It Could Happen Here Weekly 181

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
All media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 1 (00:27):
Good morning podcast fans, and welcome to it could happen here.
It's me James today and I'm joined by my friend
and colleague Garrison Davis Hige.

Speaker 3 (00:37):
Hello.

Speaker 1 (00:38):
Hey, So what I want to talk about today is
a little piece I wrote. I wrote it on my Patreon,
but I want to kind of discuss it here, read
it to you and talk about it about what we
talk about when we talk about immigration. So if he
recently sent me an Associated Press piece on the Daddy
and Gap, and the piece was reflecting on the lost
of economic opportunity for the MBRA people who had previously sold,

(01:01):
as you heard in my series right products services accommodation
to migrants coming through a Garyan gap. But if you
read that whole piece you'd never know they were Ember
because the word Embur doesn't occur once in the piece, right,
you'd never know that the Ember people existed. They never
appear in the story. Instead. The ap which is currently

(01:24):
going toe to toe with the Trump administration on whether
it should call the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of
America or not, and was ejected from the White House
Press Pool at one point for refusing to call it
the Gulf of America, used the phrase comarca Indigenous Lands
in its reporting, which I don't know where this came from.

(01:44):
It has kind of a strange capitalization. If you were
just reading the piece, you might think that that was
the name of the comarca, like that it was a
proper noun, but it's not. The commark is like I
guess you could. You could reughquate that to an American state.
It's like an administrative division of Panama. The name of
the comarca is Embera Unan, but that doesn't appear anywhere

(02:06):
in the appiece, and you could to be clear, Like
I understand that some reporters don't speak Spanish. I understand
that some reporters, like you know that they are not
like particularly expertly given region. Neither am I that was
my first time in Panama, But like this is something
you could find out on Google Maps, right.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
It's not unique to the AP.

Speaker 1 (02:26):
It happens all the time, right, and I want to
talk about that today because it happens at the US
is southern border too. One of the reasons that I
wanted to go to the Dallian was because I felt
like the Emberda story was not being told when people
talked about the Darian Gap. When they're mentioned at all,
it's kind of in passing or not as people who
have agency, right, And even I think these stories about

(02:48):
like the lack of income that they have off to
migrants leaving kind of strip them in a of agency
in the way that they're told. When people talk about
the Darien Gap in media, they kind of use this
heart of darkness construction. Obviously it's justed Comrade novel, but
like this idea that like it's where the wild things are,

(03:10):
I don't know, like it strikes me as very almost orientalist.

Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yeah, orientalist is what I was going to say.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah, And it's like it completely discounts that there are
thousands of people who live there who've raised their families there,
Their children play fucking basketball there, right. They spend their
whole life there, and they bury their elders there, and
they have done for thousands of years.

Speaker 3 (03:33):
For them, it's their home, right.

Speaker 1 (03:34):
And I understand that the jungle could be scary, and
I think anyone who's listened to my series will will
understand that, Like the jungle was scary for me sometimes,
and it could be a very harsh environment. But if
you're someone who belongs there, if you're comfortable there, it
can also be home, and it could be beautiful and
it could be bountiful. And I think the same thing

(03:56):
is true of the mountains and deserts and rivers that
make up the USA southern border. As it can kill people,
I'm well aware of that, But for the people who
call it home, the desert is somewhere that contains their
memories and their sacred spaces, their childhood recollections, and the
remains of their ancestors.

Speaker 5 (04:13):
Right.

Speaker 1 (04:14):
And the emission of indigenous perspective is something that we
saw again when CHRISTI Genom decided to waive a number
of laws in order to facilitate faster construction of the
border wall.

Speaker 3 (04:24):
So I want to pud that.

Speaker 1 (04:26):
Again the AP coverage there the AP and again they're
far from unique in this, right, Lots of other outlets
did this too. They seem to have only engage with
the DHS press release as opposed to the actual proclamation
by knowing, which you can find in the federal register. Right,
So the press release only focused on the environmental laws

(04:47):
she was waving, DHS said, and I quote to cut
through bureaucratic delays. DHS is waving environmental laws, including the
National Environmental Policy Act, that could store vital products for
months or even years. This waver a clears the path
that are rapid deployment of physical barriers where they're needed most,
reinforcing our commitment to national security and the rule of law.

(05:10):
The rule of law thing kind of made me laugh
as they were like, here we are waving like a
dozen or so laws. But I'm not a big rule
of law person, so I guess, like that's fine. It
seems that almost every outlet though, like that's what they
read and that's what they ran with, like that they're
waving these environmental laws, and I think that can sometimes

(05:30):
be this like we still see this all the time
in the legacy press, like when they talk about environmental laws,
it's this idea that it's like some kind of like
people who want to protect the flowers and the plants,
and like that it's not that serious, you know, and
that like these environmental laws are something that's not that
are nice but not necessary.

Speaker 3 (05:50):
Yeah, And like some of.

Speaker 1 (05:52):
These environmental laws, like specifically the ones that regulate water,
will determine the future of places like California, like and
oviously places south of the border, right the water doesn't
know where the border is. And like in the previous
Trump administration, they wave some environmental laws, including ones about floodwater,
which that combined with the expedited way which they built
the border wall, I guess, led to them not putting

(06:14):
floodgates in part of the wall, which then led to
the wall damming up with like dead trees and dead
cacti right when it rained heavily, and then the wall
becoming a barrier to water, and then the wall getting
broken or washed away, right because it didn't have like
sluice gates so they could open to let the water out.
The AP went to someone called Earth Justice for comment,

(06:35):
and to their credit, that person said quote waving environmental,
cultural preservation and good governance laws that protect clean air,
clean water. Say if God precious cultural resources and preserve
vibrant ecosystems of biodiversity will only cause further harm to
our border communities and ecosystems. That person is the only
person who mentioned the cultural damage it's been done here,

(06:58):
unless a reader themselves that the Federal Register isn't linked
in any of these pieces, right, it really is. I
try and link to it when we talk about something
in executive disorder. But unless you've found that yourself, you
wouldn't know that. Along with waving these environmental laws, and
like I've said, those are important, they also wave something
called the Native American Grave Protection and Repatriation Act, according

(07:21):
to the Department of the Interior. I was kind of
surprised this was still up on their website. Actually, I
thought this might have been purred, so like a lot
of maybe it.

Speaker 4 (07:29):
Just maybe it's just like screwed it by Yeah.

Speaker 1 (07:32):
Yeah, like well, I mean no, apparently no one fucking
talks about it, so yeah, maybe they got away with it,
you know, Like it's always funny going on government websites
now being like oh it's gone, like finding dead links
to so much even in stories I've written in like
twenty twenty that those links are dead now. NAGRA requires
any federally funded entity to return human remains, sunery possessions,

(07:53):
objects of cultural patrimony, and sacred objects to the deceased
persons and their descendants by and I'm quoting for website
now consulting with lineal descendants, Indian tribes and Native Hawaiian organizations,
or Native American human remains and other cultural items, Protecting
and planning for Native American human remains and other cultural
items that may be removed from federal or tribal lands,

(08:15):
Identifying and reporting all Native American human remains and other
cultural items in inventories and summaries of holdings or collections,
and giving prior notice to repatriating or transferring human remains
and other cultural items.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
So the waiver allows.

Speaker 1 (08:32):
Them not to do these things right crucially, in the
context of border wall construction, what allows them to do
is not to conduct an archaeological survey before they dig
the border wall. And again, like, I don't know why
this isn't something the legacy media isn't concerned about. It
wasn't in twenty twenty either right when they started doing this,

(08:53):
they were blasting areas where something called miden soil was found.
Mid and soil is soil or that contains evidence of
cremated human remains. Right. I wrote a piece in twenty
twenty for Sierra about this. And normally before these digs
there would be an archaeological survey done by a tribal
representative would be there to take part in that. Right,

(09:16):
that would take time and it would delay construction. Instead,
right now, the construction will continue without considering a damage
done to the cultural patrimony and ancestral remains of the
Kumii people here in San Diego, whose homeland spanned both
sides at the border, and who were here long before
the US or Mexico was talking of. I can't think
of a good fucking ad pivot.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
Yeah, there really is no good at pivot for.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Stuff like this.

Speaker 3 (09:39):
No, there's not.

Speaker 1 (09:41):
We're just going to do adverts now and we are back.
The Cumi not the only indigenous people who homelands have
been significantly permanently damaged by the construction of border barriers.

(10:05):
Right further east, in the homelands of the Tornada people,
where I've spent a lot of time. Wall construction has
destroyed Sacred Cuaro's. Soguaro's. That's the big cactus, like when
you think of a cactus, right, like the cactus Yeah, yeah,
yeah yeah with the two arms. You could put a
little hat on that cactus if you wanted to, maybe

(10:26):
give it like a little six shooter and it would
look like it was a cowboy. Yeah, it's the it's
literally the cactus. It's in all the Western films that
were filmed out at Old Tucson there. Yeah, we used
to ride our bikes from the passcalt Yaki Reds to
the place where they filmed all those Western films. That
that was our loop. A very very weird experience that place.
It's like a one day I will write my fucking

(10:48):
five part documentary about the myth of the Old West.
But you can find it. You can find it there
in Tucson. The Soguaro's people aren't aware of orded the
highest respect as ancestors by Otam people, and they play
an important role in ceremonial and culinary traditions that have
been kept alive despite centuries of genocide and assimilationist policies

(11:09):
from state and local government. Under the Biden administration, the
Government Accountability Office wrote a report about damage done by
border wall construction. Again for now, this is on the
internet and I will link it in the show notes.
I don't know how long that will remain on the internet.
It's a pdf, so it's going to be out and

(11:30):
about that. It can't be taken down, but maybe it
won't be on government websites. They highlighted the case of
Monument Hill, which was damaged by explosives in the previous
Trump administration, despite being a sacred place for Odham and
the site of ceremonies conducted by the Here said Odham,
who are their ancestors. Quito Bakito Springs, which is a

(11:50):
sacred site and oasis in the Sonoran Desert and it's
a really special place, was irreparably damaged in the last
Trump administration, including the destruction of a burial site that
the Tripe had sought to protect. In some cases, the
Biden administration made this worse. One of those was that
on entering office, Biden said they were going to build

(12:11):
not one more foot of border war in twenty twenty one. Right,
he was full of shit. They built lots more border wall,
but they didn't put a pause on some of the contracts, right.
It sort of they finished some of them and they
were like, oh, we can't go back on this federal funding.
Who's has not been an issue for Donald Trump for years.
Later they were in Congress approved it, so we have

(12:31):
to pay it, which was great. But the bits that
they were able to cut included a program that had
people taking care of so that they attempted to transplant
the Saguaros. They didn't just cut down because they were sacred,
right and they're very old. They wanted to take them
somewhere else, and this was part of sort of the
agreement that they came to. Unfortunately, the Biden administration cut

(12:55):
the funding for the people who were taking care of
them in their new location, so nearly all of them died.
They were being watered and stuff to get them settled
into their new route structure, and because of by administration
cutback funding, it stopped them from being watered, and so
many of them died in areas where barriers were built,
but drainage culverts were not finished. The colverts were never

(13:18):
install so that was the flooding I was talking about.

Speaker 6 (13:20):
Earlier.

Speaker 1 (13:20):
Right, sometimes they just went ahead and built war that
when they build the wall, it comes in about fifty
foot sections, and they truck those out there and like
just deput them on the ground flat and pull them
up right, and they dig a foundation. They mix the
sand made concrete and put the war sections up. But
then they I guess it's my understanding that in the
end of the last Trump administration, Trump made a claim

(13:43):
in a debate about the number of miles of wall
that had been built, and that claim was largely inaccurate,
but they sort of started trying to expost facto justify
it by claiming repairs were miles of war right, And
in the final months of the Trump administration, maybe like from
late summer to January, it was certainly to November, they

(14:06):
would really speed running wall construction. And part of that
was putting sections up where there should have been culverts
and just putting regular wall sections there and then attempting
to come back later and do the culverts, which because
of the funding pause.

Speaker 3 (14:19):
It didn't do.

Speaker 1 (14:21):
So then we've seen a huge change in how the
desert drains, right, because it backs up at the or
the detritus or the dead branches and stuff get caught
in the wall, and then the water gets sort of
pushed along the wall until it finds a weak point
to undermine it, I'll push it over. Very little of
this gets reported at all. Right, Occasionally there are media
moments when everyone wants to report on the borders damage

(14:42):
to Indigenous communities. We had one in twenty twenty when
they started destroying segualas at the Organ Pipe Cactus National Monument.
But these appear to be when they just pop up
like this, it seems like it's without context or precedent, right,
And when outlets ignore Indigenous people for ninety percent of

(15:03):
their border reporting, it doesn't give the context it's necessary
to explain these incidents, which are outrageous in decades of
policy which has been outrageous. If our listeners are not
aware that the border is on Native land, all of it,
just like all of America, right, it can seem confusing

(15:24):
for them, right when they see something like Organ Pipe
Cactus National Monument and they think, well, that's not on
a reservation, because a lot of outlets don't give that context.
Right that obviously, reservations not contain all spaces that are
sacred to Indigenous people, and like a reservation is a
legal not a cultural construct, it can seem alien to them.

(15:44):
And lots of these spaces that are being military that
will be militarized under it's Roosevelt Reservation declaration that the
reservations are not militarized under that, but spaces that are
sacred to people still will be. But because are reporting
so often lacks that context, people don't understand it. The
admission of tribal lands was again like missing in lots

(16:06):
of pieces on the Roosevelt Reservation right Washington Post Arctic
on the Rust Reservation, the one that broke the story.
It doesn't contain the word tribal lands at all, right,
it doesn't mention the fact that these areas are not
part of the militarization proclamation. The problem here isn't just

(16:33):
the ongoing a rage or Indigenous people. It's a failure
in basic journalistic practice. In my mind, right, we can't
properly understand borders unless we acknowledge the people they impact.
There's no way I could have experienced dairying Gap in
the way that I did if it wasn't for the
Mbire people who literally let me live in their homes.

Speaker 5 (16:53):
Right.

Speaker 1 (16:54):
Without the same generosity that they showed to me, the
people crossing would die in much greater numbers. And it's
precisely because migrants to arrive in indigenous villages and not
in like a government Panama, that a system exists where
they're ferried up river on those pit agworks that are
reports it on, right, And it's precisely because they enter

(17:15):
government custody at Las blancas a place at the ap
court of Riverport, by the way, which I mean, it's
one of the more miserable places that one can end up.
It's terrible, and calling it a riverport fundamentally under cells
how appalling, and it's what happens to people. People are
stalled there for months, right, And that is because they
are entering the system of bureaucracy, the system of the state,

(17:37):
the system of fees and identification papers and all these things.
More importantly, I think we can't understand the relatively new
and invasive nature of borders, especially borders with physical barriers,
without acknowledging the much much longer history of indigenous people
moving freely through these areas. Like I said, it's much people,

(17:58):
it's water and wildlife in all cases, the damage down
will be unforeseen and likely irreparable. But if we only
treat the border of the rhetorical thing like something to
discuss in congress, not a physical place, then we miss
what's really happening, and we miss the people it really impacts.
I don't want to pick solely on that app it's
a tendency in the whole US right where the overwhelming

(18:20):
media narrative eraises the existence of indigenous people unless it's
some kind of novelty or trope through which they can
be deployed. The Darrect example was a particularly stark one
to me because I spend theatle amount of time there,
and I obviously have a great deal of affection for
the people who looked after me. But as more and
more laws are waived, both in terms of border wall
construction and human rights, more damage will be done. It's

(18:41):
already the case that people who speak indigenous languages tend
to have much worse outcomes in the US immigration system right.
I've seen this first hand, Like it could be very
difficult when someone arrives and they speak, you know, an
indigenous language from Mexico, from Peru, from these places where
like the people speak these digits languages their first language,

(19:05):
and it's hard for them to very hard for them
to get legal representation, right even US citizens.

Speaker 4 (19:11):
Like that incident from just a few weeks ago with
that nineteen year old who was born in the state
of Georgia but primarily spoken indigenous language was like put
into ice attention overnight.

Speaker 1 (19:23):
Yeah, like, which I think kind of these two narratives
sort of play into each other, right, Like, because indigenous
people don't exist so much in so much coverage, it
can be much easier for the state to make them disappear,
right like that guy.

Speaker 4 (19:37):
Well yeah, and literally being arrested in charge with like
like entry as an unauthorized alien.

Speaker 1 (19:44):
Yeah, like absolutely, And it's happened to indigenous people who
are like indigenous to the United States, right like yeah,
and it will continue to I think I've heard some
stuff about happening on a Navajorez relatively recently. Obviously, I
should say if that has happened to you or someone
you know, you can reach out to us. Call Zone
tips at proton dot me. And like, I know that

(20:06):
there are lots of big border reporters, that big outlets
who fucking hate me, And I really don't care. I
just want to, Like, any one person coming into this
country who needs a bottle of water is more important
to me than all of their collective opinions, right, Like
my job is not to make them happy. My job
is to tell the stories of the people who come

(20:26):
into this country and often stuffer greatly to do so.
I care more about them than like my ability to
be objective, which you know, I don't think we should
be objective in these situations, and like I want to
kind of end on this idea of objectivity, because objectivity
I don't know. I'm glad that the Washington Post is

(20:48):
writing a story about a Venezuelan teacher who got deported today.
I'm glad that they're giving these people human faces now.
But it's fucking hard to look at the reporters who
wouldn't drive half an hour down a dirt road to
come and see people in concentration camps when Biden was president,
because I don't know, they were worried about getting their
rental car dirty, or they don't speak Spanish, or the

(21:08):
desert's cold at night. Like I don't know why people
didn't come. I suspect it's because their commitment to writing
about migrants is more a commitment to doing it when
it makes money than it is to doing it because
it's the right thing to do. And like, when we
write these stories now about deportations being terrible, they seem
to pop up without context, right, and the context of

(21:30):
how these people came into this country and the amount
that they were forced to suffer by choice by the
Biden administration in twenty twenty three, it's completely absent from
these stories, right, Like, the reason folks, some folks that
are choosing to leave is because what they've seen of
the US government a week in an outdoor attention camp

(21:51):
where the government didn't even bring them food or water, right,
and then their passage through this system which doesn't give
them a pathway to permanent residency, which doesn't give them
a pathway to citizen, and then they see these deportations. Like,
from the migrant perspective, this is just a sort of
steady escalation. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that
what's happening now is the same as what happened before.
It's worse, it's considerably worse, and it's abhorrent. But like

(22:14):
that doesn't mean that we shouldn't tell the truth about
what happened before either. And it doesn't mean that we
should ignore the physical border as well as the sort
of rhetorical and internal and technical border, right, all these
things that we're seeing now, And like the way that
borders have worked in this country is that it's like
a ratchet that only moves to the right, and the

(22:36):
Republicans move it to the right, and the Democrats never
move it back, and until we hold them accountable for this,
it will continue to get worse. Like, the Democrats completely
ceded the narrative on migration under the Biden administration, and
that's part of why they lost right. Rather than like
making an argument that these people have a right to

(22:57):
come here, that many of them are a massive benefit
to our society, and it doesn't matter whether they are
or not, they still deserve to be treated with dignity
and respect, and even if you're a big la law
in order person, like according to international and United States law.
They didn't do that. It didn't treat them according to
international life to States law, nor did they make an
argument that it's morally right to do so. And that's

(23:20):
one of the reasons they lost right.

Speaker 3 (23:22):
This is why.

Speaker 1 (23:23):
I really think that we need to be conscious in
our media consumption and be conscious as journalists of like
why we do this, because I'm finding it really hard
to see this outpouring of care from people who I
know didn't care when they were shivering little babies in
the desert, from people who could have said something, could
have done something right, like this could have stopped earlier

(23:45):
if there were big, major legacy media op ed. You know,
the pictures of shivering babies were like on the nine
o'clock news, right coming into people's houses every night. This
wouldn't have lasted for as long as it did. People
wouldn't stuff that, people wouldn't have died. But because I
guess Joe Biden was in ourviice, it didn't matter. And

(24:06):
I'm glad that people care now, don't get me wrong,
but like I want especially listeners to think about holding
those people accountable to caring when it's not profitable, caring
when it's not convenient, and our listeners have to be fair. Right,
We raised almost fifty thousand dollars for migrants in the desert,
and that was fantastic, But yeah, I still think we
do immigration reporting wrong. I still think for most outlet.

(24:28):
That's because they treat migrants as a rhetorical device, not
as people in the same way that they are, and
that upsets me and I wanted to write about it,
so I have. I guess that's all I've got. It's
not the best ending. If you are somebody who wants
to get in touch, right, like I said, especially with

(24:48):
regard to immigration activities, on reservations or indigenous people, you
can reach us at cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
If there's other stuff that you want to share with us,
you can do it there too. It is end to
end encryptid only if you send from another proton email address.
And that's all I got.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
Welcome Jack, it happened here a podcast about transgender I
am your host, Na Wong. Now we have spent a
lot of time on this show covering a bunch of
really bad stuff and also maybe some cool stuff. We've
had some cool trans things on this show too. We're
gonna have some more in like the coming weeks. But
it is a bleak time to be trans really anywhere

(25:50):
in the world. The United States is also pretty fucking
bad right now. But in the words of Lengths and Hees,
between the darkness and the dawn, the rises a red star.
And one of the things that that has happened as
this sort of like you know, sort of the crisis
of transphobia and the crisis of the genocide and the
sort of multiple genocides the government's doing, and as sort

(26:11):
of transphobia as like an institutional state discourse has like solidified.

Speaker 1 (26:16):
Is that.

Speaker 3 (26:18):
I mean, honestly, multiple generations of trans journalists have really
kind of like risen to the forefront. And yeah, we've
we've been We've been seeing a bunch of extremely cool
reporting and a bunch of very very good work from
a bunch of like more radical trans journalists. And that's
a thing that kind of like there's been so few
of us for so long and suddenly there's several and

(26:40):
it ripped and I'm really happy about it. And with
me to talk about sort of, you know, what transjournalism
is like in this moment, how it functions and you know,
and how how how it can be sustained going forward
and why it's sort of important is David Forbes, who
is the editor of the Asheville Blade and also an
independent journalist. Mira Lasine, who is a freelance journalist who

(27:02):
recently launched the outlet Free Radical and medi Cast again,
who's an independent journalist and the creator of medi cast News.
All of you welcome to the show. Thank you, hap
Byby on.

Speaker 1 (27:13):
You're having me.

Speaker 3 (27:14):
Yeah, I'm ecstatic to have all of you on to
get to talk about this because I don't know, I
guess the place that I want to start is, like
I I remember this kind of like period in like
twenty twenty four, twenty twenty twenty four where it was like,
I mean, it still is really bleak for trans journalism
in a lot of ways, but like, you know, I'm
just in transmedia in general. Like I was just watching

(27:37):
like the space that had been opened a little bit
in like the twenty tens for there to be trans
people in media, just like closing, you know, And like
I've been watching like pretty immediately around me, like I've
been watching the number of like transforms, especially like non
white transferms just like disappearing from media. And it was,
you know, it was it was like watching the stars
disappear from this guy and the thing for the stars

(28:00):
disappearing from the skies. You know, there's you don't notice
it's unless you're looking at them, in which case the
light has fucking gone forever and it was this really
really bleak thing. But also, you know, as it's happening,
and as we've been sort of like resisting this, I've
been getting to watch like the stars go back on
in the sky and like watching new like people emerge,

(28:20):
and watching people who've been doing cool work for a
really long time sort of like come out into the
open and like get more sort of national recognition. And Yeah,
I don't know, I guess, so I guess that's the
sort of place I wanted to start, is just talking
a little bit about like what it's like to be
fucking doing journalism right now.

Speaker 7 (28:39):
Because Jesus Christ, I'll go ahead and start. I've been
a journalist for over twenty years. And for those who
might be wondering, since you refer to transfems, I am
a transwoman. I U she the pronounce I also like
the name David so. But I have seen it kind
of wax and lane. I've seen it go up and down,
and to some degree, what we're facing now it is

(29:01):
a much worse and escalating version, but it is also
some of what I've seen trans journalists face period. I
came out in publicly in twenty sixteen. I started my
transition in twenty fifteen, and immediately my freelance career basically
died overnight. And it wasn't like I was writing for
you know, right wing outlets or something. And you know, honestly,

(29:25):
the fact is, and this is I think unusual among
trans journalism because a lot of it admirably focuses on national,
international level stuff because what we face is so vast.
But if it had not been for the local support,
because the Blade, a lot of the Blades subscribers are
local that we certainly welcome people to subscribe from wherever
they are, you know, I would be homeless, and there's

(29:46):
a good chance I wouldn't be talking to you all
right now. But at the same time, in this kind
of what I kind of call the quiet purge, which
I think has been escalating in recent years that you
talked about about, you know, just we've got trans journalists
who used to write for national magazines living out of
their cars. Now that is the reality we face our publications,
all working class trans people. And you know, we've had

(30:09):
journalists arrested twice, yeah, oh my for doing their jobs.
Two of our journalists were were taken to trial in
twenty twenty three on a minor trustpassing charge, which is
almost unheard of in the US as bad as US
often is.

Speaker 3 (30:23):
As you mention, also, this was like trespassing for fucking
reporting on the cops doing a helpless and camp and
sleep like on Christmas. Yeah yeah, oh Christmas. Yeah yeah,
Like I just like unhinged police state shit, like yeah.

Speaker 1 (30:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (30:38):
Even in LA they'll like sometimes they'll act like accidentally
a arrest journalist, but then they'll be like, Okay, we'll
let you go because they're a journalists. They don't actually
take you to trial.

Speaker 7 (30:47):
This is one of those kind of welcome to Ashville moments,
because I think people buy the marketing sometimes and think
we're this super progressive city and actually it's an incredibly
repressive like tourism Fife and that's this is kind of
really still point though, Like the city got city council
here is six Democrats and one kind of like Bernie
Sanders type independent though even more tepid, and the DA

(31:10):
is a Democrat. And still you know, they were hell
bent to persecute trans journalists. Yeah, one of our journals
until the Bliss was openly mistreated and misgendered based on
her genitor during that So to some degree what's happening
now is certainly a worsening, but it is also an
extension what's been going on for a very long time.

(31:32):
So okay, like it is getting worse, I don't know
we're going to be in a two, three, even one year,
but also like this is not a new fight.

Speaker 1 (31:42):
Yeah, I can speak to it a little bit too.

Speaker 8 (31:44):
And I've been a journalist for I guess a lot
last six months because it's a long story, but I
kind of got into it more out of fear for myself.
Sometimes people think I'm selfless, and maybe I am a
little bit, but a lot of it is really selfish
and just feeling like I have to do stuff to
protect myself and my friends basically. But even in that

(32:09):
short period of time, I have faced a lot of
bad stuff from honestly predominantly the left and liberals and
sometimes even other queer people being a trans woman of color,
and that wasn't really initially what I was afraid of,
you know. I was afraid of like I'm going to
get death threats and Nazis up in like fandox being

(32:31):
actually none of that's happened. I can't really explain why
other than that I just don't use Twitter, and I
guess so they don't know why exists. But I have
like one of the first national news story that I broke,
or one of them, I guess. It was about like
Medai being like super racist, and I like kind of
figured that out. I like proved that it was racist

(32:52):
basically just like use my brain to make it tell
on itself and explain it's prompt and all that, and
it became the huge international news story, but it was
like immediately co opted by a Washington Post journalist who
retreated me and then recreated the conversation and posted it again.
And then I had to go on like this weeks

(33:14):
long like kind of campaign to try to just get
basic credit for that. And eventually she did credit me
in the column to give her credit, but that was
not something that was forgiven, and a lot of others
that I said the thing to you also didn't credit me.
And that's just been a recurring trend that, uh, yeah,
like I'm kind of invisible even though I make a

(33:36):
lot of important news.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
So that kind of sucks. So yeah, there's something happens
fucking constantly. I'm like, my, my, like, welcome to the
this this is before I was out too. And it's
also like, you know, part part of what's going on
here is like one of the things you learned really
quickly in media is the extent to which so much
national media is just like what they do is steal
stories from like people like who are you know, from

(33:59):
sort of like like more regional media or people that
think they can get away with taking stuff from like if.
And this goes all the way up the chain, right
like if if. If you want to know what's gonna
be on Rachel Maddow show, look at look at what's
happening on behind the bastards whenever they cover someone on
the right, And within about three weeks you will get
a Rachel Mattour episode that is five minutes a thing.
But like you know, but like you know, it's obviously

(34:19):
like it'significantly worse with like trans people, because like, yeah,
they can just fucking stell stories to mess Like I remember, god, my,
like my fucking like the first like journalism well that's
not true, but the first journalism stuff that I did
with like thoson people was like we would dream in
like the Atlanta spash shooting. We tracked down there there's
like that there was a Facebook post that people were

(34:40):
circulating reportedly from the shooter that was like basically blaming
like anti China media stuff for it. And we tracked
down that this person did not have a Facebook and
that all of this was fake, but that person that
post had been circling into the national news and we
were like, well, yeah, this is like fake, right, and
then like every single news, like every single like CNN,
fucking Fox News, like every single major dwe outlet just

(35:00):
like took all of our work and like repackaged it
and then never fucking mentioned that it was like Gary
and I who did this, because you know, why would
you credit the transgender anarchists when you could simply repackage
the story yourself. And this is a problem that's like
goes all the way up to like this is part
of the reason we're here right now, right Like we're
complaining about this on sort of like professional level because

(35:22):
like it's annoying, but also like the reason we're fucking
here right now is because the person who got to
write about trans stuff was fucking Jettison gall who is
a sis man whose only qualification it was the thing
he previously wrote about was men who fuck other men
who don't consider themselves gay. And because he was the
person who got to write all of the like trans
cooveraging with though, he's just like some fucking cis dipshit right,

(35:43):
Like he's now the guy who's like been being cited
in fucking legal cases for ages and ages for why
you should restrict trans healthcare, oh.

Speaker 4 (35:53):
The Atlantic and its consequences on society disaster yas.

Speaker 3 (35:58):
Yeah, I meriad you want to talk a bit about
your exp with it.

Speaker 6 (36:00):
Honestly, what you just described has been happening to me
this week. So I've been in the industry for about
three to four years now, consistently inconsistently for a little
bit longer, And initially it was way easier for me
to get eggs, Like within the first few months of

(36:20):
me seriously starting, I got accepted pitches into Discover magazine
and places like that, and then like within like six
months after that, it became a nightmare to get pitches accepted. Yeah,
it just so happened. I became more out as trans
off the time frame definitely not a coincidence at all.
But more recently, this week I launched my independent newsletter,

(36:45):
The Free Radical. Go subscribe it, goes subscribe it. It's
legitimately great.

Speaker 3 (36:50):
You will get reporting there that you won't fucking get well, okay,
you will get recording there that you won't get from
anyone else until about three weeks later, when all the
national out let's pick it up, and it will be
better and you will have it first to the person
who actually reported it.

Speaker 6 (37:07):
In every artguard retons so far, I've taken a second
to basically be like, Okay, here's some anarchist shit you
should read. Y'all. Audience is mostly like libs, and I'm
just like here, here, read this please. But my first
story I broke this week was about a trans woman
who was legally held in Guantanamo Bay, and that story

(37:31):
got picked up by big remedia outlets pretty quick. But
in the first like twelve hours, the news uplet then
did a very good story that basically just cited me
every chance they got. Come to find out, this is
because a trans woman wrote that she's awesome. I just
followed her to the other day. Oh but then bazillion
dus out like started picking up on this.

Speaker 3 (37:52):
Yeah, this was a Brazilian trans woman who got like
sent to Guantanamo.

Speaker 6 (37:56):
Yeah. And the first one to do this was the
newspaper Forgive me if I am mispronounced in this full
holdais self polo. I believe it's called I might be
mispronouncing that. I apologize if I am. But they are
one of the biggest newspapers in Brazil and definitely one
of the oldest. And that story was all right, you know,

(38:17):
they credited me, you're breaking the story. Yeah, I was
talking to the person who wrote that. She's sweet and
even did original recording. It's awesome. And then right after that,
like dozens of other outlets came. Then none of them
credited me, and they posted like social media stuff about
the story. Not a single one of those credited me,

(38:38):
and they're getting like thousands of lights and comments and shares,
and most egregious I think is I've seen a few
of them credit the journalist with fulha as breaking the story,
and I've seen one sake them as breaking the story.

Speaker 3 (38:58):
Oh my god, who's art?

Speaker 6 (39:00):
Go mind you literally in a subheading says I broke
the story.

Speaker 9 (39:04):
Yeah, and I didn't check in on it today yet,
but last night I was like up late just looking
at all the news outlets that was boosting, and it's like,
and why the stories getting coverage.

Speaker 6 (39:16):
Don't get me wrong, it's an important one. It's just like, yeah, no,
it's great. Yeah, almost none of them are seeing where
they got the story from. It's just like, oh, wow,
there's this bigger outlet covery. I'm gonna credit the bigger outlift.

Speaker 3 (39:29):
So did to explain why we're also sort of concerned
about like the way this attribution stuff works, right, this
is an incredibly material problem for us, right, And like
I am very lucky in that, like in terms of transjertionalism,
I have like a stable job. But the thing is,
right unless unless you fucking got really lucky and you

(39:51):
got hired like as assis person, and then you have
a bunch of very very supportive like coworkers, and like
your bosses are supportive. You are like trying to cobble
together like every scent that you can possibly pull out
of a fucking couch cushion, because like you know, I've
said this other show before, right, Like, if you're a

(40:12):
transperson in the US, even when even before all the
turf tariffs hit right like you you were living in
the night in like nineteen thirty six, great depression levels
of unemployment, and you know, and so and so that
means that, like it actually matters a lot when when
other outlets do your stories and don't attribute it to you,
because like, you have to find a way to fucking
make money, and like, almost all trans journalists are like

(40:34):
the most hideously broke people you've ever heard of in
your entire fucking life. Like, and this is also you know,
and this is this is also part of the way
that like class plays out in the transmitting you see,
is like, you know, the people with the biggest platforms
tend to be trans people who were already doing okay,
because those are the only people who can afford to
fucking do this. And like that's why most of you

(40:57):
have heard of me, and most of you probably have
not heard of David and Miira, even though David and
Mirra do like quite frankly more important journalism than I do,
and like and in terms of especially in terms of
like like and like break a lot way more fucking
stories than I do. Because it's not kind of like
not exactly like my thing, right, But that's because I was, like,
you know, like I was already sort of like in

(41:18):
a place that was financially secure, and everyone else is
so unbelievably fucking broke all the time. And it matters
when fucking stories get stolen, because the only way that
if if you're a trans journalist and you're you know,
you're working at your own outlet, because an outlet won't
fucking hire you because that's just the way that the
fucking media is structured. The only way for you to
get paid is by like people seeing your stories. And

(41:41):
that's part of why there's like just not that many
trans journalists because like the level of discrimination on top
of the kind of like erasure of independent journalist that
already happens, makes it just like financially impossible to fucking
do it.

Speaker 8 (41:54):
Yeah, it's it's not just uh liberal media, or it's
not just like the cist liberal meat too. Sometimes, Like
I had a similar thing with when I broke the
story of rain and some other sexual abuse nonprofits removing
all of the trans people from their websites. That became
a national news story, and the Washington Post kicked it

(42:16):
up also, and I think part of that was because
I complained so much about the previous time where they
almost didn't cite me, that maybe they were a little
bit more cautious about me, is my theory. But anyway,
after that initial news story that cited me, same thing
happened where it's like everyone's like, oh, well, we can
just cite the Washington Post now, and so this person

(42:37):
no one knows. And the first website to do that
was like a queer news outlet, and then I just
kept watching as like I think it was like three
or four different queer or like feminist women focused news
outlets did the same thing of not citing me, And
there was even like a really long piece from this
other like, oht that was it felt like it was

(42:57):
going out of its way not to cite me because
it was talking about this entire issue about nonprofits censoring people,
and that was an entire conversation that was started specifically
because of the news article I wrote, but it specifically
did not cite me, even though they mentioned how one
of the organizations that I reported on had reversed course,

(43:19):
which is something that they emailed me and said it
was because of me. So that's how that's how deep
this goes, they will like go out of their way
to like carve you out of a story that exists
because of you, even if they are extensively you know,
not just a liberal like a New York Times outlet,
but like a left wing like progressive facing outlet that's
trying to like market itself like that. They they just

(43:40):
want to exclude trans women from their own stories. Even
it's kind of crazy.

Speaker 7 (43:44):
Yeah, the extent of it is actually telling of the
local level too. Here the blade Diddle number of reporting
and we also featured some like really well thought out
and pretty sharp opinion columns, which is one thing we
kind of specializing because they're really good for like raising
issues in the local level about how awful the tourism
Development Authority is, which is this hotel or cartail that

(44:06):
takes every dime of all the local hotel tax, every
bit of it, and then uses it to market the
place to more rich people and push crackdowns on pretty
much everyone else.

Speaker 3 (44:17):
So we pushed this.

Speaker 7 (44:18):
It became a widespread public demand, A lot of organizing
happened around it, and there was zip Zilch zero mentioned
that like spurred by investigations and editorials in the Asheville Blade.
Even one of the people who wrote that editorial, who
was a local resident activist who dealt with some tourism stuff,
was literally being quoted the fact she'd written a piece

(44:40):
for the Blade and that you know, was just not mentioned,
and it actually became kind of a running kind of
grim joke because we're all working class Trains people, and
you know, half of us are transferm is just the
Asheville Blade does not exist. And some of that was
for liberals, but honestly, Ashville has a massive trains massaging problem.
Which think we were the first meet outs to do
like a quick guide to trans misogyny in which we

(45:01):
did kind of like a slide show about it in
our Patreon and stuff, because it was that extensive. But
even the left to Nashville has some real problems with
trans misogyny. So and it's applied everything out just from
trans issues, but even to bread and butter kind of
local stuff, which we also do a lot of reporting on.
You know, it's we can't admit that trans leftists and
anarchists are shaping the discussion in any way, shape or form.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
MHM.

Speaker 3 (45:33):
It's funny because like like even us like even like
the podcast it could happen here, which is like a
pretty big national thing, like there's no one else talks
about us. It's fucking amazing. You could just like see
you could like literally watch like every other podcast that's
like a tenth of our size there's like media coverage

(45:53):
of and there's nothing and they will never admit that
we fucking did anything. It's awesome. It's so cool, And
I think like a conversions of facturacy too, because like
you know, on the one hand, like in terms of
sort of the way that hypervisibility works, right, hypervisibility for
transferms only works negatively, like there's only the kind of

(46:13):
like you get fucked by it. But then also on
top of it, you get the reverse version of it,
where it's like, yeah, you know your labor was stolen
all and this is you know, this is true both
in movements. This is true of the way the sort
of capitalist media functions. And then on top of that
we have the kind of like trifecta of like we
will never mention that you exist, which is trans independent

(46:38):
and radical at the same time, and like this is
the thing happens like every fucking transferm like journalist, like
friend of the show Maya Arsen crime w has had
this happen to it like a billion fucking times. I
want to talk a bit more about kind of just
like the financials of how this plays out and how
independent media is sort of being so ported in this era,

(47:01):
because you know, like it's also really true that like Eve,
even the like nominally trans outlets, like a lot of
it functions a labor exploitation. And yeah, let's let's talk
a bit about that.

Speaker 6 (47:14):
I have a lot of strong cakes, seen some shit.
Oh boy, I have so many opinions, So I mentioned
I kind of more formally got to start three to
four years ago. My first article was published in like
twenty eighteen, and it was just like a local thing

(47:34):
when I was living in Scranton, Pennsylvania area where bathing happens,
but I found something to report on. The reason I
got started that would have been like early twenty twenty two.
Reason I got started then because I was homeless and
I needed a way to make money, and where I
was living at the time it was a complete job

(47:55):
desert there. I didn't have a car and there was
nothing in walking distance to me. The only things that
were like minimum wage food service jobs that over half
an hour walk and my lon disabled. My body is
in pain if I stand up too long. So those
jobs did not last long because I physically couldn't. And

(48:16):
so I tried to find something that I could do remotely,
more consistently, and I went all in into freelance writing
and journal.

Speaker 5 (48:25):
With the.

Speaker 3 (48:27):
Real really the money making career.

Speaker 6 (48:30):
Oh yeah, I'm totally I'm just in this for the money,
you know.

Speaker 1 (48:34):
I made such.

Speaker 6 (48:35):
Amazing profits that year, which is why I ended up
homeless again, and by the end of the year I
was living in a hotel.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
God yeah.

Speaker 6 (48:44):
And a lot of the writing I was doing at
that time was very generalist and I hadn't really found
much of my niche yet. But as I began to
zero it more on trains, issues over time and just
politics and stuff like that. Because as an aside, I
also tried to break into gaming journalism because I unfortunately

(49:06):
am a gamer regredibly many such cases, many such cases,
and that industry is just dead. It was dying at
that point and now it's just like, if you want
to get a job as a gaming journalist, you're not
gonna I tried. We need more people to do it,
but it does not pay. So I ended up going
into politics journalism, which pays like marginally better, and by

(49:27):
marginally better, let me talk about some of my rates.

Speaker 3 (49:30):
Oh god, yeah.

Speaker 6 (49:31):
One outlet I've written for pretty consistently goal for a while.
To start, it paid me about one hundred bucks an
article flat rate. And this includes for highly research and
death recording articles.

Speaker 2 (49:45):
My god, yeah, this.

Speaker 3 (49:47):
Is again like shit that's going to be stolen by
a national outlet in two days, like and by you.

Speaker 6 (49:53):
A lot of these stories took weeks to make and
fell for a hundred bucks, And so I eventually got
quote upcradated to that outl it to doing seventy five
a piece, but four pieces in a month, and so
that was great. You know that two hundred dollars a
month for each individually reported piece. That really paid the bills.

(50:17):
And eventually it changed into one fifty a piece for
indef reporting pieces that often took over a month's worth
of work to get going. And I had to meet
my deadliner as they would get really angry at me
and they would be really dickish. And that was one
of my better experiences, certainly, not the best I've had.

(50:40):
Plenty of people who were wonderful, who I've riten for
and I've had great times with. But the through line
of all of it, even the places that pay that
are they're for one off stories. They're for things that
do not giveing key a source of and come long term.
Even the places that have paid me the best for
individual storyes, it's not enough, not the least of which

(51:04):
because you know, the cost of living is borable right now,
terrorists are going to show up and oh God, or
what the fuck is happening, But also because none of
it's consistent. The closest to consistent I had was overworking
myself by writing like upwards of like ten articles a week,
sometimes upwards of like five to seven in one day

(51:25):
and all of them being reported and in that And
it's not sustainable doing that, No, no, but that's just common.
That is just normal.

Speaker 3 (51:38):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, And it's and it's like the sort
of bleak thing about it is your your options are
you have money already, you won the fucking lottery basically,
and like you got a stable position, you work at
a rate that is like genuinely hideous, or you have

(51:59):
a side job, and sometimes it's a lot of these
things combined. Yeah, yeah, I think there's a tendency to
talk about discrimination as something that's sort of like abstract
or something that's even just kind of like point of
hiring stuff, which is all true and like, you know,
it is like yeah, like part of the problem with
this is that it's impossible to get like fucking staff

(52:20):
positions and like and like I could say this is
like so I mean I got hired like as a
SIS person, right, and like and like they would have
hired me if I was trans, But like that's also
just true for a lot of people, which is that
like that's like the way that you can do it.
So like there is the like front toward discrimination. But
then also the second aspect of it is that like
the way that all of this stuff plays out structurally

(52:42):
in the economy is that you get reduced to sort
of contract labor unless you try to go go it
by yourself. And because of the incredible just my material
financial oppression of trans people, this is another big part
of the reason why there's just so few, you know,
and like there's there's becoming more right and I'm incredibly
like you know, like I'm fucking talking with three trans

(53:03):
journalists this rules. And also the reason is all more
of us, which is important because like sis, people trying
to cover our stori is a fucking disaster, Like that's
how we got here. But like part of the reason
why there's not more is just that, like it's so
difficult to survive doing this and yeah, you know, and
that's also I'm gonna gona tur this into a minor plug,
which is like, go subscribe to the Ashful Blade, go

(53:24):
subscribe to Free Radical, goes subscribe to mane cast News,
because like literally the difference between like people being able
to have an apartment and pay their rent or like
living in a car is like the amount of support
that you get from this stuff.

Speaker 7 (53:40):
That's absolutely true. Yeah, and I should note the you know,
the Blade's a co op. We've been one for for
half a decade now, and part of the reason for
that was we've seen how unfairly like income was treated
just in the press in general. And also I'm an
anner kissed and while I love being an editor, I

(54:02):
don't want to be a boss. I want to like
work with other people, and it's made us a lot
more effective. I would say we wouldn't exist if we
hadn't become a co op, but also when we do
hit a difficult financial spot and we operate in a
shoestring budget, especially post to Lene as sadly a lot
of folks have been driven out of Ashville by the
refusal of various governments to do anything about rental aid,

(54:24):
by the resumption of like very quick resumption of fvictions,
and a lot of other horrible stuff Like it's a struggle.
We all are working class folks, we all work of
their jobs and face transis, the discrimination, trans misology, and transphobia.
So it's it's difficult. And even with being a co op,
we do the best we can, and we do, unlike

(54:45):
other places, pay freelancers fair rate. But sometimes it's legitimately
difficult to divide up our tiny budget, and at some
points we say, look, we can't cover this right now,
or we have to say okay, yeah, in some cases
I've done it before, certainly I'm covering this, but I
am going to literally have to split up payment forward
over multile months because we just don't have the money

(55:05):
in there. But I feel it does need, it does
need to get out there. And even if those decisions
are made more fairly, it is still a real problem
that we are dividing up a fairly small pool of resources.
We do a lot with that, but it is real limitation.

Speaker 4 (55:20):
Mm hmm.

Speaker 3 (55:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (55:22):
I'm kind of in a similar boat in terms of
my publication, Maddie cast News. So I've in one of
the categories you mentioned. Actually I'm in two of them,
where I find what I'm doing not from my work
but from.

Speaker 3 (55:35):
My first job, my main job. I guess which I got.

Speaker 8 (55:39):
I guess pretending to be assis or maybe you know,
non binary, be them or whatever and then kind of
jump scare them. But anyway, that job pays pretty well thankfully,
you know, software engineering one of the one of the
lottery professions for trans women. You get your healthcare, you
get your money. But I've been trying to go beyond

(56:00):
just me and try to help other people as well.
So recently we just applied for fiscal sponsorship with five
to one C three, which hopefully hopefully let us become
a charity tax deductible and all that. And I've also
been putting a bit of my own money. And I've
also been you know, pretty much begging all my readers
to give us money because one of the biggest goals

(56:23):
of my publication has It kind of started off more
about like, you know, reporting on the news, of course,
but now it's reporting on the news and also you know,
making sure the people who report on the news aren't homeless.
Actually maybe that's a bad thing. Everyone I know in
my life knows people like all these journalists who report
on this news, but a lot of them probably don't
even know how much like they suck as they struggled

(56:45):
just like getting through their daily lives. So I'm really
trying to hopefully create some structure for us to have
at least one nonprofit that will fund trans journalists at
like a living wage of at least, you know, twenty
five dollars an hour, which I honest I don't think
it's a lot, especially like in a place like LA,
but twenty five dollars an hour is probably more than
you can get almost anywhere as a trans journalist.

Speaker 3 (57:08):
Also, I've heard a lot of jokes.

Speaker 8 (57:10):
About, you know, we're passing around the same trade dollars
in the trans community, and it's a little bit more
of that. But I'm also hoping to see if I
can try to fundraise from other people and try to,
you know, raise awareness for this issue because I don't
have a lot of time myself to be read in
articles these days, because I do have a full ten job.
But yeah, hoping to kind of make a dent on

(57:33):
this issue and raise awareness. And it's really a win
ran for all trans people that you know, if we're
paying people who need this money to survive, but they're
also creating really important news coverage that literally is like
life changing for hundreds of thousands, millions of people at
many times. And that's how I see it's an exceptionally
important issue that is completely unaddressed.

Speaker 3 (57:56):
This is also part of the issue with the way
that like trans issue who are reported on by the
media is that they're they're largely you know, and it's
not things like healthcare aren't important, right, but like just
the raw class dynamic of all of this just does
not get talked about, right. The homelessness rates that I
don't I don't, actually fuck I should have the homelessness

(58:19):
race off top of my head. Things like three or
four times at the very least more likely across the
entire transpopulation to be homeless than people. And like you
can just fucking see that if you know trans people.
It's like, yeah, fucking everyone's spent a bunch of time
being homeless, and like, you know, that's just the conditions

(58:40):
of this. And you know, this is the thing that like,
as you the listener, like it is possible for this.
It doesn't have to fucking be like this, Like it doesn't.
You have the power in your hands, like to keep
people off the street and like with a roof above
their head. And you can do this by clicking the
links in the.

Speaker 7 (58:57):
Description from our co O. Thank you for repeatedly mentioning
that aspect. I think also, this does, this classynemic does
shape the type of trans coverage you see two quite
a bit. We did, sir, importing one time on the
city of Ashville spending over a million dollars to the
Salvation Army, which is basically a queer and transphobic cult.

(59:22):
But that piece is reported very differently from if it
been reported by say a trans journalist who'd been very
well off their entire lives. You know, because a lot
of us people in our co op have either been
close to or been homeless before, and so we were
able to bring in the experience of knowing that if
you are a trans homeless person, the Salvation Army isn't

(59:43):
letting you in or is one of the worst possible
shelters you can end up in. And that piece was
written and read very differently because we were drawing from
that from that on the ground experience.

Speaker 6 (59:54):
Yeah, on that note, I've I've written so many stories
that have been about the poverty rates of trans people
and what we've all gone through. I used to be
a daily contributor for LGBTQ Nation. They were one of
the outlooks that I was trying to crank out as
many articles as I could for and the editors lovely people.

(01:00:16):
There no issues with them, Lovely folks. Yeah, they just
they don't. They didn't have enough money to begin with
to pay me enough, so you're gonna do. I remember
working on a story or something like the summer of
last year for them where I was I was writing
about some new report that came out talking about just

(01:00:38):
like poverty rates, job discrimination rates of trans people. And
one thing I've noticed is, like David mentioned, there is
a huge disconnect between even if you have like wealthier
trans people write about an issue versus those who are
in poverty. Like a lot of the sources I had
for specific article. I don't remember that headline because I

(01:01:01):
wrote like five hundred or goalster q Nation last year.
But a lot of the sources I used for that article,
and like other ones like it, are like big nonprofits.
And you know, obviously your mileage may very depending on
whur's nonprofit. But most of the folk who like were
writing these reports or who were doing the press releases
and stuff like that, you could just kind of tell

(01:01:24):
that they maybe did not have quite the same experiences
as say, trans people who have been homeless, trans people
who have had to deprive themselves of medical care because
they couldn't afford it, trans people who have had to
go without food because not enough money. And it's almost
like a lot of people who didn't have to go

(01:01:44):
through this stuff like intellectualize it more. They see it
as like these abstract numbers and they know it's bad,
but they don't have that like individual connection. Like even
many of the nonprofit folks, a lot of their friends,
even their social circles are all going to be on average,
you know, I can't say for every single person. Obviously,

(01:02:06):
like on average more wealthy, more stable, they have family
to back them, up. They have plenty of options, and
I don't know, rambling a bit, but there's just a disconnect,
you know, whenever reaching out to folk who won the
birth lottery a little bit.

Speaker 4 (01:02:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:02:24):
One of the most the most expensive article that we
did Mady cast News earlier last month was about Maryland
prisons and how they're basically torture chambers for trans women,
as most prisons are, but it seems like they're especially
bad in Maryland, you know, despite it being supposedly a

(01:02:47):
safe trans to date, you know, seventy percent Democrats. And
that was a kind of example of just like how unprofitable,
how possible to not just unprofitable, because when you think unprofitable,
it's like, oh, you're not making money.

Speaker 3 (01:02:59):
It's not about that.

Speaker 8 (01:02:59):
It's like if you're losing like eighty percent of the
money you put into these articles because it takes so
many Like I'm a very strong believer of paying people,
you know, a living wage. So I was paying the
journalists like well over twenty five dollars an hour for
you know, dozens of hours of work, and that adds
up really fast. And then court fee like pacer fees,

(01:03:22):
all these other costs are adding up and it ends
up being like around the thousand dollars for the single article,
and it's a really important article that you know, raise
a lot of awareness. Everyone in Maryland in the trans circle,
they're talking about it. But at the same time, it's
basically a charity product, right, This is why I'm trying
to become a nonprofit because there's simply no other way
to be able to fund this stuff. There's no capitalist

(01:03:44):
model for reporting on trans women in prison. It's not
a it's not something that people are you know, like
I definitely get there's a lot of people who support
us out of the goodness of their hearts, and that's
really nice, but even that is not enough because of
that's just how it is. There's just not enough people
who care about these issues, especially the more intersectional it is.
You know, even a lot of people in the queer

(01:04:04):
community aren't as worried necessarily about people in prison. They're
more aggorry about people not in prisons. And you know,
of course everyone matters, but I think it's really important
to focus on those most intersectional issues because when you
really think about it, like prisons are basically you know,
where they do everything they want to do to transform
and aren't in prison. That's where they get to do

(01:04:25):
all of it, and no one's looking on, no one's
watching them, no one's holding them accountable. But yeah, I
think it's basically a complete failing of capitalism. Like it's
there's definitely be some outlets that, you know, maybe they
could be doing better, but at the same time, a
lot of the time it's basically, you know, be really shitty.

Speaker 4 (01:04:43):
The people are closed down.

Speaker 3 (01:04:44):
And neither of those are great options.

Speaker 8 (01:04:46):
And personally I would close down, but I can't tell
other people what to do. And I think really it's
a systemic issue that society doesn't care about us, that
the sists, people who really should be funding these things
and trying to solve these issues, just pretend like we
don't exist, and you know, go go out of their
way to even erase our presence even when we do,
you know, create national needs.

Speaker 3 (01:05:16):
You know, I think part of part of the difficulty
of it, right, and this specifically the way the transit
she's functioned about. Class and journalism are a microcosm. It's
like the most intense version of the stuff that's happening
to the entire journalism industry, right or like, you know,
part of what we're seeing is like is just that
it's been the destruction of local news, right and and
the product of this is that the only people who

(01:05:38):
can be journalists are like a bunch of fucking rich
dipshits and you know, like, yeah, you've all fucking read
like New York Times columnists. Is like the platforming a
genocide denier today, right, like that, and that's that's sort
of the product of this. And it means that like
unless like literally like people like you, the fucking listener,

(01:05:59):
and I guess doesn't apply to you if you're you know,
like statistically a good number of you are like you
are also transgender and you make like fucking nine dollars
an hour like running a forklift or something like. This
is not this is not on you, Like I know
much of you are gonna be like, holy shit, I
actually give funy these people. It's like, okay, but like
this stuff is only possible if people are actually fucking

(01:06:22):
willing to support it, like until we can like fundamentally
change the way that the entire political and economic system
works in this country and in this world. And until then,
it's like, yeah, like it's this is a fucking problem
for like us here too, cause you know, like again,
like I got fucking lucky, Like I am extremely dissimilar,
Like I am the transferman, like one of the transfomens

(01:06:42):
who you will hear from the most, and I have
like a stable job. I haven't been homeless and I
haven't done sex work, and this makes me completely unlike
a huge portion of trans people, especially transforms, right, and yeah,
it's like, yeah, I fucking colors is the way I
do this shit in ways that like I don't see
because like I haven't had to like do this shit,
and this is a real fucking problem. The only way

(01:07:04):
that it can not be like this is if people
are actually willing to support the people who understand these
things because they've fucking gone through it. And so your
options are, like all of our stuff gets reported on
by Jesse Sentall and we all fucking die, or we
find trans journalism and we fight them and we all

(01:07:25):
live in a fucking better world.

Speaker 6 (01:07:27):
My backup option if trans journalism doesn't work. You mentioned
sex work is quite literally to write furry smut and
hope that pays.

Speaker 7 (01:07:38):
The last year, The Ashville Blade marked our tenth anniversary
so I think I think that is worth mentioning too,
Like I think sometimes things and they truly are precarious,
they truly are difficult in some ways, they're only getting
more precarious and more difficult. But at the same time,
despite our journalists being arrested, despite being kind of like

(01:07:58):
targeted and ignored by a lot of liberals and even
some leftists in town, we're still here. We're still doing journalism.
We just put out a really powerful investigation about you know,
more mouth yet more mouthfeasance in the police department.

Speaker 4 (01:08:11):
So so yeah, like it.

Speaker 6 (01:08:13):
Can be done.

Speaker 7 (01:08:14):
It's not impossible, and as tight as things are, there
is also a lot of resilience and we do get
a lot of very genuine support. I do think that's
worth emphasizing too. So like there is strengthened, there is
some hope here. Yeah, and you know, and again it's
like it's it's not impossible. It just requires it requires
a bunch of fucking work from the trans people who
are doing it. And then also it requires you know,

(01:08:38):
putting on my fucking MPR pledge to my voice. It
requires viewers like you to you know, it requires people
to care enough about it to support it and make
it exist. And yeah, I think that's a that's a
kind of good note to start sort of wrapping up.
Do you have anything else that you want to make
sure you get in? Yeah, before we move too plugs.

Speaker 8 (01:08:59):
I guess so yeah for me as I'm also kind
of in that spectrum of like being a little bit
more privileged as far as trans women go financially. And
my message to other people who make especially since if
you're a SIS person you make over one hundred thousand dollars,
you're comfortable and you're feeling bad listening to this, you know,
go give a trans person money, Go give my relazine money,

(01:09:22):
Go give David Forbes money, Like we have to. We
really need everyone to start pitching in, especially people who
aren't trans, and we really need like it's it's literally
life saving the money. Like, and I think one thing
to consider is, you know, one thousand dollars to someone
who makes a lot of money is completely different from
one thousand dollars to someone who is like a month

(01:09:43):
away from being homeless.

Speaker 3 (01:09:45):
And twenty dollars functions like that.

Speaker 8 (01:09:47):
Like, yeah, twenty dollars even like no, I know so
many people like one thousand dollars, like they'll go, they'll
spend a thousand dollars in a couple of weeks on restaurants. Right,
And then there's people there's trans of a thousand dollars,
it's like changed their life forever.

Speaker 3 (01:10:03):
The look on mirror's face, Like those people spend and
I don't even do twenty thousand dollars a year on.

Speaker 7 (01:10:12):
Sushi, Holy shit, having worked in the service industry, Yeah.

Speaker 6 (01:10:16):
I feel bad when I spend like twenty bucks on
Popeyes once a week.

Speaker 3 (01:10:19):
Like, yeah, exactly.

Speaker 8 (01:10:22):
So if you spend twenty thousand dollars a year on sushi,
please spend nineteen thousand dollars a year this year and said,
and give one thousand dollars to transperson.

Speaker 3 (01:10:31):
That's my advice for you. Double the income of a
transperson today. This is also, like, you know, part of
what I'm talking about with like the Great Depression, Like
we don't live in the same economy that everyone else does,
Like it is literally a different fucking world. And the
more fucked you are, like down the fucking scale of
like of like trans poverty, the more it's like you

(01:10:53):
literally like the reality that like the people live in
is just completely alien to you, it's like, what the.

Speaker 6 (01:11:02):
Fun want that kind of money?

Speaker 3 (01:11:08):
You're a David Diah Do you have anything else you
want to say before.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
You like that?

Speaker 6 (01:11:11):
Please support trend journalists, please, Dear God. Please, everyone I
know who is primarily a journalist for work is broke.
We need the money, please, Dear God.

Speaker 7 (01:11:26):
Yeah I would, Yeah, I'd add to that. But another
thing is, look, you should support trans jernals because trans
people deserve to you know, to be supported and to
be able to make a living. Also, frankly, we're really
good at this, like generally as a whole, like we
have a lot more perspective I think on how this

(01:11:46):
healthscape social structure actually does and doesn't work, and a
lot more determination to actually tell the truth in general.
And so you know, dollars to the actual blade for example,
or to or tamra ortomaticasts like they go to journalism. Yeah, yeah,
you know, they're not going to like some baroque hierarchy

(01:12:09):
of you know, of gentry administrators or something or CEOs like.
It goes to journalism. It goes to actual interesting reporting
and views and things that need to be said. So
if people are even just looking if it's some journalism.
It is something they care about or think needs to
be stronger. This is the way to do it.

Speaker 3 (01:12:30):
Yeah, And like, like this is also a directly political
thing because like the word that you'll do, like I
have literally watched it change the sort of political landscape
like that. That's just that's just like a thing that happens,
you know, Like, and I think we're all we're all
very cynical about sort of the power of like the
truth to do anything, because it requires people to act
on it. But you know, if you don't know anything
is happening, it is not possible to act on something. Yeah, So,

(01:12:52):
like you know, you are simultaneously you were supporting, like
you're supporting trans people in like the most vicarious position
you've been in in fucking ages. You are like supporting
your supporting journalism and you are not even poking a stick.
You are helping build a lance to like stab into
the side of the people who are like destroying this world.

(01:13:13):
And yeah, I think that's fucking important. So if if
people want to support you, where do they go? Where
do they go?

Speaker 5 (01:13:19):
Go? Go go go.

Speaker 6 (01:13:22):
Yeah, So if you want to support me, go to
the free radical dot org. That that that is my newsletter.
There's stuff to subscribe and and and give money. You
can do a free subscription, you know, if you especially
for Grope, please do a free subscription, like we don't.
I don't need your twenty dollars. I'll give you my
twenty dollars please. And also I have a cofi if

(01:13:47):
you know need to like a one time saying, it's
mirror Lousine. I'm the only one only mirrors and Losine
on there. And if you subscribe, you're supporting some of
the only trans anarchy national news coverage. Basically, and every
single article I write, I try to find a way
to shoot order anarchist theory and what fucking I'm sucking.

(01:14:08):
Like my first article, I was like, hey, go check
out crime Thing, the one who I published yesterday. I
just I went on a whole like page long tangent
where I'm like, okay, cool, So this is what more
liberal people are saying. But here's go read Lorenzo komboa
urban Go read coruery and anarchism, Go read this ship and

(01:14:29):
yeah that's I just want to shoehorn anarchist theory and
get more people will be anarchists. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:14:35):
Yeah, So if you ever want to support Maddie cast News.
To be clear, I don't take any income from the website,
actually having plant plans to put lots of money into it,
but all of your money will be going towards supporting
other trans journalists. So that's one way to you know,
contribute to the cause. So or even if you just
give me your email, I appreciate that too. But my

(01:14:57):
website is maddiecast dot com and that's only one d
so madycast dot com and round blueblis Guy too. It's
the same website named and yeah, thank you.

Speaker 7 (01:15:09):
People can find our co ops work at Ashvillblade dot
com and there's a giant link to our Patreon there.
For fifteen bucks a month, you can get a lovely
gentry Tears mug, which we're particularly proud of.

Speaker 3 (01:15:21):
It's so cool it rules.

Speaker 6 (01:15:26):
Thank you for the adorsement.

Speaker 7 (01:15:27):
And at the end of each article we have addition
to our Patreon a link if folks just want to
send us some one time support, we'll certainly put that
to use as well, and if they would like to
see some my personal writings about trans survival as well
as some anarchists looks at various periods of history Patreon
dot com slash David Forbes, if that is, if that

(01:15:50):
is more of their cup of tea.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
Statistically, in our audience, I know there are a bunch
of you whose special interest either is or could be
medieval peasant uprisings. You are not going to find better
writing on medieval and uprisings anywhere else. Yes, there is
a limit to the extent to which you can actually
talk about the structural problems that are happening, and you
can't fucking talk about how to solve them. And this

(01:16:11):
is also partially why I have a coxsault journalistic. I
kind of jokingly refuse to call myself a journalist because,
like I fucking I refuse to be associated with like
all of those goddamn Atlantic motherfuckers who in institutional jobs
to endanger trans people like you know.

Speaker 6 (01:16:27):
But also ground fascists.

Speaker 3 (01:16:28):
Though that's true, that's true, yeah, you know, because it's
like we're the ones actually fucking doing this shit. But
also yeah, like this is you know, to do my one,
to do my one Karl Marx quote. It's like, you know,
like philosophy has hitherto only sought to describe the world.
The point is to change it. And that's a thing
that we could that like, we like have the power

(01:16:49):
to collectively do together. And that's something that like the
New York Times does not want you to know that
you can change things.

Speaker 6 (01:16:57):
Now. Yeah, they to borrow a term that David has
recently gotten into my vocabulary. A bunch the gentry really
fucking do not like the idea of solutions. Their idea
of a solution is go vote for Pete Boudage Egg,
go sign the acl YUS petition.

Speaker 3 (01:17:14):
Yeah, I want to read this, this fucking post that
I saw forbout Kendra Rights about the New York Times,
I think a lot about the top New York Times editor,
who I told the historians were warning were in a
similar period to the ramp up to the Holocaust and
maybe we could look back and see what NYT had
done wrong. Did not repeat his mistakes. He shrugged. New
York Times didn't really cover the Holocaust.

Speaker 1 (01:17:36):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (01:17:37):
What So don't support these people, support the people who
actually do this shit, you know, Like I go, I'm
gonna I'm gonna make a kind of comparison. But it
was like, at the time this shit was happening, there
was a bunch of very good coverage of the Holocaust
of what was happening, but it was because it was
all happening from fucking like because it was like largely
Jewish radicals who were doing it. All that shit fucking

(01:17:59):
got ignored and shit that could have been fucking prevented wasn't.
And we don't have to live in a world where
that shit fucking happens, and we can make it not
be like that. But like the structural, the structural like
structural dature of the media is one of the ways
that this fucking happens. And we don't have to let
the New York Times do this again.

Speaker 7 (01:18:19):
No, And that's a good reminder there is another way
with journalism.

Speaker 6 (01:18:22):
You know.

Speaker 7 (01:18:22):
Ido Well's was able to detail the extent and horror
of American segregation and lynching and also called for people
to shoot the clan.

Speaker 3 (01:18:32):
Yeah, this is the.

Speaker 7 (01:18:33):
You know, the modern idea that you have to be
detached andeverably attached from pretty gentry perspective. You know, there's
a world elsewhere, there's other ways to do things.

Speaker 10 (01:19:02):
Welcome to another episode, if it can happen here, I
am your guest co host Bridget Pod, host of There
are no girls on the Internet. I'm joined by the
lovely Molly, host of award winning podcast on Pool Zone,
Weird Little Guys.

Speaker 5 (01:19:16):
Molly, how you doing great? Glad to be here in
bridget Okay.

Speaker 10 (01:19:20):
So I wish we were here to talk about all
the exciting stuff going on in your life. But I
wanted to bring this topic to the it could happen
here audience because I live in the district. I know
you're a Virginia Gail, so you might know a little
bit more about how it works in the district than
your average person. But I don't know that people really
understand what is happening to residents of the District of

(01:19:41):
Columbia like myself. So I live in DC. I've lived
here for most of my life. I have a lot
of like hometown pride. This is not just where I
happen to live. It's like my city, my home.

Speaker 5 (01:19:50):
Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 11 (01:19:51):
And you don't have representation, It's true, right, It's something
that infuriates me.

Speaker 10 (01:19:56):
And so you know, the first thing to know about
DC is that it's it's not a state, so that
means that what happens federally has a huge impact on
the day to day minutia of the life of people
like me who live in the district.

Speaker 5 (01:20:09):
If you don't live in the district, when it comes
to decisions.

Speaker 10 (01:20:12):
About how your like local tax dollars are spent, that
usually lies with like your state and local leaders. That's
not really the case for me and the other like
over half a million residents of the district. All of
this has made worse but the fact that we are
essentially disenfranchised just like you said, right, all of this
stuff is playing out in our home, like all of

(01:20:32):
these big national conversations are happening in our own backyard,
and we arguably have less electoral power and agency because
we aren't a state. Fun fact, DC residents only got
the right to vote in nineteen.

Speaker 5 (01:20:43):
Sixty one in presidential elections.

Speaker 3 (01:20:46):
What I know, Like I didn't know that we have.

Speaker 10 (01:20:49):
Not been voting in presidential elections for very long when
you think about it, in the fullness of time. So
when people are like, oh, you know, call your congress person,
call your lesson official to oppose x y Z, we
really have like nobody to call our congressional representative.

Speaker 3 (01:21:03):
Eleanor Holmes.

Speaker 10 (01:21:04):
Norton cannot vote on bills that are being considered by
the full House, and so we really just like don't
have us say whenever those big campaigns are going on,
I'm like, oh, it must be nice to have even
if that person ignores you, it must be nice to
have someone you can call.

Speaker 3 (01:21:17):
Wouldn't know.

Speaker 11 (01:21:18):
It almost seems disrespectful to be like, oh, yeah, you
guys have a representative. But it doesn't do anything exactly.
It's just vibes.

Speaker 5 (01:21:26):
It's just vibes.

Speaker 10 (01:21:28):
So all of this matters for Trump's return to my
hometown because as President, Trump has a lot more authority
to dictate how things are run locally for DC residents
like myself. You know, we all know that the Trump
administration is hell bent on making all of our lives worse.
But imagine if Trump was also in charge of how
your local police force in your city policed your city.

Speaker 5 (01:21:49):
Like that would be horrible, right, That.

Speaker 10 (01:21:52):
Sounds like a nightmare, And that is that threat is
like literally the reality that we are faced with here
in DC. So there's been some pretty big changes this
time around in the Trump administration. During his first administration,
I feel like Trump largely ignored DC like he would
pick a fight every now and then, but he didn't
really seem the meddle and how DC was run like locally,

(01:22:14):
That does not mean that he was not like out
in the district doing terrible things, which he very much was.
You might recall in twenty twenty, during the racial Justice
uprisings in the wake of George Floyd's death, Trump cleared
protesters using chemical agents so that he could go out
in front of Saint John's Church and.

Speaker 5 (01:22:30):
Like post upside down Bible Bible.

Speaker 3 (01:22:33):
Remember that distressing.

Speaker 5 (01:22:36):
It was distressing.

Speaker 10 (01:22:37):
I was there that day, and I'll say, like it
was like genuinely very excessive. I'm not going to get
into the nitty gritty of it, but in the aftermath
of that event, internal reports made it clear that like
it wasn't exactly clear what happened and underw what authority,
Like was it DC's local police force, Metropolitan PD, was
it federal Park Police?

Speaker 6 (01:22:57):
Like?

Speaker 10 (01:22:58):
It really underscored the of DC locally versus the federal government.

Speaker 11 (01:23:03):
And it doesn't help that there's half a dozen different
police forces operating on any given block of d C.

Speaker 10 (01:23:08):
Oh my god, girl, Like you genuinely never know when
you see flashing blue and red lights, you genuinely.

Speaker 5 (01:23:15):
It's like this could be federal, Like this could be federal.

Speaker 11 (01:23:18):
You never know if I just committed a federal traffic
violation exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:23:23):
And so the New York Times actually described that event
as quote a burst of violence unlike any scene in
the shadow of the White House in generations, and possibly
one of the defining moments of the Trump residency. And
so I remember that as like a moment that played
out nationally, but also it felt very local and like
I think it underscored how we really felt the impacts

(01:23:46):
of how militarized the city could locally get during Trump's
first administration. So that was like something that really sticks
out to me.

Speaker 11 (01:23:54):
I mean, I I rarely visit DC because I'm afraid
of traffic, Like just the act of driving through northern
Virginia too yet to d C is too frightening for me,
So I try not to go. But I think people
who don't live in the area don't think of DC
as a place where people live. They don't think of
it as anyone's home. Right, It's like Congress lives there,
the laws live there, but like a lot of people

(01:24:16):
live there, people who have nothing to do with the
federal government, mostly a lot of black people.

Speaker 3 (01:24:20):
Honestly, I mean.

Speaker 10 (01:24:21):
DC used to be called chocolate City for a reason.
These things were more like like a latte city. But
exactly I can confirm that people don't think of the
you know, over half a million DC residents who have
nothing to do with the federal government sometimes who nothing
with politics, who just like live here and is our home,
Like I was born in DC, like this is I

(01:24:42):
didn't just you know, move here to work in politics,
like my family can be traced back to our roots
in the district through generations. And so I have to
be in my bonnet about this because I feel very unseen,
and I think the way that the Trump administration is
playing out, I feel like the reporting really can sometimes
overlook the way that this is playing out in the

(01:25:03):
lie the life of your average you know, DC resident
who might have nothing to do with politics or you know,
the federal government.

Speaker 5 (01:25:10):
Like seventh grader's trying to get to middle school. Exactly
that exactly that.

Speaker 10 (01:25:15):
So during Trump's first administration, after the incident at Saint
John's Church, our mayor, DC's mayor, Muriel Bowser.

Speaker 5 (01:25:23):
She's still the mayor. She's still the mayor. She's the mayor.
She's a young girl, old and strong.

Speaker 10 (01:25:29):
She erected what became known as Black Lives Matter Plaza,
where she wrote black Lives Matter in like big yellow
letters outside of the White House.

Speaker 5 (01:25:38):
You remember this. I've had some unpleasant experiences in that zone.

Speaker 3 (01:25:41):
Yes, yes, you and me both.

Speaker 5 (01:25:44):
This could be a separate conversation.

Speaker 10 (01:25:46):
And so I will say when she did that, it
was largely like a symbolic move, and a lot of
DC activists thought the mayor was kind of co opting
or racial justice ethos that she didn't really embody and practiced.

Speaker 5 (01:25:57):
But I do think that that really is at.

Speaker 10 (01:25:59):
The tone for the mayor's relationship with Trump during his
first term. Like she was defiant. She was someone who
was going to stand up to him publicly. And something
to know about DC's Mayor Muriel Bauser is that Jakinda
has two modes. Defiant, like the version of herself that
painted Black Lives Matter outside of the Trump White House,
and then sort of diplomatic, right like somebody who like

(01:26:22):
wants to find common ground, which I think is the
is the version of her that we're seeing this time
around that is very different than how she was the
last time around, like she started trump second term sort
of counting the goals they have in common, and like
she met with him even before he was in office.
And so I have a lot of critiques about DC's marriage,
like anybody would have their political leader.

Speaker 5 (01:26:43):
But I do think it is.

Speaker 10 (01:26:44):
Important that folks understand that she is navigating something that
literally no other elected official in the United States has
to because of DC's lack of statehood. Like we our
city is uniquely threatened by Trump, and she knows this,
and Trump knows this, and so he really has to
like walk a tight rope, greased and shit if you will.

(01:27:05):
She's like navigating this public relationship with an unstable, lying
fascist and has to do so in a way that's
going to end up with like what's best for the city.

Speaker 5 (01:27:14):
So you could say whatever you want about Mayor Bouser.

Speaker 10 (01:27:16):
Like I certainly do, but this is a complicated thing
to navigate. I do not advocate for anybody complying in
advance with a fascist, but in this situation, I do
think it's fair to ask life, well, would being defiant
toward Trump make things worse for DC residents like myself?

Speaker 11 (01:27:35):
But it results in martial law in the city.

Speaker 10 (01:27:37):
Exactly exactly, So like, I don't like it, but I
get it. I guess if there was like a mantra
for my feelings on this, it's like, I don't like
it at all, but I get it.

Speaker 5 (01:27:46):
It's a no win situation. It is a no win situation.

Speaker 10 (01:27:51):
And you know, Trump spent even when he was on
the campaign trail before he was president, he talked this
time around about how he was planning to take over
this and because DC is not a state, like any
president does have the authority to interfere with how DC
is run. Like any president can take over the police
department and the powers of the mayor and the DC

(01:28:11):
City Council. Any president has the power to federalize DC's
like local police force, metropolitan police, deputize the national Guard,
and give law enforcement powers in DC, and activate the
military and federal law enforcement agencies such as the park
Police in DC.

Speaker 5 (01:28:26):
So oh, I didn't need so.

Speaker 11 (01:28:28):
Like the governor of any state has control of their
national guard, but DC has its own national guard, right, correct,
and they don't have a governor, so those are the
president's national guard.

Speaker 5 (01:28:37):
Correct. That's not great, So it's not great. It's not great.

Speaker 10 (01:28:41):
And you know the prospect of just just like let
that sink in the prospect of Trump having its own
military and police force in the district. Like I cannot
tell you how much this terrifies me. Like I cannot
stress to listeners how much of a shit hitting the
fan moment this would be for the city. To give
you a sense, like I have a go bag, and
I like, get the fuck out plan for that scenario

(01:29:02):
playing out.

Speaker 3 (01:29:03):
Virginia's so close.

Speaker 10 (01:29:04):
I no, I mean yeah, honestly, anybody in the DMV,
if you're in Maryland, Virginia, you should all be thinking
about this. So Trump has continued to like pressure the
mayor and threatening to like take over if she will

(01:29:26):
not do the things that he says, things like clean
up the city.

Speaker 5 (01:29:30):
Trump notified Mayor Bowser that she.

Speaker 10 (01:29:32):
Has to clean up all the unsightly homeless encampments in
the district, especially around federal buildings.

Speaker 3 (01:29:37):
If she is not capable of doing.

Speaker 5 (01:29:39):
So, we will be forced to do it for her,
he said.

Speaker 10 (01:29:41):
And so far, her strategy has really been one of
like quiet appeasement, so that Black Lives Matter plaza that
she erected in defiance during his first term that came.

Speaker 5 (01:29:52):
Down, did it really they'd painted over it? I think
they they dismantled it.

Speaker 10 (01:29:57):
I think that they were like, Oh, we're going to
like take it up so that it can go someplace else,
but we're removing it from this part of the city, if.

Speaker 5 (01:30:07):
That make sense.

Speaker 11 (01:30:08):
That's I mean, that's a symbolic moment, right, just like
pouring the asphalt over the words black Lives Matter.

Speaker 10 (01:30:13):
Yeah, And I do really think it it underscores this
moment that we're in right now.

Speaker 5 (01:30:18):
Where it does, I mean, I'm curious for your thoughts.

Speaker 10 (01:30:20):
It does sort of feel like a pendulum swing in
some ways where all of these like largely symbolic gestures
are now like being bulldozed over, oftentimes like voluntarily, like
without even really being pressured into doing so.

Speaker 6 (01:30:36):
Right.

Speaker 11 (01:30:36):
I guess it's hard, right because like painting Black Lives
Matter on the sidewalk did nothing for black people, right,
Like did that help you to that materially improve your life?

Speaker 5 (01:30:45):
No, it was purely symbolic.

Speaker 11 (01:30:46):
But negating that symbolic gesture I think does a lot
more harm than never having had it, right, because that
is a that is an imposition of will over over
what was again a symbol that did nothing in accomplis nothing.
It didn't actually help anyone or change any situation. But
taking the time out of your day to bulldoze that
symbol sends a strong message.

Speaker 10 (01:31:08):
I feel the exact same way, and Republican Representative Andrew
Clyde actually wants it to go further. He introduced a
bill that would have amended the US Code to withhold
certain funds from DC unless Black Lives Matter was taken
off the street and that area was renamed quote Liberty Plaza,
and for the district to remove all Black Lives Matter

(01:31:28):
Plaza references from city websites and official documents. So they
want to like memory, hold it and be like it
never happened.

Speaker 11 (01:31:35):
That's such cripeyby bullshit too for the like these free
speech warriors right like, oh the facts don't care about
your feelings. Free speech is the most important thing, like
the marketplace of ideas, Like I guess you can't compete
in the marketplace of.

Speaker 5 (01:31:45):
Ideas, buckoh exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:31:47):
Clyde said, quote it's time for our nation to leave
this failed agenda behind, starting with the removal BLM plaza
from America's capital. Trump is what one hundred percent right.
We must clean up DC for the American people. I
believe that removing ba m Plaza must be part of
this critical effort. After all, BLM is a radical defund
the police organization, but we are not a defund the
police nation.

Speaker 3 (01:32:09):
So I know this.

Speaker 11 (01:32:09):
You know, clean up the city rhetoric is sort of
fascist in and of itself, right, that that's scary rhet regardless,
but pairing it with like back to back in the
same breath, like we have to clean up the city,
we have to get rid of BLM plaza. Like are
you saying being reminded that black people have civil liberties
is dirty to you? That that's what's making the city
dirty is the black people.

Speaker 10 (01:32:29):
I would argue that's exactly what he's saying. But DC
is like getting upset about black people. It's like going
to the beach and getting upset with than when they're sand.

Speaker 3 (01:32:36):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:32:36):
It's like, we could have a whole conversation about DC's demographics,
but like a, we are a black city, like that
is what makes DC what it is. It's like why
I continue to live here? Right, It's like, I think
that's exactly what he's saying. Is we don't want our
nation's capital to be one that honors the you know,
agency of black people, black bodies and black lives.

Speaker 3 (01:32:56):
Right, Like, I think that's like what he said.

Speaker 5 (01:32:57):
Then move the White House to South Boston. I guess
I don't know what.

Speaker 10 (01:33:02):
So, you know, the mayor pretty quickly relented and bielm
plazas no more. She basically said, like, you know, we've
got bigger fish to fry, like focusing on DC's autonomy
and budget, and to be honest, like a lot of
residents agreed with her that like it probably was not
worth the fight.

Speaker 5 (01:33:18):
That's kind of that's kind of the theme.

Speaker 10 (01:33:20):
Here, is that all of these little things that individually
are probably not worth the fight, but then collectively you're like, well,
who is.

Speaker 5 (01:33:27):
Sort of in charge of this city?

Speaker 11 (01:33:29):
You know when if none of these little things are
worth the fight, are you fighting?

Speaker 10 (01:33:33):
That's a great question. Are you fighting? If nothing is
worth the fight? Are you fighting?

Speaker 11 (01:33:38):
And I feel like that's kind of I don't know,
on a larger scale, sort of the National Democratic Party's
line has always been we got to keep a power dry,
we got to keep her powder.

Speaker 3 (01:33:46):
Dry, keep it drive for fucking what, dog?

Speaker 5 (01:33:47):
Right?

Speaker 11 (01:33:48):
You're gonna end the war, you know, with a pile
of bodies and a bunch of dry powder.

Speaker 5 (01:33:53):
Exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:33:55):
So the next demand that Trump made of Bowser was
the need to clear homeless encampments near the White House,
saying that if Bowser didn't do it, he would be
forced to do it for her. So, within hours of
Trump's call to Bowser, DC City Creuz arrived at these
encampments to tell residents they had to be out the
next day. It's not great, like, to be clear, it
is not like our mayor does not clear encampments in DC.

(01:34:17):
In fact, her administration said they had been planning to
clear the encampment in question, but just doing so in
like a more planned, rolled out way. So it's not
like she's like someone who is not, you know, down
with clearing encampments. The Washington Post spoke to some of
the people who were residents of those encampments when they
were cleared. Shelley Buyer's is someone they spoke to who
has been chronically homeless in DC for three years. She

(01:34:38):
was living at an encampment that was cleared in twenty
twenty three before winding up at the one that Trump
wanted cleared, and she said they were basically given no
notice that they needed to vacate. She said, now we
have only less than twenty four hours to get out,
as she threw her clothing out of her tent.

Speaker 5 (01:34:51):
I liked it here.

Speaker 10 (01:34:52):
They keep shoving us off from place to place, making
it so we don't have anywhere to go.

Speaker 5 (01:34:56):
The Post also spoke to the.

Speaker 10 (01:34:57):
President of Miriam's Kitchen, which is a big nonprofit here
DC that provides services for the homeless, and he said
that it wasn't even clear, like he wasn't even sure
if the city followed proper protocols with this hasty encampment
clearing at Trump's direction. Encampment residents are meant to be
given two weeks notice, but people who were cleared so
that they only learned about that action within twenty four hours.

Speaker 5 (01:35:19):
And so I think that's part of the issue here.

Speaker 10 (01:35:22):
DC, like any city, has issues like crime and homelessness,
but like hitting people housed takes time. Like just wanting
to quickly move people who might have anywhere else to
go because they look, as Trump said, unseemly or unsightly
is not solving the problem. What you're actually doing is
just traumatizing people who are already vulnerable and then forcing
them to go elsewhere, exactly like that woman.

Speaker 11 (01:35:44):
Told the Post, even in the best case scenario, even
the most organized clearing of an encampment is I mean,
it's violent, and it's inhumane, and it doesn't really serve
a greater purpose other than I don't know, so that
people don't have to think about homelessness on their way
to work. But there is a way to do it
that is, at least theoretically could result in something that

(01:36:05):
is not monstrous, you know what I mean. Like I said,
there's no good way to clear it encampment unless you're
giving everyone an apartment. But right like, you're giving people
two weeks notice, Lets social services get involved, lets them go,
you know, tent to tent for those two weeks, talking
to people about where they could go, giving them options,
connecting them with services if that's what they choose. But
if you're just rolling up overnight and throwing people' shit away,

(01:36:27):
you're not You're not solving a problem.

Speaker 5 (01:36:28):
You're not even trying to solve a problem. You're not
even pretending that you're trying to solve a problem.

Speaker 10 (01:36:32):
But I think that's exactly how Trump thinks about this issue.
It's just like looks bad and unseemly to him. So
I don't care where they go. I don't care how
you do it. Just I don't want to be looking.

Speaker 11 (01:36:42):
At them, right, because for him, it's not about getting
these people connected to services so that they might eventually
find stable housing. It's about I don't want to fucking
see these people because they're gross exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:36:52):
And like he is encroaching on how our city is run, right,
and so like, if that is the ethos that you have,
I don't want to see these gross people. I don't
care where they go. This is not an ethos that
that responsibly is able to run a city like that
is really disruptive.

Speaker 11 (01:37:06):
Yeah, it's absolutely disruptive because they'll go somewhere else. They'll
go somewhere else, and now their lives have been uprooted,
they don't have maybe the documents got thrown away, and
it's going to be even harder for them to find stability.

Speaker 5 (01:37:16):
Like you have not addressed the problem.

Speaker 10 (01:37:19):
Exactly, and I think that's what that's like the name
of the game, with the way that Trump has already
been you know, meddling in the way that DC runs
its local affairs. This next example, I got to say,
it really gets to me. So DC's Attorney General Ryan
Schwab recently dropped a lawsuit against the Proud Boys and

(01:37:39):
the Oathkeepers for their behavior during January six so. The
suit was initially filed by the former DC Attorney General,
carl A.

Speaker 5 (01:37:46):
Racine.

Speaker 10 (01:37:47):
It initially marks the first effort by a government agency
to hold the individuals and organizations civilly liable for violence
at the Capitol on January sixth, but a federal judge
in DC granted the district's request to dismiss that case.
The suit was fashioned after a modern version of the
eighteen seventy one law known as the klu Klux klan
At that was enacted after the Civil War to safeguard

(01:38:07):
government officials carrying out their duties to protect civil rights.
This is actually a similar challenge that prevailed against groups
involved in the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, which Molly,
I know you might know a thing or two about.

Speaker 11 (01:38:19):
Let's just see, very familiar with Clan Act lawsuits.

Speaker 5 (01:38:22):
And they are effective. They're effective.

Speaker 11 (01:38:24):
It's one of the only things that we still have
from reconstruction that hasn't been taken away from us. Is
this civil remedy for civil rights violations?

Speaker 5 (01:38:32):
And it works, it.

Speaker 10 (01:38:34):
Works, but like you have to carry it out, and
basically the city decided that it wasn't worth it given
all of the threats to DC's autonomy by the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (01:38:43):
So it's extortion.

Speaker 5 (01:38:44):
I mean, yeah, like that's exactly what it feels like.
I mean, this is extortion.

Speaker 11 (01:38:48):
They're being prevented, They're being prevented from seeking a viable
civil remedy through the courts out of fear of retaliation.

Speaker 5 (01:38:55):
That seems very bad.

Speaker 10 (01:38:57):
It's like, I mean, I'm glad that you use the
word extortion, because it really does feel like if you've
seen one of my favorite movies, Goodfellas, it feels like
what Henry Hill the mobster calls real grease ball shit, right, like, ooh,
great city you have here. It would be a shame
if something were to uh happen to it.

Speaker 11 (01:39:15):
Like extortion, right, God, But usually, I mean sometimes you
get something out of a protection racket. DC's not even
fucking getting anything out of it.

Speaker 10 (01:39:23):
I guess you could argue that they are like not
raising the iyre further of the Trump administration and that
like that might lead to DC having more autonomy and
like DC, you know, like Trump officials not meddling in
DC's affairs.

Speaker 11 (01:39:37):
I mean, I don't know if any of these people
have read a book, but appeasing of fascist has historically
not resulted in you getting what you want.

Speaker 10 (01:39:47):
No, And I gotta be honest, girl, this one's fucking stung.
Like it sucks hearing people like the Proud Boys leader
Enrique Terrio basically brag about having this case dropped. The
Oathkeeper's founder, Stuart Rhoades, his attorney, said, we are very
pleased to see the District of Columbia has come to
the same conclusion that the American public and President Trump
have the narrative that January sixth was some sort of

(01:40:09):
armed insurrection to overthrow the government plus falls from the
very beginning. Enriquetario posted after the district requested to dismiss
this lawsuit, saying another exoneration. If God is with us,
who can be against us? Like it just chaps my
ass to hear this shit.

Speaker 5 (01:40:24):
Like God didn't do this, baby, God didn't do this.

Speaker 10 (01:40:28):
You also have DC's Metro Police investigating the vandalization of
tesla's as a hate crime. This again, like it really
makes me wonder, Like, as far as I know, Trump
is not in charge of our Metropolitan Police Department, but
stuff like this makes me wonder.

Speaker 3 (01:40:45):
We're like, is he a kind.

Speaker 2 (01:40:46):
Of in charge?

Speaker 11 (01:40:47):
I mean, pressure's clearly being exact.

Speaker 10 (01:40:49):
Basically, somebody wrote quote political hate speech on a Tesla.
The statement from the Metropolitan Police Departments that they were
investigating these offenses as being motivated by hate or bias clear.
Mayor Bowser was like, I didn't tell them to do this,
Like she was like, I have nothing to do with
the police department's decision making on this, Like that's them.

Speaker 11 (01:41:07):
I hate crime typically implicates a protected class like race, gender, religion,
national origin. What is the protected class of being a
Tesla owner? It's like it's being a big loser of
protected class unclear.

Speaker 10 (01:41:20):
And they wouldn't even say, like what was the nature
of what was written on this car that made it
a potential hate crime? Like we don't even know, which is.

Speaker 11 (01:41:28):
So funny because these guys never believed in hate crimes before, unless.

Speaker 10 (01:41:31):
It's against like Elon Musk and people who like him.

Speaker 5 (01:41:34):
Something that's the best I.

Speaker 11 (01:41:35):
Can figure, but I've heard full throadd arguments against the
existence of the category of hate crime, and now suddenly
they're very important. Yeah, now they're very important.

Speaker 10 (01:41:43):
And I do you think I mean, like, when I
heard about this, it really made me think about how
different categories of crime and legislation around it is like
very well intended and well meaning, and like I understand
who hate crime legislation is meant to protect, but then
you also have the ways it can be sort of
like perverted to protect a protective class that is not

(01:42:05):
a protected class, right, Like it.

Speaker 11 (01:42:06):
I mean, it's the same as the language around terrorism,
right that, Like, terrorism wasn't something that we were talking
about or charging. It's not even very well defined in
the law, to be honest, But it's something that became
part of the conversation when America became very afraid of Muslims,
became very afraid of Middle Eastern people, Right, So terrorism
had that implication for a very long time, and then
there was this brief window in the last couple of
years where they were using it against domestic white extremists.

(01:42:30):
And now they're not doing that anymore, and they're just
going to charge you with terrorism. For looking sideways at
a Tesla exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:42:36):
Here's how my co host and friend Michael Schaeffer, who
writes the Capital City's column for Political put it. He says,
now the White House is beating the drums about Tesla vandalism,
creating another incentive for locals to play ball. The FBI
director called Tesla vandalism domestic terrorism. The President suggested sending
vandals to jail and El Salvador if likening the run
of the mill political graffiti to criminal bigotry, it's what

(01:42:58):
it takes to keep the feds from have locking city Hall.
The logic goes, maybe it's worth it.

Speaker 5 (01:43:03):
No, it's not. I would say it's not.

Speaker 11 (01:43:05):
No, it's not Maybe they want to do through you
extraordinary rendition to vandals, but maybe it's worth No.

Speaker 5 (01:43:11):
It's not worth it, babe, it's not worth it.

Speaker 11 (01:43:12):
You're not gonna you're not holding back the tide of
fascism if you allow fascism to happen.

Speaker 10 (01:43:17):
Unlike local governments in Cleveland or Boston, DC is really
stuck between a rock and a hard place. And I mean, like,
I understand why city officials are taking this like appeasement angle,
but like I guess, as you said, like, I don't
know how you can make the argument that it's like
worth it, Like, what are we getting if every single

(01:43:40):
day it's going to be a new threat to DC's autonomy,
a new threat to DC, a new EO from the
Trump administration?

Speaker 5 (01:43:46):
What are we really getting by playing ball in this way? Right?

Speaker 11 (01:43:49):
And if you're saying you're saving your energy for the
big fight, it's like, well, what do you think the
big fight is going to be If it's not the
slow erosion of the safety and civil liberties of everyone
who lives here. Exactly what is the big fight?

Speaker 10 (01:44:10):
Well, some might say the big fight is DC's tense
budget showdown, which is ongoing. It's a little in the
weed ze, So like, I'm not going to get too
too into it, but I'll try to give the quick
and dirty version of what's going on. The district is
overseen by Congress thanks to provision in the Constitution, So
this means that DC is occasionally treated like a federal
agency rather than like a city or a local government

(01:44:31):
under various laws. This used to mean that DC's budget
was regularly delayed. Because of this, The city had to
wait for Congress to approve DC's local budget alongside other
federal agencies, which Congress is like almost never does on time.
So pretty much everybody agreed like this was a problem.
So in the early two thousands they changed it so
that as Congress was behind schedule, DC could just keep

(01:44:52):
spending at its current budget levels without disruption until Congress
is able to formally approve a new budget. But in
March that alt change because the language was omitted from
a new funding bill that Congress passed in March that
would basically force DC to omit one billion dollars from
its budget. This to be clear, like, if DC were
to omit one billion dollars from the budget, we basically

(01:45:15):
could not function as a city. The things that you
need to run a city, schools, garbage collection, all of
that would be cut to the point of like not
being viable. I'm not even sure what that would mean
for the city to make that deep of a cut.
And the worst part is nobody really knows why Congress
did this. Like, in my capacity as co host for
a local DC podcast, City CASTC, I've spoken to a

(01:45:37):
lot of people in DC government and reporters, and the
best I can come up with is that Congress just
really does not understand what they have done. A reporter
that I spoke to you said that there seemed to
be confusion with lawmakers that we were talking about DC's
local tax money and not federal money. And so this
was happening in March, during the height of like doge efficiency.

(01:45:59):
I'm putting a fish see in like heavy scare quotes.
It was at the height of that, and so the
best I could think was that lawmakers thought, like, oh,
this will we will be able to like say that,
you know, making DC cut a billion dollars from the
budget will be a big show of federal tax dollar savings.
But we're not talking about federal money. We're talking about

(01:46:19):
local tax money, not federal money. Doesn't save anybody any
federal money. And so I think that from what I've heard,
it sounds like people like Mike Johnson just maybe like
did not really have a good understanding of that. It
is a little bit complicated, but like if you're a lawmaker,
like come on, dude, but.

Speaker 11 (01:46:35):
Again, because you have no representative who is really involved
in this process, Like there's nobody in that room going
to bat for DC. There's nobody in that room whose
constituency is DC, who understands what it means to run
DC exactly.

Speaker 10 (01:46:49):
And what's funny is that, like for all the talk
about like how how like we're not a defund the
police nation, this bill would kind of defund DC police.

Speaker 5 (01:46:57):
It would have to.

Speaker 3 (01:46:58):
Mean who defund everything?

Speaker 10 (01:46:59):
Like it would' I mean like sixty seven million dollars
caught from the DC police budget, along with cutting funding
for DC public schools and the Department of Human Services,
which serves the city's forest residents. Right, So, like it
would defund everything.

Speaker 5 (01:47:10):
Including the police.

Speaker 10 (01:47:11):
So it's like funny to be like, we're not down
with defund the police, but we are down with this
bill that kind of does it.

Speaker 11 (01:47:17):
We're like, who do you think is gonna fill the potholes?
Who's gonna mow the grass? Like nothing will get done,
the city will fall apart.

Speaker 10 (01:47:23):
Well, so our mayor has really been doing her diplomacy
thing and appealing to exactly that, right, Like Trump has
been really clear about all these goals he has for
the district, like beautifying DC and cracking down on crime
and homelessness. There is no way to do that if
you are slashing the budgets of these departments that are
meant to work on those things by tens of millions
of dollars.

Speaker 5 (01:47:41):
Who's gonna prune the cherry trees?

Speaker 4 (01:47:43):
Donald?

Speaker 3 (01:47:43):
I mean it Tho's gonna prove.

Speaker 10 (01:47:44):
Almost as if Trump doesn't really care about doing any
of this stuff. He's just like talking big and doesn't
give a shit about how it actually plays out.

Speaker 5 (01:47:51):
He doesn't know how anything works.

Speaker 10 (01:47:54):
Yeah, I mean that's really the bottom line for me
is that when you have Trump loudly talking about the
ways that he is meddling in the way that DC
is run, He's not someone who is good at efficiently governing.
And so like, you know, say what you little about DC?
We had a function we have a functioning local government,
a functioning city. Putting somebody like Trump in charge of

(01:48:17):
how things get done, what happens to encampments, what happens
to education, what happens to crime? Like, like, that's just
a terrible, terrible move for the city.

Speaker 11 (01:48:26):
I mean it's like, you know, at a shitty retail job,
you get a new assistant store manager and they try
to change the way the schedule gets made just so
they can look like they're doing something, so they can
feel like they're in charge, and it's like, yeah, dog,
that's just not how things work at this store, Like
it won't function if the keyholder doesn't open.

Speaker 10 (01:48:40):
I wish I could tell Trump that, Like I'm taken
back to my days of working retail at the mall
or where you could just be like, actually, Greg, that's
not how it works here at this Claire's.

Speaker 5 (01:48:51):
I used to work at Claires. It just won't work
like that.

Speaker 11 (01:48:56):
Like, I know you're very important and you're in charge here,
but it's just like it won't work.

Speaker 5 (01:49:00):
It won't work.

Speaker 10 (01:49:02):
So yeah, I mean, as of today, there has not
been a vote on DC's budget. Trump actually signaled that
he is on board for a fix that would prevent
this billion dollar cut, and he urged the Senate to
vote for it. He posted, the House should take up
the DC funding fix that the Senate passed and get
it done immediately, all caps. But everybody's on recess and
so in the meantime, like it's not clear what's going

(01:49:24):
to happen, And the city did announce that they're looking
at making cuts and furlowing staff because it's not clear
what's going to happen.

Speaker 11 (01:49:31):
So, you know, so it's not It's not that the
city doesn't have them. It's not like the city's broke.
Like the city has the money, they're just not allowed
to budget it.

Speaker 5 (01:49:37):
Yes, exactly that and for no reason. Problems. It's a
fake but it's a fake problem.

Speaker 10 (01:49:43):
But again, I don't know that people like Mike Johnson
understand that there are people who live here who you know,
just want to have their trash taken out, just want
to be able to educate their kids, just want to
be able to like live our lives in the city.

Speaker 5 (01:49:55):
And I think I've said this on it could happen
here before.

Speaker 10 (01:49:57):
But I have to feel like it's punitive, right like
DC nobody didn't vote for Trump, Like DC didn't vote
for Trump, like you know, Nicky Hayley won DC's Republican primary,
not even Trump, right, so, like we have made it
very clear that we don't like him and we don't
want him here. And I guess I just have to
say the only thing that makes sense as to why

(01:50:18):
Congress would do this it's punitive, is to be like
fuck DC and the progressive, hippie, dippy educated people who
live there, Like it just feels like like a punitive
attack on the district.

Speaker 11 (01:50:28):
But again just like shooting themselves in the dick, because
like if the city falls apart, like you still work here,
you still have to drive on the streets here.

Speaker 10 (01:50:36):
Well, I mean, if Trump gets his way and DC
just becomes like a instead of a city, like a
military compound that is controlled by like his goons.

Speaker 11 (01:50:48):
Like it's sort of a like a Trump Vatican City
where he's the king of this little tiny country.

Speaker 10 (01:50:52):
That is my ultimate, biggest fear about what is on
the horizon for DC. That is like the ultimate ultimate
like negative fear that I have.

Speaker 5 (01:51:02):
And I guess bottom line is like this is.

Speaker 10 (01:51:05):
Why DC needs statehoods, Like we are facing such unique
threats from the Trump administration that no other place in
the United States faces. You know, there are a million
reasons for DC to become a state, but this just
I think that the way that Trump is acting.

Speaker 5 (01:51:20):
Toward our city, toward our mayor toward our council.

Speaker 10 (01:51:23):
With regards to our budget, like it all just makes
so much sense that our residents should not be at
the behest of somebody like Trump.

Speaker 5 (01:51:30):
To have our city run the way that we want
it to be run. And yeah, it just doesn't make sense.
It doesn't make sense.

Speaker 11 (01:51:36):
It doesn't the city should be able to make its
own budget. There's no reason for it to function like this.

Speaker 10 (01:51:41):
There is no reason for it. So from your lips
to God's ears.

Speaker 11 (01:51:47):
Yeah, So, like, I guess what should people look for,
Like what's the next step in this process?

Speaker 5 (01:51:52):
Like when's the next vote on this?

Speaker 10 (01:51:54):
So when lawmakers are back in session, we should have
some sense of what's going on with DC's budget. The
thing I would end with is like, give a shit
about DC, Like, don't be somebody who perpetuates the idea
that the only thing happening in DC is like national politics,
and like where national conversations are happening, Because you know,
there are six hundred thousand people who live here and

(01:52:17):
we want to be able to control our city and control.

Speaker 5 (01:52:20):
Our tax money.

Speaker 10 (01:52:22):
Like I pay taxes just like anybody else, and it's
ridiculous that I get less of a say than everybody else.
So if you don't live in DC and you hear
about Congress or the Senate voting on stuff that impacts
DC residents, like you might hear about them voting on
the DC budget fixed bill, you can call your representatives
and advocate on our behalf and kind of be our
voice because we don't really get one. Hopefully this all

(01:52:43):
gives you a sense of what's at stake for us,
So please give a shit about DC.

Speaker 11 (01:52:47):
Give a shit about DC, and hopefully you guys still
have garbage services.

Speaker 10 (01:52:51):
We'll see Molly, thank you for running through all of
this with me.

Speaker 5 (01:52:57):
You're such a good co host. Yeah, this was fun. Yeah,
I listened to Bridges' podcast. There are no girls on
the Internet listen to Weird Little Guys, a Webby.

Speaker 11 (01:53:05):
Award winning podcast.

Speaker 10 (01:53:06):
Yes, so deserved. Are you like keeping your wedding secret?
Is that something I can talk about?

Speaker 11 (01:53:11):
Well, I did tell the listeners just because there's gonna
be some reruns coming out. I'm getting married soon, so
I will be out of town for a little bit.
But yeah, so I got a lot going on. I
got my Weird Little Guys, I got my weird little wedding.

Speaker 5 (01:53:22):
Well, congratulations. I was telling you off.

Speaker 10 (01:53:25):
Mike that, like, I love it when women who do
work in the like extremism right wing space have happy,
thriving personal lives, so it brings me a lot of joy.

Speaker 5 (01:53:35):
Deeply congratulations, thank you. Yeah, I am experiencing a lot
of joy. You deserve it. Thank you.

Speaker 2 (01:54:04):
Welcome back to It could Happen Here? A podcast normally
about it happening here, being you know, the real world
where you live, but for the next two weeks after this,
and for the week before us, and for this week,
we're talking about it happening in a galaxy far far away.
That's right. This is the second in our four part
series reviewing and discussing and Or Season two, which, due

(01:54:29):
to a series of incredibly unlikely events, has become the
most radical media to reach a wide audience in the
United States and quite some time. I am here with
Mio Wong and Garrison Davis. How are we all doing today.

Speaker 3 (01:54:40):
Hanging in there, hanging in there as we always are.

Speaker 2 (01:54:46):
Yeah. I just watched episodes seven through nine last night,
which is really helping with the hanging in there.

Speaker 3 (01:54:51):
I have not seen that shit yet.

Speaker 4 (01:54:53):
So yeah, that's for next week, though we have to
say that for next week.

Speaker 2 (01:54:55):
Yeah, well, we're not talking about them now, but we
watched them this week and I'm happy.

Speaker 4 (01:55:00):
Did watch them, and oh boy, but we still have
a lot to talk about for episodes four to six.
It does kind of set up what we see later on,
but I think there's a lot of interesting stuff there
with like building an underground resistance, a lot of spies
an espionage mixed in with like the personal cost of
rebellion and how it affects like your personal life, your relationships.

(01:55:20):
So there is a lot to discuss here. But oh boy,
I am excited for next week.

Speaker 2 (01:55:24):
Yes, I am very excited for next week. I'm very
excited for this week, which we should talk about so
kind of there's a few themes running through these three episodes.
One of them is, yeah, the cost in terms of
your personal life on being part of a rebellion, And yeah,
I'm interested kind of what are some of the I mean,

(01:55:47):
there's one real standout moment in these episodes that I
know we're all going to want to talk about, which
is a speech given by Saul Gerrera saw Yeah, played
by Forrest Whitaker, just just amazingly.

Speaker 4 (01:55:58):
Yeah, the nitrous speech. Yeah, we'll get to it.

Speaker 3 (01:56:01):
We'll get to that.

Speaker 2 (01:56:01):
But yeah, we should start with the first of these episodes.

Speaker 4 (01:56:05):
Yeah, episode four. Ever been to Gorman? I guess once again,
if you do not want to be giving Disney Plus
your money, you can be like Hondo Anaka and acquire
the show that way.

Speaker 3 (01:56:17):
Remember the torrent combinations, Remember the variations, gotta keep them
all in your.

Speaker 4 (01:56:20):
Head, Yes, yes, all nine or eight variations. Let's do
a quick recap of this episode, then we'll talk about
some of these aspects. So one year later from the
previous episodes, Cassian and Bix are on the planet Coroissant,
staying at a safe house in between running missions for Luthen.
Bix is severely struggling with PTSD, while Cassian is stressed
about having to avoid surveillance while hiding in the capital city.

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
And Bix is also we find out abusing space santas.

Speaker 4 (01:56:48):
Yeah, later on we can we can see that she's
she's using using space drugs to help her cope with
the massive amounts of trauma that she's been forced to
deal with the past few years. Now, our favorite weasel,
Cyril Karn, has been transferred to the planet Gormant, where
he's running the local Bureau of Standards in the capital
city of Palmo. He refutes Imperial propaganda about Gorman while

(01:57:10):
on a FaceTime call with his Fox News addicted.

Speaker 2 (01:57:13):
More talking about like, yeah, the Imperial the Imperial News
says the Gormans are super arrogant, just real assholes.

Speaker 4 (01:57:22):
You gotta stop watching Imperial news Man. But this may
be a ploy from Cyril, because Cyril knows he's being
monitored and surveilled by members of the Gorman Front, a
small underground resistance group, while working as a double agent
for his ISB girlfriend Dedra. Sirtle gets invited to a
town hall meeting where he's introduced to the leader of

(01:57:42):
the Gorman Front, a local businessman and city councilor, and
then Cyril is recruited into the resistance.

Speaker 2 (01:57:48):
Yeah. I want to say a little about the Gorman
Front because they're very clearly French resistance in World War Two.
Coded they developed a whole like language for them to speak,
which is basically like.

Speaker 4 (01:57:59):
French French phonics, but different words but.

Speaker 2 (01:58:02):
Different words, and so it sounds a little bit like
French and German, like got mashed together. People who speak
both have told me, I don't know, I'm not a
not a language guy, but it sounds distinctive and they're
very clearly like Again, their whole the whole industry of
this planet is high quality textiles that come from like
spider silk, but also clearly the the the guy who's
leading the resistance. His business is kind of meant to

(01:58:24):
evoke sort of like a classic like French vineyard. Like,
so he's like he's not a poor man, right, Like.

Speaker 4 (01:58:30):
No, he's like he's like wealthy, he's like well off. Yes, yes,
I mean that's a big part about like Gorman is
this is like a you know, middle upper class like
status planet.

Speaker 6 (01:58:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:40):
This is like a big part of like Luthen's interest
in the planet is if he can bring a planet
with that status into the rebellion, that could have a
whole bunch of advantages. And that's kind of why he's
at least like looking into them as an option and
eventually kind of setting them up for like an accelerationist
to push.

Speaker 2 (01:58:53):
Yeah, because I actually think it's a slightly different even
than that. But we'll talk about that and up when
we get to episode nine. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:59):
Sure, there's an Iceby board meeting where they discuss a
batch of new raids and arrests on rebel activity and
how to deal with this influx of arrests that's making
it hard to process and obtain useful information. Luthn's Iceby
spy informs them of the Empire's increased interest in Gorman
and that the Ice be is running covert operations on
the planet. Meanwhile, Senator Manmathma unsuccessfully lobbies against the Emperor's

(01:59:23):
resentencing directive, and at Saguerera's hideout, Willem teaches Saws partisans
how to safety deploy a fuel pipeline of.

Speaker 2 (01:59:30):
Verter Yeah, and specifically, Saw puts him with one of
his guys who's kind of coded as being like a
close to Saul, Like this is somebody that he really trusts,
and it's kind of implied fairly soon that like Saw
doesn't want this guy going back to Luthen with information, right.

Speaker 4 (01:59:46):
He wants to keep Willow.

Speaker 2 (01:59:47):
Yeah, he's just like kidnapping this guy. It's like, well,
he wants to kill him at first. That's the statement
he makes to his guy, is like, once you have
these variations down, we're going to ice him.

Speaker 4 (01:59:59):
Saw does a they trusts Luthen very much anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:00:01):
He never did well luth.

Speaker 4 (02:00:02):
And slowly losing a lot of the trust that he's
built up throughout the galaxy.

Speaker 2 (02:00:07):
Yeah. But like one of the things that's interesting here
is that like we kind of see Saws paranoia where
there's a bunch of variations you need to know to
get fuel out of any number of different things, and
the guys like I have to memorize too many if
you just let us know which one we're trying to
go after, but that would make it clear which fuel
station they're going after, So Saw doesn't want to say
shit initially.

Speaker 4 (02:00:28):
So this episode we're introduced to the planet Gorman. Like
in person, it's basically like northern Italy mixed with French culture. Yeah,
the massive set they built is just gorgeous, a huge,
huge town square for the capital city of Palmo.

Speaker 3 (02:00:41):
The amount of money they spent on this show. The
protesters I think is really interesting.

Speaker 4 (02:00:46):
Because it's like protesters at like the monument of the
Tarkan massacre.

Speaker 3 (02:00:49):
Yeah. Yeah, they're kind of fascinating because like the way
that their banners are designed really really remind me of
like pictures you see from like nineteen seventeen. It's like
very very similar to that. And also they have a
thing that's a very common protest thing where it's like
there's as you know, there's protests going on, so there's
like just like ten guys in the square all the time. Yes,
kind of like chantons.

Speaker 4 (02:01:10):
Yeah, always making noise.

Speaker 2 (02:01:12):
They're kind of keeping a vigil because basically what happened.
And this is another interesting Tony Gurroy is kind of
famously not a Star Wars fan like prior to working
on this, and so there was a lot of like
anxiety from big Star Wars nerds that like, oh, this
isn't going to feel like Star Wars, but it clearly
has a lot of folks who understand, not just like
the stuff that's come out, you know, since Disney started

(02:01:34):
in the different books and comics, but like the legend
stuff because in Legends, like a major spark of the
whole rebellion was the Gorman massacre, which is in tarkan Lands,
and Tarkan's the old guy in the Death Star in
a New Hope, right, Like, he's the guy who's Darth
Vader's boss in the first movie, and he lands a
craft on a crowd at Gorman, And that's supposed to

(02:01:55):
have been one of the major sparks, And they've retconned
it a little, but to the point where that's still happened,
but it's clearly the setup for a larger massacre that
this season is building towards.

Speaker 4 (02:02:05):
Yeah, man, Spacebox News very good. We see the Ministry
of Enlightenment efforts to weaponize public opinion and how much
it's working on someone on someone like Cyril's mother, who
who then becomes convinced that like the propaganda that she's
being fed is the stuff that she like already believed
absolutely right, is stuff that she she's like red conned

(02:02:25):
into her own memory of being like no, like I've
I've always never trusted the Gore. Yeah. Meanwhile, she's like
sitting in front of her like TV like twenty four
to seven, watching this like the garbage get beamed into
her brain.

Speaker 2 (02:02:38):
And I'm wondering, did y'all wonder for a second if
Cyril was legitimately getting pilled by totally the GORMANSI yeah,
because it's good. Right, there's like that moment like, well, fuck,
is he is our boy like starting to have a
break already, and then he realized like no, that's.

Speaker 4 (02:02:52):
That's what we're getting. Like that's kind of what's being
set up, is like how like will will this experience
for Cyril like change him as a person? And like,
I think, yeah, the audience is meant to not fully
know and I think I think it's it's definitely like possible.
But but Cyril might be more of a hard ass
than what some people give him credit for. Yeah, because
he is. He's very excited to get invited to this meeting.

(02:03:14):
He purchases a spider from one of like the Gorman
Front like recruiters that has information on how to how
to go to this like public town hall, where he
talks about, hey, you know, if maybe maybe we can
start working together, maybe we can start feeding information. One point, hilariously,
he gets he gets accused of being an Imperial spy
in like a joking manner yeah, and denies it, and

(02:03:35):
then he gets on the phone with his IP girlfriends
like I'm in also, this is this.

Speaker 3 (02:03:39):
Is this is one of the first times we see
is the Gorman Front people. These people have no idea
what the fuck they're doing. They are amateurs. They are
like yeah, like their operational security is unbelievably dog shit.
They like wiretapped one guy and were like, hey, let
me introduce you to the leader of our organization. We
have met you one time. We have listened to one
phone call. You're in now. I just I think they

(02:04:03):
probably listened to more than they've definitely been watching him
for a while him much. They just were kind of like, hey,
you're going to like meet their leader now at the
first meeting you've shown up to he met like the
public facing aspect, I guess.

Speaker 2 (02:04:16):
Yeah, you can see the Gorman like they have some
degree of sophistication and that they're tapping like him, and
they've been listening probably for quite a while. And they
sweep their shit every day for bugs, so you understand that,
like they have an idea of what they need to
be doing. But when it comes to all of the
in person stuff, that's where they're incompetent right where they

(02:04:37):
they don't have the actual operational experience to know when
someone feels off right, Like that's the stuff that they're missing,
Like man to man on the ground is where the
problems come in. Like you can tell they're thinking this
stuff through, but they just don't know what they're doing enough.

Speaker 3 (02:04:53):
This is this is the thing you I mean, this
is the thing you genuine wine you run into, like
in the field a lot where there's people who like
have read a lot of soft bought operational security but
haven't done anything and so they don't under and there's
there's varying levels of this, right, but you get this
to do people where it's like they don't know what
the important things are. So they do some of the
stuff right that they've read, but they don't understand how

(02:05:15):
to put all of it together to like do something securely.
And so you'll get these things where like some of
their stuff is like unbelievably secure to a point where
it's useless, and then some of it is like very open. Yeah,
they're just like hey have I don't know. Yeah, they'll
just bring people into stuff that instantly compromises everything that
they're doing because they haven't like thought it through.

Speaker 4 (02:05:35):
Yeah, I mean, and this is something that that Cassian
talks about in the next episode, which we will get
yeah shortly. Yeah, I mean, so much of these episodes
is built around like paranoia and like surveillance. Like Cassie's
talking about not wanting to go like on a walk
in the park because the Empire just put up cameras.
He's nervous about like where they go grocery shopping. Like
he's trying to like do everything right, but it's like

(02:05:56):
hurting his relationship with Bicks, and it's just making their
life like very very challenging encorre assant as they're like
stationed there in between missions. Like meanwhile, like Luthan's just
trying to gain as much information on Gorman as possible.
He has a line that I like, a smear campaign
is an opening move, not an endgame. I need the
end game. Yeah, talking about like the limits of you know,

(02:06:17):
the Empire's Fox News style propaganda is only is only
like a starting position, like this is obviously leading somewhere,
and I need to know where that is. And he's
gonna obtain that information slowly over the course of the
next few episodes. And then I think the other thing
I want to talk about before we go on break
is Mon Mathma's lobbying against like the prison sentencing guidelines.

(02:06:41):
She says, quote sector boundaries, civil liberties, personal freedom, respect
for local traditions. You've been voting with me on these
issues for years. And the Gorman senator replies, this is security. Mon,
You're confusing criminality and politics here. Mon says, really, are
we finding criminals or are we making them? Yeah, this
is where you see senators parenting like fake crime stats

(02:07:02):
about how there's been like you know, this increased wage
surgery front.

Speaker 3 (02:07:06):
But that's not true.

Speaker 4 (02:07:07):
Yeah, because just because just because they're arresting more peoples,
that makes there be more crime. And like you see
this in season one where Cassidean's arrested at the Beach
planet for like no reason and then sentenced to the
Forever prison. Yeah, like, yeah, they are arresting more people.
So if you just look at those stats by itself
without any context on like how how other policing is working,
then yeah, I can look a certain way. And this

(02:07:28):
is what Mon's trying to push back on. And and
the other senators are just too like bought into the
empire or too scared, like the Gorman senator believes that
voting against the emperor at this point would further endanger
his planet. Yeah, even though this type of thing is
actually going to end up biting him in the ass
in the next few years.

Speaker 2 (02:07:45):
Yes, And yeah, he is like very much desperate to like, no, please,
we can we can calm this down if we just
don't piss the empire off enough.

Speaker 6 (02:07:53):
No.

Speaker 3 (02:07:54):
The the thing I think is actually it's interesting about
the crime statistic stuff is that this is actually a
more sophisticated operation than what happened in real life. We're
in real life. All the actual crime statistics were like
crime is falling, but everyone just kept saying there was
more crime. Totally, yeah, totally, this is like arresting more
people to jack the crime rates. That he's a more
sophisticated thing than what we actually dealt with, which was

(02:08:15):
the media just love.

Speaker 4 (02:08:16):
Our own version of this are not outer space version
of like propaganda news. Media can just say something and
you don't even need this stats to back it up. Yeah,
let's go and break and we'll come back to talk
about episode five. I have friends everywhere, ah, and we're back.

Speaker 10 (02:08:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:08:45):
So yeah, let's start with the summary of this episode.

Speaker 4 (02:08:48):
All right, Luthen wants a first person assessment of the
Gorman front, but he's like too high profile to go himself,
so he sends Cassie and undercover as fashion designer Vary
in Sky. The ISB stages a performative raid of Cyril
Karan's office to gain more cred with local rebels as
Cyril begins to feed them select information.

Speaker 2 (02:09:08):
And he does such a good job of seeming pissed
at it.

Speaker 4 (02:09:11):
Oh yeah, he loves he loves pretending to be pissed
at the ISB. He has so much fun kicking his
little trash can.

Speaker 2 (02:09:17):
Across the room.

Speaker 4 (02:09:20):
This is outrageous. Yeah, very good stuff. And I do like, like, yeah,
like the weaponization of like state repression as a tactic
to actually increase state repression, like long term doing this
like performative show so that Cyril like builds trust and
like solidarity with the other rebels. Very good. Luthen visits
Bicks at the safe house and grows concern for her

(02:09:41):
well being as she uses space drugs to cope with trauma.

Speaker 2 (02:09:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:09:44):
Cyril arrives back on Courissant to report to ice by Command,
has a one hour meeting with his girlfriend where they
turn off the lights.

Speaker 2 (02:09:52):
Yeah, after arguing because she's had him followed.

Speaker 4 (02:09:58):
Yeah, he's a little bit pissed that she's having a
followed and then she orders into trount the lights and
then they do something for an hour in their apartment.

Speaker 3 (02:10:05):
God only knows. I don't want to know. I don't
want to know what they're enough to this fascist weirdness.

Speaker 4 (02:10:12):
But at V Command they plan how to like carefully
push the Gorman Front into taking action against the Empire.
Cassian makes contact on Gorman and is unimpressed with their
operational security, and Warren's against trusting an imperial source as
the ISB could be feeding false intel.

Speaker 2 (02:10:29):
Some of the best moments in the episode so far,
because it's it's they don't know shit about Cassian, so
they don't know who they're talking to, and when he's like,
you guys shouldn't do fuck right now because you don't
know shit about fuck, they're like, well, you're not a
real revolutionary.

Speaker 4 (02:10:45):
You don't get it, and like, honestly, I understand what
what's being expressed there too, and like, well, we'll get
ahead in a sec Like the Gorman Front is adamant
that their source is vetted and reliable, even though they
haven't really been vetted.

Speaker 3 (02:10:58):
The plan is is that the resistance seeks.

Speaker 4 (02:11:00):
To expose the construction of an imperial military based on Palmo,
something that the Empire denies, though it seems most of
the citizens actually already take this to be true and
or questions the necessity of this plan and relations sour
with the group. Back on Corriscant, Clea learns through radio
chatter that one of Luthan's listening devices may be discovered

(02:11:21):
during an artifact reappraisal, Saw Hills, an imperial spy, and
his crew forcibly recruits Willem, and while on mission installing
a fuel diverter, Saw convinces Willem to huff the fuel fumes.

Speaker 2 (02:11:34):
Yeah, we'll talk about that in a second.

Speaker 4 (02:11:37):
I want to talk a little bit about like Cassian
on Gorman. Yes, and there's there's a lot of interesting
stuff there, and like specifically when the Gorman Front leader
like calls Cassian out for like not being a real revolutionary,
which I think is kind of true. Like Cassia at
this point is a thief and a soldier. He thinks
about things purely from that like operationally like like tactical

(02:11:58):
point of view. He doesn't have like a large like politics.
He's like focused on right, like like Luthan is more
of like a revolutionary, a very like manipulative one, but
like he is focused on like this like larger political game.
And this is something that at this point Cassian's not
fully like interested in. He's more interested on like on
the ground like tactical preparedness.

Speaker 2 (02:12:16):
He is interested in what he can do and get
away with right exactly as opposed to Luthen is interested
in what does more damage to the Empire. Now, what's
interesting to me is that the Gorman Front are actually
in the middle. They think totally that they are willing
to do whatever, but they don't understand what that is.

(02:12:36):
And part of what you are seeing here is the
Gorman Front are adamant, we are ready for war. We're
already in a war. Yeah, and they're not technically wrong
about that because the Empire is planning to wipe them out.

Speaker 12 (02:12:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:12:49):
We know the Empire does not plan for there to
be a Gorman in the future. So the stakes are
where they're saying they are. But even though they're saying that,
most of them don't truly believe or understand it. And
Cassian understands what war is, and what he is telling
them is that you are and he's at right about this.
You are not ready for what you think you're ready

(02:13:10):
for totally because what you're going to do is die
all of you.

Speaker 4 (02:13:15):
That's what makes all their interactions so interesting, because there
is that unspoken tension which slowly gets like aired because
like they're really assessing different things, Like what Cassie's assessing
is different from what Lusen wants assessed, and that's different
from what the Gorman Front actually want to do. Like
they're okay with a degree of casualties like being had
because they just want to like have control over their
planet again and put up any resistance even if it

(02:13:36):
ends up like leading to hardship.

Speaker 3 (02:13:38):
But I think the other angle of that too, though,
is it like they don't know what they're doing right, No,
Like they like their plan, their plan is not genuinely
really bad, right. Like the plan is that they want
to like steal an imperial weapons shipment and then reveal
that the Empire shipping weapons in. But if you do
that then you've just like and Andrew points it out,
like okay, so if you do this, then you reveal

(02:14:00):
that you did you hijacked the shipment, So they're just
going to like raid you all.

Speaker 4 (02:14:05):
And they're okay with you. Yeah, And they're like okay
with that visibility at this point.

Speaker 2 (02:14:10):
And there's this this very standard. It's also this very
common and this is part of what Casside recognizes, this
common myopic thing that you get with people who again
think they want a war that they don't truly understand
the meaning of, where they're like, we need we need
weapons and when they think of weapons. They think of
guns that they can hold, and so that's what they're

(02:14:30):
focused on getting, and that's what they think will let
them fight the Empire. When Casside understands there's no fighting
the Empire with what you can possibly get from a
raid like this. All there is is suicide. And then
there's the other level of what Luthan understands.

Speaker 4 (02:14:45):
Is so the fuck what sometimes that needs to happen.

Speaker 2 (02:14:48):
What matters is that these people die in public and
it pisses people off. Yeah, right, And that's there's this
there's this escalation of like the Gormans think having guns
means you can fight back.

Speaker 4 (02:15:00):
Like guns guns means that they'll be safer, right.

Speaker 2 (02:15:02):
And they're wrong. Cassie and thinks staying alive for a
future moment means that you can fight back, and he
is wrong. Luthan understands that the only ammunition that really
counts in this war is human life, and that sucks,
and that sucks. That's why he's lost his mind and soul.

Speaker 4 (02:15:21):
Yes, and that's why people are starting to really like
dislike working with him. Yes, because he's even though he
might not be like completely wrong here, Yeah, I like
so much of this episode is built around finding bugs. Yeah,
the ISB looks for bugs in Cyro's office, the iceba's
planting bugs in Zero's office. Bugs are hidden in the
artifacts that Luthen's telling to high society. Everyone's listening, everyone's
always everyone's trying to collect more intel, and.

Speaker 2 (02:15:43):
There's this this this issue the Empire and Luthen's organization
of having with like we're getting too much, you know.
The Empire's like we're releasting too many people like Yah
number one. It's like cutting into our ability to get
into these organizations. And it also is just like we're drowning.
And Luthen says the same thing. I'm always spacing on
her name, but she's wonderful to his his his college lady,

(02:16:05):
Like we're drowning, we have too much shit.

Speaker 4 (02:16:08):
Yeah. Something I love is when when Cyril's talking with
the Gorman Front about the ISB rate of his office,
the Gorman Front remarks, quote, we think the ISB is
running a shadow government without the Emperor's.

Speaker 2 (02:16:20):
Yes, yes, and it's a real you hear this when
you read about histories of like Tsarist Russia, like even
a lot of people who take part in the nineteen
seventeen revolution right right up till it started. Their attitude
was like, oh, if the Czar knew what his advisors
were doing in his name, he'd exactly it'd be on
our side. And the same thing happened in the Third Reich.
If only Hitler knew was a common phrase. We're like, well, Hitler,

(02:16:41):
who doesn't know the Gestapo's doing all these awful things?

Speaker 4 (02:16:43):
Of course, Yeah, And it's it's so sad because like
this is this is their like local like resistance group
who still has that level of delusion because they come
from like high society, right, they come from this like
diplomatic background where they can like solve solved through through
like free trade. And they're like like, sure, surely, surely
the Emperor doesn't actually know what's going on here. It
must it must be like the CIA, it must be

(02:17:04):
the FBI. It's like the I s B is running
a shadow government. They're the ones that are actually like
ruining things. Yes, and you're like, no, your enemy is
the entire empire. Yes, your enemy is the ISB, but
it's also Cyril karn and it's also Emperor Palpatine.

Speaker 2 (02:17:18):
Yes, And I love that's part of What I love
about that that laddered interaction between them and Cassian and
Cassian and Luthan is they're not really revolutionaries either. They
they are protesters right totally. They still think that the
overall Empire, once it realizes how bad things are, will
be on their side, and Cassian thinks they can wait. Yeah,

(02:17:39):
it's it's Luthan who's like, no, no, no, there's one
way out, right, you know, back going back to season one,
there's one way out.

Speaker 4 (02:17:47):
Before we talk about the Sagerera stuff at the end,
I do want to point out how wonderful it was
to see Cyril Karn in the ISB control room where
he remarks that this is the greatest day of his life.

Speaker 2 (02:17:59):
Oh god, just.

Speaker 3 (02:18:02):
It's like Libby finally getting to spy.

Speaker 2 (02:18:05):
And part of Guys even makes that great, that great
comment where he's directly talking about the Gorman Front and
he's like, yeah, there's a lot of people who think
they understand shit better than they do because they're new
to it. But he's also he's clearly talking to Cyril
like you don't know what you're doing, but I'll use you.

Speaker 3 (02:18:22):
Fine.

Speaker 4 (02:18:23):
It's so good. Cyril gains cred amongst the Gorman front
when they find out that his background is that he
lost his job because the ISB found out how badly
he fucked up Ferriks like they're like, ah, I see,
Cyril must have good reason to hate the Empire because
of that.

Speaker 3 (02:18:40):
You're like, no, he's like the fuckers.

Speaker 4 (02:18:42):
He's desperately trying to like become some like ISB secret agent.

Speaker 10 (02:18:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:18:47):
Like he just wants approval from like the Daddy state,
like and from.

Speaker 2 (02:18:51):
His girlfriend right and has taken over for his mom
in being like the primary source the person he's trying
to impress.

Speaker 4 (02:18:59):
The last we're talking about in this episode is this
episode displays like two different types of drug use. Yes,
we have we have Bix, who's trying to get over
the immense amount of fucked up stuff that's happened to
her by taking space XENX if you will.

Speaker 2 (02:19:13):
She's barred out every night holding a gun, watching TV
and Y and it's like who amongst us?

Speaker 4 (02:19:21):
It is disrupting her personal life. It's also disrupting her
like operational capacity.

Speaker 2 (02:19:26):
She has been sent out in the recent past and
she can't be sent back out again. And the specific
we don't even see the mission that most recently fucked
her up, but we're through her nightmares were lid to
In first, she and Cassie and captured an Imperial pilot
and Cassian killed the guy because he'd seen her face,
and she's, in addition to having been tortured in season one,

(02:19:46):
fucked up because like we didn't need to kill him,
and Cassiean's like, yeah we did, Like he saw your face.

Speaker 3 (02:19:53):
That's it.

Speaker 4 (02:19:55):
The weight of Resistance is really getting to Bix. Yeah,
and like like Luthen comes over to like check on
her and so like see if she's able to like
work and see if she can like appraise some like
weapons or something, and he realizes like she is not
like well enough to work at this point, Yeah, and
becomes like getting worried for her and like like try
to like plead with her, like you have to. You

(02:20:15):
have to make sure that you like stay healthy. I
don't know, it's it's it's definitely it's it's definitely hard
to watch. I think this is definitely like this moment.
It's like I don't look. Bix has always had a
lot of agency taken away from her, Like we see
this like in season one and we see this kind
of now and I definitely would like to would like
to see her get put back in like the driver's
seat of her own life at a certain point. But

(02:20:35):
like like like living through like PTSD and living through
like these types of like you know, political movements does
does like destroy people and like this does happen well, and.

Speaker 2 (02:20:43):
Just what torture does, right, Like, Yeah, torture breaks people,
that's its purpose, you know.

Speaker 3 (02:20:49):
So we have Space n X and then we have Sagerera. Yeah,
we fucking do.

Speaker 2 (02:20:54):
So let's I want to talk a little bit about
his background, some stuff that's not in the show, and
the show you see him when we when he is
already basically the hardest son of a bitch in the rebellion, right,
he is the only leader of a rebel faction that
Luthen treats as an equal. Right where like Luthan is
meeting with him, we see Luthan meeting with him directly.
Luthen is not willing to sacrifice he and his men

(02:21:14):
and like in order to maintain the cover of a spy.

Speaker 4 (02:21:18):
Which he is serious mien.

Speaker 2 (02:21:20):
Yeah, they are serious there, and every time we see
them there's more of them and they have more ships
they're the first ones. They're the first rebels to use
ex qust ones to X wings, yeah and saws background
and you have. This is way a bunch of the
expanded stuff. But he's he started out as essentially a
local rebel on this planet during the Clone Wars that
was not aligned between either major faction, but basically the Jedi,

(02:21:44):
taking the role of Space Cia, armed him and his
sister to lead like a rebel group against the other
power they were fighting in the Clone Wars occupation, like
separatist forces. He was meant to be Mujahideen coded right initially, right,
So he's like a space musja Hideen who's armed by
the Space Cia, who are the Jedi. And then when
the Republic ends, he immediately starts fighting the Empire. And

(02:22:08):
one of the kind of like moments that form saw
is his sister dies in the process of this failed
attempt to gain independence for their homeworld, this place called Hoduran.

Speaker 6 (02:22:17):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:22:18):
You don't need to know any of that to perfectly
get and enjoy his character in these shows, but the
moment that we're talked about to talk about means more
if you understand his backstory with his sister, right.

Speaker 4 (02:22:29):
Yeah, and he's been doing this ever since he was
like a kid.

Speaker 2 (02:22:32):
Yes, and yet this has been his whole life, right,
I think he's supposed to be like forty six when
he dies in Rogue one had forty six. If you
look at him, you know, he looks clearly older, but
also he looks like, well, yeah, he's been fighting his
entire life. That age is a teacher and he has this.
So the first thing that he does is he executes

(02:22:53):
this guy who was set up as his friend. When
it becomes clear that that guy was a spy and
it's insinuated, he thinks it's a spy for the Empire.
That guy might have been a spy for Lutheran or
someone else. We don't actually know. We know he was
sending info to someone.

Speaker 4 (02:23:05):
He was transmitting, Yeah, saw things that they were going
to set up like an ambush at their next mission. Yeah,
And instead they evacuate their base.

Speaker 2 (02:23:13):
And Saw blasts him and basically says, hey, to the kid,
your mind now, and we're going to go steal this
fucking fuel. So the next time we see them, they
they've busted onto this Imperial fuel lot and they're fueling
up their ships and while the kid is like working
out to set this thing up to allow them to
take the ribo, which is the rionium riydonium rhydo sorry,

(02:23:37):
the starship fuel. While the kid is like doing this
job that we've been told if you don't do it perfectly,
it kills you and everyone around you. Saw is monologuing
and he's talking about his childhood where he was like
I was a child slave, you know, forced to labor
in these rhido mines, right, and one day there was
a gas leak and all everyone ran and you know

(02:23:57):
this stuff. It was so bad out there. The old
people would and you'd come back the next day and
the jungle was so thick they'd been eaten down to
bones and want everybody has to flee because of this leak.
But I don't run away because, like I'm huffing this gas,
I get high and I like realize for the first time,
I'm alive.

Speaker 4 (02:24:12):
You know.

Speaker 2 (02:24:13):
He has this like this moment, and then when the
kid figures out how to get the fuel hooked up,
Saw immediately leans in and starts huffing what is effectively
gasoline and going and the kid's like, what the fuck.
The kid who's wearing gas mask, who's like wearing gas
is like, what are you doing? And he's like, she's
my sister, right, Oh, she's my sister and she loves me.

Speaker 4 (02:24:35):
I want to read it here. I sure have this
back of the monologu quote. Yeah you feel how badly
she wants to explode. Yeah, remember this moment. You think
I'm crazy? Yes, I am. Revolution is not for the samee.
Look at us, unloved, hunted, cannon fodder. Will all be
dead before the Republic is back. And yet here we are.

Speaker 3 (02:24:54):
Where are you?

Speaker 4 (02:24:55):
Boy?

Speaker 3 (02:24:55):
You're here.

Speaker 4 (02:24:56):
You're not with Luthin, you're here. You're right here, and
you're ready to fight. We're the rido kid, We're the fuel.
We're the thing that explodes when there's too much friction
in the air. Let it in, boy, that's freedom calling
Let it in, Let it run, let it run wild.

Speaker 2 (02:25:10):
And he is just for one thing. The kid is
choking on the on the fumes, is nearly dying from
the gas fumes that clearly saw as barely affected by anymore. Right,
it's again this thing I love that they do in
terms of they're calling back to the older lore when
he calls this his sister. Yeah, but you don't need
to know that his sister died to get this moment.

(02:25:32):
It just makes it adds an extra layer of meaning
if you're a nerd for the lore, which I appreciate
a lot. And it also sets up in Rogue one
when we see Saw near death, he's huff he's on
he's on oxygen. He's well, I think he's on O
two because he's destroyed his lung stuffing.

Speaker 4 (02:25:48):
He's houghing this now, this is this is what he's huffing.
That has been like like like retcond.

Speaker 3 (02:25:54):
Confirmed it wasn't oxygen.

Speaker 4 (02:25:55):
Okay, yes, bo the writer Ye called Tony Gilroy and said, hey,
what if we have him huff and fumes?

Speaker 3 (02:26:02):
And they went for it.

Speaker 2 (02:26:04):
Well yeah, but I but I think that was to
try to explain because because Tony said he didn't know
why Saul was on oxygen when YE put it in
Rogue one, and so they came to explain it. But
I think he's on oxygen because I.

Speaker 4 (02:26:15):
Think it's been retconto to being that he's just huffing.

Speaker 3 (02:26:18):
Risy, I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:26:20):
I saw it in an article. You yeah, so either way,
we'll see, we'll see. I could be wrong. I was
wrong last beekause of one thing, I miscredited the quote
about about the Empire's grip tightening and systems falling through
because the Theory Twinks British actor has a has an
accent very similar to the one Carry Fisher poorly tries
to imitate in a New Hope where she says that line,

(02:26:42):
so sorry, George, Sorry George, that was your line.

Speaker 3 (02:26:45):
Good line.

Speaker 4 (02:26:45):
The Theory Twink just has some very similar ones. So
I got confused.

Speaker 2 (02:26:49):
Accountability Wow, mean to Carry Fisher Garrison.

Speaker 3 (02:26:53):
Everyone knows her accents bad in that movie. We all
know it.

Speaker 2 (02:26:58):
I fucking love this speech by Oh.

Speaker 4 (02:27:01):
Yeah, this is the most Robert thing I've ever seen it.

Speaker 2 (02:27:03):
Yeah, it's perfect, It's perfect. Everything about it makes me
so happy. Bo Willman continues to be like maybe the
best monologuest writing for TV right now. It's just such
a raw scene and it explains both like why Saw
is still around, because he's the most paranoid, crazy son
of a bitch there is, and because he unlike everyone

(02:27:24):
else and unlike the Gorman's, unlike even Cassie, and he's
the only guy who understands what Luthan understands, which is
that likely. We're not here to see the other side
of this. Now, we're here to catch on fire, you know,
like that's the.

Speaker 4 (02:27:37):
Whole thing, and hopefully that fire will grow. Yeah, and yeah,
if that means we get burned up in the process,
that is, that's how it be. Yeah, if the fire
will burn very brightly, yes, all right, let's go and
break and then come back to discus the final episode
in this arc.

Speaker 3 (02:28:01):
Okay, we are back.

Speaker 4 (02:28:02):
And Or Season two, episode six, What a festive evening.
Luthen sends mon Mathma's cousin Val to re establish relations
with the Gorman front after Cassian's icy reception. Cassian and
Bicks reunite on Corroussant, but then Cassian shows up at
Luthen's shock confront him about checking in on Bicks at
the safe house while and Or was on mission. In

(02:28:23):
a possibly like OPSEC irresponsible, huge OPSEC.

Speaker 2 (02:28:27):
Fuck up, huge oxexo CACI and Andor's face is known.

Speaker 4 (02:28:31):
Yeah, not good. This is like the Cassian's emotions getting
the better of him here. Senator mon Mathma and her
husband parent attend a party of the Empire's elite, where
she debates Krenik on Imperial cruelty and the mindset of
a rebel underdog. Meanwhile, Claya uses their undercover ice B
agent to help remove a listening device hidden in the
Price collection of artifacts. Vell reunites with Sinta as they

(02:28:54):
helped to lead the Gorman Front's first attack, stealing imperial
weapons on a cargo transport. At first, things go according
to plan. Cyril watches from a distance and reports to
icebyhead quarter.

Speaker 2 (02:29:04):
We should note ahead of this that during the meeting
where they had about this, one point that they had
made is none of you have guns. None of you
carry guns on this Me and her are the only
people with blasters. You don't need them, you're not competent
to use them.

Speaker 3 (02:29:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29:20):
So, near the end of this operation, a civilian confronts
the rebels but what they're doing and in the struggle,
Sinta is accidentally shot and killed by one of the
members of the Gorman Front, a guy named Sam with
two ms. I love Star Wars. This episode ends with
Bix and Cassian going on a mission to kill the
Imperial interrogation expert doctor Gorst, which they succeed and then

(02:29:43):
walk away heroically from the explosion, similar to.

Speaker 2 (02:29:46):
Kill him by torturing him the way he tortured her.

Speaker 4 (02:29:49):
Yeah, and then they love the building and they play
the music cue from the very first arc, Yeah, the
very first season where Cassian is walking away with that
fast drum beat. So this episode has so much about
like like relationships complicating political activity.

Speaker 6 (02:30:05):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:30:06):
We have we have and orn bicks. We have the lesbians.
Valin Senta be killed by lesbian. They did kill your lesbian?
H we'll talk about that, yeah, we'll second. They also
have they also have Cyril and Dedra. We have like
like a lot of a lot of like how relationships
and politics like function, how where there's friction, when things
can go well, with things can go bad. Let's talk

(02:30:28):
I guess a little bit of about this party where
where where uh Luthen talks with Cretic very very briefly
and at the end, I mean this is this is
a very effective scene where they like build tension with
Clay trying to remove this bug while critics like in
the room seeing seeing these other artifacts and it's like

(02:30:50):
debating Mond. But when when Luthen and Claya leave, they
jokingly remark, oh, good man, we should have killed critic
when we were up there and they laugh and you're like, yeah,
you know, you guys should.

Speaker 5 (02:31:00):
Have that's.

Speaker 3 (02:31:02):
You really should have killed critic.

Speaker 4 (02:31:04):
You really should have killed critic. It would have bummed
things up. But then the Death Star may not have
been completed. Yeah, and this whole thing would have gone differently,
although you know, you know, in a way, the deskto
operation does lead to the fall of the Empire in
like the paradox that a way.

Speaker 3 (02:31:19):
To be fair, they should they don't know exists some business.

Speaker 4 (02:31:25):
But he's like he's like a super high up guy. Yes,
and man, yeah, that is tough.

Speaker 3 (02:31:29):
That's that's a tough scene.

Speaker 2 (02:31:30):
It's a's also what's interesting is that it's a tough
scene in light of the rest of the lore. It's
a really nice because they've been fighting, bickering for this
whole cycle of episodes and like you're, yeah, things are
breaking down, and this is a moment where like they
get back on the same page and you're like, eases.

Speaker 3 (02:31:46):
Yeah, well because part of it, because like part of
what's going on here is like losing is losing it, right,
and this is the thing because like he's he's struggling
and like, yeah, everyone's fucking seen this, Like yeah, your
friend is struggling fifteen products at once. They're losing their
goddamn minds and then like the girl in your group
was on top of it, has to just slap them
and be like locked the fuck in.

Speaker 4 (02:32:05):
Yeah, No, Klay is a scary monster.

Speaker 3 (02:32:07):
She is on it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:32:08):
Well, it's made really clear in these cycles. She is
not his subordinate.

Speaker 4 (02:32:13):
Oh no, they are.

Speaker 2 (02:32:14):
They are handling very different parts of the operation, but
she is not working under him.

Speaker 3 (02:32:20):
No, and she is like the one who like is
the reason any of the shit works. Absolutely, And it's
like that's the thing you see very often.

Speaker 2 (02:32:26):
There's a line in the season one where things are
looking bad for them and he specifically asks her is
your go bag ready? And he doesn't check his own,
so he I think he understands if one of us
has to get out, it should be you.

Speaker 4 (02:32:38):
She has to survive. Yeah, totally. Yeah, And I think
that is that is where things are going to are
going to be moving.

Speaker 6 (02:32:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:32:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:32:44):
I mean when when Cassiean's coming back from Gorman, like
Luthen picks him up and they start like arguing over
like is the Gorman front like a real thing to
like spend effort and like time on, like they're kind
of all like like green, they don't really have good
op sex. They're not they're just not like ready yet. Yeah,
and and and Luthen pushes back and says to Cassie
and like you're thinking small, you're thinking like a thief.

(02:33:05):
And Cassian robuts like, no, I'm thinking like a soldier.
And you have to think like a leader. You have
to actually and like from Luten's point of view, a
leader is like a very like manipulative rule and like
like you you have to start using these guys as
pawns for this like larger game, because the empire is
bigger than just Gorman. The Empire is bigger than us.

(02:33:25):
We have to think bigger. You can't just you can't
just think like a you know, a small illegalist who
is gonna steal your food and not pay for parking
and and just like get by while still doing crying.
But like you know, try that like outsmart the empires
like no, like we we are we are we are
beyond that.

Speaker 2 (02:33:42):
We ain't robbing banks anymore.

Speaker 4 (02:33:45):
Yeah, exactly right, like we are beyond the illegalist like
point of view, we have to start thinking like much
more much more like strategically and with like the bigger
picture in mind, because like we are we are slowly
getting closer to the Battle of Yavn. Here, Yeah, and
their little argument they're really really interesting. And then their
secondary meet up where where Cassian's mad about Luthen checking

(02:34:07):
in on bicks and I think, like I can understand
both their point of view here is this. I think
this is still a big fuck up from Cassian, but
it's like it makes sense, but like, yeah, the relationship
is getting like the better of him on like a
strategic standpoint, like at this at this plot point, and
Luthen still trusts them though, like Luthen still gives them
the assignment to kill doctor Gores, So like Luthen still

(02:34:28):
is able to work with these people, and he's still
actually like oddly enough like prioritizes empathy and like he
says like like like empathy, like you can you cannot
have a you cannot have a revolution without empathy. That's
what this is built on. And and and even though
he's a bit of a hard ass sometimes he still
does like trust them, yeah, yeah, but he's he also
is deliberately fucking with him, Like yeah, totally he's very

(02:34:49):
minific like he like he's like he's being unbelievagnit of
like like like one of the things there is like
he deliberately gives Bis, tells Bis about this assignment that
he was going to give her and then doesn't specifically
to see if she would tell about it.

Speaker 3 (02:35:00):
And that's how Andrew would react to that, which is like,
don't do that. That's unhinged, Like that's like not and
this is like also part of like, you know the
thing you have to like balance here, right is like
you know, you have to be able to balance like
getting people to do things that need to be done
with like not being a fucking asshole and alienating everyone.

(02:35:21):
And this is like a and especially when you yourself,
because like Luthor is also falling apart, and he's not
going to change.

Speaker 4 (02:35:28):
He's not he's never gonna change.

Speaker 3 (02:35:29):
No, he's not changing.

Speaker 2 (02:35:30):
But he's like he's like the thing though that's not
his job, right, His job was to make the later
stages of this where people act differently inevitable totally, and
he understands that you need something that horrifies people to
do that, right, Like, and that's that's all he's trying
to set.

Speaker 4 (02:35:48):
Up Luthid is absolutely like a moral very manipulative.

Speaker 6 (02:35:51):
I am.

Speaker 4 (02:35:52):
I am still I'm still teaming even though he like
sucks as a dude, Like I would hate to work
with him.

Speaker 3 (02:35:58):
Well it's like, but like I a god have the
team Luthen and the yet Yeah, well I would just
say like like if the thing is like, if you
try to act like this in like an actual organizing space,
this isn't gonna work. You're just gonna putter. He's not organizing,
He's not doing that, right, That's that's what I'm saying, though,
you're right, right, like like this this works because of

(02:36:20):
the exact specific thing that he's doing, which is he
is the guy who is coordinating a bunch of networks.
The thing is, in order for networks to hold together
and work, people have to have relationships with each other,
and if you behave like this in that situation, it
will funck out everything. And this is like the conflict
that's happening, like even inside of his own limited network
is that like he's he is like fucking with everyone

(02:36:41):
And we'll get to that with the lesbian you.

Speaker 2 (02:36:43):
See you see how you see the different levels at
which networks work here, like the Gorman Front works because
they're all friends and neighbors who care about each other, right,
And that's why they are like real tactles albody, and
they're able to stick together even though they're not they
don't have perfect competence. We see Saws group where someone

(02:37:03):
made the comment that like, well, he's basically a fascist
and because of like the hold he has on his group,
which is not what I saw at all. I saw
as soon as he shoots the spy, he has but
he's not a fashion. He has to prove to the
rest of his group that guy was a spy and
needed to die. And once he does, they're like, all right,
well back to the job, right, I mean yeah, But
and he gets he has to get fucked you know,

(02:37:25):
he gets fucked up as part of like the just
the necessity of it's it's literally the only thing he
has in between acts of terrifying violence. But that's how
that group bands together. And then we see, you know,
these smaller cells of experts, right who they have their
connections with each other and they have their little moments

(02:37:45):
of vengeance, and that's what keeps them going and the
only thing that keeps Luthen going is the pure logic
of the calculus of what he's put together. That's all
he's got.

Speaker 4 (02:37:55):
Yeah, information collecting boyfriend, always collecting information. Yeah, all right,
let's talk about the space lesbians who are running the
French Resistance. So I liked I liked a lot of
what they did with them in this episode. I liked
how they were like reuniting. I liked the way they
talked about the on again, off again style of their

(02:38:16):
relationship based on like having to live in this rebellion
like life, Like they can't always see each other, they're
always being moved around by Luthern. But they both specifically
took this assignment like hoping and like and I think
like knowing that it would mean that they could see
each other. So I liked the development that we had
with them as people who like you, are like in
the same spaces, but do not have the luxury of

(02:38:38):
actually having like a life together at this point in time.
They advised the little resistance group, they're they're much more
friendly than than than Cassie and is oh, well they
do come in or like.

Speaker 3 (02:38:51):
All right, you motherfuckers like you people are amateur? Yes,
oh yeah, yeah, no, fucking guns.

Speaker 4 (02:38:56):
Yeah, it's like no, Like, I guess they have more
of a willingness to put up with the amateurs than
Cassie does. And I think, I think is kind of
what's going on there. And you know, they're they're hoping
that after this mission's over, maybe they'll be able to
spend more time together. And then Cinta does get killed.
And I've seen a lot of criticism of this. I've

(02:39:17):
seen people invoking like a like a like a barrier
gaze type crope, and I don't think that's my personal
outlook on what's going on here. I think a lot
of people die throughout this show. We had Brasso die
and this sort of thing like just happened.

Speaker 2 (02:39:31):
It happens. That's that's the point is Yes, she's really good,
she's really good, she's incredibly.

Speaker 4 (02:39:36):
And it feels so like purposeless and like welcome to war.
I think that is part of the problem, part of
the point. And like the upset like a reaction that
you have I think is like that's that's showing I
think the strength of the strength of this, Like it
sucks to see a lesbian get killed, but I think
we're seeing so many relationships like fall apart. We're seeing
a lot of people get killed.

Speaker 2 (02:39:57):
Brasso didn't die for any better reason. This is just
how war works.

Speaker 3 (02:40:01):
No, I mean I think I think the reason and
this isn't It has been an interesting part of this.
I talked a bit about this last episode was like
this is the most like this is by far the
most like gay Star Wars River had right, and it's
the most Like I'm trying to think of the number
of other shows the only time they didn't lean away
from it or insinuate it. Yeah, no, like, well they
just kissing this episode. It's like I'm legitimately like I'm

(02:40:22):
like racking my brain. I'm trying to think, like the
number of like major TV shows I have ever seen
in my life run non white lesbian gets to kiss someone.
It's like not that high. And I think that's why
people because like, yeah, like this is this is this
is an this is the best representation of my culture,
which is like the leftist lesbian. Yeah, they're gonna see
each other I've ever seen And then it's like yeah,
and she fucking dies.

Speaker 4 (02:40:42):
It's it hurts, Like I think like we were able
to watch these characters develop over the course of like
a few arcs, right, Like we saw these in the
Aldanni heist where they were like basically the only two
people to survive besides casting and like everyone else on
that ont heist died, right, Yeah, so the lesbians made
it out of that. They they struggled to maintain their
relationship in the interim as as things happened. They had

(02:41:05):
this emotional reunion here. I think, you know, you could
you could make an argument maybe you'd be better to
kill Vow, But we've we've had more development with Vow
because of being related to mon So, Like, yeah, it is,
it is, it is. It is tough with like the disposability,
but that is that is that that is a part
of us fighting in an environment like this.

Speaker 2 (02:41:25):
Yeah, it's not that they're disposable, it's that combat is random,
like and fuck ups are random, like this this exact thing.
Somebody screws up and shoots when they're not supposed to
and the bullet doesn't stop. Happens all the goddamn time,
and like it's part of what fucks people up. If
you talk to people about there who have war experiences,

(02:41:47):
one of the things that will fuck someone up the
most is watching someone they know and care about get
turned into pink mist And it's usually a situation where
somebody hits or steps on or whatever an ied or
takes a rocket at a bad time, and there's this
person that you knew and you care about and they're
three dimensional to you and you probably plan to keep

(02:42:07):
knowing them after that, and then they're just fucking missed,
and it just it shatters people's minds, and that's what happens,
like and.

Speaker 4 (02:42:16):
Like yeah, vow's little like speech to to Sam afterwards,
being like like you are you now have to live
your entire life knowing that you took this person away,
and like every action you take for the rest of
your life is going to be like it's gonna be
all in all an attempt to like make up for this,
Like every every every imperial you kill will just be
one for Cinta, Yeah, because like the Cinta was like
a professional. This is like the life that she led,

(02:42:37):
Like you will never be able to understand how important
she was. You'll never be able to understand like how
good she was at this. And you're like a fucking
like French kid, Yeah, like you don't know what you're
doing and now you have to spend your entire life
making up for it. And it was a very hard speech.
But I think Val did a really good job with
that and like understanding like the political necessity of like
you can't let this be like in vain either, like
you have to like you have to be using him,

(02:42:58):
making making his life like worthwhile. Yeah, yeah, and I
mean yeah, it's it was rough. I mean I would
love I would love more more like gay characters living
happy lives in Star Wars, but we rarely see anyone
living a happy life in Star Wars.

Speaker 2 (02:43:09):
This is not about happy lives.

Speaker 4 (02:43:11):
I also, that's not what we're seeing love.

Speaker 2 (02:43:13):
The thing that doesn't get a huge amount of attention
in these episodes but is interesting to me is the
guy that he was he pulled that Matt or whatever
his name was, Sam Samama, the guy that Samon Man
told his gun to try to stop, is just this
random Gorman dude who's like, hey, no, I'm not gonna
like leave, this is like my city, What are you
doing here?

Speaker 4 (02:43:33):
What's going on?

Speaker 2 (02:43:34):
As soon as he realized that he carries her body
like he goes with them, you know, and we it's
kind of unclear is he likes some sort of spot
or is he literally a Gorman who it the whole
time was looking for a way to get involved, and
once he realized what was happening, he's like, yeah, these
are my people I'm with this.

Speaker 3 (02:43:49):
Was that the guy from the meeting or was it
a different the one from the He wasn't.

Speaker 2 (02:43:53):
He wasn't the Yeah, okay, yeah, yeah, so I guess
he just wasn't in the inner circle. But like he
hops on, you.

Speaker 4 (02:44:01):
Know, yeah, but no, I do understand like the racial
disposability and like the barrier gaze like aspect that could
be read into this. It's a tough thing to to
thread here. And I think if if you view this
in context of all of the people that we have
seen like get killed, like the entire Aldnnie Crewe, like
Brass so basically you know, the droid from season one

(02:44:23):
gets like abandoned on that planet, I think, like it
does it does make sense. I think in that larger context,
I think there's a way that not everyone like has
to die to lead to rogue one like besides Cassian, No,
not everyone, but but someone like since and like frankly,
like someone like Sinta the type of militant she is

(02:44:43):
they do have a short life span, like that is
that is part of the specific thing Sinta is doing.
Is like you burn fast and you burn bright, and
sometimes you will die in a way that's like really
purposeless and that fucking sucks. And that happens in war,
that happens in like activist spaces, like that happens. That
happens in the United States with people here and often
they are like non white gay people. Yeah, like that's

(02:45:07):
what happened in Atlanta. So like these these things happen.

Speaker 2 (02:45:11):
The number of people who committed suicide too after twenty twenty,
you know, like, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:45:17):
Do we have anything else you want to want to
say me?

Speaker 3 (02:45:19):
Do do you have anything?

Speaker 4 (02:45:20):
When I close that on as the president, non white
lesbian on the podcast.

Speaker 3 (02:45:25):
They killed by lesbian. So it's sad there aren't. What
is the next time I'm getting a non white lesbian
in Star Wars is gonna work? Like I Am going
to be right, like raising a black flag over Shensend.
But the next time we get another one.

Speaker 4 (02:45:41):
Of these characters of the series, you know, we had
we we had a non white lesbian uh in Acolyte
who also taught it. Yeah, yeah, I do not see
people talking about the barrier gay stuff with the Acolyte as.

Speaker 3 (02:45:54):
Well, nobody because because it wasn't bad.

Speaker 4 (02:45:57):
But I think it's also worth I think it's also
where remembering like like this is this is a show
starring like a non white leading role, like like a
Cassian is not white. So I think that the racial
politics are a little bit, a little bit more more complex.
I think some people are discussing.

Speaker 2 (02:46:12):
But yeah, all right, well these episodes have been amazing.
Everybody get into inhalance, uh and steal fuel from the military.
That's the message of vandor.

Speaker 4 (02:46:26):
Run wild.

Speaker 5 (02:46:30):
Don't do that.

Speaker 2 (02:46:31):
That's a joke legally, Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:46:57):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today,
joined by Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode,
we're covering the week of April thirtieth to May seventh.

Speaker 2 (02:47:14):
Yes, when you think of ED, you think about rigid
cylindrical things now flying at high speed towards miss That's
a bad way to introduce the facts. There's now a
war going on between India and Pakistan. Chris, I don't
know what else are we supposed to do? How are
we supposed to go into this? Pakistan and India are

(02:47:34):
are shooting.

Speaker 3 (02:47:35):
Yeah's okay, okay, I'm going to attempt to do a
very very very very brief Please God like, do not
let this be the extent of your knowledge about this conflict.
But yeah, okay, here is one paragraph about this. So
when India gains and Pakistan eventually gained independence from the

(02:47:57):
UK and the British Empire, there was the partition. This
is a process in which millions died and India and
Pakistan were split into two states.

Speaker 2 (02:48:08):
Millions die as a result of the disruption to infrastructure
and as a result of mascular.

Speaker 3 (02:48:13):
Yeah, and again people fleeing like back and forth between
the two places. There's been a studio territory for fucking ever.
One of the most contentious parts of this has always
been Kashmir. Large walk There's a whole complicated thing here.
But so Kashmir was sort of split in two. There's
an almost entirely Muslim like territory that ends up under

(02:48:36):
the control of India and India has waged a brutal
military occupation of Kashmir since they got it. Basically, it
ramps up and down in terms of like how bad
it is, but it's never good. Yeah, And this has
been a constant source ofttension between India and Pakistan, where
you know, Pakistan has played its card of like we

(02:48:57):
are like the defenders of Muslims in in India. And
there's been a series of wars also, but this this
is one of the few times where you can say
there were gedocides on both sides and it's true because
like one of the wars that they fought was because
of the jedicide that Pakistan did in what became Bangladesh.
So like, there are no heroes in this story. There
is only I mean, I guess, like you know, there

(02:49:19):
are people resisting repression from both states.

Speaker 2 (02:49:21):
There are good people, but neither of the states have
clean ams.

Speaker 3 (02:49:24):
Yeah, but the states suck shit, right, Like you know,
let let's be clear about that Kashmir is one of
the most militarized places in the world. It got much
much worse after twenty nineteen, when India withdrew the autonomous
status that kashmiir had had. This sparked a bunch of protests.
They're horribly repressed. There's been staggering numbers of people have

(02:49:44):
died over the past like thirty years. There look a
lot of like Hesbra's accesis, the outside world has been
cut off. It's difficult to get people like in to it.
And obviously, you know, the thing about occupations is that
there's been a very very long running series of sort
of insertion sees and militant groups in Kashmir of various kinds.
Pakistan has funded some of these groups as a way

(02:50:09):
to sort of like poke a stick at India, and
in late April a group killed twenty odd twenty six
I think, yeah, twenty six, I think yeah, I think
that's the final number, like Hindu tourists in Kashmir. It's
worth noting that there's no actual evidence that Pakistan is

(02:50:29):
behind this, but.

Speaker 2 (02:50:32):
No, but that's India's claim.

Speaker 3 (02:50:34):
Yeah, that's India's claim. And this is causings to get
really really bad in Kashmir itself, which is the part
of this I think has gotten lost in a lot
of the discussions here, which is like like if you
if you read statements from from like I mean, like, A,
there's just been like an incredible intensification of oppression and
b if you read statements from Indian officials, they are
they're just straight up talking about quote like Indian style

(02:50:54):
final solutions for Kashmir. It's completely unhinged. The Indian state
has gone into this. I mean, like, you know, it's Mody, right.
Mody is running probably the world's most effective fascist government
and his thing is always like a huge part of
it has always been specifically about like wanting to repress Muslims,
and this, you know, has has kicked the homophobia into

(02:51:15):
an absolute fever pitch. And the product of this is
that they have started doing strikes inside of Pakistan. I'm
going to pass it over to Robert talk about like
what does have looked like in what this conflict has been. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:51:26):
So, and it's important to know that during this terrorist attack,
one of the big things that is alleged is that
husbands were executed in front of their wives. Yeah, that
is going to be relevant for the name of the
operation that India is in the process of carrying out
right now. Prior to in the immediate wake of that attack,
everyone knew some shit was going to go down on

(02:51:48):
the border. India was going to do something, in part
because India said they were going to do something. Right JD. Vance,
the Peacemaker, as we call him, I don't believe anyone
else has ever been called that, and they history of
government or popular media. So yeah, that seems like a
good nickname for him. Went to India like a day
or two before this all happened to calm things down.

Speaker 3 (02:52:08):
This is often making a visit to the Pope or
to tell.

Speaker 2 (02:52:11):
Mody do whatever. Like, we don't know actually what he said.
Some people are like Vance must have given him the
go ahead. I think it's just as likely Vance was like, hey,
we don't really want a war right now? Can he
calm shit down? And Mody didn't listen, or that Vance
just didn't even have anything meaningful to say. We actually
don't know at the moment. But last night India started
carrying out what they are calling operations Sindoor si Indo

(02:52:34):
R is how it is generally anglicized. The name of
the operation comes from. Again. I mentioned a little earlier
that during that terrorist attack in Kashmir, Hindu men were
killed in front of their wives, Sindoor is a word
that refers to this kind of colored dye that I
believe it's like a bridal thing that like women put in.

(02:52:55):
I think it's in their hair. But it's a reference
to something that is part of like a traditional Hindu
wedding and something that the bride does. And so it
was specifically named this in order to make it very clear,
this is vengeance for that attack. Right, Like that's why
it was named what it was. Okay, does that all
make sense? Yeah, sorry, I've got here. Sindor is the
Hindi word for vermilion, which is the red pignant Hindu

(02:53:16):
women applied to their forehead, right, So like that, and
so it's a reference also to the fact that these
terrorists are said to have like shot their victims in
the forehead.

Speaker 1 (02:53:24):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:53:24):
So there's a lot going on there basically. Yeah, but
that's what's relevant. So when it comes to this what's happening,
first off, perfectly reasonable to call what's happening war. India
has launched cross border strikes. They appear to have launched
both cruise missiles and air strikes using modern jets.

Speaker 10 (02:53:43):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:53:44):
Pakistan has responded with modern military air defenses. What we
can safely say right now is that this is the
first full twenty first century here on peer military action.
And I know, as came up in the meeting, people
are gonna say, well, Ukraine, not entirely Ukraine and Russia.
There is a degree to which that is true, because

(02:54:05):
Ukraine is armed by states that are peer or more
than peer to Russia in terms of military technology. But
Ukraine does not have an industrial base that is in
any way comparable to Russia's. They're not capable of manufacturing
the weaponry that they need to compete with Russia on
the battlefield on their own. That's why international aid has
been so critical. Pakistan and India are both effectively peers

(02:54:28):
in that they both do purchase weaponry a lot from
other countries, but they also have domestic arms industries, and
they have potent domestic militaries that are armed to a
comparable standard. Right, And so there's a few things happening here.
I do not want to lose count of the fact
that people are dying. Obviously, civilians died in that attack

(02:54:48):
in Kashmir. At the moment, it looks like the death
toll from the initial Indian strikes is somewhere around forty.
Pakistan is claiming the vast majority of those are civilians.
India is claiming that they only hit infant structure associated
with the terrorist group that they believe carried out the
attacks in Kashmir that they claim is being supported by Pakistan.
There is substantial evidence the majority of the dead are civilians.

(02:55:12):
People have claimed that large chunks of their families were
wiped out in these strikes. I don't see any reason
to doubt that, knowing how air strikes work. A good
number of the dead, though, have also occurred as a
result of cross border artillery fire, and it's unclear to
me if India and Pakistan have had a full on
artillery duel across the border, or if this is Pakistan's
artillery firing back in response to the air strikes. That

(02:55:34):
part is unclear. There are also videos where you can
hear small arms fire, so machine guns and the like,
and reports that that is coming from Pakistan's side too.
It's possible there is a cross border direct arm engagement.
It's possible no one died as a result of the
small arms fire. Given the distances that this is occurring
at right that the only nets have been due to
field artillery and due to missile strikes. Right, that seems

(02:55:58):
likely at this point. It's possible to death is much
higher than forty. But that's somewhere around there is what's
been confirmed right now. Now we have talked about the deaths. Obviously,
the biggest concern is the loss in human life. Here,
I am going to talk about what this means on
a military level, because that is relevant both how this
conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts are

(02:56:20):
going to proceed, because we have not seen a peer
on peer fight like this before in this century.

Speaker 5 (02:56:25):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:56:26):
So, one of the more important things as to how
this has preceded is that a number of the jets
that India launched across the border are what are called
refalls our afal e. This is a French fighter jet.
It is broadly considered to be equivalent to an F
eighteen super Hornet. Now, I say that if you go
online and you listen to people who are nerds about

(02:56:48):
fighter jets, they will pull a knife on you for
claiming that, right, there are major differences between the two airframes.
One of them is that the Refall is a larger plane,
which means it's theoretically capable of got theoretically it is
capable of a significantly higher payload. However, there's a couple
of problems that come with that. One is that the
super Hornet not only is it a smaller craft, but

(02:57:09):
it is built for carrier duty, which means it's wings
fold yeata. You can fit more of them on a carrier.
They take off and land more easily from a carrier,
or a fall can take off and land from a carrier,
but it has to have a different load out right.
The other issue, a super Hornet can stay supersonic with
its full payload for longer periods of time. That means
that it can be breaking the sound barrier consistently, not

(02:57:30):
just using its after burner for like a quick burst
of speed. That matters because the faster you're going, the
harder you are to shoot down. The primary eritor ground
package it has is what's called a hammer, and that's
an acronym hammer. I don't know what it stands for
off the top of my head, but they are between
two hundred and fifty and one thousand pounds each.

Speaker 3 (02:57:49):
Right.

Speaker 2 (02:57:49):
These are their air to ground munitions that they are
equipped with. Standard it's possible India has a separate load
out for them. I don't actually know. This is their
standard armament now. They can only have their full complement
if they're not going supersonic, so they cannot go supersonic
for a comparable period of time to a super Hornet
if they have a full compliment. From a military technology standpoint,

(02:58:10):
the biggest news from the initial stage of the strike
is that at least one of these refalls has been destroyed.
There's decent evidence that potentially another two. If India lost
three of these jets, they have thirty six. That is
a meaningful degradation of their entire air force capability to
strike right Losing these jets and they cannot be replaced

(02:58:32):
on any kind of timeframe that is comparable to how
quickly they're being shot down. Pakistan is claiming significantly more
that they Pakistan's claim is that they've downed three Rafalls,
one MiG twenty nine, one SU thirty MKI and at
least one Israeli made Herondrone. People generally say Pakistan is
probably exaggerating. However, French authorities have confirmed at least one Refall,

(02:58:54):
and there's two more than possibilities that are being looked into.
It's possible three planes were downed, but only one are
a fall. We don't really know yet, right, but even
one is a meaningful loss, and the fact that it
was downed says a couple of things. One thing is
that there's a decent chance. What I suspect we might hear,
especially if three of these went down, is that India
sent these things off with a full strike package, so

(02:59:17):
they were not able to go as fast as they
normally can, and thus we're not able to evade Pakistan's
anti air defenses. Right, That may be what happened. The
other thing that we're seeing here is that Pakistan is equipped.
They buy the best part and Pakistan has a lot
of S three hundreds and S four hundreds, I believe,
which are like what we've seen in Ukraine. Those have
had a very mixed operational history in terms of their

(02:59:39):
capability to take out modern aircraft. Pakistan also has a
lot of PL fifteen radar guided anti air missiles. These
are Chinese anti aircraft missiles. They have never been used
in combat before. If you're a nerd for like modern
military technology, one of the things people have been talking
about in that field for a long time is like
how are these going to function? And we just I

(03:00:00):
know that they've been used because wreckage from them has
been found and photographed and people who are experts in
these missiles online have confirmed this is from this weapons package.
It is very likely that the Rafaal that was down
was downed by this missile, and if more than one
was down, that they were all downed by these missiles.
So that tells us a lot about the comparable capabilities

(03:00:21):
of both this modern Western fighter that the French are
selling and of this Chinese anti aircraft missile. Right, And
so that's really relevant if we're looking at both how
this conflict is going to proceed, because I don't want
to be coming at from this bloodless like, oh, I'm
just interested in the military strategy part. This is relevant
because if India has lost three of these advanced fighters
that they cannot replace on any kind of comparable timeframe

(03:00:44):
in the first few hours of strikes, that suggests one
of two potential future outcomes. Number One, the tempo of
use of advanced aircraft and this war is going to
change considerably as it drags into the next stages, right,
because they simply can't maintain that tempo, that can't continue
to take those sort of risks, and that either means

(03:01:04):
moving on to a lot more ground engagements between infantry,
between tanks, between artillery, like direct face to face shit
or a potential for escalating things to the next level
And the only next level higher than where we're at
is nuclear, right. I don't think that is the likeliest outcome.
I do not think a nuclear exchange between Pakistan and
India is the likeliest thing at this point. However, the

(03:01:27):
rate at which India is a tritting air assets means
that they're going to have to make a choice in
the not too distant future. Right, Although it's also worth
noting we don't know entirely the degree to which Pakistan's
anti air defenses have been attreated by this. Right, there's
a lot of open there's a lot of unknown unknowns
and known unknowns here.

Speaker 12 (03:01:45):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:01:45):
As our good friend Rumsfeld would say, I will say
the other issue here, if there is a nuclear exchange,
it's going to be the greatest humanitarian catastrophe of the century.
That doesn't mean it's going to be a nuclear war
across the entire world. And that shouldn't be your first concern.
Your first concern should be that that would still mean
millions of deaths in India and Pakistan, potentially at least

(03:02:05):
hundreds of thousands.

Speaker 1 (03:02:06):
Right.

Speaker 2 (03:02:07):
The concern is not they start so everyone else does,
it's they start and thus the worst humanitarian disaster since
World War Two occurs.

Speaker 3 (03:02:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:02:15):
I mean some of the most densely populated cities on
Earth are in this region. Like a strike in any
major city that would be devastating.

Speaker 2 (03:02:22):
Yeah, a strike in Islamabad would be the worst thing
that's happened, possibly since the Holocaust in terms of like
human death told due to human actions.

Speaker 1 (03:02:30):
Yeah, it's pretty bad.

Speaker 5 (03:02:33):
I know.

Speaker 1 (03:02:33):
India claimed that they were launching a quote non escalatory
strike in it so much as that means shit.

Speaker 3 (03:02:38):
Yes.

Speaker 1 (03:02:39):
They also claimed that they PL fifteen didn't have its
intercept ahead, which I guess the French intelligence refuted.

Speaker 2 (03:02:44):
Yeah, and this is all There's a lot that's unknown
about kind of how these weapons have performed. Still, but
these are from a in terms of both how this
conflict is going to proceed and how future conflicts will proceed.
These are things you should be looking at because these
weapons platforms, these are this is important in terms of
what war is going to continue to look like.

Speaker 3 (03:03:02):
I think it's also worth noting a couple of things.
One is that this is by far the largest like
clash that these countries have had in a long time.
But also like there have been like periodic like cross
border skirmishes around cashume for a while now, right like
there was a pretty big flare up in twenty twenty
that kind of less than twenty twenty one, And so

(03:03:22):
there is a chance that this doesn't turn into a
full scale war and that you get something more like
what happened sort of recently with Israel and Ran where
they like bomb each other a few times and then
everyone sort of packs up their bags and goes home
and continues to like poke each other with milton groups
instead of it being like tanks. And I think that

(03:03:46):
is like orders of magnitude more likely than like nukes flying.
Just it's sort of like, yeah, like the chance at
which these people start shooting dukes to each other is
not very high. Like yes, just like in the history
of nuclear weapons too, you have to underst that, like
some of the most unhinged people who have ever lived,
like Curtis le may like the US and the Soviets

(03:04:06):
never did it like Mao Mao and the Soviets never
did it. Like apartheid South Africa had nuclear weapons and
never used them. Some of the worst people who have
ever lived have had access to nukes, have never fired them.
The odds that you're gonna die in nuclear fire are
very very very very very low. It's not good. No,
everything that's happening here is very bad. But like you

(03:04:26):
do not need to be like living in existential terror
of like fire ring from the sky. That's not like
a reasonable reaction to this, and I've been seeing a
lot of that.

Speaker 2 (03:04:35):
So no, it's far from the likeliest outcome, and your
primary concern should be to people who are living there
right now.

Speaker 5 (03:04:44):
Yeah, yeah, right.

Speaker 2 (03:04:45):
You know, it's worth noting that the nineteen ninety nine,
the Cargo War, that was not an insignificant death toll, right,
Like you're talking probably like certainly more than a thousand,
I think a thousand to a couple of thousand people,
So that would not be that's not certainly not out
of the question without it escalating in that way. I

(03:05:06):
think the primary concern that you always have, and why
I bring up weapons systems. Is that countries think in
terms of stuff like this a lot. This is a
big part of why we get World War one, Right.
You have these nations that are arming, and they're always
concerned with how do my weapons compare to my neighbors
if we go to war. Now, I feel pretty good
about where I'm at, and if I wait another two years,
maybe they'll be in a better position. And thinking like

(03:05:28):
that is part of the planning that's going on in
these states, and the planning about when do we escalate
and how do we escalate? Right, do we move to
a point where we've got masses of infantry shooting at
each other, Well, maybe if we can't risk the continued
attrition of our advanced air assets, we do that, or
maybe we make another decision. That's why it's relevant to
know about this stuff, not because you want to nerd

(03:05:48):
out over who's got the coolest missile and who's got
the coolest planes, but because that is very much how
states think. Right Anyway, before we got to add this
back to the executive dysfunction, because that is what this
is a yeah, not the current Wars podcast. In the
immediate wake of all of this, President Trump was asked about, Hey,
how about these two nuclear armed states going to war?

(03:06:10):
What do you think about that? And he gave a,
you know, just a traditionally eloquent, you know, Donald Trump response,
It's a shame we just heard about it. I guess
people knew something was going to happen based on a
little bit of the past. They've been fighting for a
long time. I just hope it ends quickly. Me too, buddy, correct,

(03:06:33):
I guess I guess they've been fighting for a long time. Okay, anyway,
let's go to ads.

Speaker 4 (03:06:53):
All right, we are back. I'm gonna talk now about
some other horrifying geopolitical news. Hey, this is Garrison from Friday,
May ninth. I have a correction to make on the
original copy of this episode. I made an error in
saying Greta Thunberg was aboard a humanitarian aid ship off
the coast of Italy that was airstriked by Israel. The

(03:07:16):
ship was indeed attacked, but she was not on that ship.
I watched a video of her discussing the attack and
it sounded first person, and then we recorded shortly thereafter.
But now it's clear she was not on the ship
but instead planned to board later that day on the
way to Gaza as a part of the humanitarian aid
organization the Freedom Flotilla Coalition. More than a dozen other

(03:07:39):
aid workers were aboard the vessel when it was hit,
and this relates to the larger humanitarian aid crisis in Gaza.
Now back to the episode. The past two months, Israel
has forcibly cut off all food, water, machines, supplies, and
other humanitarian aid to Gaza, starving the Palestinian people as
not now who continues to reject see fire deals. Reports

(03:08:01):
from the UN say that Gaza will run out of
food in days.

Speaker 2 (03:08:05):
Yep, I mean it looks like a starvation genocide. I
don't know how else to phrase this. There's really nothing else.
This isn't the time to mince words. Like every piece
of evidence suggests this is a starvation genocide being carried out.
But they're trying to starve this population to death or
until they all leave, which is the same. Genocide does
not necessarily mean you kill everyone. It is the forced

(03:08:25):
killing and or displacement of a population.

Speaker 6 (03:08:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:08:28):
Israel says that the Palestinians still have food for a
few months, but the Yuan and other eight organizations say
that is not true now. Last Sunday night, Israel's Security
Cabinet approved a plan to reoccupy and hold the Gaza
Strip if a new Seaspire deal isn't reached by May fifteenth,
while Yahoo and Israel officials continue to undermine negotiations for

(03:08:51):
a permanent ceasefire. This plan is called Gideon's Chariots.

Speaker 2 (03:08:57):
Jesus fucking Christ.

Speaker 4 (03:08:58):
The plan is for the idea to invade with four
to five armored infantry divisions, mobilizing uproots of seventy thousand reservists,
which would gradually occupy and secure basically the entire Gaza Strip.
According to Israel's Finance Minister, this IDF occupation would be permanent,
not even pulling back with the release of any remaining hostages,

(03:09:20):
though other Israeli officials disagree on this and say this
would be a temporary occupation. Pretty hard to take their
word on that all remaining buildings would be destroyed, flattening
the entirety of the strip, just like Rafa and the
northern side. Amir Aviv, the founder of the Israel Defense
and Security Forum think tank and a former deputy commander

(03:09:41):
of the Israeli forces, say, quote, this is the only
way to eradicate Hamas militarily and governmentally is to take
over Gaza and to conquer the area and destroy them unquote.
There's some added complications with like legally like occupying Gaza
under the Geneva Convention, a formal occupation would require Israel

(03:10:02):
to have the capacity to operate as an official government
authority in this region. Now there's no indication that Israel
will follow the Genema Convention as they haven't.

Speaker 3 (03:10:13):
Yeah, it's Israel. They never have given a shit.

Speaker 2 (03:10:15):
Yeah, I don't see why we'd expect that.

Speaker 4 (03:10:18):
But if they do occupy, they would be more like
liable for the well being of the Palestinians that would
be inside the territory, and the IDEF doesn't have a
plan for this. They are planning to forcedly relocate around
two million Palestinians to a single quote unquote humanitarian area
which is positioned in the rubble of Ratha, where secure

(03:10:40):
quote unquote compounds are being constructed to distribute food and
supplies to Palestinians who are screened and approved as not
being members of Hamas. This area will be managed by
private US companies and a quote unquote new international foundation
which works with Israel and the United States. Established aid

(03:11:02):
organizations in the un announced that they would not be
participating in running these quote unquote compounds, calling this a
tactic to give the Israeli military even more power over
how aid is distributed, saying in a statement, quote it
contravenes fundamental humanitarian principles and appears designed to reinforce control
over life sustaining items as a pressure tactic as a

(03:11:23):
part of a military strategy. It is dangerous driving civilians
into militarized zones to collect rations threatening lives, including those
of humanitarian workers, while further entrenching forced displacement.

Speaker 1 (03:11:35):
On quotep Yeah, an.

Speaker 4 (03:11:38):
Israeli official said the only alternative to being moved to
this quote unquote humanitarian area would be to leave Gaza
quote unquote voluntarily to other countries, citing Trump's plan to
resettle displaced Palestinians. Robert James, Mia, do you wanna comment
on this?

Speaker 1 (03:11:56):
It's not much to say, is that, Like it's they're
just saying the thing that they've been going for for
a while now, which is the removal of ale panistin
Gut people from the Goddess trip, either in body bags
or to live somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (03:12:08):
I guess it's just straight up a genocide, Like they're
describing a genocide.

Speaker 2 (03:12:11):
Yeah, there's no doubting it. Like I don't even know, Like,
is what is there to say?

Speaker 1 (03:12:17):
Right?

Speaker 2 (03:12:18):
Like at this point, I almost think other than obviously
documenting what's happening is important, the only important thing to
try to talk of it is like how can this
be stopped? And or how can a degree of like
what does justice look like at some point down the line?
What should be done? You know, Like these are questions

(03:12:39):
to ask, but like to just like I don't know
what to keep saying other than like, yep, they're trying
to wipe out Gaza like.

Speaker 4 (03:12:47):
Well, and specifically the use of these like quote unquote compounds,
You're like rounding up and keeping people inside one secure.

Speaker 3 (03:12:54):
Area, concentrating them in camps.

Speaker 4 (03:12:56):
Like come on, guys, you're just setting up camps for
Palestinians on the south side of the Strip and like
that's all that this is as they reoccupy and hold
the entirety to quote unquote eliminate Hamas. So this Monday,
Trump's going to start a three day visit to Saudi Arabia,
Cutter and the United Arab Emirates. This is while the
US government has taken a backfoot on Gaza negotiations while

(03:13:18):
still backing up net Yahoo and any actions taken by
the Israeli military. Yeah, so we will know more about
what Israel is actually going to do immediately in the
region in like a week's time, though. It looks like
they are going to be going forward with this May
fifteenth reoccupation plan.

Speaker 6 (03:13:37):
Cool.

Speaker 1 (03:13:38):
Well, yeah, so more good news from me. Immigration update.
The New York Times today on the this is Wednesday,
the seventh is reporting that the Trump administration is as
soon as today. I checked this before recording. The plan
hadn't taken off planning to ship people to migrants to Libya.

(03:14:00):
Nationalities of people being renditioned there are not clear, but
my guess would be that these are third party nationals
that the US can't deport to their home countries like
they previously deported these people to Panama and to Elsabadov.
If you're not familiar with migrant detention in Libya, conditions
are horrific, like among the worst things that can happen

(03:14:22):
to people. The situation in Libya is currently the country
is divided between the Tripoli government, which is recognized by
the UN and which the US has formal government government
relationships with, and Hafta's government based in Benghazi, which the
Trump regime has associated with. Before. We have covered conditions

(03:14:42):
in Libyan migrant detention camps before, which I'll check in
the show notes. And we also talked about the dangers
faced by people leaving Libya towards the EU in a
different episode which I also list but to recap. Reports
document starvation, rape, murder, slavery, and organ harves occurring in Libya.

(03:15:02):
Mass graves, including one last year that was found with
sixty five bodies in it, are not uncommon. To quote
from David Yambio. David Yambio is someone who was He
was sold and then forced to fight in a militia
in Libya, and I think I believe he escaped and
he is now in I think he's in Italy, but
he's ready to be outspoken on this stuff. The slave

(03:15:24):
trade is alive and thriving in Libya. It thrives in
the silence of nations, in the shadows of complicit systems,
and then the unchecked racism that dehumanizes black lives in
other Immigration News. The government's attempt to delay Rumsa Oztek's
return to Vermont was rejected by the second Circuit, so
that means that she will have to be returned to

(03:15:47):
She was arrested in Massachusetts, if you remember, for writing
an op.

Speaker 4 (03:15:50):
Ed at tux University.

Speaker 6 (03:15:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:15:52):
Yeah, moved across state borders to Vermont and from their
Central Louisiana. So the habeas case was transferred to Vermont
and has a rule that the government cannotter laboring her
back there anymore. Another flight containing eighty one migrants left
Panama yesterday at the United States expense. This is a

(03:16:13):
continuation of a plan that the Biaen administration installed in
summer last year, and the Trump administration has continued whereby
the US funds deportations from Panama. Meanwhile, Tokyo Weekender in
Japan is reporting that the United States is asking people
to show five years of social media history in order
to obtain a student visa, just to like put that

(03:16:36):
in perspective for people. So you have to eventher those
accounts are deleted or no longer used. You have to
declare them all on your form. If you're applying for
a student visa and you're at the younger end of
a traditional aged undergraduate. You could have to list every
social media account you've had since you were twelve on
this form. And the US has required disclosure for a while,

(03:16:58):
but like, it hasn't been a practical thing. I have
really ever heard from any one of anybody's visa being
denied or asylum being denied based on social media posting.
But this is now something that that they are asking
people to disclose well and requiring, not like requiring it,
not asking it is it is. It is going to
be like an enforced requirement in a way that before

(03:17:19):
it really hasn't been. It's the term that the law
firm used in this piece is like in the past,
this has been mostly quote unquote negligible. Yeah, and now
this is something that the Department of State is really
being adamant about, yeah, which will massively delay the time
to process visa applications on top of everything else.

Speaker 4 (03:17:40):
People in Japan have compared this to two policies similar
to that of China's Cultural Revolution.

Speaker 3 (03:17:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:17:48):
I mean I've been to other countries to be clear,
where they open up your social media and look at
it when when you're entering. But this is not a
thing that anyone has ever associated with the United States. Finally,
I guess the Freedom of Press Foundation got some documentary
reliefs under a federal Freedom of Information Act. The outline
that the intelligence community did not believe that the Madua

(03:18:08):
regime was controlling tender Agua, which was one of the
claims that Trump administration has made in its invocation of
the Alien Enemies Act. Right, So it's just kind of
I think most people who pay any attention to the
situation weren't really buying that, but it's showing that this
was documented by the US intelligence community as well. So, yeah,

(03:18:30):
any anything to add that the Libya stuff is bleak,
Like it hasn't got much coverage in the US. We
have covered it before, but the European Union is already
complicit in the terrible treatment of migrants in Libya, and
oh yeah, and for ages it has happened, for ages
like the so called Libyan Coast Guard of bringing people
back to Libya and like literally selling them from shelters

(03:18:51):
to human traffickers. I mean, we've more or less kind
of lined up behind some of the worst places on Earth,
like in terms of migrant detention. Right with SECOT and this.

Speaker 4 (03:19:03):
Yeah, more and more families are figuring out that like
their family members have been sent to SCOT, like people
who have not been named an official documentation. They've been
able to like search through these propaganda videos and identify
more people. So they're launching court cases to have them returned,
people who very clearly have had no gang affiliation. Not

(03:19:24):
that that should even matter when you're sending people to
the forever prison.

Speaker 6 (03:19:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:19:28):
I saw one guy we had a Donald Duck tattoo,
and that was I guess the decisive claim there. Right,
there's a form that ICE agents fill out and there's
a number of points they after a mass. I believe
it's three points, and one of the things that can
allow you to a mass three points. It's like, I
think two points come from a tattoo which they decide
to be gang affiliated and.

Speaker 2 (03:19:49):
No, and again, like they seem to just be saying
tattoos period, right, Like anything is trindagua, right, yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:19:57):
Right, people who have like soccer tattoos, people who have
of my mom and dad tattoos, It doesn't matter.

Speaker 2 (03:20:02):
There's an autism awareness tattoo.

Speaker 1 (03:20:04):
Yeah, so some guy had an autism awareness Yeah, that
one like haunts me because I have met young neurodivergent
people and their families who are bringing them to the
US to get what they thought was a better standard
of care, right to allow their children to progress and
have a beautiful life. Yeah, man, that one, like, like,

(03:20:25):
I honestly really struggled with that. I have spent lots
and lots and lots of time with Venezuelan migrants and
like they're my friends. And that particular one, like people
whose children have any need for medical care right are
overrepresented the migrant population because they just can't access it
there and so they upend their whole lives and carry

(03:20:47):
their children across the continent to give them a chance
had a better life And like that, that one is
particularly hard for me to Winness, I did just want
to mention on the topic of asylum. I've heard from
so many migrants stuck in Mexico who are having a
god awful time to include you know, robbery, kidnapping, sexual violence,

(03:21:10):
all of the things that we know can happen to
migrants on the migrant trail because they have no pathway
to get to the US. They're now just stuck there
right Mexico continues to take migrants and move them back
south if it catches them near the United States border,
even if some of them move up as far as
Mexico City, right because they have access to services there,

(03:21:30):
and then again sent back south to places where migrants
have routinely been murdered. So I know, we're focusing a
lot on migrants being kicked out of the US deported.
Renditioned conditions for migrants who aspired to come to the
United States who took great risks to be Americans and
are stuck in Mexico are also dire.

Speaker 4 (03:21:51):
All right, Let's go and break and then come back
for a few more updates before we close out.

Speaker 2 (03:21:56):
Yeah, we're back. And wait a second, is that is
that the tariff song?

Speaker 12 (03:22:14):
Locking jas Rocking Jaspar Sorry, Locking, Locking jas Rocking Jazz Bob?

Speaker 2 (03:22:28):
All right, guys, I actually don't know. Do we have
anything to say about tariffs this week?

Speaker 5 (03:22:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (03:22:31):
We actually actually do us some on tariffs, So okay.

Speaker 2 (03:22:33):
All right, very good. I'm just we gotta get all
of our use out of that song, because again, we
really do. We really had to suspend the whole team's
healthcare to pay for it. It was monstrously expensive.

Speaker 3 (03:22:44):
The full cut of that.

Speaker 2 (03:22:45):
Song is seventeen and a half hours. We actually brought
in the remaining members of Fleetwood Mac as well as
several Rolling Stones.

Speaker 9 (03:22:53):
It was.

Speaker 2 (03:22:53):
It just just disastrous.

Speaker 1 (03:22:57):
So far attempts to resurrect Joe Strama failed that we
spent million.

Speaker 2 (03:23:01):
We only used the clip with our friend the Narcissist Cookbook.
But yeah, there there is a twenty six minute drum
solo with the guy from Rush Gedty Lee. He's still alive, right,
was it, Getty Lee? Yeah, yeah, he's still alive. The
joke works. The joke works.

Speaker 4 (03:23:16):
Not cheap, not cheap.

Speaker 3 (03:23:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:23:18):
Yeah, it's much like the dire Wolf thing. We've put
Joe's drummer's DNA into another court.

Speaker 3 (03:23:23):
Yeah, man, and does he worried?

Speaker 1 (03:23:25):
We've released him into the wild and we're going to
see how he developed.

Speaker 2 (03:23:28):
So far, he just has a lot of blood clots.

Speaker 3 (03:23:30):
But we have we're homefielder on.

Speaker 4 (03:23:31):
The case though. He's training him up.

Speaker 3 (03:23:33):
Well, we'll get him. We'll get him on here, all right.

Speaker 2 (03:23:36):
Yeah yeah, parraffs good bad?

Speaker 1 (03:23:38):
What do you think?

Speaker 3 (03:23:40):
Okay, So all right, let's let let's let's let's actually
do this shit. So is it One of the things
that we've been talking about along on this show is
the Deminimus exemption, which was this exemption that formerly allowed
you was particularly used in trade with China, where you could,
like if you were setting a package that was under
like seven hundred dollars, you didn't have to like it
didn't have to like go through in the way that

(03:24:00):
you would normally would have to do it. That shit's gone.
That ended on Friday of last week. This has already
skyrocketed the cost of doing imports of shit from China
because huge amounts of stuff being shipped from China was
you know, like reliant on shipping it in packages that
were exactly six hundred and ninety nine dollars, and you know,
this has like like Temu's entire business model has changed

(03:24:22):
basically over night, where like they're no longer shipping stuff
in from China, They're only selling stuff from like American distributors.
This is going to have catastrophic effects on so many
supply chains you've never even thought of in the weeks
to come, because again, there are so many different like
tiny screws and shit, like just like really really small
items that you used to be able to get from

(03:24:43):
China for like fucking five dollars for like one hundred
of them that now have like unbelievable tariff rates on
them and have to go through a really, really convoluted
customs process. There have already been sort of massive supply
chain disruptions in a large number of industries. It's going
to continue to get where Sophie was talking about metal
imports hitting the construction industry, because there's you know, there's

(03:25:04):
terraffs on a bunch of different kinds of metal, as
we've covered on the show, aluminum.

Speaker 2 (03:25:08):
God knows what's gonna happen to diet coke.

Speaker 3 (03:25:11):
We'll put it in lead like God intended.

Speaker 4 (03:25:13):
Maybe that'll finally change Trump's outlook is when his diet
coat stop.

Speaker 6 (03:25:19):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:25:19):
Yeah, Trump and Musk both become inoperable.

Speaker 2 (03:25:21):
But you know, Garrison, we will know when that's hit
when the missiles are in the air, like oh shitty
ran out.

Speaker 4 (03:25:29):
Federal occupation of the Coca Cola headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia.

Speaker 3 (03:25:32):
Yeah, so you know, and this is also like this,
this is going to have a profound impact on Chinese economy. Again,
we're still in sort of the waiting room until sort
of Midsummer when all of the rest of the tariffs
that were supposed to go into effect go back into
effect and literally everything collapses.

Speaker 2 (03:25:49):
You're probably three to five weeks out from really starting
to see it hit hard in like the stuff you
buy on a day to day basis. Right, People who
are doing stuff like remodeling houses or building houses are
starting to notice.

Speaker 6 (03:26:00):
Now.

Speaker 2 (03:26:00):
Yeah, I think people car prepare businesses and one of
people have to order parts. That is starting to hit.
But your grocery store, that's really going to be most
noticeable somewhere between three and five weeks from now. Maybe yeah,
maybe sooner, probably not much longer.

Speaker 3 (03:26:15):
Well, and and other things are about to get sniffy
and the worse. So this has been talked about for
a long time. The buzz right now is that they're
happening soon. I don't know exactly what that means, but
there has been for a long long time. Trump has
been talking about doing tariffs on pharma, so congratulations, get
excited for all of your medication costing a lot more money.
He also put into place of one hundred percent terrafund

(03:26:37):
foreign movies.

Speaker 2 (03:26:38):
Well, we'll see, yes, yeah, But then he walked that back,
he had a conversation with John Voight and announced, Yeah,
they're getting to that hundred percent tariff on all movies.

Speaker 3 (03:26:49):
Yeah, not made in the US. No one knows what
that means. How can you do that?

Speaker 2 (03:26:53):
What taraffun a movie? What are we talking about?

Speaker 3 (03:26:56):
It's literally it's literally just like like he's doing tariffs
in the way that like the is that but the
guy for the Wolf of Wall Street is like what
guy walks out of the room and goes short. Everything
is ever touched like it's like that thing. Yeah, like
he's gonna be terriffing like fucking ocean currents in two months.

Speaker 2 (03:27:10):
The responses to it have been have been so funny
because Gavin Newsome, arch dipshit of the Democratic Party, was
immediately like, we love the idea of working with our
president to keep the film jobs in California.

Speaker 10 (03:27:23):
You know.

Speaker 2 (03:27:24):
Meanwhile, Trump immediately was like, well, maybe we won't do that.
I think because they're still at the very head of
the studio system. Some scary old mob type dudes, right,
and I think a few of them also Tom Cruise
is terraf Tom Cruise. Tom Cruise like sat down, listen, Donald,

(03:27:44):
you know, no one's heard from David Mskovich's wife in
a long ass time, and they don't have to hear
from you either, Like you don't want to fuck with me?

Speaker 1 (03:27:52):
Yeah, Trump believes he actually is the mission impossible guy.

Speaker 3 (03:27:56):
And you could given some you could give he he
convinced him. Yeah, someone convinced him. To Nero's is, like,
didn't he reopen Alcatraz? Off to the Alcatraz film? Add
on the.

Speaker 2 (03:28:10):
Yes, but it was the it was the Clint Eastwood one,
and not the much better Alcatraz film The Rock starring
Sean Connery and Nicholas Cage a banger ages perfectly watch it.
Everyone watch it tonight. Fu reading any more news?

Speaker 3 (03:28:25):
Okay, there's more news though unfortunately Yeah, well okay, there
there's one funny thing, and there's a like the actual
news here is part of what's going on here is
just everything is just chaos. And this is something that like,
I mean, I've had this conversation with a bunch of
people who work in shipping of the last couple of weeks.
Is that like it's just chaos, right, Like everything is
changing all the fucking time, and this means every time
one of these things changes, a bunch of like the
import codes and like stuff just changes on the level

(03:28:48):
of like the customs people, and like just like like
literally the process of importing this stuff changes, and it's
just a complete fucking disaster. People are getting laid off
constantly too, so like every single part of the government
that's supposed to be doing this suddenly has less people.
It's an absolute rolling detachment for you will continue to
get worse. There's also good evidents that like they know

(03:29:08):
that it's gonna get worse. I'm gonna read this quote
from USA today, Well, this is from Trump. I don't
think a beautiful baby that's eleven years old needs to
have thirty dollars, Trump told Meet the Press House Kirsten Welker.
I think they can have three or four dolls because
what we're doing with China is just unbelievable. We have
a trade deficit of hundreds of billions of dollars for China.
I'm just saying they don't need to have thirty dollars.

(03:29:28):
They can have belief. They don't need to have one
hundred and fifty pencils. They can have five five pencils.

Speaker 4 (03:29:34):
Everyone five pencils and three dollars. This Christmas. Imagine if
Joe Biden annow, it's like, all right, we're gonna have
to cut down on Christmas gifts this year.

Speaker 3 (03:29:41):
We can't do it.

Speaker 4 (03:29:43):
The Fox News would be like freaking the fuck out.
We're like, Joe Biden's taking away your kid's Christmas and
the pencils and yeah, who cares?

Speaker 3 (03:29:54):
Yeah, But I mean, like like the actual song thing
here is like yeah, no, like these people understand that
you're going to suffer. They don't give a shit.

Speaker 4 (03:30:00):
I want you to suffer their political project. Yeah, so
you know, yeah, owning the Libs anyway? Is that all
for tariff Talkbia?

Speaker 3 (03:30:10):
Yeah, that's all we got on. That's how we got
on the tariffs.

Speaker 4 (03:30:13):
I am excited for for Trump to meet Ethan Hunt
on his last mission, So there's still hope.

Speaker 2 (03:30:19):
All right.

Speaker 4 (03:30:20):
I have a few more updates before we close out here.
One on the federal judge back and forth of last week.
US District judge blocked the Trump Admin's efforts via executive
order to require what they deem as proof of citizenship
to register to vote. The judge stated that this case
was about separation of powers and undue presidential interference in
how states in Congress run and regulate elections, writing quote,

(03:30:43):
our Constitution entrusts Congress and the States, not the President,
with the authority to regulate federal elections. No statutory delegation
of authority to the executive branch permits the president to
short circuit Congress's deliberative process by executive order. Yeah, so
we'll see how that develops. Foreign now, I'll also be
doing an uphit on the Save Act as it makes
its way through Congress as well, for those interested another

(03:31:06):
kind of voting suppression bill.

Speaker 1 (03:31:08):
It's getting a push.

Speaker 4 (03:31:09):
Through this Tuesday, the Supreme Court upheld the trans military ban,
at least for now. It'll still process through appeals, but
the Trump administration is now allowed to enforce the ban,
which they previously couldn't because a lower court put the
enforcement on hold.

Speaker 6 (03:31:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:31:25):
So, I think the actual scariest part about that is
if you read the if you read the language of
what the court was talking about, they've been describing it
as like someone who thinks that like they are a
woman when they're actually a man. Like isn't someone who
can perform at like the standards of like honor and
whatever that like a soldier needs and This is I
think a ramp up to the really really dangerous thing
that is coming, which is their attempt to just straight

(03:31:47):
up brand being trans as fraud.

Speaker 4 (03:31:49):
I mean, this is this is the Trump Admin's argument, correct,
this is what they were writing.

Speaker 3 (03:31:53):
Yeah, yeah, this is the statement.

Speaker 1 (03:31:55):
I guess that the DoD is claiming that expressing a
quote false gender idea entity divergent from an individual sex
can't satisfy the rigorous standards necessarily for military service. And
they specifically talk about a soldier's commitment to an honorable, truthful,
and disciplined lifestyle, even in one's personal life, and they
then go ahead to claim that being trans inherently contradicts that.

Speaker 4 (03:32:20):
That's the Trump admins argument, which is going to be
like used to undermine transmitter rights in the future, possibly
threatening Title nine.

Speaker 3 (03:32:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32:29):
Yeah, it's very concerning.

Speaker 4 (03:32:31):
So the fact that they were able to, like at
least at this point when this case in the Streame
Court extremely worrying.

Speaker 3 (03:32:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:32:40):
I will just say that if this impacts you someone
you care about, so when you know you can reach
out to us. Obviously there's a very little we can
do about it, but we are here to listen to
report the News and you can do that at cool Zone,
tips at proton dot me tonly an encrypted email and

(03:33:01):
to end if it comes from an encrypted email address
to a encrypted email address.

Speaker 4 (03:33:06):
We are reading all of those. We may not respond
to all of them, but we are taking note of them,
and we'll report on stuff in the future. The last
thing I do want to add is like a raid
that happened last week in California. Homeland Security Investigations ICE
and Secret Service right to the house in southern California
looking for a man who months ago posted flyers around

(03:33:30):
Los Angeles last January warning about ICE agents in the
area with names, photos, and phone numbers reading in Spanish
quote careful with these faces. The FEDS served a criminal
search warrant on the home of this guy's parents, even
though he moved to New York last March. At least

(03:33:50):
fifteen armored vehicles pulled up to this upscale neighborhood with
full militarized federal swat. They seized routers and hard drives.

Speaker 3 (03:33:59):
Yeah, that's good.

Speaker 4 (03:34:00):
Acting ICE director Todd Loins was on the scene for
this operation. He told Fox News that he took it
personally that someone would put a target on his agents
in an effort to interfere with them and put them
at risk, saying the person will be held accountable. What
they're using here is probably likely US Code one nineteen
Protection of Individuals performing certain duties. Whoever knowingly makes restricted

(03:34:22):
personal information about a covered person or a member of
the immediate family of that covered person publicly available with
the intent to threaten and intimidate or incite the commission
of a crime of violence against that covered person or
a member of the immediate family. So this is likely
what they're using, arguing that posting a photo on a
flyer with the person's name and phone number is enough

(03:34:45):
to threaten, intimidate, or facilitate the commission of a crime.

Speaker 1 (03:34:49):
Yeah, what constitutes covered persons?

Speaker 4 (03:34:51):
And it is that's a good question, James.

Speaker 3 (03:34:54):
That's a screenshot, right, so you can't click that.

Speaker 4 (03:34:56):
That is a screenshot and probably a question for a lawyer.
But they are they are arguing that that the ICE
agents like fall under this purview.

Speaker 1 (03:35:05):
Yes, the term covered person means a an individual designated
to Session one fourteen B, a grand dura, petty jura witness,
or rather officer of the court, an informal witness in
a federal criminal investigation or prosecution, state or local officer
or employee whose restricted personal information is made publicly available
because of the participation in or assistant provided to a

(03:35:27):
federal criminal investigation. So it's part C.

Speaker 4 (03:35:30):
Yeah, so that's that's what they're going to argue. The
people's addresses weren't posted here, it was just their names
and photos. But ICE and HSI are being very protective
of the faces of the agents doing immigration raids and
student crackdowns right now. They're they're really nervous about about
agents possibly being targeted, so any attempt to identify these

(03:35:51):
is being treated as like a threat. A Homeland Security
spokesperson told Fox News quote, these pathetic activists are putting
targets on the backs of our law enforcement as they
shield Ms thirteen, Trendilagua and other vicious gangs at traffic,
women and children, kidnapped for ransom, and poison Americans with
lethal drugs. These individuals will be held accountable for obstructing
the law and justice. This shouldn't be controversial.

Speaker 6 (03:36:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (03:36:17):
So five people died after a panga carrying migrants capsized
off Del Mar, which is in North County San Diego.
The search is on going. I believe another five are
still missing. One of those is a ten year old
girl from India, and Christie Nohan has said she wants
the DOJ to pursue death penalty charges against the smugglers

(03:36:42):
who brought these people over. These boats have been a
thing for a while, but this is not the first
of these tragedies. And it's obviously like we shouldn't lose
focus of the fact that someone's little child died, which
is horrific.

Speaker 4 (03:36:57):
Yeah, yeah, tough news week as usual.

Speaker 2 (03:37:01):
I guess tough news week.

Speaker 3 (03:37:04):
The only way to feel better is by fighting.

Speaker 4 (03:37:07):
But we did report the news.

Speaker 2 (03:37:10):
We did, We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back
Monday with more episodes every week from now until the
heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 13 (03:37:23):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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