Speaker 1: Call zone media.
Speaker 2: This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly
Speaker 2: newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
Speaker 2: and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today
Speaker 2: I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, Robert Evans, and
Speaker 2: special correspondent Carlos Berrios-Pilanco, who we have had on a
Speaker 2: few times for regular episodes. This episode, we are covering
Speaker 2: the week of August 19th through August 26th. Robert, do
Speaker 2: you want to start us off with our tribute?
Speaker 3: Yeah. So before we get going today, as I'm sure
Speaker 3: everyone listening is at least broadly aware, Dolly Rebecca Parton
Speaker 3: Dean passed away the day before we recorded this on
Speaker 3: August 25th, 2026. Dolly Parton was more widely beloved than
Speaker 3: pretty much anyone that was still alive in the United States.
Speaker 3: Her death was met by immediate mourning from every side
Speaker 3: of society. And I do mean every side. President Donald
Speaker 3: Trump ordered all flags to fly at half staff and
Speaker 3: issued at least as genuine a statement of respect as
Speaker 3: he's ever put out about anyone, saying this is a
Speaker 3: true loss for millions of people. There has never been
Speaker 3: anyone like her and never will. It's hard to argue
Speaker 3: with that. The DSA also sent out an official in
Speaker 3: memoriam praising Parton as a hero to the working class.
Speaker 3: And you would find anyone hard pressed to genuinely disagree
Speaker 3: with that statement, too. Dolly was born in a one-room
Speaker 3: cabin in Tennessee, the fourth of 12 children of a
Speaker 3: dirt poor and illiterate sharecropper. She wrote more than 3,000
Speaker 3: songs in her life and had 44 career top 10
Speaker 3: country albums, which is nuts. But I wouldn't be talking
Speaker 3: about Dolly on this show, which does not do obituaries
Speaker 3: as a rule, if she'd just been a rags-to-riches entertainment
Speaker 3: industry success story. Dolly had the good luck to become
Speaker 3: rich and famous, and she would always emphasize that luck
Speaker 3: had a lot to do with it, even though she
Speaker 3: worked very hard. And she grew up poor enough that
Speaker 3: she never, ever forgot that had things been a little different,
Speaker 3: she would have stayed dirt poor. So she dedicated her
Speaker 3: life and her fortune to helping the least fortunate in
Speaker 3: our society. Parton established the Dollywood Foundation to improve education
Speaker 3: in Sevier County, Tennessee, and in participating classes, the dropout
Speaker 3: rate fell from 35% to 6%. She founded the Imagination Library,
Speaker 3: her best-known charity, and donated her 100 millionth free book
Speaker 3: to children in 2018. She helped build hospitals and universities
Speaker 3: and was the single highest dollar donor to research that
Speaker 3: created the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine. When getting vaccinated became a
Speaker 3: political hot-button issue, Dolly posted a video of herself taking
Speaker 3: the vaccine and performed a cover of her own song, Jolene,
Speaker 3: themed after getting vaccinated. She was also a longtime and
Speaker 3: vocal advocate for queer people. In 1990, The Sun, a
Speaker 3: British magazine, found out that her Hollywood chauffeur was a
Speaker 3: trans man named Jason Pirro. They interviewed him, and he
Speaker 3: told the magazine, Dolly has been good to me. I'm
Speaker 3: not real comfortable talking about myself. Dolly knows all about
Speaker 3: me and is a very nice lady. Even back in
Speaker 3: the 90s, Dolly Parton was comfortable openly supporting trans people
Speaker 3: and the rest of the queer community. Her song Family,
Speaker 3: released in 1991, is probably the first country music song
Speaker 3: to use the word gay, certainly the first to use
Speaker 3: it in like a positive sense of the word. And
Speaker 3: she had queer and trans employees as far back as
Speaker 3: the early 90s and talked openly about that. In 2016,
Speaker 3: she was interviewed by Chris as a party for Pride
Speaker 3: Source and said, I have many gays and lesbians in
Speaker 3: my own family, she revealed to me, and then she
Speaker 3: used a word that stuck with me for a decade now, ours.
Speaker 3: They're ours, and they're who they are, and we know
Speaker 3: they're wonderful, and they're like us. Some relatives back in
Speaker 3: the mountains, she admitted, still weren't quite sure what to
Speaker 3: make of it. She also told me casually, like it
Speaker 3: was nothing, which is exactly how she wanted it treated,
Speaker 3: that she had transgender employees on salary in her own company,
Speaker 3: years before most corporations would say that sentence out loud,
Speaker 3: let alone mean it. People came to her the way
Speaker 3: they used to come to her mama, she said, to
Speaker 3: be told it was safe to be honest. You need
Speaker 3: to let people know who you are and you need
Speaker 3: to come on out, she'd tell them. You don't need
Speaker 3: to live your life in darkness. Parton strenuously avoided direct
Speaker 3: political punditry when she could, but after the right-wing moral
Speaker 3: panic over trans rights ignited in the 2020s, she spoke out,
Speaker 3: stating her explicit and direct support for trans people. I
Speaker 3: know how important this is to them. That's who they are,
Speaker 3: she said. They cannot help that any more than I
Speaker 3: can help being Dolly Parton, you know, the way people
Speaker 3: know me. If there's something to be judged, that is
Speaker 3: God's business, but we are all God's children, and how
Speaker 3: we are is who we are. There's so much more
Speaker 3: to who Dolly was and what she did, from reinvesting
Speaker 3: royalties from Whitney Houston's cover of I Will Always Love
Speaker 3: You into the black community, after refusing to license the
Speaker 3: song to Elvis, to starring in The Best Little Whorehouse
Speaker 3: in Texas, arguably the best film about either Texas or whorehouses.
Speaker 3: She did it all in her life. I think the
Speaker 3: loss of Parton hurts so keenly because of the very
Speaker 3: thing I started with, though. The fact that her loss
Speaker 3: has been mourned across the aisle almost regardless of political stance.
Speaker 3: Dolly Parton was the closest thing our culture had to
Speaker 3: a secular saint, a Joshua Norton-like figure who could have
Speaker 3: waded into the middle of a deadly partisan riot and
Speaker 3: parted the fighting with her presence like that baby at
Speaker 3: the end of Children of Men. I might be going
Speaker 3: a little bit far with that last one, but in
Speaker 3: my research for this, I came across a recollection of
Speaker 3: Dolly by Roger Ebert that I feel I need to share.
Speaker 3: Roger Ebert, if you're on the younger side, was a
Speaker 3: very famous Pulitzer-winning film critic, and this is him talking
Speaker 3: about meetings that he and his partner Gene Siskel had
Speaker 3: with Dolly Parton. In Dallas for the premiere of 9
Speaker 3: to 5, I had an uncanny experience, and on the
Speaker 3: plane home to Chicago, I confessed it to Siskel. I
Speaker 3: had been granted a private half hour with Dolly Parton,
Speaker 3: and as we spoke, I was filled with a strange
Speaker 3: ethereal grace. This was not spiritual, nor was it sexual.
Speaker 3: It was healing and comforting. Jean listened and said, Roger,
Speaker 3: I felt the exact same thing during my interview with her.
Speaker 1: We looked at each other.
Speaker 3: What did this mean? Neither one of us ever felt
Speaker 3: that feeling again. From time to time, we would refer
Speaker 3: to it in wonder. And to close off, I think
Speaker 3: I should give us all some advice courtesy of Dolly Parton.
Speaker 3: Find out who you are and do it on purpose
Speaker 3: and do it with purpose. You got to know who
Speaker 3: you are because so many people try to emulate or
Speaker 3: copy somebody else.
Speaker 1: And that's what I got to say about Dolly.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Robert. For some less good. I mean, how
Speaker 2: do I say this?
Speaker 1: Some people who are less good than Dolly Parton. There
Speaker 1: are billions of them.
Speaker 2: Let's start with some small things regarding people who are
Speaker 2: not as good as Dolly Parton. Darlene Graham just won
Speaker 2: the runoff election for the Republican Senate nomination in South Carolina.
Speaker 2: Graham won with 52.5% of the vote, dominating in the
Speaker 2: eastern part of the state where Trump campaigned for her
Speaker 2: last Friday in Myrtle Beach. On Wednesday morning, the Department
Speaker 2: of State in partnership with the Department of Treasury, has
Speaker 2: announced the Italy-based autonomous anti-capitalist digital service provider Autostici Inventati,
Speaker 2: or the IA Collective, is now a specially designated global
Speaker 2: terrorist organization. To quote from Treasury, quote, Today, the U.S.
Speaker 2: Department of the Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced
Speaker 2: took action to counter the growing threat posed by violent
Speaker 2: far-left terrorist groups by sanctioning the IA Collective, an Italy-based
Speaker 2: entity that supplies specialized digital architecture tools and services for
Speaker 2: Antifa cells and other violent far-left extremists, including the foreign
Speaker 2: terrorist organization Palestine Action. The IA Collective also operates the
Speaker 2: web platform NoBlogs, which hosts many Antifa and anarchist communiques. Though, notably,
Speaker 2: the State Department has repeatedly asserted that Rose City Antifa
Speaker 2: used the NoBlogs platform online, and that is simply not true.
Speaker 2: What they are referring to is Rose City Counter Info,
Speaker 2: a separate website that is not affiliated with Rose City Antifa,
Speaker 2: which is used by local anarchists to make community bulletin
Speaker 2: board-style updates. I cannot emphasize enough that these are totally
Speaker 2: separate groups with often very different politics. But on both
Speaker 2: social media and official State Department press releases, these two
Speaker 2: groups have been conflated, asserting that Rose City Antifa used
Speaker 2: the AI collective tools to organize and incite violent and
Speaker 2: criminal acts. Something else I want to emphasize is that
Speaker 2: Palestine Action, the UK-based organization, is described as a foreign
Speaker 2: terrorist organization in the Treasury Department's announcement about sanctions regarding
Speaker 2: the IA Collective. And in that same announcement, sanctions were
Speaker 2: also imposed on Palestine Action, which the Treasury Department accused
Speaker 2: of supporting, quote, numerous acts of terrorism. But as of recording...
Speaker 2: Palestine Action has not been officially designated as a foreign
Speaker 2: terrorist organization.
Speaker 4: And then one thing from me, the Trump administration moved
Speaker 4: ahead this week with its plans to rescind the 2001
Speaker 4: roadless rule, which blocks road building in infantry roadless areas
Speaker 4: of national forests, not in wilderness areas or national parks,
Speaker 4: as some people have been reporting.
Speaker 1: And The new rule was proposed on August 18th with
Speaker 1: a public comment period beginning that day. The justification that
Speaker 1: they're going for with this is it will prevent wildfires.
Speaker 1: And I believe they're going for it will allow fuel
Speaker 1: mitigation to prevent wildfires. It's worth noting that there were
Speaker 1: already provisions in the roadless rule to allow for thinning
Speaker 1: of small diameter timber. What they didn't do is add budget.
Speaker 1: to do that, right? So like if they were making
Speaker 1: a serious attempt to do fire mitigation in so much
Speaker 1: as that is something we can prevent, which I don't
Speaker 1: think it is, then they would have added budget, but
Speaker 1: they haven't done that. It's just worth pointing out that
Speaker 1: the construction of roads will allow people to get into
Speaker 1: areas that were harder for them to get into before.
Speaker 1: And the thing that tends to start wildfires is people.
Speaker 1: So people being in these areas will allow people to
Speaker 1: start fires in these areas. I'm going to cover this
Speaker 1: more in depth on natural causes in a couple of weeks,
Speaker 1: but I wanted to flag it because the comment period
Speaker 1: will probably end soon after I do my episode. So
Speaker 1: if you want to comment and so much that matters anymore,
Speaker 1: I'll include a link.
Speaker 5: So in other news that has thus far wound up
Speaker 5: not really being news, President Trump has declared, quote, economic
Speaker 5: D-Day in his attempt to end the war in Iran,
Speaker 5: win the war in Iran. So in theory, economic D-Day
Speaker 5: is supposed to be a bunch of what are called
Speaker 5: secondary sanctions. Secondary sanctions are not just sanctions on a country,
Speaker 5: but are sanctions on any country that does trade with
Speaker 5: the first country, in this case, Iran. The specific focuses
Speaker 5: here are supposed to be, quote, cryptocurrency, technology, gold, aviation,
Speaker 5: and shipping. Now, the issue here is that if you
Speaker 5: are going to do... secondary sanctions against countries that trade
Speaker 5: with Iran. The actual largest target here would be China. Now,
Speaker 5: reporters repeatedly asked Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, who is nominally
Speaker 5: the person supposed to be running these sanctions, if he
Speaker 5: was going to name which countries there were going to
Speaker 5: be secondary sanctions against. Besant refused repeatedly. So these sanctions
Speaker 5: were supposed to begin later this week. But the administration
Speaker 5: has been, I don't know if slow-walking them is the term,
Speaker 5: but they have refused to actually impose any. They are
Speaker 5: claiming that they are not imposing any because they are
Speaker 5: giving countries time to comply voluntarily. But as of Wednesday,
Speaker 5: August 26th, there have been no actual sanctions imposed. Every
Speaker 5: conceivable joke comparing this to D-Day has already been made.
Speaker 5: Many actually, by the press corps, in an unexpected bit
Speaker 5: of bravery, there were several members of the press corps
Speaker 5: in various press conferences asked, hey, so D-Day was a
Speaker 5: surprise and you're announcing this. Can you explain this conflict?
Speaker 5: And they got a bunch of non-answers.
Speaker 1: So... Maybe this is the giant inflatable set of sanctions
Speaker 1: that they are using to draw attention from the actual
Speaker 1: set of sanctions.
Speaker 5: James, you unfortunately know significantly more about D-Day than every
Speaker 5: single person in this illustration can find.
Speaker 2: Oh my God.
Speaker 1: It's a thing that they make you do when you're
Speaker 1: a British man in your 30s.
Speaker 5: But if any sanctions actually come from this, we will
Speaker 5: let you know.
Speaker 2: But as of.
Speaker 5: As of Wednesday, August 26th, this is another failed attempt
Speaker 5: to win the war in Iran that seems to have
Speaker 5: been called off before it began. Speaking of tariffs.
Speaker 1: Tariff, don't like it.
Speaker 6: Rocket Casbah.
Speaker 4: Rocket Casbah.
Speaker 6: Tariff, don't like it.
Speaker 1: Rocket Casbah.
Speaker 4: Rocket Casbah.
Speaker 5: So the other big piece of big tariff news is
Speaker 5: something that we talked about a few weeks ago, which
Speaker 5: is the US's attempt to impose 50% tariffs on a
Speaker 5: broad swath of Canadian goods. Ever since then, the US
Speaker 5: and Canada have been in trade negotiations over these tariffs,
Speaker 5: and these negotiations have completely fallen apart as Canada has
Speaker 5: walked away from the table. Now, there are a bunch
Speaker 5: of reasons why These specific negotiations broke down completely. I'm
Speaker 5: going to go through some of them. One of the
Speaker 5: big ones is that one of the biggest sources of
Speaker 5: cross-border trade between the U.S. and Canada is the fact
Speaker 5: that in a similar way to the U.S. and Mexico,
Speaker 5: there is a lot of cross-border trade revolving around U.S.
Speaker 5: auto manufacturing, right? And Canadian auto manufacturing, a lot of Ford,
Speaker 5: General Motors, stuff like that. A lot of trucks are
Speaker 5: produced in Canada. The US was negotiating reducing the tariffs
Speaker 5: on Canadian automobiles to 15%, but they were only doing
Speaker 5: this for cars and not trucks. And so they wanted
Speaker 5: to leave the truck rate at 50%. And there were
Speaker 5: a whole bunch of very, very fancy trucks that American
Speaker 5: consumers buy and that Canada makes that would still have 50% tariffs.
Speaker 6: Sure. Yeah.
Speaker 5: This is one of the things that normally when these
Speaker 5: kind of Trade battles have happened before. Automotive stuff has
Speaker 5: been written out of them almost immediately because it's terrible
Speaker 5: for a bunch of American companies. But the administration was
Speaker 5: refusing to back down on this. And, you know, the
Speaker 5: Canadians walked out. They have wooden alcohol tariffs that are
Speaker 5: already in effect. There are going to be more tariffs
Speaker 5: coming on September 8th. More bafflingly, one of the big
Speaker 5: things that Trump has been on is trying to restart
Speaker 5: the Keystone XL pipeline.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Which Carty is like, no, we're not doing this pipeline
Speaker 5: unless we get a better trade deal. But then in
Speaker 5: a truly startling set of proposals, the U.S. wanted to
Speaker 5: be able to set Canadian steel tariff rates?
Speaker 1: Sure.
Speaker 5: The nominal argument here is that the U.S. is trying
Speaker 5: to like, quote unquote, stop the import of the flood
Speaker 5: of cheap steel from countries like China and And they
Speaker 5: could only do this if the Canadian steel tariff rate
Speaker 5: matched the American steel tariff rate. But the goal for
Speaker 5: this was for the U.S. to be able to review
Speaker 5: and set Canadian tariff rates and make sure that they
Speaker 5: match American tariff rates on other countries. Which, this is
Speaker 5: the kind of stuff you do to a colony? 51st state.
Speaker 6: Yeah. Can confirm. Very colonial thing to do.
Speaker 1: Shocking from America.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I've never seen a country do this, try to
Speaker 3: do this to another sovereign country like Canada.
Speaker 5: Yes.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: I don't think we did this to Iraq. I've never
Speaker 5: I've never seen anything like this.
Speaker 6: It's it's bizarre.
Speaker 3: The insistence that like, yeah, we have any sort of
Speaker 3: say in their international policy is de facto making Canada
Speaker 3: trying to make Canada agree that they're a colony.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 5: Yeah. It's very weird the way this is being written
Speaker 5: about in the American press, where they're like, oh, well,
Speaker 5: this is Canadian autonomy and sovereignty has become a political issue.
Speaker 5: And yes, obviously, there's no country on earth that would
Speaker 5: agree to this.
Speaker 6: No.
Speaker 5: Even the staunchest American, like Saudi Arabia, would not agree
Speaker 5: to let the U.S. dictate its tariff policy.
Speaker 1: No.
Speaker 2: It's absurd.
Speaker 5: And this has managed to accomplish the absolutely staggering feat
Speaker 5: of uniting... Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney with Doug Ford,
Speaker 5: the right-wing premier of Ontario.
Speaker 2: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 5: And also, because these people just hate winning, I don't
Speaker 5: have another explanation for this other than racism. Canadian negotiators
Speaker 5: claimed that the U.S. was trying to intervene in Canadian
Speaker 5: policy about the digital promotion of French films. Which is
Speaker 5: a direct attack on Quebec.
Speaker 1: On the Quebecois. Yeah.
Speaker 5: And a bunch of very, very important legal protections in
Speaker 5: Quebec about the French language. So they have somehow managed
Speaker 5: to unite a political coalition of Doug Ford, the Quebec separatist.
Speaker 2: And the ruling liberals, all of whom... It's pretty insane.
Speaker 2: It's unbelievable.
Speaker 5: They're just going systematically through every single conceivable political bloc
Speaker 5: in Canada and pissing them off. So these negotiations obviously collapsed. Obviously,
Speaker 5: the Canadians walked away. Obviously, there was almost total support
Speaker 5: in Canadian society for doing this.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Canadian nationalism is at an all-time high.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: This is really just... carrying over the sort of trends
Speaker 2: that we saw in the last Canadian election where Carney
Speaker 2: saved the liberals from like total, total and utter demise
Speaker 2: by feeding into this, this sense of like nationalism, like
Speaker 2: based on being under threat from Trump. And the guy
Speaker 2: who was running for the conservative prime minister was too
Speaker 2: associated with Trump. And so that, that really hurt them.
Speaker 2: And it, it, it built this really big coalition in
Speaker 2: Canada that, to push back against the conservatives as a
Speaker 2: way of pushing back against Trump and really put forward
Speaker 2: the Liberal Party as this counterforce to Trump's America and
Speaker 2: the attempted incursions into Canadian sovereignty, which Trump is still
Speaker 2: trying to do. And it's impressive how much Carney's been
Speaker 2: able to hold on to that coalition while ruling, because
Speaker 2: it's been over a year now. and stuff like this
Speaker 2: shows that it's, if anything, only gotten stronger in recent
Speaker 2: weeks during these negotiations. Pulling together Doug Ford, the Liberal Party,
Speaker 2: And the Quebecois into one united bloc is like an
Speaker 2: unprecedented piece of like national unity.
Speaker 3: The fact that other Canadians are backing up the Quebecois
Speaker 3: after fucking Trump tried to make restrictions that like the
Speaker 3: French language and can't like that.
Speaker 1: That's nuts.
Speaker 2: The fact that I'm going to be on the side
Speaker 2: as like a Midwest Canadian.
Speaker 1: It's nuts.
Speaker 2: Very impressive by Trump.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And I think what's interesting about this, right, is that like,
Speaker 5: you know, throughout Canadian history, there's been a bipartisan series
Speaker 5: of debates that have cut across You know, like as
Speaker 5: cut across every political party, there have been factions in
Speaker 5: both about whether the extent to which Canada was going
Speaker 5: to be sort of a branch plant economy of of
Speaker 5: the United States. And that's just over. Everyone at this
Speaker 5: point has has, you know, sort of unified and saying, no,
Speaker 5: we're not going to continue doing this, you know, to
Speaker 5: sort of cap this off. One of the demands from
Speaker 5: the Trump negotiators were that Canada would end this program.
Speaker 5: It's been doing this sort of this sort of by
Speaker 5: Canadian program. where they've been doing something that the U.S.
Speaker 5: also has been doing for ages of encouraging people and
Speaker 5: encouraging government contracts to go to Canadian companies, which has
Speaker 5: been intensified in response to sort of their– And Canadians
Speaker 5: have refused to do this. And instead, this has been
Speaker 5: intensifying attempts to sort of do whatever is possible to
Speaker 5: try to decouple the US and Canadian economies. Obviously, that's
Speaker 5: not something that's particularly possible in a macro sense, just
Speaker 5: because of the reliance on both, you know, oil exports
Speaker 5: and also the way that the auto sector is intertwined.
Speaker 5: But this has become economic policy in a way that
Speaker 5: would have been unthinkable even like five years ago.
Speaker 2: In specific, like the Buy Canada campaign to push for
Speaker 2: consumers just to buy products made either by Canadian companies
Speaker 2: or made in Canada has been a massive success. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Talking with my family in Canada about this, like this
Speaker 2: is penetrated into all parts of the country, including like
Speaker 2: the conservative Alberta province where my family lives, where, yeah,
Speaker 2: this is like a big thing. It's hard to understate
Speaker 2: how much of an impact that has had in the
Speaker 2: country's consuming habits in the past year and a half.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Trump has the ability to do this in an
Speaker 1: incredible number of countries, actually. He has created some fantastic alliances.
Speaker 1: He's been great for the maple syrup business.
Speaker 2: Let's go on ad break and then return for more news.
Speaker 1: Ads for poutine and maple syrup coming up.
Speaker 2: From your mouth to Katya's.
Speaker 1: Not at the same time. Maybe at the same time now.
Speaker 1: Maybe that's all they have.
Speaker 2: Carlos, welcome.
Speaker 6: Hello.
Speaker 2: What is your special segment for us this week on
Speaker 2: Executive Disorder?
Speaker 1: There was an American Colony segue that was hanging right there.
Speaker 6: You know what?
Speaker 2: My bad.
Speaker 6: From the soon-to-be colony of the U.S., Canada, to the
Speaker 6: current colony, Puerto Rico, on Wednesday, the U.S. Department of
Speaker 6: Agriculture declared that 26 out of the 78 municipalities in
Speaker 6: Puerto Rico were undergoing a drought disaster. Per the AP,
Speaker 6: more than 33% of the archipelago is under extreme drought,
Speaker 6: and another 30% is experiencing severe drought. So I should
Speaker 6: say that this emergency declaration has been a long time coming,
Speaker 6: and I wouldn't be surprised if it gets extended to
Speaker 6: other municipalities. Puerto Rico has been experiencing pretty bad water
Speaker 6: problems since forever, but they became particularly acute last year
Speaker 6: when more than half a million people lost water because
Speaker 6: of a broken pipe. Earlier this year, another break caused
Speaker 6: about 300,000 people to lose water, more or less. In
Speaker 6: my area, which is kind of outside of the metro
Speaker 6: where it's been most affecting, we lost water for about
Speaker 6: 10 days early in the summer. And now, because of
Speaker 6: a mixture of aging infrastructure that hasn't been fixed and
Speaker 6: a continuing drought, it looks like that might be the
Speaker 6: case again soon. At least we're stockpiling as much water
Speaker 6: as we can. So to talk about the infrastructure problems
Speaker 6: real quick, part of it is really due to how
Speaker 6: bad the system is. We lose about 60% of the
Speaker 6: water produced by the local water utility before it gets
Speaker 6: to people's homes, which is... It's become normal to us,
Speaker 6: but it's kind of crazy to say to other people,
Speaker 6: at least in my experience when I've talked about it
Speaker 6: with others. And quite a few of the reservoirs that
Speaker 6: feed us water have not been dredged in years. Yeah,
Speaker 6: and part of the reason the drought is going on
Speaker 6: is because of the Super El Nino, which has been
Speaker 6: causing temperatures across pretty much the whole world to go up.
Speaker 6: So I also want to talk about two pretty big
Speaker 6: investigations published by Aura Bogado of Injustice Watch, one in
Speaker 6: collaboration with Wired and the other in collaboration with The Intercept.
Speaker 6: To kind of set the scene, Illinois has this thing
Speaker 6: called the Trust Act, which generally prohibits law enforcement in
Speaker 6: Illinois from participating in immigration enforcement. This includes... not detaining
Speaker 6: or not continuing to detain any person based solely on
Speaker 6: whether they have an immigration detainer. They are not supposed to, quote,
Speaker 6: assist in any capacity with an immigration agent's enforcement operation
Speaker 6: unless required to by a judge's warrant or a federal law.
Speaker 6: Several other states have laws like this, essentially making them
Speaker 6: sanctuary states. However, as Bogada writes, this hasn't really stopped
Speaker 6: local officials from collaborating with immigration enforcement. In one case,
Speaker 6: a Riverton police officer ran the name of a 31-year-old
Speaker 6: immigrant for a law enforcement database due to a traffic infraction,
Speaker 6: only to get a phone call from the FBI almost immediately.
Speaker 6: The FBI agent was trying to see how he could
Speaker 6: help ICE detain the guy, the man who was stopped.
Speaker 6: The solution came from an outstanding state warrant the man
Speaker 6: had out for him. The police officer technically was not
Speaker 6: detaining him on an immigration base, but the outcome was
Speaker 6: the same. Per Borgato's reporting, since Trump came into office,
Speaker 6: officials from at least 75 agencies across Illinois have have
Speaker 6: collaborated with immigration officials by feeding them information. This has
Speaker 6: led to at least 150 people being put into the
Speaker 6: immigration system throughout Illinois, even though as a sanctuary state,
Speaker 6: it's ostensibly not supposed to do that. In another exchange
Speaker 6: reported by Injustice Watch, a Tinley Park officer was asked
Speaker 6: by an ICE agent for quote-unquote lead data on a
Speaker 6: person the officer had stopped for speeding. The officer responded
Speaker 6: with a bunch of information about the guy, including his
Speaker 6: address and phone number. and also told the ICE agent that, quote,
Speaker 6: his crew is doing work in Tinley Park currently. There
Speaker 6: are several examples of this kind of wink and nod
Speaker 6: collaboration by local officials with immigration enforcement for a variety
Speaker 6: of different ways, including emails or housing detained migrants at
Speaker 6: the request of the U.S. Marshals, then releasing them into
Speaker 6: ICE's hands. The second story published by Bogalo is much
Speaker 6: the same, but focused on county prosecutors' role in enforcing
Speaker 6: immigration law. Per her story, quote, state's attorney's office in
Speaker 6: one out of every six Illinois counties acted as valuable
Speaker 6: assets of federal immigration enforcement, sharing sensitive personal data about
Speaker 6: the people they were prosecuting without criminal warrants, public disclosure,
Speaker 6: or legislative oversight, and with no accounting of how often
Speaker 6: it happened or who was affected, end quote. Some of
Speaker 6: this came from simply answering when DHS agents came calling,
Speaker 6: while some prosecutors volunteered information of their own volition. In
Speaker 6: Marion County, one assistant state's attorney emailed the information of
Speaker 6: a man in a case he was prosecuting only for
Speaker 6: ICE to respond, quote, we'll take care of it, and
Speaker 6: detained him three weeks later outside his home, along with
Speaker 6: his 17-year-old son. The same prosecutor, per Injustice Watch, emailed
Speaker 6: the same ICE agent within 20 minutes after flagging the
Speaker 6: first person, saying, quote, I've got another potential. It's worth
Speaker 6: noting that per Bogalo, more than half of Illinois state
Speaker 6: attorney's offices said they had no record of contacts with ICE. However,
Speaker 6: what I wanted to highlight here was that even in
Speaker 6: states people would consider, quote unquote, safe because they're sanctuary
Speaker 6: states or sanctuary cities, the mechanism of the state continues
Speaker 6: to collaborate with immigration enforcement under the table. We've seen
Speaker 6: this in a bunch of places already, mainly for state, local,
Speaker 6: and municipal police officers doing this exact same type of
Speaker 6: thing across the country. But the prosecutor's thing, as far
Speaker 6: as I know, is pretty new, especially at this scale
Speaker 6: that Bogado reported on, right?
Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.
Speaker 6: So this kind of wink and nod collaboration is likely
Speaker 6: happening across the board in the United States. And we'll
Speaker 6: be hearing stories like this probably for years to come.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think like. People should be aware, I guess,
Speaker 1: I just want to say really briefly that like sanctuary
Speaker 1: jurisdiction laws are not necessarily doing what people think they
Speaker 1: are doing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like cops are going to cop.
Speaker 6: Yeah, absolutely.
Speaker 1: And, uh, you see this all the time with like
Speaker 1: when they put into, well, you know, the, the queries
Speaker 1: they put into flock when people query, look at their
Speaker 1: flock hot list and they just put like investigation or
Speaker 1: crime as the reason why. Like that is what's happening there, right?
Speaker 1: When your jurisdiction tells you that these flock cameras aren't
Speaker 1: going to be used for immigration. When the cop just
Speaker 1: puts in investigation, you have no idea what it's being
Speaker 1: used for, right?
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 6: Absolutely. And I should also flag that a bunch of
Speaker 6: sanctuary cities have specific ways in which they'll collaborate with
Speaker 6: immigration enforcement. So, for example, a big thing is Operation
Speaker 6: Stone Garden, where they use municipal, state and local cops
Speaker 6: to patrol the border. And sometimes, ostensibly, it's not supposed
Speaker 6: to be for immigration enforcement, but I'm pretty sure that
Speaker 6: it's happened across the US where it's being used to
Speaker 6: enforce immigration.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Or like look at NDAs, right? Like that's in
Speaker 1: theory a trespass thing. Top of it being, I guess
Speaker 1: it's a federal trespass in that instance because it's a
Speaker 1: military installation. For a citizen, that would be like a
Speaker 1: trespass thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of these ways or like the
Speaker 1: California Values Act has all these Carve outs in addition
Speaker 1: to like, as far as I'm aware, never having led
Speaker 1: to a prosecution, these sanctuary city laws of a cop
Speaker 1: or a prosecutor or sanctuary jurisdiction laws, they don't have teeth.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and insofar as sanctuary city laws did anything under
Speaker 5: the first Trump administration, it wasn't because of the laws themselves,
Speaker 5: it was because of the mass resistance to it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we don't fix this with sanctuary laws, and I
Speaker 1: think anyone who's telling you that that is the case
Speaker 1: is either lying to you or unaware.
Speaker 6: Exactly.
Speaker 1: I want to talk a little bit about some documents
Speaker 1: that the Deportation Data Project has obtained by Freedom of
Speaker 1: Information Act request, and they show us some data about
Speaker 1: ICE detentions. One of the things they show is that
Speaker 1: ICE is focusing more and more on people with no
Speaker 1: criminal record rather than, as they claim, focusing on people
Speaker 1: with convictions. As of July, the majority of ICE arrests
Speaker 1: were people with no convictions and no pending charges. This
Speaker 1: comes in the same week as the Fourth Circuit. Post-Chevron
Speaker 1: ruled that if a person's criminal conviction is vacated for
Speaker 1: any reason, that eliminates immigration consequences coming from that conviction.
Speaker 1: That would only be in the Fourth Circuit right now, right?
Speaker 2: It was reported today in a few outlets that July
Speaker 2: had the highest number of ICE arrests, almost 50,000.
Speaker 1: That's correct. Yeah, yeah. And it's very interesting. June saw
Speaker 1: the previous record, right? And then July saw an even
Speaker 1: higher record. Specifically, I'm looking at detention bookings there.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 1: So it is possible that someone could be booked in
Speaker 1: having previously been detained once, right? We can't sum all
Speaker 1: of these months. It's unlikely, but like Flores, right? The
Speaker 1: Flores settlement governs detention of minors. But I don't think
Speaker 1: there's a prohibition on re-detention under Flores, as I understand it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, as you said, these are the highest numbers
Speaker 1: that we've seen in this Trump administration. The data set
Speaker 1: I was looking at goes back to 2022, but I
Speaker 1: would be shocked if there were pre-2022 numbers that were
Speaker 1: higher than this. So I think it's probably pretty safe
Speaker 1: to say these are the highest numbers ever. It's interesting
Speaker 1: to break it down by state, which I did. A
Speaker 1: lot of that increase came in Texas and Florida. if
Speaker 1: you graph the number of bookings by state by month,
Speaker 1: you see huge spikes in Texas and Florida. Texas has
Speaker 1: always been the highest rate. It's a vast state. It
Speaker 1: has a large migrant population. You have support from local
Speaker 1: law enforcement. But the Florida peak was particularly notable, as
Speaker 1: were Arizona and Georgia. California, by contrast, didn't go up
Speaker 1: as much. And I want to get in a little bit.
Speaker 1: I'm going to go through some more data and tell
Speaker 1: us more about what this tells us about how ICE
Speaker 1: is going about things now. The number of people in
Speaker 1: detention is lower than its peak of January this year.
Speaker 1: This is probably due to the all-time high number of
Speaker 1: book outs from detention in July. The vast majority of
Speaker 1: those were removals. Some of them, people who bonded out,
Speaker 1: the vast bulk of those are going to be removals.
Speaker 1: We can also see certain detention facilities growing in population,
Speaker 1: notably Camp East Montana a few months ago. I reported
Speaker 1: on the GAO report, Government Accountability Office report, which highlighted
Speaker 1: how terrible conditions were there. As far as I know,
Speaker 1: still called Montana, not Montagna. I don't know if that's
Speaker 1: just they don't have the capacity to add accents or
Speaker 1: if maybe they go for something else there. Overall, this
Speaker 1: data shows that the ice surge in July was really huge.
Speaker 1: And it shows us a little bit about this home
Speaker 1: and era approach, right? They're not doing what Bovino did,
Speaker 1: which was gratuitously using violence and crowd control and a
Speaker 1: highly visible militarized presence in blue states. They are doing
Speaker 1: this in red states as well, and they're doing it
Speaker 1: in a less sort of confrontational way. Not that it's
Speaker 1: not confrontational to grab someone and tear their family apart.
Speaker 1: Of course it is, right? But Bovino was trying to
Speaker 1: manufacture media moments. Yeah, less of a public spectacle, I guess. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Bovino has been about the spectacle for years, right? Like
Speaker 1: he had in the Biden administration, he had social media
Speaker 1: people on his payroll in the El Centro sector and
Speaker 1: video content creators. So like Homan is going about this differently,
Speaker 1: but clearly he is very effective at what he is
Speaker 1: trying to do. And it has been harder for people
Speaker 1: to oppose, said Pavino, it's like flood a city with
Speaker 1: Border Patrol guys in plague carriers approach. DHS OIG, that's
Speaker 1: the Office of the Inspector General of the Department of
Speaker 1: Homeland Security, has also released a report this month detailing
Speaker 1: how the focus on deportation, so all costs, has impacted
Speaker 1: the fentanyl market. So the report, which looked at how HSI,
Speaker 1: that's Homeland Security Investigations, has used expensive technologies, spoiler, it hasn't,
Speaker 1: concluded that, quote, As ICE shifted priorities towards immigration enforcement,
Speaker 1: HSI's level of effort on fentanyl declined from fiscal years
Speaker 1: 2024 to 2025. Fentanyl investigations decreased by 24%, investigative hours
Speaker 1: spent countering fentanyl decreased by approximately 30%, and fentanyl seizures
Speaker 1: decreased by 39%. Indeed, there are fewer HSI agents doing
Speaker 1: fentanyl investigations now than there were in some years under Biden.
Speaker 1: which is remarkable when you look at how massive the
Speaker 1: budget for DHS is, right? And how aggressively they've been
Speaker 1: recruiting people.
Speaker 2: Well, no, James, they have to infiltrate the Sunrise Movement meetings.
Speaker 2: That's more important for national security.
Speaker 1: They're sitting in cars outside memorials to Alex Peretti taking pictures.
Speaker 1: The report also looked at a school called Raven. The
Speaker 1: N is lowercase, the rest is not. You could ask
Speaker 1: me why and I wouldn't be able to tell you.
Speaker 1: It's a group of analytical tools It stated that, quote,
Speaker 1: from fiscal years 2022 to 2025, HSI spent more than
Speaker 1: $ 150 million developing the Raven platform. It was not widely used.
Speaker 1: Most of the offices surveyed abandoned using it altogether and
Speaker 1: complained that it, quote, did not work and, quote, crashed.
Speaker 5: Hell yeah.
Speaker 1: We'd love to see it. Yeah, it goes into, like,
Speaker 1: I think this is probably something that we're going to
Speaker 1: see more, right, as we continue on. like massively inflating
Speaker 1: the budgets of these agencies that they will just do
Speaker 1: things that end up being like a bridge to nowhere.
Speaker 1: But their attempt at some like highly sophisticated analytical tool
Speaker 1: platform that would generate leads seems to have completely failed.
Speaker 1: They're not using it anymore.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. Something I did not mention in yesterday's episode
Speaker 2: about the ICE surveillance in Minnesota is like DHS's use
Speaker 2: of Clearview AI to do some like analysis of suspects.
Speaker 2: which identified people with similar names but are different human
Speaker 2: beings in the clear few AI reports when they were
Speaker 2: looking into anti-ice protesters.
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe this is what led to the famous case
Speaker 1: of Olivia Rodrigo getting detained at the border a few
Speaker 1: years ago.
Speaker 5: It used to be humans detaining a second guy named
Speaker 5: John Smith on the Do Not Fly list.
Speaker 1: Now it's automated. Yeah, those people have lost their jobs
Speaker 1: and it's very sad. But yeah, they love to use AI, right?
Speaker 1: They use AI in their surveillance at the border. I'm
Speaker 1: sure we'll see a bunch of money thrown at AI
Speaker 1: shit that will end up going nowhere in the next
Speaker 1: two years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I would not be surprised if some of
Speaker 2: the budget increases that they have received might go to
Speaker 2: some of the things that I will discuss in the
Speaker 2: next segment after this ad break. All right, we are back.
Speaker 2: Let's return to our show's namesake because there's a big
Speaker 2: update on Trump's March executive order to restrict mail-in voting.
Speaker 2: Earlier this week, the Supreme Court lifted one injunction blocking
Speaker 2: parts of this executive order. But as of recording, there
Speaker 2: is another injunction in a separate case that still remains
Speaker 2: in place. However, these injunctions relate to different parts of
Speaker 2: the same executive order. So the entirety of the order
Speaker 2: is not blocked by courts, and parts of it may
Speaker 2: now be able to go into effect possibly before the midterms.
Speaker 2: Let's start by talking about the injunction that the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court just lifted. A group of 23 states sued the
Speaker 2: government over Trump's executive order on mail-in voting for infringing
Speaker 2: on the state's authority to administer elections. A district court
Speaker 2: agreed and blocked the executive order. But on Monday, the
Speaker 2: conservative majority ruled 6-3 in a shadow docket, unsigned ruling,
Speaker 2: finding that the states and the lower court lacked the
Speaker 2: legal authority to block the executive order because no harms
Speaker 2: have yet come as a result of the executive order. Basically,
Speaker 2: it was too soon to file a challenge because the
Speaker 2: order hadn't yet gone into effect.
Speaker 6: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 2: And the plaintiffs had yet to suffer any injury.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And, like, that's the whole fucking point of the shadow docket.
Speaker 2: Oh my god. It's based on the idea that the
Speaker 2: applicant faces serious, irreparable harm if the emergency order is
Speaker 2: not granted. Like, the main example of this is, like,
Speaker 2: if someone's facing execution on death row. But under the
Speaker 2: logic of the conservative justices in this court ruling, such
Speaker 2: an inmate wouldn't have the grounds to stay their execution
Speaker 2: because they haven't died yet. Mm-hmm. It's completely batshit. This
Speaker 2: is not how these rulings usually work. And having this
Speaker 2: ruling on the shadow docket itself is just like insults
Speaker 2: to injury. The majority wrote that the state's supposed concrete injury.
Speaker 2: was in fact only a, quote, unduly long chain of inferences.
Speaker 2: So this ruling from the Supreme Court will now allow
Speaker 2: DHS to create and send, quote unquote, state citizenship lists
Speaker 2: to each state 60 days ahead of upcoming federal elections.
Speaker 2: cataloging each person in every state who DHS believes is
Speaker 2: eligible to vote. Now, the Supreme Court does note that, quote,
Speaker 2: states are not required to use the lists, unquote. But
Speaker 2: just the existence of these lists and the creation of
Speaker 2: them could be incredibly troubling. Of course, they could be
Speaker 2: used in the future. But as James has discussed, we
Speaker 2: do not have a single list of U.S. citizens. And
Speaker 2: the idea that DHS might be trying to, and in
Speaker 2: fact is now allowed to make such a list for
Speaker 2: a specific purpose, could have a lot of far-reaching ramifications,
Speaker 2: even beyond elections. It's also important to know that as
Speaker 2: of the Supreme Court's new ruling, the Attorney General will now, quote,
Speaker 2: prioritize the investigation and, as appropriate, the prosecution. of state
Speaker 2: and local officials or any others who issue federal ballots
Speaker 2: to ineligible voters. So even if states are not required
Speaker 2: to use these citizenship lists from DHS, Trump is still
Speaker 2: effectively compelling states to follow these lists or else they
Speaker 2: could face prosecution.
Speaker 6: Yep.
Speaker 2: In the ruling, the conservative majority wrote that the lower
Speaker 2: court concluded states did suffer a present injury because it
Speaker 2: required them to, quote, begin planning now how to comply
Speaker 2: with the order, unquote. But the Supreme Court stated that states, quote,
Speaker 2: cannot manufacture standing merely by inflicting harm on themselves based
Speaker 2: on their fears of hypothetical future harm that is certainly
Speaker 2: not impending. This is wild. This is a wild thing
Speaker 2: to say. That states are only suffering harm because they're
Speaker 2: trying to figure out how to comply with the order
Speaker 2: as written. And they're just doing that to themselves as
Speaker 2: opposed to that being imposed from the president.
Speaker 1: Right. So the suggestion is that they would just be like,
Speaker 1: will not comply, see you in court when this comes in,
Speaker 1: I guess. That will be how they should approach this.
Speaker 2: And that is maybe what they are going to do
Speaker 2: going forward because there is now a new lawsuit, which
Speaker 2: I will discuss in a second, regarding some of these issues.
Speaker 2: And again, the whole argument from the conservative court is
Speaker 2: that basically no harm has yet been done, so they
Speaker 2: can't file a challenge. However, because this is a shadow
Speaker 2: docket ruling, the court did find that this injunction was
Speaker 2: would cause the government to likely suffer irreparable harm if
Speaker 2: the stay isn't granted.
Speaker 5: I love our just, like, cartoon Calvin Ball ruling legal body.
Speaker 2: It's one of the most cartoon rulings I've looked at.
Speaker 2: And we've looked at a lot of cartoon rulings this year.
Speaker 6: Yeah, that's almost the only rulings we get anymore.
Speaker 5: Oh, man, yeah.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now, the court does note, quote, the court's disposition of
Speaker 2: this application... does not mean that any measure taken by
Speaker 2: the government to implement the order will necessarily be lawful.
Speaker 2: On that score, time will tell. But the order itself
Speaker 2: does not harm the states, so the district court lacks
Speaker 2: justification to bar the government from trying to implement it, unquote.
Speaker 2: So they admit that in the implementation of this executive order,
Speaker 2: it might violate the constitution, right? The government, the federal
Speaker 2: government might violate laws. But just the order as written
Speaker 2: can't do anything because it's just text. It can't actually
Speaker 2: do anything. So you can't challenge it. So that's all bad.
Speaker 2: But let's talk about kind of the other half of this.
Speaker 2: So this ruling did not address the part of the
Speaker 2: executive order requiring the post office to review the eligibility
Speaker 2: of voters before sending them an absentee ballot. And there's
Speaker 2: a separate injunction by the same lower court judge blocking
Speaker 2: the Postal Service from implementing their proposed rule change in
Speaker 2: accordance with Trump's executive order. This executive order directed the
Speaker 2: Postal Service to, quote, initiate a proposed rulemaking that includes several, quote, unquote,
Speaker 2: proposed provisions, including a new requirement that outbound absentee ballots
Speaker 2: feature a unique barcode to facilitate tracking. And Trump told
Speaker 2: the Postal Service to not mail any ballots. to people
Speaker 2: who are not on a list of eligible U.S. citizen voters. Now,
Speaker 2: in the Supreme Court's ruling on that other injunction, the
Speaker 2: conservative majority wrote, quote, And, well, well, well, last Friday,
Speaker 2: the Postal Service outlined and published their new final rule. Quote,
Speaker 2: The rule introduces new mail piece preparations requirements and data
Speaker 2: reporting standards for federal ballot mail that must be satisfied
Speaker 2: prior to presenting outbound federal ballot mail for acceptance into
Speaker 2: the mail stream, unquote. So the new rule requires states
Speaker 2: to use standardized mail-in ballot envelope designs to be compatible
Speaker 2: with automated processing to display a consistent election mail logo
Speaker 2: and an intelligent mail barcode. State and local election officials
Speaker 2: will also have to use a new federal ballot mail
Speaker 2: portal to administer absentee ballots. And this portal will be
Speaker 2: used for two things. This is like a digital portal.
Speaker 2: State officials will use the portal to certify the design
Speaker 2: of their new envelopes in accordance with the new requirements
Speaker 2: and must provide the name and address of the voter
Speaker 2: as found on the outbound federal mail ballot envelope. the
Speaker 2: issuing state and the barcode on the outbound and return
Speaker 2: federal ballot mail envelopes prior to presenting an outbound federal
Speaker 2: ballot mailing for acceptance. So that's the data states have
Speaker 2: to submit to the Postal Service. It is a name, address,
Speaker 2: the barcode and the state. That does not go as
Speaker 2: far as what Trump's executive order wanted the Postal Service
Speaker 2: to go. But this is going to be a new
Speaker 2: step or at least a new process to do some
Speaker 2: of the same steps that have already been kind of
Speaker 2: been done in like an ad hoc manner. And rather
Speaker 2: than this following a 60-day deadline as set in Trump's
Speaker 2: executive order, the Postal Service's final rule contains an optional
Speaker 2: 90-day notice for states to tell the Postal Service that
Speaker 2: they'll be using mail-in ballots and a recommended 30-day soft
Speaker 2: deadline to upload voter data into this new portal and
Speaker 2: before the Postal Service will accept any mail-in ballots. And importantly,
Speaker 2: if states do not follow the new proposed rulemaking, the
Speaker 2: Post Office just will not accept mail-in ballots. Quote, The
Speaker 2: Postal Service will generally not accept outbound federal ballot mailings
Speaker 2: unless compliance with the rule's new standards has been verified.
Speaker 2: Meaning they have to upload that data into the portal
Speaker 2: and have these new envelopes. Now, the rule does note, quote,
Speaker 2: the Postal Service will not play any role in determining
Speaker 2: voter eligibility, maintaining voter rules, or counting ballots, unquote. So
Speaker 2: they're not directly, as of how this rule is written,
Speaker 2: they're not going to be directly reviewing citizenship lists when
Speaker 2: they receive those ballots, but they will have the name
Speaker 2: and the address and the state and the barcode. And
Speaker 2: even if the Postal Service themselves will not be verifying eligibility,
Speaker 2: That doesn't mean Trump officials won't ever use this new
Speaker 2: centralized mail-in ballot portal database for other purposes in the future.
Speaker 2: The published final rule says that the post office is
Speaker 2: ready to implement this rule after the government obtains timely
Speaker 2: relief from the lower court injunction in preparation for the
Speaker 2: 2026 election, which has yet to happen as of recording.
Speaker 2: But on Wednesday morning, a few hours ago, 23 states
Speaker 2: have sued over the final rule, over this new rule,
Speaker 2: as the Supreme Court told them they could once this
Speaker 2: rule was published. So again, this rule does not go
Speaker 2: as far as what Trump wanted, but it does open
Speaker 2: the door for certain things. And combined with the DHS
Speaker 2: citizenship lists and the Attorney General being able to prosecute
Speaker 2: people who do not essentially follow those lists at the
Speaker 2: state level, This could be combined with aspects of Trump's
Speaker 2: executive order to make mail-in voting more difficult and introduce very, very,
Speaker 2: very severe penalties for states that don't follow what the
Speaker 2: executive order is outlining.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is great. This has been part of the
Speaker 1: project for a while, right?
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Attacking elections has been the thing that has been like
Speaker 1: the cost of entry into the Republican Party since 2020.
Speaker 3: They hate the idea of people voting.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a free and fair election is something you
Speaker 1: have to be opposed to.
Speaker 3: Like that's the most disgusting thing that a conservative can
Speaker 3: imagine today.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I'm sure like if I had to guess, we will
Speaker 1: see a lot more visible eye stuff again, give it
Speaker 1: a couple months, you know, right before the election. That
Speaker 1: wouldn't shock me at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Quick update here.
Speaker 2: After recording... a federal judge lifted that final injunction blocking
Speaker 2: parts of Trump's executive order. So now the administration is
Speaker 2: fully cleared to implement aspects of that order ahead of
Speaker 2: the midterms. That new 23-state lawsuit will target the Postal
Speaker 2: Service's final rule, which can now be implemented following the
Speaker 2: lifting of the injunction. For our last section, let's turn
Speaker 2: to the U.S. military. Let's start with Carlos.
Speaker 6: The oceans around the U.S. have once again become killing
Speaker 6: fields because the U.S. military carried out two strikes against
Speaker 6: vessels in the Pacific and the Caribbean that it alleges,
Speaker 6: without publishing any proof, were trafficking drugs. The first strike
Speaker 6: was in the Pacific on Sunday, and it was the
Speaker 6: first one of these strikes in roughly two months. Meanwhile,
Speaker 6: the second was in the Caribbean on Tuesday. Per The Guardian,
Speaker 6: this brings a total to 68 strikes with an overall
Speaker 6: death toll of at least 227 people since the strikes
Speaker 6: began in September of last year. These strikes come at
Speaker 6: the same time as the U.S. announced that Colombia, Guatemala,
Speaker 6: and Honduras agreed to allow joint military operations against criminal
Speaker 6: groups on their soil. It's worth noting that, per The Guardian,
Speaker 6: Guatemala denied reaching such a deal. Ecuador launched these operations
Speaker 6: earlier in March. And right before we started recording, the
Speaker 6: Ecuadorian police announced that it had dealt a, quote, strong
Speaker 6: blow against organized crime through operations Factoría and Jericho with
Speaker 6: international cooperation of the DEA and Southcom that led to
Speaker 6: the arrest of 43 people.
Speaker 2: Robert, do you want to close this out? Yeah.
Speaker 3: So as I'm going to guess, everybody remembers about six
Speaker 3: months ago, Iranian strikes crippled a U.S. base in Bahrain
Speaker 3: and damaged a major logistics hub. This is part of
Speaker 3: why the Abraham Lincoln has been running short of supplies
Speaker 3: and has been just out of a bunch of stuff
Speaker 3: because they had to redirect and move supply. We talked
Speaker 3: about this last week to the base in Diego Garcia.
Speaker 3: One of the other things that happened after that base
Speaker 3: in Bahrain was struck is that the U.S. Navy found
Speaker 3: themselves planning a hasty evacuation for roughly 1,300 family members
Speaker 3: of servicemen and women, as well as civilian employees of
Speaker 3: the Department of Defense that worked at the base. If
Speaker 3: you aren't super familiar with how the U.S. military's overseas
Speaker 3: footprint works, we've got a shitload of bases all over
Speaker 3: the world, and those bases all fall into two broad groups.
Speaker 3: You've got ones that are large and safe enough for
Speaker 3: soldiers to bring their families and to host large numbers
Speaker 3: of full-time live-in civilian employees, and you've got bases that
Speaker 3: are considered too close to the action for all of
Speaker 3: that to be safe. These DoD communities of civilians are
Speaker 3: like little chunks of suburban America transplanted to locations across
Speaker 3: the globe. They have their own schools, bars, clubs, and
Speaker 3: grocery stores. Most of my family grew up around the
Speaker 3: air bases that we have on Okinawa, and even during
Speaker 3: the Vietnam War, there was never any chance that people
Speaker 3: living there would come into direct danger, unless, like, there
Speaker 3: was a nuclear war, but then who gives a fuck? Iran, however,
Speaker 3: has the ballistic missile capacity in order to strike these bases,
Speaker 3: and this has been the case for years, for a
Speaker 3: long time. They've been able to hit these bases in
Speaker 3: Bahrain and other parts of the Middle East that they've
Speaker 3: been hitting lately, but they've restrained themselves historically because in
Speaker 3: previous iterations of this conflict, Both sides abided by certain
Speaker 3: lines and rules. Trump threw the whole playbook out, and
Speaker 3: it turns out that none of our facilities within missile
Speaker 3: range of Iran were hardened and ready to be shot
Speaker 3: at by missiles. There had not been, and it would
Speaker 3: have been extremely expensive to do that for all these bases,
Speaker 3: and nobody really thought it was necessary. And even when
Speaker 3: we started a war with Iran and knew that there
Speaker 3: was a chance they were going to start retaliating, There
Speaker 3: was so much arrogance within the administration about both our
Speaker 3: missile defenses and about Iran's lack of capability that I
Speaker 3: don't think they thought it was possible that we would
Speaker 3: get struck in any meaningful way. So the evacuation from
Speaker 3: Bahrain was chaotic and poorly executed.
Speaker 1: Laura Corte reported.
Speaker 3: On this in an August 21st article for Stars and Stripes,
Speaker 3: which is a newspaper owned by the Department of Defense
Speaker 3: that is at least on paper editorially independent. And we'll
Speaker 3: talk a little bit.
Speaker 1: More about that later.
Speaker 3: But from that article, quote, Early in the war, a
Speaker 3: mass text message went out to evacuees directing them to
Speaker 3: contact the Navy Marine Corps Relief Society, a nonprofit that
Speaker 3: aims to assist military families during emergencies. However, when one
Speaker 3: spouse called the phone number listed in the announcement, they
Speaker 3: were connected with the National Bank of Canada.
Speaker 1: The spouse said.
Speaker 3: That gives you an idea of just how piss poor
Speaker 3: the planning was.
Speaker 1: Like no one checked.
Speaker 3: I'm guessing they probably had some AI like throw shit
Speaker 3: together for people, but nobody was like prepared to evacuate
Speaker 3: these people. And even once they knew they had to,
Speaker 3: Nobody took the care to make sure that these.
Speaker 1: Folks got correct information, right?
Speaker 3: And I'm not asking you, the listener, to sympathize with
Speaker 3: a bunch of families of servicemen and women who are, again,
Speaker 3: participating in an illegal war against Iran. What I am
Speaker 3: asking you to do is look at what this says
Speaker 3: about the lack of planning and understanding of what we
Speaker 3: were getting into when Trump and his cronies started this war, right?
Speaker 3: Here's another quote from that article. Many say the prolonged
Speaker 3: displacement has taken an emotional toll and worry about its
Speaker 3: long-term effect on their family's financial and emotional well-being. We
Speaker 3: literally have been making this up as we go because
Speaker 3: nothing is conceived to go on for this length of time.
Speaker 3: Vice Admiral Kurt Renshaw, commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command,
Speaker 3: said on Wednesday at a virtual town meeting, when you've
Speaker 3: got the commander of U.S. Naval Forces Central Command being like, well,
Speaker 3: we're making up the evac plan and how to take
Speaker 3: care of these people as we go because we never
Speaker 3: thought that we would have to care about this. That's
Speaker 3: a bad fucking sign, right?
Speaker 6: So U.S.
Speaker 3: Naval Forces Central Command are an absent. was based in Bahrain, right?
Speaker 3: That's where their headquarters were. And we've had to move
Speaker 3: the HQ. I think it's floating right now, but none
Speaker 3: of the civilian staff who are critical to keeping it
Speaker 3: going are working wherever they've got it right now. And
Speaker 3: it's unclear where they're going to relocate to because again,
Speaker 3: nobody knows fucking anything because they didn't plan for any
Speaker 3: of this. Furthering the confusion, the Washington Post recently reported
Speaker 3: that top Pentagon officials are currently considering a massive drawdown
Speaker 3: of US military presence in the Middle East After the
Speaker 3: war ends. Now, I find this interesting because this reporting
Speaker 3: came out the exact same time Trump started threatening slash
Speaker 3: promising to make the Strait of Hormuz a U.S. territory
Speaker 3: and charge tolls, which would obviously necessitate an expanded U.S.
Speaker 3: presence in the region. This report was put together by
Speaker 3: people within the Pentagon who were kind of acting on
Speaker 3: their own recognizance. They were not ordered to do this.
Speaker 3: So this is basically a result of people who are
Speaker 3: somewhat smart in the Pentagon going, we cannot maintain all
Speaker 3: these bases with the increased level of hostility and knowing
Speaker 3: that Iran now can and will strike them. We need
Speaker 3: to reduce our capacity because we cannot defend all of
Speaker 3: these bases or keep them safely operational. Whereas Trump is
Speaker 3: just blasting off and we're going to take the straight
Speaker 3: and hold it. So you have inside the Pentagon, people
Speaker 3: saying we absolutely cannot hold on to all of our
Speaker 3: current possessions in the Persian Gulf. And Trump just sort
Speaker 3: of making whatever fucking statements he wants to make. Per
Speaker 3: the Washington Post, one of the key areas the Defense
Speaker 3: Department is assessing is whether to pull back troops from
Speaker 3: the Persian Gulf, where America's large overseas military bases have
Speaker 3: been battered for months by Iranian strikes. And the damage
Speaker 3: to these facilities has prompted a once-in-a-generation chance for the
Speaker 3: Pentagon to reconsider its presence in the region. The Defense
Speaker 3: Department has already signaled that it might not rebuild bases
Speaker 3: as they were before the conflict. Now again, This review
Speaker 3: was not ordered by Pete Hegseth. This is the thinking
Speaker 3: of sober and prudent people who remain at the Pentagon,
Speaker 3: and they have to do it on their own because
Speaker 3: they know that none of their bosses are going to
Speaker 3: order this, right? If it becomes immediately obvious that, oh,
Speaker 3: we actually have to do a drawdown, they'll get the
Speaker 3: order like they did with the evacuation of Bahrain, and
Speaker 3: they'll just be told to figure it out suddenly. So
Speaker 3: people are trying within the Pentagon to make sure they
Speaker 3: have a fucking plan together, knowing that no one in
Speaker 3: charge is going to plan things out properly. And there's
Speaker 3: a lot of funny quotes from that article. I'm going
Speaker 3: to read another here. Before the start of the war
Speaker 3: in February, U.S. Central Command evacuated many of its bases,
Speaker 3: judging them too vulnerable to Iranian missiles and drone attacks
Speaker 3: to maintain normal staffing levels. Some of the shifts away
Speaker 3: from the major Gulf facilities might last after the war,
Speaker 3: a person familiar with the posture adjustment said. Iran thinks
Speaker 3: we are in the traditional places, the person said, declining
Speaker 3: to specify the changes so as to not put U.S.
Speaker 3: service members at risk.
Speaker 1: And we are not.
Speaker 3: And then the article immediately goes on to.
Speaker 1: Say six U.S.
Speaker 3: Service members were killed in a March strike on Port Shuaiba,
Speaker 3: a military facility in Kuwait. And more than 200 U.S.
Speaker 3: facilities have been damaged or destroyed during the conflict. I
Speaker 3: just find that that clash between when we moved our
Speaker 3: stuff before the war. So Iran doesn't know where our
Speaker 3: stuff is. You know, they think that we're one place
Speaker 3: and we're in the other. And it's like, well, then
Speaker 3: they hit and killed and wounded a bunch of guys
Speaker 3: because actually they had a pretty good idea of where
Speaker 3: we were.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was just thinking, as you mentioned those bases, Robert,
Speaker 1: I don't know if you saw this tweet, Zeet, maybe
Speaker 1: we're supposed to call it, by Barry McCaffrey, who was
Speaker 1: a US general, commanded US forces, I think, in the
Speaker 1: first war in the Persian Gulf, right?
Speaker 6: Right, right.
Speaker 1: In my judgment, the US armed forces have probably permanently
Speaker 1: lost access to 15 Persian Gulf bases. Iran now poised
Speaker 1: to control access to the Gulf states. US will have
Speaker 1: to negotiate new access into Western Saudi Arabia, Israel, Southern Europe.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like, oh, that's bad. It's sometimes just so revelatory to
Speaker 1: pull out and be like, oh, fuck.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Like a change in the global order of things. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 5: The age of uncontested U.S. hegemony is over. And it
Speaker 5: was ended for absolutely no reason other than a bunch
Speaker 5: of people hate Iran.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 5: And thought they could just instantly win a war.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like we wound up to take a haymaker and
Speaker 1: ended up missing and falling over and hitting our head.
Speaker 1: It's like fighting an allergy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it is kind of funny to think that like
Speaker 3: the British Empire lost its largely uncontested power and wealth
Speaker 3: in a lot of areas because there was like a
Speaker 3: nightmarish war that cost millions and millions of people their lives.
Speaker 3: And Britain burnt a shitload of its treasure and young
Speaker 3: men fighting it. And there was another war not that
Speaker 3: long later in.
Speaker 1: Just the day.
Speaker 3: Whereas the US was just like, I don't know, why
Speaker 3: don't we just shoot ourselves in the dick for no reason?
Speaker 1: Let's see if that works.
Speaker 6: Swing and a miss.
Speaker 1: It's great.
Speaker 6: The patterns of empire.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 3: And that Stripes article is just there's I'll read one
Speaker 3: last quote from it just for an idea of like
Speaker 3: what this is doing to the families of these people.
Speaker 3: One spouse of an active duty sailor who requested anonymity
Speaker 3: for fear of reprisal said the repeated displacement has traumatized
Speaker 3: her children. The family first fled to a U.S. base
Speaker 3: in Germany, where donations from the local military community helped
Speaker 3: them set up a temporary household. They were later told
Speaker 3: they had to relocate again, this time to the United States.
Speaker 3: She said her kids are developing serious behavior issues as
Speaker 3: a result of the move, and that the youngest now
Speaker 3: barely recognizes her husband during video calls. This is all
Speaker 3: really bad. There's a lot of ugly quotes in that article.
Speaker 3: And again, this is a Defense Department-owned newspaper. Within hours
Speaker 3: of that Stripes article being published, the Pentagon went after
Speaker 3: the supposed editorial independence of Stars and Stripes. They basically
Speaker 3: wound up firing the editor in chief, the publisher and
Speaker 3: the reporter who wrote that article, Laura Corte. The editor
Speaker 3: who stood by Laura is Eric Slavin. And I think
Speaker 3: that's why he lost his job because he refused to
Speaker 3: throw her under the bus. And I do applaud them
Speaker 3: both for doing the right thing. But that is also
Speaker 3: noteworthy that Stripes has always had a degree of independence.
Speaker 3: They have reported on things that the Pentagon, the DOD
Speaker 3: didn't want them to because they're reporting on like actual
Speaker 3: issues that like troops and their families are facing, you know,
Speaker 3: and that's an important thing for that community to have.
Speaker 3: And one thing this signals is that that does not
Speaker 3: exist anymore, nor no degree of independence can be allowed
Speaker 3: when it threatens the propaganda.
Speaker 6: Anyway, that's what I got.
Speaker 1: Good stuff.
Speaker 2: Carlos, where can people find more of your journalism online?
Speaker 6: You can find me pretty much on every social media platform.
Speaker 6: My at is Vaquero2XL. It's V-A-Q-U-E-R-O-2-X-L.
Speaker 2: And on It Could Happen Here.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: As well as it could happen here. That is true.
Speaker 6: I forget that. But yes, I just spoke with James
Speaker 6: about U.S. colonialism.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 6: How it started. And now it looks like it might
Speaker 6: be ending. We'll see.
Speaker 1: We're pivoting in a different direction.
Speaker 6: Yeah, there we go.
Speaker 2: What a heartwarming story. I guess there is hope for
Speaker 2: the future.
Speaker 1: That's what we do here at CoolZone Media.
Speaker 6: That's what we do.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you want to email us, you can do it.
Speaker 1: CoolZoneTips at Proton.me. Should I list the categories of emails
Speaker 1: I will not be responding to? Because they grow every fucking...
Speaker 1: Just don't be weird in there. It's for tips about news.
Speaker 6: Don't be weird.
Speaker 1: Don't be weird.
Speaker 2: Don't be weird in there. I think that's enough said.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is not the place to flirt with people or...
Speaker 3: It might be the place to tell us your conspiracy theories.
Speaker 3: Tell us your conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1: All right.
Speaker 6: Episode's done.
Speaker 5: No, don't tell us.
Speaker 1: Your conspiracy theories.
Speaker 6: No, Robert. That's going to be horrible.
Speaker 2: Send all your conspiracy theories to at James Stout.
Speaker 1: Do you know how much I fucking work already?
Speaker 5: Anyways, put a trans girl on your couch.
Speaker 2: We reported the news.
Speaker 6: We reported the news.
Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.