Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #36

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Old media.

Speaker 2 (00:08):
Happy g October everybody.

Speaker 3 (00:10):
Oh, shut the fuck up, we can't.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
This is that could happen here? Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis to
joint by Mio Wong, Jamestown and Robert Evans. This episode
recovering the week of September twenty first to October first.

Speaker 1 (00:29):
And what a week it was.

Speaker 2 (00:31):
Yeah, it does not feel like it should be October,
but who cares. I guess the government's shut down right now,
So all of the dozens of anarchists around the country
are rejoicing, uh huh, as the Senate has failed to
pass a short term funding bill.

Speaker 1 (00:45):
That's right, everyone, we did it. We defeated the state
using the power of the state.

Speaker 3 (00:50):
State.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
Yeah, many such cases. As the governments shut down, Trump
is threatening mass layoffs, and Republicans are framing this whole
shot down as being caused by Democrats who are trying
to defend health care for quote unquote illegals, which isn't real.
Undocumented immigrants do not get federal health care. That's not

(01:12):
even what the Democrats are fighting for. Would be cool
if they were would be cool if the theory of
this country you could just get health care, that sounds nice.
Wouldn't that be a cool, almost utopian place to live.
But that's not what's happening. And the rights confronted with this,
but they just do not care. Here's a Mike Johnson,
Speaker of the House on CNN having a little debate
about this.

Speaker 4 (01:32):
If that counterproposal was enacted, is illegal aliens would be
paid for American taxpayers hard earned dollars would be paying
for benefits for illegal aliens. Again, we're not doing that.

Speaker 3 (01:41):
But it's against federal law for people who are here illegally.

Speaker 4 (01:44):
To get yes, and that's why our reforms are so
important to enforce all that. The important thing.

Speaker 5 (01:48):
To remember is that the Democratic proposal that people who
are here illegally again.

Speaker 4 (01:52):
Because they don't have the level of specification that we
had in our bill, it will unwind that and all
those things that the CBO just verified will be reversed.
We can't afford to do.

Speaker 3 (02:03):
Right.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
No, that is a red hearing in this in this debate.

Speaker 2 (02:05):
So what the Democrats are actually doing right now is
they're trying to extend the current currently enacted federal subsidies
for the Affordable Care Act, which keeps millions of people
able to access healthcare. And Democrats are also trying to
reverse some of the federal health care cuts, including to Medicaid,
which happened under the One Big Beautiful Bill earlier this year.

(02:28):
That is what they're actually fighting for. The White House
is retruthing and retweeting proposals from the Democrats that include
health care for aliens. But that's legal aliens, that's like
legal documented residents, and they're framing this as health care
for quote unquote illegals.

Speaker 3 (02:47):
It's a it's a bad faith representation, as it always is.
Like people can go all the way back to the
episode that I made with Robin Sophie last year about
what Trump might do to learn more about the public
charge rule and how that pertain to people who are
not US citizens. I don't think we really have the time, Noise,
this the place to go over that here, But there
is not, and there has never been a massive federal

(03:09):
free health care plan for undocumented people. In fact, people
who are undocumented are not going to see the doctor
right now because of the persistent and untrue rumor that
ICE are taking people from hospitals. That is not something
I'm aware of ever happening. Ice do take people who
are already in their custody to hospitals, and they will

(03:31):
wait for those people while those people are treated. That
it's not the same as entering the hospital and grabbing
people based on the immigration status. And I'm aware of
several cases where people whose life was genuinely in danger
were afraid to go and seek medical attention because they
were afraid that they would be targeted for their immigration status.

Speaker 2 (03:51):
So we'll see how long this government shut down last.
The last one start on twenty eighteen, lasted thirty five days.
If this shutdown is still happening next week, I'm sure
we will include some details about government services being affected.
But this could resolve in a few days, a few hours,
or in a few weeks. We do not know. But luckily,
not all is depressing and dark in this country. There

(04:12):
still is a ray of hope. In that ray of
hope is named Jimmy Kimmel, who was thankfully back on
the air. I know we've all been watching. We've all
been watching this certainly, and next our Instintclair have ceased,
preempting his show. That's back on air across the country.
Free speech is hashtag So back in America, provert. Do
you want to talk about the Disney plus boycott?

Speaker 1 (04:33):
Yes, So we've gotten some data finally on the damage
down to Disney's result of the boycott. After they fired
Monsieur Kimmel.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Suspended, suspended, Monsieur kim.

Speaker 1 (04:44):
Il suspended, suspended, They were definitely going to fire. They
wanted to fire his We definitely wanted to fire him.
And you know, there was a lot of posting online
about it.

Speaker 2 (04:53):
There's a lot of posting, a lot of.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Posting about people canceling their accounts and people being like wow,
and it's I always it's always very frustrated to me
because like people get very excited and it's impossible to
tell with the moment is this actually anything? Right? Yeah,
sixteen thousand people shared this thing about how the website
for Disney was down, but that doesn't mean anything other

(05:15):
than like someone saw the website down and a bunch
of people shared and posted it. So it was very
difficult to tell, like, is there actually any follow through
on this? Is Disney's bottom line being hurt? And thankfully
I'm very happy to say that it does look like
Disney suffered a substantial financial setback as a result of
the boycott campaign. YEP, something like one point seven million

(05:37):
paid subscribers canceled. And this was immediately before Disney was
looking to announce a price increase. So like this, this
is like a serious I'm not surprised they reversed. Course,
this is like damaging to them. We're not talking about
the amount of money that a company like Disney would
just ignore.

Speaker 6 (05:53):
Yeah, And I think the most important thing here for
all of us, and this is the thing I talked about.
We did an episode about this. This is actually before for Kimmel.
I've reenstated by Sinclair. But one of the really important
things here is that everyone fucking hates this government. They
are hideously unpopular of the All of their sort of

(06:14):
legitimization stuff, all of the sort of media complicity they've
bought has bought them about a four percent of poofa
rating bump from where they were this time of the
administration the first time, so he said about forty one
percent of poofa rating. Everything that he's doing is hideously underwater.
Like his most popular thing is his immigration policy, which
is horrible. But it's again like forty two percent. Everyone

(06:35):
hates these people, you know, and it's it's very easy
because of their control the media sphere to believe that
they have this sort of total hegemonic power over everyone
in the US until the exact moment where it gets
challenged and everyone's like, wait, hold on, no, it turns
out most of the country hates this, does not want
Jimmy Kimmel acts from Disney.

Speaker 2 (06:54):
Like, Comrade Kimmel has joined the fight. Yeah, yeah, there
are more of us than there are and there always
have been, and by more of us, Mia is referring
to herself and Jimmy Kimmel as a coherent political class.

Speaker 1 (07:05):
Just for the record, there the only two members of
the coherent political class.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
But that's good news just over the state which holds
me up and Kimmel and the entirety of the fourth Estate.

Speaker 1 (07:22):
But I don't know, there's a little bit of good
news for you. A bunch of people got really pissed
at something blatantly anti First Amendment, anti democratic, massive overreach
of the state, thought crime, nonsense, and the company suffered
such dramatic within like literally in the space of a week.
That's three hundred and thirty million or so million dollars
a year that Disney lost. That even Disney can't ignore

(07:45):
that kind of money.

Speaker 2 (07:46):
Oh looks like regular people.

Speaker 3 (07:48):
Yeah. Yeah, like people who subscribe to Disney Bluss.

Speaker 7 (07:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (07:51):
An army of ordinary liberals, the actual silent majority in
this country. Yeah said no this, like.

Speaker 1 (07:57):
Well, that's gross and scary. I'm not paying Disney anymore. Yeah,
and it's good that they did that.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
Currently, the rights trying to manufacture counter boycott against Netflix
for having children's shows with non binary characters, mostly using
clips and children's shows that are like two or three
years old clips that Limbs of Talk Talk has already
posted years ago. Now try to write check and others
are recirculating these clips to being like, look at how

(08:23):
Netflix has gone too far as pushing woke nonsense down
the throats of your children by using like ancient clips
from like the Jurassic Park TV show. Like, okay, guys,
good luck with that. Have fun.

Speaker 1 (08:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (08:35):
In other news, the Department of War. This actually happened
last month. On September fifth, Trump signed an executive order
approving the name the Department of War as a secondary
title for the Department of Defense to use an official correspondence,
public communications, ceremonial contexts, and non statutory documents within the

(08:56):
executive branch, while the administration also works on changing the
name officially through Congress. Hag Seth nearly immediately switched all
of his accounts and his office name plate to read
Secretary of War.

Speaker 3 (09:10):
Yeah, you know, he pushed hard for this one.

Speaker 2 (09:13):
Defense dot gov now redirects to war dot gov. And
they're just referring to this in all public appearances as
the War Department, something that we've talked about on the
show before of them wanting to do and they're going
to continue to push this and using this kind of
war framing for domestic operations, yeah, not just international deployments.

Speaker 3 (09:35):
This was its historical name right like way way before
it was a DoD Yeah. Yeah, it was, so just
to be clear for people, that doesn't mean that it's
like a good reason to change it back.

Speaker 2 (09:46):
Trump truthed last week quote, at the request of the
Secretary of Homeland Security Christinome, I'm directing Secretary of War
Pete Hagseth to provide all necessary troops to protect war
more ravaged Portland and any of our ICE facilities under
siege from attack by Antifa and other domestic terrorists. I'm

(10:07):
also authorizing full force if necessary. Thank you for your
attention in this matter. War ravaged Portland. How's it hanging
out there for our Portland correspondence.

Speaker 1 (10:18):
It's fine. It's kind of raining. I had a nice
tapas dinner on Sunday. It was pretty good.

Speaker 6 (10:23):
The crows are really nice.

Speaker 2 (10:24):
Do what it does? Does someone want to mention like
the nature of the anti ICE protests happening in like
one square block in like the south waterfront of downtown Portland.

Speaker 1 (10:33):
Yeah, it's in the South waterfront. McAdam is what people
here call it the neighborhood where the ICE auxiliary facility is.
And there have been protests off and on pretty much
since Trump took office. Usually on like a good night
you get maybe one hundred and fifty two hundred people.
There were some nights kind of around where things blew
up in LA that there were more like five or

(10:54):
six hundred people out for a couple of days. There
really hasn't been any of the like what we were
seeing in twenty twenty in terms of like the mass
mass gatherings, and you know, there has not really been
much in the way of like people getting arrested, generally
getting arrested for crossing a line that separates federal property
from like state property, so to speak, and like step

(11:14):
over it and then a bunch of guys run out
and grab them. Right, That's that's mostly what the arrests
are for. A lot of people have had charges dropped.
I mean, people get fucked up charges when they get charged,
but a lot of them are not really sticking because
they're not very strong, like because it's just not much
going on.

Speaker 5 (11:30):
Right.

Speaker 2 (11:30):
Yeah, we'll talk more about why Trump thinks there's this
apocalypse now scenario happening in Portland. But yeah, so far
the protests have been relatively mild.

Speaker 6 (11:40):
Yes, Yeah, the vibe is very much like the classic
Portland thing of people with like holding doughnuts on fishing
lines out in front of the cops. Right, it's like that,
not like molotovs.

Speaker 1 (11:50):
The response has been crazy, Like there's a video going
around that's a bunch of federal agents. I think they're
fps rolling in up from a van from outside of
the ice facility and arresting somebody who again probably crossed
a line or through something. Generally is why people have
been getting arrested, so that the response has been nonsense.
That video is from recently, and I'm seeing it attributed

(12:10):
to Trump's declaration of war. But like I saw stuff
like that three months ago, four months ago, like it's
been happening every day, like they do roll up in
their vans when they because they periodically throughout the day
will have Feds come in to go grab a couple
of people, and that this is a thing they've been doing.
So they've been so far at least, I have not
seen either an escalation on the ground really in terms

(12:33):
of what protests, what the protests are doing, and the
numbers of protesters since Trump's declaration. And I also really
haven't seen an escalation in what's being deployed on the ground.

Speaker 2 (12:43):
We have not seen the Oregon National Guard presence that
is being promised. No, this has just been DHS officers.

Speaker 1 (12:51):
I can confirm, just based on some information that's come
my way that there do seem to be an increased
number of DHS blackhaws flying with their transponders off. There's
a couple of reasons they can do that. Some of
them is for if they are transporting like high value
quote unquote deportees, right, people who are being deported for

(13:12):
some sort of serious crime. Sure, some of it is
if they are feel like they are under threat and
are doing like emergency personnel transfers. They're not generally supposed
to fly without their transponders, although again, you can't really
trust anything to work the way it's supposed to work.
But there is some evidence that they have been ramping
up and they have been flying more MQ nine's over
the city Reaper drones for surveillance purposes, so that I

(13:36):
can say there does seem to have been a degree
of escalation, But in terms of we're not seeing troops
marching through the city yet, and I honestly can't, it
doesn't seem to me, as of the moment that we're
recording this, that there has been an escalation in the
level of force used on the ground right now. That said,
the level of force use on the ground before Trump
declared his war on Portland or whatever was still pretty extreme.

(13:58):
That has continued. I just it doesn't seem like what's
happening right now is a massive increase over where we
were two weeks ago. You know, That's all I'm saying.

Speaker 6 (14:05):
And I think the place where that has happened is Chicago,
and we will get to that later.

Speaker 3 (14:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (14:10):
Yeah, Well, Trump has continued to talk about deploying quote
unquote troops to US cities, including at a meeting of
top brass on Tuesday, September thirtieth, where Pete hag Seth
basically ranted to top generals and admirals about no more
wokeness in the military. But Trump also spoke telling top

(14:33):
military officials to prepare to deploy military to liberal run cities,
calling it a quote war from within. Let's play the clip.

Speaker 7 (14:42):
But it seems that the ones that are run by
the radical left Democrats, what they've done to San Francisco, Chicago,
New York, Los Angeles the very unsafe places, and we're
going to straighten them out. It'll be a major part
for some of the people in this room. That's a
war too, It's a war from within. Controlling the physical
territory of our border is essential to national security. We

(15:06):
can't let these people in.

Speaker 3 (15:08):
The two separate issues there that he conflated, right, protests
in cities and people crossing the border.

Speaker 2 (15:16):
Yeah, and that's the way Trump's been talking about this
for a while. I mean, same thing with like DC right,
combining this like crime issue with undocumented immigration and also
with protests against ICE operations targeting undocumented immigrants, all kind
of bundled together into this, into this war from within.

Speaker 3 (15:35):
Yeah. I mean the immigration issue, right, is one that
gives him a much broaderly way and the powers the
constitutionally available to him as the executive than policing with
the military, which is on the face foot of thing
that shouldn't happen in the United States. It makes sense
from a tactical perspective for them to conflate those two
things together. I will say, even if it's not particularly real.

Speaker 2 (15:58):
During this televise meeting, Trump told military leaders quote, last month,
I signing an executive order to provide training for a
quick reaction force that can help quell civil disturbances. This
is going to be a big thing for the people
in this room talking to the generals, because it's the
enemy from within, and we will have to handle it

(16:20):
before it gets out of control. It won't get out
of control once you're involved. Unquote. They're directly addressing admirals
and generals about them having to help form a quick
reaction for us to quell civil disturbance, which won't get
out of control once they're involved, calling it again the
enemy from within, align that Trump used a lot during

(16:41):
the tail end of his presidential campaign in twenty twenty four.

Speaker 6 (16:44):
Yeah, which is just it's every single element if it
is just fascist.

Speaker 2 (16:49):
I mean it's it's pretty it's pretty blanket authoritarian stuff.
Like there's no like sugar coating it here. Oh yeah, yeah,
they don't need to like use coded phrases, right, they
just say this stuff.

Speaker 6 (16:57):
Yeah, No, they're just yeah, they're just this is this
is just fascism. They're just trying to do it.

Speaker 3 (17:01):
Yeah, they're just saying the thing.

Speaker 2 (17:02):
In the meeting, he explicitly labeled these dangerous cities as
a training ground for our military National Guard.

Speaker 7 (17:11):
But I want to salute every service member who has
helped us carry out this critical mission. It's really a
very important mission. And I told Pete we should use
some of these dangerous cities as training grounds for our
military national Guard. But military, because we're going into Chicago.
Verson that's a big city with an incompetent governor. Stupid

(17:31):
governor stupid.

Speaker 6 (17:33):
And I think it's worth noting that both the mayor
of Chicago and the Governor Pritzker have been very unhappy
about this. Like as much as Pritzker has kind of
not been doing anything about like CPD aiding ice in raids,
he is absolutely not budging at all about not putting

(17:53):
National Guard troops in. So if they're very serious about
following this through, we're going to see some kind of
large scale confrontation.

Speaker 3 (17:58):
Yep.

Speaker 6 (17:59):
And Pritzker is not the kind of like knock needs,
uh Gavin Newson type governor.

Speaker 3 (18:10):
Yeah, he's not Gavin Newson.

Speaker 6 (18:11):
He's not simply just going to let Trump do this.
And yeah, that's going to be a major source of
confrontation assuming this, Assuming this specific like we're going to
send the National Guard in the Chicago stuff like happens soon.

Speaker 2 (18:23):
Trump also talked about talking with Tina Kotec, governor of Oregon,
about deploying Oregon National Gardener, and her pushing back against that,
but ostensibly acquiescing in some way because there's been an
announcement from the organ National Guard that they will be
deploying and people in Oregon probably aren't gonna be happy
about it. They won't quote understand the mission. But during

(18:43):
this meeting, Trump did talk about his phone calls with
the Oregon governor.

Speaker 7 (18:47):
Portland, Oregon, where it looks like a war zone. And
I get a call from the liberal governor. Sure, please
don't come, and we don't need you. I said, well,
unless they're playing false tapes, this looked like World War two.
Your place is burning down. I mean, you must be kidding, sir.

(19:08):
We have it under control. I said, you don't have
it under control, Governor, but I'll check it and I'll
call you back. I called it back. I said, this
place is a nightmare. Probably it's certainly not the biggest,
but it's one of the worst. Is brew They go
after our ice people, who are great patriots and tough
job too, but they love it. They love it because

(19:30):
they're cleaning up our country.

Speaker 3 (19:32):
And I think because it's a fifty thousand dollars sign up.

Speaker 2 (19:36):
Well, unless they're playing false tapes. So the tapes aren't
necessarily false. But if you're watching Fox News twenty four
to seven, what Fox News is doing is they're playing
a lot of clips not from the Year of Our
Lord twenty twenty five, but in fact from twenty twenty
when Trump's last federal invasion of Portland happened where he
deployed Bortac, which looked much more like a war scene.

(19:58):
Do you know why because of the massive amounts of
chemical munitions that Bortac like caked downtown Portland, which made
it look very similar to a war scene. So yeah,
those are the clips that are playing NonStop on TV.
I've been watching Fox News clips. They're just playing clips
of Portland twenty twenty to make this look like a

(20:20):
different situation than what the current on the ground situation is,
which may have some intense moments, but not nearly the
intensity of five years ago, which again was stoked by
Trump's own military police force, which was deployed to the city.

Speaker 1 (20:35):
So yeah, there's some information that Trump got corrected internally.
I don't know that I think that that's going to
mean anything, but yeah, six year old footage, five year
old footage being used to justify in military deployments about
you'd expect.

Speaker 2 (20:50):
Really literally, yesterday I saw footage circulating on X the
Everything app of someone throwing a Molotov cocktail into a street.

Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, I remember that Molotov.

Speaker 2 (21:00):
I remember that.

Speaker 1 (21:03):
That Malota getting thrown half a decade ago.

Speaker 2 (21:06):
It only hit another protester whose feet got very badly burned. Yes,
and that's the type of footage circulating that makes it
look like, you know, once again, Portland's burning down, Portland's
always burning down, using like one or two select clips
from yeah, half a decade ago.

Speaker 1 (21:20):
And again no buildings actually burnt down.

Speaker 3 (21:23):
Yeah, they've created a reality around what happened important in
twenty twenty that you will never change with facts or evidence. Right,
like to people who watch Fox News, Portland was burned
to the ground in twenty twenty.

Speaker 1 (21:36):
And again, even on the worst nights in Portland, we
could go three blocks and get food from a food cart.

Speaker 2 (21:41):
Yeah, we got a lot of great Chinese food.

Speaker 1 (21:43):
That stuff. We've got great Chinese food, shwarma, you know.

Speaker 2 (21:46):
Yep.

Speaker 3 (21:47):
In La when the city was whatever under siege, I
went to Buffalo Wild Wings and pretty pre normal Buffalo
Wild Wings at two am on a Wednesday scene.

Speaker 1 (21:55):
That's a war zone. That's a war zone.

Speaker 3 (21:58):
I had my plague carrier on. I was ready to go.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
Here's some ads. We'll be back to talking about Chicago,
but enjoy these possibly Buffalo Wild Wing sponsored ads.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
I doubt it. No vegan food. All right, we are
back sweet and it's good to be back. I want
to talk very briefly about Pete hegsss sec war as

(22:32):
he is calling himself now, right, and the little speech
he gave Pete Pegs he's he's working on his his
physical fitness for sure, his bod that He put a
big emphasis on physical fitness in his speech, along with
grooming standards and other.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
Shiit male standards.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Yes, everybody has to attain the male standard for the
various role of their combat roles that they if they
want to do that, right, So that would mean, you know,
the Army Physical Fitness test, right, whatever the male standard
quote unquote was would be everyone's standard. I don't want
to go deep into hegsth career. That would be another episode,
possibly of another show, but I do want to talk

(23:11):
about this stuff. Did you notice he said no more.
He listed number of generals, but one of them was Milli, Right,
he said no more. Milli's Chiarelli, and I forget who
the other one was. But I thought that was interesting
given what we saw Trump say about a QRF. Right,
Milli had a long career in the military, rate he
saw plenty of combat and all that stuff. But I
think He's most well known to most people for his

(23:33):
cooling effect on the use of the US military against
protesters in twenty twenty. Elsa, I think that is what
that was referring to, right that hegsth was talking about
removing that kind of person from Kamal and.

Speaker 1 (23:46):
Milly also said no to Trump when he wanted to
deploy for and he was also working behind the scenes,
he's admitted now with Pelosi being like, we need to
have a plan if he tries to use the nukes
after the election.

Speaker 3 (23:59):
Yeah, Millie was doing everything he could to mitigate what
he saw as a massive danger of Trump responding in
a completely disproportionate.

Speaker 2 (24:09):
Way a legitimate national security and danger.

Speaker 3 (24:11):
Yeah yes, yeah, like, yeah, someone whose job is protecting
the United States, like that's some reasonable concern. Was a
reasonable concern at that time. Obviously, the Trump administration does
not want people like that in command anymore, and that
was something that HEGs spoke about at length. The rest
of his speech focused on shit like fitness standards, shit

(24:33):
like grooming, visible tattoos, a bunch of stuff that you
would expect from a mid career infantry officer who hasn't
had a particularly distinguished career, right, Like, that's the ship
that mid career infantry officers do.

Speaker 2 (24:46):
I think you mean war fighters, James, which is haig
Set's preferred term for soldiers.

Speaker 3 (24:51):
Yes, fuck me. Yeah, well because it's gender neutrals start that.

Speaker 1 (24:57):
They've been doing that for a while.

Speaker 3 (24:58):
But yeah, it's on the MRI, It's been on the
emerys for a while. But yes, heik Seth does like
the phrase warfighters. His stuff was, like I said, not
something you would expect from someone who I think he
was a four in the national card, right. I don't
think any of that it's particularly new. He issued a
number of directives. One thing I did want to talk

(25:20):
about was this change in grooming standards. So the War
Department has issued a new directive on shaving profiles. What
this does in practice is we can see from their announcement,
which features prominently a black soldier shaving, is it takes
away long term shaving profiles for soldiers with medical conditions

(25:44):
such as pseudofoliculitis or exma, or other soldiers who experienced
skin irritation by shaving. Previously, those soldiers may have had
a like a waiver which they could show to their
officers of their officer said, hey, soldier, why have you shave? Soldier, sailor, emon,
Space Force, guardian, whatever, why haven't you shaved? They could say, well,

(26:08):
I'm on the shaving profile because of this condition that
I have. Now you will only have a year and
then you will have to somehow rectify that condition. They
talk about treatments a little bit in this Sonow's which
you can read if you want, not going to read
them out for you, but this will very clearly target
black service people the most. And I don't think that's
a coincidence. And as we see from the picture of

(26:30):
the black soldiers shaving in the in the release that
they sent out there, this is happening at the same
time as the arrested his stuff, right, and at the
same time as we've seen trans folks removed from the military.
As Heagfest seems to be going pretty hard on removing
women from combat roles. He's previously been more out right

(26:51):
in that this time he's in his speech he was
talking about how women, if they could meet the same
standards as men, would be welcoming combat roles, but they
wouldn't qute unquote lower the standards. The whole thing was
pretty remarkable to see heg Theift lecturing, you know, people
who have spent collectively maybe hundreds of years in combat, right.

Speaker 2 (27:10):
People spent decades losing wars. Yeah, yeah, decades of period
of time.

Speaker 3 (27:17):
Yeah yeah, I mean centuries between them, right, But explaining
how warfare works to people who have vastly more experience
in it than him. Yes, I'm basically telling them it's
not a myth that we haven't seen from fascist states before. Right.
The soldiers were fine, but they were betrayed by the
politicians in the generals. Yeah, yeah, yeah, this is nothing new. Yeah,

(27:39):
but but it was still kind of remarkable to see
heg theft delivering it to the generals.

Speaker 2 (27:43):
And specifically, both he and Trump made statements about if
the generals and animals do not like what Trump and
Hexer were saying, they should just resign, they should just leave.

Speaker 5 (27:53):
I've never walked into a room so solid before. This
is very don't left, don't live if you're not allowed
to do that. You know, I just have a good time.
And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if
you want to do anything you want, you can do
anything you want. And if you don't like what I'm saying,
you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank,
there goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose, okay,

(28:17):
because we're all on the same team.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
Part of this is because Trump just wants more loyalists
in the upper brass of the military. Like that's part
of this process. That's why he doesn't want millies. He
doesn't want people that will deny him. He wants just
a complete loyalist government, and that includes the military.

Speaker 1 (28:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:34):
And if that means that we're going to have a
whole bunch of generals and animals resigned because of hig
Seth and Trump's anti woke granting, then that's a desirable
outcome for the administration at this point.

Speaker 3 (28:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (28:47):
Speaking of war Chicago, Yeah, I mean the scenes that
I have seen the most frequently described as war or
looking like war this week have come out of Chicago,
where on Tuesday the thirtieth, there was one of the
most brutal raids that we've seen from the Feds yet

(29:11):
in any city. This took place in South Shore, which
is a ninety percent black neighborhood on the South side
of Chicago, where a whole bunch of immigrants who. I
don't know if people remember when Texas and a bunch
of other states in the South started busing immigrants up
to cities in the north. Chicago is one of the
ones where that happened. A lot a lot of these
people ended up in South Shore and there was a

(29:35):
massive raid on an apartment complex in the South Shore.
Agents showed up in a combination of moving vans, sort
of unmarked vans, and armored vehicles. It's still unclear exactly
how many people were taken. We so don't know. Estimates
at the time suggested about forty. It's very unclear. What

(29:56):
we do know about the raid was that it was
absolutely brutal. A bunch of a bunch of the initial
reports thought that they had been shooting, but there hadn't
been shooting. What there had been was that they blew
into this apartment complex with flash bank grenades.

Speaker 1 (30:07):
Yeah, pretty common for people to mistake those two yeah.

Speaker 6 (30:11):
Yeah. And these are just you know, these are just
regular people who suddenly at one in the morning, a
bunch of explosions start going off. There's a whole bunch
of pictures that you can see in various articles about
this of doors torn off their hinges. The agents did
a I think this is a classic Chicago police tactic,
but you know, they just went through and just started
grabbing everyone's stuff and tearing through it and throwing it

(30:33):
onto the ground. There were black Hawk helicopters like constantly
circling this just random apartment complex. There was a massive
FBI presence alongside border patrol and Ice. Yeah, it's also
worth mentioning that Independent book Club Chicago, which is one
of the very sort of prominent independent local media outlets there,

(30:55):
obtained a picture from a neighbor who was like next
to the raid that show Chicago Police Department on the scene,
which they are there expressly forbidden like by state law
from assisting in immigration enforcement. It is worth reading this
article in order to see this quote quote. We did
not participate in or assist with any immigration enforcement, spokesperson

(31:17):
Maggie he Un said in a statement, followed immediately by
pictures that clearly show a CBD car on the scene
of this raid. Yeah, this raid is a really significant
escalation of force in a sea that has I mean,
I've already seen ice literally shoot someone and kill them.
But yeah, I'm going to quote this from Tribe, which

(31:39):
is another independent news outlet in collaboration with Unraffled Press.
Veronica Castro, if the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights,
at a press conference, said quote, this looked like hundreds
of masked agents knocking down doors and dragging families out
in the middle of the night, holding babies that were unclothed.
Castro added, so people from their homes in the middle

(32:02):
of the night, holding naked babies because people haven't had time,
Like they're not giving people time to like even put
clothes on something. You see a lot in the accounts
of this. I'm gonna read some more from an account
from ABC. As I got to my unit to stick
my key in the door, I was grabbed by an
officer and I said, what's going on? What's going on?
He never actually told me. He said I was being detained,

(32:23):
said Alicia Books. Neighbors like Ebony Watson say they duck
for covers. They heard several flashbangs. They was terrified. The
kids was crying, people was screaming. They looked very distraught.
I was out there when I seen the little girl
coming around the corner, because they was bringing the kids
down too, had them zip tied to each other. Watson said,

(32:43):
that's all. I kept asking, what is the morality? Where
is the human One of them literally laughed he was
standing right there. He said, fucking kids. So that is
what these raids are looking like now. It is again
also worth noting that like this, this is a very
significant escalation of force. They are zip tying children to
each other as they dragged them from their homes at

(33:05):
one in the morning and saying fucking kids.

Speaker 3 (33:07):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:08):
And this also marks what seems to be a pretty
large pivot away from the areas they've been targeting before,
which hand to be the suburbs in the outlying areas,
and into very very majority, the majority black.

Speaker 2 (33:21):
Parts of Chicago.

Speaker 6 (33:22):
And we're gonna talk more about this next week with
journalists who's been on the ground.

Speaker 7 (33:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (33:28):
I mean, for example, a couple of hours before we
recorded this episode. So there are sparse details, but there
is a video that shows the Feds just two hands
on neck choking a black man in East Garfield Park.
It's deeply unclear why this is happening, but they are

(33:49):
just doing this now, and what we have so far,
we don't know why they were doing this. But this
is also one thing I think is very alarming. This
is also reported by Tribe. There is a video from
this where an agent is recorded saying, just so you
guys know, this is not an immigration enforcement action. The
agent goes on to say they were responding to a
robbery in progress. All we know about is there was

(34:11):
a car crash and they just started choking this guy.
It's unclear exactly what's going on with this. There probably
will be more details by the time this episode is
going out, but the Feds are just doing this stuff
every day in Chicago, I mean, just randomly choking black
people on the street. And this massive, hideous raid and

(34:32):
Sushore are pretty significant escalations in places that haven't been
targeting before. And it's hard to see this ending anytime
soon or they're you know, things getting any better from here,
especially with the sort of you know, as you were
mentioned earlier, there hasn't been really any sign of like
an intensification in federal violence in Portland, but in Chicago

(34:55):
there absolutely has been. And yeah, it's horrible.

Speaker 3 (35:00):
Yeah, So talking of intensification of federal activity, I guess
according to a notice posted in the Federal Register, DHS
is going to use the Cultural, Environmental and Historical Protection
Waiver that we reported about that came out this spring
to force through war construction in the San Diego sector.

(35:20):
I am guessing that in part we will see this
used to wave one of the acts that is waves
the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act. And I'm
guessing in part that this will be used to waive
that right because Kumei ancestors are in these areas and

(35:43):
in at the end tail end of the previous Tramp administration.
I reported on this for Sierra, which is a magazine
of the Sierra Club. Kumii people were using ceremony, So
they were participating in ceremony every day at construction sites
in order to slow down the clock, and they also
filed a lawsuit. Right, but they were trying to basically

(36:03):
run out the clock on the Trump administration. In twenty twenty,
they successfully in some areas prevented some construction, but with
the waiver of Nagpray, it's hard to see how they
will be able to do that. They also wave a
bunch of other acts that Eagle Protection Act, Environmental microtrect
Bird Treatise, a bunch of other acts. Right, this comes

(36:26):
on the same week as Secretary of War Headths restored
medals of honor to soldiers at Wounded Knee. If people
are not familiar, this is not the episode where I
do a history of things sort of happened at Wounded
Knee Creek. But this was the largest mass shooting in
US history.

Speaker 2 (36:44):
This was just a slaughter.

Speaker 3 (36:45):
Hundreds of unarmed Lacta civilians were murdered by the United
States military in the battle.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
This was just a massacre.

Speaker 3 (36:51):
There were significant casualties for the US military, most of
them were caused by the US military, a friendly fire
and completely disorganized slaughter of civilians. There was a standoff
at Wounded Lee later in the nineteen seventies in which
two Indigenous people died one went missing. You can read
Mary brave Bird's book about that if you want a

(37:13):
first hand account fat it's very good book. But yeah,
Hegseth is doing this, I think because Lloyd Austin had
previously ordered a review of those medals, because they weren't fighting,
they were just killing people. Therefore, it makes sense, you know,
that led to strip these these medals of honor, in
that there was very little honor in what they did.
Hegseth has restored those very amusingly, he said, this is final,

(37:35):
like another SECTEF couldn't just order a review like in
four years and change it again. CBP has also issued
a request for comments here in San Diego about its
plans to build seven point six miles of war west
of Dakat as well as one point three miles of
wall east of Dakat, more secondary barrier east of O
tim Mesa, and install or maintain fifty one miles of

(38:00):
quote barrier system attributes, which may include fiber uptic cables,
lighting poles, artificial lights, power cables, surveillance cameras, access and
patrol roads, and utility shelters.

Speaker 2 (38:11):
What this would do.

Speaker 3 (38:13):
I think most people who haven't spent time at the
border in not aware that there are vast gaps in
the border wall right, and this would close some of those.
There are still gaps east of this area. When a
lot of people were entering in twenty twenty three, they
were coming east of here in a more mountainous area.
But this will close existing gaps in the wall around

(38:33):
takat Ara and Marin Valley. I imagine that after that
they will continue to move east the areas where there
are gaps. Some of the area's where the gaps for
the east aren't that hard to access. Some of them
would be very hard to access with construction machinery, and
therefore they'd have to spend a long time building a
road before they could even begin building the wall. Reuters

(38:56):
has conducted a review of more than two million court
records and concluded that federal prosecution of drug cases, especially
those of high profile traffickers, have dropped to the lowest
level in decades. Fell forward again a word, yeah, yeah,
I mean normally you would see things like racketeering, money laundering,

(39:16):
conspiracy charges, right, but these are down twenty four percent
compared to last year. Even ongoing investigations have stalled as
a federal law enforcement apparatus is focusing the vast majority
of its people on deporting people who have not been
accused of any crime.

Speaker 2 (39:31):
Really, and even just like the regular FBI investigative capacity,
it has been shifted massive large extents towards just immigration enforcement.
So they're not they're actually just not going after as
much like actual crime.

Speaker 3 (39:43):
Yeah. I think some agencies like the Bureau of Alcohol
to back of firearms and explosive for example, I think
have the majority of their agents tasks to immigration rates
right now. The FBI one agent described what he had
been tasked with as quote photo op bullshit shit, which
was taking photos of their teams on and before raids

(40:05):
for use by the ADF and the White House in
social media posts. So they do appay to have. I've
lost the support of even some federal law enforcement. Talking
of federal law enforcement, we have also learned this week
about an FBI operation during the Biden administration during which
Tom Homan allegedly accepted fifty thousand dollars in cash. What

(40:28):
you didn't hear about the Tom Homan bag of Yeah,
what a joy to be able to share this with
you going to get better, Just just keep it, keep
simmered down, a simmer down, simmer down, sima down. So
Tom Homan, for those who are not familiar, is Trump's

(40:49):
borders are and a longtime border security official dating back
to the Biden administration. Let's find out about how they
got on to Tom Homan said that there was fifty
dollars in care but for what Just wait wait, wait
wait wait. Another Obama era I staffer, Juliancalderas, who agents
undercover agents had contacted as part of a separate investigation,

(41:12):
repeatedly suggested to the agents that they may wish to
bribe Homan in order to obtain government contracts. Kyl Deris
repeatedly suggested this to the undercover agents, so much so
that they diverted their investigation and set up this investigation.
They gave Home and the money, but waited to see

(41:32):
what he would do in office in order to see.
I guess they felt they would have a stronger case
if he came back to them and said, you know,
I have these five federal contracts, which one would you like?
The Trump DOJ took no further steps to investigate and
has closed the investigation. According to NBC, the Trump administration
is claiming this was a set up by the FBI,

(41:52):
but of course the investigation occurred in September of twenty four,
so before the election. Again, it was not an investigation
that they started on. It branched off because car Thereus
repeatedly suggested that they should continue to they should try
and bribe Home. The agents who who did this operation
were posing his businessman trying to get government contracts. Right, OK,

(42:14):
This might explain so Homan was a big time Trump affiliate, right,
big time Trump supporting. Yeah, people were suggesting that he
might be made Secretary of Homeland Security. This might be
why we will never know official right, This might explain
why he's been given a slightly less formal role which
I don't believe. He has to pass through Congress, which

(42:36):
is quite unquote borders za.

Speaker 2 (42:38):
This is like the level of normalized corruption which exists
in every level of this administration is like remember when
they just could not stop talking about Hunter hide in
it all the time. And meanwhile you have like like
you know, like all of like Jared Kushner's dealings with
like Saudi is the tom hooman getting fifty thousand dollars

(43:00):
in cash, Yeah, recover he'sents posing US businessman to help
obtain like government contracts. It's like an absurd comical cartoon world.

Speaker 3 (43:10):
So it's Keystone cop shit. We don't know if he's
given the cash back.

Speaker 6 (43:14):
Oh that cash, Oh god, so much cocaine, Like I
could either confirm her did I?

Speaker 3 (43:22):
It was spent on cocaine? Yeah, a world incidence of corruption.

Speaker 2 (43:26):
Oh god.

Speaker 3 (43:27):
Finally, I want to talk about Venezuela. In Venezuela, it
seems that Stephen Miller has been taking the lead on
strikes on alleged drug smugglers. According to a Guardian piece,
the strikes have been authorized by the Homeland Security count Shure.
That's a body that Miller leaves, which has massively grown
in influence since the Trump administration. It seems like most

(43:47):
people in the administration were pretty much kept in the
duck about this until very shortly before the strikes took place.
They were just find under the Article two powers, which
give the president authority to use force in limited self
defense engagements. But it seems like Miller is the pun
driving the ship on this increased violence that we're seeing

(44:09):
against Venezuela.

Speaker 2 (44:23):
All right, we are back for our final story this episode.
We're going to talk about the National Security Presidential Memorandums
number seven, titled Countering Domestic Terrorism and Organized Political Violence,
which was signed by President Donald Trump on Thursday, September

(44:44):
twenty fifth. This relates in many ways to the Antifa
Domestic Terrorism Executive Order from last week, but this memo
is a lot more clear in outlining actual policy changes
that will affect law enforcement investigations. So let's go over
the four sections of this very very long memo. I've

(45:05):
tried to condense it down as much as possible, but
there is some good information in here too.

Speaker 5 (45:09):
Now.

Speaker 2 (45:09):
Section one asserts that there's been an increase in political
violence in recent years, with assassinations and quote unquote riots
in Los Angeles and Portland, which have resulted into more
than one thousand percent increase in attacks against ice officers
since Trump's inauguration two point zero. The memo states that
riots and violence aren't organic events or isolated incidents, but

(45:30):
in fact, quote a culmination of a sophisticated, organized campaigns
of targeted intimidation, radicalization, threats, and violence designed to silence
of posting speech, limit political activity, change or direct policy outcomes,
and prevent the functioning of a democratic society. Unquote.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
If we've spoken about the statistic about attacks and ICE
officers before and how that's very misleading.

Speaker 2 (45:52):
Yeah, I mean an ICE officer is attacked when of
ice officer's fist encounters the face of a child that's
Latino grandmother.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
R yes, uh, Latina grandmother in that case.

Speaker 2 (46:06):
Well, and a lot of this talking about, you know,
riots is not organized depends us at an incidents what
they describe here is this like a culmination of the
sophisticated campaign. This is just describing like the process of
like what protesting is right trying to direct or change
policy outcomes, which comes up a lot in these like
domestic terrorism laws, which when over applied to just nonviolent

(46:27):
acts of speech, just start infringing upon very standard First
Amendment activity.

Speaker 3 (46:33):
It's one of the five fundamental freedoms of the First Amendment,
right like the right to assemble. The right was several
of them, actually, the right to assemble, the right to speak,
the right to petition the government, like these are fundamental.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
The right to twitch stream at a riot as a
free member of the press.

Speaker 3 (46:46):
Yeah, definitely, that's not a right that I choose to exercise,
but I guess it is one that exists. But you
and I have you were important and I was in
Los Angeles. Like the idea that these cities were fundamentally
like damaged by these protests, it's just not true.

Speaker 2 (47:00):
Well, and they're not just talking about damage from riots,
they're also talking about, you know, effects on individual citizens.
This memo describes how these you know, organized campaigns start
by quote isolating and dehumanizing specific targets to justify murder
or other violent action unquote, claiming that this process happens
across quote anonymous chat forums, in person meetings, the social media,

(47:23):
and even educational institutions. These campaigns then escalate to organized
docsing with the explicit intent of encouraging others to harass, intimidate,
or violently assault targets en quote.

Speaker 3 (47:35):
I mean this is what the right has done to
like express especially migrants and trand people right for for
a very long time. Anonymous chat forums. And do they
mean a.

Speaker 2 (47:47):
Reddit credits telegram maybe?

Speaker 3 (47:51):
Yeah, I know, I know that some subreddits have been
closed since the issuing of this memorandum, which and wondering
if it is related.

Speaker 2 (48:02):
Not explicitly, but like I think this memos would be
in this section like referring to things akin to ice Watch.

Speaker 3 (48:08):
Okay, yeah, yeah, that makes a lot of sense as
well as.

Speaker 2 (48:10):
You know standard like you know, anti fascist action against
like legitimate neo Nazis, which, yeah, the right is not
against a dooxing as a practice, as we have seen
a few weeks with the state sponsored organized doxing harassment
campaigns against people for their comments about the death of
Charlie Kirk. Yeah, the memo goes on to list a

(48:31):
collection of quote common recurrent motivations and indica or indicators
that unite this pattern of violence and terroristic activities under
the umbrella of self described anti fascism. These movements portray
foundational American principles support for law enforcement and border control
as fascist to justify and encourage acts of a violent revolution.

(48:54):
Common threads animating this violent conduct include anti Americanism, anti
cap anti Christianity, support for the overthrow of the United
States government, extremism on migration, race and gender, and hostility
towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion,
and morality unquote. So in so far as this memo

(49:15):
has been reported, it's mostly been on this specific section here,
listing the indicators that could be driving terroristic acts under
the umbrella of anti fascism, including all of these beliefs
that people are allowed to hold in the United States
due to the rights granted to us and the Bill
of Rights in the Constitution.

Speaker 3 (49:36):
Yeah, I mean, the hypocrisi is the point, and it's
sometimes not worth it. It's not the point, but it's
not particularly you know, it doesn't change anything I'm pointing out,
But I will just point out that the idea that
border control is a foundational American principle is not true.
That it was not until the Chinese Exclusion Act that
the United States began to exclude anyone from coming here,
and that was in the nineteenth century. History understanders will

(49:59):
have noticed, so the United States began at some point
before the nineteenth century.

Speaker 2 (50:04):
One thing I will say regarding this section, some reporting
around this memo is framing things like, you know, anti
capitalism or anti Christianity is now that is going to
be used as evidence that you are a terrorist. That
is not the explicit way is written about in this memo.
These are indicators which if some investigator sees on a

(50:26):
Twitter account or a blue Sky account, could then cause
them to investigate further into this personal group. But it's
not like just expressing these things will itself deem you
a terrorist and be putting you in jail. And this
does rely on action. Now, the memo does go on
to talk about trying to prevent crime before it happens.

(50:46):
I think this would be more in the way of
how the FBI tries to set up like sting operations
or catch people who are planning a violent act before
they actually do it. Yeah, as we've even seen the
past few weeks with people being arrested for planning retaliation
attacks following the death of Charlie Kirk. This has happened.

Speaker 3 (51:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (51:06):
Now, the memo calls for a new national law enforcement
strategy to quote investigate all participants in these criminal and
terroristic conspiracies and disrupt networks, entities and organizations that foment
political violence. That law enforcement can intervene in criminal conspiracies
before they result in violent political acts unquote. So that

(51:28):
is the pre crime aspect of this order which they
could use some of these beliefs like right extremism on
migration or race or gender, anti americanism as justification to
start investigating groups, which then arrests could follow prior to
imminent violent act as deemed by federal law enforcement.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yeah. I mean, in theory, the role of the effectially
federal law enforcement has always been to investigate people who
were planning violent or terroristic acts. The difference here that
this is being specifically framed around a certain group, and
this probably will lead to more attempts by their more
surveillance on people within exactly groups.

Speaker 2 (52:10):
Right now, this is very worrying in terms of like surveillance,
suppressing speech, chilling speech, because what they're qualifying as violent
terroristic gas is just ordinary protest activity, first man protests activity,
non government organizations that support progressive causes or values. That's
the real concern here.

Speaker 3 (52:30):
It's worth stating here that in Los Angeles, for example,
a number of grand juries did not return indictments of
people who were accused of quite serious crimes that the
grand jury did not think it was reasonable to indict
them for right. This is unusual. Most federal prosecutions do
result ultimately in a guilty plea right because they bring

(52:51):
very strong cases when they bring them. But it's worth
noting that the specifically, like the US Attorney's Office in
Los Angeles, has not stuck their landing on all of
its attempts to indict people for things that they did
during that time of protest in June.

Speaker 2 (53:06):
In terms of like implementation, the memo says, quote law
enforcement will disband and uproot networks entities and organizations that
promote organized violence, violent intimidation, conspiracies against rights, and other
efforts to disrupt the functioning of a democratic society. Unquote
networks entities organizations. These refer to like established organizations, like

(53:31):
actual like formed groups that have political activity. Now, Section
two outlines how the National Joint Terrorism Task Force will
quote unquote coordinate and supervise a new comprehensive national strategy
and orders the local Joint Terrorism Task Force around the
country to quote investigate potential federal crimes relating to acts

(53:54):
of recruiting or radicalizing persons for the purpose of political violence, terrorism,
conspiracy against rights, or the violent deprivation of any citizens'
rights unquote. The GDTFS, Joint Terrors and Passport will also
investigate institutional and individual funders, including employees of organizations which

(54:15):
are quote responsible for sponsor or otherwise the A and
EVET the principal actors engaging in the criminal conduct as
previously described.

Speaker 3 (54:25):
That's a broad neet, right, There's.

Speaker 2 (54:27):
A lot of this stuff, like the anti for order
also alluded to this. Trump's statements made in the Oval
Office have alluded to this going after funders, foreign funders,
whether that's the groups like the ACLU or like bail
funds they mentioned George Sorows very often, Yeah, the Open
Society Foundation, right, Yeah, I.

Speaker 3 (54:45):
Think the right has had a fascination with sorrows for
a long time, Right, They've been looking for a reason
to either exclude Sorrows from participation in US politics and
just to be like obviously, I think most people realize this,
but that that fascination is rooted deeply in antisemitis, and
George Soros is a Holocaust survivor, and there has been
like an attempt to find reasons to exclude sorrows from

(55:07):
US political activity for some time. I think it's reasonable
to see this in that trend.

Speaker 2 (55:12):
This sort of like big organizations foreign organizations is also
mentioned in this memo and saying the investigation will include
NGOs and American citizens with foreign ties that could be
in violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act or quote
money laundering by funding, creating, or supporting entities that engaging
activities that support encouraged domestic terrorism unquote. The memo states

(55:34):
that the Attorney General shall issue guidance which ensures that
domestic terrorism priorities include quote politically motivated terrorist acts such
as organized docsing campaigns, swatting, rioting, looting, trespass, assault, damage
of property, threats of violence, and civil disorder. The guides
shall also include an identification of any behaviors, fact patterns,

(55:57):
recurrent motivations, or other indica common to organizations and these
that coordinate these acts in order to direct efforts to
identify and prevent potential violent activity. Unquote. This is a
worrying list of things that are not domestic terrorism that
they're going to try to claim our domestic terrorism. Trespass. Yeah,
like trespassing is now domestic terrorism. That's not a great

(56:19):
thing for the Attorney General to be issuing guidance on.

Speaker 3 (56:22):
Yeah, civil disorder is a very broad and somewhat nebulous term, right, Like.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
Are they going to call the organized doxing campaigns that
the right is doing right now domestic terrorism? No, of
course not right, These things are just taking form for
explicit like political prosecution, for the political ends of Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (56:42):
I think the goal hit like some of these are
reason even a statue, right, Like, I'm not aware of
a broad federal doxing statute aside from you know, certain
specific instances where it might be a crime to reveal
someone's address.

Speaker 2 (56:54):
Violent intimidation of probably like federal law enforcement would be
one thing that they go after.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah, federal law enforcement people with protective orders that kind
of thing, right, And yeah, there are probably ways of
doing that, but I think a lot of this is
intended to have a chilling effect on speech and organizing.

Speaker 2 (57:12):
Absolutely, the Treasury Secretary will work with EA turn in
general to quote identify and disrupt financial networks at funded
domestic terrorism and political activity, and shall deploy investigative tools,
examine financial flows, and coordinate with partner agencies to trace
illicit funding streams unquote. Again, very obsessed with this idea
that there's tons of money that is funding Antifa, which
if you know anyone under the Antifa umbrella, you know

(57:34):
that they are extremely bro Yeah, yeah, this is left
wing protesters are not the most financially stable budget. Yeah,
there's not this illicit funding streams. This is a huge,
a huge idea that the right has like latched on.

Speaker 3 (57:49):
Ironically, this is something that the right shares with the
authoritarian left. Actually, the idea that people can't act independently
unless there is a large, well funded actor motivating them
to act. It's something that because the authoritarian right and
the authoritarian left agree on some things, and one of
them is that like people can't take the initiative to act, right,

(58:09):
that there has to be some kind of vanguard in
the case of the authoritarian left, or nefarious funder in
the case of the authoritarian right. And so this this
lines up with the way that they understand the world.

Speaker 2 (58:21):
I mean, yeah, and I was talking specifically here in
terms of like regular people on the ground attending protests.
There's like big, big groups like you know, often like
you know, communist A line groups that may be receiving funding,
possibly from foreign sources. Yeah, yeah, yeah, for real, But
I do not believe that is what this order is,
at least this section is actually wanting to go after.

(58:43):
That might be what they in the end actually end
up targeting, end up sweeping up because it's the only
thing that actually has like you know, foreign funding. But
like you know, capital a Antifa teenagers with like umbrellas
showing up in front of an ice building are not
receiving money from like Iran, China or Russia.

Speaker 3 (58:58):
Like, yeah, as you say, it might be large as
Southern Policy Law Center, the ACLU, Open Society Foundation, built.

Speaker 2 (59:06):
Gate Network for Strong Community.

Speaker 3 (59:08):
Yeah, like some of these organizations might be what they're
trying to drag a net over here.

Speaker 2 (59:13):
Or nonprofits. The next section instructs the IRS to quote
take action to ensure that no tax exempt entities are
directly or indirectly financing political violence or domestic terrorism unquote,
and calls for the IRS to refer suspect organizations and
their employees to the Department of Justice for investigation and

(59:34):
possible prosecution.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
It's probably worth noting the context here that there was.
This is after a twenty ten congressional investigation that found
out that the IRS had gone after some Tea party groups. Right,
do you remember the Tea Party Garrison? You or seven
at that time?

Speaker 2 (59:49):
I remember the Tea Party, Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:51):
So the feeling here Biden, if you remember, Garrison also
hired a number of new IRS agents. There was a
conspiracy theory that the were to provide some kind of armed, massive,
armed element to the IRS that was going around in
the Biden administration. I'm sure the IRS had an armed element, right.
There is not a federal investigative agency that doesn't, like

(01:00:13):
the Postal Service, has cops and probably a swat team.
But there was a feeling on the right that Biden
mobilized the IRS against right wing individuals, and I can
see this being the old Pantue'm swinging back in the
other direction a little bit.

Speaker 2 (01:00:29):
One of the more interesting sections that I've highlighted of
the memo instructs investigators to quote question and interrogate individuals
engaged in political violence or lawlessness regarding the entity or
individual organizing such actions and any related financial sponsorship prior
to perfect comjunication or initiation of a plea agreement unquote.

(01:00:53):
That's directing like the interrogations of people arrested at protests,
like specifically go after who funding them to be a protest.
I'm sure some very fruitful information will come out of
referring back to our discussion of like, you know, the
common motivators are Indica, including things you know like anti capitalism,
anti Americanism, and how those beliefs in and of themselves

(01:01:16):
I do not think will be sufficient for declaring someone
a terrorist and like locking them up. Is because later
in this memo, the memo directs investigations to quote prioritize
crimes such as the following assaulting federal officers or employees,
conspiracy against rights, conspiracy to commit offense, solicitation to commit
a crime of violence, money laundering, funding of terrorist acts,

(01:01:39):
or otherwise facilitating terrorism arson, violations of the u Rico Act,
and major fraud against the United States unquote. So could
the government use these indicators to then find groups to target,
to stick some of these crimes onto groups or organizations. Absolutely,
that's probably what they're going to do.

Speaker 7 (01:02:00):
M h.

Speaker 2 (01:02:01):
Yeah, But these these are the things to like be
aware of, and they're going to try to, you know,
slap these on people who are just arrested at protests,
people who work for NGOs, people who work for legal
support networks, maybe migrant assistance networks like that's that's going
to be the target for a lot of these things.

(01:02:21):
And we've seen some of these like conspiracy charges in
San Diego with their with their Antifa prosecution case. We've
seen similar stuff in Atlanta with Stop Cop City. Right,
there is precedent for this. We've seen the state try
to and to a degree of success and failure, actually
push these charges forward.

Speaker 6 (01:02:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:02:41):
The panic that those two cases created, I think, and
we we're still pre you know, trial in the Atlantic case, right,
trials in progress. Yeah, yeah, sorry, pre uh, I guess
a conclusion of that trial.

Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
But the current indication is that most of these record
charges are not going to stick.

Speaker 3 (01:02:58):
Yes, and most of the conspiracy charges and San Diego
did not write and most of those people ended up
not being convicted of all the things they were accused of.
I do see the major fraud against the United States,
and I think that's probably going to use against NGOs.
I do also wonder they have spoken before about the
Payroll Protection Plan and looking at PPP fraud.

Speaker 2 (01:03:20):
Yeah, I mean financial crimes are always are always really scary,
right like.

Speaker 3 (01:03:25):
Yeah, yeah, like a lot of nonprofits, you know, like
people undoubtedly given a scare of the PPP people abused it.
I think nonprofits would be a lot more buttoned up
than almost anyone else in that regard, you know, these
especially these big liberal nonprofits. But that is an area
which I'm sure that the Trump I R s will

(01:03:46):
be looking at.

Speaker 2 (01:03:47):
Yeah, and they might even try to slap these on
people making jokes or quote unquote threats online right solicitation
to commit a crime of violence.

Speaker 3 (01:03:54):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah. People shouldn't be saying stupid shit on
social media right.

Speaker 2 (01:03:58):
Now, which which is absolutely like a chilling speech, right
that is that that is a bad thing. But you
don't want to give these people extra ammunition to use
against yourself. Right now.

Speaker 3 (01:04:09):
Fighting words are not always like First Amendment speech right
now now, Like I'm no expect in where that starts
and where that ends. But yet, yeah, like in terms
of not doing stupid things, like this is not a
time to do stupid things on your posting website of choice.

Speaker 2 (01:04:28):
Section two closes by calling for investigators in federal police
to quote adopt strategies similar to those used to address
violent crime and organized crime to disrupt and dismantle entire
networks of criminal activity unquote. So yeah, especially with all
this financial stuff, money laundering, rico, conspiracy charges, they're basically

(01:04:48):
using or they want to use like tactics to take
down like organized crime rings just targeting their political enemies,
targeting political organizations and people who attend protests like that
is that is the real gist of this memo. Section
three instructs the Eturney General to designate qualifying groups or
entities under investigation as domestic terrorist organizations per the definition

(01:05:13):
of domestic terrorism in eighteen USC. Two three three one five,
and to submit a list of such groups to the
President of the United States. And Section four instructs the
Attorney General and Secretary of Homeland Security to designate domestic
terrorism a National Priority area and provide extra funding for
law enforcement to quote, detect, prevent, and protect against threats

(01:05:34):
arising from this area. That is the bulk of the
National Security Presdential Memorandum number seven, promising to chill speech
and go after political opponents and organizations, entities and individuals
and employees of organizations. Yeah, very very undemocratic, very very
on its face authoritarian. Yeah, you don't even need like

(01:05:58):
like allegations of political targets. Like they're writing down how
they want to do political targeting, they're bragging about it.

Speaker 3 (01:06:05):
It's really what briefly want to raise the example of
the flag burning. Right, so Donald Trump signed an executive
order ordering the Justice Department to investigate flag burning earlier
this year. I can't quite remember when. Subsequently, someone called
jan Carey of North Carolina was arrested after they burned

(01:06:28):
a flag, an American flag, just to be clear outside
the White House, I guess the flag burning executive order
doesn't apply to like you're you know, like anime flag
or whatever, specifically about the flag of the United States,
something which I think Johnson versus Texas is a Supreme
Court case, right, But there is a considerable amount of
legal precedent, that is First Amendment speech. Kerry was arrested.

(01:06:50):
What is being missed in the discussion is that Kerry
was charged with two misdemeanor crimes. One was for lighting
a fire not in a designated area and receptacle. The
other was for lighting a fire in a manner that
threatened to cause damage to a resulted in the burning
of property, real property and park resources. These are both
offensives and you can be incarcerated or fined for I

(01:07:11):
want people to know that, right Like, he was not
arrested because of the executive order, although the executive order
may very much influenced the climate which led to his
arrest in charge with these other things, but he wasn't
charged with violating the executive order because that is not
how it works.

Speaker 2 (01:07:29):
They can't change the law with executive orders or presidential memorandums.
What they can do is direct how the law will
be enforced or policy guidelines, right, and that's what this
is affecting. Right now, all of these branches, like the DHS,
Justice Department, Federal Police are going to be following the
policy guidelines and outlines established in this memo to then

(01:07:52):
try to enforce the laws that we have, some of
which they will probably find ways to do it, and
sometimes they won't.

Speaker 3 (01:08:00):
Yeah, we have a very broad range of statute's criminalizing
a very large range of things, and someone will find
some way in there to criminalize someone for something that
might seem on the face of it to be not nefarious.
But that doesn't mean that we have executive legisative fusion.
We don't write yourself too proind to the government. And
that is important to remember too.

Speaker 2 (01:08:20):
No, no laws have been changed criminalizing anti americanism, right, Yeah,
that is that is an important thing to keep in mind.
That does not mean that this order is not going
to chill speech, suppress free speech, or be used to
criminally target people. Yeah, criminal prosecutions can ruin the lives
of people for years and years, regardless of the actual outcome, right,

(01:08:42):
even if they get off on the charges. And totally
we want to be clear that we're not like minimizing
the effects of this, but we do want to actually
break down what like the threat model is specifically for
like NGO's legal organizations that help protesters or migrants, LGBTQ organizations, right,
these are probably going to be the first targets of
a lot of like the conspiracy fraud sections of disorder. Besides,

(01:09:06):
you know protesters that get rounded up and get put
into into this like political war game that they're playing,
similar to how regular protesters in Atlanta then found themselves
suddenly admitst like a three year long Rico domestic terrorism
case despite not participating in any kind of large organized
aspect of Stop Coop City. They were just regular attendees.

(01:09:27):
So there'll be stuff similar to that that happens throughout
the next few months to years, and I think that
is where we should keep our attention focused on mitigating
the harms of government overreach.

Speaker 3 (01:09:39):
Yeah. So for the fund raise this week, something slightly different.
I wanted to read of this GoFundMe for the emergency
circus they are traveling south of the US border. I
believe they're going to migrant shelters in Tijuana to hold
circus acts circus performances for kids. I have obviously, obviously,
but I've spent a decent amount of my life in

(01:10:00):
refugee camps and migrant shelters and they can be pretty
hard places for kids. And it's something that I think
about almost every day, and so people bringing joy to
their children is something that I think is wonderful and
very important. People you get the impression that like legal
funds are important and the kids having a laugh is
not important, But like children have a right to be children,

(01:10:21):
and that's taken away from them by the immigration system.
And so I would like if you supported this. The
website is ww dot gofundb dot com slash f slash
ec hyphen o, f f hyphen ic. It will also
be in the show notes. If you would like to
email us, you can do so at our encrypted email address,

(01:10:43):
which is cool Zone tips at proton dot me. Your
email will only be end to end encrypted if you
send it from an encrypted email address. Proton mail is
an example of an encrypted email address.

Speaker 2 (01:10:58):
Before we close the episode, but I will tease an
episode for next week. There was a shooting at a
Mormon church on Sunday, which the right briefly tried to
turn into like this culture war narrative I attacks on Christianity,
and then once information about the shooter became more clear,
they quickly dropped the subject. So on Wednesday, I'll be

(01:11:20):
doing an episode talking about this shooting and a few
others and how various outlets on the right end left
are only reporting on these big shootings insofar as they
can turn them into political weapons against the opposition party.
We reported the news, We reported the news.

Speaker 8 (01:11:46):
It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out from the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.
How I'll find sources for it Could Happen here listed
directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #36