Auto Emissions Rules, Alabama DEI Law, Reddit Goes Public

The oil industry is not happy.

Why are automakers on board?

That's Steve Inskeep, and this is Up First from NPR News.

Alabama follows other conservative states by banning public schools and universities

from spending money on diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Students who oppose the bill say they'll fight for those ideas anyway.

disappear and we're not going to be silenced.

The company is going public with a stock offering, and some users say they may try to drive the

price down.

Why?

Stay with us.

We've got the news you need to post on Reddit or just to start your day.

Her latest research into the intimate relationships people are having with chatbots.

Technologies that say, I care about you, I love you, I'm here for you, take care of me.

The pros and cons of artificial intimacy.

That's on the TED Radio Hour from NPR.

vehicles.

By 2032, the government expects two-thirds of new cars, trucks, and SUVs to have a plug.

Here's EPA Administrator Michael Regan.

in United States history.

Camilla, good morning.

Car and Energy.

You're the correspondent, is what I think you are.

Okay.

Anyway.

Anyway, how do these rules work?

That includes both greenhouse gases and the stuff in exhaust that's bad for human health,

starting in model year 2027.

And this is not a ban on gas cars.

It's not even a mandate that companies have to make electric cars.

What it does is it sets this standard that you can meet however you like so strict for

these tailpipe emissions that, realistically, companies are going to have to make a lot

of battery-powered cars, or at least plug-in electric cars, which also can run on battery

power, to meet these rules.

So this has been one of the concepts of climate efforts for a while, set a standard, leave

it to companies, leave it to industry to figure out how to meet them.

But it seems to mean electric cars.

So what does this mean for those of us who might be looking for a new car in a few years?

So in a few years, three years, not much of a difference.

In a few years, eight years, a big difference, a lot more electric vehicles than there would

be otherwise.

And that timeline, the EPA had initially proposed rules that kicked in a lot faster, and autoworkers

and the autoworkers union and automakers lobbied really hard for a slower start to give more

time for things like charging infrastructure, and they got what they asked for, so it kicks

in slower.

of President Biden.

So how does the auto industry itself feel about these final rules now that they've been

changed?

I hear the word challenging a lot, but there's a positive tone.

It's important that despite some negative headlines about EVs lately, the auto industry

is really adamant that electric vehicles are the future.

And in that context, having regulations around how fast that transition happens can be helpful.

It puts everyone on the same timeline and gives some certainty around investments.

You know who's not happy about these rules is the oil industry and the biofuels industry,

for that matter.

Expect some lawsuits challenging them in the future.

I'm thinking about then the effects of this.

You're saying this is a less radical timeline than the administration initially wanted,

but they've adopted the timeline that they can, given the politics, given the economics.

How good will it be for the environment?

Environmental groups say they're very significant.

EVs are much cleaner than gas cars, even counting the footprint of batteries and charging.

So very significant for the climate.

This also helps human health and, side note, saves money on fuel.

That's if they stick, like you said, Steve.

And that is part of the reason why the administration bent over backwards for the car industry's

interests here.

The rules are more durable.

They're harder to overturn by lawsuit or by future administration if the industry that's

actually being regulated will stick out their necks to support them.

public colleges, and state agencies.

The governor said she wants to stop, quote, bad actors on campuses from pushing a, quote,

liberal political movement.

the reaction to it.

Good morning.

Good morning.

What exactly does this law do?

The sponsor of the bill said it's designed to protect students from indoctrination in

the classroom.

This law prohibits public schools, universities, and government agencies from maintaining a

DEI office or funding any DEI programs.

It also requires students use bathrooms that correlate with the sex on their birth certificate.

And another big thing in the bill is it stops any program that teaches what the law calls

a divisive concept.

Any teacher who knowingly violates this act can be fired.

What does that mean exactly when you're trying to ban it?

You know, what is a divisive concept?

During a debate on the House floor, Democrats actually questioned the language.

They tried to get the sponsor, Senator Barfoot, to give a clearer definition.

But the best response they got was that it's talking about race or gender or nationality

or religion in any way that makes a student feel superior or inferior.

way about DEI makes white people feel bad or may make some white people feel bad.

So this is the kind of thing they say they want to prohibit, and teachers can be punished

if they're saying too much on this topic.

What are you hearing from students about this?

He's a sophomore at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

He was involved in a protest against this bill, and he says students are disappointed

by the outcome.

I asked him if there have been any changes yet, were students afraid or have any clubs

or organizations paused?

And he says, actually, it's only made diversity efforts stronger.

But Luna was really concerned about losing access to some of the things that make school

enjoyable.

You know, he's a part of a networking organization for Latino students, and they're worried their

advisor might lose her job because she works out of the school's DEI office.

But he says he hopes this law will galvanize students.

attention to state politics.

in Montgomery, along with Luna, earlier this month.

Isabella Campos was one of the organizers.

We as students are able to stand up for ourselves and get external support, because regardless

of if we're not going to receive funding from the state, we're not going to disappear

and we're not going to be silenced.

rather than from some formal state initiative.

But whatever their views, they don't seem to have persuaded the legislature.

So for Republicans, they said this bill was created to protect students.

You know, they don't want them to have what they call a, quote, sense of guilt.

When Governor Kay Ivey signed into law, she said it supports academic freedom, embraces

diversity, and treats people fairly.

But, however, at the Capitol protest, students waited outside of the Republican caucus meeting

hoping to talk to them, and Luna's legislators went out the back door and would not speak

to them.

stock.

Its ticker symbol RDDT.

Some of its most active users are not so thrilled and say they might try to disrupt the stock

offering.

Bobby, good morning.

Raising money and becoming profitable.

In the company's nearly two-decade history, it has been very bad at precisely these two

things.

Now, back in 2005, Reddit was founded by Steve Huffman and Alexis Ohanian.

They were two college roommates at the University of Virginia.

This was barely a year after Mark Zuckerberg founded a little social network known as Facebook

from a Harvard dorm.

This was, of course, the era of dudes starting social media sites from college dorms, right?

But Reddit was a collection of freewheeling anything-goes message boards where people

posted under pseudonyms about everything from sports to politics to internet memes.

Jump ahead to today, Reddit has 73 million users, but despite all of these people posting

on Reddit, it's never been able to turn a profit.

They've had leadership crises.

The site has not exactly been known for civil discourse.

It's been chaotic.

Not exactly something advertisers want to place ads against, but it really has changed

in recent years.

It's become more tame and rule-bound than it used to be, and it makes hundreds of millions

of dollars now in advertising.

But it's really tried to make even more money.

Those efforts have run into protests from regular Reddit users.

They prefer a scrappy version of the site that doesn't care about making money.

Last year, Reddit decided to start charging third-party developers for access to its backend

data.

Here is how Steve Huffman, the co-founder and CEO, framed that decision in an NPR interview

back in June.

We are simply in an unsustainable position, and so we need to get into a sustainable situation.

There was a mass protest that made thousands of communities known as subreddits go dark.

Some of those users see themselves as the renegades of the internet, and that they're

pushing against all this Wall Street money that's about to pour into the site.

There was this Reddit group that created havoc.

It was called Wall Street Bets.

The users of this group heard that Wall Street was going to bet against this video game store

that is now famous in a way, GameStop, so they sent GameStop's price soaring more than

1,700%.

It created crazy market turbulence.

Well, that very group is now talking about throwing sand in the gears yet again because

they are grumbling about Reddit becoming more corporate.

And Reddit could be inviting this because the company has agreed to set aside 8% of

its stock to power users who volunteer to run this site as Reddit's way of giving back.

But they may come to regret this because some of these folks on Wall Street Bets are now

talking about betting against Reddit because they're so angry about the IPO.

that behaves like an adult company.

Huffman wants the company to mature, and more than 70 million Redditors just want it to

stay a fun, childish playground.

This is really the core tension here, Steve, right between the users and its corporate shift.

I'm Michelle Martin.

Today's Up First was edited by Denise Rios, Susana Capilouto, Pallavi Gogoi, Alice Wolfley,

and Ben Adler.

It was produced by Ziad Butch, Ben Abrams, and Taylor Haney, and we get engineering support

from Arthur Laurent and our technical director, Isaac Coleman.

Join us tomorrow.

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