It Could Happen Here Weekly 192

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Al 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 (00:28):
Welcome Dick.

Speaker 4 (00:29):
It happened here, a podcast that played some role in
the defeats of the Republicans reposed ban on using Medicaid
to pay for trans healthcare. I am your host, Mia Wong,
and with me are three of the people who helped
make this whole thing possible. This is David Forbes, journalist
from the Ashville Blade, and Medica's News, Mattie Cassagin of
the namesake Medicast News, and Miura Laisine of Free Radical

(00:53):
and also Medica's News and all of you welcome to
the show. Congratulations on your defeat of the Republican part
already and helping to save trans healthcare for unbelievably large
numbers of people in this country.

Speaker 5 (01:05):
Yeah, yeah, it's kind of like a sentence that's kind
of hard to accept, and you know, in a lot
of ways, it is really what we've been trying to say.
It's been like a collective effort of everyone involved, especially
to people at the grassroots, and you know, like I
guess to give listeners a little bit of context. So
going back to May, they're in the big beautiful bill

(01:27):
that unfortunately did pass. Originally Republicans included a ban on
government funding for Medicaid for gender transition procedures, and originally
just from miners in the House. Then right before they
passed it through the House, they actually removed the miners claws,
so it was applying for all adults on Medicaid who
are trans At this point, everyone started kind of freaking out,

(01:48):
which is very reasonable because you know, there's over two
hundred thousand trans people on Medicaid depending on the numbers,
like hundred and seventy thousand depending on who you ask.
And so what we found is, you know a lot
of other sources have told us this that the bird roll,
which is basically, you know, parliamentary procedure in the Senate
that only exists in the Senate because of the filibuster

(02:08):
pretty much is one way that we could kill this
is what they told us back in May, and so
that's something that we reported on and tried to take
like you know, basically like a don't panic angle or
don't panic yet at least you know, like that there's
a lot of ways to fight back against this, and
we provided you know, templates for here's how you can
email your senators and this is exactly what you should

(02:30):
tell them.

Speaker 6 (02:31):
You should call them.

Speaker 5 (02:32):
You could call specific people on specific committees and tell
specific things to them. And you know, of course a
lot of other organizations and people also chipped into this,
you know, a for t PE, head of campaigns and whatnot.
But I think you know, at the end of the day,
what really pushed the needle was the people calling in
and waking Democrats up to this issue. And basically what

(02:52):
ended up happening is we Wove sent it. Widen basically
argued to the parliamentarium that hey, this trans Medicaid band,
it's not not a budgetary matter, it's actually a policy matter.
And the parliamentarian agreed and ruled that it was basically
a sixty vote threshold and not a fifty vote threshold.
So what that meant is that as long as all Democrats,
or at least forty Democrats forty one Democrats were closing

(03:16):
this measure, it was basically guaranteed to be kicked out
of the bill. And we did end up having enough
Democrats to basically ensure that that provision didn't make it
into law, even though unfortunately the bill did pass at
the end of the day.

Speaker 7 (03:29):
Yeah, I think one thing that's notable about this, I
think one thing to emerge in our discussions, and while
she's not in the podcast, I really want to thank
Koreean Green for very invaluable policy insight into some of
this and some of the specific ways and weaknesses to
go after politicians on this. And you know, certainly we

(03:50):
were not alone in this. I think there were a
lot of grassroots organizations as well, and I think kind
of the approach that emerged and was successful, I think
it's kind of important how it happened, because one, it
identified a specific weakness who weren't just vaguely asking legislators
to do something about this. And two, I think it
did something which traditionally definitely democratic politicians, but even a

(04:14):
lot of the gay ink to use a term popular
among the law of transactivists like big lobbying groups and
establishment nonprofits been loath to do, which is it got
angry at democrats. It warned them that people were watching.
It wasn't like pretty please, you know, will you do
something to stop this? And from two decades dealing with politicians,

(04:35):
that's a much more effective way to approach. If you're
just going to ask nicely, they'll ignore you. They ignore
your entire demographic, if you're marginalized, if they're afraid of you. However,
if they're worried about their phone lines being shut down
with pushback, people are getting angry at them, then they
get worried and feel like they need to do something.
So I think both with our article and with some

(04:58):
of the other grassroots groups involved, it really kind of
put the focus back on what people can do. But
it did it by identifying weakness and then pressing really
hard on it. And I think that's kind of a
break with how some of the very unsuccessful higher level
tactics that have you know, been used or not been
used against transphobic legislation before.

Speaker 4 (05:19):
Yeah, and I think I think it's important to, you know,
look at the changing terrain of this all because a
lot of the sort of gig lobbying efforts were based
on conditions that don't exist anymore. And you could argue
how effective they were back in like you know, like
twenty fifteen. Yeah, right, and I still think there are

(05:43):
more effective things that could have been done. Then there
is no argument now like you can't just rely on
sort of like access as democratic politicians and being like, oh, hey,
wh're this org? You want this thing to happen. And
we saw this a lot, and this is something that
our policy analyst friend Karine Green, who have had in
the show before, was talking about with like with the
Biden administration was the way that all of these orgs

(06:03):
sort of just fell in line behind the Biden administration,
like fucking over trans people's healthcare in ways that no
one ever really talked about, and that kind of access
model got flipped, you know, whatever they were trying to
do before, and you can are you know, you can
have arguments about like what they thought they were doing.
At this point, it's just like no, like you're not

(06:25):
existing to like protect queer people, You're existing to protect
the Democrats from queer people. And you know, and and
and the situation we're in now is one where and
there was some very very scary reporting coming out of
the Democrats were like it wasn't clear if they were
actually going to try to whip the votes together, like
to actually vote against this stuff, and so like we're

(06:45):
at a point where regardless of whatever you would have
supported before, and again like I think I think they
were wrong before, but like now, no, you had this
is the only way to do this shit, Like there's
no other mechanism.

Speaker 8 (06:57):
Yeah, So this has been something I've especially noticed in
like recording on this because myself and Matti we both
co reported on the initial story breaking the effect that
the Medicaid ban was going in there. Mattie especially did
all the stuff at the bird role. When we initially
started working in the story, it was just a small
tip we had that there was going to be something

(07:20):
big coming in the next funding bill, and I can
definitely speak that at the time, Democrats, lobbyists and so forth,
they were just very like business as usual, right, they
were just even knowing that a lot of this was
kind of had the chance of emerging, and that there

(07:40):
was going to be a lot of bad stuff emerging,
a lot of it was still like trying to use
these whole tactics from way back when to just act
like everything is still as if it's you know, twenty fifteen,
twenty fourteen, and once everything started to unferral and dedicae
band became added in to the bill itself. Witnessing it

(08:07):
all from just a reporting perspective was like it felt
like watching them all go into panic mode and yet
at the same time be like trying to find ways
to kind of push us to the side.

Speaker 6 (08:19):
Yeah, And while I am.

Speaker 8 (08:22):
Of course, like god so incredibly thankful we were able
to play any type of role and getting this done.
Like so, it's become a narrative among so many, for
lack of a better phrasing, proponents of gay ink, proponents
of the status quo, proponents of just you know, your
social democracy types, that the way forward is to be nice,

(08:47):
to beg and plead for our rights, so hope that
they give us it. If we ask really really nicely,
and we beg and plead and we say thank you,
and we don't be too rude or else we'll earn
it and we'll deserve whatever they give. You know, It's
like what ultimately became the final straw was like, we
sent out a push for every single just reader, follower,

(09:12):
every single listener podcast like everyone at home who just
spread this around, put pressure on the politicians, made it
clear this wasn't acceptable, made it clear that no, they
can't just ignore us and act like we don't exist,
and that no, they can't just wash their hands away
and pretend like this is all fine and that their

(09:33):
records came that no, it's this is something that matters,
This is something that has to be fought. And it
really boiled down to just the intense pressure everyone put publicly,
like yeah, and I think it is just a very
ultimate testament to how the true power in any political

(09:55):
system lies not with just a handful of elected NEPO
babies end up getting into office, but with the regular
people who make their voice heard, who band together and
aren't afraid to say, hey, this shit is fucked up.
We need to do something about it.

Speaker 7 (10:22):
Y'all are mentioning how like, whatever debate about the gang
approach before, it's it's not just dead now it's catastrophically failed.
I honestly think that's kind of beyond debate at this point.
But one thing that I think kind of this shows
is that when you're doing with politicians, if all you
have is hey, pretty please be nice to us mater earlier,

(10:43):
you just can you be ignored. But like if they
go no, what else do you have then? If you
don't have some other kind of leverage. And one thing
I've seen consistently at local, state, and federal levels is
the odds are a lot better if people are.

Speaker 9 (10:59):
Ancher and the politicians are afraid.

Speaker 7 (11:01):
Yep, So I think, yeah, nothing, that that's the real
vantage the grassroots have. You know, stop caring about the
politicians are your friends or really care about us? Because
generally the answer is they don't. None of them are
our friends. And more focus on what can you and
your communities, your friends, the larger networks you're part of

(11:23):
do to make their lives miserable until the part of
the SASCO you're trying to fight becomes unsustainable for them too.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
What I heard from people on the on the hill
are people close to people on the hill, is basically
that the whole bird rule maneuver for this specific provision,
there was you know, definitely whispers of it, you know,
especially among lobbyists and maybe some staffers. But until it
was being publicly advocated for this specific tool to be
used by constituents towards senators Democratic senators specifically, it wasn't

(11:55):
really like hugely in consideration or like that wasn't something
they were planning to do in a very strongly like
maybe it would have happened eventually, but it definitely does
seem like the constituent pressure specifically did help kind of
make Democrats realize that, hey, we're watching, you're watching you do,
like whether you're invoking these parliamentary procedures that you aren't

(12:16):
supposed to know about, Like you're not supposed to know
about this stuff, right, It's like it's really obscure stuff
that no one knows about except like super autistic policy ner.
It's like like me and a current probably, but yeah,
and this kind of stuff is really what turns the needles.
And like you can look at the other side too, right,
Like you know, there are extremely effective lobbies in Congress

(12:38):
you can look at you can look at the lobby
that literally got this provision into the bill. They sent
a letter to Speaker Johnson saying, hey, you should expand
this from miners only to adults because we think this
will actually help it survive the burg Row better. And
this was a public letter, right, And you know you
might say, oh, well that's not a big deal. Rights,
It's a letter, right, But how many gay rights organizations
released a letter to Democrats saying they should in book

(13:02):
the Bird Rule? Yeah, I'm not aware of any like.

Speaker 7 (13:06):
I think that's the key part of this is that, yes,
eventually some of those groups did start belatedly moving against this. Yes,
eventually it's probably into a second Some politicians did, in
various ways start moving against this. But I think it's
important not to get kind of the cart before the horse.
That came after the grassroots pressure came after weeks of
people getting angry at them, blowing up their phones, very

(13:28):
public criticism, all the things that I think we're told
a lot of the time by liberals and Democrats were
not supposed to do. You know, be nice or you
know your concerns won't be heard. Well, it turns out
is that the Isaac Ollas is the case. And you
mentioned those conservative lobbyists, people will know, you know. I
don't think it's always a rule that the tactics or
enemy can be adopted for various reasons.

Speaker 9 (13:50):
But the NRA and a.

Speaker 7 (13:51):
Lot of these terrible groups don't go into Congress going hey,
please be nice to us. They go in going do this,
or we're going to make your life Hell yeah. And
if you're if this is terrain, people are going to
fight on. That's how you have to fight as far
as because that's what moves politicians at every level is

(14:12):
it's oh my god, I do not want this group
angry at me.

Speaker 8 (14:16):
And there's one thing I want to add to is
since the bird Rolls and Folk in the Band was
taken out, there has emerged a common narrative online. It's
not really one specific person doing this, it's just kind
of something that's kind of collectively emerged in that claiming
that the credit lies with politicians, with lobbyists, with staffer,

(14:37):
it's with all these anonymous people behind closed doors who
are supposedly the ones that actually did the work, and
no one else matters. I want to strongly emphasize that
that is not only not true, but dangerous rhetoric.

Speaker 9 (14:54):
It's propaganda.

Speaker 8 (14:56):
Yes, it's an attempt to reinforce the role that the
state has in subjugating everyone, to reinforce the fact that oh, no,
the way things are is perfect. You can trust all
these leaders to protect you when you can't. They are
the reason we got in this mess. The Gayank tactics
are the things that have failed and led to this

(15:16):
in the first place. Liberals had plenty of opportunities prevents
this and they didn't. And ultimately, the reason that this
narrative spreads is because at the end of the day,
gay Yank has called that for a reason because well, yes,
their interests happen to align on the realm of queer
rights because they themselves are queer. At the end of

(15:36):
the day, they are still representing the upper class, and
their primary interests are still going to be with protecting
the upper class and protecting the role they have in
subjugating the lower class and subjugating marginalized people who are
not in their economic class.

Speaker 4 (15:53):
Yeah, which is most trans people, like almost all of us.

Speaker 10 (15:57):
Yeah, this is like.

Speaker 7 (15:59):
Really important because I don't think the intersections of queerness
and definitely not transist in class get talked.

Speaker 9 (16:04):
About nearly enough.

Speaker 7 (16:05):
Which is is that queer in transy or overwhelmingly working
class demographics. Yep, like the legislators you know, like Sara McBride,
but also like the people running gag coorganizations are not
just like not generally representative of our wider communities in.

Speaker 9 (16:22):
A lot of ways.

Speaker 7 (16:24):
They also just have had incredibly different lives almost always,
with some exceptions, they've been part of the gentry their
entire lives, and most queer and trades people, especially trans people,
are as far from the gentry as you get. So
that does create like this massive gulf, but also I
think it's one reason these groups are so out of touch.

(16:45):
But also I think it does, you know, if we
put the power back on ourselves, if we realize that
this kind of grasstreots Anger is much more representative of
where queer and trans people are, If this willingness to
fight directly in whatever tactics people choose is much more
like in keeping with like queer culture and tradition and history,

(17:07):
then I think there's a lot of power there. And
I think this is an example of successfully wielding that.
I think Mirror was correct about this propaganda that's kind
of been spreading in the wake, and it was particularly
I think egregious because it specifically like tried to credit
Sara McBride, who had just come off a really obnoxious
interview with The New York Times where she was literally

(17:28):
against all.

Speaker 9 (17:29):
The aggressive trans rights and then after the band.

Speaker 7 (17:32):
Finally got killed, this you know, various sources, and honestly,
I don't know anyone hearing this stuff in whatever capacities is
a journalist act was whatever. I think it's just professionally
good to be more skeptical when these kind of convenient
narratives emerge. But kind of embers, Oh, behind the scenes,
she'd been doing so much. Yeah, sure, in public she'd
been you know, very either low key or refusing defend

(17:55):
trains rights at all, even justifying some of the narratives
of our enemies. But sure she was doing all this
behind the scenes.

Speaker 4 (18:02):
She refused to fucking do anything when they ban trans
people from fucking up bathrooms in DC.

Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yes, like in Capitol Town.

Speaker 8 (18:09):
You wouldn't even defend her own staffers.

Speaker 3 (18:11):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 7 (18:13):
So, like it's worth being skeptical of the claim that, oh,
she was doing so much behind the scenes. However, you know,
if she was prompted in the last week of a
multi week effort to suddenly start taking some action based
on anger, great. Part of the point these strategies is
to prompt people who don't want to act into feeling
like they're forced to act. But I think in twenty
years of covering politics at various levels, if politicians don't

(18:37):
like something, you will know. If they support something, you
will know they will be very loud and very public,
because the public platform is one of the biggest powers
they have, as well as doing whatever behind the scenes
if they're quiet about something or even seem opposite to it,
especially if it involves a group on the front.

Speaker 9 (18:54):
Lines like trans communities.

Speaker 7 (18:56):
And then later on they try to kind of take
back credit of saying, oh, look, you know, we were
doing so much behind the scenes that is pretty universally
attacked to commit to demobilized people.

Speaker 5 (19:08):
Yeah, and I want to note that the point of
us saying this is not to say that you know,
Sarah McBride or you know Saffher's or these other people
didn't do anything, like, of course, they did stuff right like,
they voted, they were voting. Note, they probably made some
phone calls and stuff, right, But what we're saying is like, Okay,
they basically did the bare minimum of what they're supposed
to do right like, and that was only after a

(19:29):
huge pressure campaign from the grassroots and from people who
they would literally not be even in office without. Like
I did the math in an article way back in
that last November, and there's like exit polls showing that
like eighty six percent of LGBTQ people voted for Democrats
last year. That's like a crazy margin. That's like it's

(19:50):
up there with you know, black voters and LGBTQ people
are like the biggest bass of the Democratic Party, right,
Like they would have lost three or four more Senate
seats they would it would have been like a fifty
six fifty seven seat chamber if it were not for
literally the people that are advocating for this healthcare. And
it's so absurd that, like Sarah McBride, what she did was,
if we assume everything that's been said is true about

(20:12):
this is what she's done is basically she got Democrats
to not vote to take away the healthcare of two
hundred thousand trans people, which is like, why was that
even a question like this? This is the actual story
that came out of this. In my opinion, that was
bigger is that this was ever in question that there
might be like seven or eight Democrats who would vote

(20:32):
to ban medicate from two D three hundred thousand trans
people like and the fact that we're supposed to, like
give them a huge applause for not doing that is
kind of obscene to me.

Speaker 7 (20:46):
Yeah, I think the readiness to thank politicians kind of
cuts against the grassroots anger and organizing that works so
well here because you don't want them. And actually I
think it's certainly a good rule not to thank politicians
because what you want constantly keep them in, if that's
the terrain you're going to fight on, is they need
to feel like they're on thin ice. They need to worry,

(21:06):
their staff needs to worry about Okay, we got to
keep this out of the bill, because holy hell, you
do not want those queers mad at you. That's where
you want to get closer to if putting pressure on
politicians is what needs to happen, and so buying these narratives,
thanking them that takes the pressure off. Don't ever do that,

(21:28):
you know, yes, And so I think it's it's kind
of important, and you know, to quote the Internet masterpiece
of old drill tweet like you do underneath circumstances, have
to hand it to them. At best, they acted late
grudgingly after they faced a ton of anger that resulted
and was helped amplified by a ton of work from

(21:51):
bluntly like working.

Speaker 9 (21:52):
Class trans people and working class queer people.

Speaker 5 (21:55):
Yeah, and I would argue that what Representative McBride did specifically,
even assuming that it like help us in the short
term with this bill, the way that she's been kind
of talking about this internally and in the New York
Times interview is actually extremely dangerous for trans people because
I believe it or not, they're not going to stop
with this this bill. They're going to do it again.
They're going to do it again, probably in budget bills

(22:16):
or another reconciliation bill. And at some point it's going
to come down to the wire where Democrats will have
to publicly defend the right of trans people to have
healthcare and to be alive and to exist. That that's
going to happen at some point. And what McBride has
been telling everyone, what she's been telling as her client
on New York Times, what she was telling Democrats behind
the scenes, according to the notice article, is that you

(22:38):
can't talk about these issues. You have to be really quiet.
You just have to do it behind the scenes. Because
it's too hot topic of an issue. You know, you
don't want to accidentally, like I don't know, show the
world that trans people might actually deserve to exist. It
doesn't It doesn't even make sense.

Speaker 9 (22:51):
I think they just doesn't.

Speaker 5 (22:52):
They just like feel gross arguing it, like personally like
they don't there's no political like, there's no like good
political calcitalusts. They just feel gross talking about trans people.
Is my opinion that this is why they don't want
to do it. It's like it's bad for them politically.
They will lose votes, they will lose political power. They
just like hate us. Basically, I don't know, we.

Speaker 8 (23:21):
Should never be nice or kind or thank politicians, like
both Maddie and David had said they are not our friends.
Like there is a popular approach that I think a
lot of people end up having towards these kind of
quote unquote leaders that they are somehow these mythical saviors
of everyone, that they're all leading these nonprofits, they're leading,

(23:41):
these companies, these governments save us. They are not our friends.
They do not give a shit about us. You would
be surprised to things I've heard behind closed doors that
they have said they are not your friends. They hate
every single fucking poor person. They will never say that vocally,
but they hate us.

Speaker 9 (23:58):
Especially the transplants.

Speaker 8 (23:59):
Oh yeah, oh, and it's like us to be subservient
to them until the day we fucking die, because it's
all about consolidating their own power. And the kind of
core of what I'm getting at here is kill the
idol in your head. You should never have an idle like.
There is no person worth idolizing, not only not gay,

(24:22):
and not even only not anyone in this call, this
podcast now, no one at all should be idolized, because
doing that is placing all the power in the hands
of people you don't know, in the hands of people
who are just as human as anyone else. And even
if they're very good, people who do good things are

(24:43):
fundamentally capable of fucking up and doing bad. And if
you idolize someone, you end up condoning everything they do,
whether you even say it or otherwise. It comes with
the territory. Fundamentally, you should not rely on other people
to save you. You should rely on you and your community.
You need to fucking work with your community to bring

(25:03):
about the outcomes you want. And I mean you the
listener like you specifically, Yes, you need to work with
your community to bring about what you need.

Speaker 7 (25:14):
I think that's that's kind of the message that should
emerge from this is no one in Washington organization and
politician are the ones of the power here.

Speaker 9 (25:22):
You are.

Speaker 7 (25:23):
You and your friends are you and your community are
And I know we've said that a little bit before,
but it's worth re emphasizing how much people can do
when they get together and decide to do something about
these issues.

Speaker 4 (25:33):
Yeah, and I think that's a really good note to
end on. However, come up before we do that very
exciting news, do you all want to introduce introduce the
new news network.

Speaker 5 (25:43):
Hell yeah, we have a huge news to announce that's
related to the news website that we used to write
this article about. The bird Roll, formerly known as Maddicast
News will now be known as trans News Network, and
we're basically relaunching completely. We're switching up our business model
from technically was a for profit before, but now it's

(26:03):
going to be part of fiscally sponsored nonprofit of community partners.
And we're also moving off subset to behive and so,
you know, as Mira and David were saying, earlier, like
we don't want you to rely on us to save you,
Like it's kind of like a team effort, right, Like
we do have a part to play. We'll help will
help you give you information, but we also could use

(26:26):
help from you. We could use help from the listener,
especially people who do have you know, some people have
more time, some people have more resources or money. And
one thing that we are looking to do with our
relaunch is to fundraise so we can basically, you know,
ensure that basically our journalists like you know, Mirra and
David have the financial stability they need to continue making

(26:47):
journalism like this. And so we're launching with a fundraiser
and we're gonna we'll have a link I guess with
the podcast description and there will be like you know,
you can get a free gift if you donate a
certain amount. That's a huge way to help. But as well,
you know, you also need to actually listen to the
things that people in your community say, like what are
the things people in your community are saying that can help?
What are other ways that you can contribute back to

(27:10):
save yourselves basically because put all in this together, and yeah.

Speaker 7 (27:14):
I think also one of the reasons I'm really excited
about the Trans News Network and the transition as it were,
to the Trans is that I think our collective experiences
and our experience with this fight as well, have shown
that there is a real need for hard hitting, powerful,

(27:35):
unrepentantly radical and trans journalism, trans journalism that actually gets
trans communities and proceeds kind of to take the fight
from there. And so that's that is badly needed. And
I think we are, from our own experiences and from
kind of what we've all built working together like able

(27:57):
to be part of that.

Speaker 8 (27:58):
Yeah, and just to have one thing because I know
how many trans people artistic and need to hear this
spout out. I'm one of them. This is explicitly a
worker's co op. We are doing this radical from the
ground up. Everyone gets eqal say this is a community thing.
This is not some like, oh, you know, we're doing this,
but then there's a nice CEO who makes five hundred k. Now,

(28:20):
this is the money is going to the journalists who
need it. This is a group of us basically deciding, hey,
we need to fucking keep doing this work. We want to,
we need to support, we need help. Yeah, and we're
joining the bandwagon of all these news outlets doing workers
co ops because that's the only way you can fucking
make money in this industry nowadays.

Speaker 9 (28:41):
It's also the fairest and best way to do it.

Speaker 11 (28:43):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (28:44):
It is it.

Speaker 8 (28:45):
It's objectively the best and most ethical way to do
this under the healthscape of capitalism, yep.

Speaker 5 (28:50):
And Antimyra's point, and I'm gonna we went on this
podcast earlier this year to talk about trans journalism, and
you might want to listen to that as well if
you're curious on like just the struggles that a lot
of us have dealt with, and number one is, you know,
the material need for money basically. And I'm going to
say what I said in that episode again, which is
that one hundred dollars for some people, like you know,

(29:14):
let's say working class transferson is very different compared to
one hundred dollars for people in other social classes. You know,
maybe someone working in tech or something like, maybe you'll
get a dinner at the one hundred dollars and it's
not a big deal to you, right, it could be
life changing for someone else who's literally like spending their
life creating news to help trans people like you know this,

(29:34):
this article that we wrote, it wasn't a huge amount
of money that that took to create that. But at
the same time, we don't have a lot of money
to go around like it's it's being basically a small
number of people. We have a we have a good
number of like paid subscribers to but really in order
to keep expanding the way we want to, we really
need more money and it's going to be so huge
to trans people everywhere.

Speaker 7 (29:56):
So yeah, So if someone has money and it's interested
in support trans journalism, that is all the things we've
just talked about and I think makes a real difference. Yeah,
please sign episode Haide subscriber donate to the fundraiser. Every
single dollar of that we will put to use.

Speaker 8 (30:13):
Yep.

Speaker 5 (30:14):
Our first goal is basically to hire one of our
journalists as a part time W two employee, which should
be literally life changing.

Speaker 4 (30:21):
So yeah, yeah, And when we said this in the
last episode, and we're going to say it again, working
class trans journalism can exist if you support it, And
every single dollar that you sent to a working class
trans journalist is going one hundred times further that it's
going for any other thing you can do to like
like it's going so much further that it is giving

(30:41):
it to like fucking the Human Rights Committee or whatever
the fuck, Like, wait, is what's actually with it? Organization?

Speaker 3 (30:47):
Human Rights Campaign?

Speaker 11 (30:48):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (30:48):
Yeah, here was that one?

Speaker 11 (30:49):
Yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:50):
Well, by the way, did I mention it's tax seductible, So.

Speaker 9 (30:55):
Got to throw that in there.

Speaker 5 (30:57):
If you itemiz your deductions, if you give like one
hundred dollars to us, then you get to pay like
you know whatever, like thirty dollars less goes to the
federal government, which means slightly less money for ice in Israel.
That's how I see it anyway.

Speaker 8 (31:10):
Okay, your God, I'm tired of living off my measly savings,
dear God.

Speaker 5 (31:16):
Please, yeah, you can tell her really trying to sell
this well.

Speaker 7 (31:20):
And also I think, like you know, Mirror and myself
both do other trans journalism work. I'm part of the
editor at The Ashville Blade, which is a local trans
journalist co op, and you know, we've seen how far
that goes. So so yeah, like the more support for
trans journalism period, TRANSUS Network, the Free Radical Asheville Blade,

(31:43):
some of the other projects out there, the better.

Speaker 3 (31:46):
Yep, this has been Nick.

Speaker 4 (31:47):
It happen here, Support, support trans journalism, and go keep
fighting the good fight.

Speaker 12 (32:11):
Hi everyone, and welcome to it could happened here. We
are joined once again by Gillian Brockel, who is once
again going to talk to us about the terrible actually
world of deportation flights, how we can track them, what
we can learn from following them, and what it tells
us about the US's massive deportation regime. Welcome back, Thanks

(32:33):
for joining.

Speaker 13 (32:33):
Us, Thank you for having me, James, I appreciate it.

Speaker 12 (32:36):
You're welcome. All right, let's get going here this We've
got a lot to go whether there's been a lot
of planes deporting.

Speaker 13 (32:41):
People, deporting and removing, so we've really stopped saying deporting
because we don't know who hasn't gotten due process and
who does and does not actually belong to the country
they're being sent to.

Speaker 12 (32:55):
Yeah, in many cases, it's more like what we saw
in the extraordinary, very much so kind of war on Terry.
I think it was pretty a better way to describe it. See,
let's start out. I suppose it was Jibouti.

Speaker 13 (33:07):
Yeah, so the eight men that were sent to Djibouti,
that's the flight I first tracked on May twentieth. They
were taken on a Gulf Stream five operated by Journey
Aviation from Harling in Texas to Shannon Airport in Ireland,
and I you know, called the cops in Ireland to
try and stop. It didn't work, and then they went

(33:30):
to a US military base in Djibouti, where Judge had
ordered them to remain while he considered their case. So
those men are now in South Sudan where Trump wanted
to send them. They were held in Jibouti for six weeks.
We know from court filings that they were held inside
a shipping container in a far corner of the base

(33:53):
near a burn pit where the trash for the base
was burned, and that smoke from this pit was getting
into the shipping container through the events and causing the
men and the ICE guards to cough and feel ill.
There was also an independent journalist named Alex Planck who

(34:14):
got a photo from a source on the base showing
one of the detainees shackled at the ankles and being
escorted by an ICE guard to the restroom because the
shipping container did not have its own restroom. And he
said that most of the members of the military at
the base didn't even know that they were there. And

(34:34):
you know, this base is generally considered like one of
the worst assignments to get when you're in the military.
Plank said he talked to a defense contractor who said
that they stopped sending their employees to that base because
it was just too terrible. So during the six week period,
I and other flight trackers we tracked five trips by

(34:58):
round trip trips by Journey Aviation jets to and from
their base in Miami and Djibouti, all traveling through Shannon.
Presumably these were flights that were swapping out ICE guards,
but we really don't know because ICE does not provide
any information about its air operations. Everything we know is
through court filings and through open source intelligence like the

(35:22):
ADSB Exchange. Then on July third, the Supreme Court cleared
the way for these third country removals, and this one
specifically to South Sudan. All of US flight trekers were
watching the airspace really closely, and we knew that one
of Journey's jets was already there on the ground in Jibouti,
so that's what we were looking for. But then on

(35:45):
the evening of July fifth, about two days later, DHS
announced that it was done. They had removed the detainees
to Saua, Sudan via a military flight earlier that day.
And I have gone over the air track data for
that region six times on ADSB exchange, and I haven't
been able to spot this military flight. And granted, Djibouti

(36:09):
is a real ADSB dead zone, but Juba isn't. Juba
actually has quite good coverage, and you know, Addis Ababa
also has very good coverage which they would have had
to fly over. So it's clear to me that this
military flight, if it happened as DHS claims, probably flew
the entire trip with its transponder turned off, which is

(36:32):
something that the military can do, but it's not standard.
I think people would be surprised how rare actually it
is for military flights to do that, unless they're going
on a combat or a spy mission. Most military aircraft
fly with their transponders on. So if you think about
the Iran air strikes a couple of weeks ago, the

(36:54):
week before the air strikes, there were thirty two Globe
Masters and Strata tankers that flew from the US to
bases in Europe, in a single night that like every
av geek was like, whoa, you know, and we knew
that that happened because they flew with their transponders on,
even though it made it really obvious that some kind
of military operation was probably imminent. And then even during

(37:18):
the air strikes, these aircraft would take off from Europe
with their transponders on, turn them off over the Mediterranean
when they were heading east, do whatever they were doing,
and then turn them back on when they were headed
back toward Europe. So even part of the combat mission,
they still have their transponders on. So the fact that

(37:40):
the flight to Sasudan, which was not a combat or
a spy mission, appears to have flown the entire trip
with its transponder off is quite notable to me. And
you know, I see it as an extension of ISIS
tactics on the ground where they are covering their faces
and refusing to identify themselves. But I'm, you know, kind

(38:00):
of surprised that they got the military to go along
with that.

Speaker 12 (38:04):
Yeah, if it was really a military flight relic, it
could be something kind of military adjacent like some DHS
or other government aircraft, right.

Speaker 3 (38:16):
I mean We don't know.

Speaker 13 (38:18):
Yeah, they said it happened via military flight on this date,
but we don't know.

Speaker 12 (38:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (38:23):
So on July eighth, the spokesperson for the South Sudanese
government told the AP that the men were there and
that they were quote under the care of the relevant
authorities who are screening them and ensuring their safety and
well being. We have no idea what that means. Does
that mean they're in prison there? Does that mean that
they are going to be sent to their countries of

(38:46):
origin as they claimed at one point? We have no idea. Yeah,
And then just a few minutes ago, we're recording this.
On Besiel Day, July fourteenth, the same plane that first
took these men to Djibouti scheduled to take off from
El Paso for Shannon Airport in Ireland. Once again, where
it goes after that, Well, you might know by the

(39:07):
time you hear this, but right now it's anyone's guess.

Speaker 12 (39:11):
Yeah, it's baffling, like some of this stuff, like the
deportations to or no deportations, like rendition to South Sudan.
Right like even Homan, who's the Trump's quote unquote borders
are or immigrations are seems to be asserting that he
has no idea what happened to them once they've landed there,
Like right, at one point they suggested that they didn't

(39:31):
think they would be detained, but like did they just
let them out into the street in I mean, when
people are released from custody in the United States, that's
exactly what they do, right, they let them out into
the street. Like, Yeah, a lot of volunteers here in
San Diego have spent a lot of time, you know,
because often people are released without Sometimes they're released without
religious garments, which are very important to them. Often they're

(39:54):
released without any sort of orientation as like where are
they how they get where they're going? Can they afford
a flight? You know, how do they book a flight?
Do they have the relevant documents to book a flight?
Like it's a complete clusterfuck. And that's it in the US.

Speaker 13 (40:08):
Right, And I mean think about it. If you're like
Laosian or Vietnamese man in your fifties or sixties, which
a lot of these men are older gentlemen, and you're
what just like led out into the streets of Juba,
which is, you know, a big city, but there's a
lot of instability in this country, Like what are you
going to do it a spig dinker? Like what you know?

Speaker 12 (40:31):
Yeah, you're very vulnerable, very vulnerable, and you probably don't
have any material resources. It's not that you can get
your credit card and take out much of money and
fly somewhere else. Nor do these people really have in
many cases anywhere to go, right, Like the reason that
they're being taken to third countries is generally that they
have withholding of removal or Convention against torture claims that

(40:51):
they can't be removed to their home countries. Since we
recorded this, we have found out that people in South
Sudan are being detained. According to a like called The
Daily with your South Studentees Outlet, those people are incarcerated
in South Suda.

Speaker 13 (41:07):
Like the man for me and Mar. You know, they're
arguing that, you know, I suppose, oh, we can't send
him to me and Mar, But if you're going to
send him to another place where he's likely to be tortured,
is really any different? And also they are sending people
to me and Mar. They have departed people to me
and Marr in the last few months, as you James
have reported.

Speaker 12 (41:27):
Yeah, that's right, they've sent more than a dozen people
to MEMMR and seem to be continuing at least they
have not said they will stop. And most of those
people were directly detained by military intelligence and MEMMA when
they landed, so that those people will have been tortured.
And yeah, this this other person who had withholding it
for removal, doesn't mean that he will not be tortured.

(41:49):
I mean, if we look at like migrants making the
journey to the United States are routinely kidnapped, tortured, ransom killed,
sexually assaulted. I've heard of all of these first hand.
I don't suspect it will be any different. You know,
once they're outside the US again, they're extremely vulnerable. And
we saw this a lot in Chitl forty two, when
the Trump administration and the Bid administration would just boot

(42:11):
people back over the border. Often they would do lateral transfers,
so you enter in the San Diego sector, they drop
you in the Laredo sector or somewhere further east, and
those people then have zero network right and often don't
speak Spanish and are extremely vulnerable. It's pretty much the
worst case outcome here.

Speaker 13 (42:30):
Well, unfortunately, in the next part I'm about to tell
you about how all of that is about to increase exponentially.

Speaker 12 (42:37):
Yeah, talking of things that are increasing, they're not actually increasing.
We sort of have to do to advertisements every show
that will get to be one of them. Now, all right,
we are back. I have you enjoyed those adverts here?
We had some new ones for like a religiously sanctient gold,
which I'm very exciting about. This is one thing Jesus

(42:59):
loved it. Money changes a lot of stuff in the
Bible about that.

Speaker 13 (43:04):
I think silver especially right.

Speaker 12 (43:06):
Yeah, I think big precious metals. Guy, love to see
currency speculation. Okay, let's talk about Djibouty, place where the
United States has a big base that it is using
for housing people that is renditioning to other countries.

Speaker 2 (43:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (43:25):
So when we first recorded this, we were just doing
a Djibouti update about the men who were renditioned to
South Sudan, and we knew at the time that there
was another Journey Aviation jet about to take off. And
now we know what happened with that flight. It landed

(43:45):
again in Djibouti and two days later DHS announced that
it had renditioned five more people to the country. Of Swatini,
which I've been to. I reported there in twenty eleven.
I spoke to you teachers who were starving because they
hadn't been paid for eight months by the king, who
you know is the last absolute monarch in Africa. And

(44:08):
you know, the teachers that I spoke to were terrified
to disappear into the prisons that these five men have
now been renditioned to. I worked with another independent journalist
named Alex Plank, and we published a story using OSIN
to prove that that journey flight to Djibouti was carrying

(44:31):
the five men and from there they were transported by
a C seventeen US military you know, huge aircraft that
flew with its transponders off from Djibouti to Swatini to
deliver these men.

Speaker 12 (44:45):
Seems like that is the emerging standard for these military
deportation flights, right at least for the final leg.

Speaker 13 (44:52):
Yeah, so the last week has been pretty crazy.

Speaker 12 (44:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (44:58):
An Omni seven sixties did a removal flight to a
couple places in Africa, and at least two and perhaps
three large military jets also did removal flights from the
United States, landing in Gemo just for fun and landing
in different countries in Africa. Now, the interesting thing about

(45:22):
that and about Journey is that until this past week,
Africa and Central Asia have really been the purview of
this other ice air operator that's really gone under the radar.
But I think it's possible might be doing some things

(45:43):
that are even more sinister than your usual ice air flights.
So this company is called Aircraft Transport Service. They are
Florida base, but they are now all of their aircraft
are based in Mesa, Arizona, which is an ICE hub,
and they're at the end of their five year contract

(46:05):
doing these special high risk removals to dangerous areas or
with you know, allegedly dangerous migrant passengers. Their flights really
began to spike in mid February up until July fourth.
They have five private jets that they lease from their

(46:28):
owners to operate these flights. And I've looked at all
of their flights and it's not clear if they are
doing any flights that aren't ICE, but certainly at least
most of their business is ICE. And so I've tracked

(46:49):
nineteen different trips, different ice removal trips that they've done
since February eighteenth, and most of these have gone to
countries in Africa, and that really began to surge around
April twenty ninth. And what I've noticed is that on

(47:12):
June twenty six, New York Times published a story about,
you know, the Trump administration is pressuring all of these
countries to accept more of these third country removals, and
there's a lot of overlap between that list of countries
and the countries that ATS has been landing in for

(47:35):
the last four months. There is a pair of flights
in particular that I find pretty alarming. They went out
within thirty minutes of each other on May twentieth, which
was the same day that the flight to Djibouti, when
the flight that was supposed to go to Sasudan and

(47:58):
these flights, so these flights started doing their usual ice
removal route, which is, you know, MESA, maybe we stop
in Fort Worth to pick up more migrants, then you
do a fuel stop in San Juan, you do another
fuel stop in Senegal, and then you go wherever you're
going to go in West Africa. These flights, thirty minutes

(48:21):
apart from each other, flew directly from San Juan to
Mauritanium and we're on the ground for thirty minutes, and
then from their flew to Senegal. You know, I can't
prove anything because ICE does not communicate about its air
operations at all, you know, unless they feel like it

(48:43):
because they want to brag about it, or because you know,
they're ordered to bite courts. These flights to me seem
particularly alarming as possible flights where there could have been
third country removals that we don't even know about. And
Marissa Cavas, she's an independent reporter who has a site

(49:04):
called The Handbasket. At the end of April, she reported
that there was a third country removal that hasn't gotten
a lot of attention and I don't know why, because
it's really messed up. A third country removal of an
Iraqi man to Rwanda, which happened on April fourth, after
he legally migrated to the US. He was accused of

(49:25):
murder in Iraq. There's incontroversial evidence proving that he did
not commit this crime. He wasn't even in Iraq when
it happened, but the Biden administration continued with his removal,
and because he couldn't go back to Iraq because he
would have been executed. They had been looking for a

(49:47):
safe third country for him. They did not finish that
when they handed the keys over to the Trump administration.
So on April fourth, he was removed to Rwanda. And
he has a lot of media contacts, and no one
has heard from him. I have not seen a report
about him, you know. I tried to contact his family,

(50:08):
was unsuccessful. I contacted his attorney and didn't hear back.
So ATS operated a flight. It began at about eleven
thirty on April second to this Fort Worth airport that's
right next to an iced attention center San Juan, Senegal,

(50:29):
and then landed in Nairobi. Now Nairobi is not Kigali
in Rwanda, but they're only about an hour apart. And
if you look at the flight data, the aircraft at
that point had been operating for about twenty three hours straight,
which is stretching the boundaries of legality, even if you
have two crews. So there's a lot of reasons why

(50:52):
ICE might have taken him to Nairobi and then done
something else for the last leg I think the most
likely the explanation is that the crew had to rest
and I decided that they didn't want to wait, so
they may have chartered a local puddle jumper to take them,

(51:12):
you know, over the lake to Quida.

Speaker 12 (51:14):
It's pretty common, I think too, when I've flew into Kikali,
I think I've stopped in Kinshasa and Nairobi. I don't
know if it's a big planes can't land there. It's
just the kind of the way it works. Fewer people
are flying to Kigali directly from the USO Europe than
are going to places like King Shasta, Nairobi, so it
might just be that they don't do direct flights. But yeah,
I don't think I've ever done a direct like big

(51:37):
plane flight, right.

Speaker 13 (51:39):
It seems that the only aircraft going in and out
of there are going to Nairobi and Kampala, and from
there you connect somewhere else.

Speaker 12 (51:47):
It's a pretty small airport.

Speaker 13 (51:49):
So so yeah, that's ATS. They've kind of flown under
the radar because global x is doing so much more
in terms of numbers. But I think it's quite possible
that ATS's mission for the past few months has been
to sort of pilot program small amounts of third country

(52:11):
removals to these different countries, just like omar Amin because
after Omaramin was sent to Rwanda. The State Department sent
a cable that Mrsakabas obtains saying, oh man, it totally worked.
This is great. Let's send ten more people.

Speaker 12 (52:27):
At a cost to one hundred thousand head right, right again,
maybe suggesting cars rationally, one hundred grand is going to
cover more than your paperwork, you.

Speaker 13 (52:37):
Know, right, And just to be clear about you know,
the cost all of these military flights that have been
flying around Africa now doing isis dirty work. Those cost
about twenty eight five hundred dollars an hour to operate,
and of course cost is the least important thing here.

(52:58):
But my god, you know, for an administration that claims
to care about government waste.

Speaker 12 (53:04):
Yeah, this is ridiculous. We don't know how much they're
paying people in South Sudana, the monarchy of Aswardini. We
don't know what they're sort of bribing these people to accept.
I just checked with Mauritania. It's currently a level three
State Department travel warning telling people to reconsider travel due
to terrorism and crime. That's why we're sending people. I

(53:25):
have explained the many and varied human rights abuses that
have happened in Mauritania on the show before, so you
can go back and listen to other episodes. Do you
want to want to hear about those hundreds of Mauritanians,
if not thousands, entered the United States in the tail
end of the Biden administration. I'm thinking like it was

(53:45):
late summer of twenty twenty three when I recall seeing
many of them. Just in my workdown at the border.
We often get very hot, like September's Octobers in southern California,
and a few times have come across Mauritanian people who
are in really bad just during those sort of hot months,
and it's always stuck with me that, like some of

(54:05):
the stories they had were horrific treat and I'm sure
that it's some of those people who are now being
sent back and just the fact that they tried to
leave will have made things even worse for them.

Speaker 13 (54:16):
So yeah, I mean these flights going to Mauritania, which
includes one of the military flights last week, you know,
slavery still exists in Mauritania. There's a minimum of ninety
thousand people there who are still enslaved. That's the low
end of the estimates. And you know, it's been illegal

(54:38):
since nineteen eighty one, but the practice is really protected
by a culture of secrecy, not just among Mauritanian elites,
but the multinational corporations who are embedded there and will
just kind of look the other way while they're you know,
extract natural resources with people in the minds that like,

(54:59):
they're not really a check if they're enslaved or not. So,
you know, maybe we're doing third country deportations and removals there.
Maybe we're just sending Mauritanians back to a really horrible place.

Speaker 12 (55:12):
Yeah, and it doesn't hugely matter, right, We're sending people
back to a place where they are very likely to
be tortured, to be as you say, like faust un
free labor, to be incarcerated without having committed a crime.
Doesn't really matter whether's people are wont it's fucked. The
embassy doesn't let us people drive around Mauritania at night,
have to be in the capitol. They can only walk

(55:34):
in certain places. Give an idea of like how this
double standard is applied talking of multinational corporations, I would
love to hear from. So let's do that now, all right,
we are back and we were talking about the safety

(55:54):
of private jets. Some of these flights have some pretty
horrific safety practices, right, and this, like, when you mentioned this,
it instantly reminded me of a thing that I have
had no luck trying to sell stories on for four years.
It is standard practice for ICE and TVP to transport children,

(56:15):
children in their custody without proper child seats or other restraints, right,
which is you know, to my knowledge, you can get
a ticket for that in some states. Right, Like if
you're driving a child, like you put a little two
year old in the seat without a like a child
seat that they have to have, Like, rightfully, you're endangering
that person's life. But apparently our government's doing it every day.

Speaker 13 (56:38):
Yeah, I mean the law doesn't apply to the upholders
of the law.

Speaker 12 (56:41):
Right right, Yeah, many such cases.

Speaker 13 (56:44):
Many such cases which I'm about to explain more.

Speaker 12 (56:46):
Yeah, yeah, let's learn some more.

Speaker 13 (56:49):
So these ice flights, you know, most of these are
happening on larger jets A three twenties owing seven thirty
sevens inside the cabin. REPUBLICA has done some really good
reporting on this from April. There's another outlet called Capitol
and Maine that also did a terrific story in twenty
twenty one, and the University of Washington also has a

(57:10):
lot of research and information on what it's like inside
the cabin of these planes. And you know, as a
former flight attendant, I find it fucking disgusting and really unsafe.
Flight attendants on these flights are not allowed to look
at or speak to migrant passengers. They aren't allowed to

(57:31):
serve them food or water. All of the migrants on
these flights are shackled wrist to ankles, and some of them,
if they're allowed or distressed or just annoying, the ice
guarts are wrapped in restraint blankets and harnesses and have
hoods put over their faces. Just this morning, JJ and DC,

(57:51):
one of the ice air trackers on Blue Sky, posted
a video of a migrant passenger in a hood being
loaded onto a Vello jet in Seattle and he's being
pushed by three ice guards and falls to the ground
face first and then they just sort of man handle
him back up the stairs.

Speaker 12 (58:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (58:11):
So, you know, as a former flight attendant, I just
want to say, in the event of an emergency, how
the fuck is a flight attendant supposed to evacuate the
passengers in ninety seconds when their seat belts are getting
tangled in their handcuffs and all they can do is
shuffle down the aisle when they can't see because they
have a hood over their head. If the cabin loses pressure,

(58:35):
how can they reach up for their oxygen masks when
their handcuffs are attached by a chain to their leg irons.
How are they going to get the mask on themselves
if they're wearing a hood? How are they going to
get their life fests on when they can't reach back
to wrap the strap around their waists? And these emergencies
are not theoretical. We know from court filings that between

(58:58):
twenty fourteen and twenty twenty one there were six emergency
evacuations of ice air flights. Of those incidents, the evacuation
times of only two are known, and they took two
and a half minutes and seven minutes. And to be clear,
we only know about those evacuations because of lawsuits. So
there may very well have been more evacuations since twenty

(59:20):
twenty one and we just don't know about it.

Speaker 12 (59:23):
Yeah, I mean it's likely right, like the Biden administration
did it, especially when they were deporting Haitian people like
huge numbers of flights.

Speaker 13 (59:32):
Right until May and June September twenty one, when Biden
did the Haitian mass deportation. That was the highest amount
of deportations that witness at the border has recorded.

Speaker 12 (59:44):
Yeah. That was also the last time I was able
to write about Biden's administration policy nbc BA. I think
I crossed the line saying something mean about Uncle Joe.

Speaker 3 (59:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (59:58):
Yeah, but we should be very clip. This has been
a bipartisan thing.

Speaker 13 (01:00:01):
Oh yes, oh yes. So on each of these flights
there is generally one or two ICE officials and at
least fifteen ICE contracted guards. Migrant passengers have reported being verbally,
physically and sexually abused by these guards, and flight attendants
on board have no power to stop them. In twenty seventeen,

(01:00:24):
ninety two migrant passengers traveling from the US to Ethiopia
were left shackled on a plane in the car Senegal
for twenty three hours because the crew timed out. They
were kicked, dragged, tied up, threatened by ICE guards, and
when the labs filled up, they soiled themselves. Flight attendants

(01:00:46):
report that the guards on these flights regularly ignore their
safety commands. And will even you know, try and nark
on them. They'll complain to the flight attendant's supervisors at
their airline when they're asking people to follow federal aviation
regulations just like everyone else in America has to do.

(01:01:08):
But when flight attendants have complained to the FAA about this,
the FAA defers to ice. You know, this is not
just a matter of like, it's disrespectful, two dangerous flight attendants.
You know, this is extremely dangerous. And one of the
most important parts of aviation safety is something called crew

(01:01:29):
resource management or CRM. This is something that all pilots
and flight attendants are trained in every year and have
to retrain every year, and basically CRM boils down to
pilots need to listen to the flight attendants about safety,
and flight attendants are trained to be assertive with the
pilots about safety. This was developed after a notorious incident

(01:01:51):
in the nineteen seventies where a plane was on the ground,
it was filling up with smoke, and the pilot ignored
flight attendants please to evacuate, you know, just for some
like garden variety sexism probably, and everyone on board died
of smoke inhalations. Two hundred and eighty people. So after that,
crews are trained every year to really flatten the hierarchies.

(01:02:13):
You know, I think people think like, oh, the captain
has four epaulets and the first officer has three, and
you know, oh hierarchy.

Speaker 3 (01:02:20):
No.

Speaker 13 (01:02:20):
Air crews are actually very like the hierarchies are flattened
intentionally on purpose. They train to flatten it across job titles,
across gender education, racial cultural divides, because it is safer
to fly that way. When everyone feels that, you know,
they have a stake in safety and they'll be heard

(01:02:44):
if they say something about safety, everyone else is safer.
So if you've got these ice guards stepping into the
middle of that, throwing their weight around, overruling flight attendants
and pilots, and the FAA isn't backing them up, you
have confusion about who's in power on board, you have

(01:03:04):
a total breakdown of CRM and so beyond just like
people physically being able to get off of the planes,
this is so unsafe to have this kind of environment
with these guards. So the last incident I want to
talk about was in June seventeen. To me, this is
the scariest one of all of the safety incidents. There

(01:03:27):
was an Ice Air emergency. This flight landed, it was
filling up with smoke. This is almost just like the
plane in the seventies. The flight attendants told the pilots
to evacuate, and the pilots ignored them. A bunch of
people on board were hospitalized. We don't know how many
or who, but frankly, everyone on board could have died

(01:03:48):
from smoke inhalation very easily. And I really think you
can point to the presence of the ICE guards here
as a big factor in the failure to evacuate. That
is not how pilots are trained.

Speaker 8 (01:04:02):
Jeez.

Speaker 13 (01:04:02):
So again, Yeah, if you're a flight attendant or a
pilot and you do not want your airline to contract
with Ice, now is the time to tell them. Tell
your union help flight attendants for Global X and a
Vello get jobs somewhere else. Ye, you know, do whatever
you can to slow this down, because it is all
about to increase if they get their way.

Speaker 12 (01:04:24):
Yeah, jeez, that is fucking bleak.

Speaker 13 (01:04:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:04:28):
Yeah, you said it's going to get bigger. Like, let's
talk about that, Like, can you kind of zoom out
and explain Ice Air to us, and like We've talked
about these small flights a lot, but like that's not
the bulk of the flights that they do right.

Speaker 13 (01:04:42):
Right, So ice Air right now has twelve large jets,
you know, a three twenty seven thirty sevens chartered from
different airlines that they're using for their deportations, and then
these private jets are you know, used less for these
smaller high risk deportations. They're running like thirty thirty five
flights a day at this point. So May twentieth turned

(01:05:04):
out to be like kind of a big day for
I Air because that was the Djibouti flight. That was
when ats started using the Tyson call sign. It's also
the day that the larger operation really just searched in activity.
And you know, the other flight trackers tell me that
ice Air used to take weekends and holidays off and

(01:05:25):
they don't do that anymore. They were deporting people on
juneteenth and July fourth. In May, ice operated a record
number of flights, which was at least one thousand and
eighty three flights that flight trackers recorded, one hundred and
ninety of which were removal flights. And then the rest
are like these internal shuffle flights between different ICE attention

(01:05:48):
centers and return trips, and then in June they set
a record again with one one hundred and eighty seven flights,
of which two hundred and nine were removal flights. All
of this data is a witness at the border dot
org and it's kept by Tom Cartwright, who is a
real hero. He has been tracking flights basically by himself

(01:06:10):
for five and a half years, and he publishes very
detailed monthly reports. And yeah, as you said earlier, you
know he's been tracking this through the Biden administration too,
which is how we know that, you know, the Trump
deportation machine from the first term, you know, Biden didn't
really slow it down that much, and now Trump is

(01:06:33):
picking up the reins again and surging it again. So
the airlines right now that are flying these larger removal
flights are global X also called Global Crossing Airlines, a
Velo Airlines, Eastern Air and on the international and except

(01:06:54):
for ATS, who you know I talked about earlier, has
their own contract. All of these carriers who fly for
ICE are subcontracted through a flight broker called CSI Aviation.
CSI Aviation signed a five year contract with the Biden
administration last year that has been paused because of a
lawsuit from a rival flight broker that wanted that contract.

(01:07:18):
So since late February, CSI has been brokering these flights
on a six month no bid contract that started at
one hundred and twenty eight million dollars and was quickly
doubled and then went up to two hundred and seventy
four million, and then just a couple of days ago,
I don't think anyone else has reported this, it was
raised again to three hundred and thirty nine million dollars.

(01:07:40):
So they've got about sixty million dollars left on this
contract for the next six weeks, and that's before the
huge windfall and funding that ICE just got from Trump's
big beautiful bill. The administration has said it once to
triple deportations, and right now they just don't have the
airct that and DHS. On Twitter and Instagram a couple

(01:08:04):
of days ago, they posted this really ghoulish meme that
said fire up the deportation planes, and there was like
a skeleton lifting weights with a caption that said my
body is a machine that turns ICE funding into mass deportations.

Speaker 1 (01:08:22):
So that's gross.

Speaker 12 (01:08:23):
Yeah, that was really weird. They've been doing a lot
of this like post stuff right.

Speaker 13 (01:08:29):
Like I said, they only have twelve jets right now,
and they're flying those capacities, so they can't triple deportations
unless they start bringing in more airlines. So the other
day I posted a call to action to flight attendants
and to flight attendant unions saying, you know, if you
don't want your airline to do these flights, now is

(01:08:50):
the time to tell them.

Speaker 12 (01:08:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:08:51):
CSI Aviation is run by a man named Alan Way
and his daughter, Deborah Mastis. Alan Way is the former
chair of the New Mexico Republican Party. He's hosted a
bunch of Trump rallies over the years. He ran unsuccessfully
for Senate and governor of New Mexico in the past
on an anti immigrant platform, which local media at the

(01:09:15):
time pointed out, you know, well, you're mostly doing deportation flights,
so that would really be enriching yourself. His daughter, Deborah Masis,
was one of the fake electors in New Mexico during
the twenty twenty election.

Speaker 3 (01:09:29):
Wow Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:09:31):
She was subpoenaed by the House committee investigating the January
sixth insurrection and the New Mexico State Attorney General's office
investigated her. Eventually, they're not press charges because she and
the other fake electors claimed they didn't know they're fake
certifications were going to be used for anything illegal. And

(01:09:51):
the Project on Government Oversight has some pretty good reporting
on CSI aviation. If you want to see.

Speaker 12 (01:09:57):
That, yeah, it will put it in this show notes like, yeah, insane,
Like this whole thing is just like complete. I would
watch or look at some of the footage from inside
deportation flights because it is inhumane.

Speaker 13 (01:10:12):
It's yeah. I mean, I hope that any flight attendants
who are forced to work these flights can find a
way to quit. But if they can't quit for financial reasons,
because all of these people are you know, very underpaid,
you know, I hope that they can provide us with

(01:10:32):
more information about what is going on inside these flights.

Speaker 12 (01:10:36):
Yeah, definitely, that will be at least give people a
chance to see what their tax dollars are being spent on.

Speaker 2 (01:10:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:10:42):
I mean one of the things that I've been thinking about,
you know, terrorism is like a really loaded word that
gets misused a lot against black and brown people, But
I think that's the right word for all of these removals.
Because they're random, they're violent, they're getting civilians for political purpose,

(01:11:04):
and they're designed to frighten the larger population potential victims.
Right the Trump administration is trying to scare all undocumented
immigrants and anyone adjacent to them, since you know, a
lot of citizens are being arrested too.

Speaker 12 (01:11:21):
Yeah, or green cardholders, people with buckets of documents are
being deported a rendition right.

Speaker 13 (01:11:26):
Now, and they're saying, you know, they're trying to make
them so scared that if they don't self deport they
could end up in South Sudan, they could end up
in Mauritania. You know, that's what this policy is designed
to do, is to terrorize the people of this country.

Speaker 11 (01:11:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:11:45):
Absolutely, it's pretty bleak. We have an encrypted email address,
so if you are I guess a deportation flight attendant
and you would like to talk to someone, I can
pasidoron to give you in two or you might have
you any crypted email address and you can plug it
if you do.

Speaker 13 (01:12:02):
Yeah, you can definitely leak to me on signal.

Speaker 12 (01:12:05):
Okay, yeah, nice. We have cool zone tips at ProtonMail
dot com or cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
I believe they both work. It's only encrypted if the
address that it's sent from is also encrypted. So in
this instance you would need a proton mail or you
can cook up your own encryption. Yeah, that would be
the way to get in touch if you want to

(01:12:27):
get in touch. This this just fucking sucks, like and
there's going to be so much more of it in
the next couple of years with this budget, Like this
is going to become well it already isn't everyday thing.
This is going to become even more common.

Speaker 8 (01:12:42):
I know.

Speaker 12 (01:12:42):
They're also like they're doing some weird shuffle to avoid
sanctions with Venezuelan Airlines.

Speaker 13 (01:12:47):
Right, yeah, they fly I believe it is, to Honduras,
and then Venezuela flies their own plane to Honduras to
pick them up.

Speaker 12 (01:12:57):
Right yeah cool, I'm sure to sup. I have a
great time. Want to get back to Venezuela. And in
Venezuela's also offering humanitarian flights for a citizens who are
stuck in Mexico right now, So like, if people want
to do something about this, what can they do?

Speaker 13 (01:13:11):
The first thing you can do is boycott Avello Airlines.
They are commercial airlines, so don't fly with them. You
can write to the airlines you use regularly right now
and tell them that if they are considering contracting with
ICE not to that you will boycott them too. You
can complain to the FAA about the safety issues on

(01:13:33):
these flights. I doubt that they'll do anything, but I
think there's value in saying something anyway. If you have
contacts in aviation or in any of the countries that
these people are being sent to, and you find something out,
you can leak to me on signal. And if you
work in aviation, tell your airline and your union right
now that you are not going to operate these flights.

(01:13:56):
And if you want to get started tracking flights yourself,
we need a lot of help, especially in the overnight hours.
A good first step is to go to Globe dot
adsb exchange dot com and in the general search window
type Tyson.

Speaker 12 (01:14:13):
You've been doing really, really great reporting on this, and
I'm sure people want to continue to follow it. It
is a shame that other outlets are not running it.

Speaker 13 (01:14:21):
But God bless them.

Speaker 12 (01:14:23):
Yeah, just try.

Speaker 13 (01:14:27):
Out there if you want to know what James is
talking about. There's a brief explanation at the end of
one of my stories that I've written recently at hard
g History dot ghost dot io. I have a couple
stories there about the recent flights to Africa, and you
can read the bottom and you'll find out what James
is talking about.

Speaker 12 (01:14:46):
Yeah, it's a little teaser for you, right, go get
the t Yeah, Okay, thank you for joining us. I'm
sure we'll hear from you again soon.

Speaker 13 (01:14:57):
Thank you, James.

Speaker 4 (01:15:18):
It it could happen here, the podcast about I don't know
how am I supposed to do the pivot from like.

Speaker 12 (01:15:25):
It the Stephen King novel, which could at any point
happen in a place where you are.

Speaker 4 (01:15:30):
I was trying to get to the podcast coming to
you not quite live from a place where a bunch
of just masked guys are driving people off the street.

Speaker 3 (01:15:38):
But that works too, Stephen.

Speaker 4 (01:15:40):
King, good pivot. Haven't done that one yet. I'm your host,
Miya Wong. With me is James Stout, and we're also
joined by the wonderful freelance journalists melbuer At a fucking Christ.

Speaker 3 (01:15:51):
Holy shit.

Speaker 4 (01:15:54):
Yeah, so that happened simultaneously as I inhaled and like
apparently a piece of popcor were and just like fucking
rail gunned into the back of my throat.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
Relief for this.

Speaker 6 (01:16:05):
All professionals here.

Speaker 3 (01:16:11):
This is going great. Is journalist John Pactor carpentual. Good lord,
I'm so.

Speaker 4 (01:16:19):
Good at my job. So what we're gonna be talking
about is the continued resistance to ice and ice actions
in LA and in sort of broader parts of California
as stuff has shifted and intensified. So both of you two,
welcome to the show.

Speaker 6 (01:16:36):
Glad to be here, Happy to be here.

Speaker 4 (01:16:39):
So I think the place I want to start is,
could you give people just kind of a brief reminder
of what happened during that sort of big flare up
several weeks ago of protests and ice actions in LA.

Speaker 3 (01:16:53):
I can probably speak a little bit more to that.

Speaker 10 (01:16:54):
So as part of the federal immigration raids that Donald
from promise, Los Angeles was one of the first targets
of pretty large scale and pretty frankly random immigration raids.
So it started in early June where you started to
see you know, massed agents without oftentimes badges or names

(01:17:19):
on their badges or sometimes even serial numbers. First they
started in home depots areas like that, just sort of
running around parking lots, tackling people and throwing them into
buses pretty understandably, Los Angelinos started to protest, and they
started to protest pretty hard, and that happened for a

(01:17:40):
few weeks. Eventually the Marines in the National Guard were
both deployed to federal buildings more large scale protests, and
that sort of brings us to the last few weeks,
which I think mel can probably speak to.

Speaker 14 (01:17:54):
Yeah, so, you know, the National Guard and the Marines
were deployed like mid right, and we kind of saw
a little bit of petering out of like the mass
protests that we saw at the beginning of June. But
still there were a number of organizations and groups that

(01:18:15):
were trying to keep tabs on the sort of roving
patrols that were happening in Los Angeles throughout the month
of June and early July. So these groups were taking
in tips and trying to maintain a sort of map
of rapid response locations to the ice detainments, kidnappings, suspension

(01:18:37):
of constitutional rights, if you will. And so what we
saw was, you know, a good number of weeks of
social media sort of proliferating these posts about where ice
patrols had gone. And because the you know, and this
is something that organizations have spoken to in the last
couple of weeks. But because they're pounder, surveillance, as you

(01:19:00):
could say, by these organizations was pretty successful. The sort
of ice patrols began to not happen throughout the later
half of the day.

Speaker 6 (01:19:09):
They would happen early in the morning.

Speaker 14 (01:19:11):
They would you know, hit a location, grab as many
people as possible, pull them.

Speaker 6 (01:19:16):
Into the van, and take them away.

Speaker 14 (01:19:18):
And they had gotten it down to something like less
than ten minutes that they were on scene, and it
made it a little bit difficult for folks to be
able to respond forcefully to those events. And they kept
it to parking lots, car washes, you know, businesses, random
street vendors, places that they could enter quickly and leave quickly.

(01:19:41):
We saw in the middle of June and the later
half of the month that if they were trying to
execute warrens, for example, in a neighborhood, they would be
blocked in almost immediately by neighbors. So you can see
that there was a pretty consistent response by Angelino's across
the board as.

Speaker 6 (01:19:59):
Much as they could.

Speaker 14 (01:20:00):
And while this was happening, there was also a pretty
dedicated group of individuals who were spending a lot of
time outside the Mentro Detention Center downtown in downtown LA,
which is where many of these vans were going in
and out of before they were taking detainees elsewhere. Yeah,
so you know, across the board, what we've seen is
quite a bit of organizing. Much of this organizing is

(01:20:23):
decades in the making, especially in Los Angeles, but also
in places like Ventura County and a little bit up
north where you see the same kind of work that's
being done. In the later half of the month, early July,
I should say, we began to see some pretty intense
movements by Border Patrol, most notably in MacArthur Park on

(01:20:49):
July eighth, I believe, and in the cama Rio Oxynard area,
which is right on the border of Venture County and
other county name escapes me at to cannabis farms that
next week, and.

Speaker 6 (01:21:03):
Those were large scale operations.

Speaker 14 (01:21:07):
A lot of militarized Border Patrol National Guard I believe
helped with both of those operations as well, and also
saw some pretty intense community response to those.

Speaker 12 (01:21:20):
So, Sean, you mentioned you wanted to talk a little
more about the organizing right the way people that are
organized to try and kind of resist this, or at
least like do what they could.

Speaker 10 (01:21:29):
One of the things that I think is interesting, this
isn't unique to Los Angeles. We're seeing groups organize what
I've been hearing called megri patrols here in Los Angeles.
There's also pretty heavy touch of this from San Diego.
One of the things that I thought was really really
interesting was in Los Angeles has been preparing for a

(01:21:50):
moment like this since the late sixties. Frankly, you know,
you have groups that have a pretty solid through line
since the mid sixties at the dawn of the Chicano movement,
and these are groups that already have experience with large
scale attainments. Not throughout the city like we were seeing
the last few weeks, but there's this really impressive level

(01:22:14):
of organization. Where I saw a detainment in Boyle Heights
of a gentleman who was accused of.

Speaker 3 (01:22:21):
Getting a police officer.

Speaker 10 (01:22:22):
Within I think three minutes of them arriving, not only
was there one or two people, but there was like
fifteen people already onseen Boyle Heights is pretty singular in
its preparation. However, it was not uncommon. I mean in
MacArthur Park. There was a detainment of a few people
who were walking down the street. I was maybe eight

(01:22:43):
minutes away when I heard about the raid. There was
already like ten people there, including a college professor, including
members of Union del Barrow and Attendance Union. I have
a bit of a theory that I don't know if
Los Angeles was chosen because they wanted to prove a point.
And there is a part of me that wonders seeing

(01:23:04):
how quickly people are responding to these raids. There's a
part of me that wonders at that point was even made.

Speaker 12 (01:23:10):
I think the government's actions can be understood in like
owning the libs and like if your Facebook uncle got
to make government policy, it wouldn't look that different from this.
So I think that was certainly like the point early on,
and they'd have detained a lot of people in LA Like,
but yeah, they're organizing. You have very entrenched work in
class communities, even going back way before the sixties, right,

(01:23:31):
like if we look at the zoot suit, right, if
we look at the Brassero program and the attempts to
expel people after that, Like if we look at United
farm Workers, like across LA County, we have a long
history of organizing, so like it's a hard target for
them for sure.

Speaker 4 (01:23:47):
And I think it's really interesting listening to YouTube talk
about this matches a lot of what I was hearing
about the way that it all kind of decentralized in
between sort of May and June. And the thing that
reminds me of really interestingly is what was happening to
sort of other protest movements but reversed. You know, if
you look at like the Pala Side encampments right where

(01:24:08):
it's okay, you put a bunch of people in one
spot and then they all get crushed because the police
can bring overwhelming numbers. And it feels like the raid
response has almost been the reverse of that, where ices
had to adopt, at least in that period, had to
adopt the sort of hyper bolbile in and out like
rapid strike kind of thing, like because they were suddenly
faced with a scenario where like if they tried to

(01:24:29):
like stay in mass in an area, it went really
badly for them. And that's absolutely fascinating to me.

Speaker 10 (01:24:34):
One of the things that I think is interesting is
the first few days you saw a pretty heavy amount
of raids sort of in the Central Courridor near downtown
or you know, near East Hollywood, things like that, and
those were extremely heavily protested. You know, there was a
protest sort of the first day of when the raids

(01:24:55):
really really started in the garment districts or in the
fashion district excuse me. Within minutes there was like seventy
five people there and you know, they were shouting. You know,
they were there before all of the vehicles for federal
agents were actually there. That's the one where you know,
you saw quite a bit of Union folks who arrive

(01:25:16):
extremely quickly, you know. And one of the other things
that I think is really interesting about this organizing is
you're also seeing regular people who I don't know if
they normally would organize something where they're sort of facing
off with federal agents.

Speaker 3 (01:25:32):
You're starting to see.

Speaker 10 (01:25:33):
Them mobilized in a way that I don't know if
you would normally see them. You know, one of the
ladies that I spoke to as part of the rapid
Response sort of network is a teacher. And I talked
to her and I was like, hey, like, why do
you do this? And she told me She's like, look
like I teach in a heavily immigrant community. My job

(01:25:54):
is to take care of these kids, and unfortunately now
part of that is driving around the neighborhood and looking
for white vans filled with people wearing masks.

Speaker 4 (01:26:06):
That's both incredibly moving and beautiful and also one of
the most hideous things I've ever heard in my entire life.

Speaker 12 (01:26:15):
There were quite a few teachers at the SEIU rally
which was on the ninth of June, which was with
David Wuerta, the president of the SCIU, was detained, I guess,
allegedly for obstructing federal agents are correctly.

Speaker 8 (01:26:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:26:29):
I met a lot of people who were older who
I think were like soidedly liberal in their politics, but
not particularly radical, And it was a really interesting combination
of these older people who were outraged and somewhat inexperienced
in street politics and younger people who were outraged and
somewhat inexperienced in street politics. Like it wasn't the same

(01:26:51):
crowd that you see the people who I'd seen in
twenty twenty when I covered stuff in La. Haven't really
covered much of the Palestine stuff in LA, but a
lot of the people who I interviewed in June were
citizen children of non citizen parents, and like they felt
like an obligation on behalf of their community and their
family to show up, And like it was really moving

(01:27:14):
to see people who were clearly very afraid by the
third night of like unhinged state violence. Right, Like Sean
was there too about the amount of like les lethal's
that were just being discharged by the third night, Like
the protest was split up, and so was the policing.
Like there wasn't really ever a point where all the
protesters were able to get together because the police had

(01:27:36):
so many roads bucked off and like you were just
turned down the street and they'd be firing Leslie thought
you'd turned down the street and there's tear gas. You
turned down the street and there's pepper balls like all
over downtown LA. And these people were very afraid, but
they still kept coming out, And that was quite like
inspiring to me.

Speaker 4 (01:27:52):
Yeah, And I mean, I think that's the situation that
we're in right where you know, the sort of the
fear and the horror has to is being forced to
give way to action because the only alternative to that
is just watching them take your family and take your
neighbors and taking the people you love. The Carabell until
one day they take you and it doesn't have to

(01:28:12):
get to there.

Speaker 12 (01:28:14):
Maybe you know what else is going to take you,
God specifically take money from your wallet. It's these incredible
products and services which we're lucky enough to be able
to share with our listeners.

Speaker 3 (01:28:27):
We are back.

Speaker 4 (01:28:27):
I notably did not want to do an actual pivot there,
but we're back.

Speaker 10 (01:28:32):
I think, you know, speaking on sort of the climate
of Los Angeles and at the same time this sort
of insistent joy that Los Angeles has. There's a very
famous song most of your listeners may have heard it, Lachona,
which is basically just a song about a woman who

(01:28:52):
won't listen to her husband and gets drunk, and you
see it at every single protest in Los Angeles involving
immigrant rites. And one of the interesting things about it
is multiple times at the protests, I would see this
beginning of dancing to La Chona, and then multiple times

(01:29:13):
it would be broken up. I think this was the
thirteenth mid June. And eventually it got to a point
where I remember saying, you know, these protesters seem to
really want to listen to this song, and I have
a feeling it's going to end up being played in
a weird spot. What ended up happening is by the

(01:29:33):
end of it, I saw a bunch of people with
like these gnarly bruises all over their body, you know,
welts from less Lethal's fire, in the middle of the street,
dancing to La Chona. They finally got their chance, and
you know, it's whenever the Dodgers win. This speaks to
sort of the specific culture of Los Angeles. I have
seen more fires and people dancing around them to that

(01:29:57):
song than any other song, including protests, so throughout the
last five years.

Speaker 3 (01:30:03):
But there's also you know.

Speaker 10 (01:30:04):
I live in Boyle Heights and one of the really
interesting and kind of horrific things is I had sort
of been cued up and trained to listen for the
ice Cream Man, both the actual van and there's a
guy that does Rospatos who just walks down the street
honks a bicycle horn. And I am an actual child,

(01:30:25):
and every time I heard that bicycle horn, just like
I'm sick. It would just like run out with a
lot of cash and by Rospatos, And for about a
week you didn't hear him. He didn't A lot of
businesses were closed and then After about a week he
started to see younger people that looked kind of like
the guy that used to do it, you know, usually

(01:30:45):
the son or the daughter sort of working for their parents.
Now we're starting to see, you know, a little bit
of a more of a return to regularity. But you know,
one of the things that was really interesting about all
this organizing is, you know, you have unions. You also
have like former politicians and things like that. You know,
I got an email from a former city councilman with
the subject line that just said, it is happening here. Yeah,

(01:31:10):
and I remember thinking that's that's probably not good.

Speaker 12 (01:31:16):
Yeah, that's not great talking of it is happening. I
think both the NML you were there, you went up
to Camario right the raid on the cannabis grow operation
and subsequent stand up that was just like a different
scene from like DTLA. Can you explain if people aren't familiar,
maybe very briefly explain the operation and the consequences.

Speaker 14 (01:31:40):
So Sean and I just sat in federal court for
five hours prior to that in downtown LA, where federal
judge was listening to arguments being made in the hopes
of getting a temporary restraining order on the grounds that
these roving patrols in Los Angeles were unconstitutional, and we
left court, and you know, one of our sources who

(01:32:02):
was also there at the Federal courthouse was talking about
how they had heard about this raid happening in Cambrio
and Carpenteria, two different cannabis grow houses, and you know,
by the time he left, it had been happening for
five hours at that point, so they, under a warrant,
had rated both of these cannabis co operations, which are

(01:32:25):
you know, quite large. We're talking hundreds of workers who
work in these processing centers and greenhouses and such. And
local organizers, particularly organizers with VC Defensa, which is in
Ventura County, who has been doing really successful organizing following
ice vehicles wherever they go to try and head off
these roving patrols.

Speaker 6 (01:32:45):
They've really thrown a wrench in things up there.

Speaker 14 (01:32:48):
One of the organizers was following one of these border
patrol vehicles and watched as the border patrol vehicle drove
past the gates of a military base out there, and
then kind of got an idea that, Okay, something big
is happening.

Speaker 6 (01:33:00):
This is not normal, Like this is not.

Speaker 14 (01:33:02):
Usually what happens when we follow these cars usually they're
going into neighborhood or things of that nature. And so
almost immediately these groups were organizing to try and see
where these cars, armored vehicles were going, and they hit
two different locations. One of the locations, the one in
came Rio, just outside of is kind of in the
middle of nowhere.

Speaker 6 (01:33:22):
It's flanked on all sides with farm fields.

Speaker 14 (01:33:24):
You know, there's dirt highways and you know, two lane
highways that kind.

Speaker 6 (01:33:28):
Of bisect everything.

Speaker 14 (01:33:30):
And what they did when they started this raid is
they blocked off the roads leading into and out of
this particular greenhouse, right and so they had checkpoints like roadblocks,
barricades at like four or five different locations at these
intersections around the greenhouse, and at every single barricade there

(01:33:53):
were people. So you know, there were these sort of
like face offs between heavily militarized border patrol agents kit.

Speaker 6 (01:34:03):
It out in the nines.

Speaker 14 (01:34:04):
You know, everything that you could possibly think of. They had,
you know, these massive vehicles. National Guard helped them, you know,
block off these roads. The local police helped them block
off these roads, which you know, if you know about
the sheriff in Ventura County. He's one of the only
guys who doesn't care about sanctuary state ordinances.

Speaker 6 (01:34:23):
So it was a standoff essentially.

Speaker 14 (01:34:26):
And when Shawn and I arrived, it was right around dusk,
so you know, it had been many hours since these
raids began, and essentially what Border Patrol found is that
they couldn't leave because these roads were being blocked off.
They got some fans through, but the vast majority of
those vehicles were still there, and they weren't prepared to

(01:34:47):
be there that long.

Speaker 6 (01:34:48):
They had to air drop supplies, water, food in order
to you know, shore up these folks.

Speaker 14 (01:34:55):
And you know, as word got out of the sort
of commit unity response to this event, more people showed up.
So by the time Sean and I got there, we
were driving up list Posus and suddenly there's cars just
parked on either side of the road, and we ended
up parking, i think, like three quarters of a mile

(01:35:17):
away from the nearest blockade and all have to hike
in because there was no space for cars. You know,
I mean, we get up there and it's just about
dusk and you can hear the chanting in the distance,
and you know, it was a really horrible and also
moving experience to walk up on you know, community response
to this, and you know, the standoff continued for another

(01:35:39):
couple of hours, but it was you know, half of
the folks there are concerned community members, folks of mixed
status families who understand the absolute terror of what happens
when the government is chasing after your dad, you know,
and also individuals who were looking for parents, uncles, you know,
they had no idea idea where their family members were.

(01:36:02):
I think the total number of people who were detained
and are probably going to be deported ended up somewhere
around three hundred and sixty one across two farms. Yeah,
it's significant, absolutely insane, you know, and the standoff lasted
for a couple extra hours into the night. People turned
on their car headlights so that we had light out there.

Speaker 6 (01:36:23):
There was you know a.

Speaker 14 (01:36:25):
Pretty solid group of individuals who were in communication with
other blockades asking for folks to shift to other locations,
sharing supplies and water, you know, and then border patrols
started getting antsy. You could see them playing with their guns,
you know, their riot munition's weapons. They were shifting, they're

(01:36:47):
forming and reforming, and you know, organizers kind of understood
that something was about to happen, so they backed off,
strategically retreated because there were marches planned for the next day.
They were leaving, I could see off in the distance.
It witness this directly until we drove up on it.
But you could see off in the distance that all
of these cars, this line of cars was going around

(01:37:09):
the back end of the factory on a side road
and then ending up a little bit farther down Lasosos
and there was flashing lights everywhere. Turns out that they
were trying to make their getaway and they hit what
I think was probably a traffic jam because folks were
ready to go. They had packed up their cars and
they were leaving when they tear gassed everybody so they

(01:37:30):
could make their getaway.

Speaker 6 (01:37:32):
So, like Sean and I.

Speaker 14 (01:37:32):
By the time we drove up on it, because we
saw in the distance, it was like that cloud is
not normal, This isn't dust, Like that's tear gas.

Speaker 6 (01:37:41):
Let's get in the car and go see what's going on.

Speaker 14 (01:37:43):
We drove up just as the last canisters were being
spent on the road and it was just a fog,
you know, and cars people were panicking. You know, you
can tear gas in your fricking car, man. You know,
it was pretty pretty intense. Not a great experience.

Speaker 12 (01:37:59):
Yeah, And videos from downtown LA on the first day
of protests and as Sean was there covering it, they
had agents in gas masks in their vehicles and they
were tear gasing in front. And then that seems to
have been like their protocol, right, they will just tear
gas the fuck out of the block and then we'll
wear our gas masks inside our vehicles and leave. But
I wanted to explain people I've seen this a lot

(01:38:20):
will be wondering why Border Patrol with in Ventura, so, like,
just to clarify or Oxnard or wherever they were at.
The United States border isn't just a land border, like
the United States has four edges, just like well, there's
lots of edges, but you know, just like anything that's
a big square, right, the ocean is a border too,
and Border Patrol has this somewhat arbitrar one hundred mile
enforcement zone in which they operate. So when you see

(01:38:43):
border patrol operating a long way from a land border,
that's because they are still within one hundred miles of
a border. You know, to include the Great Lakes up north.
Most of the United States population lives inside a border
patrol enforcement zone.

Speaker 14 (01:38:57):
Right, so you know, you won't see as many us
there are warrants to be served. For example, in Omaha, Nebraska,
where there was a raid on a factory there that
was a warrant investigation. Generally speaking, though, Yeah, that's why
you see it in Boston, in Chicago, in Florida, and
in most of California. It lives, you know, withinside that border.

(01:39:21):
And so you know, the thing that I can say
is that that next day when we went up and
spoke to organizers, kind of got the skinny on how
they were able to mobilize so quickly. As we were
leaving that march, you know, a federal judge issued a
temporary restraining order in Los Angeles County. Seven cities I

(01:39:41):
think that were a party to the suit.

Speaker 10 (01:39:44):
It's not just Los Angeles County, it's the entire district
of the CBD, thank you. Yes, yeah, it was quite
a few cities filed suit as well as the ACLU
farm workers several individual plaintiffs, which blocks them essentially from
having a large scale rate with no warrant. So a

(01:40:05):
judge basically told them, hey, you have to have a
reason to be stopping and detaining people.

Speaker 9 (01:40:11):
The judge.

Speaker 10 (01:40:12):
I don't want to read too much into a judge's
personal thoughts, but it became pretty clear even when they
were having the hearing that the judge had pretty much
had her own concerns that I don't think we're even
in the filings. And it also baighteen is essentially the
basement in a federal building, which is where a significant
amount of the people are being held, and it forced

(01:40:34):
them to allow lawyers access as well as a lot
of them were essentially in these rooms that were like
fifty to sixty people and there was one phone in
the middle of it, so they were not getting private counsel.
And with the restraining order, which I believe ends time
next week, now they actually have to provide access to lawyers,

(01:40:58):
you know, basic constitution stuff.

Speaker 14 (01:41:01):
Yeah, man, let me tell you, it was really, really
bizarre to sit in a federal hearing. And now, look,
I've read transcripts from other reporters who listen in on
these federal immigration issue hearings that we've had over the
last six months. It is a whole other experience to
be sitting in a courtroom with your little notepad, listening

(01:41:22):
to the government's lawyers try and make the case that no,
we're not actually racially profiling people here. We are just
stopping them based on their appearance, facial expressions, what they're wearing,
potentially the.

Speaker 6 (01:41:35):
Language that they choose to speak.

Speaker 14 (01:41:37):
And all of us sitting in the gallery are like, okay,
you actually made that argument in an open court. Cool,
you know what I mean, Like absolutely insane to hear
that come out of a DOJ lawyer's mouth, where they're like,
we take umbrage with the fact that you're saying that
we're racial profiling. By the way, here's all the things
that we are doing, which is essentially profiling people.

Speaker 6 (01:41:57):
You know.

Speaker 14 (01:41:58):
So the tro is essentially just in we're seeing the
Fourth Amendment, which is saying, you know, you cannot conduct
these roving patrols and stop people without probable cause or
weren't you just can't do it, you know.

Speaker 6 (01:42:10):
And what that's done is we have seen much.

Speaker 14 (01:42:14):
Less of the immigration enforcement activity that was a feature
of June and early July, and it's kind of moving
to the peripheric. I know that there are things happening
in San Diego, James, and we've seen some potential reports
out of Sacramento. We've seen reports up north in San Francisco,

(01:42:35):
you know, in terms of the enforcement zone in California.
We're also seeing ramping up immigration activities in places like
Chicago and other cities Utah for example. And now in
the last week and a half, we've seen half of
the federalized National Guard be taken off deployment and sent home.
And as of today, the twenty first of July, they're

(01:42:57):
sending home the Marines, you know, which good right, But
it's very clear that whatever they were trying to accomplish
in Los Angeles to make a point to be a
battering ram to set Los Angeles, which has always kind
of been known as the sanctuary city and the surrounding

(01:43:17):
area as like the example of what immigration enforcement activity
in this new era of Trump two point zero what
have you will look like?

Speaker 6 (01:43:28):
And ultimately I don't think they were successful.

Speaker 14 (01:43:30):
I mean you look at the Raven MacArthur Park for example,
or it was meant to be this you know, big
operation essensibly to try and crack down on fake ID processing.
Sean can talk to more of the context around MacArthur
Park than I can. But they showed up and organizers
had already cleared the park. You know, we were there
for two and a half hours before they even showed up,

(01:43:53):
and we watched as organizers put up signs. They were
sitting at the home depot up the street making sure
the folks knew that there might be a raid today.
Like organizers had called through the entire park and said,
this might happen today. If you're a mixed status or
you know, your status is not one with papers, you
might want to go home. You know, they cleared the

(01:44:13):
soccer field, which had forty five people playing soccer on it,
you know, and so by the time these armored vehicles
are running down the street and doing all of their theater,
there's no one there at all. You know, there's journalists,
there's us. You know, there's a couple of unhoused folks
who said, you know, screw that, I don't want to leave,
but the vast majority of people had already gone, and

(01:44:35):
so all that they got out of it was a
really shitty hype video and a mayor and a governor
who were like really really pissed off, and you know,
a city that's just not going to just roll over
and let this kind of crap happen, you know. And
I think that's really emblematic of like what's been going

(01:44:55):
on in Los Angeles for the last six weeks is
they did not get the response that they were expecting,
and they weren't prepared for that response and for the
you know, for that to be a continuous response to unconstitutional, oppressive,
violent actions by ICE and by the agencies that are

(01:45:18):
enabling ICE.

Speaker 12 (01:45:19):
So yeah, you know, I think when we say city,
we should like be clear that we're referring to like
the city kua like community, not city like as government entity. Right, Like,
there really hasn't been any certainly here in San Diego.
At Sanieo police departmentally don't assist ICE, but they do
show up to like form a coordinate around them, right like,
to prevent any confrontation between them and protesters. And we

(01:45:43):
saw like every police agency, like literally every police agency
in La County and also Ventura County sheriffs were there
for the biggest protest days. The city hasn't used its
resources in that sense to stop this, right They've made
rhetorical statements, but they haven't done anything with their police.

Speaker 4 (01:46:02):
Yeah, And I think this speaks to a kind of
larger thing, which is that like these people thought they
could just come into cities around the country and just
shock and all everyone would really went over because like
they think they're the Nazis. But the thing about the
Nazis is that like people supported them, right, Like all
the shit the Nazis were able to do happened because
people wanted it to happen. And in a country where
people don't want that shit to happen, where everyone looks

(01:46:22):
at this and goes, what the fuck is going on,
we're like it's like seventy nine percent support for like
the effects of immigration on the US right now, where
everyone's looking at this and just being like, no, they
can't do it. There aren't enough of them. I don't know,
Like it's just so stunning to me watching them like
have to do the tactical adaptations that like normally like
protest groups have to do because the cops have tuned

(01:46:43):
more resources than them. But they're having to do it
because they's just like every single person walking down the
street is like fuck you eat shit, And so they're.

Speaker 3 (01:46:51):
Just like outnumbered everywhere they go.

Speaker 4 (01:46:53):
It's and that's all to say, it's not like fucking horrible,
because yeah, resisting fashion fucking sucks a lot of the time,
and a lot of people get hurt and it's hideous,
and also it's what has to be done. The last
thing that I wanted to ask is, so, with the

(01:47:14):
injunction kind of like coming to an end soon, what
do you think is the future of sort of what
ICE is going to be doing, and what the response
is going to be, and what border patrol are doing
in this sort of month to come.

Speaker 3 (01:47:27):
It's hard to say.

Speaker 10 (01:47:27):
One of the things that I'm curious about is we
won't really know what the federal government's plan is until
I think it's the We'll just say late July when
the next hearing is. So the temporar straining order ends
in late July. Generally speaking, with temporaries training orders on
law enforcement, what you see is they either continue while

(01:47:53):
the hearings commence, or you see a pretty large mountain
of evidence that says, hey, we did this, this, this, this,
and this that's changed it, so we're now sort of
in cooperation with the order. That is likely one of
the reasons why we've seen fewer raids here in Los Angeles. Ultimately,

(01:48:13):
a temporary restraining order is I don't want to call
it a wilder extreme action at all, but those are
generally signed when a judge agrees that it is extremely
likely that, given the current situation, the plaintiffs have a case.
So unless the federal government comes by with like this

(01:48:35):
gigantic mountain of new training and all these new plans
and things like that, my guess is we'll probably see
at least some of the things in that temporary restraining
order continue. I also think it's possible that the federal
government is just going to say, you know what, this
temporary restraining order only applies to this specific area. We'll
just go somewhere else.

Speaker 12 (01:48:56):
It's the Central District of California, right, so like San
Luis Obispo Center, Arbora, then sure at La Riverside County
as well.

Speaker 2 (01:49:04):
I think Riverside.

Speaker 12 (01:49:06):
Yeah, it doesn't include San Diego, doesn't include the Northern District,
which is most of the west coast of California, or
the Eastern District, which is most of the Valley and
further north eastern California. So yeah, it's perfectly possible they
could go somewhere else and still do their shit within
California or like you say, like there are so many targets,
right because immigrants are part of the fabric of our society.

(01:49:28):
They are everywhere, and that's you know, they can just
go for wherever they think a soft target is.

Speaker 14 (01:49:34):
And there's also work noting that. You know, these organizers
are going to continue to organize.

Speaker 8 (01:49:39):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:49:39):
So these groups Central CSO and Union of Barrio and
you know the various other groups. Again, I've been around
for decades. VC Defense that has been around since twenty sixteen. Right,
this is only a portion of the organizing that they do.
You know, they didn't start with or they will not
end with just these patrols.

Speaker 6 (01:49:59):
Right.

Speaker 14 (01:50:00):
So they've built out infrastructure and mutual aid group networks
that are buying groceries for folks and mixed status families
that are covering the sort of bills that are not
being paid because people are too afraid to go to work.
They're doing childcare, they're getting kids to school, they're trying
to provide legal defense. You know, like these are you know,
coalitions of individuals who live in these areas who are

(01:50:22):
doing long term organizing to shore up the community whether
or not there is an onslaught of immigration enforcement activity
in a certain geographical area.

Speaker 6 (01:50:32):
So in terms of organizing.

Speaker 14 (01:50:35):
It's just going to keep happening and that's good, right,
And you know, I think that what's hardening to see
after the last you know, seven weeks of really intense,
really scary, really horrifying kidnappings and detainments on the streets
in southern California, is you know, an equal and often

(01:50:58):
more you know, stronger response to it from the community
that you know reminds you that this is.

Speaker 6 (01:51:05):
Not the end and.

Speaker 14 (01:51:06):
Folks are prepared for picking up the slack when things
fall through. You know, people are not falling through the cracks.
People are not having their lives shattered without someone watching
and trying to help.

Speaker 6 (01:51:17):
So that's an important piece there, you know.

Speaker 14 (01:51:20):
So I would say that in terms of the response
and what happens next, like it's a multi front thing.
You have these legal cases finding their way through the courts.
You have from all levels, right, and you have individuals
who are trying to keep track of folks who have
been detained and deported and sending money back to Mexico
or whatever, you know, other country that these folks are

(01:51:41):
being sent back to making sure that things are as
much as they can. You know, there aren't any rips
in the safety net. And I think that's the main
lesson of the last seven weeks is like that sort
of response is incredible, and you can replicate it anywhere
that you are.

Speaker 6 (01:51:58):
You know a lot of folks.

Speaker 14 (01:51:59):
Like to, you know, kind of roll their eyes at
the idea of like organizing starts with.

Speaker 6 (01:52:04):
Talking to your neighbor.

Speaker 14 (01:52:05):
No, actually it does, right, And you know there's these models,
especially in southern and central California, where this organizing works right.
It's not particularly ideological in many ways, sometimes it is,
but the basic function of it is to make sure
that your neighbor doesn't fall into a hole, right, And
they'll do the same for you so you don't fall

(01:52:25):
into a hole should something happen to you. So you know,
start there and take a look at these models that
these absolute fucking heroes pardon my language, are doing in
this area and know that you can also do that.

Speaker 4 (01:52:39):
So yeah, these people in every facet of this are
just you somewhere else or help.

Speaker 3 (01:52:45):
Maybe they are literally you. I don't know. Yah, I
keep up the good work.

Speaker 12 (01:52:51):
Sure do you want to explain to us very briefly
the FBI arrests and the case against at least one
of us and so see so members.

Speaker 10 (01:53:02):
Well, right now, there's only one criminal complaint, and that's
for Alejandro Oriana, who is accused of conspiracy to commit
civil disorder as well as aiding and embedding a conspiracy
to commit civil disorder. The criminal complaint, all it really
says is that he gave a dispense with face shields

(01:53:25):
to protesters who were dressed like they might do something bad.
At no point during the criminal complaint does it even say, hey,
he handed it to a guy and then that guy
committed a crime.

Speaker 3 (01:53:36):
Doesn't even go that far.

Speaker 10 (01:53:38):
It just goes those guys look kind of I don't know,
they look like they're about to do something, and says
that you know, these people were dressed in such a
way where it might interfere with law enforcement activities, like
you know, it would deaden the impact of less leevil weapons.

Speaker 12 (01:53:56):
Yeah, I mean the impact of leslie for weapons on
your face is potentially told.

Speaker 10 (01:54:01):
Yeah, and you know, beyond that, you know, there was
a search warrant for another member of Centro CSO who
was roughly handled by FBI agents on a walk through
the park and was given a search warrant and her
phone was taken. I asked the US Attorney's office if
they were related, and first I was told I don't

(01:54:21):
know what you're talking about, which I thought was a
little interesting. Never gotten that response from any official, and
then a few hours later got an official response that said, no,
it is another case. So what that means time will tell,
but I think it's likely that there will be more
to come. On top of that. I think it's interesting
to note that the first arraignment for Oreana was an

(01:54:44):
absolutely packed court and.

Speaker 3 (01:54:45):
Support of them.

Speaker 4 (01:54:46):
Where can people find you two's work and where can
people support you as you do a whole bunch of
incredibly critical journalism on the continuing resistance to the fascist
deportation campaign.

Speaker 14 (01:54:58):
A lot of my reporting goes to bluesky, so you
can find me at melviw or Blueskuy dot social. I
have a newsletter, Words about Work dot blog, and you
can also find me on my Instagram. My link tree
is linked in all sorts of places, so you can
find all those links in one convenient.

Speaker 3 (01:55:14):
Place, including the description of this episode.

Speaker 6 (01:55:17):
Hey yeah, those are the places where you can find me.

Speaker 10 (01:55:20):
You can find me on a cat with news on
all social media platforms, although most of my sort of
breaking stories come on Blue Sky first, and I'm a
freelance journalist, so usually you can just google my name
and you'll see some stories there. On my Blue Sky
and Instagram, there's a link tree if you want to

(01:55:41):
support Hell.

Speaker 4 (01:55:42):
Yeah, and to everyone listening to the show, always remember
you are many, they are few.

Speaker 12 (01:56:11):
Pedophile is a correct pronunciation going into.

Speaker 2 (01:56:14):
This just for and that's the sentence we're starting the
episode with. Welcome to It could happen here a podcast
where we teach you how to pronounce the word pedophile
or pedophile or pedophily your Greek. You know, that's not
how the Greeks say it. Welcome to the show. We're

(01:56:39):
talking about some breaking news about friend of the pod
Kylie Ray Jepstein, a joke I did on the Behind
the Bastards episodes about Epstein that nobody liked.

Speaker 12 (01:56:49):
Least of all the lawyers.

Speaker 3 (01:56:50):
I don't like that either.

Speaker 2 (01:56:53):
It wasn't even really a joke, just something I shouldn't
have said. Yeah, so this is all.

Speaker 3 (01:56:57):
Barely breaking news because this is stuff that we've known
about for like ever.

Speaker 2 (01:57:01):
None of this is a mystery. We're not going to
be blowing any minds here that Jeffrey Epstein sexually trafficked
and molested children, or that Donald Trump probably did as well,
or well, he didn't do the trafficking, but you know
he was a party to it. Yeah, allegedly, you know,
being alleged by a lot of people, Rupert Murdoch, one
of them by Dach, who is currently being sued for

(01:57:23):
ten million dollars in his capacity as owner of The
Wall Street Journal. So on July seventeenth, twenty twenty five,
at six forty five pm Eastern Standard time, the Wall
Street Journal published an article with the title Jeffrey Epstein's
friends sent him body letters for a fiftieth birthday album.
One was from Donald Trump.

Speaker 3 (01:57:42):
Body is one way to describe it.

Speaker 2 (01:57:44):
Bondy is one way to describe it.

Speaker 3 (01:57:46):
Yes, Yes, indeed, it's really good to see a leftist
outlet like Wall Street Journal take this thing head on.

Speaker 2 (01:57:51):
Yeh finally, Yes, you know, I've had my issues with them,
you know, being hardline Marxists as they are. That doesn't
fully del with my own beliefs. But you have to
resp sfeckt them in this instance. You know, I'm not
as much of a Stalinist as the Wall Street Journal
famed Stalinists.

Speaker 12 (01:58:06):
Yeah, that's why they've counseled us, because they're two wake.

Speaker 13 (01:58:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:58:10):
The Little Red Book published by the Wall Street Journal,
Big malfansmphlets imprint.

Speaker 12 (01:58:20):
History would absolve me. Yeah, a little Red Book.

Speaker 2 (01:58:23):
Yeah yeah. They've got a beautiful leather bound edition of
Ted Kaczinski's manifesto. Speaking of letter bound editions, Gillan Maxwell,
I think this initially came out because it was a
Spanish like small scale publisher that published that put out
this like leather bound book for Gillan for to give
to Jeffrey and god do I want to see the

(01:58:44):
whole copy because I am curious to who else submitted letters.
But during the FBI investigation and everything around Epstein, this
was found and it got leaked out to the Wall
Street Journal. I think the New York Times has now
seen it, so they're not the only people who have
seen it. You've got a piece of paper and there
is a drawing that may or may not have been

(01:59:05):
done by Trump, but is alleged by some to have
been done by Trump. Although he denies this, having said
that he has never written a picture in his life.
But it's like a silhouette of a naked woman. And
then Donald Trump's signature where pubic hare would be right,
classy man, Yeah, our current.

Speaker 12 (01:59:24):
Our president. Yeah, I had the guy with the nuclear codes.

Speaker 2 (01:59:28):
Yeah, great stuff. And then the actual text on the
letter is written in the form of like a dialogue. Right,
So it's like written as like a fake script of
a conversation between Trump and Epstein voiceover. There must be
more to life than having everything, Donald, Yes, there is,
but I won't tell you what it is, Jeffrey, nor

(01:59:50):
will I since I also know what it is. Donald.
We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey, yes, we do,
come to think of it, Donald, Enigma's never a Have
you noticed that, Jeffrey. As a matter of fact, it
was clear to me the last time I saw you Trump,
A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may
every day be another wonderful secret.

Speaker 4 (02:00:12):
The thing I need a listener to understand about this episode, right,
that is not the most incriminating thing Donald Trump is
going to say in this episode.

Speaker 2 (02:00:21):
It's not even close to it. Although it is It
is very funny. This could hardly be more directive. The
letter was just Jeffrey, I love being a pedophile with
you love Donald Trump? Right, Like that's less.

Speaker 3 (02:00:33):
Direct yet he has gone further. Yeah, but like he's
just saying it.

Speaker 2 (02:00:40):
So the Wall Street Journal publishes this, and they publish
this with like the least bit of editorializing that they can, right,
they're being very careful with this. Trump loses his fucking mind.
And this is obviously coming on the heels I probably
should have started with this important context. This is coming
on the heels of Pambondi and the Justice Department announcing actually,
everything's cool and they're not going to be dropping any

(02:01:02):
more info on Epstein. There's no client list or anything.
After Bondi had earlier this year been like I have
the Epstein client list on my desk, and they handed
out the Epstein papers, you know, release one, these like
big binders that fucking the limbs of TikTok Lady and
Jack Pasobaic and a munch of other right wing influencers.
Well walked out of the White House with these big
binders being like, Aha, we've got it. We've got all

(02:01:22):
the files that are gonna put all the dims behind jail.
And then a couple months later, BONDI and the DJ
is like, actually, there's nothing else to tell anybody. We've
got nothing. There's nothing interesting at all about Epstein. So
then this shit comes out, right, it gets leaked from someone,
presumably someone within the FBI. Right, I think that's what
we're left to assume at this point, because this was
revealed as a part of their investigation. Right, this is

(02:01:43):
some of the stuff that was confiscated, you know, when
Gilan Maxwell got taken into custody. Okay, so a couple
of things have happened since then. For one thing, Trump
is suing the Wall Street Journal for I believe at
least twenty billion dollars. This lawsuit was launched in a
federal court in Miami. Trump said, true's social The lawsuits
filed not only in behalf of your favorite president, all

(02:02:03):
caps me, but in order to continue standing up for
all Americans who will no longer tolerate the abusive wrongdoings
of the fake news media. So this is what Trump
is claiming. And obviously Trump denies any wrongdoing, denies anything
but kind of lightly knowing Jeffrey Epstein and for some context,
Trump and Epstein have been seen together numerous times. There
are pictures and videos of them both together. Trump talked

(02:02:23):
about in interviews, including one with New York Magazine where
he said, like me, Jeffrey's known to really like women,
and some of them are on the younger side. Right.
He's been saying shit like this for years.

Speaker 3 (02:02:34):
Quote. I've known Jeffer fifteen years. Terrific guy. He's a
lot of fun to be with it. Deeven said, he
likes beautiful women as much as I do. And many
of them are on the younger side, no doubt about it.
Jeffrey enjoys his social life. Two thousand and two, we
know they were friends. The information suggests that I think
it's around two thousand and five or six, they had
a falling out over a real estate deal. With the

(02:02:55):
real estate deal and one alleged incident at mar A Lago, Yes,
where jeff Free was acting quote unquote inappropriately to a
daughter of a member of the club and then Trump
barred him from the club. And Trump has claimed this
multiple times through the years. Between this and the real
estate deal that's led to their falling out.

Speaker 2 (02:03:12):
There's other stories. There's one. I've heard that Epstein got
really angry because Trump was physically like touching one of
Epstein's girlfriends, like one of his actual like partner girlfriends,
and that he got angry over that. We don't know,
but we do know that they were seen socially together
and talked about being friends for quite a while.

Speaker 3 (02:03:30):
They were neighbors, and they were like socialites, both in
New York and in Frorida.

Speaker 2 (02:03:34):
Right, yeah, for a while, from the eighties up through
the early two thousands. Right now. Trump has denied sending
this letter. He said that this doesn't sound like me.
He wrote on truth Social I don't draw pictures.

Speaker 3 (02:03:46):
Now that was a lot.

Speaker 2 (02:03:47):
This has sparked one of my favorite investigatory cycles. The
New York Times published an article right after this post
that says Trump says he doesn't draw pictures, but many
of his sketches sold an auction, and it's like photos
of a bunch of To be fair, none of these
are sketches of naked women. But there's a crude black
marker drawing of the Empire, state building.

Speaker 3 (02:04:07):
A lot of city skylines.

Speaker 2 (02:04:08):
Allegedly, the drawing of the woman was drawn in black marker, right,
and they're noting that he did a lot of black
marker drawings. Right, he signs his bills in shoppy, doesn't
he signs his bills in sharpie, And that he has
a signature that does kind of look like pubic hair. Right,
if you were to like draw a crude set of Genitalia,
Donald Trump's signature could stand in for pubic hair, right,

(02:04:30):
Like the way that he signs this signature, that's one
way you could interpret it, right, It's also.

Speaker 4 (02:04:35):
Worth noting, and I think this is actually really important
when he signs this, right, he signs it like like
on this picture of like the Empire State Building. Right,
it's a really shitty drawing the Umper State Building. His
signature is like right next to the building. If you're
drawing a picture of a naked woman and you shift it,
like if.

Speaker 2 (02:04:52):
The Empire State Building was sitting down in like an
L shape and had pubiccare, that's where the signature right, bes.

Speaker 3 (02:05:00):
Everything is exactly the same.

Speaker 12 (02:05:02):
It's the SIPI State Building had pubic care.

Speaker 2 (02:05:04):
There's also a drawing that he did. It's called the
money Tree drawing. It looks like if the giving tree
was filled with dollars, and again, the signature kind of
looks like pubic hair.

Speaker 12 (02:05:13):
So Trump's a little artist, just like a since underneath
the money tree to meditate. That gets his alternative.

Speaker 3 (02:05:20):
Trump did like yearly drawings and the doodles for like
charity auctions, and that's what most of these are from.

Speaker 2 (02:05:26):
And to be fair, a lot of US presidents have
been doodlers, you know. Ike, our former president doodled himself
with huge muscles during a meeting talking about the overthrow
of Guatemala by the.

Speaker 3 (02:05:36):
Same it's so funny.

Speaker 2 (02:05:42):
It's so funny. I mean, so many people died in
a horrible deaths, but it's really pretty funny.

Speaker 12 (02:05:47):
Chad Eisenhower.

Speaker 4 (02:05:51):
Just shredded entire indigitous civilizations, wipe off the face of
the earth forever, Like.

Speaker 2 (02:05:57):
Look at Chad Eisenhower.

Speaker 12 (02:06:01):
If you have a chat eise in how a tattoo,
please submit it to Sophie on Twitter. She's just I write, Okay.

Speaker 2 (02:06:07):
Look, I feel confident saying iHeartRadio will pay for anyone's tattoo.
If you want to get Chad Eisenhower, as long as
it's a facial tattoo, you know.

Speaker 12 (02:06:16):
Yeah, you can get it in that uv ink that
doing tattoos in when you're in.

Speaker 2 (02:06:21):
The club, people.

Speaker 12 (02:06:27):
Beautiful stuff, triggering a stampede from the dooms.

Speaker 8 (02:06:30):
Fill.

Speaker 2 (02:06:31):
Yeah, you're gonna cause another one of those fucking Jersey
nightclub fires that killed one and twenty people. It's not funny.
A lot of people died anyway. There was also another
God I should have it up here, but it's another
investigation into like does the writing that Trump did sound
like his other writing? And they found that Number One,
Trump has a number of times in the past put

(02:06:53):
out writing in the form of a hypothetical script between
other people. That is a thing he's done in the past.
And then multiple phrases that were used in this letter
are phrases he has used in the past, in some
cases multiple times.

Speaker 3 (02:07:07):
Except some of the Mega investigators were able to use
Grok to ask if Trump ever used the word enigma before,
and Grok said no, So we closed that case. Never
mind the fact that he said it on the campaign
trail in twenty sixteen, and he said multiple times in
his best selling.

Speaker 12 (02:07:24):
Book No Evidence he wrote that book.

Speaker 2 (02:07:26):
He loves the word Well, I'm not gonna say he
loves it, but he's used the word enigma before, right,
He described Ben Carson as an enigma. He's described Dan
Rather as an enigma. So maybe he and Epstein were
both fucking Dan Rather. Is that possible. I'm gonna say yes.

Speaker 3 (02:07:43):
I think you should also be impeached for that.

Speaker 2 (02:07:46):
I think so.

Speaker 12 (02:07:47):
I'm sorry I have just just kept talking of Grook.
I'm reading the Trump versus murderc lawsuit, which describe Eggs
dot Com as quote the Internet's watering hole. What no, sorry, no, yeah,
no longer the everything website.

Speaker 2 (02:08:02):
The watering hole. What are you doing? What is wrong
with you? People? Fucking jump off a bridge? You stupid sons?
A bitious.

Speaker 3 (02:08:10):
It is interesting you still really met at Elon because
Elon is also one of the originators of this current
wave of like Epstein focus.

Speaker 2 (02:08:18):
And it's interesting after the letter came out, Elon was
just like, obviously a fake. Obviously. I think he's scared.
I think some g men showed up at his door
and were like, this is a nice life you've got,
fucking Elon Musk. It would be a shame of a
hell fire missile hit your house, hit your fucking compound
with all of your wives.

Speaker 4 (02:08:34):
But the thing is, and this is the fun part
about this is like it doesn't matter what Elon says now,
like he already opened the floodgates and the games are fucking.

Speaker 2 (02:08:41):
Open now, like no, no, no, do you.

Speaker 3 (02:08:44):
Know what else the gates are open from.

Speaker 2 (02:08:46):
Yeah, is our advertisers and we're back. So this is
the gist of the situation. Now, this letter is out,
and a lot of people, even I and I still
am to some extent kind of there's been so many
ops this that has to be it for old Donnie Trump.

(02:09:08):
One Nitny wiggles his fucking way out right, you know
that said this does seem to be pissing off a
lot of his more diehard people, right, including fucking the
Dilbert guy. We don't need to give any name besides
the Dilbert guy, but the Dilbert Guy's pissed about this.
A lot of people who have been like really religious
Trump supporters are pissed as a result of this.

Speaker 12 (02:09:30):
Sean Ryan, the right pissed about this.

Speaker 3 (02:09:33):
Even Speaker of the House Mike Johnson has been more
Trump critical the past week and has given interviews to
another mega influencer turned soft Trump critic, now Benny Johnson,
about how Trump handled this so poorly. A lot of
them are trying to make this down into like a
messaging fail or like a rhetoric fumble, which obviously it's

(02:09:55):
so much more substantial than that. But cracks are forming
in a way that we haven't released scene for his
base in a long time.

Speaker 4 (02:10:02):
And the thing I think is really important about this
is that, Okay, so this is me a going history mode.
If you look at a thing that has been studied
by an enormous amount by the left, and I think
studied mostly wrong, which is how did the Bolsheviks actually
take power in nineteen seventeen. And the answer is that
when they came for Kerensky in the October Revolution, everyone

(02:10:24):
stayed home. Everyone looked at Kerensky and was like, I'm
not dying for that dip shit, Like fuck them, Like
if there's like dueling machine gun companies in the street,
i Am not going to go die for Alexander Kerensky.
And that's all they won because everyone stayed home. And
that's the thing with Trump, right. The thing that's important
about this is that the way that Trump can be
defeated is if enough of his base just stays the

(02:10:45):
fuck home whenever the sort of terminal crisis hits and
every single thing we get like this, we're more and
more of his base.

Speaker 3 (02:10:50):
Is like, well, I mean I.

Speaker 4 (02:10:52):
Could go face down a machine gun line for this guy,
but he did piss me off by Epstein, So like
fuck that. The more that happens, the better it is
for all of us. When never the confrontations start to emerge.

Speaker 2 (02:11:01):
Yeah, I think in general just the more so much
of the modern right is built on the Epstein stuff,
and a lot of it is a myth. Right, there's
a mythical idea that Epstein is trafficking small children and
he's not. He was trafficking teenage girls, because that's what
mostly rich adult men want to fuck, right, That's just
the reality of the situation.

Speaker 3 (02:11:23):
Including famously Donald Trump. Yeah, he has like said this before,
and you can look at the many court cases that
have often been solved out of.

Speaker 2 (02:11:30):
Court alleged by him.

Speaker 3 (02:11:32):
And like there's this clip of the Howard Stern Show
from the mid two thousands, which is kind of an
endless source of men saying horrible things. I will include
this clip here thing about four year olds.

Speaker 9 (02:11:44):
Oh, absolutely, would you do it?

Speaker 10 (02:11:47):
I have no problem?

Speaker 1 (02:11:48):
Yeah, do you have any age limit?

Speaker 8 (02:11:50):
Or would you.

Speaker 11 (02:11:51):
No, No, I have no age. I mean I have
an age.

Speaker 3 (02:11:52):
I don't want to be like you, a twelve year old?
Can I make a prediction for you? Good lord? This
is the incorrect response to this question. Yes, this question
has a very clear like cut off point, which even
still is a little bit iffy. But this is absolutely
the wrong answer. The answer is not twelve years old.

Speaker 12 (02:12:12):
This is that is Marity legally the wrong answer.

Speaker 2 (02:12:17):
Oh man.

Speaker 4 (02:12:18):
You know, one of the things I think it's also
really important about this is looking at this in the
context of Trump's unbelievable number of sexual assault allegations. And
we're going to get into that in a second, but
first we need to ask the question, Okay, has Donald
Trump ever intentionally looked at the naked body of an

(02:12:38):
underage girl? And in order to figure out the answer
to this, I am going to turn to the man himself,
Donald Trump, talking about walking into the changing rooms of
teen Miss USA pageants, and I quote, you know, no
men are anywhere, and I'm allowed to go in because
I'm the owner of the pageant, and therefore I'm inspecting

(02:12:59):
it is this one.

Speaker 3 (02:13:00):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (02:13:01):
You know they're standing there with no clothes and you
see these incredible looking women, and I sort of get
away with things like that. Now, that is our president
Donald J. Trump saying that he walks into changing rooms
and looks at the bodies of naked underage girls and
says that they are end like quotes incredible looking women.

Speaker 3 (02:13:18):
I remember when this quote was going around like maybe
ten years ago. Yeah, and then just no, one know.

Speaker 12 (02:13:25):
No, it's gone into the memory hole now.

Speaker 3 (02:13:26):
Yeah, disappear right, Like there's so much of this shit.

Speaker 12 (02:13:29):
Like the Access Hollywood tape, but like.

Speaker 4 (02:13:32):
Yeah, and I think it's actually worth like looking at this.
There's another quote from Vox where they say this is
an incident of like Trump walking in on a changing
room like of again like naked underage girls.

Speaker 3 (02:13:42):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (02:13:43):
Billottel told BuzzFeed. She mentioned the incident to Trump's daughter Avonka,
who shrugged it off, saying, quote, yeah he does that,
so like yeah, like this is multiple people cooperating that
he just like walks into the changing rooms of naked
underage girls and like looks at their bodies. Right now,
I will call that pedophile shit, right Like, I don't
know if he wants to sue me for one billion dollars,

(02:14:03):
please don't but.

Speaker 2 (02:14:04):
Like sounds like he's alleging pedophile.

Speaker 11 (02:14:07):
Shit.

Speaker 4 (02:14:07):
He's the one who said this, so, like, you know,
and it's worth noting also last year a jury did
rule that Trump had sexually assaulted an advice columnist named
em J. Carroll, and he had to pay her like
five million dollars. There's also again the like grab him
by the pussy thing, which is him just talking about
sexually assaulting women, which he does constantly. He kept on

(02:14:28):
just like walking up to like people at his pageants
and just kissing him without their consent, which is again
sexual assault and directly tied to the Epstein case. We
have an allegation by former model Stacy Williams, which for
some reason, I don't know why everyone has suddenly forgotten
about this, who alleged that she was introduced to Trump
by Epstein, who like walked her to Trump Tower to

(02:14:51):
meet Donald Trump, where he then sexually assaulted her like
in front of Epstein.

Speaker 3 (02:14:55):
Yeah, in Trump Tower. This was also included in the
list The New York Times together a few days ago
on like Trump and Epstein's friendship quote. One of the
young women who later said, mister Epstein greendon abus he
was recruited into his world while working as a spot
and an at mar A Lago. Another accuser recalled being
eyed by Trump during a brief encounter in mister Epstein's
office and claimed that mister Epstein told Trump at the time, quote,

(02:15:17):
she's not for you.

Speaker 4 (02:15:19):
So like he just like says this shit, right, And
I think this is, you know, part of the problem
that we've been sort of getting it here, right, which
is that like the conservative mythos about Epstein is that
it's like four year olds, right, and it's like, no,
Epstein was doing the shit that Donald Trump talks about doing, right,
But because it's like attached to Epstein, right, Like Trump

(02:15:40):
doesn't want to admit that he's been doing this, even
though he's been admitting that he's been doing this for
decades and decades and decades. It's harder for the conservatives
to deal with this because like all of these people
think the child marriage should be legal and that creeping
on like fifteen year olds isn't pedophilia.

Speaker 12 (02:15:54):
It's not hard for them to deal with this because
they don't have a fucking problem with it.

Speaker 3 (02:15:57):
Like Matt Wallash's talking about how like venteen year olds
are the most fertile. So yeah, this is very common
among certain aspects of like this like evangelical.

Speaker 2 (02:16:06):
Again, it's a major thing on the right to fight
for it to be legal to marry fourteen year old girls,
you know, as all as their parents say yes.

Speaker 4 (02:16:14):
And you could look at this from a conspiracy productive
and be like, okay, like is there a ruling cabal
of pedophiles I control the United States? And it's like, well, yeah,
it's the Baptists and like the systematic cover up of
this shit by the Catholic Church, right, it's Epstein. Yeah,
But it's also like Trump admitting that he's like again
perving on like doing pedophiles shit, but like walking in

(02:16:35):
on these changing rooms of these fucking girls. He's just
like admitting this on TV, right.

Speaker 3 (02:16:40):
And I think like the current thing that Trump's trying
to do is make this Epstein thing another one of
the many lines of attack against him throughout the years.
And he's done a really good job at deflecting some
things that have some actual like serious data on had
some serious investigations, and like there was aspects of like
Russian interference in the twenty sixteen election. It may not
have changed the outcome of the election in a substantial manner.

(02:17:02):
But this is something that the FBI like legitimately investigated
and had like real findings of, and he was able
to just completely like rewrite what that investigation was into
this like completely like astroturfed and like orchestrated hoax. And
now it's like one of the main things that he
talks about. And whenever there's new things that people bring

(02:17:23):
up about why Trump is bad, he just compares it
to the Russia hoax. Everything's just just like the Russia hoax.
This is just another Democrat hoax against me. And this
has been such an effective way for him to diffuse
so many lines of attack against him. It's by just
repeating long enough and often enough that it's just a
baseless hoax. And he can do this anytime, and he'll

(02:17:44):
replace like, oh, you know, this is a hoax, but
you know when Hunter Biden does stuff, that's the real
thing that the Democrats then try to cover up Hunter's laptop.
They talk about Hunter's laptop so many times, something that
does not matter. But like, this is the trend that
he's been able to do. And eventually journalism get tired
of having to repeat the same thing over and over again,
explaining that these things are not baseless hoaxes but are

(02:18:07):
legitimate investigations, legitimate concerns, and people just get tired of it.
And he's able to like warp reality around things that
he says. And this is the thing he's currently trying
to do with Epstein. This is why he's calling it
the Epstein hoax, using the same rhetoric that he used
around all of the Russia stuff around the twenty twenty election,
around Hunter Biden's laptop, and it's going to tire people out.

(02:18:30):
And you can already kind of feel some of this
like iteration of it losing some steam. And like I
thought the Wall Street Journal piece would like invigorate people's
discussion of like Trump's, you know, alleged pedophilia, and I
think it's I don't know, at least in like observing
the online ecosystem, immediate ecosystem the last few days. I
don't know if Trump's strategy is working, but it is

(02:18:53):
growing stagnant and that's just kind of the pace of
the Internet sometimes. But if he's able to keep doing
what he's currently I'm not sure if this stuff's going
to really matter in two months beyond, you know, whatever
comes out in discovery for the like Murdoch lawsuit.

Speaker 12 (02:19:09):
We should maybe explain who Murdoch is. Just it's Murdoch
Murdoch is.

Speaker 3 (02:19:14):
He's a leftist revolutionary.

Speaker 12 (02:19:17):
Yeah, that's going to say, member of the Communist Party.
Murdoch is an Australian tabloid magnate who owns the tabloid
press more or less at some point in time. He
has probably owned most of the tabloid press in the
English language almost all around the world.

Speaker 8 (02:19:33):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:19:33):
He owns The Sun in the UK, also The Times
in Australia. He owns the Daily Sun and Deai Telegraph.
In the US he owns a Wall Street Journal and
the New York Post. He also owns Sky News, which
broadcast like in the UK, he owns Fox News. He
used to own people in the UK, remember the News
of the World. He owns a massive amount of the

(02:19:56):
tabloid and I guess the broadsheet press now. But he
has historically been very right wing right. It's fair to
say that Murdock outlets have boosted Trump enormously in his
assent to office. However, now it appears they have fallen
out and like that is significant. I think it is
significant that this guy who has played a huge role

(02:20:17):
in Trump's like, we don't have the sort of liberal
Walter Cronkite anymore, right, Like the person who can change
their mind on something and take the nation with them
in the way that Kronkite had a role in doing
at least in the Vietnam War. The boomer and gen
x conservative people still have that in Fox News, right,
Like Fox News can because it's like the constant background

(02:20:39):
noise in people's lives in so much of this country.
It can take people with it. And the fact that
Trump has gone after Murdoch, I think that is potentially
if they're falling out continues, that is potentially the most
damaging part of this for him.

Speaker 4 (02:20:53):
I want to read a quote. I think I've talked
about this on the show before, but Murdoch's role in
doing the sort of reality shape stuff for Trump until
now and Garrison what we were talking about about how
Trump is able to sort of create his own reality.
I want to read this quote from the Bush administration
that's very famous, which is like the reality based community quote.

(02:21:14):
Because the neo cons were trying to do the same thing, right,
There's a very famous quote from the Bush administration which
is attributed to a journalist named Ron Suttzkind. And he's
doing an interview with like a Bush administration aid, and
I'm just going to quote fromit. The aid said that
guys like me were quote in what we call the
reality based community, which he defined as people who quote

(02:21:36):
believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.
That's not the way the world really works anymore, he continued.
We're an empire now, and when we act, we create
our own reality. And while you're studying reality judiciously, as
you will will act again, creating other new realities which
you can study too, And that's how things will sort out.

(02:22:00):
Tree's actors and you, all of you will just be
left to study what we do. And that's you know,
a lot of what trump Ism is too, right, which
is like, yeah, I know all of you people are
trying to like describe reality. I'm just simply going to
change it by saying shit right and doing shit.

Speaker 3 (02:22:14):
And like all he has to do is like diffuse
the possible damage that this Epstein thing can do to
his base, Like he does not care about the other
half of the country at all. He knows that they
hate him, that does not matter. All he has to
do is create enough of a doubt in the mind
of the base that this thing isn't real. There's no
proof that this Wall Street Journal story is real. This

(02:22:34):
is all a hoax. The Epstein files were written by Obama,
even though the second Epstein investigation was kicked off when
he was president in twenty nineteen. But all these files
were written by.

Speaker 12 (02:22:45):
My own garrison. I think it's bold of you to
say that Trump was president in twenty nineteen. That's very
much up for.

Speaker 3 (02:22:51):
Different controversial claim now about who was president in twenty nineteen.

Speaker 12 (02:22:55):
Yeah, certainly, like who is president in twenty twenty is
something that the country now disagrees about.

Speaker 4 (02:23:00):
Yeah. The thing I want to say about this, though,
right is, the neocons believe they could do this. Right,
the neocons believe they had seized the range of empire
and they could forever shape reality to their will, and
they couldn't this quote from two thousand and four, Right,
the neocons tried to do this, and they invaded a
rock and they thought they could just fucking will like empire,
like we create reality they thought they could just turn
a rock into their own personal playground, and it destroyed them.

(02:23:22):
Like where are the neocons now?

Speaker 3 (02:23:24):
Right?

Speaker 4 (02:23:24):
Like some of them are obviously the Trump administration, but
like this is not a neocons.

Speaker 2 (02:23:28):
Some of them are now in the anti Trump or
side of this.

Speaker 12 (02:23:30):
Yeah yeah, right, yeah, many of them are in the
Lincoln project.

Speaker 4 (02:23:33):
The thing is right, the neocons are, like they don't
they do not rule the empire anymore.

Speaker 3 (02:23:37):
Right, that's Trump.

Speaker 4 (02:23:38):
These people they ran into a piece of reality that
they tried to devour and consume and replace.

Speaker 3 (02:23:44):
And it destroyed them. And I don't know if this
is that for Trump, but.

Speaker 2 (02:23:48):
I yeah, I don't know. I'm not that optimistic.

Speaker 4 (02:23:50):
But like the last time that someone tried to do
this using the American state, they eventually hit a thing
they couldn't swallow and it completely annihilated them. And that's
the goal with us, right, Like we have to like
find the thing where enough of the coalition is peeled
off and where it just completely blows up in their
fucking face. And hopefully it's not like the Iraq War

(02:24:12):
three or something, but this ability to warp reality purely
by like thought and speech and action of empire like
has its limits, and we've seen them be destroyed before.

Speaker 12 (02:24:24):
Yeah, it took a lot of people dying into the
first time.

Speaker 4 (02:24:28):
That's what it was horrible, Right, It's not easy to
stop these people. But you know, like, where the fuck
is George Bush right now?

Speaker 12 (02:24:35):
Yeah he's doing a painting, Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:24:37):
Yeah, on his foreign painting. But he's not running the
fucking country.

Speaker 11 (02:24:40):
Not far.

Speaker 2 (02:24:41):
He's like ten miles away from where I used to live.

Speaker 12 (02:24:43):
It down, God, he's at a rubbit's house.

Speaker 2 (02:24:47):
Yeah. I don't know what else we got to say
about our old friend Jepstein.

Speaker 4 (02:24:53):
I guess the one last thing that I have to
say is I actually do think that, Like, look, if
the thing that you've decided to do is you want
to wage information warfare, like just continuing to spread this
shit and like seating it in random right wing things
is probably a fun thing to do with your time.

Speaker 3 (02:25:07):
It could work. Who knows it can't hurt?

Speaker 2 (02:25:09):
Yeah, I mean it could, but probably won't. What really
could hurt? Right now? Given where we are, this.

Speaker 12 (02:25:15):
Is like the biggest chink in the maga ama that
we've seen. Like he's lost more people over this than
tearing families apart. We've masked and identified men with guns.
People are fine with that, James, unfortunate. Lots of them
think it's.

Speaker 3 (02:25:29):
Cool, but someone them don't.

Speaker 4 (02:25:30):
And that's going to be our interview tomorrow or maybe yesterday.

Speaker 3 (02:25:34):
The whole country is governed by QAnon logic. Now, this
is the only thing that truly gets Americans upset anymore.
As like an entire political block. Yeah, this is it.
Like QAnon as a cohesive conspiracy doesn't really exist anymore,
but its logic has perforated every aspect of America, Democrats

(02:25:54):
and Republicans included. Now, and that's the real people that's
like survived survived the past ten years of politics. Is
like the logic of QAnon.

Speaker 2 (02:26:06):
It's the only thing that matters.

Speaker 3 (02:26:08):
It cannot be killed anymore.

Speaker 2 (02:26:11):
All right, Well this has been It could happen here
until next time. You know, may every day be another
beautiful secret.

Speaker 3 (02:26:19):
Gold this is it could happen here. Executive Disorder our

(02:26:50):
weekly newscast covering what is happening in the White House,
the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm
Garson Davis. Today I'm joined by Mia Wong, James Stout,
and Sophie Lichtermann. This episode, we are covering the week
of July sixteenth to July twenty three. It has been
six months since Trump has took office. How do we

(02:27:10):
feel about that, folks?

Speaker 4 (02:27:12):
Yeah, wow, there can't be three and a half were years.
It's like there just can't, like there will not be
a country left.

Speaker 15 (02:27:20):
Yeah, six months feels like a lifetime and not like
it feels like no time has passed at all.

Speaker 12 (02:27:26):
So yeah, sixpence of us doing this? She's wild? Was
that forty two months left? Am I correctly auditioning? I
don't do mar heye is six months?

Speaker 3 (02:27:37):
Welcome to Math cast with doctor James Stout.

Speaker 12 (02:27:40):
Yeah, a doctor of modern European history. So it does
not involve arithmetic.

Speaker 3 (02:27:46):
Oh man, let's go straight to Epstein, which is also
what Hillary Clinton's Black Ops Kills squad said after they
broke into the jail.

Speaker 4 (02:27:54):
Wow, garrets, you are spreading disinformation. That is the one
group of people we can and confirmed. Did I feel,
Jeffrey Epstein?

Speaker 15 (02:28:03):
Harrison, just because Robert's not here, does it mean you
have to go down to his level of humor?

Speaker 3 (02:28:11):
I think yesterday or two days ago, we released Epstein
Update episode where we discussed the first Wall Street Journal
story where they released this type written note given to
Epstein on his fiftieth birthday from Trump, where he wrote
this fake dialogue conversation between him and Epstein saying, among
other things, we have certain things in common Jeffrey, Yes,

(02:28:35):
we do. Come to think of it, Enigma's never age.
Have you noticed that? As a matter of fact, it
was clear to me last time I saw you, a
pal is a wonderful thing. Happy birthday, and may every
day be another wonderful secret quote, which is who you
could have just wrote like a pedophile confession note and
it would be less incriminating than whatever creepy shit you're

(02:28:56):
doing with this. So if you want to listen to
our full update episode on that, just pop over to
the other episode after Executive Disorder is done. We do
have some other updates to add on because the Epstein
thing keeps being in the news despite the will of
Donald Trump, who definitely wants this not in the news.
In fact, he is trying out a number of distraction techniques,

(02:29:19):
including releasing some files related to the death of Martin
Luther King, which when everyone's asking to release the files,
that's not the files they were talking about.

Speaker 1 (02:29:26):
Also, the family did not want that to happen.

Speaker 3 (02:29:29):
It's very disrespectful and has stated that for a while.
This is a very cheap way to run some distraction.
Last week, Pambondi sent a request to release the grand
jury files on the Epstein investigation, and this was just
a way to perform transparency because these types of files
usually do not get released, like this was most likely
going to get blocked by the judge. And they knew

(02:29:50):
that when they sent this request. This was just to
perform this like gesture of transparency, knowing that it wouldn't
actually lead to anything. And all of this stuff goes
against what Trump was saying, like a year ago. A
year ago on Fox News, Trump said that he would
release the files and then although he did kind of
catch himself and realized that that might not be in
his best interest because he kind of corrected and said

(02:30:12):
that he would have to make sure there's not phony
stuff in there. Let's play the clip.

Speaker 6 (02:30:16):
Would you declassify the nine to eleven files?

Speaker 11 (02:30:19):
Yeah?

Speaker 4 (02:30:20):
Would you declassified JFK files.

Speaker 11 (02:30:22):
Yeah, which I did. I did a lot of it.

Speaker 14 (02:30:24):
Would you declassify the Epstein files, Yeah?

Speaker 11 (02:30:27):
Yeah, I would I guess I would.

Speaker 16 (02:30:29):
I think that less so because you know, you don't
know if you don't want to affect people's lives of
its phony stuff in there, because there's a lot of
phony stuff with that whole world.

Speaker 11 (02:30:39):
But I think I would.

Speaker 1 (02:30:40):
What does that fucking mean?

Speaker 3 (02:30:42):
That whole world? Yeah, there's a lot of interesting things
in there. Notably, when Fox first aired this, they only
played the first half of his answer where he said, yeah,
I would, and did not air the part where we said, well,
actually maybe not, because there's a lot of phony stuff
in there.

Speaker 12 (02:31:01):
Yeah, that's interesting.

Speaker 3 (02:31:02):
Eventually the full clip went online, but at first they
released this shorter clip to make Trump look better, which
there's a lot of similarity to Trump's lawsuit against sixty
Minutes in Paramount, when they released two different clips of
Kamala Harris answering a question in like the same week
on two different shows, answering the same question like two
halves of the answer. Trump said that this was done

(02:31:22):
explicitly to change the outcome of the election and sued
sixty Minutes for this and because Paramount, the parent company
of CBS News, is trying to complete a merger with
sky Dance, which needs to be approved by the Trump administration.
Paramount had started interfering with the affairs of sixty minutes,
had just canceled the Colbert A Late show, possibly in
efforts to appease Trump, and just gave him this massive

(02:31:46):
bribe as a way to get out of the lawsuit.
So very similar situation where news companies are playing two
different things from the same answer. I think the one
that happened on Fox News is way more egregious than
the one sixty Minutes did. I think this, even if
it's one, makes sense. But that's just a whole tiny aside.
Releasing Epstein files is something that Trump has still been

(02:32:08):
talking about. Last week, on Wednesday, July sixteenth, in an
Oval Office press conference, he was asked if you would
get Pambondi to try to release more documents. He answered
like this, will you ask a trade general Pambondi to
release more documents to finally put this controversy to that, you.

Speaker 11 (02:32:23):
Know, whatever is credible she can release.

Speaker 16 (02:32:25):
If a document is credible, of the documents there that
is credible, she can release.

Speaker 11 (02:32:31):
I think it's I.

Speaker 16 (02:32:32):
Think it's good, but it's just really it's just a subject.
He's dead, he's gone, and all it is is the Republicans.
Certain Republicans got duped by the Democrats and then following
a Democrat playbooker.

Speaker 3 (02:32:48):
So after this, Pambondi sent a request to a judge
to unseal the Epstein Maxwell grand jury transcripts, and again
this is the move to feign transparency. Attorney Sarah Crissoff,
assistant us A jtorney in Manhattan two s eight, twenty
twenty one, told the AP that this move was a
quote unquote distraction. Quote the president is trying to present

(02:33:09):
himself as if he's doing something here and really it's
nothing unquote. She estimates that these transcripts could be as
little as sixty pages anyway, because it is standard practice
for the Southern District of New York to put very
little information in these transcripts compared to some other states.
And as expected earlier this week, the judge denied this request,
which the Trump admin knew was going to happen, because

(02:33:30):
they don't release grand jury transcripts. The whole point of
a grand jury is that it's secret that she did this. Yeah,
so this was never gonna happen.

Speaker 1 (02:33:38):
I fear that's commonsense.

Speaker 3 (02:33:40):
But this was the move to make it look like
they were having some level of transparency. Another tactic Trump
has done to distract from the Epstein story is directing
in Tulsa Gabbard to run this huge distraction campaign by
talking about the Obama treeson investigation. Jesus Christ, Yeah, I'll
play a clip here.

Speaker 17 (02:34:01):
There is irrefutable evidence that detail how President Obama and
his national security team directed the creation of an intelligence
community assessment that they knew was false.

Speaker 3 (02:34:13):
They knew it would.

Speaker 17 (02:34:14):
Promote this contrived narrative that Russia interfered in the twenty
sixteen election to help President Trump win, selling it to
the American people as though it were true.

Speaker 2 (02:34:24):
It wasn't.

Speaker 17 (02:34:25):
The report that we released today shows in great detail
how they carried this out. They manufactured findings from shoddy sources,
They suppressed evidence and credible intelligence that disproved their false claims.
They disobeyed traditional trade craft intelligence community standards, and withheld

(02:34:45):
the truth from the American people.

Speaker 3 (02:34:48):
Very serious stuff.

Speaker 1 (02:34:50):
Just looks like a villain from the Orville.

Speaker 3 (02:34:53):
What they're talking about is, yeah, there was legitimate investigations
into Russia's meddling in the twenty sixteen election. What they
were unable to prove is conclusive evidence that Trump colluded
with the Russians. But this meddling was real and was proven.
This is stuff that they've found and Obama was president
at the time, and yeah, he's gonna know about the investigation.

(02:35:14):
So they're trying to turn that into this whole giant,
giant hoax regarding Obama trying to steal the twenty sixteen election, again,
an election that everyone knows Trump won. Trump was president
from twenty seventeen to early twenty twenty one, something that
some people have tried to forget, and they're trying to
run like all of these distractions just to keep people

(02:35:37):
from talking about Epstein. And this is something that Trump's
really good at. All he needs to do is keep
his base from turning on him, and the way he's
going to do that is make them angry at other people.
He has to find new targets to make his base
upset at, and right now he's trying it out with Obama.
Right He's done that with Biden for years, He's done
that with Clinton for years. Obama is the new guy

(02:35:58):
that he hasn't really targeted as much. So now he's
trying to get his supporters really mad at Obama, and
that is the whole way that he's trying to hold
onto their support and hold onto their power. Because, yeah,
some of the Epstein stuff may be a little bit weird,
but did you see how Obama tried to steal the election?
And this is his whole strategy. And he laid the
strategy out at a press conference earlier this week where
he's seen like coaching Republicans to respond to questions about

(02:36:21):
Epstein by just talking about Obama and the Russian election
interference investigation, the quote unquote Russia hopes.

Speaker 18 (02:36:29):
But remember this, Obama cheated on the election, and we
have it called hard blue, and it's getting even more
so because the stuff that's coming in is not even believable.
So and you should mention that every time they give
you a question that's not appropriate, just say, oh, by

(02:36:49):
the way, Obama cheated on the election.

Speaker 11 (02:36:51):
You'll watch the camera turn off instantly.

Speaker 3 (02:36:54):
And this is the strategy he uses. Whenever he's asked
about something, He'll talk about the Russia, Russia, Russia hope,
the Hunter Biden laptop, things that aren't even real, things
that he's like successfully syoped the country into believing are
like real things. But whenever he's asked a question about Epstein,
you can immediately pivot to that and have that control
the conversation. And he's laying out the strategy here. This

(02:37:16):
is what I was talking about last week in d
about how Trump like dictates reality through speech, and he's
trying to coach his fellow Republicans on how to do it.
And they have to catch up on a lot of
stuff because Trump's ties to Epstein have been known for
a long long time. I'm going to play a very
very gross clip from around the turn of the millennia

(02:37:38):
talking about dating eighteen models.

Speaker 2 (02:37:41):
What did you do last night? For fun?

Speaker 16 (02:37:43):
I actually went to the Fashion Award show.

Speaker 2 (02:37:47):
Models working on.

Speaker 8 (02:37:51):
Big Donald.

Speaker 17 (02:37:51):
Do you worry because you have a daughter who's a model?

Speaker 16 (02:37:54):
I do, and I have a deal with her. She's
just seventeen and she's doing great Ivanka, and she made
me promised her swear to her that I would never
dat a girl younger than her.

Speaker 8 (02:38:05):
So why did you grow with Howard?

Speaker 15 (02:38:07):
And she grows older?

Speaker 8 (02:38:08):
Right?

Speaker 3 (02:38:09):
The field is getting very limited for Dearly now that
she's seventeen, His dating a field is getting very limited.
I wonder what he could mean by that. Oh, I
wonder what that could be, insinuating.

Speaker 1 (02:38:22):
Really fucking girls.

Speaker 11 (02:38:23):
Man.

Speaker 12 (02:38:24):
Yeah, this shit is actually deeply fucking still, like, yeah,
it's hideous.

Speaker 4 (02:38:28):
And also like the fact that the Democrats didn't spend
the entire election just calling him a pedophile and running
ads that were just this man as a pedophile.

Speaker 3 (02:38:36):
Like, this is stuff we've known for a long time.

Speaker 12 (02:38:40):
Yeah, she's like in the public domain decades and decades.

Speaker 3 (02:38:45):
This is from a Guardian article in twenty twenty. At
forty three years old, Donald Trump asked a seventeen year
old girl on a date. Trump asked her out for
dinner in the summer of nineteen eighty nine at an
industry soiree. She recalls Trump asking how old she was.
Quote I said seventeen, and he said, that's just great.
You're not too old, not too young unquote legally speaking,

(02:39:07):
too young. Outrageous, outrageous stuff. And we have some breaking
news from just a few hours ago. We're recording this.
On Wednesday, a second Wall Street Journal article has hit
the Trump Towers. A new article talking about the Justice
Department officials reviewing Attorney General Pam Bondi's quote unquote truckload

(02:39:28):
of Jeffrey Epstein documents and discovering that Donald Trump's name
appears multiple times, according to senior Administration officials. Bondy notified
Trump about this in May, saying that a few other
high profile names are also in the documents and that
the DOJ would not be releasing these documents in order

(02:39:49):
to quote unquote protect victims. As if you can't censor victims'
names or censored hold sexual abast material, this is just
a complete cover up.

Speaker 8 (02:39:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:39:58):
Oh and by the way, in late break news, that's
sure to make everyone considerably more normal. Epstein's defense lawyer,
Roy Black, who's the guy who got him off from
like going to prison for a billion years in two
thousand and seven, just.

Speaker 3 (02:40:10):
Died like today, So okay, sure, Hillary Clinton kills squad.

Speaker 4 (02:40:15):
It's really really working working over time this point, Like
Donald Trump kills squad questionable. Absolutely absolutely need to be
retiring the Hillary Clinton kills squad jokes, because like, I
think it's very likely that Epstein did kill himself. I
do not think you need to believe in that sort
of like conspiratorial thinking to also believe that there's documented

(02:40:36):
evidence of Trump dating teenagers and wanting to date teenagers
for the past like forty years, and that's something that
everyone should be aware of.

Speaker 3 (02:40:45):
Like, that's not a conspiracy theory, and you don't need
to believe in conspiratorial thinking to think that that's very likely.

Speaker 4 (02:40:53):
That said, I do want to establish there is at
least one person on the podcast who thinks that he
might not have I don't know, but every single time
they do more weird shit about it, I'm like, maybe
is this conspiracy brain thinking yes?

Speaker 12 (02:41:08):
But I mean, editing the video, did it make any
one more certain that he killed himself?

Speaker 3 (02:41:14):
So as we enter the more than six month marker
in the Trump administration, I think we should check in
on how they youths feel about Donald Trump. Famously, there's
a lot of reporting about how gen Z is, like,
you know, swinging more conservative, how gen Z helped get
Trump elected, and if you look at some February approval numbers,
it does seem that between ages of eighteen and twenty nine.

Speaker 12 (02:41:37):
So too old. Using the aforementioned criteria.

Speaker 3 (02:41:40):
Trump did have a plus ten points approval, with fifty
five percent approving only forty five percent disapproving of his performance. Now,
come July things have changed dramatically in the youth bracket
eighteen to twenty nine, with only twenty eight percent approval.
It's a negative forty four points and seventy two percent disapproval,
which is a net fifty four point negative swing. That's

(02:42:04):
genuinely astonishing, Like.

Speaker 12 (02:42:07):
That's a huge jump. But it's not a jump, Garrison,
it's a fall. That's you're right, You're right, it is
going down. Yeah, Yeah, it's a plummet.

Speaker 3 (02:42:16):
This is according to CBS Newsballs again, and I do
think me is right. I don't know if Trump's going
to care about this very much because this does seem
to be higher than his preferred dating bracket, So I
don't think he's looking for the approval of people between
eighteen to twenty nine, but this still might affect him culturally,
I guess.

Speaker 4 (02:42:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:42:34):
Talking of things that have gone down badly, Garrison, it's
now our obligation to pivot to advertisements.

Speaker 3 (02:42:41):
Advertisements are doing just fine from what I hear, and
we are back. Let's do an immigration segment for the

(02:43:02):
middle of the show, and I guess I'll first start
with ice watch. So the past few weeks, I've seen
multiple videos of ice pulling over cars and sometimes not
even like pulling over, just like blocking cars and narrow streets,
like stopping them forcefully and then drawing guns as they
get out of the car, like by the time they
are like door open, feed on the ground, gun already drawn.

(02:43:26):
And they then descend on activists doing ICE watch, basically
people who follow ICE agents around to alert their community
of where ICE currently is. Usually they're live streaming and
this in particular video that I have sent to the
team here very freaky. I think we should just watch
it here.

Speaker 12 (02:43:43):
Yeah, yeah, definitely, and we can try and describe it
a little bit for listeners.

Speaker 8 (02:43:50):
Right.

Speaker 14 (02:43:57):
If you know how I am, then why the fuck
are you telling me to open the window, and why
the hell are you pointing a gun a fucking taser
on me?

Speaker 6 (02:44:05):
If you know who I am? Okay, And you guys
follow everyone everyone.

Speaker 19 (02:44:13):
You guys stalk people all the fucking time.

Speaker 3 (02:44:16):
A very large man wearing a mask, a hoodie and
a baseball cap, no obviously identification, not in a police uniform,
not in like a order patrol uniform. It's just a
guy who basically forces your car to stop and jumps
out and points a gun at you.

Speaker 12 (02:44:31):
Yeah, he draws from Appendix Carrie, like, it's not in
many states, this would be justification to start shooting at
this man.

Speaker 18 (02:44:37):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:44:38):
Yeah, there's I think reasons why they're not doing this
in states through there's high levels of gun ownership because
they're afraid of that happening. Because it's not clear at
all as guy's a cop. No, it's a masked man
has forced your car to a halt and is pulling
a gun on you and is approaching you.

Speaker 11 (02:44:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:44:55):
I mean that happens in another country and you assume
you're being roped, like right, another part of the world.
Like Also, it's notable that the vehicle doesn't have lights.

Speaker 3 (02:45:04):
It's not a cop car.

Speaker 12 (02:45:05):
No, it's not even a US made car like sometimes
cops will use like non marked cars, but they're normally
US manufactured right for or US companies for Chevy, etc.
This is a Kia. Everything apart from a lanyard hanging
around the guy's neck which is not identifiable. It's a badge.
Certainly not at this speed. Certainly not while he's drawing
a gun. From appendix carry points to this being someone

(02:45:27):
trying to rub.

Speaker 9 (02:45:28):
Or kill you.

Speaker 3 (02:45:29):
Very scary.

Speaker 4 (02:45:30):
Yeah, I will say, I think the fact that they're
being forced to do this in some sense is a
sign that this is really working.

Speaker 3 (02:45:36):
It's pissing them off. The fact that people are keeping
tabs on where I see it. Yeah, yeah, it's working.
And like I keep saying, this is like they're the
ones who are being forced to operate, is if they're
working in a police state, Like they're the ones who
are having to deal with surveillance. They're the ones who
are having to deal with the fact that like if
they stay in a place too long, they'll be beast
mobilizations and people will just like drop the hammer on them.

Speaker 4 (02:45:56):
It's a really interesting look at what happens when you
try to do this police state shit in a society
where everyone fucking hates you, which is that all you
really have is speed and terror totally. And so you
know they're doing this shit right, like they're just trying
to terrorize people into letting them do their police state stuff.
But if people keep doing it right, it seriously is
like denting their effectiveness a lot.

Speaker 3 (02:46:17):
Yeah, I've seen multiple videos like this. Eventually the ICE
agents will call over some like state trooper or like
a DHS guy who does not work or ICE directly
to diffuse this situation. I've seen most of these situations
get eventually diffused, but it's something to I think draw
attention to right now.

Speaker 12 (02:46:33):
Yeah, I mean, if this keeps happening, it's likely to
end in violence somewhere, right, I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:46:39):
This is the same thing when they're kidnapping college students
without any clear identification.

Speaker 12 (02:46:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:46:43):
Yeah, notably doing that in like New England states where
people do not conceal carry firearms like regularly, as like
a regular thing that like people do.

Speaker 12 (02:46:52):
Yeah, I mean, firelarms are not the only means of
violence available to people like that. Lady seem very calm
and commendably so, but like she could a step on
the gas pedal car and.

Speaker 3 (02:47:00):
Totally absolutely right. Yeah, And obviously this person knows that
the guy is ICED, because that's why she's following him.
But if ICE just starts getting paranoid about cars behind them,
if they think someone's following them, they can pull us
on someone who's not doing ICE.

Speaker 8 (02:47:14):
Watch.

Speaker 3 (02:47:15):
Yeah, they could just pull us on anyone who they
are like suspicious of, And I think that's when really
dangerous situations could start breaking out between these like unmarked
ICE agents and just regular citizens.

Speaker 4 (02:47:26):
And I think the odds of one of them just
snapping and starting shooting is like not zero, because that's
who these people are, and as they're increasingly put under stress.

Speaker 3 (02:47:38):
They're being trained to always be afraid of danger, like
more so than even just like regular like cop stuff.
Like they're talking about how like violence against ICE is
up eight hundred percent, where the violence is like someone's
head meets an ICE agent's fist, right, It's that sort
of violence where it's like you're assaulting a cop by
like partially resisting arrest in some way. But they are

(02:48:00):
running those stats as if this is a real epidemic
of violence against ICE agents right now. Another story I
like to talk about is this deportation hoax story that
I've seen going around social media. Seen it going around
like our slash green card on Reddit, like TikTok, and
even of local news stories across the country where ICE

(02:48:20):
secretly deports an eighty two year old torture survivor and
US legal resident for forty years. This man goes to
an immigration office to replace a green card, and instead
of that happening, ICE handcuffs him, detains him, denies access
to a lawyer and deports him to Guatemala, a country
where he is not from, with no official paperwork, and

(02:48:42):
then is put into the hospital in Guatemala. This story
got super viral the past week, and from what we
can tell, this is not a real story. There was
no immigration appointment in Philadelphia at the time of this
spiral story. Guatemala says that the man is not in
the country. The hospital he was alleged to be at.
Doctors have said there's no man matching this description in

(02:49:03):
the story, and the photos attached to this viral story
of the man are not of this guy. The photos
are of a guy who died three years ago. This is,
from what we can tell, an entirely fabricated story that
one local news outlet bought and then spread around from there.
It's not even clear if, like the family members that
were the original source of this even exist. It's not

(02:49:25):
clear if this man even exists. So this is, from
what we can tell right now, not real, not real
at all, and this is something to keep him in mind.
Just because a story is like scary and just because
it's going viral does not necessarily mean it's true, and
we don't need to be sharing fake stories of ICE
deporting people or even going after Green card holders, because

(02:49:48):
this is actually happening. This is happening in the country
right now, and ICE is defying judicial orders.

Speaker 12 (02:49:54):
Yeah, So let's talk about one of those incidents, right.
In this case, it's a man called Leonell Navaret Hernandez
who filed a habeas suit in the Central District of
California right against the Department of Home Lown Security. Let's
get some background on his case first, and we can
talk about this specific kind of not justifying court orders,
but also the United States Constitution. So he fled to

(02:50:16):
the United States in two thousand and nine after being
pursued by the police and falsely accused of El Salvador
and beaten by police several times. I'm going to quote
from the court documents pretty extensively throughout this so quote
including in one distance, beaten until he vomited blood, resulting
in a cut on his head that scarred and a
fractured finger. And quote in twenty twenty two, he was

(02:50:37):
part of a targeted enforcement operation and he was issued
a notice to appear and that he bonded out, right,
So he posted like bail and he was out of detention. Right.
In January twenty twenty four, he filed for his asylum.
He didn't get asylum dus a timing of filing. He
also asked for withholding of removal. I didn't get that
because he quote failed to show that his proposed quote

(02:50:59):
particular groups are cognizable or that his past harm was
because of a protected ground.

Speaker 11 (02:51:04):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:51:04):
So regular listeners will know that there are certain grounds
on which one can obtain asylum and what has to
be part of these certain categories to obtain asylum. What
he did get was protection of removal under a convention
against torture because again quoting, it is more likely than
not that their respondent will be detained and tortured in
El Salvador. El Salvador has put out an inter poll

(02:51:27):
read alert for him. For some reason, they deeply wanted
him back. Doesn't seem to be any evidence that this
person committed crimes. Ice appealed this protection for removal right,
and then the same day they appealed it, they detained
him when he appeared at his intensive supervision appearance program.
Check it, so, Ice ap rate. It's one of these
things where instead of being detained, you appear at ice

(02:51:48):
office and check in every now and again, as opposed
to than just locking you up for the entire time.
His partner then testified to that quote. Lionel called me
and told me that he was arrested, says immigration officers
went up to him and his IYESAP check in and
told him he was under arrest. Lionel said he asked
the officers why and informed them he had an order

(02:52:08):
from the judge. The officer said something like judges don't Judges'
orders don't matter only the president.

Speaker 3 (02:52:14):
Judges orders don't matter only the president. This is a
rogue law enforcement agency in service of a rogue president.
Like yeah.

Speaker 12 (02:52:23):
Leonel then told me that he told the officers he
had an attorney. I'm still quoting from his partner here,
but the officer said that doesn't matter either.

Speaker 3 (02:52:31):
He has an order forbidding his deportation, and they're telling
him that doesn't matter because the president wants you out
of the country.

Speaker 12 (02:52:38):
Yeah, exactly, And that is what they have done. Right,
That was the entire rendition of people to l Salbadol
was an end run around that, right, attempting to They're
just like saying this to people, Yeah, because that's what
they're doing. That's Warren. That's what they said to the court. Right,
we sneaked him out before you could stop it. Yeah,
So just to update people in his case, he called
from jail in Santa Anna and said he was in
a small space and he heard people being taken to

(02:53:00):
San Diego or Texas. Then he had to hang up.
He was moved around significantly, right all around, including into Texas.
When he showed up on the detainee locator, the judge
in the case issued attentive restraining order to prevent them
from removing him. In detention, he was only allowed to
make phone calls for three minutes, and in one of
those calls, he told his partner that detention officers, I guess,

(02:53:21):
were telling detainees they were going to be removed whether
or not they signed deportation papers. In his case, the
court has issued an injunction to prevent his removal or
his read attention. So shout out to this Central District
of California. I guess this is wild, right, this is
dictatorial regime.

Speaker 8 (02:53:39):
Shit.

Speaker 12 (02:53:39):
You have no rights other than those a president decides
to give to you. It's the subtext here.

Speaker 4 (02:53:43):
It's explicitly the fascist thing of like there are people
who exist outside the legal order in order to maintain it,
and that person is the fear. Like that, that's just
what this is, right, Like it it's really explicit.

Speaker 12 (02:53:57):
I don't really know what people expect on them and
you know, the expected dress like they're in the sound
of music. You know, like this is what fascism looks like.
Let's talk about some more immigration cases.

Speaker 3 (02:54:06):
What other immigration updates do we have, James.

Speaker 12 (02:54:08):
Yeah, well none of them are great, to be honest.

Speaker 3 (02:54:11):
No, the immigration segment has been a bit of a
bummer in the past. Let me check my watch six months.

Speaker 12 (02:54:16):
Yeah, it's hard on the soul. A New Jersey district
court has struck down the state's law forbidding private immigration detention.
This also happened in California. Right, they said it was
stay overy. So this was an issue. It's federal detention
instead of fed to get to decide basically, right. So
New Jersey had tried to stop Geo Group cour Civic,

(02:54:36):
these massive detention operations from operating private immigration detention in
the state. Couldn't get down one through the court. Probably
the bigger story this week is that the federal government
has signed a contract for a huge five thousand bed
tent camp facility for migration detention of Fort Bliss. So
according to reporting in Bloomberg, Bloomberg has reported that the

(02:54:57):
contract totals one point twenty six billion. The only tract
I was able to actually find was a Department of
Defense contract for two hundred and thirty one million, eight
hundred and seventy eight thousand, two hundred and twenty nine
dollars to be precise. What is not being reported on this?
And I don't understand why other than nobody reported on

(02:55:17):
immigration during the Biden admitt Apparently people are looking for
like analogues. What will this be like? Well, the Department
of Defense operated a tent facility at Fort Bliss under
Operation Allies Welcome for Afghan people arriving in the United States.
So after the bungled withdrawal from Afghanistan, right, I interviewed
one of them. I was freelancing for the nation at
that time, and there'll be a link in the show notes.

(02:55:39):
But the Afghanswa Howls did a place called Donja Anna Range,
which is in New Mexico. So Bliss spans Texas and
New Mexico. Right, this New complex needs to be in
a different place because it will be quote unquote soft sided,
which just needs tents. Right, But this one is accessible
from El Paso streets and it's accessible without entering the

(02:55:59):
Fort Bliss main gate, right, so people don't have to
have on base clearance. The Afghan site had ninety eight tenths,
which each held about one hundred people. This one will
house five thousand people, so we can assume about five
hundred tenths. Right. This contract for one point two six billion,
Operation Allies Welcome was larger.

Speaker 9 (02:56:18):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:56:18):
It did other things. For instance, all those people got
their COVID vaccinations because they hadn't gotten them when they
were in Afghanistan. A lot of other vaccinations too. That
that spent three billion just in fiscal year twenty twenty
two to give people a sense of the scale of
these things. Right, So one point two six billion, it's
not at all out of the question, and in fact
brings me on to my next point, which is that
it may be a bit low, given this company has

(02:56:42):
no experience with this kind of operation.

Speaker 8 (02:56:44):
Right.

Speaker 12 (02:56:44):
One of the questions we asked back in November when
we did are like what could happen under Trump is
how will they stand up these facilities. Who has the
experience to do it well? This company does not have
the experience to do it right. They've never done anything
like this before. They have some logistic common practice DoD,
but they do not have the capacity. At least they
have not shown that they have the capacity to do

(02:57:06):
anything on this scale. The DoD operation used a lot
of contractors as well as defact dining facility for food.
And I just want to quote some of the people
I called a bull who I talked to, who was
in that detention facility. Quote for the past month, nighttime
was the most horrible time for us because every day
it got colder. We didn't have enough warm clothes or
any thick blankets to fight against the cold. They gave

(02:57:27):
us a blanket that was so thin we could see
through it. These are people who in some cases fought
alongside United States soldiers right like, it's not going to
be better for migrants. Ball also told me the food
wasn't great. He said, quote it's not cooked enough or
it's burned. He did say that he appreciated the quote.
The guy doing the cooking was always asking for feedback.

(02:57:47):
They tried to cook Afghan food, I guess, and yeah, yeah,
he appreciated the effort to cook food that interesting. Yeah,
I mean they ain't going to try that now this time, right,
but not, for instance, provide halal food, which was a consideration.

Speaker 4 (02:58:01):
I'm assuming this time they're going to be getting the
fucking boldy food from Florida.

Speaker 12 (02:58:05):
Yeah, I mean, the United States has a whole bunch
of food should have gone out to many of the
starving people around the world, right, but yet has been
left to mold and warehouses. So yeah, they might be
eating the high energy biscuits or the humrats. Talking of food,
Human Rights Watch has reached a report detailing human rights
abuses at detention centers. The report focuses on Chrome North

(02:58:27):
Service Processing Center aka a Chrome, the Brower Transitional Center,
and the Federal Detention Center. All of these are in Florida.

Speaker 3 (02:58:35):
Are those first two like privately owned better than being
leased or like licensed out to the government.

Speaker 12 (02:58:41):
Yes, they're run by contractors for the government for immigration
detencent We've talked about Chrome before. It was one that
was already ever crowded, had two deaths.

Speaker 3 (02:58:50):
It's also the name that I would pick for like
an evil agency who gets the private prison. Yeah, it's
it's chrome with a K with a K too, which
makes it more evil.

Speaker 12 (02:59:00):
So the incidence detailed in this report pretty pretty bad.
They include people being forced to eat like dogs with
a hands tied behind their back. They include people being
punished and put in solitary confinement for seeking medical or
mental health help and having their hands tipped. I had
and been forced to lay down on wet floors, as
it's very common in ice facilities. The air conditioning was

(02:59:21):
turned up very high to make it uncomfortably cold.

Speaker 3 (02:59:23):
Like the Florida bomb.

Speaker 12 (02:59:25):
Yeah, this is the case in every immigration detention to
the facility that I've heard about. Right, the Spanish word
is it translates to ice box. Is the word that
people used to refer That's the colloquial term for these facilities. Right.
The FDC staff also used stun grenades and physical force
against detainees protesting denial of food, water, medical attention. The

(02:59:47):
report details people being detained in crowdedge cells with no
beds or bedding and denied essential medications. Really a couple
of quotes from people interviewed in the report here quote,
you could not fall asleep because it was so cold,
I thought I was going to experience hypothermia. One said,
it's like psychological abuse. You feel like your life is over,

(03:00:07):
said another.

Speaker 3 (03:00:20):
All right, we're back. This past week, the World Food
Program released a new report on food scarcity in Gaza
enforced through the Israeli military, and also discussed a quote
unquote deadly incident this past Sunday in which dozens of
civilians were killed and injured while waiting to access food
as a World Food Program convoy was entering northern Gaza.

(03:00:44):
The Director of Emergency Preparedness and Response, Ross Smith said,
quote yesterday's incident is one of the greatest tragedies we've
seen for our operations in Gaza and elsewhere while we're
trying to work, and it's completely avoidable, and it's an
absolute tragedy. Currently, food safety experts warned that one in
five people in Gaza face enforced starvation. I'm going to

(03:01:06):
quote from the un here, quote, mister Smith said. World
Food Program assessments show that a quarter of the population
is facing famine like conditions. Almost one hundred thousand women
and children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition and need
treatment as soon as possible, pointing to reports. He said, quote,
people are dying from a lack of humanitarian assistance every day,
and we are seeing this escalate day by day, saying

(03:01:29):
that food and humanitarian assistance are quote the only solution
at the moment for Gaza unquote.

Speaker 4 (03:01:35):
And it's worth emphasizing with this that like, the food
is there, it is literally just sitting and warehouses, like
they can bring it in the moment the blockade lifts,
but the Israelis don't.

Speaker 3 (03:01:45):
Worry bombing people bringing food into Gaza at this point.

Speaker 4 (03:01:50):
Then they keep on doing this thing where they'll be like, oh,
we have food, and then they shoot everyone who shows food.

Speaker 3 (03:01:57):
So this is something that World Food Program has been saying, quote.
We also need to have no armed actors near food
and distribution points, near our convoys, and near the movement
of those convoys from one place to another.

Speaker 12 (03:02:09):
This is basic humanitarian agient. This is like one oh
one fucking operating humanitarian resources in a conflict zone.

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

Speaker 12 (03:02:16):
This isn't new stuff, right. This is asking the IDF
to do what you would expect any reasonable actor to
do in one of these situations. Obviously, the IDF not
a particularly reasonable actor.

Speaker 3 (03:02:29):
Rain speaking of things they don't like, Oh.

Speaker 12 (03:02:32):
Garrison, you cannot compare the work of Joe drama to
the ideas unreasonable Jesus Christ.

Speaker 3 (03:02:41):
If I don't like Jesus Christ, all right, welcome to
tariff talk thing where I had no role in the
prior transition to it.

Speaker 4 (03:02:50):
So we've gotten a few teriff deals over the week.
We got one with the Philippines where Trump was negotiated
a deal for a nineteen percent on all goods in
the Philippines coming to the US. There's also been a
deal established with Japan where we're out of terriforate of
fifteen percent. This one also has and there's been a

(03:03:12):
few of these deals that have things like this where
Japan also had to agree to invest five hundred and
fifty billion dollars in the US. It's really unclear how
that's going to work, like it might just be loans.

Speaker 3 (03:03:26):
That's the part.

Speaker 4 (03:03:26):
I don't even know if it's going to happen, because
it's so staggeringly fuzzy and unclear as to what any
of that means. Trump has been talking about how there's
going to be like a ninety ten profit split where
Americans take home ninety percent of the profits in Japan
takes on tempers very weird, very weird. This is also look,
it's worth noting that the last time we deliberately decaped

(03:03:48):
Japan's export manufacturing economy, dreading the Plaza Accords, it kicked
off in economic crisis that Japan has literally never recovered from.
Like people used to talk about the Japanese economy in
the way that we talk about the Chinese economy now
is like emerging rising on stoppable force that was going
to like become the world's greatest manufacturing power, and we
don't do that anymore, partially because of like Japan hit

(03:04:08):
like structural overcapacity in the market blah blah blah blah blah.
Listen to me on every other episode where I talk
about the Plosa Accords and structural global manufacturing overcapacity. But again,
the second thing is we also made their manufacturing less
competitive and it destroyed the entire global economy. Like it's
the reason two thousand and eight happened is because we
did that, and we're doing it again. Like twenty eight

(03:04:29):
percent of the Japanese economy is based on like car exports,
so that's great, that's fun. There's also been reports that
there's a deal with the EU coming. I don't know
who knows. I'm not gonna say what's in it because
we don't know if this is going to happen. There's
that one in particular. There's a lot of things that
can torpedo it, but it's not great. Also, these terrorists,

(03:04:51):
by the way, are replacing the ones that are scheduled
to go into effect on August first. Trump is still
promising to put out tariff things for one hundred and
twenty countries or something like that. I don't know then
what the number is exactly right now. It keeps changing.
He's also not writing those letters, so who knows.

Speaker 3 (03:05:06):
Silky Doki.

Speaker 4 (03:05:07):
Yeah, great way to have terrorist policy, say is that
Trump says something on truth social and then doesn't do it.

Speaker 3 (03:05:14):
And sometimes he does, yes, sometimes he does.

Speaker 12 (03:05:18):
It's good. It's a good way to do things.

Speaker 3 (03:05:20):
It's okay.

Speaker 4 (03:05:22):
So speaking of things being done badly, we need to
talk about NPR and PBS because Republic has just cut
one point one billion dollars from public broadcasting, which is
like all.

Speaker 3 (03:05:32):
Again, we were reported on what Elmo said last week.
It's not a surprise that PBS is getting cut after this.

Speaker 4 (03:05:38):
I actually language hold on, we have not on this
show talked about the fact that PBS like sold Sesame Street.

Speaker 3 (03:05:46):
Yes, that's true. This is so ghoulish, like it does
Jenny whyee? Sesame Street was like one.

Speaker 4 (03:05:52):
Of the few, like really truly great triumphs of American
state media, Like it was specifically designed to teach kids
in underprivileged backgrounds.

Speaker 3 (03:05:59):
How to Now it's on like like HBO, Max or
Netflix or something. I think some posites are still available
on public podcasting.

Speaker 12 (03:06:05):
Some of it's in a public domain, like it's probably
on youtubecause it's been out for SOTI.

Speaker 3 (03:06:08):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:06:08):
But like the problem is, like, this is Jenni Wineley,
one of the greatest public goods the US ever created,
and it was fucking looted and privatized. And now as
all of this funding is being cut, Trump has basically
been pissed off at public podcasting for ages.

Speaker 3 (03:06:24):
Actually, hilariously a lot of this.

Speaker 4 (03:06:26):
One of the big origin points of this was that
they had friend of the show, Vicky Osterweil on NPR
to do an interview about her book in Defensive Looting
and Republican's been mad ever since.

Speaker 3 (03:06:36):
Like a few months ago, Trump sign an executive order
to quote unquote end taxpayer subsidation of biased media, which
specifically sought to defund MPR and PBS through ending contributions
through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting in the order of saying,
quote government funding of news media in this environment is
not only outdated and unnecessary, but corrosive to the appearance

(03:06:59):
of journalistic independence. And instead they replaced the role of
PVS and NPR with One American News, the super far
right mode in sending like American News overseas. Instead of
promoting things like the Voice of America, they are explicitly
entering a partnership with oa N which is of the.

Speaker 12 (03:07:19):
Certain stuff like Voice of American News and the Cuban
Broadcasting Office right like where they which are explicitly like
these are things the US government goes to to advance
its a gender abroad like this isn't.

Speaker 3 (03:07:30):
And now the way that they're doing that is with
One America.

Speaker 4 (03:07:32):
Which is really funny because that probably does make it
less effective. I do want to circle back a little
bit to what this is going to do to NPR
and PPS because like the main central NPR, I mean,
obviously it's a disaster for even like the National MPR,
but like this is going to just annihilate any semplages
of like local news, right, like yeah, because they rely

(03:07:54):
on public broadcasting and NPR massively around the country.

Speaker 3 (03:07:57):
Especially in rural areas.

Speaker 4 (03:07:58):
Like one of the portsoyz ridicle was talking about how
like Texas was expecting to lose half of their like
NPR stations and like rural areas. This is just like
the apocalypse for any kind of like rural local news.
And you know, obviously, like this is a part of
trust attempt to just consolidate all of the American media
under his control through a combination of destroying this kind

(03:08:18):
of stuff and then doing lawsuits. And also, and this
is another thing we need to talk about is like Garrison,
you talked about this Guidiance merger and how that you know,
is being used as leverage to like just destroy the
gut CBS, loot it and turn it into just like
a pro Trumpet outlet, right.

Speaker 3 (03:08:35):
Like allegedly entering in a cooperation deal with the Free
Press from Barry Weiss to exert editorial control over CBS News,
which we'll just take the outlet destroy. Sixty minutes, one
of the most respectable, longstanding television news programs in the
history of the country.

Speaker 4 (03:08:52):
I think there's a very good argument that this is
what Bezos is doing to the Washington Post. Right, is
better for these people that news outlets don't exist or
like seven people read the like unhandedbar right things, than
it is for like anything to actually exist. This is
all again like media consolidation of a diictorial regime, being
accelerated by the fact that all of these things are
owned either by corporations or individual billionaires.

Speaker 3 (03:09:14):
So that's bad.

Speaker 4 (03:09:16):
Speaking of bad, the EPA's Office of Research has just
been eliminated.

Speaker 3 (03:09:21):
This is a unbelievable.

Speaker 4 (03:09:25):
Catastrophe because the EPA's Office of Research does all of
the basic research about like is this chemical dangerous? What
does this chemical do to the environment, what does like
what do these pollution levels do? This is the part
of the EPA that undergirds like basically all environmental regulations
and all regulations on things like chemical protection. Right, it
comes out of this Office of Research. That's where the

(03:09:46):
standards are set. That's where the science has done that
is used in basically like all like regulatory policy that
the EPA does that other agencies used to and they're
just destroying it. Trump has said that they're going to
move some of it to other offices, but they've already
been massively downsizing the EPA. Every day we edge closer
and closers who are just like, this is the country
with no environmental regulations.

Speaker 3 (03:10:07):
We're seeing it more and more.

Speaker 4 (03:10:09):
At some point on the show, we're going to cover
all of the unhinged shit that's been happening with the
power stations and like generators set up to power AI stuff.
I also want to specifically mention one of the things
that the New York Times reported on, which is that
the people who are running the destruction of the EPA
have been trying to get rid of the integrated risk

(03:10:30):
information system, which, if you've ever dealt with dangerous chemicals,
the integrated risk information system is the system that tells
you what the effects of it are. Every chemical has
one right and these fucking people like there's a guy
who's now in the American First Policy Institute, which like
Trump pulls a lot of shit from, who is literally
talking about just getting rid of it because quote, IRIS

(03:10:53):
evaluations often rely on worst case scenario hazard assumptions that
fail to consider real world exposure.

Speaker 12 (03:11:00):
That's kind of the situation with these things, isn't you
don't want to look at the worst case scenario.

Speaker 4 (03:11:04):
Yes, And when you don't look at the worst case scenario.
One of the other agencies that's been like just destroyed
is the US Chemical Safety and Hazard Investigation Board, which
is very famous for doing a bunch of very very
good YouTube videos about like plant disasters and like how
safety violations and safety lapse has caused like fucking plants
to explode.

Speaker 3 (03:11:24):
And that's just like gone now.

Speaker 4 (03:11:26):
And this is, you know, the world that these people
want you to live in is a world in which
you don't know what all of these corporations are pumping
into the environment around you. And even if you can
figure out what the chemicals they're pumping, like into the
groundwater that you're drinking is, you're not supposed to know
what it does. This is just like the basic infrastructure
for how all American like chemical operations work, and they're

(03:11:51):
just trying to destroy it.

Speaker 8 (03:11:53):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:11:53):
Great, speaking of chemicals.

Speaker 4 (03:11:58):
Yeah, speaking of chemicals and the gun trying to destroy it.
The government of Puerto Rico has passed a bill that
bans gender affirming care of all kinds for anyone under
the age of twenty one, because twenty one is the age,
the highest that we've seen. So what's happening here is
twenty one is the age which become a legal adult
in Puerto Rico, which is unhinged. Yeah, this is the

(03:12:19):
highest band we've seen. We've seen a couple of other
places try to do it to nineteen. This also includes
what's basically a high amendment for transcare, like all transcare
of all ages that says that like state money cannot
be used, so state insurance stuff like that in Puerto
Rico cannot be used to pay for any gender affirming
care at all, which is fucking hideous. This is basically

(03:12:42):
the thing we were trying to stop with medicaid, where
we did stop Medicaid the Lost Budget bill, but they've
passed a local version of it. This bill promises us.
I think it's up to five years in prison and
fifteen thousand dollars in fines for anyone who gives trans
healthcare to anyone under the age of twenty one.

Speaker 3 (03:12:56):
So if you never planned to visit Puerto Rico, it's
time to start mailing gender firm and care services to
people in Puerto Rico.

Speaker 4 (03:13:03):
The fun part too, is this law is worded so
loosely that there is genuine concern that it could apply
to Like if you are a parent and you try
to get your kid gender firman care, this could apply
to you.

Speaker 3 (03:13:18):
There's I will say, I think that aspect of it
is still a little bit unclear. I don't want to
inspire too much panic in that sense. I think a
lot of it is directed at people who work in
the medical industry. But still I think if you do
not ever want to visit Puerto Rico and you want
to help trans people, because presumably.

Speaker 12 (03:13:36):
Like no ban on like the import of these products, right,
I guess some products themselves controlled.

Speaker 4 (03:13:42):
Yeah, I mean in chal law, they don't start doing that.

Speaker 3 (03:13:47):
But because famously there's never illegal drugs mailed in the
United States, they can't stop us US. We're getting the
HRT one way or another. But this sucks, and it
will force people to adapt, and it's a really unfortunate
to see. But I do believe in the ability which
tries people to overcome the state's attacks against us. Before

(03:14:07):
we close, there's actually one other piece of important news
that we need to discuss. We're turning once again to
the Stinky Musky segment, because the Tesla Diner has finally opened.
I know we've been waiting for this for a long time.
It is open in La, right right, yeah, so James,
you need to get up there and go to the
Tesla Diner. They have cyber truck food containers, so that's cool. Cool.

(03:14:32):
They have Tesla robots helping to serve food and drinks.
It's what they're calling retro futurist style. I would never
say that. And most importantly, if you want to spend
twelve dollars, you can get yourself a single serving of
epic bacon that's on the menu. It's called epic Bacon
for twelve dollars. Twelve dollars epic bacon at the Tesla

(03:14:54):
Dinars twelve oh. They also opened it at four twenty.

Speaker 12 (03:14:58):
I saw that they also have avocato toast, which is
great for those of us who will never afford a home.

Speaker 3 (03:15:02):
I can't support the Tesla Diners serving this lib cock
avocado toes. It needs to be beef tallow fries.

Speaker 12 (03:15:09):
Well, unfortunately, they did put buttermilk bread with avocado toes,
so just so like vegan people can't eat there. I
guess there you go. Yeah, and again I cannot go
to the testa diner. I don't have to return to
Buffalo wild Wings at two am like I did when
I was up in LA covering the protest a few
weeks ago.

Speaker 1 (03:15:28):
Four wild Wings open that late.

Speaker 12 (03:15:31):
Let me tell you it was no time.

Speaker 3 (03:15:33):
What other time are you going to be eating Buffalo
wild wings?

Speaker 12 (03:15:38):
Are you launching there like a fucking psycho.

Speaker 1 (03:15:42):
In college?

Speaker 12 (03:15:43):
But it was a good time back in the This
is a great time. God, no one looked to be
weird for wearing a fucking plate carrier with press.

Speaker 3 (03:15:53):
Buffalo is a war zone. It's basically one step removed
from like waffle house.

Speaker 12 (03:15:58):
Yeah yeah, which is in turn wanted to removed from Falujah.

Speaker 3 (03:16:01):
So James, I thought that you wanted to plug.

Speaker 12 (03:16:04):
Well that's right, Okay. So we do have an email address.
It's a encrypted email address, and you can send us
emails there. It is cool Zone tips at proton dot me.
What's it going to include? A fundraiser this week? We're
trying to do one of these every week if there's
someone in your community, Like we're trying to focus on
micro fundraisers, people who are raising money for legal a

(03:16:25):
people who need representation. I know immigration lawyers are either
overworked or overpriced. It seems to be like like two
brackets that they've gone into.

Speaker 3 (03:16:34):
Hit me up.

Speaker 12 (03:16:35):
You can send that to me at that email address
and we'll try and include more of them. This week
we are fundraising for Primrose and you can find her
go fundme page at www dot GoFundMe dot com, slash
f slash immigration hyphen lawyer hyphen for hyphen Primos at

(03:16:55):
Primos Who's out of detention right now, which is great,
but I know she still has a lot of significant
expense is and legal expenses coming up. So if you
would like to donate, if you'd like to help, this
is a concrete thing you can do to help someone.

Speaker 3 (03:17:08):
We reported the news, We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:17:41):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the universe.

Speaker 1 (03:17:47):
It could happen.

Speaker 19 (03:17:48):
Here is a production of cool Zone Media. For more
podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website cool Zonemedia
dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for it could happen here, listed directly
in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening,

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Behind the Bastards News

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