It Could Happen Here Weekly 184

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Call Zone 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 3 (00:27):
Hey, this is me the future. This is recorded in
the now Haalcion days of January twenty twenty five. Lots
of things have changed. Basically everything everywhere has gotten worse.
This is the story about the oppression of trends people
in the United Kingdom that is very bleak. In many ways,
United Kingdom has gotten worse since then. The UK Supreme

(00:50):
Court has ruled that the definition of sex and the
Equality Act of twenty ten is quote binary and is
decided by quote biological sex. So whatever the sex that
some fucking doctor assigns you at birth is your sex
specifically under the Equalities Act. A bunch of people in
the UK have decided that this means that like the
courts have ruled that like sex in general means quote

(01:13):
unquote biological sex. That's actually not what they ruled, but
they're doing anyways. So there's been a whole bunch of
things where, for example, the Labor Party has started purging
trans women from any like one of their bodies that's
supposed to be a woman's body. So through the oppression
of trans people continues to escalate. Yeah, our only path

(01:33):
out is just open and active resistance against them. In
a more positive note, Mira, our guest for this episode,
has since since this episode, has struck out on her
own and is now the mind and genius behind the
outlet Free Radical. She will link to here and you
should go support her work because it's great. Now to
our episode, it's it could happen here a podcast that

(01:57):
is largely about the US.

Speaker 4 (01:59):
That my that might.

Speaker 3 (02:00):
Exaggerate the e sat to which is about the US,
but it is most episodes are about the US, but
sometimes it's about other places. And one of the frequent
places that it's about is the United Kingdom. And specifically
we're here to talk about the United Kingdom because the
UK is both an image of the presence and the
future of the oppression of trans people and there have

(02:21):
been a bunch of just absolutely horrible things happening there
that have gotten very little press attention. And one of
one of those things is what appears to be a
like I guess I would call it like a two
stage cover up of a bunch of suicides of trans
kids on waiting lists for healthcare. And with me to

(02:41):
talk about this fucking terrible shit is Mira Lazine, who's
a freelance trans journalist. Miro, Welcome to the show.

Speaker 5 (02:48):
Great to be here, Thank you for having me.

Speaker 3 (02:50):
Yeah. So, I mean, God, this is one of those
I always am excited to talk to people, but I
swear to God, like one out of every four times
this happens, it's like a I have to pull do
I want to say, I'm excited to talk to you
about this because, like Jesus christis is the most depressing
shit I've seen in ages.

Speaker 5 (03:07):
Yeah, it's not a fun story. It's an important one,
probably one of the most important I've ever boarded on,
but not remotely fun.

Speaker 1 (03:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:18):
So let's go back to the Halcyon days of mid
twenty twenty four. I don't know, thanks for she really
bad then too, but they're worse now. But they were
also bad then, yeah, So can you talk a bit
about how this story started and about what was going
on with the National Health Service, the NHS, which is

(03:38):
the British basically the British healthcare system is run out
of National Health Service. Can you talk about the whistleblowers
there and what was going on with them?

Speaker 5 (03:46):
So, yeah, I first became aware of whats going on independently.
I was working with Alejandra care Bio the Clinical Instruction
of cyber Law plant at Harvard sheets a friend of mine,
and we work together on subjects. She and Ira and

(04:08):
Almos some other people were talking about the horrific waitlists
going on with the NHS. It's terrible there. I mean
not even just for trance stuff. There's only millions of
reports of people having to wait months to get essential healthcare.
Some people have died just from like their conditions being

(04:31):
on the wait list. We had both stumbled upon some
old news reports from like years prior, about trans kids
who had unfortunately committed suicide as a result of not
getting the essential health CUY getting need on the wait list.
These stories are not talked about their media at all.

(04:52):
They got like one art mentioned naing what happened to them,
and then that was it. So we started to invest
gate it. She was compiling a spreadsheet of everything she
could find, every news report of kids who experienced this.
I was pitching helped and contribute to that spreadsheets. And
then right around the same time, the director then of

(05:16):
the Good Law Project, a civil rights organization that does
a lot of legal stuff in the United Kingdom. His
name is Jolyn Mogam apologized if I mispronounced that. He
came out with a Twitter thread revealing and this was
very suddenly. He hadn't contacted anyone about this. He just
kind of posted it right when he got enough of

(05:38):
a story and everything. He revealed that he was talking
to a couple of whistleblowers within the NHS about what
was going down. And not only did he talk to
some whistleblowers, but he also gained some independent evidence from himself,
his own investigation, from meeting it's from officials in the NHS,

(06:03):
and so what he found kind of again at the
first was still beliller. This one was someone who did
not reveal much about who they were publicly and presumably
to protect their job. But Logan said that with his
whistleblowers he independently confirmed that they did work for the NHS.

(06:23):
He saw their ideas. Mangham's that typic guy to lie.
He's a trusted figure in the UK political scene. First
one said that there was only one reported suicide prior
to twenty twenty. Significance of twenty twenty in relation to
trantelthcare at United Kingdom was that the infamous Caspell versus Tatstock.

(06:48):
Not going to go into detail of this case because
it condoluded messy and hellish, but the gist of it
is that it led to tightened restrictions on gender priman
care for minors, particularly in the new realm of puberty blockers.
This ruling ended up kind of restricting how might act
as puberty blockers. Some it was the leader overturned, but

(07:11):
it already led to lasting damage. Even after it was overturned,
a lot of doctors for even prescribe puberty blockers because
they were worried about political consequences. So a lot of
miners weren't getting the care they need.

Speaker 3 (07:24):
Yeah, and we should also mention here too because I
think this has been lost in a lot of the
reporting on this, because like I mean, I guess this
is the story where a lot of the reporting was
done by trans people just because like nobody gives a shit.
But like, the thing about puberty blockers is that puberty
blockers with the healthcare of trans youth were always a
sort of compromise measure that was, you know, sort of
put in place as a compromise of like instead of

(07:45):
letting kids actually transition and like, you know, go on hormones,
which is, you know, the thing that kids need, right
if your goal is to like improve the health outcomes
of trans kids, like the thing you actually want for them,
like maximally is for them to have the ability to
get gender affirming hormones. But you know, the sort of
the sort of compromise thing that was happenings like, well,

(08:06):
you could have puberty blockers, but you know, you start
horbuns later, and that is not a good compromise to
begin with, but losing it is even worse because the
alternative to that is like you are now spending even
more time with a bunch of fucking hormones in your
system that you don't want. Thats more of more of
the hormones that you fucking want, and you know you're

(08:26):
getting you're being forced to go through puberty, which fucking sucks.
Shit if you're going through I don't know. I don't
know if the wrong puberty is like the correct language
or whatever, but like it fucking sucks. It's awful. But
now you know. And this is just something that's happening
in the US too. It's also happening in the UK,
is that the compromise solutions are being knocked out and

(08:47):
we're seeing the sort of knock on effects of these
kids losing even the sort of compromise stuff they were
supposed to be getting.

Speaker 5 (08:53):
Yeah, and they used come deep bogus justifications for this
or like we don't see any benefits of pu people loockers,
And it's like, the point is not that they are
benefiting these kids directly. No kid is like, oh boy,
I get to be five years behind on puberty from
my peers, I get to look like a ten year old,
but all my peers have bull one beam everything. Oh boy.

(09:16):
Like no, but the point is that these kids are
being deprived of the care they absolutely need to stay itlive,
and it's being targeted just for the sole purpose of
getting cheap political pals from what are the hell's in office. Yeah,
but more back to the whistleblowers. So prior to twenty twenty,

(09:37):
when the Belvy Tavistock ruling came into effect, only one
transmitter died from suicide. I don't quite remember how I'm
being the used estimated, but it was broader than the
one they used after. I believe it was like seven years,
I think, and the years after which was measured up
to like the very beginning of twenty twenty four. Chane,

(10:00):
you at twenty twenty four, so not even four years,
more like three years. In June months they recorded sixteen debts. Yeah,
sixteen transgender minors committed to suicide, and they were all
able to be linked to restrictions on compreticaters and NHS

(10:22):
wait lists. This was the blower says on This data
came directly from a doctor who analyzes this stuff professionally,
is like part of his job in the NHS. The
doctor also wanted to be anonymous. Understandably, he named himself
the quote named doctor for Safeguarding child. He tried to
warn people in the NHS about this. He was like, hey,

(10:45):
there's something wrong. This isn't right. We are fucking up.

Speaker 1 (10:49):
Yeah, And he.

Speaker 5 (10:52):
Talked to so many different people, including doctor Hilary Cass,
who I'll talk of it about later.

Speaker 3 (11:00):
This is a literary device called foreshadowy ETCA giant clip
flashing big here, giant ominous music surrounding her remain that
does he just warned.

Speaker 5 (11:14):
Of people basically, and they all ignored him. They all
just according to him. And this is all alleged. I
have to say, you know, this has not been verified
in the court of flaw or anything. This is according
to the whistleblowers and mongam, but we have no reason
to believe they lied or fabricated this information about this

(11:34):
was not even revealed publicly. There is no public outcry.
There was no action taken by the NHS or any
of the clinics. So that is the first whistleblower and
the whistleblower's connection to that doctor. The second one basically
can and gave independent verification of this. They were like, yeah,
I've seen the data for myself too, I can confirm

(11:57):
this is legitimate. Now it wasn't just these sory staff
members who were trying to raise a larm bells. According
to the second whistle blower, staff and the NHS were like, hey,
well this is not cool, we need to do something
until they got an open letter, sent it to their
higher ups and reportedly the director of the Tavistock Clinic,

(12:18):
which was at the time the only gender affirming air
clinic for minors in the entire United Kingdom. Since that's
more opened up. But it's a really complicated thing. That's
a headache to deal with. But head honchos at Tavistock
completely retabiated. They threatened them a disciplined interaction. They suppressed material.

(12:40):
They're basically were like, you go public about this, if
you continue talking about this, you're going to face consequences.
The thing the thing that instantly came to mind here,
and I think it's just specifically because of number sixteen,
but like the first time I read this, the first
thing that came to my mind was there, you know,
there's the sort of famous Chicago story of the police
killing of the Clint McDonald where the slogan afterwards was

(13:02):
sixteen shots and a cover up. And this is fucking
sixteen dead at a cover up, And the about a
fucking rage that I have for all for this, all
of this fucking shit that these people covered this up,
that they knew this was happening and were just and
not only knew this was happening, and not only didn't
do anything about it, but like actively you contributed to

(13:23):
fucking making it worse by threatening anyone to try to
talk about it. Is just so unbelievably disgusting.

Speaker 4 (13:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
I was the first one who broke the story. I
basically recorded on it, like almost immediately after Moldern Republic
about this, because I knew not many people were going
to report on this right away and it was going
to kind of be a headache. I didn't know how
he would, but I was the first one to report
on it. I did it for cheerlest Aaron read subsec

(13:50):
Aaron in the Morning back in June of last year,
and I had to stop writing it multiple times, like
I spent the entire day getting on it because it
was stomach wrenching reading some of these stories and doing everything.
The only reason I even got through it was because
I dissociated the entire time and just kind of impartmentalized

(14:11):
the anger of a bunch Beretta. It's like Jesus Christ, this
is horrifying. But Malcolm was not talking out of his
aspetus too. He brought receipts right in the initial thread
he showed leaked to meeting minutes and like you can
see water marks from the NHS on these meeting minutes.
Like it is unless someone wants to suggest that he

(14:33):
did a giant conspiracy and fabricated a bunch of very
accurate meeting minutes that reflect publicly available meeting minutes elsewhere,
it it's pretty reputable. Yeah, these minutes show that any
test officials were aware of every single one of these debts,
every single one of them. People were in these meetings

(14:54):
calling for an independent investigation into each of these debts,
into gender firming care for miners, into restrictions. They wanted
to investigate everything and had detailed data. They had information
on the type of care they received, which was basically negligence,
and instead of reporting on this publicly, instead of doing

(15:18):
an investigation, they covered this up. They didn't do anything,
and they just pretended like everything was fine, like there
was no debts as a result of this. They were
acted nothing wrong was going on, and these meeting minutes
are still public too. Mangan is not believed in that
it's still on his Twitter account. Good Law Project is

(15:41):
not fully a thing any more of the kind of
dissolving their stuff right now, but Magan is still keeping
all information up. It's all detailed, it's publicly there. People
can see for themselves these minutes and it's horrifying seeing
the physical proof. It's yeah, it's horrifying.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
Yeah, and we need to go to ads and when
we come back, we'll get to the second fucking cover
up because there was a second one. Did it again
this time with the British broadcasting What the fuck does
the C stand for corporation?

Speaker 6 (16:13):
That one British broadcast in corporation leading the charge.

Speaker 3 (16:27):
And we are back. So let's talk about the fucking
second cover up because normally, normally you only get one
cover up when your fucking healthcare policies kill a bunch
of people, but no, two, they got multiple cover ups.
Before we get to the second cover up, we need
to talk about what the cash report is because that's
also part of this. And we kind of bounced around

(16:47):
a little bit but then didn't. Yeah.

Speaker 5 (16:49):
Well, yeah, so the cast report is probably one of
the worst things to come out at the anti trans
crowd in the past decade.

Speaker 7 (17:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (17:00):
The gist of it is, it's essentially a supposedly independent
report commissioned by the Knighting government to investigate the efficacy
of huberty blockers and gender of herman care from liners
authored by doctor Hillard Cass, who they claimed is an
expert in the subject. I'll get to that in a second.

(17:22):
The gist of what it was claiming is that no
puberty blockers do anything. They actually hurt the kids. They
don't improve mental health, they don't protect anything, suicide to
stay the same, it's all bad. Get rid of them
and actually restrict gender perman care two and also maybe
we should de transition these kids too. It's a very

(17:43):
long documents, actually a set of documents, but the primary
one isn't incredibly long. I remember when it first it
came out last year. It's been in the works for
the better part of the last decade. Still get twenty tens.
It's been in the works. I don't remember the exactly
gear that it was initially commissioned, but it's been something

(18:06):
the United Kingdom government has been waiting on for a
while to take action for gender reforming care. Now to
understand the CAST report, you gotta understand a little bit
about Hillary Cass. Hillary Cass is not an expert in
gender firming care seeing up for minors. She has never
treated a transgender patient aimed her professional practice.

Speaker 3 (18:26):
Whatsoever, which, thank god yes, because holy shit, oh she
is such a transphob Oh my god, yes, but yeah,
also utterly unqualified.

Speaker 5 (18:36):
Completely unqualified while she was writing it instead of talking
with single trans person as like part of the consulting
because she didn't do it by herself. It's wait too
long for anyone to do buyers by themselves. She got
a bunch of unknown advisors to help her with this,
one of which is a Finnish psychiatrist who has been

(18:59):
campaigned against transgender rights for the past twenty years. But
she did not have any trans people on the consulting board,
not a single one. Well, of course, why would you
talk to a transperson about trans healthcare? Like that's why
would you. Trans people don't know anything. They need to
be regulated and told exactly what's best for them by
people who have never even talked to them before. She actually,

(19:22):
while she was writing it, she talked to Florida Healthcare
officials during the Ron DeSantis fstration for information YEP on
what to do like and these officials, by the way,
they weren't just like leftovers from the prior governor. They

(19:42):
were appointed by Ron de Santis and have literally been
Jews bidding and restricting healthcare.

Speaker 3 (19:50):
Yeah, appointed by the guy who in the last campaign
cycle had to fucking add with a son and rat
in it. So like, you know the level of Nazi
we're dealing with here.

Speaker 5 (20:00):
Uh. And not only did she work with them, but
there's even more. She worked with numerous people who were
tied to anti transit groups, most notable of which is
the quote Society for Evidence Based Gender Medicine.

Speaker 4 (20:18):
God.

Speaker 5 (20:19):
They are probably one of the leading anti transgroups right now.
They are southern poverty, low centered, desic hate group. They're
not very fun people. They all have a financial interest
in opposing transgender rights. Many of the people with them
have been quite orderly paid to oppose transjunder rights in court.
There's a whole rabbit hole to get into there. The

(20:41):
point being she's worked with hate groups, She's worked with
the Santa's appointees, She talked to no trans people, and
she lied a lot. When the cast for Brew first
came out, I was one of the people who was
working around the clock to try to be like, hey,
let's not just assume that this is immediately accurate, because

(21:02):
we should wait for independent scholars to evaluate this. There's
a lot of shady stuff going on here, and why
didn't you know it? A lot of things were wrong
for starters. Ass misrepresented a lot of what she did
for the review. It was supposed to be a systematic
review into all the literature and pubi blockers. The problem
is she left out a bunch of studies, especially more

(21:24):
recent ones with better elogies. She and her method degrade them,
basically changed it up last minute and didn't seek peer
review for it from her institution's review the board, which
she didn't speak any ethical verification on anything.

Speaker 3 (21:40):
Yeah, which, which is which is amazing. It's like, do
you know how fucked your report has to beat and
like your anti transferport has to be and not be
able to survive a British peer review board like Jesus Christ.

Speaker 8 (21:53):
It's like yeah, like it's it gets even worse because
as time went on, a lot of journalists, myself included,
found a bunch of little pact role in art seat there.

Speaker 5 (22:05):
She was misrepresenting this study. She was misterpreting that study.
Lots of little information it was she at one point
fighted a YouTube channel that is dedicated to opposing trans rate.
That be the YouTube channel in your fucking secitations. It
was a tangential citation, but the point being the fact

(22:26):
that she even discovered that shows her allegiances. She was
in the CAST Review. She was trying to cast doubt
on the leading medical association for trans people, the war
Professional Association for Transgender Health. She was like, Oh, no,
you're actually not good. They're politically biased. I'm not though,
don't more eyes, don't investigate me.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (22:48):
And in the time since, there's been a shit ton
of medical experts coming forward opposing the CAST Review, being like, no,
the methodology is garbage. Not just journalists saying it. There
are quite littly been hundreds of metabirds who have come
forward to publicly imposed the CAST Review. These are people
across a variety of fields, psychiatrists, pediatrician and anechronologists, basically

(23:12):
everyone you could imagine who would be relevant to the
study of transunder health and minors. They have come forward
against it, including most of the leading researchers in the field,
including people who have actually important with trans people in
a professional capacity.

Speaker 3 (23:29):
Yeah wow, And this review.

Speaker 5 (23:34):
It's the reason the United Kingdom went on last year
to ban puberty blockers in all four countries within it.
They started in England, then they spread it out to Scotland,
Wales with their beauty blocker ban, and was recently right
before New Year's they banned it in Northern Ireland. And

(23:56):
because of this, so many clinics are now just not
treating transple including transgender adults. They are out transgender adults
not getting the care they need. Yeah, because of something
ton't even discuss trans adults in a meaningful capacity.

Speaker 9 (24:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
And that's and that's part of the thing with the
Cast Review, right, is that, like, you know, it literally
like it could have just been like seven hundred pages
of fuck you over and over again and it would
have had the same effects, because the point of the
Cast Review wasn't actually to like establish anything medically. It
was to just have a document that you could point
at and then justify any policy whatsoever. Like it's it's

(24:31):
kind of like it's kind of like the way the
Gambits and the Bell Curve works were, like none of
the actual policy recommendations follow from any of the arguments
that they're making. But it exists so that you can
make those policy arguments and then point to like, oh
it's because of IQ and this is this is the
same like bullshit IQ, like fake IQ science, right, Like.

Speaker 5 (24:50):
There's literally IQ science used to justify the puberty blocker band.

Speaker 10 (24:54):
Of course there is why they are claiming that puberty
blockers reduce IQ using a STO from like two thousand
and one on one of the and a separate study
on show god, a separate study on fucking sheep.

Speaker 5 (25:08):
How are you measuring the IQ of sheep?

Speaker 3 (25:10):
Like yeah, okay, yeah, we wheeled in the sheep to
do the fucking Army standard amplitude test. Like ah, it'
scored real bad. Give it puberty blockers and it scored
even worse.

Speaker 5 (25:23):
It gets garbage science.

Speaker 3 (25:25):
Yeah, but one of the important things, like cocclusions here
is that, like so one of the one of the
sort of things that's happening now is that fucking feral
attack dog. I don't know fuckings sue me, you motherfucker.
We won the revolution. Each shit west Streeting who's now
running British Healthcare, issued a fucking thing to to ban
puberty blockers for trans youth, you know, and he cites

(25:48):
the Cash Report. Do you know what's not in the
Cash Report? A recommendation to ban puberty blockers? Do you
know what these fucking he doing you anyways? Because that's
the actual sort of purpose of the report is to
serve as sort of like just a kind of like
talisman you can hold up and say, ha, see this
is justified. Yeah, and can you talk about the whistleblowers
and the Cast report too, because this is the thing

(26:09):
that I has seen very very little coverage that is
extremely important.

Speaker 7 (26:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (26:14):
So the whistleblowers, they literally reached out to the Cast
while she was writing the review. She had to be like, hey,
restricting puberty blockers isn't good. And like you said, Pass
did not recommend to ban puberty blockers. She called for
more research into it and like some restriction, but not
an outgrade band that was not anywhere within it. Even

(26:35):
with her extremism, she's like, maybe we shouldn't restrict everything completely,
you know, maybe we should just de transition some of
the kids. But she did not advocate for a full
on ban, and she has even gone public into the
media to clarify that she has does not believe in
a hole on ban and yet she ignored the whistleblowers.

(26:59):
She ignored them when they came to her being like, hey,
there's evidence that restricting pubery blockers is haunting these depths
record and she didn't do anything. We don't know the
specifics of that conversation. That's not public information. But you
read the cast review, you're not coming away with it thinking,
oh boy, she's really concerned about kids who are killing themselves. Yeah,

(27:24):
you're coming away with it thinking she doesn't believe a
shit and she has her own agenda.

Speaker 3 (27:28):
Yeah, And so okay, we're going to take another ad break,
and then we're going to get to the promise second
cover up, and we're back for cover up number two.
So okay, we have now introduced briefly the fucking spawn

(27:52):
of Satan himself, West Reading. Can you talk a little
bit more about him and the cover up that he
commissioned of this?

Speaker 5 (28:00):
So yeah, when I broke this story, it was getting
no coverage. No other news outlet wanted to touch it.
There were actually some journalists I talked to I'm not
going to name any names, but journalists I talked to
you who are trying to get their editors to publish
a story on these claims and they were like, m
I don't think so. I think we're going to do that.

(28:21):
It's too speculative and things like that. People were actively
shutting it down, especially in the British media. Yeah, and
for about a month the NHS was nordness and not
getting public comment. Enter West streaming. You said, he is
the head of British Healthcare officially, is like fucking the

(28:42):
head of the Secretary of State for Help and Social
Care some shit like that. But he's a sellout. He's
a labor guy, you know, the party that's supposed to
be at least kind of left wing and some and
he threw trans people under the bus the first chance
he got, right after Turf started pressing him for it
was streating in all his awful, awful glory, looked at

(29:07):
Mullgan's thread and thought, what if I denied this? So
he commissioned Professor Lewis Appleby or Appleby. He is a
leading suicide researcher he at the University of Manchester. Except
even though he's been in the field of suicide research
for decades, in the past year or so he's been

(29:29):
cozying up to a lot of antutrians people. Yeah, there's
shipped ton of tweets of him basically talking to turfs,
repeating the oh you can't have men and women's sports nonsense,
you can. What does him going down the pipeline?

Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yeah, he's just he's a he's a turf. Yeah, like
that's the.

Speaker 5 (29:46):
Yeah, he's a the turf. He's a turf. Who I
do you does not professionally really work with Transius commits suicide.
He does not discuss LGBTQ issues in his brieft arch
as his primary focus. He does it for the general population.

Speaker 4 (30:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:04):
I haven't read every single study of his, so it's
probably as like one or two that talk about LGBQ
suicide rates. But by no means is he like the
guy you go to to learn about why suicide attempts
and suicide rates are a thing in the LGBTQ population.
West Reading was like, Hey, Lewis, do you want to
write a quote unquote debunking of Margam's dread. So enter

(30:29):
the I have it up right now. They quote review
of Suicide from Gender Dysphoria at the Tavistock and Portman
NHS Foundation Trust Independent Report. This guy, he basically claimed
that Nope, there's no data for this. Actually Mogam's wrong
is that data pans it out. The data doesn't lie.

Speaker 3 (30:51):
It's also funny because his argument is that trans people
were already killing themselves. Yeah, it was just like it
was really fucking plaque you think about it. But now there's.

Speaker 5 (31:04):
Gripes a million breaths of people could have with this.
For start, the data set is obviously too small to
analyze fucking statistically. Makes no sense to try to do
a fucking in death satistical analysis on what marg was
claiming with sixteen kids. That's not but you're not going
to get shit out of that. That's not really a
big issue with it. The big issue that Mogum himself

(31:27):
actually pointed out. In the same day that this came out,
Logan pointed out that this analysis was just wrong from
the start. For starters, this guy analyzed quote current and
former patients of under Identity Service. Malcolm's claims weren't about that.

(31:50):
Malcom's claims were about those who were on the waiting list.

Speaker 3 (31:54):
Which is which which is just nuts. Like it is
up here for a second, it's like the difference between
again on the waiting list and have finished care, like, what, yeah,
what are we doing here? Oh god, how did this
get past any be the outlet? I mean tretsphobia?

Speaker 5 (32:15):
But like really yeah, now there's other problems with what
It's kind of suspicious. So applebye, Applebee. However he pronounce
his last name, He's.

Speaker 3 (32:27):
Gonna call him Applebee's because fuck him Applebee's.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
Fuck it.

Speaker 5 (32:31):
He used data directly provided by NHS inclin. Now student
viewers will notice something. Magham never claimed to access data
directly given to them from NHS Acland. He was given
data from whistleblowers. Magham actually in this direct because he
wrote a whole debunking this debunking, and Morgan was like,

(32:54):
he revealed that he actually a month before this was published,
he reached out to NHS angling to be like, hey,
can I have your data on this subject. I've gotten
a lot of information I want to try to corroborate it.
They denied him the data. They just denied him it.

Speaker 3 (33:11):
Yeah, I remember incorrectly. Part of it was they claimed
the data didn't exist.

Speaker 5 (33:14):
Yeah, yeah, they claimed it didn't exist, that they just
didn't have it at all, and something. They pulled that
up in air for good old Applebee's well, there's some
other insure inconsistencies. As we know, Mogham had receipts he
provided information on minutes directly from NHS meetings discussing these suicides.

(33:38):
The minutes don't match up to the data Applebee's has.
Applebee's is underestimating everything. And yeah, very recently, this has
not gotten any media coverage at all. Those who have
been following UK politics for a while, especially trans politics,
remember the unfortunate case of Alice Linn. Yeah, she was

(34:00):
a young trientleman who committed suicide as advantage of this
wait lists years ago. Her mother, Er Litman, has been
a staunch outline trans people since. She's been one of
the excusest people in the UK to be like, hey, no,
I'm I'm putting my all behind trans people. She's wonderful.
She came out publicly revealing that Alice Litman was not

(34:24):
included in Applebe's data set, even though she should have been.
She was within Yeah the years. So what this says
is that Applebee's had bad data that didn't include every kid.

Speaker 3 (34:40):
Yeah, well, here's the thing we don't know about that, right,
It's possible he had bad data. It's possible he's also
just been falsifying his data because like again, he won't
show it to us, so we have no fucking idea
what like what he was, what he was actually provided
with and what he was like you know what, or
what things he did to the It says that he
was given beforehand to produce what he's analyzing in his report.

Speaker 5 (35:04):
True, and there was of course a bunch of smaller
issues you could point out with Applebee's review, but the
crux of it, it's bogus data is a matchup. As
you said, he could be falsifying it. He could have
just been given bad data. We don't know. He's not
sharing anything. The NHS isn't sharing anything. Yeah, but all

(35:24):
we know is that there's major inconsistencies and they they're
not doing shit with it. And this is where we
enter everyone's favorite mainstream media, the lovely British media specifically
outlooks like the BBC right literally within the first twenty
four hours of this review coming out, they've applored it

(35:46):
on it. At this point, my coverage has been there
for a month. It loggam's claims have been out there
for a month. They weren't touched them, and yet the
moment someone came out with the NHS trying to be like,
actually it's false. They were rush to report on it
something they claimed was not newsworthy Previously. Yeah, and mind you,

(36:07):
Mougam's rebuttal to this review was posted publicly at this time,
at the time that this media coverage was going up.
At the BBC article breaking the story up, the only
discussion they give to basically any issues with this is

(36:28):
just a couple of brief sentences talking about Mogam's issues
with him. At the beginning, they just claimed that Morgan
had profound difficulties and at the very end of the article,
buried at the bottom, they gave Mogam like three sentences,
and they left out a lot of information, like the
minutes Muggham showed that he got from whistleblowers, the exact

(36:50):
claims he got from whistle blowers. They just didn't report
on it. They they gave such intense coverage to alt
these Applebee's claims in the review, and then they just
plot o ignored everything Magham was singing, everything everyone else
was doing. Now again I add, sure we don't know

(37:10):
for sure whether who's telling the truth, but the NHS
has an incentive to lie here, Magham doesn't. Magham is
getting his career torch basically because they go going forward
about all this.

Speaker 3 (37:24):
And you can tell which side the BBC is on.
You know, they give the game away at the end
where they give the last word of this article to
Ken Barker, who is the chief executive the LGB Alliance,
which is an anti transait group, and you know, and
they give her the last sentence saying that trans people
are spreading misinformation to serve a dangerous and homophobic ideology.

(37:44):
And I like, quite specifically, like Kate Barker, if you
ever fucking listen to this, fuck you eat shit, Like
this is direct evidence that of the BBC's fucking political
line here, because again they're giving the closing statement to
a group that is literally just an anti transacor because
the BBC is the institutional is to institutional fucking media

(38:04):
arm of the British government, and the British government is
institutionally transphobic.

Speaker 5 (38:08):
Yeah, and I'm not gonna say that what the information
right now, we have a definite news that's not the problem.
The problem is this have been being investigated any non
biased fucking NHS, any non biased British, Yeah, would look
at Moggan's claims and think, oh wow, we should look
into this, we should independently verify. Yeah, we should try

(38:30):
to cor operate everything saying, or at least see if
he's accurate, which which again, and I want to put
this out this is the job of a journalist. The
job of a journalist is not to fucking literally reprint
a press report from fucking like commissioned by the fucking government.
Your job is to go find the fucking whistleblowers and
talk to people. Did the British Did the fucking BBC
do this? No, of course they didn't, because they're fucking
PR hacks. Yep, they're PR hacks for a transgendocide. And

(38:54):
like quite frankly, and I will say this on the
fucking record, because I'm not a journalist, fuck these people,
like this is this is what the BBC wants, Like
fucking dead trans kids and a cover up is what
they institutionally what this fucking organization wants because they fucking
hate trans people and they are completely okay with all
of this shit happening as long as long as they
fucking get to do another story about how fucking JK

(39:17):
Rowling is a brave truth teller or whatever like this,
this is what these people want. I agree, and I
also agree with your statement. Uh, the British media cannot
call fuck themselves and I hope they've Robben. Hell yeah,
I don't know how you can, as a journalist, someone
trained to prioritize the truth and nothing but the truth,
look at all this and think this is suspicious going

(39:40):
on here. There's nothing that warrant further investigation, even if
Malcolm's claims are false, right, even if everything Malcolm says
he made it up. He's an influential guy. He has
been covered by the media for his lawsuits with the
Good Law Project countless time before. He's made national headlines there.
And they don't investigate this at all, Like, yeah, they're

(40:00):
rushing to report on everything fucking JK Rowling says everything
some random fucking turf is saying, May Angelou whoever ter
if you want to run?

Speaker 3 (40:10):
Oh yeah, I'm realizing there are people listening to this.
I don't know, maybe you're still listening to the episode
and you don't know about the JK rolling Turf stuff,
but like to get an understanding of like how vehement
of like an anti trans hate figure she is, Like
anti trans groups literally wear her face as a mask.
Like I'm not joking. She she she fucking retweeted them

(40:31):
an anti trans group literally wearing like printed out copies
of her face as a mask. Like that is that?
That is the status that she has in the anti
trans world right, Like and then the VBC fucking loves
her so everything she does and she's not even an
expert in anything.

Speaker 5 (40:50):
She's a fucking author of children's books.

Speaker 3 (40:53):
Like yeah, you know it's like, well, we'll talk to
the authors of Sheldon's book when we talk to trans people, know,
And I mean that's what ever thing about this is,
Like the BBC never talked to a transperson. They did
talk to an anti transhaite group though, so you know,
you know, you know what fucking side of this is
considered valid by the British political and media establishment. Oh

(41:14):
and also at the bottom and like, I know that
they're doing this because this is just like standard policy
for like if you're doing a thing story about suicide,
but the very end of the article is a is
a link to a bunch of suicide and crisis hotlines,
So uh, one last fuck you to every transperson reading this. Yeah,
the one two punch of we quoted an anti trans

(41:35):
hate figure, here's a suicide hotline is like real, who.

Speaker 5 (41:39):
Yeah, it's a it's a fucking insult it.

Speaker 7 (41:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (41:44):
It just gets me how they didn't report on these
claims at all when they were initially made, Like it
didn't even have to be a big story, Like most
fucking outlets I've written for would have just reported as like,
oh this, this guy said this, we're waiting more information, okay, whatever.
It wouldn't be a good reporting, but it'd be the
bare minimum. We didn't even do that. They rushed to

(42:04):
just to repeat whatever the fuck. A commission review from
the government said, that's more reputable, I guess than you know,
leading advocates who actually cited their sources instead of just
during shit at the wall.

Speaker 3 (42:20):
Yep, And I think that's that's That's as good of
a place as endy to stop. Less you have anything
else you want to make sure people know about about this, No,
I think that's it. Yeah, thank you so much for
coming on the show. And where can people find you
in your work?

Speaker 5 (42:32):
Yeah? Thank you for having me. I I can primarily
be found on Blue Sky That is the main place
I post now. Yeah, I'm at meural u gene a
blue sky dot social. Beyond that, you'll probably see one
of my articles published around because I am constantly working
my ass off.

Speaker 3 (42:53):
Yeah, so this is what it could happen here. Yeah,
I don't know. I mean, there's still time for this
not to happen here. So yeah, go go organize and
go make West Reading and the BBC have a bad day.

Speaker 4 (43:05):
Hell yeah, hi everyone, and welcome to it could happen here.

(43:30):
It's me James today here to bring you more terrible
news about migration and deportation. And I'm joined to share
that terrible news by Gillian Bruckell, a journalist who has
been tracking deportation flights to dbooty. Hi Gillian, Hi, how
are you?

Speaker 5 (43:48):
James?

Speaker 4 (43:49):
I'm good. Well, amidst the crumbling of everything, that's wonderful.

Speaker 11 (43:53):
Yeah, I mean, this is terrible news, but I'm also
very excited to be in the Cool Zone Universe.

Speaker 1 (43:59):
I love all of the shows.

Speaker 4 (44:01):
Yeah, welcome, welcome to the called universe. It's the Sophie
Lichtman comic universe.

Speaker 1 (44:07):
Oh my god, such a fangirl.

Speaker 4 (44:09):
Okay, the United States government attempted to deport twelve men,
none of whom are Libyan, to Libya on the seventh
of May. Right, it got so far as to take
them to the airport right in San Antonio, in San Antonio, Texas.
And then thanks to a injunction court injunction, those people

(44:32):
were not taken to Libya. Those people were in said,
returned to an intention center. Where as listeners the show
will now be aware they were informed that they were
being deported renditioned, how you want to say it, to
South Sudan. This news broke a couple of days ago, now,

(44:52):
I think Tuesday, Tuesday afternoon, yeah, yeah, and that was
when you were able to begin using your or like
o in aviation knowledge looking for like this this flight
right that was taking him to Seal Sudan, because at
the time, yeah, the United States government was claiming that
the flight was was classified or like a state secret.

(45:15):
And even in court the judge wasn't aware of the
flight was in the air on the ground, could it
turn around? Judging the anthony was going to ask it
to turn around. So I wonder if you could like
walk listeners through the time none of this deportation and
then how you were able to find of millions of
maybe not million, thousands of planes in the sky the

(45:37):
one that was taking these people to as it turned
out to Jubooty.

Speaker 5 (45:41):
Sure.

Speaker 11 (45:41):
Yeah, So I've been a journalist for fifteen years, but
before that, I was a flight attendant. And you know,
I'm an av geek, an aviation enthusiast. The shorthand you know,
the hashtag for that is af geek, And so you know,
I'm always looking at flight Radar twenty four. It's an
app where you can track different aircraft. And so when

(46:02):
I heard that the flight might still be in the air,
I just thought, I wonder if I can find it,
so I win. First I went on to flight Radar
twenty four, and first I looked at all of the
departures out of San Antonio for like the previous twenty
four hours since the previous flight that was supposed to

(46:23):
go to Libya that was stopped, that departed from San Antonio.

Speaker 3 (46:27):
And so I was.

Speaker 11 (46:27):
Looking there and you know, didn't see anything just commercial flights,
very obviously military flights, and I know they've used military
aircraft sometimes, but I said, I'm not going to try
and touch that right now. I want to see if
it's one of these charter companies, you know, global X,
a Vello, that have been doing these deportation flights.

Speaker 4 (46:47):
Can you explain those to people, because I don't think
everyone's aware of those.

Speaker 11 (46:51):
So these are you know, commercial carriers, but they're they're
contracting with DHS to deport people on their So you know,
the A three twenty that you take across the country
is sometimes used to deport people to other countries. And
the main companies that are doing that right now are

(47:14):
a Vello, global X. I think Omni does some of
them sometimes. And I should say there are a lot
of people, especially on Blue Sky, a lot of av
geeks who are tracking and cataloging all of these flights.
I wasn't even aware of that community until I started

(47:34):
looking for so I didn't see anything, you know, in
San Antonio, and then I realized, oh, these people had
been transferred to Port Isabelle in the last few weeks,
so they would have departed out of Harlingen Airport, which
is nearby. It's you know, a deep deep South Texas,
and so I looked at departures out of harling and

(47:55):
it's a small airport. They have like ten departures a day,
and it's generally puddle jumpers from one small Texas town
to another small Texas town, you know. And there was
one global X flight to Miami the day before. The
timeline wasn't exactly right, but I know that DHS, you know,
has been slow to notify attorneys. Yeah, so I thought, well,

(48:20):
maybe this is the flight, and they just didn't tell
the attorneys till the next day.

Speaker 1 (48:25):
So then I spent way.

Speaker 11 (48:26):
Too much time looking at all of the departures out
of Miami to see if there were any Global X flights.
I saw a few things, but you know, nothing heading
across the Atlantic. And so at that point, Flight Radar
twenty four will show you publicly available information on flights.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
It won't show you all flights.

Speaker 11 (48:49):
But there is another you know, for like deep deep
ab geeks, there's another website called ADSB Exchange, and this
is a pool of all feeder data all over the
world of all aircraft in the air that aviation enthusiasts
maintain themselves. And they will have military flights that aren't

(49:13):
going to be on Flight Radar twenty four. They also
have a lot more information about planes that have a
lad designation, which stands for Limited Aviation Data displayed. I
don't know how much you want me to explain about that.

Speaker 4 (49:29):
Yeah, explain, explain. I think it's interesting for people.

Speaker 11 (49:32):
Sure, So LAD designation is used most often for like
private jet owners, like celebrities and you know, the ultra rich.
And basically it means that they have an extra layer
of privacy for their movements in their private jets. So
if you try and find a specific private jet on flight.

Speaker 1 (49:56):
Radar twenty four, it won't come up.

Speaker 5 (49:59):
You know.

Speaker 11 (49:59):
So, the the tail of this plane that did the
Jibouty flight is N five AA eight eight a T.
If you search for that in flight radar twenty four,
you won't see it.

Speaker 1 (50:11):
Nothing will come up.

Speaker 11 (50:12):
However, if you know what you're looking for, if you know, like, oh,
I think the flight is heading to Jibouti right now,
you can see on flight radar twenty four that there's
a Gulf Stream five headed to Jabooti right now, but
the registration information is obscured. Okay, you know it's not
like that on the ADSB you can you can see it. Yeah,

(50:34):
your filters have a lot more power. Basically, you know
your search terms, they're going to go around different designations, okay,
and so some people hate that. You know, Taylor Swift
had beef with some guy a couple of years ago
because she has a LAD designation on her private jet.
He was using ADSB exchange to post her flights, you know,

(50:55):
ostensibly for to shame her for her carbon footprint. But
then she threatened to sue him. And she was like,
I have stalkers, like I don't want them to know
when I'm landing in Nashville. You know, not going to
get into that, but you know, that's basically the LAD
designation and ADSB doesn't care. And so I went on

(51:16):
ADSB and I said, well, since I've already seen all
the publicly available flights, let me just look at LAD flights, okay.

Speaker 1 (51:23):
And so I set that filter.

Speaker 11 (51:25):
And that took it down to a couple hundred planes
in the air, and I honestly just got lucky. I
just started clicking on planes because I don't know how
to search for all departures out of one airport on
ADSP exchange. I'm sure AV geeks who are better at
it do, but I just started clicking on planes and
I clicked I think like the third plane that I

(51:46):
clicked on had taken off out of Harlingen a couple
hours earlier and was over the middle of the Atlantic,
which is not a usual departure for Harlingen.

Speaker 4 (51:57):
Right, Yeah, that's quite a.

Speaker 11 (51:59):
D and so you know, I posted on Blue Sky
to the other av geeks who were looking for it.

Speaker 1 (52:09):
I think this might be it.

Speaker 11 (52:10):
You know, it's a private jet with a LAD designation
that took off from this very obscure airport and is
traveling internationally. Nothing else really fit the profile, right, so
we all started looking at it. Another reporter named Jacqueline Sweet.
You know, I looked up the registration. It's registered to

(52:32):
a man named Igor Smirnov, which there are a lot
of Igor Smirnov's.

Speaker 4 (52:37):
Yeah, it's a pretty common name.

Speaker 11 (52:40):
He's not the Chess guy, he's not the Moldovan guy.
He appears to have once owned an airline in his
Pakistan and has been in the US for some time.
So he has, you know, this private jet. And then
Jacqueline Sweet looked up that yes, he has DHS contracts.

Speaker 4 (52:56):
Okay.

Speaker 1 (52:57):
Then the other thing was.

Speaker 11 (52:58):
I just googled the tail number M five eight eight.

Speaker 1 (53:03):
One of the first things that came up was that
this was the.

Speaker 11 (53:08):
Private jet that carried Britney Griner home from Russia when
she had been released in a prisoner swap. Yeah, and
so that, you know, was the thing where I was like, okay,
this this plane's been used for like weird government business before.

Speaker 1 (53:28):
Yeah, like I think I think this might be it. Yeah,
so that's when I posted.

Speaker 11 (53:33):
Once I realized the Britney Grinder thing, then I posted
it and other people, other av geeks were saying, yeah,
I think that might be it, and then you know,
Jacqueline got more info on the contracts and so this
is for about two hours we watched it and JJ
and DC said I think it's about to land in Shannon,

(53:54):
and you know, soon enough it descended and landed at Shannon.
So Shannon Airport in Ireland is a frequent refueling stop

(54:16):
for the US military, and you know that's something that
a lot of Irish people really fucking hate.

Speaker 4 (54:23):
Yeah. Not a US base, to be clear if people don't.

Speaker 11 (54:26):
Away, Yeah, it's not a US base. These are this
is US military that are just they're just refueling, but
they're refueling to you know, do a lot of things
that the Irish are not okay with Yeah, and so
there's there's an organization there called Shannon Watch, who you know,

(54:46):
they're watching all these US activities and you know, pressuring
the government to stop this. So, you know, I tried
to email them before the plane even landed. And I
don't know if it was the user air on my
end or you know, if I don't know why I
didn't work, but they didn't get the message.

Speaker 1 (55:06):
I only found that out like half an hour ago.

Speaker 11 (55:09):
Yeah, But so I messaged them, and then I like
messaged a couple friends in Ireland like.

Speaker 4 (55:16):
Hey, wake up, wake up.

Speaker 1 (55:18):
You didn't call somebody, you know.

Speaker 11 (55:21):
But there's two thirty in the morning. I'm glad my
friends were asleep. And yeah. So I don't know how
how much I wanted to get into my personal hedging
or my journey. But you know, I used to be
like a neutral, objective journalist at the Washington Post for
ten years and I left a year and a half ago,

(55:43):
and I've been enjoying being an opinionated journalist. I've been
writing a book. But you know, there's a difference between
being an opinionated journalist and actually interfering in a story. Yeah,
and so I kind of hedged from an of like
should I should I do anything else? Should I actively

(56:04):
participate in trying to stop this flight? You know, am
I not going to get a columns job someday if
I do that? Yeah, you know, I'm ashamed to say that.
But I have to tell the truth. That's what I thought.
And then I just decided, you know, screw it, I
have to do the right thing. So I called the
Shannon Airport police.

Speaker 1 (56:28):
I called the Shannon Garda.

Speaker 11 (56:29):
I called the police, the garden in Ireland and h
I talked to you know whatever man answered for like
a minute, and then he was like, let me let me,
you know, knock you up the chain. And I was
forwarded to someone else, to a woman who you know,

(56:50):
she sounded smart, urgent, interested, It sounded like she was
taking notes. It sounded like she was taking this seriously.
And I was saying, there's a play with this tail
number that landed fifteen minutes ago, that may have people
on board who have been illegally removed from the United States,

(57:14):
who have not consented to go to their destination, who
are being sent to South Sudan when they are not
from Sauth Sudan. You know, and I made clear that, like,
I don't know that this is the right plane, but
I'm pretty sure that it is. This plane has been
used before for US government business. And I said, I

(57:38):
know that our judges' orders don't matter in your sovereign country,
but a judge has said this is not allowed, and
it might be happening. And I don't know what your
human trafficking laws are like, but you should know that
if there are human trafficking or kidnapping laws in Ireland

(58:01):
that might apply to this, like maybe check the plane. Yeah,
and you know, I didn't record the call and I
didn't take notes, but I do recall her saying that
she was trying to send someone to check the plane,
and she was, you know, taking detailed notes.

Speaker 1 (58:20):
What are their nationalities? How many are there?

Speaker 12 (58:23):
You know?

Speaker 11 (58:25):
And yes, so you know, the call lasted thirteen minutes,
and then I waited, you know, was talking with the
other av geeks on Blue Sky who were at this point,
you know, this is around ten pm.

Speaker 1 (58:40):
It's getting a little late.

Speaker 11 (58:42):
And then yeah, I don't know what happened, but the
plane taxi to a parking stamp near the terminal for
a while, and I thought, oh, it's been it's been
turned off, it's parked for the night. I don't think
they're going to let him leave. Yeah, and then the
plane took off. It was two hours after it landed.

Speaker 1 (59:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (59:07):
Yeah, and it went to JABOUTI where it remains at
the time of recording. Yeah, it's been raised since you
first kind of identified this plane, it's been raised. I
talked to Dallas or like an Irish member of parliament
raised it today. I saw there was an exchange about it.

(59:27):
I spoke to Paul Murphy, who's the TV for Dublin's Southwest. Paul,
get me a statement I'm going to read here. The
very least Sierrish government must do is to inform the
US authorities that no more deportation flights are permitted to
use our airspace, in our airports. We must not facilitate
this in humane an illegal deportation policy. It does seem

(59:50):
like even if nothing we're done in this instance, hopefully
this isn't something that will be able to happen again.
I know, as you said, people have been upset about
that use of Shannon. I think they used Knock Airport
as well, like for a long time because the US
use them a lot in the in the in its
war on terror. An Ireland has been a neutral country
for a long time, and that's a feeling that it

(01:00:11):
compromises that among some people. But this raises a really
interesting question for those of us who are following the deportations, right,
which is like we've been thinking that it was happening
on military or commercial flights, like you said, but there's
this possibility that these smaller planes are being used for deportation,
and like that's very concerning. I means we could have

(01:00:34):
missed things absolutely. It also shows the timeline here is
extraordinarily rapid, right, Like from the people being informed at
six pm, I believe it's six pm Pacific. I've been
spending a lot of time on Pacer this week. Yeah,
good old Pacer yep, A lot of the money generated

(01:00:54):
by the adverts in this show on Pacer. So six
thirty five Central time and M who is one of
the Burmese people in this this class action lawsuit, right, So,
the lawsuit a number of people trying to get attentative
restraining order against being sent to South Soudan now previously Libya,
six eighty five Central time. That person's lawyer was told
that they had an order of removal at nine am Pacific.

(01:01:19):
The lawyer had scheduled of video conference, but at eight
twenty seven Pacific, they were told that that person had
already been removed. Yeah, so pretty fast. And like perhaps
that's why they're using these like small can you give
an idea of like, I guess a lot of people
weren't a phone on a small aircraft, but these are

(01:01:39):
quite like this isn't a usual thing, right to be
be No.

Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
This is a luxury jet.

Speaker 11 (01:01:45):
Yeah, that you know is moonlighting as a prisoner vessel
for for kidnappers. And I just I'm so struck by
the dichotomy of the law luxury of this vessel transporting
them to Hell, to a country where they do not

(01:02:08):
speak the language, they have no family or friends, to
you know, a prison where people are being tortured that
is about to descend into civil war, may already be
in civil war. I mean the economy of that is
so striking to me. Yeah, and so perverse.

Speaker 4 (01:02:25):
Yeah, perverse is a right word. It is, like it's uh,
perversely ludicrous. I don't know, Like it's so striking to
me as well that somebody who has the financial means
to own a private luxury jet to find themselves around
the world. Is also profiting of the rendition of people
who are trying now to plead in Convention against torture. Right,

(01:02:48):
they will be tortured if they are flown via luxury
private jet to South Sudan, and that South Sudanese government
seems to have stated that it would just return them
to their countries from which they have withholding in for
movement in the first spaces. Why the US can't send
them to their countries.

Speaker 11 (01:03:02):
Right, That's why the US hasn't done it, right, It's like,
you know, it's a diplomatic pickle. But like the solution
is in, we'll just you know, dump them somewhere else.

Speaker 4 (01:03:14):
Right, Yeah, and then they have someone else do iday work,
like send them back. Right. You found these contracts. Do
you know how much DHS is spending like per flight
on these things?

Speaker 1 (01:03:24):
I have no idea.

Speaker 11 (01:03:25):
I mean that is something that other reporters, I think,
are you know, going to be better sources of that information.
I've really just begun tracking these flights, right, you know,
I like to track flights all the time.

Speaker 1 (01:03:40):
Just because I have ADHD.

Speaker 11 (01:03:42):
You know, it's a wonderful activity if you're neurodivergent to
spend some time on adsp exchange. But but like I said,
I was just like, I wonder if I can find
this plane?

Speaker 4 (01:03:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (01:03:54):
And I did.

Speaker 11 (01:03:55):
Yeah, And that has opened up a whole world to
me of you know, really dedicated people. Tom Cartwright is one,
and then JJ and DC is another. He wants to
remain anonymous, got it who have been tracking these planes
for some time And I'm really inspired by them and

(01:04:16):
you know, want to join them and help them.

Speaker 4 (01:04:29):
We see a number of issues like that. We can
questions that we can answer with these things, right, the
United States deporting people to Venezuela, but there are lots
of eies in Venezuela which are under sanctions, right, So
like how is it doing that? Who is it paying
to do that? Like where is our taxpayer money going?
How much is it costing to achieve this rendition of
a dozen people? Right who at the current time of

(01:04:52):
our recording, which is Thursday afternoon Pacific time, the twenty
second of May, they go. I just checked the pacer again,
which is what I do all day now, and Judge
Murphy's most recent order had clarified that these people would
have ten days to present their reasonable fear right, so

(01:05:14):
to present their reasonable fear and convention against torture proceedings
that they would be they could face torture right if
they were sent to these places. If the Department of
Homeland Security determined that they didn't have credible fear, then
they would have fifteen days to again petition for reopening
of their migration case. So that's twenty five days for

(01:05:36):
those who accounting that these people will presumably now have
to be accommodated in Djibouty. The DHS is claiming that
they can do all these interviews and that one assess
tate translators, Like one of them speaks Korn, not a
language that we have. I mean that there are lots
of Curren speaking people in the United States, but it's
you know, it's not language that many immigration lawyers speak.
So I'm guessing there will have to be a translator provided.

(01:06:00):
So all that is now happening into Booty and like
we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able
to track these flights, right, and so it's a very
interesting way of approaching this. And I think like increasingly
the government have recently lost a number of fire requests.
I guess, like public records do not move at the

(01:06:21):
same speed as the news cycle does. I file a
lot of public records requests, most of them I don't
get anything back.

Speaker 1 (01:06:29):
The ones that I can take like eight years sometimes.

Speaker 4 (01:06:31):
Yeah, literally, Yeah, I mean I have public records requests
that I made under the previous Trump administration that I
believe are still ongoing. Yeah, it's infuriatingly slowly. You have
a right to inspect these records, but you don't have
a right to inspect them in any particular time period.
And so doing this kind of open source tracking offers

(01:06:51):
us a window into this deportation machine that the government
is building right exactly in cooperation with the super rich,
like using your taxpayer resources. I would if people are
interested in doing this, like, how would you suggest they
kind of get going? They could explain it out there.

Speaker 11 (01:07:09):
I mean, the first thing I would do is that
I would follow Tom Cartwright and JJ and DC on
Blue Sky. Then you know, get the flight Radar twenty
four app. You can see a lot of the charter
planes on that app. ADSB Exchange is pretty buggy and
hard to use. If you don't have any aviation experience

(01:07:29):
at all, but you know you can learn. Yeah, and yeah,
I mean, like I said, if you're neuro divergent, this
is a terrific activity to just kind of like massage
your brain and hyper focus, and you know, putting it
to good purpose to maybe witness or maybe even stop

(01:07:50):
some of these activities from happening, you know, would be great.

Speaker 13 (01:07:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
No, I think that's like there are countries which have
strong legislation that could possibly prevent these you know, these
either planes transiting their airspace or if they're refueling there
as you as you said in an Ireland, like perhaps
prevent these people being renditioned to somewhere where they might
face torture. And I think it's a really valuable absolutely

(01:08:15):
thing to try, Like we should try whatever we can
right now.

Speaker 11 (01:08:19):
Yeah, and I mean now that Ireland knows this is happening,
you know, I don't know what happened with the Garda
on Tuesday night early Wednesday morning. I don't know if
they were able to board the plane, if they tried
to stop it and couldn't.

Speaker 1 (01:08:36):
I have no idea.

Speaker 11 (01:08:37):
Yeah, now that they know this is happening, maybe they
can look a little bit deeper into their laws and
regulations and find a justification so that if this happens again,
they can be prepared to respond. You know, I know
that the Irish are exemplars in human rights, and so

(01:08:58):
you know, if anybody is going to do something, it
might be them.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
Yeah, yeah, I know. Artie and now camped out at
the airport wing for the plane to come back, which.

Speaker 12 (01:09:07):
Yeah, I know.

Speaker 11 (01:09:07):
I wish they had checked with the av yeks first
because the plane's not on the way.

Speaker 4 (01:09:11):
Yeah, no, it's not here.

Speaker 1 (01:09:12):
It hasn't left.

Speaker 4 (01:09:13):
Look at the court proceedings are going to be three weeks.
But yeah, yeah, it's great. You've made this an issue there,
which I think, yeah, it helps, Like all this stuff
makes a difference.

Speaker 11 (01:09:23):
I mean, I just I want the Irish people to realize,
because none of their lawmakers have said it yet, that
Irish authorities knew when the plane was on the ground
at Shannon that there were people who were possibly being
illegally detained on this specific airplane.

Speaker 1 (01:09:45):
I just want them to know that.

Speaker 11 (01:09:47):
Yeah, yeah, you know, And I'm I hear that their
public information laws are also not great, but the police
there recorded the call, so there's a recording somewhere if
they can.

Speaker 4 (01:09:59):
F right, I guess I can't find anyone who can
answer the satisfactory the question of like, whose jurisdiction in
the plane is under?

Speaker 11 (01:10:07):
Yeah, I mean, and it really depends too, like was
the plane parked in the international transit area? Was it
in a place where you know the guard I didn't
even have authority.

Speaker 1 (01:10:18):
I have no idea, right you know?

Speaker 4 (01:10:20):
Yeah, these are real questions that we can now ask
because we know right that it was there, and I
think that's very valuable. Gillian, Where can people follow your work? Said?
You published this on your ghost newsletter?

Speaker 5 (01:10:31):
First?

Speaker 11 (01:10:32):
Right, Yeah, I'm writing a book, so I post extremely sporadically,
but I do have a ghost newsletter. It's hard, g
History because it's hard. G Gillian har Ghistory dot ghost
dot io. And then I'm on Blue Sky at g Brackhill.

Speaker 5 (01:10:49):
Nice.

Speaker 4 (01:10:49):
Do you I plug your book where you have the opportunity.

Speaker 1 (01:10:52):
I mean, there's there's not like a you know, pre
order links.

Speaker 11 (01:10:56):
I'm very much still writing it, but you know, my
agent will be mad at me for saying this. The
working title is people that didn't know what was wrong
back then? The lie at the heart of American history.

Speaker 4 (01:11:08):
I will look forward to reading that.

Speaker 1 (01:11:10):
Thank you. Thanks for having me, James. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 4 (01:11:13):
Thanks for joining us. Hi everyone, and welcome to the show.

(01:11:37):
It's me James today and I'm joined once again by
Kirsten Zitlao. We've heard from her before. She's an immigration
lawyer who takes asylum cases, and we're going to talk
about the asylum system or I guess what's left of it. Today.
Kirsten is representing somebody I met, the Darien gap Primrose,
who you've heard from before. So we're going to talk
about that case, and then we're going to talk a
little bit about ice detentions inside immigration court. Welcome to

(01:12:00):
the show.

Speaker 14 (01:12:01):
Thank you, James. It's good to be here.

Speaker 4 (01:12:03):
Yeah, thanks for thanks for coming. I know you're extremely busy.
Can you explain to us, like the asylum system is
essentially coming to an end? Right we are not getting
new asylum cases, Like what is the situation for people
in the asylum system right now?

Speaker 15 (01:12:21):
Yes, that's a correct statement, James. So there are no
new asylum cases. In other words, people who cross at
the southern border are now detained, only to be removed
immediately basically or as soon as possible, under what's called
two twelve F authority.

Speaker 14 (01:12:40):
It's under the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Speaker 15 (01:12:43):
Trump has used this authority, which basically broadly says that
if the President finds a certain class of immigrants or
the entry of immigrants would be detrimental to the interests
of the United States, they may, by proclamation, you know,
spend all entry have said immigrants. So that was the
purpose and the effect of the executive order discussing the

(01:13:07):
invasion at the border, and all the other executive orders
discussing invasions and criminal aspects such as cartels and trender ragua,
which we all know now is the justification for alleged
justification for just shutting it down at the border. So
whereas people used to get credible fear interviews or were

(01:13:31):
paroled into the United States to be allowed to fight
an asylum case, none of that is happening anymore. And
people are, if anything, only screened for what's called Convention
against Torture screenings to just determine, like, hey, are they
going to be tortured by their government or with the
acquiescence of their government if they're returned to their home country.
But even then they are not allowed to remain in

(01:13:53):
the United States or fight any relief in the United States.
That just means that they will be deported to a
third country. So that was the situation. And like when
we saw the Iranians sitting in the hotel room and Panama,
that's what happened there most likely. So that's the situation
at the southern border. Whoever is still in the United States,
you know, who came in before an operation day, is
still allowed to fight their case as of now, but

(01:14:15):
there are no new asylum cases essentially, right.

Speaker 4 (01:14:19):
So for those people fighting their case, the asylum system
was already an uphill battle, right, and it became harder
after Biden's asylum ban. It was already harder after title
forty two. Like people who listened to the show would
have known about the people who crushed in twenty twenty three,
and of course they would have followed those people who

(01:14:39):
I'm in the Darian Gap, some of whom very few
of whom crushed before January. I literally one I believe
that I'm aware of. Can you explain what the asylum
system is like for those people now?

Speaker 5 (01:14:53):
Yeah?

Speaker 15 (01:14:53):
So I think the biggest two factors affecting asylum cases
these days is what you just referred to, which is
the asylum called the circumvention against Lawful Pathways that barred
people essentially from asylum if they did not use CBP
one the application to apply for an appointment, which of
course only allowed I think fifteen hundred a day or

(01:15:14):
something absurd, forcing most people to cross unlawfully. So that's
still very much in place. The litigation has been stalled forever.
There's no hope of you know, I don't think there's
no movement on that. I haven't seen or heard anything,
most likely intentionally because when Trump did a similar ban,
it was overturned immediately. So this is like a new
strategy that we're seeing where things are just lagging in court.

(01:15:37):
You know, for example, just a quick side detour the
birthright citizenship issue got up to the Supreme Court real quick,
whereas the asylum issue, meaning the border shut down to asylum,
is still languishing somewhere before I think even just a
federal district, I just is not even in any appeal
court yet. So this is all I think, it's strategic,
So that circumvention against Lawful Pathways ban is still very

(01:15:59):
much heediment. You know, we all of course argue that
every migrant in Mexico was in danger and thus qualifies
for the exception to the CLP that their life was
in danger and they couldn't afford to wait the many
many months for the CBP one appointment.

Speaker 14 (01:16:14):
But judges it's been met with mixed reviews. They generally like.

Speaker 15 (01:16:18):
To see like somebody basically near death for the exception
to apply. And of course the immigration bar argues that
all migrants are basically under threat of death. I mean,
any any cartel or even immigration official contact in Mexico
could have been a death sentence very easily, as we
all know. Yeah, so that's a big thing affecting. The
latest thing that's also being implemented as a result of

(01:16:41):
this cartel terrorist organization designation is you know where it's
not just the cartels, is MS thirteen and ten deo ragua,
is that there's a what's called a trig bar that's
applied then also to asylum and the bar is basically
about materials port of any of these groups, but it's

(01:17:02):
construed to an absurd degree where even if you made
a bowl of food for Samaras under duress or you
made payment because your kid was about to be killed, right,
that's considered material support, and you're barred from asylum.

Speaker 4 (01:17:17):
Jeez, I wondered if they would do that.

Speaker 15 (01:17:18):
Yeah, so we're seeing that too. Other than that, I mean,
I have been fortunate to win asylum for folks under
Trump two point zero.

Speaker 14 (01:17:26):
I mean, I don't know how long.

Speaker 15 (01:17:27):
That'll still last, but judges are still you know, granting cases.
So I'm glad to see that.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:17:34):
So that's generally what it's looked like these past four
months for Assil's.

Speaker 4 (01:17:38):
Okay, And yeah, I think it's really important that we do.
There are still possible, like victories to be had within
the court system, and asylum is one of the places where,
like there's no more getting me on the train. I
guess like the people who are on the train now
we can and people should if they have the financial means,
and we'll talk about how they can do that later.
People should support those people because there's no one else

(01:17:59):
who who can go through that system, and like, there
are people who have gone through horrific things to get
here and horrific things in the places that they came from.
And even if it's not everyone, we would like to
keep safe. We should do everything we can to keep
those people safe.

Speaker 15 (01:18:13):
One hundred percent, you know, just to say, I mean
and funding somebody's legal fees, I mean an attorney makes
all the difference in navigating these types of issues that
I just talked about and other issues and presenting your case.
I mean, asylum cases are still incredibly difficult to win,
and so representation of council is often key.

Speaker 4 (01:18:31):
Yeah, I think that the rates of success people who
don't have counsel are dramatically lower. I haven't lived on
Track recently, but you can normally find that on the
I think Track is no longer in the University of Syracuse,
but it did some place where you can find information statistics.
Let's talk about one of those cases, if that's okay.
And obviously you know we won't intervene in anyone's prihapsy

(01:18:53):
any more than we have to. But like I want
to talk about Primrose. Primrose is Zimbabwean woman who I
met in Bo when I was in the Darien Gap
reporting on my series. People heard from her in the series.

Speaker 13 (01:19:06):
Even me. I was crying myself. I was like, I
want to just put myself in the water. Then I
can just go what the genuine tough really really tough,
the mountain, the stones, the river. It's not easy at all.
It's it's not a very I don't even recommended someone
to say you use that and give no. And even myself,

(01:19:28):
I did know about it. Yeah, I was regretting myself.
I was crying. I was like, God, I don't know
my family and my family they don't know where I
am right now.

Speaker 4 (01:19:39):
But I make it yeah, I make it safe.

Speaker 9 (01:19:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:19:45):
She is now in the asylum process, right, can you
explain a little bit about like where she is in
the process. And I will eventually do a scripted series
on this, but like I guess, can we get an
update on her situation and how it's progressing.

Speaker 14 (01:20:00):
Absolutely, so.

Speaker 15 (01:20:01):
I came into the case about I want to say,
a month or two ago, she had somebody supporting her,
a friend living in Texas, and that situation, a living
situation has changed, I believe, which is also not the
worst things.

Speaker 14 (01:20:17):
But she will be moving.

Speaker 15 (01:20:18):
With a friend to southern California or moving in with
a friend brother. But just this situation is very different
in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and those types of states,
markedly so, and her case is a good example of that.
And there's a reason that people like mamou Khalil and
many others are sent to detention centers in that area

(01:20:40):
because it's in the Fifth Circuit, first of all, which
is widely renowned to be not a favorable circuit court
of appeals to immigrants. Yeah, but more so than that,
even the judges themselves are very different from what we
would encounter in California, for example. So my first encounter
with the judge was, you know, this is all very
I submitted a motion to appear for her. She had

(01:21:03):
a master calendar hearing in June. I submitted a motion
to appear for that telephonically, explaining I was representing her
at lower no cost, you know, whatever funds could be raised,
and could I please appear for a status it's a
status type conference telephonically, And that motion was met with
a really strange response. I don't to this day, I

(01:21:24):
don't really know exactly. It was sort of approved, but
then moot because eventually a final court hearing was set.

Speaker 14 (01:21:29):
So that's where we're at right now.

Speaker 15 (01:21:31):
She has a final court next year, in about a
year and a couple months, but in ruling on my
WebEx motion, I was emailed the order of the judge
along with a notice that Permers should self deport. So
judges are sending out these notices with routine other orders
in cases where the immigrant has council is fighting their case. Yeah,

(01:21:55):
it's obvious they're fighting their case Jesus And yeah. So
it's one of the things where you just feel very
strongly this administration's influence.

Speaker 4 (01:22:05):
Are they obliged to do that or is that a
choice that the judge's making.

Speaker 14 (01:22:09):
Not at all, and in fact it's completely inappropriate.

Speaker 15 (01:22:11):
So all of us are okay. The immigration bar is
taking a different approach to it. You know, some are
filing motions to recuse, telling the judges, hey, you need
to recuse yourself. You're a non neutral judge. To send
this out in the middle of the case is absurd.
It's a due process violation. They're entitled to a neutral judge. Yeah.
I think my approach would be more one of playing dumb,
because often this has happened. The system, if you will,

(01:22:34):
of ECASS, the electronics system that we use for court
immigration filing systems that Elon Musk briefly had access to
or whatever was going on there. But anyways, I digress,
you know, will send out automatic notices with the emails
with the judges orders. So my approach, I think will
be to give the judges the benefit of the doubt
and ask them if this was an electronic notice and
if they say no, then I've gotten it on the record,

(01:22:56):
and if they deny the case, I have that in
there for the appeal. But yeah, it's happening all over
the country with all sorts of different judges, and it's
definitely something that we're grappling with right now.

Speaker 14 (01:23:06):
And it's just it's.

Speaker 15 (01:23:07):
Very ballsy for a judge to say, hey, leave the
country and oh, by the way, I'm a neutral arbiter.

Speaker 4 (01:23:14):
Yeah, I mean, what's the point of having the judge
or having the whole process right if then they're going
to declare this clear bias.

Speaker 14 (01:23:21):
Yeah, it's absurd.

Speaker 15 (01:23:22):
I mean, it's you know, I mean, it's such a
violation of due process rights. And I think I know
everybody in this country now knows the importance of due process,
whereas before only attorneys through that term around. But no,
I mean, this stuff really matters, you know. Yeah, And
then also another thing that happened in Primosa's case is
that when you have a work permit clock right, which
is another absurd thing for assiles that once they file

(01:23:45):
their asylum application, they have to wait one hundred and
fifty days before they can apply for a work permit.
And of course they're expected to be independently wealthy during
those five months or you know, or star o or
I don't know what they're expected to do.

Speaker 4 (01:23:57):
Yeah, rely on the jeder rusty brothers.

Speaker 14 (01:23:59):
Like exactly.

Speaker 15 (01:24:00):
So if you do something like try to change venue
or a motion to continue, if you do something in
your case that the judge perceives as not moving the
case along and rather like kind of trying to stall
it or possibly pausing it or slow it down, the
judge will stop the work permit clock the days and
it's a whole thing. So Primroses was stopped because the

(01:24:21):
judge wanted her to get an attorney. So usually when
the case is set for a final hearing, that code
adjournment code they call it. I know from we have
the access to the codes and what stops the clock
and what doesn't, and it always restarts the clock because
you move your case along because you're setting it for trial.
It's you know, obviously moving your case along hers was

(01:24:41):
not restarted for whatever reason, and my only remedy would
be to write some court administrator who may or may
not ever respond. I can't even go to the judge
about this, you know, it's it's absurd. So that's just
the situation that one assilie is one asylum seeker is
dealing with in Texas. So you can only imagine what

(01:25:02):
goes on in detentions that, you know, detained cases in
those states.

Speaker 4 (01:25:06):
Yeah, people who don't have counsel, like getting that self deportation.
If you don't have counsel, like you could assume that
you are just obliged to leave, like, yeah, that your
your process is.

Speaker 15 (01:25:16):
Over one hundred percent, And there's no legal basis for
the judge to be issuing that. In fact, it's completely
unlawful to be issuing something like that at the beginning
of the case, at the end of the case, and
at the beginning. The judge does have to give certain advisals,
but telling somebody to self deport is never an advisal
that should be given under the law.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
Ever, right, Yeah, like it kind of nullifies the whole system.

Speaker 15 (01:25:38):
And plus I should mention real quick that it's disingenuous
and harmful and that with these you know, this administration
on purpose isn't telling people with the thousand dollars, take
a thousand dollars in self deport and you know, will
pay for your flight and all this stuff. But they're
not telling people is that when you leave, you're then
subject to a deportation order and that comes with a
ten year bar. This is not mentioned. And that's a

(01:26:02):
big deal.

Speaker 4 (01:26:03):
Yes, yeah, I mean it seems even like I think
the executive order said permanently leave the United States, right.

Speaker 15 (01:26:09):
Well, it did, and then but then they switch tactics
a little bit with the app to self support, saying like,
you know, leave now, leave now so you have a
chance to come back later or something like that. Right,
but you know without mentioning that, hey, you no, you're
barred from the United States for ten years and if
you ever return unlawfully, then you're a subject to a
whole series of you know. I mean, it's just there's

(01:26:31):
all these warnings that need to come with the deportation
order that are strategically left out of all the administration's
latest messaging on this topic.

Speaker 4 (01:26:39):
Yeah, that's it's pretty bad. Let's take a break for
advertisements here and then we'll come back. All right, We
are back, and we've spoken about these like self deportation

(01:27:00):
orders right for other people who have entered more recently, right,
entered within the last two years. This has been happening
we're recording on the twenty second for the last two
days now. It seems like ICE is dismissing the cases
against them and then detaining them directly in court, if
I'm correctly informed.

Speaker 15 (01:27:21):
Yes, So this has been happening periodically throughout the past
four months, but in the past few days, like this week,
it's been dramatically ramped up. Like right now as we're
recording this, ICE is arresting people in the downtown San
Diego court and also courts throughout the country. It's been
reported everywhere, happening widely this week. And this is another

(01:27:42):
thing the administration said they were going to do and
is doing. I mean, you know, they're doing what they
said they were going to do. Yeah, and it's to
use what's called two thirty five authority. More broadly so,
INA Section two thirty five applies to people who entered
within less than two years, like you said, and they
can be then said to what's called expedited removal. That

(01:28:02):
means that they have to take a credible fear interview
and be detained, and that they only get to fight
a case if they pass their credible fear interview, and
then they do not qualify for an immigration judge bond,
So they only get out if ICE lets them out,
which of course I is letting nobody out. So the
administration wants to have people detained under this authority, this
two thirty five authority as much as possible, to have

(01:28:25):
them have to fight their case detained and either lose
the will to do so and or not be able
to afford an attorney, because detained cases move along a
lot quicker and are very costly as well for that reason.
So what they're doing is anybody who was here two
years or less but was parolled in so they're in
the regular immigration court proceedings they got out there under

(01:28:48):
two forty proceedings, that's called so DHS attorneys in court
are terminating those proceedings. They're asking the judge to terminate
the two forty proceedings, so then that case is closed,
and then they immediately restart a case under section two
thirty five. And at the second they do that, the
person is subject to mandatory detention. And Ice is right
there in the courthouse to arrest them and detain them.

Speaker 4 (01:29:08):
Jesus, yeah, I thought Ice couldn't arrest people in California.
Is that California state courts, no federal courts which are
in California.

Speaker 15 (01:29:17):
I believe so, And colleagues and I have been talking
about this. I haven't researched it thoroughly, but I think
also the nature of these proceedings, like the two thirty
five proceeding, like you are mandatory detention, like you okay,
you were taken into custody. It's as if you just
crossed the border and you know, are taken in a custody.
It's treated like that type of situation, like no warrant

(01:29:38):
is necessary.

Speaker 14 (01:29:38):
I don't believe you.

Speaker 4 (01:29:39):
Know, oh okay, right, yeah, so they could. They have
very broad authority to detain people anywhere. That makes sense exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:29:46):
So.

Speaker 15 (01:29:46):
The real issue here is the ethical I mean a
lot of us are grappling with this and of course
fiercely opposing these motions in that the justification that the
DHS attorneys are attempting to use is that circumstances have
materially changed since the issuance of their initial case that
they're in now, which of course is not the.

Speaker 4 (01:30:07):
Case, right, whose circumstances.

Speaker 15 (01:30:10):
Exactly exactly, Like the rise of fascism doesn't constitute a
change circumstance. Yeah, So it's just there's no, there's no
basis for this motion. And secondly, the only basis, like,
there's zero justification for this other than filling detention centers,
lining cour Civic and Geogroup's pockets. Yeah, and intentionally prejudicing

(01:30:32):
an immigrant to have to fight their case attained. I
mean right, there's no there's no good or legitimate justification
for this period the end, you know.

Speaker 4 (01:30:42):
Yeah, and fighting it detained will be a lot harder.
They will be obviously in like terrible situation they are,
as we've covered before, often moved to a different state
from their council. Will make it a lot harder for
them if they choose to go that route. I'm guessing
that ICE is hoping that people won't fight and will
just DHS is hoping the people will choose not to fight.

Speaker 15 (01:31:01):
Percent that's the whole point is this full Administration's the
messaging and their actions are all about forcing people, breaking
people's spirits, and forcing them into a situation where they
feel their only option is to self deport.

Speaker 4 (01:31:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 15 (01:31:18):
It is heartbreaking, it's very sick. Yeah, it's it's very disturbing.
It's very very different from Trump one point zero.

Speaker 4 (01:31:26):
Yeah. I think that's worth sort of focusing in on
that this is a completely distinct and much more radical
disassembling of the asylum system as we know it.

Speaker 14 (01:31:37):
Absolutely.

Speaker 15 (01:31:38):
I mean, I think we can all agree or disagree
as far as how we feel about the past four
months and what has happened, but I think everybody can
agree the pace at which it has happened is extremely concerning.

Speaker 4 (01:31:51):
Right, we have four months into four years, and we
have seen like a constitutional crisis, like a full blown
defiance of courts. We at the day we're recording, the
Trump administration is attempting to deport people to South Sudan,
many of whom eleven of twelve of whom are not
South Sudanese.

Speaker 5 (01:32:10):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:32:11):
I guess from what I understand, their attempt at giving
those people a credible fear screening was that they didn't
hear them shouting from the cells they were detained in
that they were afraid of being tortured.

Speaker 15 (01:32:23):
Yeah, they're supposed to give them opportunity to be heard,
essentially and give notice of this third country that they're
going to be deported to. That nobody and no judge
is ever considered whether they have a fear or if
they would be in danger or deported to this country. Right,
So again, this is a due process situation where hey,
before you can be sent to some random country, especially

(01:32:45):
South Sudan, maybe you should be given an opportunity to
present why you have a fear or that something bad
might happen to you over there to a judge. And
so this was recently ordered. I believe the case is
called DBD versus DHS. Was what stopped the Libya situation
from happening, where yeah, judge said, this is exactly what
needs to occur. These people need to be give you

(01:33:05):
given real notice, not this whatever has been had, you know,
and and an opportunity to be heard. And then yeah,
and they immediately thereafter attempted to as you said, or
I think I don't know if they actually accomplished it
with South Sudan.

Speaker 4 (01:33:18):
Yeah, my understanding is they are in a country which
is neither the United States nor South Sudan on an
aircraft at this time, and DHS is arguing that they
can do their credible fear screenings there on the aircraft.
I don't know how they've planned together people privacy, translation,
access to council. I just looked on court listener right
before we recorded, and Judge Murphy clarified Massachusetts District Court

(01:33:42):
judge that ten days would be the amount of time
that they would need to assert a credible fear and
then if DHS determined that they didn't have credible fear,
they would then have fifteen days to ask for the
reopening of their case. TBD. Is the United States going
to like somehow accommodate them in where they are. People
are speculating they're in jow Booty, which is the largest

(01:34:02):
US military base in the continent of Africa and close
to South Sudan, And so if that's the case, Yeah,
I don't know how they will get due process. We
will find out if they will get due process.

Speaker 15 (01:34:15):
I guess yeah, they probably won't, but will be told
that they did, or will be or will be told
that they were criminals in the first place, which is
the other theme of this administration, right with the Alien
Enemies Act, which has basically been put on pause by
a number of Satan judges who have said, there's no invasion,

(01:34:35):
there's no war.

Speaker 14 (01:34:36):
This is absurd, This just flat out doesn't apply.

Speaker 15 (01:34:39):
And I have to say that the immigration bar is
very I think not just the immigration bar, I think
all of us are very frustrated that the Supreme Court
has not yet come out with a definitive substance of
ruling on this because, for the people who don't know,
the Alien Enemies Act allows the administration to circumvent the
i NA, which is the whole immigration court system, and

(01:35:00):
immediately to port supposed criminals who were invading the country.
I mean, we all know this with the Venezuelans who
are accused of being trended Aragua just for having tattoos,
and so that is to me and I think all
of us the biggest threat to just be able to
put somebody on a plane to another country and in
a prison in another country, as we've seen the Sea cot.

Speaker 14 (01:35:20):
In El Salvador.

Speaker 15 (01:35:21):
I mean, we need our Supreme Court to speak on this,
then we need it quickly.

Speaker 4 (01:35:26):
Yeah, like if we no longer have habeas. It's a
frontal assault on the Bill of rights, like most of them.

Speaker 15 (01:35:33):
And there's so many assaults on the Bill of rights.
And then we need our Supreme Court to really to
step up. And I think I'm not the only one
who's extremely frustrated by that, because we're in crisis and
as we've seen, it's fallen on courts and lawyers and
judges to try to defend the semblance of democracy in

(01:35:53):
this country.

Speaker 14 (01:35:54):
But the highest court in the land needs to help
out soon.

Speaker 4 (01:35:57):
Yeah. Yeah, and like this is where like the Reba
meets the road right for like maintaining people's basic rights,
dignity and yeah, the right not to be sent to
a labor camp in El Salvador or you know, seuth
Sudana country, which is rapidly descending into conflict. Again, I
thought the government was barrel bombing this week.

Speaker 15 (01:36:19):
Well, and just real quick, another note on the Supreme
Court is that they're they're also concerning I mean, as
we know, there's a lot of Trump appointees there and
so I mean it's not even that that's the answer,
it's just we're you know, but we need answers more
quickly than what they're they're giving us. And it's just
given the rate that this administration is working at, I

(01:36:40):
don't know that they will if they ever get the
case for the asylum ban at the border, would even
overturn that because historically they've sort of supported his two
twelve F powers. So I'm not saying that's the answer
to everything, but it's definitely frustrating to not have basic
things yeah already decided, like the use of the alien
enemy that.

Speaker 4 (01:36:58):
Yeah, like just notes in where we're at, Like when
you know people are trying in good faith to move
forward with the legal processes that they have spent their
entire life savings on to get here and do the
right quote unquote the right way. You're still fighting a

(01:37:25):
number of asylum cases, as we said before the call,
like you probably won't be forever, right Like, at some
point there's just not going to be any more asylum cases.
I know that you're accepting donations. I think through venmo
On behalf of Primrose, that will be sure to link
to that mo account in the description of this show,
so people can donate if they'd like to. Now it's

(01:37:45):
the time to do it right, It's not like this
is going to be an ongoing thing. Like if people
don't help now, then there won't be migrants to support
or assylies to support later. So like, how can people
materially support maybe in other ways, right, if they're like
on hard times and have the financial resources, what else
can people do to I just to make this a

(01:38:06):
little bit less cruel to some people who are among
the most unfortunate people on the planet.

Speaker 15 (01:38:12):
Often, I think even mental and emotional support for the
immigrants in your life, I think is something that is
underestimated because speaking as a very privileged white woman attorney
US citizen, this has taken a tremendous toll on me,
and the mental toll that has taken on the actual

(01:38:33):
undocumented community and a siles. This messaging is so harmful
and so disgusting that I think I would just caution
people to not underestimate the power of human kindness to
those already in your life and just empowering them distributing
Know your Rights cards and information that still matters. But

(01:38:54):
also I think the people who are, as we've been discussing,
going to be at the most disadvant managed in terms
of being able to keep up morale are these people
who are going to be mandatorily detained. So, in terms
of what we were talking about, I believe before we
started recording, reaching out to any organizations I know in
San Diego there's detention resistance, or even reaching out to

(01:39:17):
the detention center that's near you to be able to
determine how you can send a letter, how you can
put money on somebody's books so that they can have
phone calls with their family or phone calls with you
even I think these types of things are key in
light of the administration's clear messaging that immigrants are very

(01:39:41):
much unwanted and criminals. So I think that's where I
would come at this from. If you cannot donate, again,
like we were talking, if you have a few dollars
to spare, I mean, if everybody has a few dollars
to spare, there is a finite number like we were
saying of asylum cases left, like for Roses. So if
people can spare a few dollars here or there whenever

(01:40:03):
they can, it does make the difference.

Speaker 4 (01:40:06):
Yeah, no, it does, and it shows that like even
if the government doesn't want you to hear a lot
of people want you to be protected. We want you
to be safe. Like, yeah, the mental damage it does,
I think it's hard to overstate. Like I was talking,
I remember to a young woman Ino and like she
was the only surviving member of her family. The government
had killed everyone, and so she came to the US

(01:40:28):
right to be safe, and like, now the government is
coming after her in addition to the trauma she already
has from watching her entire family die. Like, now the
most powerful government in the world is coming after you.
Like I can't imagine how that feels.

Speaker 14 (01:40:42):
That's a very good point.

Speaker 15 (01:40:43):
I mean, yeah, people are coming already traumatized, only to
be further traumatized by this administration in the system. And yes,
I mean emotional and mental and any kind of support
is not to be underestimated in the slightest during these times.

Speaker 4 (01:40:57):
Yeah, like have people over for dinner if you can,
or yet like the detention center and put money on
someone's commissary, Like just showing people that they're welcome is important.
Like I know a lot of the migrants. Like if
I look at my phone right now, in the time
we've been recording one of the migrants, I meant that
Darien Gap will probably have texted me. They're in Mexico, right,

(01:41:18):
and they just want the world to know about the situation.
They know they can't come to the US anymore. But
sometimes people will say, I guess the Americans don't want
u s anymore, and like that breaks my heart because
I think most people, if they knew these people's circumstances, right,
Like hundreds of people have reached out to me since
the Darien Gap stuff to ask how they can help,
and like most people do want those people to be
their neighbors, and it breaks my heart that they think

(01:41:40):
that we don't want them, that we would rather leave
them to die wherever they're at. Like it's genuinely really
horrible for me to think of that. So yeah, I
would really encourage anyone listening if you can, to do what.

Speaker 15 (01:41:54):
You can, absolutely and just remembering that again, these asylum
cases are finite. So if you know any asylum seeker
or can support any asylum seeker right now, they made
it in Let's give them their best shot.

Speaker 4 (01:42:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, like we can still help those people,
and while we can, we should absolutely. Yeah, Well, thank
you so much for joining us. We do appreciate it.
I know that your time is very valuable and you're
really busy right now, so we really appreciate your time.
You're always welcome back, and if there's anything else you'd
like to say before we finish.

Speaker 14 (01:42:26):
Up, yeah, thank you, James.

Speaker 15 (01:42:27):
I think the only thing I just want to emphasize
is that, you know, from the standpoint of immigration attorneys
like I feel that we're obviously a subject of an
executive order. And you know, big law firms are being
extorted by the administration to represent causes that the administration
believes in and not robono immigration work, and so forth
and so on.

Speaker 14 (01:42:46):
So it's not like too many of us have.

Speaker 15 (01:42:47):
Been personally attacked, although you know judges have been arrested,
even judges for just hiring an immigrant to do work
around the house.

Speaker 5 (01:42:55):
So it is.

Speaker 15 (01:42:56):
It is a scary time to be practicing immigration law,
but unfortunate. I do see there being a time when
it won't happen. I mean, I see the writing on
the wall where I will not be able to continue
mentally and or economically, because a side effect of all this,
and a very intentional side effect, is to make it
so that we can't do much for people anymore, and

(01:43:17):
or they can't afford us, or there's not people here
to do anything for because their spirit was broken, or
their finances or all of the above and they had
to leave. So it is a very intense time. But
I came from different areas of law. I've only been
in immigration seven years and it's the first time I've
thought of, Okay, where am I going to go to

(01:43:38):
next in these seven years, And it's a very real thing. So,
like I said, it feels very different than Trump one
point zero.

Speaker 4 (01:43:46):
So no, yeah, this is considerably most severe.

Speaker 15 (01:43:50):
So in other words, take care of yourself if you
are an ally, because you know the attack is on
immigrants and anybody who advocates, supports and so forth, and
it's a very very targeted, direct attack and it's very
easy to get run down, yeah, and consume by it.
And so definitely do what you need to do to
take care of yourself. And if that means stepping back,
then you know, I mean, I want to keep my

(01:44:13):
foot in the door as much as possible these next
four years on something immigration and recite asylum related. But
there's also economic and other realities that are happening. Yeah intentionally, so.

Speaker 4 (01:44:23):
Yeah, definitely, And I think it is important for people
to do whatever they need to do to self preserve
and take care of themselves as well. I think that's
a good place to end. Thank you so much for
your time, and again, like if you're listening, please check
the description of the show and we will have a
link to primorise Who's go fund me if you'd like
to help.

Speaker 12 (01:44:41):
Thank you so much, James, thank you. This is it

(01:45:08):
could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's
happening in the White House, the crumbling world of what
it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined
by James Stout and Robert Evans.

Speaker 7 (01:45:20):
Hello, what's up? Everybody? Who's got ed.

Speaker 4 (01:45:24):
Us?

Speaker 12 (01:45:25):
You everybody, we're giving you ed this episode, we're covering
the week of May twenty one to May twenty eight.
It was a really busy news week for the latter
half of that week, so we're going to be mostly
catching up with that.

Speaker 7 (01:45:41):
Jesus.

Speaker 12 (01:45:42):
Yeah, and let's start with the biggest news from late
last week, domestically the shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers
in Washington, DC. The shooting took place around nine pm
on Wednesday, May twenty first, outside of an event at
the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting, the suspect

(01:46:04):
was seen pacing outside of the building. According to witnesses
and surveillance video, a thirty one year old man named
Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people leaving the event.
As he walked past them, he turned to face their
backs and shot two people and continued to fire as
they felt the ground. One of the victims, a twenty
six year old woman, tried to crawl away after being shot.

(01:46:27):
Rodriguez followed her and fired again Jesus while he was reloading,
She sat up, and then Rodriguez shot her several more
times before throwing his gun into a bush. He ran
into the museum after the shooting. Security let him in
thinking that he was a victim. Witnesses say he appeared
traumatized and in shock. People from the museum event brought

(01:46:50):
him water, and when they asked him if he was
okay or if he was injured, Rodriguez requested the police.
When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted to the shooting, and,
according to witnesses, quote grabbed a red cafea out of
his pocket. And started free Palestine chance quote there is
only one solution, Antifada revolution unquote. While being arrested and

(01:47:12):
taken out of the building, he chanted free Free Palestine.
Israel's ambassador to the US claimed that the two victims
were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees, and that Rariguez
mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that evening before
raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although the organization

(01:47:33):
who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee, disputes
this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register for
their event but was denied entry following a background check.
Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English
degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun
in Illinois and flew with it to d S the

(01:47:55):
night before the shooting. This event was an American Jewish
Committee Access DC Young Diplomat's Reception. The description for the
event reads quote, this special event brings together Jewish young
professionals age twenty two to forty five and the DC
diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and
celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations

(01:48:17):
and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce
this year's theme, turning Pain into Purpose. Here from members
of the Multi Faith Alliance and Israel as they delve
into humanitarian diplomacy and have a coalition of organizations from
the region and for the Region are working together in
response to humanitarian crises through the Middle East and North
Africa regions. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah

(01:48:42):
Milgram and Ran Lisinski, twenty six and thirty, who met
through their work at the embassy. Lozinski identified as a Christian,
though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany
as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in
the IDF. There is an alternative claim that he was
born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager,

(01:49:04):
but most reporting says that he was born in Israel.
In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this
as anti Semitic violence. The acting US Attorney said that
they are investigating the cases a hate crime and an
act of terrorism. Dan Bongino, Deputy FBI Director, said the
shooting was a quote act of targeted violence. The Israeli

(01:49:26):
foreign minister and net Yahoo have laid blame at college
protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France,
Britain in Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking
about Israel's quote supposed genocide and crimes against humanity unquote,
and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel quote unquote incitement.
Natanyahu said, quote free Palestine is just today's version of

(01:49:50):
Hyle Hitler Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state.
They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to
annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land
of Israel for three thousand, five hundred years.

Speaker 2 (01:50:03):
This is, obviously, I think, in a lot of ways
the kind of thing net yahoo has been waiting for,
and probably the kind of thing that a number of
folks in that Trump is put in federal law enforcement
have been waiting for because it provides them with some
opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student organizing and

(01:50:24):
organizing against.

Speaker 7 (01:50:25):
Israeli war crimes.

Speaker 5 (01:50:27):
Right like.

Speaker 2 (01:50:27):
The argument they want to be able to make is
that just saying free Palestine is an active terrorism and
there was an act of terrorism here, right, Like shooting
two embassy employees for the crimes of their government, Like,
that is a clear act of terrorism.

Speaker 5 (01:50:42):
Right.

Speaker 2 (01:50:42):
You can feel however you want to about it, but
like that's the definition of what was done. But the
things he was chanting were not part of the active terrorism.
The fact that he shot people to death was the
active terrorism.

Speaker 4 (01:50:54):
Yeah, it's the murdering people that's the terrorism.

Speaker 2 (01:50:57):
Yeah, and that is already illegal, by the way, and
quite heavily, I'll be interested. We don't seem to know
much about where he got the firearm.

Speaker 7 (01:51:05):
Yet that I've come across.

Speaker 12 (01:51:06):
So he legally purchased it in Illinois.

Speaker 2 (01:51:09):
Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has like fairly strict.

Speaker 4 (01:51:13):
Gun laws, Yes, some of the strictest in the US.

Speaker 2 (01:51:16):
So it's one of those things where there's already quite
a bit of regulation around everything that he did here.
But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you
are because this, you know, if there's an amendment, there
will be people who carry out attacks like this. And
I don't really know there certainly didn't seem to be
outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends. A

(01:51:39):
lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar.
He had been at like a PSL Party for Socialism
and Liberation march in twenty seventeen or something, but like,
this wasn't a guy who had a history of violence
or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a
reality of the country that we live in, is that
when people like this decide to carry out shootings for

(01:52:00):
whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low.

Speaker 12 (01:52:05):
It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like
like this because there's a lot of them out there.

Speaker 2 (01:52:10):
Yeah, yeah, and most of them don't do shootings.

Speaker 12 (01:52:13):
Yeah, this active been widely condemned. Like pro Palestine commentators
have said that this style of like adventurist terrorism does
nothing to help the Palestine people and in fact only
hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby
and Natya who have been like wanting to happen for
a while.

Speaker 5 (01:52:32):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:52:32):
I think kat Aboukazela, a Parastalian American woman he's running
for office in Illinois.

Speaker 7 (01:52:39):
Worked it for Media Matters for years.

Speaker 5 (01:52:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:52:42):
It does a lot of videos. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:52:44):
Yeah. Anyway, I saw that she'd she had something about
how like yeah, this was something that evidently should be condemned. Right,
that is wrong, and it's not advancing the cause of
Palestinian freedom, Like I think adventurist terrorism is a good
way to describe it. Geah, just getting panned by people
on the internet, which like I don't know people engaging

(01:53:05):
with this like from a place it doesn't come from,
Like it's bad when random folks get shot killed.

Speaker 12 (01:53:11):
No, people have have used the horrific genocide as a
way to like channel their general societal frustration and find
a way to like just act incredibly hostile like to
actual Palestinians. Yeah, yeah, yeah, who don't share the exact
same like anti imperialist TM views that they might have. Right,

(01:53:32):
it's just permission to abuse people online.

Speaker 4 (01:53:34):
Yeah, deeply, like verbally violent and like no like psycho shit.

Speaker 12 (01:53:40):
And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as
well as well as we'll see.

Speaker 4 (01:53:44):
Let's talk about that.

Speaker 12 (01:53:45):
Let's get a little bit into his background. So he
has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.

Speaker 2 (01:53:52):
And it's it's kojent like in terms of it's not
the ramblings of like a madman or something. There's nothing
like it.

Speaker 12 (01:53:58):
All He has an English degree, right, you know, to write. Yeah,
he has worked as a writer for like almost a decade.

Speaker 2 (01:54:03):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean that in terms of, like
it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not
any evidence here of like a disconnect or whatever. He's
not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the
weather bad or whatever, right, right, yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:54:16):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:54:17):
The manifesto is title to Escalate for Gaza, Bring the
War Home, and he attempts to explain the rationale behind
his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale
of dead Palestinians, writing that quote atrocity is committed by
Israelis against Palestine. Defy description and defy quantification. He writes
about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the

(01:54:40):
US government has continually refused to reign in Israel and
instead moves to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action. Quote.
An armed action is not necessarily a military action. It
usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle, a
quality it shares in many unarmed actions.

Speaker 2 (01:55:00):
Yeah, and I do find you know, one of the
first things that happened when this attack was carried out
was people started theorizing that this had been some Nazi
who was using this to using the propouse and cost
like camouflage as Nazism, and I don't think that the
preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things.
One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name

(01:55:24):
was Habbo eighty eight, and he was not born in
eighty eight, obviously whenever you see an eighty eight in.

Speaker 4 (01:55:29):
The Native Curse Millennial. And the other is.

Speaker 2 (01:55:31):
That the bring the war home reference in his manifesto,
which is basically a reference to something that I believe
was Louis Beam, who is a neo Nazi organizer, said
about trying to get Vietnam veterans to essentially bring the
war home to the United States in order to spark
a race war. And those two little things are weird. However,

(01:55:53):
the rest of this guy's fairly well documented history and
background does not suggest anything like that, So I don't
think that that's the credible thing to blame this on.

Speaker 12 (01:56:05):
Quite frankly, Yeah, I'll go over some of that background
in brief.

Speaker 15 (01:56:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:56:11):
He also talked about targeting government representatives, quote the impunity
that representatives of our government feel at a Bedding that
this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then
tells the story of a man who tried to throw
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea.
He finishes with his thoughts on the quote unquote morality
of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize

(01:56:35):
the perpetrators of atrocities as a method for us to
cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of.

Speaker 14 (01:56:41):
Quote.

Speaker 12 (01:56:42):
This action would have been morally justified taken eleven years
ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became
acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I
think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible.
It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least
there are many Americans for which the action will be

(01:57:03):
highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane
thing to do unquote. It did find it interesting that
on December fifth, twenty twenty four, Rodriguez posted on his
Twitter account that quote eighty percent of the country applauds
the targeted annihilation of a healthcare insurance executive.

Speaker 7 (01:57:22):
Quote.

Speaker 12 (01:57:23):
As for his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist
third worldiest yeah, and believes that the global seuth alone
has quote unquote revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described
his politics to journalist KNK Clippenstein like this quote. He
was a big proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran, Hesbula, Assad, Syria.

Speaker 7 (01:57:50):
How'd that go?

Speaker 12 (01:57:51):
He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years,
way before twenty twenty three. He'd always hated Israel and
would call it, quote the little Satan.

Speaker 4 (01:58:02):
For fox sake, they Asad test are in supreme as Yeah,
it's a fucking ab test for someone having shitty politics.

Speaker 12 (01:58:10):
Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by aside.

Speaker 4 (01:58:14):
Yeah yeah, Asad who gaffed his own people who murdered
little children.

Speaker 2 (01:58:17):
Including thousands and thousands of Palestinians by the way, Yeah yeah, Like,
but again, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well informed
opinions out of folks.

Speaker 3 (01:58:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:58:30):
This.

Speaker 12 (01:58:30):
His online presence mirrors what I would call like the
typical like anti imperialist TM poster where he's there is
most of his frustration at the Democrats sometimes at Republicans,
but mostly yeah, posts about being pro Russia, Iran, Hesbala,
pro Asade, and particularly the past few years posting a

(01:58:51):
lot of a Palestine right with explicit defense and like
veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein
also said, quote, it's driving me crazy that people are
calling it a false flag. This development is shocking, but
not completely out of character. Yeah, he always had strong
political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's the

(01:59:12):
same as he was.

Speaker 7 (01:59:13):
Quote. Yeah, and I mean that seems true.

Speaker 2 (01:59:17):
Again, we still don't have a like a perfect knowledge
of all of this guy's you know, online life. No,
this is just a week away, but based on what
Kin's posted, based on this interview, that makes complete sense. Yeah, right,
I like I don't have any trouble believing that for
a number of reasons.

Speaker 12 (01:59:35):
No, absolutely, this is this is not a false flag attack.
That's that's conspiratorial nonsense.

Speaker 2 (01:59:40):
Yeah, I think that's this guy did a thing that
he's sincerely believed in, and it seems like everything he'd
been expressing in the year or two leading up to
doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did.

Speaker 12 (01:59:51):
Now, Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL Party for
socialistm in Liberation back in twenty seventeen, and spoke to
the media on their behalf, though he would later regret
his association with the group, telling friends quote, PSL sucks shit.
I wish I had just done a misadventure with the
Freedom Road Socialist organization rather than the PSL.

Speaker 7 (02:00:14):
Lol YEA.

Speaker 12 (02:00:16):
Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In twenty twenty three,
he posted video from a local pro Palestine march on
his Twitter account. Clippenstein spoke with at least five friends
of his, who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez
express anti Semitic sentiments. Now, one of Arigue's friends gave
Clippenstein access to a years old private WhatsApp group chat

(02:00:38):
that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day
before the shooting. Clippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal
any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray
an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things,
especially Israel and its Warren Gaza unquote, and from what
we conceived of the chats that kind has posted, this

(02:00:59):
matches pretty well, well, A chat member wrote, quote, I'm
almost surprised you're not anti Semitic elias. It usually goes
hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong mantra.

Speaker 2 (02:01:11):
Yeah, and his response to this was like, Stalin ended,
you know, among other things, Stalin ended the greatest anti
Semitic state in history, which I've seen his evidence that
he wasn't pro Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know,
defeating the Nazis. But he says like among other things,
So he clearly got a number of reasons he likes Stalin.

Speaker 12 (02:01:30):
Yeah, from the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly
like a like a tanky anti imperialist type.

Speaker 7 (02:01:36):
Yes, yes, yeah, a million such examples.

Speaker 12 (02:01:38):
The only time he talked about race explicitly was the
lambast white people quote. Lol, you probably would have to
actually genesied white people to make this a normal country.
Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would
probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens
of millions of white people.

Speaker 4 (02:01:59):
On quest, Uh, there's a Stalin did nothing really. Yeah,
there's that rained type that we were looking for.

Speaker 2 (02:02:05):
Well, and again, it's one of those things we're talking
about this because there's a bunch of guys who expressed
similar views. This is the only one who's done as shooting.
When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking
about this like as evidence that like, oh, someone who's
a fucking tanky type is like is likely to commit
a mass shooting, right, they go hand in hand.

Speaker 12 (02:02:26):
No, this is the first time of take he's done anything.

Speaker 7 (02:02:27):
This is the first one of these I've heard of
in quite quite a long time.

Speaker 4 (02:02:32):
Yeah, it's just this guy.

Speaker 2 (02:02:33):
There's a bunch of people who expressed similar things to
this guy, right, yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:02:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:02:36):
On October seventh, he celebrated the Hamas attack. Quote just
saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli
troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred
by Hamas fighters. I am ao love checking back in
with the news every few hours, like, hmm, I wonder
if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly
wonder if Israel is over yet today or not.

Speaker 2 (02:02:58):
Unquote yeah, and again, like that just kind of shows
the general lack of knowledge.

Speaker 12 (02:03:03):
A level of political delusion.

Speaker 4 (02:03:05):
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of kind of telegram propaganda
consumption type worldview here.

Speaker 2 (02:03:11):
Yes, and can convince you that what's happening is different
from the reality.

Speaker 4 (02:03:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:03:16):
In this chat, he lmented to friends and expressed sorrow
at the deaths of Hamas and has been of leaders
and sometimes his ire was directed at other members of
this leaked chat, at one point going on an unhinged
ablest rant attacking one of his friends for being privileged
after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with cazophrenia. Quote,
why not just have him committed. You can't possibly be

(02:03:39):
gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that.
Just put him in a padded room and forget about him.

Speaker 7 (02:03:44):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 12 (02:03:45):
If there was a person you loved, he's gone.

Speaker 4 (02:03:47):
Now let it go.

Speaker 12 (02:03:48):
Can you just chain him in the basement and slide
meals under the door. I'm just tired of hearing about
this guy. He's useless, we get it. Stop complaining and
just dispose of him.

Speaker 7 (02:03:57):
Yeah, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 4 (02:03:59):
I mean this goes with the people who I don't know,
aren't useful to me, are of no value? Right that
people don't have inherent value and you know they don't
agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them.
They can die. Like, I guess there's some kind of
coherence there.

Speaker 12 (02:04:16):
Well, Robert, you want to mention the Something.

Speaker 7 (02:04:19):
Awful, Yes, I do, Garrison.

Speaker 2 (02:04:21):
So the other thing that came out in Ken's article
is that this dude was a poster. Well, his friends
described him as a dedicated poster, which is the worst
thing you can be described as being, and noted that
he had been There had been some when it came
out that like his former Twitter user name had been
like Habbo eighty eight. That was very clearly a reference

(02:04:43):
to a game called Habo Hotel that if you're gen Z,
there's very good odds you don't remember. But it was
a big thing for people who were on four Chan
and who were on Something Awful. And Something Awful was
the website that gave birth to four Chan. It's where
I was raised on the internet, and many many years ago,
around the turn of the millennium, I think I don't

(02:05:05):
remember the exact year, but we started gathering on this
game for children. It was like an MMO for little kids,
and like pretending to be members of a cult in
order to like confuse small children. And then four Chan
did their own version of that that was a bit
more racist, which is often the case.

Speaker 12 (02:05:22):
Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:05:24):
Yeah, many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there
was a debate. Was this guy a channer or was
this guy a goon? You know, a member of the
something Awful forums? And a lot of people thought I
called goon. A lot of people thought shanner because of
his age, he was a little bit young to have
been a part of the something awful have a hotel things.
I think it's actually likely or he did both, but

(02:05:44):
his friends described him as somebody who was really into
something awful, right, as somebody who had been influenced by
that in particularly a subset of the something awful forms
called FIAD, which stands for fuck you and Die, which
kind of pioneered a lot of them, those toxic aspects
of online discourse.

Speaker 4 (02:06:03):
Apparently, Jesus.

Speaker 2 (02:06:04):
Now, folks have found at least one of his accounts
that doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't
mean much because number one, he could have deleted a
lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older.
Number Two, he could have had another account, which is
also the case. The one account that people know was
his was banned for shooting and killing two him to

(02:06:26):
see employees. There's reasons given in the ever lengthening something
Awful ban list when somebody gets banned. Obviously, again, I
don't think there's like a positive thing to him being Like,
him being on something awful didn't cause him to shoot
two people, but him being on something awful was a
natural part of the progression that led to him being

(02:06:48):
the kind of like toxic online asshole that he was.
And sort of evidence of that is that one of
the last things he had done online before the shooting
was he had gotten briefly onto Blue Sky and then
gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stanzel, who's another
annoying asshole on the Internet, who was also a something

(02:07:10):
awful goon who was raised in this same chunk of
the internet, and who became a similar kind of asshole,
just with wildly different politics. And these two hated each other,
and Elias like threatened to murder him over the internet
because he's like, again that these guys, he's that type
of guy. He's that type of guy, which doesn't mean again,
which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting

(02:07:31):
or had anything to do with that, because there's a
lot of this type of guy and almost none of
them commit acts of terrorism. It just like his background
makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we
can see that he was online.

Speaker 12 (02:07:43):
The last thing I'll say about this is that you know,
beyond this like senseless loss of life, which is like
an issue in and of itself. Obviously, this also contributes
to further loss of life in the way this plays
into like media capture. Right now, we have a whole
week where the new cycles dominated by two people getting
murdered in the streets of DC, and this does not

(02:08:06):
help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The
exact same day that this happened, Wednesday, the twenty first,
ninety three people were killed in Israeli attacks across the
Gaza Strip and that type of stuff does not really
get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans
are really good at getting desensitized to this in a
large scale media environment, but stuff like this only serves

(02:08:27):
as a distraction and fuels Israel's oone motivation for their
continued actions.

Speaker 4 (02:08:33):
Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by
the advertisers in this show it's true.

Speaker 12 (02:08:39):
There you go, and we are back. Another big news
item from last week was the passing of the Big

(02:08:59):
View full budget bill in the House. We'll talk more
about this bill as it turns through the Senate, but first,
our co host Mia Wong has a special report on
how the bill targets trans healthcare.

Speaker 3 (02:09:13):
So we're going to talk a little bit about the
budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes
in the Senate, that's been passed by the House. I
am Mia Wong, and with me to talk about how
this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is
Maddie Castikin from Mad Cast and Mirror Levine from The
Free Radical. Glad to have both of you to hear.

(02:09:35):
You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this
stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First,
can you can you explain what is going on in
this budget with the ban on trans healthcare using Medicaid?

Speaker 4 (02:09:47):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (02:09:48):
Absolutely so. The budget bill, also known as House Resolution One,
is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding
next year's budget and how they're going to allocate all
their fun this time around. Republicans socided it would be
a great idea to push through. So what it was
at first was a intense limitation on what Medicaid cover,

(02:10:12):
essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I
began investigating first. Me and Mattie were talking about it
a bunch. She's the one who took me off to it.
They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that
would result in millions of people losing access to their healthcare,
not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts,
for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are

(02:10:35):
famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps
of the I believe it was the Capitol Building in
the nineties to raise awareness and help get the American
Disabilities Act passed. They staged a protest on the United
States Capital during a hearing for this bill where Republicans

(02:10:56):
were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple activists
got arrested. They're all fine now. Apparently apparently they weren't
treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But
what ultimately happened is more and more came out and
it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected,
but basically every marginalized group for people of course being

(02:11:18):
what we were focusing on given the beat, but this
will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're a low income,
especially if you are a person of color, you are
more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this
bill and how sweeping it is. And Republicans implemented a

(02:11:40):
ban for gender ferming care for minors on it. It
was a very milktoas ban that at the time was
projected to pretty much get overturned in court right away
if we were to pass. They didn't stop there though.
They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it
into a sweeping ban on gender firming care for all ages, Medicaid,

(02:12:00):
and for any health insurance received through Affordable Care Act marketplaces.
And ultimately this led to a lot of panic and
a lot of people assuming that their care is going
to be taken away immediately. That wasn't what's going to
happen on The minimum effective date that's currently in the
bill is twenty twenty seven. I'm telling people to prepare

(02:12:21):
if it passes for twenty twenty six, because there's a
decent change. Republicans will trying to expedite it because it
passed through the House, it passed through committees in the House,
it was sent to the Senate, and I think that's
what we'll give to Mattie to talk about kind of
what next steps for that are.

Speaker 9 (02:12:38):
Yeah, so lake Man was saying, there's a lot of
really huge This bill is tremendous. They could talk for
hours about it. But focusing on the transparts, there's a
ban on medicaid funding and there's also a ban on
including trans cares and essential Health benefit and ACA plans.
And the thing about both of these provisions is that

(02:13:00):
normally with reconciliation bills, they're supposed to be focused on
budget items, not policy items. So for example, you couldn't say, hey,
weed is legal everywhere now or something like that, or
raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried to do in
twenty twenty one and they failed because there are rules
regarding how this process works. And so what we argued

(02:13:21):
in an article was that there's a possibility that, you know,
if activists and advocates reach out to their senators and
advocated to point out that this part of the bill
is completely against those provisions, against those procedural rules for
the Senate Parliamentaria could rule against it and basically strike
that portion of the bill without ever even becoming law.

(02:13:42):
And you know that would stay people a lot of
stress and anxiety. And you don't have to worry about
the court battles and what happens with Scremetti versus us,
which is a Supreme Court case that's going to be
ruled on on gender a firming care soon. So what
we've been telling people, and you know, including listeners for
your show, is that people really need to reach out
to their senators every single day, email, call and ask

(02:14:02):
them to vote no on this bill on HR one
and specifically mentioned the trans healthcare aspects, and if you want,
there's templates online on our website, or you can just
you know, ask them, Hey, we don't think this bill
is good.

Speaker 4 (02:14:16):
We don't.

Speaker 9 (02:14:16):
We want you to challenge specifically the parts that are
attacking trans people. And I can confirm with you. I
can't share too much information, but I can confirm with
you that we are making real, legitimate progress on killing
this provision. And the more people we have calling in
every single day, the better our odds are. But there's
still more ways to fight back, and I want Mara
to pick up on how people can fight back on

(02:14:38):
the ground.

Speaker 5 (02:14:38):
Yeah, So in addition to reaching out to your senators,
of course, to that, there's an email template, Mattie wrote
of a great one. It tells you everything you need to do.
You can even leave a phone call to the script.
It takes like five minutes. But more long term is
this is not going to be the only attack on
gender affirming care. It's not going to stop here. This
is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately,

(02:15:03):
we cannot rely on the government to give us a
central health care. We cannot rely on the government to
protect us and give us what we need, because fundamentally,
the government and the laws that it aims to uphold
are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy.
The law is functionally something that gives police power to

(02:15:23):
act as essentially an occupying army on the state and
to persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are
disproportionately rich and powerful decruity. And we need to start
focusing on building long term solutions. Everything we can do
with legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not
save us, because there will be more attacks down the line,

(02:15:45):
and they'll keep coming, and they only need to win once.
We need to win that every time. But there are
long term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially
just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual
aid network, get plugged into people doing work on the
ground in your state, in your area who are focusing

(02:16:07):
on a plethora of different issues. A bit of a
self plug here. But I wrote an article, for instance,
last month, where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the
Twin Cities who told me just a lot about the
history of radical practice in the cities, especially in light
of the George Floyd riots and especially in right of

(02:16:30):
corporate pride, rango capitalism whole nine yards recommend reading it.
It's on the free radical dot org. Check it out.
But beyond of course, my own writing in my own interviews,
there are so many people doing work that doesn't get
covered because it either isn't pattalable to mainstream news audiences
or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons.

(02:16:52):
In every single major city this I can guarantee there
are people doing work most of the time. It's not
going to be publicly visible, but they are there. I
would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in
gets started with something that is much more entry level
and something that is much more like meant to be
kind of for everyone who may not be willing to

(02:17:13):
do more in depth and more treesy type of stuff.
Food not bombs is the great thing I recommend for
everyone to check out. Not every city has one, most two,
every state has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of
local mutual aid groups in every single locality, and if
there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in
your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend I'm a

(02:17:36):
bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones
that are decentralized and non hierarchical, ones that don't revolve
around centralizing power and placing that power in the hands
of people who are either good at smooth talking or
who have a lot of money. Ultimately, the way forward
for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just
trans people you know on document immigrants, blocking additions, people

(02:17:59):
of color, low income people, disable people, and so forth.
The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect
all of us. Attacks on trans healthcare are not limited there. Inevitably,
let's say they ban trans healthcare overnight, they're going to
come for intersex people. Next, They're going to come for
gay people. Next, They're going to come for everyone. So
I would just say get involved in your local groups

(02:18:22):
and reach out. There are resources out there if you
need some, check out the free radical dot org. I
recommend a ton of them. Thank you and yees.

Speaker 9 (02:18:30):
Our upside for Matti Metticast is m adycast dot com
and you can find our templates for contacting your senators there.
Thank you so much for helping yourself and helping your community.

Speaker 3 (02:18:42):
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to
close on I want to read the Route, a real
line form fucking Davix manifesto from and Or. Remember that
the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the
smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the
arguments that going to make sure that is just true
is that in order to maintain their holds, these people

(02:19:03):
have to win one hundred battles across one hundred fronts,
you know. But this means that there are so many
different things that you can do to resist them and
to make sure that this fucking budget they're trying to pass,
to make sure that everyone in this country suffers, and
specifically that trans people cannot use the health insurances that
we need, use Medicaid, use Affordable Care Act to pay
for stuff. This stuff can be resisted in so many

(02:19:25):
different ways. You can ass We've talked about. You can
call your senators, you can yell at them, you can
make their lives miserable until they agree to not do this.
And then also you can join your local mituway groups,
you can join local activist groups. You can start you know,
getting a serious or organized. Other ways you can again,
like we've talked a lot about unions and the role
of unions and trying to struggle on the show. We've

(02:19:46):
talked of God, We've talked about so many things. I'm
going to do a one second plug for the episode
I wrote last year called you already know how to
organize because you do already know how to organize. And Yeah,
none of the things that are happening here are inevitable.
They can be stopped and there are so many many
different ways for you to start stopping them.

Speaker 2 (02:20:02):
Yeah, So we're back, and we're talking about Gavin Newsome
and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and
Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect.
So if you remember a little earlier this year, there
was a big brujaha publicly because a California transgender high

(02:20:27):
school athlete won at the woman's eight feet triple jump.
This is an eleventh grade transgender athlete from Urupa Valley
High School near Riverside, California, and she won the Division
three girls long jump and triple jump and placed seventh
in the high jump at her Southern Section championship.

Speaker 7 (02:20:47):
A few weeks later.

Speaker 2 (02:20:48):
There's going to be I don't think it's happened yet,
a championship meet that she qualified for as a result
of this. And when this happened, it was immediately left
on by the Trump administration and by right wing media
as evidence of this thing that they've been trying to
push for forever, which is that trans athletes are a
threat to women's sports. Right now, this is something that

(02:21:09):
number one, there's just not a lot of And this
is also something that like I think something like two
thirds of Americans when polled say that they don't feel
like trans athletes should be competing with you know, quote
unquote naturally born women in women's sports. Right, Like, this
is a thing that the right has built a lot
of support for because they have made this a political

(02:21:32):
issue for so long, and they've been largely successful in
that the state of California and California lawmakers have been
pushing back against this. There have been state bills in
order to allow these girls to continue to compete. But
Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same degree of support.
And this kind of largely came out earlier this month

(02:21:55):
when he had a meeting with conservative personality Charlie Kirk
on his new podcast. As Newsom said, Kirk pushed so
hard on the topic that Newsom said he felt like
he had to address it. Here's how Newsom characterized it.
And then he asked me, tell me that's not fair.
And I looked at him. I said, you're right, that's
not And so it wasn't some grand design. And I know,
I know that hurt a lot of people, but respectively,

(02:22:16):
I just disagree with those on the other side of this.

Speaker 7 (02:22:20):
Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom.

Speaker 2 (02:22:22):
He was attacked for flip flopping because again, like the
California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend
trans athletes, but Newsom kind of flipped as soon as
he was in a room with Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom
will argue that he also tried to stick up for
trans athletes to Charlie Kirk. To be clear about that,

(02:22:43):
this is exactly what he said to Charlie. Completely fair
on the issue of fairness, I completely agree. So that's
easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also
a humility and grace that these poor people are more
likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the
way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is an
issue that I have a hard time with as well.
So both things I can hold in my hand. How

(02:23:03):
can we address this issue with the kind of decency
that I think you know is inherent in you but
not always expressed in the issue. And first of all,
there's no decency inherent in Charlie Kirk. And second yeah,
there's also a humility and grace that these poor people
are more likely to commit suicide.

Speaker 7 (02:23:17):
What does that?

Speaker 4 (02:23:17):
What that mean? What does that mean? Gavin, that's not
a sentence. Also, like, just like I made my living
exercising for most of my twenties, right, Like.

Speaker 7 (02:23:26):
You're a professional athletes done sports?

Speaker 4 (02:23:29):
Yeah, Like and then I've done all kinds of ether
shit where I still got paid to race my bike,
right Like, Yeah, sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I
coached people who worked way harder than me. They trained
super hard, they slept well, they ate better. Unfortunately, for
whatever reason, they were not able to get to the

(02:23:52):
same level. That sucks. But like, sport is inherently unfair.
The idea that like the only difference is like this,
like you so x y chromosoonality is nonsense. Like, especially
in high school sports, kids will develop at different times.
That is unfair. Some kids will excel and then other
kids will get better. The function of high school sports
is not to find who can go like higher, faster, stronger.

(02:24:15):
It's to teach people to play nicely with one another
and to communicate inclusion and excluding trans kids is completely
contrary to that.

Speaker 2 (02:24:25):
Yeah, and that's like, yeah, I think that's a great point, James,
is that, like number one, this is all being entirely
made about like who places how which is always going
to be based largely on things that like people can't control,
because like people's bodies are different, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:24:43):
Yeah, and they developed differently. Like there are people who
I beat a by graces when I was a kid
who have one stages at the Tour de France. Yeah,
Like if our bodies developed differently, that's completely normal.

Speaker 7 (02:24:53):
Yeah, and it's this again.

Speaker 2 (02:24:54):
The thing that should matter here is not treating a
community of people hatefully, which is the entirety of the
reason the right has made this an issue. It has
nothing to do with fairness, It has nothing to do
with sports. It's entirely about hurting a group of people.

Speaker 4 (02:25:06):
Yeah, if these people gave a single shit about women's sports,
said it being there when women weren't getting paid the
same Did it been there when they didn't get the
same TV covery? Did it there when they didn't get
the same price money?

Speaker 2 (02:25:15):
And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at
that point in time. Now, I do think one thing
that's funny here is that when Newsom was when people
asked rightly, like when Californian legislators were pushing to protect
trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you felt
this way, and his answer was, I didn't have a podcast.

Speaker 7 (02:25:33):
I wasn't having that conversation.

Speaker 2 (02:25:35):
I was out there on the campaign trail and the
big blue bubble, on the big blue bus and the
big blue crowds, having big blue conversations. And then he
went on to say that basically the backlash to him
agreeing with Charlie Kirk on this has convinced him. I
always thought the right overstated how judgmental my party was,
and I'll be candid with you, I have a deeper
understanding now of that critique than I ever ever ever understood.

(02:25:55):
It's like, now that people are angry at me, I
believe there's a problem with my part being judgmental.

Speaker 4 (02:26:01):
Yeah, now that I've faced a consequence of my shit,
I hate trans people even more.

Speaker 7 (02:26:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:26:06):
It must be so hard to be Gavin Newsome. It's
gotta be tough and betray your constituents to get the
approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around.

Speaker 4 (02:26:19):
Who still hates you, touring.

Speaker 12 (02:26:21):
College campuses to debate seventeen year olds. That must be
so hard for you.

Speaker 7 (02:26:25):
It's gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, Gavin.

Speaker 4 (02:26:27):
He did say in his podcast. His kid likes Charlie Kirk,
not surprisingly. Maybe this is all just a ploy to
be a cool dad.

Speaker 7 (02:26:34):
Yeah, I'm not surprised he sucks at being a dad.

Speaker 4 (02:26:37):
Gavin usedomings, you wants to be a cool dad empty,
It's embarrassing.

Speaker 12 (02:26:41):
Reminds me that Jake Dapper just said his kid's not
really into politics. He's just into World War two and gaming.

Speaker 7 (02:26:48):
Great part of World War Two.

Speaker 4 (02:26:51):
Tapurious, curious many such cases. Doesn't his kid want to
be a cop? Is that Jake Tapper?

Speaker 7 (02:26:57):
Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like Jake fucking Taper's kid.

Speaker 3 (02:27:01):
So look.

Speaker 2 (02:27:01):
Earlier this week, on Tuesday, President Trump shared a truth
social post, a truth threatening to yesa he retruthed a
post threatening to withhold federal funding from California over the
participation of this high school trans athlete in the upcoming
California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field championships. Right, and

(02:27:23):
he said that, under the leadership of radical left Democrat
Gavin Nuskum, California continues to illegally allow men to play
in women's sports. The governor himself said it is unfair.
Trump wrote, first off, the fact that Gavin agreed with
Charlie INA's podcast did nothing to change the rhetoric around him.
He's still radical left Democrat Gavin newscom because you can't

(02:27:44):
make these people unhappy because it's not about fairness, it's
about hurting people.

Speaker 12 (02:27:48):
Right, you can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.

Speaker 7 (02:27:51):
I wanted to talk about Maine.

Speaker 2 (02:27:53):
Yes, yeah, So Trump made this same threat to the
state of Maine when the governor of Maine refused to
stop allowing trans people to compete in women's sports, and
the administration attempted to freeze funds intended for a main
child nutrition program.

Speaker 12 (02:28:09):
No more food for your kids because woa, no more.

Speaker 7 (02:28:11):
Food for poor kids because woke.

Speaker 2 (02:28:14):
And in response, the governor made was like, all right,
let's fucking go to the mat. And they filed a
lawsuit against the US Department of Agriculture, and the Trump
administration settled like they they backed down. They agreed to
stop freezing the funds if Maine dropped the lawsuit, right like,
as soon as Maine sued, Trump backed down, right, And

(02:28:36):
rather than attempting to do that, even though there's ample
evidence that the administration backs down and to be fair
and I think against Maine. California's got a lot more
weight to throw around. Yeah, it's the fifth blackist economy
on the planet. They have some they have some fucking
heck behind them, and like News clearly has.

Speaker 4 (02:28:56):
No moral principle other than advancing his own career and
personal power and wealth right now. But like, even if
that is the case, it's so easy to be like, yeah,
I'll fight him on this, I'll fight for the trans
kids and get some like resist a points.

Speaker 2 (02:29:09):
But he's just too much of a fucking cow. The
first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything.
Don't treat them like people. They're monsters, their scum. You
fight them every step of the way, right, Like, it
doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never
give pieces a shit like this a win. Yeah right,
that's just not the way you fight them.

Speaker 12 (02:29:30):
This is the problem with people like Evin who just
whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist.

Speaker 7 (02:29:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:29:34):
So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging
against your previously held progressive DEI woke LGBTQ plus values, yeah,
then you just go along with that swing and you
actually don't even care about getting this getting this points
anymore because you think the culture is going in a
different direction. Sure, and all you care about is being
in the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, you don't actually stand for anything,
like you're just you're's nothing.

Speaker 4 (02:29:55):
Yeah, and everyone can see that.

Speaker 2 (02:29:56):
As opposed to understanding. What Governor Frey of Man understands
was that no, you stand there. You accept that the
zeitgeist is a screen door and it's going to bounce
off of you and back in enough for another direction
if you stand for something, right, Gavin decided not to
stand for something, and immediately after Trump made that tweet
threatening to withhold funds from the state of California, and

(02:30:20):
you know, the Department of Education has opened title for
investigations in two leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF,
which is California's high school governing a sports governing body.
Right after Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF
released a statement saying that it had made the decision
to pilot an entry process for the championship that's coming

(02:30:41):
up that will alter the way they hand out awards.
It will expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes.
Is the exact way that they have phrased this, and
basically what they're going to be doing is giving an
award for biological men, biological women, and then competitors, right,
so there will be like three long jump awards.

Speaker 12 (02:31:04):
It's like a segregated scoring field.

Speaker 2 (02:31:08):
Yeah, it's it's some. I guess you could say it's
not as awful as trying to ban people. But also
it's kind of like you're not even taking any kind
of stance here.

Speaker 4 (02:31:19):
It's not it's just it's nothing.

Speaker 7 (02:31:21):
It's nothing.

Speaker 5 (02:31:22):
Now.

Speaker 2 (02:31:23):
Newsome spokesperson is a garden, says cif proposed pilot is
a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without
compromising competitive fairness. That governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach.
And I should note here this has done nothing to
actually calm the right or get conservatives to back down right.

Speaker 12 (02:31:42):
Now, because they don't want trans kids competing at all.
They don't want trans kids in public life.

Speaker 4 (02:31:46):
They don't wants existing.

Speaker 2 (02:31:48):
Yes, and so like the conservative Californians are still angry.

Speaker 12 (02:31:52):
You can't take them for their word for it. Yeah,
they don't care about fairness in sports. This is all
about just eradicating transgenderism from public life. Like as as
Michael Knowles said at Sea Pack like two years ago,
like that's yeah, what they actually care about.

Speaker 2 (02:32:06):
Yeah, and there's you know, there's been a bunch of
statements some some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ cock because
it have been like well, Gavin's you know, otherwise been
a good ally, you know for LGBTQ people. And I
don't agree with this is something that an Assembly member
Chris Ward said basically, I don't agree with this particular move,
but he's been a good ally for a long time.

Speaker 3 (02:32:27):
Has he though? Has he though?

Speaker 7 (02:32:30):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:32:30):
I mean when it's convenient to him, I guess I prefer.

Speaker 2 (02:32:33):
Caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was quote just
commenting on how he personally feels. He mentioned it on
his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a
policy direction. Announced, Hell yeah, that's a dumb podcast.

Speaker 4 (02:32:47):
Yeah yeah, I mean you should be concerned that he
has a dumb pot cost what he deemed it. I
just trans people like, yeah, he signed vetos all the time.

Speaker 2 (02:32:55):
Like again, I found a k Cira add An article
on this that quotes Republican's leew Woman Kate Sanchez, who
wrote a bill that would have banned transathletes from competing
in girls high school sports earlier this year. This is
what she said about cif's rule chains pilot policy. It's
incredibly weak. We're angry, We're pissed at this. How every
day that goes by, no one is protecting our girls.
This is inexcusable. We need to have something done. Governor

(02:33:18):
Newson needs to pick aside, do something, do the right thing.
So again, this gets you nothing with them, right, It
benefits you not at all. There's another quote I want
to read here from State Senator Scott Weiner, who is
the leader of the Senate Budget Committee and again a
member of the LGBTQ rights Caucus. Trump is now targeting California,
just like he targeted Maine. Threatening to withhold federal funds
of California doesn't follow as illegal edicts targeting transgender people.

(02:33:40):
California law protects trans people. That won't change Main one
in court, So will California. There's only one answer to
a bully. No, And as Main Governor Janet Mills said,
see you in court. Sorry I got I don't know
why I said Governor Fray earlier, but anyway, the point
here is that you have Californian legislators saying the right thing,
and then you have fucking Newsome being like, no, no, no,

(02:34:01):
actually we're totally going to cave and in a way
that won't even make the Republicans happy. It's just frustrating
to me that you do have Democrats trying to do
the right thing here in California politics and Newsom absolutely
having CIF do a run around on them out of
pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what I got.

Speaker 12 (02:34:20):
Get him out of there.

Speaker 7 (02:34:21):
Get him out of there. Fuck Kevin Newsom.

Speaker 4 (02:34:23):
We tried to. That was a recall, but it was
not for the right reasons.

Speaker 2 (02:34:27):
Yeah, the last time we recalled a California governor, it
was a real mixed bag.

Speaker 4 (02:34:31):
Yeah, speaking of a mixed bag, that's right.

Speaker 7 (02:34:46):
And we're back.

Speaker 12 (02:34:47):
Okay, we're back.

Speaker 4 (02:34:49):
We're back.

Speaker 12 (02:34:50):
James don want to finish us up here.

Speaker 4 (02:34:52):
I do, Garrison, I would like that very much. I
want to talk about a couple of things. I'm going
to try and keep this faster now it's already been
a long episode. Let's start with agents have been arresting
people in immigration court around the country and placing them
at expedited remove all proceedings. If you want to know
more about exactly what they exploited remove all proceedings are
and how they work, you can go back to our

(02:35:14):
episode which will have aired the day before you hear this,
and that would explain and I talked to an immigration
attorney there and explain a little bit more about how
that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed.
So previously, it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases
of people who had arrived less than two years ago
and placing them under two forty explanited remove all proceedings.

(02:35:35):
Apparently they are also detaining other people. I am not
sure how that works. I have not seen any justifications
for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm
not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are
going to have to fight their removal from detention, which
is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience.

Speaker 7 (02:35:54):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:35:54):
Detention in these in these cour civic or geogroup facilities
is pretty bad. I'm aware of cases where I misidentified
the person being detained cuff the wrong person. And I'm
aware that there are Spectrum services who are an ICE
detention officer provider officers, at least outside some of these facilities.

(02:36:15):
I believe also inside spectrum services. I've noticed been posting
a lot of job adverts recently. This is something I
sometimes keep an eye on, right, Like right before the
end of title forty two, I saw they were advertising
for ice contractors to transport detainees. So this is sometimes
a sign that bad things are a foot in the

(02:36:36):
immigration world. I'm guessing in this case it's either this
or a plan to further expand detention capacity, which also
something the Trump administration has been talking about. Right, So
they also have these various subjective orders authorizing more budget,
and the budget bill or threw thing more budget for
detaining migrants. Secondly, the South Sudan case rope we've covered

(02:36:58):
this last week DVD alvs is known. We also covered
it earlier in this week. If you go back to
our episode which aired on Wednesday, you can hear more
about the sort of blow by blow of timeline of
that case. In the South Studian case, Trump administration seems
to have gone directly to the Supreme Court try and
get an emergency stay on the injunction which afforded due

(02:37:21):
process rights to the migrants who are currently detained into Booty.
The administration asked for a stay of the court's injunction.
The courts injunction had given them ten days to assert
their reasonable fear of torture, and then a further fifteen
days to ask to reopen their case if the Department
of Home Land Security determined that fear not to be credible.

(02:37:43):
Justice Supreme Court Justice Jackson has given the plaintiffs a
week to respond to the United States the DOJ's call
for a stay right, So, in practices, people will still
have that ten days from the injunction to make their
claim that they have a fear of torture. Right South
Sudan has said that if these people aren't South Sudanese,

(02:38:04):
it will just return them to their country of citizenship.
So if the United States can't return them there because
they have a fear of torture, it just seems like
the whole South Sudan thing is just an end run
around the Convention against Torture Right there their obligation not
to return people to places where they will be tortured.
Talking of returning people to places where they will be tortured. Unfortunately,

(02:38:27):
the Trump administration has deported twenty people to Mianma. This
is according to reporting in Mianma.

Speaker 7 (02:38:34):
Now.

Speaker 4 (02:38:34):
I've also written about it on my page Patreon page.
I've linked both of those in the show notes. But
it should be noted that meam I now broke the
story and it's getting very little coverage in the United States.
I can speculate as to why that. You probably don't
need to hear me to sort of join the dots there.
This is atrocious. Robert and I have both spoken to

(02:38:56):
people with extensive experience of them, and like, when we
talk about the worst attention conditions in the world, we
get to a point where it doesn't really make any
sense for us to say, like a is worse in.

Speaker 2 (02:39:08):
Right right, that this is worse than Sednaia or whatever.
But it's on like the level which was Assad's torture
prison and syria As.

Speaker 4 (02:39:15):
Sad's butchery for human beings.

Speaker 7 (02:39:18):
Like we're talking about that level.

Speaker 4 (02:39:20):
Yeah, Like I mean things that I have heard. People
have been electrocuted to death, people are water boarded, people
have acid poured in their mouths. Bodies are found without organs,
people are beaten to such an extent that their entire
bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people
will only know that their family member is detained when

(02:39:42):
they disappear, and then a few days later they get
a call telling them to pick up the body. Conditions
in Burmese hunted attention facilities are atrocious. These people are
currently being held at the on Tarpi Interrogation Center. It
appears at seven of the early so this has been
happening since March. It appears that some of these people

(02:40:03):
have been released. The rest are being held by SAC
that's the Burmese hunter of military intelligence units, who will
almost certainly torture them. Me and MA does have a
temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple
of posts about this, so I just want to clarify
the TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the

(02:40:23):
TPS was granted, or to people who have committed certain crimes.
We know that at least one of the men they
returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of
these crimes are like particularly Henus felonies. Right, you can
do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported
under a TPS. But I'm trying to find out who
these people are. I know that you can't download our

(02:40:46):
podcast in Meanma, which is a huge dub for us,
But you know, I know a lot of Burmese people
do listen, so you know, if you have an particular
insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll
drop the email addressing a little bit here. Seem very
unlikely that these people were given a chance to make
a claim of fear of torture, right, because it would
be a very easy claim to make, given every major

(02:41:09):
human rights organization on the planet has documented torture of
detainees in Meanma. I was just reading a report this
morning about harassment of trans women in prisons in Myanmar.
But the same thing goes for CIS folks, for straight folks,
for everyone, right, no one, No one comes out of
there the same they went in. Yeah, I can't believe
that these people were given a chance to claim a

(02:41:30):
credible fear because it would have been such an easy
claim to make, yep, and they wouldn't have been returned there.
So yeah, I wish this story was getting more reporting.
I wish more people in the media in this country
cared about me and Ma. But that's a drama. I
have been beating for four years now, and I don't
think she's going to change anytime soon. So I guess
all there is to say is that I really appreciate

(02:41:52):
those of you who do, especially the third of you
who listen to the show and take an interest in
all things me and Maa. But yeah, if these people
have been returned to a country that the US press
was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise
about this. But this is absolutely unconscionable.

Speaker 13 (02:42:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:42:07):
Yeah, these people will be tortured. It would not shock
me if some of these people died.

Speaker 2 (02:42:11):
Yeah, Now, this is I mean, there have been cases
so far of I think at least seven of the
people that have been sent over previously in the last
year or so by the US have been released from
this prison. So it's not unnecessarily a death sentence, but
for a good number of them it will be, right, Yeah,
especially since there are also Rohinga people who will be
deported in the near future and presumably directly back to

(02:42:35):
the same place.

Speaker 4 (02:42:36):
Yeah. I mean it's documented that people deported from Thailand
are immediately conscripted and yeah sent it to the military. Right,
So if they get out of prison, there's a good
chance that, especially if they're men, that they will be
Women do get conscripted too in Meanmar, but there's a
good chance that will happen to They've been conscripting a
lot o Hinga people. So yeah, the outcomes of this

(02:42:58):
will be very poor. And uh yeah, the only way
torture stops in Burma is when the revolution succeeds and
liberates to Britons. Like that, there is no reasoning with
the Burmese hunter. Yep, it's about all I got. It's
pretty fucked.

Speaker 5 (02:43:13):
Like.

Speaker 2 (02:43:13):
Speaking of fucked, let's listen to the tariff song riffs
this week now fuck it.

Speaker 4 (02:43:21):
Well, let's just listen to it and then have the
end of the episode just gets a nice song.

Speaker 7 (02:43:24):
Let's just listen to it now.

Speaker 12 (02:43:26):
We don't have time to listen to it. This is
the end of the episode.

Speaker 2 (02:43:28):
Wow, Garrison took it away from you complained to them online.

Speaker 4 (02:43:32):
The constant ageist attacks on the Clash have not stopped.

Speaker 12 (02:43:37):
Sorry, fellas, all that money for nothing.

Speaker 7 (02:43:41):
We reported the new.

Speaker 2 (02:43:49):
Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 4 (02:43:55):
It could happen.

Speaker 1 (02:43:56):
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.

Speaker 2 (02:44:06):
You listen to podcasts can now find sources for it
could happen here, listed directly in episode descriptions.

Speaker 1 (02:44:12):
Thanks for listening.

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Robert Evans

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