What’s Next For AI Regulation After Dems Sweep? Reps. Casar and Liccardo Weigh In

As Democrats solidify the size and scope of their House and Senate majorities after Tuesday’s midterm blowout, the party is brainstorming how best to take advantage of its coming Congressional control. One area of focus will be passing AI regulations, an issue with some bipartisan support. But with Trump still in the White House — and warning lawmakers not to “kill the golden goose” — what can the party actually accomplish? Two Democrats who will be key to getting any AI bill passed are Texas Rep. Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus and has introduced a series of populist bills aimed at reigning in big tech, and California Rep. Sam Liccardo, whose Bay Area district includes a sliver of Silicon Valley. Kara talks to them about what Democrats should prioritize when it comes to AI legislation, where the party might be able to work with Republicans, and whether Congress can actually get ahead of the technology’s rapid advancement. Please note: This episode was taped the Wednesday following the midterm elections. Questions? Comments? Email us at [email protected] or find us on YouTube, Instagram, TikTok, Threads, and Bluesky @onwithkaraswisher. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  I've heard from zero voters that they think Democrats are too strong and you get too much stuff done too quick. Nobody says that ever. And what people are asking is for us to act. And so we have to learn from our failures during the housing bubble. We have to learn from our failures on social media. And this is our shot.

• 0:28Kara Swisher?

  Hi, everyone. From New York Magazine and the Vox Media Podcast Network, this is On with Kara Swisher, and I'm Kara Swisher. Call it a blue wave, a tsunami, a Republican bloodbath, Democrats had an extraordinary night last Tuesday. They've won comfortable majorities in both the House and the Senate, taking seats they hadn't won in decades, and in one case, almost a century. The results exceeded even the party's rosiest predictions, and they have huge implications for the next two years. Democrats will have subpoena power and be able to investigate areas where they think the Trump administration has gone off the rails. There may even be an opportunity to work with Republicans on passing legislation, especially around issues like AI, where there is some bipartisan agreement on the need

• 1:11Kara Swisher?

  for regulation. Joining me today are two House Democrats who will be key to this. Greg Casar of Texas chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, and he's one of the leading advocates in Congress for an AI slowdown. He's introduced a handful of bills to rein in AI platforms. One of them calls for a wholesale ban on AI superintelligence. And Sam Liccardo's Bay Area district includes a slice of Silicon Valley. In the past, he's warned against an impulse to overregulate AI. But in September, he helped lead a push by House Democrats to demand action to create AI safeguards. He's also pushed legislation calling for more coordination between the US and China on frontier models. I think this is critical right now to think about what AI regulation and tech regulation in

• 1:56Kara Swisher?

  general looks like, because there hasn't been any. It's a golden opportunity to have bipartisan support for bills the voters are demanding around safety, around jobs, around all kinds of guardrails, and about reining in our out-of-control tech billionaires. If Congress doesn't act, it's going to be really problematic. You've seen what's happened with social media platforms. And by the way, we can still go back and regulate those. And you've seen the damage they've done. And we need to do something now. It's something I've been pushing for years. And I hope the time has come. All right, let's get to my conversation with Representatives Greg Casar and Sam Liccardo. Our expert question comes from New York Democratic Assemblyman Alex Boris. He ran for Congress on an AI safety

• 2:41Kara Swisher?

  platform but lost the Democratic primary. Now he's launching a political advocacy group called Who Decides, aimed at shaping the ways Democrats talk about AI. A note to listeners, we spoke the day after Election Day, so some things may have changed by the time you're listening to this. Stick around.

• 3:05Speaker 02

  Black Friday is around the corner, your biggest chance to grow sales this year. Don't wait. With Realize, Tabula's advertising platform for businesses, you can reach people engaging with your competitors across premium websites with 600 million daily active users. And as an exclusive offer for podcast listeners, new customers get $700 credit back. Just search Realize Podcast on Google or use the promo code PODCAST26. Ready to get started? Take advantage of this offer while it lasts. Terms apply.

• 3:42Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest-growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/vox.

• 4:26Speaker 04

  What will you Canva today? What will you brainstorm, collaborate on, present today? What will you resize, post, edit, imagine? What will you research, test, switch, and finally have the courage to pitch? You got this. What will you visualize, design, brand, animate, create, generate? What will you translate, pour your heart into, or have a laugh doing? Whatever you want to make is possible. So what will you Canva today?

• 4:58Kara Swisher?

  Representatives Kassar and Licardo, thanks for coming on On. What a day to be here. I'm so glad we scheduled it. What a day. Yeah. So the blue wave seems an understatement now. I'm not sure the tsunami, whatever, there's all manner of metaphors, but Democrats saw their wildest dreams come true on Tuesday night. When did you realize it was going to be a monumental night for Democrats? And how hungover are you right now? What'd you say, Greg? You start and then Sam?

• 5:26Speaker 00

  You know, in Texas, we've just knocked on doors so many times, been told it's going to be our year over and over and over again. And so you like protect your heart by like not having high expectations. And then it was the night before Election Night where I realized, I was like, we're gonna sweep these guys. Like what we've been out there telling people we can do is gonna happen. And then it was crazy to see it happen. I got to hug James Talarico when Ken Paxton conceded. And the only room I'd rather have been in than that is with Ken Paxton or Greg Abbott conceding, or with Elon Musk, like watching his hundreds of millions of dollars just burn in front of him. It is going to make such a difference in so many people's lives. It's just really special.

• 6:09Speaker 05

  Yeah, and kudos to Greg and a lot of great leaders in Texas who have finally vanquished Lucy and the football down there. We were all hoping and praying, and it's great to see what's happened down there, particularly after the redistricting effort from the Trump administration, obviously from very blue California. It's a very different perspective, but we're just so thrilled to see what's happening throughout the rest of the country.

• 6:32Kara Swisher?

  And did you have a sense it was gonna happen? Or is it just, we were shocked, Scott and I were shocked. And I had said I thought that it would probably happen. But of course, as you said, you don't get your hopes up.

• 6:41Speaker 05

  Yeah, I was thinking maybe a 50-50 shot at the Senate. I certainly didn't anticipate a blue nami.

• 6:46Kara Swisher?

  What about you, Greg?

• 6:47Speaker 00

  I just protected my little heart. But I'm, you know, but I know, here's the thing, you know, I've known Gina since, I've got all these workers' rights posters behind us. We were working in like little community rooms when she was suing employers to win workers' wages back. And I was a labor organizer, and she was, you know, a pregnant mom, new lawyer. Known James since he was coming out of grad school. And like, they were always ready for this. And Texans were ready. And I'll tell you, when I really knew it was happening is every restaurant I'd walk into, all, everybody'd come out of the kitchens and show me their I voted stickers. It was like nothing I'd seen before. And these guys

• 7:27Speaker 00

  who thought they could send ICE into our communities and send us into endless wars and get in bed with billionaires and have no consequences, like, I think they are the most deeply surprised right now.

• 7:39Kara Swisher?

  And the mood among your fellow Texas Democrats is shock and awe, essentially, correct?

• 7:43Speaker 00

  I mean, there were parties in the streets, I mean, all night, people just screaming out their cars. I mean, it's like winning the Super Bowl and the NBA Finals and like all of it all at once that we've been waiting for my entire life. I mean, I was born in 89. We haven't won a US Senate seat since 88.

• 8:02Kara Swisher?

  Right, exactly. And the last governor, I think it was Ann Richards, right?

• 8:06Speaker 05

  Ann Richards, yeah, I remember that defeat.

• 8:08Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. So, Sam, Republicans are in serious blame game mode. Vice President JD Vance on Wednesday blamed the loss on the Iran more and the economy. It's pretty clear repudiation of President Trump, who he had been supporting up until then, and notable because he's expected to run for president in 2028. Talk about the opportunity for Republicans to work with Democrats in the coming years, or do remaining Republicans become more obstinate as they try to position the party for a presidential election? Because Trump was the most, yeah, I'll work with Democrats, of any of them so far.

• 8:40Speaker 05

  Yeah, you know, I spend a lot of time on the Republican side of the floor, lurking to find Republicans who might get on a bill. Obviously, they've controlled both houses. That's the nature of the business if you're trying to get anything to move forward. And I guess I see two countervailing factors. One is the folks who would be most willing to actually get on a Democratic bill are the ones who are losing most of those races. They're happening in battleground districts, obviously, where they're most vulnerable. But I do think that, you know, we pray that the spell of Trump over the party is starting to break. And certainly, the wisdom of blindly following Trump off of every cliff, as we

• 9:23Speaker 05

  have seen so repeatedly, is starting to become more obvious to many. And so I think there is going to be an opportunity, as he's clearly a lame duck. To actually do something sensible around a whole host of issues. I know Greg and I were just talking about a few minutes ago, the critical issues that so many families are struggling with to be able to get health insurance, to be able to pay rent, the critical things. I think there's a real opportunity to get Republicans on board now. They're not going to support everything. Maybe they won't support our minimum wage increase, for example. But certainly, there are plenty of Republicans who understand what tariffs are doing to farmers right now in the Midwest.

• 9:59Kara Swisher?

  Greg, what do you think replaces the spell of Trump that Sam just talked about?

• 10:04Speaker 00

  I mean, last night is the beginning of the end of the Trump era. And now, today, we start building what's going to come afterwards. Like, last night's election was not just, hey, Democrats have solved all of our problems. We now have been given a chance by the voters to show people what we're made of. And so, yeah, let's send a bunch of bills to Trump's desk. And he's crazy enough that he might sign some of them. And then if he vetoes popular things, that's what a Democratic president can run on and then sign. So we should not be complacent. We shouldn't be cautious. We should go and pass those laws. I mean, to Sam's point, Elizabeth Warren tried this and was successful.

• 10:46Speaker 00

  We actually got into law a bill to ban private equity from buying up all of our single-family houses. Trump mentioned it in his speech. And now it's the law. And so, let's try it with price gouging. Let's try it with getting dark money out of politics. Let's try it with the minimum wage and with childcare affordability. And if he vetoes it, we get it passed by the next Democratic president. If he signs it, we show we got something done.

• 11:09Kara Swisher?

  I mean, even though Democrats had a huge night, and it was, the party had been broadly unpopular. And what Scott Galloway, my partner, says, it's not a mortgage, it's rent right now. And what's clear is voters want change. And Democrats are going to have to deliver on some of these campaign promises, especially on affordability. I think corruption is something people have been worried about. But I think affordability, especially as central chances of retaking the White House in two years. Talk a little bit about that.

• 11:36Speaker 05

  Yeah, and just to double down on what Greg said, you know, the one thing we know about Trump is whatever he says on any given day, he'll change his mind within the next two weeks. And so, the man has no ideological bearing whatsoever. I don't think he's the guy who's going to have the courage to say, no, I'm going to veto this.

• 11:52Kara Swisher?

  Right, absolutely. But one of the things that people are worried about, and there's a big debate going on, is level of retribution and level of revenge, I guess, for some people. The incoming Chair of the House Oversight Committee, who I've interviewed many times, Robert Garcia, had two words to the administration and its enablers Tuesday night. Lawyer up. With Democrats said to have sizable majorities, where do you think the investigations should start? And who are the targets? Because a lot of people, I do a podcast also with Hillary Clinton, and she felt the impeachment was pointless, even if it made you feel better, and it should be very specific toward corruption. Or Pete Hegseth, or both, or whatever. First, Greg, and then Sam, where do you lie on that issue?

• 12:33Speaker 00

  There is, of course, important work to stop the worst excesses of the Trump administration. People did elect us to do that. But people are used to, one party has the House, and there's the president of the other party, and you go after them. That may not get us the new trust, or this new trust we just won. It may not hold it unless we're willing to do something different, which is go after the corrupt actors that also thought they could get a merger by potentially paying somebody off, that thought that they could get through regulations and make sure tariffs are still on you, but not on them because of a corrupt deal. So let's go after those oligarchs and corporations, who are the other part of the takes two to tango.

• 13:15Speaker 00

  And I think that will really get voters' attention and earn us trust. You can't get a bigger repudiation of Trump than what we just got last night. We can't just be known as the anti-Trump party heading into the next presidential election, though. We have to be known as the everyday American worker party. And you don't do that just by going after Trump. You do that by making sure that we go after the corruption that is screwing up our government and our economy.

• 13:42Kara Swisher?

  What about you, Sam?

• 13:43Speaker 05

  I mean, we've got a target-rich environment to go chase corruption. I'm a former criminal prosecutor, and we could be spending thousands of years going after all of the corrupt acts and actors in this administration. I think it's going to be very important for us to be very strategic and focused on the corruption that most impacts Americans directly. The crypto-corruption, for example, that has enabled folks to get off the hook, that is, in various ways, disrupting our financial system and ultimately costing people.

• 14:14Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 14:15Speaker 05

  We've got to really focus on connecting the corruption to everyday Americans and how it's hurting them. I think that is going to be important for us. And I think it's going to be important for us to demonstrate, first and foremost, that we can govern. You know, Greg and I were just talking about a while ago about how, you know, we need a package that is going to be a whole lot of 80/20 issues in January that affects how we can help families pay bills. And if we can demonstrate we can govern first, then we'll have a lot more leeway to go after all the corruption. But if all people see and hear is about Democrats trying to prosecute Republicans or Trump, it gets lost in the noise, and we will lose the confidence of those independents

• 14:58Speaker 05

  and Americans who maybe went our way this time, but question whether or not they should support a Democrat in the next run, because all we can do is be political.

• 15:07Kara Swisher?

  Well, the economy was highest, but corruption was right up there. The idea of, I think they were linked, if you link them together, that's an interesting thing. Like, as you were talking about, I think you were referring to all the tech moguls having lunch at the White House every Tuesday, essentially, and getting stuff and putting coins in and getting stuff out for it. Now, speaking of that, the midterms are over. Let's talk about AI legislation. There are dozens of bills being debated in Congress right now. Some address fears around displacement of workers, others tackle safety, privacy, construction of data centers, corporate accountability. The list is very long. When it comes to AI, which of the big issues should Congress tackle first? Or is there something else the Democratic majority should prioritize?

• 15:47Speaker 00

  The overarching issue across all of this, jobs, safety, privacy, data centers, is who should be in control of our future? Should it be just a couple of guys that are billionaires that want to be trillionaires? Or should it be the rest of us? And I think that that is really the defining feature for us here, is for us to say, instead of cashing the checks from the AI lobby, super PACs, we should be standing up to these guys and standing up for what everyday people want. And that's why we flipped the state of Texas in part, is because people in rural Texas, just as much as here in Austin, Texas, don't think you should lose your job so that an AI billionaire can become a trillionaire.

• 16:30Speaker 00

  Don't think that you should have to pay higher electric bills for these guys, or our national security should be compromised. So it really, I think, is going to be about taking a side and then passing meaningful legislation, in my view, to protect your jobs, to reduce your bills, protect your safety.

• 16:47Kara Swisher?

  Greg, you have a couple of bills. One is the displacement of workers. The other is a ban on artificial superintelligence you sponsored along with Bernie Sanders in the Senate. Can you just give more specifics about these and where you think they are in terms of voter interest?

• 17:03Speaker 00

  I'll start with our ban on superintelligence bill. It basically says, we should not develop AI that is too powerful for humans to control. And if you remember, when Senator Sanders came out against unregulated data centers, people were like, that's some way out there progressive idea. Now it's the mainstream American politics. Similarly here, you know, this idea of like, why should we develop AI that could develop a bioweapon without our authorization? I mean, who wants that? That's nuts. We shouldn't be allowed to do that, and we should have it under control. On jobs, I've developed a tax proposal that disincentivizes AI companies from getting rid of your job and getting a tax break for it.

• 17:48Speaker 00

  Instead, they should pay a meager tax that increases if unemployment increases, to make it so that we don't wind up in a situation where you've got structural mass unemployment. We should be able to, you know, develop our technology in a way that benefits people, but not in a way that puts lots of people out of work. And then I'll add a third one real briefly, Kira, that is like this simple affordability stuff. I have a bill, and Rumin Gallego has it in the Senate, to ban AI surveillance pricing. This is where... These companies know what you Googled, have so much of your private data that they can set a specific price for you. So think about, you know, if somebody Googles the word, somebody's obituary, next thing you know, an airline jacks up your air fares because they know

• 18:33Speaker 00

  you've got to get to a funeral and will pay what it takes. There's no good reason for that. And that's the kind of affordability policy that we can pass that is overwhelmingly popular with all voters and takes on these AI oligarchs who have just been running amok.

• 18:46Kara Swisher?

  So Sam, talk about it from a California perspective. Obviously, California has been one of the states that's governed it more than other states, obviously.

• 18:53Speaker 05

  Yes, leading in safety, yeah.

• 18:55Kara Swisher?

  But it has to be a federal thing. How do you look, as a legislator from California, how do you look at what has to happen in AI? And what is non-negotiable really for you?

• 19:04Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, you know, as you discussed, all the issues, and I would never minimize the jobs issue because I think that's going to be a massive disruption to our economy. We have to confront it. But I think the most urgent issues we have to focus on around AI safety, because the cybersecurity risk, the loss of control risk, what we've already seen with the gigantic misalignment is terrifying. And I think if you go survey the employees of major AI companies and the labs, overwhelmingly, the employees will say the same things. And so this is a situation where those who are very knowledgeable in the industry have been begging, not just for months, but for years, for the federal government to step up with

• 19:44Speaker 05

  sensible AI safety regulations. And it appears now, even though sensible regulations are probably not going to be enough, we're going to need a lot more. And by that, I mean, we need to find a way to massively accelerate the technology of safety to be able to catch up to the technology of model capability. And until we do that, we are going to be in great peril. And so Congress needs to move quickly, at least to get some of the basics in place, ensure you actually have a regulatory agency, presumably it would be Casey in the Commerce Department, that has real authority, real funding, real knowledgeable staff. I mean, they have good staff, but clearly they need a lot more to be able to engage.

• 20:24Kara Swisher?

  You're not talking about a separate agency, because some people have suggested that.

• 20:28Speaker 05

  I mean, Casey exists now. I'm less stuck to exactly how you do it and what it looks like in the org chart. The critical thing is that we have an entity in the federal government that is actually capable of regulating and power to do so and has the resources to do so.

• 20:44Kara Swisher?

  Right. So the bill that has the most momentum in Congress right now is the Frontier Act. It requires developers of frontier AI models to undergo regular independent audits, and I mean independent, not them grading their own homework and report any serious issues that occur, and presumably have some teeth when they don't. The Frontier Act does have bipartisan support, OpenAI threw its support behind it. Greg, where do you see its strengths and weaknesses? Because you've said Democrats can't afford to be squishy on AI. And where are you willing to compromise on what's non-negotiable?

• 21:17Speaker 00

  We have to get AI safety legislation passed. And so we will work on whatever compromises we need to, but we shouldn't be compromising ahead of time here. Because if you remember, as this law was being developed, what Republicans were pushing in Congress was getting rid of all AI safety laws at the state level, period. The ground has shifted rapidly beneath us. And so we should assess based on where we are now. And based on where we are now, I expect and think that some of these members may even change what they're saying about the Frontier Act, because we should, and I agree with Congressman Liccardo, have these auditors held accountable to the government. Some of the drafts I've seen, for example,

• 22:00Speaker 00

  have some of the auditors hired or paid for by the companies. I mean, we should be taking this as seriously as the mandate that the voters sent our way. And then, Kira, as you mentioned, while there may be some teeth in the bill, I think that we can have much stronger teeth here, because this is the kind of situation where you don't want to say, oops, you know, we took down the internet, or the grid, or, you know, a hospital, and go back and deal with it later. We should be monitoring these models at every stage of development and having real teeth to shut it down.

• 22:34Kara Swisher?

  And you mean, including punishments, criminal or?

• 22:37Speaker 00

  Including punishment, including criminal punishment for people involved, you know, not just a fine that these companies could pay like a speeding ticket.

• 22:44Kara Swisher?

  And Sam, when you look at the strengths and weaknesses of the Frontier Act, what do you look at? And as you said, I think Republicans will come along on this. It's very bipartisan in a lot of ways.

• 22:53Speaker 05

  Well, you know, I think the Frontier Act is a good place to start. And there are many good elements in it. I would also, I agree that there needs to be some additional elements. I think that we need to create strong bipartisan momentum that I think ultimately will force the White House to cave. I think everyone sees that there's great concern among the American public, unlike what Donald Trump said about AI safety being a hoax. What I'd be focusing on is probably adding elements around pre-release review to make sure that we actually have objective criteria for determining whether or not models get released, as opposed to what we just saw with the Commerce Department back in, what

• 23:35Speaker 05

  was it, April or May, with fairly arbitrary decisions that were not transparent. I think we need to get in the game with China, because whatever we do from a regulatory standpoint is largely meaningless, when we know the majority of models are being downloaded today from hugging face in the United States are Chinese, not American. And they're very powerful open weight models can be easily manipulated by bad actors. We need to be at the table with China, at the very least on track two negotiations.

• 24:05Kara Swisher?

  You had a bill with California independent Kevin Kiley to push the two nations coordinate more, and he lost his reelection Tuesday night. What does coordination with China look like in the middle of the AI race that both nations see as existential? And where do our interests overlap? I have always pushed for a global discussion and not this ridiculous G or me argument. There's competition, and then there's a need for cooperation, like on nuclear proliferation, for example. It's very similar to, in my mind. How do you look at that?

• 24:35Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I think that offers a good blueprint. You had top scientists on track two negotiations, engaging in very deep, technical-focused conversations around how do we agree on things like metrics, and testing, and evaluation, and perhaps most importantly, verification. We don't trust each other. We're not going to trust each other. So we need clear mechanisms for verification. Some of the same principles apply, but right now you've got a lot of legal barriers that prevent those conversations from happening, either in antitrust law, or national security law, or export control restrictions, believe it or not, to actually limit what we can say and communicate. And so we need to create

• 25:17Speaker 05

  safe pathways for the top scientists at our AI labs, or our think tanks, universities to be talking to their counterparts in China. And what the bill would suggest is basically just register with the State Department. So they know what you're doing. They can get engaged in the conversation if they want, but we have to have the conversations. So we can actually agree on how we're going to test, evaluate, supervise, monitor, all those things we need to do to make this much safer.

• 25:43Kara Swisher?

  So Greg, when you think about that, who should be in those discussions? I mean, I've always complained is that the White House, it's all people with shareholder interest, financial interest. It's the CEOs. You don't see a critic. You don't see a scientist. You don't see an academic. You don't see anyone who disagrees with them. Who needs to be in those discussions?

• 26:01Speaker 00

  Yeah, this has to be a totally new kind of discussion. And really, in the last few months, this has shifted. I mean, I'm hearing from parliamentarians and members of Congress from all over the world, taking a meeting tomorrow with leaders from Europe about how we come to global agreements on AI safety, and also create safety in parallel, right? We could take a step forward, and then other nations take a step forward. And that is how we get this done. Kira, I was recently sitting with some of these executives from some of the top AI labs, and you're right. You know, so often, they're stuck in the same way of doing things, where they said, when I asked them, why is it that you're saying we're racing towards a cliff, and you keep pushing the gas? And they say, well,

• 26:43Speaker 00

  we just don't think that China will slow down. And I asked them, I was like, y'all just finished telling me that you think you can cure cancer, but you are, you don't think that we can sign an agreement, right? We've, forever civilizations have been able to come to agreements across nations.

• 26:59Kara Swisher?

  Right, they've done it before, yeah.

• 27:00Speaker 00

  We can do this, but we have the same folks in the room too often who, you know, just think that it is, they're, as you've pointed out on your podcast, so nihilistic that they're saying, well, they're the ones that are going to create the autonomous killer robots, and it's better for it to be theirs that kill us rather than somebody else's. To me, that is sociopathic, and we need folks in the room that put humanity first.

• 27:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, and I'm certainly never going to stand up for the nihilism, because I think Greg is right about some folks in the industry. You know, we can think of those who certainly view that. But the reality is, we're looking at a White House, you know, where a president has said that AI safety is a hoax. They're not serious, or at least they're not of one mind about this issue. And so it is not hard to understand from the industry's perspective why it might be hard to believe that this White House is going to negotiate anything with China. And so, you know, obviously, we need to do everything we can to make that possible, whether it's for this president or a future president. But I believe that the blame is squarely on the government, first and foremost. This is supposed to be our job, and we're not doing our job.

• 28:03Kara Swisher?

  So what involvement should AI labs have in the conversations? Obviously, they need to be involved. I don't think they shouldn't. They just, they're the only ones involved at this point in the conversation.

• 28:13Speaker 00

  I think one of the, some of the folks that have been most helpful honestly have been the employees themselves at these labs. And that's how we know what's really going on here. Some of the real heroes here have been people who have, you know, people who I think were just fired, right, over at OpenAI, the people like Jacob Coxon, you know, putting out the tweet heard around the world. So they're critical in this conversation. And to Sam's point, to get the CEOs and executives to make a turn would be very important now. And I agree that while Trump bears huge parts of this responsibility, I also don't let them off the hook when it's like, if you think you're creating potentially the mass death

• 28:53Speaker 00

  machine, you have a big responsibility here too. But who I'm so grateful to have been those rank and file researchers and staffers who've spoken out, because that's how we know what's actually really going on deep in there. They're the folks who have been holding them accountable. Now with subpoena power and potentially having these executives tell us the truth under oath, I hope that we can also get the truth out to the American people and change course.

• 29:17Kara Swisher?

  Right. So Sam, you wrote a Washington Post op ed back in May where you argued that AI doesn't need a regulator, it needs a referee. But in September, you helped lead the call for more than 100 Democrats demanding a vote on AI safeguard legislation. So can you illuminate on that? What changed for you?

• 29:33Speaker 05

  Yeah, let me explain where I was going. The reality is, I don't think we know how to regulate AI, AI safety. And we don't, in part because the nature of the technology, this is not deterministic software code, this is probabilistic. We don't, nobody knows exactly what comes out of these models. So it makes it very different as we think about regulating. But part of the challenge too, is that the expertise is nowhere near Washington. It really is in the labs. And we have heard plenty of cries for more AI safety regulation. We have to engage the leading thinkers who are overwhelmingly in places like Greg's district and my district, they're not in Washington DC, to actually enable us to create

• 30:16Speaker 05

  much safer AI. And ultimately, I believe it's going to require us to engage the industry proactively with obviously the right liability rules and so forth, to force a race to safety. That is to realign incentives towards safety rather than toward greater model capability. I think there are things we can do, but it's not the traditional regulation as we conceived it in the past. I think the Frontier Act is a good effort. It is necessary, but by no means sufficient. And we're going to need those folks in the industry to help us understand how to make this safer.

• 30:51Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 31:01Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no BS. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/box.

• 31:45Speaker 06

  Ripple has been powering modern finance for a decade. We're leading the charge to bridge the gap between existing financial systems and the future of finance. You can have it all, legacy, stability, and digital innovation. Systems that work with your other systems. Because with the right partner, the question isn't crypto or traditional finance. The question is simply, why choose? A new standard of modern finance. It's happening with Ripple. For informational purposes only, availability of products can vary and may be provided by different Ripple entities.

• 32:16Kara Swisher?

  Support for this show comes from Framer. The future of website building is one that seamlessly blends all the tools we have available. And you should use a platform that has it all and stays useful even after you launch. That's what Framer is. Framer is the AI website builder that helps creators, teams, and businesses ship production-ready sites faster than ever while getting every detail right. You're able to prompt, inspect, edit, and publish in one place at a whole new pace. On Framer, agents and humans work in tandem. Agents bring speed and scale while people bring taste, judgment, and control. And that all takes place in the same workspace where the real site is designed, managed, reviewed, and published. Everyone's ideas land on the canvas, stay editable, and can

• 32:57Kara Swisher?

  be published when the team is ready. Framer is an enterprise-level solution. Thousands of businesses from early-stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer, where changes take place in minutes instead of days. Learn how you can get more out of your site from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/kara for 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/kara. Rules and restrictions apply.

• 33:29Kara Swisher?

  Now, every episode we get a question from an outside expert. Here is yours.

• 33:33Speaker 05

  Hi, I'm Alex Boris, New York State Assembly member, author of the RACE Act, and co-founder of Who Decides. The big question I'd ask is, should we allow the AI companies to fully automate AI research? All of the frontier companies are striving for what they call recursive self-improvement, having AIs fully build the next generation of AI without any humans in the loop. OpenAI says they are on pace to do this around March 2028. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark estimated around 2027. But in either case, this is going to be a question the next Congress has to solve. We won't get another election before this

• 34:12Speaker 05

  happens. So would each of you vote to ban RSI? The mechanisms might be slightly different, but one example could be requiring that training runs be kicked off only by human beings, and having senior executives at the company held personally liable if those processes are kicked off recklessly, the same way we hold executives at meat manufacturing plants or financial auditors personally responsible if they do something truly reckless.

• 34:43Kara Swisher?

  Great question. Greg, then Sam?

• 34:45Speaker 00

  My answer to that is yes. And that, to me, RSI, recursive self-improvement, is the jet fuel that could set AI on entirely the wrong path. And we know these companies are headed that direction. And if we just say that is off limits, then we can start getting on the right path. Senator Sanders in my bill to ban artificial superintelligence, one of the ways that we stop ourselves from having an AI that's too powerful to control. An element in that bill is to not have recursive self-improvement. Make sure humans are building the AI, rather than having AI that we can't control, building even more dangerous AI that we can't control.

• 35:24Kara Swisher?

  Sam?

• 35:25Speaker 05

  Yeah, I certainly support it. But, and here's the big but, I don't think we really understand how to implement effectively a ban like that. And I think there are a lot of smart folks, certainly in my niche, we have a lot of AI safety advocates in labs that are working on things like figuring out how we can verify and monitor whether or not compute is being used for training or not, as opposed to inference. You know, those are the kinds of technologies that can be very important to the extent that we can actually verify, then I think it makes a lot of sense for us to move forward with something. My concern is that you pass something, and we know the bad guys won't comply. And if we don't have real verification, this whole thing becomes a mess, and we end up empowering the wrong folks.

• 36:09Kara Swisher?

  Right. Although, we managed to do it with cloning. We managed to do it with nuclear energy, you know, superbugs and things like that.

• 36:18Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think with nuclear energy, we do have better ways of verifying, but fair points.

• 36:22Kara Swisher?

  Absolutely. Yeah, because it's things. It's things. But in this case, they do, there is records. And if nothing else, Democrats can use their subpoena power in the House to hold hearings with the leaders of top companies. Greg has been pushing this on Democratic leadership, especially in the wake of the hugging phase inches, which I have still not understood why there wasn't more worry about what happened there. Because I know there was in Silicon Valley in the past when congressional leaders held hearings with tech leaders. It's pretty clear that some members obviously didn't understand the platforms. And I remember the one with Mark Zuckerberg around social media where Josh Hawley was haranguing them. And all I could think of is, if only there was someone in this room could do something about it. Like, stop yelling at him and do something, asshole.

• 37:04Kara Swisher?

  So how can hearings and subpoena power be used in a way that's effective versus performative jazz hands that is easy to do in Congress?

• 37:15Speaker 00

  First, there is the important information gathering about what the risks are, how far out we are from those risks, both what happened and where these CEOs think we are headed. Because to Alex Boris's point, as he just popped up for his question, we need to know directly from the executives how close we are, they believe we are, to the edge. And then, actually, to Sam's point, we then can ask what it is that our laws need to do to be able to achieve the ends that we want. Because, Sam, I don't think your answer to the RSI question was yes, but, I think it was yes, and. We need strong laws, and then we need to hold these CEOs to it.

• 37:56Speaker 00

  And that should be the purpose of the hearings, because voters overwhelmingly voted against Republicans because they thought they were just taking the AI billionaires' checks and doing whatever they want. We need to show that we are serious about the fact that people are worried that their kids are getting addicted to dangerous stuff on the internet, they're worried that their prices are going up, and that, yes, they're worried that we're walking into a massive national security risk. They should see that Democrats are not just performatively fighting, but are actually trying to do something to take care of their, of their lives. That's what they are electing us to do.

• 38:30Kara Swisher?

  Sam?

• 38:31Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think what's important for us is to come to the table with solutions and challenge them to come up with better solutions. You know, we have seen those performative hearings that you described, and the running joke in Silicon Valley is, we're going to have a bunch of ranting from members of Congress who are still trying to spell AI. That's not the solution.

• 38:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah.

• 38:53Speaker 05

  We have some ideas, certainly Frontier Act is a good place to start. I think Greg's got some interesting bills, good bills, that we should also be putting on the table. Let's put them on the table and say, look, we're terrified what RSI could be doing to humanity, come up with a better solution, or else.

• 39:09Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, now, there's a new crop of lawmakers who are, it's not all old men, like, wondering what it is, right? And they're much younger, they're more tech savvy, it's a big game changer. But one of the things that's been, problem is the deleterious effects of money, right? And we have to talk about Elon, and he's sort of the poster child for all this money. That's a big roadblock. And one of the things many of the tech people have told me is, well, Trump will hurt us, Democrats won't, they'll forgive us, and then take our money, essentially. How do you fight against this enormous amount of money? It didn't work in this election, but it's sort of the fuel of all elections in a lot of ways, and, you know, Elon has proven that.

• 39:51Speaker 00

  I mean, yeah, Elon's a constituent right up the road here in Austin, Texas. And the answer to this is different today than yesterday. Today, we smashed those roadblocks, we broke the dam, we showed people how we actually do this. Elon Musk financed the majority of Ken Paxton's campaign. And what James Talarico and frankly, all Democrats got together and did was to try to make that, and successfully did make that, a huge liability for Ken Paxton.

• 40:21Kara Swisher?

  He did, he talked about it at every, every single stop, yes.

• 40:24Speaker 00

  Instead of being scared of the money, make that money the big issue, and you can win over voters we never thought we could win over before. And so Democrats have to, as you pointed out, not cash their checks and take their apology, but instead, actually, just go fight for the right policy that people believe in. That's it.

• 40:43Kara Swisher?

  Well, that's nice, but, you know, Musk spent a half a billion dollars on the midterms, he's still got a lot of money, from what I can understand, even though SpaceX and Tesla shares are down today. But how do you, in closer elections, how do you overcome that potential cudgel the tech industry can wield?

• 40:58Speaker 00

  And we should make it toxic, where every dollar he spends, it costs his supported candidate $100 to explain it. We just had literally the most expensive elections in American history, and Democrats won overwhelmingly by fighting Elon Musk's money. So we have to make their money toxic. And then, Kara, of course, we can make Musk toxic, but then there's the others. And there's a famous saying from a Texas lobbyist who said, I want to buy off Republicans, and I don't want Democrats to do anything for me, but I also don't want them to do anything to me. And we can't take that kind of advice, because not doing anything to them and their billions of dollars is actually doing something for them.

• 41:42Speaker 00

  We've got to take this moment to say, what is it that voters want? What is the right thing to do? And let's make their money toxic.

• 41:49Kara Swisher?

  What about you, Sam?

• 41:50Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think, I may be a bit quixotic, because I'm a first-term member of the minority party, and, at least for now. And so it's easy for me to dream of ideas without being the chair of the committee who's got to move it to the floor. But this might be the moment to actually get a constitutional amendment in place. And I don't mean just undo Citizens United, I mean, completely change the relationship between campaign money and the First Amendment. And stop pretending that this is protected speech, because nobody really believes that, even though the courts have been stuck on that since Buckley versus Valeo back in the 1970s.

• 42:33Speaker 05

  This is, I think, an opportunity because it's an 80/20 issue. It turns out, a lot of Republican voters also believe there's way too much money in politics, even though they may not see it the same way we do with Elon Musk. And for the first time, we can say to an awful lot of folks, see, money didn't actually drive the results, right? We saw what happened in Texas and how much money Elon spent there. So we might actually get a few more folks with some spine to stand up and say, okay, it's now finally time to rid ourselves of this pox, and let's allow for sensible regulation. It can be a very simple, one-sentence amendment. This is the opportunity where we can really unite people across the partisan divide.

• 43:15Speaker 00

  And I want to yes-and what Sam said, Kara, we should move forward on that, but we don't have to wait on the constitutional amendment, in my view, we can pass, we have a bill to cap contributions to any PAC at $5,000. We could pass another law that's a 100% tax on any contribution politically over $5,000. If the Supreme Court wants to keep coming at us time and time again, we show the Supreme Court for who it is they are, but we, we have a real opportunity to be the party against big money in politics and to reset the laws here.

• 43:43Kara Swisher?

  Do you have to get rid of the filibuster to do that? I'm not sure it'll get passed the Senate without it.

• 43:48Speaker 00

  I cannot understand why it would be that the Senate would allow, like Chuck Grassley or somebody, to hold up getting big money out of politics. Why would we have the filibuster block things that are 80/20 issues anymore? I just think that, you know, Joe Manchin's time and Kristin Sinema's time has passed, and it's time for the Senate to wield democracy, instead of just being stuck with some arcane rules.

• 44:14Speaker 05

  It's going to take a massive organizing effort, and there's five or six days where we need to get those senators on board. You know, but this is something I think is within our reach, I never thought was within our reach a couple of years ago.

• 44:28Kara Swisher?

  We'll be back in a minute.

• 44:37Kara Swisher?

  When the holidays start to feel a bit repetitive, reach for a Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry and put your twist on tradition.

• 44:46Speaker 04

  A bold cranberry and winter spice flavor fusion? Sprite Winter Spiced Cranberry is a refreshing way to shake things up this sipping season, and only for a limited time. Sprite, obey your thirst.

• 45:00Speaker 06

  Give yourself the gift of savings with Visible Wireless. Stay connected to what matters most with unlimited 5G data, talk, and text. Share the joy anywhere you go with unlimited hotspot and no contract to tie you down. For a limited time, plans start at $19 a month for one year on the Visible plan with promo code HOLIDAYHACK. Unwrap a little peace of mind this holiday season with Visible. To switch today, terms apply. Standard rate applies at month 13. See visible.com for plan features and network management details. When you spend enough time around great companies, you notice that the best ones treat trust as a growth strategy, not a box to check. Vanta helps companies build and prove trust from day one.

• 45:40Speaker 06

  Its Agentic Trust platform connects compliance, risk, and trust at enterprise scale. Vanta delivers a 526% return on investment over three years and pays for itself in just three months. Learn why over 16,000 of the fastest-growing companies use Vanta at vanta.com.

• 46:00Kara Swisher?

  Democrats will still face a lot of challenges to passing meaningful AI legislation. And two of you, as I said, represent the divisions the Democratic Caucus has, how to best approach it. Where is the common ground in the caucus?

• 46:13Speaker 05

  Well, I think there's a lot of common ground about all the major risks that AI poses that we need to address legislatively. And I think there's going to be a lot of common ground on safety. Certainly, we can debate about the details, but a real sense of urgency to move forward. I think on jobs, there's a lot of common ground about the critical need for us to be able to invest in people again, and enable our workers to be nimble enough with the skills they need. I think we failed in the past to do that, a lot of federal programs have failed, I have some ideas about how we can do it much better.

• 46:51Speaker 05

  But this is a moment when we've got to enable millions of Americans to see a pathway, and it has to be a real pathway, in an AI-enabled economy, because we are not going to order back the sea of AI. No matter how much we may try, it is coming, is coming at us, and we've got to be much more prepared. So I think, and around data centers, look, I, Lord knows, data centers poll about as well as measles, mumps, and rubella. But the truth is, we critically need all that money that hyperscalers can invest in the grid if we are going to transition from a fossil fuel economy. And if we do this right, we can leverage those resources and protect local communities. We just need

• 47:34Speaker 05

  federal rules in place that protect local communities, protect ratepayers, and elicit the investment we need from the hyperscalers into the grid. And I think we can have the data centers we need for infrastructure and

• 47:48Kara Swisher?

  We've got to battle a lot of voter discontent about this issue. It's really quite high.

• 47:53Speaker 05

  Oh, absolutely. Because we haven't stepped up.

• 47:55Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, I was just texting with Mark Cuban about this. And he's like, they've got to not be against data centers all the time. I said, it's the voters, Mark. It's not the politicians, the voters. And maybe you should convince them you're not all assholes. You know what I mean? Like, maybe there's, like, if you could make your argument, if that's the case, instead of running over people. And of course, that was Elon Musk and Kevin O'Leary behaving like that.

• 48:16Speaker 05

  Agreed. We know what's happening on the right. But I think there's plenty of folks in the industry, hyperscalers, who are saying, look, we're willing to pay our own way. We're willing to do this with much cleaner energy. Let's put the rules in place and make sure everybody's playing by those rules.

• 48:29Kara Swisher?

  And Greg, where do you see common ground?

• 48:31Speaker 00

  I think the common ground is growing and has grown rapidly over the course of the last few months. Right? I think that the Democrats have come together and realized that our voters are increasingly united in saying, we want real rules. We don't need you to tiptoe around the edges. And as Sam said, although we may represent two different ideological caucuses inside of the Democratic family, on what the problem is, we don't want mass surveillance from corporations or the government. We don't want a massive national security risk. We need agreements with China and other nations. And no, I don't want Great Depression level of unemployment and to try to make that a little less bad

• 49:16Speaker 00

  with small checks sent to people. We agree on all of that. And now we just get to which policy can we pass that gets us closest to that goal. And if we take that seriously, that is such a better place than we were just even a few weeks ago.

• 49:31Kara Swisher?

  Now, of course, as you were kind of pointing out, Sam, right now, the US economy is massively dependent on the AI boom. It accounts for roughly one fifth to one third of economic growth right now. This is not good. The Wall Street Journal said, never before has the US economy been so dependent on the build out of a single industry. So when you're thinking about, and we shouldn't be in this situation, how do you balance the need for economic growth, which is critical, with the push for regulation? Sam, and then Greg?

• 50:00Speaker 05

  Well, I think we need to acknowledge that probably is a bubble. And we need to ensure that first, we are not subsidizing this bubble, that is not being encouraged in some way with taxpayer help. And we need to do everything we can to protect taxpayers and workers through this bubble. But the reality is, as much as I think there is likely going to be some correction, we are still going to need this infrastructure. So it's going to be important for us, as we think about policy, how we can direct this private sector investment to a maximal extent possible to actually get us the infrastructure we need, which is overwhelmingly around grid expansion and bolstering that grid.

• 50:44Speaker 00

  And as Sam noted, we, right now, are in part subsidizing the financially irresponsible behavior and blowing up the bubble. The big ugly bill that Trump ran through as his only horrible achievement, gives enormous tax breaks that are being taken advantage of by the big AI companies. That leads to more financially irresponsible behavior. So I and Maxine Waters have filed a resolution calling for a sense of the House that we will not bail out the AI companies and instead should be focused on helping retirees and workers and anybody affected by this financially irresponsible behavior, because we need to

• 51:25Speaker 00

  have learned from the housing bubble, where people lost their houses, but then some of the people responsible for the devastation, you know, got golden parachutes. And we can't allow that. And we should start making sure that our economy is directed towards truly productive uses of everybody's labor and money. And it is really, you know, nobody wants for there to be a devastating correction. But we need to be prepared to make sure we take care of people in the instance in which that happens.

• 51:55Speaker 05

  I was just going to build on that. I think, you know, particularly as these larger companies are going public, and the SEC is going to be really critical here. And Paul Atkins has been completely spineless.

• 52:06Kara Swisher?

  Yes.

• 52:06Speaker 05

  But we need strong oversight on the SEC to ensure that these very circular financing arrangements are made very transparent, so that the market corrections can happen sooner, in a less abrupt and painful way that we know will happen if they're not transparent.

• 52:26Kara Swisher?

  And the one person you're going to have to get past is Trump. He said he will work with Democrats. He also said he's ready to be Mr. Veto. He has been the doormat for the AI industry completely. Honestly, Elon Musk, even though he lost all this money this week, he's made a ton of money elsewhere. How do you get Trump on board? Because you have to, in a lot of ways. And which of these tech people do you have to remove from the conversation?

• 52:52Speaker 00

  We may successfully, I hope we successfully avoid any kind of bailout for the AI companies. But they then may be coming for federal contracts, right? Or for other kinds of relief. And as you said, the number one person on this is Elon Musk, who gets at least $8 million a day in federal contracts while he was trying to cut your mom's social security check down. And so if we're going to be doing investigations and be doing this work, and as you said, we can't just be known as the anti-Trump party. I think we should be very targeted and look at how it is that these AI billionaires who keep squeezing money

• 53:32Speaker 00

  out of the federal taxpayer kitty, right? They're not just making all of this money because they've been extremely profitable and productive. That we, we cut them off there. And, and we have the power of the purse. And so there are lots of ways that we can have an influence there, even without getting Trump on board. There may be some things that Trump comes on board with. But even without getting him on board, making sure that we are exposing where there is this grift and federal money flowing directly to the AI oligarchs.

• 54:04Kara Swisher?

  And Sam, how do you get Trump on board? Or out of your way? Either way?

• 54:08Speaker 05

  Yeah, I don't, I struggle with that one. Look, I think, you know, going back to what I said about the fact that Trump is guaranteed to change his mind on any position he takes, he sees where political winds are going. I think it's imperative for us to build the momentum in a bipartisan way, even though we now have strong majority in the House. This is an opportunity for us to show leadership, bring enough Republicans along to show that this is inevitable. The more that we can do that, the more effective we'll be.

• 54:41Kara Swisher?

  Or you can just let him go build, let him build something. It's fine. Go over there.

• 54:45Speaker 05

  Yeah, he wants to hang out the pond.

• 54:46Kara Swisher?

  Go ahead. It's fine.

• 54:47Speaker 00

  Well, we'll name Sam's AI safety bill after Trump, you know?

• 54:50Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, that's right. Yeah.

• 54:51Speaker 00

  Have it printed on gold paper.

• 54:53Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, something like that. So, last question. Congress has not managed to pass some meaningful regulations on social media platform, even as their dangers became obvious, like the spread of disinformation, effects on kids' mental health, election meddling, foreign actors, list just goes on. How do you ensure history doesn't repeat itself with AI? There has never been an industry that has been so unregulated and so powerful, I think, since, well, no, the railroads got regulated. They all did.

• 55:22Speaker 05

  I think it would help if we created an AI committee. Right now, AI is spread across a lot of different committees and jurisdictions. And frankly, it could be every committee, if you want to be really specific about. So we're not going to get bills over the goal line if we're playing legislative pinball between every committee that wants jurisdiction. I know this is a big fight. And, you know, God love Hakeem Jeffries. He's got a lot of cats to hurt in our caucus, to be sure. And I respect his leadership tremendously. I'm hopeful that we're going to end up with a single committee that is going to drive the most critical, most urgent AI legislation, so we can get it to the floor and start pushing the accelerator. You know, data privacy, what was been 30 years now. I mean, you went

• 56:07Speaker 05

  down a long list. We can't keep doing things the same way.

• 56:10Kara Swisher?

  Right. Very good point. Greg, you have the last word.

• 56:13Speaker 00

  Sam is part of what's known as the new Democrats. I'm the chair of the Progressive Caucus. Typically, you've seen sort of this Democratic battling over ourselves. But what is so important and interesting and different this time, Kara, is that people are demanding action. And Sam and I agree entirely on this point, that our biggest mistakes haven't been just being a little left here, or a little right or center there. It is when we fail to act. People want a Democratic Party that takes action. I've heard from zero voters that they think Democrats are too strong and you get too much stuff done too quick. Nobody says that ever. And what people are asking is for us to act. And so

• 56:56Speaker 00

  we have to learn from our failures during the housing bubble. We have to learn from our failures on social media. And this is our shot. Inequality is worse than it was under the railroads and the Gilded Age. We are in a crazier position than they were back then. And we have to have our version of what FDR did, getting all this stuff done. And, and that's our task. It's our job.

• 57:19Kara Swisher?

  Yeah, Teddy Roosevelt. It's Teddy. Was it Teddy or FDR?

• 57:24Speaker 00

  Teddy got a lot of good stuff done, but FDR

• 57:25Kara Swisher?

  Teddy did too. Both of them did.

• 57:27Speaker 00

  But FDR did it coming out of the Great Depression.

• 57:29Kara Swisher?

  Yeah. Yes, he did. Yes. FDR, all the Roosevelts.

• 57:31Speaker 05

  I'm bipartisan and say, we love both of our Roosevelts.

• 57:34Kara Swisher?

  All the Roosevelts. We need them back. Anyway.

• 57:37Speaker 00

  The Bull Moose Party, third party Teddy Roosevelt.

• 57:40Kara Swisher?

  Whatever it takes, guys. I'm waiting. I've been waiting. I've been sitting here waiting. Anyway, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. It's really a time to actually get things done. And I think that's the critical part. And I really appreciate you for being here and talking about it so substantively.

• 57:54Speaker 00

  Thanks, Kara.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  Thank you, Kara. Look forward to continuing the conversation.

• 57:57Kara Swisher?

  Today's show was produced by Vicky Vergalina, Michelle Aloy, Catherine Millsop, Madeline LaPlante-Duby, and Megan Burney. Nishat Kurwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Annika Robbins, Jim Mackel, and Manolo Moreno. Our engineers are Fernando Aruda and Rick Kwan. And our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, you don't have to protect your little heart anymore. If not, you're still under Trump's spell. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us. We'll be back on Thursday with more.

• 58:41Speaker 03

  Support for the show comes from Engine. Running a small business means every dollar has to work hard. But if your team is still booking travel the old way, it's costing you more than you think. Engine is the fastest growing travel and spend platform in the country, built specifically for businesses like yours. Book a trip in as little as two and a half minutes, earn up to 10% back on hotels. And in 2025, Engine customers save more than $300 million on travel with zero booking fees, no contracts, and no B S. More than 1,000 businesses join Engine every month. Join them and get $500 when your business

• 59:25Speaker 03

  signs up and starts traveling at engine.com/vox.

• 59:29Speaker 02

  What's the secret to being a great host this season? Keeping things deliciously simple, like mixing Simply Cranberry into a festive drink as guests arrive, or serving up a warm mug of Simply Apple on a chilly night. That means less time behind the scenes and more time in the moment with everyone. Crafted with real fruit, Simply juices and fruit drinks make any holiday drink effortless, inviting, and completely delicious. Simply. Say yes to simple.

• 1:00:00Speaker 07

  This holiday, all plans, even unlimited, are just $15 a month. A holiday deal this good obviously deserves an enormously expensive holiday song, like All I Want [bleep]. Right. Okay, we can afford that. You know what? Forget the music budget. We're going to stick with whatever's in the public domain. Give it a try at mintmobile.com/switch. Upfront payment of $45 for three months, $90 for six months, or $180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. New customer offer for initial plan term only. Greater than 50GB may slow when network is busy. See terms.