Today, I’m talking with Sen. Ron Wyden, a Democrat and the senior senator from Oregon. He’s been in the Senate for almost 30 years, which makes him one of the longest-serving members of the institution. He’s also deeply involved in tech policy — in fact, he co-authored Section 230 in 1996. That’s the law that says tech platforms like Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube aren’t generally liable for what their users post, making it the law that basically allows the modern social media internet we have today to even exist.

We scheduled this interview with Sen. Wyden a while ago — he’s got a new book out called It Takes Chutzpah: How to Fight Fearlessly for Progressive Change, and it’s a combination memoir and call to action for young people to take part in politics. Wyden was going to come on and talk about that book.

But recent events made it vastly more important to talk about the state of our federal government and, specifically, what Elon Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are doing as they seize power in various federal agencies. DOGE has some level of access in the Treasury Department and now has its sights set on the Labor and Education departments, too. Numerous agencies have had their funding frozen, with workers locked out and told to resign or put on leave, all while lawsuits are being filed and courts are telling the administration to hold on. It is utter chaos, and it’s not slowing down.

So I asked Sen. Wyden as bluntly as I could: What the fuck is even going on? And can Congress and the courts even keep up with it? Wyden did not mince words here; he called it a coup. 

You’ll hear us get into the mechanisms Musk has used to seize power in the government and why it feels like any attempts to slow this down feel so flat-footed. We also discuss whether we can trust anything these people say — Wyden basically calls bullshit on virtually every promise and declaration coming out of DOGE, especially around how much access its staffers have to sensitive data and systems. 

It’s the story of the moment and we dove into it. But if not for DOGE and its associated chaos, the biggest tech policy story of the moment would be TikTok, which was legally banned by an act of Congress and then upheld by the Supreme Court. But enforcement of that ban was paused for 75 days by President Donald Trump so the company could figure out how to sell itself. 

Right now, it’s just in a legal grey area, and that clock is ticking. So I asked Sen. Wyden, who sits on the Senate Intelligence Committee, what’s going on with that ban and if Trump can really just keep delaying enforcement of the law, which is also not a great legal situation. Wyden seems to think a deal can get it done, and I did my best to get any hints about who might buy it.

There’s a lot more in this one, including some discussion of our networks themselves and Trump’s newly censorious Federal Communications Commission, but it’s probably best to just get into it. If you pay attention, you’ll notice that Sen. Wyden manages to seamlessly plug his new book throughout this episode. 

Okay, Sen. Ron Wyden. Here we go.

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Sen. Ron Wyden, welcome to Decoder.

Hey, thanks for having me again.

Thank you for being on. There’s an awful lot to talk about, senator. You have a new book. There are an escalating series of catastrophes in the government. There’s TikTok to talk about. It’s still banned, but unbanned in a liminal state. I want to ask you about that.

I was listening to our audience, and I was talking to our staff. Can I ask you the first question in just the bluntest way that I can think of? Can I have your permission for that?

Permission granted, bluntness.

All right. Senator, what the fuck is going on?

That is the question of the hour. It’s almost impossible to divine an answer because it moves minute to minute. Donald Trump essentially governs by whim. He gets up and out of nowhere, he will put our whole economy in play with a really colossally stupid approach to tariffs — Tariffs that he has lied nonstop to the American people about for well over a year. He always tells them that foreigners will pay the tariff. That’s factually wrong. All of the people who are listening to your program, the fans of the good work you all do, they pay the tariffs. So, this weekend was just perpetual bedlam, and foreign leaders were basically laughing at us. They were making fake promises. They knew that Trump just wanted to be able to get some kind of headline.

I’m sure we’ll talk about other aspects of the bizarre nature of these times, but you probably know that last Friday, I blew the whistle — as a result of getting input from whistleblowers — that the Secretary of Treasury had signed off on giving Elon Musk access to the federal payments program, which has enormous implications for hacking, abuse, and violations of privacy. The list could go on and on. So, that’s just a little bit of the last few days.

Let’s start there. Again, just hearing from our audience, our listeners, and readers of The Verge, there is a sense that what is happening right now is Donald Trump is sitting in the White House, signing executive orders that may or may not be legal, may or may not have impact, may or may not mean anything at all, talking about building hotels in Gaza. And that is all a distraction from Elon Musk and DOGE taking over the government. We’re all the way at “is this a coup?” I really want to start there. Is that where you’re at? Do you think that there’s a coup going on?

I’m very troubled by the types of policies they are pursuing, that when you add them up, look and feel like a coup. The reality is we are working very hard to derail them at various steps. Let me give you a couple of examples. Last week, Donald Trump basically undertook a kind of freeze of the budget, and he wanted to do it unilaterally. There was a lot of back and forth about what authority he might possibly have. We knew there wasn’t any, but we heard him out. Then we went to court, we won, and he had to drop it. 

Let me give you a small snapshot of the kind of work I do. My background is working with senior citizens. I was the director of the Gray Panthers for about seven years before I got elected to Congress. So, during the freeze, I found out that the Medicaid portals, which they have in all states, were essentially off. They weren’t available for the senior citizens and the disabled to get information about their medicine, nursing homes, and the like. 

So, I went online immediately, and said that the whistleblowers, which were truthful, had told me about the tremendous problems being caused for the vulnerable, seniors, and the like, and that it was important for citizens to get in touch with their elected officials, community groups, and organizations and talk about why this was so unfair. Nobody voted to cause harm and discomfort to seniors and the disabled. And there was this outpouring of calls and letters. Within about three hours, the Trump people were backpedaling. By late at night, they said that it would all be fixed the next day. 

This is just a small snapshot from one day, but people mobilized. The whistleblowers that I work with, particularly on senior citizen issues, came through. This was something where Trump and Musk were stopped cold as they tried to abuse the federal budget. It’s a small snapshot, but it’s the kind of thing that I tried to help with. If I were to embrace it in a sentence, apropos of what the hell is going on here: Trump and Musk are ignoring the checks and balances that are the foundation of our republic. And for all practical purposes, I’d call that a coup.

When you think about the mechanism that you just laid out, you heard about something that was happening that was bad because of a policy that was hastily rolled out, you mobilized some attention, there was a swarm of negative feedback for the policy, and eventually, the administration backed down. Maybe it’s fixed, maybe it’s not. This is an open question. Programs are still being unfunded, right?

I will tell you on this point, we check every day to make sure that seniors can get their Medicaid, their medicine, and access to nursing home information. But your general point is correct. There’s still a flood of abuses in a whole variety of programs across the government.

Can that mechanism of “I need to blow the whistle, then maybe a flood of outrage that’ll fix it, or maybe we’ll file a lawsuit and our courts will fix it” keep up with the pace and scale of the chaos happening right now?

We’re going to use every possible tool: court actions, legislative actions, whistleblowers, the bully pulpit. We’re going to use it all. We are still trying to find our way through the array of remedies that we have. When my wife agreed to marry me. She said, “You aren’t a real lawyer. You worked with the Gray Panthers. So, I’ll marry you because you’re not a real lawyer.” We’re now looking through all of the legal tools to make sure that we can protect our rights. But it’s not going to be a walk in the park. In some of these areas, like with the federal payments, nobody ever even thought of doing what Trump is doing, which is why it’s so important that we stop him.

Let’s talk about that for a second. Do you know how much access Elon Musk has to the overall federal government right now? Has that been quantified for you or is it just ever increasing because it’s chaos?

We believe that it’s ever increasing because to a great extent, Mr. Musk tells us that it is increasing. There was a big story that there wasn’t much being done, just general information. I got asked by the press about it late last night, and I said, “You got to be kidding me. Just look at all the stuff that he claims he is doing.” The first thing he went after was a charity. It didn’t have anything to do with waste, fraud, and abuse.

I believe that we will move quickly in the days ahead to build more tools for a legal strike approach. We’re talking about that as members of a Democratic caucus. I’ve been tasked particularly with promoting privacy for those concerned that their data would be peddled hither and yon in the payments system. I can tell you that from a privacy standpoint, giving out people’s home addresses and the like, this will be a horror show.

There’s a big question right now over whether Musk and his team’s access to that system is read-only or if they have the ability to write code. They have said it’s read-only. There’s some reporting that says they have the ability to write code. Do you know if it’s read-only?

I believe that this is data that’s being abused now. Part of this is also semantics. I’m not taking anything off the table in terms of what they’re doing. They can write code. There’s no question about that.

So, you think this argument over whether or not it’s read-only is a semantic distraction? That they do have full access to the system?

Correct. There is no question that this description is designed to lull people into thinking that Elon Musk is not doing what he tells people he’s doing. I mean, he tells people that he is doing all these things, and then they put out these cover-up stories about how he’s not really doing it.

We have a very technical audience. They’re very worried that we have increased the surface area for cyberattacks–

No question about it! Let me save you some time. No question about it!

Have you heard this from our intelligence agencies? Is this something Congress is worried about?

I am on the [Senate] Intelligence Committee, so I can’t say anything about that.

Is the Trump administration broadly being responsive to these concerns? Because we are at risk of cyberattacks. It’s a pretty bipartisan concern.

No, the Trump people aren’t telling us anything about anything.

Do you think they know what Elon is doing fully?

You asked me if Trump just sits in the office and issues executive orders. I think that’s largely what’s going on. I’m sure they have some conversations, but I don’t get the feeling that there are any checks and balances on Elon. That’s for sure.

There’s a weird gap in every Trump administration. I think it’s even weirder here in Trump 2.0 where Republican officials will not criticize the president in public. Are they understanding or aware of the scale of the problem in private when you talk to them?

They’re saying very little in the consideration of the Robert F. Kennedy Jr. nomination. For example, yesterday I brought up that our committee, the Senate Finance Committee, had passed a bipartisan measure to rein in these pharmaceutical benefit managers (PBMs) that are ripping off seniors, taxpayers, and people of all ages purchasing medicine. I pointed out that Medicare and Medicaid are under the jurisdiction of our committee and are subject to the kind of abuses that could happen with Musk and the federal payments.

And they looked up. It was clear that what I said was registering them. I said, “This is important. This is something all of you have voted for.” But they’re not speaking out. In fact, yesterday, there was apparently some kind of Republican show trial where they basically all lined up and said, “Nothing to see here.”

Do you think that holds?

Let me put it this way. There’s no way this will be something they can just continue to stonewall. Let me give you an example. I announced five days ago that the Secretary of Treasury had given the keys to the kingdom, so to speak. Yesterday there were thousands and thousands of Americans outside the Treasury Dept. speaking out against these practices. Something like 30 members of Congress addressed this, making it clear that we were going to keep at it until we secured the protections that our citizens deserve. That happened all within five days. 

I give great credit to the whistleblowers. We heard a rumor that there was some activity going on with the Treasury payments, and the whistleblowers were the ones who specifically told me that Scott Bessent had signed off on giving the keys to Musk.

That set of whistleblowers is largely the federal workforce, which is appalled. They’re filing their own actions from their unions as private citizens — just worker protection lawsuits. They’ve also all been told to quit their jobs, right? They’ve received these letters that say, “You should resign.” Musk famously used “fork in the road,” which is from a letter he sent when he took over Twitter. That may or may not be legal. There’s some big questions around that. Have you been hearing from that constituency?

Yeah, they’d like some answers about it. You can hear the headline, “Oh, we’ll buy you out. We’ll give you all these opportunities to make a transition.” But most of the experience that the federal workforce has had with Trump — and it goes to the first administration — has not exactly been confidence building. They’d like more details about how they and their families will be affected. This is not just their current and future income, but making sure that the benefits they’ve accrued get treated fairly.

What advice would you give to those workers that have received this offer?

Proceed with great caution.

Do you think that’s a farce as well? Do you think this is just a cover for mass layoffs? Is that something you’re worried about?

Yeah! I don’t trust any of this stuff. I don’t want to sound like the old-fashioned version of a broken record, but I don’t trust any of this stuff. Often you go to these meetings and they act like they’re on the level, and then they go and do everything they want. That was the first administration, so I don’t trust any of this. When it sounds appealing and you can’t get specific answers, that ought to be a wake-up call to make sure you check. The law limits his ability to make mass layoffs, so that’s a big part of the debate too.

We’re talking on a Wednesday. We usually publish Decoder interviews on Mondays. Usually, that’s fine, right? There’s two business days between us talking and publishing the conversation. Usually, not a lot happens in two days.

You can be sure that a lot’s going to happen tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, and Sunday. Tomorrow, we have a hearing on international trade. I described some of the bizarre practices that they’ve pursued in this space, like how they keep saying that the foreigners are going to pay the tariffs but it’s going to be your listeners instead. So you bet, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, there’s no days off here with the Trump whims, as I call them.

The specific question I had there involves Elon tweeting, “I work on the weekends when the other team is not in the field.” The other team that he’s describing is the federal workforce, so that is already problematic. But Congress goes into recess. People leave town on the weekends. Are you and the Democrats ready to be here all weekend to see what he’s up to?

They’re making a big deal out of saying they want to work around the clock. Look, I told you that I have this book, It Takes Chutzpah. I’ve been using some of the lessons in It Takes Chutzpah all week to try and tackle the Trump administration. I was flying across the country and taking red eyes to make sure I didn’t miss a minute in the effort to blow the whistle. That was what we were doing late on Friday night, in terms of Musk being given the keys to the Treasury payments. I know the Republicans are leaving town this weekend, so they managed to find ways to set an agenda that’s favorable to them.

Has the DOGE team been responsive to you or other Democrats at all throughout this period?

Absolutely not. I know no one who’s being briefed on the Democratic side consistently. At all, really. 

Is there a way for you to get that insight as a member of Congress?

We’re continuing, for example, to follow up with individuals who used to work at the Treasury and tap them for their knowledge. That’s been very helpful. Obviously, I can’t get into that.

Are you planning to find a way to hold hearings on any of the committees you’re on or call Elon as a witness on any of the committees you’re on?

We’re going to use every tool to excavate the information that the American people deserve. This is one of the most important issues I’ve tackled in my time in public service. It’s actually one of the first rules of Chutzpah that I spell out: “if you want to make a difference, you have to make some noise.” We’re making plenty of noise right now. We just have to keep following through until we get the job done.

One of the weirder aspects with Elon Musk in all of this is that he owns a communications platform, the preferred communication platform of many members of government. Is that a problem, that he can command attention, that he can run that algorithm any way he wishes? Do you think you have to go somewhere else?

There are certainly questions with respect to how he runs his operations, and there’s certainly some questions involving China as well. We’ll have some more to say about that before long.

You are famously one of the authors of Section 230, which protects service providers from liability for the content their users post. Elon is the service provider. He’s also the user that is posting the content. Do you have any newer thoughts about Section 230 in all this mix? Do you think it’s doing the job the way it’s intended for it to be working?

I’ve said this on your show, but I’ve always felt that the big guys — of which Elon is about the biggest — always have the biggest checking account to be able to buy what they want. Elon Musk just bought a presidential campaign. He basically was the big giver. Section 230, as you and I have talked about, is all about making sure there’s a voice for the little guy: the #MeToo [movement], Black Lives Matter, the people who probably couldn’t get a message out without what Section 230 involves.

I think that Section 230 continues to be an immensely valuable tool for the person who doesn’t have a political action committee, doesn’t have power, doesn’t have a deep checkbook. We’re going to have a problem reining in the Elon Musks no matter what because they can buy the kind of government they want… at least until we get rid of things like Citizens United.

The other rich guy in the mix this time is Mark Zuckerberg, who also owns several large communications platforms. He’s notably changing his moderation standards to favor the Trump administration’s desires. He’s allowing more hate speech, particularly against trans people, on his platform. That’s something that Section 230 protects, right? That platforms can moderate however they want. Ideally, you have some competition for moderation standards to push and pull and give people places to go, but we don’t really see that today, right? We see sort of a herd mentality.

There’s some competition. Anybody can sue Elon right now. He posts lies himself. Section 230 protects Elon’s competitors against Trump’s FCC. There are protections, but the bottom line is that when you have somebody as rich as Musk, who literally bought a presidential campaign, you’ve got to use every tool you got, and a lot of them are not Section 230.

There’s another platform in the mix that seemed very relevant during the presidential campaign, TikTok. It was banned, the law passed, the Supreme Court upheld it, and Trump paused enforcement of it. Do you think that Trump’s enforcement pause on TikTok is legal? Is that just him pushing his authority some more?

I don’t think it’s legal, but here’s what I think this debate is all about. The reality is that from day one I had the same position, unlike Donald Trump. Donald Trump was against it, and now he’s for it. I always said it would be a good thing to have an American company run TikTok and have them tightly vetted. That would, for example, have limited [former Treasury Secretary] Steve Mnuchin and others who talked about getting access to it. I’m still in favor of that as a policy issue. The question now is what the courts are going to say given that there’s been an act of Congress, but I have not changed my preference once since the very beginning.

What were the problems with TikTok under ByteDance that required that original ban-or-sell law?

I’m on the Intelligence Committee, and the issue is the closeness to the Chinese government. That was a national security issue.

There’s a lot of young people today who would say, “Sure, but then, Elon Musk is going to buy it and we see what he did to X. That is as much of a national security problem today as the Chinese government owning the algorithm.”

Musk could not pass the Ron Wyden test because you would have to have a reputable American buyer who’d been thoroughly vetted. I don’t think Musk, with all his China connections, could pass the test that I’ve described.

Have you heard about any buyers for TikTok so far?

Rumors, but nothing that I’m going to splay out in front of a national radio audience. The reality is Trump, as he usually does, just governs by whim. He starts off by saying, “TikTok is bad.” Then he learns that there are a bunch of young people who like it, and suddenly, he’s trying all of these exotic ways to deal with it. 

I said from the very beginning that my first choice was to have an American buyer who could pass rigorous vetting to show that they were independent and would meet public interest standards. I don’t think Trump’s interested much in that. In fact, you’d think that at some point, he’s just going to figure out a way to hotwire a deal where he sells TikTok, in some way, to Musk directly. And if he does, that’d be about the most corrupt example I could find.

That vetting process is not contemplated in the bill, right? It’s an interagency process. 

Yeah, this would take extra work to lock it in place, but that’s been my position from the beginning.

The reason I’m focused on this is that I see a lot of danger of algorithmic ownership. You see how Musk has managed to distort the conversation on X because he owns that algorithm. I don’t know how changing the content moderation standards on Facebook and Instagram will play out, but my expectation is a lot of minority and queer creators are going to face a lot more harassment on those platforms because the rules have been changed. The algorithm will allow more things to happen. If the danger of TikTok is, the algorithm is owned by somebody–

Hey, can I just make one point I think I may have misstepped on? I am not for the ban. I am for finding a way to get this right with an American buyer.

Right. I guess my question is if divestiture was required due to Chinese ownership of the algorithm, which would run counter to US interests, do you think that having some amount of algorithmic transparency or privacy protections would solve that problem with American buyers as well? From our audience, what I hear is that all you really need is algorithmic transparency, and then, China should be able to do whatever it wants.

Not only do you need algorithm transparency, you got a guy who’s authored a bill that moves in that direction called the Algorithmic Accountability Act, my legislation.

Under a Trump administration with this Congress, do you think that will go anywhere?

We’ll see. A lot of people now understand that algorithms are pretty complicated, but when you talk about protecting people’s education, healthcare, and jobs, they get interested.

Sure. Trump gave 75 days, which is just a number he apparently made up, and if we hit the 75 days and he says, “I’m going to extend it again,” do you think there will be litigation, at that point, about whether the law is actually in effect?

Hard to say.

Would you support that? We can’t just keep indefinitely postponed enforcement of a law?

I think I’ve described the path to get this done, and I’m going to keep working for that.

What do you say to TikTok creators right now who don’t know if their businesses will last another 50 days?

I’d tell them I’m busting my chops to get them something resembling an American buyer who’s been carefully vetted and protects their interests and all American interests.

Do you think Microsoft is a good buyer? For the audio listener, Sen. Wyden looked away first before he began answering that question.

Put me down as pretty dubious, but we’ll see.

All right. What about Oracle?

No.

All right. What about Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty?

No.

No, across the board.

Right. I think we ought to bag it on these kinds of folks.

I’m just curious. Okay. Amazon?

I’m just not going to get into a lineup evaluation batter by batter.

In the tech world, this is everyone’s parlor game beyond “does Elon run the government.” Those are the two things everyone talks about at the parties I go to. So I’m just curious. It has to be done. The clock is running out.

I think we got pretty far down the road in terms of Elon running the government and what I’m going to try to do to stop him. We probably have a ways to go in terms of TikTok, but I think I’ve spelled out what I think ought to be done. At least it’s consistent from day one.

Last question on TikTok, and I promise I’ll move on to the FCC because I’m very curious for your opinion there as well. The clock is running, right? There’s only 50, 60 more days. Do you think the deal can be made in time?

Yeah, but you’re really going to have to hustle to get the right kind of parties and go through the process. But yes, it’s doable.

Let’s talk about the FCC again. You are a First Amendment advocate. You have said to me on this show, to people on other shows, that Section 230, which you co-authored, is really about the First Amendment, and most people’s problems with 230 are really about First Amendment-protected speech. The First Amendment, from my point of view, is under the greatest full-frontal attack I’ve ever encountered as a journalist.

Could not agree more.

It is bizarre to me. It’s particularly bizarre because it’s wrapped up in the language of free speech. In particular, that language comes from  new FCC Chairman Brendan Carr, who is attacking CBS, NBC, ABC, and radio stations about how they’re using their spectrum and threatening to take that spectrum away. Is Congress paying attention to this? It feels like a sideshow, but to me, this is the most overt government speech regulation I’ve ever seen.

It’s not getting a lot of attention in Congress, but I’m doing everything I can to light the place up around it because I share your view that a big chunk of what the Trump crowd and the far-right want to do is act in the name of free speech. They make all these proclamations about how they’re about free speech, but they’re trying to do everything possible to deny the voices they don’t agree with.

Have you spoken to the chairman about the FCC? He put out a blog post today saying that he’s worried about TV commercials that are too loud, which sounds like it’s straight out of the 80s. At the same time, he’s opening inquiries into CBS News. Have you spoken to him? Have you pushed anything?

I have not since his appointment, but it’s very predictable. They find something to try and make sound relevant, but it is completely irrelevant to the big question. That makes it less likely the public’s going to pick up on the big question. I’ve had 1,103 town hall meetings, and you can read about them in It Takes Chutzpah. They’re open to all, and I don’t give any speeches. I just show up and say, “For the next 90 minutes you can say your peace. Ask me any kind of question.” It is, to me, my vision of the First Amendment.

My dad was a journalist and an author. Right next to me is one of his books on the Bay of Pigs, with a picture of Fidel Castro next to my dad in the book. The caption is “Peter Wyden knows more about it than we do,” coming from Castro. So, I’m a journalist kid, and I think the Founding Fathers, who said that a free press was more important than government, got it right. And I believe that.

Normally you would see these big companies look at an FCC (particularly a 2025 FCC) complaining about news distortion over their broadcast spectrum, and they would just bat it away, right? They would send the lawyers, the lawyers would fight, and they would bat it away. Meta was sued by Trump himself for banning Trump while he was president, saying that was somehow a state action. Very confusing. Meta settled this case and agreed to pay Trump $25 million for his library. It seems like CBS is going to end up settling the 60 Minutes case.

Hey, let me give you the real–

But I’m just asking, the big companies are caving on the First Amendment. They’re the ones that should be fighting.

They are caving like crazy, and nobody has caved more than Mark Zuckerberg. So Zuckerberg goes to Mar-a-Lago, and he tells Trump what he wants to hear. There aren’t going to be any fact-checkers. “Okay, Donald, just what you wanted. No fact-checkers.” He scores some points with Trump. My guess is that seeing how this was successful for Zuckerberg, a lot of the other big players are going to go down to Mar-a-Lago and look for favors also. 

In the process, what’s going to happen is that we’re going to re-consolidate big communications and have even fewer small voices than we had before the internet came into being. We ought to be protecting those small voices. What Zuckerberg is now a part of is doing more to help the big voices, and in effect, push the little guys out of communications.

That visit by Zuckerberg to Mar-a-Lago and what he did with the fact-checkers was a god awful thing to do for the future of communications.

But if Zuckerberg caves, Disney caves, and Shari Redstone caves because she wants to sell Paramount to Skydance so she rolls with the CBS lawsuit. No one shows up in court and says, “Actually, these threats violate the First Amendment.” Don’t we just lose the First Amendment? Doesn’t the pressure just work? How do you push back?

We’ll have to find ways to crank up the pressure, and I’m going to do that. You have people like the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) that might step in, or other kinds of groups.

ACLU.

The ACLU, EFF, Ron Wyden, and those are your three. Sign me up.

The argument I’ve heard from the other side — I’m not saying I agree with it, but I’ve heard it and I understand where it comes from — is that these are mercenary moves. Meta spending its time and energy fighting a First Amendment lawsuit instead of just paying the money runs the risk of them losing, right? It’s worse for Meta to roll into courts — especially all the way up to the Supreme Court, which is 6-3 conservative — and lose a First Amendment lawsuit than to just pay the money and leave the law effectively where it is, even if the norms change. Do you buy that argument?

No. I think that both of them are harmful, and I think Zuckerberg is looking at buying whatever influence he possibly can because he sees it works. It’s not that complicated. Write big checks and you get influence with Trump.

Carr is now targeting NPR and PBS. He’s saying that they’re technically running ads by asking for viewer support even though they’re publicly funded, and that he should look into their content. Is there a way for us to try to protect NPR or PBS?

The best way to do it is by statute, and we’ll see if any of these rural Republicans whose farmers really like those services in the morning are going to stand up for them. What we’re describing is continued good business for the big guys, and they’re doing all the things possible to run out their competition. That includes virtually everything you can see. I’m trying to find new ways to get voices for people who don’t have power and clout join with a Republican trying to get more streaming services. So we’re busy looking for all the options, like getting C-SPAN out and streaming.

You’re talking about rural farmers. You spoke earlier in the show about the outcry from people and Republicans backing down. Are you seeing the policy hit on some of these Republican constituents actually driving change? Are you able to reach those populations? I think a lot of people are worried that they’re fully captured by whatever TikTok right-wing influencer they see.

It’s very early. I gave you some examples where we had some effect, but let me give you the bottom line here. I think very rarely does political change start in Washington, D.C. and then trickle down. I believe it’s almost always in the exact opposite direction. When people at home get concerned about access to communications they care about and whether they’re getting clobbered by tariffs, they go to their elected officials. They’ll see them in a grocery store, they’ll see them at the gas station, they’ll see them someplace and say, “What the hell are you doing? I’m getting clobbered on that.” And you end up making change. It’s a grassroots, juggernaut setting in that really changes things.

I probably use that as much as any legislator. The way we were the architect of the PIPA-SOPA movement when all the power, all the money, was out trying to redesign the internet for the big guys. I organized a lot of grassroots groups, and [Sen.] Harry Reid set a date for a vote, and suddenly, 15 million texts and emails came in, and we beat all the money.

You’re saying, “Do you see all of this happening yet?” When I was with the activists yesterday at the Treasury talking about trying to rein in Musk, I said, “This is really stunning.” This is less than five full days after I blew the whistle on the problem. And look, we got thousands of people and 30 legislators in the streets. So put me down as continuing to believe that citizens who mobilize can make a difference.

That’s what I describe in the book. The book, for example, gives 12 rules, “Ron’s 12 Rules of Chutzpah,” that describe not just how people are looking at past examples, but how you can use the rules outlined in the book to make a difference. That was the first rule that we used yesterday: fight bad things, make a difference and speak out for good things, and above all, make noise.

The book is really about pushing for progressive political change. You have a history of doing that. I think the question on everyone’s mind right now is when the other side doesn’t seem to care, and you can’t reach their constituents because they own the media platforms and their algorithms are driving all kinds of views that honestly just dismiss any concerns or turn the Democrats or any opposition at all into cartoon characters, how do you drive that kind of grassroots change? You have a lot of people who voted against their own interests here. They voted for cheaper egg prices and they’re getting Trump saying they’ll understand when terrorists drive prices up.

Yeah, but they’re also catching up in a couple of weeks. Musk’s popularity numbers are really low. They’re finding out that Donald Trump tells them, “I am going to lower the prices of your groceries” — he said that point-blank — and then, he puts up a white flag of surrender a couple of weeks later and says, “Nope. Can’t do anything about it.”

We’re going to build every single day between now and 2026 as many wins on the issues and matters people care about. It’s not sitting around and waiting. When we did that during the first term, we gained a few seats at the midterm. Two years later, we beat them all together. This is not going to be an easy walk in the park, but I’ve been part of efforts where I was able to beat incredible odds, which is what chutzpah is about. Chutzpah is about being bold, taking on big odds, and reaching out and finding people with all points of view. That’s what we’re going to be doing.

Can you do that when you don’t own the communications networks? Just to boil the question down. Elon Musk owns Starlink in a world where–

I’m talking to you, and you guys get the message.

That’s true.

You guys get the message out, and this guy’s working to make these changes that we’re talking about. He’s got a book that tells you how you can do more of it.

There you go. I hate to hammer on it, but you can see the bigger picture. You have a Brendan Carr at the FCC putting pressure on legacy broadcast media. You have a Mark Zuckerberg and an Elon Musk telling their algorithms what to do, what kind of media to disseminate, and what’s acceptable speech and not. You have a TikTok sale in the offing that could go to a Trump loyalist. Is there an alternative media? Do you look at Bluesky and say, “Okay, decentralize social media. Provide a necessary check.”

I’m on Bluesky. I love it. But if you want somebody who’s just going to say, “All I’m going to do all day is hang crepe because it’s hopeless,” I’m the wrong guy. I’m a 29-year-old Jewish kid who wanted to play in the NBA. That was a ridiculous idea. I got a scholarship, but I couldn’t get that dream, and I ended up being one of the youngest people elected to Congress by beating an incumbent. 

Guess who else did that not very long ago? [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], again, beating incredible odds. So, you’re talking about ways where you can really make a difference and beat the odds. Frankly, it takes a lot of chutzpah to do it. People say it’s hard to beat the powerful and the money, but I just gave you some examples of doing it.

There’s a big split right now in the tech community. You have a lot of regular workers at the big tech companies who are horrified at what’s happening, and then you have their bosses who all showed up, sat at the inauguration, and are trying to get various things out of the Trump administration. As you said, I think they realize they can just write checks and get what they want. 

But their interests are not aligned. I don’t think Tim Cook’s interests and Mark Zuckerberg’s interests are aligned. I don’t even think they like each other. I don’t know if Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk like each other. I think they’re pretty ferociously competitive about their rockets and general cowboy demeanors. Is that a split that you see that can be exploited for political gain here? That the interests of tech, which has now taken over, are not actually aligned?

If you look at the chutzpah rule, you say you’ll work with anybody regardless of political philosophy to get the public interest. I think that if Trump equals chaos, we’ve got more to work with than people think.

Have you heard from that constituency at all? From the big tech companies? What I have heard from their executives, very directly, is that they thought the Biden administration hated them, that they could not work with Biden at all. They couldn’t even get the meetings they needed or meetings with the right people. What they generally got was, “We’re going to break you up,” and then there were a lot of lawsuits aimed at breaking them up. What you might still get out of the Trump administration is, “We’ll break you up, but you might be able to buy your way out of it.”

Let me tell you what I think a bunch of these big tech companies are saying. Yes, they didn’t like the policies of the Biden administration, but they’re seeing more and more particularly young people — you see it in schools, on TikTok, and the like — who want to have their own businesses. They want to be entrepreneurs. They want to be the future. I think that big businesses who don’t pay attention to the small guys that have ideas and creative approaches are making a mistake because that’s who I’m throwing in with. I’m throwing in with the little guys because I think they can make a big, big difference. 

Biden was a big opponent of mine in technology for 30 years. I don’t think that the Democratic Party is about being for Big Tech. I think being for small business is going to be the future of the Democratic Party. In fact, small businesses and users. The two people that I fought for in the tech space are going to be my vision for the Democratic Party going forward. You can count on that.

Is there any lesson you took away from DeepSeek? The big tech companies are spending or want to spend enormous amounts of money on data centers, on energy–

The real message is how important open source is. Open source communications have got to be in the ballgame. I’ve continued to push them through all my time in public life, and it’s even more important today than it was.

The other lesson there is that restricting chips to China didn’t work. The Chinese companies were able to take somewhat underpowered Nvidia chips, over-optimize them, and then outcompete.

Because I think we’re wrapping up pretty soon, let me just mention that the Chinese are engaged in all kinds of abusive practices. Salt Typhoon, for example. The phone companies were supposed to have secured the phones 20 years ago, and I’ve been screaming my lungs out about it. I’ll be introducing another bill on this because when this latest set of breaches took place, a bunch of conservatives in the Congress said, “This is the biggest hack in American history.” Well, I’m going to make sure that we get another debate on this whole set of abuses. My bill will be going in soon.

Salt Typhoon didn’t collect a lot of attention, but this is a massive breach of the American phone system.

Stunning breach!

The Biden administration was telling people to use secure and encrypted communications. Why do you think that went so unnoticed?

I think that a bunch of the big companies you mentioned, like Microsoft, all said that they were taking care of things and tried to lull people through it. It wasn’t until the Chinese actually got away with it that anybody woke up and said, “Oh my goodness Mildred, we’ve got a problem.”

On the same note, the notion that we would ban them from having our chips and that would keep them from competing in AI? I don’t know if that worked. I am looking at DeepSeek and saying, “Well, constraint breeds creativity. They got really creative, and they built a cheaper model that performs as well as our most expensive models.” Do you think that it’s time to rethink that approach to technology limitation?

I think that’s a fair judgment. We understand that we have national security interests, and we’re certainly trying to compete with these people all over the world. And rethinking this is a sensible idea. We can’t stop China from getting chips, but we can certainly notice if it’s more expensive. We can make it more expensive.

To bring that all the way back around to the top. Elon Musk, who may or may not be running part of our government, has significant ties to China. It’s a huge market for Tesla.

You’ll hear a bit more from me on this very soon.

Can you give us a preview?

Nope. I’ve got to go through all the security rules and all the rest, but you’ll hear more about it soon.

Do you think whatever you have to reveal will provide the necessary momentum to stop the chaos run of Elon Musk through the government?

I think people are going to pay attention to it. It’ll be an important part of the debate.

Sen. Wyden, I think we’re out of time. Thank you so much for being on Decoder. This was great. Thank you for letting me ask that question so bluntly at the top as well.

No, I appreciate it. You guys, really care about policy issues, and thank goodness.

I’m going to ask you for your advice, and I mean this sincerely. Last question. The Verge has always only cared about policy issues. This has been a thing that we say. We write about policy, not politics, because policy is important to people. It’s real. But it seems, here in 2025, politics and policy are the same thing. Do you feel that?

It certainly makes me reflect on the policy that I’ve always said. It comes up at town hall meetings all the time. I say, “The best politics is good policy because you get in a position to be able to win people over for the right reasons. The reality is that these are really serious questions that don’t lend themselves to quick thought. We have to be ready to babble on both fronts. Let’s get the best policy ideas that we can and then work like hell to have the grassroots support in order to get them passed.

But here’s my pushback. It seems like right now, the politics are winning. The politics are about collecting as much attention, being as loud on social media, and being as “authentic” as you can be. That lets you do whatever harebrained policy idea you want, including announcing a takeover of Gaza from the White House. That feels like a meaningful split. How do you bring that back into alignment?

I’m going to continue to say that it’s possible to make this temporary and we can move on. But it’s only going to come about with good ideas and political organizing that will have to mobilize people all across the country. I mean, you can’t fake the price of eggs. Donald Trump’s got a problem, and if we pound that issue, a specific policy matter… I am going to talk until I run out of larynx space about him saying he was going to lower food prices and then putting up the white flag of surrender two weeks later.

Now, the homeowner is worried about the price of eggs and you can’t fake that stuff. We’re going to do the best policy and work like hell to make sure people know about it. This last campaign was particularly hard because we made a big candidate change very late in the game, and it’s pretty hard to get your issues out that way, and we can do better.

Sen. Wyden, I’ll let you get back to work. It sounds like you have a lot to do. We’ll talk to you soon.

Thanks.