In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman critique Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis' plan to investigate the inclusion of Bud Light's parent company AB InBev in the state's pension funds.

00:40: Gov. Ron DeSantis politicizes Florida pension funds.

20:38: The summer of strikes

32:50: Weekly Listener Question

38:50: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. appears before the House Subcommittee on the Weaponization of the Federal Government.

43:53: This week's cultural recommendations

Mentioned in this podcast:

"Ron DeSantis Bullies Bud Light Like Elizabeth Warren Bullies Amazon," by Joe Lancaster

"How Corporations' Good Social and Environmental Intentions Undermine the Common Good," by Samuel Gregg

"DeSantis Unironically Frets About 'Criminalizing Political Differences,'" by Eric Boehm

"Politically Motivated Investment Guidelines Making Bad Public Pension Programs Worse," by Scott Shackford

"Three Reasons to Fix Public Sector Pensions Now," by Nick Gillespie and Todd Krainin

Is ESG a threat to capitalism? Live with Samuel Gregg, Russ Greene, and Zach Weissmueller


"Don't Expect Unions To Make a Comeback," by Nick Gillespie

"America Needs a Better Kind of Capitalism," by Veronique de Rugy

"UPS vs. FedEx: Ultimate Whiteboard Remix," by Nick Gillespie and Meredith Bragg

"Artifact: War's Nightmare Landscape," by Nick Gillespie

"Why Color Atom Bomb Footage of Hiroshima & Nagasaki Was Censored by the Government for Decades," by Nick Gillespie

"Obama, Trump, and the Nuking of Hiroshima," by Steve Chapman

Send your questions to roundtable@reason.com. Be sure to include your social media handle and the correct pronunciation of your name.

Audio production by Luke Allen; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

Get Your Culture War Out of Our Pension Funds

Before Matt Taibbi was sparring with Democratic members of Congress on Capitol Hill earlier this year over the Twitter files, he was a darling of the progressive left, appearing regularly on shows like Democracy Now! and others hosted by Bill Moyers and Rachel Maddow.

Though he was always a fierce critic of the Democratic establishment, the rise of Donald Trump suddenly meant that anyone nominally left of center—including progressive journalists like Taibbi—was expected to support Hillary Clinton unconditionally. So when he attacked her as a sellout, argued that the Russiagate narrative was mostly bullshit, and equated the manipulative tactics of right and left media personalities, progressives gave him the cold shoulder. Elected Democrats started treating him like a puppet of the right.

In 2020, Taibbi started publishing his work on Substack and quickly became one of the platform's most popular writers, earning far more than he ever did at Rolling Stone, where he had been chief political reporter. He became even more of a pariah by publishing exhaustive reports that documented how the government sought to control what was said on Twitter about COVID-19 and efforts by Russia to influence U.S. elections. Congressional Democrats unconvincingly pilloried him as a fake journalist, an apologist for Vladimir Putin, and a stooge for Elon Musk.

I caught up with Taibbi at FreedomFest, an annual gathering held this year in Memphis, to talk about the new challenges to free speech, why legacy media is dying, and how identity politics are poisoning political discourse.

Matt Taibbi: How the Left Lost Its Mind and Legacy Media Its Audience

In this week's The Reason Roundtable, editors Matt Welch, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, and Peter Suderman are all back in action, and they tear into recent arguments by the Federal Communications Commission in favor of revoking Fox News' broadcast license. The editors also ponder the appointment of a special counsel in the ongoing Hunter Biden probe.

1:06: Special counsel appointed to investigate Hunter Biden

16:00: Misguided threats to yank Fox News' broadcast license

30:54: Weekly Listener Question

53:47: Age verification laws for online porn

Today's sponsor:

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Audio production by Ian Keyser; assistant production by Hunt Beaty.

Music: "Angeline," by The Brothers Steve

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The Reason Roundtable

Why Stripping Fox's Broadcast License Is a Terrible Idea

While Jake is off exploring the incredible Sawyer Glacier in Tracy Arm, Cutter stays put at their hotel in Juneau. Upon discovering the passing of Robbie Robertson, Cutter decided to pay Homage. Cutter discusses "The Peter Principle" and how it applies to most anything, from the failed Math aptitude scores of Lebron James' "I Promise" School, to everyday Government. Also, Vivek Ramaswamy schools Neil Cavuto on Fox News.

Ep 289 - Four Points | Juneau, AK - "Robbie Robertson"

Today's episode is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

Zach Weissmueller talked with Jay Bhattacharya, a professor of medicine, economics, and health research policy at Stanford University, and John Vecchione of the New Civil Liberties Alliance. They are among the plaintiffs in the lawsuit Missouri v. Biden, which names the president, the Justice Department, the FBI, and nearly the entire federal public health apparatus as defendants. Attorneys general for the states of Missouri and Louisiana brought the case against the federal government in May 2022 for what they describe as "open collusion with social media companies to suppress disfavored speakers, viewpoints, and content." Bhattacharya and Vecchione say that the government illegally squelched their speech throughout the COVID-19 pandemic and the 2020 presidential election by pushing social media platforms to remove or minimize the reach of heterodox views on COVID-19.

In July, U.S. District Court Judge Terry A. Doughty issued a preliminary injunction ordering the federal agencies to cease meeting with social media companies for the purpose of "inducing in any manner the removal…of content containing protected free speech posted on social-media platforms." Last week, the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals heard arguments challenging that injunction.

Bhattacharya and Vecchione talk with Zach about the state of the lawsuit, what a victory or loss in court would mean for free speech online, the legal limits of government–social media "partnerships," and the ways in which the government blurred the line between private content moderation and outright censorship to suppress or mislabel factual information or opinion as "misinformation" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Today's sponsors:

BetterHelp. Are you at your best? Working with a therapist can help you get closer to the best version of you—because when you feel empowered, you're more prepared to take on everything life throws at you. If you're thinking of giving therapy a try, BetterHelp is a great option. It's convenient, flexible, affordable, and entirely online. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist, and switch therapists anytime for no additional charge. If you want to live a more empowered life, therapy can get you there. Visit BetterHelp.com/TRI today to get 10 percent off your first month.
Why We Can't Have Nice Things. A six-part Reason magazine podcast series about the frustrating and foolish aspects of American trade policy that make everyday items more expensive. From last year's sudden shortages of baby formula to the Jones Act and President Lyndon Johnson's infamous "chicken war," host Eric Boehm sits down with industry experts and libertarian policy wonks to explore how these counterproductive rules got made—and explains why they can be so difficult to undo.

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The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie

Jay Bhattacharya & John Vecchione: Biden's Social Media Meddling Was Illegal

This is an audio version of The Reason Livestream, which takes place every Thursday at 1 p.m. Eastern on Reason's YouTube channel.

The topic this week was a lawsuit challenging California Community Colleges' new diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility—or DEIA—teaching standards, which allegedly "mandate viewpoint conformity" and "compel professors to teach and preach the State's perspective," according to the lawsuit Palsgaard v. Christian, filed by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression, or FIRE.  

Reason's Zach Weissmuller and Liz Wolfe welcomed FIRE attorney Jessie Appleby and Bill Blanken, a plaintiff in the case and a chemistry professor at Reedley College in California. Blanken says the standards advanced by the state's community college board amount to  "compelled speech" in the classroom and that he will not comply with them.  

We talked about the details of the case, dove into the substance of the proposed changes in the classroom, discussed the origins of the DEIA standards that now pervade academia and the corporate world, and examined FIRE's other case against Florida's Stop WOKE Act, which prohibits exactly the kind of classroom instruction that California's new standards compel.

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Jessie Appleby and Bill Blanken: Do California Community Colleges 'Mandate Viewpoint Conformity'?

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Vincent Phillip Muñoz discusses his book Religious Liberty and the American Founding, which explores the political philosophy of the Founders and their understanding of religious freedom.

Religious Liberty and the American Founding, with Vincent Phillip Muñoz

"We've taught young people that any of their missteps or any of their heterodox opinions are grounds to tear them down. That's no way to grow up."

That was journalist Rikki Schlott speaking before a sold-out crowd on Monday night at a live taping of The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie podcast in New York City. Schlott, 23, teamed up with Greg Lukianoff to co-write The Canceling of the American Mind.

Lukianoff, 49, is the president of the Foundation for Individual Rights and Expression (FIRE) and co-author with Jonathan Haidt of the bestselling The Coddling of the American Mind (2018). Schlott is a fellow at FIRE, a New York Post columnist, and a cohost of the Lost Debate podcast. 

Cancel culture, they argue, constitutes a serious threat to free speech and open inquiry in academia and the workplace and is best understood as a battle for power, status, and dominance. I talked with them about the roots and extent of cancel culture, whether it's fading, and whether firing or not hiring someone who supports Hamas' killing of Israeli citizens is an act of cancel culture.

Live tapings of this podcast take place once a month in New York at the Reason Speakeasy.

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Greg Lukianoff and Rikki Schlott: The Canceling of the American Mind

The "redress of grievances" component of the first amendment emphasizes the right of the people to bring their complaints or concerns to the government. It essentially means that citizens have the right to seek remedies or solutions for their grievances from the government without fear of retribution.

Redress Of Grievances

Founded in 1968, Reason is the planet's leading source of news, politics, and culture from a libertarian perspective. Our podcast offerings include:

The Reason Roundtable
Every Monday, the libertarian editors of the magazine of “Free Minds and Free Markets”—Matt Welch, Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, and Peter Suderman—discuss and debate the week’s biggest stories and what fresh hell awaits us all.

The Reason Interview with Nick Gillespie
Want to know what comes next in politics, culture, and libertarian ideas? Reason’s Nick Gillespie hosts relentlessly interesting interviews with the activists, artists, authors, entrepreneurs, newsmakers, and politicians who are defining the 21st century.

The Soho Forum Debates
Reason presents a libertarian-themed debate series recorded monthly before a live audience in New York City. Moderated by former Barron's Economics Editor Gene Epstein, the Soho Forum features Nobel prize winners, radical thinkers, and other public intellectuals facing off over the future of bitcoin, veganism, sex work, illegal drugs, electric vehicles, abortion, robotics, government debt, and other controversial topics.

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New tracks tagged #First Amendment