Today, I’m talking with Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, and you’ll hear me start with the only question I think anyone should be asking any politician in the federal government right now: What the hell is going on here?
Sen. Markey didn’t mince words with his answer. You’ll hear him compare the Trump administration to the fascist dystopia in Orwell’s 1984 and say that democracy itself is on the line. And one of the places that Sen. Markey and I agree that it most seems like democracy is on the line is when it comes to the First Amendment and the increasing pressure the Trump administration is putting on free speech.
Of course, if you’ve been listening to this show or The Vergecast this year, you know that I’ve been particularly focused on the pressure FCC chairman Brendan Carr is putting on free speech. Carr talks like a mobster when it comes to threatening broadcasters with fines and merger conditions — and many media companies, like CBS parent company Paramount, are going along with it to get what they want. Sen. Markey has a lot to say about all of this, especially ahead of Carr’s scheduled appearance in front of Congress coming on December 17.
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Oh, but there’s more: I also have a lot of questions about the supposed TikTok ban, which no one seems to know anything about, even though the House and Senate actually passed a law that would force ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, to either sell some assets or stop operating in the United States. The Supreme Court held that law to be constitutional, even though it has profound free speech implications for all of TikTok’s users.
But despite being the person who originally tried to ban TikTok during his first term, President Trump has promised a deal with ByteDance that would keep TikTok operating in some way. So instead of enforcing the law, his administration has repeatedly pressed pause on any possible enforcement of the law. And having an administration just flat-out ignore laws it doesn’t like is a pretty big problem. Sen. Markey voted against the TikTok ban, and I wanted to know if he’s heard anything about the status of the app or if anything he’s learned since has changed his mind about the potential national security issues that might actually support a ban.
Of course, we also talked about the bigger picture, especially as we head into the midterm election year. His answers about how to push back against authoritarianism were pretty forceful — although I pushed him pretty hard on whether the rest of the Democratic party, especially its current leadership, is as interested in fighting back as he is.
He gave us a lot of interesting answers. I think you’re going to like it.
Okay: Sen. Ed Markey. Here we go.
This interview has been lightly edited for length and clarity.
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