March 28, 2025 • 47 mins
Verify your signal number! The gang talks about anti-genocide protesters being hunted by ICE, an update on the rendition of Venezuelan immigrants, and how a journalist learned about airstrikes in Yemen from a Trump admin group chat.
Sources:
https://www.congress.gov/crs-product/IF12581
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cbp-9930/
https://x.com/presssec/status/1904875629612331123?s=46
https://x.com/kyledcheney/status/1904884072763044089
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/trump-administration-deportation-flights-el-salvador-doubles-down/
https://x.com/David_J_Bier/status/1904526812434084143
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 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 today.
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. You are
this week, we are covering the week of March twenty
to March twenty six.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Short week because we did a late recording last week.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yep, we did, so it's it's minus one day if
my math is correct. It's been a hard week for
any of us because we all really care about group
chats and group chat security is super important, oh yeah,
to kind of anyone involved in politics, and whenever we
see a breach of this magnitude, it's really a warning
and like a threat to all of us. So it
(00:50):
has it has been. It has been a tough week.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Yeah, Like a threat to one is a threat to all.
So like that's way I see it. Any group chat
that gets compromised.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
First they came for whovps group, that's right.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
Next they're gonna come.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Be any of us, could be any of us, Jeffrey
Goldberg could be lurking in your small group that's you
and your girlfriend talking about what kind of pizza do order?
He could be there reporting for the Atlantic. You wouldn't
know unless you like looked at who was in there
and saw his name, then you would know. Which is
true of all of the people in the hoothy PC
small group.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
I guess it is actually pretty easy. You didn't know.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Maybe maybe Giffrey Goldbug's signal name is like like Cia
Superspy or something, and everyone just assumed you along there.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I'm gonna start at the beginning because I do assume
that actually, like as impossible as it sounds to those
of us who like wake up and imbibe fucking social
media in the morning like an addict takes their first
hit of crack cocaine, but in a way that's less
healthy for both our hearts and our brains. A decent
number of people who listen to this podcast have just
kind of like heard vaguely like some bits about this.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, they're wondering what the fuck we're talking about?
Speaker 4 (01:58):
What are you doing? What are you guys doing? So
we're going to talk about this group chat. So first off,
couple of basics. So Signal is an app that is
end to end encrypted. That means that if you have
signal and your buddy has signal, and you're messaging each other,
it's encrypted, and it is very hard at this point
unless one of your phones is directly compromised by a
(02:19):
nonstate actor or an x who's really good with the computers,
no one else can see what you're messaging each other.
So if you and a friend are like planning what
to order on fucking grub Hub tonight when you go
play Super Smash Brothers or whatever, you can keep that secret.
Or if you and a friend are planning what substances
to buy that the government might not want you buying,
(02:40):
you can keep that secret. Or if you and your
friend simply don't want various media companies taking every detail
and phone carriers taking every detail of your life's conversations
and turning that into analytics data, you can stop them
from doing that. And if maybe one day you might
be engaged in speech that the government might not like,
you can continue to age in that speech privately without
(03:02):
danger or with less danger, yeah, or with with as
little danger as it is possible to do.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Especially if your messages automatically explode after anywhere between five
seconds to one week, right, which is a feature signal has.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yes, you can automatically set it to delete stuff over
a period of time you want to. If you're going
to use it, turn off the thing where it like
pushes messages so that you can like see visible notifications.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So yeah, not if you.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Turn them off, because that's a that that'll function.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Up because then your operating system can read the messages
without the encryption. Similarly, never open a QR code.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
This is the yes.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Really the only way that Signal can can get compromised
on like scale right now beyond like physical infiltration right
like what accidentally happened with who the PC spell group.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
But the main other way.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That Signal can get compromised is through malicious QR codes
and unknown links. So really be careful about links as
always on the Internet, and especially be skeptical of QR codes.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yeah, there's there's a quote from Herman Garring, I think
it was from Herman Gehring. When I hear the word culture,
I reach for my revolver. And I have adapted that
gearing quote to the modern era. When I hear QR code,
I reach for my clock nineteen.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right. Do not use crew argots yeah, the work
of Satan. Let's explain what who these PC small group
is for the people. Well, I'm getting to it. So
you've got you've got this app which is normally used
by and has been used for a long time by
like protesters and dissidents and journalists to communicate with sources
because it's very secure. The Trump administration takes office, one
(04:34):
thing that they are annoyed about is that when you
are government employees, even if you're doing top secret shit,
especially if you're doing top secret shit, the kind of
meetings about national security planning for like military actions that
you are supposed to only have in something called a skiff.
And a skiff is basically a room in.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
You know, the West Wing, I think, or the Pentagon, right,
I'm not one hundred percent sure where all the skiffs are,
but it's like a room that is incredibly secure, and
it is the the only place that you are supposed
to have certain kinds of conversations. And in fact, if
you are having one of those kinds of conversations in
a skiff, no one, not even the president or the
vice president, is allowed to have a phone in there.
(05:14):
It is a very strict rule. You don't take phones
into the skiff because none of them are fucking secure. Now,
the problem is all these communications, all of this stuff
is documented and potentially foiaable. Maybe not immediately because there's
always security concerns. They have the ability to redact stuff,
but in twenty years perhaps, but at some.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Point, yeah, it might be archived even if it's not flable.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
People who are in charge of our military now didn't
like that and were like, hey, what if we all
just did it through a single group, and they did
to plan for an attack that started March fifteenth against
the Hoothys. Now you will remember the hoothis from the
episode James and I did. I mean from other stuff too,
because they're all over the news.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
You know, the Hoothy stuff.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
James and I did an episode recently about it regular
naval warfare, and you check it out. That's all still
pretty relevant.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Better known for their other work, yeah, better.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Known for their other work. The Biden administration was like,
we can probably take care of these guys with air strikes,
and it didn't really work. And the Trump administration was like,
we can do a better job of taking these guys
out with air strikes, and at this point it's too
early to say if it worked or not, but I'm
gonna guess probably didn't.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Probably not, just generally given the history.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Maybe they say they killed a lot more high value
targets and top missile guys.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
The main missile guy quote.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I don't know. I'm not I don't know. I'm not
privy to the information they're working off of or how
much it matters at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
So we'll see, you know, in that signal chat, Rob,
I'm not in that signal chat they have, not accidentally.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I'm in too many signal chats, frankly.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, yeah, I could be, and I might not know.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Ye, we all are in too many.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I might be in several government ones and be totally
unaware of it because there's too many notifications on my.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
F that shit's mute and I'm not seeing that.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
So they decide we're going to plan an attack on
some Hoothi's. We're gonna be hitting them with stuff, and
we should probably all get we need to get all
of these different kind of people from different chunks of
the you know, the government together. So we got to
have JD. Vance and his representative because usually Vance is
too busy to respond, and we got to have the
Defense Secretary Pete hegg Zeth and his representative. We've got
to have the d n I Toulci Gabbard her representative.
(07:21):
Weve got to have the head of the CIA his
represent you know that kind of thing. There's a few more
people in there, Mark Rubio, Mark Rubio, right, Sex State,
you know, and his representative Rvian Miller, Steven Miller. I
don't know that Miller had a representative. He feels like
he handles a lot of this stuff on his own,
but yeah, on his phone too much Steven Miller.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Yeh, chronically online Steven Miller.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Yeah, and you have you have the head of I
think Sincom was in there. Anyway. You got all these
people in there, and while they're setting this up, all
the invites are going out. Because the way you do
it with Signal is you click a button that says
like start a new group. You name the new group.
In this case, they named the group HOOVPCS right, and uh,
what does PC stand for?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
In this politically correct? Which, honestly I thought that we
were over.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, you'd think so, huh, don't Sandy slurs in the
group chat that says what. It's just a reminder.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, yeah, no slurs in the small group chat.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Planning committee, I'm guessing, yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Planning committee. Who the planning committee, small group. Sorry, I
had that written down somewhere. So they make this group
chat and they invite a bunch of people. And here's
one of the ways signal works is that, like, if
you're just importing your contacts in the signal, it'll find
the guys who have signal and it'll just like show you,
based on whatever your name you have for them in
their phone right that they're on signal, and you can
(08:37):
just invite them. Otherwise, you can set what your signal
name is going to be, and so when people type
in your phone number or whatever, they'll see that, or
if you send them an invite, that's the name they'll see.
And this brings us. I got to take an aside
to talk about a guy who is not a member
of the Trump administration and who is not a member
of government, a man named Jeffrey Goldberg born in nineteen
sixty five. He is currently the co editor of the Atlantic.
(09:01):
Prior to this, he had what some people would call
an illustrious career. He grew up in Malvern and long
Eye and I'm Maulvin. Yeah, I'm looking at his wiki here,
which just has the line that his neighborhood was mainly
Catholic and he described it as a wasteland of Irish pagramists.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Oh he had a fun childhood, So okay, interesting, interesting
Jeffrey fascinating stuff there. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
So after college or kind of while he's in college,
he leaves and he goes to Israel because he wants
to serve in the IDF during the Infata, the first
one as a prison guard Jesus Christ, which is where
Palestinian participants in the Intefub were being held. And yeah,
he he had like an interesting conversation with this PLO
(09:49):
leader who is also like a math teacher, who I
guess they were able to like discuss their Zionism or
whatever in some way that he found useful anyway, weird guy.
Not I bring this up to be like not a
left wing radical.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Like not one of quote unquote to our guys.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
One of our guys. Not a guy who's probably broadly
opposed to most of and in fact to most of
what the Trump administration is.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Doing over especially the air strikes.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Frankly, yes, now he has pissed off It's fair to
say he has really pissed off Trump a number of times, right,
because he wrote some articles. He wrote that twenty twenty
article in the Atlantic about when Trump said got caught
saying that Americans who died in wars are losers and suckers. Yes,
which is you know, based on sourcing that he had.
So he's also attracted their ire. But he's again generally
(10:36):
I would say, like more on the bootleoker east side
of things, Like he's just kind of like a NATSEK cheerleader, right,
that that would be a fair way to describe Jeffrey.
I don't know that he would entirely disagree with that
description of himself.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Yeah, like a neo lobe guy.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, that said, he's not so much of one that
he's unwilling to report critical stuff, which is what happens here.
So he gets an invite on his phone that it
just takes him into this PC hoothy small group and
people have done the work. There's another guy in the
Trump administration whose initials are.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
JC John Greenbrier I believe, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I think it was John Greenbrier and the person who
because there was some debate initially about like who invited him,
because after this came out, there were allegations that he
snuck his way in or whatever. We now know based
on the evidence that he was inadvertently invited by National
Security Advisor Michael Waltz, right.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
As evidenced by the signal screen shot.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Yes, yes, yes, there's lots of screenshots. Jeffrey did his
you know, the job of document eventually, yes, well he
documented it right away.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
So now here's the thing. From the beginning here, Jeffrey
is having the natural reaction. I will say this wrong
my critiques of him. He has the reaction I think
any minimally competent journalist would have. Someone's fucking with.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Me, Yeah, yeah, this is like something to get me.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, you don't get invited into a chat with the
sect deaf and the head of the CIA planning a
military strike, right, But that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I'd bit of Johna's for a while. That's not a
good to me. Yeah, that's not does not really go down.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
So he's like trying to figure out what the fuck's
going on. I'm like, what's happening, and he's like he's
making a note he's documenting stuff is there, and they're
talking about like weapons packages, like these are the kind
of weapons, this is where they're striking. And then as
the strikes going, they're being like this guy headed into
his girlfriend's house, we're hitting it. The house blew up.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
He's dead.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Particular exchange was very funny because the way he phrased
it was like it completely baffled JD Vance. Yes, let
me pull this up because it was it was pretty funny.
No please please uh. Michael Waltz VP full Stop building collapsed,
full Stop had multiple positive ID full stop, Pete Carilla,
the ic amazing job. JD Vance replies, what Michael Waltz
(12:45):
typing too fast full stop the first target, M Dash
that top missile guy, M Dash. We have positive idea
of him walking into his girlfriend's building and now it's collapsed,
and then Jdvbarnes replies, excellent. At this point, Michael Waltz
responds with the fist emoji, American flag emoji, flame emoji.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, so it's great and once it becomes very clear
what's happening, Number one, rather than stay in the group,
see if maybe he could get invited to other groups,
just kind of like keep track of what was going
on again being a guy who's like primary concern and
I really do think Goldberg's primary concern here was the
security of US soldiers, like.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
The national security of the United States.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, as opposed to like is any
of this legal?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Are they?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Like what like his is just like these people are
not being secure like with I mean like this this
could if the wrong person got invited to a group
like this, it could potentially endanger the lives of airmen
and stuff. That's on my primary concern with all this, right,
But that is his, you know. And so he hops
out of the group. He leaves, and he puts out
this article and he redacts most other than the what's happened,
(13:54):
which is a story in and of itself. He like
goes out of his way, like there's people who are
in intelligence that are in this that he has their names,
and he's like, I am not naming them because they're
serving intelligence officers, and that's a no no. He doesn't
like specifically give up other than that this is happening
anything that's like particularly dangerous, right, But this is the
(14:17):
kind of thing as soon as it comes out obviously
it's a it's a fewer and it's unlike most of
the time when everybody gets like pissed, it seems to
like it might have some legs because it's just such
a what the buch moment, right.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And it's so contrary to like so much of the
messaging coming from from the Trump administration regarding you know,
like digital security, Hillary's emails.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Prosecuting individual soldiers for any like like you're losing a
night vision goggle. Right, it's kind of a classic.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
One leaking information house.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Administration is gonna gonna crack down and all information weeks,
you know that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
At one point, Excess says we are clear for op sec,
which I thought was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The funniest message in this signal group is that we're
all good on op sec. Yeah, that he's in a
group chat with internal.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, it's super funny. Yeah, everything that's happening here is
very funny. I basically want to move on to like
what's what's going to happen next, which is they are
going to try to nuke Jeffrey Goldberg, Like they're going
to try to send him to a prison, if not
a literal like El Salvadorian work camp, right, like that
that is going to be their next goal here.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
He embarrassed these people, like yes to an extent that
it's I mean, anyone in uniform would have been court
martialed for this kind of security fuck up.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean in times of war in
the past. If like the version of this had happened
in World War Two, they would have just executed whatever
soldier did.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
This, Like, yeah, you don't have to be a spy
if you're incompetent enough to just bumble into a shit,
it's the same result. I did want to address really quickly,
like a couple of things. One, I saw this USA
Today article that was like, oh, it's so relatable that
they made this mistake of adding someone to the group chat.
That was not the mistake. The mistake was coordinating things
that should be classified. Things it should be quote unquote
(16:00):
side on personal devices using signal as opposed to a
state department or government issued device which doesn't have your
personal contacts to avoid all this, like a device which
is not hackable, advice which has not a bit exposed
to QR codes, for example.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, to make sure that in your context there's not
two guys named JG.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, yeah, so you.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Might add the wrong JG to your Yemen bombing.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Chat, haven't we all added the wrong person to a
group chat. And it's like, I mean, yeah, but I've
never like bombed Yemen.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah yeah, like bomb yeah yeah, it's not the same thing.
It's not the same thing as a birthday party.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Yeah, Like I have two friends named John and I
added the wrong one to a group about like planning
a mutual friends birthday party. But like, again, minimal damage,
yeah yeah, no no service. People's lives are put at risk.
I did also want to point out this.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
At one point, Waltz says of Michael Walls, who's a
national security advisor. Yeah, not not the other one. Yeah,
that would be pretty funny. They have him as well.
He was just in there.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
It seems in the ground, like to shoot.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Parent friends with JD vans wouldn't be so.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
One of the things Wolf says which is bizarre is
that like European navies are incapable of defeating hoothy weapons systems.
It just isn't true. Like there was a coalition of
twenty different states running operations in the rest he last year.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
And against like France has a navy, like they've got
a nuclear submarines they could in the world.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
To cite one example, HMS Diamond, which is a British ship,
shot down a Hoothy missile last year. The UK also
struck Houthy targets last year.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yeah, I've watched the UK carry out air strikes.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I've like they're very capable. Look what the Iranian what
the Houthis have is Iranian three fifty eights to just
get really nerdy for a second, right, which are not
really a threat to modern fighter aircraft. It's like a
loitering munition.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Maybe a drone.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah, but no, no like aircraft, not a manned or
personed aircraft.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
The primary point of like how the Hoothies are conducting
their strikes is not we're going to knock all of
these ships out of the sea. It's it will It
will create an unsustainable insurance situation for a lot of merchants.
If there's just always kind of missiles, even if we
never really or almost never hit anybody, that doesn't really matter.
You got to deal with the insurance thing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, they're going to make that much and more expensive,
and that that particular part of global trade much more
difficult to conduct. So far, the Trump administration has doubled
down in its response. This is pretty funny karn Levitt
on Twitter X, I guess called Goldberg.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
She's the White House Press secretary. I believe press.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That's correct. Yeah, why has press secretory? She called Goldberg
a quote Trump hater and also claimed the story was
a quote hoax and a quote sensationalist spin. They are
also right now claiming that quote war plans and quote
attack plans are different things. The information they lead to
was too specific to constitute a war plan. Both of
(19:03):
these things are kind of ludicrous claims, right, very clearly,
this is stuff that should be classified very clearly. It's
stuff that put those people's lives at risk in the
event that the whoth he's had any means to respond
to like F eighteen's, which I don't think they do
really now. But you know, Iran, who absolutely is a
state backer of the who he's, does have the ability,
(19:23):
at least in theory. They they kind of haven't. They've
kind of shown their ass a bit in the last
year or two with Israeli strikes in a run.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Yeah, it's not the ability to like easily interdict these
kinds of strikes, but certainly the ability to and more
importantly kind of the ability to survive them, to like
mitigate the damage that they can do.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Sure, sure to go underground or go somewhere else, and
like those planes are vulnerable when they're like certain points
in their trajectory, I think. So, you know, yeah, it's
generally very poor to broad to broadcast exactly what you're doing, when,
where and how.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
It's kind of just a basic of like military stuff
that you really don't want people to know exactly when
you're sending dudes in to do what.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, there was a very funny meme going around which
basically had like imagined if the same discussion had been
had about D Day in nineteen forty four, And yeah,
that wouldn't have gone so well if they had brought
a lot of great posts. I'm looking at one by
Katie and Autopolis on Twitter right now. Having read through
the full Hoothy PC small group logs, I've come to
(20:21):
the sad realization that I'm the Jdvans of my group chats,
overly emotional, slightly and professional, confused by what everyone else
is saying because I won't scroll up continually derail's plans
with later jactions.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
So good, that's so good.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
It is that is that is really funny.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
That is brutal. Yeah, it is interesting to see their dynamics.
It's interesting to see kind of Stephen Miller seemed to
have the decisive word on let's go ahead with ye Miller, Oh, yeah,
speaking directly for the president.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's what's interesting is no one ever says the president
has approved this, the President has said do this, Like
Miller says something along the lines of like, we're going
forward with this or I've been told we're going forward
with this, yeah, which is again not in terms of
like it's a very Hitler way of doing things right, right,
Like there's this I talk about this in the show.
There's this decades long debate about like the Hitler literally
(21:11):
order the Holocaust or did he just kind of like
keep making it clear to people that if they kept
moving in a more holocausty direction that would.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Like endear them to him.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Aspects of both are true, but like, yeah, this is
definitely kind of example of that ladder thing where Trump
is probably like, yeah, somebody should probably fuck up those hoothies.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
And then Steven.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Miller goes like, yeah, Trump said, you know, we're good,
keep moving forward. But he's also Miller's not dumb. He's
not gonna say Trump he's been doing this. He's gonna say.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
He's been delegating so much more than his first term,
to the point where his presidency is just projecting a
certain vibe that then other people have to carry out
all of the details for it.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah. This is very similar to the Hitler regimes.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yeah, yeah, there is a term for this at the
time in the third reck. It's called working towards the
Fueryka right where you're not going to get direct guidelines,
your supposed to figure out what he wants and move
closer to it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, No, that's kind of been his
new governing style.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It's a lot smarter in terms of like just like.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
You know, getting documents to sign and then projects certain
certain like slogans or vibes that then everyone who works
under him, which is at this point's maybe like roughly
twutored people tops have to all like figure out to
like how to enact this thing that they think he wants.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Yeah, Like, even to the extent that he himself was
saying he didn't sign the evocation of the Alien Enemies
Act that Rubio did. Yeah, his signatures on it in
the federal record. But clearly it's kind of a Rubio
or it seems from that it's a Rubio concoction that
he just greenlit. Just a quote from Miller in case
anyone's wondering exactly what he said. As I heard it,
the President was clear colon green light, but we soon
(22:48):
make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.
So yeah, it's he never he never specifically says the
President has okayed this, But yeah, that's obviously people in
Europe really pissed. I've seen some statements from government ministers
in the United Kingdom like the sort of maligning of
Europe and its military powers is obviously going to piss
(23:09):
those people off. Talking of pissing people off, should we
pivot to advertisements.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
We should, which does not piss me off. It makes
me really happy to consume.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Garrison personal consumes all the products and services that support
this show.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, that's definitely not true.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
It's the only thing that Garrison concerns, which is why
they have Polegra.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I don't know what that is, but sure, here's here's
the ads. All right, we are so bad?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Mm hmmm, yeah, what's rending my auditions?
Speaker 5 (23:48):
James?
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, okay, I'll just start so very amusingly is that's
probably concerningly for him. Judge Boseberg, the same person who
issued a restraining order against the Trump administration for the
rendition of people to Venezuela, has also been assigned the
signal lawsuit American Obsite versus HeiG Seth. So that guy
(24:11):
that the one who Trump already called for his impeachment
right has another crucial case in front of him. What
the Trump administration has done in the court case pertaining
to the rendition of people to El Salvador is invoked
the state secrets privilege in court. Very ironic or very
very ironic. They're talking about state secrets now, having just
added Jeff Goldberg to the group yet, But that's what
(24:32):
they have done. You can go back last week to
understand sort of a bit more about where that's coming from.
If you didn't listen to last week's.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Yeah we did, we did a whole episode on it
last week. Ye.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It's also continuing to claim that it didn't quote unquote
remove migrants after the tepative restraining order was issued because
they'd already been removed. The removal happened when they were
loaded onto the plane. Is this argument concurrectly with this
as a panel hearing? So that's a panel of three
judges right which the government is appeal the attentive restraining order.
During this hearings, CAULLT Judge Patricia Millet said, quote, the
(25:05):
Nazis received better treatment under their Alien Enemies Act than
these Venezuelan migrants. Which is true. The Nazis had hearings
in the nineteen thirties and they didn't just get loaded
onto play in the central work camp. Not a great
reflection and where we're at. The Trump administration is trying
to challenge the jurisdiction of Bozburg, saying that they should
have filed the same claim in Texas. Meanwhile, Thenezuelan government
(25:28):
thirties are filing a colegal claim in El Salvador to
deliberate their citizens from SECOD. It's worth noting, of course,
that these people, some of them, have been tortured by
the Venezuelan government right and chose to flee at no
small risk to their lives, Like if people haven't listened
to some of our older stuff, like I've been to
the Darien Gap, which is the way that the vast
majority of Venezuelan migrants come. You can listen to my
(25:51):
episodes about that if you will know more about why
people are leaving Venezuela. We have a little more information
on some of the people detained. One of them is
a makeup artist who's a gay man who was beaten
by guards as a US photojournalist. Watch. Another one, the
Miami Herald is reporting, had been granted legal refugee status,
So it seems that they sort of randomly grabbed tattooed Venezuelan's.
(26:15):
Some of these people have been through background checks already,
right at which they will have disclosed their tattoos. That's
one of the things that they'll be asked about, and
they would have disclosed those. So whether they control left
it or quite how they came across these people as
to a little bit unclear. A couple of other things
regarding to immigration enforcement this week that have come across
my radar but probably don't merit a whole episode. It's
(26:37):
been reported that the IRS is close to an agreement
to hand over the tax records of undocumented people. It's
claimed for decades if it won't do this. This is
why most documented people pay taxes, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
Which is something that the conservative is just like don't believe.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, so like all these undocumented immigrants are aren't paying
taxes like the rest of us, Like no, actually they are.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
What they're not doing is receiving benefits from those taxes.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, and yes, and this is a great way to
have people want to pay less taxes if they're gonna
get their information sent over to like the Gestapo, Like.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole point was to not provide
a distance. This is similar to why California gives driver's
licenses to undocumented people and allows them to ensure vehicles, right,
because you don't want to provide a disincentive to have
a driver's license, you don't want to provide a disincentive
to have insurance. We have now provided a disincentive to
pay your taxes for undocumented people. So yeah, that will
(27:30):
have consequences, and it will have consequences, especially in industries
right like agriculture and construction, and my large numbers of
people tend to be undocumented. Talking of undocumented migration, the
COMMA secretary Howard Lutnik reports it. He said it's on
the All In podcast. He has claimed to have already
sold one thousand gold cards. So gold cards. If you
(27:51):
didn't listen to our previous.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Oh, I feel like I thought, I'm getting dizzy.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
I'm just like, yeah, I am all yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah. There is no pro for applying for receiving a
gold card yet, so it's extremely unclear what this means
in immigration law terms.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So he just got like a thousand texts from millionaires
being like, yeah, I'll buy one maybe, Like.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, well multimillionaires five million each, right, like so yeah,
apparently not quite clear, Like and like he claims that
he sold them, Like is he going around shopping these around?
Is this how they're going to replace a tax revenue
from undocumented people? Like oh my god, No one knows, no,
no one knows what this means. Who do you pay?
Like very unclear? So yeah, that's great that that is
(28:36):
that it's the current situation with immigration. I also wanted
to add at least three people who were aware of
died in San Diego County on the fourteenth of March
in a storm while crossing the border. One young woman
who survived was found next to the remains of her father,
who died of exposure in a winter storm out here.
(28:56):
So yeah, the border continues to be doing violence to
say of the most martinized people alive, which is great.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
We should pop in here. A story just dropped. Michael Waltz,
the National Security advisor who invited Jeffrey to that group
chat journalists have found his public venmo every time with
the quote, unquote it's full of journalists. I'm just gonna
(29:25):
read a quote from an article on Prospect dot org.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Unsurprisingly, Fox News holds the highest headcount for reporters in
Mike Waltz's phone. Griff Jenkins, who's Fox dot com bio
listen as a Washington based national correspondent for Fox, is
joining the list by Brian Kilmead, co host of Fox
and Friends. Porter Berry, President and editor of Fox Digital,
also made the gut But what right wing reporters are
not the only ones represented in Waltz's venmo list, which
appears to be less than clean on obsec as Secretary
(29:52):
of Defense Heggsceth throat Leland Vintert, a national correspondent for
News Nation, is also listed on the digital account, as
is Breonna Keeler, American journalist who currently serves as co
anchor of the afternoon edition of CNN News Central. Lauren
pike Off, an executive producer at MSNBC, is also in
Wallas's contacts. Earlier this year, Trump tweeted about the network, Wow,
Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings. She'll be off the air soon.
(30:14):
But amidst the broadcasters, producers, and talking heads, one name
stands out from the crowd. Judith Miller, who was summarily
fired from The New York Times after it was revealed
that her reporting on the Iraq war was categorically false
and obtained almost verbatim from Vice President Dick Cheney. Her
dismissal was the price paid for cozying up too close
to an administration set on war. It's just like, okay,
(30:36):
we don't check any of this, we haven't locked anything down.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Good having your public venmo itself is crazy. The fact
that he's like the fact that he's like getting like
dinner with journalists to be like, I'll I'll send you
a Venmo requests for this sushi.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They've downloaded his entire friends list and you can just scroll.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yeah, I know you can see everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh my god, he said to get like a fifteen
dollar venmo requests from Bryan Kilmeade for getting drinks at
a bar, Like, what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
What are we doing? Yeah? Oh so yeah, how well
these people make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, two
dollars you it makes so much money bucks. Yeah, yeah,
it's just one drink in DC.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
So funny. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Now I think it's time, folks that we take a
little bit of a detour and talk about tariffs.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Sorry, locking Jasp, rocking jazz botry, locking, locking.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
J locking Jasp. Oh my god, I love playing that song.
I love playing that song. We don't actually have anything
to say about tariffs. MIA's not here. I will note
there's a graph going around about the potential cost of
Guinness under Trump's tax plan, which is usually around seven
dollars per pint in the US, and we'll now I'll
be twenty two to twenty seven dollars after Trump's you know,
(32:04):
new new tariffs for imported alcohol that.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Reflects its true value. Because it's also yes.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Yes, absolutely, anyway, We're done. That's all I have to
say on tariffs.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
As long as the twisted tea pricing doesn't get affected,
I'll be fine. Then that's good.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Good long I comment.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
In some more upsetting news, another student at Columbia has
been forced into hiding as ICE targets her for deportation.
Unsouchung is a twenty one year old permanent resident who
immigrated to the United States from Korea with her family
when she was seven. On March ninth, she'd received a
text message from Homeland Security Investigations reading, Hyensau, this is
(32:46):
Audrey from the police. My job is to reach out
to you and see if you have any questions about
your recent arrest and the process going forward.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
What are you available for a phone call?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
So this this message was allegedly friends to being arrested,
among others at a recent sit in protest at Bernard
College at Columbia. She was charged and then released with
misdemeanor obstruction. So after receiving that like sketchy text, right,
something that you should never never respond to, you should
immediately send to your lawyer. But after receiving this text,
(33:18):
Chung got an email from Columbia Public Safety reading quote
the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New
York has asked us to inform you that Homeland Security
Investigation agents are seeking to make contact with you in
connection with an administrative warrant for your arrest. Consistent with
university's practice, we wanted to share this information and their
request with you. If you are represented by counsel, it
(33:40):
may make sense for your lawyer to speak directly with
DHS now. That same day, ICE agents showed up at
the home of Chunk's parents, and Chung's lawyer called quote
unquote to Audrey from the police, who revealed she was
actually an ICE agent and stated that there was an
administrative warrant for her arrest and that the State Department
can revoke Miss Chung's residency status. Yes, we're going to
(34:01):
talk more about what's happened with miss Chung after this
at break.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So, when ICE failed to locate this Columbia University student,
they started to enlist the help of federal prosecutors. I'm
going to quote from the New York Times who broke
this story. Quote on March tenth, Perry Carbone, a high
ranking lawyer in the federal Prosecutor's office, told miss Amaud
Miss Chung's attorney that the Secretary of State Mark Rubio
(34:41):
had revoked Miss Chung's visa. Miss Amad responded that Miss
Chung was not in the country on a visa and
was a permanent resident, according to the lawsuit. Miss Carbone
responded that mister Rubio had quote revoked that as well unquote.
So this similar to like a Mahmudkali like demonstrats that
(35:02):
like they have no idea of the of the actual
residency status of the people that they are going after.
They are just going after non citizens and may eventually
start going after citizens too. Like they're just going after
people that they assume have like the least amount of protections,
whether that's a Green card holder, whether that's someone on
a student visa or a work visa. They don't really
know going in there. They're just going after people. Then,
(35:24):
on March thirteenth, ICE searched two residences on campus with warrants,
citing a statute for harboring non citizens. The Trump administration
is arguing that Chung's presence in the United States hinders
the administration's foreign policy agenda. One twenty one year old
student who was the valve victorian at her high school
is hindering their foreign policy agenda for attending a sit
(35:48):
in protest. Her lawyers note that Chung was not, by
any means like a movement leader. She was simply one
of hundreds of students who joined in in nationwide protests
against Israel's actions in Gaza. Her lawyer's right quote, Miss
Chung has not made any public statements to the press
or otherwise assumed a high profile role in these protests.
(36:08):
She was rather one of a large group of college
students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns. Chung herself had
previously faced a university disciplinary process, which found that Chung
was not in violation of any university policy. So in
response to the actions of ICE on Homeland Security to
try to locate and deport her, Chung went into hiding.
(36:30):
Her whereabouts are still unknown as the time of recording,
and her lawyers fouled a lawsuit to prevent her deportation,
claiming that ICE actions against Chung are illegal and unconstitutional.
The lawsuit reads quote officials that the highest echalons a
government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon
to suppress speech that they dislike, including Miss Chung's speech.
ICE's shocking actions against Miss Chung form part of a
(36:53):
larger pattern of attempted US government repression of constitutionally protected
protest activity and other forms of speech. Now, this past Tuesday,
a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting efforts
from ICE to detain or relocate Chung. The judge said
that there is quote nothing in the record indicating that
Chung is a danger to the community or a quote
(37:15):
unquote foreign policy risk, or that she is communicated with
terrorist organizations. The judge said that there would be quote
no trips to Louisiana here, quote, referring to the movement
of Khalil to ICE attention in Louisiana. A DHS statement
said that ICE is going to quote investigate individuals engage
(37:35):
in activities in support of hamas a foreign terrorist organization unquote.
The statement also claimed that Chung would have an opportunity
to present her case before an immigration judge, which is
like contrary to incidence of ICE just deporting people before
they're legally required hearings, even like in defiance of like
extra court orders mandating those hearings, Like ICE is just
(37:59):
lying here and I think it's worth pointing out, like
what types of people they are going after right now.
One type of person that ICE is going after is
like non citizens who were arrested at protests, regardless of
what they actually did.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
This can be anything from standing in the street to
doing a sit in protest to just like being arrested
on campus and removed by campus police or NYPD, right, like,
just just any arrest like on record that shows you
at one of these protests.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The other in the cases like Khalil, like he was
never arrested. He was the subject of a mass doxing
campaign by other students at Columbia, professors and other you know,
quote unquote anti Semitism organizations which target high profile activists
to create like public pressure against them, and those same
lists are now being used by the Trump administration to
(38:47):
target students.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, Pita had one, right, Beta, the ultra Zionist people
who are going around like attempting to fucking present people
with pages, I think they were one of the groups
that had created like a quote unquote depote list. So
we should just mention that a tough student, romeaser Oz Turk,
was essentially abducted on her way to university. Right, there's
video which will link in the show notes here, very
(39:12):
very frightening video of her just standing on the sidewalk.
As first one man approaches her in like a in
like a like a navy hoodie, put mask on his face,
approaches her, stops her.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And then as soon as they start engaging in conversation,
she gets surrounded by like five other people, all wearing
like what I would describe as like a gray man
block essentially that they then like pull out badges and
they like detain her. And it's interesting like as they approach,
most of these people are unmasked, and then as soon
as people realize what's happening, like like like people in
the neighborhood it realize what's happening, they all start pulling
(39:44):
up like a like half faced mask like gators.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, gators.
Speaker 6 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
They looked to me more like than anything the way
prowdboys dressed a lot in like Jordany in nineteen twenty twenty. Yeah,
it's yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Like it's extremely concerning, Like yes, when you you start
seeing at these people mass people snatching people off the street. Right,
she asked if she asked if she can call the
cops and they say, we are the police. It looks
like her phone falls out of her hand at some
point they take her bag. We know this because it
seems like somebody was filming from a building just above,
(40:17):
and you can hear that people say like why are
you covering your person?
Speaker 5 (40:20):
Saying why are you wearing masks?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Why are you covering your faces?
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, yeah, the guy, the guy filming, is like doing
about what he can, given the fact that you have
to assume he had no real idea what was happening
initially other than like something visibly fucked up, Like I'm
glad he said the things that he said.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
But yeah, so yeah, she's a Turkish citizen who is
in the States on a student visa in Boston, Massachusetts
or outside Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah, she's on a F one visa. So just a
couple of dates to a few days before she was seized,
she was like Her name was published by Canary Mission Right.
Canary Mission is a desionist group that has been boxing
for Palestine or anti genocide people for several years now.
She had co edited an op ed in the Toughest
(41:08):
Daily last year. It seems to be how they were
able to identify her. But as Garrison said, right like,
in terms of how they're picking their targets right now,
it seems to be heavily tied disease vigil anti Zionists,
far right groups. I did see that a judge has
already ruled that she shouldn't be left, she shouldn't be
removed from Massachusetts without further consultation with that judge.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
And we don't know if she has been or not already.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
But this is this is continuing to happen, right. We
talked about it this last week.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I'm going to do a whole episode next week about this,
about this issue.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
She is in Louisiana. Sorry, update, she has already been
moved to Louisiana. Yeah, so I'm just reading a truth
out piece here. Officials initially did not specify wells have
been taken and Canarbi it's her lawyer was unable to
reach her. Later on Wednesday, Hanabis said an emotion that
she was informed by a senator's office that the student
was already transferred to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
It's like in a matter of hours they worked to
get her like outside of yeah, her like home state
or she probably has more legal protections.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, it's not something that's super uncommon. I've seen them
do this with what they called lateral transfers under Title
forty two, where they would move people. Under Title forty two,
they can immediately return people to Mexico, right, And what
they would do is laterally transfer them along the border
and return them to another location in Mexico, which obviously
led to them being completely dislocated when they were dropped
(42:25):
in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Something else that I want to note is the use
of this harboring non citizens warrant. Like, one problem that
ICE can run into often is that people can choose
just to not answer the door. I usually likes to
rely on people that have already been arrested or already
detained by like police. Right, that makes it much easier
for immigration officials to find people. Without that, locating people
can be a little bit harder. With the use of
(42:47):
this like harboring non citizens warrant, that shows like there's
trying to create this precedent for being able to actually
break into more people's homes even though you know she
had a permanent resident status. This is just like in
terms of the tactic being used, similar to like you
know this all these like gray Man block people approaching
you on the street one by one. That's like a
tactic to take note of. The use of this type
(43:10):
of warrant is also something to take note of. We
are already at that point where people are like are
like going into hiding. Right, This is like very very
like dystopian ya coded stuff where you're like you are
literally as like as a twenty one year old like junior,
being forced to go into hiding because federal agents are
(43:31):
after you because you sat down. Yeah, you sat down
in front of a building in protest of a genocide.
You're a You're not even a movement leader, and this
this type of thing shouldn't even happen to quote unquote
movement leaders.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Right, Yeah, there's the very First Amendment protects your right
to do that exactly.
Speaker 5 (43:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
But like regardless of whether or not you're involved in
like the planning the organization, whether or not you're making
statements depressed, whether or not you're you're you're giving speeches,
if you just attend these sorts of things, you are
you are a target by what is like very obviously
a modern version of like gestopo like actions.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Yeah, I think it's also quite revealing that she's somewhat
successfully gone into hiding, right, Like it suggests that, yeah,
their intelligent operation is not sordvioleance that they were able
to immediately find her.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Well, No, because again, the resources to do stuff like
trace somebody down by their shoes from like surveillance camera
footage exists. We saw it used on those lawyers who
let police vehicle fire twenty twenty. But like, there's not
really much in the way a crime's going on here.
And there also there's so many of these people, Like
(44:36):
the idea that you would you would pull all of
the footage that you would need to track every one
of these, it's just it's just not feasible.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, and I think they'll just go off to someone
else right to get the headlined. But I'll be following
this one with interest because it's sort of it's sort
of an alternative outcome to the other ones that we've
seen so far, So it'd just be revelatory to see
how it goes. Yeah, So if you want to con
take us about any of this, maybe if you're seeing
(45:02):
things happening on your campus, if you have anything you'd
like to share, things that you think we've missed, you
can do so. The email address is cool Zone tips
at proton dot me. Proton Mail is an encrypted email service.
It's only end to end encrypted like signal. If you
send it from a proton mail address, don't copy any
(45:23):
Atlantic journalists on your email and you should be good
to go.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Thank you to everyone who's been sending those messages. It
does take time for us to go through all of them.
Not all of them will have a response, but we
are reading them.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
I am still working on a piece in the Lavender scare.
There's a lot of stuff happening regarding, you know, suppressing
and going after trans people in the military. This takes time,
but we are working on that slowly but surely, as
well as stuff regarding ice targeting students and what's going
on in Columbia, so we appreciate that. The last thing
(45:59):
I want to talk about is this past Monday, the
IDF killed two Palistinian journalists in Gaza in separate air strikes.
Mohammad Mansour, who works for Palestine Today, was killed quote
in his house in southern Gaza, alongside his wife and
his son without any prior warning. According to al Jazeira.
Later that day, the IDF killed a twenty three year
old Palestinian journalist, Hassam Shabbat, in a targeted airstrike while
(46:24):
he was driving his car in northern Gaza. I want
to read this statement from Hassam quote. If you're reading this,
it means I have been killed, most likely targeted by
the Israeli occupation forces. When all this began, I was
only twenty one years old, a college student with dreams
like anyone else. For the past eighteen months, I've dedicated
every moment of my life to my people. I documented
(46:44):
the horrors in northern Gaza, minute by minute, determined to
show the world the truth they tried to bury. I
slept on pavements, in schools, intents, anywhere I could. Each
day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months,
yet I never left my people's side. God, I fulfilled
my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report
the truth, and now I am finally at rest, something
(47:07):
I haven't known in the past eighteen months. I did
all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I
believe this land is ours, and it has been the
highest honor of my life to die defending it and
serving its people. I ask you now, do not stop
speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away,
keep fighting, keep telling our stories until Palestine is free.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts can now
find sources for it could Happen Here listened directly in
episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.
Cool Media.
Speaker 2 (00:07):
This is it 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 today.
I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. You are
this week, we are covering the week of March twenty
to March twenty six.
Speaker 3 (00:26):
Short week because we did a late recording last week.
Speaker 2 (00:29):
Yep, we did, so it's it's minus one day if
my math is correct. It's been a hard week for
any of us because we all really care about group
chats and group chat security is super important, oh yeah,
to kind of anyone involved in politics, and whenever we
see a breach of this magnitude, it's really a warning
and like a threat to all of us. So it
(00:50):
has it has been. It has been a tough week.
Speaker 4 (00:52):
Yeah, Like a threat to one is a threat to all.
So like that's way I see it. Any group chat
that gets compromised.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
First they came for whovps group, that's right.
Speaker 5 (01:02):
Next they're gonna come.
Speaker 4 (01:03):
Be any of us, could be any of us, Jeffrey
Goldberg could be lurking in your small group that's you
and your girlfriend talking about what kind of pizza do order?
He could be there reporting for the Atlantic. You wouldn't
know unless you like looked at who was in there
and saw his name, then you would know. Which is
true of all of the people in the hoothy PC
small group.
Speaker 5 (01:24):
I guess it is actually pretty easy. You didn't know.
Speaker 3 (01:27):
Maybe maybe Giffrey Goldbug's signal name is like like Cia
Superspy or something, and everyone just assumed you along there.
Speaker 4 (01:34):
I'm gonna start at the beginning because I do assume
that actually, like as impossible as it sounds to those
of us who like wake up and imbibe fucking social
media in the morning like an addict takes their first
hit of crack cocaine, but in a way that's less
healthy for both our hearts and our brains. A decent
number of people who listen to this podcast have just
kind of like heard vaguely like some bits about this.
Speaker 3 (01:56):
Yeah, they're wondering what the fuck we're talking about?
Speaker 4 (01:58):
What are you doing? What are you guys doing? So
we're going to talk about this group chat. So first off,
couple of basics. So Signal is an app that is
end to end encrypted. That means that if you have
signal and your buddy has signal, and you're messaging each other,
it's encrypted, and it is very hard at this point
unless one of your phones is directly compromised by a
(02:19):
nonstate actor or an x who's really good with the computers,
no one else can see what you're messaging each other.
So if you and a friend are like planning what
to order on fucking grub Hub tonight when you go
play Super Smash Brothers or whatever, you can keep that secret.
Or if you and a friend are planning what substances
to buy that the government might not want you buying,
(02:40):
you can keep that secret. Or if you and your
friend simply don't want various media companies taking every detail
and phone carriers taking every detail of your life's conversations
and turning that into analytics data, you can stop them
from doing that. And if maybe one day you might
be engaged in speech that the government might not like,
you can continue to age in that speech privately without
(03:02):
danger or with less danger, yeah, or with with as
little danger as it is possible to do.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
Especially if your messages automatically explode after anywhere between five
seconds to one week, right, which is a feature signal has.
Speaker 4 (03:15):
Yes, you can automatically set it to delete stuff over
a period of time you want to. If you're going
to use it, turn off the thing where it like
pushes messages so that you can like see visible notifications.
Speaker 3 (03:25):
So yeah, not if you.
Speaker 4 (03:26):
Turn them off, because that's a that that'll function.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Up because then your operating system can read the messages
without the encryption. Similarly, never open a QR code.
Speaker 5 (03:35):
This is the yes.
Speaker 2 (03:36):
Really the only way that Signal can can get compromised
on like scale right now beyond like physical infiltration right
like what accidentally happened with who the PC spell group.
Speaker 5 (03:46):
But the main other way.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
That Signal can get compromised is through malicious QR codes
and unknown links. So really be careful about links as
always on the Internet, and especially be skeptical of QR codes.
Speaker 4 (03:59):
Yeah, there's there's a quote from Herman Garring, I think
it was from Herman Gehring. When I hear the word culture,
I reach for my revolver. And I have adapted that
gearing quote to the modern era. When I hear QR code,
I reach for my clock nineteen.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
That's right. Do not use crew argots yeah, the work
of Satan. Let's explain what who these PC small group
is for the people. Well, I'm getting to it. So
you've got you've got this app which is normally used
by and has been used for a long time by
like protesters and dissidents and journalists to communicate with sources
because it's very secure. The Trump administration takes office, one
(04:34):
thing that they are annoyed about is that when you
are government employees, even if you're doing top secret shit,
especially if you're doing top secret shit, the kind of
meetings about national security planning for like military actions that
you are supposed to only have in something called a skiff.
And a skiff is basically a room in.
Speaker 4 (04:52):
You know, the West Wing, I think, or the Pentagon, right,
I'm not one hundred percent sure where all the skiffs are,
but it's like a room that is incredibly secure, and
it is the the only place that you are supposed
to have certain kinds of conversations. And in fact, if
you are having one of those kinds of conversations in
a skiff, no one, not even the president or the
vice president, is allowed to have a phone in there.
(05:14):
It is a very strict rule. You don't take phones
into the skiff because none of them are fucking secure. Now,
the problem is all these communications, all of this stuff
is documented and potentially foiaable. Maybe not immediately because there's
always security concerns. They have the ability to redact stuff,
but in twenty years perhaps, but at some.
Speaker 3 (05:33):
Point, yeah, it might be archived even if it's not flable.
Speaker 4 (05:37):
People who are in charge of our military now didn't
like that and were like, hey, what if we all
just did it through a single group, and they did
to plan for an attack that started March fifteenth against
the Hoothys. Now you will remember the hoothis from the
episode James and I did. I mean from other stuff too,
because they're all over the news.
Speaker 5 (05:55):
You know, the Hoothy stuff.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
James and I did an episode recently about it regular
naval warfare, and you check it out. That's all still
pretty relevant.
Speaker 5 (06:03):
Better known for their other work, yeah, better.
Speaker 4 (06:05):
Known for their other work. The Biden administration was like,
we can probably take care of these guys with air strikes,
and it didn't really work. And the Trump administration was like,
we can do a better job of taking these guys
out with air strikes, and at this point it's too
early to say if it worked or not, but I'm
gonna guess probably didn't.
Speaker 5 (06:22):
Probably not, just generally given the history.
Speaker 4 (06:24):
Maybe they say they killed a lot more high value
targets and top missile guys.
Speaker 3 (06:29):
The main missile guy quote.
Speaker 4 (06:31):
I don't know. I'm not I don't know. I'm not
privy to the information they're working off of or how
much it matters at this point.
Speaker 3 (06:38):
Right.
Speaker 4 (06:38):
So we'll see, you know, in that signal chat, Rob,
I'm not in that signal chat they have, not accidentally.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
I'm in too many signal chats, frankly.
Speaker 3 (06:46):
Yeah, yeah, I could be, and I might not know.
Speaker 5 (06:48):
Ye, we all are in too many.
Speaker 3 (06:51):
I might be in several government ones and be totally
unaware of it because there's too many notifications on my.
Speaker 5 (06:55):
F that shit's mute and I'm not seeing that.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
So they decide we're going to plan an attack on
some Hoothi's. We're gonna be hitting them with stuff, and
we should probably all get we need to get all
of these different kind of people from different chunks of
the you know, the government together. So we got to
have JD. Vance and his representative because usually Vance is
too busy to respond, and we got to have the
Defense Secretary Pete hegg Zeth and his representative. We've got
to have the d n I Toulci Gabbard her representative.
(07:21):
Weve got to have the head of the CIA his
represent you know that kind of thing. There's a few more
people in there, Mark Rubio, Mark Rubio, right, Sex State,
you know, and his representative Rvian Miller, Steven Miller. I
don't know that Miller had a representative. He feels like
he handles a lot of this stuff on his own,
but yeah, on his phone too much Steven Miller.
Speaker 5 (07:40):
Yeh, chronically online Steven Miller.
Speaker 4 (07:43):
Yeah, and you have you have the head of I
think Sincom was in there. Anyway. You got all these
people in there, and while they're setting this up, all
the invites are going out. Because the way you do
it with Signal is you click a button that says
like start a new group. You name the new group.
In this case, they named the group HOOVPCS right, and uh,
what does PC stand for?
Speaker 2 (08:03):
In this politically correct? Which, honestly I thought that we
were over.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
Yeah, you'd think so, huh, don't Sandy slurs in the
group chat that says what. It's just a reminder.
Speaker 4 (08:12):
Yeah, yeah, no slurs in the small group chat.
Speaker 3 (08:15):
Planning committee, I'm guessing, yeah.
Speaker 4 (08:17):
Planning committee. Who the planning committee, small group. Sorry, I
had that written down somewhere. So they make this group
chat and they invite a bunch of people. And here's
one of the ways signal works is that, like, if
you're just importing your contacts in the signal, it'll find
the guys who have signal and it'll just like show you,
based on whatever your name you have for them in
their phone right that they're on signal, and you can
(08:37):
just invite them. Otherwise, you can set what your signal
name is going to be, and so when people type
in your phone number or whatever, they'll see that, or
if you send them an invite, that's the name they'll see.
And this brings us. I got to take an aside
to talk about a guy who is not a member
of the Trump administration and who is not a member
of government, a man named Jeffrey Goldberg born in nineteen
sixty five. He is currently the co editor of the Atlantic.
(09:01):
Prior to this, he had what some people would call
an illustrious career. He grew up in Malvern and long
Eye and I'm Maulvin. Yeah, I'm looking at his wiki here,
which just has the line that his neighborhood was mainly
Catholic and he described it as a wasteland of Irish pagramists.
Speaker 3 (09:18):
Oh he had a fun childhood, So okay, interesting, interesting
Jeffrey fascinating stuff there. Interesting.
Speaker 4 (09:29):
So after college or kind of while he's in college,
he leaves and he goes to Israel because he wants
to serve in the IDF during the Infata, the first
one as a prison guard Jesus Christ, which is where
Palestinian participants in the Intefub were being held. And yeah,
he he had like an interesting conversation with this PLO
(09:49):
leader who is also like a math teacher, who I
guess they were able to like discuss their Zionism or
whatever in some way that he found useful anyway, weird guy.
Not I bring this up to be like not a
left wing radical.
Speaker 5 (10:03):
Like not one of quote unquote to our guys.
Speaker 4 (10:05):
One of our guys. Not a guy who's probably broadly
opposed to most of and in fact to most of
what the Trump administration is.
Speaker 5 (10:12):
Doing over especially the air strikes.
Speaker 4 (10:14):
Frankly, yes, now he has pissed off It's fair to
say he has really pissed off Trump a number of times, right,
because he wrote some articles. He wrote that twenty twenty
article in the Atlantic about when Trump said got caught
saying that Americans who died in wars are losers and suckers. Yes,
which is you know, based on sourcing that he had.
So he's also attracted their ire. But he's again generally
(10:36):
I would say, like more on the bootleoker east side
of things, Like he's just kind of like a NATSEK cheerleader, right,
that that would be a fair way to describe Jeffrey.
I don't know that he would entirely disagree with that
description of himself.
Speaker 5 (10:48):
Yeah, like a neo lobe guy.
Speaker 4 (10:49):
Yeah, that said, he's not so much of one that
he's unwilling to report critical stuff, which is what happens here.
So he gets an invite on his phone that it
just takes him into this PC hoothy small group and
people have done the work. There's another guy in the
Trump administration whose initials are.
Speaker 5 (11:05):
JC John Greenbrier I believe, Yeah.
Speaker 4 (11:08):
I think it was John Greenbrier and the person who
because there was some debate initially about like who invited him,
because after this came out, there were allegations that he
snuck his way in or whatever. We now know based
on the evidence that he was inadvertently invited by National
Security Advisor Michael Waltz, right.
Speaker 5 (11:27):
As evidenced by the signal screen shot.
Speaker 4 (11:28):
Yes, yes, yes, there's lots of screenshots. Jeffrey did his
you know, the job of document eventually, yes, well he
documented it right away.
Speaker 3 (11:36):
Yes.
Speaker 4 (11:36):
So now here's the thing. From the beginning here, Jeffrey
is having the natural reaction. I will say this wrong
my critiques of him. He has the reaction I think
any minimally competent journalist would have. Someone's fucking with.
Speaker 5 (11:48):
Me, Yeah, yeah, this is like something to get me.
Speaker 4 (11:50):
Yeah, you don't get invited into a chat with the
sect deaf and the head of the CIA planning a
military strike, right, But that just doesn't happen.
Speaker 3 (11:57):
I'd bit of Johna's for a while. That's not a
good to me. Yeah, that's not does not really go down.
Speaker 4 (12:02):
So he's like trying to figure out what the fuck's
going on. I'm like, what's happening, and he's like he's
making a note he's documenting stuff is there, and they're
talking about like weapons packages, like these are the kind
of weapons, this is where they're striking. And then as
the strikes going, they're being like this guy headed into
his girlfriend's house, we're hitting it. The house blew up.
Speaker 3 (12:19):
He's dead.
Speaker 5 (12:20):
Right.
Speaker 3 (12:20):
Particular exchange was very funny because the way he phrased
it was like it completely baffled JD Vance. Yes, let
me pull this up because it was it was pretty funny.
No please please uh. Michael Waltz VP full Stop building collapsed,
full Stop had multiple positive ID full stop, Pete Carilla,
the ic amazing job. JD Vance replies, what Michael Waltz
(12:45):
typing too fast full stop the first target, M Dash
that top missile guy, M Dash. We have positive idea
of him walking into his girlfriend's building and now it's collapsed,
and then Jdvbarnes replies, excellent. At this point, Michael Waltz
responds with the fist emoji, American flag emoji, flame emoji.
Speaker 4 (13:04):
Yeah, so it's great and once it becomes very clear
what's happening, Number one, rather than stay in the group,
see if maybe he could get invited to other groups,
just kind of like keep track of what was going
on again being a guy who's like primary concern and
I really do think Goldberg's primary concern here was the
security of US soldiers, like.
Speaker 5 (13:24):
The national security of the United States.
Speaker 4 (13:26):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, as opposed to like is any
of this legal?
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Are they?
Speaker 4 (13:31):
Like what like his is just like these people are
not being secure like with I mean like this this
could if the wrong person got invited to a group
like this, it could potentially endanger the lives of airmen
and stuff. That's on my primary concern with all this, right,
But that is his, you know. And so he hops
out of the group. He leaves, and he puts out
this article and he redacts most other than the what's happened,
(13:54):
which is a story in and of itself. He like
goes out of his way, like there's people who are
in intelligence that are in this that he has their names,
and he's like, I am not naming them because they're
serving intelligence officers, and that's a no no. He doesn't
like specifically give up other than that this is happening
anything that's like particularly dangerous, right, But this is the
(14:17):
kind of thing as soon as it comes out obviously
it's a it's a fewer and it's unlike most of
the time when everybody gets like pissed, it seems to
like it might have some legs because it's just such
a what the buch moment, right.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
And it's so contrary to like so much of the
messaging coming from from the Trump administration regarding you know,
like digital security, Hillary's emails.
Speaker 3 (14:37):
Prosecuting individual soldiers for any like like you're losing a
night vision goggle. Right, it's kind of a classic.
Speaker 5 (14:44):
One leaking information house.
Speaker 2 (14:46):
Administration is gonna gonna crack down and all information weeks,
you know that sort of stuff.
Speaker 3 (14:51):
At one point, Excess says we are clear for op sec,
which I thought was pretty funny.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
The funniest message in this signal group is that we're
all good on op sec. Yeah, that he's in a
group chat with internal.
Speaker 3 (15:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (15:02):
Yeah, it's super funny. Yeah, everything that's happening here is
very funny. I basically want to move on to like
what's what's going to happen next, which is they are
going to try to nuke Jeffrey Goldberg, Like they're going
to try to send him to a prison, if not
a literal like El Salvadorian work camp, right, like that
that is going to be their next goal here.
Speaker 3 (15:23):
He embarrassed these people, like yes to an extent that
it's I mean, anyone in uniform would have been court
martialed for this kind of security fuck up.
Speaker 4 (15:30):
Oh yeah, yeah, I mean in times of war in
the past. If like the version of this had happened
in World War Two, they would have just executed whatever
soldier did.
Speaker 3 (15:39):
This, Like, yeah, you don't have to be a spy
if you're incompetent enough to just bumble into a shit,
it's the same result. I did want to address really quickly,
like a couple of things. One, I saw this USA
Today article that was like, oh, it's so relatable that
they made this mistake of adding someone to the group chat.
That was not the mistake. The mistake was coordinating things
that should be classified. Things it should be quote unquote
(16:00):
side on personal devices using signal as opposed to a
state department or government issued device which doesn't have your
personal contacts to avoid all this, like a device which
is not hackable, advice which has not a bit exposed
to QR codes, for example.
Speaker 2 (16:15):
Yeah, to make sure that in your context there's not
two guys named JG.
Speaker 3 (16:20):
Yeah, yeah, so you.
Speaker 5 (16:20):
Might add the wrong JG to your Yemen bombing.
Speaker 4 (16:23):
Chat, haven't we all added the wrong person to a
group chat. And it's like, I mean, yeah, but I've
never like bombed Yemen.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Yeah yeah, like bomb yeah yeah, it's not the same thing.
It's not the same thing as a birthday party.
Speaker 4 (16:37):
Yeah, Like I have two friends named John and I
added the wrong one to a group about like planning
a mutual friends birthday party. But like, again, minimal damage,
yeah yeah, no no service. People's lives are put at risk.
I did also want to point out this.
Speaker 3 (16:52):
At one point, Waltz says of Michael Walls, who's a
national security advisor. Yeah, not not the other one. Yeah,
that would be pretty funny. They have him as well.
He was just in there.
Speaker 4 (17:02):
It seems in the ground, like to shoot.
Speaker 5 (17:06):
Parent friends with JD vans wouldn't be so.
Speaker 3 (17:11):
One of the things Wolf says which is bizarre is
that like European navies are incapable of defeating hoothy weapons systems.
It just isn't true. Like there was a coalition of
twenty different states running operations in the rest he last year.
Speaker 4 (17:24):
And against like France has a navy, like they've got
a nuclear submarines they could in the world.
Speaker 3 (17:31):
To cite one example, HMS Diamond, which is a British ship,
shot down a Hoothy missile last year. The UK also
struck Houthy targets last year.
Speaker 4 (17:40):
Yeah, I've watched the UK carry out air strikes.
Speaker 3 (17:43):
I've like they're very capable. Look what the Iranian what
the Houthis have is Iranian three fifty eights to just
get really nerdy for a second, right, which are not
really a threat to modern fighter aircraft. It's like a
loitering munition.
Speaker 4 (17:56):
Maybe a drone.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Yeah, but no, no like aircraft, not a manned or
personed aircraft.
Speaker 4 (18:03):
The primary point of like how the Hoothies are conducting
their strikes is not we're going to knock all of
these ships out of the sea. It's it will It
will create an unsustainable insurance situation for a lot of merchants.
If there's just always kind of missiles, even if we
never really or almost never hit anybody, that doesn't really matter.
You got to deal with the insurance thing.
Speaker 3 (18:23):
Yeah, they're going to make that much and more expensive,
and that that particular part of global trade much more
difficult to conduct. So far, the Trump administration has doubled
down in its response. This is pretty funny karn Levitt
on Twitter X, I guess called Goldberg.
Speaker 5 (18:40):
She's the White House Press secretary. I believe press.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
That's correct. Yeah, why has press secretory? She called Goldberg
a quote Trump hater and also claimed the story was
a quote hoax and a quote sensationalist spin. They are
also right now claiming that quote war plans and quote
attack plans are different things. The information they lead to
was too specific to constitute a war plan. Both of
(19:03):
these things are kind of ludicrous claims, right, very clearly,
this is stuff that should be classified very clearly. It's
stuff that put those people's lives at risk in the
event that the whoth he's had any means to respond
to like F eighteen's, which I don't think they do
really now. But you know, Iran, who absolutely is a
state backer of the who he's, does have the ability,
(19:23):
at least in theory. They they kind of haven't. They've
kind of shown their ass a bit in the last
year or two with Israeli strikes in a run.
Speaker 4 (19:30):
Yeah, it's not the ability to like easily interdict these
kinds of strikes, but certainly the ability to and more
importantly kind of the ability to survive them, to like
mitigate the damage that they can do.
Speaker 3 (19:40):
Sure, sure to go underground or go somewhere else, and
like those planes are vulnerable when they're like certain points
in their trajectory, I think. So, you know, yeah, it's
generally very poor to broad to broadcast exactly what you're doing, when,
where and how.
Speaker 4 (19:51):
It's kind of just a basic of like military stuff
that you really don't want people to know exactly when
you're sending dudes in to do what.
Speaker 6 (19:59):
Yah.
Speaker 3 (20:00):
Yeah, there was a very funny meme going around which
basically had like imagined if the same discussion had been
had about D Day in nineteen forty four, And yeah,
that wouldn't have gone so well if they had brought
a lot of great posts. I'm looking at one by
Katie and Autopolis on Twitter right now. Having read through
the full Hoothy PC small group logs, I've come to
(20:21):
the sad realization that I'm the Jdvans of my group chats,
overly emotional, slightly and professional, confused by what everyone else
is saying because I won't scroll up continually derail's plans
with later jactions.
Speaker 5 (20:32):
So good, that's so good.
Speaker 4 (20:35):
It is that is that is really funny.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
That is brutal. Yeah, it is interesting to see their dynamics.
It's interesting to see kind of Stephen Miller seemed to
have the decisive word on let's go ahead with ye Miller, Oh, yeah,
speaking directly for the president.
Speaker 4 (20:50):
That's what's interesting is no one ever says the president
has approved this, the President has said do this, Like
Miller says something along the lines of like, we're going
forward with this or I've been told we're going forward
with this, yeah, which is again not in terms of
like it's a very Hitler way of doing things right, right,
Like there's this I talk about this in the show.
There's this decades long debate about like the Hitler literally
(21:11):
order the Holocaust or did he just kind of like
keep making it clear to people that if they kept
moving in a more holocausty direction that would.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
Like endear them to him.
Speaker 4 (21:22):
Aspects of both are true, but like, yeah, this is
definitely kind of example of that ladder thing where Trump
is probably like, yeah, somebody should probably fuck up those hoothies.
Speaker 3 (21:30):
And then Steven.
Speaker 4 (21:31):
Miller goes like, yeah, Trump said, you know, we're good,
keep moving forward. But he's also Miller's not dumb. He's
not gonna say Trump he's been doing this. He's gonna say.
Speaker 2 (21:38):
He's been delegating so much more than his first term,
to the point where his presidency is just projecting a
certain vibe that then other people have to carry out
all of the details for it.
Speaker 3 (21:48):
Yeah. This is very similar to the Hitler regimes.
Speaker 4 (21:52):
Yeah, yeah, there is a term for this at the
time in the third reck. It's called working towards the
Fueryka right where you're not going to get direct guidelines,
your supposed to figure out what he wants and move
closer to it.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Yeah, no, exactly. Yeah, No, that's kind of been his
new governing style.
Speaker 4 (22:07):
It's a lot smarter in terms of like just like.
Speaker 2 (22:10):
You know, getting documents to sign and then projects certain
certain like slogans or vibes that then everyone who works
under him, which is at this point's maybe like roughly
twutored people tops have to all like figure out to
like how to enact this thing that they think he wants.
Speaker 3 (22:26):
Yeah, Like, even to the extent that he himself was
saying he didn't sign the evocation of the Alien Enemies
Act that Rubio did. Yeah, his signatures on it in
the federal record. But clearly it's kind of a Rubio
or it seems from that it's a Rubio concoction that
he just greenlit. Just a quote from Miller in case
anyone's wondering exactly what he said. As I heard it,
the President was clear colon green light, but we soon
(22:48):
make clear to Egypt and Europe what we expect in return.
So yeah, it's he never he never specifically says the
President has okayed this, But yeah, that's obviously people in
Europe really pissed. I've seen some statements from government ministers
in the United Kingdom like the sort of maligning of
Europe and its military powers is obviously going to piss
(23:09):
those people off. Talking of pissing people off, should we
pivot to advertisements.
Speaker 2 (23:12):
We should, which does not piss me off. It makes
me really happy to consume.
Speaker 3 (23:18):
Garrison personal consumes all the products and services that support
this show.
Speaker 5 (23:21):
Yeah, that's definitely not true.
Speaker 4 (23:23):
It's the only thing that Garrison concerns, which is why
they have Polegra.
Speaker 2 (23:27):
I don't know what that is, but sure, here's here's
the ads. All right, we are so bad?
Speaker 4 (23:44):
Mm hmmm, yeah, what's rending my auditions?
Speaker 5 (23:48):
James?
Speaker 3 (23:49):
Yeah, okay, I'll just start so very amusingly is that's
probably concerningly for him. Judge Boseberg, the same person who
issued a restraining order against the Trump administration for the
rendition of people to Venezuela, has also been assigned the
signal lawsuit American Obsite versus HeiG Seth. So that guy
(24:11):
that the one who Trump already called for his impeachment
right has another crucial case in front of him. What
the Trump administration has done in the court case pertaining
to the rendition of people to El Salvador is invoked
the state secrets privilege in court. Very ironic or very
very ironic. They're talking about state secrets now, having just
added Jeff Goldberg to the group yet, But that's what
(24:32):
they have done. You can go back last week to
understand sort of a bit more about where that's coming from.
If you didn't listen to last week's.
Speaker 5 (24:39):
Yeah we did, we did a whole episode on it
last week. Ye.
Speaker 3 (24:41):
It's also continuing to claim that it didn't quote unquote
remove migrants after the tepative restraining order was issued because
they'd already been removed. The removal happened when they were
loaded onto the plane. Is this argument concurrectly with this
as a panel hearing? So that's a panel of three
judges right which the government is appeal the attentive restraining order.
During this hearings, CAULLT Judge Patricia Millet said, quote, the
(25:05):
Nazis received better treatment under their Alien Enemies Act than
these Venezuelan migrants. Which is true. The Nazis had hearings
in the nineteen thirties and they didn't just get loaded
onto play in the central work camp. Not a great
reflection and where we're at. The Trump administration is trying
to challenge the jurisdiction of Bozburg, saying that they should
have filed the same claim in Texas. Meanwhile, Thenezuelan government
(25:28):
thirties are filing a colegal claim in El Salvador to
deliberate their citizens from SECOD. It's worth noting, of course,
that these people, some of them, have been tortured by
the Venezuelan government right and chose to flee at no
small risk to their lives, Like if people haven't listened
to some of our older stuff, like I've been to
the Darien Gap, which is the way that the vast
majority of Venezuelan migrants come. You can listen to my
(25:51):
episodes about that if you will know more about why
people are leaving Venezuela. We have a little more information
on some of the people detained. One of them is
a makeup artist who's a gay man who was beaten
by guards as a US photojournalist. Watch. Another one, the
Miami Herald is reporting, had been granted legal refugee status,
So it seems that they sort of randomly grabbed tattooed Venezuelan's.
(26:15):
Some of these people have been through background checks already,
right at which they will have disclosed their tattoos. That's
one of the things that they'll be asked about, and
they would have disclosed those. So whether they control left
it or quite how they came across these people as
to a little bit unclear. A couple of other things
regarding to immigration enforcement this week that have come across
my radar but probably don't merit a whole episode. It's
(26:37):
been reported that the IRS is close to an agreement
to hand over the tax records of undocumented people. It's
claimed for decades if it won't do this. This is
why most documented people pay taxes, right, yeah.
Speaker 5 (26:49):
Which is something that the conservative is just like don't believe.
Speaker 2 (26:51):
Yes, so like all these undocumented immigrants are aren't paying
taxes like the rest of us, Like no, actually they are.
Speaker 3 (26:57):
What they're not doing is receiving benefits from those taxes.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Yeah, and yes, and this is a great way to
have people want to pay less taxes if they're gonna
get their information sent over to like the Gestapo, Like.
Speaker 3 (27:10):
Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The whole point was to not provide
a distance. This is similar to why California gives driver's
licenses to undocumented people and allows them to ensure vehicles, right,
because you don't want to provide a disincentive to have
a driver's license, you don't want to provide a disincentive
to have insurance. We have now provided a disincentive to
pay your taxes for undocumented people. So yeah, that will
(27:30):
have consequences, and it will have consequences, especially in industries
right like agriculture and construction, and my large numbers of
people tend to be undocumented. Talking of undocumented migration, the
COMMA secretary Howard Lutnik reports it. He said it's on
the All In podcast. He has claimed to have already
sold one thousand gold cards. So gold cards. If you
(27:51):
didn't listen to our previous.
Speaker 5 (27:53):
Oh, I feel like I thought, I'm getting dizzy.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
I'm just like, yeah, I am all yeah.
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah. There is no pro for applying for receiving a
gold card yet, so it's extremely unclear what this means
in immigration law terms.
Speaker 2 (28:06):
So he just got like a thousand texts from millionaires
being like, yeah, I'll buy one maybe, Like.
Speaker 3 (28:12):
Yeah, well multimillionaires five million each, right, like so yeah,
apparently not quite clear, Like and like he claims that
he sold them, Like is he going around shopping these around?
Is this how they're going to replace a tax revenue
from undocumented people? Like oh my god, No one knows, no,
no one knows what this means. Who do you pay?
Like very unclear? So yeah, that's great that that is
(28:36):
that it's the current situation with immigration. I also wanted
to add at least three people who were aware of
died in San Diego County on the fourteenth of March
in a storm while crossing the border. One young woman
who survived was found next to the remains of her father,
who died of exposure in a winter storm out here.
(28:56):
So yeah, the border continues to be doing violence to
say of the most martinized people alive, which is great.
Speaker 4 (29:03):
We should pop in here. A story just dropped. Michael Waltz,
the National Security advisor who invited Jeffrey to that group
chat journalists have found his public venmo every time with
the quote, unquote it's full of journalists. I'm just gonna
(29:25):
read a quote from an article on Prospect dot org.
Speaker 6 (29:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (29:29):
Unsurprisingly, Fox News holds the highest headcount for reporters in
Mike Waltz's phone. Griff Jenkins, who's Fox dot com bio
listen as a Washington based national correspondent for Fox, is
joining the list by Brian Kilmead, co host of Fox
and Friends. Porter Berry, President and editor of Fox Digital,
also made the gut But what right wing reporters are
not the only ones represented in Waltz's venmo list, which
appears to be less than clean on obsec as Secretary
(29:52):
of Defense Heggsceth throat Leland Vintert, a national correspondent for
News Nation, is also listed on the digital account, as
is Breonna Keeler, American journalist who currently serves as co
anchor of the afternoon edition of CNN News Central. Lauren
pike Off, an executive producer at MSNBC, is also in
Wallas's contacts. Earlier this year, Trump tweeted about the network, Wow,
Rachel Maddow has horrible ratings. She'll be off the air soon.
(30:14):
But amidst the broadcasters, producers, and talking heads, one name
stands out from the crowd. Judith Miller, who was summarily
fired from The New York Times after it was revealed
that her reporting on the Iraq war was categorically false
and obtained almost verbatim from Vice President Dick Cheney. Her
dismissal was the price paid for cozying up too close
to an administration set on war. It's just like, okay,
(30:36):
we don't check any of this, we haven't locked anything down.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Good having your public venmo itself is crazy. The fact
that he's like the fact that he's like getting like
dinner with journalists to be like, I'll I'll send you
a Venmo requests for this sushi.
Speaker 6 (30:51):
Oh man.
Speaker 3 (30:52):
They've downloaded his entire friends list and you can just scroll.
Speaker 4 (30:55):
Yeah, I know you can see everybody.
Speaker 2 (30:57):
Oh my god, he said to get like a fifteen
dollar venmo requests from Bryan Kilmeade for getting drinks at
a bar, Like, what are we doing?
Speaker 3 (31:06):
What are we doing? Yeah? Oh so yeah, how well
these people make hundreds of thousands, if not millions, two
dollars you it makes so much money bucks. Yeah, yeah,
it's just one drink in DC.
Speaker 5 (31:16):
So funny. Oh my god.
Speaker 4 (31:19):
Now I think it's time, folks that we take a
little bit of a detour and talk about tariffs.
Speaker 6 (31:28):
Sorry, locking Jasp, rocking jazz botry, locking, locking.
Speaker 4 (31:40):
J locking Jasp. Oh my god, I love playing that song.
I love playing that song. We don't actually have anything
to say about tariffs. MIA's not here. I will note
there's a graph going around about the potential cost of
Guinness under Trump's tax plan, which is usually around seven
dollars per pint in the US, and we'll now I'll
be twenty two to twenty seven dollars after Trump's you know,
(32:04):
new new tariffs for imported alcohol that.
Speaker 3 (32:06):
Reflects its true value. Because it's also yes.
Speaker 4 (32:09):
Yes, absolutely, anyway, We're done. That's all I have to
say on tariffs.
Speaker 5 (32:13):
As long as the twisted tea pricing doesn't get affected,
I'll be fine. Then that's good.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
Good long I comment.
Speaker 5 (32:23):
Now.
Speaker 2 (32:23):
In some more upsetting news, another student at Columbia has
been forced into hiding as ICE targets her for deportation.
Unsouchung is a twenty one year old permanent resident who
immigrated to the United States from Korea with her family
when she was seven. On March ninth, she'd received a
text message from Homeland Security Investigations reading, Hyensau, this is
(32:46):
Audrey from the police. My job is to reach out
to you and see if you have any questions about
your recent arrest and the process going forward.
Speaker 5 (32:55):
What are you available for a phone call?
Speaker 2 (32:57):
So this this message was allegedly friends to being arrested,
among others at a recent sit in protest at Bernard
College at Columbia. She was charged and then released with
misdemeanor obstruction. So after receiving that like sketchy text, right,
something that you should never never respond to, you should
immediately send to your lawyer. But after receiving this text,
(33:18):
Chung got an email from Columbia Public Safety reading quote
the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New
York has asked us to inform you that Homeland Security
Investigation agents are seeking to make contact with you in
connection with an administrative warrant for your arrest. Consistent with
university's practice, we wanted to share this information and their
request with you. If you are represented by counsel, it
(33:40):
may make sense for your lawyer to speak directly with
DHS now. That same day, ICE agents showed up at
the home of Chunk's parents, and Chung's lawyer called quote
unquote to Audrey from the police, who revealed she was
actually an ICE agent and stated that there was an
administrative warrant for her arrest and that the State Department
can revoke Miss Chung's residency status. Yes, we're going to
(34:01):
talk more about what's happened with miss Chung after this
at break.
Speaker 5 (34:17):
All right, we're back.
Speaker 2 (34:20):
So, when ICE failed to locate this Columbia University student,
they started to enlist the help of federal prosecutors. I'm
going to quote from the New York Times who broke
this story. Quote on March tenth, Perry Carbone, a high
ranking lawyer in the federal Prosecutor's office, told miss Amaud
Miss Chung's attorney that the Secretary of State Mark Rubio
(34:41):
had revoked Miss Chung's visa. Miss Amad responded that Miss
Chung was not in the country on a visa and
was a permanent resident, according to the lawsuit. Miss Carbone
responded that mister Rubio had quote revoked that as well unquote.
So this similar to like a Mahmudkali like demonstrats that
(35:02):
like they have no idea of the of the actual
residency status of the people that they are going after.
They are just going after non citizens and may eventually
start going after citizens too. Like they're just going after
people that they assume have like the least amount of protections,
whether that's a Green card holder, whether that's someone on
a student visa or a work visa. They don't really
know going in there. They're just going after people. Then,
(35:24):
on March thirteenth, ICE searched two residences on campus with warrants,
citing a statute for harboring non citizens. The Trump administration
is arguing that Chung's presence in the United States hinders
the administration's foreign policy agenda. One twenty one year old
student who was the valve victorian at her high school
is hindering their foreign policy agenda for attending a sit
(35:48):
in protest. Her lawyers note that Chung was not, by
any means like a movement leader. She was simply one
of hundreds of students who joined in in nationwide protests
against Israel's actions in Gaza. Her lawyer's right quote, Miss
Chung has not made any public statements to the press
or otherwise assumed a high profile role in these protests.
(36:08):
She was rather one of a large group of college
students raising, expressing, and discussing shared concerns. Chung herself had
previously faced a university disciplinary process, which found that Chung
was not in violation of any university policy. So in
response to the actions of ICE on Homeland Security to
try to locate and deport her, Chung went into hiding.
(36:30):
Her whereabouts are still unknown as the time of recording,
and her lawyers fouled a lawsuit to prevent her deportation,
claiming that ICE actions against Chung are illegal and unconstitutional.
The lawsuit reads quote officials that the highest echalons a
government are attempting to use immigration enforcement as a bludgeon
to suppress speech that they dislike, including Miss Chung's speech.
ICE's shocking actions against Miss Chung form part of a
(36:53):
larger pattern of attempted US government repression of constitutionally protected
protest activity and other forms of speech. Now, this past Tuesday,
a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order halting efforts
from ICE to detain or relocate Chung. The judge said
that there is quote nothing in the record indicating that
Chung is a danger to the community or a quote
(37:15):
unquote foreign policy risk, or that she is communicated with
terrorist organizations. The judge said that there would be quote
no trips to Louisiana here, quote, referring to the movement
of Khalil to ICE attention in Louisiana. A DHS statement
said that ICE is going to quote investigate individuals engage
(37:35):
in activities in support of hamas a foreign terrorist organization unquote.
The statement also claimed that Chung would have an opportunity
to present her case before an immigration judge, which is
like contrary to incidence of ICE just deporting people before
they're legally required hearings, even like in defiance of like
extra court orders mandating those hearings, Like ICE is just
(37:59):
lying here and I think it's worth pointing out, like
what types of people they are going after right now.
One type of person that ICE is going after is
like non citizens who were arrested at protests, regardless of
what they actually did.
Speaker 6 (38:11):
Right.
Speaker 2 (38:11):
This can be anything from standing in the street to
doing a sit in protest to just like being arrested
on campus and removed by campus police or NYPD, right, like,
just just any arrest like on record that shows you
at one of these protests.
Speaker 1 (38:25):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (38:26):
The other in the cases like Khalil, like he was
never arrested. He was the subject of a mass doxing
campaign by other students at Columbia, professors and other you know,
quote unquote anti Semitism organizations which target high profile activists
to create like public pressure against them, and those same
lists are now being used by the Trump administration to
(38:47):
target students.
Speaker 3 (38:49):
Yeah, Pita had one, right, Beta, the ultra Zionist people
who are going around like attempting to fucking present people
with pages, I think they were one of the groups
that had created like a quote unquote depote list. So
we should just mention that a tough student, romeaser Oz Turk,
was essentially abducted on her way to university. Right, there's
video which will link in the show notes here, very
(39:12):
very frightening video of her just standing on the sidewalk.
As first one man approaches her in like a in
like a like a navy hoodie, put mask on his face,
approaches her, stops her.
Speaker 2 (39:22):
And then as soon as they start engaging in conversation,
she gets surrounded by like five other people, all wearing
like what I would describe as like a gray man
block essentially that they then like pull out badges and
they like detain her. And it's interesting like as they approach,
most of these people are unmasked, and then as soon
as people realize what's happening, like like like people in
the neighborhood it realize what's happening, they all start pulling
(39:44):
up like a like half faced mask like gators.
Speaker 4 (39:46):
Yeah, gators.
Speaker 6 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (39:47):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (39:48):
They looked to me more like than anything the way
prowdboys dressed a lot in like Jordany in nineteen twenty twenty. Yeah,
it's yeah, like.
Speaker 3 (39:56):
Like it's extremely concerning, Like yes, when you you start
seeing at these people mass people snatching people off the street. Right,
she asked if she asked if she can call the
cops and they say, we are the police. It looks
like her phone falls out of her hand at some
point they take her bag. We know this because it
seems like somebody was filming from a building just above,
(40:17):
and you can hear that people say like why are
you covering your person?
Speaker 5 (40:20):
Saying why are you wearing masks?
Speaker 3 (40:21):
Why are you covering your faces?
Speaker 4 (40:22):
Yeah, yeah, the guy, the guy filming, is like doing
about what he can, given the fact that you have
to assume he had no real idea what was happening
initially other than like something visibly fucked up, Like I'm
glad he said the things that he said.
Speaker 2 (40:36):
But yeah, so yeah, she's a Turkish citizen who is
in the States on a student visa in Boston, Massachusetts
or outside Boston, Massachusetts.
Speaker 3 (40:46):
Yeah, she's on a F one visa. So just a
couple of dates to a few days before she was seized,
she was like Her name was published by Canary Mission Right.
Canary Mission is a desionist group that has been boxing
for Palestine or anti genocide people for several years now.
She had co edited an op ed in the Toughest
(41:08):
Daily last year. It seems to be how they were
able to identify her. But as Garrison said, right like,
in terms of how they're picking their targets right now,
it seems to be heavily tied disease vigil anti Zionists,
far right groups. I did see that a judge has
already ruled that she shouldn't be left, she shouldn't be
removed from Massachusetts without further consultation with that judge.
Speaker 4 (41:28):
And we don't know if she has been or not already.
Speaker 5 (41:31):
But this is this is continuing to happen, right. We
talked about it this last week.
Speaker 2 (41:34):
I'm going to do a whole episode next week about this,
about this issue.
Speaker 3 (41:37):
She is in Louisiana. Sorry, update, she has already been
moved to Louisiana. Yeah, so I'm just reading a truth
out piece here. Officials initially did not specify wells have
been taken and Canarbi it's her lawyer was unable to
reach her. Later on Wednesday, Hanabis said an emotion that
she was informed by a senator's office that the student
was already transferred to Louisiana.
Speaker 2 (41:56):
It's like in a matter of hours they worked to
get her like outside of yeah, her like home state
or she probably has more legal protections.
Speaker 3 (42:04):
Yeah, it's not something that's super uncommon. I've seen them
do this with what they called lateral transfers under Title
forty two, where they would move people. Under Title forty two,
they can immediately return people to Mexico, right, And what
they would do is laterally transfer them along the border
and return them to another location in Mexico, which obviously
led to them being completely dislocated when they were dropped
(42:25):
in Mexico.
Speaker 2 (42:26):
Something else that I want to note is the use
of this harboring non citizens warrant. Like, one problem that
ICE can run into often is that people can choose
just to not answer the door. I usually likes to
rely on people that have already been arrested or already
detained by like police. Right, that makes it much easier
for immigration officials to find people. Without that, locating people
can be a little bit harder. With the use of
(42:47):
this like harboring non citizens warrant, that shows like there's
trying to create this precedent for being able to actually
break into more people's homes even though you know she
had a permanent resident status. This is just like in
terms of the tactic being used, similar to like you
know this all these like gray Man block people approaching
you on the street one by one. That's like a
tactic to take note of. The use of this type
(43:10):
of warrant is also something to take note of. We
are already at that point where people are like are
like going into hiding. Right, This is like very very
like dystopian ya coded stuff where you're like you are
literally as like as a twenty one year old like junior,
being forced to go into hiding because federal agents are
(43:31):
after you because you sat down. Yeah, you sat down
in front of a building in protest of a genocide.
You're a You're not even a movement leader, and this
this type of thing shouldn't even happen to quote unquote
movement leaders.
Speaker 3 (43:42):
Right, Yeah, there's the very First Amendment protects your right
to do that exactly.
Speaker 5 (43:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (43:47):
But like regardless of whether or not you're involved in
like the planning the organization, whether or not you're making
statements depressed, whether or not you're you're you're giving speeches,
if you just attend these sorts of things, you are
you are a target by what is like very obviously
a modern version of like gestopo like actions.
Speaker 3 (44:06):
Yeah, I think it's also quite revealing that she's somewhat
successfully gone into hiding, right, Like it suggests that, yeah,
their intelligent operation is not sordvioleance that they were able
to immediately find her.
Speaker 4 (44:15):
Well, No, because again, the resources to do stuff like
trace somebody down by their shoes from like surveillance camera
footage exists. We saw it used on those lawyers who
let police vehicle fire twenty twenty. But like, there's not
really much in the way a crime's going on here.
And there also there's so many of these people, Like
(44:36):
the idea that you would you would pull all of
the footage that you would need to track every one
of these, it's just it's just not feasible.
Speaker 3 (44:42):
Yeah, and I think they'll just go off to someone
else right to get the headlined. But I'll be following
this one with interest because it's sort of it's sort
of an alternative outcome to the other ones that we've
seen so far, So it'd just be revelatory to see
how it goes. Yeah, So if you want to con
take us about any of this, maybe if you're seeing
(45:02):
things happening on your campus, if you have anything you'd
like to share, things that you think we've missed, you
can do so. The email address is cool Zone tips
at proton dot me. Proton Mail is an encrypted email service.
It's only end to end encrypted like signal. If you
send it from a proton mail address, don't copy any
(45:23):
Atlantic journalists on your email and you should be good
to go.
Speaker 2 (45:29):
Thank you to everyone who's been sending those messages. It
does take time for us to go through all of them.
Not all of them will have a response, but we
are reading them.
Speaker 5 (45:36):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (45:37):
I am still working on a piece in the Lavender scare.
There's a lot of stuff happening regarding, you know, suppressing
and going after trans people in the military. This takes time,
but we are working on that slowly but surely, as
well as stuff regarding ice targeting students and what's going
on in Columbia, so we appreciate that. The last thing
(45:59):
I want to talk about is this past Monday, the
IDF killed two Palistinian journalists in Gaza in separate air strikes.
Mohammad Mansour, who works for Palestine Today, was killed quote
in his house in southern Gaza, alongside his wife and
his son without any prior warning. According to al Jazeira.
Later that day, the IDF killed a twenty three year
old Palestinian journalist, Hassam Shabbat, in a targeted airstrike while
(46:24):
he was driving his car in northern Gaza. I want
to read this statement from Hassam quote. If you're reading this,
it means I have been killed, most likely targeted by
the Israeli occupation forces. When all this began, I was
only twenty one years old, a college student with dreams
like anyone else. For the past eighteen months, I've dedicated
every moment of my life to my people. I documented
(46:44):
the horrors in northern Gaza, minute by minute, determined to
show the world the truth they tried to bury. I
slept on pavements, in schools, intents, anywhere I could. Each
day was a battle for survival. I endured hunger for months,
yet I never left my people's side. God, I fulfilled
my duty as a journalist. I risked everything to report
the truth, and now I am finally at rest, something
(47:07):
I haven't known in the past eighteen months. I did
all this because I believe in the Palestinian cause. I
believe this land is ours, and it has been the
highest honor of my life to die defending it and
serving its people. I ask you now, do not stop
speaking about Gaza. Do not let the world look away,
keep fighting, keep telling our stories until Palestine is free.
Speaker 1 (47:34):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Coolzonemedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts can now
find sources for it could Happen Here listened 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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