Speaker 1: Calzon 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: Welcome, Dick, It happen. Hear a podcast about things falling
Speaker 3: apart and them continuing to fall apart. I'm your host,
Speaker 3: Na Wong with me as James Stout.
Speaker 4: Hi.
Speaker 5: Miya glad to hear about what I was going to
Speaker 5: shit today.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so before we start talking about imperialism, we're starting
Speaker 3: everything episode with this. Until you people stop, until you
Speaker 3: stop doing this. It is the year two thousand and
Speaker 3: twenty five. We are a quarter of a century into
Speaker 3: this millennium and people are still getting kettled by cops
Speaker 3: on bridges. I did this occupy in twenty eleven. They
Speaker 3: did it in twenty eighteen during the Occupy Ice protest.
Speaker 3: The people did it in twenty twenty, people did it
Speaker 3: last year. During the dream of the power signing cam lets.
Speaker 3: People are doing it again this year. Simply do not
Speaker 3: lead a march onto a bridge, yep.
Speaker 6: Or a tunnel to AI reasons, we would also include
Speaker 6: a tunnel.
Speaker 3: Yes, don't do the tunnel either.
Speaker 5: Yeah. If there's no side exits, just don't.
Speaker 3: Yes, here's the thing. The moment you walk onto a bridge,
Speaker 3: all the cops have to do is take both exits
Speaker 3: and everyone on the bridge gets arrested. You can simply
Speaker 3: not do this. If you must do it, you need
Speaker 3: to like make one thousand percent sure you can hold
Speaker 3: both sides of the bridge. Yeah, both of them. You
Speaker 3: need to all both of them. Yeah, and almost certainly
Speaker 3: you can't. So only you, only you, dear listener, can
Speaker 3: prevent four thousand more people from getting kettled on fucking bridges.
Speaker 3: And I'm going to keep starting episodes hockeyboll get it,
Speaker 3: don't get kettled up bridges until this stop. All right,
Speaker 3: this is what this has been me as public service
Speaker 3: announcement of a bridge kettling. Let's get into the nature
Speaker 3: of imperialism and why Trump's is different. So we've been
Speaker 3: covering a lot of Trump's sort of I don't know
Speaker 3: the trade wars, his call for the US to seize
Speaker 3: the Gozel strip, a whole bunch of stories about the
Speaker 3: way that Trump is using the power of the American
Speaker 3: state to do imperialism. And I think it's worth actually
Speaker 3: taking a second to unpack this because things are probably
Speaker 3: going to get worse. There is a non zero chance
Speaker 3: that we effectively start a war with Mexico in the
Speaker 3: next few months.
Speaker 5: It's great, it's spanging. Everything's going so well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, But I want to start with talking about the
Speaker 3: way that Trump has been using tariffs as as a
Speaker 3: sort of political weapon and not as an economic tool,
Speaker 3: but varies very specifically as a political weapon, and how
Speaker 3: this differs from the previous economic regime, because I think
Speaker 3: there's been a lot of you know, as the terroriff's
Speaker 3: the threat of the tariffs go up, in the markets
Speaker 3: sort of tank in fear of them. There's been a
Speaker 3: lot of sort of defense of like free trade in
Speaker 3: ways where I don't think people actually understand what's happening.
Speaker 3: And to understand how what Trump is doing is different
Speaker 3: from the stuff that's come before, we need to actually
Speaker 3: understand what trade is now. When an economist talks about trade.
Speaker 3: They go, oh, yeah, obviously, trade is when two countries
Speaker 3: exchange a thing, right, yep, But that's not actually what
Speaker 3: most of the stuff on earth that is labeled as
Speaker 3: global trade, that's not what it is, right, Look at
Speaker 3: like US Mexico trade. We're going to go a bit
Speaker 3: more into detail about what that stuff is. But do
Speaker 3: you know what most not most, but you know what
Speaker 3: a huge portion of US Mexico trade is. It is
Speaker 3: the same company, the same company moving an auto part
Speaker 3: from one side of the border to the other, back
Speaker 3: and forth across the body.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I suppos got to say.
Speaker 3: Yes, back and forth. Right, So it's a lot of
Speaker 3: different people being paid different wages can make the same thing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, or if someone paid lower wages can make it. Yeah,
Speaker 6: someone paid more con Q see it and then they
Speaker 6: can send.
Speaker 3: It back yep.
Speaker 5: Yeah, very very common.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And this is actually a real substantive problem with
Speaker 3: the way that I think everyone thinks about trade, because what
Speaker 3: is happening here, and this is an argument that the
Speaker 3: anti globalization movement used to make. You know, David Graeber
Speaker 3: like makes this argument a lot, and they're right, which
Speaker 3: is that most things that we think of as quote
Speaker 3: unquote global trade are just a single corporation moving a
Speaker 3: resource around the world so that they can produce something.
Speaker 6: Yea and exploit labor at some impossible exploitation rate.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know. And this means that using nation states
Speaker 3: as a way to understand trade is an absolutely terrible
Speaker 3: way to think about global economy. Right there, there are
Speaker 3: some things we're thinking about specifically nation state trade, Like
Speaker 3: trade is important because you know, even even the same
Speaker 3: corporation moving goods around, right, that does contribute to how
Speaker 3: much foreign currency a country, right right, And so okay,
Speaker 3: there's things like balance of payments where if you run
Speaker 3: out of it, if you're a country and you run out
Speaker 3: of American dollars, suddenly you can't employ like fuel anymore
Speaker 3: in your country, like explodes, And that's a very common
Speaker 3: way that like this happens in Trilanck, for example, pretty recently.
Speaker 3: This is a way for your economy to blow up.
Speaker 3: But that's kind of an edge case in terms of
Speaker 3: how global trade actually operates. But the problem is that
Speaker 3: it is to the advantage of the ruling class for
Speaker 3: you and everyone else to think about trade as something
Speaker 3: that's like a war between you and the country next
Speaker 3: to you instead of a corporation. Like fucking over everyone
Speaker 3: involved in this entire thing. Now, there's a pretty interesting
Speaker 3: book that I read recently called Border Economies Cities Bridging
Speaker 3: the US Mexico Divide by James Greber Gerber Nicks Gerber, Okay,
Speaker 3: And one of the things he points out is that
Speaker 3: the two largest trade relations between any country, any two
Speaker 3: countries on Earth are the US in Mexico and the
Speaker 3: US in Canada. And those are the countries with the
Speaker 3: highest tariffs that trumbles attempting to apply. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 3: worth actually understanding what this does by looking at what
Speaker 3: actually is traded between, for example, the US and Mexico.
Speaker 3: And the place I want to start is that one
Speaker 3: of the largest kinds of goods is moved from from
Speaker 3: Mexico to the US is computer equipment. And nobody fucking
Speaker 3: talks about this ever, No one, like zero fucking people
Speaker 3: talk about this. I am convinced this is because of racism.
Speaker 3: But Mexico is a huge sort of like assembly place
Speaker 3: for a whole bunch of things like monitor screens, like
Speaker 3: computer equipment in general, and a lot of that stuff
Speaker 3: comes into the US. And there's also you know, the thing,
Speaker 3: the thing that we started this episode on. That's I
Speaker 3: think the thing I gets talked about the most now
Speaker 3: is transportation equipment, right, And this is a combination of
Speaker 3: consumer vehicles and also like heavy duty cargo trucks, which
Speaker 3: are unbelievably important for the maintenance of the American economy,
Speaker 3: right of the entire global economies. Like having these trucks
Speaker 3: is a sort of vital infrastructure thing for the United States.
Speaker 3: You can move stuff around a lot of that cost
Speaker 3: in Mexico. And then also like a lot of it
Speaker 3: is like whole cars that are like like finished assembly
Speaker 3: like in Mexico, and they get shipp across the border
Speaker 3: and there's a lot of things there. And these are
Speaker 3: also like all the same international companies that work in
Speaker 3: the US. So it's like Toyotas like Konda.
Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean these are your American trucks often, right,
Speaker 6: or like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, four does this too? Yeah, what's GM
Speaker 3: now Stalores.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, like Chevy GM like these as well as
Speaker 6: like Toyota.
Speaker 5: Toyota I think has a big planet.
Speaker 6: I forget exactly where, but along the board is somewhere
Speaker 6: if I recall correctly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, this is extremely common Yeah. And what this is, right, like,
Speaker 3: this is multinational capitalist companies who are moving their products
Speaker 3: across the border. Yeah, and this gets counted as Mexico
Speaker 3: doing trade. You know. One of the things in one
Speaker 3: of the questions in this book is about why Mexico's
Speaker 3: economy never had the kind of economic bump that China
Speaker 3: did from the amount of industrial production if you look
Speaker 3: at like the East Asian tigers, right right, And I
Speaker 3: think part of that is actually something that is not
Speaker 3: mentioned in the book, which is if if you look
Speaker 3: at the East Asian economies that that develop their economies
Speaker 3: that you're talking like your South Korea's, et cetera, cedule
Speaker 3: like a lot of those countries, like Japan, there was
Speaker 3: a lot of US military investment there in a way
Speaker 3: that's just not true of Mexico. Like Mexico is not
Speaker 3: like a place where you offshore you're supplying your supplies
Speaker 3: to because you need to move stuff to you know,
Speaker 3: fight the war in Vietnam. But you know, one of
Speaker 3: the other reasons is that, Yeah, Okay, so like where
Speaker 3: is all the profit from the international trade going. It's like, well,
Speaker 3: it's going to a bunch of American and Japanese car companies. Yeah,
Speaker 3: because it's it's those those multinationals are the people who
Speaker 3: actually reap all of the benefits.
Speaker 6: Yeah, to a degree, like post NAFTA, right, post ninety four,
Speaker 6: it has created a class of people in Mexico who
Speaker 6: have benefited from it, but it has it has not
Speaker 6: lifted up like like the average income. Right, It's created
Speaker 6: a greater disparity of income than at any point.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah, previous to that.
Speaker 6: And you'll hear people I was talking to us Ran
Speaker 6: about this yesterday in Tijuana, like how like what NAFTA did,
Speaker 6: Like now, if you look at nineteen ninety four, I
Speaker 6: think it's a really good example of what you're talking
Speaker 6: about of Like, yeah, we opened up that border to
Speaker 6: international companies to do tariff free back and forth, right,
Speaker 6: but we didn't open it up to people.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: At the same time, we had Operation Gatekeeper, right like
Speaker 6: enforced much harsher border enforcement. And the two things in
Speaker 6: parallel really kind of indicate, yeah, what the free trade
Speaker 6: is going for.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And you know, and this is another old anti
Speaker 3: globalization thing like we ever talks about. This is like yeah,
Speaker 3: free like free trade is about the free movement of
Speaker 3: capital and the unfree movement of people, right, Yeah, so
Speaker 3: it's about locking people down in place so you can
Speaker 3: like you can you can dictate wages to them, and
Speaker 3: then moving capital around the world to avoid them exactly.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and we're gonna get into this more in a second,
Speaker 3: but I want to talk about some you know, some
Speaker 3: of the other things that are that are exported from
Speaker 3: Mexico fruits, vegetables, alcohol, or like huge exports.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And then also and this is something that I don't
Speaker 3: think is people don't understand what's happening very well. Is
Speaker 3: there's a lot of oil from Mexico that's shipped to
Speaker 3: the US. But the thing that's happening there, and this
Speaker 3: is the thing that's very weird about the oil industry,
Speaker 3: is that the refinery facilities are not in the same
Speaker 3: country as the extraction facilities a lot of the time.
Speaker 3: So this oil is getting shipped around because they don't
Speaker 3: have the refinery facilities to like refine the specific kind
Speaker 3: of like crude oil or whatever that they're extracting. So like, yeah,
Speaker 3: it's again one of these situations where it's not really
Speaker 3: like Mexico is sending its oil to the US. It's
Speaker 3: like I mean kind of right, that's like one of
Speaker 3: the more direct issh ones, But largely what's happening is
Speaker 3: that like again like it's an oil company moving stuff
Speaker 3: to you know, moving stuff around to do refinement of
Speaker 3: it so they can sell it. Now There's there's been
Speaker 3: some other stuff happening with Mexico that's a kind of
Speaker 3: reaction to Trump's previous thing. And I think the extent
Speaker 3: of this has been overblown to some extent, but a
Speaker 3: lot of very low end manufacturing stuff has been leaving
Speaker 3: China for a long time. This is one of my
Speaker 3: media things on the show, is that this has been
Speaker 3: happening for a while because labor price has been rising
Speaker 3: in China and one of the places that these things
Speaker 3: went to is Mexico. So there's been a lot of
Speaker 3: like direct investment from trying to et cetera, et cetera,
Speaker 3: and all of these things. You know, like these these
Speaker 3: these kind of movements. I'm talking about them because these
Speaker 3: kind of like seismic global economic shifts right of the
Speaker 3: kind that we're going to be see are driven by
Speaker 3: a lot of things, you know, I mean this stuff
Speaker 3: like currency valuations, like local tax laws, like state corporate
Speaker 3: planning policies like demands or just blah blah blah blah blah.
Speaker 3: But one of the single most important things is the
Speaker 3: state of class struggle in a country and what effect
Speaker 3: that has on wages or like, you know, like straight
Speaker 3: up uprisings.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: The geographer David Harvey, he gets credit for popularizing the
Speaker 3: term the spatial fix, though other people were already using it,
Speaker 3: and I don't like his work much, but he did.
Speaker 3: He is the guy who gets credited with this. He describes,
Speaker 3: you know, the sort of free trade regime that that
Speaker 3: persisted roughly through like now. I mean it was it
Speaker 3: was taking shape in sort of the eighties, like the
Speaker 3: eighties through like roughly now, as the spatial fix for
Speaker 3: declining profitability. Right, you know what else has declining profitability? Well?
Speaker 5: I don't know.
Speaker 6: The worst things get the more people are listen to
Speaker 6: our podcast, and you can say that.
Speaker 3: We are back. Okay, So let's talk about this, this
Speaker 3: sort of declining profitability and the fix that capitalism sort
Speaker 3: of finds fit this, right. You know, through the seventies
Speaker 3: there's this sort of spiraling unemployment and inflation and the
Speaker 3: economy is sort of going to shit. And it's happening
Speaker 3: everywhere because they're sort of like structural overcapacity and manufacturing.
Speaker 3: And the solution to this is a spatial fix, right,
Speaker 3: which is destroying some manufacturing capacity and just moving it
Speaker 3: to other places. Yeah, and you know, and this is
Speaker 3: this is sort of what James was talking about earlier, right.
Speaker 3: The goal is to sort of weaken the power of
Speaker 3: the working class by locking people down into their countries
Speaker 3: and then moving capital to poorer countries, the weaker labor
Speaker 3: protections and also a weaker level of sort of like
Speaker 3: workers organization, right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then it leaves like the previously well organized workers.
Speaker 6: Like if you look at the industries and the places
Speaker 6: where my grandparents come from, the dog workers and minors, right,
Speaker 6: those are not really jobs that are employing large numbers
Speaker 6: of people in the UK anymore. And like as a result,
Speaker 6: those working class towns are just destitute, you know. So
Speaker 6: that previously thriving a well organized working class that we
Speaker 6: had northern England, it's left kind of like it has
Speaker 6: to relocate or reorganize, right, and it destroys those like
Speaker 6: nexuses of working class power that existed in Britain up
Speaker 6: until the eighties.
Speaker 5: With a minus strike, right, Yeah, and.
Speaker 3: This was this was done deliberately, yah, right. I mean
Speaker 3: there there's always a debate in the literature about to
Speaker 3: what extent, like neoliberalism was like planned, or to what
Speaker 3: extent it was you know, a sort of reaction to
Speaker 3: a bunch of crazies. But specifically this kind of like
Speaker 3: offshoring and the container ships have been part of this,
Speaker 3: but like this specific kind of thing, and even the
Speaker 3: transition cold oil was like was a very deliberate thing
Speaker 3: done by like done by sort of American and British
Speaker 3: politicians in order to sort of break the power like
Speaker 3: miners unions. And you know, one of the major places
Speaker 3: that this went obviously like a lot of these things
Speaker 3: go to Mexico. The sort of first round of these
Speaker 3: go to like the original like Asian tiger economies I
Speaker 3: was talking about, Well, I mean places like it, like
Speaker 3: Indonesia too, with a lot of those economies sort of
Speaker 3: like Thailand, those commies kind of blew up in the nineties. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know, one of the largest, most important ones
Speaker 3: was China. And you know it's important to sort of
Speaker 3: remember I've talked about this on the show before. A
Speaker 3: lot of this is also the product of Tianoman Square,
Speaker 3: because the thing that's important to remember about Tianneman is
Speaker 3: that contra both sort of liberal histories of Tiannemen and
Speaker 3: also the sort of CCP line. Most of the people
Speaker 3: who died at Tannama were workers, right, Most people who
Speaker 3: were executed after Wridge were workers. They were like students died,
Speaker 3: but it was mostly workers who were killed. And a
Speaker 3: lot of what happened there was that, you know, Tanneman
Speaker 3: was like the last time that China's like trade union federation,
Speaker 3: which is like now such a joke that it's like
Speaker 3: it's genuinely a subject of academic debate and discussion as
Speaker 3: to whether you can even literally consider it a trade union.
Speaker 3: Like that's that's how fuck it is. And the last
Speaker 3: time that Chinese trade unions took a political stand was
Speaker 3: in favor of the Tianeman protests. And then the army
Speaker 3: shows up and just like like slaughters their base. Yeah,
Speaker 3: And what this does is it breaks the old Chinese
Speaker 3: working class, right, It breaks the alliance with the students
Speaker 3: that they'd had that was you know, and that was
Speaker 3: a durable political force dating back to like the nineteen twenties, right,
Speaker 3: And it breaks this extremely militant, well organized Chinese urban
Speaker 3: working class and replaces them with a more exploitable and
Speaker 3: less organized like migrant working class yea. And that is
Speaker 3: the class that like to this day right now is
Speaker 3: like the engine of global capital or like those like
Speaker 3: three hundred million migrant workers yep.
Speaker 5: And they can be in different parts of the world,
Speaker 5: right like the other way.
Speaker 3: The three hundred million number, that's just the microtworkers in China, Jesus.
Speaker 3: To be clear, there are a lot more internationally. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but yeah, China's miketworking population is like almost the size
Speaker 3: of the US. It's like the fourth largest country in
Speaker 3: the world just by like itself.
Speaker 5: It's yeah, that's mad.
Speaker 6: I was just thinking of today, like the scam compounds
Speaker 6: which exists on the border between me and Mah and Thailand,
Speaker 6: like they actually Thailand.
Speaker 5: Just cut power off to them today.
Speaker 6: I mean, I can see that the strategy there, but
Speaker 6: it's just going to end up hurting the people who
Speaker 6: are in those compounds more of course it is. Yeah,
Speaker 6: of course, those people who are in those compounds used
Speaker 6: to be able to escape and go to places where
Speaker 6: they could like get back to their lives, right, like
Speaker 6: be re taken care of, and of course that's well
Speaker 6: funded by USA, so they don't exist as of this week,
Speaker 6: which is pretty brutal. But like, yeah, these people, right,
Speaker 6: these these migrant workers who come from all over the
Speaker 6: world hoping for a chance that the things that capitalism
Speaker 6: have promised them are the people who have to be
Speaker 6: exploited so that people in wealthy countries can.
Speaker 5: Have their treats.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and those workers are the basis of monoglobal capitalism, right,
Speaker 3: Like you know, like those Chinese workers for example, like
Speaker 3: it it is illegal for them to form an independent union.
Speaker 3: If you try to form an independent union, you will
Speaker 3: go to prison so fast that like though we dust
Speaker 3: clouds like.
Speaker 5: Hey and like Wiley Coyote will take you to prison.
Speaker 3: Yeah, Like even trying to get your union to like
Speaker 3: do something like trying to have your own independent people
Speaker 3: elected to your to that union, like canon will get
Speaker 3: you arrested and like and even like short, Chinese labor
Speaker 3: oppression like is pretty intense. But it's like you know
Speaker 3: that we're also talking about countries like Columbia. It's like, well, yeah, okay,
Speaker 3: so what happens to union organizers in Columbia's like they
Speaker 3: get being shopped by paramilitaries with machine guns. Right, And
Speaker 3: that's that's that's what the sort of spatial fix was, right,
Speaker 3: was moving jobs to places where the ruling classes sort
Speaker 3: of control was more firm and their ability to use
Speaker 3: violence was higher. Yeah, And so this is what the
Speaker 3: American imperial system sort of had been, right. It's based
Speaker 3: on American capital flowing around the world. And this is
Speaker 3: also like international capital too, right, Like we've literally been
Speaker 3: talking about like Japanese corporations right doing like the same shit, right,
Speaker 3: But you know, it's like international capital flowing around the world,
Speaker 3: extracting resources and labor from other countries and accumulating it
Speaker 3: in American corporations like that. That's what free trade is.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's also you know, secondarily, right, it is a
Speaker 3: debt system. It's based on forcing countries to like pay
Speaker 3: back loans that were taken out by dictators. Gogurid de
Speaker 3: Draber's debt last five thousand years, it's very good. But yeah,
Speaker 3: it's based on like turning entire countries into just debt
Speaker 3: servicing engines, where like all of the wealth that is
Speaker 3: produced by entire nation is just going to like pay
Speaker 3: debts to bank of America. Yeah, And you know, the
Speaker 3: thing about this is that this is actually a very
Speaker 3: very efficient model of empire. It's one of the most
Speaker 3: sophisticated imperial systems that the world has ever seen.
Speaker 8: Right.
Speaker 3: It works extremely well and makes the US an unbelievable
Speaker 3: amount of money. It protects global capitalism, and the people
Speaker 3: currently running it don't want it to work like that.
Speaker 3: Now do you know who else? It doesn't want the
Speaker 3: current system to work like it does because they can
Speaker 3: make more money.
Speaker 5: I can guess it's.
Speaker 3: The products and services for this point, excited to hit
Speaker 3: which one we get?
Speaker 6: You know, it could be it could be anything. I
Speaker 6: really at this point, who knows?
Speaker 3: We are back, So we've entered I guess what you
Speaker 3: could call the phase of mask off imperialism. US imperialism
Speaker 3: usually at least sort of like war human face. And
Speaker 3: and it did it for good reason, right you know,
Speaker 3: Ronald Reagan did not give a single ship about democracy
Speaker 3: and human rights, right like like you know, and this
Speaker 3: is this has been true in the US for like
Speaker 3: ages and ages and ages, right you know that, like
Speaker 3: they prop up right wing military dirtatorship constantly. But the
Speaker 3: thing is, democracy and human rights are things that like
Speaker 3: people like and so you know, it was it's it's
Speaker 3: a weapon that he and and his sort of brand
Speaker 3: of conservatives, like anti communist conservatives like wielded it again communism,
Speaker 3: and it was a very very powerful ideological weapon because
Speaker 3: if if if your choice ceases to be between like
Speaker 3: communism and capitalism, and your choice is now between like
Speaker 3: do you want to live in a dictatorship, but do
Speaker 3: you want to live in a democracy? Like that's a
Speaker 3: very different question, and it's it's a very very important
Speaker 3: question for sort of how how the Cold War was
Speaker 3: won and how international power is wielded, right, because there's
Speaker 3: there's always been an illusion that there's an international community
Speaker 3: in that countries are like working together and and this
Speaker 3: is this is a very very powerful ideological thing, you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, and this is something like you live through this,
Speaker 3: like God, it probably listen to you didn't leave to
Speaker 3: this now, dear God. But like like the Iraq War, right,
Speaker 3: the US didn't unilaterally invader Rock now I was called
Speaker 3: the quote unquote Coalition of the Wilding and included like
Speaker 3: like they dragged Australia in the war by threatening to
Speaker 3: like destroy their like milk shipping contracts with the Iraqi government, Like,
Speaker 3: so you.
Speaker 6: Know, yeah, you had all kinds of people running around
Speaker 6: in a rock for a while then, I guess, yeah,
Speaker 6: obviously the United Kingdom played a big role in it,
Speaker 6: like an outside troll, given being a relatively small country.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and you know, and this, this, this is the
Speaker 3: way that you do. You know, even just overtly straight
Speaker 3: up imperialist stuff like it, like invading a rock, right,
Speaker 3: was still done under the auspices of like multinational like coalitions.
Speaker 5: Yep.
Speaker 3: And the thing about different about Trump is Trump doesn't
Speaker 3: give a fuck about any of that, right, absolutely not.
Speaker 3: He has turned on Rob Ford, a man who is
Speaker 3: like boldly answers the question what if Trump smoke crack
Speaker 3: like that is Rob Ford, Like he's he's turning on
Speaker 3: his allies, like people people like right wingers who should
Speaker 3: be his allies in Canada, right, who are exactly the
Speaker 3: kind of people who you would expect to do sort
Speaker 3: of like right wing multilateral interventions in countries, right. Yeah,
Speaker 3: and you know he is caused with with his like
Speaker 3: threat to put tariffs on like, he's caused these people
Speaker 3: to become anti American. And this is the same thing
Speaker 3: with Mexico. Right, even the sort of like the nominally
Speaker 3: center left governments in Mexico like have cooperated with American imperism.
Speaker 3: But Trump doesn't want to fucking do that anymore. He
Speaker 3: wants to run everything just very purely and very openly
Speaker 3: as as an American empire.
Speaker 6: Yeah, Like America's always bullied Mexican. Right when we talk
Speaker 6: about the deployment of troops to the border. Biden absolutely
Speaker 6: bullied Amlo into into bringing those troops to the border
Speaker 6: because they came before Donald Trump even came into office.
Speaker 6: But now Donald Trump's just doing it on true social yeah,
Speaker 6: like it's it's it's kind of different. Or Panama fuck, Like,
Speaker 6: you know, I was in Panama September of twenty four
Speaker 6: and I went to the Canal Museum, and Panama like
Speaker 6: is very proud of its history of independence.
Speaker 9: Right.
Speaker 6: It's relatively short, yeah, and hard earned and paid for
Speaker 6: in blood. But like, yeah, I traveled. I'm a US
Speaker 6: City cinema traveling you. No one gave me any shit.
Speaker 5: It was fine.
Speaker 6: Everyone's very nice to me. Now the burning American flags
Speaker 6: in Panama City, like.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because Croup is trying to take the Panama
Speaker 3: canal back and before we get into like you know,
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess we can get into hear some
Speaker 3: of the stuff that he's doing. Right, he's pulled out
Speaker 3: of the International Criminal Court and it's putting sanctions on it.
Speaker 3: He has been trying to use the sanctions that he's
Speaker 3: been threatened to apply to Canada. Who get Canada to
Speaker 3: join the US? Like he is trying to conquer Canada, Right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: he's he's been trying to He's been trying to force
Speaker 3: the government of Denmark to buy Greenland.
Speaker 6: Sell Greenland, right, Like he wants to purchase greenland from there.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he wants to buy Greenland. Yeah, there was. There
Speaker 3: was the whole sort of showdown with Columbia over Columbia's
Speaker 3: like being pissed off about the treatment of deportees to Columbia,
Speaker 3: and he used sanctions. There there is again him saying
Speaker 3: the US is going to take over Gaza. And this
Speaker 3: is a very, very substantively different thing than than the
Speaker 3: kind of American empire that we've had before.
Speaker 6: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the last time the US tried to take Canada
Speaker 3: was eighteen twelve. Right, it's been like two hot hundred years.
Speaker 3: This is how Britain returns to the world stage, right,
Speaker 3: And the thing is, last time, the last time the
Speaker 3: US tried to take Canada, they burned the capitol down,
Speaker 3: so like you know, yeah, but like like this is
Speaker 3: something that even even under like people like Bush, right,
Speaker 3: who is like a Bush is like a very very
Speaker 3: avert American imperialist, right, yeah, Bush would ever try to
Speaker 3: invade Canada. Like yeah, yeah, that's that's completely unhinged, right,
Speaker 3: And this is this, this is just a very very
Speaker 3: different kind of imperialism than than what existed before. And
Speaker 3: I wanted to go into I think why this is
Speaker 3: the case? Yeah, and I think the reason why this
Speaker 3: is the case. Okay, So the reason that there's been
Speaker 3: such a defensive free trade is like people being like,
Speaker 3: oh my god, if he puts teriffs in place, it'll
Speaker 3: raise prices, and like, yeah, that's true, right, it'll crash
Speaker 3: the global economy because the global economy has been turned
Speaker 3: into a very very efficient engine of extracting profit from
Speaker 3: countries and putting them in the hands of corporations. Right.
Speaker 3: It's it's working exactly how Trump wants it to work. Now,
Speaker 3: if the US wants to rebuild a manufacturing economy, that
Speaker 3: is technically possible, right, Reagan was able to do this.
Speaker 3: But what Reagan did instead of doing tariffs is that well,
Speaker 3: I mean kind of you but like the main thing
Speaker 3: that he did was this thing called the Plaza Accords.
Speaker 3: And the Plaza Accords was this this thing in the
Speaker 3: eighties where he forced Japan. Japan was the important moment,
Speaker 3: like Japan, West Germany. I think there are a couple
Speaker 3: other countries like he forced them to increase the value
Speaker 3: of their currency relative to the dollar, because like, you know,
Speaker 3: so if you have a currency and it's worth a
Speaker 3: bunch of like another person's currency, so like you know,
Speaker 3: you have like the dollar and it's worth like a million,
Speaker 3: like yen or whatever the fuck, right, the currency that's
Speaker 3: worthless has a more competitive manufacturing economy. And Reagan was
Speaker 3: able to like restart the American like manufacturing economy for
Speaker 3: a while by doing this. But the problem is that
Speaker 3: it blew up the entire world economy. And so to
Speaker 3: save the world economy, Clinton rolled back the accords and it,
Speaker 3: you know, and that was the thing that actually finally
Speaker 3: sort of like a viscerated American manufacturing and the exchange
Speaker 3: here was you know, and all of the stuff that
Speaker 3: I've been I've been talking about for the last few minutes.
Speaker 3: So there's a very very good essay written right after
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight called What's good for Goldman Sachs
Speaker 3: is good for America by the economist Robert Brenner. And
Speaker 3: what the strategy became, and this is a strategy that
Speaker 3: was originally pioneered by Japan that we took was instead
Speaker 3: of having like a manufacturing economy, like actually a production
Speaker 3: based economy, you have an economy based on the value
Speaker 3: of assets.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: So assets are things that you own, right, this is
Speaker 3: the stocks, bonds, like real estate, which is important for
Speaker 3: our purposes. And the goal is to make the value
Speaker 3: of those things go up.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: And so what you do is you speculate on you
Speaker 3: you take out loans, You speculate on the prices of
Speaker 3: stocks going up, the prices of houses going up right,
Speaker 3: and you know, you make it very easy to borrow money. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously this produced a series of like staggering economic collapses,
Speaker 3: including like the dot com collapse two thousand and eight
Speaker 3: with you.
Speaker 5: Know remember that one.
Speaker 3: But the thing is in the way of the financial collapse.
Speaker 3: The US mostly figured out how to sort of stabilize
Speaker 3: the system. But the thing is, you know, they were
Speaker 3: sort of able to stabilize the system economically, right. What
Speaker 3: they couldn't stabilize was the political sector, where if you
Speaker 3: look at the two people who are currently running the
Speaker 3: United States, it is Elon Musk, who is the human
Speaker 3: personification of the stock price goes up bubble economy, right,
Speaker 3: and the other one is Donald Trump, who is the
Speaker 3: human manifestation of the real estate class, right, whose wealth
Speaker 3: like belie enormously. And the thing is right, but because
Speaker 3: Elon Musk is like a tech bubble go up guy, right,
Speaker 3: those people don't think like the people who built like
Speaker 3: American financial capitalists, right, just like the people who designed
Speaker 3: the tratism, they don't think the same way Trump does.
Speaker 3: Trump is a fucking real estate guy, right, And this
Speaker 3: is how he sees the world. Right. He thinks in
Speaker 3: terms of land and borders and territorial control. And he
Speaker 3: thinks in terms of like what physical thing can I
Speaker 3: steal from someone in order to make money? Right, and
Speaker 3: that you know, this is why you're trying to steal
Speaker 3: the Panama Canal. And and he thinks this way instead
Speaker 3: of like things that are more abstract like debt servicing
Speaker 3: and like, you know, the sort of lines of power
Speaker 3: in the coalition building.
Speaker 10: Right.
Speaker 3: He looks at a map of Greenland and goes, this
Speaker 3: looks really big. I want it and so and now
Speaker 3: he's going to try to use the American empire to
Speaker 3: just seize this.
Speaker 5: Yeah. He sees things in terms of like raw power.
Speaker 6: It's a very uh undeveloped notion of like power, right,
Speaker 6: Like yeah, yeah, I was thinking the other day, like,
Speaker 6: whoever is in the same room as Joseph I must
Speaker 6: be having a fucking field day right now at the
Speaker 6: guy who he was there? He wrote books about soft power, right,
Speaker 6: the idea of the US power to persuade rather than
Speaker 6: power to kind of whether there rather than like hard power,
Speaker 6: which comes in tanks or tariffs.
Speaker 5: I guess, Joseph and I is no longer relevant. I
Speaker 5: get that.
Speaker 3: Yes, yes, no, we're we're back. We're back in pure hardpower.
Speaker 3: And something I think is renal very alarming that I
Speaker 3: want to close on is the extent to which, like
Speaker 3: the US media is just sort of just once do
Speaker 3: you propaganda for it? Yeah, I'm gonna I'm going to
Speaker 3: read a quote from a CNN arc again this is CNN. Quote.
Speaker 3: The subject heading is the US has been expanding for
Speaker 3: its entire history. This is an article, oh, the title
Speaker 3: of which is Trump is Trump wants to redraw the
Speaker 3: map of the Western hemisphere for fun's.
Speaker 6: Sake, like twenty twenty five Monroe doctrine posting on CNN literal.
Speaker 3: Literally literally, Okay, okay, you are so far ahead of
Speaker 3: this thing, because the next I'm going to read the
Speaker 3: one I was going to read.
Speaker 6: First, Uplift civilizing cris you and I what's an next paragrad.
Speaker 3: The next section heading is and I quote what is
Speaker 3: Trump's doctrine and explains the Monroe doctor for.
Speaker 6: Fox sake, this is I cannot explain how like I
Speaker 6: have taught this as a thing in history classes for
Speaker 6: more than a decade from the perspective of like that
Speaker 6: was fucked up and shameful, and even the conservative students like, yeah,
Speaker 6: hard agree, look at these racists as fuck cartoons about
Speaker 6: Filipino people that were used in here to justify this,
Speaker 6: and now we are back like it is, and like, yeah,
Speaker 6: CNN is just out there like fucking cranking the manufacturing consent.
Speaker 3: That's not even the worst part about it, Like I
Speaker 3: want to read the session. So one of the other
Speaker 3: section headings is the US has been expanding for its
Speaker 3: entire history sick quote expansion. Expansion is built into the
Speaker 3: American DNA's has retired Ambassador Gordon Gray, now a professor
Speaker 3: of practice at George Washington University and former Foreign Service
Speaker 3: career officer.
Speaker 6: Okay, yeah, like an angel sweeping across the planes, fucking
Speaker 6: manifest destinies.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's we're you know, and this is this is
Speaker 3: this coming all sort of coming into like the way
Speaker 3: that Trump thinks about which Trump thinks about the US,
Speaker 3: like like an eighteenth century land empire, Yeah right, Yeah,
Speaker 3: eighteenth century land empires, you know, got money by conquering
Speaker 3: people and like extracting tribute from them directly. And then
Speaker 3: also you know they were mercancilest empires, right, so they
Speaker 3: they got they got a bunch of their money. And
Speaker 3: this is the thing that Trump explicitly talks about. It
Speaker 3: is like he wants he thinks he can raise revenue
Speaker 3: from like terrosts, which like, no, he can't, but like
Speaker 3: what he can do is use the threat of tariffs
Speaker 3: to like force countries to do whatever the fuck he
Speaker 3: wants and this is the kind of imperialism that we're
Speaker 3: in now. It is a definite, substantive break from what
Speaker 3: we've seen in the US for a century, more than
Speaker 3: a century. Yeah, and I think I think it's important
Speaker 3: for people to understand exactly how this functions. Yeah, and yeah,
Speaker 3: it's sick.
Speaker 5: We're going into the new opium wars. It's going to
Speaker 5: be so fun. Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 3: Well, this is this spiniacul happened here. Do not get
Speaker 3: kettles on bridges, go out into the worlds and make trouble.
Speaker 6: And people want to read more about the early like
Speaker 6: globalizing that the previous year of neoliberal globalization, Like Naomi
Speaker 6: Klein has some good stuff, and I think Joe Stiglitz
Speaker 6: does as well.
Speaker 3: We can Yeah, yeah, I also recommend David Graber's direct
Speaker 3: action in Ethnography, which is him writing about the original
Speaker 3: like anti like ult globalization protests and his like time
Speaker 3: in them. So you know, if you need direct action ideas,
Speaker 3: they did some fun stuff. Yeah, dressing guys up like
Speaker 3: marshmallows and police batons would bounce off the great.
Speaker 5: Yeah, bring back clown block. That'll get us through it.
Speaker 9: Yeah.
Speaker 7: The government of two Weeks ago no longer exists. We
Speaker 7: are now in a fundamentally different country. Under the authority
Speaker 7: President Trump. Elon Musk is leading a de facto cyber
Speaker 7: coup of the United States using the intentionally vague and
Speaker 7: unaccountable department of a government efficiency, Musk is seizing control
Speaker 7: of the United States critical digital infrastructure, literally rewriting the
Speaker 7: code that runs our country and culling the federal workforce.
Speaker 7: Using the justification of removing government bureaucracy, Musk and the
Speaker 7: Trump administration have installed their own batch of bureaucratic tech oligarchs,
Speaker 7: made up of former Tesla and SpaceX interns and engineers,
Speaker 7: teal fellowship researchers, pallenteer employees, eugenics enthusiasts, and literal nick fuentes,
Speaker 7: pilled gropers. Career employees have been locked out of their
Speaker 7: respective agencies, both digitally and physically, as the DOGE team
Speaker 7: ransacks various departments and accesses wide swaths of sensitive government data.
Speaker 7: Agency officials who have tried to resist Musk's seizure of
Speaker 7: classified materials have been fired, and more federal employees have
Speaker 7: been put on leave, including the entirety of USAID. This
Speaker 7: effectively amounts to Musk abolishing the whole department, all without
Speaker 7: congressional authorization or oversight, not even in executive order from
Speaker 7: Trump that extends presidential authority on a whim. The unelected
Speaker 7: Elon Musk decided to carry out the closure of an
Speaker 7: entire government agency, and he is far from finished. Doge
Speaker 7: has hijacked the Treasury to withhold authorized payments to multiple agencies,
Speaker 7: resulting in an ongoing battle of lawsuits and court orders.
Speaker 7: This is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Davis, and
Speaker 7: this episode is an audio companion to an article I
Speaker 7: published on the shatter Zone substack linked below. In the description.
Speaker 7: You can follow along online at Shatterzone dots substack dot
Speaker 7: com and click the hyperlinks for more information and sources.
Speaker 7: Elon Musk has personally directed the General Services Administration to
Speaker 7: terminate leases on quote unquote mostly empty federal buildings. The GSA,
Speaker 7: essentially the landlord of the federal government, was one of
Speaker 7: the first agencies to receive Musks quote unquote fork in
Speaker 7: the road deferred resignation letter offering to buy out the
Speaker 7: entire workforce. The legality of the letter is still uncertain,
Speaker 7: as it promises to pay out currently unappropriated funds. IRS
Speaker 7: workers who accepted the resignation offer have already been asked
Speaker 7: to return to work until May. The newly appointed GSA Commissioner,
Speaker 7: Michael Peters, a private equity executive that specializes in downsizing
Speaker 7: corporate real estate, has decided that quote non DoD federal
Speaker 7: building space should be reduced fifty percent quote, According to
Speaker 7: a GSA employee who requested to remain anonymous, on top
Speaker 7: of planning to cut the entire federal portfolio by half,
Speaker 7: DOGE is seeking to cut GSA's own budget by as
Speaker 7: much as fifty percent, with talk of consolidating GSA offices
Speaker 7: into a few major cities using a quote unquote hub model.
Speaker 7: Wired reports that DOGE staff may be trying to use
Speaker 7: White House IT credentials to access GSA computers remotely. An
Speaker 7: anonymous GSA employee claims that few people at the agency
Speaker 7: have elected to take up the voluntary paid resignation offer,
Speaker 7: with those who have mostly being of retirement age. High
Speaker 7: leveled Trump appointees used quote unquote scare tactics in agency
Speaker 7: emails pressuring career employees to accept the deferred resignation offer,
Speaker 7: warning that cost cutting measures will eventually lead to a
Speaker 7: further reduction in force. Employees are concerned that a reduced
Speaker 7: federal workforce would result in federal buildings losing their operations
Speaker 7: and maintenance contracts, with disastrous consequences for the functionality of
Speaker 7: government buildings. Quote the brain drain is going to cripple
Speaker 7: our ability to maintain the buildings even more than it
Speaker 7: already was. We aren't overstaffed unquote for a GSA employee,
Speaker 7: they continued, quote, I think this process is already too
Speaker 7: far along to stop. I'm hoping we just need to
Speaker 7: get to the mid terms unquote. What is happening across
Speaker 7: the federal government right now is unprecedented. But this is
Speaker 7: not Germany in the nineteen thirties. It's not the fall
Speaker 7: of the Soviet Union. We grasp at analogies to help
Speaker 7: contextualize current events that escape understanding. There are similarities, but
Speaker 7: what's happening is new, very American, very twenty first century.
Speaker 7: Think of the growth of the Internet, social media tech
Speaker 7: startups in fifty years. What's happening right now could be
Speaker 7: talked about in the vein of what happened to the
Speaker 7: United States in the mid twenty twenties. Now, rhetoric of
Speaker 7: cutting red tape and breaking federal bureaucracy has been common
Speaker 7: political clap trap for decades, and previous efforts have been
Speaker 7: largely all bark and no bite. But now there's been
Speaker 7: a huge chomp. So why now? What happened? Trump has
Speaker 7: blamed entrenched federal bureaucracy or the quote unquote deep state,
Speaker 7: for preventing him from enacting sweeping change during his first term.
Speaker 7: The obstacles Trump encountered didn't just come from Congress and
Speaker 7: the courts, but rank and file government workers who run
Speaker 7: day to day operations. Last month, the far right America
Speaker 7: First Policy Institute published a report titled Tales from the Swamp,
Speaker 7: How federal bureaucrats resisted President Trump. The author, James Shrek,
Speaker 7: a former Heritage fellow, credits quote unquote hostile career employees
Speaker 7: for quote unquote refusing to implement policies. Shrek says, quote
Speaker 7: many employees refused or defied directives withheld information, slow walked
Speaker 7: projects that they opposed, performed unacceptably, and used strategic leaking
Speaker 7: to undermine the president's agenda unquote. Trump himself realized this
Speaker 7: late into his first term and sought to remedy the
Speaker 7: situation by revoking civil protections for tens of thousands of
Speaker 7: federal career employees, reclassifying them as atwill employees under an
Speaker 7: executive order called Schedule F. This allowed Trump to treat
Speaker 7: large swaths of government employees as political appointments. In his
Speaker 7: article for the America First Policy Institute, Shrek refers to
Speaker 7: career removal protections as a quote modern invention that protects
Speaker 7: entrenched bureaucracy unquote. Though Biden repealed Schedule F, Trump effectively
Speaker 7: reinstated the order on the first day of his second term.
Speaker 7: Trump promised to restore his authority to quote remove rogue
Speaker 7: bureaucrats back in early twenty twenty three under his Agenda
Speaker 7: forty seven plan, vowing to quote wield that power very
Speaker 7: aggressively unquote. When Trump first ran on Drain the Swamp
Speaker 7: in twenty fifteen, he was referring to corporate lobbyists special
Speaker 7: interests in Washington corruption, but now the term is used
Speaker 7: to deride the so called administrative state, federal agencies, regulatory boards,
Speaker 7: and bureaucratic career employees that maintain the basic functionality of
Speaker 7: our government. Both Schedule F and Doge are part of
Speaker 7: a too pronged assault on the administrative state, all in
Speaker 7: service of consolidating than amplifying executive power. Trump has fully
Speaker 7: embraced the unitary executive theory proposed by the likes of
Speaker 7: Russell Vaught, Project twenty twenty five co author and the
Speaker 7: newly confirmed director of the White House Office of Management
Speaker 7: and Budget. Although it's understood that Congress has quote unquote
Speaker 7: power of the purse, under unitary executive theory, Trump now
Speaker 7: believes that funding appropriated by Congress does not need to
Speaker 7: be spent. Rather, the executive branch controls the flow of
Speaker 7: federal spending and Congress merely sets a ceiling on spending
Speaker 7: that the executive must not exceed. Under this interpretation of
Speaker 7: the Constitution, the president has sole and complete control of
Speaker 7: the executive Branch, including all of its agencies and departments.
Speaker 7: But people in Trump's circle like JD. Vance and Elon
Speaker 7: Musk could be pushing Trump to go even further to
Speaker 7: where the president considers both the judicial and legislative branches
Speaker 7: as purely ceremonial and advisory. In the words of New
Speaker 7: Right philosopher Curtis Jarvin, and arguably we are already well
Speaker 7: on our way to that point. This centralized executive power
Speaker 7: allows the executive branch to achieve goals I would have
Speaker 7: previously considered to be quite lofty. And I'll outlined two
Speaker 7: of those examples, pulling from the aspirations of the modern
Speaker 7: conservative movement. After this ad break, welcome back to it
Speaker 7: could happen here, and get ready to say bye bye
Speaker 7: to the FBI. Though the right has typically been thought
Speaker 7: to be firmly in the back of the blue camp,
Speaker 7: this isn't always the case, especially on the more extreme end.
Speaker 7: The far right militia movement has long clashed with federal
Speaker 7: law enforcement agencies like the FBI and ATF. In the
Speaker 7: aftermath of January sixth, many Mega supporters found themselves at
Speaker 7: odds with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Republican politicians began
Speaker 7: to feed into right wing uproar surrounding the FBI, as
Speaker 7: Trump himself became a target for investigations after the mar
Speaker 7: Lago raid. In August of twenty twenty two, Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 7: Green tweeted defund the FBI. Arizona Representative Paul Gosar joined
Speaker 7: in attacks on the bureau, hosting weight to destroy the FBI,
Speaker 7: we must save America. That same month, right wing columnist
Speaker 7: and podcaster Liz Wheeler published in op ed titled Abolish
Speaker 7: the FBI, which called to quote farm out the vital
Speaker 7: functions of the FBI and raise the rest unquote. The
Speaker 7: new right publication Compact Magazine featured a slightly better written
Speaker 7: article by the same title, Abolish the FBI at CPAC.
Speaker 7: In March of twenty twenty three, Matt Gates, noted pedophile
Speaker 7: advocated to get rid of the FBI among other federal agencies.
Speaker 2: Either get this government back on our side, or we
Speaker 2: defund and get rid of Abolish the FBI.
Speaker 3: CDC, atf DJ, every last one of them if they
Speaker 3: do not come to heal.
Speaker 7: In April of twenty twenty three, Trump joined in in
Speaker 7: calls to defund the FBI after being charged with thirty
Speaker 7: four felon accounts of falsepying business records. Next month, to
Speaker 7: former FBI employees testified in a congressional hearing accusing the
Speaker 7: Bureau of weaponization against conservatives in regards to the January
Speaker 7: sixth investigations. The same two former FBI employees who had
Speaker 7: their security clearance revoked after espousing j six conspiracy theories.
Speaker 7: Later called to quote abolish the FBI at a Heritage
Speaker 7: Foundation symposium on the quote weaponization of the US government
Speaker 7: in April of twenty twenty four.
Speaker 8: You're given that magic wand that ability to be Jim Jordan, what.
Speaker 1: Would you do?
Speaker 5: I think you have to abolish the FBI. That's where
Speaker 5: I'm at at this point.
Speaker 8: What now, some people are going to say, Okay, yeah,
Speaker 8: we're gonna have to do you just abolish a What
Speaker 8: would to you?
Speaker 3: Is there a replacement? I mean, you can't just not
Speaker 3: have federal law enforcement, right.
Speaker 5: I think in large part, you could just not have
Speaker 5: federal lawforce.
Speaker 7: During a live episode of Donald Trump Junior's podcast on
Speaker 7: July eight eight, twenty twenty four, he called to abolish
Speaker 7: several federal agencies, starting with the FBI as well as
Speaker 7: the CIA and the IRS.
Speaker 4: Abolished the DEA. You know, I imagine of all the
Speaker 4: places to abolish, and I don't know if that's the
Speaker 4: best one. I'd start with the FBI, I'd start with
Speaker 4: the CIA, I'd start with the IRS. There's a lot
Speaker 4: of you know, the DA. Now maybe I know agent
Speaker 4: level guys. So if they're going after narcos and stuff
Speaker 4: like that. Perhaps a little bit more forgiving. They don't
Speaker 4: seem to be setting up or in trapping people like
Speaker 4: the FBI.
Speaker 7: The Trump administration has already begun the process to dismantle
Speaker 7: large swaths of the FBI before cash Battel has even
Speaker 7: been confirmed by the Senate. Eight top FBI officials have
Speaker 7: been fired or forced resign by order of Acting Deputy
Speaker 7: Attorney General Emil Bove, despite resistance from Acting FBI Director
Speaker 7: Brian Driscoll. A questionnaire was distributed to FBI supervisors requesting
Speaker 7: agents provide information to their own involvement in the January
Speaker 7: sixth investigations. This was believed to be used for the
Speaker 7: targeted removal of agency personnel. Last week, the FBI handed
Speaker 7: over a list containing the information of five thousand employees
Speaker 7: and agents who worked on the January sixth investigations. FBI
Speaker 7: leadership initially chose to withhold employee names. In response, Bove
Speaker 7: accused the FBI leadership of insubordination. This was ultimately a
Speaker 7: fruitless effort, as data seized by Elon Musk's DOGE team
Speaker 7: could easily match employee IDs to names. Trump has since
Speaker 7: agreed to not publicly release the names of agents until
Speaker 7: at least late March as lawsuits continue, and is required
Speaker 7: to give two days notice if the administration chooses to
Speaker 7: publicly disclosed names. But individual agents are still worried. An
Speaker 7: anonymous letter from an FBI agent to Warren's quote. Currently,
Speaker 7: there is an effort to cull a significant number of
Speaker 7: career special agents from the Federal Bureau of Investigation unquote.
Speaker 7: Around one third of FBI agents were told they would
Speaker 7: be placed on leave. According to a government source who
Speaker 7: spoke on the condition of anonymity, FBI employees have lost
Speaker 7: access to systems, only to later regain access, while others
Speaker 7: were told to wait to find out about their employee status.
Speaker 7: Agents are now trying to negotiate back into their jobs,
Speaker 7: with sources saying FBI employees may be able to stay
Speaker 7: on if they can prove their loyalty to Trump and
Speaker 7: disown the January sixth prosecutions. I write all of this
Speaker 7: not in defense of the FBI, but to demonstrate how
Speaker 7: far Trump is willing to go to expand his executive
Speaker 7: power and transfer law enforcement duties to agencies seen as
Speaker 7: more loyal to the president. Though I doubt the FBI
Speaker 7: will be completely abolished in the next few years. The
Speaker 7: agency could become unrecognizable, a shell of its former self,
Speaker 7: with hardline Trump loyalists replacing the existing and already largely
Speaker 7: conservative workforce. Alternative agencies perceived as being more loyal to Trump,
Speaker 7: like Homeland security investigations, could start picking up the FBI slack.
Speaker 7: According to a senior government source, on day two of
Speaker 7: Trump's second term, HSI was instructed to reopen investigations into
Speaker 7: the twenty twenty George Floyd protests to quote identify protesters
Speaker 7: BLM rioters likely did to us after January sixth, unquote.
Speaker 7: For another once considered far fetched goal of the conservative
Speaker 7: movement that now seems oddly within grasp, let's talk about
Speaker 7: the Department of Education. Conservatives have advocated for dismantling the
Speaker 7: Department of Education ever since Jimmy Carter signed its modern
Speaker 7: incarnation into law in nineteen seventy nine. Most notably, Ronald
Speaker 7: Reagan tried and failed to abolish the department in nineteen
Speaker 7: eighty one, but Reagan's Commission ironically strengthened support for the department.
Speaker 7: Once Reagan ran into roadblocks, he instead sought to limit
Speaker 7: the Department's power end influence. Since then, calls to abolish
Speaker 7: the Department of Education have been a recurring Republican talking
Speaker 7: point among certain think tanks and politicians, but they have
Speaker 7: struggled to land sizeable blows against the department. Trump previously
Speaker 7: fiddled around with merging the Departments of Education and Labor
Speaker 7: during his first term, but that plan went nowhere. In
Speaker 7: Trump's own Agenda forty seven plan, released in twenty twenty three,
Speaker 7: he expressed his goal of quote closing up the Department
Speaker 7: of Education in Washington, d c. Later, at the National
Speaker 7: Religious Broadcasters twenty twenty four Christian Media Convention in February
Speaker 7: of twenty twenty four, Donald Trump repeated this promise, quote,
Speaker 7: I will close the Federal Department of Education, and we
Speaker 7: will move everything back to the states where it belongs,
Speaker 7: where they can individualize education unquote. Project twenty twenty five
Speaker 7: outlined how to achieve the effective dismantling of the department
Speaker 7: by transferring funding and duties to other departments such as
Speaker 7: Health and Human Services and the DOJ. Opposition to the
Speaker 7: Department of Education was a frequent topic at the twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four Republican National Convention in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Robert Sophie
Speaker 7: and I attended multiple panels and events taking aim at
Speaker 7: the department, hosted by groups like Moms for Liberty and
Speaker 7: the Heritage Foundation. On the first day of the convention,
Speaker 7: the party ratified their official twenty twenty four RNC platform,
Speaker 7: which called to quote close the Department of Education in Washington,
Speaker 7: d C. And send it back to the States where
Speaker 7: it belongs, and let the states run our educational system
Speaker 7: as it should be run unquote. And now the Department
Speaker 7: seems to be next on the Trump doge chopping block.
Speaker 7: The administration is drafting a sweeping executive order. While Trump
Speaker 7: says he wants his education nominee Linda McMahon to quote
Speaker 7: unquote put herself out of a job. The planned executive
Speaker 7: order would not just direct the Secretary of Education to
Speaker 7: begin dismantling the department, but also ask Congress for assistance
Speaker 7: in formally abolishing the agency. It's unlikely that Trump would
Speaker 7: get the sixty Senate votes needed to pass the quote
Speaker 7: unquote necessary legislation, but even if they can't manage to
Speaker 7: technically abolish the department, he could still try to rip it,
Speaker 7: scuts out, slash spending and forcibly resign or fire employees,
Speaker 7: basically make the department simply non functioning, much like what
Speaker 7: Doge did to USAID. Upwards of sixteen DOGE staffers are
Speaker 7: currently listed in the Education Department Directory. Federal education employees
Speaker 7: have already received the Fork in the Road resignation buyout offer,
Speaker 7: while others have been fired for alleged links to DEI.
Speaker 7: Without someone like Elon Musk and Trump's administration, there was
Speaker 7: no clear path towards implementing some of the more lofty
Speaker 7: plans proposed by conservative thought leaders, whether they be Trump's
Speaker 7: own Agenda forty seven, the Heritage Foundation's Project twenty twenty five,
Speaker 7: or Curtis Jarvin's dream of a national CEO king. Only
Speaker 7: Elon Musk could do this. You need someone with his influence, connections, money, experience,
Speaker 7: and knowledge of fringe neo reactionary Silicon Valley political theory
Speaker 7: to propose and carry out something like Doge. So how
Speaker 7: did Musk get here? Though it's common knowledge that Musk
Speaker 7: has drifted pretty severely right word the past five years
Speaker 7: leading into the twenty twenty four presidential campaign, he was
Speaker 7: not an out and proud Trump supporter as recently as
Speaker 7: twenty twenty two, Musk deemed Trump too old to serve
Speaker 7: as president, again, tweeting that it was time for Trump
Speaker 7: to quote hang up his hat and sail into the
Speaker 7: sunset unquote. Initially, Musk threw his support behind the doomed
Speaker 7: presidential bid of Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, but as it
Speaker 7: became clear Trump would be the Republican nominee, Musk fell
Speaker 7: in behind his new party line, but his implicit support
Speaker 7: of Trump was kept on the down low. The two
Speaker 7: met in Florida in March of twenty twenty four among
Speaker 7: other wealthy Republican donors, as Trump was lobbying for campaign funding.
Speaker 7: The New York Times reported that Musk did not want
Speaker 7: to publicly endorse Trump as of early twenty twenty four,
Speaker 7: telling friends the most he would do was an anti
Speaker 7: Biden endorsement. Instead of public support, Musk would create his
Speaker 7: own super pac to secretly help get Trump elected, timing
Speaker 7: payments so his fiscal backing of Trump's campaign could only
Speaker 7: go public after the election. But all that changed on
Speaker 7: July thirteenth, after Trump's brush with death in Butler, Pennsylvania,
Speaker 7: Musk seemingly took Trump's call of fight Fight, Fight to heart,
Speaker 7: tweeting less than an hour later, quote I fully endorse
Speaker 7: President Trump and hope for his rapid recovery unquote. This
Speaker 7: opened more frequent communication between Musk and Trump. Later that weekend,
Speaker 7: both Musk and Peter Teel called Trump to recommend J. D.
Speaker 7: Vance as vice president. Next week was the Republican National Convention,
Speaker 7: during which Elon Musk was frequently name dropped, both by
Speaker 7: official speakers and regular attendees, talked about as almost some
Speaker 7: kind of mythic right wing superhero. On the final day
Speaker 7: of the convention, rumors circulated that Musk himself would make
Speaker 7: a surprise appearance on stage, Though said rumors did not
Speaker 7: come to fruition. Musk's specter haunted the entirety of the RNC.
Speaker 7: Come August, Musk just finished overhauling leadership at his America
Speaker 7: Super Pack and was rigorously pushing pro Trump messaging on
Speaker 7: X the Everything app. On August twelfth, Musk hosted Trump
Speaker 7: in a two hour live streamed phone call dubbed in
Speaker 7: x Space. This conversation marked the first time Trump casually
Speaker 7: spoke at length about the assassination attempt. The pair also
Speaker 7: discussed quote unquote migrant crime and the need to eliminate
Speaker 7: federal bureaucracy. Trump gave a rare compliment to Musk, calling
Speaker 7: him the greatest cutter, followed up by saying, quote, I
Speaker 7: need an Elon Musk. I need someone that has a
Speaker 7: lot of strength and courage and smarts. I want to
Speaker 7: close up the Department of Education, move education back to
Speaker 7: the States unquote. News outlets were more interested in reporting
Speaker 7: on the stream's technical glitches rather than Musk's idea for
Speaker 7: a government efficiency commission, to which Trump responded very positively.
Speaker 7: Next month, on September fourth, Trump announced that, at the
Speaker 7: suggestion of Elon Musk, if elected, he would quote create
Speaker 7: a government Efficiency Commission tasked with conducting a complete financial
Speaker 7: and performance audit of the entire federal government and making
Speaker 7: recommendations for drastic reforms unquote. Musk himself agreed to be
Speaker 7: appointed head of the commission, aiming to cut trillions of dollars.
Speaker 7: This announcement was not taken very seriously. The New York
Speaker 7: Times called commissions such as this quote a favorite Washington
Speaker 7: solution for delaying dealing with hard problems unquote, and The
Speaker 7: Times later reported that the commission quote can issue recommendations
Speaker 7: around federal five funding and regulations, but will be powerless
Speaker 7: to enact them without executive actions by mister Trump or
Speaker 7: funding approval by Congress, even though I can admit that
Speaker 7: both myself and some of my coworkers underestimated Doge's ability
Speaker 7: to physically carry out Musk's suggestions with no Congressional oversight
Speaker 7: or authority. As the election ramped up, musk super Pac
Speaker 7: mobilized thousands of canvassers across key swing states and collected
Speaker 7: data to target both enthusiastic and unlikely voters. Throughout twenty
Speaker 7: twenty four, Musk spent over two hundred and ninety million
Speaker 7: dollars in contributions in support of the Mega campaign, mostly
Speaker 7: via his own super pack. On October fifth, Musk made
Speaker 7: his first appearance at an official campaign event, joining Trump
Speaker 7: for his return to Butler, Pennsylvania. Musk continued to appear
Speaker 7: at Trump rallies in the month leading up to the election.
Speaker 7: By election day, Musk was firmly in Trump's inner circle,
Speaker 7: spending Election night and most of the next week with
Speaker 7: President Elect Trump atmar A Lago. After this adbreak, we
Speaker 7: will return to discuss how Elon Musk is now trying
Speaker 7: to become the CEO of the United States of America. Okay,
Speaker 7: we are back, and now a few months after the election,
Speaker 7: Elon Musk is doing to the United States exactly what
Speaker 7: he did to Twitter. By the end, it still might
Speaker 7: technically function on some level, just worse in every way,
Speaker 7: prone to glitches, and full of Nazis. The previous version
Speaker 7: was already bad and harmful, but the new one somehow
Speaker 7: sucks even more and no longer has the aspects that
Speaker 7: made it semi worthwhile. The Fork in the Road deferred
Speaker 7: resignation letters sent to government employees used the exact same
Speaker 7: title as a similar email sent to Twitter employees after
Speaker 7: Musk bought the com company. The Doge team has installed
Speaker 7: sofa beds on the fifth floor of the headquarters of
Speaker 7: the Office of Personnel Management to enable working around the clock,
Speaker 7: mirroring Musk's previous actions. During his takeover of Twitter, Musk
Speaker 7: has brought on some of the same exact people who
Speaker 7: helped him take over Twitter, all of whom are now
Speaker 7: special government employees with odd job titles but immense power.
Speaker 7: It was reported and Wired that a Musk stooge told
Speaker 7: General Services Administration workers that the agency will now pursue
Speaker 7: quote an AI first strategy unquote, and that the GSA
Speaker 7: should operate like a quote unquote startup software company. Musk
Speaker 7: has ordered the General Services Administration to terminate leases for
Speaker 7: all roughly seven thousand and five hundred federal offices, amidst
Speaker 7: a national call to return to in person work. This
Speaker 7: again is a classic Musk move, taken from his takeover
Speaker 7: of Twitter, in which to cut costs, he refused to
Speaker 7: pay rent for Twitter offices in London, New York City,
Speaker 7: and San Francisco while the buildings were still in use.
Speaker 7: A current GSA employee was quoted and wired as saying, quote,
Speaker 7: they are acting like this is a takeover of a
Speaker 7: tech company unquote. Musk's own personal success hasn't been from
Speaker 7: his skill as an inventor or a software engineer. What
Speaker 7: he's proficient at is taking over corporations and molding them
Speaker 7: in his image. This is what happened to Tesla, SpaceX
Speaker 7: and Twitter in twenty twenty. Musk called the federal government
Speaker 7: quote the ultimate corporation unquote, and now he seeks to
Speaker 7: become CEO. In doing this, Musk is following the tech
Speaker 7: industry motto of move fast and break things. So far
Speaker 7: all his actions bypass Congress. The slow controller of stable government,
Speaker 7: having everything be done via executive order and doge helps
Speaker 7: to speed run a full reboot of the administrative state.
Speaker 7: The motto of the old government may as well have
Speaker 7: been move slow and build things. Progress is slow, but
Speaker 7: detonation is fast. The breakage of government isn't a mere
Speaker 7: side effect or a bug of this expediated form of rule.
Speaker 7: It's a feature to reshape the government into their ideal technocracy. First,
Speaker 7: breaking things is a requirement. They might not get away
Speaker 7: with all of it, and they don't need to. They're
Speaker 7: doing so much so fast, knowing that they will only
Speaker 7: get away with some of it. But with new Supreme
Speaker 7: Court approved presidential immunity and unlimited pardon power, they can
Speaker 7: try as much as they want with zero consequence. These
Speaker 7: are not the moves you would make if you wanted
Speaker 7: a stable government. It's the moves you would make as
Speaker 7: a new tech company, which is why Musk's operation is
Speaker 7: masked with the Silicon Valley language of efficiency. The inefficiencies
Speaker 7: of government are part of the point. That's what creates stability,
Speaker 7: makes the country a trusted ally, and gives the dollar value.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 7: Regulations can be bothersome sometimes and downright problematic, but that's
Speaker 7: kind of the point. They act as a control on
Speaker 7: imprecise and rushed decision making. If the cost of doing
Speaker 7: business is slowing down the process, that's the cost that
Speaker 7: has to be made, to quote a government employee who
Speaker 7: spoke on the condition of anonymity. But those inefficiencies and
Speaker 7: pesky regulations really irritate the Silicon Valley tech bros who
Speaker 7: think they are the smartest people on the planet. It's
Speaker 7: their view that since they're so smart, shouldn't they run
Speaker 7: the country. Musk has a personal interest in slashing the
Speaker 7: regulatory state, as it interferes with his own businesses and
Speaker 7: dreams of space colonization. Last year, Musk claimed that Doge
Speaker 7: quote was the only path to extending life beyond Earth unquote.
Speaker 7: The White House Press Secretary has said that Musk himself
Speaker 7: will determine when there is a conflict of interest involving
Speaker 7: his businesses and Doge. SpaceX alone has received fifteen point
Speaker 7: four billion dollars in government contracts, according to The New
Speaker 7: York Times. The large reduction in the federal workforce through
Speaker 7: the combined efforts of doge and schedule F. There is
Speaker 7: an irrefutable similarity to a plan outlined by New Right
Speaker 7: blogger Curtis Jarvin, Peter Thiel's favorite philosopher. Last year, Robert
Speaker 7: Evans did a behind the Bastards on Curtis Yarvin, and
Speaker 7: you should absolutely check that out for more information. In
Speaker 7: twenty twenty two, Jarvin outlined how a second Trump term
Speaker 7: could quote unquote reboot the United States government. This plan
Speaker 7: amounts to a corporate takeover of government, which subsequently reshapes
Speaker 7: the structure of government, akin to a corporation. Though in
Speaker 7: Yarvin's mind, it is not President Trump who assumes the
Speaker 7: role of CEO. Instead, the President acts as chairman of
Speaker 7: the board, and before inauguration should select a CEO who
Speaker 7: is an experienced executive. This appointed CEO could then quote
Speaker 7: run the executive branch without any interference from Congress or
Speaker 7: the courts, to quote Jarvin. While President Trump reviews the
Speaker 7: CEO's performance in the background, Jarvin writes, quote most existing
Speaker 7: important institutions, public and private will be shut down and
Speaker 7: replaced with new and efficient systems. Trump will be monitoring
Speaker 7: this CEO's performance on TV and can fire him if
Speaker 7: need be unquote. Musk may believe that he has successfully
Speaker 7: maneuvered Trump into appointing him CEO, but Trump could be
Speaker 7: well aware of Musk's ambitions, but is keeping him around
Speaker 7: as an emergency patsy, ready to fire when needed. The
Speaker 7: Trump admin is currently testing the limits of presidential authority,
Speaker 7: and once those limits get surpassed by the standards of
Speaker 7: Senate Republicans, Musk is the easiest guy to blame and
Speaker 7: push out of the administration's inner circle. The first step
Speaker 7: in Yarvin's plan has the Trump campaign running on centralizing
Speaker 7: executive power to eliminate government inefficiency. This was both in
Speaker 7: line with Project twenty twenty five and Musk's suggestion of
Speaker 7: an efficiency commission once Trump gets into office. The plan
Speaker 7: is as follows, purge bureaucracy what Jarvin calls rage retire
Speaker 7: all government employees. This is essentially being carried out by
Speaker 7: doge schedule lef and by just pressuring career employees to
Speaker 7: accept deferred resignation offers. By threatening future mass layoffs, senior
Speaker 7: level officials have been replaced by a batch of loyal
Speaker 7: tech oligarchs with links to Musk and Peter Teel. The
Speaker 7: stupidity of Doge was almost a secret weapon. The cryptocurrency
Speaker 7: meanness made everyone in respectable society not take the idea seriously.
Speaker 7: What's the worst an advisory commission could do with no
Speaker 7: power to enforce its suggestions.
Speaker 9: Oops.
Speaker 7: Another step in Yarvin's plan is to nullify elite institutions
Speaker 7: of power like the media and academia. Musk's takeover of
Speaker 7: Twitter has gone a long way in altering the country's
Speaker 7: information ecosystem. The Trump admen seems to be utilizing Steve
Speaker 7: Bannon's flood the Zone strategy to distract and exhaust the media,
Speaker 7: as well as more directed attacks. On January thirty, first,
Speaker 7: the Department of Defense kicked out NBC News, The New
Speaker 7: York Times, NPR, and Politico from their in house press
Speaker 7: offices and replace them with One American News, The New
Speaker 7: York Post, Breitbart, and huff Post. Under direction from Doge,
Speaker 7: the White House has ordered government agencies to cancel subscriptions
Speaker 7: to policy news services from multiple news outlets. A White
Speaker 7: House advisor told Axios, quote, the eye of Sauron is
Speaker 7: on more than just Politico, It's all the media unquote.
Speaker 7: In terms of attacks on academia, the federal grant freeze
Speaker 7: has had devastating effects on university research. Another step in
Speaker 7: Yarvin's plan is to co opt Congress and ignore the courts.
Speaker 7: This is where we are at right now. The goal
Speaker 7: is to reduce both the judicial and legislative branches to
Speaker 7: being purely ceremonial and advisory, as advocated by Yarvin. So far,
Speaker 7: the Trump administration has effectively sidestepped the legislative bodies via
Speaker 7: Elon Musk and Doge. It's highly unlikely Trump would ever
Speaker 7: be impeached or removed by this Congress. Furthermore, this Congress
Speaker 7: seems to have willfully given up on their power over
Speaker 7: the federal budget. To quote a senior government official quote,
Speaker 7: the real challenge is that Congress is on board for
Speaker 7: now in losing their own budgetary authority. So far, a
Speaker 7: loan security guard standing outside you, sayed and the Department
Speaker 7: of Education has been enough to deter resistance from the
Speaker 7: Democratic Party. Last week, I interviewed to Derek Black, a
Speaker 7: constitutional law professor at the University of South Carolina. The
Speaker 7: full interview will air tomorrow, but here's his short take
Speaker 7: on the current situation.
Speaker 1: When Congress is willing to hand the keys over to
Speaker 1: the president. Then we really no longer really have a democracy,
Speaker 1: or at least the constitutional democracy that was created, you know,
Speaker 1: a couple centuries ago. So the bigger danger, I think
Speaker 1: is that through law itself, Congress sedes more and more
Speaker 1: power to the president with a new legislation. So if
Speaker 1: Congress were to pass new legislation giving the president more
Speaker 1: centralized power, well that would be a concerning thing to me.
Speaker 11: Right now.
Speaker 3: The real roadblock is the courts.
Speaker 7: The Trump administration has already displayed a willingness to ignore
Speaker 7: the courts based on the continued halting of federal spending
Speaker 7: and grants order from a US district judge. The Justice
Speaker 7: Department has argued that the order to resume funding quote
Speaker 7: contains several ambiguous terms and provisions that could be read
Speaker 7: to constitute significant intrusions on the executive branch's lawful authorities
Speaker 7: and the separation of powers unquote. This past weekend, Musk
Speaker 7: raged against a federal judge who ordered to temporarily restrict
Speaker 7: doja's access to Treasury Department data. Both Musk and the
Speaker 7: White House have labeled a judge an activist, with White
Speaker 7: House spokesperson Harrison Fields calling the order quote absurd and
Speaker 7: judicial overreach unquote. On x the Everything app, Musk boosted
Speaker 7: claims calling this a judicial coup and shared an announcement
Speaker 7: from California Representative darryl Isa to introduce legislation to quote
Speaker 7: unquote stop these rogue judges. But even without added legislation,
Speaker 7: Musk and the Trump administration are gearing up to directly
Speaker 7: defy judicial authority. On Saturday, Musk shared a tweet reading,
Speaker 7: I don't like the president it sets when you defy
Speaker 7: a judicial ruling, But I'm just wondering what other options
Speaker 7: are these judges leaving us if they're going to blatantly
Speaker 7: disregard the Constitution for their own partisan political goals quote.
Speaker 7: And On Sunday, Vice President j. D Vance posted a
Speaker 7: statement undermining judicial power.
Speaker 11: Quote.
Speaker 7: If a judge tried to tell a general how to
Speaker 7: conduct a military operation, that would be illegal. If a
Speaker 7: judge tried to command the attorney general in how to
Speaker 7: use her discretion as a prosecutor, that's also illegal. Judges
Speaker 7: aren't allowed to control executive's legitimate power unquote. So now
Speaker 7: it all comes down to force. If the executive branch
Speaker 7: not just ignores judicial authority, but blatantly defies it. Who
Speaker 7: would be left to enforce the power of the court.
Speaker 7: That leads us to another step in Yarvin's plan, centralize
Speaker 7: the police, nationalize local law enforcement to place them under
Speaker 7: federal control. Trump has flirted with his tactic in the past,
Speaker 7: when he deputized Washington police as US marshals to kill
Speaker 7: Michael Rhinol. In twenty twenty, Doge staff threatened to call
Speaker 7: us marshals when you say to security officials who have
Speaker 7: since been fired, denied them access to classified systems. Jorvin
Speaker 7: believes this step is paramount.
Speaker 11: Quote.
Speaker 7: Support of the democratic public is a cipher. I think
Speaker 7: that actually all you need is command of the police unquote,
Speaker 7: if you have all of the guys with guns who
Speaker 7: can physically stop you. Support from the public doesn't hurt, though,
Speaker 7: and if things get tricky, Trump could employ the next
Speaker 7: step in Yarvin's plan. Mobilize populist support, but crucially, don't
Speaker 7: wait until you're at your weakest at the end of
Speaker 7: your term after losing an election under popular mandate, deploy
Speaker 7: your empowered supporters at the height of your powers to
Speaker 7: oppose any obstruction from government agencies or the cour sort.
Speaker 7: Trump may weaponize a Supreme Court ordained presidential immunity and
Speaker 7: his unrestricted pardon power to make any willing actor carry
Speaker 7: out his bidding with zero risk of legal consequence. Now,
Speaker 7: even if Trump himself isn't aware of Jarvin's plan, his
Speaker 7: vice president certainly is. On a far right podcast in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty one, JD. Vance laid out a very similar
Speaker 7: vision for a second Trump term, using what the Peter
Speaker 7: Teel protege described as a dewocification program to purge bureaucracy.
Speaker 8: I think Trump is going to run again in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty four. I think he'll probably win again in twenty
Speaker 8: twenty four. I think that what Trump should do, like
Speaker 8: if I was giving him one piece of advice, fire
Speaker 8: every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil sermon in the
Speaker 8: administrative state. Replace them with our people. And when the courts,
Speaker 8: because you will get taken to court. And then when
Speaker 8: the courts stop, you stand before the country like Andrew
Speaker 8: Jackson did, and say the Chief Justice has made his ruling,
Speaker 8: now let him enforce It.
Speaker 7: Writes that the initial goal of this new administration should
Speaker 7: not be simply to govern, but to quote figure out
Speaker 7: what the Trump administration can actually do when it assumes
Speaker 7: the full constitutional power is given to the chief executive
Speaker 7: of the executive branch unquote. What the administration can do
Speaker 7: once they fully seize this power is so incredibly vast.
Speaker 7: Without checks and balances, all those crazy things Trump tried
Speaker 7: to do during his first term would be a lot
Speaker 7: easier to enact, let alone, whatever Musk and the tech
Speaker 7: oligarchs want out of the United States incorporated. But that's
Speaker 7: a whole separate topic. The current fight determines the degree
Speaker 7: to which this power is seized, and Jarvin notes the
Speaker 7: importance of going all the way.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 7: When Trump in twenty seventeen took office, he took about
Speaker 7: zero point zero one percent of power. If Trump in
Speaker 7: twenty twenty one wants to have more than zero point
Speaker 7: zero zero one percent of power, the only way he
Speaker 7: can do it is to take one hundred percent, take
Speaker 7: it all at once, completely legally.
Speaker 3: The real Donald J.
Speaker 7: Trump would never have the guts to even think of
Speaker 7: doing this, and he's just too old unquote. Funny pessimism
Speaker 7: from Jarvin. There, all of this doesn't even need to
Speaker 7: benefit average Trump supporters, because Trump's main campaign promise wasn't
Speaker 7: mass deportations, fixing the economy, or abolishing the Department of Education.
Speaker 7: It was retribution as extremism. Analyst Jared Holt notes, quote
Speaker 7: the right got its base so hooked on the idea
Speaker 7: of revenge. He doesn't even need to pretend that any
Speaker 7: of this benefits their base in any tangible way. They
Speaker 7: just have to say it hurts the wrong people, and
Speaker 7: that satisfies them.
Speaker 5: Unquote.
Speaker 7: If Trump and Musk continue to get their way, it
Speaker 7: could take years to fix. But the past ten years
Speaker 7: have shown us you can't really return to normal. There
Speaker 7: probably is no going back. The options are to hunker
Speaker 7: down and play it slow and try to survive whatever
Speaker 7: happens in the next two to four years while offering
Speaker 7: passive resistance, or we accelerate to whatever comes next, put
Speaker 7: cards on the table, trigger a kinetic confrontation, and fully
Speaker 7: manifest the results of this constitutional crisis. We are dealing
Speaker 7: with managing crumbles versus a full system's collapse. Sad face
Speaker 7: emoji this is it could happen here. I'm Garrison Day.
Speaker 7: Last week I was working on an essay about how
Speaker 7: the Trump administration is trying to shut down the Department
Speaker 7: of Education. Now very quickly that project expanded to being
Speaker 7: about how Elon Musk is actually trying to internally coop
Speaker 7: the federal government and become the CEO of the United States.
Speaker 7: That article is now published on Shatterzone dot substack dot com,
Speaker 7: and it's also.
Speaker 11: The previous episode of this podcast.
Speaker 7: But during my research, I talked with law professor Derek
Speaker 7: Black about the Department of Education, the state of disunion
Speaker 7: in the country, and if we still have a democracy already.
Speaker 7: Some of the things we talked about have begun to happen,
Speaker 7: like Republicans introducing legislation to expanding executive power, while Trump
Speaker 7: and Musk flirt with denying the authority of the courts.
Speaker 7: But I decided to publish the full interview because I
Speaker 7: believe his perspective is still helpful and the conversational format
Speaker 7: alters the way we process information compared to me just
Speaker 7: reading a kind of depressing essay for forty minutes. So,
Speaker 7: without further ado, here is the interviewing.
Speaker 5: I'm Derek Black.
Speaker 1: I'm a professor of law at the University of South Carolina.
Speaker 1: My area focuses on education, law and policy and really
Speaker 1: sort of how that relates to democracy. But I teach
Speaker 1: constitutional law and courses like that, author of a couple
Speaker 1: of books schoolhouse burning, public education, and the assault on
Speaker 1: American democracy, and then more recently dangerous learning the South
Speaker 1: long war on Black literacy.
Speaker 7: Let's start by discussing what's going on at the Department
Speaker 7: of Education right now, and maybe let's actually start a
Speaker 7: little bit further back. Attacks on the Department of Education
Speaker 7: like are not new. Reagan famously kind of pioneered the
Speaker 7: rights focus on this, but it's been something they've struggled
Speaker 7: to deal sizable blows against, especially in terms of wanting
Speaker 7: to abolish the organization. Could you talk about like the
Speaker 7: history of conservative attacks against the department?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean there's always been this states rights issue
Speaker 1: that's been with America since its founding. Obviously was a
Speaker 1: big part of the Civil War, big part of the
Speaker 1: Civil rights movement, you know, a big part of the
Speaker 1: Affordable Healthcare Act debate. So you always have this stage
Speaker 1: rights argument going on, and at least amongst the folks
Speaker 1: that are worried about that, public education comes up as
Speaker 1: being a target because there's this argument always that well,
Speaker 1: education is not in the federal constitution, so what business
Speaker 1: does the federal government have to be involved, and so
Speaker 1: it's really more of a talking point as opposed to
Speaker 1: any particular substantive reason why they want to get rid
Speaker 1: of it. But that's really where it's come from. But
Speaker 1: you know, it's often been not that serious of a critique,
Speaker 1: but obviously it's gotten very serious here in the last
Speaker 1: couple of weeks.
Speaker 7: Yeah, that's the general overall feeling I'm having is that
Speaker 7: there's a lot of things going on that I would
Speaker 7: have previously thought are kind of like pipe dreams. Calls
Speaker 7: to abolish the Department of Education, even this rallying call
Speaker 7: from the new Right the past years to abolish the FBI,
Speaker 7: general claims of you know, like draining the swamp, these
Speaker 7: types of like old it's almost like stereotypical claims that
Speaker 7: now through musk they've been able to like weasel their
Speaker 7: way into actually dismantling like large, large systems that make
Speaker 7: the everyday functionality of the government possible. What should people
Speaker 7: know right now about the current attacks in the Department
Speaker 7: of Education? Trump is still allegedly drafting in executive order.
Speaker 7: He'll probably have to work through Congress, but we'll see
Speaker 7: the degree to which he even needs to do that
Speaker 7: what are you worried about like right now, and what
Speaker 7: do you think people should know about like the current
Speaker 7: the current attacks on the dewy.
Speaker 1: Well, there's the sort of immediate worries and then there's
Speaker 1: the larger worries. The immediate worries I'll have to say,
Speaker 1: I'm not terribly worried about. I mean, if you look
Speaker 1: at the reporting that we've seen, it is interesting that
Speaker 1: the White House seems to distinguish between the things that
Speaker 1: it can do unilaterally right without Congress, and those things
Speaker 1: that would need Congress. And I mean, it's a weird
Speaker 1: silver lining, but that gives me like some like measure
Speaker 1: of comfortability in this weird, bizarre world, only because you know,
Speaker 1: two weeks ago the administration was willing to do things
Speaker 1: that it had no authority to do right, just sort
Speaker 1: of his claiming authority to do everything. And so there
Speaker 1: is this at least recognition that there's not unbounded power.
Speaker 1: So that's sort of the immediate threat is not that
Speaker 1: huge because the White House or Trump's power over the
Speaker 1: Department or to close it up is relatively narrow, like
Speaker 1: most of the Department is established by statute, and he
Speaker 1: can't just dissolve things or move things around that are
Speaker 1: created by statute. He can't take money that's for poor
Speaker 1: kids and spend them on vouchers. Right, these things, you know,
Speaker 1: the law dictates. And the fact that he's implicitly acknowledging,
Speaker 1: or rather his advisors or implicitly acknowledging they need Congress's
Speaker 1: help gives me a little bit of comfort because I
Speaker 1: think that getting rid of the department is I'm not
Speaker 1: sure there's a majority in the House for that, but
Speaker 1: there's certainly not a filibuster, you know, sixty vote majority
Speaker 1: for that in the Senate. So that's short term. But
Speaker 1: I think there's something far more disturbing to me, and
Speaker 1: it's the long term, This sort of idea that there's
Speaker 1: something illegitimate about the federal role and education, that there's
Speaker 1: something illegitimate about public education itself. Those are very dangerous ideas.
Speaker 1: I have a piece that just came out yesterday and
Speaker 1: Slate that says, look, you know, the federal role in
Speaker 1: public education predates the Constitution itself. You know, probably no one,
Speaker 1: not many listeners, probably familiar, ever heard of the Northwest
Speaker 1: Ordinances of seventeen eighty five and seventeen eighty seven, but
Speaker 1: before we even had a United States Constitution. This foundational
Speaker 1: document laid out how our territory is going to become states.
Speaker 1: And without going through all the details, Congress embeds public
Speaker 1: education and the very fabric of what it means to
Speaker 1: be a state before we even have a constitution. And
Speaker 1: so that's very important. Is where we start at the
Speaker 1: end of the Civil War, right where we almost lost
Speaker 1: our democer see Congress as a condition of readmitting Southern
Speaker 1: states into the Union, says that one of the terms
Speaker 1: of readmission is that you create public education system and
Speaker 1: you never take those rights away, right, forcing public education
Speaker 1: into the South in places where it never had been before.
Speaker 1: You know, people are more familiar with the civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: So I won't go through all that, but just to
Speaker 1: take one more pause, I mean, Congress created a Department
Speaker 1: of Education in eighteen sixty seven, right to get this
Speaker 1: public education project off the ground. So this isn't some
Speaker 1: wild new sort of fantasy of liberals or unions that
Speaker 1: we need a department so that we can hand over
Speaker 1: the spoils to teachers. This is an idea about what
Speaker 1: it means to have democracy in America and public education
Speaker 1: is a centerpiece of that, and the federal government has
Speaker 1: been pushing it for two hundred and fifty years. And
Speaker 1: that's a good thing. It's a good thing.
Speaker 7: How do you think that relates to the administration's attempts
Speaker 7: to centralize executive power? Though, Like, if you look at
Speaker 7: like what happened with you say it, right, this agency
Speaker 7: that has been has been tried in law that may
Speaker 7: not be legally abolished now, but they've been effectively abolished,
Speaker 7: Like all the employees are on leave, it's been hallowed out.
Speaker 3: It essentially no longer exists.
Speaker 7: I feel like they're trying to at the very least
Speaker 7: test the bare limits of executive power and bypass Congress
Speaker 7: when they can. Part of my fear is like Congress
Speaker 7: is not willing to fight them on that, Seemingly like
Speaker 7: they're not willing to call them on that. They're almost
Speaker 7: willing to acquiesce their like appropriation's ability as well as
Speaker 7: you know, the ability to have actually have to like
Speaker 7: remove departments from existence or create new ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so you're picking up on a thread that's much
Speaker 1: bigger than a department. Right, So, when Congress is willing
Speaker 1: to hand the keys over to the president. Then we
Speaker 1: no longer really have you know, a democracy, or at
Speaker 1: least the constitutional democracy that was created, you know, a
Speaker 1: couple of centuries ago here in which the president executes
Speaker 1: the law. The president doesn't make the law, right, Congress
Speaker 1: funds programs, not the executive. But if if ultimately Congress
Speaker 1: is going to shift all that authority over like that,
Speaker 1: that's a dangerous place for democracy to be. There are
Speaker 1: no checks anymore. So I think what you're raising up
Speaker 1: is the fear that there aren't any checks in place.
Speaker 1: You know, Fortunately, there still is a legal apparatus. I mean,
Speaker 1: even if Congress isn't standing up shouting and complaining, it's
Speaker 1: still the case the president can't just do whatever he wants,
Speaker 1: and hopefully the courts, you know, would would step in.
Speaker 1: I use the word hopefully. I think courts will step
Speaker 1: in to limit his ability to do things that go
Speaker 1: beyond to statutory power. So the bigger danger, I think
Speaker 1: is that through law itself, Congress seeds more and more
Speaker 1: power to the president with a new legislation. So if
Speaker 1: Congress were to pass new legislation giving the president more
Speaker 1: centralized power, well that would be a concerning thing to me.
Speaker 1: Let me just stop and we'll get to your next
Speaker 1: question to go. But we have a larger phenomenon that's
Speaker 1: just it's not just about Trump, and people don't necessarily
Speaker 1: realize this. I mean, look, I don't think that President
Speaker 1: Obama was a dictator or had authoritarian tendencies. I was
Speaker 1: part of the Obama Biden transition team, but I testified
Speaker 1: against Arnie Duncan in a case or against the United
Speaker 1: States Department of Education in twenty twelve or fourteen or
Speaker 1: something like that, because the department was taking power that
Speaker 1: it clearly did not have in regard to a no
Speaker 1: Child Left Behind waivers. And you know, I told the
Speaker 1: current administration, as much as I hate it, right, I
Speaker 1: wish we could just wipe away student debt. I feel
Speaker 1: bad for my students who have huge debt. But I said,
Speaker 1: it is beyond the president's power to just wipe away
Speaker 1: all this debt, and they did it anyway. The real
Speaker 1: point here is that both Democrats and Republicans have been
Speaker 1: asking things of their presidents that their presidents don't have
Speaker 1: the power to do, and their presidents are doing it anyway, right,
Speaker 1: And it's because our Congress is broken. Our Congress isn't
Speaker 1: doing its job. So citizens are demanding that our presidents
Speaker 1: do things that they really don't have the power too.
Speaker 7: And that's like the big thing that I'm concerned about
Speaker 7: is we talk about these things that presidents are not
Speaker 7: quote unquote like allowed to do. And I feel like
Speaker 7: like both Trump and Muskre now are are speed running
Speaker 7: like the limits of executive power, and they are willing
Speaker 7: to test the boundaries a little bit a little bit
Speaker 7: more than previous presidents, and they're willing to break the
Speaker 7: government temporarily to like their goals be enacted. And at
Speaker 7: a certain point, it's really tricky when the thing that
Speaker 7: you always hear is, you know, like hopefully the courts
Speaker 7: will step in, hopefully they'll do something. If things get
Speaker 7: really bad, who will like literally stop them in terms
Speaker 7: of like the courts told them to halt the funding freeze,
Speaker 7: and there's there's still grants that they were refusing to
Speaker 7: issue that were already approved legally need to be followed
Speaker 7: through on that they are still withholding. And it's really
Speaker 7: frightening when it comes down to like basic level of
Speaker 7: like is there people military police who will enforce this
Speaker 7: that things get really bad? That's something I don't have
Speaker 7: like complete confidence in anymore.
Speaker 1: Well, you know, I deal with this every year at
Speaker 1: the beginning of my constitutional law class. Right, this is
Speaker 1: not a new problem. It seems more real and frightening,
Speaker 1: but it's not a new problem. And so what I
Speaker 1: tell my constitutional law students is that the rule of
Speaker 1: law doesn't exist because of courts. Right, it doesn't exist
Speaker 1: because of police officers. Right, that the rule of law,
Speaker 1: when push comes to shove, exists in the hearts and
Speaker 1: minds of Americans, and if they don't believe in it,
Speaker 1: all is lost.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 1: So, for when Brown versus Board of Education was decided,
Speaker 1: it was reportedly the case that the President said, you know,
Speaker 1: if the court wants to desegregate schools, let it do
Speaker 1: it itself. Because guess what, what's the Supreme Court. It's
Speaker 1: nine old people in one building with a handful of
Speaker 1: Capitol police. Like, they can't do anything, don't have a
Speaker 1: power to do anything. Right, So, our entire system really
Speaker 1: rests on good faith, or as I tell my students,
Speaker 1: like what is due to something you know, President Trump
Speaker 1: or Biden or whoever had done. The Federal District Court
Speaker 1: issued an order directing us marshals to take President Trump
Speaker 1: into a custody, so that order goes out. The marshals
Speaker 1: receive it, they march over to the White House. They
Speaker 1: come in the door and they say, we are here
Speaker 1: to take the president. Signed and it's already been fast
Speaker 1: tracked by Supreme Court, signed by the Supreme Court. The
Speaker 1: answer to whether we'll just use Biden, the answer to
Speaker 1: whether President Biden is escorted out of the White House
Speaker 1: by US marshals is not a function of military it's
Speaker 1: not a function of police power. It's a function of
Speaker 1: when that piece of paper is held up, does the
Speaker 1: secret service member believe that the rule of law exceeds
Speaker 1: his loyalty to the man standing behind him.
Speaker 5: Yeah, that's where it's at.
Speaker 1: Right, And so you know, it really is a good
Speaker 1: faith litmus test. And I think we used to live
Speaker 1: in an era when I think we all had maybe
Speaker 1: more faith in the idea that people put fidelity and
Speaker 1: commitment to the Constitution and the law above personal loyalty.
Speaker 1: But we increasingly live in a Congress and in a
Speaker 1: world in a situation when it seems that people put
Speaker 1: personal loyalty above the Constitution.
Speaker 10: At times, JD.
Speaker 7: Vance was interviewed on a far right podcast about like
Speaker 7: two or three years ago, and he expressed desire for
Speaker 7: what he called a quote unquote dewocification program. Jahan like,
Speaker 7: sounds silly, but this is basically happening now. He extrapolated
Speaker 7: and said, quote, I think Trump is going to run
Speaker 7: again in twenty twenty four. I think what Trump should
Speaker 7: do if I was giving him one piece of advice,
Speaker 7: fire every single mid level bureaucrat, every civil servant in
Speaker 7: the administrative state. Replaced them with our people. When the
Speaker 7: courts stop, you stand before the country and say, the
Speaker 7: Chief Justice has made his ruling, now let him enforce it.
Speaker 7: And I feel like we're getting closer and closer to
Speaker 7: this scenario.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, where did jd. Vance make this statement at
Speaker 1: what context?
Speaker 7: On Jack Murphy's podcast Jack Murphy is like a fart commentator.
Speaker 7: Vance is invoking the political philosophy of Curtis Jarvin, who's
Speaker 7: becoming increasingly popular in the New Right. While lots of
Speaker 7: what Must and Trump by extension have been doing the
Speaker 7: past few weeks is taken pretty directly out of Curtis
Speaker 7: Jarvin's playbook for seizing executive power. And I feel like
Speaker 7: we're getting closer and closer to this, and so much
Speaker 7: of what's happening in various agencies it is about proving
Speaker 7: loyalty to Trump so that if there is some kind
Speaker 7: of constitutional confrontation, people side with them. DOGE is basically
Speaker 7: installing loyalty tests and running through communications to see what
Speaker 7: the loyalty to Trump is For different levels of administrative
Speaker 7: employees the FBI are negotiations to stay on, but only
Speaker 7: if they can prove their loyalty to the president. And
Speaker 7: like it's it's all of these scenarios that again, like
Speaker 7: originally would be kind of far fetched. When you're hearing
Speaker 7: someone like JD. Vance talk about this a few years
Speaker 7: ago on some like right wing podcast, that's one thing
Speaker 7: to watch this like happen in real time. For people
Speaker 7: like me who study like this type of like more
Speaker 7: like esoteric far right political theory, it's kind of surreal
Speaker 7: to watch the type of thing that you've been like
Speaker 7: writing about and thinking about, like on background for years
Speaker 7: now happen. I just kind of rambled there, But do
Speaker 7: you have any like, I guess thoughts on like this
Speaker 7: idea that like Vance is talking about in terms of
Speaker 7: like creating this constitutional crisis.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, look, I tend to be I tend
Speaker 1: to be the guy in the room that says, let's
Speaker 1: not let's not overreact, let's let's see what happens. You
Speaker 1: know that there's a lot of you know, institutional history,
Speaker 1: and there's a lot of Americans who I think the
Speaker 1: majority of good and decent people, and they don't they
Speaker 1: don't want authoritarianism. So this, this is me, right, this
Speaker 1: is my predisposition. But a week or so ago, I
Speaker 1: had a huge crisis of confidence, should we say, there
Speaker 1: were just a few events in the news that I
Speaker 1: was just like, I just never thought that this would
Speaker 1: happen in America. I never thought a governor would I mean,
Speaker 1: some of this was what governors were doing. I never
Speaker 1: thought a governor would do that. I never thought a
Speaker 1: president would do that. I just never thought, you know,
Speaker 1: never thought, never thought. And so I said to myself,
Speaker 1: you know, are any of my opinions or projections you know,
Speaker 1: valid anymore? Because I'm the guy who never thought? And
Speaker 1: so that was that was you know, that was a
Speaker 1: tough twenty four hours for me. I'll have to say. So,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't know if like I just rebooted
Speaker 1: and for self sanity and move forward, or you know,
Speaker 1: whether there is still some truth and reason to believe
Speaker 1: in certain stability. And I mean, I will say this,
Speaker 1: you know, as we started this conversation, and the fact
Speaker 1: that the White House is conceding that it can't do
Speaker 1: everything to the Department of Education that it wants to
Speaker 1: do without Congress is a good thing. If you read
Speaker 1: the five executive orders for that they've already issued there,
Speaker 1: it's a good thing that actually, if you read them carefully,
Speaker 1: it's mostly directing appointees to think about stuff, not actually
Speaker 1: do stuff, but to think about stuff. And of course
Speaker 1: the president can appoint them to think about stuff. If
Speaker 1: they do the stuff they're thinking about, that becomes a problem.
Speaker 1: But again it is this sort of like can I
Speaker 1: grab a headline about what would sound like an awful
Speaker 1: you know reality, But really, all I've done is type
Speaker 1: of to think about that reality. You know, that gives
Speaker 1: me some faith, right And notwithstanding the fact that this
Speaker 1: United States Supreme Court, you know, granted an immunity to
Speaker 1: all presidents that I never could have imagined. You know,
Speaker 1: this court does you know, issue opinions that surprise us
Speaker 1: every single term, and they line up with the rule
Speaker 1: of law. It's just it's unpredictable to some extent which
Speaker 1: which opinions those are going to be. So I have
Speaker 1: this faith, you know, these sort of pieces of of
Speaker 1: the puzzle that still suggests we're still democracy and are
Speaker 1: going to remain one. But you know, I have I
Speaker 1: have my really bad days. I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: I think a lot of people have a bad day
Speaker 1: every day right now. It's you know, I just feel
Speaker 1: thankful minor mine or fewer and further between than others.
Speaker 1: And maybe that's just psychological coping. I don't know.
Speaker 7: Let's let's I guess clip we're talking about disunion and
Speaker 7: and how that relates to the general feeling I think
Speaker 7: a lot of people are experiencing around the country as
Speaker 7: well as you know, linking back again to the attacks
Speaker 7: on Department of Education.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: So I spent a good a pretty good deal of
Speaker 1: time on this disunion question in my new book, Dangerously Learning,
Speaker 1: because I'm most of that book is focused on the
Speaker 1: three decades leading up to the Civil War, so that
Speaker 1: like the Civil War doesn't just happen overnight, it happens
Speaker 1: over the course of late eighteen twenties to the eighteen
Speaker 1: sixty with the South is saber rattling over and over again,
Speaker 1: openly talking about disunion. Right, so that you had a
Speaker 1: South that actually was diverse in lots of ways in
Speaker 1: its opinions about various things. I'm not going to say that,
Speaker 1: you know that there were a bunch of abolitions, but
Speaker 1: there was a manumissioned society in North Carolina in eighteen
Speaker 1: twenty nine that had I think sixteen hundred members. Right.
Speaker 1: The very idea of sixteen hundred you know, anti slavery
Speaker 1: advocates in North Carolina in the eighteen twenties is shocking
Speaker 1: to a lot of people, right, But ten years later,
Speaker 1: only twelve people show up to the final meeting, right,
Speaker 1: So you had something that changed there, right. And so
Speaker 1: you have this sort of period of escalating disunion and
Speaker 1: censorship and propaganda and sort of policing what is publicly
Speaker 1: you know, acceptable commentary in the South. All this stuff
Speaker 1: is happening sort of going in and you know, editing
Speaker 1: their sort of censoring textbooks, you know, demanding that books
Speaker 1: only be written by Southerners. Like, oh, I make a
Speaker 1: go on and on and on. We don't have time
Speaker 1: for it. What I point out though, in my analysis
Speaker 1: of what's going on, you know right now, over the
Speaker 1: last few years of education, is that there are a
Speaker 1: lot of policies that are attacking public education in the
Speaker 1: way that they previously had, and a lot of them
Speaker 1: are symbolic of disunion instincts, right, sort of just sort
Speaker 1: of anti government, right, anti sort of whatever the current
Speaker 1: culture is. And then there's actually policies that I argue
Speaker 1: are facilitating disunion. And one of those that I talk
Speaker 1: about is our public school voucher. I say, private school vouchers.
Speaker 1: You are so upset with You're so raging at the
Speaker 1: public school system that we need private school vouchers, right,
Speaker 1: and we are effectively paying, We're going to pay individuals
Speaker 1: to leave the public school system. And I call this
Speaker 1: a coded call for disunion, even if people don't think
Speaker 1: that's what they're doing. If we look back at where
Speaker 1: we started this conversation, which is institution of public education
Speaker 1: as something upon which American democracy has been built. Of course,
Speaker 1: it has lots of flaws and it wasn't perfect, but
Speaker 1: it's been part of how we build a democracy. It's
Speaker 1: always been a bipartisan project. Now becoming the thing that
Speaker 1: we rage against now becoming the thing in which we
Speaker 1: are going to finance exit from. Right, this is a
Speaker 1: step towards disunion from a fundamental institution of American democracy.
Speaker 1: What happens to us if they actually execute on that plan.
Speaker 1: I shudder to think about where we might be, because it's
Speaker 1: not just some private school that's the equivalent of the
Speaker 1: public school. We're talking about people on the public dollar
Speaker 1: retreating into their religious silos, into their racial silos, into
Speaker 1: their culture silos. And if there's anything I think that
Speaker 1: we could all agree on, is listening to only the
Speaker 1: people that you like on Twitter or listening only to
Speaker 1: the people that you like for the evening news is
Speaker 1: what got us here. And if what we have is
Speaker 1: education that becomes the equivalent of MSNBC and Fox News
Speaker 1: and Newsmax and you know whatever else, like that is
Speaker 1: a dangerous place. I don't know how we build democracy
Speaker 1: on such a system.
Speaker 3: What's the solution here?
Speaker 7: I mean, like beyond beyond people diversifying where they get
Speaker 7: their media from, and like for vast pats of the country,
Speaker 7: I think that that line's been crossed a long time ago.
Speaker 7: If you look at the way like Twitter functions, the
Speaker 7: way that people just exist in their bubbles and are
Speaker 7: happy to like people don't want to hear anything else,
Speaker 7: and with the most hostility coming from like both extreme ends. Yeah,
Speaker 7: I don't know how to get around this problem. This
Speaker 7: is something that you know, we've thought about a lot
Speaker 7: the past eight years, but certainly longer.
Speaker 1: Well, I'll say this, you know, public school can't solve
Speaker 1: all of the democracy's problem. You know, be a fool
Speaker 1: to say otherwise. But if what we're doing is talking
Speaker 1: about education itself, I think number one is that I
Speaker 1: think our leaders need to understand better understand the dangers
Speaker 1: of you know, vouchers for instance, like right now and
Speaker 1: I'm writing about this, like they think it's just a
Speaker 1: policy dispute, and like if you just look at the
Speaker 1: surface level, it's like, well, who cares if we give
Speaker 1: some more vouchers and that makes the most far reaches
Speaker 1: of our party happy. But like I think sort of
Speaker 1: really stepping back and appreciating how dangerous this is to
Speaker 1: our democracy is step one. That's hard, right, I'm talking
Speaker 1: about teaching adults to see things differently than what they
Speaker 1: currently see them. But as to our schools, I mean,
Speaker 1: I've got a little bit of stiff medicine for both sides.
Speaker 1: I mean, I do think that in the push for
Speaker 1: more justice in our public schools, and I think we
Speaker 1: do need. I mean, that's what I've devoted my career to.
Speaker 1: I do think that, Well, I don't think our schools
Speaker 1: did any of the any of the awful stuff that
Speaker 1: you know that the right has said, but I do
Speaker 1: think that they maybe were not as open to people
Speaker 1: disagreeing with them as they should have been. And what
Speaker 1: I really mean is in the push for justice, I
Speaker 1: think there was a bit of shutting down conversation. Not
Speaker 1: teaching children to reach their own conclusions, but giving them
Speaker 1: conclusions and expecting them to reach them. And so one
Speaker 1: of the things I'm working on my new book is that, like,
Speaker 1: I really think we have to rethink how we teach history,
Speaker 1: you know, how we teach literature. Maybe not so much literature.
Speaker 1: I think our literature teachers are pretty good, but rethink
Speaker 1: how we teach those things such that we are not
Speaker 1: committed to our children reaching particular conclusions. What we're committed
Speaker 1: to is our children engaging in free and open thought
Speaker 1: amongst themselves, right with hopefully an adult in the room
Speaker 1: that can you establish some guidelines. But I think you know,
Speaker 1: public education didn't do that very well five years ago,
Speaker 1: ten years ago, thirty years ago when I was there.
Speaker 1: But I think in this moment of cultural fracture, we
Speaker 1: do really have to commit to free speech, open to
Speaker 1: a inquiry, listening harder, thinking harder, right, not just bullet points,
Speaker 1: not just bullet points.
Speaker 7: What would cross the rubicon for you? People throw around
Speaker 7: the term constitutional crisis? What would actually happen that would
Speaker 7: make that something that you that you would be like
Speaker 7: this like it like like it is happening? What is
Speaker 7: that like make or break moment?
Speaker 1: You wanted me to imagine a realistic one or just
Speaker 1: sort of give you some sort of example that makes.
Speaker 7: Sense, No, like like what what would that be like
Speaker 7: for you? Because like I think everyone has their own
Speaker 7: personal rubric for like like what is too far in
Speaker 7: my mind? Like what is something that's like this is
Speaker 7: this is completely unacceptable? And for some people this this
Speaker 7: may have already happened. But like in terms of like
Speaker 7: legitimate like constitutional crisis, what is that for you?
Speaker 1: Well, this just rewind and this is I guess an
Speaker 1: example of why you know, someone still got their finger
Speaker 1: in the damn hold them back, holding it together. You know,
Speaker 1: the President of the United States asserted unilateral authority over
Speaker 1: the entire federal budget when he came into office, right,
Speaker 1: he does not have that power. Federal district court and
Speaker 1: joined it. He then backed down from that, right, but
Speaker 1: let's say he didn't back down. It's like, well, okay,
Speaker 1: you know, maybe you know it's a district court. But
Speaker 1: if the United States Supreme Court or a court of
Speaker 1: appeals told the president you lack the authority to sequestor
Speaker 1: those funds and he still did it. So just the budget,
Speaker 1: that's it. Just the budget, you know, just the belief
Speaker 1: that the president can spend our money however he wants
Speaker 1: with no constraint, and that would be crossing the rubicon. Now,
Speaker 1: I'll tell you. And this is why you know you
Speaker 1: had to kind of be like a constitutional law professor,
Speaker 1: or well, you don't have to be a constitutional law professor,
Speaker 1: but you've been following it. It's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: have been alarmed, and this goes back. This isn't just
Speaker 1: a Trump problem. Like I was alarmed with the NCLB waivers.
Speaker 1: Probably nobody in this even knows what I'm talking about. Right, like,
Speaker 1: you know, a decade ago, not that like President Obama
Speaker 1: was like going to take over the country, but alarmed
Speaker 1: that somehow another he thinks he can do this, Like
Speaker 1: why is he even testing the boundaries this way?
Speaker 7: Like executive power has been steadily expanding certainly.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so but I was like, you know, you
Speaker 1: can kind of get it. There was some gray area
Speaker 1: this where he kind of need to be a constitutional
Speaker 1: law professor to kind of figure out why that was
Speaker 1: such a big deal. But when Biden, I mean think
Speaker 1: back and again, I don't begrudge people needing their debts relief,
Speaker 1: but when President Biden effectively asserted the power to allocate
Speaker 1: federal dollars to pay off debts, that was like, you know,
Speaker 1: half of the discretionary funds of the entire federal government.
Speaker 1: Like that's a big move to just say, yeah, I
Speaker 1: can I can commit this nation to a fifty percent
Speaker 1: increase and it's in its fiscal outlays tomorrow. That's not
Speaker 1: constitutional democracy. But now right, we have a present going
Speaker 1: even further than that. But he liked Biden at least
Speaker 1: thus far stepped back at least from the district court
Speaker 1: right when the court said can't. So it's really that
Speaker 1: sort of defying of the court at that point. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they've all been pushing the boundaries. He's pushed him further
Speaker 1: thus far. They've all complied with judicial orders, but it
Speaker 1: would be the refusal to comply with judicial order.
Speaker 7: I mean, I guess the main difference there for me
Speaker 7: relates back to what you said about acting in good faith.
Speaker 7: Something that people on the left I think get mad
Speaker 7: about sometimes is Democrats seeming a complete commitment to acting
Speaker 7: in good faith sometimes. And it certainly appears that that
Speaker 7: Trump is willing to push a little bit farther, especially
Speaker 7: in terms of like tests for loyalty. And it's at
Speaker 7: a certain point, like if he does something really bad
Speaker 7: at least for these next two years, like I don't
Speaker 7: see a way that he'll get like impeached or removed
Speaker 7: from office, like certainly not with this Senate, not with
Speaker 7: this Congress, Like that check and balance just no longer
Speaker 7: is viable due to the last election, and acting with
Speaker 7: that popular mandate has I think given them a bit
Speaker 7: more courage on their side to go, you know, a
Speaker 7: little bit further, play a little bit more fast and
Speaker 7: loose some of these like checks and balances than what
Speaker 7: we've like previously seen, but this is certainly still still developing.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing that really sort of jumps out at me,
Speaker 1: and I was telling some you know, several reporters, is
Speaker 1: that you're right, he's pushing it further. It looks scarier.
Speaker 5: But part of why.
Speaker 1: It's scarier, to be quite honest, well, I think it's
Speaker 1: scarier is that he's doing it out in the open.
Speaker 1: I mean, on some level, some of this stuff like
Speaker 1: telling people to cook up crazy plans to do this
Speaker 1: that like presidents have been doing it, like you know,
Speaker 1: Nixon was Dixon. Nixon was paranoid. He was like, like,
Speaker 1: this is what presidents do, but it's not appropriate to
Speaker 1: do it in public, right, you do it behind close doors.
Speaker 1: You know, offer some plausible rational rationalization for what you're doing,
Speaker 1: and you know, you minimize it, act like there's no
Speaker 1: big deal. What's startling here is that he is out
Speaker 1: in the open expressing his designs to us, giving us
Speaker 1: the sort of thoughts. And that's very unusual. And it
Speaker 1: does show that what's acceptable from public officials is much
Speaker 1: different now because had you know, had Nixon shared his
Speaker 1: designs of the American public, he wouldn't have made it
Speaker 1: as long as he did, you know, and probably true
Speaker 1: of a lot of other presidents, they would have been gone.
Speaker 1: So what's actually acceptable as public behavior has clearly changed,
Speaker 1: what's acceptable as a policy agenda has clearly changed. And
Speaker 1: so he's just putting it out there. He's putting his
Speaker 1: dirty laundry out there, and people are like, oh, this
Speaker 1: is normal.
Speaker 7: Unless you have anything else to add, Do you want
Speaker 7: to talk about where people can find you and your writing?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I'm on Blue Sky more recently, still
Speaker 1: on on Twitter. I sort of have, you know, just
Speaker 1: lots of friends on there, so I'm still there. But
Speaker 1: to me too, yeah, you know, I'm not on there
Speaker 1: as often as I used to be. You know, I
Speaker 1: give up blogging a long time ago, so, you know,
Speaker 1: as we drink out of a fire hydrant, you know,
Speaker 1: I spent a lot of time just trying to explain
Speaker 1: basic things about public education to reporters. But you can
Speaker 1: find me there. I'm a professor of law at the
Speaker 1: University of South Carolina, And like I said, you know,
Speaker 1: Dangerous Learning just came out, you know, a week or
Speaker 1: so ago, really helping us, I think, helping us to
Speaker 1: see this current moment through a long lens of war
Speaker 1: on black equality, black freedom, and to be quite honest,
Speaker 1: just free and open debate. We've had those wars before
Speaker 1: and and we scarily are having them again.
Speaker 2: All right, thank as much, Thank you, Welcome back to
Speaker 2: It could happen here. This is a daily news podcast
Speaker 2: about all of the things happening here, which is wherever
Speaker 2: you happen to be, and also the world in general.
Speaker 2: And today we are going back to talk about Gaza,
Speaker 2: particularly what has happened and changed in sort of US
Speaker 2: policy relating to Gaza, to what's going to happen as
Speaker 2: the actual combat operations wind down, to the Trump administration's
Speaker 2: so far promises to effectively ethnically cleanse the entire area
Speaker 2: and turn it into some sort of weird US satellite.
Speaker 2: And with me today is Donna el Kurd, an assistant
Speaker 2: professor of political science, guest on our episodes about bib
Speaker 2: N Yahoo over It, Behind the Bastards. Dana, thank you
Speaker 2: so much for being here with us. How are you
Speaker 2: doing today? I know that's a dumb question. I just
Speaker 2: asked you that at the start of this too.
Speaker 12: Now, thank you for having me. I think every Palestinian
Speaker 12: in the world is not doing great.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, again, like I said, a dumb question. The
Speaker 2: short story of what is happening is that Trump made
Speaker 2: an unprecedented announcement about a week ago on stage with
Speaker 2: Netan Yahoo that gazo would be that, like the Palestinian
Speaker 2: population would be forced out and not allowed to return,
Speaker 2: and it would be turned into effectively American condos. Right,
Speaker 2: Like that's I think that's essentially the gist of the
Speaker 2: initial meeting, which was met with a degree of chaos
Speaker 2: even from Israel, because I don't think anyone entirely knew
Speaker 2: exactly what Trump was going to say when he got
Speaker 2: up on that stage, which is pretty normal Trump fashion.
Speaker 2: But yeah, how would you characterize kind of the initial
Speaker 2: reaction to that announcement.
Speaker 12: Yeah, so a couple of different audiences for that announcement
Speaker 12: to begin with. For the Israeli side, I mean, what
Speaker 12: I'm hearing from analysts and people who follow Israeli politics
Speaker 12: is that this has really changed the permission structure for them.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 12: I think you're right that didn't expect something to this degree,
Speaker 12: But now that it's been said, it's like that is
Speaker 12: the full extent of what we can expect to do right,
Speaker 12: and so I don't think a lot of people are thinking, like,
Speaker 12: for real, there's going to be a Gaza riviera. But
Speaker 12: what this does is it just expands the scope of
Speaker 12: what they think is possible for Gaza, whether it's preventing
Speaker 12: reconstruction and you know, basically keeping them in this kind
Speaker 12: of stagnant condition and allowing people to start trickling out
Speaker 12: and leaving and anybody left is considered combatant. That could
Speaker 12: be a possibility moving forward. It could cover up for
Speaker 12: more aggressive action ending the ceasefire. I mean, it's really
Speaker 12: upended the things in terms of the Israeli perspective. Yeah,
Speaker 12: and how much they've accepted it, I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because I mean my interpretation would be that what
Speaker 2: Trump's literal words leave the door open to everything from
Speaker 2: like you said, sort of slowly waiting for people to
Speaker 2: trickle out and not letting them back in kind of
Speaker 2: like what you saw in the Chagos Islands, or outright
Speaker 2: mass killing. You know, like there's no closed doors and
Speaker 2: Trump's plan Other than about three hours before we recorded
Speaker 2: this on Monday the tenth, a series of articles went
Speaker 2: out based on some of Trump's comments, confirming Palestinians wouldn't
Speaker 2: be allowed back into Gaza under his plan, right, the
Speaker 2: plan is for ethnic cleansing, right, Like, that's the only
Speaker 2: way to describe that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, No, it's very explicit. And I think that the
Speaker 12: way in which American allies, allied regimes in the region
Speaker 12: have reacted to this, like shows a great deal of alarm. Obviously,
Speaker 12: Jordan and Egypt, already struggling as it is with a
Speaker 12: variety of issues, don't want a bunch of Palestinians who
Speaker 12: are very politically active to be absorbed into their population.
Speaker 12: The Saudi government, you know, put out I would say,
Speaker 12: like a pretty strong statement. I mean I was. I
Speaker 12: was surprised how strong it was about how much they
Speaker 12: do not endorse such plan.
Speaker 2: So yeah, and it's interesting because Trump, in the way
Speaker 2: that he often just like says shit has I'm going
Speaker 2: to read the exact quote. I'm talking about starting to
Speaker 2: build And I think I could make a deal with Jordan.
Speaker 2: I think I can make a deal with Egypt. You know,
Speaker 2: we give them billions and billions of dollars a year,
Speaker 2: and so far Egypt and Jordan have both said no,
Speaker 2: this is not something we're interested you and special Rapporteur
Speaker 2: Francesca Albanize said Trump's proposal was nonsense but has to
Speaker 2: be taken very seriously, which I actually think is a
Speaker 2: reasonably good summary of how to handle everything that he says.
Speaker 2: It's nonsense that you have to take it very seriously.
Speaker 12: I mean, the man has the nukes, as we've discussed,
Speaker 12: so yeah, I mean the way that people have reacted
Speaker 12: is obviously a great deal of alarm. And on the
Speaker 12: Palestinian side, it's like Palestinian different Palstinian political actors are
Speaker 12: bracing for, Yeah, the end of the ceasefire essentially.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, that's pretty stark term to put it.
Speaker 2: And I don't know, I guess because yeah, one thing
Speaker 2: that the door is open on Israel saying, well, now
Speaker 2: that we've announced this plan and people have to get out,
Speaker 2: everyone's staying is effectively a combatant exactly.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I think that that's. Yeah, it's not you know,
Speaker 12: what we've seen over the past four hundred and seventy
Speaker 12: days up to cease fire is not that they have
Speaker 12: much respect for non combatants to begin with. Yeah, that
Speaker 12: really didn't stop them from targeting civilians, targeting children. So
Speaker 12: you can imagine now that even I mean, it's hard
Speaker 12: to even talk about it in these terms. It's not
Speaker 12: like le Bide administration was really holding them accountable either,
Speaker 12: But now again, because the permission structure has just been
Speaker 12: expanded to such a degree that we don't know what
Speaker 12: kinds of things we're going to see for people who
Speaker 12: remain in Gaza in the coming future. And obviously this
Speaker 12: derails any possibility for Palestinian and Israeli civil society actors
Speaker 12: who are trying to move beyond this particular status quo.
Speaker 12: And there's no international actor that's really empowering those efforts,
Speaker 12: and so it's really bleak.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's bleak in so many comprehensive ways.
Speaker 2: Like one thing, and not to I don't mean to
Speaker 2: like kind of take the focus off of Gaza, but
Speaker 2: this is you use the term permission structure on an
Speaker 2: international level. The US saying we are backing a forced
Speaker 2: expulsion in genocide of an entire population does change the
Speaker 2: permission structure for every international actor in terms of like
Speaker 2: a massive variety of conflicts around the world, Like this
Speaker 2: is like a sea change in international norms that so
Speaker 2: many millions of people outside of Gaza will eventually and
Speaker 2: the probably immediately be effective.
Speaker 12: By I mean, I think that there has always been
Speaker 12: gaps in what is acceptable and what is permissible under
Speaker 12: international law. Obviously that has never been applied evenly. And
Speaker 12: then if you were a particular group that didn't have
Speaker 12: American backing, for example the Armenians in Artza, it didn't
Speaker 12: matter if you were ethnically cleansed. But like you said,
Speaker 12: this just expands it to such a scope like now
Speaker 12: this is an acceptable policy solution to remove wholesale, huge populations.
Speaker 12: And when the ceasefire happened, there was an argument, and
Speaker 12: I think that this is a valid one that Palestinians
Speaker 12: the fact that they were able to in the ceasefire
Speaker 12: agreement secure their right to return even to the rubble,
Speaker 12: that was a huge obstacle to this kind of precedent,
Speaker 12: and I think Trump is now try to upend that victory,
Speaker 12: even if it's you know, in terms of a precedent
Speaker 12: set or in symbolic terms, like you said, this is
Speaker 12: now going to become how states operate. I mean, the
Speaker 12: Syrian dictator during the Syrian Civil War I think pushed
Speaker 12: the bounds of how states can operate. And this is
Speaker 12: another level.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, and I think that this is an I
Speaker 2: want to kind of zero back in on Gaza in
Speaker 2: a second, but I really do. I think that that
Speaker 2: broader point that you just make can't be made enough,
Speaker 2: not just the centrality of Syria, but the idea that
Speaker 2: when on the international stage the leader of a country
Speaker 2: is allowed to do force displacements through massive aerial bombing,
Speaker 2: Like there's this idea that you can just be like, well,
Speaker 2: that's just Syria, right, It's never just Syria, just like
Speaker 2: it's never just Gaza. You know, these things metastasize. You
Speaker 2: have to view that those kind of actions in the
Speaker 2: international stage like a cancer.
Speaker 4: Right.
Speaker 10: No.
Speaker 12: Absolutely. There was a Syrian activist and political writer, yasinl Hrsala,
Speaker 12: who said, the Syrianization of the world. Yeah, and we're
Speaker 12: seeing the gasification of the world. We will see the
Speaker 12: gassification of the world. Yeah, and that's very, very dangerous
Speaker 12: for everybody involved.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that can't be overstated. A chill kind of goes
Speaker 2: down my spine thinking about that and thinking about that quote,
Speaker 2: which makes this a very bad time to throw to ads.
Speaker 2: But that's what I'm going to do. Then we're going
Speaker 2: to come back and we're going to talk about b mining.
Speaker 2: We're back so to zero Beckon on Gaza. Obviously, one
Speaker 2: thing that comes up when Trump talks about this plan
Speaker 2: that is an actual thing that would have to be
Speaker 2: dealt with one way or the other, is that huge
Speaker 2: chunks of Gaza are uninhabitable right now and will be
Speaker 2: for the foreseeable future because of the sheer quantity of
Speaker 2: munitions dispensed. A number of munitions that have been used
Speaker 2: in Gaza are cluster munitions, but even munitions that are
Speaker 2: not cluster munitions, when you're dropping bombs on particularly dense
Speaker 2: urban targets, there's a wide variety of things that can
Speaker 2: happen to those munitions on their way to their target,
Speaker 2: including them getting deflected by debris, them getting deflected by
Speaker 2: pieces of metal and rebar and the like that damages
Speaker 2: the device and stops it from detonating but leaves it
Speaker 2: still in an active state. And the estimate I'm seeing
Speaker 2: for munitions used in Gaza is about ten percent of
Speaker 2: the munitions, and there's no way of knowing how many
Speaker 2: have been dropped, but estimates are at least thirty thousand
Speaker 2: in the first seventy days I think weeks sorry much
Speaker 2: less than seventy days, nearly thirty thousand munitions in the
Speaker 2: first seven weeks of the war, so a huge number,
Speaker 2: about ten percent at least, are still active and live.
Speaker 2: And you know, for an idea of how long it
Speaker 2: takes to d mine and render an area safe for
Speaker 2: munitions like this, there are still people who die in
Speaker 2: France from wor World War One munitions, you know, up
Speaker 2: to the present day in twenty twenty five. So this
Speaker 2: is a massive problem. In the best case scenario, something
Speaker 2: has to be done with these munitions. This is something
Speaker 2: that Trump has been bringing up and when talking about
Speaker 2: like his desire to clear people out of their d
Speaker 2: mine and then rebuild effectively what sounds almost like a
Speaker 2: vacation colony right for the United States. And one of
Speaker 2: the issues just with any sort of practical sort of
Speaker 2: effect with D mining is that USAID has been gutted
Speaker 2: as an agency, and that's the agency through which D
Speaker 2: mining was done. We've spent billions of dollars, put billions
Speaker 2: of dollars into D mining around the world through USAID.
Speaker 2: The US military is actually not allowed by our laws
Speaker 2: to do D mining operations. There's a complicated history there,
Speaker 2: but like so we both got this situation where the
Speaker 2: proposed justification for pushing the population out is, well, it's
Speaker 2: not safe to be there, we have to determine it.
Speaker 2: And also we have created a situation in which the
Speaker 2: organizations that do d mining can't do it anymore.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and I think those same organizations asked for like
Speaker 12: an exception to the stop work order and were denied
Speaker 12: by the State Department. And yep, no, you know, no
Speaker 12: explanations were given. And so I mean it's it's obviously
Speaker 12: a fig leaf. Yeah, it's obviously an excuse, like this
Speaker 12: has nothing to do with bettering conditions in Gaza. And
Speaker 12: I the fact that he's gone back and clarified and
Speaker 12: has been asked the number of times, including last night
Speaker 12: after the super Bowl or something, and he said no, no,
Speaker 12: they won't be allowed to return. Yeah, well, all right,
Speaker 12: what are you demining? You really think you're going to
Speaker 12: build hotels?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 12: My understanding is like people in the administration were also
Speaker 12: surprised by this tack of reasoning. So I wonder who's
Speaker 12: fed him this idea, Like, who's given him this idea
Speaker 12: that he's going to be able to build hotels.
Speaker 2: Here my understanding, based on reading don't have any inns
Speaker 2: in the Trump administration. But the reporting I've seen suggested
Speaker 2: came from Kushner that like a year or so ago,
Speaker 2: he was talking, I have been talking about this like
Speaker 2: this is great, you know, a great place to build
Speaker 2: a condo. It's beautiful, you know, wonderful weather. I mean,
Speaker 2: we know just from the past. That is kind of
Speaker 2: how Trump works is somebody people tell him a lot
Speaker 2: of shit, but something sticks in his brain and that,
Speaker 2: like with the Greenland shit can become US policy. And
Speaker 2: that appears to be I mean, as best as I
Speaker 2: can tell, that's the origin of this.
Speaker 12: It's just like the grift can really stick in his mind.
Speaker 12: He's really good at holding onto possibilities for grifting.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the fact that you are doing a genocide in
Speaker 2: order to clear land for condos doesn't make it less
Speaker 2: of a genocide, but it is like a justification for genocide.
Speaker 2: I don't think i've heard a country's leader make before, right.
Speaker 2: I mean, parts of this are familiar and go back,
Speaker 2: you know, even to the Iraq War in terms of
Speaker 2: US Paul and further back right, like what is kind
Speaker 2: of the core of US support of Israel as our
Speaker 2: desire to have a stable territory within the Middle East
Speaker 2: from where we can project power, right, So, to that extent,
Speaker 2: this is like a natural expression of US policy for
Speaker 2: decades in the area, Like, well, what if we just
Speaker 2: take this for ourselves and then we have this stable
Speaker 2: platform from where we can airstrike whoever the hell we want,
Speaker 2: and also Jared Kushner can have his condos.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean the thing is they can. They can
Speaker 12: achieve and have already been able to maintain American hegemony
Speaker 12: with all sorts of bases across the Middle East some secrets,
Speaker 12: I'm not, Yeah, cultar like it's it's this is I
Speaker 12: think this is another level where it's like American andgemony
Speaker 12: is tangential to Jared Kushner making money. So it's an
Speaker 12: interesting little I've never seen a hedgemon kind of shoot
Speaker 12: itself in the foot in this direction to this degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't want the focus to be on the
Speaker 2: danger to Americans from this, but this is extremely dangerous
Speaker 2: for Americans too, right, Like having your country openly back
Speaker 2: a genocide to this extent, like not just even arming it,
Speaker 2: but saying like we are specifically going to build, like
Speaker 2: take this land and profit off of it is such
Speaker 2: as it so comprehensively escalates everything on an international scale,
Speaker 2: Like I don't even, I can't even. I can't think
Speaker 2: of a single decision that's this reckless that's been made
Speaker 2: in my lifetime by American politicians other than the Iraq War, right.
Speaker 12: And that was I think maybe the first nail in
Speaker 12: the confine. And we're reaching the last nails in the coffin.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, well the coffin's almost done.
Speaker 12: It's almost done. We're dismantling the whatever remnants of the
Speaker 12: international order used to exist, and it's really going to
Speaker 12: be a free fall.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know what more to say on that. I
Speaker 2: guess kind of one thing we should get into is
Speaker 2: what we're seeing in terms of the Trump administration and
Speaker 2: pro Palestine protests in the United States. Obviously, last night
Speaker 2: at the Super Bowl, we had a moment where a
Speaker 2: member of Kendrick Lamar's the performance crew on the ground.
Speaker 2: I think it was one of his dancers. As far
Speaker 2: as I can tell them, I don't believe the individual
Speaker 2: has been named yet. Maybe I missed that.
Speaker 12: I think somebody has released his name. I took to intercept.
Speaker 2: Okay, well, I don't feel specifically a need to do that,
Speaker 2: but an individual who was a part of that was
Speaker 2: standing on like one of the cars that was on
Speaker 2: stage that Kendrick had been dancing on, unfurled a Palestine
Speaker 2: and Sudan flag is a fairly small, like a couple
Speaker 2: of feet wide, couple of feet deep, so like not
Speaker 2: like a mask, certainly not a destructive act, but like,
Speaker 2: not only did that person get like banned for life
Speaker 2: from all sort of NFL events and performing or attending them,
Speaker 2: which I suppose was not super shocking, but there were
Speaker 2: immediate announcements by New Orleans Police that they are trying
Speaker 2: to figure out what to charge this person under, which,
Speaker 2: like I tell me what kind of crime that is?
Speaker 12: You know, I mean, it's not like he even invaded
Speaker 12: the pitch, right, like he's it was like to be
Speaker 12: an actor.
Speaker 5: Yeah, he did a thing.
Speaker 2: I think that wasn't part of the script, I assume,
Speaker 2: but like, I don't know how you even charged him. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I don't think charges are out yet, right, but they're
Speaker 2: going to find something to do, which is also going
Speaker 2: to set a precedent, right because this is nothing. This
Speaker 2: person was not in a place they weren't allowed to
Speaker 2: be this person didn't damage any property they held a
Speaker 2: thing like that's the definition of protected speech. You know,
Speaker 2: if you're their employer, you can fire them for that,
Speaker 2: but you can't charge them criminally for that.
Speaker 12: I mean they wanted to make an example. They and
Speaker 12: we'll see what kind of example that they try to
Speaker 12: make out of this person. And it like, like you said,
Speaker 12: it's really in line with Trump, the Trump administration taking
Speaker 12: aggressive action against any forms of dissent around American foreign policy.
Speaker 12: That is obviously, as we've mentioned, like very tied up
Speaker 12: with the genocide that unfolded. And so it's these executive
Speaker 12: orders around deporting international students, it's executive orders around like
Speaker 12: expanded understandings of anti semitism and the ideas. Even if
Speaker 12: you don't go after everybody, you're making an example enough
Speaker 12: that like you're chilling people's abilities to engage, whether it's
Speaker 12: on campuses or you know, off campuses, and so it's
Speaker 12: it's definitely I can tell you from like the academic perspective,
Speaker 12: like a number of disciplinary organizations and and and like
Speaker 12: mile Ease Studies Association and things like this, like they're
Speaker 12: they're very concerned, like this is a very concerning moment.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I want to kind of dig into that a
Speaker 2: little bit more and will continue our conversation. I've got
Speaker 2: to throw to Adds one last time and then we'll
Speaker 2: be back. We're back, Dana. Yeah, we're just talking about
Speaker 2: kind of the chilling effects this has had as an academic.
Speaker 2: Do you want to talk a little bit about what
Speaker 2: you've experienced so far and what you think kind of
Speaker 2: needs to be the response to this attempt to chill
Speaker 2: any kind of protected speech in favor of Palestine or
Speaker 2: not even in favor that's the wrong way to put it. Yeah,
Speaker 2: discussing the reality of the genocide.
Speaker 12: Yeah, I mean that's the thing is, like they have
Speaker 12: not They've conflated Yeah, any any attempt to give information
Speaker 12: with advocacy. Yes, so there's that conflation. But then, of
Speaker 12: course advocacy in and of itself is protected. Yes, you're
Speaker 12: certainly allowed to advocate if you're a student or things,
Speaker 12: or you know, a citizen in the world, like of course,
Speaker 12: so there is that conflation. And I will say that, like,
Speaker 12: we're seeing attacks on academic freedom, and we're seeing attacks
Speaker 12: on freedom of speech and freedom of assembly on academic campuses,
Speaker 12: both in public institutions, that have to uphold public laws
Speaker 12: and also in private institutions that have paid lip service
Speaker 12: to things like free speech and are now ignoring that
Speaker 12: commitment in the past. And so we've seen even tenured
Speaker 12: professors like what happened in Nihlenberg College, like tenured professors
Speaker 12: being targeted losing their jobs. And I can say that
Speaker 12: this has really activated organizations like the American Association of
Speaker 12: University Professors, the AAUP, the Middle East Studies Association as well.
Speaker 12: Their Committee on Academic Freedom has been working to collect
Speaker 12: data on how this has impacted people's abilities to engage
Speaker 12: on the issue of Israel Palast that even in their
Speaker 12: research or teaching. And then there was a study by
Speaker 12: two professors Mark Lynch and Shibity Tidhemi George Washington and
Speaker 12: University of Maryland respectively that found something like over ninety
Speaker 12: percent of professors who teach on the Middle East are
Speaker 12: self censoring Jesus. And it's not because they're out in
Speaker 12: front of the classroom giving a crap about giving their opinion.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I can tell.
Speaker 12: You none of us want to change anybody's minds about this.
Speaker 12: It's like they're literally just self censoring the content. Yeah,
Speaker 12: like we're just afraid to even address what happened, what's
Speaker 12: happening in a historical context, or you know, teaching a
Speaker 12: course on Israel Palestine or any of those kinds of
Speaker 12: things is now completely under the microscope.
Speaker 2: And this is all part of the whole kind of
Speaker 2: authoritarian chilling effect of any ability to express anything outside
Speaker 2: of like what the regimes can that you live under
Speaker 2: considers acceptable, you know, And it always starts with these well,
Speaker 2: you know, if we talk about Palistine and what's happening there,
Speaker 2: then maybe this department will get you know, its funding cut,
Speaker 2: and we won't be able to talk about anything. So really,
Speaker 2: this is the same decision a lot of hospitals are
Speaker 2: making around like the treatment for trade and skill wealth.
Speaker 2: We'll lose our funding if we do this, and we
Speaker 2: do all these other good things. But they never stop, right, like,
Speaker 2: you never actually are safe. There's no point at which
Speaker 2: these people say it's enough. They take your ability to
Speaker 2: talk about or to act in one way away, and
Speaker 2: then they take it in a way in another, and
Speaker 2: they keep taking, you know, until you make a stand,
Speaker 2: and you might as well make a stand the first
Speaker 2: time they start trying to take shit from you, otherwise
Speaker 2: you're going to get backed even further into a fucking corner.
Speaker 12: Yeah, there has to be institutions and leadership at these
Speaker 12: institutions holding a line because this kind of preemptive obedience
Speaker 12: hasn't served them and it's not going to change. Fundamentally,
Speaker 12: the fact that this administration sees academic knowledge production as
Speaker 12: a political landscape they need to control. And see, I
Speaker 12: mean Jadvan says it like professors are the enemy. Yeah,
Speaker 12: so what are you doing trying to placate you know,
Speaker 12: it's like you're just giving them an easier time.
Speaker 10: No.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Through the use of funding and their ability to
Speaker 2: kind of gin up outrage in media, groups like APEC
Speaker 2: have effectively blasted a salient in free speech in this
Speaker 2: country where you really you almost can't talk about Palestine
Speaker 2: and you certainly can't acknowledge what Israel is doing, right,
Speaker 2: You can't say it stayed in plane terms like we
Speaker 2: are watching a genocide be at least attempted here, right,
Speaker 2: And if you do that, there are huge consequences to
Speaker 2: most people in traditional organizations, particularly professors, which is always
Speaker 2: where it starts. And yeah, that salient is just going
Speaker 2: to get whiter and whiter and whiter, right, like that
Speaker 2: that's the way this stuff works.
Speaker 12: Yeah, yeah, I mean this is not a new argument,
Speaker 12: but it's like the ways in which the United States
Speaker 12: has engaged abroad. It's very much boomeranging home, you know.
Speaker 12: And so it's not about, like you said, it's not
Speaker 12: just about Palestine. It's not about people who studied Palestine
Speaker 12: are each about Israel Palestine. It's so much broader than that.
Speaker 12: The precedent that is being set, and what is like
Speaker 12: kind of a silver lining is that the last year
Speaker 12: of the Biden administration, the last year plus of the
Speaker 12: Biden administration, and then even now, I think at least
Speaker 12: it has helped people connect the dots a little bit,
Speaker 12: like this is not an issue in isolation, and just
Speaker 12: because you don't happen to work on it doesn't mean
Speaker 12: that you're safe from people meddling in your syllabi or
Speaker 12: chilling your speech on other issues, whether it's trans rights,
Speaker 12: whether it's you know, reproductive rights, whatever issue. If you
Speaker 12: don't toe the line, they're going to come for you too, right,
Speaker 12: And so I think that at least I've seen folks
Speaker 12: who are not who have never been, you know, activated
Speaker 12: on the issue of Israel Palestine, whether in their advocacy
Speaker 12: or in their research, they're making that connection at least,
Speaker 12: and maybe that's a silver lining that I'm trying to
Speaker 12: be less bleak here.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, I think that's helpful.
Speaker 2: You know, when I think about the hypocrisy of this moment,
Speaker 2: I think about how much of the clamping down on speech,
Speaker 2: particularly the attempt to punish like student protesters in the
Speaker 2: United States, is predicated on accusing them of backing HAMAS, right,
Speaker 2: And it's so interesting to me because, like, you know,
Speaker 2: obviously I don't think Hamas is a good organization, but
Speaker 2: neither is the IRA, and the former President of the
Speaker 2: United States, Joe Biden, made pro IRA statements, right, Like
Speaker 2: one thing is okay and the other is not. I
Speaker 2: don't know. I find it incredibly frustrating that like there's
Speaker 2: this pretended act that like, because you've got some people
Speaker 2: on one side who have made statements in favor of
Speaker 2: this group, that sucks that that is a reason for
Speaker 2: cracking down on the ability of people to talk about
Speaker 2: a genocide. Like it's it's just this hideous hypocrisy that
Speaker 2: I don't even understand how like people can keep that
Speaker 2: consistent in their own heads. But they don't need to, right,
Speaker 2: That's always the thing with fascists.
Speaker 12: No, there's no need for consistency. Yeah, yeah, I mean
Speaker 12: that's the thing. Is like, first of all, the conflation
Speaker 12: that like the entire movement made such a statement or
Speaker 12: you know, I mean obviously that that in and of
Speaker 12: itself is dishonest. And like you said, it's not that
Speaker 12: they care about consistency and they don't have to maintain
Speaker 12: an honest approach to this. They're just using these isolated
Speaker 12: incidents of particular you know, particular students or particular groups
Speaker 12: to shut down any speech around it. And I was
Speaker 12: featured in this like Vox video and it was just
Speaker 12: like an explainer, and I received some harassment and like
Speaker 12: accusations that because I was providing context in a Vox video,
Speaker 12: which is what I was asked to do based on
Speaker 12: my expertise, that I was making excuses for, you know,
Speaker 12: what had happened on October seventh. And I was like,
Speaker 12: is the red line now? Just even discussing anything like
Speaker 12: with any kind of expert tease or information like it's
Speaker 12: it's uh, yeah, it's mind boggling.
Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I think that is what they
Speaker 2: want to make thee Yeah. Yeah, what you went through
Speaker 2: there too makes me so angry when I read shit
Speaker 2: like and this is not on Gillibrand, but Christin Gillibrand
Speaker 2: was on someone's podcast recently talking about why some of
Speaker 2: her Republican colleagues who had expressed opposition to some of
Speaker 2: Trump's picks ultimately voted for them. And she's like, they're
Speaker 2: scared of getting murdered, and like, isn't everyone who says anything,
Speaker 2: and like you've got death threats for a vox video,
Speaker 2: Like why are these Congress people who have so many
Speaker 2: more resources to protect themselves, why do they get to
Speaker 2: be scared?
Speaker 12: Oh well that's that's yeah, Congress, And it's and it's
Speaker 12: inability to do anything, Like yeah, that's that's a whole
Speaker 12: other level of demoralization.
Speaker 2: Yeah, is there anything else you wanted to make sure
Speaker 2: we hit on during this conversation before we sort of
Speaker 2: close things out.
Speaker 12: I'm not sure if maybe this is two in the weeds,
Speaker 12: but I think there's been a lot discussed around Trump
Speaker 12: and the statements around Gaza and his and his supposed
Speaker 12: plans for Gaza, and some analysts have claimed that this
Speaker 12: has to do with like taking an extreme position, so
Speaker 12: that then Arab Israeli normalization deals could make the claim that,
Speaker 12: like we talked him down from this brink, yeah, and
Speaker 12: like Saudi is going to make peace with Israel and
Speaker 12: claim that we convinced Trump not to do this kind
Speaker 12: of thing. And so that's been something I've read in
Speaker 12: some analysis, and I don't think it's actually correct. I
Speaker 12: don't think that Trump is making these kinds of statements
Speaker 12: or possibly these kinds of plans, just as kind of
Speaker 12: like I don't know, multi level chess with Saudi Arabia
Speaker 12: to get them to sign a peace deal with Israel,
Speaker 12: and the conditions in the region I think have really shifted.
Speaker 12: And I don't think Saudi Arabia, as I mentioned at
Speaker 12: the beginning, because they put out statements to this effect,
Speaker 12: I don't think they're at all interested in this kind
Speaker 12: of move right at this point. So I just maybe
Speaker 12: I would only add that Trump is not playing this
Speaker 12: long game that we think he is. Maybe we can
Speaker 12: take him at his word.
Speaker 2: Yeah, No, I know, because like Biden was playing a
Speaker 2: long game, a dumb long game, but a long game
Speaker 2: trying to brokers deal with like Saudi Arabia and Israel
Speaker 2: that I'm again I think deranged. If there's clear evidence
Speaker 2: that the fact that he was not compassmentous, it's that right.
Speaker 2: But it was a long game, and I don't think
Speaker 2: that Trump is I don't think Trump cares about that.
Speaker 12: Yeah, and the region has changed so much, you know,
Speaker 12: for whether we like it or not, Like Iran is
Speaker 12: not the threat it used to be, closer ties with
Speaker 12: Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia, I mean, has a huge influence
Speaker 12: on the new Syrian government, Like they don't need this,
Speaker 12: they don't need this, and like this is not this
Speaker 12: kind of long game, multi level chess, you know, mastermind
Speaker 12: over here that Trump is now doing. So yeah, I
Speaker 12: just wanted to add that.
Speaker 2: People are just doing shit and trying to grab onto
Speaker 2: whatever they can.
Speaker 12: Right and like let's see what sticks, essentially.
Speaker 2: Exactly I mean, and that is so much of that
Speaker 2: is the entirety of the current plan of the new
Speaker 2: regime in the United States is row everything you can
Speaker 2: out there and see what sticks.
Speaker 3: You know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're doing that in Gaza, just like they're doing
Speaker 2: it everywhere else. Well, Donna, thank you so much. Do
Speaker 2: you want to plug anything at the end of this
Speaker 2: your own stuff or something else.
Speaker 12: Check out I Guess The Fire These Times podcast. I
Speaker 12: sometimes do episode for.
Speaker 2: Them, Yes, yes, yes, yes.
Speaker 12: And if you're looking for organizations to help support gosins
Speaker 12: right now, Heal Palestine or a nara A n E
Speaker 12: r A are both doing really crucial work.
Speaker 2: Excellent, excellent, We'll check that out. Definitely check out The
Speaker 2: Fire These Times and that's a great place to send
Speaker 2: some aid. Donna, thank you so much for being on
Speaker 2: the show again. And yeah, I hope you Uh, I
Speaker 2: don't know, I hope, I hope.
Speaker 5: I hope that's what I got.
Speaker 12: Hope.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, thanks.
Speaker 1: For having.
Speaker 2: Welcome to the Birds and the Bees, a podcast where
Speaker 2: James Stout makes animal noises and also we talk about
Speaker 2: what's going on in the White House this week.
Speaker 7: That's right, this is it could happen here Executive Disorder,
Speaker 7: our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House,
Speaker 7: the crumbling of our world, and what this means for you.
Speaker 7: That is Robert talking previously. James Stout is also here.
Speaker 7: I'm Garrison Davis. I'm also joined by Mia Wong. This episode,
Speaker 7: we're covering the week of February sixth to February twelfth. Currently,
Speaker 7: ME and Mia are inside New Orleans, Louisiana, and I
Speaker 7: am proud to report that fascism has been defeated. The
Speaker 7: Philadelphia Eagles have beat the KK Kansas City Chiefs in
Speaker 7: Super Bowl. Drake has been executed live on stage. It's
Speaker 7: a great week.
Speaker 2: That would have been kinder than what I actually happened
Speaker 2: to Drake.
Speaker 3: Look as someone, as someone in my brusk I mentioned,
Speaker 3: says capitalism. Currently the rule of capitalism seems inescapable, but
Speaker 3: the divine, the divine rule of the Chiefs once seemed
Speaker 3: undefeatable too. And they were fucking humiliated.
Speaker 5: Oh my god, they lost so bad.
Speaker 3: I can't even I can't even say that they were
Speaker 3: beaten up and down the field, because I'd even fucking
Speaker 3: get down the field, obliterately generational beat down.
Speaker 7: And yeah, when I arrived here in New Orleans on Monday,
Speaker 7: this is the Monday after the Super Bowl, so a
Speaker 7: complete nightmare. But there was just an ocean of an
Speaker 7: ocean of out and proud Eagles fans. And the funniest
Speaker 7: thing I saw is that when I was waiting for
Speaker 7: me to fly in, there was this like half a
Speaker 7: full clothing rack, a leftover Chiefs merch.
Speaker 3: And all of the Eagles merch were gone.
Speaker 6: I will see that Chiefs merch again somewhere in like
Speaker 6: a resource pause setting, and it's from now.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, that's going to be the uniform of a
Speaker 2: future civil war.
Speaker 7: Literally literally Taylor Swift themed Kansas City Chiefs merch.
Speaker 5: Ah. Yeah, huge Alpha capital.
Speaker 2: It's so funny. Oh man, Well, I guess. Yeah. The
Speaker 2: big losers this week, Drake and unfortunately the nation of
Speaker 2: Ukraine and most of the rest of Western Europe. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I guess We'll start with the big news today, which
Speaker 2: is that Trump just had a really great call with
Speaker 2: Vladimir Putin, went super well. They're going to be meeting,
Speaker 2: maybe in Saudi Arabia. There's been some floating of the
Speaker 2: fact that they might meet at the White House, which
Speaker 2: I don't think it ends well for Putin if he
Speaker 2: visits the Uniteds. I don't think it ends well for
Speaker 2: anybody if he visits the United States. This country is
Speaker 2: too heavily armed and crazy right now. But they're doing
Speaker 2: this because Putin and Trump have evidently reached some sort
Speaker 2: of agreement about the end of the war in Ukraine. Zelensk,
Speaker 2: he was not really consulted on this. He's made a
Speaker 2: couple of statements like, yep, we're hoping that this is
Speaker 2: what pushes everything towards peace, but it's very clear that
Speaker 2: what's happening is Ukraine is going to be made to
Speaker 2: give up a decent chunk of their territory. Now they
Speaker 2: do have Russian territory still to bargain with somewhat, so
Speaker 2: it hopefully will not be a situation where Putin gets
Speaker 2: is entirely his own way. But that is kind of
Speaker 2: the what's happening. And the sea change that will accompany
Speaker 2: this is that new Secretary of Defense and Alcoholic Pete
Speaker 2: Hegseth made a statement and a meeting in Brussels that
Speaker 2: the United States will no longer be the guarante of
Speaker 2: peace in Europe. Specifically, he stated that we're not going
Speaker 2: to tolerate of an imbalanced relationship which encourages dependency. But
Speaker 2: this was an announcement that the post war sort of
Speaker 2: status quo is no longer something that we can rely
Speaker 2: on going forward, and that is a really significant admission
Speaker 2: from the sec deaff.
Speaker 5: Yeah, it's sick, it's pretty cool and it's gonna be great.
Speaker 5: It's gonna be great.
Speaker 6: If you're in the German arms industry, it's gonna be
Speaker 6: a banger year for you.
Speaker 5: You making simil.
Speaker 2: I think we could all agree the future is bright
Speaker 2: for German weaponry.
Speaker 5: Yeah, once again Germany will rise to its former glory. Hussah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you say that as kind of a joke, but
Speaker 3: like genuinely the fact that we are doing a bunch
Speaker 3: of stuff that is leading to the full re armament
Speaker 3: of the German army at the moment when the German
Speaker 3: fascist parties are like about to take power.
Speaker 2: When off Day is getting into power, Yeah, it's great.
Speaker 6: And the Luftwaffe hasn't even bother to change his slogo
Speaker 6: since the last time, so that's cool.
Speaker 2: Well, and what you bring up there me is probably
Speaker 2: worth discussing in concert with all of this, which is
Speaker 2: that AfD off Day, the Alternative for Deutschland, which is
Speaker 2: the new Nazi Party in Germany, is not the majoritarian party,
Speaker 2: but is taking enough seats that it is going to
Speaker 2: be included in the next governing coalition, which is something
Speaker 2: that has not happened in the post World War Two era.
Speaker 2: In the immediate aftermath of World War Two, every Western
Speaker 2: European nation basically came to a tacit agreement referred to
Speaker 2: as the Cordon sanitaire, which is when a right wing
Speaker 2: party starts to gain power, you do not coalition with
Speaker 2: them under any circumstances. Germany is actually like the last
Speaker 2: of the European countries to give up this idea. But
Speaker 2: the fact that the Cordon sanitaire has fallen in Germany
Speaker 2: is real bad news.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and the ADF, like it's worth mentioning, right, Like
Speaker 3: the ADF is so right wing and so nazi that,
Speaker 3: like the Italian Fascists to our empower right now, will
Speaker 3: not work with them.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, yeah, A bunch.
Speaker 3: Of stuff leaked a little while ago about these people
Speaker 3: at meetings openly talking about deporting every single Jew and
Speaker 3: every single immigrant from the country. Like these people are
Speaker 3: you know, I mean, they're just Nazis. And yeah, so
Speaker 3: now we're fucking handing them the fucking justification to fucking
Speaker 3: rebuild their entire arms industry. So yep, rich stuff.
Speaker 2: It is dark, I mean. And again when we say
Speaker 2: the Italian Fascist this is literally Mussolini's party, as in
Speaker 2: his granddaughter it's a member. Yeah, yeah, so, yeah, that's bad.
Speaker 2: I think that's probably most of what we can say
Speaker 2: about what's going on in Europe and with Ukraine right now.
Speaker 2: But it's not good.
Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah, it's not good. It doesn't point to a
Speaker 5: great future.
Speaker 6: And this is the multi polar world that like Russia
Speaker 6: has wanted for some time, like coming to fruition, right,
Speaker 6: and I didn't want to talk about. So there was
Speaker 6: a time when Vladimir Putin some as you remember, was
Speaker 6: sanctioned by the International Criminal Court for his war crimes
Speaker 6: in Ukraine the United States. However, the United States has
Speaker 6: not been a signatory to the Rome Statute, so it
Speaker 6: wouldn't necessarily have enforced that arrest warrant anyway. But this
Speaker 6: week Trump signed a little executive order titled in block capitals,
Speaker 6: as We've come to expect, imposing sanctions on the International
Speaker 6: Criminal Court. In doing so, he followed the example of Putin,
Speaker 6: who in twenty twenty three put out arrest warrants for
Speaker 6: ICC prosecutors after they put out a warrant for his arrest.
Speaker 6: Trump didn't cite the Putin example. He called the ICC's
Speaker 6: actions against Israel illegitimate and baseless. That's a quote He
Speaker 6: specifically called the warrants against UF Gallant and Benjamin Etting
Speaker 6: Yahoo baseless. He then went on to claim, quote, both
Speaker 6: nations are thriving democracies with militaries strictly adhered to.
Speaker 5: The laws of war. This is a thing that is
Speaker 5: not true.
Speaker 6: His order then goes on to outline what it calls
Speaker 6: protected persons for people who an't familiar at the United States.
Speaker 6: Person is distinguished from the United States citizen. It also
Speaker 6: includes any permanent residents. It also includes US Armed Forces
Speaker 6: government officials and contractors working on behalf of US Armed
Speaker 6: Forces contractors Yeah, yeah, yeah, the people who can do
Speaker 6: no wrong. It then goes on to include US allies,
Speaker 6: including all of NATO and sometimes contractors working on their behalf.
Speaker 6: It says that if the International Criminal Court investigates any
Speaker 6: of these people, Trump called the Clara National Emergency. It
Speaker 6: also imposes material sanctions and travel bands on both ICC
Speaker 6: prosecutors and people acting on their warrants, as well of
Speaker 6: the families of those people.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 6: Yeah, this is an unprecedented American politics, and sometimes it
Speaker 6: gets reported like it is. I want to throw back
Speaker 6: to what they called the Hague Invasion Act that wasn't
Speaker 6: its real name, but that was George Bush's. Like it
Speaker 6: authorized the President to use any means necessary to release
Speaker 6: United States people held by the ICC or at its request,
Speaker 6: So people studied calling it the Hague Invasion Act.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Trump did also sanction ICC prosecutors and their families in
Speaker 6: twenty twenty for looking into US war crimes in Afghanistan.
Speaker 6: I think that happened in June of twenty twenty, so
Speaker 6: you can be forgiven for having missed up because some
Speaker 6: stuff was happening at that time.
Speaker 5: Oh was it? Yeah, things were going down.
Speaker 6: I'm sure the Philadelphia Eagles were beginning their rise to
Speaker 6: glory again. That was a big thing. Kansas City chiefs
Speaker 6: were doing some racist shit shockingly, shockingly. I'm sure Taylor
Speaker 6: Swift was doing something too. But yeah, this is like
Speaker 6: Israel has for nearly a decade been trying to hack
Speaker 6: smea surveil and threaten the Court. In the show notes,
Speaker 6: I'll include a link to a Guardian article that came
Speaker 6: out last year about Israel's attacks and attempts to undermine the.
Speaker 5: International Criminal Court.
Speaker 6: And just if I've been talking about something and you're like,
Speaker 6: what is the International Criminal Court? Very Briefly, it's based
Speaker 6: at the Hague. So if you've heard, you know you
Speaker 6: will stand trial at the Hague. That's what they're talking about.
Speaker 6: It has its most immediate routes in the tribunals investigated
Speaker 6: perpetrators of genocides in Rwanda and Yugoslavia. The US and
Speaker 6: Israel are not members of the court. They never signed
Speaker 6: the Rome Statute. Russia withdrew in twenty sixteen.
Speaker 3: Curious time to withdraw.
Speaker 5: Interesting, fascinating.
Speaker 6: Yeah, they just decided that it wasn't for them, and
Speaker 6: off they went to do some war grants. The ICC
Speaker 6: has been criticized, probably reasonably, for the vast majority of
Speaker 6: the people who have actually been prosecuted for the ICC
Speaker 6: being outside of the core neoliberal states. Right, it's prosecuted
Speaker 6: a lot of people in Africa. That doesn't mean that
Speaker 6: like African people can't do war crimes in Africa, of
Speaker 6: course they can, but it means that they're held accountable
Speaker 6: more often than when countries in the global North do
Speaker 6: war crimes, which they can do too. Okay, So Trump,
Speaker 6: that's like everything else he does, was condemned internationally for
Speaker 6: this right, including by several NATO allies. In so much
Speaker 6: as they really are NATO allies anymore given everything we've
Speaker 6: just talked about. However, it's also worth noting that some
Speaker 6: of the countries like France, who condemned Trump's sanctioning of
Speaker 6: ICC prosecutors, also allowed someone with an ICC warrant I
Speaker 6: Benjamin that's in Yahoo to transit their airspace. So like,
Speaker 6: therefore commitment to the ICC perhaps can be questioned, Like
Speaker 6: this is a problem with the ICC, right it doesn't
Speaker 6: have an integral enforcement mechanism.
Speaker 7: Yeah, yeah, I mean like Canada previous sleep promised quote
Speaker 7: unquote promised, yeah, to arrest nat Yahoo if they were
Speaker 7: ever like able to, And like, yeah, I'm very curious
Speaker 7: to see how this is going to shake down with
Speaker 7: the US taking like an extremely firmer stance at least
Speaker 7: than we previously had.
Speaker 3: We already like you know, quote.
Speaker 7: Unquote like condemnic Canada, but like I'm interested to see
Speaker 7: Trump like be more interested in actually pushing this further
Speaker 7: than it has been.
Speaker 5: Yeah, I guess we'll see how it goes.
Speaker 6: For people who are unfamiliar, I do want to like
Speaker 6: really quickly mention that like Palestine is a signatory and
Speaker 6: therefore war crime to happen within Palestine and covered by
Speaker 6: the CORE. Even if states such as Israel are not signatories,
Speaker 6: right therefore, then they're still under the court to jurisdiction.
Speaker 5: So that that's how in this case this is happening. Yep.
Speaker 6: It could also make the ICC's life very difficult in
Speaker 6: terms of using technology, right that the tech back end
Speaker 6: of everything that ICC does. Try to remove that from
Speaker 6: any United States involvement would be very hard.
Speaker 7: Well, let's go on a quick out of break in
Speaker 7: return to talk about I don't know, the treasury or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's talk about the treasury.
Speaker 11: All right, all right, we are back.
Speaker 7: But before we talk about the Treasury, I first wanted
Speaker 7: to do some breaking news while kind of breaking. So
Speaker 7: when I was flying to New Orleans, I was able
Speaker 7: to fly past the brand new Gulf of America. It
Speaker 7: was a life changing experience. It really warmed my heart.
Speaker 7: And then luckily, a few days ago, Georgia Representative Buddy
Speaker 7: Carter announced legislation to empower Trump to enter into negotiations
Speaker 7: to quote unquote purchase or otherwise acquire Greenland and importantly
Speaker 7: to rename it Red, White, and Blue. Lind God, let's
Speaker 7: get some quick reactions from the panel.
Speaker 6: Sorry, as a person born in Europe, the idea of
Speaker 6: Buddy Carr authorizing the formation of Red, White and Blue Land,
Speaker 6: it's simply just like the fact that this is not
Speaker 6: a parody. It's just fucking too much for me.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, well, what it is is purposefully ridiculous.
Speaker 2: It's a it's a flex, it's a statement of the
Speaker 2: power that they have over their own party and the country.
Speaker 2: It is purposefully absurd and everyone is going to go
Speaker 2: along with it because the Chief the King supports it, right,
Speaker 2: Like that's the point in my opinion.
Speaker 5: Yeah, see empress new clothes of evading places.
Speaker 2: Like, it doesn't matter. We can be as silly as
Speaker 2: we want.
Speaker 5: Genuinely interested in hearing from people in Greenland.
Speaker 7: Yes, honestly, I'm kind of surprised because I would I
Speaker 7: would assume it. Maybe maybe this is still in the works.
Speaker 7: If Elon Musk can find a way to call this
Speaker 7: thing excellent, is really my concern.
Speaker 6: Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, but now I'm really interested
Speaker 6: in hearing from Greenland. Is genuinely You can contact us
Speaker 6: at cool Zone tips at proton dot me, which is
Speaker 6: an encrypted email address that you can send emails.
Speaker 3: To Yeah, all right, let's let's let's talk about Trump
Speaker 3: potentially crashing the entire world economy. He's taking more shots
Speaker 3: to just literally blow this all up. Yeah, okay, So
Speaker 3: let's talk about the treasuries thing and him potentially talking
Speaker 3: about not paying out our fucking treasury bonds. Okay, so
Speaker 3: many reason quotes from Reuter's so this is Trump. We're
Speaker 3: even looking at treasuries. Trump said there could be a problem.
Speaker 3: You've been reading about that with treasuries, and that could
Speaker 3: be an interesting problem. Now, treasuries again, our course, US
Speaker 3: treasury bonds. We will get to what those are in
Speaker 3: a second, but I need to read the rest of
Speaker 3: this quote. It could be that a lot of those
Speaker 3: things don't count. In other words, that some of the
Speaker 3: stuff that we're finding is very fraudulent. Therefore, maybe we
Speaker 3: have less debt than we thought. Now that's a very
Speaker 3: scary thing to say.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Treasury bills are the primary underpinning of like economic
Speaker 2: stability in this country. T bells are what large corporate
Speaker 2: institutions when they have a lot of cash. But like
Speaker 2: very wealthy people, it's where you park your money, and
Speaker 2: it's where foreign governments park a lot of their money, Like, yeah,
Speaker 2: and it's how our government gets a lot of its
Speaker 2: money because it's a good, reliable investment. So saying maybe
Speaker 2: we're going to declare some of these T bill investments
Speaker 2: bullshit is very dangerous.
Speaker 5: Yeah, for the global economy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, I want to read this next line because
Speaker 3: one of the things that's happening here, right is that
Speaker 3: people just simply and this has been a real problem
Speaker 3: for this entire administrations, people simply do not believe that
Speaker 3: he means to do the thing he says he's going
Speaker 3: to do.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Quote is this from Broiders. Again, it could be treasury payments,
Speaker 3: which is not linked the treasury bonds, said for shop Behani,
Speaker 3: investment chief for Asia at BNP Power Boss Wealth Management,
Speaker 3: I would be very surprised if they ever stopped a
Speaker 3: payment of treasury bonds to a holder. It would be
Speaker 3: like shooting yourself in the foot.
Speaker 5: He said.
Speaker 3: Now, this is something where these these institutional investors like
Speaker 3: they still have not quite wrapped their head around the
Speaker 3: fact that no, he really will do this shit because
Speaker 3: he doesn't understand at all. He thinks that American debt
Speaker 3: works the same way as like his own personal debt,
Speaker 3: and no it doesn't. I mean, it's it's worth saying something. So,
Speaker 3: I mean, just a very very basic shit about how
Speaker 3: national debt works. Right, Like all of our money, literally
Speaker 3: every single dollar that is in circulation, every dollar that
Speaker 3: is in a bank account, that is literally government debt,
Speaker 3: right like that that's what money is, right, And these
Speaker 3: treasury bonds are as you were talking about earlier, Right,
Speaker 3: this is like the investment asset for literally the entire world.
Speaker 3: And there's trillions of dollars of these. Actually Japan is
Speaker 3: the largest holder of treasury bonds. China's sort of been
Speaker 3: selling some of theirs, but they have a lot of them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, probably good to be doing that.
Speaker 11: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And it's also you know, like the fact that he's
Speaker 3: saying he's not gonna pay these yet, Like this can
Speaker 3: start a massive crisis in which I've been talking for
Speaker 3: a bit about. You know, every day we sort of
Speaker 3: get closer to credit rating agencies like downgrading the quality
Speaker 3: of US debt, which is a real problem for us
Speaker 3: trying to like get money from people. And and you know,
Speaker 3: even if you listen to what that what the sort
Speaker 3: of bond analyst is saying, right, he's like well, it's fine,
Speaker 3: they'll just stop paying like US debt to other things,
Speaker 3: which is like unbelievably unhinged. Would also in and of itself,
Speaker 3: like like destroying the full faith and credit of the
Speaker 3: United States would absolutely just fucking annihilate the world economy.
Speaker 3: And it's also another example of Trump not understanding how
Speaker 3: the empire he's inherited works, because like, the one of
Speaker 3: the ways the US funds is government is by getting
Speaker 3: its client states to buy like trillions of dollars of assets.
Speaker 3: Like that's partially why feelie. Look at who who buys
Speaker 3: US assets, Like it's China and US tributary states like
Speaker 3: Japan for example, which is just purely in American military protectorate. Right,
Speaker 3: it's a sort of incredible system for the US. Right,
Speaker 3: you get a bunch of people and you, you know,
Speaker 3: you just you just sort of perpetually keep borrowing money
Speaker 3: from them, And it's this thing where they don't understand
Speaker 3: and who actually holds the power in the relationship, which
Speaker 3: is that the US having all this, is the one
Speaker 3: with the power and is the one that's getting everyone
Speaker 3: else's money for this sort of secure asset. So you know,
Speaker 3: who knows what's going to happen with this. If this
Speaker 3: actually starts happening, like, yeah, this is the world rending
Speaker 3: economic crisis levels of stuff. Well, we'll see if he
Speaker 3: moves on it, he may simply forget about it, or
Speaker 3: we're going to wake up one day and like the
Speaker 3: US's credit's going to be downgraded to like junk bond status,
Speaker 3: and yeah, everything's going to be chaos. So, speaking of
Speaker 3: Trump trying to sort of like take shots at pillars
Speaker 3: of the global economy, starting in March, he's trying to
Speaker 3: implement a twenty five percent tariff on all imported steel
Speaker 3: and aluminum. Most of that's actually from Canada and Mexico.
Speaker 3: I think in their minds is the thing about Chinese steel,
Speaker 3: but it's mostly from Canada and Mexico. This is also
Speaker 3: a fucking shit show because the US manufacturing capacity that
Speaker 3: we still have and we still actually do have a
Speaker 3: decent amount of like very high tech manufacturing capacity, right
Speaker 3: relies on this stuff, and this is going to make
Speaker 3: it more expensive, gets bad. It will do nothing to
Speaker 3: deal with the fact that US doesn't produce steel anymore,
Speaker 3: which is the product of that. One day, I'll do
Speaker 3: my structural Chinese steel over capacity episode. But you know,
Speaker 3: it's the product of like half a century of the
Speaker 3: global manufacturing economy, you know, becoming zero sum and they're
Speaker 3: simply not being a large enough consumer market for all
Speaker 3: of industrial goods, which means the production becomes increasingly you know,
Speaker 3: it becomes impossible to expand production to one place without
Speaker 3: you know, getting red production another place. In Trump things
Speaker 3: you can solve those with tariffs. You can't. Mostly it's
Speaker 3: just another like throw things at the economy.
Speaker 10: Shit.
Speaker 3: Now, you know, Trump is sort of throwing bombs at
Speaker 3: the economic system. One of the largest ones that he's
Speaker 3: thrown is he just straight up stole eighty million dollars
Speaker 3: in FEMA funding that they had already paid out, Like
Speaker 3: just straight up stole it from like New York City
Speaker 3: bank account. They like, so we've been paid to the
Speaker 3: government in New York. Right, this happened earlier today. Right,
Speaker 3: This is yeah, literally literally, this this is breaking news,
Speaker 3: breaking news on Wednesday. This is coming out Friday. This
Speaker 3: episode is being recorded on Wednesday. Everything that you hear,
Speaker 3: if shit has happened in the US a few days,
Speaker 3: that's from the future.
Speaker 1: We didn't know.
Speaker 3: But yeah, yeah, he literally like they have taken eighty
Speaker 3: million dollars just from this bank account. They just stole it.
Speaker 3: The hospital government is just straight up robbing banks.
Speaker 2: It's okay that came out today and said that don't
Speaker 2: worry your bank accounts are still safe, everybody.
Speaker 7: Yeah, And this is like appropriated funds like for FEMA,
Speaker 7: being sayly secured in banks that have like literally been
Speaker 7: still funds so approved.
Speaker 5: By Congress for a specific purpose.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, And what's actually going to happen with this? Right?
Speaker 3: Because you would expect a even like a normal shitty
Speaker 3: mayor of New York to like go sicker mode. However,
Speaker 3: well man, however, comma, here's from Yahoo News quote. Eric
Speaker 3: Adams has said he will not publicly create size Trump
Speaker 3: or his administration. Instead, he'll take his concerns to Trump
Speaker 3: in private. On Monday, Adams convened a meeting with his
Speaker 3: own top officials to urge them not to speak badly
Speaker 3: about the President and public, saying if they were to
Speaker 3: do so, it could risk federal funding. Later that day.
Speaker 3: That same day, Trump's Justice Department ordered the prosecutors in
Speaker 3: Adam's criminal case to drop the charges against him, in part,
Speaker 3: arguing Adams must be free of the burden of his
Speaker 3: corruption indictment to help carry out Trump's immigration agenda in
Speaker 3: the city.
Speaker 5: Great.
Speaker 7: Cool, This is the most like quid pro quote thing
Speaker 7: I've ever seen.
Speaker 2: It is the single most corrupt thing I've seen out
Speaker 2: of US politics. Yeah, like blatantly, it's staggering.
Speaker 6: I mean it would come from Trump plus Adams, right, like, yeah,
Speaker 6: we'll go see it.
Speaker 5: That's what we're going to say. We've hit a singularity
Speaker 5: of corruption.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, it's stumbled as always the first stop.
Speaker 3: Yeah. The only way they can go further than this
Speaker 3: is that Eric Adams is going to appoint Rob Lagoyevitch's
Speaker 3: head of like bank robbery or something. One can dream, mia,
Speaker 3: one can dream.
Speaker 6: There are a few other ways they can go further
Speaker 6: with Yo, I'm afraid to inform youmya, but we'll be
Speaker 6: hoping those don't happen.
Speaker 3: Well on the corruption index, on the corruption index.
Speaker 7: Okay, speaking of corruption, let's pivot to ads. All right,
Speaker 7: we are back, and I'm going to close by talking
Speaker 7: about the war on Woke, my new favorite news beat.
Speaker 3: That I'm forced to addention to every week.
Speaker 7: There was a transports band that that that Trump did
Speaker 7: an executive order about using a whole bitch of children
Speaker 7: as a prop, very clearly trying to steal steal the
Speaker 7: charisma from whatever that governor who lost the election did
Speaker 7: with his free school lunch there anyway. Instead now it's
Speaker 7: you just you know, hurt other children in the school
Speaker 7: by not making them be allowed to play sports. So
Speaker 7: that happened, and then a few other things have happened
Speaker 7: the past few weeks, and I'm kind of just like
Speaker 7: catching up on because I been really focused on, like
Speaker 7: reporting on like Muscus specifically, and there's been a lot
Speaker 7: of other stuff the past few weeks, So I'm going
Speaker 7: to kind of get to that now. The State Department's
Speaker 7: travel website changed the acronym LGBT to LGB on a
Speaker 7: web page like warning about like how dangerous it might
Speaker 7: be to like travel to like other countries with like
Speaker 7: worse legal protections, say LGB travelers can face special challenges abroad.
Speaker 7: Laws and attitudes in some countries may affect safety and
Speaker 7: ease of travel. Many countries do not recognize the same
Speaker 7: sex marriage. Many countries don't recognize the ex gender marker
Speaker 7: in passports and do not have it systems at ports
Speaker 7: of entry that can accept sex markers other than female
Speaker 7: and male.
Speaker 6: So they've only changed the title pot. Yeah, they haven't
Speaker 6: even bothered to edit the text.
Speaker 7: No, because because they also have another info page where
Speaker 7: they have just like control ft LGBT two LGB as well.
Speaker 7: So this is this is like one of like many
Speaker 7: changes we're seeing across a whole bunch of federal websites
Speaker 7: in relation to Trump's order to like remove wokeness and
Speaker 7: gender ideology. Previously, the CDC removed like HIV and trans
Speaker 7: related like health info pages from their website, and as
Speaker 7: of yesterday, February eleventh, the web pages for the FDA,
Speaker 7: Health and Human Services and the CDC were allegedly brought
Speaker 7: back online, restoring their January thirtieth status. They did this
Speaker 7: like right before a court mandated deadline to restore these pages,
Speaker 7: so like I can I can now go back on
Speaker 7: to the.
Speaker 11: CDC's HIV page.
Speaker 7: Verge was first reported on this, and they said that,
Speaker 7: you know, they've been unable to verify that all of
Speaker 7: the pages have been restored exactly to how they were before.
Speaker 7: This is something that we're still working on because it's
Speaker 7: literally happened, like you know yesterday. This is this is
Speaker 7: like a small, a small part of their of their
Speaker 7: current war on wokeness. Another aspect of this is there's
Speaker 7: been a whole bunch of orders from federal agencies to
Speaker 7: ban specific woke keywords across their databases, their websites, training information,
Speaker 7: including from agencies like Noah. So just like the weather
Speaker 7: and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, they released a
Speaker 7: memo of banning specific words across the agency, including words
Speaker 7: like ability, acceptance, access, affirmation, aggression, ally shift, androgyne a,
Speaker 7: sexual belonging, bias, binary, bisexual, black culture, DEI, discrimination, diversity, empathy, empowerment, equity, ethnicity, fairness, gay, gender, genitisphia, handicap, homosexual, LGBTQ, intersex,
Speaker 7: pan sexual, queer, transgender, transvestite, as well as words like
Speaker 7: impartial inclusion, indigenous, intersectionality, justice, The word white has been banned,
Speaker 7: They space social justice, underserved communities, race, privilege, powerdynamics, the data,
Speaker 7: American multiculturalism. So just all of these Like again, this
Speaker 7: is like the Party of Free Speech has banned all
Speaker 7: of these words, and it's not it's it's it's it's
Speaker 7: not just Noah. Also, the National Science Foundation has has
Speaker 7: released my most saying that they cannot have these words
Speaker 7: included in their documents because it could cause them to
Speaker 7: lose grant funding.
Speaker 6: Well, it's the end for race science. Then they can't
Speaker 6: do race science anymore.
Speaker 7: There's a lot of similar words flagged in the National
Speaker 7: Science Foundation list of banned words, like activism, activists, advocacy,
Speaker 7: a barrier, a bias, black LATINX community, uh diversity, equity,
Speaker 7: cultural differences, cultural heritage, culturally responsive, diverse, you know, diverse,
Speaker 7: community divice groups, diversified, diversifying, all this kind of stuff, ethnicity, equality, inclusion, inequality, LGBT,
Speaker 7: institutional marginalize, trauma, underappreciated, stereotype type, systemic underrepresentation, undervalued victim.
Speaker 2: I love that you can no longer do scientific papers
Speaker 2: about systemic infections. Yeah, organs, Like yeah, no, there's anything.
Speaker 5: That has a barrier, Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 7: There's so many words that are just like used in
Speaker 7: like how like studies function that they cannot use because
Speaker 7: the word is too woke, and then they're gonna lose
Speaker 7: their funding. Like yeah, you can't, like you can't like
Speaker 7: look at like things being equal. You can't look at
Speaker 7: any kind of like scientific bias, Like you can't like
Speaker 7: this very basic stuff. It may just result in like
Speaker 7: the tiktokification of this, like trying to spell these words
Speaker 7: with like a different letter.
Speaker 5: Talking about cute little boots.
Speaker 7: So what it is, and like I'm laughing because it's
Speaker 7: all like absurd and it's kind of like kind of
Speaker 7: like a coping mechanism, but like this is all like
Speaker 7: very bad.
Speaker 3: Well, but like this some thing else, something else we
Speaker 3: need to talk about you, which is like like you
Speaker 3: are required by law as part of your grand proposal
Speaker 3: like have things that talk about like how this is
Speaker 3: going to affect different communities, et cetera, et cetera. Is
Speaker 3: a legal requirement for you to put that in your thing.
Speaker 3: So like if you were to like strictly enforce this,
Speaker 3: this kills every fucking grant. And this is this is
Speaker 3: one of these things where it's like you're literally just
Speaker 3: running straight into the federal law tells you you must
Speaker 3: do this thing, and the Trow Administration says these words
Speaker 3: are banned, and so like yeah, who knows, it's a
Speaker 3: really weird situation.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you can't do IRB right now. Like most guards
Speaker 6: will go through an institutional review board that will determine
Speaker 6: like if there are human subjects, they're like there ethical
Speaker 6: boundaries and like what you're doing is okay. I can't
Speaker 6: see it being possible to do an IRB and not
Speaker 6: say these words.
Speaker 7: Yeah no, and like we have to do scientific studies
Speaker 7: on like how how very disabilities affect people's lives, like
Speaker 7: very basic stuff like this, all of these types of things.
Speaker 7: It's really bad and these things like are going into effect.
Speaker 7: I know, like this is this stuff is still happening.
Speaker 7: Columnists to doctor Lucky Tran report quote, the CDC has
Speaker 7: instructed its scientists to retract or pause the publication of
Speaker 7: any research manuscript being considered by any medical or scientific journal.
Speaker 7: The move aims to ensure that quote unquote, no forbidden
Speaker 7: terms appear in the work band terms must be scrubbed. Great,
Speaker 7: it's all really bad, yep. And we're seeing this this
Speaker 7: sort of like lists being formed increasingly, including this DEI
Speaker 7: watch list put together by a conservative oppositional research group
Speaker 7: called the American Accountability Foundation CHRIST who released a DEI
Speaker 7: watch list, which publishes the names, photos, occupation, and personal
Speaker 7: information of mostly black employees who work under the Department
Speaker 7: of Health and Human Services When the website was first discovered,
Speaker 7: the employee profiles were labeled under targets. This has since
Speaker 7: been changed to dossiers like very very frightening, like very
Speaker 7: bad stuff, like very obvious intimidation for each target. The
Speaker 7: website lists a collection of alleged DEI offense, which includes
Speaker 7: donations to Democrats and social media posts having pronouns in
Speaker 7: their bio or previous work on since deleted diversity, equity
Speaker 7: and inclusion initiatives. Columnist Jamal Bowie says, quote, they are
Speaker 7: mostly targeting black employees. So this is quite literally just
Speaker 7: a repeat of Rigrow Wilson's segregationist purge of the federal government.
Speaker 7: And like, yes, like all of this, all of this
Speaker 7: like push against quote unquote DEEI is like very clearly
Speaker 7: just like white supremacists segregation in action. Like this is
Speaker 7: the whole point is that if any employee is a
Speaker 7: person of color, that means that they that they must
Speaker 7: be unqualified because they were hired only due to DEI
Speaker 7: and to avoid doing that, you could only hire white people.
Speaker 7: And Trump's Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy sent out a memo
Speaker 7: directing staff on where to direct like grant funds and
Speaker 7: he said, quote give preference to communities with marriage and
Speaker 7: birth rates higher than the national average unquote, which is
Speaker 7: a very clear dog whistle to just like only hire
Speaker 7: like white Christians are Christians with big families, you know,
Speaker 7: parenthesis like white people. This is like very very obviously
Speaker 7: what they're doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they're I mean, this is extending to the
Speaker 2: military now under Hegseth. West Point has just announced effectively
Speaker 2: the banning of a number of clubs, including the Society
Speaker 2: of Black Engineers, which is like three quarters of a
Speaker 2: century old something like that. Also ending programs that are
Speaker 2: focused on like recruiting into the military black soldiers but
Speaker 2: have like pivoted to recruiting from NRA gatherings, even though
Speaker 2: there's internal agreement that that brings in a lower quality
Speaker 2: type of.
Speaker 5: Say I've seen Sementara members.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I've seen a few NRA members, right, and
Speaker 2: I yeah. And it's just one of these things, like
Speaker 2: there's a very good book that I think people need
Speaker 2: to read if you want to know kind of the
Speaker 2: operational impact this is going to have, both on the
Speaker 2: US military and probably to an extent, law enforcement. We
Speaker 2: look at agencies like the FBI, there's a book called
Speaker 2: The Dictator's Army that heavily focuses on how changes like
Speaker 2: this impact operational efficiency, and the gist of it is
Speaker 2: that the goal, and clearly what Hegseth's job is, is
Speaker 2: to make the military into something that can't pose opposition
Speaker 2: to the new regime. Right, that's the goal here, because
Speaker 2: there's a very realistic understanding that the military was one
Speaker 2: of things that stopped him from maintaining power in twenty twenty, right,
Speaker 2: both because the military was not willing to be used
Speaker 2: to crack down directly on protests and because General Milly
Speaker 2: acted as a barrier to Trump's attempt to do a
Speaker 2: coup the last time.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 2: So you have an understanding which is very common when
Speaker 2: regimes like this takeover in democratic societies. In the early
Speaker 2: days of the Third Reich, the military was the primary
Speaker 2: concern Hitler had because they were not Nazis, right, they
Speaker 2: were conservative, but they were not in the tank for
Speaker 2: the Nazi Party, And there was a lot that he
Speaker 2: wanted to do that the military establishment at the time
Speaker 2: the Third Rich came to power wouldn't let him do.
Speaker 2: And that was that was one of the first things.
Speaker 2: And this this took several years, but that was one
Speaker 2: of the first goals of the Nazi regime and power
Speaker 2: was reforming the military as much as possible in their
Speaker 2: own image.
Speaker 7: And like so much of like what HEGGS is doing
Speaker 7: here specifically with like the West Point like club banning,
Speaker 7: it's like like these things are not like DEI. These
Speaker 7: things are like very old. These are like pretty like
Speaker 7: standard standard things that have been like roped into like
Speaker 7: what it means to like be in America. And we're
Speaker 7: now just seeing this like crusade against DEI being used
Speaker 7: to just reverse affirmative action and specifically select for white
Speaker 7: Christian applicants. Yeah, and like that's the entirety of this
Speaker 7: point here, Like they're they're using DEI as like as
Speaker 7: this like magical wand to frame things that are like
Speaker 7: pretty standard and like accepted parts of like how you
Speaker 7: do like hiring practices, how you don't do discrimination to
Speaker 7: just specifically only only like uplift white Christians. And that's
Speaker 7: part of this like very basic like Christian nationalist project
Speaker 7: that people like Heritage have been trying to do for
Speaker 7: a long time.
Speaker 3: I think it's also worth noting too that like the
Speaker 3: other thing that this mirrors, you know, and the like.
Speaker 3: Specifically in the way that this target's queer people is
Speaker 3: the Lavender Scare, which is a thing from like the
Speaker 3: sort of late forties through the sixties where the US
Speaker 3: is part of this like giant anti communist herge. It
Speaker 3: was on basically went through and found every gay government
Speaker 3: official and fucking ran them out. That's like another aspect
Speaker 3: of this whole thing, right, like the way these people
Speaker 3: understand the world. In order to sort of like purify
Speaker 3: their like white state, right like, you have to ord
Speaker 3: to the non white people, and you have to get
Speaker 3: rid of the queers, and you know, and people especially
Speaker 3: people who are fucking both. And so this is this
Speaker 3: sort of transformational project of changing this this sort of
Speaker 3: like just changing the composition of what the US is into,
Speaker 3: like and how its state functions, and how they can
Speaker 3: to like what level of violence they can bring about
Speaker 3: on people.
Speaker 7: And they've wrote these things together so closely now, like
Speaker 7: the anti trans like school executive order. Only the first
Speaker 7: first half the executive order was actually about the gender
Speaker 7: ideology stuff. The second half was aimed at curbing what
Speaker 7: they called discriminatory equity ideology d DEI. Basically it was
Speaker 7: proposing a program for quote unquote patriotic education across the country,
Speaker 7: basically trying to rewrite history to make like the United
Speaker 7: States like this, like noble historical project. H It's like
Speaker 7: stuff that they've tried to do before with that, like
Speaker 7: with that, like seventeen seventy six project that The New
Speaker 7: York Times reported on. Part of Trump's order called for
Speaker 7: quote an accurate, honest, unifying, inspiring, an ennobling characterization of
Speaker 7: America's founding and foundational principles, a clear examination of how
Speaker 7: the United States has admirably grown closer to its noble
Speaker 7: principles throughout history, the concept that commitment to America's aspirations
Speaker 7: is beneficial and justified, the concept that celebration of America's
Speaker 7: greatness and history is proper. And then the order goes
Speaker 7: on to try to ban the concept of white guilt,
Speaker 7: saying that like, teachers can get in trouble if any
Speaker 7: of their students feel guilty about things that people of
Speaker 7: like that same race have done in the past, and
Speaker 7: like making sure that teachers do not teach things in
Speaker 7: a way that could possibly make us students feel quote
Speaker 7: unquote guilt.
Speaker 6: They use the word children actually not students, which like
Speaker 6: is fundamentally something we don't do in education.
Speaker 7: Right.
Speaker 6: We refer to our students of students because we respect
Speaker 6: them as people. We don't think of them as like
Speaker 6: lesser than, especially when we're getting to the points where
Speaker 6: we're discussing things like race and equity, Like these are
Speaker 6: high school students, right, maybe we know we certainly do
Speaker 6: discuss these things in university, and like, it's fundamentally shows
Speaker 6: a complete lack of understanding of how education works to
Speaker 6: call them children.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I think it gets to what this is
Speaker 3: actually about when this is something that I would argue
Speaker 3: both Trump administrations were about, right if you look at
Speaker 3: when Trump like comes down the fucking elevator for the
Speaker 3: first time. So I think people may remember, like after
Speaker 3: Ferguson in twenty fifteen, there was Baltimore where there was
Speaker 3: you know, huge riots, massive convers with the police, like
Speaker 3: massive anti racist actions. And that's the that's like the
Speaker 3: thing that really truly tipped like a bunch of the
Speaker 3: Republican Party even further right from where they'd been with
Speaker 3: the Tea Party into into this into sort of trump Ism.
Speaker 3: It was, you know, it was a reaction to that
Speaker 3: and then this entire campaign, right, like all of the
Speaker 3: stuff that he's talking about here, you know, this is
Speaker 3: about twenty twenty, right, this is about reversing the gains
Speaker 3: that had beened, you know, and like obviously they were
Speaker 3: incomplete gains. One of the things that did happen was
Speaker 3: that a bunch of teachers were trying to change the
Speaker 3: way the US history is taught to reflect that this
Speaker 3: country was like again, a settler colonial empire built by
Speaker 3: slave labor, and you know that that expanded its territory
Speaker 3: through genocide, which is just this is just objectively true
Speaker 3: about how the US started. But the thing is, like
Speaker 3: that's not good for you know, these people's projects, right,
Speaker 3: Like saying that out loud is a fucking issue for them.
Speaker 3: And so you know, their their attempt to roll back
Speaker 3: everything that was gained from sort of the Black uprisings
Speaker 3: is culminating all of this shit with like the purge
Speaker 3: of black workers for the federal government, with all of
Speaker 3: these things ordering you and like that's why they're talking
Speaker 3: about all of these weird all they keep banning all
Speaker 3: these weird like terms that don't make any sense, Like
Speaker 3: we were talking about like empathy, right, so like, okay,
Speaker 3: so why the fuck are they talking about banning empathy? Yeah,
Speaker 3: because specifically these things come from the purges they've been
Speaker 3: trying to do in the education system, where they have
Speaker 3: a bunch of very specific grievances about like kinds of
Speaker 3: education stuff that teachers the teachers were implementing, particularly in
Speaker 3: sort of like middle and high schools.
Speaker 7: Well, I'm going to close here with two pieces of
Speaker 7: breaking news. One, like, earlier today, we learned that the
Speaker 7: NAH has finally has finally acknowledged that the grant funding
Speaker 7: freeze is illegal. And this is probably like due to
Speaker 7: pressure from like news coverage about all of the temporary
Speaker 7: restraining order violations through the continued freezing of funds, and
Speaker 7: now the NH is saying, because of these orders, we
Speaker 7: will resume funding. The first tro was like two weeks ago,
Speaker 7: on February first, So it's not like like they just
Speaker 7: learned about this. It's that they have in some ways
Speaker 7: like perhaps caved to pressure. Again, like, these executive orders
Speaker 7: do not enforce themselves, These are enforced by people at agencies.
Speaker 7: These things do do not do not become automatically enforced.
Speaker 7: So this is this is like one one step now
Speaker 7: you can go to a popular dot info who has
Speaker 7: been breaking the news on this specifically, and then some
Speaker 7: some breaking news that I have here on drop site
Speaker 7: quote unquote armored Tesla forecast estimated to win four hundred
Speaker 7: million dollars of State Department contract funds.
Speaker 3: What So, this could go one of two ways.
Speaker 7: This could either go a really funny way, yeah it's
Speaker 7: kinda sha or it could go a really sad way.
Speaker 5: Yeah I do.
Speaker 2: I do like the idea of a lot of Trump
Speaker 2: appointees being in Tesla's that are armored when the batteries
Speaker 2: catch and maybe the jaws of life can't cut through those,
Speaker 2: you know, yep, yep.
Speaker 6: Yeah it was. This is very funny because Trump went
Speaker 6: off on a on a cotangent about electric tank horrible idea,
Speaker 6: paintrat a couple of times, horrible idea. Yeah, Well he's
Speaker 6: had he's had to come to Jesus moment and he
Speaker 6: has changed his mind and he wants a more sustainable
Speaker 6: sure beast as they called it.
Speaker 2: What everyone always says, the problem with tanks is is
Speaker 2: that they don't explode enough when hit by munitions or
Speaker 2: by themselves, when not hit by being by themselves, just because.
Speaker 5: Batteries do that sometimes.
Speaker 6: Yes, yeah, you never know what you're going to get.
Speaker 2: I'm excited. This is going to make everything a lot
Speaker 2: safer for our our our men and women in Greenland.
Speaker 2: I'm guessing.
Speaker 6: Yeah, batteries. Batteries thrive in the cold, red, white and
Speaker 6: blue lid.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I do love the new m one a whatever
Speaker 2: seven abrams that gets four miles on a chart.
Speaker 5: And then again detonates wait.
Speaker 6: Six months to use a solar panel to field recharge.
Speaker 5: At least it doesn't get light for six months.
Speaker 2: Yeah, magnificent upwards of ten miles a year.
Speaker 7: Yes, yep, all right, well that is it for us
Speaker 7: today on it could happen here, James things. Do you
Speaker 7: want to talk about the tip point again?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
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