Special Episode: The Viral Movement Holding Politicians Accountable

Nico (0:00)

What I hope happens is there's enough Americans that start to have these experiences, and they go, I like this, this works for me.

Lawrence Lessig (0:06)

And if we lose, then we ought to really be getting the pitchforks and running the revolution.

Daniel (0:10)

80% of voters approve of not taking corporate money.

Maya Cook (0:13)

Washington isn't a swamp to run an effective campaign. They have to accept a lot of this money.

Daniel (0:18)

There's this unmet demand that we have been meeting of people that are just done. They're so tired of it. If someone says, every politician is corrupt, why should I care? You let the corrupt politicians get away with it.

Lawrence Lessig (0:28)

This is Larry Lessig, and this is another episode of the podcast Another Way. Now, it's very different.

Usually, we do really budget productions. This year, for the first time, we've had video. But when I told our executive director that I wanted to do this episode, she was like, we have to splurge and have this amazing setup. Because these two guys are the most important people in money and politics in America today. And they are building the most important movement. And I know because I've been in this business for 147 years.

And I can tell you, these two are building something that's absolutely going to work. So we're going to talk to them about it, but let's make sure we all know who we are. So this is Maya Cook, who is the executive director of Equal Citizens. She's come in now. You've been here for a year and a half.

Maya Cook (1:20)

But working with you for three years.

Lawrence Lessig (1:22)

Yeah. You've been working on this forever and with me for three years, now you've been running our organization for a year and a half. NICO and Daniel have been behind, well, you're going to introduce what you guys in fact do. But everybody knows NICO from, he's my total social media.

Maybe admitting a little bit too much, but he's my total social media feed. Talking about money and politics issues. But tell us about how you got this thing going and what this thing is in your mind. Now, you've even transitioned a bit to embrace the fight against AI. But let's start with the money and politics.

Maya Cook (1:57)

Even before you do, can you ask the question? Just to kick us off.

Nico (2:00)

Oh, yeah. Is your member of Congress a piece of shit?

That's a question, right?

Maya Cook (2:04)

Yeah.

Nico (2:05)

But thank you for the kind words about our work. I mean, it started with, as you mentioned, my social media in 2025 Then me and Daniel got connected over that summer after I started making these videos asking the question, is your member of Congress a piece of shit?

And then we started up the Political Integrity Project in November of 2025 Does that sound right? So it's still bad.

Daniel (2:31)

We're about to get the renewal on our domain next week.

Nico (2:34)

Yeah. So it's been almost a year. Wow.

Lawrence Lessig (2:37)

That is a lot for one year.

Nico (2:39)

Yeah. I mean, in that year, we launched the Integrity Index, our website that has all of our financial integrity grades.

We've launched the Trump Tracker, tracking the finances of the Trump administration.

Daniel (2:55)

Track the California governor's race when that was like on the heat of it.

Nico (2:58)

California Tracker. We've launched our Political Integrity Pledge, which many candidates and now we have almost a dozen incumbents that have taken that anti-corruption pledge. It's been a fast-paced year.

Daniel (3:10)

Yeah.

So my background, I worked in some campaigns, I worked in some of these nonprofits, and I think the biggest thing I realized before pitching this to NICO, and starting to work with NICO on this, is that for a lot of these nonprofits, you're just throwing reports out into the void, and it's like you produce this well-researched, fact-checked piece of content that maybe is covered by a couple smaller industry outlets in the political world. What does it do?

Maya Cook (3:42)

Is this open secret slander?

Daniel (3:44)

I'm not slandering. No, they're a very good research fool. The thing is, when you're of focused mission, and you're not trying to do necessarily voter persuasion, or persuasion in that way, you can do something really exciting and really good. It's when you're trying to be like, oh, we have effectively a consumer side. A lot of those places aren't built for it. But when we have a built-in audience, it means you can skip all of step one, two, three, four, and five where you have to get people to care. We don't have to worry about that. They already care.