Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media Welcome, there could happen here. We decided
Speaker 1: every week you were going to do in episode called
Speaker 1: Executive Disorders White House Weekly, where we report the news,
Speaker 1: and today we are going to start that episode. We
Speaker 1: have the entire full time team here. We have Mio Wong,
Speaker 1: Garrison Davis, Robert Evans, James Stout, and I am the
Speaker 1: voice in your ear, Sophie Lichterman.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you should know we'll be making a number
Speaker 2: of references to a show you haven't watched, called The
Speaker 2: News Rooms. So many we didn't just pretend we didn't.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyways, let's do the episode now go.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So this episode's also going to be a little bit
Speaker 4: different because the idea is to cover each week of
Speaker 4: stuff that's happening visa via the White House. And it's
Speaker 4: been two weeks since since Inauguration Day, and we are
Speaker 4: recording usually on Wednesdays, so the you know, a day
Speaker 4: or two there that we will record the week after.
Speaker 4: But we have a whole bunch of stuff today because
Speaker 4: we are covering essentially two weeks. All start with some
Speaker 4: of the transgender executive orders that happened last week. There
Speaker 4: was an order defining two sexes assigned at conception, which
Speaker 4: made plenty of biologists scratch their heads. A lot of
Speaker 4: this is just going to impact the ability to change
Speaker 4: your gender marker on federal documents for the next four years,
Speaker 4: you know, passports also removing the ex gender marker from
Speaker 4: federal documents. There's also a new directive that Pride flags
Speaker 4: are not to be flown on federal buildings. Also a
Speaker 4: separate one I don't think we have included here in
Speaker 4: the research doc but how brutalist and modernist architecture is
Speaker 4: now not allowed to be used on new federal buildings.
Speaker 4: You have to use Greek or Roman inspired architecture because
Speaker 4: they project power. So all of those, like Greek have
Speaker 4: what our statue Twitter accounts have a complete cultural victory.
Speaker 2: Now, uh great, I am going to agitate to replace
Speaker 2: the Oregon State capital with just a statue of a
Speaker 2: Roman orgy. You know, we don't even need place for
Speaker 2: the legislators. Just look at the statue and you'll know
Speaker 2: what to do.
Speaker 4: This actually is like bad, you know, very very nineteen thirties, you.
Speaker 5: Know, yeah, yeah, famously no other regimes have hawken back
Speaker 5: to Clauds Calera well.
Speaker 4: And specifically is like calling like you know, modern architecture,
Speaker 4: brutalist architecture, as you know, is like weak or bad
Speaker 4: or things that get restricted.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: On a more somber note, part of this two sex
Speaker 4: that conception thing also means that a whole bunch of
Speaker 4: trans women are now being sent to men's prisons. And
Speaker 4: like a lot of this stuff is stuff that we
Speaker 4: knew was going to happen, and it did happen quite immediately.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this is just the start.
Speaker 4: I guess we'll throw over to MIA for some more
Speaker 4: executive action done on the WOKA gender ideology angle.
Speaker 6: Yeah, but by the time we're finished recording this, there
Speaker 6: might be another anti trans executive order. We'll get to
Speaker 6: that end. But the big ones for right now is
Speaker 6: that Trump is trying to do a and this is
Speaker 6: something we talked about in our in our last episode
Speaker 6: about what's gonna look like with trans people, but a
Speaker 6: federal funding ban for trans healthcare, which means for for
Speaker 6: youth trans healthcare, which means any provider that like gets
Speaker 6: federal funding and this and this includes things like taking
Speaker 6: Medicare and Medicaid right those like hospitals can't do any
Speaker 6: kind of gender for a main care for youth.
Speaker 3: Part of what's sort of terrifying.
Speaker 6: I mean, there's a lot of terrible stuff about this,
Speaker 6: but they've they've defined a kid as age nineteen.
Speaker 4: Or under the age of nineteen.
Speaker 3: Yeah, under the age of nineteen. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Obviously, like that gives you know, worries for stuff that
Speaker 4: we've been talking about for years for how they might
Speaker 4: try to start bumping up the age for these for
Speaker 4: these HRT bands. This also could be them not really
Speaker 4: realizing what they're doing to some extent, because this could
Speaker 4: also just be copying I believe in Alabama or Arkansas
Speaker 4: ban and that was like the highest age used in
Speaker 4: any of these like state healthcare bans. They could just
Speaker 4: be copying that over because it is the highest one.
Speaker 4: And like I'm not sure how much they've like thought about,
Speaker 4: you know, their capacity to start like you know, arbitrarily
Speaker 4: raising that number.
Speaker 2: I mean, part of what I think is happening, and
Speaker 2: I think this because this was definitely at play in
Speaker 2: the Alabama ban is this is, in addition to being
Speaker 2: an attack on trans people, part of a broader set
Speaker 2: of messaging towards the Parents' Ranks movement, which very much
Speaker 2: does not consider eighteen year olds to be adults.
Speaker 6: Totally, totally, yeah. And on that note, one of the
Speaker 6: things they're trying to do is target states that have
Speaker 6: like transanctuary laws by trying to like get parents who
Speaker 6: take their kids to save states like charged on kidnapping
Speaker 6: charges and so forth, noting supposedly later today there's going
Speaker 6: to be one about using the Charney General's Office to
Speaker 6: work with the charity generals in states who prosecute teachers
Speaker 6: to use gender firming pronouns as like sexual users. And
Speaker 6: I want to point out like these executive orders specifically,
Speaker 6: like the second raft of them that I've been talking about,
Speaker 6: Like these are all unbelievably legal, right, yeah, Like these
Speaker 6: are probably not going to get implemented immediately because there's
Speaker 6: immediately going to go to the courts, Like the Supreme
Speaker 6: Court will probably give them some of it. But like
Speaker 6: you can't just like declare something a crime and have
Speaker 6: the Attorney General prosecute people for it. Like that specific
Speaker 6: thing is genuinely so ridiculous that it might not survive
Speaker 6: the Supreme Court. It's nonsense. But things that aren't nonsense,
Speaker 6: and this is something you genuinely can do that's very dangerous.
Speaker 6: Is he's trying to get and this is from per
Speaker 6: Aaron Reid. He's a trans journalist, does pretty good work
Speaker 6: on this stuff. The federal government has been instructed to
Speaker 6: not follow w PATH guidelines or WPATH is this sort
Speaker 6: of organization that sets the guidelines for like trends healthcare
Speaker 6: and this. We don't know what this is going to do.
Speaker 6: There is a chance that this could endanger private like
Speaker 6: Healthcare covering it because they follow the government using WPATH.
Speaker 6: So that's extremely extremely bad. But again, and this is
Speaker 6: going to be a running theme in the next section
Speaker 6: of this. A lot of this is stuff that he
Speaker 6: shouldn't need Congress for and he's just trying to do
Speaker 6: it because he thinks that he can and he doesn't
Speaker 6: give a shit.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's just signaling to the base even if
Speaker 2: it gets stopped, like he's I think, I don't think
Speaker 2: he cares if decent chunks that it gets stopped.
Speaker 3: He tried to do the thing. Yeah, I agree with Robert.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he can now shift the blame to someone else. Look, man,
Speaker 2: I did the executive order, which honestly is what Biden
Speaker 2: should have done on some stuff, right, fuck it? Ye
Speaker 2: make the statement, you know.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, so speaking of fuck it, let's get into
Speaker 6: this whole, this whole freezing the entire federal government thing.
Speaker 6: We're gonna do a more detailed episode about this next week.
Speaker 3: But maybe the.
Speaker 6: Most unhanged thing that he's done so far than the
Speaker 6: birthright stuff, he did an executive order that's telling everyone
Speaker 6: they can't fund DEI. Yeah, early this week, the US
Speaker 6: Office of Personnel Management sent out this memo to everyone
Speaker 6: telling them that, like all grant programs are frozen until
Speaker 6: they submit a like they submitted a description of like
Speaker 6: what the grant program is and why it's not DEI
Speaker 6: and so like think things that were like fucked by this, right.
Speaker 6: I have a few of these programs and they were
Speaker 6: the grants they were shutting down. Here, the Nicholas and
Speaker 6: Zachary Burt Memorial carbon Monoxide Poisoning Program, WHOA, the National
Speaker 6: School Lunch Program, Special Milk Program for children, the Supplemental
Speaker 6: Nutrition Program for Women, infants, and children, the do d's
Speaker 6: Basic and Applied Scientific Research Grants DEI DI.
Speaker 3: It's even got a D right in there.
Speaker 6: That's right, like one of these and this is a
Speaker 6: very serious one at least for these people holding onto
Speaker 6: power was the National Guard's military operation and maintenance samously low,
Speaker 6: which like it's like it's like eight billion dollars of
Speaker 6: money to the National Guard.
Speaker 3: Hey, critical support. He got one thing right.
Speaker 6: The way that you can tell that none of these people,
Speaker 6: and the thing is a sign of is that none
Speaker 6: of these people have any idea what's going on inside
Speaker 6: of the state. They don't understand what it is. They
Speaker 6: don't understand what it does. And I can prove this
Speaker 6: for a fact because one of the programs that they
Speaker 6: froze was a program that gives money to police to
Speaker 6: do patrols outside of a nuclear weapons assembly plan. Joey,
Speaker 6: they defunded the nuke police, Like.
Speaker 3: Check the Signal Loop gang.
Speaker 2: I think I got a plan based on that we're
Speaker 2: gonna become the first nuclear armed podcasting network.
Speaker 6: So so like I think I think people have this
Speaker 6: conception that, like, you know, they're operating according to a plan.
Speaker 6: These are all sort of strategic like strokes and masters strokes,
Speaker 6: and like no, they're just they're just lashing out right,
Speaker 6: They're driven by pure anger and they're trying to do
Speaker 6: this purge of the government of anything woke or whatever,
Speaker 6: like anything that's like vaguely involves non white people or
Speaker 6: just like anyone who's not assists white dude they're trying
Speaker 6: to get rid of. Yeah, and this memo was immediately
Speaker 6: challenged in court because it's also this is also hideously illegal.
Speaker 6: The president doesn't control the purse strings. That's like, you know,
Speaker 6: in the Constitution, it says that Congress controls this. So
Speaker 6: where we're at now is that the memo has been withdrawn,
Speaker 6: but there's there's a bunch of really conflicting information where
Speaker 6: like Trump spokespeople are saying that they're still going to
Speaker 6: go through with the executive orders.
Speaker 4: They're probably gonna try to rewrite it. They might make
Speaker 4: it more targeted against you know, woke whatever that means. Yeah,
Speaker 4: it may not be as like broad as this as
Speaker 4: this initial memo, but they're certainly going to try again.
Speaker 6: But the problem that they have is that there's there
Speaker 6: are literally so many of these grants and the read
Speaker 6: the reason they did it this way in the first
Speaker 6: place was because they just they just they found a
Speaker 6: list of grants, they copied all of them, and they
Speaker 6: were like, okay, departments, you have to go figure this out,
Speaker 6: and we're freezing your stuff until you do that.
Speaker 4: Even Medicaid was frozen for a few hours yesterday.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Right, Like, they effectively nuked most of the capacity of
Speaker 6: the federal governments, and it's going to take a lot
Speaker 6: of effort for them to sort through which of these
Speaker 6: things they could afford to turn off so that they
Speaker 6: don't end up like turning off the nuke police.
Speaker 4: Right, Yeah, critical support to abolishing the nuclear security.
Speaker 3: Yeah, they did what Biden couldn't do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, let's go on a quick ad break and then
Speaker 4: we will return to report more of the news. All right,
Speaker 4: we are back. I guess I will turn over to
Speaker 4: our Immigration and Border correspondent, James Stout.
Speaker 3: That's me.
Speaker 1: Yes, please report the news.
Speaker 5: I'm ready to report the news. I have never been
Speaker 5: more ready. Okay, this is going to be a long
Speaker 5: run because there was a raft of executive orders about
Speaker 5: the border in the flurry flurry Yeah, sound the word
Speaker 5: we're allowed to use a flurry Okay, we can use
Speaker 5: a murder like crows, you know the connective down for crows.
Speaker 4: I mean this is going to result in a murder. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Well, so let's start with a couple of the big ones, right.
Speaker 5: The first one was essentially revoking the right to asylum
Speaker 5: to anyone quote engaged in the invasion across the southern
Speaker 5: border end quote. I want to highlight this invasion language
Speaker 5: because obviously, like I'd adventure to say, I've spent more
Speaker 5: time at the southern border of the United States sent
Speaker 5: anyone in the executive branch, and most people reporting on
Speaker 5: it too. The idea of an invasion is laughable. I've
Speaker 5: been at the border twice since Trump was inaugurated. It's
Speaker 5: extremely quiet. I've never seen things more quiet. The only
Speaker 5: remarkable thing I saw was a pig of Vietnamese pop
Speaker 5: Belied Big, which some people have released, which now lives there.
Speaker 5: I think it's being rehomed because of some other stuff
Speaker 5: that we will talk about later. But this invasion language
Speaker 5: is important because it's used as a justification for some
Speaker 5: of the things that the executive Branch is doing which
Speaker 5: would otherwise seem to be outside of its authority. It's
Speaker 5: getting the national security encounter terrorism treatment, and anyone who's
Speaker 5: followed US politics for the last twenty years will understand
Speaker 5: that that means an effective waiver for all of your
Speaker 5: constitutional rights. And my have always been people who don't
Speaker 5: have rights, and this is just something that we're now
Speaker 5: seeing like further pushed.
Speaker 3: So let's go through some of these orders.
Speaker 5: Aside from the effective asylum ban, he directed the United
Speaker 5: States Northern Command to quote unquote seal the border. This
Speaker 5: has resulted in a deployment of about sixteen hundred United
Speaker 5: States troops. Most of them are military police or engineers.
Speaker 5: We've got marines, and we've got army in San Diego
Speaker 5: Sectory its first marines out of Pendleton. They're the ones
Speaker 5: that I've seen locally. He has directed various government departments
Speaker 5: and the Attorney General to begin quote identifying countries throughout
Speaker 5: the world for which vetting and screening information is so
Speaker 5: deficient as to warrant a partial full suspension on the
Speaker 5: omission of nationals from those countries. This is effectively the
Speaker 5: travel ban that we saw in the first Trap administration,
Speaker 5: or a version of that. Right, it's a visa revocation
Speaker 5: or a travel ban for people from certain countries. We
Speaker 5: can guess what those countries will be. At last time,
Speaker 5: they were for the most part, majority Muslim countries, right.
Speaker 3: And we might well see that again.
Speaker 5: They have attempted to rescind birthright citizenship for children of
Speaker 5: undocumented families.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: This is one if people go back to our like
Speaker 5: what can Trump do for mass deportations podcasts that Robert
Speaker 5: Sophie and I did sometime in November, I think you'll
Speaker 5: get more information there on what is and what is
Speaker 5: not possible than we have time to go into today.
Speaker 5: But you're seeing a lot of the things that we
Speaker 5: talked about there coming into reality now. I guess specifically,
Speaker 5: the attempt to resin birthright citizenship relies on the idea
Speaker 5: that they are not quote unquote under the jurisdiction thereof
Speaker 5: of the United States, which which is how the fourteenth
Speaker 5: Amendment is phrased. Generally, it is understood that people who
Speaker 5: are not considered to be under the jurisdiction of the
Speaker 5: United States and therefore don't get citizenship when they're born
Speaker 5: here are the children of diplomats because they have some
Speaker 5: diplomatic community, right, so they're not necessarily governed by United
Speaker 5: States laws in all areas, and that is why children
Speaker 5: of diplomats don't get citizenship people when they're born here.
Speaker 5: The Trump administration is arguing that applies to children of
Speaker 5: undocumented people as well. There are five court cases challenging
Speaker 5: that already so that they've got an upp battle in
Speaker 5: the courts there. He has attempted to restart the Migrant
Speaker 5: Protection Protocol MPP, better known as Remain in Mexico.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: The Migrant Protection Protocol requires migrants to wait in Mexico
Speaker 5: whether immigration cases are processed. In practice, it puts them
Speaker 5: in a lot of danger.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 5: Some of them are fleeing Mexico. Others are fleeing groups
Speaker 5: or states that can reach them in Mexico, so it
Speaker 5: leaves them in an unsafe place. The other thing he
Speaker 5: did while Trump was still in the inaugural ceremonies literally
Speaker 5: minutes after taking office, was canceling CBP one CBP one.
Speaker 5: There is a lot of misinformation about what CBP one is.
Speaker 5: CBP one is an application that allowed migrants to make
Speaker 5: an appointment and they had to be either in southern
Speaker 5: border states of Mexico or north of Mexico's city. They
Speaker 5: could then make an appointment to approach a United States
Speaker 5: port of entry, those that are places where you can
Speaker 5: enter across the land border and make their case for
Speaker 5: their asylum right, do their first asylum interview.
Speaker 4: Like this is like following the law, like this is
Speaker 4: like the process.
Speaker 5: Yeah, making a CBP one appointment is quote unquote the
Speaker 5: right way exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 5: You have a legal right to enter between ports of
Speaker 5: entry and still make an asylum claim, which is what
Speaker 5: we saw in their outdoor attention situation, right, But doing
Speaker 5: it via CBP one is like the belt embraces correct
Speaker 5: way to do it. People who had appointments at noon
Speaker 5: Pacific on the day Trump was inaugurated, sow those appointments counseled.
Speaker 5: They can't make appointments anymore CBP one, it's gone. Those
Speaker 5: people who have waited an average of nine months in
Speaker 5: dangerous places have wasted their time. They now don't have
Speaker 5: a pathway to asylum in this country. If you go
Speaker 5: back to my episodes on the Daddi and Gap, you
Speaker 5: will hear some of those people.
Speaker 3: Right. Those people are now stuck in Mexico without really
Speaker 3: any legal means to enter the United States and c asylum.
Speaker 5: Trump has directed ICE to increase detention capacity. We spoke
Speaker 5: about this in our previous podcast. Don't like the amount
Speaker 5: of detention beds they would need to hit. The thirteen
Speaker 5: million deportations they talked about is immense, but one of
Speaker 5: the things they are doing is starting to house it's
Speaker 5: people whose countries won't accept them for deportation, right, which
Speaker 5: is a thing that has happened. The United States has
Speaker 5: begun using military aircraft for deportations in the last two weeks.
Speaker 5: I want to stress that this isn't a capacity issue.
Speaker 5: Biden deported eight thousand people in a month in the
Speaker 5: September to October of twenty twenty one. Trump is aiming
Speaker 5: to hit five thousand. Biden did it all with contractor flights.
Speaker 5: Trump is doing a lower number and using air force flights.
Speaker 5: This is not because he can't get the contractors. It's
Speaker 5: purely an aesthetic choice, and it's an aesthetic choice which
Speaker 5: has roughfled enough feathers in South and Central America that
Speaker 5: you have Honduras saying that they're going to revote the
Speaker 5: US mission to have a military base in Hondolas as
Speaker 5: a mistreat migrants. We had Columbia briefly refusing US military
Speaker 5: flights with deportees, Mexico doing the same.
Speaker 4: Briefly entering a trade war with Columbia. Yeah, yes, which
Speaker 4: lasted about two hours.
Speaker 2: The one hour trade war at about the same length
Speaker 2: as the Civil War in Western Yugoslavia.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the trade war with Columbia was averted when Columbia
Speaker 5: sent its own military plane to get these deportees.
Speaker 4: Yeah, Columbia caved immediately.
Speaker 5: Yeah, then they will continue to accept US deportees as
Speaker 5: they have done for a long time. Right again, if
Speaker 5: you listen to my Darien series, you'll hear of some
Speaker 5: Colombian people being deported. We're now getting into things that
Speaker 5: are like more. These are orders that we haven't seen
Speaker 5: realized yet. One of them is he is. He has
Speaker 5: talked about having the Attorney General remove as far as
Speaker 5: possible federal funding from so called sanctuary jurisdictions.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 5: These are normally places where local law enforcement were cooperates
Speaker 5: with federal immigration enforcement. ICE makes a majority of its
Speaker 5: detentions from people who are already detained.
Speaker 4: People who are like arrested by police, yes.
Speaker 5: Exactly for whatever. Then those police notify ICE and ICE
Speaker 5: come get them. We've seen a lot more of door
Speaker 5: to door ICE raids in the last two weeks, and
Speaker 5: they've been ramping up even really really this week. But
Speaker 5: ever since Trump was inaugurated, we've seen ICE attempting to
Speaker 5: enter people's homes. Often they just have a warrant issued
Speaker 5: by themselves rather than they judicial warrant. So we've seen
Speaker 5: people refusing to let them into their homes. We've also
Speaker 5: seen the removal of the quote unquote sensitive places doctrine. Yeah,
Speaker 5: sensitive places had previously been understood to be schools, churches,
Speaker 5: and hospitals. Now ICE is conducting quote unquote enforcement operations
Speaker 5: in those places. Those are actually places like the sensitive
Speaker 5: places doctrine have been in place for a long time.
Speaker 5: This wasn't like a Biden thing. This was This has
Speaker 5: been a long term thing. So ICE is now and
Speaker 5: we've seen immigration actions conducted at like a church in Atlanta,
Speaker 5: for instance. We've seen I think they were actually Secret
Speaker 5: Service agents who identified themselves as an ICE agent, sort
Speaker 5: of school in Chicago because a childhood posted an anti
Speaker 5: Trump video. And then I guess. The last thing that
Speaker 5: we are seeing is this designation of organized crime groups
Speaker 5: as foreign terrorist organizations. This is an interesting one. We
Speaker 5: haven't really seen any action on this yet, but it's
Speaker 5: one of his executive orders.
Speaker 3: In day one in his.
Speaker 5: First administration, he designated Iran Kuld Force as a foreign
Speaker 5: terrorist organization and then proceeded to kill their leader. Right,
Speaker 5: So this FDO designation opens up the possibility of a
Speaker 5: lot of like covert activity I'm talking like the CIA
Speaker 5: and like Tier I special forces units. It also allows
Speaker 5: him to bring about economic sanctions on any one material
Speaker 5: really supporting these organized crime organizations. In practice, that would
Speaker 5: encompass huge swaths of the Mexican economy, right, because there
Speaker 5: are people in agriculture, people in business who are paying
Speaker 5: protection or they're being extorted to pay money, right, And
Speaker 5: so in theory, those people are now materially belefating a
Speaker 5: tent terrorist organization and they could be sanctioned as well.
Speaker 5: We will have to see how this plays out, I guess,
Speaker 5: and that there's still the directive was to look into
Speaker 5: and then name these groups.
Speaker 4: Well, and it's something that heg Seth has previously been
Speaker 4: in favor of and he has now been confirmed.
Speaker 5: Yes, yeah, Hegzeth has talked about using special forces in Mexico.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, and this was Agenda forty seven stuff. They've
Speaker 2: been talking about this for a while.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's also in our Agenda forty seven episodes.
Speaker 5: If people want to go back, there a direct action
Speaker 5: rate in Mexico.
Speaker 3: Drone warfare in Mexico.
Speaker 5: Obviously doing this without the permission of the Mexican government
Speaker 5: would be an act of war, right like killing foreign
Speaker 5: nationals without the permission of their government. Conducting direct action
Speaker 5: raids bombing another country like that, that is an act
Speaker 5: of war. The US has had an fid FED Foreign
Speaker 5: Internal Defense Mission right where it trains advisors and assists
Speaker 5: Mexican law enforcement and military for a long time. The
Speaker 5: guys who arrested El Chappa, for instance, were trained I
Speaker 5: think by Mars Sock. But this has been happening for
Speaker 5: a long time. But to go from that to unsanctioned
Speaker 5: direct action would be a huge, a huge step up.
Speaker 5: The only really analogous, directly analogous thing I can think
Speaker 5: of is Clinton with a planned Columbia designating FARC as
Speaker 5: a foreign terrorist organization, But that was very much with
Speaker 5: the cooperation and support of the Colombian government. We're seeing
Speaker 5: a much more adversarial relationship between the United States and
Speaker 5: Mexico right now. The last thing I want to mention
Speaker 5: is that this deployment, I've spoken about it, but they
Speaker 5: are about sixteen hundred troops deployed right now. Biden deployed
Speaker 5: fifteen hundred troops in the summer of twenty twenty three.
Speaker 5: This is not a vastly different number that they are
Speaker 5: doing different things. They seem to be chucking razor wire
Speaker 5: on top of the wall and being photographed there two
Speaker 5: major jobs at the moment. We will see how that
Speaker 5: plays out. Also, with reference to military, Trump immediately canceled
Speaker 5: the refugee resettlement program. This left people all over the
Speaker 5: world stranded, including Afghans, many of whom worked for the
Speaker 5: United States or family members of US service people. Their
Speaker 5: refugee resettlement program, people don't come to the southern border.
Speaker 5: They go do all their background things and then fly
Speaker 5: into the United States to different status to entering and
Speaker 5: claiming asylum. Those people, many of whom had booked flights,
Speaker 5: found their flights were canceled.
Speaker 3: They're now stranded.
Speaker 5: Lots of them were stranded in Pakistan and facing immigration
Speaker 5: enforcement there in the case of the Afghans. So yeah,
Speaker 5: that is a speed run of all the terrible Trump
Speaker 5: immigration executive orders. We'll be reporting on this pretty extensively,
Speaker 5: so you can keep coming back for more. But another
Speaker 5: thing that we have more of right now is advertisements.
Speaker 4: Okay, we are back. I have a few other notes.
Speaker 4: I want to add for the woke front that I'm
Speaker 4: reporting on right now, I think it's been a lot
Speaker 4: of conflation between you know, like DEI and like what
Speaker 4: we would consider like affirmative action. DEI refers to like
Speaker 4: these specific like corporate training policies and diversity initiatives, which is,
Speaker 4: you know, separate from long standing affirmative action policies, which
Speaker 4: has been used both in the corporate world and in
Speaker 4: like the government for like decades at this point. And
Speaker 4: what a whole bunch of this DEI rollback type stuff
Speaker 4: is essentially doing is just openly discriminating against people who
Speaker 4: are not like straight white men. It's like, if you
Speaker 4: are a straight white man, we cannot hire you because
Speaker 4: that would mean we are doing DEI. And like, this
Speaker 4: is what a lot of the stuff that we're seeing
Speaker 4: kind of looks like. There was a mass email to
Speaker 4: federal agencies about DEI and calls to report DEI policy
Speaker 4: in their department if they're going by like other names, right,
Speaker 4: So that would be stuff like affirmative action, right, if
Speaker 4: there's anything that that is about, you know, trying to
Speaker 4: trying to increase the diversity in your workforce or any
Speaker 4: quote unquote woke topics, including you know, gender ideology, anything
Speaker 4: anything that seems vaguely woke. You're supposed to now report
Speaker 4: to make sure that gets removed because that's not part
Speaker 4: of the new federal government. I believe someone from the
Speaker 4: NSA did leave a tip on that email line reporting
Speaker 4: reporting DEI masquerading as as another name. Similar to this,
Speaker 4: there was a memo or an email that was leaked
Speaker 4: to Ken Klippenstein from the Defense Intelligence Agency which basically
Speaker 4: said that they're not going to be observing any any
Speaker 4: woke holidays, including Martin Luther King Junior's Birthday, Black History Month,
Speaker 4: Women's History Months, the Holocaust Remembrance Day, Asian American Pacific
Speaker 4: Islander Heritage Month, Pride Month, June teenth, Women's Equality Day,
Speaker 4: National Hispanic Heritage Month, National Disability Employment Awareness Month, and
Speaker 4: National American Indian Heritage Month, with a small asterisk saying
Speaker 4: that the pause on observing these will not affect the
Speaker 4: federal holidays, which would be MLK and Juneteenth, although who knows,
Speaker 4: they might try to even remove some of those as
Speaker 4: being federal holidays.
Speaker 5: I did wonder that like at some point, you're gonna
Speaker 5: like you're gonna lose people when you take away their
Speaker 5: days off work.
Speaker 4: I get, like that's right, right, So, like I think
Speaker 4: they might leave those like actual federal holidays in but
Speaker 4: you're not allowed to observe any of these, any of
Speaker 4: these other awareness months or or you know, Pride Month,
Speaker 4: Black History months, like you're not allowed to acknowledge that
Speaker 4: at all in these federal agencies now, at least for
Speaker 4: the Defense Intelligence Agency. Support for most of Trump's executive
Speaker 4: orders does fluctuate. According to a poll from Reuters, the
Speaker 4: support for closing all DEI offices is actually pretty split.
Speaker 4: Fifty one percent oppose the closing of these offices. According
Speaker 4: to their poll, Forty four percent are in fame and
Speaker 4: it's very segmented. Renaming the Gulf of Mexico to be
Speaker 4: the Gulf of America pretty disliked, with seventy percent being
Speaker 4: in opposition.
Speaker 2: Look, the one thing people hate most is changing names.
Speaker 4: Having the names been change.
Speaker 3: Yeah, nobody likes that. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he did Denali as well. Right, Yeah, I guess
Speaker 2: that was changed more recently. But the Gulf of Mexico
Speaker 2: has been the Gulf of Mexico for longer than it's
Speaker 2: America has existed as a country the United States, right.
Speaker 5: I mean, Denali has been Denali for longer than America
Speaker 5: has existed.
Speaker 3: It's just right, right, right, But.
Speaker 2: There was a period where we called it McKinley. No
Speaker 2: one's ever called it the Gulf of America.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not saying the Denali thing's right. I'm just saying,
Speaker 2: like that's all a much harder.
Speaker 3: So yes, yeah, yeah, you're not going to get much
Speaker 3: buying on that. Yeah.
Speaker 4: Pardening J six protesters, new tariffs or taxes on Canadian goods,
Speaker 4: and ending birthright citizenship are all around sixty to thirty
Speaker 4: sixty opposed thirty percent in favor. Trump. During his first
Speaker 4: we did see a record high approval rating that is
Speaker 4: slowly I think gone down, but I don't know, it's
Speaker 4: hard to gauge the level of like general enthusiasm for
Speaker 4: his actions right now. And there's I think part of
Speaker 4: like the general strategy that we're seeing is there's just
Speaker 4: so much happening every single day that you can't even
Speaker 4: keep track of it all, let alone like internalize it.
Speaker 4: Like he's he is trying to sign as many of
Speaker 4: these orders every day so that both the courts, all
Speaker 4: of these like NGOs advocacy groups are always working, and
Speaker 4: we're never sure what is real, right, We're never sure
Speaker 4: what's going to stick around all of these memos about
Speaker 4: funding and grants. It's just so exhausting. And that's like
Speaker 4: part of the design is that this just feels like
Speaker 4: a constant stream of nonsense that we maybe have to
Speaker 4: deal with, maybe we won't. One of the more odd
Speaker 4: things is Trump openly embracing manifest destiny language, which I
Speaker 4: guess isn't actually odd, that's actually makes sense. It's just
Speaker 4: one of those things that it feels very rubicon esque.
Speaker 4: But he does have this new distinct focus on territorial expansion.
Speaker 4: During his inaugural address, he praised quote unquote our American
Speaker 4: ancestors for having quote won the wild West. Now, apparently
Speaker 4: the call about Greenland to Denmark did not go very well.
Speaker 4: Denmark did not realize how serious Trump was and was
Speaker 4: apparently quite angry during that phone call, and you know,
Speaker 4: seemingly upset that Denmark is not going to easily hand
Speaker 4: over Greenland. He seems to be pivoting more towards retaking Panama. Yeah,
Speaker 4: which is which is something that he also mentioned in
Speaker 4: his inaugural address.
Speaker 3: Let me tell you Panamanians not stoked.
Speaker 5: I've been receiving communications from Panama where it was his
Speaker 5: step down, but they are burning American flags.
Speaker 4: The quote from the inaugural address is quote the United
Speaker 4: States will once again consider itself a growing nation when
Speaker 4: that increases our wealth and carries our flag into new
Speaker 4: beautiful horizons, and we will pursue our manifest destiny into
Speaker 4: the stars.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I don't know, what, what do you have to do.
Speaker 3: That's not a good thing.
Speaker 4: I think that's bad, Like obviously, that's you know, not great,
Speaker 4: not ideal. You know, invading Panama not ideal. Going to
Speaker 4: war with Greenland slightly more funny because it's cold. I
Speaker 4: think specifically he's focused on, like why that he believes
Speaker 4: the US has a vested interest in Greenland? Isn't just
Speaker 4: picking out a spot on the map. I think this
Speaker 4: also could be like related to trying to prepare for
Speaker 4: climate change. Having territory in the Arctic is going to
Speaker 4: become an increasingly valuable commodity to have. And and I
Speaker 4: think there is a part of this that could be
Speaker 4: legitimately on on that side, because I mean, I don't know,
Speaker 4: maybe Trump should just get really into Alaska.
Speaker 5: Well, he did deregulate drilling in Alaska, drill baby drill.
Speaker 5: I will be up there later this year talking to
Speaker 5: people in Alaska about drill baby drill.
Speaker 3: Very excited for.
Speaker 4: That, but I don't know. I think it's also generally
Speaker 4: not super useful to make huge generalizing statements about what
Speaker 4: this type of stuff Trump is doing right now and
Speaker 4: how it will reflect on his entire presidency. People have
Speaker 4: been been doing this kind of about Trump's flip flopping
Speaker 4: opinions on TikTok, you know, being very into like, you know,
Speaker 4: saving TikTok and then then calling it worthless, but then
Speaker 4: going back to actually making sure that Microsoft buys it
Speaker 4: or something. And you know, people are very easy or
Speaker 4: quick to like jump onto these sorts of things. Trump's
Speaker 4: flip flopping tendencies maybe not sinking every single easy bucket
Speaker 4: and acting like these would be emblematic of his entire presidency,
Speaker 4: and like that's not the case. That that that does
Speaker 4: not actually mean that Trump just says things even though
Speaker 4: he's gonna call TikTok worthless, does not mean that he's
Speaker 4: going to not do that easy lay up. We're all
Speaker 4: aware of how much he just says what is on
Speaker 4: his mind, yep. And I think these sorts of things
Speaker 4: do not necessarily mean that he's going to like plummet
Speaker 4: to being the most unpopular president ever because he, you know,
Speaker 4: refuses to use the right messaging around TikTok or something.
Speaker 4: The other economic situations he might walk us into would
Speaker 4: be you know, much much more affecting to his general popularity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's he is doing again. I talked about this
Speaker 2: a lot. Why fascists succeed is that they try, like
Speaker 2: they're constantly reaching for stuff, and oftentimes like they overreach,
Speaker 2: but nobody pushes back so they get the thing, right.
Speaker 2: That's what he's doing here. Do I think that he's
Speaker 2: willing at this point to commit to a full scale
Speaker 2: military invasion and armed occupation of Panama, a thing that
Speaker 2: could be a real problem for his presidency?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 2: Right, Like US troops dying in meaningful numbers in attacks
Speaker 2: in a country that we had no fucking beef with before.
Speaker 2: That could be a real fucking problem for a guy
Speaker 2: who ran on the things that he ran on. But
Speaker 2: maybe he gets a bunch of concessions for nothing. It's
Speaker 2: the same thing with Greenland. You make the push, you
Speaker 2: try to scare Denmark, you try to scare Greenland, and
Speaker 2: you see if they'll accept something, and then you you
Speaker 2: walk away, maybe with a coup, and you do it
Speaker 2: fucking widely enough you might get something.
Speaker 3: Right, Like, that's that's it.
Speaker 4: He's he's testing his limits because that's what they do.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, look at Columbia, right, he immediately went
Speaker 5: to like eleven on the retaliation scale and effectively received concessions.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: So I think, you know, similar to how you know
Speaker 4: it was annoying in the first like resistlib era, to
Speaker 4: take every single crazy statement Trump says seriously, or like,
Speaker 4: you know, do this performative outrage over every single thing
Speaker 4: he does. I think it's also useless to do fast
Speaker 4: mimetic reactions that form generalizing statements about you know, how
Speaker 4: how something that Trump is doing is emblematic for the
Speaker 4: rest of his term and now he's like doomed to failure.
Speaker 4: I think those statements are actually pretty useless and at
Speaker 4: the very least are not helpful. Right now, let's close
Speaker 4: by talking about Guantanamo. I guess Robert and James, I'll
Speaker 4: have I'll have you taken.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So, Trump has signed an executive order saying that they're
Speaker 2: going to create a facility capable of storing thirty thousand
Speaker 2: migrants in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. First, we should probably just
Speaker 2: talk about how realistic this is. If you ever looked
Speaker 2: at a topographical map of Guantanamo Bay, it's quite a large,
Speaker 2: Like the US concession in Cuba, is a sizable degree
Speaker 2: of land. But it's not easy land to build things on,
Speaker 2: right like it is that it's rugged terrain, you would say,
Speaker 2: So making a camp like this is almost certainly going
Speaker 2: to be extremely expensive, and at least under kind of
Speaker 2: the way things currently work, it will probably take a
Speaker 2: good amount of time to get set up.
Speaker 5: Like.
Speaker 2: This is not a quick thing. This is not an
Speaker 2: overnight thing. And one thing I want to remind people
Speaker 2: of is that they have already have expanded a number
Speaker 2: of camps and facilities in the US to deal with
Speaker 2: all the migrants they are taking in. So this is
Speaker 2: not the start. If you want to call this, and
Speaker 2: I think it's fair to call this a plan to
Speaker 2: start a concentration camp system, that system began early, and
Speaker 2: in fact it started before Trump took office. A decent
Speaker 2: junk of it was anticipating him coming into office, But.
Speaker 5: This is not the first camp, right, Yeah, and like
Speaker 5: Biden did significant legwork for detension that is cool and unusual, Yes,
Speaker 5: with his legal defense and his establishment of outdoor detention
Speaker 5: for migrants since the end of Title forty two in
Speaker 5: May of twenty three. And I think, like we have
Speaker 5: to acknowledge that, I know people are very much into
Speaker 5: the like, don't criticize the Dems right now, Like if
Speaker 5: they don't change, if taking a fat l in what
Speaker 5: should have been one of the easiest elections of the
Speaker 5: century doesn't change them, then nothing will. And like we
Speaker 5: have to acknowledge that we are going to concentration camps quicker.
Speaker 5: I mean there were foreign outlets that called the outdoor
Speaker 5: detention sites in Hakumba concentration camps, right because they'd sure
Speaker 5: as hell look like one.
Speaker 2: And they are. This is a big personal frustration to me.
Speaker 2: I'm seeing a ton of people going online and comparing
Speaker 2: this to the Nazi concent camp hereafter referred to as
Speaker 2: the KZ system.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: There's one post I came across on Twitter where a
Speaker 2: person whom I'm not going to name, just to not
Speaker 2: cause a bunch of bullshit for them. Time from taking
Speaker 2: office to opening a massed attention camp. Mussolini eight years,
Speaker 2: ll Gala and others, Libya Hitler fifty one days. Docau
Speaker 2: Germany Trump nine days. That's fucking horseshit. Yes, Docou took
Speaker 2: longer to establish. Docou was not the first concentration camp.
Speaker 2: The concentration camp system in Germany under the Nazis started
Speaker 2: as soon as the Nazis took power with a series
Speaker 2: of what were called wild concentration camps, and this was
Speaker 2: involved a huge number of people, largely political enemies of
Speaker 2: the regime, members of the opposition party, being taken into custody, beaten, tortured,
Speaker 2: and stored in a series of airsats facilities. Two hundred
Speaker 2: thousand people were taken into custody under the wild concentration
Speaker 2: camp system in nineteen thirty three, the first year that
Speaker 2: Germans were in power. These are not comparable systems. That
Speaker 2: does not mean that I don't believe what Trump is
Speaker 2: doing is a concentration camp. It is a concentration camp
Speaker 2: made in the model of the American system. This is
Speaker 2: part of the American history of concentration camps, which goes
Speaker 2: back something like two hundred years right to the I
Speaker 2: mean we were one of the first countries.
Speaker 3: To employ concentration camps.
Speaker 2: The concentration camp as a concept began with what we're
Speaker 2: called reconcentrados in Cuba at the behest of a Spanish
Speaker 2: general fighting an insurgency. There were US officers embedded there.
Speaker 2: They came back and those tactics were adapted for our
Speaker 2: wars with Native American tribes on the frontiers and the planes.
Speaker 2: General Sherman was one of the very first Americans to
Speaker 2: carry out concentration camps. And what we are seeing here
Speaker 2: is part of America's tradition with concentration camps. It is
Speaker 2: not part of the German tradition with concentration camps. And
Speaker 2: you're going to be mistaken about like how this is
Speaker 2: going to proceed and what the dangers are, because I
Speaker 2: do not think the dangers at this point are that
Speaker 2: we build a death factory capable of incinerating a million
Speaker 2: people in less than a year. That's not the threat.
Speaker 2: The threat is huge numbers of people are taken into
Speaker 2: custody and stored in places that are not safe, that
Speaker 2: do not have good hygiene, that do not have good
Speaker 2: food standards, and a significant number of those people will
Speaker 2: die or suffer permanent physical injury, but it won't look
Speaker 2: like Auschwitz. And if that's what people are expecting, they'll
Speaker 2: be like, well, maybe this isn't that band, Maybe this
Speaker 2: isn't a concentration camp after all. So it's important to
Speaker 2: get things right, both for that reason and because it's
Speaker 2: also disrespectful to the people who died during the fucking
Speaker 2: Holocaust to be like, yeah, Trump's a lot worse than
Speaker 2: Hitler right now, Like.
Speaker 3: No, no, stop that.
Speaker 5: Yeah, Like we have you can trace online from like
Speaker 5: Bosquier Rodondo, right, but they sent a Navajo people.
Speaker 2: Right, Boss Gredondo is a great thing to bring.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yes, And you can trace a direct line from
Speaker 5: that to the outdoor detention comps we started twenty twenty three,
Speaker 5: where people were forced to remain in one place without food, water,
Speaker 5: or shelter, and people died as a result of that
Speaker 5: last year two years ago, and like that from there
Speaker 5: to Guantanamo Bay.
Speaker 3: It is not a massive leap.
Speaker 5: And yeah, just being like we don't have Auschwitz, it's
Speaker 5: just asinine. Like if you can't acknowledge that America has
Speaker 5: a long history of doing this, and you know, really
Speaker 5: you need to examine your own preconceptions before like speaking
Speaker 5: for others.
Speaker 4: Yep, all right, is that this episode for this week? Everyone?
Speaker 2: I think that's the episode. I think we're done.
Speaker 1: We reported the news.
Speaker 5: Thanks, we reported the news.
Speaker 1: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: cool zonemedia dot com, or check us out on the
Speaker 1: iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever.
Speaker 4: You listen to podcasts.
Speaker 1: You can now find sources for It could Happen Here.
Speaker 3: Listened directly in episode descriptions.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.