Hi, I'm Molly John Fast and this is Fast Politics, where we discuss the top political headlines with some of today's best minds. And Congressman Jamie Raskin has announced his cancers.
In remission, we have a jam pack show for you today.
Joyce Fance, who co hosts the Sisters in Law podcast, will bring us up to date on the many many lawsuits surrounding are politicians, mostly just Trump though, and the Egene Carol case.
Then we'll talk to The New York Times.
Hannah Dreyer about her blockbuster reporting on child labor across the United States. But first we have Rolling Stone editor in chief Noah Shackman. Welcome to Fast Politics.
Now, Hi, Hi, before.
We start having a fancy interview, you are the reason that I have a podcast.
No, you're the reason you have a podcast. You said, YO, give me a fucking podcast or else, and I was like, that's a terrible idea, and you were like, if you don't, I'm going to burn down Brooklyn. And so we did a bunch of them. We did a bunch of demos, and we did a bunch of stuff and I was like, uh, Molly's so awesome, fine order of bone and then.
So let's talk about I want to start with got to Grow to Stay alive, because I think about, like, you've now been at Rolling Stone, what a year and a half?
Yeah, not quite, but around there.
You kind of brought that same Daily Beast ethos to Rolling Stone in a totally different way.
Yeah.
I mean, I think part of it is that, you know, when I was at the Daily Beast, we kind of stole from old Rolling Stone DNA, and so I'm kind of just returning the DNA back to its host. And that's like there's a combination of politics and pop culture, which you know, you and I both love. There's a you don't give a spirit, which I know we both love too, and there's also a respect for great journalism, and so you kind of do all those things and you wind up with a pretty good mix.
I'm curious, like, where does traffic come from?
Where does traffic come from?
Yeah? So, I mean part of it is, right, one of the things you've done since you've been at Rolling Stone.
Is that you've gotten people back to Rolling Stone, right.
Yeah, I mean, look, traffic is up, but traffic is basically just a function of are we doing stuff that's
hot or not are we doing reporting that's good? And you know there's there are bad ways to get traffic, right if we wanted to just like as you can imagine, right, Rolling Stone ranks very high on Google for like Paul McCartney and Mick Jagger, and so if we wanted to just write about the Rolling Stones and the Beatles all day, we would probably get even better traffic, you know what I mean, because Google would keep feeding it to us.
But you know, like Rolling Stone has ultimately got to be about you know, what's happening in pop culture and politics now, not be the museum of rock and roll. And so I've actually made a bunch of decisions that are probably like on their face, bad for traffic, but you know, ultimately are better for the operation. And so you know, if you look at our covers or you look at for profiling, it's not your articles Rolling Stone,
it's your kids anyway. And on the traffic question, you know, we get traffic from old variety of sources and it's like, you know, you get original information and cool shit. You know the traffic will come from it.
So much we talk about traffic as like a pejorative thing, or it tends to have a perjorative connotation. But as a writer, I mean, if somebody doesn't read it, then what are we even doing?
Yeah, yeah, there's definitely some of that, But you know, you don't want to tie it too closely, right, because there are sometimes when you know, the thing you fart out happens to catch, like the particular algorithm. Therefore you get a lot of traffic, whereas something you work hard on doesn't always, And so there's a lot of different
ways to get recognition. For example, we did this super long, deep dive investigative piece about a Serbian war criminal back in the nineties who had turned out had a very lucrative djaying career in the techno scene.
It hits all the metrics.
Right Yeah, no, but I'm just saying so, like that story, like in terms of traffic, was a total bomb, right, But we just won a national magazine award for it. We just were the finalist for an Overseas Press Club Award with it. Done a lot of stuff and in that community it's been hugely successful. And so would I do a story again called the dj as a war criminal? Fuck? Yes, you know, even though it didn't get like, it didn't blow up on Twitter or whatever.
I want to ask you about the most recent piece that I've read that was kind of mind blowing about the total cross and appo file.
Yeah, it's mind blowing, but it also makes total sense.
Oh, it totally makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah. So, I mean Fox has a long history that everybody can look up about keeping basically oppo research files on their biggest stories to keep those stars in check and to make sure that they didn't talk against the company. And those are kept by a woman named Arena Briganti, who is the well known multi decade fear closed, terrified of head of PR for Fox News. She is one of the most powerful people at the networks, you know,
right right up there at the top. And so we broke a story a couple of days ago about how how Arena in our shop had kept an opposition research file one Tucker Carlson and had for a long time and had that information, you know, sort of at the ready in case he decided to start shitting on the bosses or shitting on the networks. Whether that oppo file is the same thing as these anonymous leaks that are coming out saying that Tucker said all kinds of racist
and sexist and horrible things in text messages. Right.
We don't know, right, we don't know.
Whether those are the same things or whether those are different things. I think you can imagine if there's an Apple file on Chucker, Like, it feels like the opportunities for there to be bad stuff and there feel numerous considering everything he does that's so vile, Like in public.
Right after you published a story, did Arena Burganti call you and scream at you? She didn't, So does that mean that like there's going to be a horse's head in your bed?
Or I mean, is that a worse sign?
Yeah, it's a good question. Ordinarily Fox reaches out about the smallest slight, right, right, I mean they issued a denial to be clear, you know, they issued it on the record denial. I think there's two interpretations. One is they're so busy with other stuff and they're so fighting in coming that they don't have time to bother with little rolling style, or they are so or there's there's nothing I can.
Say because it's true, Because it's true. Yeah, it does seem like eight sources seems like a lot of sources.
Yeah, we had eight sources for the story that does seem like a lot, And I would say since then, we've heard from others that confirm the same stuff. So it is kind of an open secret at Fox.
And there's probably APO files on a lot of people. I mean, what we know from Roger Ayle's time was that that was sort of how they did it.
Yeah, it stated operating procedure, and this was true on Bill O'Reilly and Stewart Party and those kinds of people, And so I'd be shocked if they didn't have one on everyone.
I want to like kind of get you to speculate for a minute on the future of Tucker Carlson.
Yow.
I'm sorry to do this to you because it's me, but it's also we're interested. Like part of me thinks, like, this guy is so singularly powerful and dangerous because he's smart, because he really does speak to a group that is willing to do anything for him. Yeah, part of me thinks, like, could he could go off and do some really destructive things. But then part of me thinks, like, what happened to Bill O'Reilly, what happened to Glenn Back?
Well, Glenn Back, you know, continue to operate a media company still continues to for a long time.
Right, but he's not the figure he once was.
Yeah, Bill O'Reilly continues to drink beer and cry in his corn beef with Tucker look at I don't know. I would say that though. Unlike those other two people, he has both like huge mainstream media connections, and he's got a coterie of followers not only on the right and befar right, but on a group of people that formerly identified themselves as being part of the left right.
You know, there's sort of a tulsy gabbered section of people that at least cosplayed as being on the left that I think would follow Tucker into the gates of hell. So I do think that makes him a rather different figure. Honestly, if I were him, I would try to mess around with another network or do you anything like that, Like any other network is going to make him look small, And I would go to Rumble basically and do a
video show from there. And I'm sure raake in the bucks That's what I would do if I were him. I know there's talk about him running for office.
Why would anyone do that?
Yeah, I just I don't even understand the upside of it for him, The guy like just kind of stays in his house and can be very rich and very powerful that way. Running for office seems like way too.
Much work, right, That is my sense too.
But when you saw that video of him last night, do you watch that video?
I did.
He has this stick.
Which is has worked very well for him and is very appealing to the Fox audience. But I mean, we don't know again what his noncompete is, and we also don't know what his Like I wondered how much NDA there was there, right because he didn't mention Fox.
I would be shocked if there was some kind of contractual mechanism that was keeping him speaking out against Fox in public. It would be shocked if that was my case, at least for a time, at least for six months or a year or whatever, until Rupert comes back from the dead. But I got to say, you know, if you had never heard of Tucker Carlson before, like if you didn't know what pure evil this guy was peddling, I don't know you'd listened that two minutes and to
be like, yeah, that's fucking right. There is a place for truth in this world, and there is a place for open debate, and yeah, totally and I got to say, I was like watching my video last night on my phone while waiting for my kid's courus recital. It was kind of weird. I was in a middle school in Manhattan. It's a strange juxtaposition. And I was thinking to myself, Man, this guy is good. He's really good. He is he
is really good at the demagoguery. He is excellent at it because he builds a persuasive case for absolutely terrible stuff.
I thought the vagueness hurt him, like he's so vague part of what he does successfully and again this is not and in no way as a compliment, is that he sort of picks a target and focuses on that and he can't really do that right now.
I don't know. To me, I sort of read it the other way, which was like the vagueness of it allowed him to sort of mold together Fox and you know, the non crazy part of the media into a giant other that he could then attack and really set himself apart, and kind of due to Fox, with Fox into the mainstream media, which is to say, like you can't trust them, but you can only trust me, and now give me money.
Right, that will be the question what scoops are coming at in Rolling Stone that we need to read right now.
Sure, I'd be happy to tell you about everything that we've got coming up.
Yes, yes, just everything before it's gone through illegal just tell us now.
Yeah, I appreciate that. Well, I would say this is not necessarily the fast politics overlap you were expecting. I'd say, like, our exclusive with Kesha this week was awesome. I love Kesha, And we had a very funny exclusive with this pop star and great songwriter named Bedie Reksha, who our writer gave the classic Rolling Stone assignment and they went to a dispensary and in Los Angeles and got high as fucked together and talked about music and life. I really
liked all that. Yeah, we've got to really true. She's stuff coming up that I'm not going to tell you about. Don't work.
I mean, come on, come on, just give us something.
No nothing, huh, it's some stuff about you know things.
Is there more coming about this APPO file?
Yeah, I mean obviously we're trying to dig up more on that if we had it nailed down and be published already, because it's a super competitive story. If you just think about it, there's definitely other shoes to drop in Fox on the dominion fallout, if you just think it through, I think there's going to be more there, and we're trying to shake that loose. We are working on some interesting stories about your president, Donald J. D. Trump.
Oh yeah, the best, Yeah, he is the best. Tell me more turns out even best er than you thought.
I don't believe you.
That's our story. Yeah, So we've got a lot of stuff on that. This isn't something I've got to sign, but I think there's a lot of work to be done on this. Inability of the baby boomers to kind of just let it go and the real gracelessness with which some of these powerful boomers are aging is really tough to handle it. You know, it wouldn't be so bad except that these people are still holding on to
incredible reins of power. Whether we're talking about Murdock, you know, whether we're talking about Trump, talking about Diane Feinstein, or you know, frankly about Biden. I just think it's it's insane that he's running again personally, and I think he's done a great job as president personally as a citizen. But the idea that this guy could be one heart attackle one stroke from handing the presidency back to Trump
is just nuts. It's really your response. So I definitely want to dig in on that issue.
Thank you so much for joining us.
Oh my God, my pleasure. Ananta.
Joyce Vance is an MSNBC contributor and the host of the podcast Sisters in Law and Cafe Insider Welcome Too Fast Politics.
Joyce Vance, Good morning, Mollie.
I'm so delighted to have you, and I think of you as like a friend, a genius, a legal expert, and there's a lot of legal shit going on right now. I wanted to ask you the first thing, the thing that's top of mind to me right now, And perhaps because I was named checked this morning and it is the Egene Carol case, it strikes me that there are some very hopeful things about this case, but also some really tough parts of this case.
Yeah.
I think that's exactly the right way to look at it.
I mean, this this is a case about defamation involving a former president who in twenty twenty two made ugly comments about Egen Carroll over her allegation that he had raped her in the mid nineteen nineties, and so she sues for defamation, but also for battery, which is sort of the civil equivalent of assault, under a newly passed statute in New York that lets adult survivors of sexual abuse bring civil cases that would otherwise be barred by the statute of limitations the time you have to sue.
So here Egen Carroll is in court, and on the one hand, it's this tremendous moment where the former president may finally be held accountable for the horrendous conduct that he has displayed against a number of women over the years, never been held to account. But at the same time, it's this tremendously painful moment where you know, we are seeing what women in America go through every day. This decision.
Do I report this kind of incident? Maybe I don't, because powerful men can do damaging things to women who make these sorts of allegations and bring them to light. But Egene Carroll is particularly strong. And although we can't watch the trial, there are no cameras in federal courts, which is sort of a favorite bugaboo of mine, but there are people inside the courtroom who are live tweeting. Carol is just a woman who is remarkably brave.
Yeah.
That was the thing that I was struck by was when she was talking about the abuse. You know, we don't talk about the abuse that much, the sort of online abuse.
What happens when we are targeted.
I don't know if you've had that experience, but I certainly have had the experience of being targeted by those trolls. And even though like on some level you saying, well, I'm me and this is irrelevant and these people don't even know me, it does actually take a toll.
Yeah, I mean it really does. And look, it's not just the online stuff. I mean, there are peopleeople who will decide to physically stalk you or send threatening letters. And I think that that's something that we've all experienced at this point in time, and my background, obviously, you know, coming out of federal law enforcement, I think you're better
equipped to deal with that. When you are a private citizen like Egene Carroll and you're being subjected to the worst that people who are motivated by Trump's bad behavior can throw at you, it's extremely unpleasant. It should be. You know, this is like a sign in glaring letters that says do not reelect. And I hope people will pay attention.
Right, I mean that is the big question is like will this man get another term in office, which he certainly might. This is not a criminal trial. Will you just talk about this a little more so? That's a really important point here. This is not a criminal rape prosecution. No one goes to prison at the end of this case. That's because you know, the case is old. It would be barred by the statute of limitations. Here's a really interesting thing about civil versus criminal cases, Molly, and you'll
forgive me. You know, I'm a former appellate lawyer. I'm a little bit dirty when it comes.
To this stuff. In a criminal case, guilt would have to be proved beyond a reasonable doubt to the satisfaction of the jury. In a civil case, the judge will instruct the jury that they must find Carol's allegations are true by a preponderance of the evidence. That means more likely than not or fifty one percent if you want to put it in numerical terms. That's obviously an easier burden for a plaintiff to meet in a civil case. And you know, a lot has been made about the
fact that Carol's memory is imperfect. She doesn't remember the exact date or even the exact year that this took place. She didn't go to law enforcement immediately. But in my mind, those are both strengths in this civil case. If Carol wanted to make up allegations about Trump, she would have known what the date was, right, And so I think ultimately this is a very strong case.
Right.
That is a really good point.
I also thought what she said where she talked about there's no real upside to these cases. I mean, you know, maybe she gets a little money, Ultimately it's going to cost more in lawyers fees.
Will you just talk about that for a minute. This is not an easy win for anyone.
Now, I mean, this is what I think of as a woman of valor prosecution. This is someone who's bringing a lawsuit that she really didn't want to bring because it's the right thing to do. I think Carol is someone who appreciates the moment, she understands the trajectory of history. It's very unlikely that the jury will give her a monetary award that's sufficient to even cover the damages she
suffers after she is fired by L Magazine. Of course, L Magazine said that they didn't terminate her contract because of her allegations about Trump, but the timing is very interesting. You know, she lost readers, she lost income. The jury might decide to compensate her for the but that's certainly not a sure thing. And so this is a case I think that's more about principle than it is about money.
Right, These are the kind of things they're traumatic to be involved in. So now there are some things under the radar that are going on with Trump that I was hoping you could talk about, Like, for example, he came to New York, made.
A big show of seeing.
Alvin Bragg, you know, the Da Da Da Da, and then he came later and saw Tiss James and made that it was completely sort of snuck in. Will you talk about those two different cases, because they were like a week apart.
Lawsuits everywhere. Trump is under criminal indictment in Manhattan, and I love the way you phrased it. You know that he made a big deal about showing up to see Manhattan Da Alvin Bragg, as one does when one is under arrest and submitting for processing because one has been indicted in a criminal case. And then the second situation that you're referencing. He comes back the following week because
he's been ordered to sit for a deposition. And this is the New York Attorney General's prosecution again civil not criminal, of bad business practices by his corporate entities. And this case may really be the sleeper in the whole mix of Trump's legal problems because it could involve imposing a corporate death penalty on his ability to function in the state of New York.
Can you say more about a corporate death penalty? That is some interesting wording.
Yeah.
So, you know, this case looks into manipulation of values and other loose practices, and something that James can ask the court to order is that Trump be forced to stop doing business in the state of New York. You know, it's interesting about the time that this case got serious, Trump filed for a duplicate corporate entity in Delaware. He
began the paperwork to do that. It may be that he sees the writing on the wall, but it would be a real gut shot for Trump to be an able to do business in the state of New York.
Right, And I want to talk about his CEO is already in jail, Alan Weiserberg.
He is He's sitting in Rikers Island, which is not a pleasant place for anyone to sit, you know, let alone a man of his age. One of the big wild cards in both the Manhattan DA's criminal prosecution and Tiss James civil case is will Weislberg finally decide he's had enough and that he wants to cooperate so he doesn't spend his last years in prison. He has seemed to be very motivated to stay in Trump's good graces.
There has been speculation that that's because his family benefits financially and could be devastated financially if he were to join forces with the government. That's one of those ones where we'll just have to wait and see.
Yeah, I mean, it's quite interesting.
And then there was also an announcement about in Georgia, will you talk a little bit about what's happening with Fanny Willis?
Right, So, Fulton County District Attorney Fannie Willis sent a letter and say, Mollie, this is pretty unusual to see this happen. But she sends a letter to the sheriff in Fulton County and says, listen, I'm going to be making an announcement she doesn't say, you know, is she announcing she's indicted. Is she going to announce She's not
going to indict who's involved. But she says, I'm going to make an announcement about, you know, this election investigation, and you should be unnotice that you need to be prepared for public safety purposes, to protect our citizens. So she says, you know, it could happen as early as July eleventh, it could happen as late as September. She's sort of set a time frame for announcing her prosecutive decision here.
Very unusual, Yes, very unusual, right, She's sort.
Of though, to be fair, it's one of those damned if you do and damned if you don't. She really needed, I think, to work through with state, federal, and local law enforcement public security consequences of any decision she might make. You know, Fulton County, with all due respect to Atlanta, is not Manhattan, not as equipped for what would accompany the indictment of a former president. Could she have done
this privately and gone to them and had conversations. Absolutely, Instead, we have this letter that leaked out.
So I want to ask you a little bit about this documents case. So there's one other case. It's a federal case. It's the Jack Smith case. Can you talk about that, because there's been some new information there too.
Jack Smith now has both the Document's case and the January sixth criminal investigations, and in the best tradition of federal prosecutors, those cases are largely opaque. Right we don't know what his timeline is. He could be ready to drop indictments tomorrow, or he could have decided not to indict. But what seems clear from what we've seen is that he is working towards an indictment in the Document's case.
This recent case that we're seeing with this young member of the military is a really good example of why Trump is on a trajectory to get popped by the Feds. It's not holding on to classified documents alone that gets you prosecuted. It's obstruction. So in that particular case, there's now evidence that indicates that the defendant tried to destroy evidence to discourage other people from cooperating with the Feds
as they closed in on him. And there's a parallel in Trump's case where he lies to Dojay and says I've given you everything back when he clearly hasn't, and that's the sort of conduct I think that will lead
to Jacksmith forward. You know, this week we've learned that some of the early documents that were returned involved Trump's briefings to meet with foreign leaders, which is incredibly dangerous for our national security, given what we know about how cavalierly Trump treated access to these sorts of documents, and just given all of the evidence of obstruction that surfaced in the course of this investigation, that's what we know publicly.
My assumption is that Smith has a lot more evidence than what we know about that we're just seeing the tip of the iceberg. I think this case is on track for an indictment.
Yeah, it is, I think really really quite interesting. There's still no legal world in which Trump doesn't run again, there's nothing. It's sort of too late to stop that.
I mean, I think that, to be clear, is the job of the political process, not of the legal process. Right, legal process only determines whether or not someone committed crimes. What people do once they have that information is up to them, and here it's up to the Republican Party that frankly could bar Trump, but lacks the spine to do so.
Right, that is certainly true. I want your take on this, Disney versus DeSantis.
Sorry, yeah, Disney versus DeSantis. This is a really interesting lawsuit.
Right.
It's not just a contracts case saying Florida, you can't violate our contractual agreements. It's also alleging First Amendment violations. And this I think is a case of be careful of what you ask for, right. I mean, DeSantis thought he could look like the big man by taking on Disney, and now Disney has taken the bait. Yeah, I like Disney's chances here.
Can you explain this lawsuit a little bit for me because I don't quite understand it, right.
So, what the controversy centers around is the fact that Disney, like more than one hundred other entities in the state of Florida, has this special status that's designed to encourage them to do business in the state of Florida, and it gives them incentives and special rights. And in Disney's case, they have a lot of control over the land that
Disney World is situated on. They provide services, they really act in many ways like a local government, and there's a board that heads that work and historically they've appointed
by Disney. Ron DeSantis decided that he would put his own people in place to do that, that he wanted to strip Disney's authority in retaliation for the way that you know, Disney has done horrible things like supporting gay people and so on its way out the door, the existing board sort of Meetcaps DeSantis in his new board member's ability to do anything by entering into some contracts that lock things in place for thirty years. Newboard can't
change that. So that's the essence of the contract suit that Disney is bringing. Look, you know, Disney does everything that they do immaculately. I can remember being there with our kids twenty years ago and seeing this guy in a business suit holding binders, who was obviously a Disney employee, walking down Main Street and there were a whole bunch of napkins that somebody had dropped that were on the ground, and the suit stops, picks up all of the napkins
and puts them in the trash. And I just said something like, wow, that's amazing, and he said, no, that's our training. And to me, that has always epitomized Disney. They are very good at picking up the.
Trash, so we will see how they pick up the trash.
To be continued.
Choyce Fans, I am so delighted to have you on this podcast.
I hope you will come back.
This is a treat for me anytime. Mollie.
Hi, it's Mollie and I am.
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Hannah Dryer is an investigative reporter at the New York Times. Welcome to Fast Politics, Hannah, thank you for having me. We're delighted to have you. And you did this blockbuster. I'm sorry to say blockbuster. There should be another word. It's blockbuster. It's the kind of thing that's huge, but it's also just devastating, which is you cracked this child labor story. Can you talk a little bit about this?
Yeah, So this has sort of been an open secret in immigration worlds for many years. A lot of the children who cross the border by themselves are coming here and ending up working. And so I knew about this from reporting on you know, Trump immigration crackdowns years ago, and last year I decided to try to really dig into what's happening with children who are coming over the border and working. And I sort of thought it would
be kids at restaurants, maybe it would be an agriculture story. Well, instead, what I found is these kids are working in factories, They're working the overnight shift, in slaughterhouses, They're working in the most industrial settings. I found them in every single state, and so we're talking about thousands, tens of thousands, some people think, probably hundreds of thousands of kids, some as young as twelve thirteen years old, who are working full time in jobs where children should never be.
Yeah.
I mean I remember listening to an episode of The Daily You did Wow where you talked about the sort of how you cracked these networks.
Is that fair? Yeah?
The reporting was very intense. It was basically going out getting on the ground in some of the places where I knew there were a lot of children who had been released not to their parents, but to maybe an uncle they never met, or a family friend, somebody from the village. And so I went to these towns all over the country and tried to figure out where are
these kids working? And it was a lot of standing around at you know, the Cheerios factory at the twelve o'clock shift change, and looking for young faces as people walked out of work, and then talking to some of these kids and asking them how old they were, asking if they were going to school the next morning. It's a pretty hidden population. I initially tried to do this reporting by talking to immigration lawyers or advocates, and they just weren't in touch.
With these kids.
These kids are totally on their own.
That's the thing.
When I read this warning and when I heard you interviewed about those these kids are.
Really on their own, and they're little kids.
I was expecting that I would be talking to sixteen and seventeen year olds, but yeah, really, say, these are you know, twelve year olds. I remember one twelve year old I talked to. He had come over. He was staying in a house with five other kids just like him who had come over as unaccompanied minors and been released by the government to the same sponsor, and he
was working in roofing every day. He told me he'd never learned to read, and he really wanted to go to school just to learn to read, and he thought that he would be able to But when he got to this country, he was on the hook for rent. He was on the hook for paying back the cost of his journey to the border. And it's just these really dark situations, these kids who sort of have no hope of ever escaping the situation that they're in.
Yeah, the thing that was so striking to me was just how crushingly Deckenzian this is. I mean, but the other thing that really struck me was these are not like I mean, some of them are like random roofing companies whatever, but a lot of them are like blue chip companies with publicly traded stocks.
Can you talk about that?
Yeah, I mean, these are the biggest companies in this country. We're talking about about Pepsi Co, General Mills, Ord, General Motors, Fruit of the Loom, Socks. I also thought that I was going to find a lot of sort of under the table work. But actually what's happened is that these big companies, say, you know Pepsi Coo, which makes Cheetos, there's sort of a new supply system where Pepsi Coo
will hire a manufacturer. In the case that I found, it was this company Heartside in Grand Rapids, and this company will start manufacturing Cheetos, but the workers that are there are hired through a staffing agency. So what's happened is there's all these layers and it allows a company like PepsiCo to say, oh, we had no idea there
were children making, you know, flaming hot Cheetos. And meanwhile, I'm talking to kids who are making this product and tell me that their lungs burn from the spicy dust, that they don't get enough sleep, that they're worried their hands are going to get caught in the conveyor belts. Seco sort of has plausible deniability. But at the same time, just going to the factories and looking around, it's easy to talk to these kids.
Yeah.
I mean, that's what is so striking to me, because the reason why I wanted to talk to you was not just because of this blockbuster reporting, but because I've been seeing in these GOP state houses around the country, a renewed push for child labor laws. You saw in Alabama, in Arkansas, in all of these red states were quietly seeing these child labor laws amended or changed.
And I wondered if there was a connection between these two things.
Yeah, I mean, that's exactly right. So it's totally outrageous what's happening in these Republican states. They're basically rolling back laws that have been on the books for one hundred years. It's not like, oh, now a seventeen year old can work without a work permit. These laws are allowing fourteen and fifteen neurals to work the overnight shift legally, for them to work in factories with assembly lines, stuff that has never been permitted. And it really comes down to
the same issue, which is a shortage of workers. What look on in the states say is, well, somebody's you know, got to run the overnight assembly line, and nobody wants to do it, except there are these kids out here. And that's exactly what I heard with the migrant child leab or crisis, that these companies wouldn't have turned to staffing agencies except nobody wanted to. You know, work at three am stamping car parts.
It's heartbreaking, it's so crushing, it's so upsetting to me, But it also is just insane, right, Like, this is a country that desperately needs workers, right, but here's a situation where like it could clearly be solved by fixing immigration, and instead we have stayed houses making it so that children can work without these companies getting penal lost.
One thing that struck me about the kids I was reporting on is that their parents really wish that they could come and work.
Right.
So our process was, you know, it's very unclear that a twelve year old can give consent to talk to a New York Times reporter and a newspaper. So we talked to all of these kids' parents back in Central America, and a lot of them were, you know, crying on the phone with me, talking about how they had come to the border and tried to come into this country because they wanted to be the one sending money back
and providing for the family. But, like you say, the way immigration law is set up right now, a child can come in and work, but once you're eighteen, it's almost impossible to come into this country. Even if all you want to do is you know, work the overnight shift and send money home, right.
I mean, that's the thing that strikes me.
And with children again, you know, these companies are robbing these children of their childhood. I'm just curious, like in this situation, Will I mean, was your sense that once, Because now you've published the story, it's been a little while, do you think that they or is it change from this or do you think that what's really happening is these state houses are passing these legislatures to protect these companies.
Legislation to protect these companies. I think everybody who watches child labor is really disturbed by what's going right in these states. And it's an open question whether that legislation is really going to allow kids to work these jobs, because there's still federal law that protects these kids, and that's something that is going to have to get worked out. People are hoping the federal law is going to trump the state laws and these kids will still be banned
from these really adult jobs. But more globally, I mean, the Biden administration says that they didn't know anything about child labor or micro child labor crisis until our story came out in February. There were plenty of warnings set up, there was plenty of evidence that this was happening. But the administration, in response to our reporting has done a couple things. And one thing that they're doing is going after these companies in a new way, and they're pledging
to go all the way of the Chaine. So if a child was making Cheetos, it's not just the staffing agency that gets held accountable. I think we really are seeing a lot of change in the labor enforcement side of this. On the other side, on the sort of health and human services side, looking at what kind of support there is for these children. I don't know if we're going to see much change. That's sort of something that I'm watching closely right now.
Yeah, I mean, that's the thing.
It's like, and there is a fundamental problem, like if these kids don't get to work, these families don't get to eat.
It's a sickle call problem.
I Mean, one sad thing though, is these kids could work less brutal job they have.
I don't want to laugh because it's so horrible.
Go on, yes, no, no, no, no, it's horrible, and it's like absurd. Yeah, exactly, you know, like most people work as a teenager. I definitely had a job as a teenager, but I was able to get a legal and these kids could also qualify for work permits, which is the thing that would allow them to just work at like a grocery store or McDonald's. But they need
a lawyer. And so there's a lot of pressure on Biden administration right now to provide basic legal services for all of these kids because otherwise we know the kind of jobs they end up doing.
We hear a lot of kind of noise about immigration and about the border. Some of that from the Fox industrial complex is really cruel and evil towards these immigrants, right, they said, they're you know, I mean this Trump line.
You know, they're not good people.
But ultimately, these are children who have come here to save their families, right.
I mean, can you talk about the pressure these kids feel?
Yeah, I mean I think that these children imagine that they're going to come to this country and, like you say, and save the family and send money back so that their little siblings and can eat.
Yeah, and poverty.
Has just gotten so desperate in countries like Guatemala. But they're children, so they can't really imagine what they're taking on when they come here. And what they told me, like child after child, was that they couldn't imagine what their life was going to be like here. So it's really a question of can a child consent to come here and work full time and support themselves when they're like thirteen, And you.
Know, I don't think most people could think that they can really make that choice. So we have a situation where there are all these kids here, hundreds of thousands of kids more coming each year. There's surely going to be you know, another record number this summer, and we sort of haven't set up a system where anybody is checking in on these kids once they're released, but there's any kind of support for them.
Yeah, it's strange because we think of this problem as the kind of thing from another century.
Totally totally, and it's right now.
I mean, will you just explain a little bit, like what happens when one of these kids gets sick? I mean, is there anyone to take care of them? I mean, like they're really on their own?
Oh yeah, I mean child labor laws exist basically to keep kids physically safe. Like there's this idea that it's good for kids to be in school, and it's not good for them to have too much responsibility, and all of that goes into it. But when you're thinking of the turn of the century, when these laws were put in place, it was all about kids' physical safety. And that's what I saw again and again. These kids are
working really dangerous jobs and they get hurt. I found twelve instances of children just in the last couple of years who died on the job, like baring fifty feet to their bath, getting you know, caught in machines, having legs amputated, and when they get hurt, there's no one
to take care of them. One child I talked to had his arm mangled at a chicken processing plant when he was fourteen, and he was in the hospital for days, and he told me nobody came to visit him because he wasn't really living with anybody who had his back. He was basically on his own, trying to support himself on this overnight shift, and when he got hurt, he was abandoned.
Oh, I mean, the cruelty is just unbelievable. So, I mean, are there other ideas that you've had that you think could or anything you've seen where you were out there interviewing people, where you thought, oh, this might help.
I've talked to a.
Couple children who were in really bad situations where their sponsor, the person who had agreed to take them in, was forcing them to work, threatening them, threatening them with the violence if they didn't turn over their paychecks. And these children ended up escaping that situation because they had a social worker who was sort of watching over them. The government releases most of these kids with no support, but some do get a couple months of case management, and
from what I've seen, that made a difference. These kids at least had an adult they could call and ask for help, and then in the situations thinking of the social worker got law enforcement involved and the kid was basically rescued. So I think it all comes back to what kind of support is there for these kids? Are
they getting legal services? Is there a social worker, Is there sort of anybody who could be a trusted adult once they're released in case they end up, like a lot of them do, in these really bad situations.
Yeah, I mean it seems like an easy fix, and they're I mean an easy fix. None of this is an easy fix, and all of this is you know it's just heartbreak, but that certainly sounds like a way that the Biden administration could at least put another layer of safety for these children. It's unbelievable. So can you just for a minute or two talk about the reverberations of this piece and what you're seeing and anything that makes you hopeful, because now I'm so upset.
Look with the kids that we're writing about. Some of the kids we've named have now gotten lawyers, they've gotten more support, they've gotten the fund me set up for them. It's a tiny fraction of the children who are out there, but it's beenheartening that readers really do want to help, and people do want to help what these kids are in a visible place, and I think the whole issue
is more visible right now. So there were two Congressional Oversight hearings into this issue last week, there's another one coming up this week. And Health in Human Services, it's pledging to do a lot more as far as those sort of support services on the back end, and they say Congress needs to allocate money for that.
So we'll see. But all of this is.
Sort of in motion, and the advocates who work with these kids most closely tell me that they feel really hopeful for the first time in a couple of years about this, that something might actually change.
Hanna, thank you so much for doing this work.
I mean, I am so upset from talking to you for eighteen minutes, so I can only imagine how much this has broken your heart, having to do this, And I just appreciate it so much. And I'm so glad that the New York Times is covering this and that you're doing this work, and it's so important, and I'm just so grateful that you made the time to talk to us.
Oh, thank you.
Thank you so much for having me.
It means a lot.
No moment.
Jesse Cannon Malei Jong fasts. There's well the Egen and Carol case. I think a lot of people underestimated that'd be one of the more interesting ones for mister Trump, but it really started out to be interesting. What are you seeing there?
I'm seeing my name, Yeah, and I don't like it.
It struck me too, I'm seeing my name. I don't like it.
Here's what I would like. I would like when people are in court not to mention me when they are on the stand. All I want in life is to not be in a case, but here it is. Allow me to quote from the transcript, where did you meet him? The Council's asking about one George Conway Carol at a party thrown by Erica John's daughter, Molly John fast Comma, a respected podcaster. Hell yeah, hell yeah, our moment of fuckery.
That's our moment of glory. What are you talking about?
I'm just trying, man. That's our moment of full disclosure.
That's it for this episode of Fast Politics. Tune in every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to hear the best minds in politics makes sense of all this chaos. If you enjoyed what you've heard, please send it to a friend and keep the conversation going. And again, thanks for listening.