The Push to Outlaw Child Marriage in CA, CEO of The Onion on the Future of InfoWars

from KQED. Support for KQED podcast comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, dive into a world of political intrigue with Simone Bocanegra and Mary Queen of Scots. Discover a life of Parisian luxury in Monon and laugh along with the marriage of Figaro. Learn more at sphopra.com. Minions don't wait, especially for Wi-Fi. Summon's same-day Wi-Fi from Xfinity and get the same price for five years. And seeing minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash same-day Wi-Fi. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace, and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message, and it turned out the seller was super chatty, kind of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew, well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for. From a browse to a bike ride, this summer find more on Facebook. Good evening. From KQED, this is the latest, a podcast that updates throughout the day, bringing you local news when you want it. I'm Dana Cronin. It's Thursday, August 13th. Here's a quick rundown of this hour's headlines. From KQWED News, I'm Natalia Navarro. The U.S. Department of Justice says California is failing to protect incarcerated women from sexual abuse and harassment by prison staff. A two-year federal investigation into the state's two women's facilities found a pattern of misconduct by officers and a failure to properly investigate complaints and hold staff accountable. Here's prison advocate amicamota. You know, the DOJ is really validating what survivors have been saying for years. And none of this should be surprising to CDCR. None of it should be surprising to the legislature. Federal officials are calling for expanded camera coverage, more confidential ways to report, and stronger consequences for misconduct. State prison officials say they have a zero-tolerance policy for misconduct and have already taken steps to improve reporting options and expand the use of cameras. Students at Robert F. Kennedy Jr. High School in Richmond will return to campus as scheduled on Tuesday after testing from state toxic substance experts deemed the campus safe. The school was closed indefinitely earlier this month after soil testing found the presence of a carcinogenic substance known as PCE, which used to be commonly used in dry cleaning processes. West Contra Costa school district spokesperson Liz Bernie Sanders said the vapors didn't enter the buildings so students can return to campus on the 18th, the district's first day of school.

Staff will return to campus tomorrow. I'm Natalia Navarro, KQBD News. Here's a deeper dive into the local stories we've been following. California is one of just three states that allow children to get married. The state has no minimum age requirement for marriage. Advocates and lawmakers are pushing to change that. The San Francisco standards, Michael McLaughlin, has been covering this and joins me now. You know, I was really shocked to find out about this. And as I'm sure many of our listeners are in your story out this week in The Standard, you interviewed a woman who grew up in Napa County and was married when she was underage. Can you tell us a little bit about her? Yes, I interviewed Christina Sutton, who is now a real estate agent in San Francisco. And she reached out because she is pushing for this law to change the marriage age. because of her personal experience. When she was 16 and living in Napa, she met a man who was 21 and in the Coast Guard, and they wound up getting married when she was 17 after her parents gave permission for her to get married. There are some safeguards in place in California. To be married before turning 18, the minor and a parent have to do an interview with family court services and both potential spouses must be interviewed by a judge. From what Sutton was saying and the other research you've done, is that enough to stop coercive and abusive relationships? Well, Sutton told me that it's not. She felt that those safeguards are easy to bypass because in her case, she felt like her parents did not have her best interests at heart when it came time to meeting with the judge. Although it wasn't legally required back then in the 90s, the judge did ask to interview her. And she. said she was coached by her parents and very, very easily convinced the judge that she was mature enough to handle the responsibilities of being an adult and getting married. What is currently in the works to change California laws regarding underage weddings? There is a bill that has been introduced by a state assembly member, Gail Pellarin, from Santa Cruz County, that would create a complete ban on marriages for people under 18.

It's passed the State Assembly and is now awaiting a vote in the State Senate, which could happen this week or sometime soon. Is there any opposition to this proposed legislation? Yes, in fact, there is. And it comes from the ACLU, California Action. That group says that this law would be a... departure from California's longstanding commitment to honoring minors' ability to make important decisions for themselves. And in a letter they wrote to the state assembly member who is drafted this legislation, they compared it to giving minors the right to have an abortion or to choose to carry a pregnancy to term on their own without their parents' involvement. Has there been any efforts in the past to pass some more legislation restrictions on these marriages? Yes. In fact, California was riding kind of that early wave of... the push to end underage marriage going back to 2017. But the law ultimately got watered down. And instead of banning marriage outright, it instituted these requirements that we talked about, about having to be reviewed by a judge and members of the family court services. How is it possible for minors to get married in California, given California laws about statutory rape? That. What advocates for this law point out is a gray area. Statutory rape laws do not apply in cases where the minor is victimized by their spouse. This is also not just a California problem. Far from it. 30 other states allow marriage for 15 to 17 year olds with parental consent or court approval. Are there any federal pushes for reform here? Not that I have heard because marriage laws are set at the state level. So I have not seen any. federal action on this. Are there any other states that California can look to as an example for its own reform? Yes, absolutely. What I found was that the idea of setting 18 as the minimum age for marriage is relatively new. It was only in 2018 when New Jersey and Delaware became the first states to create this requirement that people have to, that minors could not get married. All right. Thank you so much for your reporting. Thank you for having me. That was San Francisco Standard Deputy News editor Michael McLaughlin. And I'm Natalia Navarro. This is KQED News. The latest will be back after this quick break.

Support for KQED podcast comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall dive into a world of political intrigue with Simone Bocanegra and Mary Queen of Scots. Discover a life of Parisian luxury in Monon and laugh along with the marriage of Figaro. Learn more at sphopra.com. Support for KQED podcasts comes from Stanford's Master of Liberal Arts, inviting students on a journey of ideas culminating in a Stanford graduate degree. An info session will be held on August 20th, mLA.standford.edu. We're back with the latest. Now for a deeper look behind the headlines with KQED's forum team. Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. You may have already seen last month the Onion's launch of its parody of Alex Jay Jones' conspiracy riddled platform Info Wars. Hi, everybody. Welcome to the new Info Wars. I'm your host, Tim Heidecker. We have officially taken over Info Wars now. We are in charge of Info Wars. This is a new dawn, a new era. We're turning the page and we're forgetting the past, but we must always remember the past leads us towards the future. This hour, we learn what the new dawn, new era of Info Wars under the onion will actually look like, what it means that a disinformation platform infamous for Alex Jay Jones calling the 2012 murders at Sandy Hook Elementary a hoax, now being under the leadership of a satirical news outfit famous for its mass shooting headline, no way to prevent this, says only nation where this regularly happens. I'm joined now by the CEO of The Onion, Ben Susan Collins. Ben, welcome to Forum. Thank you so much for having me. Really glad to have you on. Well, before this acquisition by The Onion of InfoWars, you had covered Alex Jay Jones as a journalist, right? Yeah, I covered the rise of all these grifters sort of taking over our government and world. I was a disinformation and extremism reporter. I beat on the night of the 2016 elections to watch info wars and call people about what they were saying. It was, you know, Roger Stone was on there, completely unfazed and being like, yeah, we're about to take over. And Alex Jay Jones was shocked that they had won. And you're going to remember that Alex Jay Jones. once had Donald Trump on his podcast. And Donald Trump said, I will never let you down to Alex Jay Jones. No, obviously that has fallen apart since then. But that's what I used to cover is how these people turned America's tragedies into power. And in Alex Jay Jones's case, for a very long time, a lot of money. Yeah. Talk about how Alex Jay Jones operates and the impact his conspiracy theories can have. Sure. So the way he operates in terms of making money is pretty simple. You take the most recent tragedy that took place, say the opposite happens and the government is responsible for it. The only way to protect yourself is to take these iodine pills or these boner pills or something and everything will get fixed. And you buy them at a subscription rate and he makes millions of dollars. And it worked for a long time. But he honestly kind of came up against his match, these families.

who had nothing left to lose. And they banded together and they said, this is enough. Like, only in America do you lose your child in the worst way possible? And then you have to move because you're being taunted by a psycho trying to make money off the backs of them. So frankly, they are American heroes, the San Diego families. I'm so glad that we are finally getting this, you know, at least the Infor's name taken away from him. But eventually he'll have to pay up for real. Yeah, the anguish that Alex Jay Jones conspiracy about Sadie Hook and the harassment campaign, as you say, that it created for the families, that really had a profound effect on you, didn't it? Yeah, I, you know, my friend's girlfriend was shot and killed on live TV. That's how I got into this beat at all. Her name's Alison Parker. She was a news anchor and she was killed in Rwana, Virginia. And her killer used, like, live streamed it on Facebook Live. This was in 2015. And now so much of that is sort of deregure in American life where people are live streaming mass murder, whatever. But it wasn't at the time and it really, it did affect me. And I think it affected a lot of people like. Once you know somebody, it's pretty rough. You can't let go of it. And I just didn't want, I don't know, in this case, he was kind of going to get away with it. He was just going to get in for his back for nothing and just move on. And we just decided that. after all of that these people went through, I think they deserved to win, and we're providing that win right now. Right. Jay Jones was ordered to pay more than a billion and a half, or almost a billion and a half dollars to the San Diego families for the defamation and distress, and he basically said he was never going to pay it. So when the opportunity to take over Info Wars and to take it away from Alex Jay Jones came, you took it. But I understand you sought the family's blessing. Oh yeah. You don't want to make a joke out of something without their permission. I, you know, I met several of them in the past through my work and I talked to them. The thing that people forget about victims of mass shootings and, you know, victims of a lot of stuff in America that shouldn't be happening is that they are people and they have senses of humor and they, you know, they want things to move forward. And they want to live big lives. And I want to make sure that they're okay with it. But I also want to let them know, like, this could be fun. Like, this could give you some amount of justice. And also, you know, you get to call a celebrity and give them little notes about how that guy's voice sounds. So that's what happened with Tim. And unfortunately, it's a little bit too good. Yeah, actually, we have a clip of an example of Tim, you know, doing exactly what you say, which is that, you know, Jay Jones would peddle conspiracy theories and then he would create, you know, like a supplement or a cure or a process to be able to solve the issue that he's creating the fear about. So let's hear a clip of Tim Heidegger. And I feel like I have to constantly say it's Tim Heidecker.

impersonating Jay Jones because he's so much like him. We now have a scientific technological system by which we can take your urine and ship it to us and we'll be able to turn, extract the gold minerals. And as you know, our body is made up of many minerals and salt and different minerals, including gold. So you say this is the opportunity to have a little fun and also a little justice for the families. Talk more about the justice part. What is the justice? We've been able to take this thing and just sort of lay bare what this whole ruse is, which is... you know, you get people really scared. And then once you get them scared, you can convince them of pretty much anything. And, you know, when Alex used it to sell supplements, but he also used it to tell everybody that pretty much every mass shooting in American life didn't actually happen. And what comes with that is two things, right? It comes with that a lot of power. Like you get, you get to meet the president, you get to be friends with them and all this stuff, which is what Alex was. But it also makes you miserable. And deep down, Alex is a miserable guy. That's what we want to outline here with this show is you see Tim's version of Alex. You know, he loses his horse, the only thing, his horse, horace, the only thing he cares about in his divorce. And his ex-wife calls in and yells at him and tells him how big a coward and idiot he is. Like, it's a big character study in, like, you can go down this path. You can make a lot of money in being a ruthless idiot. But also, you're a pathetic psycho. And that is, that's what we were able to tell the first six weeks of info so far. Tim did, in fact, die in the last episode by taking too much of his laxative supplement. But I don't want to give too much away to the people who are watching. This is Ron Blue Sky writes. I've been aware of Info Wars for many years. It is one of the original fake news websites, no more credible than the weekly world news. What it had in common with The Onion was that stories in neither were believable. I do want to ask you about why does Info Wars fit well with The Onion? It allows us to go after a kind of...

I would say omnipresent media that is frankly beneath the onion itself. Like the onion, we're allowed to, you know, we have to look like the New York Times. We have to go after absurdity from the lens of like the most almost like lunatic officialdom, right? this is the opposite, right? There are a target there that would be beneath a New York Times to talk about or something like that. And we need to, they are everywhere. And we still need to talk about them. So that's a big thing that we talked about is how, for example, how could we go after trad wives? Like these people who are sort of these women who are giving away all of their rights to fit in and right-win culture. And in episode four of Infant Wars on the Haggerty show, which is a, the other show on InfoWRs so far, we had a tried wife on who locked herself in a cage and hissed at people because that's what she was told to do. So, like, that is, in fact, beneath the onion. It is not beneath. There's nothing beneath Info Wars. Like, the thing that's beneath Info Wars is, like, the top of a sewer, we can't, we can't degrade it any further than it already has been. And the value of that. I'm sorry, just what would you say that is? Oh, we got to do it. Yeah. Like this many people being this crazy from the algorithm and not making fun of them at a professional level, like we've made it 10 years without that. We need the pros to go after these people. So that's what the point of InfoWars was, is to get like the world's best setters on this between the Onion and 10. to take a crack at these folks and really do full-on character studies. And the Haggerty shows about making composite characters of these folks. Today, there's a guy on tonight's episode of InfoWres, anywhere you want to watch it, 5 p.m. Pacific on YouTube specifically if you want to go there. Right, it airs Thursdays, yeah. That's right. There is a guy, for example, who thinks he can live forever. And I think we've seen that guy out in 50 trend stories in the world. You're not going to believe this, but he cannot. And you should watch to find out how he loses the battle. Right. The world's death radio is steady at 100%. Yeah. But I guess also what I like is the point that you make that you're not necessarily going after the people, but you're going after the ill, right, that the people are embodying, essentially. Yeah, I mean, the reason Tim died is because, like, Alex Jay Jones is kind of a one-note guy. He's kind of boring. But the larger sickness here is pretty pervasive, and we have to make fun of all those things that have popped up in American life. And there's unfortunately a wealth of it right now, but it is, it's very commercialized. It's a very lucrative business to convince people that they are. you know, they're one pill away or they're one, you know, Zoom class away from fixing all the problems in their life, when in reality, it's a lot more complicated than that. There's a lot more forum for you to hear. Just look for the show wherever you listen to this podcast.

That's the latest from KQED, but remember we're updating throughout the day, so come back anytime. The latest is powered by the newsroom at member-supported KQED in San Francisco and is made by me, Dana Kronin, Srishti Prabha, and Bianca Taylor, with support from Jen Chien, Ted Goldberg, Keith Miziguchi, and Katie Springer. Some members of the KQED podcast team are represented by the Screen Actors Guild, American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, San Francisco, Northern California Local. Thanks for listening. Support for KQED podcast comes from San Francisco Opera. This fall, dive into a world of political intrigue with Simone Bocanegra and Mary Queen of Scots. Discover a life of Parisian luxury in Monon and laugh along with the marriage of Figaro. Learn more at sphopra.com. Minions don't wait, especially for Wi-Fi. Summon's same-day Wi-Fi from Xfinity and get the same price for five years. And seen minions and monsters only in theaters. Exfinity. Imagine that. Restrictions apply not available in all areas. Learn more at Xfinity.com slash same-day Wi-Fi.