Sen. Ed Markey wants media companies to fight for the First Amendment

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27:28Nilay Patel:Welcome back. I'm talking with Senator Ed Markey. Before the break, we were talking about all the chaos around the TikTok ban, which in turn led me to ask about an even bigger issue in the United States right now. The tendency of the Trump administration, especially FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, to attack media companies in a way that is not at all compatible with the First Amendment. The reason I started there and the reason I said I think I'm going to complicate this to begin with is because the theme for me really is selective and perhaps unconstitutional enforcement of the law. And so here you have a very clear law.

27:59Nilay Patel:The outcome was obvious. The goal was obvious. The Supreme Court was asked to rule on it. And it is being unenforced maybe for political reasons, maybe because we can't get a deal on – maybe because of public opinion on Gaza. On the other hand, you have Brendan Carr, who is taking a bunch of laws that have not been enforced for decades, who is reasserting the authority of the FCC over content in a way that even previous Republican chairs of the FCC walked away from and saying, I have all this authority. I'm going to use it to make sure the speech is correct. How are you interacting with the FCC?

28:31Nilay Patel:How is Congress overseeing the FCC? Is there a sense that his actions are appropriate or need oversight? Right. Obviously, whether it be TikTok, that's 170 million American users, 7 million small businesses. They have a right to be able to think that the government would be able to find a solution so that our national security concerns could be dealt with. And then over on the broadcast area, you have Brendan Carr, who, you know, honestly threatened ABC, threatened Jimmy Kimmel with almost a Godfather Part One offer they can't refuse. Either you punish him or the FCC will punish you, ABC. So they responded to that.

29:19Now, I'm thinking back to when I was a boy that if Johnny Carson ever told a joke about a president, it would have been unimaginable. The next day, the president of the United States and his FCC commissioner would say, we've got to just shut down NBC. We've got to shut down Johnny Carson and The Tonight Show. They can't be allowed to do it. So this is a hypersensitive president who believes that he is all powerful and he has an FCC commissioner who is now suffering from invasion of the body snatchers. He's no longer the Brendan Carr of the previous era, which was kind of a good conservative Republican lawyer.

30:01He is now willing to do the bidding of Donald Trump in any way that he wants if Donald Trump is offended. So, unfortunately, that is a condition that we are going to have to live with. We see CBS bent the knee in terms of its 60 Minutes programming. NBC was threatened by the president saying that jokes by Seth Meyers should be illegal. And you have kind of in the background, you have a FCC chairman who's nodding his head the whole way. You know, very, very concerned about your local TV stations whose licenses might be put in jeopardy if you allow that kind of programming to be on TV anymore. So there is a very serious, powerful threat to the economic well-being of these companies that they're weighing compared to their First Amendment rights of free speech.

30:59Which telling jokes on television about a president is not illegal and can never be illegal. Any more than telling jokes about senators can be made to be illegal. That's all part of what they constructed into the First Amendment. That is the protection of our democracy. When I first started covering the FCC 15 years ago, I spent a lot of time with Michael Powell, who was a conservative FCC chairman.

31:23Nilay Patel:And what he had been trying to do is unwind the excesses of what you might call the Janet Jackson era of the FCC, right? Justin Timberlake pulls down Janet Jackson's shirt at the Super Bowl. The whole government goes crazy. We're going to censor CBS and Viacom. Quite a lot happened in that time. And that case ran for a long time. And what Chairman Powell, I think his former Chairman Powell, when I was talking about it, his point was this is ridiculous, right? The future of media is not on broadcast airwaves or TV stations. The future of media is on the internet. These broadcast companies are just part of the mix with internet content that Americans are getting.

32:00Nilay Patel:And we should deregulate them to let them compete more fairly and even let them get bigger so they can go after the scale of Google and Facebook, which he saw as rising. I would say he was broadly correct. Right? The idea that the delivery mechanism of the media should change how the government regulates it is as alien to a young American today as any other idea from the past. That because this is coming over the broadcast airwaves, the government gets to say what it is versus this is coming over my internet pipes and the government has no say. Brendan seems to be totally reversing that and saying if this is the broadcast airwaves, I have a lot of control over it.

32:36Nilay Patel:And if it's on the internet, I shouldn't have any. That seems untenable, right? Because Americans are largely on the internet. Do you see him trying to regulate the internet as well? Because that's actually the prize. Well, he doesn't want to regulate the internet to protect against the harms which he says are emanating from broadcast TV. So to the extent to which the Republican Party, Brendan Carr, Donald Trump, shed their crocodile tears. about the impact that broadcast television could have upon American society. When it comes to Meta, Google, all those people who were sitting right behind Donald Trump on Inauguration Day, we've got a crisis in our country.

33:26One in four teenage girls contemplated suicide in 2023 in our country. One in eight teenage girls actually attempted suicide in our country in 2023. One in five LGBTQ youth attempted suicide in 2023. And the Surgeon General of the United States has pointed an accusatory finger towards social media, not as the exclusive, but one of the principal culprits in this crisis that we have in our country. If the Republican Party, if the White House, if Brendan Carr really cared about this issue, we'd be hearing them speak out on it. It's a crisis. We have a mental health crisis amongst teenagers and children in our country right now that goes unaddressed by this administration, by the Federal Communications Commission, because of that information, which is being targeted towards young people in our nation.

34:21But at the same time, hypocritically, he's very concerned about jokes about the president. in the president's eggshell psyche that he cannot bear to have anyone ever criticize him at any time. Grow up, Mr. President. Grow up, Brendan Carr. And by the way, you only need three things to be in politics. Backbone, backbone, and backbone. Take on big tech. Take on where the real problem is. Take on where we have a culture that is undermining the mental health of children, of undermining democracy, undermining the very well-being of our whole nation. That they're afraid to do because of the cash and carry nature of this administration, where the more money you contribute, the more money you pour into the coffers of Donald Trump, his campaigns, his presidential library, is the more likely you escape any scrutiny, notwithstanding the magnitude of the danger which you're posing to our society.

35:21And meanwhile, relatively benign comments made on traditional television is attacked as though it's like a dagger to the heart of our democracy when it's nothing more than more jokes and more critical analysis of public policy, which is being broadcast by the traditional sources.

35:41Nilay Patel:This brings me to the structural question that I was thinking about earlier. The big tech companies, they have the resources. They're getting ahead of the regulation or the potential for regulation by building the ballroom today, right? By buying the crypto on the side today. They're the ones who are most able to fight. I think in your estimation, they're also the ones where they most definitely need to be regulated, right? You see a mental health crisis. There needs to be some regulation of these platforms to address that crisis. That has some connection to the First Amendment in some meaningful way.

36:13Nilay Patel:And they will fight that fight. And they will spend the resources to fight that fight. And thus far, they have escaped almost all regulation in this country. And the other idea of the media companies who are as weak as they have ever been, who do not have the resources, who are lacking trust from the American consumer in real ways, who do not have the distribution, who depend on the platform's distribution. And Trump is putting pressure on them because they absolutely cannot fight. I don't know how you fix that structural problem, right? If you want to go after one of the big media companies, the idea that they have unlimited money to fight the fight all the way up and survive along the way, that's a little shakier than if you want to go fight a Google or a Meta or an Apple or whoever else who do have unlimited resources to just wait you out, to just spin you in litigation until you go away.

36:58Nilay Patel:How do you resolve that structural discrepancy? Well, I don't think there's too much of a difference to be honest with you. It's clear they allow themselves to be extorted. The big tech companies, you know, they walk in with presents for Trump into the Oval Office. You know, they pay whatever they are asked to pay and tribute. But they simultaneously then take down, you know, the safeguards that were built in. In an earlier period before Trump, in order to ensure that there is some, you know, protections that are built into these online social media sites. They just give. They're folded. And what's happening on the traditional broadcast side looks very similar.

37:44They are responding in the same way. They're saying we'll pay the fine or we'll accept the chilling effect that you're now creating in terms of our ability to program entertainment or news for the American people. And that chilling effect is impossible to fully quantify, but we know it's real. We know both the broadcasters and the social media companies are now very afraid of what the consequences could be from an out-of-control Justice Department and an out-of-control Federal Communications Commission that can easily be weaponized by the White House. So I think in terms of the impact on the American people and their ability to receive information unfettered, it's now the same in both sectors.

38:32And it's a systematic attack that has been made, unfortunately, successfully by the Trump administration. There are some notable exceptions, I will say. But in general, he's having the intended effect be put into place across the entire media spectrum.

38:52Nilay Patel:One of the weirder aspects of this FCC, Brendan Carr in particular, you mentioned earlier that he used to be a fairly traditional conservative lawyer. And now he's fire-breathing MAGA. He's cutting against some of his own positions from the past. Some of the positions from the first Trump administration that his predecessor, Ajit Pai, used to take, like disclaiming all authority over state-level net neutrality rules. They got rid of net neutrality by saying we actually have no authority over broadband. And now I've seen floated Chairman Carr say, well, we should have authority to preempt state AI regulations because that's part of broadband.

39:28Nilay Patel:which makes no sense in the context of, well, you disclaimed all your authority. How can you possibly now have the authority to narrowly preempt AI regulations? Has this been presented to you in any way that makes coherent sense? Or is this just more, let's see how much power we can acquire and use? Yeah, I think that's all you have to understand. What you're saying is that it's all about power. It's the power of whoever can pay the most to the White House. The AI industry wants state preemption. The AI industry wants preemption of state privacy laws, California, New York, other places. And this administration is, without question, not interested in the public policy consequences of those kinds of repeals, but they instead are interested in what kind of monetary benefit can flow to the Republican Party at the highest levels because of the capacity of these companies to pay.

40:31So there's a reason for us to really be concerned right now. We have an industry, this social media industry, that right now is unwilling to stand up to the president in any meaningful way. And simultaneously, the most extreme elements amongst that social media industry is coming to Washington and asking for an override of all state legislation across the board on everything that could, in fact, deal with protection against AI and the environment. AI and its impact on workers, AI and its impact on civil rights, AI and its impact on children. All of it is now subject to a real threat from the Trump administration, from the most extreme elements in the Trump administration, and from the most extreme elements in the AI industry.

41:32We're at a real juncture right now where the power is now concentrated so fully in the hands of those who have great wealth that there is a real danger that we could have an AI revolution be unleashed without the safeguards that we know have to be put in place. Yesterday, I did a press conference introducing my AI Civil Rights Act with the civil rights leaders of the United States, Black Caucus members from the House of Representatives, Cory Booker and others, talking about the need for us to have a movement of all of those civil rights protections which have been out in the physical world be moved over to AI.

42:19Otherwise, we're going to see discrimination in housing, in education, in applications for financing, for mortgages, all across the board. And we have to act right now. In earlier areas of the introduction of new technologies, the federal government, state and local governments, they moved in. When the automobile was deployed, public policymakers said, you've got to have brakes. You've got to have airbags. You've got to have seatbelts. You've got to have rear-view mirrors. You've got to have some guardrails. You've got to have some safety. We like the idea of an automobile. We just don't like the idea of the law of unintended consequences being unleashed to the max.

43:05That's what's happening with AI right now. We know what the safeguards have to look like. We know what protections have to be built in. It would not inhibit our ability to compete against the Chinese.

43:16Nilay Patel:One of the functions here is congressional oversight, which I would say has been at a low point throughout the Trump administration so far. But Brian Kari is coming to testify in front of Congress on December 17th. What's your goal there? Do you think you can meaningfully get him to change his behavior or are you just trying to figure out what he's doing? Well, I was heartened that Senator Cruz was very critical of the Kimmel controversy. So I'm hoping that it's bipartisan. I'm hoping that people are willing to stand up and to ensure that the Federal Communications Commission knows that there is bipartisan concern about this censorship that Carr is seeking to impose upon the media.

43:59At the same time, I brought out two resolutions onto the Senate floor, one on the Kimmel situation, a resolution condemning it, and a Republican senator got up and objected. Then when the Seth Meyers situation unfolded, I brought out a resolution onto the Senate floor, debated it. Then the Republican got up to just object to it even being considered. So while I appreciate the fact that Senator Cruz stepped up, I'm still awaiting any evidence to convict other Republicans of being guilty of actually standing up for the First Amendment, standing up to fight for the rights of comedians and news gatherers to be able to present the information as they see a fit and not after having received a permission slip from the White House or the FCC.

44:51Nilay Patel:We have to take another short break. We'll be right back.

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48:38Nilay Patel:Welcome back. I'm talking with Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey. I wanted to ask him how he perceives the apparent split in the Trump coalition between the hardcore tech bros on one side and the America First MAGA caucus on the other.

48:52Nilay Patel:I know you said it's hard for you to read the minds of MAGA members of Congress. But at least from where I sit, there's a pretty notable split between what you might call the tech part of Trump's coalition and the MAGA part, the populist part of Trump's coalition. And the idea that the tech companies and the AI companies should run unfettered over public policy is running directly into the more populist impulses of the Trump coalition, the MAGA part of the coalition. Are you experiencing that split in the Congress? Certainly we've seen Marjorie Taylor Greene is going to retire from Congress. There's something happening there where it seems like the tech bros are not as ascendant or is not as unchecked as they might have been early on in the Trump administration.

49:35Well, you're right. Hell was freezing over back in July when there had been an insertion of an AI moratorium into the one big, beautiful bill coming over from the House that the Republicans really didn't know about it at the rank and file level. But when it came over to the Senate, it was Marjorie Taylor Greene and Ed Markey. Yeah, hell's freezing over. Pigs are flying. We're agreeing that that language should not be allowed to pass in the Senate as well. And it was taken out. So there is some recombinant political DNA that is now being created. And it's, I think, kind of heartening at a certain level that some Republicans at some level are willing now to stand up to the tech bros and to say, no, we need some safeguards.

50:29We need some protections. To the extent to which Marsha Blackburn is doing it, Marjorie Taylor Greene is doing it. We actually then had a vote on the Senate floor at like two in the morning on that provision, and it passed 99 to 1 on the Senate floor to delete that moratorium on a ban on AI at the state level in terms of new legislation. Right now, they're trying to insert that into the defense bill. Yep. And my own belief is that, go ahead, test us. I think we can put together a coalition here to really raise such a stink about the Sank or Sank defense bill, that if you try to include a ban on any, you know, AI legislation at the state level, that you just might run into a bipartisan coalition that no one has seen on a defense bill in the history of our country.

51:18Nilay Patel:The architect of that bill we've heard is David Sachs, who is the White House crypto and AI czar. There's a lot of conversation about his investments, about his potential conflicts of interest, just about what kind of character he is inside the Trump administration. The distinction I've been drawing is there's sort of the formal policymaking process, right? There's the front door. There's the FCC and there's Congress and there's bills and committees. And then there's the Trump world, the backdoor, right, where things happen and don't happen. Things are announced on true social and maybe they're real and maybe they're not.

51:51Nilay Patel:And that's the David Sachs world. Have you interacted with David Sachs? Have you seen how that side of the House is operating? And how much is it influencing what Congress is actually doing? No, I have not met David Sachs. I would have a 50 percent chance of picking him out of a lineup of two people. So I have absolutely no idea who he is and what he does in the White House. Except to the extent to which that eye-opening expose in the New York Times last week laid out what he is doing that enriches himself, enriches Trump's allies, is almost indifferent to what the impact might be upon a policy that serves the American people rather than the enriching of a small number of well-connected Americans and overseas allies.

52:43So that needs a lot more attention. We're limited in terms of our ability to actually subpoena people as Democrats. The Republicans control the House and Senate, although I would say the election in the first week of November is highly predictive that that will not be the case in one more year and they should start to get ready in the Republican Party to have a blizzard of subpoenas be sent their way. They're now under a year away from having those subpoenas be sent their way. But yeah, it's frightening what is going on. And at the bottom line, I just see self-enrichment as the core of what the agenda is.

53:21Nilay Patel:I'm really just trying to draw the connection. The reason that preemption of state AI laws keeps coming back up again is because of whatever is happening in Trump world, right? Like that group of people has this idea that there should not be state-level AI laws. And then it keeps showing up in the Congress and you might have to keep voting it down. Can you make that connection more clear for your colleagues, for the American people? because it is strange that there are shadowy back rooms full of special advisors to the president who might have conflicts of interest getting bills on the floor of the Congress in this way over and over again, even after they've been voted down.

53:56Well, I think that happens on every bill. We can't quite see what Stephen Miller does every day. Well, he's on X.

54:05Nilay Patel:You can see he's just being racist on X. What I'm saying, just in terms of what conversations preceded whatever call that is then made by Steve Miller up to the leadership of the House and Senate Republicans, we don't know everything that is going on. But Sacks fits into that profile as well as several other people who work in the White House right now. And it's all part of this kind of very, you know, very clandestine, cozy coterie of people who are very close to the president, who slosh between public policy and private self-aggrandizement, who do the bidding of the president, who understands what the agenda is for Trump's children and for the children of others who are inside of the Trump administration.

54:56in terms of their ability to become fabulously wealthy. And I think everyone understands it. There's an old saying that it's hard to understand something when you're paid not to understand it. That's where we are right now with the Republican leadership. They're paid not to understand it. They can see it on a daily basis. And the revolt has to come from the rank and file. The revolt comes from Marjorie Taylor Greene. It comes from Marsha Blackburn inside of their own party. And my own belief is that they're on very dangerous terrain right now with this AI revolution. Very, very dangerous terrain.

55:33They don't understand the public revolt which is building against a small coterie of super wealthy people in conjunction with the Trump administration making decisions for 340 million people. They're going to pay a big political price down the line.

55:48Nilay Patel:Let me ask about that revolt more generally and specifically about the Democrats. You brought up midterms. Obviously, there was the election just recently. The Verge is based in New York. We're inundated with Sir Ron Vandami every day. He's obviously a phenomenon in the party, appears to be a phenomenon with Donald Trump himself. Those are some adorable photos of the two of them together. You know, our audience perceives both parties as being out of touch, as being beholden to billionaires or outside interests in some way. You're obviously, you've been in the Senate for a long time. You're turning 80 next July.

56:15Nilay Patel:You have a primary opponent, Seth Moulton, who's 47. Does the current Democratic leadership have the fight it needs? Are they also paid to not see it? Because I hear from our audience that what they want is younger, more energetic people who are going to take the fight to Trump more directly in maybe a way that Chuck Schumer has it. Well, first of all, it's not your age. It's the age of your ideas. So I'm still the youngest guy in the room. I've introduced the legislation, AI and workers, AI and the environment, AI and social media, AI and civil rights. So I've introduced the legislation. It's not easy to get co-sponsors, by the way.

56:50People don't really want to sign up, young or old, okay? Just so you understand, it has nothing to do with age. It has to do with, as I said earlier, backbone, backbone, backbone. Are you willing to take on the most powerful, wealthy people in the history of the world? That's what it's all about. And I think that's what the public is getting very, very concerned about. It's that they see a government unable to muster the courage to take on these powerful forces that are basically reshaping our society. our society. And so that's been at the heart of my entire career, building in the safeguards from the E-rate to make sure that every kid gets the education they need paid for by the media companies, paid for by the communications companies, the safeguards for children online.

57:36That's my 1998 law, which I'm trying to update up to age 17 and under for families. It has nothing to do, though, with what the age is of people who are willing to step up and fight. A lot of young people actually, they're kind of enthralled by the AI industry. They kind of buy into this whole idea that, oh, if there's any regulation at all, you'll be responsible for not finding the cure for cancer. And so they want to be part of this generation. And so what we need is young and old willing to stand up to them. That's what it's all about.

58:12Nilay Patel:Let me take age out of it. the thing people are really seeking is vigor and values, right? You mentioned that there's probably some sort of tsunami coming for Republican leadership as the rank and file splits, as MAGA splits from the tech bros. Do you think there's one coming for Democratic leadership? Do you think the current Democratic leadership can lead this fight? Well, we're fighting on healthcare. We're fighting on these tech issues. We're fighting on environmental, educational issues. We just saw a big return on that on Election Day in November of 2025. That exceeded the expectations of all of the experts out there observing what was going on.

58:5313 and 15 point victories in Virginia and in New Jersey. And there's now polling out there at 12, 13 points that people are more likely to vote for a Democrat for the House and for the Senate next year. And so that is what I think is going to frighten the Republican Party, because that translates into a 60-seat victory for the Democrats next year, 60-seat victory. So our message is working, but Democrats just have to stand up. They have to fight to make sure that AI is controlled in a way that is compatible with our American political and moral traditions. We have to stand up to ICE. We have to make sure that we're not allowing for masked agents to be sweeping people up off the streets the way they did with Romesa Ozturk and thousands of others across our country on an ongoing basis.

59:57We have to show that as a Democratic Party that we understand that we're in a that Donald Trump is a walking, talking constitutional crisis every day that he's in the Oval Office. And we have to align ourselves with the No Kings movement. We have to align ourselves with Indivisible. We have to align ourselves with 5051 and all the other organizations which are out there who are standing up and saying, no, we're going to fight for democracy. We're 250 years in. And those I'll tell you what people want to hear. Those minute men and minute women, they got knocked down. But they got back up and they fought and they won against King George.

1:00:36The abolitionist movement, they got knocked down. They got back up. They fought. They won. The suffragette movement, they got knocked down. They were not knocked out. They got up. They fought. They won. The civil rights movement, Martin Luther King Jr., that whole movement, they were knocked down. They were not knocked out. They got up. They fought. They won. That's where we are right now. We were knocked down. But we're not knocked out. And that's what the No Kings movement is all about. That's what the Democratic Party has to be all about. It has to be about that movement.

1:01:04Nilay Patel:Let me just push you on this a little bit. Do you think Chuck Schumer and Akeem Jeffries are as aligned with that messaging and with the No Kings movement and the aggressive fight against this administration as you are right now, the way you're talking to me? Well, it's what won the election. That's not what I asked. I asked if the leaders of Congress, the Democratic leaders of Congress are aligned with what you're saying. Well, I'll tell you what. I think a year from today, we're going to see that we've won the House overwhelmingly and we very well may win the United States Senate. And let's at that point then be making our judgments about what this movement is and what the message has been that is now winning out there.

1:01:43The Republicans have a big problem in the next four weeks because 22 million Americans are about to lose their health care or see a 50 to 75 percent increase in their health care premiums. So they're about to have nitro meat glycerin policy. And the Democrats are aligned 100 percent on that issue to ensure that the Republicans are made accountable for the pain they're about to inflict upon the American people. So that's our job. We have to we have to stay organized. We have to stay focused. And if we do it, I think that the American people next year will resoundingly throw out the Republicans and then in the House and Senate give us the subpoena power we need to ultimately have to almost buy a paper mill for all of the subpoenas we're going to be sending over, not just to the Trump administration, but to all of those people out there who have been enriching themselves at the expense of the American people.

1:02:35Nilay Patel:Yeah. Senator Markey, this has been a great conversation. You've got to come back faster than five years next time. I look forward to the oversight you intend to conduct. Love you. Thank you. I'd like to thank Senator Marky for taking time to join Decoder, and thank you for listening. I hope you enjoyed it. Now is the best possible time to drop us a line. We're about to record our end of year special with your questions and comments, so get them in while you can. You can email us at decoder at theverge.com. We really do read all the emails. Or you can hit me up directly on Threads or Blue Sky.

1:03:02Nilay Patel:We're also on YouTube. You can watch full episodes at DecoderPod. We also have a TikTok and an Instagram. They're at DecoderPod as well. A lot of fun. If you like Decoder, please share it with your friends and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts. Decoder is a production of Verge and part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. The show is produced by Kate Cox and Nick Statt. It's edited by Ursa Wright. Our editorial director is Kevin McShane. The Decoder music is by Breakmaster Cylinder. We'll see you next time.