Latest news with #TheAssignment
CNN
01-05-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
Why Does Dating Feel So Hard Right Now? - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio
Audie Cornish 00:00:01 Reality show romance is supposed to be my escape from the news, and yet I can't stop thinking about this one moment from the Netflix show Love is Blind, where the personal did in fact become political. The show is basically speed dating on steroids, ending with a high stakes alter I do, or this case. Love is Blind Soundbite 00:00:27 Ben, I love you so much. But I've always wanted a partner to be on the same wavelength. And so today I can't. Audie Cornish 00:00:41 So in this scene, a contestant, Sara Carton left her fiancé of 3 weeks Ben Mezzenga, at the altar because, as she put it, she just couldn't get past their political differences, which, as a crossover cultural moment, went about as well as you would expect in the political manosphere. This is conservative commentator Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk Soundbite 00:01:03 Her views very well could change if she had a man to lead her. Stay away from liberal women, got that? That should be a shirt, stay away from liberal women. Soundbite 00:01:13 I've never been more unimpressed with an individual. It's not over a difference of BLM views, it's that he refused to have one that was in lockstep with her. And that's the hallmark of that side. Audie Cornish 00:01:23 'And not wanting to deal with anyone on this or that side is very much a thing. Researchers with the dating app OkCupid wrote that political alignment isn't just a side note in dating, it's a filter. More than 1.2 million daters, for example, in the US have added the I'm pro-choice badge to their profiles on the site. In the DC area, that same bio might read, laid off by DOGE, according to the news site Axios. Or on the flip side, display a photo with the potential love match posing next to President Trump. But isn't love supposed to conquer all? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:02:01 Look, I'm a romantic and I believe that love is the most powerful force on Earth. Love, love can do a lot. But love is not, it's not a feeling that's independent of ethics and morals. Audie Cornish 00:02:15 'Today's guest, Dr. Orna Guralnik, clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst known for her work on the docu-series Couples Therapy. We're going to talk to her about the politics of love. I'm Audie Cornish and this is The Assignment. Audie Cornish 00:02:34 'Couples therapy is a docu-series, it's not a rose dispensing pageant show or a gonzo booze-fueled matchmaking experiment. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:02:43 What I hear from viewers is that they start off with this kind of attitude of, you know, oh, I'm going to see someone in trouble and it's going to make me feel better about myself and I'm gonna judge. Audie Cornish 00:02:57 Real couples volunteer to get weeks of free relationship therapy from psychoanalyst Orna Guralnik. In return, their experience is filmed in high, depth detail. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:03:11 And as people get to know the participants better they gradually kind of the attitude of judgment evaporates and instead it gets replaced by a certain kind of compassion and deep empathy and Audie Cornish 00:03:27 finding a lot of commonalities. As new episodes of the show's latest season begin to drop, I wanted to talk to Guralnik because she's been out there saying political movements like Me Too and Black Lives Matter forced difficult conversations that now surface in relationships in unexpected ways. On the show, even Gen Zers and polycules and LGBTQ couples kicking traditional gender roles to the curb struggle despite being armed with therapy speak. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:03:58 'I mean, I have to tell you that there's probably no couple, no individual patient that I know that is not really preoccupied with these questions nowadays of like a major fight, a major cultural fight now, both here in the United States, but beyond the United states between, in a way, two ethics or methods of living, right? There's like a serious cultural moment here between. Let's say a more liberal progressive ethic of becoming aware of these systemic differences, taking care of the vulnerable, considering like our government, the role of the government is to protect the most vulnerable versus this ethic of, I don't know, to be cynical, survival of the richest. Or let's, let's pull back from all of this progressive rhetoric and try to hold on to some kind of old school values that really support a very particular portion of the population, and in extreme cases, disappears the other. And this is not only happening here, it's happening in Israel-Palestine, it's happened in other places in the world, it's happen around migration. I mean, this is like a major clash. Audie Cornish 00:05:25 But how does it surface at the kitchen table? I mean, one of the things that's remarkable when you're watching a couple that is in therapy, you almost always find it is the fight about washing the dishes, the fight about walking the dog, they're always about something else. Like, yeah, how are you actually seeing it on the couch? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:05:41 'It's, I totally see it on the couch in the sense that these are ethics that guide how people relate to each other. So if you take this like big story ethical question of is the government slash the family, the father, the caretaker, is their job to protect the vulnerable or is their job to push people to move as fast forward in the race? That will influence literally how people talk at the kitchen table. Meaning if someone is bringing vulnerability to the other, is that something to attend to with an open heart and try to see where the commonalities are, where the, where person needs support, or is that something to fight about with as much force as possible? If someone hurts you, do you listen for where that comes from, like what happened, or do you retaliate? These big cultural questions that we're negotiating among, you know, between like Dems and Republicans or between Israelis and like pro-Palestinians or... Zionists, I mean, they really translate into how do we relate one person to another? Are we going to try to understand differences and find some kind of common ground in which vulnerability is dealt with compassion? Or are we going use brute force to make the other person surrender or disappear? It really goes all the way there from the big picture to the most minute conversation. And I see it. Does that make sense to you what I'm saying? Audie Cornish 00:07:46 It does, it does, because then I start to think about how people have opted out, meaning those people who go on dating sites and are like, I don't want to date a liberal, I don't wanna date a Republican, I do not want to do this, I want to be in a relationship where the work will be X. And I've thought about it a lot, because I'm in an interracial relationship, and I can assume that when it was against the law in so many states to be such relationship. Those kinds of conversations happened in so many families where you were basically saying like, there's a moral component to the existence of this relationship or these children and what to do with those family members who do or do not embrace it. Now it feels strange to be having that kind of conversation. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:08:36 All over again. Audie Cornish 00:08:37 Yes, but with like multiple topics like so many different things could be the moral thing That you take a stand on no matter what and I remember seeing it surface in love is blind You know like netflix reality show where you've already suspended disbelief being on the show, you know where you Couples talk without seeing each other and then all of a sudden weeks later They're supposed to say I do or not and then with some of them the thing that tripped them up was They're politics, did you believe in vaccination? It just seemed crazy to me to see it surface... Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:09:11 But it's not crazy. Audie Cornish 00:09:13 Yeah, say more. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:09:14 It's not crazy because it does boil down to, as you're saying, very key morals and ethical values that guide how you're going to relate to another person. Audie Cornish 00:09:26 But love was supposed to conquer all Dr. Guralnik! Like, love was supposed be this thing that like...I don't know. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:09:35 People have, look, I'm a romantic and I believe that love is the most powerful force on earth. Love can do a lot. But love is not, it's not a feeling that's independent of ethics and morals. I mean, loving has an ethical component to it. And how do you understand that ethical component? If you love someone else, does your love manifest in you doing your best to try to understand who they are. Or do you understand love as you are going to enforce your way of living on that other person supposedly to protect them, right? These are very different ideas of what love is. Audie Cornish 00:10:17 You were writing in the New York Times that you see like patterns in couples who are in conflict. And you mentioned this one concept splitting, like kind of categorizing people as good, bad. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:10:29 Yeah, yes. Audie Cornish 00:10:30 And can you talk about how that works? Because I do think in couples in general, or throuples or whoever people partner these days, storylines can emerge as they say, and you can sometimes be the villain and you are the hero in your own story. But what makes the splitting concept different? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:10:47 When you're in the mind's instead of splitting, you try to preserve all the good to yourself. You try to think of yourself or the person you trust as all good. And then everything that threatens that, every aspect of yourself, or of the other person that doesn't go with this pure good, is projected outward and it's all bad. So you imagine yourself in a very simplistic way. You have only like high quality behaviors. You're not greedy, you're not envious. You have no anger. You're just like a good person. And the person outside of you is the one that has all those like negative qualities and they're all bad. It's a very simple way of cutting the world, cutting yourself and cutting the word. And when you're in that state of mind where you split a lot, the world can become very dangerous to you. Because if all the bad is outside and it's not like a nuanced, both good and bad, when you imagine people are bad, they're really bad. You don't remember that they're also the same person that yesterday helped you cross the road. It's a very all good, all scary world that you live in, in the mindset of splitting. On the other hand, if you're not in that mindset, if you were in a more integrated mindset, then you can see nuances, then you can see that, oh, that qualities that I dislike in the other person, well, I recognize them in myself sometimes, too. And I can understand the humanity of both of us. Audie Cornish 00:12:25 I remember watching one of the seasons of the show where there was a couple where one was a Palestinian background. And that came up as a topic. Couples Therapy Soundbite 00:12:32 I mean, to address the elephant in the room, our dynamic as an Israeli Jew with a Palestinian in the midst of the political made me a little bit anxious, but I feel love in this space. I feel like there's a real shared experience here that is happening. Yeah, a communion. Do you want to say more though about that elephant, like in terms of your concerns? I'm scared that... Other Palestinians might criticize me for placing myself in this position. Yeah, for agreeing to this. However, sometimes I think when we look at things from the collective level, things that we do to bar people from seeing each other like a literal separation wall further perpetuates the conflict because I have no opportunity to even see that my enemies are just... Not your enemies. Yeah, they're just people. And we're also trying to live who come from so much trauma as well. One way to think about it is that we are relating under the radar of how we're supposed to relate, which is as enemies. Audie Cornish 00:13:39 'And I remember thinking, oh, that's really interesting that, like, Dr. Guralnik had to say, like well, wait a second, how is my presence affecting you? How are you thinking about it? And just for people's understanding of your background, as far as I understand, you spent some time both in Georgia and then as a child moved to Israel for several years, which I think was at age seven, which now that I have a seven-year-old. It's a very influential moment that time. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:14:09 Yes. Audie Cornish 00:14:10 Can you talk about some of the formative experiences? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:14:14 Yeah, when I moved to Israel, I mean, it was a long time ago, it was in the 70s. First of all, I moved and very soon after we moved, the Yom Kippur war broke out. You know, my dad was called into the war, he disappeared for months, I was like in bunkers. It was like a crazy time, like a very intense way to be introduced to the state of Israel. And then growing up, It was during a time where Israel went through a few different ideological political changes. When I moved to Israel, it was a pretty socialist country. And as I was growing up, it kind of went through transformation into a much more kind of very similar to the United States, a much capitalist kind of society that was also deeply going through many complicated phases of the conflict with the Arab world. And late in the 70s, there was already like the we moved from like speaking of splitting, never believing that the war would ever end to suddenly like a peace accord with Egypt. I mean, I witnessed growing up like many intense socio and political transformations in this country. Audie Cornish 00:15:31 And specific milestones for Israel itself, and inflection points. And I didn't realize this, but like later on, you ended up keeping in touch with this particular, I guess, the patient, the right word. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:15:47 She's a participant. Audie Cornish 00:15:48 Participant in the show. And I read this conversation, it was in The Guardian, and I watched you in real time deal with the conflicts you're describing. Someone looking at your fundamental identity and saying, you and the people around you, your collective, your system, fundamental damage to me and my system. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:16:09 Absolutely. Audie Cornish 00:16:10 What was that like? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:16:14 What was that like? I mean, the relationship with her is one of the most important relationships of my contemporary life right now, but it really, it's not just Christine. It's about the basic question, you know, I'm a couples therapist, I'm citizen, I am a mother. I mean these are basic questions about what do I believe ethical relationships between human beings should be. Do I believe in overpowering another person? Do I belief in over powering another people? Do I believed in occupation? Or do I believe in the ability to find some kind of mutual dignity, humanity, and resolving these kind of domination relationships? And you can imagine that I believe in the latter, but it's challenged. It's challenged when Sometimes it gets to the point where you're like, wait a minute. Is it me or you, or is there a way for both of us to exist? You know, river to sea, is it just the Palestinians? Is it just Jews or is there a way to coexist. Audie Cornish 00:17:24 There were moments in the conversation where you actually had to say, can you make room for this? Or I have to swallow the frog, which I hadn't heard in a while. Or you would what I'm feeling is anger or I am I feel rage that you can't like you had to do the things that I often see you asking the couples to do. Yes. And I think we think that, oh, if you're a therapist, this is going to be easy, or like, I don't know, that somehow you have the tools, and so it's an easier way. But it's still, I could feel you working. It was work to get to a place where you could sit across from someone who, you know, you just had such fundamental differences. And looking at this conflict and you are allowing yourselves to be proxies for both communities, which is even scarier in this environment. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:18:17 Yes, very scary. Scary in this environment. Yes, agree. Yeah, this environment is not conducive to that. Which is a big problem. Audie Cornish 00:18:26 What did you learn from going through that experience and still going through experience? And I mean that in a very literal way. What did learn about trying to suppress those or trying to hold that bay, those feelings that can overtake a conversation? What did your learn about even the idea of changing a mind, you know? I pretty much, it's cable news. I feel like I sit through discussions all day where people claim in a way they're. Trying to change each other's minds, but they clearly conduct the conversation in a way where you never would if you were actually trying to do that. I know. So for you, like you must have had an internal moment of like, maybe I'm not so good at this, or actually this is harder than I thought, even for my patients, like what kind of, yeah. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:19:12 Yeah, many moments like that. There's one thing which is that I learned at various points in the conversation where I'm getting stuck, where, for example, Christine is saying something that I suddenly feel like I can't work with because I'm coming up against a certain kind of limit in myself. At least for me, the commitment is when I'm meeting those kind of hard moments where you can't dislodge something. I do have a certain kind of commitment in myself to spend some time there and see what I can do, what I can with myself. You're talking about the feeling. It's not just a feeling, it's a thought too. It's a though of like, oh no, that cannot be true or that's too much or you've gone too far or this is too offensive. It's a feeling, but it's also a thought. There's a whole kind of complex that goes along there that means like no more, we can't talk anymore. This is where we reach the limit of our understanding. This is exactly where you need to sit and breathe and both listen to yourself with compassion, but also know that you're getting stuck and also ask the other person to talk to you again. So I would ask Christine, can you say what you're saying in a different way that doesn't make me feel so attacked or doesn't... Audie Cornish 00:20:31 Right. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:20:32 Like help me go through this process of hardening, so that I can understand better, and maybe you will understand better. I mean, with Christine and I, I mean she's a very special person, despite the fact that she's fiercely political and fiercely protective of her people, she's also a deeply empathic, respectful person. So we could offer that to each other, even in... Audie Cornish 00:20:53 Yeah, you guys really were the best case scenario of two people trying to have this discussion, which was very hard. But I think it just struck me that like, yeah, all of a sudden you're you're on the couch. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:21:09 Yes. and I'm often on the couch. I mean, when I work with patients, I may not talk about it, but I'm often on the couch with my patients, meaning I meet certain moments in myself in which I have a hard time empathizing or hard time understanding or I don't agree with something and I have to walk myself through a process. Audie Cornish 00:21:29 More of my conversation with couples therapist Orna Guralnik, stay with us. Audie Cornish 00:21:38 'You will have what people are describing as a kind of romance recession. You have a generation of people who are less likely to be in a long-term relationship, less likely to seek one. And then if I think about their slang, my favorite is catching feelings,. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:21:57 Right. Audie Cornish 00:21:57 Which is to move from your beneficial sexual arrangement in the threat of you having emotions during that. It always drives me crazy because catching sounds like you caught a disease. Like you catch an STI, you don't catch feelings. But I think it says something about this generation and where they are. Do you think we're in a romance recession? Or what are the ways you might see what this generation is going through that feels different? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:22:26 Oh yeah, there's definitely a big seismic change in the younger generation. It's not just a romance recession. They're also having less sex. They are less rushing to get involved with each other. They're more kind of wary. But I think there's a real thing going on and I think it has to do with a bunch of things. Both, you know, people's lives are, this is true for us too, but it's true for younger people their profoundly mediated by technology nowadays, right? Like they have much less direct access to each other and they're much more living through social media, YouTube, there's a way in which experience is less immediate, it's more mediated and more insular in that way. So that's one factor. Also the fact that Um, people are living in very different realities because of technology. I mean, it's the last decade has been so fragmented in terms of society and like, what can you trust? Like whether you can trust the reality, we're not sharing the same reality, whether you could trust the government that it's going to protect you. Whether there there's a way in which people have become a lot more fearful and suspicious. And that, of course, affects their willingness to love and their willingness to be vulnerable and open themselves up to each other. So all of this creates a very different environment, let's say, than the environment I grew up in when I was younger and starting to get involved in romance. It's a complicated time for people. And I think people are wary. Audie Cornish 00:24:14 Are they right to be? Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:24:15 'This is going back to the beginning of our conversation. How can you separate your romantic relationships from the political context you're living in? If you're in a political context in which you can't trust that your government is there to protect you, it's like living in a family in which the parents are not worrying about the wellbeing of their kids. You grow to be paranoid and self-protective. It's harder to extend vulnerability and care and love to each other. So are they right to be? Yes, it's tricky out there. Audie Cornish 00:24:54 I have to admit, this is the part of the interview where I'm supposed to be like, so what should we do now to change and improve this situation? But really I feel like I need to write a letter to all those like feminist websites that were like, you were right. The hetero ladies are upset for a reason. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:25:09 Agree. Audie Cornish 00:25:09 I don't want to do that. I don't want to do that, but I want to, what I do want to figure out is you've learned a lot in the last couple of years. I've learned a lot doing this job. I don't know how to talk to people who come up to me and say, how can we be talking to each other differently? They ask me in a political context, but there are people who ask you that in a relational, in a romantic context, now that our worlds have collided. Dr. Orna Guralnik 00:25:33 'I think it has to do with kind of a two-part thing. Like, one, don't be so certain about your reality. Your reality is created by, or mediated by, a very particular kind of environment that we're living in, technologically, news-wise. We're all really in the grip of very manipulative systems that are making us see only a slice of the world, all of us. Be a little bit less convinced of your reality. Step one, like hold your reality lightly and open yourself up to listen with a lot of care and empathy to the person that you're disagreeing with. You're having a hard time understanding someone else. Try to ask them, what matters to you? What in this matters to? What are you afraid of? What do you care about? I mean, I have really, quite profound conversations with people that I fiercely disagree with, sometimes people who really threaten my existence. And I find those conversations the most meaningful, right? If I can get them to talk to me about what matters to them, right, if we're not trying to convince each other or not trying to impose my reality, but we're trying to actually understand each other. Audie Cornish 00:27:04 'That was Orna Guralnik, a clinical psychologist and psychoanalyst known for her work on the docu-series Couples Therapy. New episodes of the show drop on Showtime on May 23rd. This episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN Audio, was produced by Grace Walker and Kyra Dahring. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez, our technical director is Dan Dzula, and the executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig. We also had support from Dan Bloom, Madeleine Thompson, Haley Thomas, Alex Manassari, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nicole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. I'm Audie Cornish and if you enjoyed this show, please go ahead, hit the follow button, definitely share. We love getting new listeners and I want to thank you for being with us this week.
CNN
30-04-2025
- Entertainment
- CNN
CNN Audio Launches New Narrative Podcast Series 'The Account from CNN'
April 30th, 2025 First Installment 'Persuadable with Donie O'Sullivan' Now Available Episode 1: Listen Here NEW YORK, NY – April 30, 2025 – CNN Audio announced today the launch of their latest podcast offering, The Account from CNN . The Account is CNN's new home for powerful, narrative-driven audio storytelling. The series will be made up of multi-episode seasons featuring in-depth reporting from the network's unparalleled roster of global journalists as they immerse listeners in dynamic news stories. 'We are launching The Account as a home for audio-first storytelling built specifically for listeners, not just adapted for them,' said CNN Audio Executive Producer Steve Lickteig. 'This narrative style gives our journalists the space to comprehensively capture their reporting from multiple angles and points of view, and each series within the feed will showcase a story uniquely suited to our reporters' expertise—stories best experienced through the depth and intimacy of podcasting.' The series' first season, Persuadable, follows CNN Senior Correspondent Donie O'Sullivan as he investigates how and why some individuals are susceptible to modern conspiracy theories. O'Sullivan has been covering this beat for more than a decade, but now he's digging into the factors that can lead people directly into webs of misinformation. In this deeply personal project, O'Sullivan empathetically reflects on his own mental health journey as he considers what people may be seeking out in fringe beliefs. Through conversations with cult survivors, psychologists, and the families of those embedded in these communities, O'Sullivan leaves listeners with practical takeaways for navigating this slippery world and breaking free from the grip of conspiracy. 'We are living in what has been described as the 'golden age' of conspiracy theories, but we often focus too much on the things people believe rather than why they believe them,' said O'Sullivan. 'In Persuadable , we wanted to show how anyone is capable of holding irrational beliefs so that when our loved ones find themselves deep in conspiracy theory rabbit holes, we have the tools to help. That started with an open conversation about my own mental health struggles.' The first episode of Persuadable is available now wherever you listen to podcasts. The second episode will debut on Wednesday, May 7, with the final episode to follow on Wednesday, May 14. Details on future seasons of The Account will be released in the coming weeks. CNN Audio is the exclusive producer of audio content and podcasts for CNN Worldwide including All There Is with Anderson Cooper , Chasing Life with Dr. Sanjay Gupta , The Assignment with Audie Cornish , Terms of Service with Clare Duffy , CNN 5 Things , CNN 5 Good Things , CNN One Thing , Chance Encounters , and more. Listen to all CNN Audio content at . ### About CNN Worldwide CNN Worldwide is the most honored brand in cable news, reaching more individuals through television, streamingand online than any other cable news organization in the United States. Globally, people across the world can watch CNN International, which is widely distributed in over 200 countries and territories. CNN Digital is the #1 online news destination, with more unique visitors than any other news source. Max, Warner Bros. Discovery's streaming platform, features CNN Max, a 24/7 streaming news offering available to subscribers alongside expanded access to News content and CNN Originals. CNN's award-winning portfolio includes non-scripted programming from CNN Original Series and CNN Films for broadcast, streaming and distribution across multiple platforms. CNN programming can be found on CNN, CNN International and CNN en Español channels, via CNN Max and the CNN Originals hub on discovery+ and via pay TV subscription on CNN apps and cable operator platforms. Additionally, CNN Newsource is the world's most extensively utilized news service partnering with over 1,000 local and international news organizations around the world. CNN is a division of Warner Bros. Discovery. About Warner Bros. Discovery Warner Bros. Discovery is a leading global media and entertainment company that creates and distributes the world's most differentiated and complete portfolio of branded content across television, film, streaming and gaming. Available in more than 220 countries and territories and 50 languages, Warner Bros. Discovery inspires, informs and entertains audiences worldwide through its iconic brands and products including: Discovery Channel, Max, discovery+, CNN, DC, TNT Sports, Eurosport, HBO, HGTV, Food Network, OWN, Investigation Discovery, TLC, Magnolia Network, TNT, TBS, truTV, Travel Channel, MotorTrend, Animal Planet, Science Channel, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group, Warner Bros. Television Group, Warner Bros. Pictures Animation, Warner Bros. Games, New Line Cinema, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Turner Classic Movies, Discovery en Español, Hogar de HGTV and others. For more information, please visit . CNN Audio Press Contacts Alex Manasseri Mark Duffy Donie O'Sullivan Press Contacts Bridget Leininger Amaya Starkey
Yahoo
27-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Chicago mayor fires back at border czar's ‘reprehensible' threats to prosecute him over ICE raids
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson shared how he really felt about border czar Tom Homan threatening to prosecute him if he gets in the way of ICE deportation raids in an interview on Thursday. During CNN's podcast, "The Assignment With Audie Cornish," the Democratic mayor told host Audie Cornish that he would not allow local police to enforce ICE deportation orders and ripped Homan for threatening to prosecute him if Johnson doesn't cooperate. "Well, what I find it to be is reprehensible, to be perfectly frank with you. You know, the city of Chicago has shown up for this country time and time again," the mayor declared. Tom Homan Tells Migrant Terror Groups Trump Will 'Wipe You Off The Face Of The Earth' Days prior to President Donald Trump's inauguration, Homan told a group of Chicago Republicans, "We're going to start right here in Chicago, Illinois. If your Chicago mayor doesn't want to help, he can step aside. But if he impedes us—if he knowingly harbors or conceals an illegal alien–I will prosecute him." During the CNN interview, Cornish pressed Johnson about this threat, asking him if he believes his "migrant-friendly policies" have put him in the crosshairs of Homan and the Trump administration. Read On The Fox News App The mayor defended his policies, saying they simply prevent local law enforcement from behaving like ICE agents, but maintained that the city is open to cooperating with the federal government in other areas. "So for 40 years, the city of Chicago has had a welcoming city policy. And what that policy just simply states is that our local law enforcement will not dub as federal agents," he said. "Essentially, we're not going to stand in the way and impede cooperation with the federal agencies because we do cooperate with them on a regular basis." Chicago Removes Largest Homeless Encampment, Relocates Tent Residents Into Apartments And Shelters: Report Johnson continued, "We're just not going to have our local law enforcement behave as ICE agents, because what it does is simply breaks down the trust between community members and law enforcement, local law enforcement, and there's enough for them to do already." Throughout his time as mayor, Johnson has reaffirmed his city's sanctuary status and expressed opposition to working with federal law enforcement to clean up illegal immigration. In preparation for the incoming Trump administration's crackdown, his office released guidelines in January for how locals should respond if ICE enters city property. "Contact your agency or department's designated attorney or general counsel for further guidance. Contact the highest ranking official or designated supervisor onsite and do not take any action until that person arrives," the guidelines advised. They added that people should demand copies of warrants, not to consent to ICE entering "any private or 'sensitive' locations," but not to interfere with any search, even if refused. There are further recommendations, including taking notes and keeping contemporaneous written records. Chicago Faith Leaders Brace For Mass Deportations, Cease Hosting In-person Spanish Services: Report More recently, the mayor defended his sanctuary city policies during a House Oversight Committee hearing, saying that they keep the city safer. "Any actions that amplify fears of deportations makes Chicago more dangerous," Johnson said to lawmakers. "Those fears cause witnesses and victims to avoid cooperating with police. The cooperation of all people, regardless of their immigration status, is essential to achieving the city's goals of reducing crime and pursuing justice for victims." During the podcast, Johnson told Cornish, "And what we're simply asking from the federal government is to recognize the beauty and the value that cities across America bring. My responsibility in this moment is to show up for the people of Chicago, even when the federal government dismisses working people." He pushed back against Trump's and Homan's criticism of Chicago's sanctuary policies once more, stating, "if the federal government and the Trump administration, in particular, wants to have animus in disdain towards the people of Chicago and the things at work, of course, we're going to resist that." Johnson added that his government is "not impeding" feds looking to deport criminal illegal immigrants, and reiterated Chicago law enforcement will cooperate with them so long as they show up with "a criminal, valid warrant."Original article source: Chicago mayor fires back at border czar's 'reprehensible' threats to prosecute him over ICE raids
CNN
06-03-2025
- Politics
- CNN
Where Did #MeToo Go? - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio
Audie Cornish 00:00:00 'This past weekend, former New York Governor Andrew Cuomo posted a surprising 17-minute video online. Andrew Cuomo 00:00:07 And that is why I announced my candidacy today for mayor of New York City. Audie Cornish 00:00:12 Now, in any other case, this would not be like that big a deal. He's a moderate Democrat with major name recognition, eyeing the seat of a scandal plagued incumbent in Mayor Eric Adams. But the announcement was an eyebrow raiser because, I mean, like, let's hop back in the Wayback Machine and crank it to, let's say, August 10th, 2021. Andrew Cuomo 00:00:38 Thank you for the honor of serving you. It has been the honor of my lifetime. God bless you. John King, CNN Archive Tape 00:00:48 'Simply blockbuster news. The 63-year-old Democratic Governor of New York, Andrew Cuomo, announcing he will resign 14 days from today. That in the wake of allegations of sexual harassment, a report produced by the state attorney general, in which 11 separate women said the governor had behaved inappropriately around them. This is a seismic moment in national politics, in democratic politics and in the cultural conversation, the national conversation about mistreatment of women in the workplace. Audie Cornish 00:01:20 'Democrats for the last few years had been leading the charge for public officials accused of sexual impropriety to leave the job. Cuomo had been among the highest profile to face the consequences of reported abuse and harassment. But here we are post-"Me Too," and Cuomo says he's learned his lesson. Andrew Cuomo 00:01:40 Did I make mistakes? Some painfully? Definitely. And I believe I learned from them and that I am a better person for it. Audie Cornish 00:01:49 Now what exactly he's learned? He didn't say. To the activist who helped turn the MeToo moment into a movement that he's even running is frustrating. Tarana Burke 00:02:01 The kind of world. And so many of us say that we want to live in. We will not get there when we keep making these same kinds of mistakes. When we discount violence against women as a serious enough offense, right? That that it always gets dismissed. Audie Cornish 00:02:18 'The so-called "canceled" men from Hollywood, media and politics have been welcomed back to the public sphere, and the "believe all women" approach is no more. So what was the point? What really has changed? Today, I'm talking with two women who have an answer. Former Fox News host Gretchen Carlson and the mother of Me Too, Tarana Burke. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. Gretchen Carlson is what you might call a Me Too success story. She sued former Fox News head Roger Ailes in 2016 for sexual harassment. She won a $20 million settlement and got an apology from Fox, that is. But at the time, it didn't feel much like a victory. Gretchen Carlson 00:03:10 Well, I thought I was just going to be sitting home crying my eyes out for the rest of my life. You know, my career that I had killed myself for, to get to the top of television was stripped from me for no good reason. I mean, I hadn't done anything wrong and I was doing a great job. Audie Cornish 00:03:26 Her ordeal became one of the main storylines in the Me Too movement. Her story was turned into TV and movies. She's been played on screen by Naomi Watts and Nicole Kidman. But her career as a TV anchor was more or less over. Carlson has since founded a group called Lift Our Voices to lobby for laws that prevent employers from going after survivors who speak publicly about harassment in the workplace. This is not where she thought she would be after she took on Ailes and Fox. Gretchen Carlson 00:03:58 Because I've reinvented myself so many times and this last time around has been the most significant. Audie Cornish 00:04:04 Yeah. Gretchen Carlson 00:04:04 You know, it's just it's really going to turn into my legacy as an advocate, more important than any person I've ever interviewed as a journalist. And that is so gratifying. Audie Cornish 00:04:15 'It landed in this moment where what became the mainstream Me Too movement enters the consciousness, meaning you have like allegations against Harvey Weinstein, you have allegations against candidate Donald Trump, and that intersects with Twitter, its activism, and that comes around to folks like Tarana Burke, right, who had been working in the space of sexual violence for a long time. So it was a strange kind of perfect storm --. Gretchen Carlson 00:04:48 Exactly. Audie Cornish 00:04:49 '-- for the broader culture to talk about it all at once. Gretchen Carlson 00:04:51 Exactly. I always call it a perfect storm, Audie. That's the best way to describe it. And then just the other thing I'd add is that the American public got pissed off because they were like, wait a minute, we're still treating people like this in the workplace. And the reason that they thought we had come much farther along than we actually had was because all of these cases were going to secrecy. And that's what I really found out after I came forward. I mean, I realized there was an epidemic, still, of sexual misconduct in the workplace, but there was an epidemic as well, of silencing these people. And the thousands of people who reached out to me they all said the same eerie thing, which was, thank you for being the voice for the voiceless. And I was like, what the hell is going on here? Audie Cornish 00:05:36 Well, the public all of a sudden knew what an NDA was, right? Gretchen Carlson 00:05:39 And what what forced arbitration was. And people still don't understand what that is. But that's what my two laws are about that that passed. And so that really became the genesis of my advocacy work. Audie Cornish 00:05:52 'Two federal laws passed, which, by the way, passing anything. Just add someone covering politics, like passing anything right now is so hard. That would ban arbitration and NDAs and workplace sexual abuse harassment cases. The reason why I bring this up is because these are victories, right? Like on paper, that is a legislative victory. What happened over the years started to feel like cultural rollbacks, right. So you have some of the men who are allegedly taken down or "canceled" -- that was the biggest thing being "canceled" -- very much back in the public eye. And then in entertainment, that might mean, like a Louis C.K., for example. Right. And I'm picking him because he's someone who actually kind of apologized publicly for harming the women who were harassed by him. And in politics, of course, you have the Brett Kavanaugh hearings that were a turning point where Christine Blasey Ford surfaced these allegations from their high school years in hearings. You have Donald Trump, who was found liable for sexually abusing E. Jean Carroll by a Manhattan federal jury. This was not disqualifying to these men, and they were not, in the end, hounded from the public space. And in fact, I've heard the term "me too martyr." And I'm wondering, from your point of view why you think this all took a turn? Gretchen Carlson 00:07:16 'Yeah, it's a problem. And we saw that really in the last election cycle with these far right wing, misogynist men who skyrocketed to the top of social media and started galvanizing our young men across America to start celebrating being a misogynist again. And I have -- Audie Cornish 00:07:36 But do you think that's because young men we're hearing again, 2016, 2017, 2018, they're hearing. The problem is with men and young boys and rape culture. The problem is with men and young boys being told X. The problem is, and after a while, they start to gravitate toward someone who says they're not a problem. Gretchen Carlson 00:07:52 Yeah, no, I mean, well, and it also fits into the power structure in our country. Like, who wants to give up any power? You know, men, I mean, not to harp on them because they're a huge part of this equation. And I always say I'm an extending the olive branch to them to join our fight because we need them. But when you look at the power dynamic in our patriarchal culture, and suddenly women are having more power and people of color are having more power, and then you have this whole revolution of of men being brought down by Me Too. If if anyone comes out and says, hey, I'll be your savior for you, and you know, you don't have to follow those rules anymore and you can get your power back. That's, I think, how this whole thing fit together is that. Yeah. You know, and a lot of, a lot of young men in our culture had been struggling as of late trying to find jobs. Trying to keep jobs. And so I think it was, again, this kind of perfect storm in the opposite direction, where there was a rallying cry for, especially white men, to fall in line. And, and a lot of them decided to support Donald Trump. Audie Cornish 00:09:01 'Criticism of Me Too, has always been around the idea that it went, quote unquote, "too far," that it created a spectrum of abuse that was so wide everything was sort of caught in it. Um, and then you saw organizations like the Time's Up organization in Hollywood that fell apart for its own organizational reasons. Do you think you and your organization Lift Our Voices -- Do you think you're doing well because you're picking legal fights? Right, like you're doing something that's discreet, achievable. Like is there something -- Do you think in some ways the Me Too conversation got too vague, too hard for people to get their arms around? Gretchen Carlson 00:09:43 Yeah. I mean, look on purpose and lift our voices. We are laser focused on one thing, and that is getting rid of silencing mechanisms that keep all this stuff secret. Forced arbitration and NDAs. That's it. Time's Up really started taking on way too many other causes, and it's very easy to fall into that trap. But I have found that the strategy of being incredibly disciplined and laser focused on our mission is the silver bullet to equity in the workplace, because if you're a company that believes in silencing your people about these issues, you probably also don't pay your people fairly, and you probably also don't promote them adequately. So we believe that getting rid of all of this changes the entire dynamic for all American workers. And in staying so disciplined and laser focused, I believe that that is why we have had success. Audie Cornish 00:10:39 Now, you've got to go forward in an era where company after corporation has gone out and said DEI? I don't know her. Like, they are just rolling it back, right? The Trump administration has put out all kinds of executive orders against diversity, equity and inclusion policies. I think in some places this conversation about sexual harassment was like under those umbrellas. Do you feel an environment change, a vibe shift, even in the work you do? Right. Where like, I don't even know if some of these human resources people are still hired. Gretchen Carlson 00:11:17 What I would say about the work that we do at Lift Our Voices is that we don't believe it's DEI. The truth of the matter is that our issues also affect white men in very high numbers. Audie Cornish 00:11:28 But that's a good pitch right there. But before, you might have been like, this is part of making it a more welcoming workplace for women. This is how companies might have thought of it. But I hear you moving with the moment and saying, talking about the things they care about now. Bottom line: Uh, men. Yeah. Like. It's a very different vibe. Gretchen Carlson 00:11:51 'Yeah. I mean, look, I've always talked about it. The. Here are the facts: The number one group of people that are affected by silencing mechanisms more than anyone else in American workplaces are black women making minimum wage. Okay? True. But not far behind: white men. So we approach this as a workers rights issue. This is -- Men every single day are signing contracts that are putting them into forced arbitration and NDAs at almost the same rate as African American women, who is the, you know, the biggest group affected by this. Audie Cornish 00:12:25 'This, right? And again, around issues of conduct not like company trade secret-- Gretchen Carlson 00:12:29 Exactly. No, we're in favor. Audie Cornish 00:12:30 '--which is what they were intended for. Gretchen Carlson 00:12:32 'Yeah, that was the intent originally. We are in -- Of course, companies should be able to protect their trade secrets. If I work for Pepsi. I shouldn't be able to walk across the street to Coke and give away the secret formula. We understand that. We're not fighting against that. What's happened over time, Audie, is that these NDAs have become so incredibly expansive that on your first day of work-- By the way, one third of all Americans sign these on their first day of work. One third. And you have no idea what you're signing. You think it's for trade secrets, but it's for every single thing that happens to you from that moment forward. You can't talk about it. It's why at Fox that nobody could warn anyone else about what was going on. I mean, we all sort of lived in our own little bubble because we were made to believe that it was just us, right? And that's a way in which you keep the bad culture at bay, right, because the more people you allow to come together and actually coalesce and say, "Hey, me too," that's how you start these movements. And so I understand why companies have wanted to cover up their dirty laundry. But these these these clauses have exploded-- Audie Cornish 00:13:40 'But this isn't the moment you fear that they'll back away-- Gretchen Carlson 00:13:42 Maybe. Audie Cornish 00:13:44 '--because of this new administration? Gretchen Carlson 00:13:45 Maybe. But they can't back away from my laws, so they're still going to have to abide by the laws, which brings us full circle as to why I believe that that was such a crucial thing to start with. So, as I've said before, the train's left the station. Get on board. Join our fight because we're not going away. Audie Cornish 00:14:08 The 'me too' movement, among many other things, was, I think, about creating a world where no, um, woman, victim of harassment would have to say, nobody ever believed me. Nobody would believe me. Do you think we're closer to that vision? Gretchen Carlson 00:14:27 'So, you know, these kinds of cultural shifts -- I don't have to tell you this. They take a long time. And this movement has been ultra successful in a very short period of time. And any movement has, they have. We've had roadblocks in every other movement. We've had pushback. We've had letdowns. Um, I just have to continue to to speak loud and clear, that I'm optimistic that we're going to continue to move this forward, like, why are we going to just give in? We can't. We can't give in. And we've seen a market change this time around from this Trump administration versus the last one. I mean, the last one, we had women's marches and we had people, you know, screaming from the top of mountaintops. That's not happening this time. And I'm here to say that we have, we have to be continuing to have a rallying cry, even if it's more covered up. Maybe we're not going to actually go and do marches in DC, but we still have to galvanize people to not give up this fight. Audie Cornish 00:15:30 'Gretchen Carlson is the co-founder of Lift Our Voices and the author of the book "Be Fierce: Stop Harassment and Take Your Power Back." After a quick break, the woman who coined the phrase "me too." Stay with us. I think of the phrase me too is a bit of a relic of peak Twitter hashtag activism. It exploded into the public consciousness in 2017, when celebrities started using the hashtag in solidarity with victims who had gone public with allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. But the phrase itself dates to 2006. That's when Tarana Burke used it on her MySpace page as a way to support women speaking out about experiencing abuse. Tarana Burke, welcome to The Assignment. Tarana Burke 00:16:23 Thank you. Audie, thank you for having me. Audie Cornish 00:16:25 'When you think back to that moment when the 'me too' movement explodes into the public consciousness -- into the media's consciousness -- and people start to come around to you, right, as someone who had been a long time activist, did it feel like a moment? Or did it feel like a movement? Tarana Burke 00:16:43 So there's two ways to answer, I guess, because it's always felt like a movement to me. It felt like a moment that was giving birth to an opportunity for the movement. Audie Cornish 00:16:54 Ooh, say that again. "A moment giving birth to an opportunity.". Tarana Burke 00:16:57 'Yeah. It felt that's what it felt like. And it was a convergence of two worlds that don't always mix well. Um, but quite quickly, I realized that this was a moment that was really giving birth to a big opportunity for a movement that was already moving. And not just 'me too,' but the movement to end sexual violence, right, it's a has a long history and there's there's like every movement, there are ebbs and flows and ups and downs. And what has happened since "me too" has gone viral probably couldn't have happened in 20 years without that moment. So that's kind of -- I realized that pretty quickly. Audie Cornish 00:17:36 It was such a big moment, and there were so many high profile men in media and entertainment in particular, also in politics, who were quote unquote "canceled." And I say quote unquote, because it's like a mixed bag of things that happened to them. Tarana Burke 00:17:51 Correct. Audie Cornish 00:17:51 And it didn't necessarily happen in courtrooms. Tarana Burke 00:17:54 Yeah. Audie Cornish 00:17:54 And then a conversation about what was fair to them and what was unfair to those men. Can you talk about how that may have fed into or affected what would become the backlash? Tarana Burke 00:18:08 'Oh, absolutely. I think -- I know -- in this country in particular, even though this was a global phenomenon and it happened the same way around the world, we were not used to seeing men -- powerful men, definitely -- being held to account for anything. Audie Cornish 00:18:23 Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:18:23 'Right. It was not a-- Audie Cornish 00:18:25 Or having to answer for anything, so to speak, right? Tarana Burke 00:18:27 'Not at all. Just the idea that you would accuse and be called out. Just that. Forget anything beyond it. Anything legal or [indecipherable]. Just that one act was such an affront for so many people. And I say people, not just men, right? Culturally, we are so steeped in patriarchy. And it's why when a woman -- and I'm being gendered for a moment -- but when so many women were simply opening their mouths to say, "This hurt. You hurt me. I've been harmed," all people could hear was a man's life being ruined. We should have heard people saving their own lives. People making an attempt to bring some healing into their own lives-- Audie Cornish 00:19:17 Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:19:17 '--by freeing themselves of this burden. I do think that in the fervor after that moment, and I try to explain it to people like, you gotta give people some time, right? There has not been in the history of this country, a time where, again, women collectively have been able to raise their voices and say, yes, this is what we've been dealing with. Now you see it. We have this, this, this sort of vehicle to help explain what we've been trying to tell you in all kinds, millions of different ways. Right. Like we've been screaming at the top our lungs for years. We've just found a frequency that you can hear us on. And so now that you can hear it and you understand it, there's going to be a lot of catharsis. There's going to be a lot of yelling and screaming and demanding and, you know, and so --. Audie Cornish 00:20:03 It gets messy. Tarana Burke 00:20:04 It gets a little messy because, you know, people have space for the guy, jumped out the bushes and violently raped the woman. They have space for the drunk husband who beat up his wife. They don't have space for the girl who was in the bar at 2:00 in the morning and got pissy drunk, went home with the guy. Audie Cornish 00:20:24 But you know, that's when you hear more dialogue about the gray area. The dialogue about consent. Also defensive mechanisms around well, actually what position what position are we putting young men in? I feel like you picked the perfect example for that. Tarana Burke 00:20:39 100%, because I spend a lot of time on college campuses. Audie Cornish 00:20:43 Ooh. Tarana Burke 00:20:43 'I saw the danger of what was happening while we had these young, really just wide-eyed, feminist, young women who were like, we're on this campus and how can we get these toxic men to hear us that they're sexist and misogynist? And I'm like, okay, let's take a step back. We are all raised in the same country. We're all socialized pretty much with the same pop culture, the same set of dynamics around gender and sexuality. And so if this 18-year-old boy is dropped on a college campus, having maybe had consent ed. in the sixth grade and again in the 12th grade --. Audie Cornish 00:21:26 If at all. I mean. Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:21:27 'If at all. If at all. Yes. What you are witnessing is probably is its toxic behavior. Like that description is probably accurate. But do you think screaming at him that he's toxic is going to make him un toxic? It's not because he has been socialized just like you to be that person, and we haven't had a collective moment to stop and talk about what the responsibility is. What is it that we owe each other? What do we owe our communities? What do we owe our children? There has to be a reeducation and a re-socialization in this country. Audie Cornish 00:22:02 'But did activists push away men, push away the public by basically saying, you're the problem? And I bring this up because when you think about the "manosphere" online, right -- the in that sort of informal collective of helping young men understand the world -- what they say to them is, you're fine. There's actually nothing wrong, right, you know what I mean? Tarana Burke 00:22:23 So they have some place to run to, to say,. Audie Cornish 00:22:25 Like, it's the place to go because I don't know why you would stick around that environment you described either. Tarana Burke 00:22:29 'Yeah. I think that we did not understand the challenge ahead of us. And I think our biggest mistake, meaning us in, in our work in me too, was not engaging men as survivors. Right. And now I'm not going to speak to what other activists did wrong [or] right. You know, I always talk about survivors. It's not a womens' movement. This is a survivors' movement. But if you only embrace men as harm-doers, you don't leave any space for anything else. Right? And so it puts them against the wall. If you know, there's this sort of message that if, if, you know, men would just stop raping, this would all be over. And that's actually not true. Audie Cornish 00:23:08 I wish I could say I had never heard that sentence. I have. Tarana Burke 00:23:10 No, it's and I always I'm always trying to like, say please. That's not true. It diminishes the men who have experienced sexual violence at the hands of women, which is so many, so, so many. It diminishes folks who are on the gender spectrum. Right? It just, it just is a wrong statement, really. The other part about it that's a challenge is that we cannot win this battle without everybody, right? Audie Cornish 00:23:37 Yeah, but now you're not in that position. I mean, in terms of things that have shifted. You've got, frankly, a lot of the men, let's say, in entertainment who are canceled. They are back in the public space. Right? They are very much. Their finances are still good. They may not have the same cultural relevancy that they appreciated, but they found in a whole new audience. Tarana Burke 00:24:00 Oh, yeah. Audie Cornish 00:24:01 You have political figures using the term "me too martyr" to talk about a man who has been kind of falsely accused. Tarana Burke 00:24:10 'Wow. I haven't actually heard that one. That's -- Audie Cornish 00:24:11 'Oh, really? Yeah. Yeah. No, it came up during some of the potential cabinet nominees, like, for instance, Matt Gaetz from Florida --. Tarana Burke 00:24:19 Ah, of course. 00:24:19 '-- who was actually reckoning with an investigation into right his interactions with underage girls and didn't end up going forward. So in that case, it really did hurt him. But I don't think any more I'm not sure it means and I'm not sure it's disqualifying. Tarana Burke 00:24:40 Oh, I think we are sure that it's not disqualifying in any way. Audie Cornish 00:24:43 Well, yeah, to be in a public space. Tarana Burke 00:24:45 'Yeah, it is not. I think that you have some cases that are egregious and people are like, well, sure, that person because you know, like when in the case of Diddy, you know, before that video came out of him, right. Physically abusing Cassie, people were, she is is she a gold digger? Da-da-da. Audie Cornish 00:25:06 Yeah, and "he said, she said." That's usually the term, right, before you have, in that case, Diddy's hotel surveillance video. Tarana Burke 00:25:12 'Right. And so then we, we we-- Once we decide that that person actually might have been this bad actor, then they become a boogeyman and not just a part of society. And this is the larger societal problem, right? They're just one offs. They're just these boogeymen that just happen to be bad actors as opposed to saying, no, this is part and parcel of what everyday people are dealing with in their lives. This is happening in small towns and in communities across the city, across the world. Audie Cornish 00:25:41 'Every time one of these guys comes back to the public space, or even there is a high stakes change in the legal system, Harvey Weinstein's a good example. He had his case overturned, and people probably come to you like, beep-beep-beep, what do you think? What does this mean for me too? And what has that been like? Tarana Burke 00:26:04 Annoying, in a word. I get it. You know, people want to try to understand and make meaning of these moments. But part of the reason why it's frustrating is because this movement really has never been about perpetrators. It has always been about survivors. Audie Cornish 00:26:26 'Uh, I'm chastising myself in my head because I do think, legacy-wise, I now look back, say Me Too movement. In my mind, I just see boxes and faces of men, who are accused. I don't see the survivors. Tarana Burke 00:26:38 And it's I mean, I think it's most people, right? If Weinstein and Matt Lauer and R. Kelly and all of that is the first thing that jumps in your mind, it's because that's what the media has done. What I see when I think of it, I can see myself scrolling Twitter and all of those hashtags, one after another after another. "Me too. Me too. Me too." I think about the numbers when we got the demographics back, and it said 12 million people had interacted with this hashtag across social media in 24 hours. Every hashtag is a human being. And we lose sight of that all the time because we spend so much time talking about these, the people who caused harm, the people who were accused of causing harm, and what happened to their material lives. And we never think about the material lives of survivors, and they are just millions more of us. Audie Cornish 00:27:27 Do you feel like there's more to do in terms of making survivors feel supported or not judged when they come forward? Tarana Burke 00:27:35 For sure. For sure. We have to. Audie Cornish 00:27:37 Oh, I was hoping you would say that's one legacy of 'me too,' that it's better now. Tarana Burke 00:27:41 Now. No, I think that it's I think the legacy of 'me too' around survivors coming forward is definitely that people feel more comfortable coming forward. I think we have more language and we have a shift in attitude with people. Where[as] before there was so much speculation and, you know, and there's still that, but there's much less now. And to give credit to this generation, these younger generations, the Zs and the As and the, you know, the young folks. Audie Cornish 00:28:09 Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:28:10 They have an analysis around this that is so sharp. Audie Cornish 00:28:14 Well, they grew up with it. Tarana Burke 00:28:15 They grew up with it. Audie Cornish 00:28:15 If you think about being 10 years old, 12 years old, 13 years old with this stuff coming up, I mean, it's pretty wild. Tarana Burke 00:28:21 Yeah, So I'm I worry less about that. I think that that will be a longstanding part of our legacy, that we shifted how people understand and think and talk about the material lives of survivors. Audie Cornish 00:28:32 Is there any strategizing going on meaning going forward? Are people starting to come together and be like, how should we talk about this under this new administration, under this new cultural regime? Tarana Burke 00:28:45 'Yeah. Well, you know, this is our second go-around. So I think a lot of us, particularly in this work, learned a lot of big lessons in the first era of this administration. What's a little bit nervewracking for me is thinking about what's going to happen culturally or what's happening culturally. You know, watching this administration come in, watching the open arms for people who have been accused of sexual harm or who have been-- Audie Cornish 00:29:14 Andrew Cuomo's running for mayor, right, in New York. Tarana Burke 00:29:18 'Oh, don't get me started. That's a rant for me. I was literally about to go live, and I never do that on Instagram the other night. I was like, and I hope this stays in because I need to say this. We will never be able to move forward. And when I say move forward, I mean collectively towards liberation. This is not about women or men or even sexual violence, but the kind of world, as so many of us say, that we want to live in. We will not get there when we when we keep making these same kinds of mistakes, when we discount violence against women as a serious enough offense, right. That that-- It always gets dismissed. So what happens is somebody like Andrew Cuomo decides he's going to run for mayor and people are like, oh yeah, he's great. He knows how to govern. He can beat such and such and blah blah blah. And then somebody will say, but wait a minute, what about? And, there like, well, yeah, that was terrible, or maybe that happened, but. And that "but" is what's going to kill us. That "but" is what sets us back. Right there. You can't tell me that there are not other qualified people who don't have a history of abuse of power. And I'm saying that because you you actually stepped down. You actually stepped down from the governor's seat of New York. Audie Cornish 00:30:37 Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:30:37 This is the kind of thing that hurts my heart because I'm like, it is like we are going in circles. Out of one side of their mouth. People will say they care about this issue. They want to see an end to violence. But to my point about what we see in an administration, this is cultural. Audie Cornish 00:30:54 'When I think about Democrats, that's where the 'me too'-- Tarana Burke 00:30:58 You gonna keep getting me in trouble. Audie Cornish 00:31:00 When I think about Democrats, that's where the 'me too' movement truly confuses me. Right, and let's take that example of New York. We were talking about Andrew Cuomo. I remember Senator Gillibrand being the one to come out and kind of lead the charge, saying Al Franken should resign. And then after he resigned, the last couple of years, it's been like Al Franken was actually a pretty good guy. And he didn't really hurt someone. Maybe he just groped them. Maybe not. We should have looked into that more. Like it's it's actually on the left that there has been this, did things go too far and did it cost progressive politics too much in this way or that way? Tarana Burke 00:31:40 'One, I think they're not progressive politics. I think they're left politics. Two, my, my, my grandma used to use a phrase "mealy-mouthed." You ever heard that? "Mealy-mouthed?" Audie Cornish 00:31:50 Oh, yeah. Tarana Burke 00:31:52 'Mhmm. We got too many mealy-mouthed folks. They say one thing, they mean another. They say one thing, they do another. And so I am, I probably should just leave it at that, but I, I said this during the Kavanaugh hearing. This was political football. They were using Christine Blasey Ford. It's like political football. You can't I don't care what your party is. This is not a political issue to me. It's a human issue. And so you cannot care about it when it's convenient, right? I remember I tweeted, I was so angry when around the Cuomo thing, around some of the stuff I saw, I was like, these people are Dems before fems. Audie Cornish 00:32:34 Dems before fems. Tarana Burke 00:32:35 I had to delete it. My people got to me really fast. They were like, take that down. But I just it's frustrating. I don't care what your party affiliation is, we have to hold the line. Audie Cornish 00:32:46 Yeah. Tarana Burke 00:32:47 'Right? there has to be an understanding of what's right, and what's necessary to move this issue forward. And then we have to stay there. And I and I'm just gonna say this and end. It's so many missed opportunities from people who are on the left or progressive or whatever you want to call it. There are these missed opportunities. When the bad actors are on that side, there's an opportunity for those who know better, who claim to know better, to say, okay. This happens on a spectrum. Let's handle it like that. Why don't you encourage these -- the person who's been accused -- to come forward and say, this is what happened. I'm going to let this investigation, you know, like? Audie Cornish 00:33:33 Model it, basically. Tarana Burke 00:33:36 Model it. Model what moral authority looks like. This moral authority that they always want to claim. You need to model it for people. Stop texting me asking me for $3. Go find a person who knows what they're doing, and model what it looks like to be a moral authority. That's what we need from our leadership right now across the board. And that's why we. Until we get to that point, we going to keep coming back around to the same things. Audie Cornish 00:34:07 Tarana Burke, founder of the 'me too' movement. Her memoir is called "Unbound: My Story of Liberation and the Birth of the Me Too Movement." This episode of The Assignment, a production of CNN audio, was produced by Sofia Sanchez and Madeleine Thompson. Special thanks to Grace Walker. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. Steve Lickteig is executive producer of CNN audio and our technical director is Dan Dzula. We had support from Dan Bloom, Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. As always, thank you so much for listening. Please hit your 'subscribe' button, and share this show with a friend.
CNN
06-02-2025
- Business
- CNN
The United States of Elon - The Assignment with Audie Cornish - Podcast on CNN Audio
Audie Cornish 00:00:00 Back in 2023, the man who ran the Office of Management and Budget and Trump's first administration was giving the speech at an invitation only event put on by his think tank, the Center for Renewing America. Russell Vought, a Christian Nationalist and budget policy wonk, spoke about the lessons that he had taken away from his experience in office. And, in his video uncovered by the investigative journalist organization ProPublica, he explained what would be necessary to reimagine the federal government bureaucracy should Trump be reelected. Again, this is from 2023. Russell Vought 00:00:37 We want the bureaucrats to be traumatically affected. We want when they woke up in the morning, we want them to not want to go to work because they are they are increasingly viewed as the villains. We want their funding to be shut down so that the EPA can't do all of the rules against our energy industry because they have no bandwidth financially to do so. We want to put them in trauma. Audie Cornish 00:01:03 'Vought is now on track to be confirmed for a second tour as Donald Trump's director of the OMB. But before he even assumes office, the blueprint that he outlined back in 2023 is unfolding now with the help of a so-called special government employee. Boris Ephsteyn 00:01:19 Elon Musk remains on his mission to revamp the federal workforce. He's also sowing confusion and chaos within government ranks. The White House calling Musk a special government employee working only at the approval of the president. What remains unclear, though, is whether an unelected businessman can wield this level of authority. Audie Cornish 00:01:39 Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, otherwise known as DOGE, have rattled the federal civil service to its core. This week, hundreds of people attended a constituent town hall in Leesburg, Virginia to talk about it. This audio was captured by radio station WTOP. WTOP clip 00:01:58 I've been a federal worker for 24 years and my agency for that long. And every day in the last week or two, everyone has been scared. Everyone is afraid. Every day she's going to travel, we're going to get cut. Audie Cornish 00:02:11 So now that the richest man in the world has been put in charge of remaking the U.S. government, the questions are, how is he doing it? Who's helping him to do it? And what does it mean for the government services? You might just be taking for granted. I'm Audie Cornish, and this is The Assignment. So think about your keychain. Like each key is meaningful in its own way to your door locks, your car, special rooms in your office or home? Well, government departments are a lot like those keys. And DOGE has gotten a hold of some of the most important ones. The Bureau of the Fiscal Service. Well, that's basically the government's checkbook, paying everyone from defense contractors to your Social Security checks and tax refunds. The General Services Administration, well, it keeps an eye on government real estate and also its IT. The Office of Personnel Management is basically the file cabinet on every person who has, does or might want to work for the federal government. Unlike any of the offices I've listed here, DOGE was not set up by Congress. Musk is not a cabinet official. Nor is it clear if the people he is bringing on are serving in any official capacity. A source at OPM told CNN that they are "making backend changes without regard to federal norms and requirements." WIRED magazine writer Vittoria Elliott has been following Musk for some time. She and her team profiled the young engineers carrying out the work. Most come from Musk companies Tesla, SpaceX, X and others. So in the course of your reporting, you found specific engineers, and we're going to get to that. But talk to me about the agencies that have been taken over that have allowed the Musk folks the kind of keys to the castle, so to speak. Are they existing agency or are they new ones? Like, how are they getting people in the building, so to speak? Vittoria Elliott 00:04:19 Sure. So the first thing that we need to look at is what used to be the U.S.. Digital Service. That is what has become DOGE. And the U.S. Digital Service was a part of the Obama administration. They were tasked with sort of working across different departments to help them modernize and streamline their technology. Audie Cornish 00:04:38 And it was sort of a cute Internet thing like, we're going to make Obamacare easier to use. The website is going to be great, like that kind of thing. Vittoria Elliott 00:04:46 Yeah, exactly. So they were sort of like, for lack of a better understanding, like almost like internal technical consultants, like they could come in to any agencies be sort of like, Hey, what's your process? What's not working? You know, this sort of outside, inside voice with expertise. So Doge is now the USDS. And what's very important to understand is there are technically two DOGEs. There's the permanent one, and then there's a temporary organization within that, which is another DOGE. That's the one that supposedly ends on July 4, 2026. Audie Cornish 00:05:21 'And we should say all of this is a little bit hazy because it's not an official, it's not an agency, so to speak. It's not created by Congress. It's not funded by anyone. Is it --- Do you think of it as a mass consultancy, or what is the legal apparatus that allows the Department of Government Efficiency to exist? Vittoria Elliott 00:05:44 So USDS was, to my understanding, nested in the executive branch. Audie Cornish 00:05:49 Meaning, it was a White House deal. Vittoria Elliott 00:05:53 'Initiative. Yes. So it doesn't need to be approved by Congress to make this agency. But when you have the temporary organization, what is particularly special about a temporary organization is it allows the government to bring in what are known as special government employees, and those can be volunteers or temporary employees who serve generally from 60 to 130 days, depending on what their capacity is. And that means that they don't have to get paid necessarily, and they don't have the same level of transparency required of them that other government employees have. And that means what's ended --- What we're suspecting is happening here is that these people that we're seeing come into DOGE are underneath that temporary organization and are special government employees, which means they do not have to go through the same processes that normal government employees have to go through. And that gives them a level of opacity that would not be possible in other situations. Audie Cornish 00:06:57 So I'm going to translate that. What that means is they're not vetted the same way. They don't go through the background checks the same way. And once they've done that, they're not subject to the same oversight. They're not subject to the same kind of like, you know, public interrogation as regular government workers. Vittoria Elliott 00:07:16 'Right. And oftentimes, you know, the big thing is that a lot of times when you're a government worker, you have to give up your other job. But a special government employee, if you're coming in as a volunteer, you don't need to give up your job. Elon Musk can go on a little hiatus. From space X. Or, you know. Or X and come in and work with the government 130 days a year as opposed to someone who's a full time government worker who has to give up their previous job. So I think that's also an important thing to note, is when we're seeing people who are executives at his companies coming in, while they still have on their LinkedIns those companies listed as their employer. The reality is -- and we don't know this because there hasn't been a lot of transparency -- but they may be there actually in a voluntary capacity. Audie Cornish 00:08:07 Through the reporting from you and others is the description of the day to day of what this looks like. That's coming out on Reddit and out of slack channels from the government as people start to reveal information. And it sounds something like I've been sent an email that tells me A, B and C, or I have to meet with someone that says X, Y and Z. And when I sit down with them, they're cagey about who they are. They don't use a government email. And I'm nervous. Is that about right, that description? I mean, that's what in your reporting and others the scenarios keep sounding like. Vittoria Elliott 00:08:49 So in the piece that I reported with my colleague Makena Kelly, what we found was that employees at the GSA's Technology Transformation Services were starting to get called into meetings to do what's called code reviews. So they have to show their work product and show how they've coded what they've built. They had to sort of respond to this questionnaire about how productive what, you know, what they've been working on, how productive they'd been,. Audie Cornish 00:09:15 'Using the Silicon Valley language, right? The the Musk era language of tell me your wins. What were your what were the things you did Well, what were the things that got in your way? Again, things that make sense if you're thinking about how to re-imagine a place. Vittoria Elliott 00:09:31 Yes. And also almost exactly the same stuff that happened when he took over Twitter in 2022. And these employees were called into meetings with people whose names they did not recognize. Sometimes those people were not using a government email address to be on the call. And what we found is that in some cases these people were quite young engineers that seem to have been brought in by Musk and his allies as part of their DOGE effort. Audie Cornish 00:10:03 And we're saying young. They've like graduated from college. This is not a bias against youth. Vittoria Elliott 00:10:08 Like well, one of them is as young as 19 years old. Audie Cornish 00:10:11 Whoa. Okay, rewind. Tell me more. Vittoria Elliott 00:10:15 One of them who was sitting in on GSA calls and whose name we also were able to identify at the OPM. So that means that he was working across two different government administration agencies. He graduated from high school in 2024. There are other people who appear to be around 21, 22. Unclear if they recently graduated from college. One was a senior at Harvard. Another appears to either be a senior or a dropout slash withdrawn student from Berkeley. And then there are other young young men who seem to have graduated within the past two, three years. Audie Cornish 00:10:56 What do these guys have in common? Vittoria Elliott 00:10:59 They are all young. They're all seemingly quite bright, and they all are tied to Musk's companies, or that one of his allies, like Peter Thiel, who has been a long time Trump supporter, who is very close with Musk. They both worked at PayPal together. They sort of move in the same circles. And Peter Thiel's company, Palantir, is a big data company that has billions of dollars of contracts with the U.S. military. And I think one thing that's important to note is that hiring young technical talent is quite common in Silicon Valley, and that's a place of "move fast and break things." And the government is not a "move fast and break things" kind of place because there's a lot more collateral for getting something wrong for 300 million Americans than there is in a startup. Audie Cornish 00:11:51 But at the same time, it's a government that has struggled to deal with its legacy IT systems. Like, that's one question I have. Like, how much damage can they do in a system that is like so chopped up and barely talks to itself? Vittoria Elliott 00:12:06 'Yes, some of these systems are arcane. Maybe they do need to be overhauled. But we have also heard that one of the things that's happening here is that, you know -- and again, my colleague Makena reported on this -- that like, you know, we don't know if they're taking data and using it to train A.I. systems or using A.I. to analyze it. And like that's a whole other issue around privacy and government data that needs to be examined more thoroughly because it's not just are they going into these systems and messing around on them, or maybe it might be hard. It's what are they doing with the access to the data that they have, you know? Audie Cornish 00:12:47 And we say that there's personnel data, meaning the Social Security numbers, the the the medication Medicare records, like there's all kinds of records of both workers and Americans that they would have access to. And through the Federal Payments Service, which is also sort of in the process of having been captured, so to speak, they can figure out who gets paid what anywhere in the government for any reason. Am I getting that right? Vittoria Elliott 00:13:18 'Yeah. And, you know, that's not just federal workers. That's, for instance, you know, nonprofit organizations that might have a government grant. That's hospitals that get Medicaid money. You know, that's any science funding that goes towards a university, possibly also down to individuals, like getting their tax returns on time or at all. You know, there's so many things that that Federal Payment System interacts with. And again, you know, there's the danger of sort of going into a system that you may be unfamiliar with and messing around and getting it wrong. But then there's also, you know, what must himself is talked about, which is like cutting off funding to organizations that they believe are not aligned with America First values. And that is particularly dangerous because, again, the whole point of these organizations is that they are meant to be apolitical. It means that no matter who's in power, you know that you're going to get your Social Security check on time. It means that no matter who's in power, you know that your hospital is going to get paid if you have Medicaid patients. That allows the system to keep moving with a trust that gives a sense of stability. And so suddenly the idea that there might be politics injected into this very important chokepoint -- that's more than just, hey, we want to see the code and we want to just get a sense of like where there's waste and where they're spending. But actually, like, you could get turned off at any moment. Audie Cornish 00:14:56 Right. Nevermind I guess what they could build on their own in their own companies with the information that they've learned. Vittoria Elliott 00:15:02 Exactly. Well, and that's, I think, a really important thing that a lot of experts have sort of talk to us about, which is, you know, the information that these people are gleaning is actually probably extraordinarily valuable. You know, Musk is a government contractor. SpaceX is a government contractor. There's stuff in there where businesses have to submit tons and tons of information to get government contracts for transparency and for vetting and all this stuff. And now people who work at private companies that might want or currently have government contracts have access to data that their competitors just don't. And so even if everything's perfect, even if, you know they are great at the code, they do not politicize any of these agencies [and] they really just come in and clean stuff up, like, best case scenario, you're still seeing these people coming in and ultimately probably returning to the private sector pretty quickly if they're special government employees with information that their competitors don't have. Audie Cornish 00:16:05 Right. Vittoria Elliott 00:16:05 And that in itself is a problem. Audie Cornish 00:16:06 Just to be clear, the areas that they compete in, people hear about Starlink, which can help launch satellites, etc.. But there's also national security contracts that we don't know exactly what they are that Musk companies have as well. So there's like this area of national intelligence and security. It's not just could he get to fire more rockets for the U.S.? Vittoria Elliott 00:16:33 'Right. And I think, you know, it's really important this --- I think part of the reason this conversation feels so vague and amorphous is because they're not really telling us what they're doing except broadly saying we're making things more efficient. I come from the world of international development. And the first question when someone says we want to make something efficient is go, efficient for who? And that hasn't been necessarily made clear. Audie Cornish 00:16:56 But one thing they're able to do, and I think Musk is able to do, is they're able to look at their voters and say, we said we were going to go in and break things. We said we said that the deep state, so to speak, all those people, those government workers and all those people at NGOs and nonprofits and that whole world of left liberal ideology and the money that is made from it, their industry, they're going to squawk. They're going to complain. They're going to be loud. So, what is it that you try and do in your reporting to think about that lens, right? That like everybody in your story who's opposed to this is just opposed to Trump and Musk? Vittoria Elliott 00:17:39 'I think that there are a lot of people on both sides of the political spectrum that are extraordinarily frustrated with how the government has frankly not responded to their needs. And I think in many cases that frustration is legitimate. But I don't think anybody knows how to navigate a hospital or health insurance until they have a loved one that's in a hospital and then they get a crash course really quick. But that's not something that necessarily the average American walks around thinking about or knowing every day. And so I think the biggest thing that I think is important with our reporting is to really convey the purpose of these systems and the things that they are capable --- that they do that people don't necessarily think about because it actually might be working well for them, and so it feels invisible. You know, the only things that feel really visible are the things that don't feel like they're working. And so I think one of the things to point out is like, you can have whatever opinion we want about how we spend our defense spending, or how much money we should give to this thing or whatever pain point is, but I think, you know, when we're talking about something like GSA or Treasury, you know, that's actually a system that works pretty well. And therefore, you know, when we're talking about it, it's important for people to understand, you know, that, A, this is a possible threat to something that actually might be working really well for you. And B, things that can look really wasteful to your average American might actually be really good. And I think foreign aid spending is a really important part of this. Most Americans think that foreign aid spending is like 25% of our budget. In reality, it's less than 1%. It's like going to the airport and having your suitcase be overweight and taking out your underwear. Like, it is not going to make a difference. And so I think the fact is, is that like because people feel their own pain points about like, I wish my government worked better for me in X, Y, Z ways. And then they see really big numbers like, you know, $2 million going to this thing in Uganda. That feels like a lot to an average American. And I think the biggest thing is really contextualizing like, A, some things do work well and need to work in maybe this slower or less politicized way in order to be okay, in order to be safe. And, B, like some of these things that feel like really big problems are actually in the context of things, kind of distractions from other things that could be a really big problem. Like, if some of these systems get privatized, you're going to be paying for that. One of the things is like being able to file your taxes online for free. If that gets privatized, you're going have to pay for that. And I think that's something that regular Americans feel and will feel in their day to day lives but may not know to think about unless we sort of function in this explanatory way for these systems, as well as talking about the changes that are happening. Audie Cornish 00:20:42 I notice in the course of this interview you did not say the names of the young men, the young engineers, even though they're in the WIRED story. Can you talk about why not and what the blowback has been to this reporting? Vittoria Elliott 00:20:57 I think for a lot of people who are really convinced that the DOGE sort of organization is doing exactly what they need to do, it has felt very much like doxxing to them. And to be clear, like there have been people online posting their phone numbers, emails, addresses, etc.. And I don't necessarily know that that is the right thing to do. At the same time, I think that this entity clearly, which is DOGE and the people associated with it, are not operating with full transparency. And I think the American people deserve to understand who is in control or who has access to some really important and sensitive systems and information because it can affect their lives. And no matter what side of the political spectrum you're on, that information is important. And, you know, I think if we're trying to understand the changes that are being made, we need to understand who's making them. We need to understand if they're qualified. You know, you can be a brilliant engineer. You can be a brilliant technical person, but that doesn't mean that you have an understanding of government administration. That doesn't mean you understand the totality of the U.S.. Digital security and privacy laws that would dictate how you need to work. You know, when we're talking about these young men, I think one of the most important things is that the greatest concern is not necessarily that maybe they're not great technical people. It's that they don't have the experience necessary in government to understand the possible consequences of what they may or may not be able to do when they're accessing our systems. Audie Cornish 00:22:51 You've also been calling out for more people to speak up, to reach out to you with tips. What are you hearing kind of in broad themes from the workers who are reaching out to you? Vittoria Elliott 00:23:06 I think a lot of people are really scared. People in the federal workforce feel really frustrated that their jobs are being characterized as wasteful, particularly when they have decades of expertise, when they know how things work and when they have really done a lot of things. You know, federal workers, there are certain things they can't participate in because it's a conflict of interest. They don't have for a one case is because they rely on pensions. And I think there's a lot of things that people feel like the public doesn't understand about their work. And they feel really sad and frustrated that the U.S. as a country, which they feel they have worked to protect, preserve and support for their whole careers, doesn't value them. And I think there's a grave concern across everybody that has reached out about the lack of transparency being offered not only to the public but to the workers themselves. So I think now at this point, you know, people are extraordinarily concerned with the fact that we don't know who's in these systems. We don't know what they're who they will end up working for or have worked for. We don't know any of these things. And federal workers who are who have in many cases given their lives to this work and really do understand the ramifications of what could go wrong, are really scared that these people being brought in, at best, don't know and, at worst, don't care. Audie Cornish 00:24:34 Vittoria Elliott is a reporter for WIRED magazine. Her beat is platforms and power. So what does it feel like to be in the middle of this Musk maelstrom? Rumman Chowdhury knows because she's a former Twitter executive, and she's got some advice. You'll hear from her after this break. Okay, we're back. Now, of course, this is a show that talks to people at the center of the story, but the people at the center of this story, federal workers, well, they're afraid to talk. After Vittoria's reporting came out in WIRED with the names of the six young engineers working for Musk. Ed Martin, the acting U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, assured the billionaire on X that he would pursue all legal action against anyone who impeded the work of DOGE. So we're talking with someone who has two key bits of experience: a former federal contractor who is also a former Twitter employee. And frankly, she's seen this movie before. Rumman Chowdhury was director for Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability at Twitter. Then Elon Musk took over in 2022, and she was laid off. This week, she's been posting advice to civil servants on the social media site Bluesky. Some ideas are practical. Move your group chats to encrypted messaging apps on your phone. Set them to auto delete. Others are eerie but straightforward. Don't expect managers to have your back. Overall, she describes an atmosphere of chaos. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:26:14 For me, it just makes me angry. It's so purposeful. It is intended to confuse you. It is intended to scare you. And that just makes me angry. I think with some people it makes them fearful. It makes them shut down. I think in some cases it can bring out the worst in people. And I, you know, unfortunately have seen I saw all of it. Audie Cornish 00:26:34 What do you mean by that? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:26:35 'Well, some people go into self-protection mode, right? In some cases, there were lists being made of employees to keep and employees to fire. And some people spent their time finagling to be in those rooms so they could protect themselves and throw their teammates under the bus and people that they had worked with. Audie Cornish 00:26:52 This does lead us to number three. Expect performances of loyalty. It says it won't help you keep your job. Can you talk about how you came to this piece of advice? Was there a sense that people were asked to jump hoops and that it was like not actually for the purpose intended? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:27:10 They went to one of my youngest and most junior engineers and asked this person if they could kick somebody off the team, who they would kick off? And do you think that there are people on there on your team who don't pull their weight or do their job? And that, you know, back to just being angry? How dare you? How dare you pick the youngest, most inexperienced person and make them feel that they have the responsibility of picking someone to be put on the firing line? You know, at least pick on someone your own size, but they won't. So these are the performances of loyalty, right? You want to go after the people who are younger and more inexperienced, make them feel like they're special and important. Pull them in a room, bring them to your side. And when you're done with them, you discard them. This is kind of what we are we're already seeing happen right at these government agencies. And, you know, they. Elon Musk is already talking about how his team works 120 hours a week. You know, it is he is pulling and duping people who want to feel that attention from somebody who maybe they admire or think is a great man, and he is just going to burn them out and discard them and find new ones. It was a very common refrain at Twitter after he left. I think some people were genuinely excited about it. A lot of those people got burnt out within the first five to six months because it's a lot of impossible asks. He prides himself on making people work nights. And I think especially when people are young, that sense of like hustle and you got to be in the game. Audie Cornish 00:28:44 And that's part of his lore, right? Like he sleeps in offices when he's committed to a task. He's the guy who's there and he's not going to ask you to do anything he wouldn't do himself. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:28:53 Right? And I think when you are a more mature leader, you realize that if your team is working overnight, it's because you did a bad job of allocating work, not because your work is just so that important. Audie Cornish 00:29:04 Let's get to number four, which is you cannot rely on leadership to protect or cover for you. Talk more about that because there's a lot of teams in government. There's a lot of emails going out under the names of longtime civil servants. What do you see in this moment why you would offer that advice? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:29:26 'Yeah, there are sort of two kinds of leaders that came out during the ordeal at Twitter. There are some who thought of their team first and who really wanted to help navigate whatever direction their team wanted to go in, helped navigate each individual to a safe landing. And then there are others who decided that, you know, their best bet was to cozy up to the new leadership coming in and try to protect themselves. And, you know, it's sort of every person for themselves. I would say that one of the biggest disappointments during Twitter was when we would have all hands meetings, and we were not allowed to discuss what was happening with Elon Musk. We were not allowed to talk about the high levels of attrition that were happening even before he took over. You know, we actually still don't know how many people left Twitter before he even came in. Some of the estimates are about 30%. But they stopped -- Audie Cornish 00:30:19 And, in the meantime, the federal government, we're also seeing an exodus. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:30:23 Correct. Audie Cornish 00:30:23 We are seeing people who are leaving and many at that mid senior level. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:30:29 Absolutely. And some of them left because of Trump. And I think some of them are now leaving because of this chaos that's being sown. And I think it's tests like these that really show you who good leaders are and what people are capable of. Audie Cornish 00:30:45 I want to stay with this point because you actually have a sub sub point on number four. If you're a leader who gives an 's,' help with exit strategy. This is a way different proposition for engineers at a place like Twitter versus people who work in the federal government. It's not so easy to just walk off the job, if you've been working for the government. So talk about this advice. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:31:12 'One of the reasons I put this is, you know, other leaders who are at Twitter, we were we and we don't even know each other actually very well before we were sort of colluding on this in a Signal channel. We were arranging things like meet and greets with different teams and different companies. Ironically, some of the people who I had meet with my team were from government agencies. You know, off of our devices, we arranged résumé reviews. In programing, we do things like, you know, coding tests so people would help each other study. And as a leader, I don't just, you know, you don't just see your responsibility as your team functioning within the unit that is the organization, your teams. You are responsible for your everyone who works for you, for their careers. What's harder for federal employees? A lot of people enter federal government wanting this job as a career. And some of these people that we are talking about have been in these jobs for 20, 30 years. It is very hard for anybody to leave a job after 30 years and then go to them. They have not interviewed in decades. Their résumé: 30 years old. They don't necessarily know newer practices of going out onto the market. And by the way, the market is not that good right now. So how can you -- while you are dealing with all of the chaos, all of the stress, the day to day, not knowing if you're going to have your job tomorrow -- somehow be able to hop on an interview and be calm and collected and confident and be able to sell yourself to be hired in a market that's not particularly friendly? Audie Cornish 00:32:41 'What are some of the other levers or tools or approaches that Musk-led management uses to like bend a an acquisition to their will? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:32:54 I think the big thing is just fear. You know, it's kind of amazing how much people capitulate to fear. You know, people get accustomed to status quo, even a poor status quo. And I think a lot of people just get used to it. You know, I have friends who have worked at his companies and especially when they were younger. And, you know, and again, when you're young, it seems very exciting. You know, the sense of beating somebody and being the best being admired by a, quote unquote, godlike figure. I mean, he sets himself as a godlike figure. And there is a cult of worship around him. I think when you are in an environment like that, it's easy to not see how false it is and how propped up it is. And you forget that you can leave and there are other jobs you can have and that, you know, most people probably will be okay. I think some people are also just locked in. Right? They may or maybe only have one or two years left on the job before they get their pension. They're worried about health care. They're also just some very practical and pragmatic things that can be dangled in front of you, or you can be threatened with that matter in people's lives. Audie Cornish 00:34:00 One thing I want to raise is that one of the president's preoccupations, it's always been the "deep state," that the civilian bureaucracy prevents him from executing the policies that he wants. And that in his first term, they pushed back so hard that it it sort of made it difficult to accomplish what he wanted to. In some ways, when people talk about what's happening, it kind of sounds like just the other side of the coin of what he's saying, that there is, in fact, a bunch of people who don't want to do what he wants to do and like maybe they should leave. Like maybe hearing someone who's been there for 20 or 30 years is not ideal, right, if you want to make government more efficient. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:34:47 I think a lot of it is how tech has warped our sense of value to value youth and speed. You know, "move fast and break things" over things like experience. You know, this comes up in the field that I'm in quite a bit, A.I., when people will say, oh, regulation will stifle innovation. And I'm like, well, so do you just not want to have laws? Because remember when we didn't have laws on food and anybody could just sell anything and people would just constantly die of diseases? Remember when we didn't have laws that govern medicine and you did not know what you were putting in your mouth and whether or not it would cure your disease or kill you. Right. Yeah. You know, doing things mindfully takes time. It's sort of like a macro problem we have is that everything just seems to be moving faster and faster. And I think we have to take conscious effort to say we don't actually have to move that fast. Audie Cornish 00:35:41 Read piece of advice number five. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:35:44 'Number five: Your culture will die. The hardest lesson I learned is how fragile culture is. It's more painful than you think. I wrote a whole op-ed about it. Audie Cornish 00:35:53 This is a pretty brutal assessment, and I can understand why you enjoyed the culture you were in, etc. But like, what's the point of offering this up right now? What do you think is important that will help people get through it? Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:36:07 Maybe this will sound a little bit nihilistic, but it did help me, right. All of these things, culture, institutions, these are all things we set up as human beings. They're concepts. They're actually not real physical things. And culture requires preservation. Institutions require preservation. We can't take them for granted. If you like the culture you are in, no matter what culture it is, you actually have to contribute to it. And to see how quickly it was taken away because of one man's looming threat was very sobering, and the fragility of it kind of still stays with me. Audie Cornish 00:36:43 One of the things it occurs to me that the Twitter folks have in common with the federal workers is like the public has a deep lack of sympathy. Like, I remember doing stories and people would be like, well, I don't care about Twitter, you know what I mean? Or just like, sure sounds bad. And over the years, there's just been such a dialog around the federal workforce. There's also a lack of sympathy there, like, who cares about them? Or people voted for Trump explicitly because they were like, yeah, get rid of those folks. Can you talk about how that plays into all of this that like, people are going through a thing but then like to the outside world, you like either deserve it, or it doesn't matter that you're going through it. Dr. Rumman Chowdhury 00:37:27 I think a lot of this has become theater, and that is what people like Trump and Musk are very good at. They are good at theatrics. They are good at making caricatures of others so that you don't have to care about them. The other thing is a lot of this is taking place on social media, and social media just doesn't seem real. I think a lot of this feels very removed. And the reason why I'm concerned about that in particular with federal employees, fine, you don't care about Twitter, you don't care about us, that's fine. We probably may or may not have a significant impact on people's lives. But the federal government, I think people are going to understand once they realize that their kid is no longer getting subsidized lunch and that they can't take their dad to the VA hospital because it's closed, or that their roads aren't being fixed, or that airplanes may be crashing. It is absolutely wild to me how some of the richest men in the world have managed to paint public employees, as, you know, greedy and grasping when, you know, again, these people work very hard at their jobs to keep institutions going. They don't get public credit for it. They're certainly not on social media talking about it constantly. And I, I hope that people understand that the kinds of people we are talking about here are the reason your lights are on, that your water is clean, that your child is being fed clean food and good food, and taking that away is going to be very, very dangerous for all Americans. Audie Cornish 00:38:54 Dr. Rumman Chowdhury was director for Machine Learning, Ethics, Transparency and Accountability at Twitter. Dr. Chowdhury currently runs Parity Consulting, which offers ethical AI, consulting and auditing. The Assignment is a production of CNN Audio, and this episode was produced by Sofía Sanchez, Jesse Remedios. And we got help from Dan Bloom. Our senior producer is Matt Martinez. The executive producer of CNN Audio is Steve Lickteig, and the technical director is Dan Dzula. We had support from Haley Thomas, Alex Manasseri, Robert Mathers, Jon Dianora, Leni Steinhardt, Jamus Andrest, Nichole Pesaru, and Lisa Namerow. I'm Audie Cornish. I want to thank you for listening, and I'm hoping that if you enjoyed this show, please hit 'subscribe.' Please share. Please leave a review because it matters.
