Speaker 1: Cool Zone Media.
Speaker 2: Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
Speaker 2: you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
Speaker 2: of the week that just happened is here in one
Speaker 2: convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
Speaker 2: listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
Speaker 2: you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
Speaker 2: there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
Speaker 2: you can make your own decisions.
Speaker 3: Hello everyone, I'm welcome to di could Happen Here. My
Speaker 3: name is Dan el Kerd, and I'm a researcher and
Speaker 3: analyst of Arab and Palestinian politics. Today I'm joined by
Speaker 3: Edia Yub, who is a Palstinian Lebanese writer and researcher
Speaker 3: as well as a podcaster with the podcast The Fire
Speaker 3: These Times and from the Periphery Media Collective. And today
Speaker 3: he's speaking to us about the recent agreement between Lebanon
Speaker 3: and Israel related to Israel's continued occupation of the southern
Speaker 3: part of Lebanon and continued bombardment. So he's going to
Speaker 3: talk to us about what the agreement says, why there
Speaker 3: are so many problems and concerns related to disagreement and
Speaker 3: how it fits into the broader regional war against Iran.
Speaker 4: Adia.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much for joining.
Speaker 6: Us, Hi, thank you for having me again.
Speaker 3: So today we're going to be discussing, as I mentioned
Speaker 3: in the intro, the agreement between Lebanon and Israel, the Framework,
Speaker 3: which has been quite controversial. So I wanted to just
Speaker 3: give you an opportunity to give a brief explainer. What
Speaker 3: is this agreement.
Speaker 7: So it's technically like it tried lands, the framework in
Speaker 7: the sense that it includes legally anyway, the US, Israel,
Speaker 7: and Lebanon. Ostensibly, like what it says it does is
Speaker 7: that it proposes some kind of future in which Lebanon
Speaker 7: and Israel, which have been in the factor state of
Speaker 7: war for basically forever, to no longer be in that
Speaker 7: the factor state of war. The problem, which probably won't
Speaker 7: surprise like the audience of this podcast, the problem is
Speaker 7: sort of in the details, like what is it that
Speaker 7: Lebanon has signed. If you look on the website itself,
Speaker 7: it's on the American government's website, there are fourteen points.
Speaker 6: It's roughly on thousand.
Speaker 7: I don't know, three hundred words or so, and already
Speaker 7: you see what's absent, which is the terms like withdraworld
Speaker 7: and of occupation any of that. There's basically no stipulation
Speaker 7: whatsoever that the Israelis have to leave Lebanon, and you'll
Speaker 7: have people who support the zero sell. Well, technically that's
Speaker 7: not true, because it says here in number two, Government
Speaker 7: of Israel and Government of Lebanon commit to reciprocal sequence
Speaker 7: process with clear conditions, whereby the LAF, which is the
Speaker 7: Lebanese Armed Forces, whether he's store effective sovereign authority over
Speaker 7: all of Lebanes's territory. And here is the grub Um
Speaker 7: quoting pending the verified disarmament of non state armed groups
Speaker 7: and dismantlement of associated infrastructure, enabling the idea of the
Speaker 7: defense forces to progressively redeploy out of Lebanin's territory.
Speaker 6: What it essentially says, and the various.
Speaker 7: Points we don't have to go through all of them
Speaker 7: essentially confirm this time time again is that Israel will
Speaker 7: get to define, will get to decide when an area
Speaker 7: that Israel is occupying, as in the Debanese territory that
Speaker 7: Israel is occupying, when.
Speaker 6: That area is officially disarmed.
Speaker 7: When it is no longer a quote on quote security
Speaker 7: thread the Debinese state has no say in the matter.
Speaker 7: There's no independent, like un type mechanism that would determine that.
Speaker 7: It's just Israel that gets to define that. And what
Speaker 7: they're currently they're currently doing, which is what the Lebanese
Speaker 7: government has agreed to, which is part of the controversy
Speaker 7: that we'll get into, is that they're creating these two
Speaker 7: so called pilot zones, which are among it in the
Speaker 7: territory that is THEAD is currently occupying in Lebanon, in
Speaker 7: which they will allow the LAF, the Debinese owned forces
Speaker 7: to progressively assert its I'm putting this in quotation. You
Speaker 7: can't see it like assert is a sovereign territorial control.
Speaker 7: But and here again is the kind of the devil
Speaker 7: in the detail. The Lebanese army cannot actually enforce anything
Speaker 7: that would still be the authority of the Israeli army,
Speaker 7: which again is the one that is currently illegally occupying
Speaker 7: southern Lebanon. So yeah, we can get into more of
Speaker 7: the details, but that's sort of in a nutshell why
Speaker 7: it's so bad.
Speaker 6: But I can get into more why it's bad as well.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, we'd like to talk about all the bad,
Speaker 3: So before we get into like all the bad Where
Speaker 3: does Hasbola play into any of this?
Speaker 6: Well, unsurprisingly, Hasbella opposes this.
Speaker 7: In fact, I don't think a majority of the political
Speaker 7: parties currently in the Libanese parliament support this, if I'm
Speaker 7: not mistaken, which is one of the reasons why I
Speaker 7: don't think this particular agreement, which is the latest of
Speaker 7: so many agreements between the Americans, Israelis and the Delibanese,
Speaker 7: at least at the official level, I don't see this
Speaker 7: lasting very long. Hezbolla has immediately said that this is
Speaker 7: a humiliation, it's surrendered its defeat, which is not that unusual.
Speaker 7: That's sort of how they've been talking about these negotiations
Speaker 7: for since they started. Really and it declared them declared
Speaker 7: this agreement null and void, which they cannot get more
Speaker 7: more stit forward than that. Their main ally in parliament
Speaker 7: i e. The Amal movement has also come out to
Speaker 7: oppose this, which is a big deal because that's the
Speaker 7: speaker of parliament. Lebanon is ruled by this kind of troika,
Speaker 7: so he's one or one out of three, which is
Speaker 7: a big problem for the other two. And yeah, I
Speaker 7: kind of genuinely don't see this lasting, but I am
Speaker 7: also worried about what can come next.
Speaker 3: I mean, the fact that Israel is again the unilateral
Speaker 3: you know, judge jury executioner here exactly obviously is a
Speaker 3: very big problem. But what other issues do you foresee
Speaker 3: with disagreement.
Speaker 7: I worry that the Lebanese government, in at first having
Speaker 7: some I think understandable concerns over Iran's rule and Lebanon,
Speaker 7: and we can get into that, has sort of I
Speaker 7: don't know how you would describe it, maybe over corrected
Speaker 7: and gone a bit too anti Iran, which in and
Speaker 7: of itself I.
Speaker 6: Wouldn't necessarily oppose.
Speaker 7: I'm not a fan of the Islamic Republic, to put
Speaker 7: it mildly, and I've always opposed has Balaf as long
Speaker 7: as I can remember. But the timing of doing what
Speaker 7: they've been doing, and I can get into it now,
Speaker 7: has been I think, very to put it charitably, very puzzling,
Speaker 7: but I think also like very very short sighted and
Speaker 7: frankly rectless and dangerous. This is all while Israel is
Speaker 7: bombing Lebanon. I should say, if this was any context
Speaker 7: where there was no active war, I wouldn't have as
Speaker 7: big of an issue with it. But they've declared the
Speaker 7: Ionian ambassador to Lebanon to be persona non grata. They've
Speaker 7: taken down photos of the Aetola by the road to
Speaker 7: the airport and replaced it with lubnan Aulan, which is
Speaker 7: like Lebanon. First, they've deported like members of the IOGC,
Speaker 7: the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, and done a bunch of other
Speaker 7: even like rhetorical things like the president would go on
Speaker 7: Twitter and say like Elon get out and stuff like that.
Speaker 7: The president of Lebanon, which again I have one thousand
Speaker 7: and one issues with the Iranian role in Lebanon, and
Speaker 7: including my issue with Hazbola, but there's only one country
Speaker 7: that is currently actually occupying Lebanon military and actually bombing
Speaker 7: Lebanon militarily with its military I mean, and that country
Speaker 7: is not Iran. So the priorities of the government in
Speaker 7: wanting to distance itself from Hasbola's actions, which I should
Speaker 7: say have been controversial from the beginning because Hesbolla took
Speaker 7: a unionatural decision to enter the war against Israel, a
Speaker 7: decision that was not made with like the rest of
Speaker 7: Lebanon's approval. So it's been like controversial from the start.
Speaker 7: And that's what I meant by like the charitable interpretation
Speaker 7: is that the Lebanese government sort of overcorrected and instead,
Speaker 7: by attempting, supposedly to distance itself from Iran, what has
Speaker 7: actually done is made us even more dependent on the
Speaker 7: United States than we used to be before.
Speaker 3: Right, So that's where the things you're describing under normal
Speaker 3: circumstances to be like, yeah, like why is I run
Speaker 3: so embedded in a lot of these different countries in
Speaker 3: the region, and why does it have such an interventionist role?
Speaker 3: But you're saying it's reckless in this context where the
Speaker 3: Lebanese government is basically making itself more more at the
Speaker 3: mercy of actors like the United States and Israel by proxy.
Speaker 7: Yeah, as of now, like and I really tried my
Speaker 7: best to look for some leverage that Lebanon might have,
Speaker 7: but as of now, I don't actually see any leverage
Speaker 7: that Lebanon has.
Speaker 6: It's basically we hope for the best.
Speaker 7: Like I wish I could put it differently, but it
Speaker 7: essentially is under the hope that, like the Trump administration
Speaker 7: instared of Ntanyahu, that it might fall you know, force
Speaker 7: day israelis to either withdraw from Lebanon, or to adverely
Speaker 7: stop the bombing or whatnot, which I've seen no evidence of.
Speaker 7: And as of now, every time a so called ceasefire
Speaker 7: has been signed that even has bottle like Grito, the
Speaker 7: only thing that it's done is that Hezbollah would not
Speaker 7: respond to Israeli bombings. So the Israeli bombings have been
Speaker 7: constant throughout this entire thing. Ceasefire or no ceasefire, since
Speaker 7: the agreement was signed, they've continued.
Speaker 6: They haven't stopped.
Speaker 7: As of time of recording, over four th two hundred
Speaker 7: Lebanese have been killed since the beginning of this latest war,
Speaker 7: so not even since the beginning since twenty twenty three,
Speaker 7: but twenty twenty six alone, because Israel does not discriminate
Speaker 7: and how they bomb. So to give you the example
Speaker 7: of those two so called pilot zones, are they even
Speaker 7: inhabitable as of now?
Speaker 6: I don't know.
Speaker 7: Because of the fifty four towns and villages Lebanese towns
Speaker 7: and villages that the Israelis militarily occupy, at least forty
Speaker 7: six of them that we know of, are either partially
Speaker 7: or entirely demolished.
Speaker 6: So what are those security zones?
Speaker 7: What does that even mean, you know, but again it
Speaker 7: is the entire problem now is that they get to
Speaker 7: decide all of that. And again with all of my
Speaker 7: issues with Iran, the agreement that the Lebanese have signed
Speaker 7: with the Israelis, I think is objectively worse than the
Speaker 7: MEMORANDUV understanding that the Iranians signed with the Americans that
Speaker 7: actually also included Lebanon, because at least in that AMYU
Speaker 7: and thatment of understanding, it included the sentence territorial integrity
Speaker 7: and sovereignty of Lebanon, as well as the call for seasfire,
Speaker 7: which was a nightmare for Nataniahu.
Speaker 3: Let's talk about Iran more specifically for a moment. I mean,
Speaker 3: Lebanon has taken out, the ambassador has made all of
Speaker 3: these kind of rhetorical shifts away from the Iranian regime.
Speaker 3: Obviously display for the US and for Israel. But Iran,
Speaker 3: how has it responded, How has the government responded, and
Speaker 3: how does this agreement relate to the MLU that Iran
Speaker 3: signed with the United States.
Speaker 7: So it's quite complicated because the MoU was signed just
Speaker 7: about a week or so before. So the deal between
Speaker 7: the Ionians and the Americans was signed roughly a Dean
Speaker 7: or agreed upon. I don't know if they signed these
Speaker 7: things roughly a week before this one, the one between
Speaker 7: Israel and Lebanon via America that hypotheitle one, as they
Speaker 7: call it. One interpretation that I've seen is that by
Speaker 7: going directly to Lebanon, America actually managed to bypass these
Speaker 7: kind of bullet points that Iran was putting forward. So
Speaker 7: like let's say Iran is saying, what lebt there should
Speaker 7: be ceasefire in Lebanon and that there should be like
Speaker 7: territorial integrity and sovereignty. In the meantime, the Lebanese state
Speaker 7: is saying to Iran, like, you do not negotiate on
Speaker 7: our behalf. So the Americans go to Lebanon directly, or
Speaker 7: rather Lebanon goes to the American and they superseded, they
Speaker 7: supersede this and they do negotiation, or they they get
Speaker 7: the Lebanese to sign this latest agreement directly, which of
Speaker 7: course does not include Iran anyway. So the main difference
Speaker 7: is between the MoU between America and Iran and the
Speaker 7: agreement between let's say Israel and Lebanon, is that Israel
Speaker 7: had no parts whatsoever in the MoU, and if it
Speaker 7: had come to pass. If the Iranians had basically gotten
Speaker 7: what they were asking for, the Americans would have been forced,
Speaker 7: at least legally, to pressure the Israelis to leave Lebanon
Speaker 7: all together. No ifs and bots, no negotiated exit whatever
Speaker 7: that means, no making up pilot zones, none of that stuff.
Speaker 7: It would just be you've been doing this occupation illegally.
Speaker 7: You need to leave, as simple as that. That's been
Speaker 7: the Iranian position, which is not a position that most
Speaker 7: Lebanies would disagree with, because it is.
Speaker 3: Just the fact, right, And it's interesting, I mean, obviously
Speaker 3: we don't want to speculate, but it is interesting that
Speaker 3: Iran made the ceasefire in Lebanon so kind of central
Speaker 3: to a lot of their demands, right, Yeah.
Speaker 7: It's not that surprising to me, I think, because they
Speaker 7: see this as saving has Bottler, so like it's it's
Speaker 7: like it's almost like an easy thing to do.
Speaker 6: It doesn't cost them anything. In a sense.
Speaker 7: It would have cause put pressure on the Israelis, which
Speaker 7: they're happy to do since Israel and America started the
Speaker 7: war against Iran in the first place, and it would
Speaker 7: you know, give some kind of breathing space for their
Speaker 7: main ally in Lebanon, which is has Botler. Yeah, So
Speaker 7: any and of itself, I don't think it's surprising that
Speaker 7: they included it. Maybe they knew that Lebanon would have
Speaker 7: rejected officially given the position of the Lebanese government you
Speaker 7: know thus far, and I can't know for sure, but yeah,
Speaker 7: and in of itself, it doesn't surprise me that they
Speaker 7: went for this because one other thing I should say
Speaker 7: that they were proposing in that MoU is a so
Speaker 7: called deconfliction cell, the details of which are not entirely
Speaker 7: clear to me yet and at this point may never
Speaker 7: happen anyway. But the way it's been interpreted that I
Speaker 7: saw is that it would see its influence in Lebanon historied.
Speaker 7: So there's also like a self interest in all of that,
Speaker 7: but not in a militarily occupying way. So for me,
Speaker 7: it's not that the option has been either an amazing
Speaker 7: option or a bad option. It's more like either we
Speaker 7: get the Iran option, which is not ideal but self functional,
Speaker 7: or a catastrophic option, which is the one that we
Speaker 7: actually got with these RAA.
Speaker 3: Its right, And I mean we've had some episodes about Iran.
Speaker 3: I've hosted a few people about Iran, and I think
Speaker 3: it bears repeating that their strategy, their ability to kind
Speaker 3: of withstand even this level of severe warfare in the
Speaker 3: latest escalation, has depended on their allies in the region
Speaker 3: and kind of the diffusion of Iranian power to nonstate
Speaker 3: actors essentially. So, what was the public reaction to the
Speaker 3: Lebanese government signing this agreement? The Lebanese public reaction, to
Speaker 3: be clear, Yeah.
Speaker 7: The most immediate reaction on this hit has been by
Speaker 7: of course, by Hesballa, and it's ally mL in which
Speaker 7: they you know, they burned stuff down, they yelled, they
Speaker 7: threw stuff at the cops and stuff like that. The
Speaker 7: Secretary General of Hasballa, as I said, has declared did
Speaker 7: not avoid and so on. As for the rest of
Speaker 7: the country, there hasn't been any kind of mobilization against it,
Speaker 7: but they shouldn't be interpreted as consent. It's more, I think,
Speaker 7: in my view that the Lebanese population as a whole
Speaker 7: has been exhausted by nearly three years of war now
Speaker 7: and there is an appetite for kind of diplomacy. In fact,
Speaker 7: there's been a pole, a nation white pole that was
Speaker 7: just released a few days ago that says that roughly
Speaker 7: fifty four percent of the population support the plomacy versus
Speaker 7: thirty five percent that support armed resistance. Now the fift
Speaker 7: and that support the plomacy, which is you know, not
Speaker 7: just over half. It's not because they believe this is
Speaker 7: the best option. It's more that they believe I think,
Speaker 7: this is my interpretation. It's more that I think most
Speaker 7: people genuinely believe that there are no other options. So
Speaker 7: it's more like, I think a reflection of how desperate
Speaker 7: the situation is more than anything else. It should not
Speaker 7: be confused with any kind of like warming up towards Israel.
Speaker 7: And that sample, which again was Nationloyd, eighty seven percent
Speaker 7: of people in Lebanon identified Israel as their main enemy
Speaker 7: versus fifty one percent that identified America and thirty eighty
Speaker 7: percent that identified Iran.
Speaker 6: And this is a cost sects.
Speaker 7: So usually when you see the reporting, you could be
Speaker 7: led to believe that it's only Shiahs and Lebanon that
Speaker 7: opposed Israel, but actually it is really a cost sect
Speaker 7: that Israel is a deeply unpopular state in Lebanon, which
Speaker 7: is not surprising because it's been bombing Lebanon for on
Speaker 7: and off of decades now, right.
Speaker 3: You've written about this for nine seven two mag you
Speaker 3: have another article coming out, I'm sure, or it's already out.
Speaker 3: I'm not sure, but I will definitely link it in
Speaker 3: the show notes by the time this episode airs. Is
Speaker 3: there anything you feel like we missed and that listeners
Speaker 3: should know.
Speaker 6: It's very difficult to know where things are heading in
Speaker 6: terms of the security situation in Lebanon. I would argue
Speaker 6: that kind of.
Speaker 7: The specter of a civil war, whatever that actually looks like,
Speaker 7: is never too far away, and hasn't been too far
Speaker 7: away for a while now. I don't think it's likely
Speaker 7: in the traditional sense of like multiple armed actors in
Speaker 7: the near future, largely because I think the population is
Speaker 7: really exhausted.
Speaker 6: But there israelly.
Speaker 7: War on Lebanon has created kind of this fault line
Speaker 7: that's very very difficult, I think to overcome now. And
Speaker 7: it's not again a fault line between pro isiin and
Speaker 7: anti Israel. Both sides of this fault line are technically
Speaker 7: anti Israel. It's more of like what the priority should
Speaker 7: be for the Lebanese states and sense for a lot
Speaker 7: of people who are from southern Lebanon that is currently
Speaker 7: as we're speaking, still being bombed. It is giving the
Speaker 7: sense that the rest of the country is abandoning them,
Speaker 7: and the sort of grievances is quite literally what gave
Speaker 7: us has Buddler in the first place. Hazbola was created
Speaker 7: in the mid eighties. This was a couple of years
Speaker 7: to three years after the Israeli occupation of southern Lebanon
Speaker 7: really started, which was not even the first one. It
Speaker 7: was the second one. It was just the biggest one.
Speaker 7: It would last for eighteen years. And in those eighteen years,
Speaker 7: this obscure group that did not really exist grew in
Speaker 7: popularity because they were the most effective one, thanks to
Speaker 7: the fact that Iran was backing them until they became
Speaker 7: the fact of king makers of Lebanese politics for a
Speaker 7: couple of decades after that. So here it is not
Speaker 7: even that I feel that history will just repeat itself
Speaker 7: and whatnot. It's more that there doesn't seem to be
Speaker 7: any actual path forward that proposes any alternative to people
Speaker 7: from southern Lebanon, which is roughly a fifth of the
Speaker 7: country in terms of both sides, more or less in population.
Speaker 7: More or less, those people have nowhere else to go.
Speaker 7: They will go back to their homes when they can.
Speaker 7: They go back to their lands if their homes are destroyed,
Speaker 7: and they will try and rebuild as they have done
Speaker 7: already in the past, if not once, sometimes more than once.
Speaker 6: And if there isn't.
Speaker 7: A solution for them, that is just a fair solution
Speaker 7: that brings them justice, that stops the Israeli bombings and
Speaker 7: permanently forces the Israelis out of Lebanon. There's going to
Speaker 7: be some force somewhere that's going to find a way
Speaker 7: to appeal to that population, and if they're not offered
Speaker 7: an alternative, they will seek that alternative, which again is
Speaker 7: the history has well in the first place. So as
Speaker 7: much as I oppose has Bola for very Lebanese reasons,
Speaker 7: and as the Lebanese myself because of the Secanism and
Speaker 7: authoritaranism and so on, that's a completely separate question for me.
Speaker 7: Then the right of people who are under military occupation
Speaker 7: to resist that military occupation, because that is actually a
Speaker 7: right that's guaranteed under international law. And I'm really worried
Speaker 7: as now, and I'm not just speaking for myself here,
Speaker 7: that's virtually everyone I know that the situation is getting
Speaker 7: to the point where essentially the Libanese state is hoping
Speaker 7: that the Americans would just pressure the Israelis, and the
Speaker 7: way it's been happening as of now is that they
Speaker 7: would pressure them here and they're a bit but not much,
Speaker 7: and then the rest of the time they just let
Speaker 7: them do whatever they want with American text money. Of course,
Speaker 7: if they don't actually force the Israelis to withdraw from Lebanon,
Speaker 7: it can create like a whole different political beast in
Speaker 7: a sense that would be even more violent.
Speaker 3: I think we're specifically talking about Lebanon, but this is
Speaker 3: the case in so many contexts in the region, is
Speaker 3: that when the conflicts are unresolved, when the violence is unresolved,
Speaker 3: then it'll only perpetuate more violence. Everyone I know has
Speaker 3: been warning about that in every context in Palestine, in Lebanon.
Speaker 3: So it's extremely depressing.
Speaker 5: But thank you so.
Speaker 3: Much for sharing your insights with us, and I will
Speaker 3: link Alia's work in the show notes, and yeah, help
Speaker 3: you all stay safe.
Speaker 1: Thanks Denna.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to It could Happen here.
Speaker 4: I'm Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: This is a podcast about things falling apart, and that's
Speaker 2: happening in a lot of places right now. But not
Speaker 2: every place also has things regularly unfortunately falling from the sky.
Speaker 2: But that's life in Ukraine for a lot of people,
Speaker 2: including our guests today, every single day, because they're still
Speaker 2: under invasion from the Russian Federation, which I guess we're
Speaker 2: still calling it the Federation. Romeo Kokreatsky, Welcome back to
Speaker 2: the show.
Speaker 8: How are you doing?
Speaker 2: I mean, I know it's not great, so I don't
Speaker 2: know why I'm asking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, thanks for having me back on. It's been a while.
Speaker 9: Yeah, yeah, like you mentioned it, it's not great, especially
Speaker 9: for me personally. My neighborhood's been targeted by ballistics twice
Speaker 9: in the past two weeks, one of which hit a
Speaker 9: improperly stored munitions dump and blew up half the neighborhood.
Speaker 4: So that's that's been fun to deal with.
Speaker 2: I mean, we have other stuff to talk about, but
Speaker 2: I do want to just kind of talk about what
Speaker 2: life has been like like in terms of dealing with that.
Speaker 2: I mean, thank god you have not been hit, neither
Speaker 2: has your home, but like on a day to day basis,
Speaker 2: how are y'all enduring? You know, so many years passed
Speaker 2: when this escalated.
Speaker 9: Most recently, honestly, I had thought, prior to half my
Speaker 9: neighborhood being blown up that I basically gotten numb to
Speaker 9: the bombing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, turns out that's not true. Yeah, that makes sense.
Speaker 4: Turns out I was just completely lying to myself. Yeah.
Speaker 9: I have mortal dread pretty much all the time. Every night,
Speaker 9: I am desperately checking every single monitoring channel I have
Speaker 9: access to and praying that the Russians aren't going to
Speaker 9: shoot us. And if they do shoot us, I then
Speaker 9: have to think, Hey, should I wake my wife and
Speaker 9: sun up? Should we go down to the shelter? Is
Speaker 9: there any point We live in the fifteenth floor, so
Speaker 9: we'd have to walk. What if a missile hits while
Speaker 9: we're in the stairwell?
Speaker 4: Yeah. And it's a little tiring. It's a little tiring.
Speaker 9: Yeah, to constantly live your life with the feeling that
Speaker 9: you may die at any goddamn moment.
Speaker 4: I'm not even in the military.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I am pretty much constantly afraid for my life
Speaker 9: and of course the life of my family and friends.
Speaker 9: Every morning after a mass attack, I have to call
Speaker 9: or text every single journalist who works for me make
Speaker 9: sure that they're still alive. Yeah, And so far, everything's
Speaker 9: been clear, everything's been clear for five years, but you
Speaker 9: really have to wonder how long can can one's luck last.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's like you were talking about, you know, the
Speaker 2: moment you start to feel like, you know, maybe I've hardened,
Speaker 2: or maybe like I've gotten past the point that this
Speaker 2: can affect me. Is the moment where something, you know, happens.
Speaker 2: I feel so awful that like the constant state of
Speaker 2: like panic, fear, arousal that everyone has to be in
Speaker 2: over there because they're just shooting missiles and your home
Speaker 2: every day is just it's hideous.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's not great.
Speaker 9: I haven't left the country since the start of the
Speaker 9: full scale Yeah, And to be quite honest, I'm not
Speaker 9: sure how I would do once this threat is no
Speaker 9: longer above my head. It's it's hard to imagine going
Speaker 9: to sleep and not wondering whether I'm going to wake
Speaker 9: up in the next like the next morning. It sounds
Speaker 9: a little absurd, but then I think someone about three
Speaker 9: hundred kilometers away has made a decision to lob multi
Speaker 9: hundred kilogram warheads at the general area of where I
Speaker 9: live within two to three kilometers.
Speaker 4: That is not a largery No, No, it really isn't.
Speaker 2: No, I mean ballistic missiles you know, often can go thousands. Like,
Speaker 2: that's so easy to build something that you could just
Speaker 2: fire blindly into a city.
Speaker 4: This point.
Speaker 2: That's why war looks like this for most of the
Speaker 2: people involved in it, right Like, for all the movies
Speaker 2: are about the guys like kicking indoors and shit on
Speaker 2: the front lines. The vast majority of everyone's experience of
Speaker 2: war is shit falling on you from the fucking sky
Speaker 2: or exploding in traffic or something like that, right Like,
Speaker 2: that's the reality. I'm fucking sorry, man.
Speaker 9: Yeah, And in Kiev, honestly, we don't even have as
Speaker 9: bad Yeah here, son, they're just doing a human sofariti.
Speaker 4: They've been doing that, yeah, I don't know, like six
Speaker 4: months now.
Speaker 9: The front line is right over basically the river, and
Speaker 9: they the Russians, just send drones to hunt people in
Speaker 9: the streets just for fun, you know, funzies for the lulls.
Speaker 9: So as bad as I have to here, sometimes I
Speaker 9: read the stories I'm publishing and I'm like, man, thank god,
Speaker 9: I don't live in that place.
Speaker 4: Think I don't know anyone from met City.
Speaker 2: Everything becomes so relative after a while. I mean, it's
Speaker 2: the only way to stay sane.
Speaker 4: Even though your.
Speaker 2: Sheer situation is objectively unreasonable and impossible, you kind of
Speaker 2: naturally just look over to whoever's got it worse, I mean,
Speaker 2: which says something beautiful. I guess if you'll let it.
Speaker 4: But you know, I guess that's one way of looking
Speaker 4: at it.
Speaker 2: Fuck man, I'm sorry.
Speaker 4: I know.
Speaker 2: I brought you on today to talk about some of
Speaker 2: the political changes that have been pretty massive that have
Speaker 2: just just hit the Ukrainian government as the result of
Speaker 2: the sacking of Mikaylo Federov. But that also feels like
Speaker 2: we should talk about that some I just I don't know.
Speaker 2: Talking to you reminds me of how much I even
Speaker 2: let myself overhear focus on war in terms.
Speaker 8: Of stuff like that.
Speaker 2: Right, these like moves by governments and moves by forces,
Speaker 2: which by default means excizing the majority of what's happening
Speaker 2: from your mind, because in some times, I mean, sometimes
Speaker 2: it's just too big to think about otherwise.
Speaker 4: Right, But like it's no, that's exactly right.
Speaker 9: Yeah, whenever there's any sort of domestic, local intrigue, I
Speaker 9: am just overjoyed.
Speaker 4: I'm excited. Again's something.
Speaker 9: I know a lot of people wanted to be war
Speaker 9: correspondents and like be there in the trenches. And I
Speaker 9: have a lot of friends. My buddy Dylan Burns. I
Speaker 9: saw a clip of him just getting shelled last week summer.
Speaker 9: I think, come Zepparisia front. Yeah, that wasn't what I
Speaker 9: wanted to do. I became a journalist because I love politics.
Speaker 9: The envy, the pettiness thing goes all the little like
Speaker 9: garbage bullshit that makes up the experience of human politics.
Speaker 9: That's what calls to me in my dark, little shriveled heart.
Speaker 9: So whenever I have the chance to engage in just
Speaker 9: domestic political bullshit, I feel overjoyed.
Speaker 4: That is fantastic.
Speaker 2: Well good, okay, Well let's talk about some domestic political
Speaker 2: bullshit because there's been a wild train of it in
Speaker 2: the last couple of days. I'm just gonna let you
Speaker 2: go after starting this off. But like kind of what
Speaker 2: prompted this is On July fifteenth of this year, Vladimir Zolensky,
Speaker 2: the Ukrainian president, fired or dismissed MIKHAILI. Federov, who was
Speaker 2: the Minister of Defensive Ukraine and Federov he'd been the
Speaker 2: president's social media marketer initially. Right like that, back during
Speaker 2: he was when he was campaigning, way before his involvement
Speaker 2: in the military, if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he was a not just social media he was
Speaker 9: the young it guy. He was the it right, all
Speaker 9: the IT infrastructure from SMM, from social media to the
Speaker 9: actual physical infrastructure itself, that was all Federoff.
Speaker 4: He was like the it dude for the vi Lenski administration.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's only had the position for about six months.
Speaker 2: He was appointed in January, but it's been an incredibly
Speaker 2: popular six months.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: He is widely popular in Ukraine. There were large protests
Speaker 2: following his dismissal, and he got a lot of credit
Speaker 2: for his use of drone warfare and particularly some of
Speaker 2: the promises he was making. And some people would say
Speaker 2: some of the promises that he fulfilled about drone warfare, right,
Speaker 2: And one of the issues that he had as he
Speaker 2: kind of clashed, as I understand it with an older
Speaker 2: General Sirski, who was much more of a conventional weapons gain.
Speaker 2: I think like the big fight that Spurtlus came over
Speaker 2: like a fight over munitions, right, Federoff was canceling an
Speaker 2: order of artillery shells or something like that, and it
Speaker 2: kind of embodied the greater conflict between them.
Speaker 4: It seems like, yeah, that's basically right.
Speaker 9: Federoff prior to taking the Missary Defense position, like I said,
Speaker 9: he was the it guy, and he had the Minister
Speaker 9: of Digital Transformation because we have a whole ministry set
Speaker 9: up to digitize our government and we've got the DA
Speaker 9: app and a couple of good results from it. So
Speaker 9: he had a relatively high level popularity compared to the
Speaker 9: typical Ukrainian official coming into the MOD position, and he
Speaker 9: became popular, or I guess his popularity grew not so
Speaker 9: much because he was doing drones. Like the transformation to
Speaker 9: drones occurred pretty much from the start of the right, Yes,
Speaker 9: every single union, and it has been ordering and begging
Speaker 9: and getting drones however they can since literally.
Speaker 4: The folk scale started.
Speaker 9: However, what Federal promised to do and what he did,
Speaker 9: which is what won him a lot of accolades with
Speaker 9: the common soldier, is he said we would actually get
Speaker 9: you drones instead of you know, you having to go
Speaker 9: through fifteen layers of bureaucracy procurement to maybe sign up
Speaker 9: for a list where you might get delivered something in
Speaker 9: four months somewhere we'll set up a simple direct system
Speaker 9: where you can request the equipment you want and you'll
Speaker 9: get it. Well, it's not quite as simple. He develops
Speaker 9: some gamification crap which you can get into later.
Speaker 4: I'm not yeah, I'm not a fan.
Speaker 2: It is really interesting, but yeah, yeah, he's tried some
Speaker 2: really fascinating stuff.
Speaker 9: Yeah, he's tried a lot of things and it has worked. Yeah,
Speaker 9: people have started getting drones. Like I know guys in
Speaker 9: the front who had complained previously that they were unable
Speaker 9: to get equipment even though they're posted, they're deployed, they
Speaker 9: have a mission and commands just like, oh, we don't
Speaker 9: know where your drone is. That started to be resolved. However,
Speaker 9: in order to do this you need money. Right to
Speaker 9: buy drones, you need money, So the Ministry Defense controls
Speaker 9: the actual monetary flows. They have to actually sign off
Speaker 9: on whatever the request from the General Staff or the military.
Speaker 4: Is to purchase this or that equipment.
Speaker 9: System the way it typically works because the Ministry Defense
Speaker 9: is a civilian institution and the military is obviously a
Speaker 9: military institution. Typically speaking, in wartime, civilians are intended to
Speaker 9: defer to military expertise. Right, So if the army goes,
Speaker 9: we need I don't know, one hundred thousand and one
Speaker 9: to fifty five millimeters shells. The Ministry of Defense is
Speaker 9: not really supposed to say you know what, nah, we
Speaker 9: think you need this. Instead, this is the kind of
Speaker 9: the crux of the conflict here is that federal off
Speaker 9: seeing these requests from Serski. Like you said, he's a
Speaker 9: very conventional guy, a very conventional Soviet general. He grew
Speaker 9: up in Moscow, went to the Moscow Read Army Academy.
Speaker 9: To be quite honest, he's pretty much a Soviet general
Speaker 9: through and through.
Speaker 2: My understanding is he is a reputation for accepting pretty
Speaker 2: gnarly casualties. Yeah, fair or unfair, he's gotten that reputation.
Speaker 2: I'm not like an expert on his record.
Speaker 9: Yeah, absolutely, yes, he has that reputation. And like you,
Speaker 9: I'm not a military guy, yeah, a non army expert.
Speaker 9: I've never studied strategy or tactics aside from meme posting,
Speaker 9: So I have no idea how you know true or
Speaker 9: not true? It is obviously you can look at the
Speaker 9: lost records of the units that Sirski said to personally favored,
Speaker 9: and he can see that they are higher but are
Speaker 9: they hired because they are simply being used more often.
Speaker 9: Like it's a war, there are going to be casualties.
Speaker 9: There are simply no way to remove that fact. Or
Speaker 9: are they higher because his commanders are incompetent in throwing.
Speaker 4: Away human meat.
Speaker 9: You know, you've got people that'll say one way, you've
Speaker 9: got people to say the other way. But regardless, Serski
Speaker 9: would continue to request these kind of conventional munitions, and
Speaker 9: according to Serski's version, at least Federoff will just completely
Speaker 9: ignore this and by whatever he wanted the ministry by,
Speaker 9: typically this was drones. There was a funny meme I
Speaker 9: saw of Sierski complaining to Federoff, with the text reading,
Speaker 9: the buzzing of your stupid drones are hurting the infantry
Speaker 9: to advance. To give you a sense of how Ukrainians viewed.
Speaker 8: This, Oh man, that's beautiful.
Speaker 4: I really love that, meaning really that's beautiful.
Speaker 2: That's going in a history book.
Speaker 4: From the feder Off side.
Speaker 9: What they say the conflict is, which, knowing how you
Speaker 9: Kraine works, I tend to believe them, is that in
Speaker 9: Federalf's attempts to move these cash flows from buying conventional
Speaker 9: munitions to buying drones.
Speaker 4: He started stepping on a lot.
Speaker 9: Of toes in the General Staff because this is Ukraine,
Speaker 9: because this is defense procurement. If you want to buy
Speaker 9: something from a domestic supplier, the chances are that supplier
Speaker 9: is owned somehow via cl company connected to some general
Speaker 9: or some highly placed military officials.
Speaker 4: That's just the nature of the game. Obviously.
Speaker 9: Let's say if the General Staff requests one hundred thousand
Speaker 9: shells and they source half of it from the Ukrainian firm,
Speaker 9: there's a good chance that there's a lot of generals
Speaker 9: that are going to be building themselves in Uvilla after this. If, however,
Speaker 9: you don't put that order in and instead buy, you know,
Speaker 9: drones from the five hundred or one thousand different garage manufacturers,
Speaker 9: which is how the drone industry works here. That money
Speaker 9: is not going into people's pockets, and those people get upset.
Speaker 9: Those people start complaining that you are not a team player,
Speaker 9: that they can't work with you, that you don't listen
Speaker 9: to them, they stopped taking your coals, etc. Which is
Speaker 9: exactly what we saw in the conflict between Federoff and
Speaker 9: Serski on the reporting of it. So that's that's basically
Speaker 9: the gist of it is Federoff try to use his
Speaker 9: own judgment and stepped on people's toes, redirected money, and
Speaker 9: Sierski and the general staff were not fans.
Speaker 4: I doubt Sirski cared really all that much.
Speaker 9: However, he needs to keep everyone happy, and the officer
Speaker 9: class is very heavily he involved in this creating military salaries.
Speaker 9: Even officer salaries are not great.
Speaker 2: No, and there's a lot of corruption and procurement, and
Speaker 2: a lot of allegations of corruption and procurement, which is
Speaker 2: not something any military doesn't have to be honest. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that makes sense.
Speaker 9: So finally he gets to the point where Serski he
Speaker 9: went to Zelenski and said, look, you have to get
Speaker 9: rid of this guy.
Speaker 4: I can't work with him.
Speaker 9: Then Federoff separately went to Zelenski and said, look, you
Speaker 9: have to get rid of this guy.
Speaker 4: I can't work with him.
Speaker 9: And then Zelenski goes to a private meeting with his
Speaker 9: party in Parliament and says, hey, well, they both said
Speaker 9: they can't work with each other, and I kind of
Speaker 9: need them to work with each other, so I should
Speaker 9: fire them both. But I can't fire Sirski yet, so
Speaker 9: instead I'll fire Federoff and that's what kicked off this
Speaker 9: whole shebang.
Speaker 2: How much do you buy? Because The Times had a
Speaker 2: piece recently that was kind of, I mean, quoting some
Speaker 2: insiders alleging that this was partly to do with Zelensky
Speaker 2: being jealous of federov popularity. And I've heard I've heard
Speaker 2: rumors of that before that has not seemed to be
Speaker 2: like the most I don't know, believable answer. So I
Speaker 2: was kind of surprised to see the Times give so
Speaker 2: much credence to it. But I mean, do you feel
Speaker 2: like that's credible? Is that something you hear a lot?
Speaker 2: Or is that where's that coming from?
Speaker 9: I guess, I mean I have considered this a lot,
Speaker 9: because it has been something saying, yeah, when Valari's Illusioni
Speaker 9: was made to step down as top general and he
Speaker 9: was replaced by Sirski, A lot of the kind of
Speaker 9: speculation why this move was made was because Illusioni was
Speaker 9: very quickly becoming the most popular political figure, public figure
Speaker 9: in Ukraine. And then we saw Budhanav krol Badanov, the
Speaker 9: head of military intelligence who is now Zelenski's chief of staff,
Speaker 9: when his star was rising and Zelenski had to fire
Speaker 9: your mock. He took the country's top spy basically and
Speaker 9: put him as chief of staff. Now you don't hear
Speaker 9: about Padanov at all except for some unflattering rumors on
Speaker 9: anonymous telegram channels. So there is kind of a pattern
Speaker 9: you can see with Zelensky seemingly defusing popular people around
Speaker 9: him so they are no longer in a position where
Speaker 9: they can be so popular. And in solutionies case, he
Speaker 9: recently announced that whenever we do have presidential elections, he
Speaker 9: does plan to stand in them. Right, so he has
Speaker 9: in fact directly declared he will be politically opposing Zelenski whenever.
Speaker 4: We get back to normal politics.
Speaker 9: So how do I say this? I am a cynical bastard.
Speaker 9: I will believe the worst about anyone, especially a ego
Speaker 9: driven TV star slash politician. It is not difficult for
Speaker 9: me in my citizens oh God, to look at a
Speaker 9: man and say, huh, you know what, he probably doesn't
Speaker 9: like being out shown on the stage. At the same time,
Speaker 9: I like to hope that Zelenski has the understanding that
Speaker 9: we're fighting a full scale war and that his ego
Speaker 9: is unnecessary and detrimental to the war.
Speaker 4: Effort.
Speaker 9: But but the truth of the matter is I have
Speaker 9: no idea. It certainly can be construed that way.
Speaker 4: Let's say that.
Speaker 9: I don't think construing events that that way is unfair
Speaker 9: to Zelenski. I think that's it's a reasonable interpretation. Yeah,
Speaker 9: based on the actions that he's taken, and based on
Speaker 9: you know, the rumors and so on that come out
Speaker 9: of the office the President.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that that makes sense what you're saying.
Speaker 2: I don't have trouble believing that.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 2: One of the things I have noticed is I've kind
Speaker 2: of read it into Federov and I'm wondering, and this
Speaker 2: is we're kind of our veering into some military theory here.
Speaker 2: But it is something that concerns me when I kind
Speaker 2: of look at some of the allegations about what he believes.
Speaker 2: And I'm not sure if this is entirely fair to him,
Speaker 2: but it seems like his critics within the Ukrainian military
Speaker 2: seem to believe that he basically is a believer that
Speaker 2: drones and robotics can handle a huge amount of the
Speaker 2: fighting load, right, and that this is like a major
Speaker 2: solution to the manpower crisis, to the extent that is
Speaker 2: sometimes accused of believing that they can handle much more
Speaker 2: of the load than is really realistic. In a way
Speaker 2: that sometimes sounds similar to me to what some people
Speaker 2: said about like air force generals and kind of the
Speaker 2: post World War two period where there's this big understanding
Speaker 2: and all we need is air power. That seems to
Speaker 2: be like the allegations against federof that he's saying, all
Speaker 2: we need is drone power and robotics, and we can
Speaker 2: kind of use that to fill in every gap, and
Speaker 2: there's a very reasonable critique that that's not sufficient. Now,
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's fully fair to feder Off,
Speaker 2: but it seems to be like that's how he's being characterized,
Speaker 2: certainly by his opponents.
Speaker 4: Having listened to.
Speaker 9: Him speak, I'll say that the characterization is a little
Speaker 9: bit off, Like he might honestly believe that drones and
Speaker 9: robotics have to completely replace human warfare, but it's not
Speaker 9: like he lives in a fantasy world where he understands
Speaker 9: that that's the possibility that we can implement right now, right.
Speaker 9: It's more that he faces the banal mathematical fact that
Speaker 9: we cannot match Russia.
Speaker 4: We are a much smaller country. It is mathematically impossible, right.
Speaker 4: Add into that the general unpopularity of mobilization, the whole
Speaker 4: palsification stuff, the fact that no one trusts our aging
Speaker 4: Soviet officer class to value their life or contrab utan
Speaker 4: they are drafted or joined the military. That together leads
Speaker 4: Federoff to the I think pretty obvious conclusion that the
Speaker 4: only possible thing we can do to even start to
Speaker 4: match Russia in manpower is heavily embraced robotics. Now, I
Speaker 4: do want to say a couple of things. Federoff is
Speaker 4: a libertarian in the American sense, right. And he's very young.
Speaker 4: He's thirty five, He's he's literally my age, Jesus.
Speaker 9: And this was back I think twenty seventeen or eighteen
Speaker 9: he ran as part of we had a tiny libertarian
Speaker 9: movement called the five to ten Party, which their idea
Speaker 9: was a flat five percent vat tax, flat ten percent
Speaker 9: something else I mean, in stupid libertarian shit. I didn't
Speaker 9: ever pay much attention to it because I always ask
Speaker 9: them how old their girlfriend is and if they need
Speaker 9: to use the garciat is my paying libertarians there?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 9: And again, so he may very well believe that this
Speaker 9: is the case that humans needed taking out of what's
Speaker 9: the military euphemism, humans have to be taken out of.
Speaker 2: The kill chain, right right, removed from the kill chain. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I love the term kill chain.
Speaker 9: He made very well believe that he is good personal
Speaker 9: friends with Alex Karp, the CEO of Palenteer. That's very
Speaker 9: obviously the omni surveillance courts were headed by the devil himself,
Speaker 9: Peter Teel, so there's a lot of red flags.
Speaker 2: One of the first staymans he made after getting sacked
Speaker 2: was that he's been already gotten a bunch of offers
Speaker 2: from different Silicon Valley companies. Someone close to him said that,
Speaker 2: not that he that he hasn't taken.
Speaker 4: No, no, he said that.
Speaker 9: During the briefing, I was listening and it was him. Yeah,
Speaker 9: Alex Karp has already called me and offered me a job.
Speaker 2: Oh he said, Alex Karp. Okay, great, yeah, great. I'm
Speaker 2: just remembering from a news article, are right now that said.
Speaker 2: I wanted to be fair to him because one thing
Speaker 2: he also gets a lot of credit for is over
Speaker 2: the last six months, which was not in his position
Speaker 2: for long. But it's been a reasonably good six months
Speaker 2: compared to some of the pre couple of years. Right,
Speaker 2: the front is stabilized in a lot of areas, and
Speaker 2: there's been an incredibly successful campaign to damage Rush's oil
Speaker 2: refining capacity that's taken out out a quarter of it, right,
Speaker 2: and those are seen part of why he's so popular.
Speaker 2: I would imagine there's a debate as to how much
Speaker 2: credit does he deserve for both of those things. Both
Speaker 2: of those things have happened right over the last six months.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: And the hope was that if he was allowed to
Speaker 9: complete his reform, so the next big thing that he
Speaker 9: had planned to focus on was ground robotics, ground drones.
Speaker 9: The hope was that if he had actually been able
Speaker 9: to implement plans, we would see the same kind of
Speaker 9: sea change away from human soldiery, human infantry into robotics soldiers,
Speaker 9: just as we saw drones replace the sniper team, the
Speaker 9: artillery team, the mortar team. You know, so many of
Speaker 9: these kind of fundamental roles that we thought a modern
Speaker 9: military monitoring mines, armed military needs. Turns out you could
Speaker 9: replace all of them with drones. We don't know if
Speaker 9: that's going to be true for groundrones, but that was
Speaker 9: going to be his next project, and it definitely helped.
Speaker 4: Bolster his standing.
Speaker 9: Let's say, when he goes, well, first off, I'm getting
Speaker 9: you the drones, and second off, we don't need to
Speaker 9: throw away Ukrainian lives on worthless, neat assaults to win
Speaker 9: back half a kilometer of territory. We can use easily
Speaker 9: replaceable robotics instead.
Speaker 2: Now that's a very hard thing to argue with, I mean,
Speaker 2: especially given how it's functioned. You know, it is worth
Speaker 2: kind of noting that he was brought in as well
Speaker 2: to solve the manpower crisis, and that that that certainly
Speaker 2: has not been solved, although you know, he was in
Speaker 2: there for six months. But like that still continues to
Speaker 2: be a significant issue, even with the advent of a
Speaker 2: lot more robotic fighter, which is, you know, proven successful
Speaker 2: in certain areas of the front, certainly, but it continues
Speaker 2: to be a pretty contentious and mobile front in some
Speaker 2: areas as well.
Speaker 4: Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 9: And the fact is we still have I don't know,
Speaker 9: maybe let's say another ten to fifteen years to reach
Speaker 9: the terminator feature where you just you don't need human infantry.
Speaker 9: It is a liability if you have flesh and blood
Speaker 9: guys on the battlefield. We're not quite there yet. You
Speaker 9: still do need flesh and blood meet zat humans to
Speaker 9: do things, so molization is obviously a thing. But I
Speaker 9: gotta say, every single Minister of Defense we've had since
Speaker 9: the start of the full scale has had the brief
Speaker 9: of reforming mobilization, so he is hardly the first guy
Speaker 9: to fail at right, the general staff was given the
Speaker 9: brief of reforming mobilizations. Zelenski himself said that the office
Speaker 9: of the President has the brief of performing mulization veeder Off.
Speaker 9: During his kind of exit press conference that he gave
Speaker 9: after being fired, he said this a very interesting thing.
Speaker 9: He said that in order to do mobilization form in Ukraine,
Speaker 9: we need a new social contract. The fundamental social contract
Speaker 9: between Ukrainians and the state is seen by the average
Speaker 9: Ukrainian to be broken because of the continuous and constant
Speaker 9: corruption scandals, because of the seeming you know, Soviet indifference
Speaker 9: and callousness towards human life. All of these factors make
Speaker 9: the Ukrainian populace not especially want to die for the state.
Speaker 9: It's not that we don't want to die for Ukraine,
Speaker 9: but no one wants to die for the Ukrainian state,
Speaker 9: and this is the fundamental issue. And until that is addressed,
Speaker 9: there is there is no solution for mobilization except for
Speaker 9: greater repression, right like round people up even more, use
Speaker 9: greater force. That's the only thing you can possibly do.
Speaker 9: There is no soft handle to fix that. It's not
Speaker 9: even really a question of money, because if you think
Speaker 9: that once you're drafted, they're gonna throw you in the
Speaker 9: back of a van, drive into the mill force, stick
Speaker 9: you there for two weeks, not teach you anything, yell
Speaker 9: and beat you, then drive you to the zero line
Speaker 9: and leave you there. That's what the average Ukrainian men
Speaker 9: man thinks is going to happen to them if they're drafted.
Speaker 9: And the fact is we have lots of stories exactly
Speaker 9: like that, so it's not exactly an unfounded fear. And
Speaker 9: until that's addressed, until the Ukrainian state can you know,
Speaker 9: plausibly tell the Ukrainian people, look, we care about your lives.
Speaker 9: We are doing this because we are doing this to survive,
Speaker 9: not because some general wants an extra badge or an
Speaker 9: extra villa or something. And at that point mobilization reform
Speaker 9: can't start. But without that change, you're not gonna see anything.
Speaker 9: No amount of bureaucratic wrangling or raising salaries is going
Speaker 9: to result in any kind of mobilization.
Speaker 2: Bump, Well, man, is there anything else you wanted to
Speaker 2: get to today. I think that was a really good
Speaker 2: point to make.
Speaker 9: I'll say this that we did see that the protests
Speaker 9: did pay off, So I think that's the one aspect
Speaker 9: of this we haven't talked about.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a very good point.
Speaker 9: Why he is actually doing this, or why he is
Speaker 9: actually taking steps to remove Serski is because of the protests.
Speaker 2: So we didn't even get to that so much because
Speaker 2: that just happened hours before we recorded this. But he
Speaker 2: has announced that Serski is now being removed. Right, yes, yes, yes,
Speaker 2: just happened. Sorry, it was.
Speaker 9: Always going through case once Serski's name was out in public.
Speaker 9: The country's top general cannot be this controversial. He cannot
Speaker 9: be the guy everyone is talking about derogatorily in a
Speaker 9: national or you just you need to have the trust
Speaker 9: of both the people and the troops. And Serski once
Speaker 9: this scandal had reached the level it was clear that
Speaker 9: he no longer had the Jews to continue. But again,
Speaker 9: the reasons Lunky made these changes is because of the protests.
Speaker 4: So we learned about Federov's.
Speaker 9: Dismissal like late at night, I want to say, in
Speaker 9: the fifteenth, and then that evening a couple of uh
Speaker 9: I think it was one ex volunteer, one ex soldier
Speaker 9: posted that we everyone should gather out on Twitter, I think,
Speaker 9: and then that that game steam and that was the
Speaker 9: start of the kind of five day protests. I don't
Speaker 9: know if they're going to continue today now that Serski
Speaker 9: has been replaced, but they've been happening every single day
Speaker 9: this week.
Speaker 4: And again people came out first to kind.
Speaker 9: Of keep to protest Federalf's removal, to say, hey, keep Federov.
Speaker 9: Then it became clear that Federalf himself had refused to
Speaker 9: continue to work with his Zelenski team. He pretty much
Speaker 9: told Zlenski that I don't want any job. I wanted
Speaker 9: the job that I had, but since you made that
Speaker 9: no longer possible, I don't want to work for you.
Speaker 9: Once that dynamic became clear, the protests shifted more towards
Speaker 9: trying to get Serski fired. Were to get him to
Speaker 9: resign than to get feder Off back in office, which
Speaker 9: is unlikely to.
Speaker 4: Happen, but the protests have been.
Speaker 9: First off, they occurred not just in Kiev, but pretty
Speaker 9: much in every major city, even the frontline cities, even
Speaker 9: in Zupperisia, in Harkiev. One of my journalists was in
Speaker 9: Harkyev and did a report from their protest, and these
Speaker 9: are people who are getting air bombed during the day
Speaker 9: and they're gathering in the center of their city in protesting.
Speaker 9: The scale of it, the speed of it in the
Speaker 9: general societal agreement is really what what gave these protests
Speaker 9: their statem. The same with the pro Nabu protests that
Speaker 9: we saw a couple of years backer last year, the
Speaker 9: same kind of dynamic, same kind of protesting class. Let's
Speaker 9: say it's younger people, you know, from eighteen to like thirty,
Speaker 9: typically more liberal, more progressive. However, we come out in
Speaker 9: protest not for I mean, sometimes we do come out
Speaker 9: for gay rights, but currently it's more to correct our
Speaker 9: government's person all choices than anything else.
Speaker 2: Right, Yeah, I mean, I guess it is positive that
Speaker 2: it matters still, you know, which is certainly in some
Speaker 2: ways a legacy still lingering of the Midon right is
Speaker 2: that the government's not going to ignore that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I wouldn't just say it's positive. I'd be quite honest,
Speaker 9: I cannot think of a single other democratic country on
Speaker 9: the planet that is as responsive to the undifferentiated, random
Speaker 9: cries of the masses.
Speaker 8: Then there's this huge negative to that.
Speaker 9: Yeah, I mean I say it like this, and it
Speaker 9: might sound like I'm saying this derogatorily, but I'm not. No,
Speaker 9: I think, quite frankly, pretty much all liberal democratic nations
Speaker 9: in the twenty first century have almost completely abandoned the
Speaker 9: democratic part. Either people vote for local parties that simply
Speaker 9: don't matter, and all the decisions are made in board
Speaker 9: rooms that they have less than zero impact in. They
Speaker 9: got on protest and nothing happens except some kids get
Speaker 9: beaten up by cops and then nothing fundamentally changes that.
Speaker 9: That is not true in Ukraine. We have seen multiple
Speaker 9: times where protesters go out with a concrete call and
Speaker 9: the government heeds that call. It doesn't simply ignore us,
Speaker 9: it doesn't just beat us up. It's fundamentally democratic in
Speaker 9: a way that I have not seen any other country
Speaker 9: in the world replicate so far.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that is very much worth continuing the note and acknowledge. Although,
Speaker 2: as you said, a mixed bag because the voice of
Speaker 2: the people is not always correct about aspects of strategy
Speaker 2: and governance, as a lot of.
Speaker 8: Places have learnt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, all right man, Well, do you want to
Speaker 2: plug anything before you come out here? Tell people where
Speaker 2: they can find you.
Speaker 4: Yes.
Speaker 9: I am the managing editor of The New Voice of Ukraine,
Speaker 9: which is Ukraine's best and premier English language daily u site.
Speaker 9: You can read us at English nv dot UA really
Speaker 9: easy to remember, that's English nvt UA and listen to
Speaker 9: Ukraine Without Hype, which is a podcast from myself and
Speaker 9: my colleague Anthony Bartaway, and you can find us wherever
Speaker 9: podcasts are listened to.
Speaker 4: Just search Ukraine without Hype. Awesome.
Speaker 2: Well, thank you all for listening, Thank you Romeo for
Speaker 2: showing up again, and we'll be back tomorrow with something else.
Speaker 8: Hello everyone, and welcome to the show. My name is James.
Speaker 8: We're starting Gangs. I've forgot to press the record button
Speaker 8: and I am very lucky to be joined by Wendy
Speaker 8: Frye and we're going to talk about a piece that
Speaker 8: Wendy did for cow Matters about the FEDS DHS buying
Speaker 8: detention centers in California. Hi Wendy, Welcome to the show.
Speaker 5: Hi, James, thanks for having me.
Speaker 8: Yeah, okay, so let's begin I suppose by summarizing this article. Well,
Speaker 8: link to it, right, and I think everyone should read it.
Speaker 8: It's a really good piece of reporting. But can you
Speaker 8: explain what is happening here with these two detention centers?
Speaker 5: Sure? Yeah, thank you so much.
Speaker 11: So.
Speaker 5: Last week, course of it, one of the largest private
Speaker 5: prison companies in the country in the nation, a publicly
Speaker 5: traded company, announced that they had sold two of their
Speaker 5: properties to the Department of Homeland Security for a billion
Speaker 5: and a half dollars. And those two facilities are two
Speaker 5: of the largest immigration detention facilities in California. O time
Speaker 5: mesa detention center in San Diego County that has a
Speaker 5: capacity of just a little under two thousand beds. And
Speaker 5: then the other one is the newly opened California City
Speaker 5: Facility up in Kern County, and that one's just a
Speaker 5: little bit bigger with a capacity of twenty five hundred beds.
Speaker 5: And we learned the details about the sale through this
Speaker 5: filing with the Security Exchange Commission. Like I said, because
Speaker 5: it's a publicly traded company, they have to make some
Speaker 5: of the information about this deal public. And we learned
Speaker 5: that the federal government paid seven hundred and thirty nine
Speaker 5: million I think for O time MESA, and then the
Speaker 5: other one was I think about seven hundred and thirty
Speaker 5: million for California City. And we've done some additional reporting
Speaker 5: too since that article came out, and we just last Friday,
Speaker 5: we're talking with the San Diego County appraiser, the assessor's
Speaker 5: office and current county found out that the last appraise
Speaker 5: value on these properties was about a quarter of what
Speaker 5: the federal government paid for them. So the last appraise
Speaker 5: value I think about one hundred and sixty million for
Speaker 5: O type MESA. I don't have the exact number, but
Speaker 5: around that. So they paid, you know, maybe four times.
Speaker 5: And of course the praise value we have to take
Speaker 5: it sort of with a grain of salt because it's
Speaker 5: not the market value. But it would be very hard
Speaker 5: to figure out what the market value is on a
Speaker 5: property like this because there just aren't very many of them.
Speaker 5: Both places are these huge, brawling federal prisons that don't
Speaker 5: get sold very often, so it's hard to figure out
Speaker 5: what the market value is. But those are the last
Speaker 5: appraise value.
Speaker 8: Yeah, sure, not much, not much. Your market for giant prisons,
Speaker 8: I suppose best.
Speaker 5: Guess, yeah, none much to compare it to as far
Speaker 5: as the sale, right, And on the federal government side,
Speaker 5: on course of excit, they said that this whole thing
Speaker 5: went through a very rigorous process of governmental review and
Speaker 5: that everything is above board there.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so of course they'll say that. Yeah. So these facilities, like,
Speaker 8: they spend a lot of money on them, right, and
Speaker 8: they have a lot of money right now, they're sitting
Speaker 8: on a giant pile of money. Actually, before before we
Speaker 8: talk about what they spent on them, people will remember
Speaker 8: when President Biden came into power, him saying he was
Speaker 8: going to end private prisons, right, so we should just,
Speaker 8: I guess, begin by explaining how that didn't include immigration
Speaker 8: detention and how these places have like as you say,
Speaker 8: they haven't just continued, but in the last two years,
Speaker 8: I guess they're trying to expand immigration detention capacity, right, right.
Speaker 5: Yes, So in California, particularly California, state officials have tried
Speaker 5: to ban private prison companies from operating within the state
Speaker 5: of California, and the Ninth Circuit didn't uphold that. Like
Speaker 5: the California Pass, the law Governor news and signed it.
Speaker 5: It went ended up in court. GEO Group and Course
Speaker 5: of BIC, the two largest private and companies. We're fighting
Speaker 5: against this and they they they won. The ninth Circuit
Speaker 5: upheld that California can't fan these facilities from operating. But
Speaker 5: they have pushed back a lot, and California lawmakers are
Speaker 5: trying to write a series and pass a series of
Speaker 5: laws that would require you know, more of the tax
Speaker 5: revenue from these companies to be you know, absorbed by
Speaker 5: the state and distance in avized. Basically financially disincentivized these
Speaker 5: private prison companies from operating, and that is one of
Speaker 5: the reasons why DHS, in a statement that they put out,
Speaker 5: Jason Sweeney with ICE told me, you know, it's financially infeasible.
Speaker 5: It's become too burdensome from their point of view for
Speaker 5: the private prison companies to operate in California because of
Speaker 5: all the oversight and because of all the you know, pushback,
Speaker 5: the California officials have tried to do and have done
Speaker 5: as much as I can basically.
Speaker 8: On let's talk about this new attempt to grow detention capacity,
Speaker 8: right because they're previous totem was these warehouses where we
Speaker 8: spoke to some folks in social circle on this show,
Speaker 8: such a circle Georgia a while ago about that. So,
Speaker 8: can you give people who haven't been following this little
Speaker 8: synopsis of why they've moved away from the putting human
Speaker 8: beings in warehouses models?
Speaker 4: Sure?
Speaker 5: So the spending bill, the federal spending bill that President
Speaker 5: Trump signed last year, included just the insanely unprecedented amount
Speaker 5: of money for immigration enforcement, like more than even the
Speaker 5: entire budget of the entire federal prison system. Right. It
Speaker 5: includes about forty five billion dollars just for detention capacity alone.
Speaker 5: So they poured a ton that, like you said, they're
Speaker 5: sitting on just this huge pile of cash that they
Speaker 5: have to spend. They have to do something with that money.
Speaker 5: The plan at the beginning of the year were, as
Speaker 5: you mentioned these warehouses, right, that they wanted to from
Speaker 5: their perspective, sort of more intelligently design the both the
Speaker 5: tension capacity and the deportation machine. I think I'm not
Speaker 5: one hundred percent sure which dhf's officials said this. I
Speaker 5: think it was Tom Holman in Phoenix, but it could
Speaker 5: have been another THHS official, But basically they said they
Speaker 5: wanted to design the quote Amazon Prime for humans. So
Speaker 5: like they want to make this as fast and as
Speaker 5: efficient as possible. They want to have a capacity to
Speaker 5: stay up to one hundred thousand people on any given day.
Speaker 5: And they have a ton of cash, cash that they've
Speaker 5: never even seen before, right, So buying up this billion
Speaker 5: and a half dollars of real estate in California is
Speaker 5: feasible to them, and they've signaled that owning it rather
Speaker 5: than leasing it or having Corsivic run it is more
Speaker 5: beneficial to them in not having to comply with the oversight.
Speaker 5: The different inspections and laws that California officials have tried
Speaker 5: to put into place that allows, for example, inspectors with
Speaker 5: the California's Attorney General's office, and there was a twenty
Speaker 5: twenty four law the California past that would allow local
Speaker 5: health inspect inspectors to go in and do a health inspection.
Speaker 5: San Diego County is the only place where they've actually
Speaker 5: tried to do that, and the private company pushed back,
Speaker 5: so they've said, do you just have said in their
Speaker 5: statement that you know, owning this and rather than another
Speaker 5: entity owning it gives them the upper hand as far
Speaker 5: as avoiding some of this oversight and the federal courts
Speaker 5: have upheld that.
Speaker 8: Actually, right, So let's dig into that a little bit.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 8: A lot of people have started paying attention to immigration
Speaker 8: detention approximately halfway through January in twenty twenty five, right, right,
Speaker 8: And if you had been paying attention before in California,
Speaker 8: you would have known that thousands of people were detained
Speaker 8: without food, water, or shelter in the open air for months,
Speaker 8: not like an individual duration stay was at most like
Speaker 8: a week, but that the practice continued in Hercumba, YEP
Speaker 8: in Hukumba and then Sidro. Yeah, in at least three
Speaker 8: places in Hakkumba. I believe there were also other oad
Speaker 8: sites that we didn't find, mut at least I didn't
Speaker 8: know about. And then that also happened in Arizona as well,
Speaker 8: But at that point in time, there was not a
Speaker 8: great deal of an inspection by the county. I saw
Speaker 8: a Office of the Immigration Detention on Bardsman person once
Speaker 8: their visit didn't seem to result in any changes. But
Speaker 8: like has California committed on why they suddenly care about
Speaker 8: the I guess the conditions migrants are detained in When
Speaker 8: they didn't seem to care in a way that mattered
Speaker 8: three years ago.
Speaker 5: Right, they certainly weren't coming out in statements and pushing
Speaker 5: back as hard as we have seen them push back
Speaker 5: against the Trump administration. That's true, And I have asked,
Speaker 5: like top California officials that. In an interview I did
Speaker 5: with the California Attorney General Robbonta, I did ask any.
Speaker 5: I was like, this is my really hard question for you,
Speaker 5: is you know it didn't seem like you were pushing
Speaker 5: back in this same way when you know there were
Speaker 5: babies sheltering and porter right.
Speaker 8: Oh yeah. One night in September, I remember a lady
Speaker 8: breastfeeding a baby. The baby was shivering, which, like it
Speaker 8: there's not a good sign with babies are shivering. And
Speaker 8: like I was warming up milk in the camping stove
Speaker 8: in my truck and my friend was cycling toddlers in
Speaker 8: and out of like a little warming station they built.
Speaker 8: Like I've been through the Darien Gap and that's still
Speaker 8: some of the worst ship that I've ever seen.
Speaker 5: It was horrific, Right, I remember thinking like where is
Speaker 5: the un like, where is like the Red Cross? Like
Speaker 5: this is a humanitarian crisis out here. Yeah, And it
Speaker 5: was in such a remote area it was, so it
Speaker 5: lacks so much visibility, both from the media and you know,
Speaker 5: public officials, and so we did talk about that at
Speaker 5: one point, and Bonto's response was, you know, we had
Speaker 5: a working relationship with the Biden administration that wasn't controversial
Speaker 5: or wasn't adversarial in the way that our relationship is
Speaker 5: with the Trump administration, and so we could work on
Speaker 5: that stuff behind the scenes. Now I know you were
Speaker 5: out there. Anybody who was out there would say, no,
Speaker 5: do you really ever saw the results of that collaboration
Speaker 5: or that work, right, And you know, it is a
Speaker 5: concern for sure that it does seem like California politicians
Speaker 5: do get more bang for their buck in opposing the
Speaker 5: immigration policies that the Trump administration. When it's important to
Speaker 5: note that a lot of this infrastructure, including especially a
Speaker 5: lot of the AI infrastructure that are being used to
Speaker 5: survey people who are against these policies, and the palanteer
Speaker 5: the AI technologies that is being used right now to
Speaker 5: find people and detain them without making the headlines and
Speaker 5: in quite a high profile way as we saw last year.
Speaker 5: All that was put into place by the Biden administration,
Speaker 5: right yea, And so it is important to note that
Speaker 5: for sure, that a lot of these systems that now
Speaker 5: the Trump administration is able to utilize were handed to.
Speaker 8: Them, detained the idea that we have a midterm election
Speaker 8: and the presidential election and they are conducted in a
Speaker 8: way that we kind of are accustomed to with elections,
Speaker 8: and the results are respected. Let's imagine we have a
Speaker 8: Democrat in twenty twenty eight to do the master. The
Speaker 8: FEDS will still own these two giant detention centers. Right.
Speaker 8: The way that immigration, in my experience works is like
Speaker 8: it only seems to move in one direction. I guess,
Speaker 8: like this is why this is such a concern.
Speaker 5: They're seeing themselves. DHS is saying themselves that this is
Speaker 5: a deliberate strategy to make their detention build out more
Speaker 5: permanent and harder to roll back with the changing political wins, right,
Speaker 5: and so they're acknowledging that that that's what they're trying
Speaker 5: to do.
Speaker 8: That's not great. Yeah, yeah, that's a yeah.
Speaker 5: So it's from their own mouths, right, So.
Speaker 8: Yeah, deeply concerning. I wonder though, like previously they've had
Speaker 8: a practice of moving people out of San Diego County.
Speaker 8: I guess the practices are on would there is like
Speaker 8: a number of incidents that I'm aware of where they've
Speaker 8: moved people away from their lawyer in San Diego County
Speaker 8: right to a detention facifity like Dilly or somewhere in
Speaker 8: Texas or something like that. I guess I would make
Speaker 8: that impossibly it did the same as it was before.
Speaker 8: It'll just be from a federal prison to a private prison.
Speaker 1: Maybe.
Speaker 5: Well, it's a less favorable federal jurisdiction right a district,
Speaker 5: so in San Diego, I would say probably it's a
Speaker 5: more favorable outcome to go before a federal district judge
Speaker 5: in San Diego for a possible habeas petition and to
Speaker 5: flow down the process as far as being deported, right,
Speaker 5: I think that that probably happens faster in a federal
Speaker 5: district in Texas than it would here.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I have heard a lot from families about family
Speaker 5: members being moved out to you know, these very remote
Speaker 5: I mean, there's been an effort for a long time
Speaker 5: to make sure that these facilities are set up in
Speaker 5: very remote areas out of California and in other parts
Speaker 5: of the country, in remote areas that are hard for advocations.
Speaker 5: It's hard for attorneys, hard for journalists like me to
Speaker 5: get to to report what's going on in them. You know,
Speaker 5: it's like six hours to get to California City as
Speaker 5: a drive back made way more times than I want
Speaker 5: to now at this point, right, So you know, it
Speaker 5: does it does impact the amount of resources that people
Speaker 5: can be connected to. It is the biggest expense that
Speaker 5: ICE has is moving people around the country. I remember
Speaker 5: Senator Padilla did say, like it seems sort of illogical
Speaker 5: the way they're moving, Like they're moving people from California
Speaker 5: out to California while they're moving people in other places
Speaker 5: into California, And it seems illogical the way they're moving
Speaker 5: people around. But the impact of that, I don't know
Speaker 5: what their purpose or their intention is of doing that,
Speaker 5: but the impact of is it really disorients people. Right,
Speaker 5: It's like where am I?
Speaker 4: What am I doing? What are the rules here?
Speaker 5: How do I get my phone card set up? It
Speaker 5: takes them days where they're kind of pushed back on
Speaker 5: their heels trying to figure out what the system and
Speaker 5: the guards and the new place where they go. And then,
Speaker 5: like I said, it's only makes it harder for people
Speaker 5: when they get moved around to these different facilities, and
Speaker 5: it's something that we're definitely seeing happen a lot more.
Speaker 5: Definitely hearing it from a lot of families in LA
Speaker 5: of concern about people being moved way out to California City,
Speaker 5: which is like in the middle of the Mohabi Desert, right,
Speaker 5: it's hard for families to get out there.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, it's like it's a big Kern County I think, right,
Speaker 8: but it's a height from anywhere from any major population
Speaker 8: center in California. It's a long drive.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's like an hour and forty minutes from like
Speaker 5: the farthest eastern community in LA, like Cheerlea. They have
Speaker 5: an office in like eastern LA, And I think it
Speaker 5: was like an hour and twenty to an hour and
Speaker 5: forty to get to that office from California City. So
Speaker 5: it's just just remote. It's in the middle of nowhere,
Speaker 5: you know.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And if you think about where would I put a
Speaker 5: place that's in the middle of nowhere where it have
Speaker 5: the least amount of oversight, right, like that that's the place,
Speaker 5: Like that's definitely where you would pick.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely, combat like Auto Mesa detention center, very very
Speaker 8: bad things about what happens there, but like it is
Speaker 8: relatively close, people can get to it. There are almost
Speaker 8: always people there, like outside if someone is released, or
Speaker 8: people protesting what's happening there. Like you say, like it's
Speaker 8: hard even to do things like for someone to get
Speaker 8: money on their on their phone card or like someone
Speaker 8: I've reported on many times on the show was detained
Speaker 8: at Dilly and like it's difficult to work out how
Speaker 8: to like put money on their commentsary so they can
Speaker 8: buy food because the food they get is absolutely awful,
Speaker 8: and things like this. And then every time you move
Speaker 8: that that's different again, right, like.
Speaker 5: It's I was talking to an individual in Al Salvador
Speaker 5: and they were saying that, you know, they were moved
Speaker 5: around maybe nine times before they were deported, and each
Speaker 5: time they got to the different facility was like where
Speaker 5: am I and who who are kind of the leaders
Speaker 5: in this in this place, or like who do I
Speaker 5: talk to because I need to get I need to
Speaker 5: get this worked out. And sometimes they wouldn't even be
Speaker 5: able to get the phone cards set up before the
Speaker 5: next time they got loaded back on a bus to
Speaker 5: go somewhere else. Yeah, so even let their family know
Speaker 5: where they are and That's why it's so concerning that
Speaker 5: ICE is going around opening facilities. Like we had one
Speaker 5: facility open I think also in Current County. It's like
Speaker 5: right next to Golden State Annex, so it's like kind
Speaker 5: of part of that property. But they didn't tell anybody, right, Like,
Speaker 5: nobody knew that this facility was opened until we reported
Speaker 5: on it opening. And you know, if you're a family
Speaker 5: member and you're looking on that ice detainer, you're trying
Speaker 5: to find your family member. If we have these you know,
Speaker 5: almost almost like black site ice detention facilities opening up
Speaker 5: that nobody knows are running, how are you going to
Speaker 5: find your family member if it's not even listed there
Speaker 5: in the facilities, right. I mean, there's been a lot
Speaker 5: of reporting about how sometimes people are disappearing into these systems.
Speaker 5: But that's one of the reasons why California has tried
Speaker 5: to set these laws to say, like you have to
Speaker 5: give the public a certain amount of notice before you
Speaker 5: open a new facility, so that people are aware that
Speaker 5: it's coming and they can have an opportunity to, you know,
Speaker 5: say go to the California City Council meeting and make
Speaker 5: their opposition known. But we've seen both ice and the
Speaker 5: private detention companies have in some cases been able to
Speaker 5: find noise around those rules.
Speaker 8: Yeah, one of I guess the interesting things that we
Speaker 8: have seen in the last maybe six months even maybe
Speaker 8: somewhere there, mostly this year, right, it is like communities
Speaker 8: coming together to oppose these things and data centers, right,
Speaker 8: or like across a wide swath of American politics, Like
Speaker 8: a lot of the folks organizing in social circle and
Speaker 8: not people who I think would generally identify as progressive politically,
Speaker 8: but they were opposed to all the local consequences as
Speaker 8: well as the abuses that happen in these detention centers.
Speaker 8: Like it's definitely getting harder, I guess for them to
Speaker 8: build from scratch detention centers, right.
Speaker 5: That's correct. I mean some of these when at the
Speaker 5: beginning of the year, when they had the warehouse plan
Speaker 5: and they were planning some of these mega detention centers,
Speaker 5: which like they were trying to hold you know, ten
Speaker 5: or twelve thousand people, which is crazy more than rikers,
Speaker 5: right right, Yeah, like the largest would be the largest
Speaker 5: facility anywhere, and you know they were talking about even
Speaker 5: make their own wastewater treatment plants, bringing in their own
Speaker 5: services because the cities where the local municipalities wouldn't be
Speaker 5: able to handle the influx of people, of employees, of
Speaker 5: you know, the roads, all the all the different services.
Speaker 5: And so I think that's one of the things that
Speaker 5: people are realizing is that these properties have an impact
Speaker 5: outside of just the people that they're detaining, right, They
Speaker 5: have an impact, a ripple effect on the entire community.
Speaker 5: And I think people are becoming aware of that now.
Speaker 8: Yeah, definitely, And it seems like, yeah, they're trying to
Speaker 8: do other things, and they saw some of those warehouses
Speaker 8: a loss as well, but it doesn't matter in the
Speaker 8: grand scheme of how much money they have.
Speaker 5: They have to get rid of forty five billion dollars,
Speaker 5: so they really aren't aren't aren't stressing the loss is
Speaker 5: you know, it's a weird problem to have, but they
Speaker 5: feel like they have to spend this forty five billion
Speaker 5: or its kind of like use it or lose it
Speaker 5: if they don't buy the next by I think it's
Speaker 5: three years that they have, so I think we will
Speaker 5: see them buying more property use for sure. I think
Speaker 5: they really have their eye on at Alanto. I said
Speaker 5: a script that like scans the sec to like automatically
Speaker 5: alert me if any of those companies sell anything, Right, No.
Speaker 8: Cool.
Speaker 5: The other thing to keep in mind too about this is,
Speaker 5: you know, the federal government doesn't pay local and state taxes,
Speaker 5: so where they go into these small cash strap cities
Speaker 5: like California City and say, hey, you're going to get
Speaker 5: two million dollars a year in tax revenue from this
Speaker 5: facility opening. And that's kind of how they convince or
Speaker 5: like they try to win over the local politicians with hey,
Speaker 5: we need this money, we need this facility to lower
Speaker 5: our water bills and stuff like that. But none of
Speaker 5: that is going to It's like a bait and switch. Right,
Speaker 5: They're not going to be getting that two million dollar
Speaker 5: tax revenue anymore because, you know, other than the income
Speaker 5: tax of the employers, maybe that might but yeah, so
Speaker 5: that's another you know part of it.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Yeah, bait and switch is a good way to
Speaker 8: describe it. Like people think they're getting one thing and
Speaker 8: they end up getting another thing. You talked about the employees, like,
Speaker 8: when these facilities change hands, will it then be like
Speaker 8: federal employees or will they still be staffed by cor Civic.
Speaker 5: Yeah, So that's the interesting thing is the federal government
Speaker 5: is going to own the real estate, but Corsivic has
Speaker 5: said in its SEC filings that it expects it thinks
Speaker 5: that it's going to be keeping those contracts to continue
Speaker 5: operating the facilities. So the contract for California City runs
Speaker 5: through August twenty twenty seven. The one for Otai Mesa
Speaker 5: is supposed to end in twenty twenty nine, but there's
Speaker 5: an option to extend it another five years. And my
Speaker 5: impression is that ICE is quite happy with the way
Speaker 5: Corcivic is running these facilities and Geogroup is running these facilities,
Speaker 5: so that would mean the same guards, the same medical directors,
Speaker 5: the same kind of operations and day to day at
Speaker 5: both facilities, and they plan on keeping their existing management GRONTO.
Speaker 10: Now.
Speaker 5: They they acknowledge in the SEC filing that there's no
Speaker 5: guarantee that they get to keep it, but that's it
Speaker 5: sounds like that's the deal that they've worked out and
Speaker 5: negotiated with the federal government.
Speaker 8: Sure like even when they've done these like they stood
Speaker 8: up that one camp, East Montana they call it, which
Speaker 8: is still run by a contractor, even though it's on
Speaker 8: Department and Defense land and the conditions there are atrocious
Speaker 8: from what we saw with the Inspector General report, and
Speaker 8: it doesn't seem to be a concern.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's someone outside of Belpasso.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Bliss, I've seen it.
Speaker 5: The tent camp oh okay out the side of Purt Place. Yeah,
Speaker 5: the white timp camp. Yeah yeah, you know, it seems
Speaker 5: like they're violating their own rules, right when they have
Speaker 5: these rules, they have these set of standards that they
Speaker 5: have set up. And that's the first thing courcivic or
Speaker 5: GEO will say is like, hey, we follow all the
Speaker 5: federal standards that are set up for us, right for
Speaker 5: digens standards.
Speaker 3: Ye.
Speaker 5: But it seemed, especially with that one, that you're mentioning
Speaker 5: that they violated all their own standards and sending that
Speaker 5: place up.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, I mean that place is particularly egregious, like
Speaker 8: even among immigration detention facilities. Some of the stuff, and
Speaker 8: that Inspected General's report was genuinely shocking, and I thought
Speaker 8: I'd lost a capatty to be shocked by this stuff.
Speaker 8: But yeah, there's lots of terrible things have happened, Like
Speaker 8: I think you reported on the Mongolian person right who
Speaker 8: was who used sign language and was detained for I
Speaker 8: think months without an interpreter, if I'm remembering correctly.
Speaker 5: Right, Yeah, he had never gotten a chance to even
Speaker 5: tell his story on how he had crossed the border
Speaker 5: because CBP had like really confused his story. He was
Speaker 5: telling them about his sister and they thought that that
Speaker 5: it was his daughter, and they were using like a
Speaker 5: I don't know AI some kind of online translation thing
Speaker 5: that was not even close to what his actual story was.
Speaker 5: And yeah, he spent months without able to tell anybody
Speaker 5: what happened to him. And you know, finally, yeah, after
Speaker 5: we did our story, Like finally, the ice attorney was
Speaker 5: trying to set up like a relay team of translation,
Speaker 5: but the federal judge was just said, like, doesn't he
Speaker 5: have a right to participate in his own proceedings? Like
Speaker 5: does it isn't he shouldn't he be an active participant
Speaker 5: in the proceedings against him, right, yeah, and not just
Speaker 5: a bystander in that. And then so then he the
Speaker 5: judge rule that they had to get him and interpreter,
Speaker 5: and I guess they decided it was too hard to
Speaker 5: do that, because they let him out fairly quickly after
Speaker 5: that ruling. But yeah, I mean some of the conditions
Speaker 5: that we've heard about I mean, obviously, I think everybody's heard,
Speaker 5: like the overcrowding, really severe lack of access to medical care,
Speaker 5: the horrific food. We've been hearing about how bad the
Speaker 5: food is for decades now in there, you know, smelling
Speaker 5: moldy waters particular problem in California City, and just somethings
Speaker 5: just like kind of the revaliation that people face for
Speaker 5: if they try to bring an issue up or if
Speaker 5: they try to you know, advocate for somebody else they
Speaker 5: feel like oftentimes they tell us that they feel like,
Speaker 5: you know, they get sort of retaliated against for that,
Speaker 5: you know already is one of the one of the
Speaker 5: most egregious violations that we've ever heard of, of, like
Speaker 5: the hunger strike. The hunger strikers all got dragged out
Speaker 5: and according to them, you know, beat up or handled
Speaker 5: very roughly and then take into Texas and for sped
Speaker 5: with a tube down their nose. Right Like, Yeah, there's
Speaker 5: definitely been some very egregious things that have happened inside
Speaker 5: these detention centers, and that's why it's so important for
Speaker 5: people to be able to you know, especially the congress
Speaker 5: members or and the local state inspectors. It's very important
Speaker 5: for somebody to be able to get in there and
Speaker 5: see what the conditions are like inside.
Speaker 8: Yeah, this court case doesn't matter anymore, like with this
Speaker 8: new development, right, the court case at least it match
Speaker 8: is in other detention facilities, but not in outime Mesa,
Speaker 8: specifically in San Diego County.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's kind of remain to be seen. I think,
Speaker 5: like I said, the federal courts have upheld that state
Speaker 5: can't overstep their authority, and like step on federal authority
Speaker 5: to carry out immigration of course might right.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I think that those health inspectors they already have done
Speaker 5: their health inspections, so they already did one, and their
Speaker 5: report I think is coming out at the end of July,
Speaker 5: so there will be that. But and then I think
Speaker 5: my understanding is In Diego County plans to fight.
Speaker 8: It's what I thought they were going to appeel it. Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, they're going to try to pluss the issue in
Speaker 5: court to see if they can continue going in there
Speaker 5: and doing their inspections. But like I said, you know,
Speaker 5: the courts haven't tended to rule that way, and deadjust thinks,
Speaker 5: like we know from their own statement that they think
Speaker 5: that this will sort of put an end to the
Speaker 5: different inspections and oversight stuff that the state and the
Speaker 5: local officials want to do.
Speaker 8: Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty bleak, pretty big outlook for
Speaker 8: immigration detention, which was not really a great outlook to
Speaker 8: begin with.
Speaker 5: I guess yeah, But it's not come one hundred percent decided,
Speaker 5: like it still has an open question. Whether these inspection
Speaker 5: laws will survive the beederal ownership or not remains to
Speaker 5: be seen, I think, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, you said that they had plans for other locations.
Speaker 8: I'm guessing they have plans to Geogroup locations as well.
Speaker 8: Do you think this is their plan going forward to
Speaker 8: try and acquire all of the ease private immigration. They
Speaker 8: have the money too, I assume yeah.
Speaker 5: I think everything points to yes on that. I think
Speaker 5: Courseivic said in their statement that they are already in
Speaker 5: talks with ICE about selling more of their facilities. Geogroup
Speaker 5: has said on earnings calls that they would like to
Speaker 5: sell their facilities, and like you mentioned, you know, DHS
Speaker 5: definitely has the money thanks to that massive appropriation from
Speaker 5: the federal government, so you know, really they've already said
Speaker 5: that it's kind of their preference to outright own them
Speaker 5: rather than lease them or have a private company operate
Speaker 5: them in California. Yeah, so yeah, I think we will
Speaker 5: see more of it, and I'm definitely, you know, trying
Speaker 5: to monitor it as much as possible to see when
Speaker 5: that happens.
Speaker 8: I wonder if this also changes the legal environment for
Speaker 8: people who are either protesting or like they're in a
Speaker 8: sort of mutual aid capacity for the migrant trillip. Sometimes
Speaker 8: people can hear migrant shouting from inside, and they can
Speaker 8: hear them like asking for someone to put money on
Speaker 8: their phone, cut or what have you, or just describing
Speaker 8: their condition to relating them. Will it being a federal
Speaker 8: owned facility? Do you think that changes? Like because it's
Speaker 8: legal to stand outside a thing, right, but if it's
Speaker 8: a fed facility, maybe it's even harder.
Speaker 5: Yes, I do think it will change. I do think
Speaker 5: we'll see the federal government trying to crack down harder
Speaker 5: on protesters that come, you know, in no ten ways
Speaker 5: that they had the people. We're putting information about how
Speaker 5: they were being held in bottles and throwing the bottles
Speaker 5: over the gate toy. I do think for sure that
Speaker 5: the federal government will operate differently now that it's federal property.
Speaker 5: Another thing that's very interesting. You know, they already hold
Speaker 5: people who are not immigrant dtees in California City, So
Speaker 5: they have a section of that facility that are like
Speaker 5: people who are in the custody of the US marshals already.
Speaker 5: So there are already people in there who aren't immigrants.
Speaker 5: I wonder if we might see more of an effort
Speaker 5: to detain more people in these facilities who are not immigrants, right, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 5: because they have promises made to Courcivic and Geogroup that
Speaker 5: they are going to try to give them a certain
Speaker 5: population of detees per day, right, right, So that's another
Speaker 5: part that remains to be seen.
Speaker 8: Yeah, that's also super concerning.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it really is super concerning of where it could
Speaker 5: all go, right, Like especially you see you know the
Speaker 5: federal government calling protesters domestic terrorists and stuff like that.
Speaker 5: It is really concerning.
Speaker 8: Yeah, And we saw that in like as in Minneapolis
Speaker 8: in late January, and the same thing happens there. Right,
Speaker 8: they have their federal building it's called the Whipple Building,
Speaker 8: and like they do immigration detention there. But then there
Speaker 8: was also where people who were detained for protesting against
Speaker 8: that immigration those immigration accents were taken right, they used
Speaker 8: the same facility, and like there's a certain kind of
Speaker 8: menace to that, right, Like it's.
Speaker 5: Really alarming where it could go if you think.
Speaker 8: About it, right, Yeah, it's really uh, really concerning. Like
Speaker 8: this is one of those things that's at a little
Speaker 8: people can do much about.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: It's a like willing seller willing buyer kind of situation
Speaker 8: where unfortunately, like there's pretty few means for address. Like
Speaker 8: I hope California is successful with being able to inspect them,
Speaker 8: at least that would be something. And I know there
Speaker 8: are lots of really good groups doing work to keep
Speaker 8: people out of detention, to help with habeasts, to improve
Speaker 8: conditions in detention, et cetera. So like people can help
Speaker 8: out those groups that they want to. Yet it does
Speaker 8: seem like this is a particularly kind of bleak area
Speaker 8: of immigration enforcement right now.
Speaker 5: Right and especially since you know, one of the first
Speaker 5: things that Trump did is shut down the mechanisms that
Speaker 5: people can appeal or report. Like, you know, when you
Speaker 5: have a complaint about something that's happened to you within
Speaker 5: immigration attention, you complain about it either to the Offices
Speaker 5: Civil Rights and Civil Liberties. There's another DHS and both
Speaker 5: of those have been shut down right now, are not
Speaker 5: funded right now, So those mechanisms with which you can
Speaker 5: get any oversight from within the federal government right now
Speaker 5: are not operating.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, it's o idea the other one.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that might be it. Yeah, that's great.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I've seen them precisely once, Wendy. If people want
Speaker 8: to follow your work, you've done lots of good stuff
Speaker 8: on California. Cal matt is just some really good reporting.
Speaker 8: You had great reporting about the operation return to Sender,
Speaker 8: for example, back when that was shocking.
Speaker 5: Thank you so much.
Speaker 8: How can people find you?
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's great. So all our stories are there on
Speaker 5: calmatters dot org. Thank you for that. And then our
Speaker 5: Operation Return to Center documentary is on YouTube, so you
Speaker 5: can find that there. We did a lot of work
Speaker 5: to show kind of what Bovino was saying and what
Speaker 5: was actually happening on the ground. So that's a really
Speaker 5: good one to watch.
Speaker 8: Yeah, and you guys publish also in Spanish, right, yes,
Speaker 8: we do.
Speaker 5: More recently we started translating more of our stories into
Speaker 5: Spanish so that folks who want to read it and
Speaker 5: Spanish can find that there too.
Speaker 8: Yeah that's great. That's super nice.
Speaker 5: And I speak flu in Spanish. If people need to
Speaker 5: contact me in Spanish, I can communicate there.
Speaker 8: Too, nice yep, And there's a contact link for you
Speaker 8: on the website and getting if people want to talk
Speaker 8: to you about some of this stuff.
Speaker 5: Right, absolutely, or yeah, I can just share my email
Speaker 5: for sure. It's Wendy atclmatters dot org. And I am
Speaker 5: always hoping to hear from people so we can do
Speaker 5: more end up the recording about what's going on inside
Speaker 5: these facilities. So thank you so much for that opportunity
Speaker 5: to share that.
Speaker 8: Yeah, Coose, thanks for for doing this and taking time
Speaker 8: to talk to us anytime.
Speaker 10: Welcome to it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. For
Speaker 10: the past few weeks on Executive Disorder and some regular
Speaker 10: episodes of this show, most notably the DSA Red Scare,
Speaker 10: I've been covering the ongoing battle for the future of
Speaker 10: the Democratic Party, spurred on by a recent wave of
Speaker 10: elect victories by DSA in Pennsylvania, Colorado, and most notably
Speaker 10: New York City, where last month the DSA doubled their
Speaker 10: block of Socialists in office. This episode is another installment
Speaker 10: in this informal series, and this time we are going
Speaker 10: straight to the source by talking with the co chair
Speaker 10: of the New York City Chapter of DSA, Grace Mauser,
Speaker 10: in an interview where we talked about everything from the
Speaker 10: chapter's electoral strategy to their theory of power, and what
Speaker 10: organizers can learn from New York City DSA's recent string
Speaker 10: of success. So, without further ado, here is my interview
Speaker 10: with Grace Mauser, co chair of NYC DSA. To start
Speaker 10: on like the most like broad picture aspect, what is
Speaker 10: the Democratic Socialist of America If people are not super
Speaker 10: familiar with like what the organization actually is or what
Speaker 10: the point of the organization.
Speaker 11: Is, thanks so much for having me. So DSA. Democratic
Speaker 11: Socialists of America is a political organization. Legally, we're a nonprofit.
Speaker 11: We're five to one C four, which enables us to
Speaker 11: engage in a lot of different types of campaigns, including
Speaker 11: electoral campaigns. But also we're very involved in labor work,
Speaker 11: and we often partner with unions and with brink and
Speaker 11: file workers for both internal union reform purposes and external demands.
Speaker 11: We do issue based campaigns. For example, in New York City,
Speaker 11: our Immigrant Justice Working Group ran a very successful effort
Speaker 11: to conduct Know Your Rights trainings earlier this year that
Speaker 11: trained over five thousand people in the city. So we
Speaker 11: do a lot of different types of things, including social
Speaker 11: things we have like book clubs and softball leagues and
Speaker 11: things like that.
Speaker 10: The run Club is a very formidable political group in
Speaker 10: the city.
Speaker 11: The run Club is very popular. It's true, it's true.
Speaker 11: They've really taken off. And how we are structured is
Speaker 11: that there's a national DSA so national organization, and then
Speaker 11: there are I believe over two hundred chapters all across
Speaker 11: the country. New York City is by far the largest,
Speaker 11: I think for more than twice as large as the
Speaker 11: next bigest, which is LA And the chapters engage in
Speaker 11: localized work, but then we also try to have participation
Speaker 11: from chapters on national campaigns and questions. I would say,
Speaker 11: we're you know, we're not a party, not usually Americans
Speaker 11: that some people are call some party or think we're
Speaker 11: a party. We don't have a ballot line, but we
Speaker 11: do run people in primary elections, usually in Democratic primaries,
Speaker 11: because we want our members to select and endorsed candidates
Speaker 11: that they think will represent not only their interests with
Speaker 11: the interests of a broader working class space. And then
Speaker 11: we want people who are elected to actually collaborate with
Speaker 11: DSA and other outside organizations in a real and serious
Speaker 11: way that the Democratic Party simply does not encourage and
Speaker 11: sometimes even even tries to stop.
Speaker 10: So obviously, within the name of DSA, there's democratic socialism
Speaker 10: and socialism kind of broadly, what does DSA mean by socialism?
Speaker 10: I mean, I've seen multiple articles specifically in the Atlantic,
Speaker 10: really really concerned about what socialism means and the quote
Speaker 10: unquote Trotskyist tactics that Dsay's is employing. There's been a
Speaker 10: whole of whole bunch of media coverage being scared of,
Speaker 10: you know, communism and socialism. But what does like DSA
Speaker 10: mean by socialism?
Speaker 11: ESSAY is what we call a big tent organization. There
Speaker 11: are a lot of different ideologies that are members embrace.
Speaker 11: Some people are more social democrats that you might find
Speaker 11: to be the standard in some European countries. Some people
Speaker 11: identify as communists, for example. So what we need by
Speaker 11: socialism we try to make really concrete and demand base.
Speaker 11: We're looking at things like universal health care, passing bills
Speaker 11: like Medicare for All. We are trying to make housing
Speaker 11: more affordable by expanding the role of government in the
Speaker 11: housing market through things like what's around Mamdani just help
Speaker 11: do freezing the rent.
Speaker 12: We are trying to make universal.
Speaker 11: Childcare free, right, like public education as it currently exists
Speaker 11: is functionally socialists.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 11: It's the government providing free education and childcare for millions
Speaker 11: of children, and for some reason, it arbitrarily starts at
Speaker 11: five years old. We're saying, what if we had that
Speaker 11: but a little bit sooner. So we try to center
Speaker 11: our demands on these really material ideas. One because it
Speaker 11: enables not only leftists of all different stripes, but all
Speaker 11: sorts of people to come in and identify with these
Speaker 11: ideas because they know it would help their lives.
Speaker 13: But also because.
Speaker 11: Winning these things will take a very long time. So
Speaker 11: my day to day is not so much concerned with
Speaker 11: or the economy should look like in one hundred years,
Speaker 11: but what we can achieve in the next five, ten,
Speaker 11: twenty years. And you know, even if I'm not a communist,
Speaker 11: but if I were, we're not going to be a
Speaker 11: communists in ten years, right, So what matters is actually
Speaker 11: making people's lives better now and using the government to
Speaker 11: do that, which you know American politicians socialists and not
Speaker 11: have done for many decades before.
Speaker 10: You were talking about like DSA is organizing to like
Speaker 10: see what the country could be like in like five
Speaker 10: to ten years. And I think something that people might
Speaker 10: not be aware of is the past work that New
Speaker 10: York City DSA has done the past five to ten years.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 10: I think people certainly saw were drawn to DSA around
Speaker 10: the election of Zoran And you know, maybe this most
Speaker 10: recent like slate win, but this is this has been
Speaker 10: kind of a long term project of like building power
Speaker 10: and experimenting with electoral strategy and canvassing and like this
Speaker 10: this specific path to victory. So could you speak a
Speaker 10: little bit how NYCDSA has achieved like this winning streak,
Speaker 10: especially like in the past year, and like the build
Speaker 10: up to that winning streak.
Speaker 11: Definitely, New York City DSA really got serious in twenty sixteen,
Speaker 11: both because many people were inspired by Bernie Sanders and
Speaker 11: then many people were horrified by the ultimate victory of
Speaker 11: Donald Trump in that presidential election. In twenty seventeen, we
Speaker 11: took on our first electoral races in the modern era.
Speaker 11: There was two city council races. We lost both of those,
Speaker 11: but we did learn a lot and we gained a
Speaker 11: new members around Donnie via one of those races. But
Speaker 11: something we learned is that we could certainly run field campaigns,
Speaker 11: and by field I mean canvassing and door knocking, But
Speaker 11: we also saw that hey actually a lot of the
Speaker 11: skills that are required in other parts of the campaign, communications,
Speaker 11: political maneuvering, fundraising.
Speaker 12: And budgeting.
Speaker 11: These are also things we think that our members can do,
Speaker 11: and we really tested that out in twenty eighteen. We
Speaker 11: endorsed AOC that year. But in some ways the bigger
Speaker 11: chapter project was Houli, our state Senate race, where we
Speaker 11: had members not only on staff but also basically helping
Speaker 11: in the volunteer capacity almost every aspect of that race.
Speaker 13: And we won.
Speaker 11: So from there we learned that we could teach ourselves
Speaker 11: and begin to replicate the skills of not only canvassing,
Speaker 11: but all these other skills that the political class and
Speaker 11: the consulting class in particular want to believe that they
Speaker 11: have a monopoly on that they're so hard to understand
Speaker 11: that you simply must pay them tens of thousands of dollars.
Speaker 12: So we have built out from there.
Speaker 11: We have now sixteen Socialist in office at the state
Speaker 11: legislature level, not only in New York City but also
Speaker 11: in mid Hudson Valley and in Buffalo, and we have
Speaker 11: four city council members and now three Congress members.
Speaker 13: Some of those came posts.
Speaker 12: Eron, but most of them caname pre Zoran.
Speaker 11: And it was just really nose to the grindstone kind
Speaker 11: of work, knocking on a lot of doors or replicating skills,
Speaker 11: fundraising from small dollar donors. And we lost some of
Speaker 11: our races. I think we've probably lost a little less
Speaker 11: than half of the races we'd won, but we took
Speaker 11: some big swings about strategic swings. So these kind of
Speaker 11: skills developed over time and really formed the foundation and
Speaker 11: the backbone of Zoran's campaign. So for many Durans seemed
Speaker 11: to come out of nowhere. But his first campaign event,
Speaker 11: his field launch in December of twenty twenty four, when
Speaker 11: no one had really heard of him as a series candidate,
Speaker 11: had five hundred people at it, which I would guess
Speaker 11: is bigger than any other candidate had at any point
Speaker 11: in the race. And that's because DSA members knew him,
Speaker 11: were really excited about what this meant, and also knew
Speaker 11: exactly what kind of work would be required to make
Speaker 11: this race successful, and it was work of basically building
Speaker 11: out huge infrastructure and knocking on millions of doors so
Speaker 11: that we could talk to voters.
Speaker 10: Yeah, one of the most impressive things is this sort
Speaker 10: of like like parallel campaign structure that DSA has has
Speaker 10: developed that you don't need to go through the regular
Speaker 10: channels of like consultants, sort of like inside baseball of politics.
Speaker 10: And I got people do often get very confused about
Speaker 10: like what the word like party means, right, because party
Speaker 10: in you know, Europe in something very different than what
Speaker 10: it means in the US. But in terms of running
Speaker 10: in primaries, the DSA often has to go up against
Speaker 10: the party infrastructure of the Democratic Party establishment itself. And
Speaker 10: the fact that DSA has been able to, especially in
Speaker 10: the past two years, like out organize the local political
Speaker 10: establishment has been like one of the most impressive feats.
Speaker 10: And like I've been able to see this in person.
Speaker 10: I'm in Brooklyn in the you know, the past two months,
Speaker 10: I had multiple DSA canvassers come to my door. I
Speaker 10: received a truly absurd amount of Mayer's. There was you know,
Speaker 10: people canvassing on the sidewalk, you know, all the time
Speaker 10: you know, same thing, same thing in Ridgewood and Queens.
Speaker 10: A lot of canvassers there, especially going into the mayoral race.
Speaker 10: Something that's stuck in my mind a lot is I
Speaker 10: used to live in Atlanta. Some like friends of friends,
Speaker 10: people I didn't know, but people I kind of loosely
Speaker 10: knew of were paid to do canvassing for the twenty
Speaker 10: twenty four presidential election for the Democratic Party. They were
Speaker 10: basically just operating kind of like a scam, like they
Speaker 10: did not actually do any of the work. They basically
Speaker 10: sat in like a parking lot and scrolled on their phone.
Speaker 10: And something that makes the DSA's form of canvasing so
Speaker 10: different is that the people who are actually involved in
Speaker 10: it actually care about the political project, right, They're actually
Speaker 10: like invested in these candidates, invested in, you know, putting
Speaker 10: forward this like working class politics and are not just
Speaker 10: getting a paycheck from the DNC. And that changes the
Speaker 10: way that they do canvassing on the ground. I know
Speaker 10: this this is something that you refer to, is like
Speaker 10: the DSA difference. Could you guys briefly touch on like
Speaker 10: what the DSA difference like represents?
Speaker 11: Yeah, it really for me starts from the endorsement process,
Speaker 11: which is very long and white rigorous, but also extremely democratic,
Speaker 11: and because of that, people really feel bought in to
Speaker 11: the races that we endorse. I mean, if you come
Speaker 11: to an endorsement forum, it's said over and over again,
Speaker 11: if you would not personally be interested in canvassing for
Speaker 11: this candidate, do not vote to endorse them. And that's
Speaker 11: a kind of an easy standard we try to share
Speaker 11: with members on top of a lot of strategy and
Speaker 11: data consideration, and there's a lot of things that go
Speaker 11: into it, but for as that like will you go
Speaker 11: to this? If not, how can we expect others to
Speaker 11: that initial buy in, That initial ownership that members have
Speaker 11: over what races we've run and why really extends then
Speaker 11: into the entirety of the campaign. So our campaigns do
Speaker 11: have staff, and of course larger campaigns have more staff,
Speaker 11: but we also have a practice of really elevating volunteers
Speaker 11: who show capacity and interest to be more engaged in strategy.
Speaker 11: So canvassers are also strategic actors.
Speaker 13: That's sort of the first.
Speaker 12: Rung of engagement.
Speaker 11: I mean, canvassing could just be like, oh, go out
Speaker 11: and do this, but we really actively seek to create
Speaker 11: a feedback loop between canvassing and other parts of a campaign.
Speaker 11: So not only is canvassing data of course very critical
Speaker 11: and tracking ID progress and things like that, but we
Speaker 11: also teach our field leads to lead canvases, to solicit feedback,
Speaker 11: and to systematize that feedback. What do you hearing on
Speaker 11: the doors? Did you meet anyone interesting? Should we follow
Speaker 11: up with that person? And I've seen in real time
Speaker 11: our messaging overall change because of feedback that canvassors are
Speaker 11: getting on the doors. From the next rung, if a
Speaker 11: canvasser is really great and excited, we often encourage them
Speaker 11: to become a field lead.
Speaker 13: These are pretty.
Speaker 11: Intensive and high responsibility jobs. So these people manage logistics,
Speaker 11: they run trainings, they move materials around if there are
Speaker 11: problems or questions that come up during a canvas or after.
Speaker 11: They're the first point of contact for these volunteers. They're
Speaker 11: really quite skilled leaders, and we try to create as
Speaker 11: many of these people as possible, And that's kind of
Speaker 11: the next rung of engagement from there. It sort of
Speaker 11: varies from campaign to a campaign, but on most of
Speaker 11: the campaigns that I've seen, you have robust volunteer teams
Speaker 11: around all of these functional areas. There's a fundraising team
Speaker 11: who are trying to execute not only comms and digital strategy,
Speaker 11: but also peer to fear fundraising and house parties. There
Speaker 11: is a communications team who, yes, we're closely with staff often,
Speaker 11: but is drafting and helping produce a level of content
Speaker 11: that you know, if you're a state assembly race and
Speaker 11: you have two staffers, it's pretty hard to produce as
Speaker 11: much content as you might want.
Speaker 10: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 11: There's research who are helping do oppoh and helping figure
Speaker 11: out what stories we might be able to place in
Speaker 11: the press. So these areas that can be pretty opaque
Speaker 11: in some ways and are not often a visible part
Speaker 11: of the political process, we really try to open up
Speaker 11: and invite people into and then we talk openly about
Speaker 11: that in our debriefs and also in our endorsement inforums themselves.
Speaker 10: And I guess something else said people might not be
Speaker 10: fully aware of that. There's cause there's kind of like
Speaker 10: two ways of like fielding candidates. Candidates can be DSA endorsed,
Speaker 10: and then you can have DSA members who then run
Speaker 10: for office and for the people who are more kind
Speaker 10: of like outside of the organization but seek seek a
Speaker 10: DSA endorsement. If they secure it, they then get access
Speaker 10: right to this, to this, this whole like on the
Speaker 10: ground like organizing network and that, and that could be
Speaker 10: very appealing, But there's certain things that endorsement is like
Speaker 10: contingent on in terms of like platform. As you said,
Speaker 10: it's a pretty it's a pretty intensive process actually to
Speaker 10: get a DSA endorsement. After the series of victories New
Speaker 10: or DSA has has had the past few months, has
Speaker 10: that affected the size of the membership in like any
Speaker 10: like notable ways? Is like is that grown the man
Speaker 10: up on the ground volunteers like that? What the next
Speaker 10: campaigns are? Oh?
Speaker 11: Absolutely, I mean, of course we are subject to like
Speaker 11: macro political trends. Right, we see large jumps when there's
Speaker 11: a presidential election, like we saw it in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 11: I saw it again in twenty twenty and in twenty
Speaker 11: four But you know, not every campaign results in a
Speaker 11: huge membership boost. I think they do all result in
Speaker 11: a large capacity boost because even if we're not gaining
Speaker 11: new people numerically, we're expanding the skill set of people
Speaker 11: who are there. But last year, certainly we gained a
Speaker 11: lot of a lot of members between the time that
Speaker 11: Zaron announced his campaign in the fall of twenty twenty four,
Speaker 11: and now we've almost tripled in size in New York City,
Speaker 11: and between the primary elections this year, so June twenty
Speaker 11: third and today, so about a month, we have gained
Speaker 11: over a thousand members.
Speaker 13: So we are obviously.
Speaker 11: Helped along by like high profile wins too that the
Speaker 11: media is really interested in covering, and then we get
Speaker 11: kind of more eyeballs on our ideas and more interest
Speaker 11: in the project overall. So there are some some wins
Speaker 11: that results in a lot of members, but every win
Speaker 11: I think expands capacity, and even losses expand capacity because
Speaker 11: we're teaching people these skills and we're able to better
Speaker 11: replicate ourselves for future cycles.
Speaker 10: I'm sure, as most people are aware, we are right
Speaker 10: in the middle of like a huge debate right now
Speaker 10: over the future of the Democratic Party. And you know,
Speaker 10: this debate is being waged onlines, being waged in the newspaper,
Speaker 10: it's on TV news TV, and most importantly right in
Speaker 10: the in the primaries right and then eventually the general elections.
Speaker 10: You know, it seems like every week The Atlantic has
Speaker 10: a new article out about how scary the Democratic Socialists
Speaker 10: are as I mentioned. I think today they put out
Speaker 10: a brand new article about like the secret like Trotskyism
Speaker 10: of DSA.
Speaker 11: I saw that, which I mean, all these articles suggest
Speaker 11: to me that they neither understand DSA nor do they
Speaker 11: understand the history or ideology they're comparing us too.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but it's been really interesting, especially after the winds
Speaker 10: in New York and Colorado and Pennsylvania, hopefully in Wisconsin.
Speaker 10: But this past month we've seen more and more like
Speaker 10: establishment democrats join people like President Trump and Fox News
Speaker 10: in effectively declaring war on the DSA and like the
Speaker 10: left wing of the party. And you know, there's this
Speaker 10: idea that you see in The Atlantic Washington Post that
Speaker 10: you know, communists and socialists are taking over the Democratic Party.
Speaker 10: But I think for a chunk of the people listening
Speaker 10: to this show, their concerns are probably more of the
Speaker 10: oppositet running as a Democrat. These Democratic Socialist candidates risk
Speaker 10: being captured and like brought into the very party establishment
Speaker 10: that they're trying to oppose. I guess i'd like you
Speaker 10: to speak on what is the nature of the DSA's
Speaker 10: relationship to the Democratic Party.
Speaker 11: Yeah, I mean the thing about the Democratic Party that
Speaker 11: I think a lot of media and political pundits miss
Speaker 11: is that there's no one to have a relationship with,
Speaker 11: right Like the Democratic Party is three boys in a suit,
Speaker 11: like there's no one to talk to. That's why they
Speaker 11: can't act like a party does in Europe. I mean,
Speaker 11: of course there are electoral and ballot reasons for that
Speaker 11: as well, But the Democratic Party does not really organize
Speaker 11: either voters who are Democrats, right Like, no one has
Speaker 11: ever attempted to organize me as a Democrat because I
Speaker 11: am a registered Democrat. Nor is there really a serious
Speaker 11: effort to organize Democratic elected officials as a block and
Speaker 11: move in the same direction like that infrastructure simply doesn't exist.
Speaker 11: So I feel like the risk of being captured is
Speaker 11: only a risk in so far as DSA does not
Speaker 11: try to keep our own people organized and acting as
Speaker 11: a block, which is very much central to our project.
Speaker 11: And in New York City, for example, we have weekly
Speaker 11: meetings with both our state legislators and our city council members,
Speaker 11: and now we have regular meetings with administration officials as
Speaker 11: well in the mayoral administration that try to keep us
Speaker 11: all on the same page when we have a big
Speaker 11: project that we're moving on together. Like tax the rich
Speaker 11: was this last legislative session, we do really active organizing
Speaker 11: in those meetings, like Okay, have you talked to your
Speaker 11: colleague about this bill?
Speaker 13: Will they move?
Speaker 11: Do we need to pressure them someway from the outside,
Speaker 11: or do you think you'll get somewhere in internal conversations.
Speaker 11: So to me, I don't feel worried about being captured
Speaker 11: by the Democrats because the Democrats don't have the infrastructure
Speaker 11: to capture people. The people who can capture you are
Speaker 11: like moneyed interests, right, big corporations, and sure sometimes they
Speaker 11: act through the Democratic Party, but for us that's such
Speaker 11: a clear red line that they don't feel super concerned
Speaker 11: about it. The more complicated questions are not so much
Speaker 11: of capture, but of when do we compromise right? Sure,
Speaker 11: we could be a block of people who vote know
Speaker 11: on every budget, right, every state budget, every city budget
Speaker 11: is politically compromised.
Speaker 12: It's not enough.
Speaker 11: They never tax the rich enough, they never fund public
Speaker 11: services enough.
Speaker 12: It's never good.
Speaker 11: But if we always say no, then can we.
Speaker 12: Get any any wins?
Speaker 11: What kind of wins are the you know, the non
Speaker 11: reformist reforms we might be looking for and deciding that
Speaker 11: collectively doesn't mean our choice is always correct, but I
Speaker 11: think it's much more likely to be correct than if
Speaker 11: we let even someone who's that committed Democratic Socialist kind
Speaker 11: of go out on their own and try to make
Speaker 11: those decisions by themselves. The collectiveness and the connection to DSA,
Speaker 11: I think is the biggest barrier to the capture that
Speaker 11: people are worried about. Whereas if we just say no
Speaker 11: to everything, if we ran as third party, I think, well,
Speaker 11: if we've been as third party, I don't think we'd
Speaker 11: ever win. But if we just say no to everything
Speaker 11: and our orientation is as like a morally upstanding group that.
Speaker 12: Doesn't achieve anything, I think we lose.
Speaker 11: Our credibility, not only in the eyes of like the
Speaker 11: political class and of other politicians, but in the eyes
Speaker 11: of voters. Right now, we can look at a voter
Speaker 11: have a conversation on a door about how we are.
Speaker 12: A different type of.
Speaker 11: Politician because look at what Saran has already done. Saran
Speaker 11: FROs your rent. Yeah, we are the group behind Zoran.
Speaker 11: Don't you want more people like him? And if Soran
Speaker 11: hadn't frosen the rent, that would be a much harder
Speaker 11: conversation to have.
Speaker 10: No it is really easy to point to the like
Speaker 10: the delivering of goods and be like, yeah, this is
Speaker 10: what we are about, and this is actually you know,
Speaker 10: improving the lives of workers, and like that is what matters.
Speaker 10: What else is this whole project for? I can understand that,
Speaker 10: you know, people are concerned with like the idea of
Speaker 10: like holding politicians accountable, right, holding politicans accountable to this
Speaker 10: you know, working class platform that they're running on, that
Speaker 10: they were elected to represent that the organizing put them
Speaker 10: into office to fulfill. But I think one of the
Speaker 10: biggest ways to do that is through a mass membership
Speaker 10: organization like DSA, because not only does it provide you know,
Speaker 10: campaign infrastructure which could help them get re elected if
Speaker 10: they stick to this vision, but it also provides this
Speaker 10: sort of like like like social bond, this internal process
Speaker 10: to stay being tethered together while they are serving or
Speaker 10: occupying a seat of power. And once you're occupying a
Speaker 10: seat of power, there is obviously constraints on that power
Speaker 10: and there's going to be contradictions that arise, and I
Speaker 10: think a lot of people, especially online, view those contradictions
Speaker 10: as like a bad thing. That's like a reason to
Speaker 10: not engage in this project. Alternatively, I think those contradictions
Speaker 10: are actually very often a good thing. Like this that
Speaker 10: is a sign that history is in progress, that we
Speaker 10: are actually moving forward and we're going to seek to
Speaker 10: resolve those like over time, and dealing with those contradictions
Speaker 10: is good in this sense that we have to deal
Speaker 10: with them. We actually we are at a point in
Speaker 10: our strategy where this is something to be dealt with
Speaker 10: as opposed to not engaging in this sort of strategy
Speaker 10: like at all. Right, And the power that politician has
Speaker 10: that is running on a working class platform, Their power
Speaker 10: comes from the working class, and the DSA is the
Speaker 10: manifestation of that, and DSA can be an anchor. But
Speaker 10: I think there also is these like questions of like
Speaker 10: this like long term vision, right, or if ds candidates
Speaker 10: are just going to have to like administer capitalism in
Speaker 10: a more equitable way, or if there really is like
Speaker 10: this the kind of bigger vision to increase the power
Speaker 10: of the working class towards some sort of you know,
Speaker 10: ultimate class struggle for socialism. And I guess, like is
Speaker 10: that like balance in their heads between this sort of
Speaker 10: like equitable administration and like this ultimate class struggle.
Speaker 13: Yeah, it certainly is.
Speaker 11: I mean thinking about how we actually permanently change power
Speaker 11: structures and not just kind of mitigate harm. I think
Speaker 11: is one of the things that separates a socialist from progressive. Sure,
Speaker 11: some ideas that I'm really excited about that I would
Speaker 11: point to that that.
Speaker 12: Do some of this.
Speaker 11: This didn't pass, but I think something like the pro
Speaker 11: Act absolutely would that expand and makes it easier for
Speaker 11: workers to organize themselves and empowers unions is part of
Speaker 11: that structure and central to what democratic socialists want to do.
Speaker 11: In fact, right now, Actually in New York City, there
Speaker 11: is a bill held by City Council Member Tiffany Caban,
Speaker 11: who's a DSA member and a City Socialist in office,
Speaker 11: called the Delivery Protection Act that would functionally make it
Speaker 11: extremely difficult for Amazon to consider last mild delivery workers
Speaker 11: as individual contractors and force them to be employees of Amazon,
Speaker 11: which one makes sense, like it's crazy that all these
Speaker 11: people in Amazon trucks that you see all the time
Speaker 11: are contractors when functionally they're not. Everything that they have
Speaker 11: to do is controlled by Amazon, and doing that we're
Speaker 11: partnering with the teamsters on it because doing it would
Speaker 11: make those workers unionizable. Yes, and that's a huge workforce
Speaker 11: in your city. So that's kind of the labor example.
Speaker 11: Another piece that I'm really excited about. So yes, Ron
Speaker 11: throws the rents. That's an extension of government power in
Speaker 11: the market. But one thing that is really promising is
Speaker 11: that the administration is exploring how to legally recognize and
Speaker 11: empower tenant unions in a way that you know, workers'
Speaker 11: unions are recognized, so that tenant unions actually have bargaining
Speaker 11: rights with a landlord. And we don't have all the
Speaker 11: answers for how that would look, but that's I think
Speaker 11: another example of a type of reform, a type of
Speaker 11: policy that is explicitly socialist and is actually trying to
Speaker 11: permanently change the power relationship between tenants and landlords, just
Speaker 11: as joining a worker's union changes the power relationship between
Speaker 11: a worker and a supervisor.
Speaker 13: So I'm not saying we have the.
Speaker 11: Perfect answers across all policy areas, and certainly there are
Speaker 11: policy areas that socialists will will advocate for and get
Speaker 11: behind that I would consider more progressive because our country
Speaker 11: and society is a very harsh environment for many people,
Speaker 11: and mitigating harm is in fact something good to do.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but it.
Speaker 12: Cannot be the sole thing we do.
Speaker 11: And backing these types of non reformance reforms ideas that
Speaker 11: change power structures is central to our work.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think this sort of tension between this sort
Speaker 10: of more like social democratic administration of capitalism and like
Speaker 10: just pushing for you know, like the revolution or something
Speaker 10: is of false economy, and oftentimes it can resemble the
Speaker 10: This is bad referencing Twitter, but there's this old tweet
Speaker 10: that's like, don't siege Leningrad, take it immediately, Like, don't
Speaker 10: build work in class power, just do the revolution. But
Speaker 10: if you look at like where the labor movement in
Speaker 10: the US is right now, we are so behind where
Speaker 10: the movement was in the twenties and thirties that allowed
Speaker 10: workers to extract the New Deal. We have a long
Speaker 10: way to go to be able to really threaten capital
Speaker 10: in a serious way. And these minor social democratic policies,
Speaker 10: rather than being a release valve, could in fact provide
Speaker 10: workers more autonomy and the extra time needed to organize
Speaker 10: and keep building power. Like Another thing from Zoron's rent
Speaker 10: reforms is that the administration is advancing a new rule
Speaker 10: that landlords could only request proof of income or a
Speaker 10: credit check, but not both in apartment applications, and like,
Speaker 10: that would be huge for people, right, And there's there's
Speaker 10: ways to do small stuff like that well also, you know,
Speaker 10: in a bigger sense, trying to just increase the amount
Speaker 10: that our society is socialist. Right, that's through public ownership
Speaker 10: of utilities and key industries, commodifying necessities of life like
Speaker 10: housing or food, and democratizing the workplace. I've been yelling
Speaker 10: about the Protect the Right to Organize Act in my
Speaker 10: personal life a lot lately. I've been kind of just
Speaker 10: like evangelizing about the pro Act because that that is
Speaker 10: something that like, if that, if that gets past, that
Speaker 10: would be one of the biggest boosts to working class
Speaker 10: power that we've seen in probably decades.
Speaker 11: Yeah, and I mean having Clara val Does is a
Speaker 11: labor organizer, like that was her first organizing experience, and yeah,
Speaker 11: there's no one like that in Congress right now, you know.
Speaker 13: So I don't know that.
Speaker 11: Her first move will be the Proact, but it's certainly
Speaker 11: top of mind for her.
Speaker 10: That kind of relates to one of the las quests
Speaker 10: I want to get to. But first, let's do one
Speaker 10: last ad break. Okay, we are back. How does the
Speaker 10: DSA actually communicate with and relate to a broader working
Speaker 10: class base, like like a broader working class like coalition, right,
Speaker 10: Because this is the politics that DSA is about, and
Speaker 10: this is the class that DSA is trying to like uplift.
Speaker 10: What exactly is like the nature of the relationship between
Speaker 10: DSA and the working class.
Speaker 11: DSA is striving to be a multi racial working class organization.
Speaker 13: I would say that right.
Speaker 11: Now, the majority of not entirety of our membership, not
Speaker 11: only in New York City but also nationally are our
Speaker 11: working class. We embrace it pretty broad definition of that,
Speaker 11: because the only way you get class solidarity is by
Speaker 11: you know, refraining from nitpicking who is middle class, who's
Speaker 11: working class, who's working for and like separating the interests
Speaker 11: of those groups and recognizing that basically anyone who relies
Speaker 11: on their own labor in order to live is working
Speaker 11: class and they have a lot more in common than
Speaker 11: the people who live off of their own wealth, and
Speaker 11: that we should be united in basically finding the interests
Speaker 11: of the uber wealthy who run our lives and run
Speaker 11: our economy. So I would say we're already a working
Speaker 11: class organization, but we want to become one much bigger
Speaker 11: and also more diverse, more people in different types of industry,
Speaker 11: more people from across different demographics. It's trending that way
Speaker 11: over the last.
Speaker 12: Couple of years.
Speaker 13: But we need to get more of.
Speaker 11: The people who vote for our candidates to also take
Speaker 11: the plunge into becoming a member and into actively organizing
Speaker 11: to better their own conditions.
Speaker 13: So I'm excited about.
Speaker 11: How things are heading in that direction. It's also true
Speaker 11: that becoming all to racial working class organization in the
Speaker 11: US is notoriously difficult. You know, a country that's divided
Speaker 11: violently not only by class divisions, but also by racial ones.
Speaker 11: So we have an uphill battle. But I think we're
Speaker 11: moving in the right direction, and voting trends showed that too.
Speaker 11: Like Claire Valdez one a majority of Hispanic election districts
Speaker 11: in her area do I lead to one of majority
Speaker 11: of Black election districts in her district. So I think
Speaker 11: we're seeing that these ideas have more and more mass
Speaker 11: appeal as voters are looking especially as establishment democrats who
Speaker 11: are really just continuously failing to stand up the Trump
Speaker 11: and more people are saying maybe we need to try
Speaker 11: something different. What's the socialism all about?
Speaker 10: There was an article in your Times by the time
Speaker 10: you were listening to this, like a few weeks ago,
Speaker 10: looking at like the voting data from the last June primary,
Speaker 10: and it showed like the divisions in voter behavior between
Speaker 10: like DSA candidates and either progressive or establishment candidates was
Speaker 10: not largely divided by race, but rather by age. Yes,
Speaker 10: And I think that is another significant factor in this.
Speaker 11: And we're also I notably holding on to millennial voters.
Speaker 11: I mean, trends show that, unlike previous generations, millennials tend
Speaker 11: to stay fairly left as they age, in part perhaps
Speaker 11: because millennials aren't really gaining well as we age.
Speaker 10: The capital system has nothing to offer though, Yeah, so yeah,
Speaker 10: why why would you make like the fiscal conservative turn
Speaker 10: to close out a A few weeks before the June primary,
Speaker 10: Canary Mission started getting very scared of the dssay. They
Speaker 10: put out this big, this big post on you know,
Speaker 10: the the slate candidates. But once something that I found
Speaker 10: to be more interesting rather than just like, you know,
Speaker 10: talking about who these candidates are, they focused a lot
Speaker 10: on like the organizational structure of New York d Essay
Speaker 10: and how quote New York is the testing ground. The
Speaker 10: machine is already being built. The machine doesn't stop unquote,
Speaker 10: which sounds kind of cool.
Speaker 12: Yeah, right, they made they made it sound like.
Speaker 10: Cool if you ignore all of the like horrible evil
Speaker 10: parts of the Canary mission right up, they kind of
Speaker 10: make New York d Essay sound pretty cool. How you know?
Speaker 10: It has all these members almost like one hundred thousand volunteers,
Speaker 10: all these field leads that coordinates with candidates once they
Speaker 10: get into office and maintains that connection, helps them, helps
Speaker 10: them stay accountable.
Speaker 11: It's funny too they treat it like a big secret,
Speaker 11: like they're revealing something when like I literally just told
Speaker 11: you the same, right, Like it's not a secret.
Speaker 10: But you know, considering stuff like this and the dsa momentum'
Speaker 10: seeing across the country and the reaction is getting from
Speaker 10: the GOP, the president and the Democratic Party establishment, what
Speaker 10: can organizers and you know, chapters around the country learn
Speaker 10: from New York City dsay's electoral strategy or like, what's
Speaker 10: what's something that I think New York DSAY is doing
Speaker 10: that that you would like more people to kind of
Speaker 10: understand or you'd like you'd like people to like, you know,
Speaker 10: learn from or like take take something away from what
Speaker 10: we've seen in these past few campaigns.
Speaker 11: Yeah, one thing, especially after Zoran one that I noticed
Speaker 11: is a lot of people were really focused on his
Speaker 11: charisma and his communications strategy, which Zoran is certainly charismatic,
Speaker 11: and his communication strategy was really strong and very intentional.
Speaker 13: But to me, his community cation strategy would have.
Speaker 11: Not gone anywhere if one he hadn't been saying something
Speaker 11: real that people resonated with. I mean, people are not
Speaker 11: totally fooled by an empty charismatic vessel. I mean, otherwise
Speaker 11: Jack Slosberg would have won in New Year twelve I think.
Speaker 11: But also there was an extremely robust field strategy that
Speaker 11: meant when someone saw a video wasn't inspired or interested,
Speaker 11: they could immediately find something to do to act on
Speaker 11: that feeling. And often they could find something to do
Speaker 11: basically within a mile and within a week of where
Speaker 11: they lived, in what day.
Speaker 13: It was the.
Speaker 11: Core of this run campaign was not communication that was
Speaker 11: fueled and building up that structure and that muscle can
Speaker 11: take a lot of time. You know, it's hard to
Speaker 11: jump from zero to a mayoral race, but it is
Speaker 11: possible if you build out the kind of deep ownership
Speaker 11: from like an endorsement process, and also a culture of
Speaker 11: not only valuing volunteers but really like depending on volunteers. Like,
Speaker 11: the campaign doesn't work if volunteers are expendable, if volunteers
Speaker 11: are treated as like an ancilliary.
Speaker 12: Nice to have.
Speaker 11: It only works if volunteers are both treated and truly
Speaker 11: are essential.
Speaker 12: And that kind of creates a culture.
Speaker 11: Where people are valued, where they become friends, where they
Speaker 11: keep coming back, or they talk to their friends and
Speaker 11: family about the campaign.
Speaker 12: Or things spread out from there.
Speaker 11: So what I would say both to DSA organizers in
Speaker 11: other parts of the country, but also just general organizers
Speaker 11: who are interested in replicating some of the success, I
Speaker 11: think culture sure is really key centering people who are
Speaker 11: not staff, who are not the politicians, making sure that
Speaker 11: the experience of the campaign is actually built around the
Speaker 11: experience of a canvasser and.
Speaker 12: Moving up from there.
Speaker 11: And that's how you get a campaign that is not
Speaker 11: only accountable to the people who are building it, but
Speaker 11: that's really fun and positive and grounded and people in
Speaker 11: place and not just in like kind of ideas and
Speaker 11: videos and things like that.
Speaker 10: So yeah, yeah, No, there's a real material aspect. It's
Speaker 10: not this just like idealistic kind of abstract thing that
Speaker 10: you're participating in or you believe in. It's a real,
Speaker 10: like material process. It's a real engagement. One of the
Speaker 10: funniest things I've seen recently is that there was a
Speaker 10: Wall Street Journal article where they sent one of their
Speaker 10: hit piece writers to attend all these DSA events, and
Speaker 10: the write up is essentially, uh, yeah, I had a
Speaker 10: great time at all these events. Everyone was really nice.
Speaker 13: I saw that.
Speaker 11: Yeah, there was like one of our one of our
Speaker 11: incoming assembly members, Yappasar du Bac, was like given a
Speaker 11: shout out because he like remembered someone's name, and I'm like, yeah,
Speaker 11: I don't know organizers remember people's face. That's that's a
Speaker 11: central part of our work.
Speaker 10: Where can do people learn more about DSA or New
Speaker 10: York DSA online or by any other means?
Speaker 11: So, yes, if you're in New York City or even
Speaker 11: near New York City, you can go to Socialists Dot NYC.
Speaker 12: There you can see how I joined DSA.
Speaker 11: You can look at our events calendar, which is robust.
Speaker 12: We're at a point.
Speaker 11: Where we have basically at least three events every single
Speaker 11: day that cover a wide range of geographies across the city,
Speaker 11: but also interests. There's a run club event on Friday,
Speaker 11: if that's of interest to people.
Speaker 12: If you're not in New York City, there is almost
Speaker 12: certainly a chapter where you live.
Speaker 11: You can go to DSAUSA dot org to join, but
Speaker 11: also to find your chapter, find out about national work
Speaker 11: that's going on, especially as it relates to like the
Speaker 11: ongoing imperialist wars we have that's often held by National DSA.
Speaker 11: So definitely encourage everyone to check those things out.
Speaker 10: Thank you Grace for coming on.
Speaker 12: Yeah, thanks for having me.
Speaker 5: Bradley Whitford.
Speaker 10: This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 10: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 10: and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today,
Speaker 10: joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.
Speaker 8: Surfie's also here.
Speaker 10: Sophie is also here. Allegedly we were talking West Wing
Speaker 10: before this.
Speaker 8: And Sophie has been excommunicated.
Speaker 10: Sophie said something that Robert will not let us repeat.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we legally can't repeat it. You'd all go to
Speaker 2: prison and we would be right to send you there.
Speaker 10: West Wing is in the TV show.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 10: In this episode, we're covering the week of July twenty
Speaker 10: second to July twenty ninth, James some small things to start.
Speaker 8: Yeah. So today, on the day that we are recording,
Speaker 8: which is the twenty ninth of July, the United States
Speaker 8: and Saudi forces conducting strikes inside Iraq at what they
Speaker 8: are calling Iran backed terrorists. Comes after Iraqi National Security
Speaker 8: advisor earlier this week suggested that Ukraine was responsible for
Speaker 8: strikes inside Iraq, which is a thing that isn't true.
Speaker 8: Iran again attempted to target US bases in Jordan today,
Speaker 8: but at the time of recording, the US military reporting
Speaker 8: that smissiles were all intercepted. Iranian strikes from Kurdistan have continued,
Speaker 8: and Reuter's is reporting that Iran is soon to receive
Speaker 8: Chinese shoulder fired manpads. It's man portable air defense system.
Speaker 8: Women can use them too, probably not in Iran, but
Speaker 8: these are part of what Royce is saying is a
Speaker 8: recently signed deal between the two states. China course denying it,
Speaker 8: but that would be very interesting, right considering that it
Speaker 8: was a shoulder launched manpads that shut down the jet
Speaker 8: that triggered the massive SISA mission a few months ago.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's always funny when something comes around like this
Speaker 2: in the history of like military colonialist adventures overseas. You know,
Speaker 2: it wasn't that so long ago that we were sending
Speaker 2: man pads into Afghanistan and the Soviets were going, Oh no,
Speaker 2: all of our helicopters.
Speaker 8: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, it's just beautiful how cyclical nature is.
Speaker 8: Yeah, here we are finally. I want to talk about
Speaker 8: the TPS Temporary protect States of Fa Haitian people. So
Speaker 8: a few weeks ago on a Supreme Court special we
Speaker 8: spoke about the court case that effectively ended this protected
Speaker 8: status right and it is set to expire this week.
Speaker 8: We know that this will impact as many as three
Speaker 8: hundred and fifty thousand people are going with a number
Speaker 8: from Haitian Bridge Alliance. There a lot of these people
Speaker 8: that are going back. Is no an option, it's not
Speaker 8: in any way going to be safe for them, or
Speaker 8: they just don't simply have a place to go back to. There.
Speaker 8: Many of these people will have US citizen children who
Speaker 8: therefore will not lose CPS right, but it did. It's
Speaker 8: unclear what exactly, or I mean, I think the administration,
Speaker 8: she probably doesn't give a shit what happens to their children.
Speaker 8: I'm going to keep reporting on this or already rumors
Speaker 8: of ice rates targeting Haitian people. I'm going to try
Speaker 8: and get some folks on from HbA or one of
Speaker 8: the other avocacy organizations. But I'm going to wait a
Speaker 8: little bit, just to see how things play out in
Speaker 8: a couple of days. But I'm afraid whatever happens won't
Speaker 8: be great.
Speaker 10: The House approved the one point one five trillion dollar
Speaker 10: twenty twenty seven National Defense authors Sation Act, then a
Speaker 10: two hundred and sixteen to two hundred and twelve vote,
Speaker 10: largely on party lines, though six Democrats voted in support.
Speaker 10: The version of the bill that passed includes Section two nineteen,
Speaker 10: which expands cooperation between the US and Israeli militaries, specifically
Speaker 10: the co development of military technology and joint training and
Speaker 10: information sharing to deploy jointly develops technology. The budget contains
Speaker 10: seven hundred and fifty million for these US Israel joint programs.
Speaker 10: The bills currently stalled in the Senate. Core documents revealed
Speaker 10: that last October, the Trump administration canceled nearly eight billion
Speaker 10: dollars of clean energy grants by explicitly targeting states whose
Speaker 10: Electoral College votes once to Kamala Harris in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 10: or who have two senators who caucus with the Democrats
Speaker 10: that is Georgia, and lawyers for the part of Energy
Speaker 10: just explicitly lake this out in court doc saying that's
Speaker 10: how these grants were selected, was on these political lines.
Speaker 8: Yeah, incredible.
Speaker 10: Last Friday saw the White House Press Correspondence Dinner Take two.
Speaker 10: President Trump delivered a rambling monologue with what we're supposed
Speaker 10: to be jokes to very tepid reactions from a largely
Speaker 10: friendly audience. Once again, Trump joked about running for president.
Speaker 10: In twenty twenty eight, wolf Blitzer presented an award to
Speaker 10: the Wall Street Journal and their reporters for their reporting
Speaker 10: on the Trump signed Epstein birthday card, sparking a ten
Speaker 10: billion dollar defamation suit from the President. As wolf Blitzer
Speaker 10: presented the award, Trump laughed from his seat on stage
Speaker 10: before shaking hands with all the winners. The dinner, which
Speaker 10: ostensibly is to celebrate the free press in the First Amendment,
Speaker 10: took place the same week that the Trump administration subpoened
Speaker 10: New York Times journalists, their spouses, and one of their
Speaker 10: moms following Times reporting on the security capability of the
Speaker 10: Katari gifted Air Force one. The DOJ withdrew those subpoenas
Speaker 10: last Thursday after pressure from a federal judge, but that
Speaker 10: was not the only instance of press freedom coming under
Speaker 10: attack from the government justice last week. On July twenty second,
Speaker 10: the nonprofit newsroom Breakthrough News reported that they received a
Speaker 10: congressional subpoena from the Republican controlled Houseways and Means Committee
Speaker 10: demanding quote internal communications, financial records, and more. A letter
Speaker 10: to the outlet from the House committee said they were
Speaker 10: quote unquote disturbed by the outlet's connection to quote Chinese
Speaker 10: Communist Party linked organizations unquote, and that the committee was
Speaker 10: investigating connections between quote unquote tax exempt groups and foreign nations.
Speaker 10: This was, of course, following the State Department's left wing
Speaker 10: terrorism summit that we covered last week, and parallel to
Speaker 10: Mark Rubio's crusade against Cuba and what he sees as
Speaker 10: Cuba aligned left wing organisms. The People's Forum, a PSL
Speaker 10: linked left wing anti imperialist protest organization and community space
Speaker 10: in New York City which was named in Rubio's Cuba report,
Speaker 10: was also subpoenaed by the House Committee. The People's Forum
Speaker 10: was one of the organizers of the humanitarian aid trip
Speaker 10: to Cuba earlier this year.
Speaker 2: I've got a fun thing to talk about, all right,
Speaker 2: let's do it. What's fun. There's an article in The
Speaker 2: Guardian that just came out July twenty eighth that is
Speaker 2: about this new company based out of Austin called Campus
Speaker 2: Guardian Angel, which is taking lessons from the Ukrainian War
Speaker 2: and applying them to US public schools, specifically in Ukraine.
Speaker 2: They've seen a lot of luck in stopping breaches of
Speaker 2: areas of like the front of trenches and stuff using
Speaker 2: waves of small drones.
Speaker 10: Oh, I've seen this video. I know what you're talking about.
Speaker 8: I haven't hit me with it. Come on, I want
Speaker 8: to see this.
Speaker 2: These are waves of drones that can launch mace and
Speaker 2: pepper balls and have like they've got glass breakers so
Speaker 2: they can fly through windows.
Speaker 10: They would have fucking sent a drone swarm to stop
Speaker 10: a school shooter, yeah, as they wanted to do.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 10: Yeah.
Speaker 8: The thing is with a drone swarm, it can't be
Speaker 8: a coward, which has historically been an issue for the cops.
Speaker 2: Right, it is true, this could work better. The problem
Speaker 2: is that in terms of actually stopping school shooters, this
Speaker 2: actually might be a lot more effective than calling the cops.
Speaker 2: I'm not going to say I don't think it's possible
Speaker 2: that this could work. Yeah, but everything about the press
Speaker 2: around this says tells me this company is also building
Speaker 2: itself as a way that, like school administrators can use
Speaker 2: drones to fuck up kids who mispay Sure, no, I
Speaker 2: can see that being it. That's that's kind of the
Speaker 2: what I'm expecting, right.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, you're going to get maced by a drone.
Speaker 2: I want to read a quote from the article here.
Speaker 2: They could be flown from thousands of miles away and
Speaker 2: support two way communication through an embedded speakerphone, allowing the
Speaker 2: company's response team to engage verbally with a threat or
Speaker 2: communicate to teachers in school staff campus. Guardian Angels website
Speaker 2: stated this allows our team and our op center to
Speaker 2: communicate to law enforcement officers verbally with messages such as
Speaker 2: follow me and I'll take you to the suspect, or
Speaker 2: open the door and we'll go in and clear the room, and.
Speaker 4: I'll tell you what you see.
Speaker 2: And it's the whole thing about going after the suspect
Speaker 2: that I'm like, I can see this also just these
Speaker 2: drones being swarmed after some kids smoking pot or or
Speaker 2: somebody on earth like a suspicious looking backpack to some
Speaker 2: shitty AI like visual identification system that because you can't
Speaker 2: have a guy on the cameras at all times.
Speaker 10: I don't know.
Speaker 2: I don't think this is going to wind up saving
Speaker 2: as many lives as it is causing drone related assaults
Speaker 2: in public schools, but I guess we'll see.
Speaker 8: Fascinating.
Speaker 4: The video is great.
Speaker 8: Yeah, I want to see the video, can I You should?
Speaker 10: You should look up the video.
Speaker 8: Campus Guardian Angel. That's got a lie for Campus Guardian Angel.
Speaker 1: There you go.
Speaker 8: And when someone I hear that phrase, the first thing
Speaker 8: that comes to my mind is pedophile. Yeah that's what
Speaker 8: I That's what I'm thinking when I hear something. Okay,
Speaker 8: watch video the first active shooter suppression service. I'm sure
Speaker 8: that's true. All right, here we go, got a couple
Speaker 8: of cops.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 8: Still it's still blurry. I still can't quite it's still well,
Speaker 8: it's having a long thing. Okay, here we are, here,
Speaker 8: we are okay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, This does make me think about what if the
Speaker 2: latency is bad between the camera and the drone operator
Speaker 2: flying an armed drone through a public school.
Speaker 8: Okay, we're here, we're watching a bunch of news clips.
Speaker 8: Board man is giving a talk.
Speaker 2: That's the Navy seal who runs the company.
Speaker 8: Okay, I see, okay, Wow, the drones are moving down
Speaker 8: the corridor. Fuck me, they're sitting some little boxes. There's
Speaker 8: a cop. Cop has a gun. Oh, there's someone in
Speaker 8: a balaclava. He's surrendering to the drones. He's down surrendering
Speaker 8: the Droughts' on the.
Speaker 2: Ed from front footage of like Russian soldiers surrendering the drones.
Speaker 8: They don't Yeah, these guys. Okay, there's this guy's playing
Speaker 8: a shooter. He has a BB gun. A couple of
Speaker 8: drones have got him cornered. He's not shooting at.
Speaker 2: Them, though, Cowards, cowards.
Speaker 8: Okay, he's someone from Seminole County Public Schools. So the
Speaker 8: drones live in a little box and it opens, and
Speaker 8: I like that they've done blue lighting. It's like a
Speaker 8: white box with blue lighting. Like it's very game. A
Speaker 8: little drone carrier, Yeah, a little little drone box. Here
Speaker 8: he comes he's breached through the window. Whoa, they're sucking
Speaker 8: up a dummy. That's the cliff look at it. Go
Speaker 8: they've missed. They've missed a few times. I noticed if
Speaker 8: you look closely. Yeah, way off, he's fucking way off.
Speaker 8: All right, I'm not I don't trust these drones about this.
Speaker 8: They're like, what if there was a child nearby?
Speaker 14: No, literally, that was my first thought was like, this
Speaker 14: just makes it easier for cops to shoot people accidentally.
Speaker 8: Or an AI drone to shoot someone by accident. They're
Speaker 8: going after the same dude again. He's running away. Oh,
Speaker 8: he's cornered, he's gone to ground. He's surrendering.
Speaker 14: Wait, it's probably guys that couldn't pass the cop exam.
Speaker 5: Yeah, the ones flying the drones.
Speaker 8: Yeah, in this POV, it looks like someone's manually firing
Speaker 8: because the drone has like a crosshairs in its video.
Speaker 8: Now I'm seeing the drones POV. They're coming out their
Speaker 8: little box. That's the Navy seal in through the window
Speaker 8: and he's surrendering as this shooter again, he's surrendering. They
Speaker 8: haven't really engaged with the hypothetical what if the shooter
Speaker 8: doesn't surrender to the groan all there's flying laps around him.
Speaker 2: Whoa, they took out the whole dummy.
Speaker 8: The whole dummy fell over. Okay, yeah, that's the clip
Speaker 8: wild stuff. Well, Nick, they can strobe them as well.
Speaker 8: I guess. Wow, there's a lot of cops in tactical gear.
Speaker 8: None of them have gone in. They've sent the drone
Speaker 8: in instead.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that seems realistic.
Speaker 8: Okay, Yeah, the guys like baffled by the number of
Speaker 8: targets and just live down surrenders. This is great. I
Speaker 8: can't see this being used to harass teenagers for doing
Speaker 8: things that every teenager does.
Speaker 2: So I wanted to talk a little bit about an
Speaker 2: article that just came out very recently in the New
Speaker 2: York Times about a metadata center in Louisiana. Now, obviously
Speaker 2: I've talked about data centers a few times in the
Speaker 2: fairly recent past. I did a dedicated article on the
Speaker 2: fight against all of the different kind of grassroots activism
Speaker 2: campaigns against new data center construction. One of the ones
Speaker 2: that is not really in any danger of being canceled
Speaker 2: through local protest is a massive Facebook data center in
Speaker 2: Richland Parish. It was originally had to be like a
Speaker 2: ten billion dollar data center and has now ballooned to
Speaker 2: like a fifty billion dollar project. Facebook was not originally
Speaker 2: planning to construct in Louisiana. They were taking bids back
Speaker 2: during the Biden administration. I don't think the state was
Speaker 2: really on the map, but officials, particularly in the very
Speaker 2: poor county of Richland Parish, had a problem, which is
Speaker 2: that they at least fourteen hundred, four hundred and forty
Speaker 2: acres to Toyota to build a factory, but Toyota had
Speaker 2: decided not to around two thousand and six. I think
Speaker 2: in part because the factory was proven to be unensurable
Speaker 2: because it's a floodplain. So basically they were like, we're
Speaker 2: not going to spend billions of dollars in a factory
Speaker 2: we literally can't ensure in a place that's famous for
Speaker 2: having infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes. Yeah, So Richland Paris had
Speaker 2: a problem. The area was already economically depressed, and Energy,
Speaker 2: which is a Louisiana state power company, also had an issue,
Speaker 2: which is that they were not making enough money. So
Speaker 2: their CEO, Philip May, decided he wanted to put Louisiana
Speaker 2: through as a dark horse contender for this massive fucking
Speaker 2: Meta dat center, and they wound up winning, and they
Speaker 2: basically wound up winning through promising to be corrupt on
Speaker 2: behalf of Meta.
Speaker 8: Right, there was a bill.
Speaker 2: Being pushed at the start of twenty twenty four because,
Speaker 2: like the thing they offered Meta a bunch of incentives,
Speaker 2: and the only thing they couldn't offer them was like
Speaker 2: a tax break on the different kind of materials you
Speaker 2: buy when you're building a data center, and everywhere else
Speaker 2: that Meta was considering had already offered those. So in
Speaker 2: April of twenty twenty four, Richard Nelson, the state Revenue Secretary,
Speaker 2: was kind of helping to shepherd through a bill that
Speaker 2: was a tax rebate for fiber optic equipment, and they
Speaker 2: just wound up changing it two months to a massive
Speaker 2: tax rebate for data center equipment.
Speaker 8: Amazing, super fucking corrupt.
Speaker 2: But also here's the thing, nobody in Richland Paris really
Speaker 2: cares because these people are incredibly fucking poor and Facebook
Speaker 2: is bribing basically the entire county. There's some sort of
Speaker 2: local law they have that if there's like an overfunding
Speaker 2: in county tax revenue, then like teachers get a bunch
Speaker 2: of money. And so because of how much money Facebook
Speaker 2: is pumped in. A bunch of teachers in the parish
Speaker 2: got like a fifty thousand dollars bone, And that's like
Speaker 2: the lowest level of what is effectively like legal bribery
Speaker 2: going on at every level of life in the parish.
Speaker 2: So there's no chance really that anyone is going to
Speaker 2: protest or stop the construction of this. People are enthusiastic
Speaker 2: because Meta has turned a fire hose of money on
Speaker 2: one of the poorest counties in the United States. The
Speaker 2: problem is that, as I've said, the project is really
Speaker 2: obviously fucking doomed. Again, it's uninsurable because it's in a
Speaker 2: fucking floodplaine, And the actual text of the arrangement that
Speaker 2: Meta inc basically gives them the ability to bounce and
Speaker 2: leave the project within like four or five years, leaving
Speaker 2: Energy and a bunch of other Louisiana interests on the
Speaker 2: hook for this entire massive project if say, a hurricane
Speaker 2: comes through and renders the entire side inoperable. So it
Speaker 2: seems like this kind of thing that's going to cause
Speaker 2: a massive problem and like destroy the local economy at
Speaker 2: some point.
Speaker 8: But there's so much.
Speaker 2: Money being slalommed out to people right now that I
Speaker 2: don't think anything's going to stop that. So I guess
Speaker 2: we hope that the obvious thing doesn't happen, but I
Speaker 2: kind of think it's going to anyway.
Speaker 8: Louisiana Nice. Let's talk about the public charge rule. So
Speaker 8: the Drive administration has announced that it will do away
Speaker 8: on September eighteenth with the DHS rule on public charge determination.
Speaker 8: That rule came into effect in twenty twenty two, so
Speaker 8: in the Biden administration, they're not making a new rule
Speaker 8: at this time. They're taking away the old rule. So
Speaker 8: what we will have to go off now is a
Speaker 8: text in the Immigration Nationality Act, and presumably they will
Speaker 8: issue some guidance soon. Right, whatever guidance, the issue is
Speaker 8: likely to be more restrictive than what we had in
Speaker 8: twenty twenty two rule. Right, they did publish a public
Speaker 8: notice about this last year, so we knew that this
Speaker 8: was coming, that they had planned to rescind this rule.
Speaker 8: And we should talk about what public charge is. We
Speaker 8: can go back to the nineteen ninety nine guidance and
Speaker 8: that's what was clarified in twenty twenty two. For a definition.
Speaker 8: That guidance says that someone who is likely to be
Speaker 8: quote primarily dependent on the government for subsistence, as demonstrated
Speaker 8: by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income
Speaker 8: maintenance or institutionalization for long term care at government expense,
Speaker 8: can be inadmissible to the United States or ineligible for
Speaker 8: permanent residency. This doesn't apply to some permanent residency applications
Speaker 8: like sijas, especially immigrant juvenile green card applications, tou visas, assylies,
Speaker 8: or refugees. Some other categories, including those in the Finance
Speaker 8: Against Women Act. Public charge has generally been understood to
Speaker 8: mean cash benefits, right, so SSSI or TANF would be
Speaker 8: the ones that like be generally understood to be that
Speaker 8: if somebody received those DHS, I guess it would be
Speaker 8: USCIS could find that they would be inadmissible. Somebody who
Speaker 8: is found inadmissible for this reason previously could post a
Speaker 8: bond and still be admitted. Right Just to the bond
Speaker 8: is basically saying I'm not going to be like a
Speaker 8: burden on the United States State. Right. Yeah, we're not
Speaker 8: exactly clear what they're going to do next, but we
Speaker 8: can look at the DHS pressor for some clues, which
Speaker 8: says quote aligning immigration with law and congressional intent that
Speaker 8: aliens of the United States be self reliant and not
Speaker 8: dependent on taxpayer funded government benefits. This could be really bad, right.
Speaker 8: There are a lot of different benefits people take advantage of.
Speaker 8: To include free school meals, to include things like a snap,
Speaker 8: to include wick, right, to include rent controlled housing, even
Speaker 8: right like they could draw this. I think what they're
Speaker 8: probably going to move towards is a sort of looking
Speaker 8: at the whole case thing, as opposed to a looking
Speaker 8: for specific things in the past. Another thing that we
Speaker 8: should understand is that this is forward facing, right. It's
Speaker 8: not just have they use this, it's are they likely to?
Speaker 8: An extremely broad interpretation of this could be very bad
Speaker 8: for people definitely looking to adjust their status. Right. So
Speaker 8: this is something we will keep an eye on. It's
Speaker 8: not ending yet. I just want to reinforce that it's
Speaker 8: on September the eighteenth. For people who are in these proceedings.
Speaker 8: This is something you should discuss with your immigration lawyer
Speaker 8: if that it pertains to you. I will include links
Speaker 8: to all the government press releases and the Federal Register
Speaker 8: pieces about this. If you want to read it yourself.
Speaker 8: Should take a break.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I think so, and we're back.
Speaker 2: I want to talk about Texas, and normally that's not
Speaker 2: a hopeful thing when I say I'm going to talk
Speaker 2: about Texas. In fact, about eighty percent of the time
Speaker 2: when I come on to talk about Texas, it's because
Speaker 2: either someone in Texas committed some sort of horrible violent crime,
Speaker 2: or everyone's getting excited about an election and I need
Speaker 2: to tell them not to because it's Texas. This time,
Speaker 2: I'm here to tell you there's an election in Texas.
Speaker 2: You might want to get excited about the election between
Speaker 2: kin Paxton and taller Ico. Fuck what's his first name?
Speaker 2: I want to say, Tommy or James Tallerica. The election
Speaker 2: between Kim Paxton. I can't thinking about that fucking grifter.
Speaker 2: I can't stop every time I hear his name. But no,
Speaker 2: James Tallerico is not a grifter. James Tallerico might be
Speaker 2: a US Senator in the very near future because Kin
Speaker 2: Paxton is not doing too well. And if you aren't Texan,
Speaker 2: the name Kim Paxton may not immediately conjure, dread and discussed,
Speaker 2: but it should. I would be hard pressed to name
Speaker 2: a more scandal ridden, corrupt, and evil elected leader in
Speaker 2: the United States, and that includes Donald Trump. Before we
Speaker 2: get into Paxton's latest race for a US Senate seat,
Speaker 2: I want to tell you a little bit more about
Speaker 2: Ken Friend of the Pod, Ken Paxton K Pax, as
Speaker 2: we call him. I don't think anyone actually saw the
Speaker 2: movie k Pax, so that's not really a joke that's
Speaker 2: going to land.
Speaker 8: But I didn't know that was a movie. It was
Speaker 8: a movie, James.
Speaker 2: In two thousand and eight, when Paxton was a new
Speaker 2: Texas house member for McKinney, where my mom used to teach,
Speaker 2: the AP reported that he and another state representative had
Speaker 2: been accused by ethics watchdog Fred Lewis of greasing the
Speaker 2: skids to settle a contract with WatchGuard, a company that
Speaker 2: made in car video systems that record video directly to
Speaker 2: DVD for like The Cops and Stuff. Paxton and Byron
Speaker 2: Cook to state representatives were both found to have disclosed
Speaker 2: ownership in WatchGuard, but in Paxton's case, he didn't disclose
Speaker 2: his ownership until well after his two thousand and eight
Speaker 2: personal financial statement was filed. Shortly after the deal was made.
Speaker 2: WatchGuard net earnings increased year over year by two hundred
Speaker 2: and fifty percent, and Paxton and Cook sold their shares
Speaker 2: of the company for an undisclosed amount, but a lot
Speaker 2: of money. Paxton denies any knowledge of the company's state
Speaker 2: contracts and claimed he did nothing shady. However, per the
Speaker 2: barbed Wire Quote, Paxton claimed he had no knowledge of
Speaker 2: the company state contracts at the time, which he would
Speaker 2: have been required to disclose with the Texas Ethics Commission
Speaker 2: under state law. However, Associated Press reporter that Watchguard's website
Speaker 2: boasted that the company was held by an influential shareholder
Speaker 2: group that includes three state representatives. Perfect you hate it
Speaker 2: when you're dry snitched on by the company that bribed
Speaker 2: you now. According to The Wall Street Journal, after coming
Speaker 2: under Screwtiny, Paxton shifted his investments, including those in WatchGuard,
Speaker 2: into a blind trust. A blind trust is an account
Speaker 2: managed by a third party trustee without the beneficiary's knowledge
Speaker 2: to prevent a conflict of interest. However, the Journal uncovered
Speaker 2: text betweens Paxton and the trustee, who was a friend
Speaker 2: of his, concerning stock trades in twenty twenty, a violation
Speaker 2: of the blind nature of the agreement. Passion received two
Speaker 2: point two million dollars from his investment.
Speaker 10: So that's more like a sea through trust.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's more of a see through trust, not so blind.
Speaker 2: It's more just here, you're committing a series of crimes.
Speaker 2: So he's going to get charged with securities fraud for this,
Speaker 2: and that case is going to wind on for a while,
Speaker 2: but not long, you know, kind of actually in the
Speaker 2: middle of this whole process of corruption. In twenty thirteen,
Speaker 2: when he's a state senator, he's entering the courthouse, like
Speaker 2: the state courthouse. Yeah, and a lawyer who'd just been
Speaker 2: ahead of him in lying at like the metal detector
Speaker 2: leaves behind a thousand dollars mont Blanc pen in the
Speaker 2: metal detector trade, and Kim Paxton steals it, and he's
Speaker 2: a video stealing it, Like the Dallas Morning News gets
Speaker 2: access to the video and publishes it. It's really funny.
Speaker 8: What a series of events.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In like twenty fourteen, Ken runs for and wins Attorney
Speaker 2: General of the State of Texas, and his opponent in
Speaker 2: the campaign, Justin Nelson, runs video ads using the footage.
Speaker 10: It is really funny to have top Cough be like,
Speaker 10: funny the most corrupt criminal in Texas politics, Yeah.
Speaker 8: Most and look really dedicated to it.
Speaker 2: You know, the big busiest criminal too.
Speaker 8: Just seeing an opportunity and taking it without a second
Speaker 8: thought is really beautiful.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, despite this, Paxton was still narrowly elected, thanks in
Speaker 2: part to spending twice as much as his opponent on
Speaker 2: the campaign.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 2: In twenty twenty two, Paxton faced a primary challenge from
Speaker 2: George P. Bush, one of the C list Bushes, a
Speaker 2: nephew of the most recent former President Bush.
Speaker 8: Huh.
Speaker 2: This would prove to be one of Paxson's easier victories,
Speaker 2: even though he had been charged with and was still
Speaker 2: under investigation for security He's fraud, as well as at
Speaker 2: this point a separate federal investigation for alleged corruption in
Speaker 2: favor of an Austin real estate developer. I'm going to
Speaker 2: quote now from an AP article by Thomas Beaumont.
Speaker 4: Quote.
Speaker 2: Paxton responded by portraying himself as a Trump era Republican
Speaker 2: and Bush is the heir to a privileged political legacy.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Pro Paxson organizations spent more than twenty million dollars, about
Speaker 2: twice as much as Bush and his allies. The race
Speaker 2: went into a runoff, in which Paxson defeated Bush by
Speaker 2: thirty four percentage points, So just a pansing yeah, on
Speaker 2: behalf of George P. Bush then one of the worst
Speaker 2: ass kickings in Texas state political history. It's beautiful stuff.
Speaker 10: Yeah, I mean this is a very very clear sort
Speaker 10: of like Neo con versus the New like mega Republican
Speaker 10: party matchup in which the Neo cons have just no
Speaker 10: no ground to stand on.
Speaker 2: Well, and it's it's also just like purely on like
Speaker 2: the shallowest basis of like what sounds good to a dummy.
Speaker 2: George W. Bush W is a nickname that's trustworthy.
Speaker 8: George P. Bush, P Bush.
Speaker 2: Bush anywhere just a bad idea.
Speaker 8: I do think twenty years of war in the Middle
Speaker 8: East have maybe maybe like dropped the value of George X.
Speaker 2: Bush stalkers George Bush anywhere in the.
Speaker 8: Thirty If we're doing George Bushes, I guess.
Speaker 5: Guys, we're talking about Texas.
Speaker 10: I mean even there, Yeah, even in Texas.
Speaker 8: A whole lot of people from Texas died in uh
Speaker 8: was we didn't need to have actually.
Speaker 2: I mean, even when Texans were voting for him, people
Speaker 2: had a tendency to say the man was all hat,
Speaker 2: no cattle. So I'm not super surprised about this, But anyway,
Speaker 2: Paxton beats Bush handily in the primary, and then he
Speaker 2: runs against Democrat Rochelle Garza in the general, and Garza
Speaker 2: entered the campaign with a three hundred page opposition research
Speaker 2: bio on Paxton, but also faced a really difficult quandary,
Speaker 2: which is, like, what can you say about Ken that
Speaker 2: voters haven't already heard and evidently decided they don't care about?
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 13: Yeah?
Speaker 10: Yeah, This is like the same thing with Trump. Right,
Speaker 10: It's is like, yeah, how do you attest Yes, all
Speaker 10: of this stuff that's fucked up that we all know about?
Speaker 10: Yeah that like is it worth just retreading all this
Speaker 10: all the same stuff?
Speaker 11: No?
Speaker 8: And it just wasn't right.
Speaker 2: She loses too, not by as badly as George B. Bush, obviously,
Speaker 2: and Paxton continues to cling to office and scandal.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 2: In the years after his victory, his wife divorced him,
Speaker 2: citing the Bible. He was impeached by the state House,
Speaker 2: but then acquitted by the Senate. His fraud case ended
Speaker 2: in twenty twenty four with a judgment that he paid
Speaker 2: three hundred thousand dollars in restitution, but through it all
Speaker 2: he maintained enough Republican support to squeak by.
Speaker 10: I mean because he's been very powerful as the attorney
Speaker 10: general of that state. It has done a lot to
Speaker 10: help the Republicans in that state. And like a lot
Speaker 10: of yes, really ugly stuff has been done at the
Speaker 10: behest of and the help of Paxton.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he's wielded his power, and I'm leaving a lot
Speaker 2: of that out. I don't mean this as a comprehensive
Speaker 2: look at his past. We're kind of doing the greatest hits.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna have to do a bt be on the fucker.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, k Bax deserves it.
Speaker 13: So.
Speaker 2: In that ap article, Thomas Beaumont interviewed two Paxton supporters,
Speaker 2: David and Nancy Lapp, who are retired conservatives from Woolworf
Speaker 2: Texas or Wolff Texas, and quote from that article, they
Speaker 2: described him as a conservative warrior who has been a
Speaker 2: victim of persecution. He's had a share of scandals, and
Speaker 2: almost all of them have, so it's not necessarily disqualifying anymore,
Speaker 2: said David lap seventy six. He's a flawed person, no
Speaker 2: doubt about it, but he fights for traditional American values.
Speaker 6: Oh man.
Speaker 2: He added that nowadays, as long as you're not in jail,
Speaker 2: that'll elect you, which is very true.
Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah, that's not a wrong statement.
Speaker 2: But also you'll elect him David. Yeah, yay, you're making
Speaker 2: a choice now. There is much more to the tale
Speaker 2: of Ken Baxton's scum and villainy, and this isn't an
Speaker 2: episode of BTV, so I'm gonna save us some time
Speaker 2: and just discuss arguably his worst and most famous call
Speaker 2: as at Dirney. General Kin was elected after promising to
Speaker 2: be tough on crime and attacking his predecessors and opponents
Speaker 2: for being week on crime. And then in twenty twenty five,
Speaker 2: a Waco attorney named Adam Hoffman went on trial for
Speaker 2: sexually abusing his son's best friend during multiple sleepovers from
Speaker 2: the age of six or seven up to age ten. Jesus,
Speaker 2: the victim, initially told a forensic interviewer he believed Hoffman
Speaker 2: had ejaculated over thirteen hundred times in his presence. Hawfen
Speaker 2: denied the allegant although they did like a siemens, they
Speaker 2: looked for semen and didn't find any, so like, I
Speaker 2: don't know, but also get a clean stuff who knows.
Speaker 2: Hoffman denied the allegations and called the boy a liar.
Speaker 2: The jury wound up deadlocks, the judge ordered them to
Speaker 2: keep deliberating, and long story shirt, it becomes a mistrial
Speaker 2: because the victim did not want to testify a second time.
Speaker 2: Paxton's prosecutor struck a plea deal with Hoffman, So Hoffman,
Speaker 2: please guilty. But the plea deal includes no jail time
Speaker 2: or registry for as a sex offender for Hoffman. So
Speaker 2: that's pretty fucked up. And obviously it's Paxton's people doing this,
Speaker 2: but Paxton's the attorney general, so this really grosses a
Speaker 2: lot of people out in the case becomes a major
Speaker 2: avenue attack when he goes a primary challenge by John
Speaker 2: Cornan earlier this year in the Senate race.
Speaker 10: Right yeah, he challenges corn Indi, incumbent for Senate.
Speaker 2: The attention around this caused critics of Paxton to look
Speaker 2: into other cases. Per the textas Tribune quote. For instance,
Speaker 2: attack adds from Corn's allies highlight the case of a
Speaker 2: man originally charged with child sex trafficking who received a
Speaker 2: deal for a probation sentence, and Judge Royce Sparkman brought
Speaker 2: up another case in open court last month, noting Paxton
Speaker 2: had also taken over a murder for higher case that
Speaker 2: he oversaw, which resulted in a misdemeanor plea and a
Speaker 2: four day jail sentence. And of course Paxton still beat Cornan,
Speaker 2: So you could be forgiven for being like, what could
Speaker 2: take fucking this guy out right? Yes, points what could matter?
Speaker 2: And I'll be honest, I was really hesitant to have
Speaker 2: any hope about this race until extremely recently, But within
Speaker 2: the last few days a bunch of new polling has
Speaker 2: come out that makes this look not just competitive but winnable.
Speaker 2: The most striking example of evidence, you know, in favor
Speaker 2: of that would be a recent Texas Public Opinion Research
Speaker 2: poll that showed Tallerrico leading Packston forty five percent to
Speaker 2: forty after multiple other polls had consistently shown a nail
Speaker 2: bider of a race. Now, TPOR is officially a non
Speaker 2: partisan research group, but it is run by a Democratic strategist,
Speaker 2: so there's reason to suspect some favoritism here. The Texas
Speaker 2: Tribune and a separate article had this to say about
Speaker 2: the survey quote. The group's surveyed one thousand, forty eight
Speaker 2: likely voters between July fifteenth and July seventeenth, and as
Speaker 2: a margin of era of plus or minus three point
Speaker 2: four percentage points. Of those poll respondents, fifty three percent
Speaker 2: voted for Donald Trump and forty two percent voted for
Speaker 2: Kamala Harrison twenty twenty four, making the sample only slightly
Speaker 2: bluer than the twenty twenty four electorate, which favored Trump
Speaker 2: by a fourteen point margin. In Texas, Trump carried Texas
Speaker 2: by five point six percentage points in twenty twenty, two
Speaker 2: years after the last midterm held there during his presidency,
Speaker 2: and a recent New York Times SIENA poll from June
Speaker 2: found an overall tie in the race forty seven to
Speaker 2: forty seven percent, with Tallarico winning about five percent of Republicans.
Speaker 8: The most significant.
Speaker 2: Data from this recent batch of polling that has to
Speaker 2: be hopeful, though, is that Tallerrika seems to be doing
Speaker 2: really well among non college educated voters, which is traditionally
Speaker 2: like the strongest group for Paxton. That's the group that
Speaker 2: has carried him over the line consistently, and from that
Speaker 2: same article quote, perhaps the biggest outlier was Taller Rico's
Speaker 2: lead among non college educated voters, who favored the Democrat
Speaker 2: by nine percentage points forty five percent to thirty six percent.
Speaker 2: He led by one percentage point among those with at
Speaker 2: least a bachelor's degree. I don't want to suggest that
Speaker 2: the other races in Texas are going to go this well, right,
Speaker 2: Ted Cruz is currently about eighteen points ahead of his opponent,
Speaker 2: Colin Alred right now among non college educated Texans in
Speaker 2: twenty twenty four. And yeah, like so, I don't have
Speaker 2: a lot of faith that this is going to extend
Speaker 2: past tall Rico versus Paxton, But there is evidence that,
Speaker 2: like Paxton's longevity with the specific group that's carried him
Speaker 2: past the line is at its end, Like maybe there's
Speaker 2: just too much scandal for him to stand up next
Speaker 2: to someone who seems as like relatively squeaky and nice
Speaker 2: as tall Rico. Now, there's other things to credit Tallarico's
Speaker 2: successful One of them is that he's doing a lot
Speaker 2: better than Paxton in terms of like money. Right now,
Speaker 2: as of their most recent disclosures, Tallarrico's campaign is about
Speaker 2: twenty one million dollars on hand. Paxton has less than eight.
Speaker 2: And if you remember every other election I've got, or
Speaker 2: every other campaign of packins I've run through here, he
Speaker 2: usually had like a two to one advantage in funding
Speaker 2: over his opponents. So the fact that that's kind of
Speaker 2: falling apart for him too, suggests this might be a
Speaker 2: really winnable race. Now there are some reasons to doubt
Speaker 2: that too. Most polls I've seen show a number of
Speaker 2: undecided Republicans large enough to close the gap or a
Speaker 2: tie between the two candidates led by Paxton. And if
Speaker 2: that group all breaks for Kin, and historically they're likely to,
Speaker 2: things could be really close or wind up in favor
Speaker 2: of Paxton.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 2: One of the polls found about fourteen percent of voters
Speaker 2: of all political stripes are unsure of their picks, and
Speaker 2: among undecided voters, it looks like Paxton has the most
Speaker 2: room to grow. About nineteen percent of that block that
Speaker 2: they leaned towards the Republican compared to ten percent to
Speaker 2: lean towards taller Rico. But most of them were just
Speaker 2: totally on the fence, or at least that's what they said.
Speaker 2: So a lot is going to depend on how those
Speaker 2: people break. I'm not saying this is definitely going to
Speaker 2: go tell Rico's way, but if you're talking about, like
Speaker 2: what is a race where maybe the Democratic Party might
Speaker 2: want to actually invest money in. I'd say here, this
Speaker 2: thing seems winnable, and I don't say that about Texas
Speaker 2: races often.
Speaker 10: It is a very particular matchup. Yeah, Paxston has a
Speaker 10: lot of unique vulnerabilities. Teller Coosa's doing very well in
Speaker 10: pulls for Latino voters, up like forty five points ahead
Speaker 10: of Paxton, and that will be very crucial, especially considering ice,
Speaker 10: like that's going to be a big factor in this race. Yeah,
Speaker 10: there was an ice killing in Texas just a few
Speaker 10: weeks ago. Certainly a lot of funding could come to
Speaker 10: Paxton towards the end of the race. Sure, the campaign
Speaker 10: finest ratio could change dramatically over time. But I do
Speaker 10: wonder if the sort of strategy from the GOP right now,
Speaker 10: which is like paint paint Tallerico very early on, is
Speaker 10: it's like you know, woe gender ideology made will kind
Speaker 10: of run a little bit hollow now that Trump is
Speaker 10: in charge and Republicans control all branches of government and
Speaker 10: the sort of like economic issues that can not be
Speaker 10: blamed on like woke liberals sending you know, money to
Speaker 10: sex changes in prison. It's going to be an interesting race,
Speaker 10: very close, another close race next Tuesday. The Michigan Senate
Speaker 10: primary with Ice Israel in My Dreams Hailey Stevens versus
Speaker 10: Doctor Abdual Health site. They had their last debate on Monday, Elsie.
Speaker 10: It continually hit Stevens for her corporate funding sixty million
Speaker 10: dollars outside spending forty six million dollars of a PAC funding,
Speaker 10: and the moderator was really going after Stevens for this too,
Speaker 10: asking if if all this APAC funding will result in
Speaker 10: Stevens quote unquote doing their bidding, referring to a pack
Speaker 10: and with the pro Israel lobby. That interesting, and she
Speaker 10: also lied about receiving funding from the local utility company
Speaker 10: during the debate, So early voting for that's already started.
Speaker 10: The primaries next Tuesday will cover that on next executive disorder.
Speaker 10: Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin governatorial race also had a
Speaker 10: debate on Tuesday. Had not seen that yet, but she
Speaker 10: is really pulling ahead in polls right now, but that
Speaker 10: primary is still a few weeks away. But to stay
Speaker 10: on the topic of evil Republicans. On July twenty, first
Speaker 10: Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed domestic violence allegations against Republican representatives
Speaker 10: Max Miller and Corey Mills, saying quote, well, the keyword
Speaker 10: there is allegation, and then said that the House Ethics
Speaker 10: Committee would shake things out of those two reps. Max
Speaker 10: Miller of Ohio is facing re election in the midst
Speaker 10: of escalating legal issues, including restraining orders, a defamation case,
Speaker 10: and a custody battle. Maximiller ex wife, Emily Morano of
Speaker 10: the America First Policy Institute and daughter of Ohio Senator
Speaker 10: Bernie Morano, has accused Max Miller of abusing her and
Speaker 10: their daughter while investigating suspected child abuse. Mirano told Bay
Speaker 10: Village police that Miller yelled and held a gun to
Speaker 10: her head after she turned on the lights to change
Speaker 10: their baby's diaper Jesus. According to a police report, Morano
Speaker 10: told police but another domestic balance incident from earlier this
Speaker 10: year where during a custody exchange, Miller quote grabbed and
Speaker 10: threw her against the wall, which resulted in an obvious
Speaker 10: grab mark on her upper arm and bruising to her
Speaker 10: stomach and side where she hit the wall unquote. This
Speaker 10: legend incident also was in front of their daughter, and
Speaker 10: the police report later states that Rono's daughter told her
Speaker 10: quote Daddy kill you. Morano and Miller were married in
Speaker 10: twenty twenty two, and Morano filed for divorce in August
Speaker 10: twenty four after telling Miller that she wants a divorce.
Speaker 10: In June of twenty four, Rono alleged that he threw hot,
Speaker 10: steaming water at her. In a recorded phone call, Miller
Speaker 10: admits to what he refers to as the water incident
Speaker 10: after his wife said on the call that he abused
Speaker 10: her and quote poured steaming hot water on her neck.
Speaker 10: On the call, Miller said that the quote unquote water
Speaker 10: incident wasn't done with quote unquote intent to hurt his wife.
Speaker 10: Morano told police she moved out of the house because
Speaker 10: she was quote unquote scared of him.
Speaker 4: Now.
Speaker 10: All of these allegations came to light earlier this year
Speaker 10: after Morano discovered her two year old daughter's collar bone
Speaker 10: was broken after the child came back from Miller's house
Speaker 10: this past February. This prompted a cascade of investigations and
Speaker 10: back and forth court filings, which eventually made their way
Speaker 10: into news reporting. A Bay Village police report investigating suspected
Speaker 10: child abuse stated that a child protections specialist found that
Speaker 10: the two year old's broken collarbone was accompanied by a
Speaker 10: bruise that quote appears to be in a handprint and
Speaker 10: appears to have been inflicted. According to another police report
Speaker 10: obtained by mother Jones, Rono recounted her daughter saying, quote,
Speaker 10: Daddy's house is scary. Miller, of course, denies all claims
Speaker 10: of abuse or domestic violence, and has theorized that the
Speaker 10: broken collarbone was possibly caused by a seat belt.
Speaker 8: Why is a kid wearing a seat belt? Shouldn't they
Speaker 8: be in a car seat when they're two?
Speaker 10: Yes, this was part of the investigation because Miller said
Speaker 10: this okay, and he had to show police that he
Speaker 10: had properly installed a car seat. Right after news outlets
Speaker 10: reported on the spousal and child abuse allegations, Miller filed
Speaker 10: the deformation suit against his ex wife, and this is
Speaker 10: not the first time Miller has used a deformation suit
Speaker 10: to shut down allegations of abuse. In twenty twenty one,
Speaker 10: Stephanie Grisham, a former White has Press secretary in Trump's
Speaker 10: first term, wrote in The Washington Post that her unnamed
Speaker 10: boyfriend from twenty nineteen to twenty twenty quote unquote got
Speaker 10: physical with her, that their relationship quote unquote turned abusive,
Speaker 10: and that her ex boyfriend had quote anger issues and
Speaker 10: a violent streak. These claims were later included in a book,
Speaker 10: but earlier that year, Politico reported that Max Miller quote
Speaker 10: pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her in the
Speaker 10: face at his Washington apartment after she accused him of
Speaker 10: cheating on her unquote. Max Miller psued Grisham for quote
Speaker 10: libelous and defamatory false statements made about him, but he
Speaker 10: dismissed the case in twenty twenty three after agreeing to
Speaker 10: a settlement, though Grisham is now suing Miller for breaking
Speaker 10: the settlement's nda by publicly claiming that Grisham fabricated in
Speaker 10: abuse allegations against him while defending himself against new allegations
Speaker 10: of abuse by his ex wife. Max Miller's abuse allegation,
Speaker 10: it's been a sort of open secret in Washington for
Speaker 10: a while. When George Santos was dealing with his whole
Speaker 10: thing a few years ago on the house floor, he
Speaker 10: referred to Max Miller as a woman beater. H I
Speaker 10: talked about how he didn't want the publican party to
Speaker 10: just turn into repeating media attacks against each other. As
Speaker 10: he was being kicked out of Congress. Wild he is
Speaker 10: running for re election in Ohio. Yeah, and Miller has
Speaker 10: maintained support from Republicans in Congress, and it's been backed
Speaker 10: by the President for years. Let's go on a break
Speaker 10: and then discuss some more news.
Speaker 8: All right, we are back, and I want to update
Speaker 8: people on the Iranian American Legal Defense Fund versus Rubio
Speaker 8: case we spoke about a few weeks ago. So I've
Speaker 8: reached out to Public Citizen about this and they haven't
Speaker 8: got back to me. I'd love to do an interview
Speaker 8: with them, have worked with them before and some access
Speaker 8: to med stuff, So hopefully someone from Public Citizen will
Speaker 8: listen and reply. But we have learned a lot from
Speaker 8: the new filings in this case. One of the things
Speaker 8: we learned that was the people were required by ICE
Speaker 8: to meet Iranian government officials, the very people they had
Speaker 8: fled to the USA to be safe and protected from.
Speaker 8: It seems that the person who met them was introduced
Speaker 8: as a consul, but around obviously doesn't have a consulate
Speaker 8: in the United States, right, they have the Iranian Interest
Speaker 8: Section which is in the Pakistani embassy. This person had
Speaker 8: information about their cases in other cases, they were told
Speaker 8: they had to take calls from the Iranian interest section
Speaker 8: and they wouldn't be allowed to return to their housing
Speaker 8: pard until they spoke to them on the phone. In
Speaker 8: one of these calls, the Iranian officials that they had
Speaker 8: a transcript of the person's credible fear interview. That is wild, right.
Speaker 8: So the credible fear interview is when people explain why
Speaker 8: they fear going back to where they have fled, I
Speaker 8: what it is that they think the Iranian state in
Speaker 8: this case is going to do to them. So what
Speaker 8: the credible fear interview will will have detailed for these
Speaker 8: people would have been their participation in jinaar Amini protests.
Speaker 8: I saw that in several of the testimonies. I've also
Speaker 8: spoken to dozens of Iranian migrants who participated in those protests,
Speaker 8: were arrested, released and realized that they were going to
Speaker 8: be arrested again and fled or fled before they arrested.
Speaker 8: Or their participation in the Christian faith. You see that
Speaker 8: in a lot of the testimonies. In this case, if
Speaker 8: they're Innian government, have them write down they are Christians.
Speaker 8: They were distributing bibles, they were evangelizing like it is
Speaker 8: absolutely not safe for these people to go back. Some
Speaker 8: of these meetings that the Paito have occurred right here
Speaker 8: in San Diego, the O time Meca Attention Center facility.
Speaker 8: People were bought to the Iranian government official and the
Speaker 8: official then sat down with them and tried to persuade
Speaker 8: them to return to Iran. The official had a list
Speaker 8: of names of people who they were going to meet
Speaker 8: and they read it out, so even some people who
Speaker 8: weren't there, their names were read out. So it was
Speaker 8: like the officials either selected these people or were told
Speaker 8: by I studies people were One of the people named
Speaker 8: the individuals mister Meherbadi, and he threatened that they would
Speaker 8: be sent to quote Africa. So this is the United
Speaker 8: States doing either its chain refoulment or it's sending people
Speaker 8: to third countries deportation.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: We also see a lot about the current state of
Speaker 8: the asylum system in these declarations. One person attests that
Speaker 8: she has been and will be tortured in Iran. The
Speaker 8: judge responds to her that everyone gets tortured in Iran.
Speaker 8: In their interview with the quote unquote console, one person
Speaker 8: said they were told by the consul even in the
Speaker 8: US if you are political, the same things can happen
Speaker 8: to you, which is very clearly a threat. Right. The
Speaker 8: regime agent also knew when her husband was being deported
Speaker 8: and to where, so he had that information before he
Speaker 8: met this woman. In another case, someone testified, then ICE
Speaker 8: agents said I will force you. This is my job,
Speaker 8: and this was with reference to signing self deportation papers.
Speaker 8: They cuffed the woman and then quote, he literally forced
Speaker 8: my fingerprint by forcing my finger to a stamp and
Speaker 8: then on a paper, no matter how much I tried
Speaker 8: to take back my finger, which is pretty wild. It's
Speaker 8: not the first time. I should add that we've heard
Speaker 8: allegations of them doing exactly this. So many of the
Speaker 8: people in this document are women who have stories exactly
Speaker 8: like the Iranian women I met the Darien Gap. Many
Speaker 8: of them also say they took that route. They went
Speaker 8: from a run to either Venezuela or Brazil and then
Speaker 8: traveled north from there. They also give details of their
Speaker 8: attention conditions, which are predictably appalling, right, with one writing
Speaker 8: quote water here smells very bad and we are always itchy.
Speaker 8: We all have red dots on our skin that have
Speaker 8: also gone away on my body after I started antibiotics
Speaker 8: and then skipping a bit. The dental care here is
Speaker 8: unbelievably dangerous. Any happening with teeth, and they only extract.
Speaker 8: The doctors here have already extracted three of my teeth
Speaker 8: and have told me they will extract another three more
Speaker 8: when my antibiotics were over. I have always taken care
Speaker 8: of my teeth. They also talk about the I was
Speaker 8: just quote from one of the one of their statements here.
Speaker 8: This disclosure and that I'm adding this of asylum information
Speaker 8: to the Iranian government. Returning to the quote here has
Speaker 8: materially increased the likelihood that I will be tained, interrogated,
Speaker 8: or tortured or killed if I ever returned to Iran.
Speaker 8: Another said, when I saw him talking about the Ranian consul,
Speaker 8: I was disgusted with the US government by forcing us
Speaker 8: to meet with agents of the regime, which I told
Speaker 8: my pod manager. Many of these people have been in
Speaker 8: detention for more than a year. It seems like most
Speaker 8: of these people entered in twenty twenty five. A member
Speaker 8: of staff at the Iranian Interest Section also called the
Speaker 8: Iranian American Legal Defense Fund and informed them the United
Speaker 8: States State Department had approached the Interest Section to ask
Speaker 8: for help getting rid of Iranian detainees. That's a quote
Speaker 8: that last getting rid of The Iranian officials said they
Speaker 8: met monthly with ICE to select individuals for deportation, and
Speaker 8: the ICE provided their asylum applications to the Iranians. At
Speaker 8: these meetings, they said they met with someone of Indian
Speaker 8: descent with Georgetown degree, who is described as the General
Speaker 8: Director of the Middle East Section. The meetings stopped when
Speaker 8: the war with Iran began, but apparently they still delivered documents,
Speaker 8: or at least a were delivering document in March. This
Speaker 8: core from the Iranian Interest Section to the ILDF is wild.
Speaker 8: It involves this Iranian official recounting, for instance, that on
Speaker 8: the first deportation flight September of last year, two people
Speaker 8: cut their wrists with razors, presumably attempting to end their
Speaker 8: lives rather than go back to Iran. It also details
Speaker 8: how in many cases, the United States can't that the
Speaker 8: people's travel documents together because if they fly vire a
Speaker 8: third country to Iran, right there's no direct flights between
Speaker 8: the US in Iran, and so these flights end up
Speaker 8: not being as full as the United States no doubt hopes.
Speaker 8: He also says that the clothing and state of the
Speaker 8: detainees was so poor that the Iranian government official purchased
Speaker 8: some clothing from Costco with his own money. He also
Speaker 8: said that at no point did the United States ask
Speaker 8: Iran to guarantee their well being in Iran. The official
Speaker 8: kind of posits himself as like intervening on behalf of
Speaker 8: the Iranian people to make sure they're treated correctly. Right,
Speaker 8: which is how generally one would expect the consular administration
Speaker 8: of a state to intervene on behalf that it's in.
Speaker 8: This though, is different because these people are fleeing the
Speaker 8: very government that he represents. Right. I will keep covering this.
Speaker 8: I will also link to the court listener page where
Speaker 8: you can read these testimonies. They're all handwritten. They can
Speaker 8: be a little harder to read so some times, but
Speaker 8: there's some really shocking and upsetting stuff in there.
Speaker 10: For me, if you've talked about this already, and maybe
Speaker 10: this will help us for some listeners too, Like how
Speaker 10: does this relate to the asylum laws that the United
Speaker 10: States has? Like have they been denied asylum in so
Speaker 10: called immigration courts? And this is the process for removal?
Speaker 10: And how is that actually like decided because like these
Speaker 10: people seem to have, like in the testimon as you're reading,
Speaker 10: very credible fears to the point where they're attempt to
Speaker 10: like harming themselves to avoid going back to this state.
Speaker 8: Yeah, so it seems like most of these people entered
Speaker 8: after Trump came in with his Day one effectively like
Speaker 8: southern border crossing asylum ban, right, and so they are
Speaker 8: having to fight their cases from detention, which is what
Speaker 8: they are doing. In some cases, they are already appealing
Speaker 8: because the government has found that they don't have a
Speaker 8: credible fear or that they're otherwise not eligible for asylum.
Speaker 8: The reason the ILDF knows about these people is that
Speaker 8: that is what it is doing as a nonprofit group,
Speaker 8: is helping them fight fight their case. Is sure, it
Speaker 8: shows a pretty fucking bleak situation. Like people do still
Speaker 8: get asylum. I hear about it occasionally, you know, I
Speaker 8: hear from friends in the community who do court accompaniments
Speaker 8: that they occasionally have a success still, But with the
Speaker 8: way that the Trump administration is purging the ranks of
Speaker 8: immigration quote unquote judges, that's getting less and less likely. So,
Speaker 8: like these people are in that system, many of them
Speaker 8: are either in ever spiraling delays, right, because we have
Speaker 8: few and few of these judges because they're getting purged.
Speaker 8: More judges are coming on board now, or they're already
Speaker 8: appealing or going through the CAT process Convention against Torture process.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 8: These are the sort of asylum claims that are like
Speaker 8: in the bullseye of what an asylum claim is. Right,
Speaker 8: all of these people in there, I didn't want to
Speaker 8: read them out because I don't think there's any reason
Speaker 8: to traumatize people. Nearly all of them detail torture. Most
Speaker 8: of the women detail sexual abuse. They talk about the
Speaker 8: horrific things they went through on the way here to Like,
Speaker 8: this is like friend and center of what you would
Speaker 8: think a textbook asylum case would be normally. And there
Speaker 8: are exemptions for some Christian minorities or religious minorities from
Speaker 8: Iran who largely Christian people ran some of these visa bands.
Speaker 8: But these people didn't come that way. Whether they didn't
Speaker 8: come by applying for a visa, they came across a
Speaker 8: southern border. Like, it's very possible that one of the
Speaker 8: people in this case is somebody I met in the
Speaker 8: darying gap, that the timing would line up It's been
Speaker 8: really fucking upsetting for me reading these things.
Speaker 10: Thank you for that context. Earlier this episode, we talked
Speaker 10: about attacks on the First Amendment as a part of
Speaker 10: the Trump admins cracked down on the left. But before
Speaker 10: we close, I want to go over a novel case
Speaker 10: of state repression against an Atlanta based activist. This is
Speaker 10: a first of its kind case focusing on an extreme
Speaker 10: privacy feature of graphene os, an open source operating system
Speaker 10: for Android phones. This feature is known as a dress password,
Speaker 10: a special code that, when inputed into a phone's locked
Speaker 10: pass word screen, triggers a wipe of certain data on
Speaker 10: the phone. Last November, a federal grand jury indicted an
Speaker 10: Atlanta activist for allegedly wiping the data on his phone
Speaker 10: after being detained at the airport upon re entering the
Speaker 10: country in January of twenty twenty five. US attorneys to
Speaker 10: say this was in violation of Title eighteen USC. Section
Speaker 10: two two three two A, that is the destruction or
Speaker 10: removal of property to prevent seizure. The short, single paragraph
Speaker 10: indictment reads that the defendant quote did knowingly destroy, damage, waste,
Speaker 10: disposed of, and otherwise take any action to delete the
Speaker 10: digital contents of a Google Pixel cellulair phone for the
Speaker 10: purpose of preventing and impairing the government's lawful authority to
Speaker 10: take said property into its custody and control before and
Speaker 10: during the search for and seizure of property by customs,
Speaker 10: said Border Patrol Tactical Terrorism Response Team Supervisory Officer JC.
Speaker 10: That's the name of the officer. Last week, this case
Speaker 10: had its first hearing, which was focused on a motion
Speaker 10: filed by the defense to suppress evidence and statements for
Speaker 10: violations of the fourth, fifth, and sixth Amendments. According to
Speaker 10: the motion, the FBI Atlanta Joined Terrorism Task Force coordinated
Speaker 10: with CPB to question and search US citizen Samuel Tunic
Speaker 10: as he was returning to the United States from the
Speaker 10: Dominican Republic because of his associations with the Defend the
Speaker 10: Atlanta Forest Movement or Stop Coop City, which we have
Speaker 10: covered on this show. Basically, after arriving at the airport,
Speaker 10: CPB put Tunic in secondary inspection where their Tactical Terrorism
Speaker 10: Response Team QUOTE proceeded to question mister Tunic, search mister
Speaker 10: Tunic's body and all his belongings, and insisted that he
Speaker 10: provide the password for his phone. Despite mister Tunic's request
Speaker 10: to speak with his lawyer and not engage in a
Speaker 10: further questioning, The officers insisted they could question mister Tunic
Speaker 10: and search his phone to determine whether he had child porn.
Speaker 10: Evidently this was a pretext for a phishing expedition into
Speaker 10: mister Tunick's connections with the Defend the Atlanta Forest movement unquote.
Speaker 10: A journalist Timothy Pratt reported in the Guardian that during
Speaker 10: last week's hearing, it was revealed that, unbeknownst to Samuel Tunnick,
Speaker 10: federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watch list,
Speaker 10: and that a Homeland Security agent circulated an email three
Speaker 10: hours before Tunk arrived back in Atlanta containing his name
Speaker 10: and photo and indicated he was being investigated for quote
Speaker 10: unquote suspected terrorism activities. I think it is important to
Speaker 10: mention that Samuel Tunic to this point has not been
Speaker 10: charged with terrorism and does not face any charges directly
Speaker 10: related to protest activity for Defend the Atlanta Forest or
Speaker 10: Stop Coop City. According to the defense's motion, Tunic early
Speaker 10: and repeatedly during questioning so that he would not speak
Speaker 10: without his lawyer, but the officer has ignored these requests
Speaker 10: and never mirandized Tunic. The motion states that the officers
Speaker 10: told him quote, because you're refusing to talk, which is
Speaker 10: you're right, we have the authority to go through your
Speaker 10: phone to see what we're looking for. After officers demanded
Speaker 10: his phone password a second time, Tunic asked again why
Speaker 10: he wasn't allowed to call his lawyer, and the officers responded, quote,
Speaker 10: when it comes to immigration and customs, right, it's a
Speaker 10: whole different ballgame, and we have search authority. We don't
Speaker 10: need a warrant.
Speaker 8: Unquote. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice.
Speaker 8: If this is something you are concerned about, then you
Speaker 8: should seek out legal counsel. I'm just going to give
Speaker 8: you my percenterstanding of it. This is a civil situation.
Speaker 8: Well it's also a criminal situation for him now, but
Speaker 8: like when you're entering the border, these are civil proceedings
Speaker 8: and so that that's why you're Germany not mirandized. Depends
Speaker 8: ending on where you enter the United States and what
Speaker 8: circuit you are in, they can inspect your telephone. My
Speaker 8: Idenmert understanding is should you refuse to unlock that telephone,
Speaker 8: you can expect to leave without your telephone. The general
Speaker 8: way that they do this is for them to put
Speaker 8: the phone on airplane mode and then search it because
Speaker 8: they are searching the device that is entering United States,
Speaker 8: not the remote cloud stuff that is not on the device, right,
Speaker 8: Because they are inspecting a thing that is crossing the border, right,
Speaker 8: and that is within their purview in most circuits in
Speaker 8: the United States right now as federal immigration officers. And
Speaker 8: then the other thing I would add, at some point,
Speaker 8: I think we're going to see a Supreme Court case
Speaker 8: about it, and this might be the one, right.
Speaker 10: That's very possible.
Speaker 8: Yeah, orbit there'll be other elements to this case, right, Like,
Speaker 8: as you said, who destroyed the data that was on
Speaker 8: the phone is something that's very much legally clear to me. Right,
Speaker 8: did Graphene destroy the data? Did the BP agents when
Speaker 8: they entered that pass code destroy the data? Right? Or
Speaker 8: did the person destroy the data?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 10: This this case is a whole bunch of legal gray areas.
Speaker 10: This is the first time we've seen a case about
Speaker 10: a dressed password the exact way this introgation went and
Speaker 10: introduces a lot of questions on when exactly this regular
Speaker 10: border patrol questioning turned into an actual interrogation based on
Speaker 10: allegations of a crime right with this mention of child
Speaker 10: sexual abast material and all those things could possibly trigger
Speaker 10: different legal statutes in various court cases. Now, the motion
Speaker 10: says that officers explained to Tunic that he would have
Speaker 10: to give over access to his phone quote, whether it
Speaker 10: was done with his cooperation or not. Eventually, mister Tunic
Speaker 10: provided a password to his cell phone and e reader.
Speaker 10: According to the government, when the CPB officers entered the
Speaker 10: password on his cell phone quote, the screen went blank,
Speaker 10: flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart. After this,
Speaker 10: another officer entered the room to conduct a pat down,
Speaker 10: which Tonic did not consent to, but they did anyway.
Speaker 10: Then a DHS agent arrived with three other individuals to
Speaker 10: conduct another interview, which Tunic did not consent to and
Speaker 10: pointed to his attorney's card to quote from the motion
Speaker 10: again quote. The agent explained that he was seizing mister
Speaker 10: Tunic's electronic devices and that they would be returned to
Speaker 10: mister Tonck after thirty days. Notably, the DHS agent explained
Speaker 10: that mister Tonick was quote not under arrest, but once
Speaker 10: these gentlemen are done with you pursuant to your entry
Speaker 10: into the country, you're free to leave unquote. So this
Speaker 10: motion dispress evidence argued that the border questioning became quote
Speaker 10: unquote custodial in nature when mister Tunic was not able
Speaker 10: to leave, was never informed of his rights and was
Speaker 10: denied access to his lawyer, and so any quote, evidence
Speaker 10: obtained from his phone or lack thereof, should be suppressed
Speaker 10: as fruits of unlawfully obtained evidence. The specific statute that
Speaker 10: he's been charged with eighteen Usc. Two two three two
Speaker 10: refers to quote the government's lawful authority to take such property.
Speaker 10: So this motion is arguing that the exact way this
Speaker 10: properties was taken was not lawful. Yeah, to quote from
Speaker 10: the motion again, I think we'll expound on this quote.
Speaker 10: CBB officers introduced themselves to mister Tunick and explained that
Speaker 10: they were looking for people who are pedophiles. Officers justified
Speaker 10: their questioning and demands to search mister Tutuck's phone by
Speaker 10: stating that they had to confirm whether he possessed child porn.
Speaker 10: The government's reports do not indicate any suspicion whatsoever that
Speaker 10: mister Tunick was in possession of child porn, but rather
Speaker 10: that their purpose in detaining mister Tunick and scizing his
Speaker 10: belongings was to investigate his ties with the Defend the
Speaker 10: Atlanta Forest movement. To an unmorandized statement, the alleged wiping
Speaker 10: or encryption of the contents of his phone by providing
Speaker 10: agents with the specific power word is testimonial in nature.
Speaker 10: Mister Tonk had not been charged with committing a crime
Speaker 10: in connection with the Defend the Lanta Force movement, but
Speaker 10: law enforcements seem we took advantage of the relaxed constitutional
Speaker 10: protections at the border to try to dig up evidence unquote.
Speaker 10: And the motion states that circuit cords have contradictory rulings
Speaker 10: if this sort of search is permitted, if you can
Speaker 10: search someone's phone at the border, not to actually intercept
Speaker 10: digital contraband, but to fish for evidence in an unrelated
Speaker 10: criminal investigation. Now, something that may come up if this
Speaker 10: goes to trial is technically using Graphene's stress password does
Speaker 10: not delete all of the data on the phone, but
Speaker 10: rather the phone loses the ability to access its encrypted data.
Speaker 10: Graphinos wrote on x the Everything app quote our dress
Speaker 10: pin slash password leaves all the encrypted data on the
Speaker 10: device intact, it only wipes key in the hardware key
Speaker 10: stores the secure element and encryption metadata. It's a near instant,
Speaker 10: and then it powers off the device to wipe ram unquote.
Speaker 10: So basically it wipes what the phone needs to decrypt
Speaker 10: its contents and read the data. Though Graphene followed up
Speaker 10: on Twitter, quote, we doubt that's legally different from wiping
Speaker 10: data unquote, So this technicality may or may not actually
Speaker 10: matter to the court. But this might not be a
Speaker 10: sort of get out of jail loophole that I see
Speaker 10: some people online presenting it as. Graphinos further explained that
Speaker 10: the duress password wipe should be legal not because of
Speaker 10: this quote unquote tech loophole, but because the defendant quote
Speaker 10: wasn't being investigated for any actual crime, wasn't under arrest,
Speaker 10: wasn't reta his rights before being interrogated, it wasn't under oath,
Speaker 10: et cetera, adding that it's quote near impossible that they
Speaker 10: get anything of value if the phone was in before
Speaker 10: first unlock with a strong passphrase plus second factor finger
Speaker 10: print unlock set up unquote. Whether or not this stress
Speaker 10: password was used, it is very unlikely that federal authorities
Speaker 10: would have been able to break into a phone running
Speaker 10: the Graphine operating system. That means that the device has
Speaker 10: been fully turned off and has not been unlocked since
Speaker 10: being turned back on. Similarly, it is very hard to
Speaker 10: break into an iPhone running iOS's lockdown mode with a
Speaker 10: complex alphanumeric password before first unlock. The combination of all
Speaker 10: those things can make it really hard to break in.
Speaker 8: We saw that, right Reese with a reporter from get Who,
Speaker 8: one of the broadsheets whose phone was using lockdown, though
Speaker 8: they've said they couldn't open right. Yeah, I guess I
Speaker 8: will just say that, Like, if people want to know
Speaker 8: more about border searches and telephones, I would suggest going
Speaker 8: to Electronic Frontier Foundation's page eff dot org. They have
Speaker 8: a great deal of information and you can find a
Speaker 8: lot there. It's currently the Southern District of New York,
Speaker 8: which is the one that requires a warrant, but there
Speaker 8: are various other degrees that we don't have the time,
Speaker 8: nor is this a place for us to go over.
Speaker 8: So yeah, eff Rolway is a good source for the ship.
Speaker 10: Yeah, but like James said, this is a case that
Speaker 10: could become Supreme Court precedent over time. This is invoking
Speaker 10: a bunch of legal gray areas. The motion here to
Speaker 10: express evidence probably won't be decided on until it be October,
Speaker 10: so this is going to go on for quite a while.
Speaker 10: This is another new frontier in digital privacy and how
Speaker 10: that relates to the law, which the Supreme Court has
Speaker 10: taken up a lot of cases on recently. So this
Speaker 10: could become a very influential case going forward. So I
Speaker 10: wanted to go over some of these details now, and
Speaker 10: we will certainly be covering this in the future as
Speaker 10: this as this case progresses.
Speaker 8: Yeah, the outlook hasn't been great so far, I would
Speaker 8: say with this, like the US versus Belmonte Caddoso was
Speaker 8: the most recent case that was I think this week
Speaker 8: or last week. Again, not the place to go into this,
Speaker 8: but I will include a link in the source notes
Speaker 8: if you want to read about some of the case law.
Speaker 10: I think that does it for us today.
Speaker 8: Sake, and it could happen here.
Speaker 4: Oh good.
Speaker 8: Yeah, if you would like to email us, it's cool
Speaker 8: Zone tips at proton dot me.
Speaker 10: I'll include the legal fundraiser for Samtochnic's case below.
Speaker 8: We reported the news.
Speaker 6: The news reported, We reported the news.
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