Speaker 1: Coolson 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
Speaker 2: of the world, and what it means for you. I'm
Speaker 2: Garrison Davis today I'm joined by Mia Wong and Robert Evans.
Speaker 2: This episode, we're covering the week of March five to
Speaker 2: March twelve. Trump films a Tesla commercial, RFK Junior eats
Speaker 2: beef tallow French fries at Steak and Shake, and Sam
Speaker 2: Seter commits a mass casualty event on YouTube. How's everyone
Speaker 2: doing today?
Speaker 3: Very happy to join you for ED this week. Huge
Speaker 3: fan of ED, just like just big big ED guy.
Speaker 3: So yeah, psyched to be here. I feel like we
Speaker 3: should mention up top.
Speaker 4: There's also a bunch of unhinged tariff news and the
Speaker 4: most like electing fucking Caliguli's horse to the Senate thing
Speaker 4: I've seen in a long time, So stay.
Speaker 3: Tuned for that. Lots of good stuff.
Speaker 2: Yes, we will get to it. First, I would like
Speaker 2: to have a little bit of an update on a
Speaker 2: story that we talked about a few days ago, the
Speaker 2: detention and the revocation of a green card for a
Speaker 2: Palestinian activist Mamood Khalil. As of Wednesday, his lawyers have
Speaker 2: still been unable to even contact their client. There was
Speaker 2: a large rally outside the First Court conference in New
Speaker 2: York this Wednesday. So we talked about this a few
Speaker 2: days ago for some background an episode with James Robert
Speaker 2: and myself. Robert, do you want to like briefly summarize
Speaker 2: the situation and then I'll play a clip from one
Speaker 2: of his lawyers.
Speaker 3: This situation is that this guy got taken into custody.
Speaker 3: My understanding is it was at an apartment that he
Speaker 3: lived in with his wife. He was a US citizen.
Speaker 3: He became aware, it looks like at least about twenty
Speaker 3: four hours before probably became more that he was being
Speaker 3: It's a little clear if he was just like being
Speaker 3: surveilled or there was something else that tipped them off.
Speaker 3: But he contacted the school asking for help convince that
Speaker 3: Ice was coming for him about a day before they
Speaker 3: did when they entered the house. My understanding is based
Speaker 3: on the claims being made by his wife that they
Speaker 3: did not like, they didn't like produce a warrant or anything.
Speaker 3: He's still not charged with any crime, No he's not
Speaker 3: been charged with any and they just took him and
Speaker 3: like turned off the phone when they were on the
Speaker 3: phone to their lawyers, if I'm remembering correctly. Correct, So
Speaker 3: it's like none of this is the way this should
Speaker 3: have gone. Like if this was an arrest.
Speaker 2: No, he was just like black bagged from campus.
Speaker 3: But it's not an arrest again, and they've been very
Speaker 3: clear about this that, like they have specifically stated we're
Speaker 3: not accusing him of like breaking the law, right, Like,
Speaker 3: that's not what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Correct, And we will get to some of that later.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna play a clip from a press conference outside
Speaker 2: court that happened on Wednesday, March twelfth. This is one
Speaker 2: of his lawyers.
Speaker 5: Mister Khalil's detention has nothing to do with security. It
Speaker 5: is only about repression. United States government has taken the
Speaker 5: position that it can arrest, detain, and seek to deport
Speaker 5: a lawful permanent resident exclusively because of his peaceful, constitutionally
Speaker 5: protected activism, in this case, activism in support of Palestinian
Speaker 5: human rights and an end to the genocide in Gaza.
Speaker 5: The government takes the position that because the Secretary of
Speaker 5: State finds his descent unacceptable or contrary to US foreign policy,
Speaker 5: he can be deported. As Romsey suggested, it's largely unprecedented,
Speaker 5: save for ugly historical precedents, including the Red Scare and McCarthyism.
Speaker 3: That's what we're talking about.
Speaker 5: We're also talking about a period of repression that the
Speaker 5: Center for Constitutional Rights knows well following nine to eleven,
Speaker 5: when we were in the courts trying to get people
Speaker 5: out of secret detention.
Speaker 3: One thing that's different now.
Speaker 5: Is the legal infrastructure is so much stronger, and everyone
Speaker 5: out here on the streets knows that we cannot hide
Speaker 5: in the face of.
Speaker 3: This amount of repression.
Speaker 5: We will be fighting in the courts and fighting in
Speaker 5: the streets to bring Mahmoud home and prevent this level
Speaker 5: of repression from spreading to many others, as the administration
Speaker 5: that's threatened to do so.
Speaker 2: That was on Wednesday. For now, a Khalil will be
Speaker 2: remaining in ICE attention in Louisiana, and ICE director Tom
Speaker 2: Homan said Wednesday that quote, free speech has its limitations.
Speaker 3: Unquote, Yeah, I have found some stuff today of people
Speaker 3: on the right attacking the judge who put out as
Speaker 3: I guess called a stay on this in part because
Speaker 3: the judge is Jewish, so it's nice to see the
Speaker 3: anti Semitism being used in that way as well in
Speaker 3: this instance. Just fascinating. We're really breaking new ground in
Speaker 3: all of this.
Speaker 2: A White House official did tell friend of the Pod
Speaker 2: the Free Press not necessarily our favorite publication, but they
Speaker 2: do have an exclusive quote here that the basis for
Speaker 2: targeting Khalil is being used as a blueprint for investigations
Speaker 2: against other students, saying Khalil is quote a threat to
Speaker 2: the foreign policy and national security interests of the United
Speaker 2: States unquote, said the official, noting that this calculation was
Speaker 2: the driving force behind the arrest, saying, quote, the allegation
Speaker 2: here is not that he was breaking the law. So
Speaker 2: we have this official like openly saying, like, he's not
Speaker 2: charged with a crime. We're just wanting to see if
Speaker 2: we can do this. Can we deport a legal permanent
Speaker 2: resident for saying something that we don't like?
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I think there's been a lot of comparisons
Speaker 4: to this to direct maccarthyism. I think that's accurate to
Speaker 4: some extent. I think the most direct compared to this
Speaker 4: is not maccarthyism. It's the Palmer Raids yep, which I
Speaker 4: think people tend to be way less familiar with. That
Speaker 4: was the first Red Scare, which is largely targeted at
Speaker 4: the industrial workers of the world for their opposition to
Speaker 4: World War One, and they did basically the same shit.
Speaker 4: A lot of people would give anti war speeches and
Speaker 4: then a whole bunch of IWW organizers and other sort
Speaker 4: of like leftists would get fucking deported for it. So yeah,
Speaker 4: that was a absolutely terrifying period of repression. If the
Speaker 4: line is not drawn here, and it should have been
Speaker 4: drawn like two hundred miles back from here, but if
Speaker 4: isn't drawn here, this is going to continue. This is
Speaker 4: going to continue to get worse.
Speaker 2: And I mean all of this is in relation to
Speaker 2: Trump's executive order, you know about quote unquote anti Semitism. Meanwhile,
Speaker 2: today in the Oval Office he said something incredibly anti
Speaker 2: Semitic and also anti Arab somehow, like in this same
Speaker 2: statement saying, quote, Schumer is a Palestinian as far as
Speaker 2: I'm concerned, he's become a Palestinian. He used to be Jewish,
Speaker 2: He's not Jewish anymore. He's a Palestinian unquote, which is
Speaker 2: just an unbelievably anti Semitic and anti Arab statement all
Speaker 2: at once, like removing someone's Jewishness because of how they
Speaker 2: act or things they've said or things they believe in.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and it's one of those things. Again, Like it's
Speaker 3: worth like covering this as it develops. There's not much
Speaker 3: to say other than like, this is incredibly illegal and
Speaker 3: has to be opposed immediately and vigorously. Like yeah, yeah, no.
Speaker 2: It's really bad. And of course you're not gonna have
Speaker 2: the ADL coming out against Trump hero.
Speaker 3: The ACLU did, which I should note because I heard
Speaker 3: some people saying they did not expect the ACLU too
Speaker 3: they have. But yeah, the ADL is fully in the
Speaker 3: camp of lock any one up who's ever protested Israel.
Speaker 2: And they're not gonna call Trump anti Semitic for making
Speaker 2: a statement like this, Yeah, because their interests are are
Speaker 2: fairly aligned at this point. Read what's happening in Gaza.
Speaker 2: So I think now we're gonna play a special report
Speaker 2: from James, who can't be on the recording here today,
Speaker 2: but he does have a report on deportations in Panama.
Speaker 2: So James take it away.
Speaker 6: So something that we've seen in the last week is
Speaker 6: that the people who the US government has deported to
Speaker 6: Panama who it can't deport to their home countries, have
Speaker 6: in some cases been released by the Panamanian government and
Speaker 6: given a thirty day visa or thirty days to essentially
Speaker 6: exit Panama, and they're not really been given any support.
Speaker 6: So they're in some cases like just sleeping on the
Speaker 6: streets in Panama City, right just wandering around trying to
Speaker 6: work out how to get home and trying to work
Speaker 6: out like what they should do next.
Speaker 3: Obviously, these people who.
Speaker 6: Have fled places like Afghanistan, Iran, right, places where they
Speaker 6: can't go back to, they would face persecution just for
Speaker 6: the act of having tried to lead they weren't already
Speaker 6: facing persecution before, which many of them were.
Speaker 3: That that's why they fled.
Speaker 6: So they've just kind of kicked it down the road
Speaker 6: a little bit and we'll see where this leads. But
Speaker 6: it's another piece of evidence that this wasn't hugely well planned,
Speaker 6: that the Trump administration just wanted to get these deportation
Speaker 6: numbers up but almost cost.
Speaker 2: All right, We're gonna go on a break and come
Speaker 2: back to talk about the Department of Education and Tariff
Speaker 2: talk with Mia Walong.
Speaker 3: Wow. Well, we are back, and you know it's everyone's
Speaker 3: favorite time of the podcast talking about tariffs. And before
Speaker 3: we get to Mia, I want to bring on a
Speaker 3: musical guest to set this section of the program up.
Speaker 7: Rocky Jazz Bob rocking jazz boy locking rocking jazz bo rocking.
Speaker 4: Jazz bo Ah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, oh my gosh. That was worth the rest of
Speaker 3: our year's budget. Now everyone will be getting paid for
Speaker 3: the rest of the year in Denny's coupons. That's all
Speaker 3: we have left after paying for this. But I think
Speaker 3: we can all agree worth it.
Speaker 2: Do you want to explain what that is because I
Speaker 2: still don't really have a clue what exactly that opening
Speaker 2: theme song is for Tariff Talk.
Speaker 3: Well, there was a great band called the Clash once
Speaker 3: and they wrote one song that wasn't very good, and
Speaker 3: in it, somebody says something that didn't sound very much
Speaker 3: like the word tariff. But if you mispronounce the word tariff,
Speaker 3: it fit in. And that's where forty two thousand dollars
Speaker 3: of our operating budget this year went. Anyway, Mia, let's
Speaker 3: talk about tariff's.
Speaker 4: Yeah, now that I've now that I've gotten one of
Speaker 4: the two things I've ever wanted in life, play on music.
Speaker 4: So since last week this has been an entire roller
Speaker 4: coaster because right after we finished recording, in like the
Speaker 4: next two days, everyone went, oh, the tariff aren't going
Speaker 4: to be that bad, because a lot of the tariffs
Speaker 4: that were hit with Trump sort of general twenty five
Speaker 4: percent Canada Mexico tariff got waved after Trump agreed not
Speaker 4: to apply them to goods covered by the U SMA
Speaker 4: Free Trade Agreement. But then everyone remembered that the twenty
Speaker 4: five percent steel in a Lune of tariff was still
Speaker 4: going into effect, and so that went into effect this week. Now,
Speaker 4: there was also a brief, incredible moment of panic where
Speaker 4: Trump was talking about doubling them to fifty percent. He
Speaker 4: backs off of this in exchange for Ontario's Doug Ford
Speaker 4: stopping a like twenty five percent increase in electricity prices. However, coma,
Speaker 4: the trade war is one hundred percent still on. Canada
Speaker 4: is doing a whole like sort of slate of reciprocal
Speaker 4: tariffs specifically on steel and also tariffs and taxes on
Speaker 4: a whole suite of other US goods. I'm just going
Speaker 4: to read this from the Associated Press, because this is
Speaker 4: no longer the trade war here is no longer limited
Speaker 4: to the US, Canada, China, and to some extp Mexico.
Speaker 4: For Mexico's really hasn't been responding in the same way
Speaker 4: as basically every other country who's come under these tariffs,
Speaker 4: or at least the sort of main focuses of these tariffs.
Speaker 4: But this week the EU officially joined the phrase. So
Speaker 4: here's from the AP quote across the Atlantic, the European
Speaker 4: Union will raise terrace on American beef, poultry, bourbon and motorcycles.
Speaker 4: Bourbon again.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, bourbon twice. Yeah, bourbon twice. It's twice as
Speaker 3: important as the other things.
Speaker 4: Yes, peanut, butter and jeans. Actually you say this, there
Speaker 4: was a whole like part of the whole speech. It
Speaker 4: was not a joke, maya people the EU would like this.
Speaker 4: This was this was part of the thing. Was yeah, like,
Speaker 4: we're hoping to restore the profitability of the American spirits
Speaker 4: markets with the US backs down.
Speaker 2: It was also the only American product that Trudeau can
Speaker 2: named during his big very funny.
Speaker 3: Let's be honest, outside of music, this nation has produced
Speaker 3: one thing of value to the world, and it's bourbon.
Speaker 4: Yeah, pretty reusable It's also very funny that it was
Speaker 4: like Bourbon was like our what attempt number was it
Speaker 4: at making whiskey before we finally got one that was
Speaker 4: like exportable.
Speaker 3: Terrible. I mean, yeah, it took. It took generations. Look,
Speaker 3: you know, Rome wasn't built in the day, and Bourbon
Speaker 3: is the rome of liquors produced in Kentucky.
Speaker 7: Yeah.
Speaker 4: Well, and speaking of it being produced in Kentucky, this
Speaker 4: is actually deliberately Okay, well, all right, so the EU
Speaker 4: in theory, the line that they're saying is that these
Speaker 4: are deliberately designed to like target things that are made
Speaker 4: in red States. They also did do soybean tariffs too, though,
Speaker 4: which is you know, like you're dropping a new kin
Speaker 4: Illinois here. Okay, So the EU as impost reciprocal tariffs
Speaker 4: on twenty eight billion dollars of US goods. Also on Tuesday,
Speaker 4: China's tariffs went into effect, which means the agricultural terrifts
Speaker 4: that we talked about last week. And notably I keep
Speaker 4: coming back to soybeans because soybeans are such a critical
Speaker 4: part of the system of American agriculture as the crop
Speaker 4: that you rotate out with coren to sort of like
Speaker 4: preserve soil integrity. The Chinese tariffs are now in effect.
Speaker 4: It's mostly on agricultural goods. Yeah, and this has I
Speaker 4: think in ways that are pretty predictable, at least to me.
Speaker 4: This has caused a lot of panic in the markets.
Speaker 4: There's been some sort of rallying as like more information
Speaker 4: comes in, but there's stuff that I did not predict,
Speaker 4: which is so okay. Goldman Sachs has downgraded its projection
Speaker 4: for us GDP growth. Their chief economist is talking about
Speaker 4: how he thinks we're gonna get stagflation again, which is
Speaker 4: sort of While ceclation was the thing in the seventies
Speaker 4: that was, you know, like you have inflation and unemployment
Speaker 4: growth at the same time, this is basically the economic
Speaker 4: condition that liquidated the welfare state and allowed to write
Speaker 4: take power in the first place.
Speaker 2: That's funny because when I google stag inflation, I get
Speaker 2: very different results. That could just be my own.
Speaker 3: No, that's that's stagfilation, Garrison, two very different things.
Speaker 2: Oh sorry, yeah, I think I I think I'm anyway.
Speaker 4: The things I have to deal with on this job,
Speaker 4: they never warned me every single time. It's true, It's true,
Speaker 4: it's true.
Speaker 6: This is this.
Speaker 4: This makes up for a lot.
Speaker 3: If you ever get to fight the Undertaker, you have
Speaker 3: a song to go on too.
Speaker 4: It's true, So okay now now, so it's sort of
Speaker 4: more surprisingly and this is something I have literally never
Speaker 4: seen before with the US. Both City Bank, while City
Speaker 4: which is the over the City Bank like changed his
Speaker 4: name to City or something, but City Bank and ubs
Speaker 4: the giants Swiss Bank downgraded the status of all US equities.
Speaker 4: I have never seen anything like this in my entire life.
Speaker 4: They are also boosting the status of Chinese and EU
Speaker 4: equity So this is basically like this doesn't have like
Speaker 4: a technical official effect, but this is like this is
Speaker 4: basically their their evaluation of what countries like stocks basically
Speaker 4: you should purchase right And this is also sort of
Speaker 4: applies to bonds, So.
Speaker 7: Is that bad?
Speaker 4: This is like I assume that the US would get
Speaker 4: its actual credit rating devalued before this happens. I've never
Speaker 4: this is this is unreal. Like the argument that they
Speaker 4: are making here is that it is because of the
Speaker 4: instability in the US, like because because of the tariffs
Speaker 4: and because of everything that's going on, that like you
Speaker 4: should just fucking pull your money out of the out
Speaker 4: of the US and American companies and put it somewhere else.
Speaker 4: And they're they're secifically boosting the status of Chinese and
Speaker 4: EU equities, which is astonishing because again one of one
Speaker 4: of the one of the countries again who's whose equity
Speaker 4: status that they are boosting is China. China's economy is
Speaker 4: a fucking disaster right now. They're dealing with like their
Speaker 4: fucking housing bubble going under. They've been trying to do
Speaker 4: this pivot to a consumer based economy for years and
Speaker 4: years and years and years, and it doesn't work because
Speaker 4: they don't pay people enough to actually like fuel an
Speaker 4: economy consumer spending. Like they're you know, they're they're about
Speaker 4: to take giant damage from the trade war. And also
Speaker 4: they like you know, like it was only like three
Speaker 4: years ago the CCP faced their first like nationwide mass
Speaker 4: protests like since Tianneman, right, and these guys like and
Speaker 4: again these are these these are the financial analysts of
Speaker 4: City Bank and UBS have looked at that and went,
Speaker 4: you are better off putting your money there than you
Speaker 4: are putting it in the US.
Speaker 2: I mean, at this point, I think Trump's tariffs have
Speaker 2: wiped out. I'm reading four trillion from the US stock
Speaker 2: market just in this past month.
Speaker 3: Now, now trillion?
Speaker 7: Is that?
Speaker 3: Okay? So for example, I have thirty two dollars right
Speaker 3: now in in my pocket. Is it more than that?
Speaker 3: I think it's a little bit more, Okay, Okay, okay,
Speaker 3: so it is enough to buy two different servings of pizza. Okay,
Speaker 3: this is I'm trying to put this into terms I
Speaker 3: can understand, thank you.
Speaker 5: It is.
Speaker 4: Imagine, imagine one burger, right.
Speaker 3: And a burger and Portland does cost thirty two dollars?
Speaker 2: So yes, yes, Now now imagine I thought you're gonna say,
Speaker 2: does cost for tull a dollar?
Speaker 4: I mean probably tomorrow, right, like khudos. I don't know
Speaker 4: if if any fucking plagues that.
Speaker 3: We're doing adding levity because this is legitimately kind of frightening.
Speaker 4: No, like this is I have never seen the financial
Speaker 4: press like, yes, like the only times I've ever seen
Speaker 4: the financial pressure react to something like this is like
Speaker 4: they were kind of acting like this about the possibility
Speaker 4: of Jeremy Corbin like taking power in the UK, like
Speaker 4: they are like I washed a guy on CNBC, right,
Speaker 4: this is not like like this is this is not MSNBC.
Speaker 4: This is not even like CNN. This is CNBC literally
Speaker 4: go on air and call what Trump is doing quote
Speaker 4: insane and start talking about how and this is and
Speaker 4: this is I think what these people are worried about
Speaker 4: is they're you know, the thing that they're seeing that's
Speaker 4: starting right now, and it's starting with these sort of
Speaker 4: these downgrades views equities is capital flight, which is straight
Speaker 4: up a butt like international capital taking their money from
Speaker 4: the US and fucking literally moving out of the country
Speaker 4: and moving it somewhere else because the US is so unstable.
Speaker 4: This is like, I don't know if anyone knows what
Speaker 4: mass capital flight from the US would do, because I've
Speaker 4: never seen anything like this. So part of what's going
Speaker 4: on right and part of the reason the markets have
Speaker 4: kind of recovered in the last few days after the tanking,
Speaker 4: and they did Monday, is that, like the inflation data
Speaker 4: came out and it wasn't that bad. But the thing is,
Speaker 4: all of the inflation data we're getting right now, and
Speaker 4: all of the economic indicators we're getting right now, it's
Speaker 4: gonna take a little bit of time for the actual
Speaker 4: effects of these terrorists to set in, right Like these
Speaker 4: are these are things that like you know, it's going
Speaker 4: to take it's going to take like six months, maybe
Speaker 4: a year before we fully see the impact of that.
Speaker 4: But and when we do, it is going to fucking
Speaker 4: law ismoking creator into the economy. And the worst part
Speaker 4: of it this about this is this isn't even the
Speaker 4: most unhinged part of this. The most unhinged part of
Speaker 4: this is how the Republicans have been reacting to all
Speaker 4: of this in Congress. So one of the few things
Speaker 4: the Democrats have been trying to do, and I say
Speaker 4: one of the few because like the response has been
Speaker 4: Downwright collaborationists, that they've been trying to force Republicans to
Speaker 4: take a vote on the tariffs, because the tariffs are
Speaker 4: unbelievably unpopular, and they're particularly unbelievably unpopular among like the
Speaker 4: capital owning class, who you know, actually matter. So what
Speaker 4: they've been trying to do is that Trump did these
Speaker 4: tariffs by declaring a state of emergency, and the Democrats
Speaker 4: wanted to use the National Emergencies Act to force the
Speaker 4: vote in the tariffs. I'm just going to read this
Speaker 4: in the New York Times. The National Emergency Law lays
Speaker 4: out a fast track process for Congress to consider a
Speaker 4: resolution ending a presidential emergency, requiring committee consideration within fifteen
Speaker 4: calendar days after one is introduced, and a floor vote
Speaker 4: within three days after that. But the language the House
Speaker 4: Republicans inserted into their measure on Tuesday declare that quote
Speaker 4: each day for the remainder of the one hundred and
Speaker 4: nineteenth Congress shall not constitute a calendar day for the
Speaker 4: purposes of the emergency that Trump declared on February first.
Speaker 4: So the point we are at right now is is
Speaker 4: in order to preserve a bunch of tariffs which are
Speaker 4: effectively about to fucking obliterate the entire world economy, Congress
Speaker 4: has declared that days don't pass. This is fucking this
Speaker 4: is completely unhinged. This is fucking like caligulous horse in
Speaker 4: the Senate shit like they again, they are literally they
Speaker 4: have literally declared that calendar days passing are not actually
Speaker 4: calendar days, so that Trump can just keep doing tariff
Speaker 4: shit and rule by fiat like the Israelites.
Speaker 2: They have stopped time in order to win the battle.
Speaker 4: It's it's genuinely astonishing and the extent to which this
Speaker 4: has kind of just been swept under the rug Republicans
Speaker 4: have been you know, doing this kind of quietly right
Speaker 4: and there. And and the fact that like the fact
Speaker 4: that Democrats are not literally on TV every single second
Speaker 4: of every day going that the Republicans are voting to
Speaker 4: stop time so that Trump can destroy the economy is astonishing.
Speaker 4: It's this real, like sort of admission by the Republican
Speaker 4: Congress that like they're seating authority over policy like to
Speaker 4: Trump completely right, Like the government now is Trump ruling
Speaker 4: by sort of fear and people attempting to sort of
Speaker 4: like run circles around him in courts, which is not
Speaker 4: you know, working enormously. Well, yeah, we'll see and and
Speaker 4: you know, and this this, this is starting to have
Speaker 4: effects on like investor confidence like in the in like
Speaker 4: the US as a political entity in the US is
Speaker 4: an economic entity, which is unprecedented. The other thing I
Speaker 4: think it's worth noting is that these people like Elin
Speaker 4: Must Donald Trump the people around them have been saying
Speaker 4: for a long time that the plan is to cause
Speaker 4: a recession and then after the recession things are going
Speaker 4: to get better, and the financial pressures hasn't believed them.
Speaker 4: And this right now is the period in which they're
Speaker 4: starting to realize that they were serious about this, and
Speaker 4: I don't know what the political ramifications of that are
Speaker 4: going to be, because these are people who actually matter
Speaker 4: in the political system, and I think we'll see the
Speaker 4: rammications of this play out and then this sort of
Speaker 4: coming weeks and months. But this is a fucking cliff
Speaker 4: that we've hit, and we're now like Wiley Coyote, like
Speaker 4: running off the side and trying not to look down.
Speaker 3: But on the upside, we have a great new song
Speaker 3: for everybody.
Speaker 1: So woo.
Speaker 3: Who's to say if any of this has been bad?
Speaker 2: All right, we are back speaking of running circles around
Speaker 2: the courts. We do have a small update reusade side.
Speaker 2: Last week, in a five to four vote, the Supreme
Speaker 2: Court denied an appeal from the Trump administration in a
Speaker 2: case regarding Trump's attempted federal funds freeze and the shuddering
Speaker 2: of you said. This was a case filed by the
Speaker 2: AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition and the Global Health Council. The
Speaker 2: White House is now required to pay foreign aid contractors
Speaker 2: for work that has already been completed, and further details
Speaker 2: will be worked out back in the district court. And
Speaker 2: it's still unclear if the Trump administration is going to
Speaker 2: abide by the court's ruling and resume all required payments.
Speaker 2: But this is the first move from the Supreme Court
Speaker 2: regarding Trump's actions the past few months. This has also
Speaker 2: not stopped Trump from trying to slowly close other entire
Speaker 2: government agencies. This very week, the Education Department laid off
Speaker 2: nearly half of its workforce, over one thousand and three
Speaker 2: hundred employees. Late Tuesday night, Education Secretary Linda McMahon went
Speaker 2: onto Fox News to say that this reduction force is
Speaker 2: only the first step towards abolishing the entire Education Department, saying, quote,
Speaker 2: this was the president's mandate. His directive to me clearly
Speaker 2: is to shut down the Department of Education, which we
Speaker 2: know we'll have to work with Congress, you know, to
Speaker 2: get that accomplished. But what we did today was to
Speaker 2: take the first step of eliminating what I think is
Speaker 2: a bureaucratic bloat unquote.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I mean, like, you know, we've talked on
Speaker 4: the show for a long time how eliminating Department of
Speaker 4: Education eventually destroying public education has been a long running goal.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, of the most absolutely unhinged of these people,
Speaker 4: who are the people now in charge. And Yeah, they've
Speaker 4: decided to just like individually fuck every child in the US.
Speaker 4: It's incredible.
Speaker 2: Well, and so far, the way that they're trying to
Speaker 2: close up the Department of Education is kind of in
Speaker 2: a more selective manner because they're still keeping certain parts
Speaker 2: of the department active.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: On March tenth, the Education Department announced that they were
Speaker 2: launching investigations into sixty universities for quote Title six violations
Speaker 2: relating to anti Semitic harassment and discrimination quote and this
Speaker 2: is in relation to anti genocide protests on campus. And
Speaker 2: this comes after Trump announced the immediate cancelation of four
Speaker 2: hundred million dollars in federal grants and contracts to Columbia University.
Speaker 2: The Education Department is threatening that these other fifty nine
Speaker 2: universities may lose their funding if they do not quote
Speaker 2: enforce Title six of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits
Speaker 2: any institution that receives federal funds from discriminating on the
Speaker 2: basis of race, color, and national origin. National origin includes
Speaker 2: shared a Jewish ancestry Unquote. I don't know how to
Speaker 2: say here.
Speaker 4: You get to see all the threads of this admin
Speaker 4: coming together, right, which is that you know, these people
Speaker 4: are also attempting to effectively destroy like the secondary education
Speaker 4: system in this country two for reasons that are sort
Speaker 4: of unclear to me, I don't know. But what we're
Speaker 4: seeing here, right is the ways that the Democrats sort
Speaker 4: of like falling into lockscept with Republicans on back of
Speaker 4: the genocide in Israel has sort of led to this
Speaker 4: thing where the Republicans are using this to just straight
Speaker 4: up obliterate like all of the US's like political, economic,
Speaker 4: and social institutions.
Speaker 2: Well and specifically with this like investigation, they are they
Speaker 2: are trying to get all these universities to cooperate in
Speaker 2: efforts to selectively remove students who have protested against the
Speaker 2: genocide in Gaza. Right, this is this is the you know,
Speaker 2: the same attack on free speech and free expression that
Speaker 2: they're doing against Khalil, Like this is this is the
Speaker 2: same exact purpose, and now they're trying to get more
Speaker 2: and more universities to be complicit in like the selective
Speaker 2: removal of people in this country who choose to express
Speaker 2: their First Amendment rights regardless of whether they're a citizen,
Speaker 2: a Green card holder, or on a student visa. So
Speaker 2: this is this is all deeply, deeply worrying. Robert, you
Speaker 2: have a you have a small segment you want to
Speaker 2: discuss before we start to close out.
Speaker 3: Yeah, just a little bit at the end here. So
Speaker 3: in the subreddit for the five OHO five oh one
Speaker 3: protest campaign, which is an attempt to do protests in
Speaker 3: all fifties dates simultaneously, right, I think their next day
Speaker 3: of action is coming up in April. I'm not giving
Speaker 3: an opinion on the overall thing, but in the subreddit,
Speaker 3: somebody posted claiming to be a National Guard soldier given
Speaker 3: kind of his thoughts on how the National Guard would
Speaker 3: respond to orders to carry out violence against US citizens,
Speaker 3: And I just wanted to chat about this book because
Speaker 3: it's something we talk about on the show pretty regularly.
Speaker 3: My opinion is that one of the likely ways things
Speaker 3: come to a head, probably as early as this summer,
Speaker 3: is that there is mass protests in DC and the
Speaker 3: Insurrection Act gets used and the Guard at least are
Speaker 3: brought in to attempt to crack down. I mean, obviously
Speaker 3: Trump has done a version of this before, and Trump
Speaker 3: and his state attorney have both discussed using the Insurrection
Speaker 3: Act to crack down on protests. I think they see
Speaker 3: DC as the place they want to do that. So
Speaker 3: it's interesting to me to see a post like this.
Speaker 3: This is not a thing where like I've been able
Speaker 3: to verify this guy. Yet there's a couple of points
Speaker 3: that make me that is probably is a National guardsman.
Speaker 3: For one thing, there's a lot of them, right, Like,
Speaker 3: this is not like a National guardsman. Where'd you find one?
Speaker 3: There's a ton of fucking dudes in the National Guard.
Speaker 3: For the other thing, everything he says is consistent with
Speaker 3: things that I have seen and talked to other people
Speaker 3: who are in and were in the Guard about. There's
Speaker 3: one little bit where he advises people on like stop
Speaker 3: the bleed gear, and he gives good advice. He says,
Speaker 3: only buy from NAAR and North American Rescue. It's the
Speaker 3: same advice we would have given. He cites DoD Directive
Speaker 3: thirteen forty four to ten, which is why he believes
Speaker 3: he's well within his rights to make a post like this,
Speaker 3: And in essence, what he's saying is that it is
Speaker 3: his belief that most of the military chain of command
Speaker 3: from NCOs up to officers would not be down with
Speaker 3: following illegal orders to fire on US citizens. But the
Speaker 3: vast majority of enlisted troops, if fired upon, would get
Speaker 3: over whatever issues they have with that very quickly, right.
Speaker 3: That's the gist of it is that I think, you know,
Speaker 3: within sort of the officer class and the NCO class,
Speaker 3: there are a lot of resistance to the idea of
Speaker 3: the military being used for domestic policing. That is less
Speaker 3: clear with kind of the enlisted class, who are you
Speaker 3: A significant chuck of them are very much down for Trump.
Speaker 3: But whatever sort of divisions exist within enlisted soldiers would
Speaker 3: fall apart pretty quickly if soldiers were fired upon. And
Speaker 3: I think this is probably like a assuming this is accurate,
Speaker 3: and I don't really see a reason to doubt it.
Speaker 3: There's nothing he's saying here that's crazy. I think this
Speaker 3: is kind of an interesting thing to keep in mind that, like,
Speaker 3: when you're looking at the military, it's not the police.
Speaker 3: Like if I have to have armed agents of the
Speaker 3: state cracking down on a protest, I'm less worried about
Speaker 3: people being killed if it's the National Guard in general.
Speaker 3: But that situation can change very very rapidly if the
Speaker 3: situation becomes an active firefight. And I do think like
Speaker 3: that's a thing we have to consider right now. What
Speaker 3: was the possibility that we have US soldiers, whether the
Speaker 3: National Guard or active duty, engaged openly in shooting at
Speaker 3: American protesters. Like that's in the cards as early as
Speaker 3: this summer, and it's not a fun the thing to
Speaker 3: think about. But I'm seeing more and more, not just
Speaker 3: posts like this, but I'm having more and more conversations
Speaker 3: with people who are in the military or who were
Speaker 3: are in the National Guard about their concerns about what
Speaker 3: they might be called upon to do. Some of this
Speaker 3: has to do with the border, but like it is
Speaker 3: becoming increasingly common for people in the military to worry
Speaker 3: about how they are going to be used in the
Speaker 3: immediate future. We're not talking about years. We're talking about
Speaker 3: this summer, right is when there's a very good chance
Speaker 3: a lot of stuff comes to a head. So these
Speaker 3: are things you should be thinking about. If you're listening
Speaker 3: and you are in the military, these are things that
Speaker 3: you should be thinking about because the people who are
Speaker 3: in charge of our government right now have made a
Speaker 3: lot of statements about how they want to use the
Speaker 3: military to deal with protest tests, and the idea that
Speaker 3: that's going to happen very soon is not not fringe
Speaker 3: you're crazy.
Speaker 2: Well, and although these people might have you know, slightly
Speaker 2: more disciplined when it comes to actual firearms. There is
Speaker 2: also incidents like in twenty twenty yep where the Kentucky
Speaker 2: Army National Guard killed someone via the misuse of crowd
Speaker 2: control absolutely munitions. I think that this this is also
Speaker 2: worth stating. Even if you know, like a kent State situation,
Speaker 2: maybe is not not as likely in like the modern day,
Speaker 2: there's certainly other other ways to cause grievous harm. Yes,
Speaker 2: in these sorts of like protest environments, and.
Speaker 3: When we've seen I mean even in Portland, when we
Speaker 3: have seen which you witnessed personally, unfortunately, Garrison, the worst
Speaker 3: injuries to crowd control devices are usually people in our
Speaker 3: case it was federal agents, but who are utilizing crowd
Speaker 3: control weapons and have not trained on them. Yeah, because
Speaker 3: they're not. There's certain ways you're supposed to and not
Speaker 3: supposed to use them, and these guys are just Hey,
Speaker 3: you know how to use a gun. You must know
Speaker 3: how to use the robot balling thing.
Speaker 7: You know.
Speaker 2: No, if you use like less lethals the way you
Speaker 2: would use you know, a regular firearm, that actually leads
Speaker 2: to like much more like possible lethal consequences or like
Speaker 2: life changing consequences. Yeah, which you know, police are more
Speaker 2: familiar with the regular use of crowd control munitions than
Speaker 2: necessarily you know, like bore attack or like state national guards.
Speaker 2: Something that's also you know, worth keeping in mind. Let's
Speaker 2: close by my my least favorite segment, Stinky Musk, which
Speaker 2: I still has a really bad name. On Monday, a
Speaker 2: Central judge ruled that Musk's DOGE should be the subject
Speaker 2: to comply with FOIA requests and public disclosures of information
Speaker 2: required of government agencies, with the judge ordering the release
Speaker 2: of email correspondence between Musk's team and the Office of
Speaker 2: Management and Budget and was ordered to quote begin producing
Speaker 2: documents on a rolling basis as soon as practicable unquote now.
Speaker 2: Despite Musk's claims of quote unquote maximum transparency. Last month,
Speaker 2: the Trump administration tried to shield DOGE from public records
Speaker 2: requests by labeling the agency's documents as quote unquote presidential records,
Speaker 2: which carries special protections. This specific case is super interesting.
Speaker 2: The judge of federal judge by the name of Cooper
Speaker 2: also critiqued the way that the Trump admin tried to
Speaker 2: litigate this case, quoting from political quote, the lawyers offered
Speaker 2: virtually nothing in the way of evidence about doge's operations
Speaker 2: or management. Indeed, the court wonders whether this decision was strategic,
Speaker 2: Cooper said, noting that the Trump administration lawyers had taken
Speaker 2: competing positions, including that DOGE qualifies as an agency under
Speaker 2: some sections of law but not others when it suits it. Thus,
Speaker 2: DOGE becomes, on the defendant's view, a Goldilocke's entity, Cooper wrote,
Speaker 2: not an agency when it's burdensome, but an agency when
Speaker 2: it's convenient unquote. And I do like Cooper's analysis here
Speaker 2: of how DOGE is very selectively an agency only when
Speaker 2: it causes you know, benefit to Trump or Musk. And finally,
Speaker 2: we have one other Musk story to close out. This
Speaker 2: episode admits Tesla's plummeting stock price, protests outside Tesla dealerships,
Speaker 2: and reports of vandalism of dealerships across the country. Trump
Speaker 2: has essentially started doing ads for Tesla on the White
Speaker 2: House driveway. Upon climbing in a red car that he's
Speaker 2: not allowed to operate, Trump remarked, Wow, everything is computer
Speaker 2: So this was a very very odd and kind of
Speaker 2: embarrassing show of favoritism where Musk brought out like a
Speaker 2: number of different Tesla models and Trump got to quote unquote,
Speaker 2: you know, pick the one that he wanted to buy,
Speaker 2: as he just like sat in on this like televised
Speaker 2: advertisement for Tesla as his you know, company is losing
Speaker 2: a shocking amount of money in the in the stock market.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 4: And there, I mean there, there's literally there's literally a
Speaker 4: picture of him with like the notes that he has.
Speaker 4: There's like in an in like really really.
Speaker 2: Like a Tesla's sales note like bullet point of like
Speaker 2: how much certain models are, what their different features are,
Speaker 2: which ones have self driving features included, which ones you
Speaker 2: have to pay extra for.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 2: No, he's literally carrying like a Tesla sales pitch as
Speaker 2: he does this televised appearance boosting his new best friends
Speaker 2: and co president's company. Trump said on True Social the
Speaker 2: radical left lunatics are trying to illegally and collusively boycott Tesla,
Speaker 2: one of the world's greatest automakers and Elon's baby, in
Speaker 2: order to attack and do harm to Elon and everything
Speaker 2: he stands for unquote. So now not only has Trump
Speaker 2: called the Tesla boycott illegal, which which is, you know,
Speaker 2: its own form of unhinged. But on Tuesday, Trump announced
Speaker 2: that vandalism of Tesla's will be labeled as domestic terrorism,
Speaker 2: promising that perpetrators will quote unquote go through hell. White
Speaker 2: House spokesperson Harrison Fields said, quote ongoing and heinous acts
Speaker 2: of violence against Tesla's by radical leftist activists are nothing
Speaker 2: short of domestic terror unquote, So that.
Speaker 3: Would be fun to see how that blaze out.
Speaker 4: I feel like we're we genuinely are not that far
Speaker 4: off from just like Trump trying to hand down legal
Speaker 4: mandate saying you must buy a Tesla like this. This
Speaker 4: is the this is the kind of shit that we're
Speaker 4: in now.
Speaker 2: Now, this is one of the most like bizarre things
Speaker 2: I've ever seen. If if Biden or any Democratic president
Speaker 2: did anything similar to this, you would have like thralls
Speaker 2: of people screaming for his impeachment, similar to like the
Speaker 2: erg Adams thing. It's like one of the most blatant
Speaker 2: open displays of corruption I've ever seen, where I president
Speaker 2: is using his office to boost like the personal financial
Speaker 2: interests of one of his top advisors who's also like
Speaker 2: running government agencies essentially and doing massive massive cuts to
Speaker 2: prohibit their ability to like investigate his own businesses, while
Speaker 2: also taking massive amounts of government money to keep businesses
Speaker 2: like Tesla and SpaceX operable. So this has been a
Speaker 2: pretty pretty silly thing to watch unfold the past few days,
Speaker 2: and now Tesla shares have risen four percent after Trump's
Speaker 2: support for Musk and Tesla.
Speaker 3: Great, well, I think that's going to do it here
Speaker 3: at us with the ed to play us out, We're
Speaker 3: gonna refer back to our friend the Narcissist Cookbook who
Speaker 3: put together our lovely new tariff theme song that you're
Speaker 3: gonna hear every week until tariffs aren't a thing anymore.
Speaker 2: We reported the news.
Speaker 7: Locky jazz bob locking jazzpot, Sorry, lock locking jazz bob
Speaker 7: locking jazz Bot.
Speaker 1: It could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
Speaker 1: coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 1: ap a podcast, or wherever you use to podcasts. We
Speaker 1: can now find sources for It could Happen Here. Listened
Speaker 1: directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.