February 28, 2025 • 34 mins
The gang talks about Germany's election, USAID, the new podcast driven FBI, and how gay the Navy may or may not be.
Sources:
https://pages.devex.com/rs/685-KBL-765/images/109160-memo.pdf?version=0
https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.277336/gov.uscourts.dcd.277336.21.0_7.pdf
https://www.one.org/us/what-we-do/the-issues/foreign-assistance-pause-faq/
https://www.state.gov/emergency-humanitarian-waiver-to-foreign-assistance-pause/
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy7x87ev5jyo
https://www.npr.org/2025/02/24/nx-s1-5306990/dan-bongino-fbi-deputy-director
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory/new-fbi-director-kash-patel-plans-relocate-1500-119064886
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/story/fbi-kash-patel-antifa-blm-terror-groups
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/24/neo-nazi-trump-fbi-chief
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):
Cool media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is it could happen here? Executive that Disorder. Our
weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, Yes,
the crumbling world and what it means for me and you.
I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by James Stout and
Robert Evans. Yes, this week we're covering the week of
February nineteen to February twenty sixth.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Boy, if you thought we had ed before, do we
have ed now?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
We still haven't got that HYM sponsorship, but will yeah crying.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
We're gonna keep working at it. I'm also looking to
get us a penis pump sponsorship. Speaking of penis pumps,
let's talk about the Germans. So, Germany had its election
very recently after their most recent coalition collapsed. The way
their government works is that periodically governments can't continue being governments,
(01:00):
and so they have to have a very sudden election.
I'm not going to explain it much more than that,
but the actual results of the election were pretty interesting, right.
The primary winner was off Day AfD Alternative for Germany
would be kind of the closest English translation of the
name of the party. This is a far right party.
(01:20):
It is primarily popular in East Germany now, but it
has surged massively after years and years of being decidedly
on the political fringe. One of the reasons it has
always been on the political fringe is that German parties,
both centrists, Conservatives and the left, have had a tacit
(01:42):
agreement since the end of World War Two called the
Court on Santaire. It's not just Germany, this is the
thing that used to be present in all of Europe.
And basically the gist of the Court in Sanitaire is
you don't form a coalition because these are parliamentary democracies, right,
so usually no one party has fifty percent or more
of the vote. So you know, a party with twenty
(02:04):
and a party with fifteen and a party with eight
and they form a coalition government. And the norm for
up until now, and thankfully is still the normal we'll
talk about that is that you don't coalition with AfD,
which is a part of why that and kind of
lingering stigma about the Nazis kept them from being a
major force in German politics until you know, over the
(02:27):
last eight or so years they have grown substantially to
the point where in this recent election they doubled their
support from around ten percent to a little over twenty percent.
This makes them they're not the largest single block in
the German in the Reichstag.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
They're number two though, right they are number two, I believe,
which sucks.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, the CDU is still significantly larger, although not like
overwhelmingly larger to be clear. So basically right now, the CDU,
which is the centrist party and it's kind of like
center right, a little center right, has two hundred and
eight seats in the Reichstag. AfD has one hundred and
(03:12):
fifty two, the Social Democrats have one hundred and twenty,
the Greens have eighty five, and the Left Party has
sixty four. So AfD is a minority in the government
compared to all of the people who didn't vote for AfD,
but the rate at which they're increasing is a serious problem,
especially since most Germans list immigration as their primary voting
(03:35):
concern right now, this most recent election had unusually high
voter turnout. Twenty twenty one election, seventy six percent of
the country or so voted. More than eighty two percent
of the country voted in this most recent election, so
the fact that like you have record high turnout and
AfD doubling its support is deeply chilling. Now it's not
(03:58):
one hundred percent bad news because one of the other
stories here is the new Left Party, well not super new,
but the Left Party, which is kind of came out
of East Germany's Communist Party, massively increased their support too.
And they actually for the first time, like very significantly
increased their share of the vote, which had been under
(04:21):
this kind of five percent threshold before and is now
at about eight point eight percent. So they went up
by an amount. Actually it's not like as much as
AfD went up, but like in terms of a percentage
of their prior vote, it's a similar increase. So there's
another party that had significant gains in this and it's
(04:42):
it's kind of a newer party called the BSW, which
is you could say they do a little bit of
like a Red Brown Alliance kind of thing, where there's
some left wing messaging in what they're saying with they're
also like super anti immigrant and they're not, you know,
it's not kind of like to the extent that the
AfD is. But when they came on to the scene,
(05:05):
they were expected by some people to pull votes away
from the AfD this election, and that's really not what happened.
And in fact, a lot of the votes they pulled
were from Social Democrats and the left parties, so that
was one of the you know, it's because the way
the parliamentary system works, which is more rational than our system.
(05:27):
This didn't like hand the whole election to off day. Again.
This is the benefit of a system like the Germans had,
which is pretty explicitly set up to make it a
lot harder for a right wing dictator to get in again.
But it is interesting to me that that kind of messaging,
I mean, it's further kind of evidence of what's been
happening everywhere, which is when your party positions itself to
(05:51):
try to win over far right votes by kind of
mixing in Well, okay, what if we did some sort
of you know, liberal lefty policies, but we also got
really racist. You don't take votes from the far right,
but you do wind up pulling the worst people from
the left. Yeah, and yeah, I guess that's kind of
(06:13):
like the broad strokes. Now, like this is bad, although
it's also not comprehensively a nightmare. One of the things
that's kind of hot. I don't know, positive may not
be the right. Wait, but interesting to me is if
you looked at the twenty twenty one election maps of
the strongest party by constituency in the twenty twenty one election,
(06:34):
and I found a good article German election results explaining
graphics on DW dot com. If you just google that,
you'll find it. In twenty twenty one, off Day obviously,
like the whole northeast was you know, their territory, but
they also had strong inroads into the northwest parts of
the country, right, you know, primarily like rural areas and
(06:56):
the like. But like there was a there was a
lot of red on that map orthwest portion of Germany.
In the new election that's all black, which is the
CDU right, Which means while off Day's representation of the
Reichstag and like number of voters increased substantially, their geographical
(07:16):
reach has been kind of cauterized, would be, in a
fair way of saying it is, which is interesting to
me hard to say too much, like does that mean,
you know, I think some of what has happened here,
Because it's important both to note that this is bad,
it's bad that the Nazis got doubled their share of
the vote, but also it was expected to be a
(07:38):
little worse than it was. You know, there's some evidence
that after JD Vance made his speech introducing AfD, their
pollings started to like freeze a little bit. And it
may be the fact because a lot of older voters
came in and they they seem to have primarily gone
with the CDU, with this sort of center right party.
(07:58):
So the story here is you can maybe look at
it as a lot of older, more conservative Germans who
are also old enough to really not like the idea
of the AfD came out and voted for, you know,
the center right party in order to kind of cut
off their power. The other thing, though, that's kind of
(08:19):
a lot less optimistic, is that AfD is most popular
among people under thirty, who widely don't view it as
an extremist party, which is deeply, deeply concerning.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And AfD won the majority of like working class, unemployed
and male votes. Yes, yes, pretty substantially.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes, they did extremely well with young men and unemployed
young men in particular, and that's all deeply concerning. So
you know, there's a few things going on here. All
of which are very interesting to me, but the power
often they continues to have with younger, really young Germans,
is frightening. That said, there's allso some evidence here that
(09:03):
the situation in the United States has galvanized a chunk
of the German voting populace to attempt to stop off
day and kind of one of the positive things that
came out is prior to this election, there was a
lot of talk about whether or not the CDU would
choose to coalition with the AfD and thus into the
Cordon sanitaire. And to make a long story short, they're
(09:26):
not going to do that. They're looking to coalition with
the Social Democrats, which is a good thing. You know,
it doesn't mean no one will do that in the future.
And unfortunately, a majority of German voters suspect AfD will
be in a coalition by twenty thirty, but it hasn't
happened yet. And that's as good as things get right now.
(09:47):
And that's what I got to say about Germany.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, I mean, and people frame these results is like
slightly better than expected, slightly Previous pulling showed AfD being
being slightly better in results, and that dip for Vance
and Musk started started really trying to push AfD both
in person and digitally, So you saw a slight dip there.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yes, And this is the other thing that's kind of
worth noting that kind of like red Brown Party, in
addition to being kind of pro social programs, anti immigration,
they're also very anti United States.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Okay, so.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
That may explain some of that too.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, it does seem like things are changing a lot.
And one of the things that we've seen, like as
we've spoken before, like not just in Germany, being Canada,
was that like people hate Musk and Trump so much
in the rest of the world that like their endorsement
could be something of a kiss of death electorally.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, Like the Conservative Party in Canada has been growing
pretty exponentially in terms of like popular support the past
few years as the Liberals have like tanked, and now
those trends actually started to reverse. The Canadian like liberal
pulling is up ten points that can sort of pulling
us down. Conservatives might not even be able to control
Parliament in the next election, as they were like expected to.
(11:07):
And it'll be interesting to see like if this if
this anti like far right United States trend continues to
more countries beyond, like Germany in Canada, but I'm still
I'm still eagerly, eagerly waiting for the next Canadian election.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And this is part of the story that is really
interesting right now, where we've talked a lot about the
transnational fascist coalition. You know, the fact that Trump and
his people have had the quasi dictator of Hungary, you know,
over at mar A Lago, and have repeatedly cited him
as an inspiration for how to take and centralized power.
You know how close Bolsonaro was in the last Trump administration,
(11:43):
Like you know, obviously the Republican parties increasing closeness and
embrace of Putin's Russia. But what also is happening right
now is people like countries that had been heading at
a very a more authoritarian right wing direction and turning
around in part due to the war in Ukraine and
(12:05):
turning away from kind of the international right wing movement,
as Poland being the best example right where had Polish
politics have changed substantially in the last several years, and
a big part of that is the war in Ukraine.
And there are a lot of Poles who I think
otherwise would have been more on board for a lot
of the socially conservative shit who are like, well, but
(12:27):
all these fuckers are pro Russia and we're Poland, Like, no,
all right, let's go on a break and return to
talk more about the crumbling world. And you said, yeah,
(12:56):
all right, we are back. I'm gonna ther to James
to to do a segment on usaid.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah, we are back. And before I talk about USAD,
I do want to talk about something else that has
been advertised along with whatever products and services support this show.
That is the Gold Card. So the Gold Card, if
you're not familiar, is something that Trump floated this week
to replace the EB five investor visa. Trump suggested that
the Gold Card it would require a five million dollar investment.
(13:25):
Well investment, I think that it's just a charge, right,
You're just giving the money to the United States government,
and in return you will receive a Green card plus privileges,
and it will be not a Green but a Gold card.
So that's great. That is the EB five visa if
you're not familiar, required you since twenty twenty two, it's
been one million and fifty thousand dollar investment and the
(13:49):
creation of ten jobs. So it had some kind of
like it trickled down economics. It's not a real thing.
It's a lie that they tell you. But it had
some idea that these rich people would create jobs in
the US people who are less wealthy. The gold card
seems to not have that. You just have to be rich, right,
So that's say, that's an interesting change to the immigration system.
(14:11):
The other thing I want to talk about today is
a United States Agency for International Development, better known as USAID.
It's been a target of like the anti woke right
for some time because they fundamentally don't understand what Joseph
Nia would have called soft power, right, their power to persuade,
the power to influence outcomes around the world with things
(14:32):
other than tanks and bonds.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Oh and again, if your power is soft right now,
you might consider trying Hymns or one of our other sponsors.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Gyms is not a sponsor.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Sorry, James, we needed to do that, But I have
been diverted. But returning to my topic, Yeah, the agency
has been massively impacted by DOGE and Trump administration cuts. Right.
The Trump administration suspended all foreign aid January via executive
order on the twentieth of January in order to assess
if it was quote serving US interests. The State Department
(15:07):
then issued guidance that seemed to go beyond the executive
order and cut nearly basically all usaily expensive On the
thirteenth of this month, that's February if you're listening, later,
a judges shued a temporary restraining order. This TIERRO didn't
really stop them from doing what they were doing, because
it told them to continue with existing contracts. And what
(15:28):
the State Department claims that it's doing is implementing clauses
that are already in the contract, so the contracts will
have some kind of kill clause, right, and that they
claim that they're implementing that, so they think they've found
a fun work around. Rather than talking extensively about court battles,
I want to talk about what this means. These are
cuts made by the richest man in the world that
(15:49):
have had a direct, tangible, and devastating impact on the
poorest people on the planet. In Sudan, eighty percent of
emergency kitchens have been closed. That means that close to
two million people will go without food. Local groups who
organize the kitchens are running out of money. The way
this works is that even when Rubio issued a communication
(16:12):
talking about continuing food aid, it's unclear exactly what that means,
because in this case and in other cases, USAID is
sending them money in order to provision themselves locally, as
opposed to sending them food as an inkind donation.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Whatever he communicated, these people are not getting food an
as a result. The people who run these mutual aid
kitchens it's a mutual Aid coalition of Sudan are facing
the horrible decision of having to turn people away it
or deciding who to feed, which is pretty bad. On
the border between Thailand and Myanmay, a place where Robert
and I have been to report, I've heard that people
(16:50):
are having babies right now outside lat of clinics and
life support machines have been removed for it to people
who were relying on those life support machines obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And at least one person has died.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, and I'm sure many many more people than that
have done. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I mean that's just what's reported, Like it's a lot
of most of what happens there does not get out.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah. I will try in not too long to be
there and report on that, but it's pretty devastating right
now that Robert and I have met the people who
run some of these clinics and they are some of
the most incredible people doing amazing work. And yeah, they
relied on USAID funding. There's lots of other places do
and that's not happening now. The State Department has exempted
(17:32):
quote life saving humanitarian assistance programs from the cuts, but
no one really knows what that means. Right. The order reads,
quote life saving humanitarian assistance applies to core life saving medicine,
medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance, as well as
supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.
(17:54):
As I mentioned before, the mutual AIDS who are in
coalition was receiving financial assistance to help it provision, right,
which is much better than the US going through all
the infrastructure spending of being able to deliver that aid
itself or through USAID contractors. Other contractors implementing partners of
USAID are still owed money for work that they completed
(18:16):
before January, before the stop work orders stopped payment to them.
For work to begin again on any of these contracts,
they need the contract officer to sign up on it,
and it's at a lunclear exactly how many of these
contract officers are still employed at USAID because of the
federal employment cuts. So essentially USAID has stopped all over
(18:38):
the world. In addition to this, in this country, four
hundred and ninety million dollars worth of US grown food,
which is in the USAID pipeline to go to people
who very desperately needed food, is currently at risk of
spoilage according to USAID. So it's not just that people
are starving, it's that we are allowing food to go
(18:59):
bad here while people starve in other places, which is
pretty bleak. I will just really briefly hear plug the
mutual aids who don't coalition. If you'd like to help,
you can direct to them directly, And it's mutual aids
who donig If you'd like to do that, it'll be
into show, not to if you're driving or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And there is like ongoing legal fights over this issue.
On Tuesday, February twenty fifth, another judge ordered the Trump
administration to resume hundreds of million dollars of funding towards USAID,
and there's no indication Trump's going to follow that order.
(19:37):
They're already planning to appeal again. They have already appealed before.
And we've seen them continually deny court orders from judges,
fine loopholes, fine workarounds, and Musk and Trump continue to
just openly float like defying the order of the court.
Representative Andy Ogeles introduced articles have appeachment against a specific
(20:01):
quote unquote activist judge. This will go nowhere. They don't
have nearly enough numbers to make anything like this happen.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, it's a frontal assault on the separation of powers.
It's what he's proposed, right, And like they don't have
their numbers.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yet, yes, well, and then they have openly floated just
like defying orders because they're interpreting the actions of the
judges as like themselves, unlawful. But Musk has himself called
to impeach judges who violate the law, and I believe
his most recent pinned pinned x posts ye reads quote
(20:36):
if any judge anywhere can block every presidential action everywhere,
we do not have a democracy. We have a tyranny
of the judiciary.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
So what a great legal mind.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Shit we were saying and back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So this will continue. I mean, I'm really really waiting
for a final showdown between Trump Elon and you know,
maybe the Supreme Court and seeing if they will actively
defy a ruling from the Supreme Court, if they indeed
rule against Trump and Musque. But until then, I feel
like we're just kind of all chugging along as the
(21:13):
Trump administration, you know, very very unconstitutionally defies the authority
of the Court. In some related news, last week, President
Trump signed in executive order stating that the president can
change laws erroneously, citing Article two, which only calls for
the presidents to quote faithfully execute the law. I'm going
(21:34):
to quote from the order the President to and the
Attorney General, subject to the President's supervision and control, will
interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having
separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. The next section is titled
reigning in independent Agencies. It reads the Federal Trade Commission,
(21:54):
the Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission have
exercised enormous power over the American people without presidential oversight.
These agencies issue rules and regulations without the review of
the democratically elected president. They also spend American tax dollars
to set priorities without consulting the president, voters, and the
president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments,
(22:18):
responsible for their decisions as the constitution demands. This is absurd.
This is like extremely dangerous, one of the most like
blatant like attempts at power that we've seen since Dick Nixon.
Like this is gonna get litigated, but this is crazy.
The the fact that we have that we have a
president saying that he has the ability to interpret the
(22:40):
law something that specifically he cannot do. That's why, it's
why we have three branches of government, just like openly
openly claiming that power is like very worrying. Again, like
I feel like I have every episode on Executive Disorder,
I say that, you know, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned,
but that does continue to be the case.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah, it is very concerned. I don't know what more
to say, because it's mad, like we're watching a coup
happen on the timeline while everyone just continues to go
shopping and stuff like it's it's it's pretty weird.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Speaking speaking of shopping, I just got a fantastic Swedish
M ninety feel jacket. It looks great, it fits tight.
I'm very happy, incredible.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Garrison's becoming a mills Up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We will go on break once again to come back
to talk about the Navy and the FBI. All right,
we are back. Let's now talk about the Navy, arguably
(23:47):
one of the gayer branches of the military, besides the
besides the drone operators.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh you're you're really missing out on the marine career.
He has multiple Marine veterans have told the US Marine
Corps is the gayest place I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The Marines are like part of the Navy, right, come on,
they are, they are, they are, and they hate it
when you say, oh, well, wait, wait, go cry about
Daddy Trump. I don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So meanwhile, there's a shakeups in the Navy and the
Marines as relating to Trump's anti trans executive orders. And
we have obtained an al Nave memo directed to all
Navy units and Marine Corps from February twenty fifth that
outlines the Department of Navy's guidance on how to implement
the anti trans executive orders. Now, this includes ending programs
(24:39):
and policies related to quote unquote and gender ideology all
across the Navy, as well as only using assigned sex
at birth on official documentation. I will quote from the
statement quote don entities will review policies for quote unquote
intimate single sex spaces and take appropriate action to ensure
(25:00):
such spaces are designated by sex and not gender identity
on installations, facilities, ships, and any other infrastructure under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Navy unquote. So this will
force women into bathrooms and barracks with men. It's in
line with the stuff that like Trump's been talking about
and the stuff that he's been signing. But we are
(25:21):
still getting more and more of these implementation guides getting
sent around to various departments.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
James, Yeah, and like just to clarify that to people,
most of these spaces are pretty full, right, These are
pretty crowded places. So this will mean women sharing rooms
with young marines. Right. This will meet them sharing non
stalled bathrooms with young sailors and marines.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This will force them into very confined spaces together on
board ships.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Like.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
This isn't like some kind of sort of minor inconvenience
or whatever like this, This will put these people at
a demonstrable risk for US so all for bullying, which
is a serious thing and an issue in lots of militaries,
including the US one. But like, and many of these
people I should add, like have had that they're like
(26:10):
post surgery right, and not that it matches hugely, but
that people who might pass is as women or men
and they are now forced to live according to their
gender assigned at birth pretty fucked up.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's not great. I'm going to wait before I do
reporting on the implementation guides for visas. I know there's
been a lot of articles in the Guardian and a
few trans journalists have conflicting interpretations of a few Department
of State cables regarding the issuing of visas to people
(26:46):
who are trans Specifically, I think the main cable that
we've seen allows the continued issuance of visas, but that
would only match what the case officer or like the
whoever whoever is like handling the actual these information, whatever
they determined to be the assigned gender at birth to be,
That's that's how it would get issued. But I'm going
(27:08):
to wait to report on kind of the rest of
the nitty gritty details, because there is conflicting information from
like from like these like policy wonks, lawyers and journalists
themselves who are trying to figure out kind of what
the full implications of those cables are. But we are
aware of them, We've been talking about them in our chat. Yes,
(27:28):
they are bad, but I don't necessarily want to like
overblow the scope of some of these things just to
like induce panic when when really this is all kind
of vary in line with Trump's earlier orders to only
have male and female documentation that matches assigned gender at birth.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Yeah, I would say. Also, like if you are soldier,
sailor em and a person marine whatever, and like these
these gexy voters are affecting you, you can email us
cool Zone tips at proton dot me. I know trans
folks tend to serve at a higher rate than cisgender folks,
so those a good number of people who will be
(28:07):
affected by this, And like, for whatever it's worth, if
you want to talk to us, you can reach out
to us.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I'm also going to note we obtain information on the
Department of Defense for removing travel coverage for abortion. On
January eighteenth, Department of Defense Travel Management Office Room of
Dissection from their joint travel regulations that outlined travel allowances
for quote non covered reproductive health care quote meaning like
abortion and assisted reproductive technology like IVF. Now, this change
(28:37):
was directly in compliance with Trump's executive order to enforce
the High Amendment, which Mia has talked about lots before
on the show. And then on February fourth, they actually
re established coverage for assisted reproductive technology, so probably just IVF,
but abortion was not re established, so.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
That means travel cover for abortion related medical care reproduct
fil Okay, it's no longer there. Correct.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Correct. For our last main story, I like to talk
a little bit about updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Trump goon, rap producer and children's book author Cash Ptel
has been confirmed as FBI director, and Patel is joined
by far right podcaster and conspiracy theorist Dan Gino, who
(29:27):
has been appointed deputy director.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
A God, and I look, I gotta say it. I'm
just glad there's an adult in the room.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Now, you know, this is thank God again, Like I
don't want to just be talking about how how you know,
kooky everything is in this new administration. But this is wild.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yes, this is no no, no Garrison. I disagree, and
that's because I have professional solidarity. Anything that's good for
podcasters in general, you know, is is good for the country.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So not not great.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Last week, Ptel tolds senior officials he wants to relocate
upwards of fifteen hundred employees from DC to fuel offices
around the country, and in a statement on last Friday,
which is February twenty first, Patel said, quote, anyone that
wishes to do harm to our way of life and
our citizens here and abroad will face the full wrath
(30:23):
of the DOJ and the FBI. If you seek to
hide in any corner of this country or planet, we
will put on the world's largest man hunt, and we
will find you, and we will decide your end state unquote.
Agents and government employees have warned that under Patel, the
Bureau will be on course to refocus efforts away from
far right street fighters and accelerationists and towards the nebulous
(30:46):
BLM Antifa. In related news, on Tuesday, a far right
extremist named Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the
National counter Terrorism Center Kent is a former Special Forces
and CIA operative. He's described himself as an American First
populist and has strong ties to the Proud Boys and
(31:07):
Patriot Prayer. Kent has praised Joey Gibson for standing up
to Antifa, and Kent himself employed a Proud Boy to
consult on a failed congressional campaign in twenty twenty two.
Kent has historically advocated that the FBI refocus their efforts
to target Antifa. And this is like all amidst a
(31:27):
report from the Guardian suggesting that the Nazi cocelerationist group
the Base, has had a decent resurgence in activity and
recruitment efforts inside the United States.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
That's good, so.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Not cool stuff happening, read the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I guess i'll close unless we have any other thoughts
on Kent or Patel or our podcaster deputy director, What
are you supposed to say?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
All right?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I mean, I do think it's funny that because of
the number of podcasters that have been hired, there have
been statements by people in the administration that like, there
aren't going to be any more conservative podcasters because we're
giving them all government jobs.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Well, that's more hymns advertising dollars for us.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
That's right, that's right. I feel like this is going
to be huge for us.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I would like to close on three more funny news
moments from the past week. Elon Musk danced around with
a chainsaw at c Pack while multiple of his ex
wives and baby Mama's pleaded for him on Twitter to
respond to emergencies regarding his children, including that including that
(32:39):
weird far right journalist and Babylon Be contributor who's had
an increasing spat with Musk and I now I believe
has filed for complete custody of their child.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah, well, I mean that's good luck.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I guess, I guess good luck.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
I can't think of a worse situation to be in
than Elon Musk being one of your legal parents for
the sake of that child. I hope that she succeeds.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Tesla stock is down nearly thirty percent this month. There's
been a real pressure on him because people in Europe
are refusing to buy Tesla's in a boycott, you know,
upset at him for doing the whole Nazi salute and
being a Nazi thing. And finally, in some very sad news.
A crypto trader killed himself live on a Twitter space
(33:25):
in order to start a meme coin. Sorry sorry, on
an x space in order to start a meme coin.
How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's
a dark time for our community.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
They did start the meme coin.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Multiple meme coins actually were starting so well.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well done for the people cashing in and the guy
shooting himself in the head and then bleeding out for
thirty minutes on stream. You are vampires, I don't know,
not the cool kind. No, yeah, not the not the
cool kind, the evil kind, vultures. Vultures can be cool
as well.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I guess it depends. Well. I think that's it for us.
We reported the news again.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
We reported the news.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
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 (34:28):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is it could happen here? Executive that Disorder. Our
weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, Yes,
the crumbling world and what it means for me and you.
I'm Garrison Davis today. I'm joined by James Stout and
Robert Evans. Yes, this week we're covering the week of
February nineteen to February twenty sixth.
Speaker 3 (00:27):
Boy, if you thought we had ed before, do we
have ed now?
Speaker 4 (00:33):
We still haven't got that HYM sponsorship, but will yeah crying.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
We're gonna keep working at it. I'm also looking to
get us a penis pump sponsorship. Speaking of penis pumps,
let's talk about the Germans. So, Germany had its election
very recently after their most recent coalition collapsed. The way
their government works is that periodically governments can't continue being governments,
(01:00):
and so they have to have a very sudden election.
I'm not going to explain it much more than that,
but the actual results of the election were pretty interesting, right.
The primary winner was off Day AfD Alternative for Germany
would be kind of the closest English translation of the
name of the party. This is a far right party.
(01:20):
It is primarily popular in East Germany now, but it
has surged massively after years and years of being decidedly
on the political fringe. One of the reasons it has
always been on the political fringe is that German parties,
both centrists, Conservatives and the left, have had a tacit
(01:42):
agreement since the end of World War Two called the
Court on Santaire. It's not just Germany, this is the
thing that used to be present in all of Europe.
And basically the gist of the Court in Sanitaire is
you don't form a coalition because these are parliamentary democracies, right,
so usually no one party has fifty percent or more
of the vote. So you know, a party with twenty
(02:04):
and a party with fifteen and a party with eight
and they form a coalition government. And the norm for
up until now, and thankfully is still the normal we'll
talk about that is that you don't coalition with AfD,
which is a part of why that and kind of
lingering stigma about the Nazis kept them from being a
major force in German politics until you know, over the
(02:27):
last eight or so years they have grown substantially to
the point where in this recent election they doubled their
support from around ten percent to a little over twenty percent.
This makes them they're not the largest single block in
the German in the Reichstag.
Speaker 2 (02:45):
They're number two though, right they are number two, I believe,
which sucks.
Speaker 4 (02:50):
Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 3 (02:51):
Yeah, the CDU is still significantly larger, although not like
overwhelmingly larger to be clear. So basically right now, the CDU,
which is the centrist party and it's kind of like
center right, a little center right, has two hundred and
eight seats in the Reichstag. AfD has one hundred and
(03:12):
fifty two, the Social Democrats have one hundred and twenty,
the Greens have eighty five, and the Left Party has
sixty four. So AfD is a minority in the government
compared to all of the people who didn't vote for AfD,
but the rate at which they're increasing is a serious problem,
especially since most Germans list immigration as their primary voting
(03:35):
concern right now, this most recent election had unusually high
voter turnout. Twenty twenty one election, seventy six percent of
the country or so voted. More than eighty two percent
of the country voted in this most recent election, so
the fact that like you have record high turnout and
AfD doubling its support is deeply chilling. Now it's not
(03:58):
one hundred percent bad news because one of the other
stories here is the new Left Party, well not super new,
but the Left Party, which is kind of came out
of East Germany's Communist Party, massively increased their support too.
And they actually for the first time, like very significantly
increased their share of the vote, which had been under
(04:21):
this kind of five percent threshold before and is now
at about eight point eight percent. So they went up
by an amount. Actually it's not like as much as
AfD went up, but like in terms of a percentage
of their prior vote, it's a similar increase. So there's
another party that had significant gains in this and it's
(04:42):
it's kind of a newer party called the BSW, which
is you could say they do a little bit of
like a Red Brown Alliance kind of thing, where there's
some left wing messaging in what they're saying with they're
also like super anti immigrant and they're not, you know,
it's not kind of like to the extent that the
AfD is. But when they came on to the scene,
(05:05):
they were expected by some people to pull votes away
from the AfD this election, and that's really not what happened.
And in fact, a lot of the votes they pulled
were from Social Democrats and the left parties, so that
was one of the you know, it's because the way
the parliamentary system works, which is more rational than our system.
(05:27):
This didn't like hand the whole election to off day. Again.
This is the benefit of a system like the Germans had,
which is pretty explicitly set up to make it a
lot harder for a right wing dictator to get in again.
But it is interesting to me that that kind of messaging,
I mean, it's further kind of evidence of what's been
happening everywhere, which is when your party positions itself to
(05:51):
try to win over far right votes by kind of
mixing in Well, okay, what if we did some sort
of you know, liberal lefty policies, but we also got
really racist. You don't take votes from the far right,
but you do wind up pulling the worst people from
the left. Yeah, and yeah, I guess that's kind of
(06:13):
like the broad strokes. Now, like this is bad, although
it's also not comprehensively a nightmare. One of the things
that's kind of hot. I don't know, positive may not
be the right. Wait, but interesting to me is if
you looked at the twenty twenty one election maps of
the strongest party by constituency in the twenty twenty one election,
(06:34):
and I found a good article German election results explaining
graphics on DW dot com. If you just google that,
you'll find it. In twenty twenty one, off Day obviously,
like the whole northeast was you know, their territory, but
they also had strong inroads into the northwest parts of
the country, right, you know, primarily like rural areas and
(06:56):
the like. But like there was a there was a
lot of red on that map orthwest portion of Germany.
In the new election that's all black, which is the
CDU right, Which means while off Day's representation of the
Reichstag and like number of voters increased substantially, their geographical
(07:16):
reach has been kind of cauterized, would be, in a
fair way of saying it is, which is interesting to
me hard to say too much, like does that mean,
you know, I think some of what has happened here,
Because it's important both to note that this is bad,
it's bad that the Nazis got doubled their share of
the vote, but also it was expected to be a
(07:38):
little worse than it was. You know, there's some evidence
that after JD Vance made his speech introducing AfD, their
pollings started to like freeze a little bit. And it
may be the fact because a lot of older voters
came in and they they seem to have primarily gone
with the CDU, with this sort of center right party.
(07:58):
So the story here is you can maybe look at
it as a lot of older, more conservative Germans who
are also old enough to really not like the idea
of the AfD came out and voted for, you know,
the center right party in order to kind of cut
off their power. The other thing, though, that's kind of
(08:19):
a lot less optimistic, is that AfD is most popular
among people under thirty, who widely don't view it as
an extremist party, which is deeply, deeply concerning.
Speaker 2 (08:31):
And AfD won the majority of like working class, unemployed
and male votes. Yes, yes, pretty substantially.
Speaker 3 (08:38):
Yes, they did extremely well with young men and unemployed
young men in particular, and that's all deeply concerning. So
you know, there's a few things going on here. All
of which are very interesting to me, but the power
often they continues to have with younger, really young Germans,
is frightening. That said, there's allso some evidence here that
(09:03):
the situation in the United States has galvanized a chunk
of the German voting populace to attempt to stop off
day and kind of one of the positive things that
came out is prior to this election, there was a
lot of talk about whether or not the CDU would
choose to coalition with the AfD and thus into the
Cordon sanitaire. And to make a long story short, they're
(09:26):
not going to do that. They're looking to coalition with
the Social Democrats, which is a good thing. You know,
it doesn't mean no one will do that in the future.
And unfortunately, a majority of German voters suspect AfD will
be in a coalition by twenty thirty, but it hasn't
happened yet. And that's as good as things get right now.
(09:47):
And that's what I got to say about Germany.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
Yeah, I mean, and people frame these results is like
slightly better than expected, slightly Previous pulling showed AfD being
being slightly better in results, and that dip for Vance
and Musk started started really trying to push AfD both
in person and digitally, So you saw a slight dip there.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
Yes, And this is the other thing that's kind of
worth noting that kind of like red Brown Party, in
addition to being kind of pro social programs, anti immigration,
they're also very anti United States.
Speaker 4 (10:23):
Okay, so.
Speaker 3 (10:27):
That may explain some of that too.
Speaker 4 (10:30):
Yeah, it does seem like things are changing a lot.
And one of the things that we've seen, like as
we've spoken before, like not just in Germany, being Canada,
was that like people hate Musk and Trump so much
in the rest of the world that like their endorsement
could be something of a kiss of death electorally.
Speaker 3 (10:45):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (10:46):
Yeah, Like the Conservative Party in Canada has been growing
pretty exponentially in terms of like popular support the past
few years as the Liberals have like tanked, and now
those trends actually started to reverse. The Canadian like liberal
pulling is up ten points that can sort of pulling
us down. Conservatives might not even be able to control
Parliament in the next election, as they were like expected to.
(11:07):
And it'll be interesting to see like if this if
this anti like far right United States trend continues to
more countries beyond, like Germany in Canada, but I'm still
I'm still eagerly, eagerly waiting for the next Canadian election.
Speaker 3 (11:20):
And this is part of the story that is really
interesting right now, where we've talked a lot about the
transnational fascist coalition. You know, the fact that Trump and
his people have had the quasi dictator of Hungary, you know,
over at mar A Lago, and have repeatedly cited him
as an inspiration for how to take and centralized power.
You know how close Bolsonaro was in the last Trump administration,
(11:43):
Like you know, obviously the Republican parties increasing closeness and
embrace of Putin's Russia. But what also is happening right
now is people like countries that had been heading at
a very a more authoritarian right wing direction and turning
around in part due to the war in Ukraine and
(12:05):
turning away from kind of the international right wing movement,
as Poland being the best example right where had Polish
politics have changed substantially in the last several years, and
a big part of that is the war in Ukraine.
And there are a lot of Poles who I think
otherwise would have been more on board for a lot
of the socially conservative shit who are like, well, but
(12:27):
all these fuckers are pro Russia and we're Poland, Like, no,
all right, let's go on a break and return to
talk more about the crumbling world. And you said, yeah,
(12:56):
all right, we are back. I'm gonna ther to James
to to do a segment on usaid.
Speaker 4 (13:03):
Yeah, we are back. And before I talk about USAD,
I do want to talk about something else that has
been advertised along with whatever products and services support this show.
That is the Gold Card. So the Gold Card, if
you're not familiar, is something that Trump floated this week
to replace the EB five investor visa. Trump suggested that
the Gold Card it would require a five million dollar investment.
(13:25):
Well investment, I think that it's just a charge, right,
You're just giving the money to the United States government,
and in return you will receive a Green card plus privileges,
and it will be not a Green but a Gold card.
So that's great. That is the EB five visa if
you're not familiar, required you since twenty twenty two, it's
been one million and fifty thousand dollar investment and the
(13:49):
creation of ten jobs. So it had some kind of
like it trickled down economics. It's not a real thing.
It's a lie that they tell you. But it had
some idea that these rich people would create jobs in
the US people who are less wealthy. The gold card
seems to not have that. You just have to be rich, right,
So that's say, that's an interesting change to the immigration system.
(14:11):
The other thing I want to talk about today is
a United States Agency for International Development, better known as USAID.
It's been a target of like the anti woke right
for some time because they fundamentally don't understand what Joseph
Nia would have called soft power, right, their power to persuade,
the power to influence outcomes around the world with things
(14:32):
other than tanks and bonds.
Speaker 3 (14:33):
Oh and again, if your power is soft right now,
you might consider trying Hymns or one of our other sponsors.
Speaker 2 (14:42):
Gyms is not a sponsor.
Speaker 4 (14:43):
Sorry, James, we needed to do that, But I have
been diverted. But returning to my topic, Yeah, the agency
has been massively impacted by DOGE and Trump administration cuts. Right.
The Trump administration suspended all foreign aid January via executive
order on the twentieth of January in order to assess
if it was quote serving US interests. The State Department
(15:07):
then issued guidance that seemed to go beyond the executive
order and cut nearly basically all usaily expensive On the
thirteenth of this month, that's February if you're listening, later,
a judges shued a temporary restraining order. This TIERRO didn't
really stop them from doing what they were doing, because
it told them to continue with existing contracts. And what
(15:28):
the State Department claims that it's doing is implementing clauses
that are already in the contract, so the contracts will
have some kind of kill clause, right, and that they
claim that they're implementing that, so they think they've found
a fun work around. Rather than talking extensively about court battles,
I want to talk about what this means. These are
cuts made by the richest man in the world that
(15:49):
have had a direct, tangible, and devastating impact on the
poorest people on the planet. In Sudan, eighty percent of
emergency kitchens have been closed. That means that close to
two million people will go without food. Local groups who
organize the kitchens are running out of money. The way
this works is that even when Rubio issued a communication
(16:12):
talking about continuing food aid, it's unclear exactly what that means,
because in this case and in other cases, USAID is
sending them money in order to provision themselves locally, as
opposed to sending them food as an inkind donation.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Right.
Speaker 4 (16:28):
Whatever he communicated, these people are not getting food an
as a result. The people who run these mutual aid
kitchens it's a mutual Aid coalition of Sudan are facing
the horrible decision of having to turn people away it
or deciding who to feed, which is pretty bad. On
the border between Thailand and Myanmay, a place where Robert
and I have been to report, I've heard that people
(16:50):
are having babies right now outside lat of clinics and
life support machines have been removed for it to people
who were relying on those life support machines obviously.
Speaker 3 (16:58):
And at least one person has died.
Speaker 4 (17:00):
Yeah, and I'm sure many many more people than that
have done. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
I mean that's just what's reported, Like it's a lot
of most of what happens there does not get out.
Speaker 4 (17:09):
Yeah. I will try in not too long to be
there and report on that, but it's pretty devastating right
now that Robert and I have met the people who
run some of these clinics and they are some of
the most incredible people doing amazing work. And yeah, they
relied on USAID funding. There's lots of other places do
and that's not happening now. The State Department has exempted
(17:32):
quote life saving humanitarian assistance programs from the cuts, but
no one really knows what that means. Right. The order reads,
quote life saving humanitarian assistance applies to core life saving medicine,
medical services, food, shelter and subsistence assistance, as well as
supplies and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance.
(17:54):
As I mentioned before, the mutual AIDS who are in
coalition was receiving financial assistance to help it provision, right,
which is much better than the US going through all
the infrastructure spending of being able to deliver that aid
itself or through USAID contractors. Other contractors implementing partners of
USAID are still owed money for work that they completed
(18:16):
before January, before the stop work orders stopped payment to them.
For work to begin again on any of these contracts,
they need the contract officer to sign up on it,
and it's at a lunclear exactly how many of these
contract officers are still employed at USAID because of the
federal employment cuts. So essentially USAID has stopped all over
(18:38):
the world. In addition to this, in this country, four
hundred and ninety million dollars worth of US grown food,
which is in the USAID pipeline to go to people
who very desperately needed food, is currently at risk of
spoilage according to USAID. So it's not just that people
are starving, it's that we are allowing food to go
(18:59):
bad here while people starve in other places, which is
pretty bleak. I will just really briefly hear plug the
mutual aids who don't coalition. If you'd like to help,
you can direct to them directly, And it's mutual aids
who donig If you'd like to do that, it'll be
into show, not to if you're driving or whatever.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
And there is like ongoing legal fights over this issue.
On Tuesday, February twenty fifth, another judge ordered the Trump
administration to resume hundreds of million dollars of funding towards USAID,
and there's no indication Trump's going to follow that order.
(19:37):
They're already planning to appeal again. They have already appealed before.
And we've seen them continually deny court orders from judges,
fine loopholes, fine workarounds, and Musk and Trump continue to
just openly float like defying the order of the court.
Representative Andy Ogeles introduced articles have appeachment against a specific
(20:01):
quote unquote activist judge. This will go nowhere. They don't
have nearly enough numbers to make anything like this happen.
Speaker 4 (20:07):
Yeah, it's a frontal assault on the separation of powers.
It's what he's proposed, right, And like they don't have
their numbers.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yet, yes, well, and then they have openly floated just
like defying orders because they're interpreting the actions of the
judges as like themselves, unlawful. But Musk has himself called
to impeach judges who violate the law, and I believe
his most recent pinned pinned x posts ye reads quote
(20:36):
if any judge anywhere can block every presidential action everywhere,
we do not have a democracy. We have a tyranny
of the judiciary.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
So what a great legal mind.
Speaker 3 (20:48):
Shit we were saying and back in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 2 (20:52):
So this will continue. I mean, I'm really really waiting
for a final showdown between Trump Elon and you know,
maybe the Supreme Court and seeing if they will actively
defy a ruling from the Supreme Court, if they indeed
rule against Trump and Musque. But until then, I feel
like we're just kind of all chugging along as the
(21:13):
Trump administration, you know, very very unconstitutionally defies the authority
of the Court. In some related news, last week, President
Trump signed in executive order stating that the president can
change laws erroneously, citing Article two, which only calls for
the presidents to quote faithfully execute the law. I'm going
(21:34):
to quote from the order the President to and the
Attorney General, subject to the President's supervision and control, will
interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having
separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. The next section is titled
reigning in independent Agencies. It reads the Federal Trade Commission,
(21:54):
the Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission have
exercised enormous power over the American people without presidential oversight.
These agencies issue rules and regulations without the review of
the democratically elected president. They also spend American tax dollars
to set priorities without consulting the president, voters, and the
president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments,
(22:18):
responsible for their decisions as the constitution demands. This is absurd.
This is like extremely dangerous, one of the most like
blatant like attempts at power that we've seen since Dick Nixon.
Like this is gonna get litigated, but this is crazy.
The the fact that we have that we have a
president saying that he has the ability to interpret the
(22:40):
law something that specifically he cannot do. That's why, it's
why we have three branches of government, just like openly
openly claiming that power is like very worrying. Again, like
I feel like I have every episode on Executive Disorder,
I say that, you know, I'm very worried. I'm very concerned,
but that does continue to be the case.
Speaker 4 (22:58):
Yeah, it is very concerned. I don't know what more
to say, because it's mad, like we're watching a coup
happen on the timeline while everyone just continues to go
shopping and stuff like it's it's it's pretty weird.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
Speaking speaking of shopping, I just got a fantastic Swedish
M ninety feel jacket. It looks great, it fits tight.
I'm very happy, incredible.
Speaker 4 (23:21):
Garrison's becoming a mills Up.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
We will go on break once again to come back
to talk about the Navy and the FBI. All right,
we are back. Let's now talk about the Navy, arguably
(23:47):
one of the gayer branches of the military, besides the
besides the drone operators.
Speaker 3 (23:52):
Oh you're you're really missing out on the marine career.
He has multiple Marine veterans have told the US Marine
Corps is the gayest place I've ever been.
Speaker 2 (24:03):
The Marines are like part of the Navy, right, come on,
they are, they are, they are, and they hate it
when you say, oh, well, wait, wait, go cry about
Daddy Trump. I don't care.
Speaker 3 (24:15):
It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.
Speaker 2 (24:18):
So meanwhile, there's a shakeups in the Navy and the
Marines as relating to Trump's anti trans executive orders. And
we have obtained an al Nave memo directed to all
Navy units and Marine Corps from February twenty fifth that
outlines the Department of Navy's guidance on how to implement
the anti trans executive orders. Now, this includes ending programs
(24:39):
and policies related to quote unquote and gender ideology all
across the Navy, as well as only using assigned sex
at birth on official documentation. I will quote from the
statement quote don entities will review policies for quote unquote
intimate single sex spaces and take appropriate action to ensure
(25:00):
such spaces are designated by sex and not gender identity
on installations, facilities, ships, and any other infrastructure under the
jurisdiction of the Department of Navy unquote. So this will
force women into bathrooms and barracks with men. It's in
line with the stuff that like Trump's been talking about
and the stuff that he's been signing. But we are
(25:21):
still getting more and more of these implementation guides getting
sent around to various departments.
Speaker 4 (25:26):
James, Yeah, and like just to clarify that to people,
most of these spaces are pretty full, right, These are
pretty crowded places. So this will mean women sharing rooms
with young marines. Right. This will meet them sharing non
stalled bathrooms with young sailors and marines.
Speaker 2 (25:45):
Right.
Speaker 4 (25:46):
This will force them into very confined spaces together on
board ships.
Speaker 2 (25:50):
Like.
Speaker 4 (25:50):
This isn't like some kind of sort of minor inconvenience
or whatever like this, This will put these people at
a demonstrable risk for US so all for bullying, which
is a serious thing and an issue in lots of militaries,
including the US one. But like, and many of these
people I should add, like have had that they're like
(26:10):
post surgery right, and not that it matches hugely, but
that people who might pass is as women or men
and they are now forced to live according to their
gender assigned at birth pretty fucked up.
Speaker 2 (26:25):
It's not great. I'm going to wait before I do
reporting on the implementation guides for visas. I know there's
been a lot of articles in the Guardian and a
few trans journalists have conflicting interpretations of a few Department
of State cables regarding the issuing of visas to people
(26:46):
who are trans Specifically, I think the main cable that
we've seen allows the continued issuance of visas, but that
would only match what the case officer or like the
whoever whoever is like handling the actual these information, whatever
they determined to be the assigned gender at birth to be,
That's that's how it would get issued. But I'm going
(27:08):
to wait to report on kind of the rest of
the nitty gritty details, because there is conflicting information from
like from like these like policy wonks, lawyers and journalists
themselves who are trying to figure out kind of what
the full implications of those cables are. But we are
aware of them, We've been talking about them in our chat. Yes,
(27:28):
they are bad, but I don't necessarily want to like
overblow the scope of some of these things just to
like induce panic when when really this is all kind
of vary in line with Trump's earlier orders to only
have male and female documentation that matches assigned gender at birth.
Speaker 4 (27:46):
Yeah, I would say. Also, like if you are soldier,
sailor em and a person marine whatever, and like these
these gexy voters are affecting you, you can email us
cool Zone tips at proton dot me. I know trans
folks tend to serve at a higher rate than cisgender folks,
so those a good number of people who will be
(28:07):
affected by this, And like, for whatever it's worth, if
you want to talk to us, you can reach out
to us.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
I'm also going to note we obtain information on the
Department of Defense for removing travel coverage for abortion. On
January eighteenth, Department of Defense Travel Management Office Room of
Dissection from their joint travel regulations that outlined travel allowances
for quote non covered reproductive health care quote meaning like
abortion and assisted reproductive technology like IVF. Now, this change
(28:37):
was directly in compliance with Trump's executive order to enforce
the High Amendment, which Mia has talked about lots before
on the show. And then on February fourth, they actually
re established coverage for assisted reproductive technology, so probably just IVF,
but abortion was not re established, so.
Speaker 4 (28:54):
That means travel cover for abortion related medical care reproduct
fil Okay, it's no longer there. Correct.
Speaker 2 (29:04):
Correct. For our last main story, I like to talk
a little bit about updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
Trump goon, rap producer and children's book author Cash Ptel
has been confirmed as FBI director, and Patel is joined
by far right podcaster and conspiracy theorist Dan Gino, who
(29:27):
has been appointed deputy director.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
A God, and I look, I gotta say it. I'm
just glad there's an adult in the room.
Speaker 2 (29:34):
Now, you know, this is thank God again, Like I
don't want to just be talking about how how you know,
kooky everything is in this new administration. But this is wild.
Speaker 3 (29:43):
Yes, this is no no, no Garrison. I disagree, and
that's because I have professional solidarity. Anything that's good for
podcasters in general, you know, is is good for the country.
Speaker 2 (29:57):
So not not great.
Speaker 4 (30:01):
Right.
Speaker 2 (30:02):
Last week, Ptel tolds senior officials he wants to relocate
upwards of fifteen hundred employees from DC to fuel offices
around the country, and in a statement on last Friday,
which is February twenty first, Patel said, quote, anyone that
wishes to do harm to our way of life and
our citizens here and abroad will face the full wrath
(30:23):
of the DOJ and the FBI. If you seek to
hide in any corner of this country or planet, we
will put on the world's largest man hunt, and we
will find you, and we will decide your end state unquote.
Agents and government employees have warned that under Patel, the
Bureau will be on course to refocus efforts away from
far right street fighters and accelerationists and towards the nebulous
(30:46):
BLM Antifa. In related news, on Tuesday, a far right
extremist named Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the
National counter Terrorism Center Kent is a former Special Forces
and CIA operative. He's described himself as an American First
populist and has strong ties to the Proud Boys and
(31:07):
Patriot Prayer. Kent has praised Joey Gibson for standing up
to Antifa, and Kent himself employed a Proud Boy to
consult on a failed congressional campaign in twenty twenty two.
Kent has historically advocated that the FBI refocus their efforts
to target Antifa. And this is like all amidst a
(31:27):
report from the Guardian suggesting that the Nazi cocelerationist group
the Base, has had a decent resurgence in activity and
recruitment efforts inside the United States.
Speaker 4 (31:38):
That's good, so.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
Not cool stuff happening, read the Federal Bureau of Investigation.
I guess i'll close unless we have any other thoughts
on Kent or Patel or our podcaster deputy director, What
are you supposed to say?
Speaker 4 (31:54):
All right?
Speaker 3 (31:55):
I mean, I do think it's funny that because of
the number of podcasters that have been hired, there have
been statements by people in the administration that like, there
aren't going to be any more conservative podcasters because we're
giving them all government jobs.
Speaker 4 (32:10):
Well, that's more hymns advertising dollars for us.
Speaker 3 (32:14):
That's right, that's right. I feel like this is going
to be huge for us.
Speaker 2 (32:18):
I would like to close on three more funny news
moments from the past week. Elon Musk danced around with
a chainsaw at c Pack while multiple of his ex
wives and baby Mama's pleaded for him on Twitter to
respond to emergencies regarding his children, including that including that
(32:39):
weird far right journalist and Babylon Be contributor who's had
an increasing spat with Musk and I now I believe
has filed for complete custody of their child.
Speaker 4 (32:49):
Yeah, well, I mean that's good luck.
Speaker 2 (32:51):
I guess, I guess good luck.
Speaker 4 (32:54):
I can't think of a worse situation to be in
than Elon Musk being one of your legal parents for
the sake of that child. I hope that she succeeds.
Speaker 2 (33:03):
Tesla stock is down nearly thirty percent this month. There's
been a real pressure on him because people in Europe
are refusing to buy Tesla's in a boycott, you know,
upset at him for doing the whole Nazi salute and
being a Nazi thing. And finally, in some very sad news.
A crypto trader killed himself live on a Twitter space
(33:25):
in order to start a meme coin. Sorry sorry, on
an x space in order to start a meme coin.
How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's
a dark time for our community.
Speaker 4 (33:37):
They did start the meme coin.
Speaker 2 (33:38):
Multiple meme coins actually were starting so well.
Speaker 4 (33:41):
Well done for the people cashing in and the guy
shooting himself in the head and then bleeding out for
thirty minutes on stream. You are vampires, I don't know,
not the cool kind. No, yeah, not the not the
cool kind, the evil kind, vultures. Vultures can be cool
as well.
Speaker 2 (33:58):
I guess it depends. Well. I think that's it for us.
We reported the news again.
Speaker 3 (34:07):
We reported the news.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
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 (34:28):
You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1 (34:29):
You can now find sources for 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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