The Intercept Briefing

The Supreme Court is poised to decide a landmark case on Friday that could reshape social media in America. At stake: TikTok must either break from its Chinese parent company, ByteDance, or cease U.S. operations entirely.While the government frames this as a critical national security measure, the short-form video app and its creators and users see a direct challenge to First Amendment freedoms. This tension sits at the heart of a broader debate about digital communication and national interests.On this week's Intercept Briefing, Alex Pearlman, aka Pearlmania500, whose videos reach nearly 3 million followers, says the issue is not the app but the way tech platforms operate. He says, “We want regulations of algorithms. We at least need to know what the rules are." And when it comes to the government’s crackdown on TikTok, he says, “Everything that they've accused TikTok of, Facebook has done, either domestically or internationally. Everything that they have screamed could happen with TikTok, when it came to the elections, Elon Musk did openly. And most people know that. Most people see that. And I think it's going to lend to further cynicism when it comes to our institutions and when it comes to how government can actually operate." Intercept senior counsel and correspondent Shawn Musgrave adds, “Tech competitors to TikTok have generally avoided saying very much about the ban. … But these companies obviously stand to benefit incredibly from knocking out their top competitor in the short-video space. It is not really a consideration before the court in the case itself, but I do think it's important to look at some of the background issues. That it's not just about national security and First Amendment. There are also really considerable economic interests here too."Intercept politics reporter Jessica Washington says TikTok isn't just another social network — it's fostering political conversations that wouldn't exist anywhere else. “We've seen Twitter, which is now X, move really far to the right. I think anyone who's been on there in recent times can attest to that. We know YouTube also has a pretty right-leaning audience as well and an algorithm. And Facebook and Instagram are very different platforms than TikTok. So I think we lose a lot of those conversations that are happening, important political conversations in different regions, different areas of the world. Important conversations that young people are having with each other.”To hear more of this conversation and understand what’s at stake, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Few journalists have ventured as deep into the shadows of American power as The Intercept's James Risen. A Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter, Risen waged a remarkable seven-year battle against the federal government to protect his sources, risking imprisonment to defend press freedom.As he prepares to retire from journalism, he joins this week's Intercept Briefing to reflect on his extraordinary career with longtime friend and colleague David Bralow, The Intercept’s general counsel.Recently, Risen has written extensively on Donald Trump and the dangers he poses to American democracy and is working on a new book about Christian nationalism and extremism. He warns about what lays ahead: “Trump has appointed a bunch of lunatics and conspiracy theorists to positions of power and he's turned the government over to oligarchs, so I think it's gonna get bad really, really fast.”And Risen foresees that reporters and news organizations are at even more peril than in the past because of changing public attitudes and the legal approach embraced by those in power. “The wealthy can now use libel law against the press endlessly, not to try to win cases, but just to financially exhaust news organizations,” he says. “In most libel cases brought against news organizations, the other side almost never really cares about winning. What they want to do is impose large costs on news organizations to defend against frivolous libel suits.”To hear more of the conversation, check out this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing.If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Originally aired November 15, 2024 In the wake of President-elect Donald Trump’s victory, Democrats and those on the left are grappling with what comes next.On The Intercept Briefing podcast this week, columnist Natasha Lennard critiques the Democratic Party. “You can’t be both at once: You can’t be the party of Wall Street, and you can’t be the party of the working class,” Lennard says. By acquiescing to Silicon Valley and Wall Street, the Democrats failed again “to offer a robust politics that serves the working class."Facing a second Trump term, Lennard says the way forward is a politics of everyday life and radical action that focuses on empowering grassroots movements and labor organizations. “When we look at what people can [do] — involving people at a local level, building community so that it is truly kind of a form of life to be in this politics, rather than just a donation, rather than just a vote, rather than just canvassing even.”In conversation with Jessica Washington and Jordan Uhl, Lennard emphasizes the importance and resilience of the working class. "Nurses unions, food workers unions. Most of the working class in this country are women. And it is a profoundly multi-racial working class. And we have a working class of care workers. And a service economy. And an increasingly growing care economy," she says. "That needs investing in. That needs support. That needs building."To hear more about the future of progressive politics, listen to this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing.If you want to support our work, you can go to theintercept.com/join. Your donation, no matter what the amount, makes a real difference. If you haven’t already, please subscribe to The Intercept, wherever you listen to podcasts. And definitely leave us a rating or a review, it helps other listeners to find us. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Among a president’s most profound responsibilities is the power to grant clemency. Now, as President Joe Biden's first term winds down, he faces mounting calls to use that authority to commute the sentences of the 40 men on federal death row.Donald Trump's final months in office marked a stark shift in federal execution policy. After a 17-year hiatus, his administration executed 13 people — the most under any president in over a century. While Biden halted this practice, advocates warn that a second Trump term could restart executions. It's why they're urging Biden to take decisive action now to reduce death penalty sentences to life without parole.On this week's episode of The Intercept Briefing, reporter Liliana Segura examines the gap between candidate Biden's promises and his actions as president. “By far the most significant thing that Biden could do and should do in my opinion is to make good on his stated opposition to the death penalty, which is something he ran on in 2020. Joe Biden said that he wanted to try to bring legislation to end the federal death penalty and, in fact, incentivize states to do the same. He had language in his campaign platform talking about how life without parole sentences were appropriate alternatives,” she says. According to Segura, the federal death penalty reaches far beyond the most notorious cases and its deterrent effect is questionable — challenging many Americans' assumptions. “This idea that the death penalty is a deterrent is like the myth that will not die. You know, I was in Indiana recently covering this midnight execution, and I'm looking at some of the rhetoric that is out there from the state attorney general, and he is banging that drum about, 'Oh, you know, this is a deterrent to crime.’ There's absolutely no evidence that that is true and there really never has been.”To learn more about what Biden could do, listen to this week’s episode of The Intercept Briefing. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.