Aspen Ideas Festival: Andrew Yang discusses a new political party in the U.S.

In response to an audience question, Yang gave his pitch for how to change the Electoral College while acknowledging it would be very hard to get rural states on board with eliminating it.

Yang said that instead of allocating electors through the Electoral College, states should allocate them proportionally, much like Maine and Nebraska do.

In terms of success for Forward, Yang said he’s focused on the number of Forward or Forward-affiliated officials elected in the next 12 months. He noted that people can support the Forward Party and remain Democrats or Republicans.

Yang said that he thinks Forward could “get into the hundreds” of local officials and that he hopes to grow the party’s budget.

Yang said there should be federal regulations for AI models, licenses for models with more than a million users, a Cabinet-level secretary concentrated on AI and a global AI body.

He also warned that AI development is accelerating rapidly and that regulators need to catch up fast.

“These models are just getting stronger and stronger every single moment,” he said.

Yang said the Forward Party does not necessarily push particular policies and instead looks to empower local leaders to make their own decisions based on what’s best for their communities.

“We want to let the people that know best lead in that direction, and the folks in the community generally know best what to do,” Yang said.

He added that he hoped the Forward Party could be a place where people who were anti-abortion rights but also concerned about the environment could find people they disagreed with on some things while agreeing on others.

“When people ask me what policies Forward stands for, Forward stands for reconnecting the people of this country to your elected representatives,” Yang said. “They can deliver what you want.”

Yang said the two-party system “is uniquely susceptible to authoritarianism.”

He also pointed to warnings from some of the Founding Fathers about a two-party system.

Yang said ranked-choice voting and more parties would help address creeping authoritarianism.

“The way out of this is not doubling down on partisanship and polarization,” he said. “It’s trying to get us to see ourselves as Americans.”

Yang indicated he's unlikely to run for president in 2024 while suggesting Biden should drop out.

“I’m a math guy. And the math says that if I run, I probably increase the chances of Trump winning, and that’s the opposite of what I’m here to do,” he said.

Yang noted that some surveys show a lack of enthusiasm for both Trump and Biden, and he said he thinks Biden should step down and have someone else run on the Democratic ticket.

“This is someone who voted for Joe Biden campaign,” Yang said about himself. “But I do not think that this is the right approach.”

He later said that he would “never say never” about running for office again but that it’s not his current focus.

Yang said the U.S. political system has created a system in which many politicians focus solely on their primaries, meaning they have to appeal to only a sliver of the broader population.

“It’s because their audience is not you. Their audience is that 10 to 12% of the most ideological voters in their party that they need to keep happy,” he said. “That’s the only way they can lose their job.”

He added that part of the challenge of starting a third party is that it requires a distributed effort. “If you start a national party, it turns out you’re starting 51 organizations, because you have a party in each state and then you have the national,” he said.

Asked whether he would run for president again, Yang joked, “Apparently I have another 40 years,” a reference to the ages of both President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump.

Yang said he and the Forward Party are more focused on local races, noting that surveys have found that many Americans want a third party. He also pointed to the mostly full ballroom of people who came to hear him speak. “You’re all what I call at least a little bit third-party curious,” he joked, getting some laughs from the room.

Yang said the parties are often not trying to run against each other in races they don’t think are competitive. “If you go to rural areas, it’s not like the Dems are there saying, ‘Oh, we’re gonna make it happen.’ And the reverse is true, and in a lot of big cities, it’s not like the Republicans are there,” he said. “I’m going to suggest that that’s a recipe for bad policy, a lack of accountability and a lot of frustration,” he added.

There are now 15 local officials who identify with the Forward Party, Yang said. One of them, he said, is Jeni Arndt, the mayor of Fort Collins, Colorado.

Sellers said that the last time she spoke with Yang, he said he had a negative view of U.S. politics.

“I had a great time running for president. I want to make that clear,” Yang said.

He joked that he never expected to be president, eliciting some laughter from the audience, and he said his goal was to try to help prepare the U.S. “for the most profound economic transformation of our time.”

“I ran for president to try and warn us and prepare us for the fact that this transition was coming up. We didn’t seem to understand it or be reckoning with it, and our political system certainly did not want to have that conversation,” he said.

We’re in the the historic Hotel Jerome for a conversation between Andrew Yang and NBC News’ Savannah Sellers about whether the U.S. could use a new political party.

Yang, along with his #YangGang, mounted a surprise campaign that gained some traction on the internet as a Democratic presidential candidate in 2019. He’s best known for backing universal basic income, a plan to guarantee every person in the U.S. with a certain amount of money every month.

In 2021, he left the Democratic Party and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of New York. He is now a co-chair of the Forward Party.

And that’s a wrap for Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi.

We’ll be back for a conversation between Savannah Sellers and former Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, focused on whether the U.S. needs a new political party.

Khosrowshahi said Uber continues to explore self-driving cars, pointing to a recent partnership the company signed with Waymo.

He said that he thinks the technology is still a ways off but that Uber will be ready when it is.

"We think we’ll have lots of autonomous partners in all categories," he said.

Asked by Sellers what that means for drivers, Khosrowshahi said he expects to have more drivers on Uber's platforms in the years to come, even as self-driving technology becomes more common. He said Uber’s system will figure out which routes will be better for humans and which for self-driving cars.

Khosrowshahi added that he thinks self-driving technology may bring prices for transportation down, which could increase consumer demand and keep drivers employed.

"Basically any vehicle that’s available to move anyone, either on demand or now increasingly scheduled, we want to wire up and we want to make it available to you in an incredibly easy, delightful way," he said. "And if we do our job, that vehicle will be a green vehicle."

Khosrowshahi said Uber's efforts to boost charging infrastructure is focused on public and private partnerships.

He said Uber is working with BP, for example, to provide discounts to its drivers to use BP’s growing charging network.

Khosrowshahi said, as well, that governments tend to focus on adding charging infrastructure in cities but that is not necessarily ideal for Uber drivers.

“The fastest growing parts of our platform are actually not a city centers but are in kind of secondary parts of the city and outskirts of the city,” he said.

Given that, Khosrowshahi added, Uber is providing data to city governments about where they could bolster charging infrastructure.

Asked by Sellers how Uber plans to get restaurants, including major chains such as McDonald’s, to switch to sustainable packaging, Khosrowshahi said he is worried not about bigger companies but rather about small restaurants.

He said Uber plans to continue to use incentives to get restaurants to make the switch, even helping them source sustainable packaging.

“It’ll start with incentives, and hopefully, if we do our jobs right, again, by 2030 we’ll be there,” he said. “We won’t need to use a stick, so to speak — we’ll pull our way there.”

Asked by Sellers how Uber is communicating with drivers about going green, Khosrowshahi said it is trying to pull drivers instead of push them.

He pointed to a program in which drivers could rent EVs from Hertz to "try before you buy."

Khosrowshahi said Uber is not going to charge passengers more money for EVs because they will not pay a premium, though he added that customers will pay a "time premium" by waiting for an EV.

Asked how he balances Uber’s green mission with its bottom line, Khosrowshahi said his decisions focus on the long term.

"If I were a short-term animal thinking about optimizing for Uber’s future in the next three years, I wouldn’t be making the kinds of decisions that we’re making,” he said.

He added that he sees going green as a competitive advantage: "If we lead, then I think our competitors are going to have to chase."

Khosrowshahi said Uber has created a charging map so drivers can see where all the EV chargers are in the cities in which they work. The app will also help drivers figure out when and where to charge, he added, and make sure it does not send drivers on long rides if they are low on energy.

“It’s all about just making it unbelievably easy for the rider to choose to do their little bit to save the environment and then for the drivers to do their bit and in terms of going green, as well,” he said.

Khosrowshahi said those features are available now or will be in the coming months.

“2030 is coming up fast, right?” he said.

Khosrowshahi said he hopes that by 2030, every driver on the platform will have an electric vehicle, "because it will be crazy for them not to."

He said that Uber will require drivers joining the platform in 2030 to be in EVs but that it will hopefully not be necessary to force drivers with gas-powered cars off the platform.

Ubers drivers are already switching to EVs at a rapid pace, Khosrowshahi added — five times faster than the average driver. And they drive more.

"They’re usually covering four to five times more miles," he said. "So the impact of our drivers' going green is really significant. This is the first audience that should go green."

Khosrowshahi said an Uber trip is the first time many people ride in an EV: "In the U.S. actually, 40% of our riders say that when they drive in either an 'Uber Green' or a 'Comfort Electric,' that’s the first time they’ve ever been in an electric vehicle."

Speaking about Uber's sustainability efforts, Khosrowshahi emphasized a push to get drivers to embrace electric vehicles.

He added that the company is also looking at sustainable packaging for food deliveries.

“For us, giving eaters the option to choose sustainable packaging can create that economic feedback loop, which is giving restaurants an incentive to go green, not just because it’s the right thing to do but because it can actually help businesses,” he said.

Khosrowshahi added that Uber is offering drivers an economic incentive to switch to EVs, noting that they are still expensive cars. The company is giving drivers $1 more per trip if they drive EVs, he said, and he said it is also working to address challenges like EV charging.

Sellers started by mentioning that she took a recent Uber ride in which Khosrowshahi was the driver.

Khosrowshahi said he has been driving for Uber, first delivering food, to better understand the challenges the company's drivers face — and because he was going stir crazy during the pandemic. He said he now drives once every two or three weeks and has a five-star rating.

“It was a lot tougher than I thought it was going to be,” he said. “Getting started going on the platform was a little confusing, you know, where do you pick up the food? Where should I drop it off? What happens if something goes wrong?” 

Khosrowshahi said he got nervous at times, because he wanted to provide a good service, and he added that driving has helped him improve Uber's driver experience.

“Understanding that experience, one, led me to really push our company and our employees and our product people to have that experience, as well,” he said. “And two, I think has allowed us to improve our earner-facing product.”

We’re live with the start of a conversation between Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi and NBC News’ Savannah Sellers.

Khosrowshahi has been pushing Uber in greener directions as part of an effort to make the company emission-free. That’s tough to do when you’re a transportation company, but amid the rise of electric vehicles and other green technologies, Uber has set 2040 as its target year to have all rides and deliveries globally be in zero-emission vehicles or through micromobility or public transit.

Khosrowshahi was named CEO of Uber in 2017 and helped the company weather a significant downturn during the pandemic. In May, he told CNBC that Uber was seeing “strength across the board” after its first-quarter earnings beat analyst expectations. Uber shares are up almost 75% in 2023, to trade at about $44 a share.

The panelists offered several ideas about changes that could help improve teen mental health.

"The single most powerful force for adolescent mental health is a strong relationship with a caring adult," said Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and senior adviser at Case Western Reserve University’s Schubert Center for Child Studies.

Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University, said schools could teach kids yoga and meditation, and make sure they get physical exercise, so that they are better equipped to handle stress.

"We can’t 'therapize' our way out of this," he said.

Damour said parents can also help reduce pressure on teens to get accepted into the small group of top-tier colleges with highly selective admissions. And Steinberg added that admissions committees could limit the number of AP courses or extracurricular activities that somebody can list on an application.

"We are really driving them crazy by the pressure that we're putting on them to be not only perfect, but to appear that you're not even trying that hard to be so perfect," Steinberg said.

Damour offered one other suggestion: that parents not allow their kids to use phones in bed.

"I have parented with this rule, but when I say it, people look at me like I have three heads: Nobody should have a phone in a bedroom where somebody is supposed to be sleeping," she said.

Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology at Temple University, challenged the idea that social media is a primary culprit in the teen mental health crisis. Teenagers aren't just worried about how many likes they get on Instagram, he said — they're concerned about major threats like school shootings and climate change.

"There's more evidence that depression leads to social media use than there is that social media use leads to depression," Steinberg said. "So the effect is minuscule, especially compared to other contributors."

Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist, emphasized that social media can expose teens to more information about the world compared to generations past.

"All day long, they know what’s happening in the news and also what’s going on with every person they know. I think that’s a lot to take in," she said.

When it comes to social media's effect on mental health, Damour said, she worries most about the way phone use keeps kids from sleeping, being physically active and spending time with other people.

Though CDC data show that rates of depression and suicide attempts have increased most dramatically among teen girls, teen boys' suffering shouldn't be overlooked, the panelists agreed. Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist, said boys are dying by suicide at a significantly higher rate than girls.

"Girls as a group attempt suicide more often. Boys as a group complete suicide more often," she said.

The panelists also noted that girls are more likely to experience internalized symptoms of depression and anxiety — which are the primary focus of the CDC's survey questions — whereas boys are more likely to act out through violence, aggression or criminal activity.

"I'm not convinced that the boys are suffering much less than the girls," Damour said. "I am convinced we're not asking the questions that would surface their distress."

An underdiscussed aspect of the teen mental health crisis is that there aren't enough mental health professionals available to meet teens' needs, according to Lisa Damour, a clinical psychologist and senior adviser at Case Western Reserve University’s Schubert Center for Child Studies.

"It’s a pretty small workforce who cares for teenagers, and it’s highly specialized training," Damour said. "So when we had this huge jump in distress, it’s not like we can magically deliver, you know, a fourfold increase in the workforce who’s trained to care for those young people."

Laurence Steinberg, a professor of psychology and neuroscience at Temple University, said that even the young adults at his university struggle to get an appointment at the school's counseling center and often face a three-month wait.

Teen girls and LGBQ+ teens are experiencing remarkably high levels of mental distress, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found earlier this year. More than 1 in 4 girls included in the CDC's Youth Risk Behavior Survey said they had seriously considered attempting suicide in 2021.

In a conversation moderated by NBC News’ Savannah Sellers, panelists are discussing the interventions that have potential to improve teens’ well-being.

The panelists are Lisa Damour, clinical psychologist and senior adviser at Case Western Reserve University's Schubert Center for Child Studies, and Laurence Steinberg, Distinguished University Professor and Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology and Neuroscience at Temple University.

The panel began at 3 p.m. MT/5 p.m. ET.

Neal Katyal, a law professor at Georgetown University and a partner at Hogan Lovells, said during the panel that the affirmative action case could lead to universities trying to make a "proxy for affirmative action."

"So say we look at Pell Grants, and you know, or some sort of socioeconomic status, and will that be challenged as just doing affirmative action through the backdoor? Absolutely it’s going to be challenged. This opinion doesn’t give us very much guidance on it," Katyal warned.

He also said that a lot of litigation in the education space will return to the lower courts.

"There will be fights at the K-12 level. There’ll be fights in the universities," he said. "There will be fights in the corporate setting as well. That is, this decision has implications for how corporations think about their [diversity and inclusion] programs."

Pam Karlan, a professor of public interest law and a co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School, said on the panel that she has one concern in the short term when it comes to the affirmative action decision.

"For students who are upper middle class or who have gotten scholarships to go to excellent private schools or the like, they will have guidance counselors who will be able to tell them how to write the kind of essay that will talk about their experiences in a way that will help to make them an attractive applicant," she said.

"For students who are going to underfunded public schools in the middle of nowhere with a ratio of students to guidance counselors of 400- or 600-to-1, they are not going to understand how this new process works. And so they are less likely to write the kinds of essays that will make them attractive candidates under this kind of new regime."

Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute, said in his remarks during a Supreme Court panel that what will be key from Thursday's affirmative action ruling will be how universities respond.

"The devil is really, I think, going to be in the details in terms of how the schools respond and what the courts say about how they responded," he said.

Neily said that his wife is half Japanese and therefore his kids are a quarter Japanese.

"This is something, an issue of particular concern in my household," he said. "And there was, I think, rather compelling, empirical evidence that Asian students had to perform substantially better across a whole variety of measures in order to have a chance of being admitted to Harvard."

On the heels of the Supreme Court's decision today to reject race as a determining factor in college admissions, a panel of legal experts will discuss the court's rulings this term.

The panelists are Jeffrey Rosen, president and CEO of the National Constitution Center; Neal Katyal, the Paul and Patricia Saunders Professor of National Security Law at Georgetown University and a partner at Hogan Lovells; Pam Karlan, the Kenneth and Harle Montgomery Professor of Public Interest Law and co-director of the Supreme Court Litigation Clinic at Stanford Law School; and Clark Neily, senior vice president for legal studies at the Cato Institute.

The panel begins at 1:40 p.m. MT/3:40 p.m. ET.

Sittenfeld’s latest release, “Romantic Comedy,” follows Sally Milz, who writes for a fictional show called “The Night Owls.”

She told Variety in April that she was inspired by “Saturday Night Live.”

“While my family was watching a lot of 'SNL' during the pandemic, I thought to myself: Someone should write a screenplay for a romantic comedy about a woman who’s a writer at a place like 'SNL' who writes a sketch making fun of the phenomenon of men from the show dating these stunningly beautiful, super famous celebrities who are guests on the show — and how that phenomenon doesn’t seem to happen with the female writer and the gorgeous, famous male celebrity,” she told the publication.

“… A few months passed, and I thought, Oh, maybe that screenplay that someone should write is a novel, and maybe that someone is me. In that way, I think the title 'Romantic Comedy' naturally arose from that.”

Curtis Sittenfeld knows how to write romance.

Before the release of her latest book, “Romantic Comedy,” she penned the popular “Eligible: A Modern Retelling of Pride and Prejudice.” The book is inspired by Jane Austen’s novel but is set in Cincinnati and has a few updates to the classic story.

She’s also known for her book “Rodham,” which is an alternate history novel imagining Hillary Clinton’s life, and “Prep,” a coming-of-age story set at a fictional private boarding school.

That’s all from the panel on immigration.

Up next, NBC News' Savannah Sellers will sit down with author Curtis Sittenfeld to discuss her new book about a comedy writer who believes she is done with love until she meets a pop star who challenges her assumptions.

That session is scheduled to begin at 11:50 a.m. MT/1:50 p.m. ET.

Krish O’Mara Vignarajah wrapped up the panel by saying there needs to be a change in narrative that recognizes immigration as a politics problem, not a policy problem.

“When we talk about these people, we’ve got to understand that they are us,” Vignarajah said. “We need to recognize and embrace the fact that we welcome immigrants, not because they’re Americans, but because we are.”

“If we don’t fix this, we will no longer remain the greatest nation in the world,” Vignarajah said.

In response to a question by Llamas about who should be allowed into the U.S., Krish O’Mara Vignarajah said that there is an underlying assumption that the country is full.

"We have a lower percentage of immigrants today than we had in 1910," Vignarajah said.

She added that immigrants should be welcomed because "the greatest strength of our country is that people are tragically still willing to die to come into it."

Vignarajah noted that when critics argue that immigrants should enter the U.S. through the "right way," they have to understand that there really isn't a right way, referencing examples of Ukrainians entering through the southern border after Russian President Vladimir Putin's invasion.

Ducey believes immigration is a solvable problem that requires rebuilding the trust that has eroded between the political parties.

The first step, he said, is border security, which includes a "physical barrier," satellites and technology, more law enforcement and clearer rules.

“We all know that the asylum laws are being gamed by many people, and yes, there are folks that are in need of that. But we also know the legal game that’s being played at the border. So you can put one foot on American soil and then disappear into the ether for years,” Ducey said.

Mary Kay Henry, the international president of Service Employees International Union, said that the U.S. doesn’t have a comprehensive immigration system that treats people humanely, adding that the discourse has been limited to conversations about the border and not people’s well-being.

“That’s a key part of conversation, that the demonization of immigrants that has intensified in our national discourse in the last eight years has completely pushed aside,” Henry said.

In answering a question by Llamas about sending migrants and refugees to other states, former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey said he thought bussing people to Washington, D.C., was “the right way to go.”

“I had my respect for these people and to also act as governor to get some action from Washington, D.C., on this crisis-level issue,” Ducey said.

Last year, Ducey along with the governors of Florida and Texas drew headlines for sending thousands of people north on buses and airplanes.

In response to a question from Tom Llamas about how he views issues at the border, Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas, said people in his district feel they’ve “had enough and they’re looking for someone to solve the problem.” 

“I represent a district that’s over 70% Hispanic. ... Many of the constituents are first-generation Americans, and they are tired, they’re exhausted,” said Gonzales, whose district stretches from San Antonio to El Paso.

We’re kicking off the day with the panel “Wicked Problem: Immigration,” moderated by NBC News anchor Tom Llamas and featuring speakers Rep. Tony Gonzales, R-Texas; former Arizona Gov. Doug Ducey; Mary Kay Henry, the international president of the Service Employees International Union; and Krish O’Mara Vignarajah, president and CEO of Lutheran Immigration and Refugee Service.

The group will discuss the complex issue and what policies that meet labor and security needs and humanitarian obligations would look like.

The panel begins at 9 a.m. MT/11 a.m. ET.

At a panel on gun violence, moderator Jenn White asked Rep. Lucy McBath, D-Ga., how much has changed since she first started advocating for gun safety after her son, Jordan Davis, was shot and killed in 2012 while sitting in a friend’s car at a gas station.

McBath said that while gun safety advocates are making strides, “this is a slow process.”

“We’re looking at a public health crisis that has been evolving over years. It is a cultural crisis that we’re dealing with and it will take time to dismantle this cultural crisis,” she said. “But, yes, things are changing.”

Today's panelists and moderators will discuss immigration, the future of the Supreme Court, the mental health crisis affecting teens and much more.

Check back here throughout the day for the latest.