May 30, 2025 • 59 mins
The gang discusses the shooting of two Israeli Embassy staffers, how the new budget bill targets trans healthcare, ICE arrests inside immigration courts, and deportations to Myanmar.
Sources:
https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-israel-embassy-shooter-manifesto
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ajc-access-young-diplomats-reception-tickets-1312062246499
https://www.ajc.org/events/washington
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/22/us/israel-embassy-shooting-dc
https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjyxay1zxg
https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1925468225665446272
https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1925650699414646909
https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/Spectrum-Security-Services/Job/Detention-Officer/-in-Los-Angeles,CA?jid=2a4b6034cef9977e
https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25954386-24a1153/
https://www.patreon.com/posts/129696965
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Colson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is it could Happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
world of what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today.
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello, what's up? Everybody? Who's got ed us?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You everybody, We're giving you ED this episode, we're covering
the week of May twenty one to May twenty eight.
It was a really busy news week for the latter
half of that week, so we're going to be mostly
catching up with that. Jesus, and let's start with the
(00:46):
biggest news from late last week, domestically the shooting of
two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. The shooting took
place around nine pm on Wednesday, May twenty first, outside
of event at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting,
the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According
(01:09):
to witnesses and surveillance video, a thirty one year old
man named Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people
leaving the event. As he walked past them, he turned
to face their backs and shot two people and continued
to fire as they felt the ground. One of the victims,
a twenty six year old woman, tried to crawl away
after being shot. Rodriguez followed her and fired again Jesus
(01:32):
while he was reloading, She sat up, and then Rodriguez
shot her several more times before throwing his gun into
a bush. He ran into the museum after the shooting.
Security let him in thinking that he was a victim.
Witnesses say he appeared traumatized and in shock. People from
the museum event brought him water, and when they asked
(01:52):
him if he was okay or if he was injured,
Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted
to shooting, and, according to witnesses, quote, grabbed a red
cafea out of his pocket and started free Palestine chance
quote there is only one solution, Antifada revolution unquote. While
(02:12):
being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free,
Free Palestine. Israel's ambassador to the US claimed that the
two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees, and
that Rariguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that
evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although
(02:33):
the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee,
disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register
for their event but was denied entry following a background check.
Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English
degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun
in Illinois and flew with it to d S the
(02:56):
night before the shooting. This event was as an American
Jewish Committee access DC Young Diplomat's Reception. The description for
the event reads quote, this special event brings together Jewish
young professionals age twenty two to forty five and the
DC diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity
and celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations,
(03:18):
and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce
this year's theme, turning Pain into Purpose. Here from members
of the Multi Faith Alliance and Israel as they delve
into humanitarian diplomacy and have a coalition of organizations from
the region and for the Region are working together in
response to humanitarian crises through the Middle East and North
Africa regions. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah
(03:42):
Milgram and Ran Lisinski, twenty six and thirty, who met
through their work at the embassy. Lisinski identified as a Christian,
though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany
as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in
the IDF. There is an alternative claim that he was
born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager,
(04:04):
but most reporting says that he was born in Israel.
In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this
as anti Semitic violence. The acting US Attorney said that
they are investigating the cases a hate crime and an
act of terrorism. Dan Bongino, Deputy FBI director, said the
shooting was a quote act of targeted violence. The Israeli
(04:27):
Foreign Minister and net Yahoo have laid blame at college
protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France,
Britain in Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking
about Israel's quote supposed genocide and crimes against humanity unquote,
and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel. Quote unquote incitement.
Natanyahu said, quote free Palestine is just today's version of
(04:51):
Hyle Hitler Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state.
They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to
annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the left
d of Israel for three thousand, five hundred years.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
This is, obviously, I think, in a lot of ways,
the kind of thing net Yahoo has been waiting for,
and probably the kind of thing that a number of
folks in that Trump is put in federal law enforcement
have been waiting for because it provides them with some
opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student organizing and
(05:24):
organizing against Israeli war crimes. Right. Like, the argument they
want to be able to make is that just saying
free Palestine is an active terrorism, And there was an
act of terrorism here, right, Like shooting two embassy employees
for the crimes of their government. Like that is a
clear act of terrorism. Right. You can feel however you
(05:45):
want to about it, but like that's the definition of
what was done. But the things he was chanting were
not part of the active terrorism. The fact that he
shot people to death was the active terrorism.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, it's the murdering people, that's the terrorism.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, and that is already illegal, by the way, and
quite heavily, I'll be interested. We don't seem to know
much about where he got the firearm yet that I've
come across.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So he legally purchased it in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has like fairly
strict gun laws. Yes, some of the strictest in the US.
So it's one of those things where there's already quite
a bit of regulation around everything that he did here.
But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you
are because this, you know, if there's an amendment, there
(06:29):
will be people who carry out attacks like this. And
I don't really know there certainly didn't seem to be
outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends, a
lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar.
He had been at like a PSL Party for Socialism
and Liberation March in twenty seventeen or something, but like,
this wasn't a guy who had a history of violence
(06:52):
or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a
reality of the country that we live in, is that
when people like this decide to carry out shootings for
whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like
like this because there's a lot of them out there.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah. Yeah, and most of them don't do shootings.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, this active been widely condemned. Like pro Palestine commentators
have said that this style of like adventurist terrorism does
nothing to help the Palestine people and in fact only
hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby
and Natya who have been like wanting to happen for
a while.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think kat Aboukazela, a Parastalian American woman he's running
for office in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Worked it for media matters for years. Yeah. It does
a lot of videos. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, Anyway, I saw that she'd she had somethink about
how like, yeah, this was something that evidently should be condemned. Right,
that is wrong, and it's not advancing the cause of
Palestinian freedom, Like I think adventurist terrorism is a good
way to describe it. Geah, just getting pad and by
people on the internet, which like I don't know people
engaging with this like from a place it doesn't come
(08:08):
from like it's bad when random folks get shot killed.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
No, people have have used the horrific genocide as a
way to like channel their general societal frustration and find
a way to like just act incredibly hostile like to
actual Palestinians. Yeah yeah, yeah, who don't share the exact
same like anti imperialist TM views that they might have. Right,
(08:32):
it's just permission to abuse people online.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Yeah, deeply, like verbally violent and like no psycho shit.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as
well as well, as we'll see.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Let's get a little bit into his background. So he
has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And it's it's Kojent like in terms of it's not
the ramblings of like a madman or something. There's nothing
like it.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It all has an English degree, he knows how to write.
He has worked as a writer for like almost a decade.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean that in terms of, like
it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not
any evidence here of like a disconnect or whatever. He's
not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the
weather bad or whatever. Right right, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The manifesto is title to Escalate for Gaza, Bring the
War Home, and he attempts to explain the rationale behind
his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale
of dead Palestinians, writing that quote atrocity is committed by
Israelis against Palestine, defy description and defy quantification. He writes
about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the
(09:40):
US government has continually refused to reign in Israel and
instead moves to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action.
Quote an armed action is not necessarily a military action.
It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle,
a quality it shares in many unarmed actions.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Quote yeah, and I do find you know, one of
the first things that happened when this attack was carried
out was people started theorizing that this had been some
Nazi who was using this to using the propouse and
cost like camouflage as Nazism. And I don't think that
the preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things.
(10:20):
One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name
was Habbo eighty eight and he was not born in
eighty eight obviously whenever you see an eighty eight in
the Native Curse Millennial. And the other is that the
bring the war home reference in his manifesto, which is
basically a reference to something that I believe was Louis Beam,
who is a neo Nazi organizer, said about trying to
(10:43):
get Vietnam veterans to essentially bring the war home to
the United States in order to spark a race war.
And those two little things are weird. However, the rest
of this guy's fairly well documented history and background does
not suggest anything like that, So I don't think that
that's the credible thing to blame this on. Quite frankly, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'll go over some of that background in brief.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
He also talked about targeting government representatives quote the impunity
that representatives of our government feel at a bedding, that
this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then
tells the story of a man who tried to throw
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea.
He finishes with his thoughts on the quote unquote morality
of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize
(11:36):
the perpetrators of atrocities, as a method for us to
cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
This action would have been morally justified taken eleven years
ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became
acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I
think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible.
It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least
there are many Americans for which the action will be
(12:04):
highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane
thing to do unquote. It did find it interesting that
on December fifth, twenty twenty four, Rodriguez posted on his
Twitter account that quote eighty percent of the country applauds
the targeted annihilation of a healthcare insurance EXECUTIVEUOTE. As for
(12:25):
his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist, third worldiest yeah,
and believes that the global seuth alone has quote unquote
revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to
journalist KNK Clippenstein like this quote. He was a big
proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran Hesbula
(12:49):
Assad Syria.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
How'd that go?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years,
way before twenty twenty three. He'd always hated Israel and
would call it quote the little Satan unquote.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
For fox sake, they Asad test are in supreme as. Yeah,
it's a fucking ab test for someone having shitty politics.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by aside.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, Asad who gaffed his own people who murdered
little children.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Including thousands and thousands of Palestinians by the way. Yeah, yeah,
but again, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well informed
opinions out of folks.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This His online presence mirrors what I would call like
the typical like anti imperialist TM poster, where he's there
is most of his frustration at the Democrats, sometimes at Republicans,
but mostly yeah, posts about being pro Russia, Iran, Hesbala,
pro Asade, and particularly the past few years, posting a
(13:51):
lot of a Palestine right with explicit defense and like
veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein
and also said quote, it's driving me crazy that people
are calling it a false flag. This development is shocking,
but not completely out of character. Yeah, he always had
strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's
(14:12):
the same as he was.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Unquote Yeah, and I mean that seems true. Again, we
still don't have a like, a perfect knowledge of all
of this guy's you know, online life.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, this is just a week away.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
But based on what Kin's posted, based on this interview,
that makes complete sense. Yeah, right, I like, I don't
have any trouble believing that for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
No, absolutely, this is this is not a false flag attack.
That's that's conspiratorial nonsense.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, I think that's this guy did a thing that
he's sincerely believed in, and it seems like everything he'd
been expressing in the year or two leading up to
doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did now.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL Party for socialistm
in Liberation back in twenty seventeen and spoke to the
media on their behalf, though he would later regret his
association with the group, telling friends quote, PSL sucks shit.
I wish I had just done a misadventure with the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization rather than the PSL lol YEA.
(15:17):
Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In twenty twenty three,
he posted video from a local pro Palestine march on
his Twitter account. Clippenstein spoke with at least five friends
of his, who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez
express anti Semitic sentiments. Now, one of Arigue's friends gave
Clippenstein access to a years old private WhatsApp group chat
(15:38):
that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day
before the shooting. Clippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal
any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray
an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things,
especially Israel and its Warren Gaza unquote. Yeah, and from
what we conceived of the chats that kind has posted,
(15:59):
this matches pretty well. A chat member wrote, quote, I'm
almost surprised you're not anti Semitic elias. It usually goes
hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong, mantra.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, and his response to this was like, Stalin ended,
you know, among other things, Stalin ended the greatest anti
Semitic state in history, which I've seen his evidence that
he wasn't pro Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know,
defeating the Nazis. But he says like among other things,
so he clearly got a number of reasons he likes Stalin.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, from the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly
like a like a tanky anti imperialist type.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yes, yes, yeah, a million such examples.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
The only time he talked about race explicitly was the
lambast white people quote. Lol, you probably would have to
actually genified white people to make this a normal country.
Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would
probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens
of millions of white people.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
The uh, there's a Stalin did nothing really, Yeah, there's
that gay brained type that we were looking for.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Well, and again it's one of those things. We're talking
about this because there's a bunch of guys who expressed
similar views. This is the only one who's done as shooting.
When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking
about this like as evidence that like, oh, someone who's
a fucking Tanky type is like is likely to commit
a mass shooting right, they go hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
No, this is the first time of take he's done anything.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
This is the first one of these I've heard of
in quite quite a long time. Yeah, it's just this guy.
There's a bunch of people who expressed similar things to
this guy, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
On October seventh, he celebrated the Hamas attack. Quote. Just
saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli
troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred
by Hamas fighters. I am ao love checking back in
with the news every few hours, Like, hmm, I wonder
if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly
wonder if Israel is over yet today or not?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Unquote yeah, and again like that just kind of shows
the general lack of knowledge.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
A level of political delusion.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of kind of telegram propaganda
consumption type worldview here.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yes, and can convince you that what's happening is different
from the reality.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
In this chat, he lmented to friends and expressed sorrow
at the deaths of Hamas and has been of leaders
and sometimes his ire was directed at other members of
this leaked chat. At one point, going on an unhinged
ablest rant, attacking one of his friends for being privileged
after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with cazophrenia. Quote,
why not just have him committed. You can't possibly be
(18:39):
gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that.
Just put him in a padded room and forget about him.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
If there was a person you loved, he's gone, now
let it go. Can you just chain him in the
basement and slide meals under the door. I'm just tired
of hearing about this guy. He's useless, we get it,
Stop complaining and just dispose of him.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
I mean this goes with the people who I don't
know aren't useful to me, are of no value? Right,
that people don't have inherent value, and you know they
don't agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them.
They can die. Like I guess there's some kind of
coherence there.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, Robert, you want to mention the something awful?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yes, I do, Garrison. So the other thing that came
out in Ken's article is that this dude was a
poster Well. His friends described him as a dedicated poster,
which is the worst thing you can be described as being,
and noted that he had been there had been some
when it came out that like his former Twitter user
name had been like Habbo eighty eight. That was very
(19:42):
clearly a reference to a game called Habo Hotel that
if you're gen z, there's very good odds you don't remember.
But it was a big thing for people who were
on four Chan and who were on Something Awful. And
Something Awful was the website that gave birth to four Chan.
It's where I was raised on the internet, and many
many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I
(20:04):
think I don't remember the exact year, but we started
gathering on this game for children. It was like an
MMO for little kids and like pretending to be members
of a cult in order to like confuse small children.
And then four Chan did their own version of that
that was a bit more racist, which is often the case.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there was
a debate was this guy a channer or was this
guy a goon you know, a member of the Something
Awful forums, And a lot of people thought I called goon.
A lot of people thought Shanner because of his age,
he was a little bit young to have been a
part of the something awful have a hotel things. I
think it's actually likely or he did both. But his
(20:45):
friends described him as somebody who was really into something awful, right,
as somebody who had been influenced by that in particularly
a subset of the something awful forms called FIAD, which
stands for fuck you and Die, which kind of pioneered
a lot of the most toxic aspects of online discourse.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Apparently Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Now, folks have found at least one of his accounts
that doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't
mean much because number one, he could have deleted a
lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older.
Number Two, he could have had another account, which is
also the case. The one account that people know was
his was banned for shooting and killing two him to
(21:27):
see employees. There's reasons given in the ever lengthening Something
Awful ban list when somebody gets banned. Obviously, again, I
don't think there's like a positive thing to him being
like him being on something awful didn't cause him to
shoot two people, but him being on Something Awful was
a natural part of the progression that led to him
(21:49):
being the kind of like toxic online asshole that he was.
And sort of evidence of that is that one of
the last things he had done online before the shooting
was he had gotten briefly onto Blue Sky and then
gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stanzel, who's another
annoying asshole on the Internet, who was also a Something
(22:11):
Awful goon who was raised in this same chunk of
the Internet, and who became a similar kind of asshole,
just with wildly different politics. And these two hated each other,
and Elias like threatened to murder him over the internet
because he's like again that these guys, he's that type
of guy. He's that type of guy, which doesn't mean again,
which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting
(22:32):
or had anything to do with that, because there's a
lot of this type of guy and almost none of
them commit acts of terrorism. It just like his background
makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we
can see that he was online.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The last thing I'll say about this is that you know,
beyond this like senseless loss of life, which is like
an issue in and of itself. Obviously, this also contributes
to further loss of life in the way this plays
into like media capture. Right now, we have a whole
week were the news cycles dominated by two people getting
murdered in the streets of DC, and this does not
(23:07):
help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The
exact same day that this happened, Wednesday, the twenty first,
ninety three people were killed in Israeli attacks across the
Gaza Strip and that type of stuff does not really
get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans
are really good at getting desensitized to this in a
large scale media environment, but stuff like this only serves
(23:28):
as a distraction and fuels Israel's oone motivation for their
continued actions.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by
the advertisers in this show.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
There you go, and we are back.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Another big news item from last week was the passing
of the big, beautiful budget bill in the House. We'll
talk more about this bill as it turns through the Senate,
but first our co host Mia Wong has a special
report on how the bill targets trans healthcare.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
So we're going to talk a little bit about the
budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes
in the Senate, that's been passed by the House. I
am Mia Wong, and with me to talk about how
this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is
Maddi Castikin from Mad cast and Mirror Levine from the
Free Radical. Glad to have both of you to hear.
(24:35):
You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this
stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First,
can you can you explain what is going on in
this budget with the ban on trans healthcare using Medicaid?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (24:48):
Absolutely So. The budget bill, also known as House Resolution one,
is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding
next year's budget and how they're going to allocate it
their funds. This time around, Republicans decided it would be
a great idea to push through. So what it was
at first was a intense limitation on what Medicaid cover,
(25:13):
essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I
began investigating first. Me and Mattie were talking about it
a bunch she's the one who took me off to it.
They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that
would result in millions of people losing access to their healthcare,
not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts,
for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are
(25:35):
famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps
of the I believe it was the Capital Building in
the nineties to raise awareness and help get the American
Disabilities Act passed. They staged a protest on the United
States Capital during a hearing for this bill where Republicans
(25:57):
were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple active
got arrested. They're all fine now apparently apparently they weren't
treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But
what ultimately happened is more and more came out, and
it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected,
but basically every marginalized group for people of course being
(26:19):
what we were focusing on given the beat, but this
will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're a low income,
especially if you are a person of color, you are
more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this bill,
and how sweeping it is, and Republicans implemented a ban
(26:41):
for gender ferming care for minors on it. It was
a very milktoas ban that at the time was projected
to pretty much get overturned in court right away if
we were to pass.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
They didn't stop there, though.
Speaker 7 (26:54):
They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it
into a sweeping ban on gender firming care for all
ages is on Medicaid and for any health insurance received
through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. And ultimately this led to
a lot of panic and a lot of people assuming
that their care is going to be taken away immediately.
(27:15):
That wasn't what's going to happen on the minimum effective
date that's currently in the bill is twenty twenty seven.
I'm telling people to prepare if it passes for twenty
twenty six, because there's a decent change. Republicans will try
to expedite it. Because it passed through the House, it
passed through committees in the House, it was sent to
the Senate, and I think that's what we'll give to Mattie
(27:35):
to talk about kind of what next steps for that are.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Yeah, so lake Man was saying there's a lot of
really huge. As bill is tremendous, they could talk for
hours about it, but focusing on the transparts, there's a
ban on medicaid funding and there's also a ban on
including trans cares and essential health benefit and ACA plans.
And the thing about both of these provisions is so
(28:00):
that normally with reconciliation bills, they're supposed to be focused
on budget items, not policy items. So for example, you
couldn't say, hey, weed is legal everywhere now or something
like that, or raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried
to do in twenty twenty one and they failed because
there are rules regarding how this process works. And so
(28:21):
what we argued in an article was that there's a
possibility that, you know, if activists and advocates reach out
to their senators and advocated to point out that this
part of the bill is completely against those provisions, against
those procedural rules for the Senate Parliamentaria could rule against
it and basically strike that portion of the bill without
(28:41):
ever even becoming law. And you know, that would stay
people a lot of stress and anxiety, and you don't
have to worry about the court battles and what happens
with Scremetti versus us, which is a Supreme Court case
that's going to be ruled on on gender firming care soon.
So what we've been telling people, and you know, including
listeners for your show, is that people really need to
reach out to their senators every single day, email call
(29:03):
and ask them to vote no on this bill. On
HR one and it specifically mentioned the trans healthcare aspects.
And if you want, there's templates online on our website,
or you can just you know, ask them, Hey, we
don't think this bill is good.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
We don't.
Speaker 8 (29:17):
We want you to challenge specifically the parts that are
attacking trans people. And I can confirm with you. I
can't share too much information, but I can confirm with
you that we are making real, legitimate progress on killing
this provision. And the more people we have calling in
every single day, the better our odds are. But there's
still more ways to fight back. And I want Mara
to pick up on how people can fight back on
(29:38):
the ground.
Speaker 7 (29:39):
Yeah, So in addition to reaching out to your senators,
of course, to that, there's an email template, Mattie wrote
of a great one. It tells you everything you need
to do. You can even leave a phone call to
the script it takes like five minutes. But more long
term is this is not going to be the only
attack on gender affirming care. It's not going to stop here.
This is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately,
(30:03):
we cannot rely on the government to give us a
central health care. We cannot rely on the government to
protect us and give us what we need, because fundamentally,
the government and the laws that it aims to uphold
are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy.
The law is functionally something that gives police power to
(30:23):
act as essentially an occupying army on state and to
persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are disproportionately
rich and powerful decruity. And we need to start focusing
on building long term solutions. Everything we can do with
legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not save
us because there will be more attacks down the line,
(30:46):
and they'll keep coming, and they only need to win once.
We need to win that every time. But there are
long term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially
just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual
aid network, get plugged into people doing work on the
ground in your state, in your area, who are focusing
(31:07):
on a plethora of different issues. A bit of a
self plug here, but I wrote an article, for instance,
last month, where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the
Twin Cities who told me just a lot about the
history of radical practice in the cities, especially in light
of the George Floyd riots and especially in right of
(31:30):
corporate pride, rango capitalism, whole nine yards. Recommend reading it.
It's on the free radical dot org. Check it out.
But beyond of course my own writing in my own interviews,
there are so many people doing work that doesn't get
covered because it either isn't pattalable to mainstream news audiences
or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons.
(31:53):
In every single major city this I can guarantee there
are people doing work. Most of the time. It's not
going to be publicly visible, but they are there. I
would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in
gets started with something that is much more entry level
and something that is much more like meant to be
kind of for everyone who may not be willing to
(32:14):
do more in depth and more treesy type of stuff,
food not bombs, is the great thing I recommend for
everyone to check out. Not every city has one, most two,
every state has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of
local mutual aid groups in every single locality, and if
there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in
your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend I'm a
(32:37):
bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones
that are decentralized and non hierarchical, ones that don't revolve
around centralizing power and placing that power in the hands
of people who are either good at smooth talking or
who have a lot of money. Ultimately, the way forward
for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just
trans people. You know on document immigrants, blocking auditions, well
(33:00):
of color, low income people, disable people, and so forth.
The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect
all of us. Attacks on trans healthcare are not limited there. Inevitably,
let's say they ban trance healthcare overnight, They're going to
come for intersex people. Next, They're going to come for
gay people. Next, they're going to come for everyone. So
I would just say get involved in your local groups
(33:22):
and reach out there. Are resources out there. If you
need some, check out the free radical dot org. I
recommend a ton of them.
Speaker 8 (33:30):
Thank you and yees. Our upside for Matti Metticast is
m adycast dot com and you can find our templates
for contacting your senators there. Thank you so much for
helping yourself and helping your community.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to
close on I want to read the route a real
line for fucking Davix manifesto from and or. Remember that
the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the
smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the
arguments that can make make sure that I think it's
just true is that in order to maintain their holds,
(34:03):
these people have to win one hundred battles across one
hundred fronts, you know. But this means that there are
so many different things that you can do to resist
them and to make sure that this fucking budget they're
trying to pass, to make sure that everyone in this
country suffers, and specifically that trans people cannot use the
health insurances that we need, use Medicaid, use Affordable Care
Act to pay for stuff. This stuff can be resisted
(34:25):
in so many different ways. You can, as we've talked about,
you can call your senators, you can yell at them,
you can make their lives miserable until they agree to
not do this. And then also you can join your
local mituway groups, you can join local activist groups. You
can start, you know, getting a serious organized other ways
you can. Again, like we've talked a lot about unions
and the role of unions and trying to struggle on
(34:46):
the show. We've talked of God, We've talked about so
many things. I'm going to do a one second plug
for the episode I wrote last year called you already
know how to organize, because you do already know how
to organize. And yeah, none of the things that are
happening here are inevitable. They can be stopped and there
are so many different ways for you to start stopping them.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, So we're back and we're talking about Gavin Newsome
and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and
Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect.
So if you remember a little earlier this year, there
was a big brujaha publicly because a California transgender high
(35:28):
school athlete one at the woman's eight feet triple jump.
This is an eleventh grade transgender athlete from Urupa Valley
High School near Riverside, California, and she won the Division
three girls long jump and triple jump and placed seventh
in the high jump at her Southern Section championship a
few weeks later. There's going to be I don't think
(35:50):
it's happened yet a championship meet that she qualified for
as a result of this. And when this happened, it
was immediately left on by the Trump administration and by
right wing media as evidence of this thing that they've
been trying to push for forever, which is that trans
athletes are a threat to women's sports. Right now, this
is something that number one, there's just not a lot
(36:12):
of And this is also something that like, I think
something like two thirds of Americans when polled, say that
they don't feel like trans athletes should be competing with
you know, quote unquote naturally born women in women's sports.
Right Like, this is a thing that the right has
built a lot of support for because they have made
this a political issue for so long, and they've been
(36:34):
largely successful in that the State of California and California
lawmakers have been pushing back against this. There have been
state bills in order to allow these girls to continue
to compete, but Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same
degree of support. And this kind of largely came out
(36:55):
earlier this month when he had a meeting with conservative
personality Charlie Kirk on his new podcast. As Newsom said,
Kirk pushed so hard on the topic that Newsom said
he felt like he had to address it. Here's how
Newsom characterized it, and then he asked me, tell me
that's not fair. And I looked at him. I said,
you're right, that's not And so it wasn't some grand design.
And I know, I know that hurt a lot of people,
(37:16):
but respectively, I just disagree with those on the other
side of this. Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom.
He was attacked for flip flopping because again, like the
California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend
trans athletes, but Newsom kind of flipped as soon as
he was in a room with Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom
(37:37):
will argue that he also tried to stick up for
trans athletes to Charlie Kirk to be clear about that,
this is exactly what he said to Charlie completely fair
on the issue of fairness. I completely agree. So that's
easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also
a humility and grace that these poor people are more
likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the
(37:57):
way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is issue
that I have a hard time with as well. So
both things I can hold in my hand. How can
we address this issue with the kind of decency that
I think you know is inherent in you but not
always expressed in the issue. And first of all, there's
no decency inherent in Charlie Kirk. And second, yeah, there's
also a humility and grace that these poor people are
more likely to commit suicide. What does that? What that mean?
(38:19):
What does that mean? Gavin?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
That's not a sentence? Also, like, just like I made
my living exercising for most of my twenties, right Like,
you're a professional athletes done sports?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Like, and then I've done all kinds of other shit
where I still got paid to race my bike, right Like? Yeah,
sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I coached people who
worked way.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Harder than me.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
They trained super hard, they slept well, they ate better. Unfortunately,
for whatever reason, they were not able to get to
the same level.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
That sucks.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
But like sport is inherently unfair. The idea that like
the only difference is like this, like your xx x
y chromosoonality is nonsense. Like, especially in high school sports,
kids will develop at different times.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
That is unfair.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Some kids will excel and then other kids will get better.
The function of high school sports is not to find
who can go like higher, faster, stronger. It's to teach
people to play nicely with one another and to communicate
inclusion and excluding trans kids is completely contrary to that.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yeah, and that's like, yeah, I think that's a great point, James,
is that, like number one, this is all being entirely
made about like who places how, which is always going
to be based largely on things that like people can't control,
because like people's bodies are different, you know, Yeah, and
they developed differently.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Like there are people who I beat by graces when
I was a kid who have one stages at the
Tour de France. Yeah, like if our bodies developed differently,
that's completely normal.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, and it's this again. The thing that should matter
here is not treating a community of people hatefully, which
is the entire of the reason the right has made
this an issue. It has nothing to do with fairness,
it has nothing to do with sports. It's entirely about
hurting a group of people.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, if these people gave a single shit about women's sports,
said it being there when women weren't getting paid the
same Did it been there when they didn't get the
same TV covery? Did it there when they didn't get
the same price money?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at
that point in time? Yea. Now, I do think one
thing that's funny here is that when Newsom was when
people asked, rightly, like when Californian legislators were pushing to
protect trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you
felt this way? And his answer was, I didn't have
a podcast, I wasn't having that conversation. I was out
(40:36):
there on the campaign trail and the big blue bubble,
on the big blue bus and the big blue crowds,
having big blue conversations. And then he went on to
say that basically the backlash to him agreeing with Charlie
Kirk on this has convinced him. I always thought the
right overstated how judgmental my party was, and I'll be
candid with you, I have a deeper understanding now of
that critique than I ever ever ever understood. It's like,
(40:56):
now that people are angry at me, I believe there's
a problem with my party being judgmental.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Yeah, now that I've faced a consequence of my shit,
I hate trans people even more.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah, it must be so hard to be Gavin Newsome.
It's gotta be tough and betray your constituents to get
the approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Who still hates you touring.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
College campuses to debate seventeen year olds. That must be
so hard for you.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
It's gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, Gavin.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
He did say in his podcast his kid likes Charlie Kirk,
not surprisingly. Maybe this is all just a ploy to
be a cool dad.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, I'm not surprised he sucks at being a dad.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Gavin usedomings you wants to be a cool dad, Emty,
it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Reminds me that Jake Dapper just said his kid's not
really into politics. He's just into World War two and
gaming great part of World War two.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Tapurious, curious many such cases.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Doesn't his kid want to be a cop? Is that
Jake Tapper? Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like Jake
fucking Tapper's kid. So look. Earlier this week on Tuesday,
President Trump shared a truth social post, a truth threatening
to yesa he retruthed a post threatening to withhold federal
funding from California over the participation of this high school
(42:16):
trans athlete in the upcoming California Interscholastic Federation State Track
and Field Championships. Right, and he said that, under the
leadership of radical left Democrat Gavin Nuskum, California continues to
illegally allow men to play in women's sports. The governor
himself said it is unfair. Trump wrote, first off, the
(42:37):
fact that Gavin agreed with Charlie INA's podcast did nothing
to change the rhetoric around him. He's still radical left
democrat Gavin newscom because you can't make these people unhappy,
because it's not about fairness, it's about hurting people.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Right, you can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I wanted to talk about Maine. Yes, yeah, so Trump
made this same threat to the state of Maine when
the governor of Maine refused to stop allowing trans people
to compete in women's sports, and the administration attempted to
freeze funds intended for a main child nutrition program.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
No more food for your kids because woa, no more.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Food for poor kids because woke. And in response, the
governor made was like, all right, let's fucking go to
the mat. And they filed a lawsuit against the US
Department of Agriculture, and the Trump administration settled, like they
they backed down. They agreed to stop freezing the funds
if Maine dropped the lawsuit, right, Like, as soon as
(43:34):
Maine sued, Trump backed down, right and rather than attempting
to do that even though there's ample evidence that the
administration backs down. And to be fair, and I think
against Maine, California's got a lot more weight to throw around. Yeah,
it's the fifth largest economy on the planet. They have
some they have some fucking hack behind them, and like
(43:55):
news clearly has.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
No moral principle other than advancing his own career in
personal iron wealth right now.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
But like, even if that is the case.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
It's so easy to be like, yeah, I'll fight him
on this, I'll fight for the trans kids and get
some like resist a points.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
But he's just too much of a fucking cow. The
first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything.
Don't treat them like people. They're monsters, their scum. You
fight them every step of the way, right, Like, it
doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never
give pieces a shit like this a win. Yeah. Right,
that's just not the way you fight them.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
This is the problem with people like Evin, who just
whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist.
Speaker 7 (44:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging
against your previously held progressive DEI woke LGBTQ plus values, Yeah,
then you just go along with that swing and you
actually don't even care about getting this getting this points
anymore because you think the culture is going in a
different direction. Sure, and all you care about is being
in the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, you don't actually stand for anything,
like you're just you're just nothing.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, And everyone can see that as opposed to understanding
what Governor Frey of main nderstands, which is that no,
you stand there. You accept that the zeitgeist is a
screen door and it's going to bounce off of you
and back in enough for another direction if you stand
for something, right, Gavin decided not to stand for something,
and immediately after Trump made that tweet threatening to withhold
(45:17):
funds from the state of California, and you know, the
Department of Education has opened title for investigations in two
leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF, which is
California's high school governing a sports governing body. Right after
Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF released a
statement saying that it had made the decision to pilot
(45:39):
an entry process for the championship that's coming up that
will alter the way they hand out awards. It will
expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes. Is the
exact way that they have phrased this. And basically what
they're going to be doing is giving an award for
biological men, biological women, and than trans competitors. Right, so
(46:02):
there will be like three long jump awards.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's like a segregated scoring field.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, it's it's some I guess you could say it's
not as awful as trying to ban people. But also
it's kind of like you're not even taking any kind
of stance here. It's not it's just it's nothing. It's
nothing now. Newsome spokesperson as a Garden says cif proposed
pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex
(46:29):
issue without compromising competitive fairness. That governor is encouraged by
this thoughtful approach. And I should note here this has
done nothing to actually calm the right or get conservatives
to back down right.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Now, because they don't want trans kids competing at all.
They don't want trans kids in public life.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
They don't want tids existing. Yes, and so like the
conservative Californians are still angry.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
You can't take them for their word for it. Yeah,
they don't care about fairness in sports. This is all
about just eradicating trans genders from public life, like as
as Michael Knowles said at Sea Pack like two years ago,
Like that's yeah what they actually care about.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, And there's you know, there's been a bunch of
statements some some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ cock because
it have been like well, Gavin's you know, otherwise been
a good ally. You know for LGBTQ people, and I
don't agree with this is something that an assembly member
Chris Ward said basically, I don't agree with this particular move.
But he's been a good ally for a long time.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Has he though? Has he though?
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (47:31):
I mean when it's convenient to him, I guess I prefer.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was quote just
commenting on how he personally feels. He mentioned it on
his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a
policy direction. Announced, Hell, yeah, it's a dumb podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Yea, yeah, I mean you should be concerned that he
has a dumb pot cost what he deemed it. I
just trans people like, yeah, he signed vetos all the time.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Like again, I found a k c Ira add An
article on this that quotes Publican assembly Woman Kate Sanchez,
who wrote a bill that would have banned trans athletes
from competing in girls high school sports earlier this year.
This is what she said about cif's rule chains pilot policy.
It's incredibly weak. We're angry, We're pissed at this. How
every day that goes by and no one is protecting
our girls. This is inexcusable. We need to have something done.
(48:18):
Governor whoson needs to pick aside, do something, do the
right thing. So again, this gets you nothing with them, right,
it benefits you not at all. There's another quote I
want to read here from State Senator Scott Weiner, who
is the leader of the Senate Budget Committee and again
a member of the LGBTQ Rights Caucus. Trump is now
targeting California, just like he targeted Maine. Threatening to withhold
federal funds of California doesn't follow as I legal edicts
(48:39):
targeting transgender people. California law protects trans people. That won't
change Main one in court. So will California. There's only
one answer to a bully No, And as Main Governor
Janet Mills said, see you in court. Sorry I got
I don't know why I said Governor Fray earlier, but anyway,
the point here is that you have Californian legislators saying
the right thing, and then you have of fucking Newsome
(49:01):
being like, no, no, no, actually we're totally going to
cave and in a way that won't even make the
Republicans happy. It's just frustrating to me that you do
have Democrats trying to do the right thing here in
California politics and Newsom absolutely having CIF do a run
around on them out of pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what
I got.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Get him out of there.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Get him out of there. Fuck Evin Newsom.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
We tried to. That was a recall, but it was
not for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, the last time we recalled a California governor, it
was a real mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah, speaking of a mixed bag, that's right, and we're back. Okay,
we're back.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
We're back.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
James don want to finish us up here, I.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Do, Garrison, I would like that very much. I want
to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to
try and keep this faster and know it's already been
a long episode up with ice agents have been arresting
people in immigration court around the country and placing them
at expedited remove all proceedings. If you want to know
more about exactly what they exploited remove all proceedings are
and how they work, you can go back to our episode,
(50:15):
which will have aired the day before you hear this,
and that would explain And I talked to an immigration
attorney there and explain a little bit more about how
that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed.
So Previously it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases
of people who had arrived less than two years ago
and placing them under two forty explanited remove all proceedings.
(50:35):
Apparently they are also detaining other people. I am not
sure how that works. I have not seen any justifications
for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm
not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are
going to have to fight their removal from detention, which
is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Right. Detention in these.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
In these cour civic or geogroup facilities is pretty bad.
I'm aware of cases where I misidentified the person being
detained cuff the wrong person. And I'm aware that there
are Spectrum Services who are an ICE detention officer provider officers,
at least outside some of these facilities. I believe also
(51:16):
inside Spectrum Services. I've noticed been posting a lot of
job adverts recently. This is something I sometimes keep an
eye on. Right like right before the end of title
forty two, I saw they were advertising for ICE contractors
to transport detainees. So this is sometimes a sign that
bad things are a foot in the immigration world. I'm
(51:38):
guessing in this case it's either this or a plan
to further expand detention capacity, which also something the Trump
administration has been talking about. Right, So they also have
these various subjective orders authorizing more budget and the budget
bill or threwting more budget for detaining migrants. Secondly, the
South Sudan case rope we's covered this last week at
(52:00):
ALVSUS Known.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
We also covered it earlier in this week.
Speaker 4 (52:05):
If you go back to our episode which aired on Wednesday,
you can hear more about the sort of blow by
blow of timeline of that case. In the South Studian case,
Trump administration seems to have gone directly to the Supreme
Court try and get an emergency stay on the injunction,
which afforded due process rights to the migrants who are
currently detained into booty. The administration asked for a stay
(52:27):
of the court's injunction. The courts injunction had given them
ten days to assert their reasonable fear of torture and
then a further fifteen days to ask to reopen their
case if the Department of Home Land Security determined that
fear not to be credible. Justice Supreme Court Justice Jackson
has given the plentiffs a week to respond to the
(52:49):
United States the DOJ's call for a stay right, So
in practices, people will still have that ten days from
the injunction to make their play that they have a
fear of torture. Right. South Sudan has said that if
these people aren't South Sudanese, it will just return them
to their country of citizenship. So if the United States
(53:10):
can't return them there because they have a fear of torture,
it just seems like the whole South Sudan thing is
just an end run around the Convention against Torture right
there their obligation not to return people to places where
they will be tortured. Talking of returning people to places
where they will be tortured. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has
deported twenty people to Mianma. This is according to reporting
(53:34):
in Meanma Now. I've also written about it on my
page Patreon page. I've linked both of those in the
show notes. But it should be noted that me and
I Now broke the story and it's getting very little
coverage in the United States. I can speculate as to
why that you probably don't need to hear me to
sort of join the dots there.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
This is atrocious.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
Robert and I have both spoken to people with extensive
experience of detention in me m Aar, and like, when
we talk about the worst attention conditions in the world,
we get to a point where it doesn't really make
any sense for us to say, like a is worse in.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
Right, right, that this is worse than Sednaia or whatever.
But it's on like the level which was Assad's torture
prison and Syria as.
Speaker 4 (54:16):
Sads butchery for human beings.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Like we're talking about that level.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
Yeah, Like I mean things that I have heard. People
have been electrocuted to death. People are water boarded, people
have acid poured in their mouths. Bodies are found without organs,
people are beaten to such an extent that their entire
bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people
will only know that their family member is detained when
(54:43):
they disappear, and then a few days later they get
a call telling them to pick up the body. Conditions
in Burmese hunted attention facilities are atrocious. These people are
currently being held at the on Tarpi Interrogation Center. It
appears at seven, one of the earliest, but this has
been happening since March. It appears that somebody these people
(55:03):
have been released. The rest are being held by SAC.
That's the Burmese hunter of military intelligence units, who will
almost certainly torture them. Me and MA does have a
temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple
of posts about this, so I just want to clarify
the TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the
(55:23):
TPS was granted, or to people who have committed certain crimes.
We know that at least one of the men they
returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of
these crimes are like particularly HENUS felonies. Right, you can
do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported
under a TPS. But I'm trying to find out who
these people are. I know that you can't download our
(55:46):
podcast in Meanma, which is a huge dub for us.
But you know, I know a lot of Burmese people
do listen, so you know, if you have an particular
insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll
drop the email addressing a little bit here it does
seem very unlikely that these people were given a chance
to make a claim of fear of torture, right, because
it would be a very easy claim to make, given
(56:09):
every major human rights organization on the planet has documented
torture of detainees in Meanma. I was just reading a
report this morning about harassment of trans women in prisons
in Myanmar. But the same thing goes for CIS folks,
for straight folks, for everyone, right, no one, No one
comes out of there the same they went in. Yeah,
I can't believe that these people were given a chance
(56:30):
to claim a credible fear because it would have been
such an easy claim to make, yep, And they wouldn't
have been returned there. So yeah, I wish the story
was getting more reporting. I wish more people in the
media in this country cared about me and Maa. But
that's a drama I have been beating for four years now,
and I don't think she's going to change anytime soon.
So I guess all there is to say is that
(56:52):
I really appreciate those of you who do, especially those
of you who listen to the show and take an
interest in all things Meanma. But yeah, if these people
have been returned to a country that the US press
was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise
about this, but this is absolutely unconscionable.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:08):
Yeah, these people will be tortured. It would not shock
me if some of these people died.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
Yeah, now, this is I mean, there have been cases
so far. I think at least seven of the people
that have been sent over previously in the last year
or so by the US have been released from this prison.
So it's not unnecessarily a death sentence, but for a
good number of them it will be, right, Yeah, especially
since there are also Rowhinga people who will be deported
(57:32):
in the near future and presumably directly back to the
same place.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
Yeah, I mean it's documented that people deported from Thailand
are immediately conscripted and yeah, sent me to the military. Right,
So if they get out of prison, there's a good
chance that, especially if they're men, that they will be
Women do get conscripted too in Meanmar, but there's a
good chance with that will happen too. They've been conscripting
a lot of o Hinga people. So yeah, the outcomes of
(57:58):
this will be very poor and U Yeah, the only
way torture stops in Burma. Is is when the revolution
succeeds and liberates to Britains. Like that, there is no
reasoning with the Burmese hunter. Yep, it's about all I got.
It's pretty fucked like.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Speaking of fucked, let's listen to the tariffs song. There's
no terriffs this week now, fuck it. Well, let's just
listen to it and then have the end of the episode.
Just gets a nice song. Let's just listen to it now.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
We don't have time to listen to it. This is
the end of the episode.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
Wow, Garrison took it away from you and complained to
them online.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
The constant agist attacks on the Clash have not stopped.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Sorry, fellas, all that money for nothing?
Speaker 3 (58:41):
We reported the new.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
You can now find sources where It Could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Colson Media.
Speaker 2 (00:08):
This is it could Happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling
world of what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today.
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.
Speaker 3 (00:20):
Hello, what's up? Everybody? Who's got ed us?
Speaker 2 (00:26):
You everybody, We're giving you ED this episode, we're covering
the week of May twenty one to May twenty eight.
It was a really busy news week for the latter
half of that week, so we're going to be mostly
catching up with that. Jesus, and let's start with the
(00:46):
biggest news from late last week, domestically the shooting of
two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC. The shooting took
place around nine pm on Wednesday, May twenty first, outside
of event at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting,
the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According
(01:09):
to witnesses and surveillance video, a thirty one year old
man named Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people
leaving the event. As he walked past them, he turned
to face their backs and shot two people and continued
to fire as they felt the ground. One of the victims,
a twenty six year old woman, tried to crawl away
after being shot. Rodriguez followed her and fired again Jesus
(01:32):
while he was reloading, She sat up, and then Rodriguez
shot her several more times before throwing his gun into
a bush. He ran into the museum after the shooting.
Security let him in thinking that he was a victim.
Witnesses say he appeared traumatized and in shock. People from
the museum event brought him water, and when they asked
(01:52):
him if he was okay or if he was injured,
Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted
to shooting, and, according to witnesses, quote, grabbed a red
cafea out of his pocket and started free Palestine chance
quote there is only one solution, Antifada revolution unquote. While
(02:12):
being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free,
Free Palestine. Israel's ambassador to the US claimed that the
two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees, and
that Rariguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that
evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although
(02:33):
the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee,
disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register
for their event but was denied entry following a background check.
Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English
degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun
in Illinois and flew with it to d S the
(02:56):
night before the shooting. This event was as an American
Jewish Committee access DC Young Diplomat's Reception. The description for
the event reads quote, this special event brings together Jewish
young professionals age twenty two to forty five and the
DC diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity
and celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations,
(03:18):
and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce
this year's theme, turning Pain into Purpose. Here from members
of the Multi Faith Alliance and Israel as they delve
into humanitarian diplomacy and have a coalition of organizations from
the region and for the Region are working together in
response to humanitarian crises through the Middle East and North
Africa regions. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah
(03:42):
Milgram and Ran Lisinski, twenty six and thirty, who met
through their work at the embassy. Lisinski identified as a Christian,
though he was born in Israel and moved to Germany
as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in
the IDF. There is an alternative claim that he was
born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager,
(04:04):
but most reporting says that he was born in Israel.
In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this
as anti Semitic violence. The acting US Attorney said that
they are investigating the cases a hate crime and an
act of terrorism. Dan Bongino, Deputy FBI director, said the
shooting was a quote act of targeted violence. The Israeli
(04:27):
Foreign Minister and net Yahoo have laid blame at college
protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France,
Britain in Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking
about Israel's quote supposed genocide and crimes against humanity unquote,
and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel. Quote unquote incitement.
Natanyahu said, quote free Palestine is just today's version of
(04:51):
Hyle Hitler Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state.
They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to
annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the left
d of Israel for three thousand, five hundred years.
Speaker 3 (05:03):
This is, obviously, I think, in a lot of ways,
the kind of thing net Yahoo has been waiting for,
and probably the kind of thing that a number of
folks in that Trump is put in federal law enforcement
have been waiting for because it provides them with some
opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student organizing and
(05:24):
organizing against Israeli war crimes. Right. Like, the argument they
want to be able to make is that just saying
free Palestine is an active terrorism, And there was an
act of terrorism here, right, Like shooting two embassy employees
for the crimes of their government. Like that is a
clear act of terrorism. Right. You can feel however you
(05:45):
want to about it, but like that's the definition of
what was done. But the things he was chanting were
not part of the active terrorism. The fact that he
shot people to death was the active terrorism.
Speaker 4 (05:55):
Yeah, it's the murdering people, that's the terrorism.
Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, and that is already illegal, by the way, and
quite heavily, I'll be interested. We don't seem to know
much about where he got the firearm yet that I've
come across.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
So he legally purchased it in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (06:09):
Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has like fairly
strict gun laws. Yes, some of the strictest in the US.
So it's one of those things where there's already quite
a bit of regulation around everything that he did here.
But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you
are because this, you know, if there's an amendment, there
(06:29):
will be people who carry out attacks like this. And
I don't really know there certainly didn't seem to be
outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends, a
lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar.
He had been at like a PSL Party for Socialism
and Liberation March in twenty seventeen or something, but like,
this wasn't a guy who had a history of violence
(06:52):
or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a
reality of the country that we live in, is that
when people like this decide to carry out shootings for
whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low.
Speaker 2 (07:05):
It's very hard to flag for a guy specifically like
like this because there's a lot of them out there.
Speaker 3 (07:11):
Yeah. Yeah, and most of them don't do shootings.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
Yeah, this active been widely condemned. Like pro Palestine commentators
have said that this style of like adventurist terrorism does
nothing to help the Palestine people and in fact only
hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby
and Natya who have been like wanting to happen for
a while.
Speaker 3 (07:32):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:33):
I think kat Aboukazela, a Parastalian American woman he's running
for office in Illinois.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
Worked it for media matters for years. Yeah. It does
a lot of videos. Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:45):
Yeah, Anyway, I saw that she'd she had somethink about
how like, yeah, this was something that evidently should be condemned. Right,
that is wrong, and it's not advancing the cause of
Palestinian freedom, Like I think adventurist terrorism is a good
way to describe it. Geah, just getting pad and by
people on the internet, which like I don't know people
engaging with this like from a place it doesn't come
(08:08):
from like it's bad when random folks get shot killed.
Speaker 2 (08:12):
No, people have have used the horrific genocide as a
way to like channel their general societal frustration and find
a way to like just act incredibly hostile like to
actual Palestinians. Yeah yeah, yeah, who don't share the exact
same like anti imperialist TM views that they might have. Right,
(08:32):
it's just permission to abuse people online.
Speaker 4 (08:35):
Yeah, deeply, like verbally violent and like no psycho shit.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as
well as well, as we'll see.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
Let's talk about that.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
Let's get a little bit into his background. So he
has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account.
Speaker 3 (08:52):
And it's it's Kojent like in terms of it's not
the ramblings of like a madman or something. There's nothing
like it.
Speaker 2 (08:58):
It all has an English degree, he knows how to write.
He has worked as a writer for like almost a decade.
Speaker 3 (09:04):
Okay, yeah, yeah, I mean that in terms of, like
it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not
any evidence here of like a disconnect or whatever. He's
not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the
weather bad or whatever. Right right, yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:18):
The manifesto is title to Escalate for Gaza, Bring the
War Home, and he attempts to explain the rationale behind
his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale
of dead Palestinians, writing that quote atrocity is committed by
Israelis against Palestine, defy description and defy quantification. He writes
about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the
(09:40):
US government has continually refused to reign in Israel and
instead moves to criminalize dissent. He talks about armed action.
Quote an armed action is not necessarily a military action.
It usually is not. Usually it is theater and spectacle,
a quality it shares in many unarmed actions.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
Quote yeah, and I do find you know, one of
the first things that happened when this attack was carried
out was people started theorizing that this had been some
Nazi who was using this to using the propouse and
cost like camouflage as Nazism. And I don't think that
the preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things.
(10:20):
One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name
was Habbo eighty eight and he was not born in
eighty eight obviously whenever you see an eighty eight in
the Native Curse Millennial. And the other is that the
bring the war home reference in his manifesto, which is
basically a reference to something that I believe was Louis Beam,
who is a neo Nazi organizer, said about trying to
(10:43):
get Vietnam veterans to essentially bring the war home to
the United States in order to spark a race war.
And those two little things are weird. However, the rest
of this guy's fairly well documented history and background does
not suggest anything like that, So I don't think that
that's the credible thing to blame this on. Quite frankly, Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:08):
I'll go over some of that background in brief.
Speaker 4 (11:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
He also talked about targeting government representatives quote the impunity
that representatives of our government feel at a bedding, that
this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then
tells the story of a man who tried to throw
Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea.
He finishes with his thoughts on the quote unquote morality
of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize
(11:36):
the perpetrators of atrocities, as a method for us to
cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
Quote.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
This action would have been morally justified taken eleven years
ago during Protective Edge, around the time I personally became
acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I
think to most Americans such an action would have been illegible.
It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least
there are many Americans for which the action will be
(12:04):
highly legible and, in some funny way, the only sane
thing to do unquote. It did find it interesting that
on December fifth, twenty twenty four, Rodriguez posted on his
Twitter account that quote eighty percent of the country applauds
the targeted annihilation of a healthcare insurance EXECUTIVEUOTE. As for
(12:25):
his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist, third worldiest yeah,
and believes that the global seuth alone has quote unquote
revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to
journalist KNK Clippenstein like this quote. He was a big
proponent of the emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran Hesbula
(12:49):
Assad Syria.
Speaker 3 (12:50):
How'd that go?
Speaker 2 (12:51):
He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years,
way before twenty twenty three. He'd always hated Israel and
would call it quote the little Satan unquote.
Speaker 4 (13:02):
For fox sake, they Asad test are in supreme as. Yeah,
it's a fucking ab test for someone having shitty politics.
Speaker 2 (13:11):
Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by aside.
Speaker 4 (13:14):
Yeah, yeah, Asad who gaffed his own people who murdered
little children.
Speaker 3 (13:18):
Including thousands and thousands of Palestinians by the way. Yeah, yeah,
but again, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well informed
opinions out of folks.
Speaker 4 (13:30):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
This His online presence mirrors what I would call like
the typical like anti imperialist TM poster, where he's there
is most of his frustration at the Democrats, sometimes at Republicans,
but mostly yeah, posts about being pro Russia, Iran, Hesbala,
pro Asade, and particularly the past few years, posting a
(13:51):
lot of a Palestine right with explicit defense and like
veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein
and also said quote, it's driving me crazy that people
are calling it a false flag. This development is shocking,
but not completely out of character. Yeah, he always had
strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's
(14:12):
the same as he was.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
Unquote Yeah, and I mean that seems true. Again, we
still don't have a like, a perfect knowledge of all
of this guy's you know, online life.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
No, this is just a week away.
Speaker 3 (14:26):
But based on what Kin's posted, based on this interview,
that makes complete sense. Yeah, right, I like, I don't
have any trouble believing that for a number of reasons.
Speaker 2 (14:36):
No, absolutely, this is this is not a false flag attack.
That's that's conspiratorial nonsense.
Speaker 3 (14:40):
Yeah, I think that's this guy did a thing that
he's sincerely believed in, and it seems like everything he'd
been expressing in the year or two leading up to
doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did now.
Speaker 2 (14:53):
Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL Party for socialistm
in Liberation back in twenty seventeen and spoke to the
media on their behalf, though he would later regret his
association with the group, telling friends quote, PSL sucks shit.
I wish I had just done a misadventure with the
Freedom Road Socialist Organization rather than the PSL lol YEA.
(15:17):
Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In twenty twenty three,
he posted video from a local pro Palestine march on
his Twitter account. Clippenstein spoke with at least five friends
of his, who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez
express anti Semitic sentiments. Now, one of Arigue's friends gave
Clippenstein access to a years old private WhatsApp group chat
(15:38):
that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day
before the shooting. Clippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal
any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray
an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things,
especially Israel and its Warren Gaza unquote. Yeah, and from
what we conceived of the chats that kind has posted,
(15:59):
this matches pretty well. A chat member wrote, quote, I'm
almost surprised you're not anti Semitic elias. It usually goes
hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong, mantra.
Speaker 3 (16:11):
Yeah, and his response to this was like, Stalin ended,
you know, among other things, Stalin ended the greatest anti
Semitic state in history, which I've seen his evidence that
he wasn't pro Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know,
defeating the Nazis. But he says like among other things,
so he clearly got a number of reasons he likes Stalin.
Speaker 2 (16:31):
Yeah, from the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly
like a like a tanky anti imperialist type.
Speaker 3 (16:36):
Yes, yes, yeah, a million such examples.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
The only time he talked about race explicitly was the
lambast white people quote. Lol, you probably would have to
actually genified white people to make this a normal country.
Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would
probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens
of millions of white people.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
The uh, there's a Stalin did nothing really, Yeah, there's
that gay brained type that we were looking for.
Speaker 3 (17:06):
Well, and again it's one of those things. We're talking
about this because there's a bunch of guys who expressed
similar views. This is the only one who's done as shooting.
When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking
about this like as evidence that like, oh, someone who's
a fucking Tanky type is like is likely to commit
a mass shooting right, they go hand in hand.
Speaker 2 (17:26):
No, this is the first time of take he's done anything.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
This is the first one of these I've heard of
in quite quite a long time. Yeah, it's just this guy.
There's a bunch of people who expressed similar things to
this guy, right, yeah.
Speaker 4 (17:36):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:37):
On October seventh, he celebrated the Hamas attack. Quote. Just
saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli
troops trying to get dressed for the ambush, absolutely massacred
by Hamas fighters. I am ao love checking back in
with the news every few hours, Like, hmm, I wonder
if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly
wonder if Israel is over yet today or not?
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Unquote yeah, and again like that just kind of shows
the general lack of knowledge.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
A level of political delusion.
Speaker 4 (18:06):
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of kind of telegram propaganda
consumption type worldview here.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yes, and can convince you that what's happening is different
from the reality.
Speaker 4 (18:16):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:17):
In this chat, he lmented to friends and expressed sorrow
at the deaths of Hamas and has been of leaders
and sometimes his ire was directed at other members of
this leaked chat. At one point, going on an unhinged
ablest rant, attacking one of his friends for being privileged
after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with cazophrenia. Quote,
why not just have him committed. You can't possibly be
(18:39):
gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that.
Just put him in a padded room and forget about him.
Speaker 3 (18:44):
Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
If there was a person you loved, he's gone, now
let it go. Can you just chain him in the
basement and slide meals under the door. I'm just tired
of hearing about this guy. He's useless, we get it,
Stop complaining and just dispose of him.
Speaker 3 (18:57):
Yeah, Jesus Christ.
Speaker 4 (19:00):
I mean this goes with the people who I don't
know aren't useful to me, are of no value? Right,
that people don't have inherent value, and you know they
don't agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them.
They can die. Like I guess there's some kind of
coherence there.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Well, Robert, you want to mention the something awful?
Speaker 3 (19:20):
Yes, I do, Garrison. So the other thing that came
out in Ken's article is that this dude was a
poster Well. His friends described him as a dedicated poster,
which is the worst thing you can be described as being,
and noted that he had been there had been some
when it came out that like his former Twitter user
name had been like Habbo eighty eight. That was very
(19:42):
clearly a reference to a game called Habo Hotel that
if you're gen z, there's very good odds you don't remember.
But it was a big thing for people who were
on four Chan and who were on Something Awful. And
Something Awful was the website that gave birth to four Chan.
It's where I was raised on the internet, and many
many years ago, around the turn of the millennium, I
(20:04):
think I don't remember the exact year, but we started
gathering on this game for children. It was like an
MMO for little kids and like pretending to be members
of a cult in order to like confuse small children.
And then four Chan did their own version of that
that was a bit more racist, which is often the case.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
Yeah, many such cases, Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:25):
Many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there was
a debate was this guy a channer or was this
guy a goon you know, a member of the Something
Awful forums, And a lot of people thought I called goon.
A lot of people thought Shanner because of his age,
he was a little bit young to have been a
part of the something awful have a hotel things. I
think it's actually likely or he did both. But his
(20:45):
friends described him as somebody who was really into something awful, right,
as somebody who had been influenced by that in particularly
a subset of the something awful forms called FIAD, which
stands for fuck you and Die, which kind of pioneered
a lot of the most toxic aspects of online discourse.
Speaker 4 (21:03):
Apparently Jesus.
Speaker 3 (21:05):
Now, folks have found at least one of his accounts
that doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't
mean much because number one, he could have deleted a
lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older.
Number Two, he could have had another account, which is
also the case. The one account that people know was
his was banned for shooting and killing two him to
(21:27):
see employees. There's reasons given in the ever lengthening Something
Awful ban list when somebody gets banned. Obviously, again, I
don't think there's like a positive thing to him being
like him being on something awful didn't cause him to
shoot two people, but him being on Something Awful was
a natural part of the progression that led to him
(21:49):
being the kind of like toxic online asshole that he was.
And sort of evidence of that is that one of
the last things he had done online before the shooting
was he had gotten briefly onto Blue Sky and then
gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stanzel, who's another
annoying asshole on the Internet, who was also a Something
(22:11):
Awful goon who was raised in this same chunk of
the Internet, and who became a similar kind of asshole,
just with wildly different politics. And these two hated each other,
and Elias like threatened to murder him over the internet
because he's like again that these guys, he's that type
of guy. He's that type of guy, which doesn't mean again,
which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting
(22:32):
or had anything to do with that, because there's a
lot of this type of guy and almost none of
them commit acts of terrorism. It just like his background
makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we
can see that he was online.
Speaker 2 (22:44):
The last thing I'll say about this is that you know,
beyond this like senseless loss of life, which is like
an issue in and of itself. Obviously, this also contributes
to further loss of life in the way this plays
into like media capture. Right now, we have a whole
week were the news cycles dominated by two people getting
murdered in the streets of DC, and this does not
(23:07):
help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The
exact same day that this happened, Wednesday, the twenty first,
ninety three people were killed in Israeli attacks across the
Gaza Strip and that type of stuff does not really
get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans
are really good at getting desensitized to this in a
large scale media environment, but stuff like this only serves
(23:28):
as a distraction and fuels Israel's oone motivation for their
continued actions.
Speaker 4 (23:33):
Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by
the advertisers in this show.
Speaker 2 (23:39):
It's true.
Speaker 5 (23:40):
There you go, and we are back.
Speaker 2 (23:56):
Another big news item from last week was the passing
of the big, beautiful budget bill in the House. We'll
talk more about this bill as it turns through the Senate,
but first our co host Mia Wong has a special
report on how the bill targets trans healthcare.
Speaker 6 (24:13):
So we're going to talk a little bit about the
budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes
in the Senate, that's been passed by the House. I
am Mia Wong, and with me to talk about how
this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is
Maddi Castikin from Mad cast and Mirror Levine from the
Free Radical. Glad to have both of you to hear.
(24:35):
You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this
stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First,
can you can you explain what is going on in
this budget with the ban on trans healthcare using Medicaid?
Speaker 3 (24:48):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (24:48):
Absolutely So. The budget bill, also known as House Resolution one,
is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding
next year's budget and how they're going to allocate it
their funds. This time around, Republicans decided it would be
a great idea to push through. So what it was
at first was a intense limitation on what Medicaid cover,
(25:13):
essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I
began investigating first. Me and Mattie were talking about it
a bunch she's the one who took me off to it.
They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that
would result in millions of people losing access to their healthcare,
not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts,
for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are
(25:35):
famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps
of the I believe it was the Capital Building in
the nineties to raise awareness and help get the American
Disabilities Act passed. They staged a protest on the United
States Capital during a hearing for this bill where Republicans
(25:57):
were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple active
got arrested. They're all fine now apparently apparently they weren't
treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But
what ultimately happened is more and more came out, and
it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected,
but basically every marginalized group for people of course being
(26:19):
what we were focusing on given the beat, but this
will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're a low income,
especially if you are a person of color, you are
more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this bill,
and how sweeping it is, and Republicans implemented a ban
(26:41):
for gender ferming care for minors on it. It was
a very milktoas ban that at the time was projected
to pretty much get overturned in court right away if
we were to pass.
Speaker 3 (26:52):
They didn't stop there, though.
Speaker 7 (26:54):
They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it
into a sweeping ban on gender firming care for all
ages is on Medicaid and for any health insurance received
through Affordable Care Act marketplaces. And ultimately this led to
a lot of panic and a lot of people assuming
that their care is going to be taken away immediately.
(27:15):
That wasn't what's going to happen on the minimum effective
date that's currently in the bill is twenty twenty seven.
I'm telling people to prepare if it passes for twenty
twenty six, because there's a decent change. Republicans will try
to expedite it. Because it passed through the House, it
passed through committees in the House, it was sent to
the Senate, and I think that's what we'll give to Mattie
(27:35):
to talk about kind of what next steps for that are.
Speaker 8 (27:39):
Yeah, so lake Man was saying there's a lot of
really huge. As bill is tremendous, they could talk for
hours about it, but focusing on the transparts, there's a
ban on medicaid funding and there's also a ban on
including trans cares and essential health benefit and ACA plans.
And the thing about both of these provisions is so
(28:00):
that normally with reconciliation bills, they're supposed to be focused
on budget items, not policy items. So for example, you
couldn't say, hey, weed is legal everywhere now or something
like that, or raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried
to do in twenty twenty one and they failed because
there are rules regarding how this process works. And so
(28:21):
what we argued in an article was that there's a
possibility that, you know, if activists and advocates reach out
to their senators and advocated to point out that this
part of the bill is completely against those provisions, against
those procedural rules for the Senate Parliamentaria could rule against
it and basically strike that portion of the bill without
(28:41):
ever even becoming law. And you know, that would stay
people a lot of stress and anxiety, and you don't
have to worry about the court battles and what happens
with Scremetti versus us, which is a Supreme Court case
that's going to be ruled on on gender firming care soon.
So what we've been telling people, and you know, including
listeners for your show, is that people really need to
reach out to their senators every single day, email call
(29:03):
and ask them to vote no on this bill. On
HR one and it specifically mentioned the trans healthcare aspects.
And if you want, there's templates online on our website,
or you can just you know, ask them, Hey, we
don't think this bill is good.
Speaker 3 (29:16):
We don't.
Speaker 8 (29:17):
We want you to challenge specifically the parts that are
attacking trans people. And I can confirm with you. I
can't share too much information, but I can confirm with
you that we are making real, legitimate progress on killing
this provision. And the more people we have calling in
every single day, the better our odds are. But there's
still more ways to fight back. And I want Mara
to pick up on how people can fight back on
(29:38):
the ground.
Speaker 7 (29:39):
Yeah, So in addition to reaching out to your senators,
of course, to that, there's an email template, Mattie wrote
of a great one. It tells you everything you need
to do. You can even leave a phone call to
the script it takes like five minutes. But more long
term is this is not going to be the only
attack on gender affirming care. It's not going to stop here.
This is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately,
(30:03):
we cannot rely on the government to give us a
central health care. We cannot rely on the government to
protect us and give us what we need, because fundamentally,
the government and the laws that it aims to uphold
are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy.
The law is functionally something that gives police power to
(30:23):
act as essentially an occupying army on state and to
persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are disproportionately
rich and powerful decruity. And we need to start focusing
on building long term solutions. Everything we can do with
legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not save
us because there will be more attacks down the line,
(30:46):
and they'll keep coming, and they only need to win once.
We need to win that every time. But there are
long term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially
just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual
aid network, get plugged into people doing work on the
ground in your state, in your area, who are focusing
(31:07):
on a plethora of different issues. A bit of a
self plug here, but I wrote an article, for instance,
last month, where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the
Twin Cities who told me just a lot about the
history of radical practice in the cities, especially in light
of the George Floyd riots and especially in right of
(31:30):
corporate pride, rango capitalism, whole nine yards. Recommend reading it.
It's on the free radical dot org. Check it out.
But beyond of course my own writing in my own interviews,
there are so many people doing work that doesn't get
covered because it either isn't pattalable to mainstream news audiences
or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons.
(31:53):
In every single major city this I can guarantee there
are people doing work. Most of the time. It's not
going to be publicly visible, but they are there. I
would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in
gets started with something that is much more entry level
and something that is much more like meant to be
kind of for everyone who may not be willing to
(32:14):
do more in depth and more treesy type of stuff,
food not bombs, is the great thing I recommend for
everyone to check out. Not every city has one, most two,
every state has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of
local mutual aid groups in every single locality, and if
there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in
your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend I'm a
(32:37):
bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones
that are decentralized and non hierarchical, ones that don't revolve
around centralizing power and placing that power in the hands
of people who are either good at smooth talking or
who have a lot of money. Ultimately, the way forward
for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just
trans people. You know on document immigrants, blocking auditions, well
(33:00):
of color, low income people, disable people, and so forth.
The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect
all of us. Attacks on trans healthcare are not limited there. Inevitably,
let's say they ban trance healthcare overnight, They're going to
come for intersex people. Next, They're going to come for
gay people. Next, they're going to come for everyone. So
I would just say get involved in your local groups
(33:22):
and reach out there. Are resources out there. If you
need some, check out the free radical dot org. I
recommend a ton of them.
Speaker 8 (33:30):
Thank you and yees. Our upside for Matti Metticast is
m adycast dot com and you can find our templates
for contacting your senators there. Thank you so much for
helping yourself and helping your community.
Speaker 6 (33:43):
Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to
close on I want to read the route a real
line for fucking Davix manifesto from and or. Remember that
the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere, and even the
smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the
arguments that can make make sure that I think it's
just true is that in order to maintain their holds,
(34:03):
these people have to win one hundred battles across one
hundred fronts, you know. But this means that there are
so many different things that you can do to resist
them and to make sure that this fucking budget they're
trying to pass, to make sure that everyone in this
country suffers, and specifically that trans people cannot use the
health insurances that we need, use Medicaid, use Affordable Care
Act to pay for stuff. This stuff can be resisted
(34:25):
in so many different ways. You can, as we've talked about,
you can call your senators, you can yell at them,
you can make their lives miserable until they agree to
not do this. And then also you can join your
local mituway groups, you can join local activist groups. You
can start, you know, getting a serious organized other ways
you can. Again, like we've talked a lot about unions
and the role of unions and trying to struggle on
(34:46):
the show. We've talked of God, We've talked about so
many things. I'm going to do a one second plug
for the episode I wrote last year called you already
know how to organize, because you do already know how
to organize. And yeah, none of the things that are
happening here are inevitable. They can be stopped and there
are so many different ways for you to start stopping them.
Speaker 3 (35:03):
Yeah, So we're back and we're talking about Gavin Newsome
and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and
Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect.
So if you remember a little earlier this year, there
was a big brujaha publicly because a California transgender high
(35:28):
school athlete one at the woman's eight feet triple jump.
This is an eleventh grade transgender athlete from Urupa Valley
High School near Riverside, California, and she won the Division
three girls long jump and triple jump and placed seventh
in the high jump at her Southern Section championship a
few weeks later. There's going to be I don't think
(35:50):
it's happened yet a championship meet that she qualified for
as a result of this. And when this happened, it
was immediately left on by the Trump administration and by
right wing media as evidence of this thing that they've
been trying to push for forever, which is that trans
athletes are a threat to women's sports. Right now, this
is something that number one, there's just not a lot
(36:12):
of And this is also something that like, I think
something like two thirds of Americans when polled, say that
they don't feel like trans athletes should be competing with
you know, quote unquote naturally born women in women's sports.
Right Like, this is a thing that the right has
built a lot of support for because they have made
this a political issue for so long, and they've been
(36:34):
largely successful in that the State of California and California
lawmakers have been pushing back against this. There have been
state bills in order to allow these girls to continue
to compete, but Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same
degree of support. And this kind of largely came out
(36:55):
earlier this month when he had a meeting with conservative
personality Charlie Kirk on his new podcast. As Newsom said,
Kirk pushed so hard on the topic that Newsom said
he felt like he had to address it. Here's how
Newsom characterized it, and then he asked me, tell me
that's not fair. And I looked at him. I said,
you're right, that's not And so it wasn't some grand design.
And I know, I know that hurt a lot of people,
(37:16):
but respectively, I just disagree with those on the other
side of this. Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom.
He was attacked for flip flopping because again, like the
California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend
trans athletes, but Newsom kind of flipped as soon as
he was in a room with Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom
(37:37):
will argue that he also tried to stick up for
trans athletes to Charlie Kirk to be clear about that,
this is exactly what he said to Charlie completely fair
on the issue of fairness. I completely agree. So that's
easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also
a humility and grace that these poor people are more
likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression, and the
(37:57):
way that people talk down to vulnerable communities is issue
that I have a hard time with as well. So
both things I can hold in my hand. How can
we address this issue with the kind of decency that
I think you know is inherent in you but not
always expressed in the issue. And first of all, there's
no decency inherent in Charlie Kirk. And second, yeah, there's
also a humility and grace that these poor people are
more likely to commit suicide. What does that? What that mean?
(38:19):
What does that mean? Gavin?
Speaker 4 (38:20):
That's not a sentence? Also, like, just like I made
my living exercising for most of my twenties, right Like,
you're a professional athletes done sports?
Speaker 3 (38:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (38:30):
Like, and then I've done all kinds of other shit
where I still got paid to race my bike, right Like? Yeah,
sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I coached people who
worked way.
Speaker 3 (38:40):
Harder than me.
Speaker 4 (38:42):
They trained super hard, they slept well, they ate better. Unfortunately,
for whatever reason, they were not able to get to
the same level.
Speaker 3 (38:54):
That sucks.
Speaker 4 (38:54):
But like sport is inherently unfair. The idea that like
the only difference is like this, like your xx x
y chromosoonality is nonsense. Like, especially in high school sports,
kids will develop at different times.
Speaker 3 (39:07):
That is unfair.
Speaker 4 (39:08):
Some kids will excel and then other kids will get better.
The function of high school sports is not to find
who can go like higher, faster, stronger. It's to teach
people to play nicely with one another and to communicate
inclusion and excluding trans kids is completely contrary to that.
Speaker 3 (39:26):
Yeah, and that's like, yeah, I think that's a great point, James,
is that, like number one, this is all being entirely
made about like who places how, which is always going
to be based largely on things that like people can't control,
because like people's bodies are different, you know, Yeah, and
they developed differently.
Speaker 4 (39:45):
Like there are people who I beat by graces when
I was a kid who have one stages at the
Tour de France. Yeah, like if our bodies developed differently,
that's completely normal.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, and it's this again. The thing that should matter
here is not treating a community of people hatefully, which
is the entire of the reason the right has made
this an issue. It has nothing to do with fairness,
it has nothing to do with sports. It's entirely about
hurting a group of people.
Speaker 4 (40:07):
Yeah, if these people gave a single shit about women's sports,
said it being there when women weren't getting paid the
same Did it been there when they didn't get the
same TV covery? Did it there when they didn't get
the same price money?
Speaker 3 (40:15):
And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at
that point in time? Yea. Now, I do think one
thing that's funny here is that when Newsom was when
people asked, rightly, like when Californian legislators were pushing to
protect trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you
felt this way? And his answer was, I didn't have
a podcast, I wasn't having that conversation. I was out
(40:36):
there on the campaign trail and the big blue bubble,
on the big blue bus and the big blue crowds,
having big blue conversations. And then he went on to
say that basically the backlash to him agreeing with Charlie
Kirk on this has convinced him. I always thought the
right overstated how judgmental my party was, and I'll be
candid with you, I have a deeper understanding now of
that critique than I ever ever ever understood. It's like,
(40:56):
now that people are angry at me, I believe there's
a problem with my party being judgmental.
Speaker 4 (41:02):
Yeah, now that I've faced a consequence of my shit,
I hate trans people even more.
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Yeah, it must be so hard to be Gavin Newsome.
It's gotta be tough and betray your constituents to get
the approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around.
Speaker 3 (41:19):
Who still hates you touring.
Speaker 2 (41:21):
College campuses to debate seventeen year olds. That must be
so hard for you.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
It's gotta be tough. Gotta be tough, Gavin.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
He did say in his podcast his kid likes Charlie Kirk,
not surprisingly. Maybe this is all just a ploy to
be a cool dad.
Speaker 3 (41:34):
Yeah, I'm not surprised he sucks at being a dad.
Speaker 4 (41:37):
Gavin usedomings you wants to be a cool dad, Emty,
it's embarrassing.
Speaker 2 (41:42):
Reminds me that Jake Dapper just said his kid's not
really into politics. He's just into World War two and
gaming great part of World War two.
Speaker 4 (41:52):
Tapurious, curious many such cases.
Speaker 3 (41:55):
Doesn't his kid want to be a cop? Is that
Jake Tapper? Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like Jake
fucking Tapper's kid. So look. Earlier this week on Tuesday,
President Trump shared a truth social post, a truth threatening
to yesa he retruthed a post threatening to withhold federal
funding from California over the participation of this high school
(42:16):
trans athlete in the upcoming California Interscholastic Federation State Track
and Field Championships. Right, and he said that, under the
leadership of radical left Democrat Gavin Nuskum, California continues to
illegally allow men to play in women's sports. The governor
himself said it is unfair. Trump wrote, first off, the
(42:37):
fact that Gavin agreed with Charlie INA's podcast did nothing
to change the rhetoric around him. He's still radical left
democrat Gavin newscom because you can't make these people unhappy,
because it's not about fairness, it's about hurting people.
Speaker 2 (42:49):
Right, you can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.
Speaker 3 (42:52):
I wanted to talk about Maine. Yes, yeah, so Trump
made this same threat to the state of Maine when
the governor of Maine refused to stop allowing trans people
to compete in women's sports, and the administration attempted to
freeze funds intended for a main child nutrition program.
Speaker 2 (43:10):
No more food for your kids because woa, no more.
Speaker 3 (43:12):
Food for poor kids because woke. And in response, the
governor made was like, all right, let's fucking go to
the mat. And they filed a lawsuit against the US
Department of Agriculture, and the Trump administration settled, like they
they backed down. They agreed to stop freezing the funds
if Maine dropped the lawsuit, right, Like, as soon as
(43:34):
Maine sued, Trump backed down, right and rather than attempting
to do that even though there's ample evidence that the
administration backs down. And to be fair, and I think
against Maine, California's got a lot more weight to throw around. Yeah,
it's the fifth largest economy on the planet. They have
some they have some fucking hack behind them, and like
(43:55):
news clearly has.
Speaker 4 (43:57):
No moral principle other than advancing his own career in
personal iron wealth right now.
Speaker 3 (44:01):
But like, even if that is the case.
Speaker 4 (44:03):
It's so easy to be like, yeah, I'll fight him
on this, I'll fight for the trans kids and get
some like resist a points.
Speaker 3 (44:10):
But he's just too much of a fucking cow. The
first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything.
Don't treat them like people. They're monsters, their scum. You
fight them every step of the way, right, Like, it
doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never
give pieces a shit like this a win. Yeah. Right,
that's just not the way you fight them.
Speaker 2 (44:30):
This is the problem with people like Evin, who just
whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist.
Speaker 7 (44:35):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (44:35):
So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging
against your previously held progressive DEI woke LGBTQ plus values, Yeah,
then you just go along with that swing and you
actually don't even care about getting this getting this points
anymore because you think the culture is going in a
different direction. Sure, and all you care about is being
in the cultural zeitgeist. Yeah, you don't actually stand for anything,
like you're just you're just nothing.
Speaker 3 (44:55):
Yeah, And everyone can see that as opposed to understanding
what Governor Frey of main nderstands, which is that no,
you stand there. You accept that the zeitgeist is a
screen door and it's going to bounce off of you
and back in enough for another direction if you stand
for something, right, Gavin decided not to stand for something,
and immediately after Trump made that tweet threatening to withhold
(45:17):
funds from the state of California, and you know, the
Department of Education has opened title for investigations in two
leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF, which is
California's high school governing a sports governing body. Right after
Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF released a
statement saying that it had made the decision to pilot
(45:39):
an entry process for the championship that's coming up that
will alter the way they hand out awards. It will
expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes. Is the
exact way that they have phrased this. And basically what
they're going to be doing is giving an award for
biological men, biological women, and than trans competitors. Right, so
(46:02):
there will be like three long jump awards.
Speaker 2 (46:05):
It's like a segregated scoring field.
Speaker 3 (46:08):
Yeah, it's it's some I guess you could say it's
not as awful as trying to ban people. But also
it's kind of like you're not even taking any kind
of stance here. It's not it's just it's nothing. It's
nothing now. Newsome spokesperson as a Garden says cif proposed
pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex
(46:29):
issue without compromising competitive fairness. That governor is encouraged by
this thoughtful approach. And I should note here this has
done nothing to actually calm the right or get conservatives
to back down right.
Speaker 2 (46:43):
Now, because they don't want trans kids competing at all.
They don't want trans kids in public life.
Speaker 3 (46:47):
They don't want tids existing. Yes, and so like the
conservative Californians are still angry.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
You can't take them for their word for it. Yeah,
they don't care about fairness in sports. This is all
about just eradicating trans genders from public life, like as
as Michael Knowles said at Sea Pack like two years ago,
Like that's yeah what they actually care about.
Speaker 3 (47:07):
Yeah, And there's you know, there's been a bunch of
statements some some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ cock because
it have been like well, Gavin's you know, otherwise been
a good ally. You know for LGBTQ people, and I
don't agree with this is something that an assembly member
Chris Ward said basically, I don't agree with this particular move.
But he's been a good ally for a long time.
Speaker 2 (47:28):
Has he though? Has he though?
Speaker 3 (47:30):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (47:31):
I mean when it's convenient to him, I guess I prefer.
Speaker 3 (47:34):
Caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was quote just
commenting on how he personally feels. He mentioned it on
his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a
policy direction. Announced, Hell, yeah, it's a dumb podcast.
Speaker 4 (47:47):
Yea, yeah, I mean you should be concerned that he
has a dumb pot cost what he deemed it. I
just trans people like, yeah, he signed vetos all the time.
Speaker 3 (47:56):
Like again, I found a k c Ira add An
article on this that quotes Publican assembly Woman Kate Sanchez,
who wrote a bill that would have banned trans athletes
from competing in girls high school sports earlier this year.
This is what she said about cif's rule chains pilot policy.
It's incredibly weak. We're angry, We're pissed at this. How
every day that goes by and no one is protecting
our girls. This is inexcusable. We need to have something done.
(48:18):
Governor whoson needs to pick aside, do something, do the
right thing. So again, this gets you nothing with them, right,
it benefits you not at all. There's another quote I
want to read here from State Senator Scott Weiner, who
is the leader of the Senate Budget Committee and again
a member of the LGBTQ Rights Caucus. Trump is now
targeting California, just like he targeted Maine. Threatening to withhold
federal funds of California doesn't follow as I legal edicts
(48:39):
targeting transgender people. California law protects trans people. That won't
change Main one in court. So will California. There's only
one answer to a bully No, And as Main Governor
Janet Mills said, see you in court. Sorry I got
I don't know why I said Governor Fray earlier, but anyway,
the point here is that you have Californian legislators saying
the right thing, and then you have of fucking Newsome
(49:01):
being like, no, no, no, actually we're totally going to
cave and in a way that won't even make the
Republicans happy. It's just frustrating to me that you do
have Democrats trying to do the right thing here in
California politics and Newsom absolutely having CIF do a run
around on them out of pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what
I got.
Speaker 2 (49:21):
Get him out of there.
Speaker 3 (49:22):
Get him out of there. Fuck Evin Newsom.
Speaker 4 (49:24):
We tried to. That was a recall, but it was
not for the right reasons.
Speaker 3 (49:28):
Yeah, the last time we recalled a California governor, it
was a real mixed bag.
Speaker 2 (49:32):
Yeah, speaking of a mixed bag, that's right, and we're back. Okay,
we're back.
Speaker 3 (49:49):
We're back.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
James don want to finish us up here, I.
Speaker 4 (49:52):
Do, Garrison, I would like that very much. I want
to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to
try and keep this faster and know it's already been
a long episode up with ice agents have been arresting
people in immigration court around the country and placing them
at expedited remove all proceedings. If you want to know
more about exactly what they exploited remove all proceedings are
and how they work, you can go back to our episode,
(50:15):
which will have aired the day before you hear this,
and that would explain And I talked to an immigration
attorney there and explain a little bit more about how
that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed.
So Previously it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases
of people who had arrived less than two years ago
and placing them under two forty explanited remove all proceedings.
(50:35):
Apparently they are also detaining other people. I am not
sure how that works. I have not seen any justifications
for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm
not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are
going to have to fight their removal from detention, which
is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience.
Speaker 3 (50:55):
Right. Detention in these.
Speaker 4 (50:56):
In these cour civic or geogroup facilities is pretty bad.
I'm aware of cases where I misidentified the person being
detained cuff the wrong person. And I'm aware that there
are Spectrum Services who are an ICE detention officer provider officers,
at least outside some of these facilities. I believe also
(51:16):
inside Spectrum Services. I've noticed been posting a lot of
job adverts recently. This is something I sometimes keep an
eye on. Right like right before the end of title
forty two, I saw they were advertising for ICE contractors
to transport detainees. So this is sometimes a sign that
bad things are a foot in the immigration world. I'm
(51:38):
guessing in this case it's either this or a plan
to further expand detention capacity, which also something the Trump
administration has been talking about. Right, So they also have
these various subjective orders authorizing more budget and the budget
bill or threwting more budget for detaining migrants. Secondly, the
South Sudan case rope we's covered this last week at
(52:00):
ALVSUS Known.
Speaker 3 (52:02):
We also covered it earlier in this week.
Speaker 4 (52:05):
If you go back to our episode which aired on Wednesday,
you can hear more about the sort of blow by
blow of timeline of that case. In the South Studian case,
Trump administration seems to have gone directly to the Supreme
Court try and get an emergency stay on the injunction,
which afforded due process rights to the migrants who are
currently detained into booty. The administration asked for a stay
(52:27):
of the court's injunction. The courts injunction had given them
ten days to assert their reasonable fear of torture and
then a further fifteen days to ask to reopen their
case if the Department of Home Land Security determined that
fear not to be credible. Justice Supreme Court Justice Jackson
has given the plentiffs a week to respond to the
(52:49):
United States the DOJ's call for a stay right, So
in practices, people will still have that ten days from
the injunction to make their play that they have a
fear of torture. Right. South Sudan has said that if
these people aren't South Sudanese, it will just return them
to their country of citizenship. So if the United States
(53:10):
can't return them there because they have a fear of torture,
it just seems like the whole South Sudan thing is
just an end run around the Convention against Torture right
there their obligation not to return people to places where
they will be tortured. Talking of returning people to places
where they will be tortured. Unfortunately, the Trump administration has
deported twenty people to Mianma. This is according to reporting
(53:34):
in Meanma Now. I've also written about it on my
page Patreon page. I've linked both of those in the
show notes. But it should be noted that me and
I Now broke the story and it's getting very little
coverage in the United States. I can speculate as to
why that you probably don't need to hear me to
sort of join the dots there.
Speaker 3 (53:54):
This is atrocious.
Speaker 4 (53:55):
Robert and I have both spoken to people with extensive
experience of detention in me m Aar, and like, when
we talk about the worst attention conditions in the world,
we get to a point where it doesn't really make
any sense for us to say, like a is worse in.
Speaker 3 (54:09):
Right, right, that this is worse than Sednaia or whatever.
But it's on like the level which was Assad's torture
prison and Syria as.
Speaker 4 (54:16):
Sads butchery for human beings.
Speaker 3 (54:19):
Like we're talking about that level.
Speaker 4 (54:21):
Yeah, Like I mean things that I have heard. People
have been electrocuted to death. People are water boarded, people
have acid poured in their mouths. Bodies are found without organs,
people are beaten to such an extent that their entire
bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people
will only know that their family member is detained when
(54:43):
they disappear, and then a few days later they get
a call telling them to pick up the body. Conditions
in Burmese hunted attention facilities are atrocious. These people are
currently being held at the on Tarpi Interrogation Center. It
appears at seven, one of the earliest, but this has
been happening since March. It appears that somebody these people
(55:03):
have been released. The rest are being held by SAC.
That's the Burmese hunter of military intelligence units, who will
almost certainly torture them. Me and MA does have a
temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple
of posts about this, so I just want to clarify
the TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the
(55:23):
TPS was granted, or to people who have committed certain crimes.
We know that at least one of the men they
returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of
these crimes are like particularly HENUS felonies. Right, you can
do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported
under a TPS. But I'm trying to find out who
these people are. I know that you can't download our
(55:46):
podcast in Meanma, which is a huge dub for us.
But you know, I know a lot of Burmese people
do listen, so you know, if you have an particular
insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll
drop the email addressing a little bit here it does
seem very unlikely that these people were given a chance
to make a claim of fear of torture, right, because
it would be a very easy claim to make, given
(56:09):
every major human rights organization on the planet has documented
torture of detainees in Meanma. I was just reading a
report this morning about harassment of trans women in prisons
in Myanmar. But the same thing goes for CIS folks,
for straight folks, for everyone, right, no one, No one
comes out of there the same they went in. Yeah,
I can't believe that these people were given a chance
(56:30):
to claim a credible fear because it would have been
such an easy claim to make, yep, And they wouldn't
have been returned there. So yeah, I wish the story
was getting more reporting. I wish more people in the
media in this country cared about me and Maa. But
that's a drama I have been beating for four years now,
and I don't think she's going to change anytime soon.
So I guess all there is to say is that
(56:52):
I really appreciate those of you who do, especially those
of you who listen to the show and take an
interest in all things Meanma. But yeah, if these people
have been returned to a country that the US press
was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise
about this, but this is absolutely unconscionable.
Speaker 3 (57:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (57:08):
Yeah, these people will be tortured. It would not shock
me if some of these people died.
Speaker 3 (57:12):
Yeah, now, this is I mean, there have been cases
so far. I think at least seven of the people
that have been sent over previously in the last year
or so by the US have been released from this prison.
So it's not unnecessarily a death sentence, but for a
good number of them it will be, right, Yeah, especially
since there are also Rowhinga people who will be deported
(57:32):
in the near future and presumably directly back to the
same place.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
Yeah, I mean it's documented that people deported from Thailand
are immediately conscripted and yeah, sent me to the military. Right,
So if they get out of prison, there's a good
chance that, especially if they're men, that they will be
Women do get conscripted too in Meanmar, but there's a
good chance with that will happen too. They've been conscripting
a lot of o Hinga people. So yeah, the outcomes of
(57:58):
this will be very poor and U Yeah, the only
way torture stops in Burma. Is is when the revolution
succeeds and liberates to Britains. Like that, there is no
reasoning with the Burmese hunter. Yep, it's about all I got.
It's pretty fucked like.
Speaker 3 (58:14):
Speaking of fucked, let's listen to the tariffs song. There's
no terriffs this week now, fuck it. Well, let's just
listen to it and then have the end of the episode.
Just gets a nice song. Let's just listen to it now.
Speaker 2 (58:26):
We don't have time to listen to it. This is
the end of the episode.
Speaker 3 (58:29):
Wow, Garrison took it away from you and complained to
them online.
Speaker 4 (58:33):
The constant agist attacks on the Clash have not stopped.
Speaker 2 (58:37):
Sorry, fellas, all that money for nothing?
Speaker 3 (58:41):
We reported the new.
Speaker 1 (58:51):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 2 (59:02):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (59:03):
You can now find sources where It Could Happen here
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
It Could Happen Here News
Hosts And Creators
Robert Evans
Garrison Davis
James Stout
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