace deal between Russia and Ukraine failed to materialize.
00:46:37And I don't know why everyone thought there was going to be a peace deal, and everyone was going to be.
00:46:40After a significant amount of pomp and circumstance that included a literal red carpet and three hours of talks,
00:46:44Trump told reporters, we didn't get there, but we have a very good chance of getting there.
00:46:47There's no deal until there's a deal, Trump said. I will call up NATO in a little while. I'll call up
00:46:51the various people I think are appropriate, and I'll, of course, call up President Zelensky
00:46:54and tell them about today's meeting. It's ultimately up to them.
00:46:58And as I wrote in the newsletter on Saturday, Trump spent most of the flight from Anchorage back to D.C.
00:47:05on the phone, and today, um, Keir Starmer, President Macron, Georgia Maloney, Ursula von der Leyen,
00:47:16and the Chancellor of Germany were all in Washington, and Zelensky were all in Washington today
00:47:21talking about, um, the potential for a peace deal.
00:47:27The fact that people were in a room with Trump and Putin, saw something that scared them,
00:47:34and came out looking frightening, on the surface doesn't mean anything.
00:47:38Okay, they look frightened.
00:47:40You know, but I think I agree with McFaul.
00:47:42They saw something, and there's been no comments
00:47:46from the White House today about what was said at the meeting and what was productive.
00:47:51All we have is what Trump said, that they were, they made progress, but they're not, they're not there yet.
00:47:58I was watching a video right before the show, where Trump, uh, was on, still on mic from, uh, meeting with Zelensky
00:48:07and said, you know, oh, we're very, we're very close to, you know, a deal I think Putin wants to do a deal with me,
00:48:13sort of thing, and so that matches what I've heard from my other contacts,
00:48:17that there's, you know, a deal is in progress.
00:48:22I think Ukraine's gonna lose a bunch of land.
00:48:25Ukraine's gonna be banned from joining NATO.
00:48:27Probably banned from joining the EU.
00:48:28They're going to kind of be forced back into the arms of Russia,
00:48:31and they're also gonna want new elections, and have Zelensky put out as well.
00:48:37Um, although most people don't know, Zelensky owns a house in Florida,
00:48:41so my guess is Zelensky will be, um, our new American neighbor, when this is all said, said and done.
00:48:49But that was kind of post the Great Alaska Meeting on Friday.
00:48:53I found that very interesting.
00:48:56Um, I find it interesting that it's not just left-wing people posting this,
00:49:00because the Daily Beast is definitely not that.
00:49:02There's a lot of people talking about it, which I also find rather interesting.
00:49:05Um, I don't ordinarily play TikToks on the show too much,
00:49:15and this isn't even really a video, actually.
00:49:17Um, but I thought it was an interesting idea,
00:49:22because when I came across it, I was kind of like,
00:49:25huh, yeah, I think they're onto something.
00:49:27It's the inshidification of American power.
00:49:30First Google and Facebook, then the world.
00:49:32Under Trump 2.0, U.S. statecraft is starting to mimic the worst tendencies of big tech.
00:49:37A term coined by Cory Doctorow in 2022 to describe a cycle that has played out again and again in the online economy.
00:49:42End inshidification.
00:49:43Entrepreneurs start off making high-minded promises to get new users to try their platforms.
00:49:47Then tactics change, squeezing users for everything they can get,
00:49:50even thus the platform fills with an ever more low-quality slop.
00:49:54See Twitter.
00:49:54Ever since Trump retook office in January, in fact, rapid inshidification
00:49:58has become the organizing principle of U.S. statecraft.
00:50:00This time around, Trump world understands that in controlling the infrastructural layer of global finance,
00:50:05technology, and security, it has vast machineries of coercion at its disposal.
00:50:10So, what is an ally to do?
00:50:12Like the individual consumers who are trapped by Google search or Facebook as the core product deteriorates,
00:50:16many are still learning just how hard it is to exit the network.
00:50:20The United States is beginning to monetize its hegemony.
00:50:23And when you start looking at shit through that lens, and you start thinking about like,
00:50:51oh, that's what Trump is after.
00:50:55He's like, we're in charge of the world, and somehow, uh, we're not getting paid from every little thing.
00:51:01We're not microtransacting the world to death.
00:51:05Well, time to put in some microtransactions!
00:51:08And I was kind of like, oh, I get it now.
00:51:11Like, it was an aha moment for me.
00:51:14Like, yeah, it's like, what good is being in charge of the world if you can't get paid?
00:51:20Now, tariffs are the dumbest idea because we pay the tariffs.
00:51:23Other countries do not.
00:51:24But I think that is what it all, like, everyone is so dependent, and part of it,
00:51:30that it's just kind of like, yeah, and Trump wants everyone to start running our checks.
00:51:38And it was just such a kind of a huge, a huge breakthrough moment,
00:51:42especially coming off just talking about the Russia story and everything,
00:51:46to be kind of like, yeah, that, you know what?
00:51:48But that makes a crazy amount of sense.
00:51:52A crazy, crazy amount of sense.
00:51:55So I saved it for us to talk about it because it was just too good to pass up.
00:51:59Too, too good to pass up.
00:52:00And from all places, Wired Magazine, can you imagine?
00:52:04Um, speaking of Wired Magazine and AI and all this type of thing,
00:52:08I thought this video on data centers was,
00:52:12one, for More Perfect Union, if you're not following those guys on YouTube, Twitter, you should be.
00:52:18But it was excellently fascinating about what's happening with AI and how it's changing society.
00:52:24Let's hear it.
00:52:25Investors have been pouring money into AI infrastructure projects.
00:52:29This one has cost about $700 million.
00:52:32Overall, it's tough to give an exact amount on the industry's investment
00:52:35because all of this money is private.
00:52:37But everyone more or less guesses it's at about $200 billion.
00:52:41So the AI industry has actually been, in some ways, in real financial trouble.
00:52:46There is no clear path to profitability.
00:52:49The original idea was that AI was going to be sold to businesses,
00:52:53but that has failed to materialize for all of the reasons that AI just isn't working all that well in the first place.
00:53:00In February, a hedge fund did some back-embelow math.
00:53:04If you strip out investments in data centers and training,
00:53:07how much money was actually spent on buying actual AI products and services?
00:53:11About $16 billion.
00:53:13Maybe less.
00:53:14To actually turn a reasonable profit, they need to raise that number to about $200 million.
00:53:19Exact estimates vary, but the general thesis has been backed by major venture capitalists and investment banks.
00:53:25And there's one thing that potentially complicates business cases for these systems are existing laws.
00:53:32If there are any road bumps into how they can do that,
00:53:35then selling enterprise AI software suddenly becomes less appealing, both to them and to the clients.
00:53:42These road bumps are society's foundations.
00:53:46Fair credit reporting violations.
00:53:47And these protections are exactly what deregulation is trying to undo.
00:54:12I don't see how that's good for anybody, except for the few firms that are making a ton of profit off of it.
00:54:20But here's the thing about companies that spend hundreds of billions of dollars on products with no clear path to profitability.
00:54:26They try to create their own reality.
00:54:29So a lot of terms are being thrown around by CEOs that sound incredibly impressive.
00:54:33Artificial general intelligence...
00:54:34This also kind of happened with automobiles as well.
00:54:39...and can perform any intellectual task a person can.
00:54:43We said from the very beginning we're going to go after AGI.
00:54:46I'm sure you've heard it before.
00:54:48How long before we're literally dealing with a god?
00:54:51It used to be that, like, AGI was this very binary moment.
00:54:54Open AI has had a definition of AGI in its charter, and I quote from its charter,
00:55:00highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work.
00:55:09They would consider a system AGI once it had generated $100 billion in profits.
00:55:16Artificial general intelligence isn't about curing cancer or American diabetes.
00:55:20It's about whatever makes them $100 billion.
00:55:22And that's frightening.
00:55:29Like, I'm going to pull this story over because, um, things are perilous in the AI world.
00:55:37But, like, it's not anything other than what can we make $100 billion for sort of thing.
00:55:45And it's just kind of like, huh, that's all they need.
00:55:49They need $100 billion.
00:55:50And they'll find any, any way to, to get it.
00:55:54Now, I want to bounce over to this story from Fortune Magazine because it seems like there is,
00:56:03oh, this story is, um, paywalled.
00:56:07Hang on.
00:56:08We'll go grab it from Apple News.
00:56:12Doo-doo-doo.
00:56:14Because I have a subscription there.
00:56:17And here it is.
00:56:19Um, so, while we're on the hunt for $100 billion, you know, to make AI pencil out and be profitable,
00:56:29it says here,
00:56:29AI experts returned from China stunned.
00:56:31The U.S. grid is so weak the race may already be over.
00:56:35Everywhere we went, people treated energy availability as a given,
00:56:38Rui Ma wrote on X after returning from a recent tour of China's AI hubs.
00:56:42For American AI researchers, that's almost unimaginable.
00:56:45In the U.S., surging AI demand is colliding with a fragile power grid,
00:56:48the kind of extreme bottleneck that Goldman Sachs warns could severely choke the industry's growth.
00:56:53In China, Ma continued, it's considered a solved problem.
00:56:56Ma, a renowned expert in Chinese technology and founder of the media company TechBuzzChina,
00:57:00took her team on the road to get a firsthand look at the country's AI advancements.
00:57:03She told Fortune that while she isn't an energy expert,
00:57:06she attended enough meetings and talked to enough insiders
00:57:08to come away with a conclusion that should send chills on the spine of Silicon Valley.
00:57:12In China, building enough power for data centers is no longer up for debate.
00:57:16This is in stark contrast to the U.S. where AI growth is increasingly tied to debates
00:57:21over data center power consumption and grid limitations, she wrote on X.
00:57:24The stakes are difficult to overstate.
00:57:26Data center building is the foundation of AI advancement,
00:57:28and spending on new centers now displaces consumer spending in terms of impact on U.S. GDP.
00:57:33That's concerning, since consumer spending is generally two-thirds of the pie.
00:57:37McKinsey projects that in between 2025 and 2030,
00:57:40companies worldwide will need to invest $6.7 trillion into new data center capacity
00:57:47to keep up with AI strain.
00:57:49In a recent research note, Stifle Nicholas warned of a looming correction to the S&P 500
00:57:53since it forecasts this data center capital expenditures boom to be a one-off build-out
00:57:57of infrastructure, while consumer spending is clearly on the wane.
00:58:01However, the clear limiting factor to the U.S.'s data center infrastructure development,
00:58:05according to a Deloitte industry survey, is stress on the power grid.
00:58:08Cities' power grids are so weak that some companies are just building their own power plants
00:58:11rather than relying on existing grids.
00:58:13The public is growing increasingly frustrated over increasing energy bills.
00:58:16In Ohio, the electricity bill for a typical household has increased at least $15 a month
00:58:21this summer from the data centers, while energy companies prepare for a sea change of surging demand.
00:58:26Goldman Sachs frames this crisis simply.
00:58:28Quote,
00:58:28AI's insatiable power demand is outpacing the grid's decade-long development cycles,
00:58:32creating a critical bottleneck.
00:58:35Meanwhile, David Fishman, a Chinese electricity expert who has spent years tracking the country's energy development,
00:58:40told Fortune that in China, electricity isn't even a question.
00:58:42On average, China adds more electricity demand than the entire annual consumption of Germany every single year.
00:58:48Whole rural provinces are blanketed in rooftop solar,
00:58:51with one province matching the entirety of India's electricity supply.
00:58:55U.S. policymakers should be hoping China stays a competitor, not an aggressor, Fishman said,
00:58:59because right now they can't compete effectively on the energy infrastructure front.
00:59:03And that, and they go into the oversupply China has, and the structural differences, and all this sort of thing.
00:59:14I'm frustrated because that was free on my phone.
00:59:16But it was interesting, interesting things are happening with AI.
00:59:19In my LinkedIn newsletter for my halftime report in June,
00:59:24I had kind of written about, you know,
00:59:26in January I said AI has to make sense for a business use case for enterprise to make money,
00:59:30and in June I thought, it seems like that's happening.
00:59:33But now we're starting to see some cracks, and I think that's interesting.
00:59:37So if you want to get into more on that and how it applies to business and all that sort of thing,
00:59:43make sure to follow my LinkedIn newsletter, linkedin.com slash in slash Cameron Cowan.
00:59:48You can sign right up, and I do very business-specific stuff on that, on that newsletter.
00:59:52But I thought that was an interesting aspect of AI.
00:59:55Right now, one of the biggest stories in sort of domestic politics is the, what I call the great gerrymandering debate,
01:00:07which has faced off Texas Republicans and Greg Abbott against Gavin Newsom and California Democrats.
01:00:14The current plan, which we'll get into Trump's statement from today in a minute,
01:00:20and it should be noted that Texas, the Democrats in Texas who left the state to stop the Republicans
01:00:26from gerrymandering out almost all Democrat congressional seats, have returned to Texas today,
01:00:31and the bill is going to go through, and Democrats are getting, are going to get gerrymandered out of seats in Texas.
01:00:37Gavin Newsom had threatened that if Texas did that, he was going to gerrymander all Republicans out of California,
01:00:41so that that would stop them from being able to gerrymander their way into five new seats for 2026.
01:00:47Well, since it appears that that's not working so well, Trump has a new plan,
01:00:52and it involves trying to get rid of mail-in voting with an executive order.
01:00:56And it says here, I'm going to lead, this is President Trump speaking,
01:00:59I'm going to lead a movement to get rid of mail-in ballots,
01:01:02and also while we're at it, highly inaccurate, very expensive, and seriously controversial voting machines,
01:01:07which costs ten times more than accurate and sophisticated watermark paper,
01:01:11which is faster and leaves no doubt at the end of the evening as to who won and who lost the election.
01:01:16We are now the only country in the world that uses mail-in voting.
01:01:19All others gave it up because of the massive voter fraud encountered.
01:01:22We will begin this effort, which will be strongly opposed by the Democrats,
01:01:25because they cheat at levels never seen before by sending executive order to help bring honesty to the 2026 midterm elections.
01:01:31Remember, the states are merely an agent for the federal government in counting and tabulating the votes.
01:01:35They must do what the federal government, as represented by the President of the United States, tells them,
01:01:39for the good of the country.
01:01:40That's not true.
01:01:41That's unconstitutional.
01:01:47To do.
01:01:48With their horrible radical left policies like open borders, men playing in women's sports,
01:01:53transgender and woke for everyone, and so much more,
01:01:56Democrats are virtually unelectable without using this completely disproven mail-in scam.
01:02:00Elections can never be honest with mail-in ballots voting.
01:02:03And everybody in particular Democrats knows this.
01:02:05And I and the Republican Party will fight like hell to bring honesty and integrity back to our elections.
01:02:10The mail-in ballot hoax using voting machines that are a complete and total disaster must end now.
01:02:14Remember, without fair and honest elections and strong and powerful borders,
01:02:17you don't even have a semblance of a country.
01:02:19Thank you for your attention to this matter.
01:02:21There are a couple states in this country that do mail-in voting exclusively.
01:02:33One of them is Utah.
01:02:36Yes, red Republican couldn't vote for a Democrat if you held them hostage.
01:02:42Utah is mail-in only.
01:02:44So is Washington State.
01:02:46Also, if you get rid of mail-in voting,
01:02:51what are senior citizens who can't leave their homes going to do?
01:02:55What is the U.S. military going to do?
01:02:58What are people who are sick, traveling, out of the country,
01:03:02can't make election going to do?
01:03:03The answer, I would venture to guess, is nothing.
01:03:09It's a great way to disenfranchise people.
01:03:12We already saw this in 2024.
01:03:15Coming out of the pandemic, a lot of state legislatures,
01:03:19one, granted them the power to overrule slates of electors for the presidency.
01:03:22Two, it also restricted what secretaries of state and county clerks could do
01:03:29in terms of allowing extraordinary mail-in voting privileges.
01:03:33What it does quite excellently is disenfranchise people.
01:03:38It makes...
01:03:39And the thing is, it doesn't seem like...
01:03:41It's like, well, people will still go vote.
01:03:42Yeah, they will.
01:03:43But the number of voters will be less.
01:03:46And that's how Republicans tend to win elections.
01:03:49When you have lousy turnout, Republicans tend to do better.
01:03:53When you have big turnout, as we saw in 2020,
01:03:56Republicans get their butts handed to them.
01:03:59And so the reality is, by creating these structural changes,
01:04:03gerrymandering the seats, getting rid of mail-in voting,
01:04:06which, by the way, he can't do that.
01:04:08It's all unconstitutional.
01:04:10The states are in control of elections, by the way.
01:04:16You have this...
01:04:18You have this basically structural disenfranchisement of certain people.
01:04:24You basically make it and create a situation
01:04:28where whole classes of people don't get to vote.
01:04:32And when you have a structural situation
01:04:34where whole classes of people don't get to vote,
01:04:36that advantages Republicans.
01:04:38It's that simple.
01:04:39And that's what they're doing.
01:04:41It's another level of disenfranchisement
01:04:44that creates a lot of difficulties for, you know,
01:04:49Democrats, people, voting, participating in democracy.
01:04:55That's dishonest.
01:04:57But, as Ron Filipikowski, who's editor in Chief of Midasuch, says,
01:05:00Phase 3 of Trump's attempt to rig the midterms
01:05:02for an autocratic takeover of the Republic.
01:05:04He says he will sign an executive order
01:05:05on how states must conduct elections
01:05:06when they are required to follow it.
01:05:07Which is not true.
01:05:09We're at the top of the hour,
01:05:14so I'm not going to continue on much more.
01:05:17But I will say, I will finish here,
01:05:20that Dominion Voting Systems
01:05:22has been suing everyone
01:05:24who spread lies about their machines in the 2020 election.
01:05:28And they just got Fox News for $767 million.
01:05:32And now Newsmax is going to pay out $67 million.
01:05:35So, if we have any questions
01:05:37about what happened in the 2020 presidential election,
01:05:39if Dominion Voting Machine is responsible for it,
01:05:42the courts have said,
01:05:43no, they're not, and run them a check.
01:05:45So, yeah, Dominion Voting Systems is now up.
01:05:48What is that?
01:05:50$767 plus $67?
01:05:51Almost $900 million, dude,
01:05:54from news organizations
01:05:55who told lies about their machines
01:05:57in the election.
01:05:59Funny how that works.
01:06:00We're going to save Trump acting like a dictator
01:06:05and the U.S. is becoming Russia from queer majority
01:06:08until next week.
01:06:10These are kind of more evergreen.
01:06:14Mike Lee has introduced a bill
01:06:16to make all porn a federal crime
01:06:18following 2025 playbook,
01:06:20which, yeah.
01:06:22Last year,
01:06:22right-wing Think Tank Heritage Foundation
01:06:24launched Project 2025,
01:06:25which laid out much of the policy blueprint
01:06:27for the current Trump administration.
01:06:28And this is from Gizmodo.com, of all places.
01:06:31One of the projects espoused goals
01:06:32was to permanently criminalize all pornography.
01:06:35Now, a Republican senator with kind words for Trump
01:06:37has introduced a bill that would do just that.
01:06:39Senator Mike Lee, Republican Utah,
01:06:41recently introduced
01:06:41the Interstate Obscenity Definition Act,
01:06:43I-O-D-A, I-O-D-A,
01:06:46which would effectively criminalize
01:06:47all pornography nationwide
01:06:49by legally redefining
01:06:50what it means to be obscene.
01:06:52For years,
01:06:52obscenity has been all but a defunct legal category
01:06:55that narrowly defines speech
01:06:56that remains unprotected
01:06:57unprotected by the First Amendment.
01:06:59Lee would explode this legal category,
01:07:00expanding it to encompass
01:07:01virtually all visual representations of sex.
01:07:04According to the bill,
01:07:05text,
01:07:05a picture, image, graphic image,
01:07:06file, film, videotape,
01:07:07or other visual depiction
01:07:08of any media that appeals
01:07:10to the purient interest
01:07:11in nudity, sex, or excretion
01:07:13would be considered criminal.
01:07:14In other words,
01:07:15if you have an old VHS tape
01:07:16of some Cinemax-style smut
01:07:18stashed away in your garage,
01:07:19you could, under this law,
01:07:20be considered harboring
01:07:21deeply illicit materials.
01:07:23Some critics have suggested
01:07:24that Lee's definition of obscenity
01:07:25is so ridiculously broad,
01:07:26it could effectively criminalize
01:07:28Game of Thrones.
01:07:29That said,
01:07:30the punishments for merely
01:07:30possessing porn under the proposed law
01:07:32seem unclear at this point,
01:07:33as the legislation seems more focused
01:07:35on punishing the creators
01:07:36and distributors of racy material.
01:07:38The law would, quote,
01:07:39pave the way for the prosecution
01:07:40of obscene content
01:07:41disseminated across state lines
01:07:43or from foreign countries
01:07:44and open the door
01:07:45to federal restrictions
01:07:46or bans regarding online porn
01:07:47and the daily caller rights.
01:07:49Quote,
01:07:49obscenity isn't protected
01:07:50by the First Amendment,
01:07:51but hazy and unenforceable
01:07:52legal definitions
01:07:52have allowed extreme pornography
01:07:54to saturate American society
01:07:55and reach countless children,
01:07:56said Lee in a press release
01:07:57about the bill.
01:07:58Our bill updates
01:07:59the legal definition of obscenity
01:08:00for the internet age,
01:08:01so this content can be taken down
01:08:03and its peddlers prosecuted.
01:08:06Lee's view of pornography
01:08:07hews closely to that
01:08:08of the Heritage Foundation,
01:08:09which has similarly sought
01:08:10to curse this month industry.
01:08:11In its Mandate for Leadership
01:08:12Project 2025 defines pornography
01:08:14as the omnipresent propagation
01:08:15of transgender ideology
01:08:17and sexualization of children
01:08:18and argues that the people
01:08:20who produce and distribute it
01:08:21should be imprisoned
01:08:21and that telecommunications
01:08:23and technology firms
01:08:24that facilitate its spread
01:08:25should be shuttered.
01:08:29And we're already in an age
01:08:31of instituting age verification
01:08:32requirements for porn websites
01:08:34and this is our,
01:08:36we've talked about that
01:08:37on this show,
01:08:37we've talked about it
01:08:38on The Living Joke
01:08:38and all that we're doing
01:08:40and at this point
01:08:41I think we should check in
01:08:42on the Project 2025 tracker
01:08:44and here we are
01:08:46at 47%.
01:08:48There are 317 total objectives
01:08:51being tracked.
01:08:52There are 34 agencies involved.
01:08:54We are still 1,250 days to go
01:09:00until end of term
01:09:02and of the 317,
01:09:05116 are done at 47%.
01:09:07They have been in office
01:09:08six months
01:09:09and they're half done.
01:09:17This is real.
01:09:23This is real.
01:09:26And I don't want
01:09:27any hand-wringing about,
01:09:29oh, well, Cameron,
01:09:31it's a terrible thing
01:09:32and porn is awful.
01:09:33I have looked at numbers
01:09:35of how much porn is consumed
01:09:37in this country.
01:09:38We're all consuming it.
01:09:39It's like drugs.
01:09:40Seemingly no one does drugs
01:09:42but we're buying it
01:09:42by the trillions a year.
01:09:43Well, do the math on that.
01:09:46That, yeah,
01:09:47this is real.
01:09:48It's coming.
01:09:49It's happening.
01:09:49All that stuff
01:09:50said about Christian nationalism
01:09:51trying to change society,
01:09:52remake it in some
01:09:53evangelical view.
01:09:55This is how it starts.
01:09:58If you want to continue
01:09:59to have free speech
01:10:00in this country,
01:10:01save adult content.
01:10:03Because when they ban that,
01:10:05it becomes very easy
01:10:06to ban a whole lot
01:10:06of other things.
01:10:07Like common dissent.
01:10:10Yeah.
01:10:11Anyway.
01:10:13Thank you all for watching.
01:10:15I appreciate it.
01:10:16My name is Cameron Cowan.
01:10:17This is the Cameron Journal
01:10:17News Hour.
01:10:18Please follow me
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01:10:29And please also join us
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01:10:34Today's interview
01:10:35is really, really sweet.
01:10:36It's by a guy
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01:10:39who wrote a series
01:10:40of stories
01:10:41called Old Grandmother's Tree
01:10:42that's kind of
01:10:43a portmanteau
01:10:44of his French,
01:10:45Canadian,
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01:10:47storytelling traditions.
01:10:49So that's the interview today.
01:10:51There'll be a new interview
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01:10:53So make sure to check all that.
01:10:54Please follow me
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01:11:04Thank you so much
01:11:05for watching.
01:11:06I will see you next Monday.
01:11:07Have a great night.
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