ZadekpediaJosh Hawley is discussed across three episodes of The Bob Zadek Show, in each case by a guest or by Bob Zadek rather than in his own voice. The episodes present him as a senator associated with two distinct controversies: proposed government regulation of social media content moderation, and the congressional challenge to state electoral votes in 2020.
Social media censorship and the “regulatory shakedown”
In a June 2019 episode, Bob Zadek and Professor Frank Buckley discussed growing calls for government regulation of social media censorship following high-profile de-platforming incidents. According to the episode summary, they critiqued Senator Josh Hawley’s proposed legislation as a “regulatory shakedown” and explored Buckley’s alternative proposal for a disclosure-based commission intended to provide transparency without granting the government enforcement power Who Will Censure the Censors? (2019).
The Oversight Board as an alternative to regulation
A July 2020 episode returned to the same terrain. Bob Zadek framed the discussion around the suspicion that Facebook was editing content so that a user interested in conservative points of view might be denied it without knowing, and around what he called the fearful threat of government regulation. In that context he said that hearings were being held and that Josh Hawley and others were getting a lot of attention. He then asked John Samples whether the Oversight Board was formed to preempt the need for government regulation Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020).
Samples, a member of the board, described the structural arrangements behind it: Facebook set up a trust and laid down $130 million for the first six years, money that cannot be taken back, and board members cannot have their salaries reduced or be removed for the judgments they make. He described the board’s purpose as giving users trust and gaining legitimacy for what he called the inevitable task of taking down expression, which he said is a big deal in the United States Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020).
Zadek drew the contrast explicitly, asking who Americans and Facebook users would feel more protected by — Samples and his colleagues, or Josh Hawley and his colleagues — and answering that the answer was pretty clear to him. He also compared the board’s structural independence to that of the CFPB, which he noted is despised by libertarians, while telling Samples he was not despised, at least not yet Why Government Regulation of Tech Censorship is Undesirable (2020).
The Electoral Count Act and the 2020 challenge
In an August 2022 episode, Ilya Somin discussed the Electoral Count Act of 1887, enacted in the wake of the disputed election of 1876, and the vague aspects of that legislation which he said Trump and others tried to exploit in 2020. Among the problems he identified was the issue of Congress’s and the vice president’s powers to refuse to recognize particular electoral votes, and the fact that under the current rules a single senator or member of the House willing to challenge any state’s electoral votes is enough to trigger a process and a vote to potentially reject them 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
Somin said it would be desirable to raise that threshold so that one rogue ambitious senator is not enough, and named Josh Hawley as the ringleader of this stuff on the Republican side. He also said that Mike Pence, to his credit, correctly decided that he did not have the authority to overturn results on his own authority even under the 1887 act, but that it was desirable to make that clearer 3 Libertarian Ideas to Strengthen Democracy (2022).
Across episodes
Two episodes — the 2019 discussion with Frank Buckley and the 2020 discussion with John Samples — treat Hawley’s proposed regulation of social media content moderation, the earlier episode characterizing it as a regulatory shakedown and the later one placing it as the background threat against which Facebook’s private Oversight Board was constructed; the 2022 episode with Ilya Somin addresses a different subject entirely, Hawley’s role in the electoral-vote challenge. The episodes show no development in the treatment of Hawley across these appearances: he functions in each as a named example of government power that the guests and host distrust, and no guest or host revises an earlier characterization in light of a later one.