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August 19, 2025 • 12 mins
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Episode Transcript

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Speaker 1 (00:00):
She is the Attorney General of the state of Iowa
and her name is Brenda Bird. She is sitting in
the studio with us here in Omaha. Attorney General Bird,
it's great to see you here.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Yeah, it's good to be on this side of the
river too. Usually I stay on the other side of
the Missouri River.

Speaker 1 (00:13):
Yeah. I saw you at the fair Iowa Stay Fair,
and I found out, you know, the last few days,
that you were going to actually make it over here
for a couple of things. So what brings you to town.

Speaker 2 (00:22):
Well, FBI Director Cash Battel came to Omaha this morning
and was there to meet with law enforcement from Iowa
and Nebraska. So I was there also with Attorney General
Mike Hilgers, who's somebody I really enjoy working with, a
good guy who works hard. And we had a meeting
where the FBI director came here to hear from local

(00:43):
law enforcement about how can the FBI help them, what
can be done differently, what is needed. It was a
great meeting, and I've really appreciated the changes he's made.
He's made some big changes to the FBI.

Speaker 1 (00:54):
I think the biggest thing for anyone who's like, oh,
Cash Hotel was here in Omaha. It's always about law
and or and that's what your office does. But I
always find it interesting, and you know, I have two
different shows, so my other audience that kind of asked
you this last time, we talked about what kind of
a regular day or a regular week looks like. What

(01:15):
is kind of the day to day operations in the
Attorney's General's office for you?

Speaker 2 (01:19):
Well, I can't say there's a regular day like No.
Nine to five, but I focus on supporting law enforcement
and keeping Iowa safe, So that could be all kinds
of different things. They're supporting crime victims and helping them
with our crime victim compensation and ways we can help people.
And then we also protect people who've been ripped off,
whether it's by a company that won't onnero a warranty,

(01:42):
or car dealer, used car dealer if that's something that's happening,
or con artists. So we do a lot of work
on that. I try to get the word out about
the scams too, so that people are armed with that information.
And then we uphold the constitution and laws of the
State of Iowa in courts. So when Biden was in office,
that meant suing the Biden administration quite a bit to

(02:02):
enforce the constitution. Now that we have President Trump there,
we're coming in to help, you know, help write the
ship a little bit and make sure we're doing the
right things and also fixing some of the issues we've
got out there in Washington.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
We have a ton of people who listen in Iowa.
We reach a ton of Western Iowa here and I
always find it fascinating to hear people and what their
concerns may be, and it's great for them to actually
see the people that are representing them. So when you
come this far over here to you know, meet with
Cash Bettel, which totally worthy situation.

Speaker 2 (02:34):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (02:35):
And then tomorrow you were telling me of somewhere you
have to be tomorrow.

Speaker 2 (02:38):
Yeah, tomorrow, I'm in Dubuque, which Dubuque is on the
Mississippi River. So you know, really what we should do
is take my car and dip the back tires in
the Missouri on the way out, and then dip the
front tires and the Mississippi, just to make a proper
celebration of it. But we'll be clear out on the
eastern side of Iowa in Dubuque.

Speaker 1 (02:55):
Yeah, so we could call it Ragbriar or something like that.
Just replace the bee right with the right. It'stend of
the bike ride. It's the Brenna Ride across the state
of Iowa. It's we're here with Brenda Bird, she's the
Attorney General of the State of Iowa. Before I get
into some of the stuff your office is doing, my
Omaha audience, you know, we haven't talked about this specifically.

(03:18):
About a month and a half ago or so, you
made the decision you were not going to run for
governor of Iowa, and that kind of surprised me, to
be honest, I thought that there was great momentum. You
had been a presence at Donald Trump's trial in New
York the year before. You, you know, were really well positioned,
I think, as a great ally for people in Washington
who were representing the state of Iowa as well. And

(03:40):
then when Governor cam Reynold said she was no longer
going to seek reelection she wanted to retire from politics.
You know, there's that open space, and of course you
hear the names start getting thrown in there. Randy Feinster,
Zach nunn Uh, Brenda Bird decided to join the Fray there,
Mike nag would he decided to join the Fray there,
And you made it clear to make the announcement that
you still felt like the job that you were doing

(04:01):
with the Attorney General's office was more important to you
right now. So how did you come to that decision
knowing that there was a big opening there for the taking.

Speaker 2 (04:09):
Yeah, well, Bob and I, my husband, Bob and I
prayed about it and thought about it and met with folks,
and I do appreciate all the support and encouragement though
at the end of the day, taking a good look
at it, I've only been Attorney General for about two
and a half years, and as a mom and a prosecutor,
that job is really important to me. I want to
do it right. I want to back our law enforcement.

(04:29):
I want to make sure that we're upholding the laws
in Iowa. Not to mention, I replaced somebody who got
elected in nineteen seventy eight from the opposite party, so
we made some pretty big changes in our office, and
I want to see those things through. I don't want
to leave a job undone to run for another office. Instead,
I think it's the farm girl in me. Your work
until the job is done and you don't quit halfway through,

(04:51):
so we still got more to do. And I'm running
for reelection.

Speaker 1 (04:54):
You're a younger, like, can you look at the politics.
You got a lot of time ahead of you. It's
two and a half years now. If you do win
reelection in twenty six, it'll end up being like a
full eight years by the time that you finish up
that you'll have to do this, And you have been
very active. We've talked to you about different things that
you had involving TikTok. Can we revisit that one for

(05:15):
a second, and can you just remind us what exactly
that was about with age requirements and is there an
update kind of on what we've learned, especially with the
new administration who's taken over.

Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, well, Sue, and I'm still suing TikTok because they
were not honest with parents about the age appropriateness of
the app, like a lot of moms before. And my
child is nine, does not have a cell phone. I'll
say that, but when I'm letting him play a game
on my phone, it would matter to me what the
age rating is. And so if it was something that
was appropriate for a twelve or thirteen year old. It

(05:50):
wouldn't be one that I would want to have him
play even with me there. So yeah, I'm probably pretty
careful parent as a prosecutor because of everything I've seen,
But I think it's important to be careful with kids
and technology. What we had with TikTok is we had
someone in our office, an investigator, basically impersonate an underaged
person child, and the type of content that was served

(06:12):
up to them was illicit drug use, bene drinking, things
that would cause mental health issues and kids if they
would watch them over and over things, and also sexual content,
things that are only appropriate for an adult and definitely
not appropriate for the type of rating they said they
had in the app store.

Speaker 1 (06:31):
That makes a lot of sense. So we're still it's
unresolved at this point going through the court system.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Right now, we're up on appeal.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
Okay, so we'll keep an eye on that. Iowa Attorney
General Brenna Bird with us here this morning. Another app
that is it related to TikTok, but is certainly used
as much as TikTok by a lot of people is Instagram.
And I know that you have been involved in a
deal with Instagram. Now that you know, you're always thinking of,
you know, the ways that this stuff is getting to

(06:59):
the people. So what with Instagram has gotten your attention?

Speaker 2 (07:03):
Well, one of the things that I do as Attorney
General is I am on the lookout for people anything
that is trying to take advantage of people that people
might not know about. And what happened here is Instagram
rolled out an update and changed it so that now
people who are on Instagram their location data is shared
unbeknownst to them, including their exact location on a map.

(07:26):
This even applies to users who might be under eighteen.
And the worst thing about this is these Instagram users
they don't opt in. They have to opt out. How
is someone supposed to know they're supposed to opt out?
I think that is so wrong. So I have demanded
that Instagram make that change. And I believe that if
they are going to track location data, they need to

(07:46):
ask for permission ahead of time, rather than make people
opt out of it after the fact. And secondly, I
think they need to explain just exactly what do they
plan to use this location data for. I want people
to be able to protect their own privacy and if
they want to if an iown wants to share that
location data with one of their friends, and that's fine

(08:07):
with them. I'm okay with that, but they should be
asked and they should be the ones to give permission.
We cannot let big tech just run all over our privacy.

Speaker 1 (08:15):
One of the interesting things about Instagram is it's part
of Meta, which includes Facebook and other apps as well.
Was there any crossover to that lawsuit or to the
policy essentially that your location is just kind of public
if your location is on in your phone and you

(08:36):
have to opt out, or is this just solely an
Instagram problem.

Speaker 2 (08:40):
We believe it right now to be solely an Instagram problem.
But here's what I find so disturbing about it. I
know that the big tech companies are on notice that
privacy is important. I think they should have known better.
I think they should not have tried this and waited
until they got caught. I think that what they should
have done is done it the right way and make
sure that they're users who enjoy Instagram. There are a

(09:01):
lot of good things that people can enjoy about Instagram.
It's a good way to share content, and many people
enjoy being on Instagram. It's a good thing when it's
used properly. But what I don't like to see is
something like this. I think people are being taken advantage of.
And people shouldn't have to constantly worry about how things
are changing on things they use every day. They should

(09:21):
be able to give permission if they want to, and
if they don't want to, they should be able to
opt out.

Speaker 1 (09:26):
We're speaking with Brena Bird, who's the Attorney General for
the state of Iowa here on eleven ten kfab. Another
thing that falls right into your jurisdiction is these deep
fakes and the Take It Down Act, which Milania Trump
made a very big deal about. Donald Trump made the
signing of a bill. And this is something that I
think might be a little confusing. If you're not sure

(09:48):
exactly how AI works or how AI is being used
against maybe people, especially young people in this country. How
can you best describe what this is and what your
efforts have been to make sure that we're aware of
this now with a new school year.

Speaker 2 (10:00):
Well, I think it's something that many parents and anybody
that works with young people or in a school set
and especially should be aware of. But it can happen
to anybody regardless of age. What happens is AI is
used to basically take a real person's face and put
it on a pornographic image or even a video, and
these fakes are high quality. They're vile, and I can't

(10:23):
even imagine how upsetting it would be for a middle
school or a high schooler to discover that something like
that was going around their school or was posted. So
to take it down Act that was passed by Congress
is something I really support. Not only does it make
it a federal crime, and it's been a crime in Iowa.
We criminalized it last year, but it also makes it
clear that the social media companies have to take it

(10:44):
down within forty eight hours, which helps people get the
image off the internet because it's devastating. We've had this happen.
Several school settings in Iowa have had this happen. It's
something that's hitting the country. It's kind of one of
the latest awful things that this generation has to deal with,
and I think we need to come in and support them.
It's absolutely vile and it shouldn't happen. It's a crime.

(11:06):
So if any of your listeners hear about it, reach
out to law enforcement, get that help and support. No
one should have to go through that alone. And just
because it's a deep fake, it's still illegal.

Speaker 1 (11:18):
Yeah, it doesn't have to be. You were explaining to
me off the air that they don't have to be extorted,
which you know a lot I've heard from different law
enforcement that part of this is somebody who's a scammer
will take the image, they will put it onto a
very inappropriate photo and send it basically to them and
say I'm sharing this to everyone, you know, if you
don't send me five hundred dollars or something like that.

(11:41):
But it doesn't even have to get to that point
for this to be an illegal act.

Speaker 2 (11:44):
It doesn't even have to get to that point. So
anytime something like this is happening, I just encourage parents
to call law enforcement and get them involved so you
can help protect the young person who's being attacked in
that way.

Speaker 1 (11:56):
Attorney General Berner Bird of the State of Iowa, if
anyone has questions or what's more information about your office
and what you're up to. What's the easiest way for
people to kind of follow along and see what's going on.

Speaker 2 (12:05):
Well, we have Iowa Attorney General dot gov is our website,
and we're on Facebook and X and all the usual places,
but just appreciate people reaching out, taking a look and
if there's something we can help you with, please call,
especially if you don't know where to call for something
or there's a scam. That's why we're there to help.

Speaker 1 (12:22):
It's amazing stuff. Thank you so much for stopping in
while you're in town. We really appreciate chatting with you,
and hopefully we get a chance to see the gain
over here soon.

Speaker 2 (12:29):
Yeah, it's good to be with you in person. What
is it two weeks in a row? It's kind of awesome.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
Yeah, how about that all these phone calls for a
full year? And how about that a couple of different times.
But hopefully enjoy Omaha and stay cool out there. Okay,
thank you,
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