November 1, 2019 • 19 mins
In a 232-196 party line-vote, the House has approved rules for the Trump impeachment inquiry. The rules lay out how the House Intelligence Committee, who is currently leading the investigation will transition to public hearings. They will release a report of their findings and also release transcripts of closed-door testimony. Mike Lillis, congressional reporter at The Hill, joins us for the latest step in the impeachment inquiry.
Next, one of the biggest events in horse racing happens this weekend as Santa Anita Racetrack hosts the Breeders’ Cup. Santa Anita itself has been under tons of scrutiny for 36 horse deaths since last December, and while there are many factors that can contribute to a horse injury, one of the few factors we can control is the quality of dirt tracks. Lexi Pandell, contributor to Wired, joins us for the super-optimized dirt that helps keep horses safe.
Finally, Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that they will no longer run political ads, putting pressure on Facebook, who recently said they would allow political ads to be posted on their platform even if there were lies in the campaign messaging. Steven Overly, tech reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's Friday, November one. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. In a two thirty
two to one party line vote, the House has approved
rules for the Trump impeachment inquiry. The rules lay out
how the House Intelligence Committee, who is currently leading the investigation,
(00:22):
will transition to public hearings. They will release a report
of their findings and also release transcripts of closed door testimony.
Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill, joins us for
the latest step in the appeachment inquiry. Next, one of
the biggest events in horse racing happens this weekend as
Santa Anita Racetrack hosts the Breeders Cup. Sant Aita itself
(00:43):
has been under tons of scrutiny for thirty six horse
deaths since last December, and while there are many factors
that can contribute to a horse injury, one of the
few factors we can control is the quality of dirt tracks.
Lexie Pendel, contributor to Wired, joins us for the super
optimized dirt that helps keep horses say it. Finally, Twitter
(01:04):
CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that they will no longer
run political ads, putting pressure on Facebook, who recently said
they would allow political ads to be posted on their
platform even if there were lies in the campaign messaging.
Stephen Overly, tech reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. This is
(01:25):
a sad day. It's a sad day because nobody comes
to Congress to impeach a president of the United States.
No one, they inquired. Proceige will decide whether we'll go
for it with impeachment. That decision has not been made.
Joining us now is Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill.
Thanks for joining us, Mike, Hey, thanks for having me.
(01:46):
I appreciate it. So Democrats took a vote on Thursday
and passed the package of ground rules for their impeachment
inquiry of the president. The vote was two two to
one nine. All Republicans voted to oppose the resolution and
two Democrats joined them. Mike, tell us a little bit
about what happened surrounding this vote. Extremely partisan vote, as
(02:08):
you mentioned, it almost strictly across party lines. That was predictable.
Nobody thought that Republicans were going to cross the line
on this one. There was one independent justinmash We could
mention him. He was a Republican until a couple of
months ago, until he supported an impeachment and then he
was kind of disowned by the party. So he's now
an independent. And he did vote with the Democrats for
this package. So he was a wild card in all
(02:28):
of this. But yes, it was a strict party line vote.
Let's call it. The two Democrats who voted with the
Republicans are in kind of heavy Trump districts and they're
just looking at their re election. That was Colin Peterson
up in Minnesota, and Trump won his district by more
than thirty points three years ago, so he has a
very tough race coming up. And then Jeff and Andrew,
a freshman from New Jersey, Trump won his district by
(02:50):
five points, So there's a lot of politics at play here.
The surprising thing I think, if anything, from this vote,
was the number of moderates like Jeff v. Andrew who
did just the opposite and vote with Pelosi and the Democrats.
Because there are a lot of people in his type
of district five points, four points, three points for Trump.
They're facing very tough reelections, and yet they did stick
their neck out here to support impeachment. And I think
(03:11):
the reason is that a lot of them have national
security or military backgrounds and they just have reached a
tipping point where they said, we've got to do something here,
and we can't allow this precedent to be set. I
would have to imagine that a lot of that has
to do with a lot of the testimony that we've
been hearing coming out from these impeachment panels. A lot
of diplomats, military people also saying that they were very
(03:33):
concerned with the phone call that the president had with
the Ukrainian president, and that's also part of the problem too.
That's where Republicans were attacking the process on this, saying,
you're doing all this stuff behind closed doors, you're just
kind of leaking out things that make the president seem worse.
I'm assuming all of that plays into it, absolutely sure.
And not everybody, of course, is on the committees that
are hearing these closed door depositions, so not everybody is
(03:56):
in the room and has a first hand account of
the witness testimony and everything that has happened. But enough
of the testimony has leaked, and a lot of these
are very respected veteran diplomats who have been in service
for decades under administrations of both Democratic and Republican presidents.
So their nonpartisan bona fides are fairly established and their
voice goes a long way. And for them to testify
(04:19):
and then for their testimony to leak and these stories
to be written about how damning they thought that phone
call was and what a threat to national security, I mean,
that's the whole reason we're having this inquiry to begin with.
That's the reason Pelosi, who didn't want to do this
at all for months and months and months to suddenly
changed her mind and said, no, we have to do it.
That's the reason that they had to vote today. We
have to take it to the public. And so this
thing is really churning pretty quickly. It was just five
(04:41):
weeks ago that Pelosi announced the process, and now we're
moving into the public phase. Having covered Pelosi for many years,
she says once the day at least, she says, public
sentiment is everything, and she's paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln. So she
knows that they can't do this without public support. And
so part of the strategy here is just to get
the thanks televised, get it all out in the open,
(05:02):
and hopefully it changes people's minds enough that they would
put pressure on Trump's Republican defenders over there in the Senate, because,
of course, nothing happens unless the Republicans in the Senate
actually vote for something down the line. So the rules
that they passed talk about how they would transition to
public hearings and a couple of other things. What do
we learn from the rules that they set forth? So far,
the closed door bearings have been primarily three committees, Intelligence, Oversight,
(05:27):
and Foreign Affairs. Now they're saying this rule specifies that
they'll broaden it out just a little bit and they'll
include a couple of other committees. Now, having said that,
it's still going to be primarily Adam Schiff and the
Intelligence Committee covering the Ukraine stuff, but they just want
to include some of the other allegations that are out there.
I think that's more a political move to get some
of these other members involved, some of the chair men
(05:48):
and women who have been working on these issues for
a long time and have been kind of left on
the sidelines, and one a piece of this spotlight, so
to speak. So there will be six committees that will
be working all public hearings is going to do things
like right now, the committees can only each member can
only ask questions for five minutes and then you got
to move on to the next member. So the rules
today will establish you can broaden that out so that
(06:11):
one member can ask a longer series of questions, more
like deposition style, more like a courtroom style. It will
also allow staff to ask questions, which they feel is
important because a lot of these staffers are prosecutors, are
seasoned lawyers, whereas some of these lawmakers have no background
in law or prosecution or a courtroom, so they think
that that's to their advantage. It also will allow for
(06:33):
the release of our set up a process for how
to release the transcripts from the closed door depositions that
we've been having, which is you know, you've heard the
Republicans say, we don't even have access to the transcripts.
Public can see the transcripts, nobody knows what these witnesses
are saying. So this will allow for a process where
the transcripts will be released. We still don't know when,
and I'm sure there will be read actions, but that's
(06:53):
part of this process is figuring out how to do
all of that, and then finally they're going to produce
a final report at the end of all this, so
this hits the ground rules for how to produce that report.
And then of course we're still in the investigation stage
from closed door to public. We're still investigating. This is
still the inquiry, not the articles phase. But when they
do move to the articles phase, or if they do,
but it will be the Judiciary committee that has jurisdiction
(07:16):
over the articles, and so this rule will also transition
from the investigatory committees to judiciary, which will ultimately right
the articles, vote on them, and send them to the floor.
Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill, Thank you very
much for joining us. Listen, thanks for having me anytime.
(07:41):
We've been through thinking about what's been going on at
Santa Anita. A lot of people have been looking to
the dirt because of the storms is last winter, which
are kind of uncharacteristically stormy and rainy, So essentially people
were worried that some of the materials we're getting washed away,
making it firmer for the horses legs. Joining us now
was Lexi Pendel, contributing rider to Wired. Thanks for joining us, Lexi,
(08:05):
thanks for having me. One of the biggest events in
horse racing is going to be happening this weekend on
Friday and Saturday. It's the Breeders Cup. It's gonna be
held at Santa Anita Race Track, which has come under
a lot of scrutiny for about thirty six horse deaths
now since December of last year. They've had a hard
time getting a handle on exactly what was happening. Part
(08:26):
of the thing with this is that there's so many
contributing factors to why a horse might fall and break
a leg, all that stuff, and that's what we're gonna
focus on a little bit. Here is the super optimized
dirt that they use to help keep race horses safe.
Lexi tell us a little bit about that. When somebody
who doesn't know much about horses, or honestly even someone
who does, looks out at a racetrack, it looks kind
(08:49):
of just like dirt. In reality, the material that they
use for this dirt track is actually comprised but very
specific blend of sand, clay, and silt. When we've been
sort of thinking about what's been going on at Santa Anita,
a lot of people have been looking to the dirt
because of the storms is last winter. Essentially people were
(09:10):
worried that either some of the materials were getting washed away,
making it firmer for the horse's legs, or alternatively that
the process by which they essentially rolled the track flat
to prevent too much water from getting into it was
making the track to firm for the horse's legs in
any case. To get to kind of back to what
the actual track is comprised of, there's sort of these
(09:32):
three layers, almost like a cake. So there's a base
of crushed limestone at the very bottom, and then there's
a hard pan of compacted sand in between that, and
then on top about three inches of this sort of
soft sandy cushion, which is that sand, clay and silt lend.
And what goes into this is an incredible amount of
(09:52):
work from the track maintenance team. They're out there essentially
aerating and fluffing it with harrows which are tracked with
big times attached to the side of them. They're also
out there with watering machines that essentially spray out about
a hundred thousand gallons of water every day onto the track,
and there's also engineers that are going out and doing
(10:14):
testing with sensors and machinery to make sure that everything
is the exact material, composition, and the exact texture is
exactly what they want. There's so much that goes into it.
Even the grains of sand you were talking about how
they bind together. And when the sand is fresh and
kind of rocky still, let's say it kind of forms
(10:34):
together and it holds itself. But as time goes and
horses are trampling over it, the sand gets softer and rounder,
and then it kind of becomes looser, and that even
that could be a detriment to the horses when they're
running down the track and we all know, you know, horses,
big giant, beautiful animals, but they're racing on toothpick legs
basically holding up that huge frame. Horses are really incredible
(10:55):
once you get to learn more about the biomechanics of
exactly how they work. The bones and their legs are
some as small as the size of a walnut, some
of which taper down to the thinness of a Q tip,
and all of this holds up a thousand pound animal.
And because there is such strain on their bodies as athletes.
The service they run is of the most important, and
(11:17):
we have to put this into perspective this time around,
at least for Santinita. There's a lot more media scrutiny,
a lot of activists that might have been concerned for
the horses. The numbers of horse deaths there are not
really out of the ordinary. In two thousand eighteen there
was thirty seven horse deaths were about thirty six right now.
This is since last December, and in the years prior
(11:37):
there was fifty four and fifty seven deaths. So that's
kind of another one of the things to put in perspective,
you know, it's just received a lot more scrutiny this
time around, and just continuing on this whole thing about
the science and how the analyzing the dirt with sensors.
There's a guy named Mick Peterson who does a lot
of the testing for Santinita, and they've tested it multiple
times and a lot of times everything's come back fairly normal.
(11:59):
And a thing to keep in mind too about the
fatality rates. Though Santa Anita is technically in line with
years past, I think a lot of people in the
horse wold degree that it doesn't make too much of
a difference, that things still need to become safer for
the horses. And you know, Mix Peterson is really at
the forefront of that kind of work. He is a
guy who's trained as a mechanical engineer. He had pretty
(12:21):
much no horse experience. Came into the racing world while
he was an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and
he was really alarmed that there were no standards for
how track surfaces should be maintained. And Mick Peterson came
in and he started developing some really amazing machinery that
(12:43):
could do that testing. He developed this massive machine that
essentially replicates the impact of a horse's front leg on
the surface of the track, and you watch it. It It
slams down to the ground and there's all these embedded
censers in it that will tell you all this information
about what the impact is on the horse. He also
started using some machinery that was used in other fields.
(13:05):
He started using ground penetrating radar, which had been historically
used by archaeologists and even the military, and he started
using that to essentially beame into the ground and see
exactly how sick and even each of those layers of
the track was to essentially determine if things were even
if things were the right death and this is work
(13:28):
that had never been done before, which is pretty remarkable.
Of course, people in general are somewhat traditionalists, and he's
one of the people really moving things forward. And the
innovations that he's working on sort of now looking ahead
are also pretty amazing too. Lexie Pendell, contributing writer at Wired,
Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for
having me here. I think what you have Jack Dorsey's
(13:58):
saying is how could we try to come that election
interference while also allowing paid ads that contain misinformation or
contain falsehoods. And so Twitter is just going to sort
of tap out on political ads now. Is Stephen Overly,
tech reporter at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Stephen, thank
you for having me. Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack
(14:20):
Dorsey announced that Twitter will no longer be running political ads,
and this also kind of threw a little bit of
pressure on Facebook, who earlier had said that they're going
to allow political ads even if candidates or political groups
are lying in those ads. Steven tell us a little
bit about this decision. So over the last couple of weeks.
(14:41):
We've seen a lot of intense scrutiny on Facebook after
the company made this decision that it was not going
to that political ads for accuracy. If a politician wanted
to run an ad on Facebook, even if it included
lies or misleading information, that was going to be permissible,
And the company has gone to out of blowback for that.
What really sort of through gasoline on the fire now
(15:04):
is Wednesday. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the company
is not going to allow political advertising at all, that
they don't think this is a question of free speech,
This is a question of people buying access to speech,
and that they did not want to essentially have any
part in political ads that had misleading or deceptive information.
(15:25):
Jack Dorsey, for his part, in a series of Twitter posts, said,
We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems
to spread misleading info. But if somebody wants to target
and force people to see their ad by paying for it,
you know, well that they can do whatever they want.
He's got a point there, But for his part, Mark
Zuckerberg has his own points also. These companies have all
been battling misinformation since coming out of the election. When
(15:48):
we learned that Russians and sort of others were deliberately
using social media to spread false information, often to advantage
President Trump in the last presidential race. And so as
we look forward to all of these companies are going
to be facing questions about what they're doing to combat
misinformation and to combat for an election interference. And sort
(16:10):
of here, I think what you have Jack Dorsey's saying
is calguive. We try to combat election interference while also
allowing paid ads that contain misinformation or contain falsehoods. I
think for his point was that those two things don't
line up, and so Twitter is just going to sort
of tap out on political ads rather than vet them
for accuracy or sort of risk spreading misinformation. And Facebook
(16:33):
has taken the opposite view. Zuckerberg said in a speech
at Georgetown two weeks ago that the company has committed
to free expression and that that's one of the reasons
that it's sort of allowing misleading ads on its site.
It would rather have people see them and sort of
make their own decisions than be the one to say
what can and cannot be advertised on its website. On
(16:53):
the face of it, it seems like this is a
much easier decision for Twitter. According to some reports, spending
on political advertise could reach an overall amount of about
six billion dollars for the election. A lot of that
money is going to be directed towards Facebook and Google,
and I think for their part, Twitter said that they
got about three million dollars from the election just from
(17:17):
political ads, so on the face of it, it seems
like it's a much easier decision for them. Twitter received
three million dollars in the mid term elections cycle, and
for Twitter, political advertising is a much lower number. They
make a lot less money than both Google and Facebook,
and so one could say from a business standpoint, it's
easier for them to make that call. But at the
(17:37):
end of the day, if you look at the amount
of money that Google and Facebook make on political advertising,
it is a very very small amount of their overall revenue.
So for none of these companies, are they really getting
rich off of political ads? And that's why I think
this debate has kind of become a question of free
expression and free speech, because for these companies, they couldn't
(18:00):
since get rid of political ads and not suffer terribly
from a business perspective. But I think the question they're
grappling with is what does that mean for free speech
and democracy if suddenly politicians and political groups can advertise
on these platforms that are used by millions of voters
across the country. And what has been the reaction to this?
(18:20):
A lot of times now it just seems like things
come down on party lines. It seems like Democrats were
applauding this decision and Republicans and the president's campaign himself
said that this is another effort to silence conservative voices.
We definitely saw a partisan reaction to this. You've seen
a lot of Democrats who have praised the decision and
basically said, if social media companies can't fact check their advertisements,
(18:42):
or if they can't commit to only allowing accurate political ads,
and they should not be in this business at all. Conversely, though,
they're having a number of Republicans who've criticized this decision,
particularly Brad Parscale, who's the campaign manager for President Trump's reelection,
came down rather hard on Twitter for this decision and
did say it amounts to sort of the silencing of conservatives,
(19:03):
which Twitter is banning all political ads. To be clear,
it doesn't matter if it's a Democrat or Republican. All
political ads will no longer be allowed on the site,
but that Trump campaign has sort of painted this as
another effort to suppress conservatives on social media sites. Stephen Overley,
tech reporter at Politico, thank you very much for joining us.
(19:24):
Thank you so much. That's it for this week. Join
us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both
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and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
(19:45):
your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sorrentino. Hi'm Oscar Ramirez
and this was your Daily Dive
It's Friday, November one. I'm Oscar Ramiraz in Los Angeles
and this is the Daily Dive. In a two thirty
two to one party line vote, the House has approved
rules for the Trump impeachment inquiry. The rules lay out
how the House Intelligence Committee, who is currently leading the investigation,
(00:22):
will transition to public hearings. They will release a report
of their findings and also release transcripts of closed door testimony.
Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill, joins us for
the latest step in the appeachment inquiry. Next, one of
the biggest events in horse racing happens this weekend as
Santa Anita Racetrack hosts the Breeders Cup. Sant Aita itself
(00:43):
has been under tons of scrutiny for thirty six horse
deaths since last December, and while there are many factors
that can contribute to a horse injury, one of the
few factors we can control is the quality of dirt tracks.
Lexie Pendel, contributor to Wired, joins us for the super
optimized dirt that helps keep horses say it. Finally, Twitter
(01:04):
CEO Jack Dorsey has announced that they will no longer
run political ads, putting pressure on Facebook, who recently said
they would allow political ads to be posted on their
platform even if there were lies in the campaign messaging.
Stephen Overly, tech reporter at Politico, joins us for more.
It's news without the noise. Let's dive in. This is
(01:25):
a sad day. It's a sad day because nobody comes
to Congress to impeach a president of the United States.
No one, they inquired. Proceige will decide whether we'll go
for it with impeachment. That decision has not been made.
Joining us now is Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill.
Thanks for joining us, Mike, Hey, thanks for having me.
(01:46):
I appreciate it. So Democrats took a vote on Thursday
and passed the package of ground rules for their impeachment
inquiry of the president. The vote was two two to
one nine. All Republicans voted to oppose the resolution and
two Democrats joined them. Mike, tell us a little bit
about what happened surrounding this vote. Extremely partisan vote, as
(02:08):
you mentioned, it almost strictly across party lines. That was predictable.
Nobody thought that Republicans were going to cross the line
on this one. There was one independent justinmash We could
mention him. He was a Republican until a couple of
months ago, until he supported an impeachment and then he
was kind of disowned by the party. So he's now
an independent. And he did vote with the Democrats for
this package. So he was a wild card in all
(02:28):
of this. But yes, it was a strict party line vote.
Let's call it. The two Democrats who voted with the
Republicans are in kind of heavy Trump districts and they're
just looking at their re election. That was Colin Peterson
up in Minnesota, and Trump won his district by more
than thirty points three years ago, so he has a
very tough race coming up. And then Jeff and Andrew,
a freshman from New Jersey, Trump won his district by
(02:50):
five points, So there's a lot of politics at play here.
The surprising thing I think, if anything, from this vote,
was the number of moderates like Jeff v. Andrew who
did just the opposite and vote with Pelosi and the Democrats.
Because there are a lot of people in his type
of district five points, four points, three points for Trump.
They're facing very tough reelections, and yet they did stick
their neck out here to support impeachment. And I think
(03:11):
the reason is that a lot of them have national
security or military backgrounds and they just have reached a
tipping point where they said, we've got to do something here,
and we can't allow this precedent to be set. I
would have to imagine that a lot of that has
to do with a lot of the testimony that we've
been hearing coming out from these impeachment panels. A lot
of diplomats, military people also saying that they were very
(03:33):
concerned with the phone call that the president had with
the Ukrainian president, and that's also part of the problem too.
That's where Republicans were attacking the process on this, saying,
you're doing all this stuff behind closed doors, you're just
kind of leaking out things that make the president seem worse.
I'm assuming all of that plays into it, absolutely sure.
And not everybody, of course, is on the committees that
are hearing these closed door depositions, so not everybody is
(03:56):
in the room and has a first hand account of
the witness testimony and everything that has happened. But enough
of the testimony has leaked, and a lot of these
are very respected veteran diplomats who have been in service
for decades under administrations of both Democratic and Republican presidents.
So their nonpartisan bona fides are fairly established and their
voice goes a long way. And for them to testify
(04:19):
and then for their testimony to leak and these stories
to be written about how damning they thought that phone
call was and what a threat to national security, I mean,
that's the whole reason we're having this inquiry to begin with.
That's the reason Pelosi, who didn't want to do this
at all for months and months and months to suddenly
changed her mind and said, no, we have to do it.
That's the reason that they had to vote today. We
have to take it to the public. And so this
thing is really churning pretty quickly. It was just five
(04:41):
weeks ago that Pelosi announced the process, and now we're
moving into the public phase. Having covered Pelosi for many years,
she says once the day at least, she says, public
sentiment is everything, and she's paraphrasing Abraham Lincoln. So she
knows that they can't do this without public support. And
so part of the strategy here is just to get
the thanks televised, get it all out in the open,
(05:02):
and hopefully it changes people's minds enough that they would
put pressure on Trump's Republican defenders over there in the Senate, because,
of course, nothing happens unless the Republicans in the Senate
actually vote for something down the line. So the rules
that they passed talk about how they would transition to
public hearings and a couple of other things. What do
we learn from the rules that they set forth? So far,
the closed door bearings have been primarily three committees, Intelligence, Oversight,
(05:27):
and Foreign Affairs. Now they're saying this rule specifies that
they'll broaden it out just a little bit and they'll
include a couple of other committees. Now, having said that,
it's still going to be primarily Adam Schiff and the
Intelligence Committee covering the Ukraine stuff, but they just want
to include some of the other allegations that are out there.
I think that's more a political move to get some
of these other members involved, some of the chair men
(05:48):
and women who have been working on these issues for
a long time and have been kind of left on
the sidelines, and one a piece of this spotlight, so
to speak. So there will be six committees that will
be working all public hearings is going to do things
like right now, the committees can only each member can
only ask questions for five minutes and then you got
to move on to the next member. So the rules
today will establish you can broaden that out so that
(06:11):
one member can ask a longer series of questions, more
like deposition style, more like a courtroom style. It will
also allow staff to ask questions, which they feel is
important because a lot of these staffers are prosecutors, are
seasoned lawyers, whereas some of these lawmakers have no background
in law or prosecution or a courtroom, so they think
that that's to their advantage. It also will allow for
(06:33):
the release of our set up a process for how
to release the transcripts from the closed door depositions that
we've been having, which is you know, you've heard the
Republicans say, we don't even have access to the transcripts.
Public can see the transcripts, nobody knows what these witnesses
are saying. So this will allow for a process where
the transcripts will be released. We still don't know when,
and I'm sure there will be read actions, but that's
(06:53):
part of this process is figuring out how to do
all of that, and then finally they're going to produce
a final report at the end of all this, so
this hits the ground rules for how to produce that report.
And then of course we're still in the investigation stage
from closed door to public. We're still investigating. This is
still the inquiry, not the articles phase. But when they
do move to the articles phase, or if they do,
but it will be the Judiciary committee that has jurisdiction
(07:16):
over the articles, and so this rule will also transition
from the investigatory committees to judiciary, which will ultimately right
the articles, vote on them, and send them to the floor.
Mike Lillis, Congressional reporter at the Hill, Thank you very
much for joining us. Listen, thanks for having me anytime.
(07:41):
We've been through thinking about what's been going on at
Santa Anita. A lot of people have been looking to
the dirt because of the storms is last winter, which
are kind of uncharacteristically stormy and rainy, So essentially people
were worried that some of the materials we're getting washed away,
making it firmer for the horses legs. Joining us now
was Lexi Pendel, contributing rider to Wired. Thanks for joining us, Lexi,
(08:05):
thanks for having me. One of the biggest events in
horse racing is going to be happening this weekend on
Friday and Saturday. It's the Breeders Cup. It's gonna be
held at Santa Anita Race Track, which has come under
a lot of scrutiny for about thirty six horse deaths
now since December of last year. They've had a hard
time getting a handle on exactly what was happening. Part
(08:26):
of the thing with this is that there's so many
contributing factors to why a horse might fall and break
a leg, all that stuff, and that's what we're gonna
focus on a little bit. Here is the super optimized
dirt that they use to help keep race horses safe.
Lexi tell us a little bit about that. When somebody
who doesn't know much about horses, or honestly even someone
who does, looks out at a racetrack, it looks kind
(08:49):
of just like dirt. In reality, the material that they
use for this dirt track is actually comprised but very
specific blend of sand, clay, and silt. When we've been
sort of thinking about what's been going on at Santa Anita,
a lot of people have been looking to the dirt
because of the storms is last winter. Essentially people were
(09:10):
worried that either some of the materials were getting washed away,
making it firmer for the horse's legs, or alternatively that
the process by which they essentially rolled the track flat
to prevent too much water from getting into it was
making the track to firm for the horse's legs in
any case. To get to kind of back to what
the actual track is comprised of, there's sort of these
(09:32):
three layers, almost like a cake. So there's a base
of crushed limestone at the very bottom, and then there's
a hard pan of compacted sand in between that, and
then on top about three inches of this sort of
soft sandy cushion, which is that sand, clay and silt lend.
And what goes into this is an incredible amount of
(09:52):
work from the track maintenance team. They're out there essentially
aerating and fluffing it with harrows which are tracked with
big times attached to the side of them. They're also
out there with watering machines that essentially spray out about
a hundred thousand gallons of water every day onto the track,
and there's also engineers that are going out and doing
(10:14):
testing with sensors and machinery to make sure that everything
is the exact material, composition, and the exact texture is
exactly what they want. There's so much that goes into it.
Even the grains of sand you were talking about how
they bind together. And when the sand is fresh and
kind of rocky still, let's say it kind of forms
(10:34):
together and it holds itself. But as time goes and
horses are trampling over it, the sand gets softer and rounder,
and then it kind of becomes looser, and that even
that could be a detriment to the horses when they're
running down the track and we all know, you know, horses,
big giant, beautiful animals, but they're racing on toothpick legs
basically holding up that huge frame. Horses are really incredible
(10:55):
once you get to learn more about the biomechanics of
exactly how they work. The bones and their legs are
some as small as the size of a walnut, some
of which taper down to the thinness of a Q tip,
and all of this holds up a thousand pound animal.
And because there is such strain on their bodies as athletes.
The service they run is of the most important, and
(11:17):
we have to put this into perspective this time around,
at least for Santinita. There's a lot more media scrutiny,
a lot of activists that might have been concerned for
the horses. The numbers of horse deaths there are not
really out of the ordinary. In two thousand eighteen there
was thirty seven horse deaths were about thirty six right now.
This is since last December, and in the years prior
(11:37):
there was fifty four and fifty seven deaths. So that's
kind of another one of the things to put in perspective,
you know, it's just received a lot more scrutiny this
time around, and just continuing on this whole thing about
the science and how the analyzing the dirt with sensors.
There's a guy named Mick Peterson who does a lot
of the testing for Santinita, and they've tested it multiple
times and a lot of times everything's come back fairly normal.
(11:59):
And a thing to keep in mind too about the
fatality rates. Though Santa Anita is technically in line with
years past, I think a lot of people in the
horse wold degree that it doesn't make too much of
a difference, that things still need to become safer for
the horses. And you know, Mix Peterson is really at
the forefront of that kind of work. He is a
guy who's trained as a mechanical engineer. He had pretty
(12:21):
much no horse experience. Came into the racing world while
he was an assistant professor at Colorado State University, and
he was really alarmed that there were no standards for
how track surfaces should be maintained. And Mick Peterson came
in and he started developing some really amazing machinery that
(12:43):
could do that testing. He developed this massive machine that
essentially replicates the impact of a horse's front leg on
the surface of the track, and you watch it. It It
slams down to the ground and there's all these embedded
censers in it that will tell you all this information
about what the impact is on the horse. He also
started using some machinery that was used in other fields.
(13:05):
He started using ground penetrating radar, which had been historically
used by archaeologists and even the military, and he started
using that to essentially beame into the ground and see
exactly how sick and even each of those layers of
the track was to essentially determine if things were even
if things were the right death and this is work
(13:28):
that had never been done before, which is pretty remarkable.
Of course, people in general are somewhat traditionalists, and he's
one of the people really moving things forward. And the
innovations that he's working on sort of now looking ahead
are also pretty amazing too. Lexie Pendell, contributing writer at Wired,
Thank you very much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for
having me here. I think what you have Jack Dorsey's
(13:58):
saying is how could we try to come that election
interference while also allowing paid ads that contain misinformation or
contain falsehoods. And so Twitter is just going to sort
of tap out on political ads now. Is Stephen Overly,
tech reporter at Politico. Thanks for joining us, Stephen, thank
you for having me. Earlier this week, Twitter CEO Jack
(14:20):
Dorsey announced that Twitter will no longer be running political ads,
and this also kind of threw a little bit of
pressure on Facebook, who earlier had said that they're going
to allow political ads even if candidates or political groups
are lying in those ads. Steven tell us a little
bit about this decision. So over the last couple of weeks.
(14:41):
We've seen a lot of intense scrutiny on Facebook after
the company made this decision that it was not going
to that political ads for accuracy. If a politician wanted
to run an ad on Facebook, even if it included
lies or misleading information, that was going to be permissible,
And the company has gone to out of blowback for that.
What really sort of through gasoline on the fire now
(15:04):
is Wednesday. Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey said that the company
is not going to allow political advertising at all, that
they don't think this is a question of free speech,
This is a question of people buying access to speech,
and that they did not want to essentially have any
part in political ads that had misleading or deceptive information.
(15:25):
Jack Dorsey, for his part, in a series of Twitter posts, said,
We're working hard to stop people from gaming our systems
to spread misleading info. But if somebody wants to target
and force people to see their ad by paying for it,
you know, well that they can do whatever they want.
He's got a point there, But for his part, Mark
Zuckerberg has his own points also. These companies have all
been battling misinformation since coming out of the election. When
(15:48):
we learned that Russians and sort of others were deliberately
using social media to spread false information, often to advantage
President Trump in the last presidential race. And so as
we look forward to all of these companies are going
to be facing questions about what they're doing to combat
misinformation and to combat for an election interference. And sort
(16:10):
of here, I think what you have Jack Dorsey's saying
is calguive. We try to combat election interference while also
allowing paid ads that contain misinformation or contain falsehoods. I
think for his point was that those two things don't
line up, and so Twitter is just going to sort
of tap out on political ads rather than vet them
for accuracy or sort of risk spreading misinformation. And Facebook
(16:33):
has taken the opposite view. Zuckerberg said in a speech
at Georgetown two weeks ago that the company has committed
to free expression and that that's one of the reasons
that it's sort of allowing misleading ads on its site.
It would rather have people see them and sort of
make their own decisions than be the one to say
what can and cannot be advertised on its website. On
(16:53):
the face of it, it seems like this is a
much easier decision for Twitter. According to some reports, spending
on political advertise could reach an overall amount of about
six billion dollars for the election. A lot of that
money is going to be directed towards Facebook and Google,
and I think for their part, Twitter said that they
got about three million dollars from the election just from
(17:17):
political ads, so on the face of it, it seems
like it's a much easier decision for them. Twitter received
three million dollars in the mid term elections cycle, and
for Twitter, political advertising is a much lower number. They
make a lot less money than both Google and Facebook,
and so one could say from a business standpoint, it's
easier for them to make that call. But at the
(17:37):
end of the day, if you look at the amount
of money that Google and Facebook make on political advertising,
it is a very very small amount of their overall revenue.
So for none of these companies, are they really getting
rich off of political ads? And that's why I think
this debate has kind of become a question of free
expression and free speech, because for these companies, they couldn't
(18:00):
since get rid of political ads and not suffer terribly
from a business perspective. But I think the question they're
grappling with is what does that mean for free speech
and democracy if suddenly politicians and political groups can advertise
on these platforms that are used by millions of voters
across the country. And what has been the reaction to this?
(18:20):
A lot of times now it just seems like things
come down on party lines. It seems like Democrats were
applauding this decision and Republicans and the president's campaign himself
said that this is another effort to silence conservative voices.
We definitely saw a partisan reaction to this. You've seen
a lot of Democrats who have praised the decision and
basically said, if social media companies can't fact check their advertisements,
(18:42):
or if they can't commit to only allowing accurate political ads,
and they should not be in this business at all. Conversely, though,
they're having a number of Republicans who've criticized this decision,
particularly Brad Parscale, who's the campaign manager for President Trump's reelection,
came down rather hard on Twitter for this decision and
did say it amounts to sort of the silencing of conservatives,
(19:03):
which Twitter is banning all political ads. To be clear,
it doesn't matter if it's a Democrat or Republican. All
political ads will no longer be allowed on the site,
but that Trump campaign has sort of painted this as
another effort to suppress conservatives on social media sites. Stephen Overley,
tech reporter at Politico, thank you very much for joining us.
(19:24):
Thank you so much. That's it for this week. Join
us on social media at Daily Dive Pod on both
Twitter and Instagram. Leave us a comment, give us a rating,
and tell us the stories that you're interested in. Follow
us on I Heart Radio, or subscribe wherever you get
(19:45):
your podcast. This episode of The Daily Divers produced by
Victor Wright and engineered by Tony Sorrentino. Hi'm Oscar Ramirez
and this was your Daily Dive
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