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Speaker A: Hello and welcome to the Slate Political Gabfest. March 26, 2026. Airplane travel is a nightmare edition. I’m David Plotz of CityCast in Washington D.C. from the New York Times Magazine and Yale University Law School. Finally, not in Puerto Rico.

Speaker B: Emily Baselon, though, in New York. Still migrating.

Speaker C: Yeah. You’re in some kind of new venue. You’re in some sort of corporate housing.

Speaker B: Precisely.

Speaker C: Yeah. There’s a, there’s a pillow on the floor behind you.

Speaker A: That is John Dickerson, that other voice. John Dickerson. Where from? New York City, where as part of Mayor mom Donnie’s plan to bring agriculture back to the city, John has just planted his early spring crops. John has been given 12 acres in Central Park. He’s doing onions, peas, lettuce and all the brassicas. Congratulations, John. I hope you are watering well and that is a lot of Central Park.

Speaker C: Well, thank you. But the problem is the fertilizer prices are so high because of the issue in the Strait of Hormuz. So I’m unable to take full advantage of this wonderful new program. But I’m actually not even in New York. I am just blocks away from the David Plotz memorial plaque here in Cambridge, Massachusetts by which young college students stop and pause and reflect every day as they go to class.

Speaker B: And it’s quite a plaque revenge.

Speaker A: It’s a great plaque. This week on the gabfest, the cascading series of problems in American air travel. What is causing them with a side dish of Iran war? On that topic then will the Supreme Court bar late arriving mail in ballots, not allow them to be counted? And then Meta lost a couple of big civil cases. Is the landscape for social media going to change for children in the wake of these big losses and these juries finding that Meta and and YouTube have misbehaved towards our children? Plus we’ll have cocktail ch. American air travel is a mess. I’m sure you guys probably like me, are enjoying looking at the New York Times chart of wait times at various airports and looking at how at George W. Bush airport in Houston, the wait time in the regular security line is four hours, which is way longer than it is in any other city. But my God, four hours. So because of the partial government shutdown which has TSA agents not getting paid, many TSA agents quitting, many sicking out security in airports has slowed down a great deal. President Trump has responded by putting some ICE agents in airports to do unclear God knows what. And then of course we had this terrible crash at LaGuardia Airport this week. With a Runway accident that seems to have been triggered by a mistake by an air traffic controller. And this discussions that air traffic control itself has been decimated, damaged and undermined by what’s been happening in the country over the past many years. Also, jet fuel prices are spiking because of the Iran war. So John Dickerson, it is incredible in a civilized society to have four hour waits for security and yet it doesn’t seem that the politicians are going to solve it instantly. I mean, they have a chance to solve it, but they keep failing to solve it. Why do they keep failing to solve this crisis?

Speaker C: Yeah, and I’ve traveled through, traveled out of Chicago, let’s see, out of New York, out of Chicago, into Boston. So I’ve experienced the TSA madness. And I would just say in my own experience, and this is limited, obviously, but the TSA agents who were there were incredibly cheerful and really like doing their job. There was not. There was not. I mean, they hooray for them. Really super hooray for them. I actually didn’t see any of the ICE agents, but the ICE agents. And now the President is talking about sending the National Guard. I mean, talk about when you’re a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Obviously TSA agents have specialized training. ICE agents can’t do that. The idea that they’re at the airports is just like adds absurdity on top of absurdity. The reason there’s not a deal is that you have a couple of problems. Like any deal that you would make in the Senate, which could get 60 votes, which the Republican leader, John Thune had, basically the solution he’d come up with is fund the rest of dhs, which would take care of TSA and all of that and then leave funding for ICE in a separate bill which could be passed through reconciliation. The funding for ICE is what Democrats have been holding up as they argue for a series of measures, including getting rid of masks. Emily, do you remember the other parts of it?

Speaker B: Yeah. There are rules about use of force and use of force investigations, not using administrative warrants, meaning that you have to go to a judge if you’re gonna crash into someone’ house and break down their door. A bunch of other things like that.

Speaker A: And leaving hospitals, schools and churches as more or less as safe zones.

Speaker B: Yes. Sensitive locations, which was a policy for 40 years until Trump ended it last year.

Speaker C: But if it passes the Senate, it’s not going to pass the House.

Speaker A: Right. And also isn’t the problem that Democrats don’t particularly want that because it a ICE is not ICE is funded. ICE is effectively funded, even though you know that funding won’t last forever. But ICE has funding because of the, the bill last year which gave ICE $75 billion or some over four years.

Speaker B: Yes.

Speaker A: To spend kind of as they see fit so they can, they can spend it to pay their employees.

Speaker B: One thing I’m really confused about is so there are rules and law. There is a law against taking money that’s appropriated for one part of the government and using it to do something else. However, the Trump administration has basically violated that law that several times. Why aren’t they paying the TSA agents? Like if there is a moment to bend the rules, it would be on that. Especially because it’s all part of the same department. They’re all in Homeland Security together. And I’m just confounded by why these TSA agents are going unpaid while the ICE agents are, are getting paid and are like being subbed in for them even though they can’t do the job.

Speaker A: That is a good question, John.

Speaker C: Do you know, I think they’re just choosing not to because when you can choose to claw back money that’s already been authorized and appropriated, you’re deciding that you can choose to do whatever you want with money. And not only that, but Donald Trump on Monday moved the goalposts and said any bill that passes that funds TSA has to include these voter ID measures that are a part of the so called SAVE Act. So he made it even more difficult to pass any legislation. There was a period then during the week where it seemed like Thune had solve that problem by attaching the voter ID thing to the ICE funding, which would go through the reconciliation process, which is a mechanism that only requires 50 votes rather than the 60 in the Senate. But I don’t know where that, that seems to have not been able to solve the other problem, which is that a, as you say, Democrats, David, don’t want to provide the 60 votes in the Senate. And you still have a problem then among the House where Speaker Johnson has such a thin majority and some of his folks are saying that this deal that Thune had cooked up was gaslighting. So the thing about the Democrats, I mean, yes, that’s their position. I wonder though, as these days pass whether that position might shift a little because it’s get, it’s only getting worse at the airports.

Speaker B: Wait, what’s the Democrats position? Sorry, I got mixed up.

Speaker C: Schumer doesn’t like the idea of taking ICE enforcement out of the. I mean, he’s not wrong because all the things the Democrats want wouldn’t get put in the ice. There’s a separate ice measure that funded on a 50 vote margin. Then Democrats lose all their leverage to get these changes made. So he’s not crazy, but it’s just a question of at some point the pain of all these people getting stuck in airports is just going to get like too big and there’s going to be some kind of deal is going to get made. And I’m not sure a maximalist position is going to win out for Democrats.

Speaker A: What I don’t get is that it seemed earlier a few days ago that between Tom Homans, who’s more or less running kind of ice, and Thune, there was a deal which would give the Democrats more of what they wanted substantively on ice. Homans basically agreed. Okay, yeah, we will be more careful about administrative warrants, we will be more careful about use of force and we won’t, we won’t touch these secure areas, we won’t touch these sensitive areas and they that seem to have had a deal on this. What happened to that? Is it just that Trump was like, no, we will not, we won’t concede on this?

Speaker B: That is what it seems like happened.

Speaker C: Yes. Because the minute he said he was okay, I mean because he’s been all over the lot in terms of what he, what he, what he said and you can tell from at least well or you can surmise from his true social posts that he thinks that this is going to be wonderful for, for Republicans to keep beating Democrats up on this. Both the TSA issue but also on the voter id. I’m not sure he’s obviously right about that.

Speaker A: Do you guys think as a matter sort of in your personal beliefs that American air travel is bad? I think there’s been, there’s a huge amount of, of chest beating and kind of opining this week about how what a terrible situation is people saying, oh, we shouldn’t have deregulated back in the 70s, our air traffic controllers are working at the margins. It is so uncomfortable. It is, you know, these lines are unreasonable, etc. Etc. Do you, do you, where do you guys fall on that access?

Speaker C: Having just traveled, I’ll blunder in here. First, Emily, the. It’s a marvel of like the modern world that we’re able to zip and pop to these places as easily and with as few accidents as we have. That said, the LaGuardia disaster, which by the way, like three days before I was on approach to LaGuardia and was about like, I don’t know, 100ft above the tarmac. And we had to pull up because there was a. There was somebody on the. There was another plane on the tarmac. So that’s a little. But I mean, at least the preliminary reporting is that the fire truck that was given clearance to go across the Runway to deal with one disaster, that was, in part, as I understand it, at least one of the contributing factors was this, the kind of shortage up in the control towers. Just not enough people to handle these, you know, the complexities of air traffic control. The fire truck didn’t have the warning system, and that was a known issue that people had complained about. And the fact that the two controllers on the job that night were doing the job of four controllers, also a known issue for a long time, not just at LaGuardio, but in terms of the general shortages in the air traffic control system. So that part of it does seem super rickety. In addition, finally, just the fact that a lot of the air traffic control towers have outdated technology. So that of the litany you went through, David, that does seem to be a part that needs a little WD40.

Speaker B: I mean, I think the other part of it is that it feels so. It’s like, truly random whether everything is fine or not. Right. Like, I also had to travel this week, and I was supposed to fly out of LaGuardia, and then my flight got canceled, which I think was an enormous blessing, and I flew out of a regional airport in Hartford and I was flying to Indianapolis, and it was all totally smooth and fine. And I felt extra grateful this week, but sometimes it takes forever. It’s awful. You kind of are uncomfortable because you’re getting packed in like sardines in a way that, like, I notice that I’m uncomfortable. And so I think those irritations make us forget about the marvel John was talking about earlier, which is that actually, like, it’s kind of amazingly easy to go from one place to the other, except, of course, when it’s not and you end up, like, stuck in O’ Hare for 12 hours, which happened to me a couple years ago.

Speaker A: Right. Yes. You guys have identified, I think, the same paradox that I feel, which is that it’s incredible how safe it is. It’s incredible how easy it is. It’s incredible how cheap it is relative to what it cost a generation ago. It is actually cheap to air travel. I know the airplane tickets are very expensive, broadly, but they’re relatively cheap compared to what they used to cost as a sort of share of your income. And it’s become a means of mass travel in a way that, I don’t know that if you looked in the 1950s, people would have said, oh, yeah, everyone, millions of people are going to travel by this every day. Millions of people are going to travel. And it’s, and, you know, the level of safety is astonishing. And yet, because we are human and because we, you grow accustomed to a certain level of comfort, certain level of convenience. Any, any diminishment of that makes you feel terrible. You should be so grateful that you no longer have a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying when you get into an airplane. You should be grateful that that chance is now one in a billion. But you’re not, because mostly you’re just like, oh, the seat is smaller. And the peanuts, the peanuts are not very good. And they got rid of the Biscoff on this flight.

Speaker C: Well, they pretty much have gotten rid of the peanuts.

Speaker A: I also think, like, we have a world of private opulence here, too, which is that there is this world where the very rich do not travel the way that most people travel. They take private jets. And those private jets have a whole different ecosystem, a different world. And, and I don’t think that most members of Congress are taking private jets all the time, but probably some of them are taking some of the time. And I, and they, the, the people who are rich and make the big decisions in this country are not experiencing air travel in the way that most people are experiencing air travel. And that discrepancy is a, is probably a problem, John, because you’re great at shoehorning things into each other. Do you want to try to shoehorn what’s happened in Iran into this topic? We’re not really going to talk about Iran, but if you want to, if you want 30 seconds on Iran and connect it to what’s going on here, please go ahead.

Speaker C: To the extent that things are a mess at the airports, it’s less of a mess than they are in Iran, which is to say that good segue.

Speaker A: I mean, again, you know, as we’ve said, think it’s uncomfortable at o’? Hare? Try the horse Straits of Hormuz.

Speaker C: Yeah, well, I mean, as we’ve talked about before, the US Has a certain military dominance, although as I was reading the Economist War correspondent on the nature of the conflict, and I just want to read from a Wall Street Journal piece, actually probably is the place to start on this, which is the Journal had a peace late Wednesday night. President Trump has told associates in recent days that he wants to avoid a protracted war in Iran, and that he hopes to bring the conflict to an end in the coming weeks. Okay, well, that makes it all sound very simple and easy and cut and dry. But the fact is that the Iranians have created a pain point in the Straits of Hormuz that has caused things like the Philippines to declare an emergency because they’re so dependent on oil that comes through the Strait of Hormuz. The Saudis and others are saying to Trump, you have to go. You have to finish the job, because we don’t want to p*** off Iran just kind of bouncing around that we have to deal with after you leave. And I was reading the Economist, and it was saying, you know, clearly Trump wants to get out of this, and so he won’t have changed the regime. And the nuclear material is basically untouched. And I thought, it’s untouched. Like, well, then what. What was this all for? And the problem, of course, at the heart of the problem, at the heart of this is that not only is there a carousel of rationalizations that. That both the president and his officials go through and kind of pick different ones at different times, but we are reliant on one source of information for the two key questions about whether this was worth it. One is, was. Everybody knows Iran was bad, but was Iran so bad that it required this level of war, this level of destruction, this level of killing, and this level of economic chaos? And that requires having a read on how bad Iran was. Was the, you know, missile program as dangerous as Marco Rubio said? He put a timeline on it of a year away. Was, is the nuclear program as bad as Trump sometimes says, but also then it other times doesn’t say? And then finally, was war the only option? So those are the two questions. Were things as bad, and was war the only option? And the only person who could really give us actual information on that is the president or his officials. And the president is a historic liar. Like, he lies about things big, small, and when the truth will do. So that’s at the center of this whole problem, and obviously the center of what happens when it comes to an end, whatever kind of end it is. And I should just finalize it by saying the president started the week by saying, oh, we’re having good talks with the Iranians, and the Iranians are saying, nuts to you. That isn’t true. And nobody can tell whether the president is the one to believe or the Iranians, who are not exactly truth tellers. So it’s a bit of a mess.

Speaker A: The Supreme Court’s conservatives seem generally skeptical of A Mississippi law that has the state count votes received up to five days after an election as long as those votes are postmarked by Election Day. The more conservative for more most conservative judges, echoing Trump talking points, argue that such ballots contribute to a feeling of mistrust about the election, create a sense of ambiguity about when the election is complete. And it just sort of extends in a vague way. The election passed, what Congress or what the Constitution designates as Election Day or Congress designated as Election Day? No, the Constitution designates as Election day.

Speaker B: No, Congress. 1845.

Speaker A: Oh. What Congress designated as Election Day. There we go. Thank you.

Speaker C: Boom.

Speaker A: You’re welcome. In any case. In any case, the Supreme Court seems likely to overturn this Mississippi law and to require all votes be in hand by Election Day in Mississippi. There are many other states that have similar laws. Unclear whether those similar laws would be also whacked for the 2026 midterms if the Supreme Court takes out the Mississippi law instantly. So that’s whole other area of ambiguity and confusion that we can look forward to. So, Emily, what are the legal arguments for and against this Mississippi law?

Speaker B: Yeah, well, you started with the policy arguments about whether this is a good idea and contributes to fraud and lack of confidence. All interesting, got a lot of attention in oral argument. All irrelevant to the legal question here. The legal question here is when Congress passed laws in 1845 and then again in 1872, establishing election day, did they intend to forestall to preempt states from what Mississippi and lots of other states have since done? Which is to say that if you cast your ballot, you put it in the mailbox, you postmark it by election Day, but it arrives later, the state will still count it. And like, that’s it. That’s the whole text. It’s Election Day in these two laws. And we have this interesting phenomenon in which, like you said, David, the foremost conservative judges seemed very concerned about these state practices. And the liberal judges are saying, wait a second, Election Day. That’s all it says. Plus, we have the Constitution saying that states can make election laws unless Congress steps in and preempts them from doing that. And how can you say that? Like just this phrase, Election day from the 19th century is Congress preempting these laws about mail in ballots, which, like, obviously Congress wasn’t thinking about the 19th century because there were no real mail in ballots. Footnote about Civil War practices and soldiers on the battlefield, which we can talk about because they got to turn in their ballots later. But in any case, it’s like this weird flipping of sides where the conservatives are kind of hand waving at the text and hand waving at states rights and that aspect of federalism and the liberal judges are pointing to those things and saying, what are we all doing here?

Speaker C: Are they, Emily, are they hand waving at the text or are they, or are they overemphasizing just two words in the text? Which is, which is they’re saying that they were being, you know, they’re interpreting the creators that legislation to be hyper attentive to election day. And there’s no evidence in the record that that’s in fact the case.

Speaker B: Yeah, I think that’s the best way to put it. You’re right. I mean the other thing that’s complicated here is everybody has problems with line drawings on all sides. Right. So like if election day really just means election day, then what about all the early voting that is become also completely commonplace? Paul Clement, who is representing the Republican National Committee, which has challenged this Mississippi law, he was like, no, that’s all fine because election day just means by election day or on election day. And so that sweeps in all the voting that happens beforehand. But it’s not really clear why that would be. Exactly. And then the other thing that’s interesting about this case is Mississippi, this deep red state, state is defending these late arriving ballots. And Scott Stewart, who’s the solicitor general for the state, happens to be the person who argued Dobbs on behalf of Mississippi. So that was another just like flipping around of this case.

Speaker A: I, I don’t have a.

Speaker B: You don’t care?

Speaker A: I don’t have an argument. I don’t have a legal argument to make, but I do think deadlines are important. So I think when Clement says it’s different early voting is a different situation than voting that happens after election day or that is not attributed until after election day. I don’t think he’s wrong. Like we have a, the purpose of a deadline is to kind of cause something to end at a moment. And that, that is a, that is a very valuable function in any kind of thing where you, where you need to, where you need to make a decision about something. You have to basically say, okay, that all the, the facts that are going to help us make this decision have to be complete by X and that’s where we’re going to consider it. So I, so I don’t, I don’t, I don’t think saying that there’s a time after election day and there’s a time before election day means that those two things are equal. I Think they are not equal. Also, it’s clear, like, if you were going to allow votes to come in after election day, that can’t be. You also agree that it can’t be infinite, right? It can’t be like, oh, it can come in a year later. It has to.

Speaker B: And that was a problem for Scott Stewart because they were asking him that and he was like, well, it’s up to the states. But that just also seems like a line drawing problem.

Speaker C: Right.

Speaker A: And so it does seem to me that, like, the line of it stuff needs to be in by election day. Feels like an okay line. Like you. It just people need to be aware of it. They need to get themselves together. And, and that is a as from a policy perspective, that seems totally fine. It seems completely fine to make it. And I want to get to another point. I want to make two points before you dismiss me. Emily.

Speaker C: All right, those of you at home, get out your pencil. Is this point. This is point number one.

Speaker A: Point number one, which is, I think there is this some worry among Democrats. Oh, this is going to disenfranchise Democratic voters deeply skeptical that this is true. I think what happens with election laws is that parties and states educate people. They learn to, they learn to adjust to it. And if it people now know, oh, our ballots have to be in by election day, they change their behavior accordingly. And educated voters especially change their behavior accordingly. There will be some laggards and they will mess it up because that’s how they’ve always done it. But the numbers will be small because the parties and, and the states themselves would do this education and people will become aware of it. So I think the idea that we’re going to suddenly disenfranchise these millions of people just because there have been some ballots that arrived after election day doesn’t mean that, well, that will continue infinitely if the rules change. If the rules change, people will adjust their behavior. That’s my first point. The second point is I do think that this extended arrival time gets to something that actually is destabilizing about American elections, which is that it takes way too long to count votes. And in some states it takes way, way, way too long to count votes. And that does create mistrust. And so the sooner you can get the kind of votes locked in and count them, the better, because these periods, like California, have they finished counting the elections and like the 2024 votes in California yet? I mean, they take forever in California. And part of it is like, it’s not the only reason, isn’t that votes come in late, but it’s, but there are a myriad of reasons why they just are not acting fast enough. And anything that I think that the, the country can do to accelerate the vote counting once elections are over, they should do. And if this helps with that a little bit, I’m for it.

Speaker C: Although you don’t, you don’t want to suggest that the thorough double checking process of counting votes that takes a little time is a bad thing because one of the challenges.

Speaker A: I do. No, no, no, you don’t want to, you can go back. You. I do want to suggest that.

Speaker C: No, no, no, no, you don’t. Because here’s why you don’t. Here’s why you don’t. In 2020, did I finish the reason. No, no, let me barrel forward in 2020. The reason Donald Trump was laughed out of a lot of jurisdictions is that people is that they were able to say, hey, we’ve thoroughly gone through our multi point process here to ensure that this vote is accurate. And while it was irritating in the moment that it took a little while, the fact that it was so, you know, belt and suspenders allowed them to, on the one hand it allowed Trump to make mischief in the way you’re saying, David, because he said, well, why is it taken so long? There must be fraud. But in the end of the day, in front of the judges, the fact that everything was double checked helped solidify the final result. I think I’m right. Emily, am I right?

Speaker A: I’m not saying you finalize results that they’re like, oh, we counted two thirds of it. That seems good, we’re done. I’m saying, I agree that yes, the final process, you know, the, but we know in almost every state we get results that are, that are not completely final and we get them quite quickly. And then there’s some states where you don’t get those results or they take, they, it takes them forever. They’re still at 80%, you know, days afterwards. And, and, but the states where we’re getting the quick results, those results are not finalized. They haven’t completed the process. It’s just they’re reporting our first count says, you know, we’ve counted 95% with our first count and we’ve got, these are results what we’ve got and that gives people a lot of confidence. And then they will go back and complete their process later and do all the double counting. But the early release of accurate first counts or preliminary first counts, who knows if they’re accurate. But they are generally accurate. They’re using accurate machines. They’re using accurate machines. The numbers don’t vary very much. Is very helpful to get those numbers out. And the sooner those numbers are out, the better because the longer that we wait for it, the more instability there is and the more mistrust that people have.

Speaker B: I think there are a few different things floating around here. So one is about counting. There are a couple of states that don’t start the counting until election day or even till the close of the polls.

Speaker A: Right.

Speaker B: Pennsylvania and California takes forever. For that and other reasons, I agree with you that California is its own problem and that is bad. Like that seems bad for the reasons that David was saying. And also John, for the reasons you’re saying that you want an accurate count pretty quickly. And there is no reason to wait to open a single ballot and start counting until election day or, or the, the close. Polls closing like that, bad change. Fix this question of the mail in ballots and when they can arrive. I’m a little torn about this. There were 750,000 late arriving mail in ballots in 2024. I think that’s the right number, which seems like a lot. I mean, it’s not a big percentage. I agree with you, David, that if we had clear rules that said everything has to arrive by election day, not be dropped in the mailbox, I think people would figure it out and get used to it. And in fact, we have some evidence from Minnesota and Wisconsin that when they made the rule change late in the game of the last election cycle to exactly what I just said, people adjusted and the rate of late ballots was low. So that seems promising. At the same time, it does seem a little bit like if you’re just sticking to this election day textualist question, back to the law versus the policy, that yeah, Congress was not preempting the states from saying that you cast your ballot when you turn it in and it should be up to the states to set the policy. And if Congress thinks this is wrong, they can pass a really clear statute saying no, don’t do it this way anymore. And it is not up to the Supreme Court to step in here. Especially because when you listen to what the conservatives were talking about, their concerns, they were in like voter fraud land. They were going out on these weird tangents about the idea that you could recall your ballot.

Speaker C: That was Gorsuch.

Speaker B: What was he talking about? I was literally like, dude, what are you talking about? Who has ever heard of this thing?

Speaker C: And so the guy running down the street in his flip flops trying to stop the Mail truck completely.

Speaker B: It was totally made up. Conspiracy theory, very strange. So I don’t know, like, I think if you want the Supreme Court to behaving like a court, then you hope that Robertson Barrett, who seemed on the fence, I couldn’t tell which way they were going to go. We’re going to let the states sort this out over time and again.

Speaker C: If Congress objects, Congress can say so what’s the Purcell principle here say, Emily, in terms of whether if the, if Congress says no, you can’t have counting of ballots after election day is over. Isn’t there some. Isn’t the Purcell principle the idea you don’t make changes close to an election? Essentially, yeah.

Speaker B: Well, this came up. Kavanaugh asked about this at oral argument and Paul Clement said, oh, don’t worry about that because if you make this decision by June, ballots don’t have to go out until September. Those early ballots to people who are overseas and military personnel and there’ll be plenty of time. And I mean, I guess that’s right. The Purcell principle has gotten, has kind of taken a beating in the last year from the Supreme Court. Like sometimes it seems like it matters a lot and other it doesn’t and it doesn’t have a hard deadline attached to it. Anyway, I think if Congress passed a statute in September, that would definitely not be okay. And again it really, policy wise, forget election day and the 1845 statute for a minute. Policy wise, I totally agree that what matters is a clear rule. Everybody knows what the rule is. Everybody will adjust to it once all of that is set.

Speaker A: If I were a Democrat, I would not spend even one minute like Freddy about this and I would just spend my time educating voters. Like educate your voters. Get your ballot in. Or like get it in.

Speaker B: Well, Republican, you might say the same thing, right?

Speaker C: Although if you’re a partisan concern, presumably if you’re both, but, but if you’re a Democrat, the way you educate them is say, oh my God, they’re, they’re taking this precious thing away from you. Yeah, yeah. Foreign.

Speaker A: Lost two high profile civil cases this week. On Wednesday, a jury in California found that Meta and YouTube were responsible for causing mental health harm to a girl who became a heavy user of their products. They argued. The plaintiff argued that the addictive design of Instagram and YouTube intrinsically acted to swallow her time, to harm her, to addict her. That the never ending scroll, the ease of, the general ease of use, the algorithm made her a prisoner of these platforms. In a separate case in New Mexico, a jury made a $375 million ruling against Instagram, slash, Meta, for not adequately protecting young users from child predators. So, Emily, we’ve talked about that California case before as it was making its way to trial. Remind us what the plaintiffs were arguing and how it’s evocative of the tobacco cases that were brought a generation ago.

Speaker B: Yeah, I mean, this is about the idea that you have a product that is inherently designed to addict its users and that the company knows that and is willfully playing off of that feature and making it worse. And so to zero in on the social media cases, we’re talking really about the recommendation algorithm and the idea that it is deliberately feeding people content that they then get totally hypnotized by, essentially. I mean, it’s. It’s an argument that takes away some agency from users, obviously, but there is evidence that this. It is having this effect, especially on teenagers. And so then the virtue of that argument, from the point of view of the plaintiffs, is that it gets around some of the free speech protections that Meta and other companies have claimed. And specifically this problem of section 230, which is the part of the Communications Decency act back in the 90s that judges have interpreted because the law really doesn’t say this to give social media companies immunity from being sued for the content that’s on their platforms. Right. This is the idea that the social media companies are not publishers, that they’re not in trouble if somebody defame someone else or does anything else that you would normally get sued for if you were like a media outlet. I am increasingly skeptical of section 230 and its virtues as applied to these big companies. And so the idea to me that you could have a kind of product liability theory that would get at the real harm I think is happening here. Like, I think it’s really interesting. And this case itself doesn’t have huge damages attached to it. And that was actually true in the New Mexico verdict as well. Like Meta can just swallow these particular results as the cost of doing business. But if this starts a trend where you start to see liability time after time and the companies are really vulnerable, then it seems like the critics of the companies have found a real legal hook for hopefully getting them to change their business practices. We’ll see.

Speaker A: And, Emily, just to just to be clear, what you’re saying is that these juries did not find that the content that. That the plaintiff was consuming was the problem. It was the way the content was delivered to her was the problem. And therefore it’s the section 230 is not invoked because it’s not that, oh, she’s getting content that’s all about, you know, how, how much weight she needs to lose or something. It’s because she’s, she just the features of the platform itself, the way it takes her time and attention is the problem.

Speaker B: Right. Well, it’s the fact that the way that bad content is fed to her, that the company controls that. Right. The company is feeding her that kind of content over and over again. Not that any one piece of content itself is the basis for the lawsuit.

Speaker C: And as somebody who likes to boil things down into simple morality plays, Emily, isn’t that a harsher judgment on meta and YouTube? Which is to say you can, you can say, well, gee, like spoon boy 3829 put up a video and like, we can’t catch every crazy a** thing that gets through there. But what this is saying is you created an architecture that knew it was doing this and made life miserable for people, specifically because you had designed it to do that. And that seems to put the companies more on the hook. And let me just staple this other thing to it, which is the fact that a jury came to this conclusion. Does that give moral force? Even if Meta can swallow and write the check, does that give it moral force? So that now every parent and everybody knows, you know, what the jig is up here. We’ve all known this was the case and that we have all felt the pickling to steal David’s frame of the algorithm. But now like a jury has in two places come to that conclusion.

Speaker B: Yeah, and I think having these two verdicts come down on the same day. And the second one is about content that exploits children sexually. Right. There are all these allegations that many states attorneys generals have brought about kids getting trafficked online and being exposed to predators. And you know, when I was reporting on bullying and what it was then called Facebook, and this is like 15 years ago, they were so self righteous about the steps they were taking to prevent exactly this kind of child exploitation online. I mean, honestly, like really, I cannot tell you how many lectures I listened to about it. And so, you know, it is interesting and telling that now that we’re testing all these premises in the courtroom, juries are fighting against the companies.

Speaker A: A couple of points. One, I think it’s interesting, I the strategy that Meta pursued in the, the, the litigation in California where they kind of impugned the plaintiff, they made it seem that the mental health problems she had were preceded any involvement that she had with, with Meta and that she had all these problems in her own life. And to then blame Meta for her, her mental health, weaknesses and, and problems and, and suffering was to miss the point. The point is that she has all these other factors which were much more important in her family life and in her and in the world right around her. And I totally understand why they made that claim. It juries in general don’t like to see children blamed their problems. That is not, I think if I were on that jury, I bet that that would be a very delicate line to walk to like to be like, no, the problem is that she’s, she’s crazy and her parents are up and that’s why she’s unhappy. Not look at this big company that is feeding her slop all the live long day.

Speaker B: Well, and also you can be vulnerable because of your kind of preexisting problems and then be especially susceptible to the damage the company is inflicting on you. And I think a lot of people can identify with that then they can.

Speaker C: Not only that, but they can. It’s not a huge leap for them to say that the vulnerable are actually the target because they’re susceptible to spend lots and lots of time because of the vulnerable condition they’re in.

Speaker A: Right. One question I had, Emily, is how much the kidness of this is central to the claims. Because if you say this is a problem because it affects kids and kids get addicted and your kids are made unhappy, that is, you know, that’s useful. That’s a category of people. And obviously kids are. Deserve special protection. But I guess I’m curious about that question because I’m really thinking about this in terms of the next wave of cases against platforms which will be against sports gambling platforms. And in sports gambling, all the people who are becoming addicted to sports gambling are adults. Not all, but most of them overwhelmingly adults. And like they, the gambling platforms do a pretty good job of identifying who is an adult and making sure those are the people who are using it. And if I were, if, if this case is not really contingent on it being about children, but it’s really just about the, the harms of the platform. If I were a sports gambling company, I would be really worried right now because all of the things that you talk about with, with Instagram are true in the sports gambling casinos, sports gambling apps, except it’s even more true because you’re literally taking people’s money away and you can see the, you can see the financial loss which is very easy to point to for people. And so I’m really interested in the underage question and how much it factors.

Speaker B: It’s a really important part of this. You’re right. So it is much easier, I think, to make this argument about kids right now. There’s tons of research in the social addiction algorithm landscape, first of all. But also there’s the issue of the First Amendment right. And the Supreme Court last year in a case about a law in Texas that was limiting every. So the law in Texas was setting an age verification for sexually exploitive content for pornography, basically. And the Supreme Court looked at it and the argument here was like, okay, this is obscene content, and so it’s not, or it’s much less protected by the First Amendment and kids don’t have any right to see this content. But the argument against the law was like, well, if you make everybody do age verification, then you in some way infringe on the rights of adults to see pornography because they have to deal with this age verification barrier. And in past cases, the Supreme Court has been very pro free speech, kind of absolutist in these scenarios and have not let states pass laws like this. But this time the majority said, go right ahead, Texas and the incidental in their kind of view infringement on adult speech is not worth all the exposure to the kids. They were allowing the kids as a separate category to really like reduce the First Amendment protections here. And so I think that sets up more of an opening for these lawsuits that we’ve just seen about kids to be affirmed by the appeals courts. Whereas whether you could also attach this theory to adults without running into a bigger problem from the First Amendment, we just don’t have the answer to that yet. But given how robust and kind of absolutist the Supreme Court has been about the First Amendment in that context, like, I’m not at all sure that an adult verdict would be held up on appeal.

Speaker A: What do you guys think the social media platforms will do in response to this? And what should they do? What’s like the ideal outcome? And what are they likely to do? I mean, first, they’re going to appeal. We already know they’re going to appeal. But what, what are the.

Speaker C: How do they stay alive?

Speaker A: Are there ways they can mitigate their liability? And, and if, if we were running those companies, or if you were running those companies, what would you do to. To bring them in shut down?

Speaker C: Can you. Yes, it would be. Well, would you. Can you.

Speaker A: Can we keep YouTube?

Speaker B: Oh, God, they have like the most addictive recommendation algorithm supposedly.

Speaker C: So I think the idea they’re already doing it, which is to say, hey, we’re going to put the algorithm in your hands, man. Like, if you want to, if you want to change the algorithm, it’s really easy. Or set the default setting as like algorithm is, you know, whatever they can claim is the most is the least coercive and then find a super easy way for people to be fed what they want. So like it’s the least coercive. But if you sign on, we’ll give you the extra special only for you David Plotz algorithm, which will just be the old algorithm, but you have chosen to do it and therefore they’re off the hook.

Speaker B: Should they also be giving parents easier ways to control what their kids see? Like, should the default be that you have to age verify and then you have to like try to get parents to weigh in and limit what kids are seeing? Is that, or is that something you have to do with the level of like the device, the tablet or the phone? Make it a kid tablet. A kid phone. I’m not sure. But I do think this question of trying to protect kids from some of this content is a real one that we should be thinking hard about.

Speaker A: Whenever I am watching almost anything these days and the, the streaming platforms are feeding me advertisements. Those advertisements are for Instagram accounts that insta. That Instagram is spending a gazillion dollars advertising to parents that now Instagram has accounts for teens and you can, you can set limits, some controls over those accounts. And they are, they’re really, really, really trying to shove it down your throat that that’s an option kind of horse out of barn situation. But, but it is, it is an effort.

Speaker C: Yeah, the horse is out of the barn and has set up its own Instagram account.

Speaker A: I mean this, we’re very far down the wood road and probably has its own Only Fans account at this point.

Speaker C: Only horses gone wild. Only fans.

Speaker A: All right, let us go to Cocktail Chatter. When John Dickerson, you are having a delicious gin martini, as you do on a Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday night, what will you be chattering to Madam Dickerson about?

Speaker C: This is a terrible week for job information. So the New York Fed put out a report that said by the end of last year, the unemployment rate for 22 to 27 year olds was 5.6%, which is well above the 4.2% unemployment rate. And that was the. And 40% of the jobs that people in that age range of 22 to 27. 40% of the jobs that people did have in that age range were jobs that didn’t require a college degree. Second finding US Worker thriving declines to its lowest level since Gallup started measuring that. So basically if somebody reports struggling in their life more than thriving, and for the first time it’s more people are struggling than thriving. And finally, people who are forced to take jobs with lower salaries is now 40% of the people who change jobs at the end of last year, 40% of them took salary cuts. That’s the highest share in the last decade or in at least a decade. So I guess the point is we know about the K shaped economy where the people at the higher end are thriving and people at the lower end are not. And this just is kind of more of those underlying unpleasant numbers inside the job market, particularly if you have young kids at home or college graduates at home.

Speaker A: Emily Bazelon, what is your chatter?

Speaker B: Our former colleague Julia Turner has been working for a while on a new publication in Los Angeles and it just came out. It’s called LA Material. I subscribed immediately because I love Julia and I’m kind of fascinated by LA and I just want to see what this is going to be. And I was checking it out this morning and was just super interested in the mix of stories. I read a whole piece about how an effort to set down a kind of dreadful sounding sex work and but really child exploitation corridor in LA kind of moved all of the that traffic that was going on into this wealthier neighborhood and how irritated the neighbors there were and the city kind of just wrestling with this question of what to do about this. It really seems like a real nest of exploiting teenage girls in particular. Anyway, it was interesting, so go check it out. LA Material online at an Internet near you.

Speaker A: I am so glad you mentioned that, Emily. I was going to mention it, but I’m glad you beat me to it.

Speaker B: And Julia, did you say that Julia was also a longtime Slate podcaster, of course, at the Clipper Fest.

Speaker A: Yeah, it’s great. I’ve been, I love it. I’ve been reading my LA Material emails with great pleasure. And Julia Turner is a former editor of the Indie at Brown, which is an important and illustrious position and a former editor in chief of Slate, an illustrious position that I held too. So I saw a hilarious story in the Washington Post this morning. Have you guys heard about the landline company? Do you know about this? So, so apparently you there’s certain regional airports seems to be mostly in Illinois, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware. And you you buying a ticket like let’s say you need to go from from Scranton, Pennsylvania, and you’re going to go to Los Angeles until you buy a ticket from Scranton to Los Angeles. Round trip ticket. Great. You show up at the airport, get ready for your flight, you get in your flight, you’re like going to be on the landline flight, and you get. And you’re on a bus. The flight is a bus. What, it takes you to a bigger airport. And so the story is all about these people who think they’re on a, like a little jumping flight that goes from Scranton to, you know, to Philly and then from Philly to la. But actually they just take a bus from Scranton to Philly and then they take the long flight, but they just did. And you, if you pay attention when you’re booking, you understand that you’re on a bus. But there’s definitely a category of people who. Descriptions of people who, like, are at the airport and they go out to the bus on the tarmac and like, oh, we’re taking the bus to the plane.

Speaker B: It’s just the plane is at a different airport.

Speaker A: This is so funny.

Speaker C: This one’s happened. Amtrak has a version of this. I was going down to Charlottesville from Washington and I noticed a little something funky with the ticket which most normal humans would notice as you’re booking a bus and not a train. But I mean, to be fair, you don’t expect to be on a bus when you book for a train.

Speaker B: Oh, my God, I would totally fall for this 100%.

Speaker C: But then, so that what the disappointment on not being on a train is compounded by the fact that you’re on a bus and the swinging door of the lavatory in the back, which creates a sort of constant perfume.

Speaker A: Well, but what’s interesting, actually, John, in the contrast, going back to our earlier conversation, the people who are on the bus instead of a plane are actually like, oh, it’s pretty comfortable. Yeah, I picked nicer than being on a plane.

Speaker B: Exactly.

Speaker C: There’s nothing wrong with the bus.

Speaker A: The WI fi works.

Speaker C: There’s nothing wrong with the bus if you’ve chosen it. It’s the surprise bus that is really the challenge.

Speaker A: What’s really funny is apparently if you look on the ticket, it says plane type, you know, in the plane and it’ll be like, you know, 7:37 or whatever. And the plane type on this says bus.

Speaker C: And somebody probably thought. Somebody probably thought. Well, they mean Airbus, of course.

Speaker A: Airbus. Right, exactly, exactly. Anyway, very funny story in the post, listeners, you’ve got chatters. Please email them to us@gabfestatslate.com Keep them coming. We love your listener chatters. And our listener chatter this week comes from Elena in Yellow Springs, Ohio.

Speaker D: A few weeks ago, John Dickerson spoke about shoveling snow and whether he should shovel the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the street. My cocktail chatter is that according to Way with words radio episode 1574, that strip of grass is called the Devil Strip, but only in Akron, Ohio. While the term double strip was once widely used in the northern Midwest, it’s now only used in Akron to the point that a kidnapping was solved when the perpetrator cited the Devil’s Strip and their ransom note. Way With Words Radio digs into colloquialisms and phrases, their history and geographic variations. A recent episode described restaurant staff using the term auctioneering to describe walking up to a table and saying, okay, who has the chicken? It’s a delightful listen. I hope the people of Akron would be okay with having gabfest listeners, except expand the use of devil Strip. Perhaps someday John Dickerson can declare that he shoveled the Devil strip in support of his New York City neighbors. Love the podcast.

Speaker C: I appreciate the entire team who makes it possible that word is acronistic.

Speaker B: Hey, before we close out, I just want to correct something I said last week. I was talking about John Stuart Mill and the book On Liberty, and I gave the wrong first name for Harriet Taylor Mill, who helped write On Liberty. Her name is again Harriet Taylor Mill. Not what I said. Apologies to Harriet posthumously.

Speaker A: We’re not the only podcast this week in the Slate ecosystem. Slate Money has an episode Are the Billionaires Smothering hbo? Felix and Elizabeth and Emily talk about the oil shortage, but mostly, or more interestingly for me, they talk about the Paramount Warner Brothers deal and how HBO might be the big loser. And as a big fan of hbo, I am disheartened to learn that the network is in trouble and its reputation for edgy prestige TV may be suffering. So I hope it survives. Listen to Slate Money on the billionaires and hbo. That’s all for our episode this week, but we also have a bonus episode in your feed. We’re going to be talking to Yale historian Beverly Gage about her new book about an American history road trip. Her semi quincentennial road trip. This Land Is yous Land is the book. We get to talk to Bev about that. That’s just for Slate plus members. Just for Slate plus members who also get bonus episodes on other Slate podcasts. They get discounts to live shows, and they never hit the paywall on the Slate site. So become a member. Subscribe to Slate plus directly from our show page on Apple Podcasts and Spotify, or visit slate.com gabfestplus to get access wherever you listen to thanks for being a member. That’s all for our show today. The Political Gabfest is produced by Nina Porzucki. Our researcher is Emily Ditto. Our theme music is by the MIT giants Ben Richmond, senior director for podcast operations Milo Bell, EP of Slate Podcast, and Hilary Fry as editor in chief of Slate. For Emily Bazelon and John Dickerson, I’m David Plotz. Thanks for listening. We’ll talk to you next week.

Speaker C: Sam.