VF Hive editor Jon Kelly, Kristen Scholer and the Hive panel discuss the top five stories of the week in politics, technology and business. Tom Frank and Bess Levin kick off The Hive 5 with the first legislative victory of Donald Trump's presidency. They talk about the tax reform bill that, critics argue, will raise the deficit, harm the middle class, and only benefit corporations.
Maya Kosoff covers the latest troubles for Uber. She and Nick Bilton discuss the recent ruling from the European Court of Justice that Uber is essentially a cab company, as opposed to a digital technology company.
Bess Levin and T.A. Frank weigh in on Bernie Sanders' suggestion that the Republican tax bill will be completely re-written once the Democrats take over Congress in 2018. The panel discusses a possible Sanders run for president in 2020.
Bilton and Kosoff return to report on Facebook, and how 2017 was a reckoning for the company. They talk about whether Mark Zuckerberg can pivot in 2018, or if the company will be broken up.
Levin and Frank round out The Hive 5 with a discussion on the return of Anthony Scaramucci to the news. They bring up his criticisms of Steve Bannon at a recent holiday party, and whether he might be well-suited to star in his own reality show.
Emily Hoeven, newsletter editor at CalMatters, joins Cheddar News to discuss California Governor Gavin Newsom's gun law modeled after Texas's abortion law.
Chuck Rocha, host of 'Nuestro' podcast and opinion contributor at The New York Times, joins Cheddar News to discuss why Democrats are losing Hispanic voters.
More businesses are requiring workers to return to the office, but there is concern that many employees in the middle class, especially women and people of color, need remote work options for reasons including childcare and financial security. Joan Williams, director of the Center for WorkLife Law at the University of California, joined Cheddar to discuss why office mandates could be detrimental to the middle class. She noted that while companies claim a return to offices would help foster more collaboration and efficiency, reports show that they are successfully able to do their jobs from home.
The U.S. postal service has confirmed that it secretly developed and tested a blockchain-based mobile voting system ahead of the 2020 election. Susan Greenhalgh, senior advisor on election security, Free Speech for People, joins Cheddar News to discuss the cybersecurity complications of a mobile voting system.
The U.S. Supreme Court ruled to allow the controversial Texas abortion law to remain in effect, banning abortion at six weeks and allowing any private citizen to sue a person or doctor aiding or abetting someone seeking an abortion. Outraged at this decision, California Governor Gavin Newsom is working to draft a proposal in line with the law as it relates to guns. Shawn Hubler, California correspondent at the New York Times, joins Cheddar News to discuss.
Even as tech giant Google implements a vaccination mandate, charging its employees to declare their vaccine status within a time frame or risk dismissal, the federal government is tangled up in the court system trying to impose one of its own. Cindy Cohn, the executive director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Harry Nelson, founder and managing partner of Nelson Hardiman LLP, joined Cheddar to debate the ethics, efficacy, and legality surrounding the issue. While Cohn noted that she thinks the federal mandate might be legally sound, her organization is also concerned with a separate question of privacy. "At EFF what we're most interested in is the digital surveillance that's going along with some of these attempts to try to track and confirm whether people are vaccinated or not," she said.
