Speaker 1: Also media.
Speaker 2: This is it could happen here.
Speaker 3: Executive Disorder are weekly newscast covering what is happening in
Speaker 3: the White House, the crumbling of our world and what
Speaker 3: this means for you. I am James Stout and today
Speaker 3: I am joined by Sophie Lichtman and Mia What.
Speaker 2: This week we're.
Speaker 3: Covering the week of February eighteenth to February twenty fifth.
Speaker 4: We'll also have a segment by one Garrison. Davis added
Speaker 4: on later they were out in the field covering a
Speaker 4: story which will be an episode coming out soon.
Speaker 3: But yeah, they were inside the capital, not the.
Speaker 2: Januarited States Capital.
Speaker 3: Yea, yeah, so around Mumbo Army, I understand is going
Speaker 3: to pardon them and it will be fine.
Speaker 2: Oh my gosh, two like four people who actually believe this.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, Please don't take to the subreddit. Garrison has
Speaker 3: not been arrested. It's up a couple of small things,
Speaker 3: I guess. Last week, the Georgia State Elections Board voted
Speaker 3: to reprimand Elon Musk's America Pack for mailing absentee ballot
Speaker 3: applications prey filled out with voting information during twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four elections that violates the law. Uh yeah, yeah, and
Speaker 3: they didn't they did this thing.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you remember this.
Speaker 3: They didn't indicate like it wasn't a ballot, it wasn't
Speaker 3: from the government to vote with, it was from Elo Musk.
Speaker 2: What that's so unhinged.
Speaker 3: Yeah, he was really on one back then. It'll be
Speaker 3: interesting to see how he approaches the mid terms with
Speaker 3: his America Party.
Speaker 4: Wow, Scotus did say that USPS is legally immune for
Speaker 4: intentionally misdelivered mail. They're basically saying, you know, and this
Speaker 4: was a five to four decision and.
Speaker 1: It happened on Tuesday.
Speaker 4: February twenty fourth, that the US Postal Service can't be
Speaker 4: held liable for intentional failure to deliver mail.
Speaker 2: Only Hinge's decision. By the way, that the actual, the
Speaker 2: actual story behind it is this black woman who was
Speaker 2: renting property out to people and all the like, the
Speaker 2: people were pissed about it because they're racists, and so
Speaker 2: they were doing shit like intentionally not delivering bills and stuff.
Speaker 2: They were like locking their mailboxes with like locks that
Speaker 2: no one had the keys to because the post office
Speaker 2: people were just putting locks on it. And it got
Speaker 2: ruled that they have immunity for this. Wow, bizarre.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean all of this just feels like it's
Speaker 4: being targeted for voter suppression.
Speaker 1: But yeah, that's a bigger story.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But also another case of Supreme Court says racism. Fine, yeah,
Speaker 2: many such cases.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's the that's the doctrine. The other thing was
Speaker 3: this this week is part of the DHS shut down.
Speaker 3: Lewandowski and nom decided that they were going to shut
Speaker 3: down TSA pre check and global entry so those people
Speaker 3: aren't familiar, are like expedited processing. One is forgetting on
Speaker 3: the plane as you go for security there, and the
Speaker 3: other one is for when you arrive in the United
Speaker 3: States and nuclear costumes that this lasted for like minutes.
Speaker 3: It seems that way. I think global entry is still paused.
Speaker 3: There are other ways in which having a global entry
Speaker 3: car can exploit your entry into the US still, but
Speaker 3: the pre check thing did not last very long because
Speaker 3: that would.
Speaker 2: Have probably pissed off all the wrong people, right, like.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and also make lines even longer, which is airports
Speaker 4: are already a nightmare.
Speaker 2: Come on, come on, they would have gotten killed by
Speaker 2: their own congressional staffers.
Speaker 1: Right. You think Ted Cruz doesn't have TSA pre check.
Speaker 3: Please the idea that like, okay, so we're like they're
Speaker 3: forcing all the TSA people to work anyway, right, because
Speaker 3: they are essential employees. But be like, if you can
Speaker 3: find a way to make those people work less, let's
Speaker 3: say by having a group of people who have been
Speaker 3: pre cleared so the TSA people don't have to spend
Speaker 3: quite a long checking them.
Speaker 2: That helps.
Speaker 3: Actually, this is not a cost saving measure. This is
Speaker 3: clearly to try to punish people and put it on
Speaker 3: the dems.
Speaker 4: I simply have TSA pre check just so I don't
Speaker 4: have to take off my shoes, and because it brings
Speaker 4: me great joy when I get to ditch people who
Speaker 4: do not have love ditching Robert Evans at the airport
Speaker 4: and every time we travel together it's a battle who
Speaker 4: will get through the line first.
Speaker 1: And one time it was him and he was like.
Speaker 4: Ah, you know what I deserve that a prettiest ye
Speaker 4: A previous job bought me that PSA prey check and
Speaker 4: I've had it.
Speaker 1: For years, and wow, I love not taking my shoes off.
Speaker 1: That's it. That's the only person for me. I'm like, Wow,
Speaker 1: get to wear shoes.
Speaker 4: First world problems, Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2: Let's talk briefly about Mexico. Yes, oh god, dramatic tone shift.
Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, well you know you might use your
Speaker 3: pre check on a trip to Mexico.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 3: Transition Wow, yeah, that's a transition. That's what we do here.
Speaker 3: See yeah, professional podcasting. The Mexican military killed Elemento on Sunday.
Speaker 3: Mento's legal name is Nemesio where servantees. He was, of
Speaker 3: course the leader of the CJ and G, which is
Speaker 3: I guess the English translation would be like the Hallisco
Speaker 3: Cartel new generation, right. The Spanish acronym is how it's
Speaker 3: generally used. He was also the most wanted person in Mexico.
Speaker 3: The operation was carried out by the Mexican military. I've
Speaker 3: seen some reports that they didn't notify local law enforcement
Speaker 3: so he wouldn't be tipped off now. Mento is reported
Speaker 3: to have died on a military flight after the raid,
Speaker 3: so have been injured in the raid and then died
Speaker 3: on the way back to Mexico City, where he was
Speaker 3: obviously going to be treated, and then questioned if he survived.
Speaker 3: I guess in response, more than two hundred and fifty
Speaker 3: knuck called blockados knuckle blockaloes. If you're not familiar. Are
Speaker 3: roadblocks that are generally made up of vehicles that are carjacked.
Speaker 3: They're often like buses, and then they're set a blaze
Speaker 3: that they're set at ninety degrees to the direction of
Speaker 3: traveler of the road right, so it makes a roadblock.
Speaker 3: So more than two hundred and fifty of these were
Speaker 3: set up around the country. This is a relatively common response.
Speaker 3: The most I guess, like serious response we've seen to
Speaker 3: a government action before was called the Kolia Kanasso.
Speaker 2: Couliacan was in a lower cartel.
Speaker 3: This this one they're calling the men jassel right, using
Speaker 3: the same etymology, I guess. There have also been attacks
Speaker 3: on Mexican National Guard troops, killing more than two dozen
Speaker 3: In twenty four hours. Following the raids, more than sixty
Speaker 3: civilians I've now been reported to have been killed, including
Speaker 3: a pregnant woman. Yeah, it's all like it's folks in
Speaker 3: Mexico who going to suffer, right, Like it's every day
Speaker 3: people trying to get on with their lives. Another of
Speaker 3: the things that happened is the bank will be nstar
Speaker 3: so like well being bank. I guess I would translate
Speaker 3: that as it's a bank that exists to bring people
Speaker 3: into the banking system who would otherwise be unbanked. It's
Speaker 3: a government initiative in Mexico. So a lot of branches
Speaker 3: of that bank have been burnt down. This is part
Speaker 3: of a tendency on the part of Shinenbaum right to
Speaker 3: repudiate the previous policy of hugs not bullets, and to
Speaker 3: go after organized crime in Mexico more violently.
Speaker 2: I guess it.
Speaker 3: Seems like the country's security forces have been leading the
Speaker 3: charge against the seen A lower cartel, and this maybe
Speaker 3: indicates that it's the military who were going.
Speaker 2: After the Hallischico cartel.
Speaker 3: So like the two branches are pursuing separate missions against
Speaker 3: against different entities. Right, it remains to be seen if
Speaker 3: there was any US involvement.
Speaker 2: I kind of take.
Speaker 3: Issue at the needs you suggestion that there has to
Speaker 3: have been US involvement. Like, the Mexican government is more
Speaker 3: than capable of doing state violence. It has done so
Speaker 3: for a long time. Yep, you know, the Mexican government
Speaker 3: is capable of acting on its own. Not everything that
Speaker 3: happens is about America. I don't want to cover this
Speaker 3: in too great of a detail. It's not really a
Speaker 3: beat that we report on other than this is a
Speaker 3: relatively major occurrence in Mexico.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and Gear is gonna plug in now future Gear,
Speaker 4: tell us what you got?
Speaker 2: Hello.
Speaker 5: Garrison Davis here with Sophie Lechterman for a special segment
Speaker 5: about the Super Bowl commercial for Ring the Doorbell, owned
Speaker 5: by Amazon Yep. During the Super Bowl, Amazon's Ring Doorbell
Speaker 5: air commercial showing off a new feature called Search Party,
Speaker 5: which was advertised as a way to locate lost dogs
Speaker 5: by automatically searching through footage captured by ring cameras in
Speaker 5: the neighborhood to track a pet's movements.
Speaker 4: Ooh, who picked the name search party? And who thought
Speaker 4: that wasn't creepy?
Speaker 5: Search Party is interesting because it makes you think of
Speaker 5: like a crime scene. Yes, that is a brain link
Speaker 5: that they may not have intended. Let's play, yes, please
Speaker 5: the audio from this commercial because, as Sophie discussed before
Speaker 5: we started this segment, where we're unsure of the overlap
Speaker 5: of it could happen here listeners and Super Bowl watchers.
Speaker 5: So here is the Ring commercial audio. It's thirty seconds.
Speaker 2: This is milw pets her family.
Speaker 6: But every year ten million go missing, and the way
Speaker 6: we look for them hasn't changed in years.
Speaker 2: Until now.
Speaker 6: One post of a dog's photo in the Ring app
Speaker 6: starts outdoor cameras looking for a match. Search Party from
Speaker 6: Ring uses AI to help families find lost dogs. Since launch,
Speaker 6: more than a dog a day has been reunited with
Speaker 6: their family. Be a hero in your neighborhood with Search
Speaker 6: Party available to everyone for free right now, Join the
Speaker 6: neighborhood at rain dot com.
Speaker 2: Join the neighbor uh No?
Speaker 1: Also, when did they launch this?
Speaker 2: Do we know it's launched? I'm pretty sure Search Party
Speaker 2: is launched.
Speaker 1: I just don't believe that dog and Day bullshit.
Speaker 5: It launched in late twenty twenty five, Okay, and I
Speaker 5: can speak to this a little bit more, Actually sure,
Speaker 5: because I saw this feature early when I was in
Speaker 5: Las Vegas. Actually right, this commercial this intends to portray,
Speaker 5: you know, a heartwarming unification of a dog and its owner,
Speaker 5: but in effect, the ad sparked public backlash, including from
Speaker 5: politicians like Massachusetts Senator Ed Markey and privacy rights organizations,
Speaker 5: and among normies because this ad accidentally demonstrated the technological
Speaker 5: capacity to turn every neighborhood Ring camera into a web
Speaker 5: of surveillance that AI can use to locate anything.
Speaker 2: Based on a picture.
Speaker 5: Now, as I said, I saw this feature unveiled at
Speaker 5: CEES last month. I talked about it on Better Offline.
Speaker 5: At ces the AI search functionality was described like this.
Speaker 5: The owner of a lost pet can upload a photo
Speaker 5: and post a notice in the ring app. An Amazon
Speaker 5: will utilize ring cameras in the area to search for matches,
Speaker 5: and if a match is found, the owner of the
Speaker 5: camera can share the footage with the owner of the
Speaker 5: lost pet. But the public display this technology during the
Speaker 5: Super Bowl has stirred trouble and bad headlines for Amazon.
Speaker 5: Senator Ed Markey said that the ad quote exposed a
Speaker 5: scary truth the technology in its doorbell cameras can be
Speaker 5: used to hunt down a lost pet or a person.
Speaker 5: Americans oppose this creepy surveillance state unquote, and the privacy
Speaker 5: rights organization the Electronic Frontier Foundation wrote in a statement
Speaker 5: that the ad was quote unquote disguised as heartfelt, but
Speaker 5: actually quote previewed future surveillance of our streets, a world
Speaker 5: where biometric identification could be unleashed from consumer devices to identify, track,
Speaker 5: and locate anything human, pet, or otherwise.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 5: Now, these concerns are in the wake of high profile
Speaker 5: ICE rates targeting neighborhoods, and a recent announcement that RING
Speaker 5: was going to partner with the police surveillance company Flock,
Speaker 5: which operates large scale, integrated camera systems that allow police
Speaker 5: to tap into a network of surveillance in urban areas
Speaker 5: through cameras and license plate readers. Now, Flock claims that
Speaker 5: they do not give federal immigration agencies direct access to footage,
Speaker 5: and that may be true, that.
Speaker 4: Doesn't mean that won't change that they don't have capability
Speaker 4: to do so.
Speaker 5: Well, and that doesn't mean that CBP and ICE can't
Speaker 5: acquire that footage in other ways and currently right now,
Speaker 5: a four h four media report from last May showed
Speaker 5: that local police working with ICE used Flock's camera network
Speaker 5: to track immigrants as a part of ICE and homeland
Speaker 5: security investigation. So they are getting access to this footage
Speaker 5: even though they aren't directly tapped into the Flock network,
Speaker 5: because they can work with local agencies in states that
Speaker 5: do not have sanctuary city policies and in states that
Speaker 5: maybe do, because police may not be always following those laws,
Speaker 5: Ring not. Flock says that their footage can be requested
Speaker 5: by local law enforcement, and users can decide whether or
Speaker 5: not to respond, though Ring is also subject to Warrens, subpoenas,
Speaker 5: and court orders requiring some footage be handed over to authorities.
Speaker 5: Following the backlash to the Super Bowl ad, Ring canceled
Speaker 5: its partnership with Flock in what the companies describe as
Speaker 5: a mutual decision. The deal would have allowed Ring owners
Speaker 5: to directly share footage with the Flock network.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 5: All of this happened around the same time that the
Speaker 5: FBI was able to access recorded footage from Nancy Guthrie's
Speaker 5: Google Nest camera as a part of that kidnapping investigation,
Speaker 5: despite Guthrie not having an active recording subscription, so this
Speaker 5: too sparked privacy concerns. Cash Fortel, FBI director said that
Speaker 5: the footage was recovered from quote residual data located in
Speaker 5: back end SYSTEMSOTE. This was footage that Google records and
Speaker 5: stores for free on a temporary basis, usually for a
Speaker 5: few hours before it is quote unquote deleted. So if
Speaker 5: you have one of these Nest cameras, Google will store
Speaker 5: a few hours of footage for you to look at
Speaker 5: for free and then says that it's going to be
Speaker 5: quote unquote deleted, and Nest owners can pay a reoccurring
Speaker 5: fee to keep that footage accessible on the Google Cloud
Speaker 5: for longer. Guthrie did not have such a subscription, so
Speaker 5: this data that was recorded was marked for deletion. But
Speaker 5: data deletion is not an immediate process. It just marks
Speaker 5: a piece of data as being okay to write over
Speaker 5: with new data, which means until that happens, fragments of
Speaker 5: that data can be retrieved and pieced back together. But
Speaker 5: this can be tricky and take a lot of time,
Speaker 5: and in this case, it took Google over a week
Speaker 5: for a very high profile case.
Speaker 4: And they're still working behind the scenes to retrieve even
Speaker 4: more footage. Yeah, from this Nest cameras.
Speaker 2: It's not easy.
Speaker 5: I think the sort of privacy concerns for this case
Speaker 5: do not reflect largely for I think most people's concerns
Speaker 5: because the specific way Google stores it footage in the
Speaker 5: cloud is also unique to the Google Nest system. Ring
Speaker 5: doesn't do it in this same way.
Speaker 4: They also ended up outsourcing this to like private security
Speaker 4: retrievers for data retrievers, as opposed to doing it internally,
Speaker 4: either with the local sheriffs or FBI, which says a lot.
Speaker 5: Yeah, not surprising, and yeah, there's always a concern with
Speaker 5: these sorts of you know, doorbell cameras, that the footage
Speaker 5: can be subpeded, right, but that process also takes a
Speaker 5: long time. I think there's a difference between the sort
Speaker 5: of flock style immediate access and subpoena ining footage or
Speaker 5: having to piece together fragmented footage in the case of
Speaker 5: like the Nest storage system. But this is this is
Speaker 5: the current situation with with the Ring and Flock deal
Speaker 5: that fell through. Ring does partner with Axon, the bodycam company. Similarly,
Speaker 5: police can send requests to Ring users and they can
Speaker 5: voluntarily send the footage. If they choose not to police
Speaker 5: really want that footage, they can try to get a
Speaker 5: court order that may or may not succeed, depending on
Speaker 5: the details of that case.
Speaker 4: My question is when you were a CS what what
Speaker 4: were they highlighting there? Was it different from this commercial
Speaker 4: or was it a similar campaign?
Speaker 5: It was very similar to this commercial. It was it
Speaker 5: was like a section of the large like Amazon room.
Speaker 5: Like Amazon has a whole suite a suite in this hotel,
Speaker 5: but it's it's not it's not like a hotel room.
Speaker 5: It's on the convention floor. But they have like their
Speaker 5: whole whole like kind of ballroom section Amazon wing and
Speaker 5: Amazon wing of the convention. Yeah, and this was one
Speaker 5: of the many products. They had a few other surveillance products,
Speaker 5: like a like a security camera tower it's powered by
Speaker 5: solar that can like roll around. Also as planning to
Speaker 5: integrate into these web surveillance networks. But since this ad
Speaker 5: and the negative backlash which led to the Flock deal
Speaker 5: coming through, there still has been reports from four oh
Speaker 5: four media about internal discussions among Ring to use search
Speaker 5: Party for crime to quote unquote stop crime, and they're
Speaker 5: still ongoing discussion on the various ways to apply this technology.
Speaker 5: In an internal email acquired by four o four, the
Speaker 5: Ring CEO said that search Party could be a tool
Speaker 5: to help quote zero out crime in neighborhoods. So the
Speaker 5: capabilities of using this to track humans are very known
Speaker 5: among the people at RING.
Speaker 4: I think it's really interesting how quickly this partnership dissolved
Speaker 4: with the backlash from that Super Bowl ad. It seemed
Speaker 4: to be almost instant. It's pretty quick, which shows that
Speaker 4: once upthing's really bad and you point it out, sometimes
Speaker 4: that can work to stop said bad thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but yeah.
Speaker 4: Search party creepy though like a law enforcement still wants
Speaker 4: to use it potentially be helpful with certain things, maybe,
Speaker 4: but it really just seems like they're trying to do
Speaker 4: like normal people surveillance.
Speaker 5: Yeah, and then putting it with this you heartwarming package
Speaker 5: of helping find lost dogs. If you want to locate
Speaker 5: a lost dog, the most efficient way to do that
Speaker 5: is by having your dog myca trips. That is still
Speaker 5: the most most reliable method. Using this integrated camera network
Speaker 5: as a as a way to coax people into submitting
Speaker 5: into a system like this by waving the lost puppy
Speaker 5: banner is a little bit insidious.
Speaker 4: Leave the dogs alone. The dogs don't want to be surveilled.
Speaker 4: My dog doesn't want to be surveilled. She does, she
Speaker 4: surveils mind house, Stop trying to take the dog's jobs.
Speaker 4: We're gonna go to a quick ad.
Speaker 1: Break and we'll be back. And we're back.
Speaker 4: And I just wanted to follow up on something that
Speaker 4: was kind of overlooked from the City of the Union,
Speaker 4: which was, you know, kind of a throwaway discussion about
Speaker 4: IVF and I just wanted to give some information because
Speaker 4: I think it's worth talking about for those of you
Speaker 4: who don't know, IVF is incredibly expensive. According to I
Speaker 4: looked at the National Bureau of Economic Research as well
Speaker 4: as an article from CNY Fertility that says the average
Speaker 4: coughs of IVF is often quoted at twelve thousand dollars,
Speaker 4: but that is just the price quoted by the fertillity
Speaker 4: clinic for like their base package. And I have several
Speaker 4: friends who have gone through this and the costs are outrageous,
Speaker 4: many other necessary expenses on top of that, twelve thousand
Speaker 4: dollars is around twenty thousand dollars and for most folks,
Speaker 4: on average, IBS doesn't necessarily work the first time around.
Speaker 4: For a lot of people, you're spending somewhere between thirty
Speaker 4: thousand per round to fifty to sixty thousand per round.
Speaker 4: And you know, despite and fertility being a medical diagnosis
Speaker 4: and IBF being the best medical treatment for that. A
Speaker 4: twenty eighteen analysis of the IBF insurance market by Mercer
Speaker 4: found that seventy four percent of Americans do not have
Speaker 4: insurance coverage for IBF, and you know, just from speaking
Speaker 4: with friends, even if they do, it's still outrageously expensive.
Speaker 4: So we're looking at a cost of about somewhere between
Speaker 4: depending on insurance or without insurance. And that's not even
Speaker 4: including the medical cost. That's not including the downtime cost
Speaker 4: of not working. That's not including if you're just doing
Speaker 4: egg retrieval, and the cost of storage. But these expenses
Speaker 4: are outrageous and it's been a heated topic for many
Speaker 4: folks in the far right. And just for an example,
Speaker 4: I would like to play a clip from Charlie Kirk
Speaker 4: talking to to Sorry Sorry in advance, two girl twins
Speaker 4: that you know. I actually when this when this video
Speaker 4: originally dropped, it was a discussion with a bunch.
Speaker 1: Of my friends. So I kind of think it's worth sharing.
Speaker 4: Just to see, like how heated of a topic it is,
Speaker 4: because I want to talk about how Donald Trump has
Speaker 4: addressed it and how that changed.
Speaker 1: So here is an interaction between two.
Speaker 4: Girls that were IVF babies talking to Charlie Kirk about IVF,
Speaker 4: and I think it's just really interesting to hear that
Speaker 4: extreme thinking from that side.
Speaker 7: Hi, Charlie, Hi, So my name is Paige and this
Speaker 7: is my twin sister IVF.
Speaker 8: We have two older sisters that are also IVF.
Speaker 1: Okay, so this is about IVF of.
Speaker 8: Course, so I'm particularly a neutral on the topic. I
Speaker 8: don't want to have like a forced opinion because like
Speaker 8: my entire families kind of become a product of IVF.
Speaker 9: Or you guys surahcuse too or just IVF just if.
Speaker 8: But I watch your videos and so I've noticed that
Speaker 8: in one of your videos you do mention that you
Speaker 8: are okay with IVF, but you're morally against it. Is
Speaker 8: that true?
Speaker 9: Yeah, it's a little bit deeper than that, But I
Speaker 9: have a lot of problems with IVF albe it while
Speaker 9: acknowledging the fruit. I'm glad you're both alive and so
Speaker 9: that must be celebrated. So it's a very I'll explain
Speaker 9: the difficulty, but please continue, Okay.
Speaker 8: My part one of my question is just as someone
Speaker 8: who was conceived through IVF, why should I also be
Speaker 8: morally against it?
Speaker 9: Got good question, Okay, So, as a pro life for
Speaker 9: first and foremost, we have to have an issue with
Speaker 9: the discarded fertilized eggs that happen during IVF. That's why
Speaker 9: you guys are twins, is because during your creation process,
Speaker 9: if I can be provocatively blunt with your you lost
Speaker 9: a lot of your siblings. Yes, am I correct and saying.
Speaker 8: So for our older sisters they had six embryos in
Speaker 8: their batch, two came out, of course, but for us
Speaker 8: there were three and then two came out.
Speaker 9: Yeah, and so that's my first problem is that it
Speaker 9: definitionally is saying like we're going to discard life to
Speaker 9: get to life. I have a problem with that.
Speaker 2: So I do.
Speaker 7: Agree, but in a certain way. Oh sorry, So in
Speaker 7: a certain way, those embryos, like say, they weren't going
Speaker 7: to become anyways, but at least we were trying because
Speaker 7: they were going to be raised in a house where
Speaker 7: we are pro life and we really wanted to be
Speaker 7: able to have kids and cherish that. But by taking
Speaker 7: that loss, they were able to have at least us
Speaker 7: out of the three, at least they could have the one.
Speaker 7: So it's kind of I don't know where I'm going
Speaker 7: with that.
Speaker 9: I understand what you're saying. So there's a pro life
Speaker 9: way to do IVA, which is only implant the eggs
Speaker 9: of which the children that you actually want to raise,
Speaker 9: and so by the way, you have a lower likelihood
Speaker 9: of working because in your case it would be maybe
Speaker 9: two or three. For example, the way that the IVF
Speaker 9: doctor will sell it. It is like, look, here's six embryos.
Speaker 9: You'll be lucky if one or two implant to the
Speaker 9: uterine wall. Let's see what happens. Now in certain cases,
Speaker 9: four implant to the uterine wall and you get quadruplets, right,
Speaker 9: which is what happens.
Speaker 2: I find that to be a little bit.
Speaker 9: Creepy, to be honest, that a doctor can kind of
Speaker 9: call shots on what life is going to live and
Speaker 9: not live.
Speaker 1: I think you're a little bit creepy.
Speaker 2: Just I understand what an a is. Like, I just like,
Speaker 2: ideologically obviously no, but like, what how does he think that?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was like an extreme side of things.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that opinion of you're killing your siblings and you
Speaker 4: know that, that sort of thing. I just find it
Speaker 4: the beginning of that video. I talked about it with
Speaker 4: a lot of my friends when I first came out.
Speaker 4: I just thought it was so interesting that where he's like, well,
Speaker 4: I'm glad you're alive, but you're immoral? Is such a
Speaker 4: such such an unhinged stance. Meanwhile, during the Trump campaign,
Speaker 4: Sorry in advance, Donald Trump's voice.
Speaker 2: Trump back to back hazard pay.
Speaker 3: After listening to it for like two hours last night
Speaker 3: of the.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Trump deeply pivoted We're going back to like
Speaker 4: about a month before the election in twenty twenty four,
Speaker 4: but he deeply pivoted on IVF after the Biomi Supreme
Speaker 4: Court issued a ruling that effectively halted IVF treatment in
Speaker 4: the state by declaring that frozen embryos.
Speaker 1: Are legally considered to be children.
Speaker 4: This decision led to a temporary shot down of IVF
Speaker 4: services at major clinics due to liability risks. This is,
Speaker 4: you know, from Johns Hopkins Public health website. Yeah, and
Speaker 4: so that started a big discussion and splits of different
Speaker 4: people on different political sides about the topic. But yeah,
Speaker 4: Trump pivoted an IVF and this is what he had
Speaker 4: to say, Oh, I want to talk about IVF.
Speaker 10: I'm the father of IVF, so I want to hear
Speaker 10: this question.
Speaker 2: What the fuck?
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Also during the campaign trail, in an interview with NBC News,
Speaker 4: this is the most important clip of it.
Speaker 11: He said the following, Well, as you know, I was
Speaker 11: always for IVF right from the beginning, as soon as
Speaker 11: we heard about it. It's fertilization and it's helping women
Speaker 11: and men and families.
Speaker 12: But it's helping women able to have a baby.
Speaker 11: Some have great difficulty, and a lot of them have
Speaker 11: been very happy with the results, as you know, and
Speaker 11: what we're doing, and we're doing this because we just
Speaker 11: think it's great and we.
Speaker 12: Need great children, beautiful children in our country.
Speaker 11: We actually need them, and we are going to be
Speaker 11: under the Trump administration, we are going to be paying
Speaker 11: for that treatment.
Speaker 12: So we are paying for that treatment.
Speaker 3: Or you want it, or for for.
Speaker 11: All Americans that get it, all Americans that need it.
Speaker 11: So we're going to be paying for that drape.
Speaker 12: And or we're going to be mandating that the insurance
Speaker 12: company plays.
Speaker 2: So either either the government will pay for it or
Speaker 2: the insurance companies under a mandate.
Speaker 4: Yes, that did not happen. He campaigned on that and
Speaker 4: just giving that false hope to people struggling with infertility
Speaker 4: who can't afford the Like I said, thirty to sixty
Speaker 4: to god knows how much thousands of dollars is pretty sick.
Speaker 3: It's particularly weird when I understand this is this thing
Speaker 3: that like his party is not united on, but like
Speaker 3: they've gone after not having to pay for other reproductive
Speaker 3: health care right and like specifically I'm talking mostly about
Speaker 3: abortions here right, like that insurers or employers would not
Speaker 3: have to pay for it, and that that's a demand
Speaker 3: that you constantly hear on the right, Like, I guess
Speaker 3: it this is such a strange issue for them because
Speaker 3: I guess it's one of the few areas where there's
Speaker 3: still like some division where they haven't all just like
Speaker 3: fallen into life on it.
Speaker 13: Right.
Speaker 4: And right after he was elected, it was in the
Speaker 4: middle of February twenty twenty five, you put on an
Speaker 4: executive order that said, end quote to support American families
Speaker 4: is the policy of my administration to ensure reliable access
Speaker 4: to the IVF treatment, including by easy unnecessary statutory regulatory
Speaker 4: burdens to make IVF treatment drastically more affordable. Okay, so
Speaker 4: he's already gone back on the promise from money campaign,
Speaker 4: but that didn't stop him from doing this.
Speaker 11: We're going to have tremendous, tremendous goodies in the bag
Speaker 11: for women to hold women between the fertilization or all
Speaker 11: of the other things that we're talking about.
Speaker 12: It's going to be it's going to be grace. We're
Speaker 12: joined today. Horrible word fertilization. I'm I'm still very proud
Speaker 12: of it.
Speaker 10: I don't care.
Speaker 12: I'll be known as the fertilization President.
Speaker 2: That that's okay, that's not bad. That's not bad.
Speaker 10: I've I've been called I've been called much worse.
Speaker 1: Wow, yeah you have.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't expect that one. Today.
Speaker 1: I'm sorry, it's so insane.
Speaker 4: And then back in last October, they put out like
Speaker 4: one of their like White House fact sheets, you know,
Speaker 4: fact sheet President J. Trump announces action to lower costs
Speaker 4: and expand access to in vitro fertilization IVF and high
Speaker 4: quality fertility care and for the American Society for Reproductive Medicine.
Speaker 4: You can read this on the White House website, but
Speaker 4: this summary pretty much covers it. It's that the Trump
Speaker 4: administration's ivfinition contains two king components. The first is a
Speaker 4: drug pricing agreement with far supertical company EMD Serrano provides
Speaker 4: discounts on the list prices of select IVF medications. These
Speaker 4: medications will be offered at a lower cost to eligible
Speaker 4: users through a government operated portal trump RX dot CoV
Speaker 4: and preliminary federal estimates from the Centers for Medicare and
Speaker 4: Medicaid Services suggest potential savings of up to twenty two
Speaker 4: hundred dollars per treatment cycle for medications alone. So trumprx
Speaker 4: dot gov launched this month in February twenty twenty six.
Speaker 4: It's a government hosted website that serves as a facilitator
Speaker 4: and points Americans to drug makers direct to consumer websites
Speaker 4: where they can make purchases.
Speaker 1: It also provides coupons.
Speaker 4: To use it Pharma disease and it seems basically like
Speaker 4: a government version of good RX and is very similar
Speaker 4: to Mark Cuban's Cost plus Drugs, which has a lot
Speaker 4: of the same medications with similar discounts, including the same
Speaker 4: kind of medications for fertility and per ASMR. Again, this
Speaker 4: move alone does not make IVF attainable for most patients.
Speaker 4: Fertility drugs represent only one portion of the overall cost
Speaker 4: of care, and patients without good insurance coverage continue to
Speaker 4: face significant out of it expensive Trump has repeatedly promised
Speaker 4: to make IVF University successful. This announcement does not fulfill
Speaker 4: that promise. Meaningful progress requires policies that ensure all Americans
Speaker 4: who need medical assistance to build their families and access
Speaker 4: that care.
Speaker 2: Also, by the way, you can't use your insurance with
Speaker 2: Trump are x. So yeah, it's an either roll. It's yeah.
Speaker 1: Great to note.
Speaker 4: He specifically brought this up in last night's State of
Speaker 4: the Union during one of his what I call a
Speaker 4: propo I think back to like the Hunger CAG what
Speaker 4: I call a propo, which is when they like bring
Speaker 4: people out. I like dates back to like Reagan and
Speaker 4: when they bring people out to be like and this
Speaker 4: person here. But it just was such a bizarre thing
Speaker 4: to bring up. And you know, Trump's State of the
Speaker 4: Union was the longest of all time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think so.
Speaker 4: And he spent a total of five minutes on healthcare alone,
Speaker 4: and this was part of it.
Speaker 10: And here tonight is the very first customer ever to
Speaker 10: get that big discount, and it is big. Katherine Raider.
Speaker 10: For five years, she and her husband have struggled with
Speaker 10: infertility and they turned to IVF, one drug has been
Speaker 10: costing Catherine four thousand dollars to purchase. But a few
Speaker 10: weeks ago she logged onto the Trump RX website and
Speaker 10: got that same drug that costs four thousand dollars, got
Speaker 10: it for under five hundred dollars, a reduction of much
Speaker 10: more actually than three thousand, five hundred dollars. Catherine, we
Speaker 10: are all praying for you and you're going to be
Speaker 10: a great mom.
Speaker 1: Really creepy.
Speaker 3: Yeah, imagine having the president talking about how you've been boning,
Speaker 3: Like like, what a fucking how you're having trouble, Like
Speaker 3: that's a difficult thing for a lot of people to talk.
Speaker 3: Like I've had friends who have gone through IVF as well. Yeah,
Speaker 3: thing that happens when you're ear thirties, but like it's
Speaker 3: a hard thing for people to talk about, let alone
Speaker 3: to have to have it talked about in front of
Speaker 3: the whole fucking country.
Speaker 1: Fertility.
Speaker 4: Infertility is such a personal thing, and it's really to
Speaker 4: use that woman's pain to promote your drug discount website.
Speaker 1: It's pugg it's repugnant.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she's still paying five hundred bucks a month,
Speaker 3: like like that's just a lot of money.
Speaker 1: She's unreal one hundred percent.
Speaker 4: While that's not as bad as five thousand, that's so
Speaker 4: much money.
Speaker 1: And it's like, while any discounter.
Speaker 4: Fertility related drugs is good, this is not what was promised.
Speaker 4: I've still ridiculously unachievable for most people. He is not
Speaker 4: the father of IVF, And this is fraudulent advertising. Just
Speaker 4: a way of like trying to promote his like artificial
Speaker 4: empathy to a wider audience. And it's despicable and fertility
Speaker 4: issues do not need to be played with like that.
Speaker 1: That's what I had on that.
Speaker 4: It was like a very big throwaway comment, but I
Speaker 4: thought it was worth talking about because it's been there's
Speaker 4: been like a linear lead up to what that was,
Speaker 4: and I think it's important.
Speaker 1: To talk about.
Speaker 2: Yeah, definitely.
Speaker 1: Yeah, anyways, James, you have more to talk about.
Speaker 3: Yeah, So going back to Congress before the State of
Speaker 3: the Union, Senator bloom Othol's office published a couple of
Speaker 3: documents from two anonymous whistleblowers which show changes in basic
Speaker 3: training for er. Er are enforcement removal operations, so they're
Speaker 3: one of the branches of ICE. You also have AHSI
Speaker 3: and then the ICE administrative stuff Majorsie homelown, security investigations,
Speaker 3: the ER the other people who are supposed to go
Speaker 3: out and detain and remove people, right, that is what
Speaker 3: they do. The documents show quote cuts of more than
Speaker 3: a dozen significant practice examinations which potential ICE ERO officer
Speaker 3: is no longer must undergo. In fact, the cut is
Speaker 3: sixteen out of a previous total of twenty five. So
Speaker 3: there are now just nine of these practical exams, whereas
Speaker 3: before there.
Speaker 2: Were twenty five.
Speaker 3: The exams to remove include quote judgment, pistol shooting, determine removability,
Speaker 3: to encounters to detention and detention to removal, as well
Speaker 3: as criminal encounters. So these are like exams that would
Speaker 3: test the knowledge of the potential would be ice agent
Speaker 3: on these issues.
Speaker 2: Right, So you so you just don't have to know
Speaker 2: that anymore? Yeah, well you can you do an open
Speaker 2: book test.
Speaker 14: Well, it's open book multiple choice, it is now.
Speaker 2: Yea.
Speaker 3: In some cases there isn't a greaded practical exam at all.
Speaker 3: It's just passed fail.
Speaker 2: An open book multiple.
Speaker 3: Choice, Yeah, to determine your understanding of the law, right
Speaker 3: or becoming a testing Yeah, I know, right, I guess
Speaker 3: it's a caveat all of this. By saying like the
Speaker 3: people who killed Alex Pretty and Rennie Good were exceptionally
Speaker 3: well trained, they had been trained for a long time,
Speaker 3: they had been in DHS for years and didn't stop
Speaker 3: the murdering American citizens industry, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not saying that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm not Joe bidening this, but this is still notable.
Speaker 2: There is also the wholesale removal.
Speaker 3: Of some classes, because these classes that have been removed
Speaker 3: include the use of force simulation training that's like a
Speaker 3: late they watch a video and they have like a
Speaker 3: laser pistol. That's how they slate use of force there. Well,
Speaker 3: they used to, I guess. Also the training on the
Speaker 3: legal structure of the United States government, ERRO authority, and
Speaker 3: use of force. It also shows a huge reduction in
Speaker 3: the overall training, which we also heard from Ryan Schwank
Speaker 3: will get to in a minute, but he was a
Speaker 3: former lawyer with ICE who testified to Congress. Toddlines previously
Speaker 3: told Congress at the FLDC, that's a federal law enforcement
Speaker 3: training centers in Georgia had been moving from five eight
Speaker 3: hour days to six twelve hour days. So although the
Speaker 3: number of training days for ICE agents have been cut,
Speaker 3: the number of training hours was the same. They was
Speaker 3: going to get through with their grind set, I guess,
Speaker 3: but the whistleblower documents show that they're still appearing to
Speaker 3: do eight hour days. Like the number of days have
Speaker 3: been cutting out, the number of hours of training in
Speaker 3: each day has remained the same. There are some longer days,
Speaker 3: but mostly those are people who have to make up
Speaker 3: the pt test or like some nights seem to go
Speaker 3: later with practical stuff like first aid and shooting, but
Speaker 3: the bulk of the days continued to be eight hours.
Speaker 3: There are now forty two total days versus seventy five before.
Speaker 3: Some of this was already public actually in certain forums
Speaker 3: and subreddits. Era Officer has been posting about like the
Speaker 3: faster training course for a while. The documents show a
Speaker 3: target of four thousand and seven new officers in fiscal
Speaker 3: year twenty twenty six. They would aim to have commissioned
Speaker 3: four thousand new ICE officers by the end of September.
Speaker 3: We also heard from Ryan Schwank who testified to Congress,
Speaker 3: and they published some excerpts in this testimony which I'm
Speaker 3: just going to include here. A couple of quotations quote,
Speaker 3: I am duty bound to tell you the ICE Basic
Speaker 3: Immigration Enforcement Training program is now deficient, defective, and broken.
Speaker 3: And another quote here Without reform, I will graduate thousands
Speaker 3: of new officers who do not know their constitutional duty
Speaker 3: and do not know the limits of their authority, and
Speaker 3: do not have the training to recognize an unlawful order. Finally,
Speaker 3: is is lying to Congress and the American people about
Speaker 3: the steps it is taking to ensure its ten thousand
Speaker 3: new officers faithfully uphold the Constitution and perform their jobs.
Speaker 3: Schwank was hired in twenty twenty one as a Assistant
Speaker 3: Chief Counsel for the ICE Office Principal Legal Advisor. He
Speaker 3: also serves as a resident attorney at Dilly, which is
Speaker 3: a detention center for families and children, and at some
Speaker 3: point in this past he was a private practice immigration attorney.
Speaker 3: What good lord, this is not like a particularly woke guy,
Speaker 3: I would say, And like, none of this is to
Speaker 3: suggest that it would be okay for there to be
Speaker 3: thousands more ICE officers if they were better trained. It
Speaker 3: still wouldn't. But it does show that the state is
Speaker 3: building a force of people who don't know an unlawful
Speaker 3: order is and what their rights are and what their
Speaker 3: obligations are, and what the rights of the people who they.
Speaker 2: Are detaining are.
Speaker 3: And talking about the rights of people who are being detained,
Speaker 3: I want to talk about a development in the case
Speaker 3: was the unaccompanied Guatemalan children. People remember that over Labor Day,
Speaker 3: the Trump administration tried to deport these children, and they
Speaker 3: tried a number of like credit lawyer shit like like
Speaker 3: just really like silly, like I don't know did did
Speaker 3: these legal arguments, which which was kind of supurious to
Speaker 3: get away with it, And they were prevented by a
Speaker 3: restraining order, right if you remember the judge Sparkle Sunan
Speaker 3: who was the first judge who issued the restraining order.
Speaker 3: But they did so in the middle of the night
Speaker 3: over Labor Day weekend and sent one of their attorneys
Speaker 3: to the airport to prevent them.
Speaker 2: Christ. Yeah, truly like last minute stuff.
Speaker 3: The class for that tro and the injunction was quote
Speaker 3: children from Guatemala who are or will be in the
Speaker 3: custody of defendants. They all will be lead to the
Speaker 3: next part of our story.
Speaker 11: Right.
Speaker 3: A lawsuit is now alleging that CBP is flouting the
Speaker 3: injunction by returning children when they first enter custody before
Speaker 3: they're sent to the Office of Refugee Resettlement. So they
Speaker 3: kind of tried to previously make this argument that like
Speaker 3: they were with oh, they weren't with ICE, so they
Speaker 3: went with DHS there with o R. Right, So the
Speaker 3: Office of Refugee Resettlement is a distinct entity, so they'd
Speaker 3: sort of tried this like, oh, there's nothing we can
Speaker 3: do to stop the Office of Refugee Resettlement, and that
Speaker 3: had not worked right. The suit also alleges that quote,
Speaker 3: defendants are using misinformation, coercion, threats, and fear to persuade
Speaker 3: children to relinquish their rights and sign paperwork portally accepting
Speaker 3: a form of expedited voluntary return. This is common across DHS.
Speaker 3: Rightly in my reporting on Dilly, for instance, Primrose told
Speaker 3: me that the forms for voluntary repatriation are present like
Speaker 3: all day and all that in their room. Like any
Speaker 3: time it gets too much for you, anytime they're too hungry,
Speaker 3: too tired, to stressed, too scared, you can sign that
Speaker 3: formula on a plane and it's all over for You're
Speaker 3: going back to wherever you fled from. Including the case
Speaker 3: is a claim by an attorney at the National Immigrant
Speaker 3: Justice Center that unaccompanied children have been given a document
Speaker 3: that quote completely misstates, or at least dramatically misrepresents the
Speaker 3: immigration laws that apply to unaccompanied immigrant children, and it
Speaker 3: conveys to vulnerable children threats that are quote in clear
Speaker 3: contravention of the entire system implemented to protect and promote
Speaker 3: the safety and best interest of unaccompanied immigrant children. This
Speaker 3: went to the Trafficking Victims Protection re Authorization Act of
Speaker 3: two thousand and eight. So what this is suggesting is
Speaker 3: that these young people are being provided with essentially it's
Speaker 3: not legal advice, but it's misconstruing the rights that they
Speaker 3: have to be protected, right, and so that they are
Speaker 3: not being advised properly of the protections that they have
Speaker 3: under law. I'm going to keep an eye on this
Speaker 3: one because I think I don't love the phrase unaccompanied
Speaker 3: mine is when we talk about this because these children
Speaker 3: after and accompanied, there are people who are with them,
Speaker 3: who care for them on their journey here. Right, I've
Speaker 3: seen this firsthand. It just means that their immediate family
Speaker 3: are not with them. But like we saw in the
Speaker 3: State of the Union last night, right, when the Trump
Speaker 3: administration talks about migrants, it wants to talk about people
Speaker 3: who kill children. Right, that is the thing that they
Speaker 3: or hurt children. That it's the thing that they trusted
Speaker 3: out a couple of times last night. It is not
Speaker 3: the migrants who are hurting children in this instance, it
Speaker 3: is the government. These children who came here on their
Speaker 3: own to be safe with very few options, right, and
Speaker 3: either their parents couldn't look after them while their parents
Speaker 3: aren't around anymore. There is not a more sympathetic case, right,
Speaker 3: There's not a clear example of people we should be
Speaker 3: looking after as a state or a community or a
Speaker 3: nation or whatever. And the fact that they're trying to
Speaker 3: turn these children around and boot them back to the
Speaker 3: dangerous situation came from is really morally appalling. Well, keep
Speaker 3: reportting on it because I think it is like a
Speaker 3: very important thing to shed more light on.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, it's horrifying, Yeah, just on a basic moral level,
Speaker 2: like being the person whose job it is and the
Speaker 2: apparently doing this job of trying to construct fake legal
Speaker 2: arguments so you can fucking deport children, Like what the fuck? Yeah,
Speaker 2: it's just so evil.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's it's horrible, like they you know, I've spent
Speaker 3: a lot of time with migrants. I spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time with migrants with children. I've known plenty of
Speaker 3: children who are traveling without their parents. Yeah, and the
Speaker 3: things that they go through just to get here are horrific,
Speaker 3: and the things that they're going away from are probably worse.
Speaker 3: And to think that those kids could be booted back
Speaker 3: to the places that they fled within seventy two hours
Speaker 3: of arrival before they're transferred to r right after months
Speaker 3: potentially years. Is Yeah, it's genuinely appalling to me. Like
Speaker 3: few of these things shocked me, but they still disgusted me.
Speaker 3: And I really hope that this is something that will
Speaker 3: continue to get coverage, not just here but elsewhere, because like,
Speaker 3: these are the most egregious wrongs that the immigration system does.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and the meal will be
Speaker 1: back with some terror park.
Speaker 2: Oh what's that?
Speaker 13: Oh?
Speaker 2: Is it?
Speaker 1: Is it?
Speaker 3: The the dulcet tones of someone who is a Joe's
Speaker 3: Dramma singing the worst clash song?
Speaker 10: Jazz right jazz bar sorry, jazz.
Speaker 12: Jazz bock.
Speaker 4: I love how consistent you I read that change is
Speaker 4: the worst class song.
Speaker 2: It really pass me off.
Speaker 3: Like people they think, oh, the clash and then they go, no,
Speaker 3: the song that they played while they were fucking bombing
Speaker 3: Iraq in nineteen ninety one that made Joyce Drama cry
Speaker 3: and what she hadn't written it? Yeah, uphold listen to
Speaker 3: other clash songs please?
Speaker 2: Oh God, speaking of clashes, Wow, we have finally learned
Speaker 2: the results of the log awaited Supreme Court case about
Speaker 2: specifically the tariffs that were implemented through the International Emergency
Speaker 2: Economic Powers Act. Those have been struck down. So this
Speaker 2: is the retaliatory tariffs, This is the Liberation Day stuff,
Speaker 2: the ones on Canada and Mexico. Some of the tariffs
Speaker 2: are still in a fact. We will get to that
Speaker 2: in a second, like for example, the illudinum and steel ones,
Speaker 2: et cetera, et cetera, are still in effect. I'm going
Speaker 2: to be doing a full episode about this case and
Speaker 2: about what's going on with tariff policy now, because it's
Speaker 2: very convoluted and weird. But what's important for our purposes
Speaker 2: here is that in a lot of ways, this is
Speaker 2: a very narrow ruling in that it is just specifically
Speaker 2: about this one act IEPA, and what it specifically, very
Speaker 2: narrowly says is that IEEPA does not give Trump the
Speaker 2: authority to do tariffs. What he doesn't say anything about
Speaker 2: is his ability to use other acts. And we're going
Speaker 2: to talk about that in a second. Okay to do tariffs.
Speaker 2: And it also doesn't say anything and I think this
Speaker 2: is actually very important about the completely unhinged state of
Speaker 2: emergencies that he's been declaring in order to be able
Speaker 2: to use IEPA and that's also going to be very
Speaker 2: important in a little bit, because there's no ruling on that,
Speaker 2: he's probably to be able to do some of this
Speaker 2: stuff with other tariffs. So basically, immediately after this ruling,
Speaker 2: Trump imposed a ten percent tariff across the board using
Speaker 2: Section one twenty two of the Trade Act in nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy four, he says, So he implements it at ten percent,
Speaker 2: and then the next day he says it's going to
Speaker 2: be fifteen percent. The current rate as of data of
Speaker 2: recording on Wednesday, the one that's actually being assessed at
Speaker 2: customs is ten percent. Because he hasn't signed executive order
Speaker 2: to actually lift the fifteen percent. It's all very weird.
Speaker 2: It's all very sort of extremely chaotic. So right now
Speaker 2: the fifteen percent hasn't gone through. But I want to
Speaker 2: talk about this Section one twenty two thing that he's
Speaker 2: using right now, because this is a significantly less broad
Speaker 2: authority than the authority he was claiming before. So okay,
Speaker 2: first off, it's worth noting that Section one twenty two
Speaker 2: has literally never been used to enforce Harris before for
Speaker 2: reasons i'll get into in a second. Because it's very weird,
Speaker 2: and it's also going to be very, very difficult to
Speaker 2: do the kind of Calvin Ball tariff policy Trump wasn't implementing,
Speaker 2: where he just sort of says a thing in a
Speaker 2: tariff appears. So the thing about one twenty two is
Speaker 2: that instead of the thing that Trump was doing before,
Speaker 2: where he was just tweeting out a tariff rate for
Speaker 2: an individual country because he was mad at them, section
Speaker 2: one twenty two it only allows you to set a
Speaker 2: flat tariff rate for every country in the world, and
Speaker 2: the maximum tariff rate is capped at fifteen percent. The
Speaker 2: other thing that's notable about this is that Section one
Speaker 2: twenty two tariffs also need to be approved by Congress
Speaker 2: after one hundred and fifty days, at least in theory.
Speaker 2: The Cato Institute interestingly is arguing that Trump theoretically could
Speaker 2: just extend it for another one hundred and fifty days
Speaker 2: after the first one. But this this would be a
Speaker 2: huge mess because there's no way he can win a
Speaker 2: terrorf vote in Congress. There's just absolutely no way. Now.
Speaker 2: The other important aspect of this that's very weird that
Speaker 2: I think is going to become a very large sort
Speaker 2: of point of discussion in the coming weeks is that
Speaker 2: section one twenty two. So I've read this section. It
Speaker 2: says specifically, quote it can only be used to levy
Speaker 2: tariff's quote whenever fundamental international payment problems require special import
Speaker 2: measures to restrict imports one to deal with large and
Speaker 2: serious United States balance of payment deficits. Now that's vague.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, well, but here's the thing though. Here's the thing.
Speaker 2: So I tried to write a version of this where
Speaker 2: I tried to explain ballant of payments and what a
Speaker 2: balanced payment deficit is. I'm going to do that in
Speaker 2: the other episode. It's too convoluted. But what's really important
Speaker 2: about this is that Trump has been complaining about trade deficits,
Speaker 2: and the state of emergency is over trade deficit. A
Speaker 2: trade deficit is not a balance of payment deficit. Balance
Speaker 2: of payments is an accounting identity that has to do
Speaker 2: with like it's literally like the sum of all exchange
Speaker 2: between everyone in the US and everyone outside of the US.
Speaker 2: So you, by definition, can't have a deficit in it
Speaker 2: because it's the accounting identity attracks both sides, right, So
Speaker 2: if someone in the US is sending money to someone,
Speaker 2: it tracks both the fact that the used person set
Speaker 2: the money and the fact that the other person got
Speaker 2: the money, So you can't have a deficit because it's
Speaker 2: always one to one because it's tracking both. Right, So you're.
Speaker 1: Saying the limit does not exist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's unhinge. And like you know, and specifically for
Speaker 2: the US, it is. It is possible to get into
Speaker 2: trouble with ballance of payments if you can't just print
Speaker 2: your currency, like if your currency is on the gold Standard,
Speaker 2: you couldn't theory get in trouble here. Now, a notable
Speaker 2: thing about the United States is that we are not
Speaker 2: on the gold Standard, so we literally, even if you
Speaker 2: use definitions of ballants of payment where you could theoretically
Speaker 2: have one of these problems, the US cannot have a
Speaker 2: balance of payments crisis. It cannot. It definitionally cannot have
Speaker 2: one of these, right. And the thing about this right is,
Speaker 2: you're gonna hear a lot of people talking about how
Speaker 2: the US is a balance of payments crisis. If the
Speaker 2: US was having an actual serious balance of payments deficit
Speaker 2: right now, there would be riots in the streets. And
Speaker 2: that's not an exaggeration. This is normally what happens. Normally,
Speaker 2: balance of payments crises are a country owes a bunch
Speaker 2: of money and they straight up do not have enough
Speaker 2: US dollars to pay that off. And when that happens,
Speaker 2: things happen, like suddenly there's like five hundred person lines
Speaker 2: outside of every gas station because there's not enough money
Speaker 2: to import gas, right, like you can't import food. It's like,
Speaker 2: like that is what happens when there's balance of payments crises. Right,
Speaker 2: this is like Sri Lanka in twenty twenty four, and
Speaker 2: like that's the kind of thing where you get a
Speaker 2: balance of payments crisis and people burned down the presidential
Speaker 2: mansion like we don't have one. Yea, this is not happening.
Speaker 2: So there's already becoming an attempt to be like, oh,
Speaker 2: the US is a balance of payments deficit, there's a crisis.
Speaker 2: No no, no, no, no, no nonsense. Gibberius, You're gonna hear this
Speaker 2: a lot. It's complete nonsense. And it's one of the
Speaker 2: things that makes me look at this and go, Okay,
Speaker 2: this is the immediate one that he picks. But like,
Speaker 2: this is not going to survive in court because the
Speaker 2: specific line here where it says fundamental international payment problems,
Speaker 2: like we don't have fundamentally international payment problems, like we
Speaker 2: paid all of this gets paid every years. It's funny
Speaker 2: in the Executive Order it says the US sometimes has
Speaker 2: international payment problems, and no it doesn't. It has never
Speaker 2: had international payment problems like on any kind of real scale.
Speaker 2: The closest thing you can do is look back at
Speaker 2: periods when the US was again on the gold standards,
Speaker 2: and even then we were fined like it's it's completely gibberish.
Speaker 2: I'm pissed about this. I'm annoyed that I have to
Speaker 2: go back to balance of payment stuff this. So this
Speaker 2: is probably not going to hold up when the inevitable
Speaker 2: next lawsuit goes under. However, come up. There are a
Speaker 2: couple of other trade authorities that he can use that
Speaker 2: they've been talking about using, and some of them have
Speaker 2: been used already. So broadly, we've been talking about like
Speaker 2: two kinds of tariffs on this show. We've been talking
Speaker 2: about the tariffs that are on a specific country, and
Speaker 2: those are the ones that are basically gone. We'll get
Speaker 2: to the one exception to that in a second. And
Speaker 2: then there's been the ones that are on goods. So
Speaker 2: if you remember, like THO, there was a there was
Speaker 2: a tariff recently on like vanity cabinets like stuff like yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I do remember that one. Yeah, really weird niche thing.
Speaker 2: Oh gamps, wait wait wait till I talk about what
Speaker 2: the legal authority of tariffs on kitchen cabinets was. There's
Speaker 2: a special constitutional exemption for those. It's so bad. Okay,
Speaker 2: So so this this is this is the section two
Speaker 2: thirty two of the Trade Act, Nextivity four. These are
Speaker 2: these specific tariffs and these ones are supposed to be
Speaker 2: tariffs on goods in response to threats to national security.
Speaker 2: So it's yeah, hang on, join the DUTs for me.
Speaker 2: The price of impointed cabinets are being too low.
Speaker 3: Threat to national security.
Speaker 2: It's funny because okay, this is the the legal experts
Speaker 2: think actually can potentially survive challenges because it's national security.
Speaker 2: But it's like, okay, like I get our Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: The fact that this ruling was six to three is
Speaker 2: frankly ridiculous, given that again, Trump was pretending he had
Speaker 2: legal authority to issue tariffs in a bill that literally
Speaker 2: never says the word tariff and had never been used
Speaker 2: to raise a tariff before. Okay, So like Supreme Court
Speaker 2: was like, okay, well that's nonsense. And even I, who
Speaker 2: was extremely cynical about the Supreme Court, do not think
Speaker 2: that you can compellingly argue in front of a court.
Speaker 2: And this probably won't even go to the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: like that you can compellingly argue that is it is
Speaker 2: part of the national security interest of the United States
Speaker 2: that the American cabinet makers mildly out compete foreign cabinet. Wow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: that's a weird one.
Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, national security and like terrorism, Joe, the
Speaker 3: magic words when it comes to the Constitution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but in this case, okay, like I really seriously
Speaker 2: with a stream it's gonna walk up there.
Speaker 14: National security, right, yeah, they've done some wild stuff in
Speaker 14: the court.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: It was interesting to what, like you say, you were saying,
Speaker 3: like how much he'll get past the court. It was
Speaker 3: interesting to watch the Supreme Court justices in the State
Speaker 3: of the Union just like, oh yeah, just grimacing through it.
Speaker 2: Yep, yep, he was so mad at them.
Speaker 4: They're usually pretty stoic, but there was a serious grimace
Speaker 4: action going.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 14: Yeah.
Speaker 3: There was no attempt to hide that particular face, right, yeah.
Speaker 4: I don't know if we've ever had a sitting president,
Speaker 4: like school the Supreme Court in a state of the Union.
Speaker 1: In that way, I.
Speaker 2: Think maybe it is possible IFTR did it.
Speaker 14: Yeah, I was gonna say, I can see the FTR
Speaker 14: did try to pack the court at what point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that was at least funnier.
Speaker 3: Or at least back in the day when they used
Speaker 3: to like fight on the floor of Congress like something.
Speaker 1: Back then, those were the days.
Speaker 2: So there's there's one more trade thing I think we're
Speaker 2: talking about here in terms in terms of of where
Speaker 2: more terif aulorady can come from, and that's section three
Speaker 2: oh one of that same TERR Effact. And this is
Speaker 2: the one where so a lot of the tariffs on
Speaker 2: China are actually still in effect because a lot of
Speaker 2: those tariffs are actually from the first Trump administration and
Speaker 2: then Biden continued them because it's yeah, they hate China.
Speaker 2: I quite seriously do not have a better than that. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but section three oh one is specifically for quote, unfair
Speaker 2: trade practices. Yeah, no, like unfair.
Speaker 3: It's such a strange word to use in legislation, right,
Speaker 3: like what what do we what do we mean by that?
Speaker 2: Well, so, like in the original context, it was like
Speaker 2: supposed to be an anti protectionist thing, okay, but it's
Speaker 2: also like, yeah, people are like, oh my god, it's
Speaker 2: unfair of that, Like the Chinese companies get money from
Speaker 2: the governments, and I'm like, all of you get fucking
Speaker 2: money from the government all the time. What are you
Speaker 2: talkt like yeah.
Speaker 3: And like they're talking about it like it's unfair that
Speaker 3: the wages are lower in certain countries, you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And it's just like do you look at this,
Speaker 2: And it's like, Okay, the US, the entire US agriculture industry,
Speaker 2: like all of the corn grown in this country is
Speaker 2: grown because they pass an ag bill every single year
Speaker 2: that does subsidies that are literally illegal for like any
Speaker 2: other country to have because I specifically got agreements carved
Speaker 2: out of the free trade statues. Yeah, it's it's absolutely ridiculous.
Speaker 2: But you know, this is the one that he's been
Speaker 2: able to sort of use so far. So I think
Speaker 2: this is going to be the one that's going to
Speaker 2: be leaned on once the Trump people sort of remember
Speaker 2: they have it. But the problem with using three oh
Speaker 2: one is that there's actual bureaucratic steps you have to do,
Speaker 2: Like you have to like convene a bunch of trade authorities,
Speaker 2: and you have to have like a specific anti competitive practice. Okay,
Speaker 2: so this is awesome. I think going to be very
Speaker 2: vulnerable to legal challenges, except probably on China because you
Speaker 2: actually have to go through and designate what the legal
Speaker 2: practices are, and I mean usually the process six months,
Speaker 2: even when you're moving quickly. So there's also I guess
Speaker 2: what I would call the sort of like the secret
Speaker 2: dark mode option where they just start doing the nightmare
Speaker 2: or stuff. This is something that I think it was hazlit.
Speaker 2: One of Trump's officials talked about this last year is
Speaker 2: potentially using the Smooth Harley Tariff Act.
Speaker 3: Like the nineteen thirties as.
Speaker 2: Like yep, yeah, yeah, the one the one that is
Speaker 2: very famous for exacerbating the Great Depression. Yeah, that when
Speaker 2: I land about in high school. Yep. It's also the
Speaker 2: other thing about this, right, is this act is not
Speaker 2: on the books anymore. Okay, because well, so, okay, so
Speaker 2: I've seen a conflicting explanation to this. Some people are
Speaker 2: just confused. I think the explanation of it that I've
Speaker 2: seen is that it was superseded by sections of the
Speaker 2: nineteen seventy four Trade Act. Okay, so it's not even
Speaker 2: clear if this is in effect, but this is in theory,
Speaker 2: like the sort of like dark maga, like we're reaching
Speaker 2: into the bag and pulling trade authority out of something
Speaker 2: button they could reach for.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, we take that and before with like title
Speaker 3: forty two and stuff. Right yeah, the title thirty two
Speaker 3: it is to stop people with tuberculosis, like back in
Speaker 3: the day. That was the idea behind it, and they
Speaker 3: pulled it out in twenty twenty, right, and then Biden
Speaker 3: just like this, Harris kept it for much longer than trap.
Speaker 2: Yeah. But I think this is and this is I
Speaker 2: think actually a very significant moment for the Supreme Court.
Speaker 2: And I think sexual bank independence will eventually become this
Speaker 2: if and when this gets this gets to the courts.
Speaker 2: But tariffs are sort of the the redline for a
Speaker 2: couple of the Supreme Court justices who normally sided with
Speaker 2: Trump just specifically because A, I mean, it just says
Speaker 2: in the Constitution that tariffs are specifically think that Congress
Speaker 2: does so just be like, oh, they gave me the
Speaker 2: power to do this unless they like explicitly set it.
Speaker 2: But then b it's it's this is this is a
Speaker 2: financial red light, right, like this is this this is
Speaker 2: the point at which you're fucking with the money. So
Speaker 2: this is the point where the Supreme Court was like,
Speaker 2: you know, we've we've let you just make up laws
Speaker 2: in a whole bunch of other cases. But this is
Speaker 2: this is the actual limit of it when it comes
Speaker 2: to authority that really significantly like destroys the American economy.
Speaker 14: Yeah, like the economy has more rights and people. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 14: this is the way that it's always been. I also
Speaker 14: want to mention one closing thing on the terriffs is
Speaker 14: that the Supreme Court didn't answer the question of if
Speaker 14: people are going to get their money back and how
Speaker 14: the refunds are going to work. Sure didn't, Nope, And
Speaker 14: I think it's because they couldn't get agreement on it,
Speaker 14: because this ruling is kind of a mess in that
Speaker 14: it's like this like weird fractured coalition of justices or
Speaker 14: like parts of them agree on part of it, and
Speaker 14: there's like parts of the opinion that are agreed by
Speaker 14: to by a plurality of the court.
Speaker 2: And not a majority. It's very weird. But yeah, they
Speaker 2: have no idea how this is going to work. There's
Speaker 2: already lawsuits going on to get the money back that
Speaker 2: have been in place already, So presumably some kind of
Speaker 2: redispensation's going to happen. It's going to be unbelievably chaotic, Okay,
Speaker 2: but we will we will keep you updated on how
Speaker 2: American trade negotiations go.
Speaker 4: Yeah, okay, we reported the news.
Speaker 1: Yeah, put a trans girl on your couch.
Speaker 2: Oh, actually, okay, I have one also really bleak update
Speaker 2: on put a transgirl on your couch, which is we
Speaker 2: actually got numbers, well they're technically not the first numbers
Speaker 2: we've gotten, but we got actual good numbers on the
Speaker 2: number of trans people who've moved, we've like fled their state,
Speaker 2: like just from mid twenty twenty four to mid twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five. The statistics suggests that it's it's ten percent
Speaker 2: of all trans people, which is four hundred thousand people.
Speaker 2: I think that's likely an undercount, and that's just the
Speaker 2: first half of twenty twenty five. Yeah, that is a
Speaker 2: humanitarian crisis. Like this is an internal migration crisis, right
Speaker 2: that these are these are internally these have become internally
Speaker 2: displaced people. Yes, and yeah, it's hideous and the least
Speaker 2: that we can do at this moment is putting trans
Speaker 2: people in your couch because the violence of there folleying
Speaker 2: is intensifying.
Speaker 3: A lot of people actually reached out to our email.
Speaker 3: Our email is cool Zone, Tips and proton dot me,
Speaker 3: and that's mostly for things that you know that we
Speaker 3: should report on, not for just like general episode ideas.
Speaker 3: If you're trying to be a be a source for us,
Speaker 3: so I have some tip of something that you become
Speaker 3: aware of this and being reported. It's not for like
Speaker 3: Robert should do this episode on Bastards.
Speaker 2: It's not.
Speaker 3: I just want to emphasize once again that it is not.
Speaker 1: There is a if you want to do that, go
Speaker 1: to the Bastards subreddit. There is a section for that.
Speaker 2: Thank you.
Speaker 3: But a lot of people had reached out to be like,
Speaker 3: I want to do this, but I don't know of anyone,
Speaker 3: and obviously I don't want to be like posting online
Speaker 3: like transfolks come to my house, because that seems like
Speaker 3: weird behavior. So that's something we will try and aggress
Speaker 3: like in a more general kind of mutual aid focused
Speaker 3: yea a series of episodes that will work on. But
Speaker 3: those people, it is good that you are trying to
Speaker 3: do something.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we reported the news.
Speaker 2: We reported the news.
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Speaker 1: Thanks for listening.