Politix

After a three-year hiatus during the COVID-19 pandemic, Americans will have to begin repaying their student-loan debt this month. And after the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision in June to strike down President Biden’s student-loan forgiveness program, mass relief probably won’t come anytime soon. Biden has adopted other, narrower programs, and may try to salvage a Plan B for broader forgiveness. But in the meantime, millions of Americans are financially unprepared to start making payments again, and the Department of Education is stuck in a logistical quagmire, trying to restart a repayment system that wasn’t designed to be paused. What should Biden do in the face of a right-wing Supreme Court that seems uninterested in changing its views? Or about the larger, systemic problems that caused a student-debt crisis in the first place? Even in an ideal world of free or affordable public universities, what impact would right-wing ideology have on curriculum? Host Brian Beutler discusses all of these questions and others with Kevin Carey, vice president for Education Policy and knowledge management at New America, where he directs the Education Policy program.

We have every reason in the world to try to stop climate change. But when it comes to geoengineering––lacing the atmosphere with particles to block the sun’s warming effect––experts are split on whether the intervention would create more problems than it would solve. At this rate of global warming, though, it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which humans won’t eventually try it out. Inadvertently, we’ve already piloted the method through air pollution. Is the geoengineering genie already out of the bottle? Should we even want to stop it? Are there ways to deploy these efforts that will insure against scenarios where we wish we’d never tried? Host Brian Beutler is joined by Elizabeth Kolbert, a New Yorker staff writer and author of Under a White Sky, and Dr. David Keith, a professor of geophysical sciences at the University of Chicago and an advocate for geoengineering research.

At the start of the pandemic, China built a 1,500 room hospital in 5 days. In the United States, things don’t tend to go that way. We’re notorious for our boondoggles, cost overruns, and the slug-like pace it takes us to complete relatively small projects. It’s given rise to a debate over why we so often suck at building stuff, and what we should do to get better at it. Is the problem red tape that ultimately cripples projects or falls victim to abuse? Is it that powerful interests have a monopoly over what gets built? Is the key to creating state capacity for progressive ends building comparable progressive power? A bunch of the scholarly legwork that gave rise to this debate about the future of liberalism was undertaken by a University of Michigan law professor named Nicholas Bagley. He’s the author of the influential law review article “The Procedure Fetish,” and he joins host Brian Beutler for a discussion about how systems that were designed to either sabotage government or keep government honest have combined to make government incapable of building new projects that would make life better.

A few weeks ago the left-wing writer and critic Freddie DeBoer published an essay in New York magazine, in which he argued that Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez has become “just a regular old Democrat now.” The piece described left-wing dissatisfaction with AOC’s record in Congress as an outgrowth of a larger left-wing disaffection with U.S. politics, and concluded the Democratic Party is simply structurally resistant to socialist change. DeBoer generated a lot of warranted counter-criticism, but also captured something very real about the sentiments of marginal Democrats—the ones who might vote blue as means of blocking authoritarians from victory, or who might abstain from voting when left-wing candidates lose their primaries. In that world, disenchantment with AOC and the left wing of the Democratic Party is palpable, and raises some interesting questions: Is their disenchantment rooted in real grievances? Are Democratic politics really so resistant to left-wing pressure that the Democratic Socialists of America ought to stop deluding themselves? What could DSA or future AOCs do to have a bigger impact on policy, one that wouldn’t leave so many of its members with the sense that it’s all pointless? Host Brian Beutler moderates a debate between Eric Levitz, a New York Magazine writer who wrote a lengthy critique of the DeBoer article, and Ryan Grim, the DC Bureau Chief of The Intercept and author of the forthcoming book The Squad.

Last week, Pod Save America interviewed former New Jersey governor Chris Christie. An early and critical endorser of Donald Trump, Christie has now broken with his Republican contemporaries to wage a staunch never-Trump presidential campaign. So far, he’s the only candidate that has both qualified for the first GOP debate and demonstrated that he’ll attack Trump directly. Some PSA listeners were upset with our choice to give Christie a platform, but what does it really mean to give someone airtime? How quick should we be to reach for that deplatforming button? Are respectable news organizations always suckers for amplifying dishonest, or disreputable, or checkered people? Pod Save America’s Jon Lovett, who interviewed Christie, and Oliver Darcy, a senior media reporter at CNN who covers platforming decisions, join host Brian Beutler to debate the role of shunning and accountability in media.

The runaway favorite to win the Republican presidential nomination will soon be under felony indictment in three, or maybe four jurisdictions, but most leading Democrats are withholding comment on Donald Trump’s mounting legal problems. Joe Biden has reportedly ordered his campaign and the Democratic National Committee to keep quiet about it, even as Republicans work overtime to try to muddy Biden’s far more ethical record of conduct. Why aren’t Democrats doing more to emphasize character contrast between Biden and Trump? Are voters too mired in their personal circumstances to care which politicians are corrupt or cruel? Do appeals to their material well being, rather than appeals to morality, decency, or ethics reach more people? Faiz Shakir, the chair of Bernie Sanders’s 2020 campaign and founder of More Perfect Union, and Leah Greenberg, an executive director of Indivisible, join host Brian Beutler to hash it out. Should Democrats (other than Joe Biden himself) be more engaged in salacious infowars with the right? Or should they leave that kind of red meat politics to Republicans while building a singular economic policy appeal?

Whatever you think of recent, watershed Supreme Court opinions, it’s indisputable that the court’s six Republican appointees are deeply out of step with the will of the public—not to mention the entire institution was constituted without public consent. But should anything be done about it? The Court’s architects think everything is wonderful and will claim any criticism of the justices represents some kind of subversive attack. But even good-faith critics can’t agree on an answer. Some influential liberals, like Joe Biden, think the answer is nothing. At least not now. Others think the answer is to pass a law expanding the court and fill the vacancies with liberals, so its balance reflects what it should have been all along. And between those two poles, there are a number of ideas for reforming the court to better insulate it from political ideology. Host Brian Beutler moderates a debate over which—if any—of these ideas is best, and how to go about enacting them given that the current state of the court suits Republicans just fine. Joining him are Atlantic staff writer Adam Serwer, whose criticisms of the court have put the justices themselves on the defensive, and Lawfare editor Benjamin Wittes, who has warned Biden’s commission on the Supreme Court against outright court packing.

President Biden cut a deal with House Speaker McCarthy to increase the national debt limit. Or, more accurately, he defused the Republican threat to default on the debt and tank the economy if Democrats don’t accede to their policy demands––at least for the next few years. Many pundits have said Biden “won” the debt-limit fight, that he didn’t concede any more than he would’ve during the regular government-funding process, and that he achieved some semblance of bipartisanship. But that stands in stark contrast to President Obama’s approach; after House Republicans extorted much bigger concessions from him in 2011, Obama said it was a mistake to negotiate in the first place, and refused to do so again. Republicans talked a big game, puffed their chests, but ultimately backed down from future standoffs. Which approach is right? Those who argue Biden out-negotiated McCarthy, and thus “won”? Or those who say Biden’s decision to negotiate in the first place re-establishes a terrible precedent and thus precludes any claim to victory? Host Brian Beutler moderates a new, debate-style format for the show. Jordan Weissmann, Washington editor of Semafor, defends Biden’s approach, while David Dayen, executive editor of the American Prospect, argues this new precedent won’t age well.

Shortly after the Coast Guard kicked off its rescue mission to find the OceanGate submarine, one of the company’s founding advisers posted the following message online: “I hope to get a few hours of sleep, wake up and see very positive responses from the U.S. government in my Inbox. If I don’t, the whole world will know the names of the people who did not do their jobs.” It’s the latest example of powerful “disruptors” who got rich touting high-minded libertarian principles about innovation and deregulation, then blaming the government when everything predictably goes wrong. As with the BP Deepwater Horizon oil spill and Silicon Valley Bank debacle, the taxpayers foot the bill for the cleanup, while the supposed visionaries get a slap on the wrist. Host Brian Beutler is joined by Crooked contributor Max Fisher, whose book The Chaos Machine examines the mass-scale wrecking Silicon Valley has done to our society. They talk about how American industry got here, the psychology and origin story of the disruptor class, and how the path from idealism to nihilism is shorter than Elon Musk’s temper.

Donald Trump recently marveled that talking about trans rights whips his supporters into a frenzy far more effectively than economic issues like tax cuts do. He and other Republican leaders are (thus!) intensifying attacks on trans kids, banning health-care procedures and trying to separate them from their parents. The politics and discourse in some parts of the U.S. have left families with trans children little choice but to pack up their belongings and move to more welcoming places. Twelve-year-old trans activist and author Kai Shappley and her mother Kimberly left their home state of Texas and relocated to Connecticut less than a year ago. They join host Brian Beutler to talk about why they had to move, what it’s like being targeted by the state for gender expression, and how the Biden administration can better support girls like Kai.