Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 171

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer, the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York,

Starting point is 00:00:25 since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio, app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. CallZone Media. Hey, everybody. Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to in a long stretch if you want. If you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing

Starting point is 00:00:56 new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Welcome to Inka Dhaban here, a podcast that has been really, really fucking bleak basically since Trump took office. So instead of doing another episode about how doomed the U.S. is, we are taking a, I don't know, a field trip to Argentina to talk about something extremely funny. And that extremely funny thing is the Argentinian president, Javier Malai, promoting a meme coin and maybe going down for it. And with me to talk about this is really the only person I could, I could have. have on to talk about a crypto thing, who is Molly White. And I'm trying to explain who Molly White is. My explanation of this is in the same way that the great 20th century Marxist theorist

Starting point is 00:01:43 C.LR James' book Beyond a Boundary is both universally considered to be the best book ever written about cricket and also literally calling it the thing that it is, the best book ever written about cricket is like a damning insult to how good the actual book is. Molly is like probably the world's best cryptojournalist. and writes the newsletter Citation Needed. Also, does Web 3 is going great, which is amazing. Everyone should go listen to it. Molly, welcome to the show.

Starting point is 00:02:09 Thanks for having me. What an intro. I've been waiting for an opportunity to use that one for such a long time. Great book, by the way. Everyone should both go subscribe to citation needed and also go read Beyond the Boundary because it's great. So, God, we were talking about this before the show. I had planned this episode out before Elon Musk showed up. at CPAC with Javier Malay, like with Malay's signature chainsaw, doing, like, doing an even

Starting point is 00:02:37 weirder version of Belize thing about like cutting regulation with a chainsaw. But Jesus Christ. Yeah, what a spectacle that was. Oh my God. I, like Steve Bannon doing the Nazi salute wasn't even the weirdest thing that happened there. That was only like day one. Well, that's overdone now. You know, everyone's doing it. You have to do something. new. Yeah, you have to wander around the stage with a chainsaw. He didn't even do the Malay thing, which is you have, you have like a book of regulations or whatever, and you cut it with the chainsaw, you didn't even do it. And you saw it and have, yeah. Oh, God. So I, I am very excited to talk about the crypto scandal that might finally bring this administration down. However,

Starting point is 00:03:21 and I am deeply sorry, I already, I apologize before this recording started. I am deeply sorry. in order to explain who Javier Malay is, I have to do the single most difficult thing I've ever attempted in my, like not just in my history as a podcast show, like that's obviously trivially true, but like my entire history doing theoretical work in general, which is I'm about to attempt to explain peronism

Starting point is 00:03:46 in under 10 minutes on four hours of sleep. Let's see it. Here we fucking go, because to take a sense of why, you know, why we have to do this, right? like Malay is able to take power like basically because he's like one of the first candidates in a long time

Starting point is 00:04:04 to in Argentina to run as an anti-parodist and that may seem weird because hold on wait shouldn't there always be like okay if you have an ideology shouldn't that the person from like either the left or right side of the political spectrum you know be running against an ideology and no no up until basically now both the left and the right

Starting point is 00:04:24 in Argentina we're both peronics So to get an understanding of what Peronism is, we need to go back, not just to who Juan Peron is, and we'll get to who Juan Peron, who's like the guy this ideology is named after, and, you know, the ideology is based on like this guy returning from exile from the military coups. But we have to go back to one of the sort of foundational parts of the modern Argentinian state. And that element is the fact that Argentina has one of those militant workers' movements, in the entire world and has had it for about a century. I was on Margaret's show.

Starting point is 00:05:01 It could happen here. Jesus Christ, not it could happen here. Good Lord. You're telling one four hours of sleep. You're doing great. Thank you. Thank you. I haven't even gotten.

Starting point is 00:05:08 We have not gotten to my final analysis of Pironism where the closest thing I can compare it to is post-short cultural revolution's 1970s era China. So this is about to get so much more unhitched. But a while back, I was on Margaret's show, cool people who did cool stuff. to talk about the second Argentinian giant anarcho-sendicalist uprising

Starting point is 00:05:32 in about a span of four years, which was the giant anarchist rebellion in Patagonia in 1921, 1922. This is the second one, because the first one was the 19-19 general strike, which ends in an event called the tragic week where everyone sort of gets killed by the military. But, you know, the fact that there's two

Starting point is 00:05:51 in different parts of the country, enormous anarchist uprising in a span of about four years. is a demonstration of the fact that this is one of the most built-in-working classes at the world. And any political movement that is trying to hold power in this country is going to have to deal with the fact that the Argentinian working class at any moment can, you know, if you're a factory owner, you can wake up one day and there's a black flag flying over

Starting point is 00:06:12 your factories because your workers have seized it. And the sort of culmination of this, and the reason this is even still relevant today is that like the last of what you would, I guess you could call like the classical 20th century revolution. So a line of uprising started with like the original formation of the workers councils in Russia in 1905. You know, and that continues to like the occupation of the factories in Italy through the two red years in like 1980 and 1919, like the anarchist parts of the Spanish revolution, like the revolutions in Hungary and Algeria, like, you know, all like through 68, like the factory occupations in France and Italy and like all this whole, this whole lineage

Starting point is 00:06:46 of like the thing that happens when you do revolution is workers occupy the factories and try to seize control of the country. The last one of those ever was an Argentine. in 2001, like everywhere else in the world, this shit was gone. And then randomly in Argentina in 2001, like there's a giant one of these uprisings that is, you know, only really put down by a sort of left Peronist government agreeing to like tell I'm have to fuck off, which was like, you know, a sort of seismic change in, in the political landscape. But all of this is to say that, okay, if you were a capitalist in Argentina and you have to deal

Starting point is 00:07:24 with this? Like, what do you do? And the answer is to create the most unhinged ideology the world has ever seen by uniting socialism and fascism under the single banner of Argentinian nationalist class collaboration, which the thing that makes no sense, but you have to understand, like, Peronism is, oh God, Peronism is simply the weirdest ideology ever. I promise we were going to get to the fun crypto stuff, but we have to unfortunately do this. We have to do our homework first. And part of this is, so Juan Perron, the actual guy who his ideologies based off, is an enormously popular president in, like, the late 40s and 50s until he gets overthrown by military coup. And to get a sense of, again, like, how weird this guy is, like, this is a guy who, when he comes into power, a bunch of the most famous Nazi war criminals and, like, not just, you know, obviously, like, the famous Nazis fleet of Argentina, there's a whole meme about that, right? But, I mean, we're talking, like, guys who literally did the Holocaust by hand, like, flee to Argentina and Doreen his administration.

Starting point is 00:08:20 and when a military coup overthrows him, they flee the country. So again, like, the U.S.-backed military junta is less pro-Nazi than this guy is. He is also personal friends with Che Guevara and considers, like, the Cuban Revolution to be, like, part of his, like, revolutionary project. So a deeply, deeply weird, deeply weird guy. And the result of this is that, okay, so you have a military dictatorship through, like, the 50s and the 60s, right? and like the entire time

Starting point is 00:08:50 the dictatorship, not the entire time, but most of the time the dictatorship is happening, right, the entire political spectrum sort of projects all of their political energy onto we want Perone back because Perone is remembered as like the guy who like brought workers rights to the country and also like gave women the right to vote and also as you remember it as

Starting point is 00:09:06 a stable nationalist right wing government by the rights. So like everyone on like both sides of political spectrum project all of their political aspirations into the single figure of Peron, which works because he's not in the country. is not there. So, you know, and because he's gone, you can project anything you want onto him.

Starting point is 00:09:25 And this is to a large extent the origin of modern populism, right? Like, you know, modern populism is the projection of all grievances onto one guy, and then having that guy come in, take power, do constant sort of semi-political mobilization to, like, fix your issues.

Starting point is 00:09:40 And one of the interesting threads here is that, like, the theoretical origin of left populism is very specifically, Peronism, because one of the theoreticians of like modern left populism, one of the most famous ones, is my old nemesis, the Argentinian political philosopher

Starting point is 00:09:54 Anesto LaClaue, and his wife Chantal Mouf, who were like, they were like, you know, these people were like the theoretical forces behind a bunch of like the European left in this sort of Eurocommunism era. And even up until like Podemos in Spain 2011, like these are the people who are the theoretical force behind so much

Starting point is 00:10:10 like left electoral stuff in the last like 50 years. And it's all from LaClau who was a left Peronis. So all of all the dots are going on the pinboard And while he's gone He's this guy that like From an American perspective It's like imagine that like Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump

Starting point is 00:10:27 From 2016 were both the same guy And both sides were just trying to get this one guy To come back to Argentina and like fix everything So this creates like the left and right Peronists And when Peron comes back in the 70s and like immediately gets elected president again The right Peronist just I mean just literally start slaughtering the left Peronists in the streets. And Peron like backs the right peronists against the left.

Starting point is 00:10:53 And you would think this would destroy left Peronism. But no, no, left peronism was in power in Argentina until like Malai's election like a few years ago. It's, oh. So, okay, so like why would you still be a left Peronist after Peron, like had all your boys machine guns in the 70s? Part of the reason this works also is that he dies and his wife takes power and there's like another military coup. So, you know, he's not, like, in power long enough, kind of for, like, the disenchantment to really set in. He's in power just long enough for people to remember it as, like, the break between the detaterships. And at this point, I can finally attempt to go, what is Peronism after, like, how many minutes of, like, oh, God, I think I've got it over my 10-minute limit of what is Peronism.

Starting point is 00:11:36 But, okay, Peron's deal is this, right? Like, so, okay, like, if you were a Peronist, right, in a Peronist state, everyone is supposed to be equal before the power of the Argentinian state. And so if you're a leftist, you focus on the everyone is going to be equal part. And this means on the one hand, you know, there are real substantive gains for the Argentinian working class that they didn't get under the, you know, the sort of previous administrations and under the junta, right? You know, you have like massive expansions of workers' rights, like, nationalizations of a bunch of sectors of the economy. You have this like strategy of national development through like import substitution. There's like a long strain of like feminist peronism from, you know, his like, like him being. the administration where women got the right to vote

Starting point is 00:12:18 On the other hand, if you're a fascist, you focus on the like before the power of the Argentinian state part which means like permanent class collaboration and this is the part of the deal that brings the right in is like the deal is that okay so you give the workers all of this stuff and you set up these really complicated patronage networks

Starting point is 00:12:34 and you know people have jobs and like they have a social safety net at least in theory. And the tradeoff is you will never ever again attempt to like occupy a factory or like drive these parasites who run your entire life out of power. And the second part of that is this like this hardline, unhinged right wing, like Argentinian nationalism, which is wielded against, for example, like Argentinian indigenous

Starting point is 00:12:57 groups. And so I promised a comparison to the long culture, 70s long cultural revolution. We've reached that point of it. So to understand, like, really what this is, right? It's an active counterinsurgency that is sort of that is waged by the state and waged by a bunch of, like, parts of the social sector to, to unfold this really dynamic and militant workers movement into the state in such a way

Starting point is 00:13:20 that there can still be politics, kind of, but it won't actually be a threat to the ruling class. And my sort of like closest thing to this is this very, very weird period in Chinese history between like the end of the short culture revolution in like 1969 and the death of Mao in 76 where like the most unhinged parts

Starting point is 00:13:42 of the culture revolution are sort of over because Mao has set off, you know, so in 1967, like, Mao sets off this uprising in Shanghai. He does this deliberately as part of his strategy to, like, gain power of the party. The problem is that control of Shanghai is no longer in the hands of the Chinese Communist Party, like, the workers take the city. And this is a disaster because they've all been reading about the Paris Commie. I think about the Paris Commie is that they had, like, direct elections of people. And there's a moment, I actually, like, I found this, this moment of this transcript where Mao was talking to Joe and Lai.

Starting point is 00:14:13 and Joe and Lai is like if we let these people do direct elections like it's going to lead to anarchism and Mao is like oh shit we have to stop this so what what happens is that he wheels together this baffling coalition of like student red guards and these sort of some of like a loyal like rebel workers factions along with a bunch of like the remaining party bureaucracy and the military which is a coalition comprised of everyone on every side of the Cultural Revolution, right? Like, normally the Cultural Revolution is broken down into very roughly, there are rebel factions and there are, like, government factions, right? And he's pulled together a coalition of a bunch of elements of both of them with the explicit thing of we are going to end the revolution.

Starting point is 00:14:58 And in the short run, what this does is it leads to the back half of the Cultural Revolution that people don't talk about very much, which is, instead of, like, everyone dying because there are rebels running around, everyone's dying because the state is killing everyone to, like, bring everyone back under control. And that's what, like,

Starting point is 00:15:12 most of the people who die in the culture revolution are killed putting the whole thing down, if you want to try to understand what peronism is, right? It's this ideology of bringing together all of the different sort of disparate political factions in a moment, right? You're bringing together everyone from like the fascist on the right to like the socialists on the left. And you're bringing them into the banner of this one guy in the same. And the reason Mao is able to do this is because like he's Mao, right? Every single like faction on every side of the culture revolution, whatever they're trying to do is justifying it in the name of like, oh, this is what Mao wants.

Starting point is 00:15:45 This is what Perron is doing, right? He's drawing together the entire political spectrum in a way that he can sort of stabilize power, take it away from like the junta and forge this permanent political coalition. And this results in like the sort of total dominance that this ideology has a Argentian politics means that like basically every election in Argentina until like Malai takes power is an election between the left and the right Peronists. And okay, okay, I am so sorry. This finally is the end of my attempt to explain brodism,

Starting point is 00:16:13 and we're going to go to ads. When we come back, I'm going to actually do this interview that I've been promising. I am so sorry. Okay, we are back. Thank you so much for surviving this. This sort of brings us to, like, how he kind of takes power and how, you know,

Starting point is 00:16:44 there's an economic crisis. There's, like, all this inflation. And so he comes in on, like, I don't know, we were talking about this beforehand. And we want to talk to you about this. Like, there's all these really weird parallels between this and the American election where it's like, except the inflation in Argentina is like real. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:02 We just have this sort of like bogeyman version of it. They actually have hyperinflation. Yeah. Yeah. We check the current inflation rate. Yeah, I think, I mean, it's like several hundred percent right now. I think, I think it's like 300. something per cent, which is actually

Starting point is 00:17:20 Lay's entire thing was that he was going to stop inflation. It's actually, it's way worse under him than it was under the previous Peronis administration. Oh, there's one last thing I forgot to mention, which is like, you know, why if you're on the left would you take this deal? And this also ties into like how this politics, how is politics

Starting point is 00:17:37 I took over the state, which is that like, you know, there were people in Argentina like under these Peronis governments got things that are like unimaginable here. Like there's one that's important to me. And like, obviously like it's still, you're still living under capitalism, a lot of it still sucks. But like, one of the things that people won under these governments was this mandate that 1% of all government employees had to be trans,

Starting point is 00:17:57 which is like unimaginable here. Like, like, like, even at the height of like, you know, like sort of trans acceptance or whatever, like that's, there's what? Like, that's, that's not, that's not a thing that's even like, no one even like thinks to ask about that. And like, yeah, like, I don't know, like, yeah, like, I might sell my soul to Juan Perron if it meant that like, none of my trans friends ever had to sleep in an alley again. Like I, you know, but the wheels fall off of this and they put the self-described and narco-capitalist in power, which is, this is great. And, oh, God. Okay. And this finally gets us to the fun part of this. I said at the top of this episode that, like, he did a meme coin, right? Can you explain what that is? Because, like, oh, God.

Starting point is 00:18:43 Yeah. So meme coins are a particularly weird part of the cryptocurrency world where, They basically go out and say that this is a token that has no inherent value, which, I mean, you know, skeptics would argue that that's true of all cryptocurrency. But meme coins very actively embrace that fact. And they're often themed around a meme. So, you know, a lot of people know of Dogecoin, which is themed about the, you know, around the Shiba Inu dog. They're also sometimes just themed around sort of an idea or a person or, you know, just sort of whatever is capturing the podcast. public attention at any given moment. And the idea is that you buy in and all of the attention causes more people to buy in. And if you're really good at it or really lucky, you're one of the first people to buy in. And so you buy in at a low price and then you sell after everyone else is bought in and pump the price up higher. That's the idea. In reality, it doesn't really work

Starting point is 00:19:38 that way. It's full of insider trading and market manipulation. And it's not sort of a fair game where anyone has a chance to be one of those early people, but that's sort of the shape of it, at least. And so I guess that brings us to Libra, which is the meme coin that Millet was convinced, I guess, to endorse. Yeah. I mean, I think this is an interesting thing here, too, where it's like, our government is just like a fucking meme coin now.

Starting point is 00:20:06 Like, the thing that is in control of the American state is Doge, the Department of Government Efficiency, which is just the Dogecoin meme. Like, I... Yeah. We're in sort of a post-ironic world at this point where crypto and the U.S. government are somehow completely intertwined. And I guess we should probably mention that just before Trump took office, he launched his own meme coin, which was the Trump token, followed very shortly after by his wife launching the

Starting point is 00:20:33 Melania token. And they did what all good meme coins do, which is that they spiked in price based on the original interest. And then they lost everyone a bunch of money once the price came back down. because with meme coins, people lose interest and move on to the next one. And, you know, the Trump token, shockingly, does not have enduring value. So. Yeah. And like, and that's just an interesting thing about it, which is like, okay, this is just a pump and dump scheme. Yes. Like, it's just securities fraud. Like, I, I, we have an entire economy based on security. Everyone doing securities fraud and everyone knows that security's fraud. I don't know. I mean, it's, it's really cynical. Like, if you actually talk to people who are deep into,

Starting point is 00:21:14 meme coins, either creating them or trading them. There's this broad acceptance that, like, oh, yeah, yeah, it's totally a scam. People are trying to run off with the money after they launch these tokens. Like, there's all of this market manipulation happening. Average everyday people who are, you know, seeing these stories about people buying in super early and then making a million dollars out of thin air. Like, that never happens. Those aren't average people. Those are, like, deeply sophisticated trading bots or people with insider knowledge. Like, everyone knows this and openly discusses it. And yet there's still this active participation in it because the idea is that, like, okay, sure, it's a scam. But if you get in on the scam

Starting point is 00:21:53 early enough, you can be the scammer and you can be the one who profits and, you know, screw everybody else. So it's like this really deeply rotten, like cynical world. Yeah. I remember you talked about this on Jamie's show about like how just deeply nihilistic it all is. Yeah. And I think, you know, I mean, it's not even, it used to be you had to do metaphors to draw a direct line between this sort of like the nihilism of this shit and like the nihilism of putting like Malai or like putting Trump and Elon like in office.

Starting point is 00:22:28 But now it's just, I mean, they just do the meme coin, right? Like there's no. Yeah, the mask is like fully off of crypto in the meme coin era, I think. Like it's kind of amazing how during the first. the previous crypto boom in like 2020 and 2021, there was this phrase that everyone was saying, which was, like, we're all going to make it. And the idea was like, we're all going to get rich together. Everyone's going to succeed. And now it's like they've totally, like, you never hear that anymore. And now it's like, oh, I will punch you in the face and steal your wallet if I get the

Starting point is 00:22:59 moment's opportunity. And that is like broadly accepted throughout the crypto world. Yeah. You know, and like that is also like what Malai has been doing to like everyone in our Right. Like his, his thing that came in is he, I mean, God, one of the things I remember from like the very first days he was in office as he was talking about all the stuff about how they were going to take away welfare benefits from anyone who was arrested at a protest. and like that didn't stop there's been massive protests like basically the sense of the moment you took power but you know like it's just this really deeply cynical very explicit thing of like pitting like everyone in society against each other like you know like making this argument too there's like a crime thick article about this where it's like he's very explicitly making this argument that like well okay if you're if you're like a private

Starting point is 00:23:43 sector worker and you're making no money the reason you're making no money is because wages are too high in the public sector it's because taxes are too high and if taxes and corporations were lower, they would pay you more. It's like, yeah. No. But it, but if it fits into this sort of like, pure nihilism of like, yeah, everyone trying to grift each other. And it's, I mean, it's really recognizable here in the United States, too, where it's the same story of like, oh, you're not making enough money because, you know, people are stealing your tax money and it's going to, you know, people who don't deserve it or it's going to these programs to fund foreign aid instead of people in the United States. Or, you know, it's like very much trying to pit everyone against one

Starting point is 00:24:20 and others so that you don't notice that the person who's actually taking the money is the guy who launched the meme coin or the people who have the insider information. You know, it's like this very direct mirror of what is happening in society. And yet it's like so obvious. The problem that we have is like I think people do broadly recognize that like everyone who's rich got rich by fucking robbing people. But instead of trying to do anything about that, the solution that's being positive by these people. It's like, well, instead of you just being scammed all the time, like, you could be the scam artist. You could be the robbery. Yeah, like, that's like the new scam instead of like, you know, because like organizing is fucking hard, right? And like, attempting to fight these people is

Starting point is 00:24:58 really hard. They have all the money. They have all the power. They have the police. They have the military. And so you get like this shit. On the other hand, sometimes it backfires because these people like are like all in enough on on this fucking meme coin shit to like run it. So yeah, let's let's talk about this specific meme coin Libra. So it's kind of a weird example of a meme coin because, you know, most meme coins, the idea is like, this has no intrinsic value, this has no purpose, you just gamble on the token price and hope for the best. Libra was ostensibly supposed to actually have some sort of point to it, making it much unlike most of the meme coins. But it was still, you know, basically a meme coin under the hood. But the idea was that somehow some of the profits from this Libra token were going to be put towards supporting Argentine entrepreneurs or something like that.

Starting point is 00:25:54 There was a sort of like social benefit side to it, which was all very vague and like there was very little detail. Like you never really know with these things what is actually supposed to happen. But that was the story is that like this is going to support Argentine entrepreneurs and it's going to funnel money to their projects and all this. It almost feels like an older kind of scam. Like it reminds me of like an NFT scam. We're like, yeah, they'll be like, ah, somewhere in the future, we're going to make a game. And you're all going to, it's like that thing. But they brought it back for one last ride.

Starting point is 00:26:27 Right. It's like the historical like 2020 era crypto scam where it was like, look, we have this beautiful roadmap of all these things we're going to do and we're going to give you gifts and rewards. And then it's like, okay, but how is it going to work? And they're like, oh, don't worry about it. We'll tell you later. Just give us your money now.

Starting point is 00:26:42 And that was kind of the idea with the Libra coin. But basically, the team behind it had some folks who were involved in something called Tech Forum, Argentina, which was like a group of tech entrepreneurs with this sort of like blockchain angle to it, who had access to Malay via this sort of project that was happening in Argentina where you could like pay to come to this conference. And Malay was going to be there and all this. And so they joined forces with some meme coin guys. who had a lot of experience launching other meme coin projects, including the Melania token, including the Enron token, which was literally launched by someone who purchased the trademark rights to the Enron company. I forgot about that. Oh, no.

Starting point is 00:27:28 Yeah, that came back to haunt us. And so they all joined forces and launched this meme coin, and they were able to get President Mule to promote the meme coin on his Twitter account by saying, like, here's this Libra project. It's going to support Argentine entrepreneurs. Here's the contract address. Buy in.

Starting point is 00:27:49 And so everyone got super excited because a president had just endorsed a meme coin. And he unfortunately was too slow to be the first president to do such a thing with Trump beating him to that particular record. But I actually can't believe, oh, my blanking on his name, the guy in El Salvador hadn't pulled one yet. Oh, yeah, Buckele. Yeah, I'm like stunned. he hadn't done it yet. Yeah, it's probably because he's a real bitcoiner and Bitcoin maximalists are not a huge fan of any other cryptocurrencies.

Starting point is 00:28:19 That would be my guess. But yeah, it is a little surprising. Yeah. Oh, also, okay, there's another unhinged angle here, which I want to briefly mention because it's extremely funny. The one of my good friends, Julie pointed me to you, which is part of the thing that's, like, originally maybe wanted to do this is that. So one of the people who was, like, involved in, like, this hookup process with, like,

Starting point is 00:28:38 the crypto people was this guy named Augustine Le Hay, who's, like, this, very, very famous conservative writer, and he's the guy who, like, introduced the concept of gender ideology to Argentina. So he's, you know, like, one of, and one of what the Lle's, like, big thing is just, like, being a turf all the time, right? And the guy who, like, got all of these people into turf shit is, like, the guy who introduced him to this fucking crypto scam, and he might have to sell him out in order to get out of the crypto scam bullshit, which is just, oh, God. Trans, trans people getting our revenge. You love to see it.

Starting point is 00:29:11 Speaking of crypto scams, we should take one more ad break before we get into all of the rest of this bullshit. We are back to the main story of the really unprecedented access to administration has given the crypto people. Can you talk a bit about who the people involved in this are? Because it's a lot of like very, very large players in this world. Yeah. So, I mean, it's still sort of coming out like who exactly was involved and to what degree they were involved, but it's really starting to look like the creation of this meme coin was spearheaded by a bunch of guys at a group called Kelseyor Ventures that has been involved in, like I said,

Starting point is 00:30:04 launching a bunch of these tokens. And that's sort of a family run operation. There's a guy named Dr. Tom and then his two sons, Hayden and Gideon, I believe. Hayden and Gideon. Jesus Christ. Like, oh, no. making these guys in a lab. And, you know, they're kind of young guys.

Starting point is 00:30:27 Like Hayden is like 28 or something like that, which is, you know, typical for the crypto world, I guess. But yeah, and so Hayden Davis is the mastermind behind much of the launch. But they're working very closely with a bunch of other people in the crypto world. And that's something that they sort of have to do with these big, splashy token launches. You know, the Trump token had to do this as well, where you can't just show. up as like a president and launch a meme coin and expect everything will just work. Because when that many people all try to buy a token at once, you know, you need someone on the other end to actually

Starting point is 00:31:01 be selling the tokens. And, you know, there's all of this infrastructure behind it that goes into these launches. And so you need people to do the market making. And there's the liquidity providers. And there's all these, you know, projects under the hood that are that are involved. And it's beginning to look like a lot of those people were deeply involved in these token launches in ways that was perhaps not entirely proper. Yeah. I know propriety around meme coin launches is maybe a lot to expect, but, you know, there's sort of talks about how one of the co-founders of a project called Meteora, which is one of these huge liquidity platforms and also a place where people are actually buying these tokens. Can you explain like what a liquidity platform is for listeners? Yeah, yeah. So,

Starting point is 00:31:48 it's basically sort of what I suggested, which is that like, if you go out and launch a token and you don't do any prep, when someone goes to buy that token, or sell that token, there's, there's no one on the other side of that trade. You need some amount of liquidity in the markets when you start off. Yeah. So there have to be like, there have to be like actual tokens that you can sell the people. Yeah. And if someone, you know, if someone buys one of your tokens, they want to be able to sell it to someone as well. And so you need to be able to sort of absorb that kind of trading without just assuming that, you know, out of thin air, these people will exist on both sides of the trade. And so there are these projects called liquidity providers where, you know, sometimes

Starting point is 00:32:30 it's like big firms will provide liquidity and they'll step in in that role and that's sort of the market maker end of things. Mediora is a little bit unusual in that they do like decentralized liquidity provision, which I'm not going to go into. too much detail about because it's very mind-numbing, but... It's also so funny that, like, the terms that have taken hold for these things, like, are financial terms, and it's like... Yeah. It's like, like, this is not liquidity in the sense of, like, does the U.S. government

Starting point is 00:32:57 have cash on hand to pay something? This is, like, are there these, like, stupid little weird program things to, like, move other programs around? Yeah. And it's not even dollars. You know, we're not, we're not talking about real dollars here. We're talking about, like, people providing you one fake token in exchange for another. fake token. But I think they very much intentionally use the traditional financial terms to sort of

Starting point is 00:33:20 lend a degree of legitimacy to it and cover up the fact that like, oh, and if you're a liquidity provider and you just like siphon all the liquidity out of there, you've just made a ton of money and a total scam. But it sounds legit because it's a liquidity provider and it's something that exists in like traditional finance. But yeah, so there's this Meteora project where that liquidity operation all happens. And, you know, Meteora was deeply, sort of involved in some of these big token launches, like Trump token was starting out on Meteora. Melania started out there. This Libra token started out there. And now it seems like the co-founder was like very closely connected to this Hayden guy. He even supposedly introduced the Melania team

Starting point is 00:34:05 to Hayden Davis, the Calciar guy. It sounds like, you know, according to some of the allegations out there, he was personally involved in a lot of this early insider trading that I'm sure we'll get into when it comes to Lieber token and why everything went so wrong. And it seems like there is this sort of network of people throughout this meme coin world who are running these big platforms and who are making connections and all of that, who are personally insider trading a lot of these big token launches so that when those people who are buying it up early and making all this money, it's like, oh yeah, that's the guy who runs Meteora. This happens so much in the crypto world, and I should stop being surprised every time it happens.

Starting point is 00:34:48 But what happened is when the co-founder of Meteora stepped down, the other co-founder who was like previously not really known stepped up and was like, hey, I'm the other co-founder. And he released this whole statement about how Ben Chow, the co-founder who stepped down, was, you know, he thought he was totally innocent of all this and nothing shady was happening at Meteora, etc. The other co-founder who just like came out of the woodwork, he runs Jupiter, which is the other, it's like the ostensible Meteora competitor. It's like, oh yeah, it's all just the same people, you know, behind the scenes. And, you know, some of the insiders who were sort of whistleblowing on this were saying, oh yeah, the Jupiter guys were all insider trading too. The Meteora guys are

Starting point is 00:35:29 insider trading. Like, they're all trading against you. So it's really exposed a lot of the rot in this sort of meme coin world in all of this infrastructure and the fact that like, oh, yeah, yeah, when you're buying meme coins, like you are playing in a rigged casino, which has certainly not done any favors to the meme coin reputation, but certainly also to Malay's as well. Yes, well, let's get into like Malay's involvement in this. Can you lay out to the timeline of this? Because it's so funny. Yeah, it's a little wild. So unlike the Trump token, Millet did not launch this token. He was not the mastermind behind it. It's not clear how much he really knew about the team behind it or what they were doing,

Starting point is 00:36:11 but he was certainly convinced to endorse this token and, you know, pump it up on Twitter and all of this. And again, this is not an unusual thing for meme coins to do. I mean, it's unusual for them to find a president, but. Like, apparently not now. Like, I... That's true. It was unusual for them to find a president. But, you know, there's this whole process with meme coins where they try.

Starting point is 00:36:35 to find influential people to talk about them to drive the interest in the token. And so they will hire celebrities or people who are influential in the crypto world or, you know, anyone with some degree of a platform to promote a token. And ostensibly they're supposed to disclose that they are being paid to promote the token. They rarely do. Yeah. It is technically illegal, but like rarely, rarely enforced for, for someone to promote a token without disclosure.

Starting point is 00:37:09 One of the very few cases where it was enforced was against Kim Kardashian of all people. Although that shit's all gone now. Yeah, and that was years ago before the SEC was bought by the crypto companies. And so... Yeah, and like, I mean, they literally, like, I think like yesterday,

Starting point is 00:37:25 was it yesterday as we're recording this? Recording this on Friday. Was it yesterday that the... Is it the SEC to the SEC that dropped the case against Coinbase? SEC. And that was today. Yeah, this morning. Oh, my God. Yeah. And I mean, we're seeing this everywhere, but the SEC has paused a case against Binance, which had involved allegations of actual fraud, not just the sort of like minor securities law violations. Fraud is also actually of a security

Starting point is 00:37:53 law violation. Yeah, those are all, by the way, a bunch of like very, very like, like, buyance and like Coinbase are like the biggest players in like the regular crypto market. Yeah, Binance is the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the world. Coinbase is the, the biggest cryptocurrency exchange in the United States. Coinbase spent over $75 million on the most recent political cycle in the U.S., and now is reaping the rewards by having the SEC case against them dropped. So I would not expect much in the way of SEC enforcement against crypto founders or companies, especially given that they have also installed crypto-friendly people at the SEC, at the CFTC.

Starting point is 00:38:32 The CFTC nominee for chair is an Andrews. Andreessen Horowitz guy who is advising them on crypto policy. Like, it's totally rotten now. Yeah. Well, and also, like, the actual guy running the government right now is Elon Musk, who is, you know, like, one of their fucking boys. Yeah. And the guy who's ostensibly running the project has his own meme coin project.

Starting point is 00:38:52 So I suspect he's not going to be super keen on anyone enforcing laws against meme coin operations either. Yeah. Good God. It's such a mess. Yeah. All right. Back to Argentina.

Starting point is 00:39:03 Back to Argentina. before we get lost in despair. Oh, God. Yeah, so basically, you know, the coin launches. Melae fires off a tweet about how this is such a great meme coin. And, you know, he gives the token address so you can all go buy it. And then very early on, it becomes clear that there is some degree of insider trading happening. So, you know, the beauty and the horror of crypto is that it's all recorded on a public blockchain.

Starting point is 00:39:33 People can look at. who is doing the early trades in these tokens. And it fairly quickly becomes apparent that the wallets that were involved in launching the token, and so the ones that are being controlled by the people who, you know, actually created this token and are promoting it, are also involved in this early sniping of the token. And sniping is when you use crypto trading bots, you know, like automated programs, to buy up the tokens very early on at low, low, low prices. You know, earlier than any human could reasonably be expected to go hit the buy button.

Starting point is 00:40:15 Yeah, it's the thing that, like, fucking ticket scalpers do. Or, like, the reason why you can't buy a PS5 is that all these thing trading bots get in, like, immediately. Exactly. It's 100% analogous to that. But in the case of these trading bots, you know, often they have insider information. They have the contract address before it's public so that they can be, like, split, second on it to buy these tokens early. And then they usually dump them really early, too. So, you know, if Millet tweets about a meme coin, the price shoots up within minutes of this thing launching.

Starting point is 00:40:45 And within minutes, these snipers sell off and they make millions of dollars often in profits. And it is that selling that often causes the price to crash right back down again, causing those average people who thought that they were early to be the ones basically subsidizing the, the who make millions of dollars off these launches. Yeah, like, it's pump and dump. It's literally just a pump and dump. Like, it's just fraud. Like, I just...

Starting point is 00:41:12 Right. I don't know. Like, I just... This is my, like, old, like, 2010 sense of ethics emerging here, which apparently doesn't exist in the sort of bold new world of, like, nihilism. But, like, this is just fraud. Yeah. No, I know.

Starting point is 00:41:27 And, like, people talk about, you know, oh, we need crypto regulations. Like, you don't need any new regulations. Fraud is still fraud. Like, stealing from me. people is illegal, but that's like a whole separate point. This entire thing when everyone was doing this on Wall Street, it like crashed the economy a bunch of times. We were like, holy shit, maybe you shouldn't be allowed to do this. But I don't know. Capitalism is such that you could just buy the government. And now all your fraud schemes are legal. Right. If you do it on the blockchain,

Starting point is 00:41:52 crime is legal, apparently. Yeah. But yeah, so, you know, there's this, there's this really early scandal where it's like, oh, you know, insiders are trading this token. Everyone's calling it a rugpole. because that's like the colloquial term for when someone launches a project and then steals all the money. And it certainly looks like that's what's happening. And so Muley very quickly distances himself from the project. He deletes the tweet that he made and he sends out a new tweet saying, basically, I didn't know anything about these guys. I don't really know what their project is. I just thought it was this, you know, cool thing that was going to support Argentinian businesses.

Starting point is 00:42:30 is I, you know, I renounced all affiliation with it, basically. And then he, of course, like, blames his political opponents for trying to weaponize this against him. And, you know, he goes very much out swinging on people being like, I can't believe you're taking advantage of this scam to come after my reputation. Oh, the Perotists made me do it. Oh, one perone. Right. Exactly. He's like, this is all your fault somehow. So anyway, you know, that all happens. And it sort of launches the project. into chaos because the way that the people on the inside are talking about it and huge grain of salt here because, you know, these are people who are potentially admitting to their crimes.

Starting point is 00:43:11 Well, it also, like, these are professional liars. Like, their job is to lie to people for a living. And, yeah, and several of the things that they've said have already been proven to be untrue. So, like, huge, huge, huge grain of salt here. But their story is that, oh, we were sniping the token, yes, but it's not bad because we were. were doing it to try to protect people from the other token snipers who show up on on launches like this. Like, we did it. No, no.

Starting point is 00:43:38 You don't know what I said. We had to do the scam to save you from the other people who were trying to do the same scam. You're not even exaggerating. That's literally what they said. And so they come up with this like hairbrain theory where they're like, okay, if we snip the tokens early, we can stop other token snipers from accumulating these huge piles of the tokens and then dumping them and causing the whole. thing to crash. And so, you know, they will be limited to sniping smaller quantities that won't

Starting point is 00:44:08 totally wreck the whole, you know, chart basically and cause it to go to zero. And then we'll take our accumulated pile of tokens and, like, slowly seed it back in to try to stabilize the chart. I mean, it's like blatant manipulate, market manipulation that they're describing, like, in defending themselves against allegations that they're committing crimes, they're admitting to new crimes. It's like this whole thing. But that's the story is that they were like, we had to do this to protect the chart. And the idea was that, like, Millet was going to make this video promoting the token even more. And at that point, they were going to put all this money that they had taken back into the project.

Starting point is 00:44:47 But, of course, that video never came because Millet had already cut his losses and was like, I don't want anything to do with this. And so now the guys who launched this token are sitting on, like, ostensibly $100 million worth of tokens. I use the word ostensibly because it's crypto and the numbers aren't real and, you know, there's really not $100 million floating around in there. Again, people talk about how this is like a $4.5 billion crypto scam. There was never $4.5 billion in this. It's all fake money. But like it is true that there were people who put real money into this.

Starting point is 00:45:24 They got totally scammed, basically taken for a ride because they thought that they might be able to make money on it because the. president endorsed it because they thought there was this, you know, somewhat legitimate scheme behind it to go to Argentinian businesses. They lost their money. And it all went to this guy, Hayden Williams, who is, you know, connected to Millay, who has some degree of influence with Millet, who claimed in text messages that he controls Milay. Oh my God. Yeah. By the way, use the N word. By the way, in these two. Like, you have to, like, who these people are? Like, this is, this is a white guy using the N-word.

Starting point is 00:45:59 Like, yeah, this guy is like, wider than I am and using the N-word to say that he controls. Christ. Miele, not great. He said in this text message that was leaked that he was sending money to Miele's sister, who is very influential and who sort of is Miele's right-hand sister, you know, sent money to her and that as a result of that, Miele will do anything that I want. He'll say what I want. He'll tweet what I want.

Starting point is 00:46:23 He'll, you know, he's my puppet, basically. Of course, Muley was very unhappy about this. characterization. But it seems like there's money trading hands behind the scenes, even though Milay was not, you know, behind the token directly. And, you know, this is all resulted in somewhat of a political scandal for Milay, which is both surprising that, like, of all things that could have caused a political scandal for Milay, there are so many things to choose from, and this is what it was. But, you know, he's now facing these, these allegations that he was complicit in the fraud, that he should be impeached even. You know, there's some rumblings among the opposition

Starting point is 00:47:01 party about trying to start some sort of impeachment proceedings against him. And it's all gone very south very quickly for him, I think. God, it really would be so incredibly funny if this is the thing that brings him down. I don't know if it will, but also like, I don't know. This is one of these, like, it didn't even bigger way than like the Trump plane crashes are like a political fucking godsend, like, handed down to the opposition, and the Democrats just aren't, don't use it, right? Because, you know, they're the Democrats. Right, instead of just, like, doing,

Starting point is 00:47:32 instead of doing a thing I would do, which is starting literally every speech with fucking no cops, no kings, no crashes, they're like, they're like, no way after anything. But, like, this is like, if you were, like, a Catholic opponent of this administration, like, this is, like, fucking God, like, reaching a giant hand down and going,

Starting point is 00:47:48 hey, have this thing to beat him. Like, have this stick to beat him over the head with. Yeah, and, you know, to their credit, I feel like, Argentinian politicians are taking better advantage of this than U.S. politicians have taken of their many opportunities because they are calling for, you know, impeachment. There have been, you know, many lawsuits filed against Miele. And, you know, there is a judge looking into his degree of connections here. Obviously, there is, you know, some amount of corruption over in the Argentinian government. And so, you know, the degree to which they will adequately investigate themselves is,

Starting point is 00:48:23 somewhat questionable, let's just say. Yeah. And, you know, the likelihood of an impeachment proceeding actually, you know, getting the votes to go to trial is certainly questionable. But this has been used, you know, in a somewhat effective way to attack the credibility of melee, which is, you know, worth doing, I think. And, you know, I was, I'll say this about peronism, right? Like, the thing about peronism is that it's like the engine that devoures social movements,

Starting point is 00:48:49 right? Like, anytime a social movement comes in, the pro just sort of, like, consume it from the inside. But the thing about the way that like, prognos and functions is like, okay, so they've eaten all these social movements, but it's not quite like the U.S. where you can just like disband it and make it go away. Like, you actually

Starting point is 00:49:04 have to still have, you have the thing the social movement does. And that means that these motherfuckers can throw a protest. Like, whatever else you say about the parodas, they aren't capable of putting an unbelievable number of people into the streets. And I'm really interested to see what's going to happen like this weekend and

Starting point is 00:49:20 over the coming weeks to see if we see a another 17th giant round of protests, like also specifically about this? Yeah. Yeah, I'll be curious, too. It's really interesting to me, like, to what degree this resonates with everyday people, I guess, in Argentina. Because, you know, there's, there's a lot to complain about with the Mule government. And so, you know, it's sort of fascinating to me that people are latching onto this. And, you know, it's sort of interesting just to compare with the United States where there's a lot to complain about with the Trump administration. And, you know, people were complaining about the meme coin, but by the time, that was, you know, partly because it was pre-inauguration.

Starting point is 00:50:00 And so Trump hadn't started signing all the executive orders. And so it was very quickly overshadowed by the other sort of blatantly illegal things happening within the Trump administration. And so it didn't get that much traction in sort of the longer term. So it's interesting to me to watch this play out in a different country where, you know, Millet has been in office for some time now. and, you know, this has gained at least some degree of a foothold. And I'll be curious to see, you know, if that indoors or not. He's sort of trying to play it off as like, you know, oh, everyone knows crypto is risky. He said something.

Starting point is 00:50:34 He tried to do this like damage control interview on TV where he said that basically, like, the people who bought this token knew they were playing Russian roulette and they got the bullet, which is a wild thing to say. Jesus Christ. Yeah, that's just a nutty thing to say. but also very in character for him. And, you know, he said something in that interview to the effect of, like, you know, only a couple thousand people lost money.

Starting point is 00:50:59 What's the chances that those people were even Argentinian? Like, we shouldn't even care if they were, you know, not Argentinian. And so, you know, it's sort of interesting to watch him try to downplay this. It's like, well, yeah, of course people lost money. It's a scam, you know. Just like, yeah, I guess. I think part of the reason this is, like, a real issue for him is that, like, he really truly you know and it's something that like Trump is also doing this like he but he like really truly

Starting point is 00:51:35 went out to like his main base of supporters yeah and was like I was going to take you up behind a woodshed and shoot you and like take the money out of your pocket and like the way he's like systematically fucking all of the people who are supposed to be his political base and like like Trump was also doing this but like people sort of like haven't isn't set in that this is what's happening whereas like this rugpole thing it's like this is like the only thing that the fucking unhinged right-wing crypto bro people care about. Like, this is like the one thing you could possibly do to, like, fits them off. Yeah, it's really interesting to see, like, what causes crypto people to turn on you?

Starting point is 00:52:11 Because it did happen in a much more limited way with Trump, where, you know, the U.S. Crypto Movement, I guess, that's not the right word for it. But the industry or the crypto world had really supported Trump very heavily. And, you know, they had donated to him. But there was also this widespread belief among people. who traded crypto that Trump was going to be good for crypto. He was going to cause crypto prices to go up. He was going to fix all these regulations that they thought were holding the industry back and all this stuff. And then when Trump came out and launched a meme coin,

Starting point is 00:52:41 some of his most devoted fans among the crypto community were horrified by it. And they really responded in a way that I think a lot of people didn't expect, which was like, I can't believe he's doing this grifty meme coin. He's supposed to believe in crypto, not just use it to steal money from his supporters. And so, like, there was actually this degree of shock that very briefly rattled the crypto world in the U.S. as well. And so I think that's, you know, sort of interesting to see is that, like, okay, you're allowed to do scams and, you know, run your government in a way that personally benefits you as long as it's not reflecting poorly on us and it's not taking money from us. But as soon as it starts to make people, you know, look askance at meme coins or the crypto world in general,

Starting point is 00:53:27 or it starts to affect crypto prices, then things turn bad somewhat quickly. Yeah, I wonder, I don't know, I'm interested in your take on this. Like, how much of that is people who are in less meme coin-y things who are worried about, like, their assets because they at some point, like, have to be able to cash out? Yeah. I think that's a big part of it. Like, there are factions in crypto where I sort of referred to this earlier when we were talking about Bikali, but, you know, there are Bitcoin.

Starting point is 00:53:57 who believe that Bitcoin is the one true cryptocurrency and that everything else is a total scam. And so they are really upset when these meme coins come out because they feel like it reflects poorly on Bitcoin because people just sort of lump everything together. There's sort of a step down from that, which is people who think that there are more legitimate cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin, but meme coins are not them.

Starting point is 00:54:20 And so there's been all this talk recently where they're like, look at all these meme coin scams that are getting in the news. you know, there was like the Hock Tua meme coin that totally like stole a news cycle for a minute there. And they're terrified that, you know, people are starting to think of crypto as meme coins. You know, it's just one and the same. And they're like, people are not going to think of all these wonderful, legitimate cryptocurrencies and all of their use cases if they're thinking about Hock Tua coin and how they ripped off a bunch of people, which like, personally, I think that the

Starting point is 00:54:52 reputation is perhaps somewhat deserved. But, you know, there is, this belief among some people that like, oh, this is not real crypto and it's giving the rest of crypto a bad reputation. And we're actually starting to see talk of that in some of the higher places where, you know, I've been seeing reporting that people are talking about the Haktua coin on Capitol Hill, you know, like when they're talking about shredding regulations to prevent people from running securities frauds, the opposition is like, well, do we want Hocktua coin everywhere? Like, is this really what we want? And so it is, you. It is, you, affecting the public perception and the perception in, you know, Congress to some extent,

Starting point is 00:55:33 which I think is what's really scaring people because they've just made these huge inroads with, you know, all of these now crypto-friendly politicians and friendly regulators. And now crypto is out here making a fool of itself, right, as, you know, new legislation or regulation might be installed. Yeah. And this gets me to, I think the thing I want to close on, which is, you know, like, we actually did successfully as a society kill the NFT. Yeah. Like, we took that motherfucker out back at Stadden to death.

Starting point is 00:56:00 Yep. And I'm wondering whether you think that like this is, this is a moment where we can like use this as a wedge thing to try to like fucking kill this entire industry and how vulnerable they are to like the negative PR rattlings from all of this? Yeah, I mean, I think that's a really good point that like the NFT, even as crypto has had a resurgence, you know, Bitcoin crossed $100,000. NFTs are like nowhere to be found. You know, like the NFT platforms are strong. ruggling. A couple of them just went out of business. And I think it is largely thanks to the fact that NFTs became really cringe, you know, like everyone was like, oh, those stupid monkey pictures. And that had like a really devastating impact on this entire industry that was supposed to be like the future of art or whatever. And so I think there is that potential throughout other portions of the crypto world. I would not be shocked to see that happen to these meme coin platforms

Starting point is 00:56:55 where they sort of lose their novelty value and people just see them as big scams and there's really no point. But unfortunately, I don't think that, you know, all of crypto can be undermined by the cringe factor or, you know, the sort of societal distaste for it because, I mean, there are people who have bought Bitcoin early who have billions of dollars in crypto in Bitcoin. They are now working in the U.S. government. They have very strong control over very powerful institutions. And so there is this countervailing force to keep crypto alive at basically any cost. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:57:38 And I think we're seeing them somewhat desperate to do that as we're seeing calls for, say, a Bitcoin strategic reserve, which is something that keeps coming up. The idea that, like, the U.S. government should personally stockpile Bitcoin, which, you know, they make a couple of arguments as to why they should do that, which are not very convincing even to some of the people in the crypto world. But the sort of underlying thread through it is that if the U.S. government holds a substantial amount of Bitcoin, they won't be able to afford to let the Bitcoin price collapse or to do anything that might threaten the cryptocurrency industry. And so I think that's why we're seeing the attempts to, you know, sort of work crypto into

Starting point is 00:58:20 government checkbooks, into the banking system. into traditional finance, you know, people trying to get Bitcoin ETFs into, you know, your pension plans and your retirement funds and things like that is really to make it so endemic and so contagious, I guess, to the rest of the financial world that it's almost like, you know, this threat that they're holding against the government, which is like, all right, if you kill us, we'll kill you. Yeah, and I think it's this interesting thing of like, sorry, I know, so we were going to close up, like, no, this is fun.

Starting point is 00:58:56 There's just interesting way in which, like, this seems like the end game for the entire, like, tech bubble economy is like, you know, like, none of these fucking companies have ever been able to make money, right? None of these fucking companies. Like, they all, they all, like, fucking, like, fucking, like, everything from, like, fucking Uber to, like, fucking, like, Google and Amazon, like, hemorrhaged money. Uber will hemorrhage money until it eventually the bubble pops and it dies, right? But, like, Amazon only really started making money, you know, Google was kind of making money,

Starting point is 00:59:23 but like Amazon only started making money when they started getting government contracts for like their cloud computing shit. Yeah. And like that looks like the end game. Like, you know, this is the thing with like Elon's like fucking electric armored vehicle contract is like the only thing that can keep the bubble going is just pure state intervention. But that also gives me a little bit of hope because I think the thing that's kept this giant bubble economy going for like over like a decade and a half now has been really, really even under the original Trump administration. I mean, and the original Trump administration kind of got bailed out by COVID to some extent. Like, you know, I mean, like the original Argentinian economic crisis was this, there's this huge wave of currency collapses in 2018. Where it was sort of contained, like the IMF did a bailout in, well, I was trying to do a bailout in Argentina and it like, it kind of got contained, but it set off a like a wave of uprisings.

Starting point is 01:00:10 But like, there's been this like really, it's taken this really careful financial management and like all of these like, I mean, like a trillion dollars of like overnight repo purchases like every day from the treasury to like make sure there's enough liquidity in the. banking like industry to like prevent like the kind of like 2008 style collapses. And I think it's taken a really delicate hand. And you know, like I don't think it's a good thing. But on your hand, like these guys just fire the nuke police. Like while they were moving a nuke. And I wonder if they can actually keep the dance going or if they're just going or if they're going to fuck up their bubble economy, just blow it all up, which might

Starting point is 01:00:47 maybe nuke all of these people in the process. Maybe. I also think that, you know, if we're talking like accelerationism, I think that one of the most interesting things that we're going to be seeing now is that the crypto industry has long argued that they have all this potential, you know, they are just around the corner from reinventing the financial system to be wonderful and spectacular. And the only reason that they haven't, you know, actually made true on that is because of those pesky regulators that are stopping them from doing all the stuff that they want. And so they've spent years now vilifying the regulators, claiming that the industry would be so wonderful if these regulators

Starting point is 01:01:27 would just let them innovate. And now they've got the regulators. They're in a world where, you know, they basically own the regulators. All of the enforcement cases against them are going to go away. You know, the friendliest possible regulations are going to be introduced. And now crypto doesn't have that excuse anymore, right? They can't just say that the reason we don't do anything useful is because these stupid regulators won't let us lend you Bitcoin or whatever. And so I think, you know, there is going to be this moment where people are like, okay, so do it now. You know, like do the innovation now. And it's going to expose a lot of the popsicle sticks and bubblegum that's holding up this crypto industry because they don't have that excuse anymore,

Starting point is 01:02:12 which I think will be interesting. I just hope it doesn't take like, you know, the economic collapse of a entire country to prove it. Well, my line on this is that like accelerationism as an ideology doesn't exist anymore because there's nothing you can do to do the acceleration. Yeah. Right? Like, or so like left accelerationism. Like Trump and Elon Musk like just

Starting point is 01:02:32 have their fucking foot hammering the pedal all the way down. We are accelerating as fast as we could possibly go and all we have left is to like make sure but the fucking acceleration goes our way and not theirs. Yeah. Yeah. But I, yeah, I guess like

Starting point is 01:02:47 you know, it's me trying to find a light in the darkness, you know? It's like, all right, well, I guess at least we might see the crypto industry fall apart. Yeah. Well, look, look, they might bring down the first anarcho-capitalist president. So, yeah, that's true. Yeah, I don't know. Today, Argentina, tomorrow of the world. Yeah. Well, and I think also just like, you know, it's interesting to see this uprising and sort of broad distaste for Millet and everything the E's doing when everything that he's doing is so clearly modeled after Donald Trump and his affection for Elon Musk. And so, you know, to see people sort of turn on that is perhaps a little bit instructive. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:03:30 And I think this is interesting kind of like bounce back thing too because he's like, you know, he's somebody's like he's modeling himself on Trump one, like the first Trump administration, but he got even weirder with it than like Trump one did. And now Trump too is like modeling itself back. Yeah. They're like slingshoting. And Elon's got the chainsaw. Yeah, and I don't know, hopefully the fucking rebound hits them too, and they also get the backlash to it. And we, I don't know. We don't all die when they actually set a nuke off because we've driven them out of power already.

Starting point is 01:03:59 That would be nice. Yeah. Well, Molly, thank you so much for coming on the show and for talking with us about this unhinged bullshit. And also just genuinely, thank you for reporting on all of this shit because, oh my, God, it is not easy. I don't know how you stay sane. Like, it's... I don't pretend I do. I think that's the secret. You just have to give into the madness. Yeah. Well, thank you for having me. Yeah. And where can people find your work? You can find me at citation needed. news. I also run Web3 is going just great, which is web3

Starting point is 01:04:36 is going great.com. And then I'm on social media everywhere. You'll find me from either of those websites. Yeah, we'll put links to all of this in the description. Thank you again. And yeah, I don't know, go make crypto so uncool that these people have a terrible day in panic. I'll do my best. Hi, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen here, a podcast about things falling apart and the people putting them back together. And today, Garrison and I are joined by Haley and Dan. Both Haley and Dan are gender affirming care providers in the Northeast, and they both work at federally qualified health centers. Welcome to the show, guys.

Starting point is 01:05:37 Thank you so much. Thank you. Okay. So for people who are not familiar, right, maybe they've been fortunate enough to have, like, really good health care the whole life or fortunate enough to not live in the United States and have this bizarre, like, web of health care provision,

Starting point is 01:05:54 can you explain what a federally qualified healthcare center is? Sure. You mind if I'd take this one, Hayley? So I would start by saying that our industry, our advocacy arms would riot if they assumed that federally qualified health centers weren't good care, right? So I got to dismiss with that to start. Oh, yeah. Yeah, I guess good is a relative to, yeah, I've relied on federally qualified healthcare center for a while, and it was great. They were very nice. Actually, my prescriptions got a lot less now than they do with my very expensive I-Hite insurance.

Starting point is 01:06:25 Yeah. So around the 1960s, there was the sort of free clinic movement that got started, and what grew out of that became the federally qualified health center system in the United States. United States. So there are roughly 1,600 unique federally qualified health centers all over the country, and we, as in sort of, you know, a confederated set of health centers all across the country are responsible for treating those most in need in the United States. So the Medicaid population, those without insurance, we cannot turn anybody away if you do not have insurance, people in rural areas where health care is very difficult to access and to get undocumented. folks and really everybody in between at the health center that I work at. We mostly treat folks

Starting point is 01:07:09 on Medicaid, which is pretty typical, although you'll find in states with no Medicaid expansion, it's a lot more uninsured and less Medicaid. But we are the nation's safety net healthcare provider. And without us, there are roughly one in 10 Americans would not get their health care. Geez. I feel like, I guess people who are not in the United States, do you want to go and give us a one minute speed run of what Medicaid is, Medicare? Sure. So America does not have a nationalized insurance program, as we are very frustrated with most of the time. It's mostly commercial insurance that you mostly get through your job. But if you are not fortunate, it's not the right word. But if you're not fortunate enough to get that, Medicaid is the system that gives health insurance to people who are living at or below the federal poverty line with the Affordable Care Act or the ACA, Obamacare, that level raised a little bit. So you could still get Medicaid if you were at above the federal poverty line. But this is mostly for the work. working poor. That's who gets Medicaid. Cool. Yeah. It's a great system.

Starting point is 01:08:09 Let's talk about how this is funded then. You said the U.S. doesn't have like a single-payer healthcare system. So how are these healthcare centers funded right now? Or maybe how were they funded like six weeks ago? Yeah. So most of the work that we do is fee-for-service. We're not a lot different than a lot of other places in that regard. If you have Medicaid patients, we are a fee-for-service program. We give provision of care to them on a per-visit basis, same as anywhere else in the country and how that works, and we get reimbursed for it.

Starting point is 01:08:38 What makes FQs different than everywhere else is two things. One, we get a special rate that is designated because of our willingness to take on these more expensive, more complicated patients and to ensure they're healthy enough to keep about expensive systems of care, like the emergency rooms and things of that nature. Yeah. And two is that we have a grant called the Fed 330. And this is a sort of like large sort of use it as you need to grant that, depending on the agency, is anywhere from 5 to 25% of your total annual funds and is meant to cover all of the folks who can't afford care and are uninsured. Part of my funding also, I do a lot of work with HIV and HIV prevention. So a lot of my work is done via Ryan White funding. And there's some other kind of separate funding streams that's applicable specifically to gender affirming care.

Starting point is 01:09:28 care. However, it's all kind of messy and tied up in a lot of those other funding streams that Dan mentioned. And there's some specific limitations because of those funding streams, again, historically, because who knows right now? But through something called the Hyde Amendment, it means that our funding would be at jeopardy if we provided abortion care. So there are some kind of limitations. A lot of what we do as an FQHC is providing really comprehensive, expansive care. We're kind of some of the few clinics that do everything that we do under one roof. Yeah. But there have been some limitations, specifically abortion to that. Yeah. It's more of a, like, a healthcare experience that I'm used to as someone from Europe, like, going to one of

Starting point is 01:10:13 these centres, then like the American one where you get a referral and then get it approved and blah, blah, blah. And like a lot of the ways that I talk to friends who live in other countries, like, I feel like my role is kind of more similar to like a GP as a nurse practitioner. There isn't necessarily. really an equivalent, but I feel like a GP is kind of a very similar universal way to understand a lot of what I do. Yeah, that makes sense. So can you explain Ryan White funding? Like, where does that come from? Why is it called Ryan White? So basically, Ryan White funding was initiated in, I believe, the early 90s during the AIDS crisis and was a large government initiative. It's named after Ryan White, who was a patient who contracted HIV through a blood

Starting point is 01:10:58 transfusion. So Ryan White funding right now is a major source for funding things like prep, which is medication for prevention for HIV, as well as direct HIV treatment. Yeah. So a number of these things, right, gender affirming care, perhaps care for people with HIV or preventing people from getting HIV through pre-exposure prophylaxis, like you said. These are things that have been like at the center of the culture war for the current government, right? Like they're like the things that they point to is, you know, whatever. They're sort of like in Paxton's impact on construction of fascism, he talks about moral decline, right? And this is their moral decline. That this is what they use when they're constructing their kind of, we will save you narrative. What is that,

Starting point is 01:11:51 mean for funding and like what does that mean more importantly for your patients for people who come to you for these different types of care? I mean, I think it's terrifying. I think I'm more on the patient facing side. So a lot of the conversations I've been having are just about the uncertainty. I'm a prescriber for a lot of trans youth, adolescents, and young adults. And so moreover, the uncertainty of just being able to, you know, get their medication, the stress of being publicly named and targeted in this culture war has just created a climate of fear. As my job, I want to be able to reassure patients that I am going to fight for them and do all that I can. But it's really scary. As Dan mentioned, a lot of our patients don't have financial safety net. They don't have

Starting point is 01:12:46 a medical safety net. We're really the one option for them. And if our clinic does not continue to offer this type of care, these are our kids who are going to go without hormones. I prescribe puberty blockers. My work as a gender affirming care provider isn't just walkers and hormones, but those are medications that we know are life-saving. We know that, that unfortunately, kids will suicide if they don't have access to those medications. And so I think, you know, talking about funding, talking about kind of these bigger shifts politically, you know, are things that, unfortunately, a lot of the conversations I'm having are really coming just down to safety and safety planning and figuring out support networks and talking about creative ways to get

Starting point is 01:13:33 hormones if we can't prescribe them. Yeah. I think it's worth talking about the fact that, like, there are so many angles of attack on this, right? There is the one that is just very clearly aimed at trans kids, right? the EO that specifies like protecting children, it's nonsense, but that is aimed at ending this care everywhere. Yeah. Now, are they going to be able to do it everywhere? I don't know, maybe, but not quickly. But they can end it for FQCs all across the country by simply making it like the

Starting point is 01:14:04 Hyde Amendment. If we were to perform abortion services at the place that I work, then we would lose our Fed 330 funding and we would lose our FQ designation, which would cut our rate in half. and that would devastate the business and put us out and mean that we could not care for the thousands and thousands and thousands of other people that we care for besides those kids, right? Right. Then there are also just the doge fuckery that is going to harm all of this and may create a lot of the same outcomes, right? Which is they turned off grants kind of just across the board. Yes, some of them were targeted on things like gender affirming care, but most of them were just like it's a grant, we're turning it off. And then there was the TRO, but much of that funding has remained frozen.

Starting point is 01:14:50 We have been told that the system is up and running and that they undid what they did and the court stepped in and, oh, don't we have the courts still here in the United States? Isn't that a good thing? But they just kept the funding off, whether because they're incompetent or because they're actively defying the law, doesn't really matter. And as a result, federally qualified health centers all across the country have laid people off, they have closed clinics, and they have entirely gone underwater in some cases. and then those people are not there to treat the community that needs them so badly.

Starting point is 01:15:19 And all of these systems are grounded in their communities. So when you lose the clinic that's in L.A. that had to close its doors for the office that's, you know, on one side of town, the people there knew that place. It was part of their community, part of their existence. It was grounded in that community and its community's needs. And that's just gone. And this puts us in the very difficult position and, you know, leadership in the very difficult position of figuring out, well, do I worry about these trans youth and the fact that they might kill themselves, or do I worry about the impact that standing up on principle and saying,

Starting point is 01:15:52 I won't toss them to the wolves, might have on the rest of the system. And it becomes a very difficult sort of situation for us as providers to navigate, but in fairness to leadership, which I disagree with, for them too. Yeah, that's tough. Can you briefly explain, like maybe lay out a timeline? Because we talked about executive orders there. We talked about a TRO.

Starting point is 01:16:12 like there was a large number of executive orders, right, in the last three weeks. So like maybe people miss them. Can you explain the pertinent executive orders and then what's a tentative restraining order? Yeah. So on Trump's first day in office on the day of his inauguration, so January 20th, he signs 100 some odd executive orders. So the ones that are particularly of interest to us in healthcare were protecting children against chemical and surgical mutilation is the name of it,

Starting point is 01:16:43 which is a disgusting and vile name. Yeah. And then protecting women something, something, something. Defending women. Yeah, defending women, which is similarly aimed at transgender individuals. And I think will be used after we are under attack for trans youth to come after trans adults in federally qualified health centers as well.

Starting point is 01:17:03 Those EOs led to later that week on Friday, we got emails to every PI, which is principal investigator, on every federal grant that we had that said, because of those two, and there was one about DEI, which is also an executive order, you are not allowed to use any of these grant dollars in service of anything in defiance of these three executive orders. So that was the first shot we got, and it came only four days later. It's threatening, but it wasn't specific, right? It didn't specifically say, we're going to do X, Y, or Z, but it was, here's the threat. The following Tuesday, Doge is let loose and announces that they are freezing federal grant funding tied to anything that is in opposition to those things.

Starting point is 01:17:50 If you actually looked at the Excel file that they released with the actual grants, it froze everything. Like, it was not just the stuff that they felt was in opposition to this. It was like everything. We have a ton of grants that were on that list at the agency that I work. and boy, oh, boy, oh, boy, was there a lot of panic going around. Wednesday rolls around and they get a judge to come in and sort of put a halt on it. And then later that day, the press secretary says, oh, we're just going to rescind the memo. We're still going to freeze everything. And then the judge comes back and puts a temporary restraining order.

Starting point is 01:18:25 So in theory, what that should have meant is that all of that grant funding once again flows. And it did not. Importantly, too, for us, given how much Medicaid dollars we take in, Medicaid portals in all 50 states went down so we could not get any of those dollars in service of what we were doing for 12 hours, but still it was this very concerning situation

Starting point is 01:18:45 because Medicaid was not on their list of things that they were after, and yet we couldn't even access it at the state level. A few more weeks go by, and there's news popping about, hey, you said you unfrozed stuff, but it's still frozen. Another judge issued an order saying that, like, no, for real, I meet it,

Starting point is 01:19:04 this time unfreeze everything. I know some of the grants that we had that we couldn't access seem to have come back online, but I don't know, you know, I think it would be an impossible thing to do an accounting of like every single one that might have been turned off that might or might not be back on right now. But I am doubtful that at this point, every single grant across the federal agency is potentially available for folks. It just seems unlikely to me. Yeah. We should pivot to advertisements here. So I'm going to do that and then we'll be right back. Okay, we are back. So you talked about like these grants being turned off or not coming. What does that mean? Does that mean people don't get care? Does that mean providers don't get paid?

Starting point is 01:19:56 Does that mean they can't access their prescriptions? Like, what does it look like if I'm trying to access care through one of your clinics? So, yeah, I'll speak to that a little bit on the prescriber side because I think, you know, having direct contact with someone who works at the administration is really the only way that I have really been able to get any updates. So as a health care provider, it's been utter chaos. Basically, every day we've gotten different messaging around whether or not appointments can be scheduled. New patients can, you know, schedule intakes, whether or not we're able to prescribe these life-saving medications. And no one knows exactly gender affirming care is basically healthcare. There's nothing that separates it. There's no, there's no hard line.

Starting point is 01:20:41 There's no clear distinction. it is medically indicated evidence-based care. So saying you can't do gender affirming care, it literally doesn't make any sense in terms of, you know, what we do as prescribers. And on my end, I've been faced with intimidation. I've been faced with kind of whisper networks of misinformation coming from administration trying to get us to stop prescribing because they do see this type of care

Starting point is 01:21:11 as a liability. I'm still prescribing. There is no state law in the state that I am in that prevents my ability to practice to the full extent of my scope. There are also no medical indications for me to stop prescribing. And I'm ethically bound as a nurse practitioner to do what I believe is best for my patients, which is to continue to provide them with a care that they need. But it's terrifying. I think importantly, Haley and I have the advantage of working for a more economic stable institution. There's a lot of health clinics out there that have a week's worth of working capital, right? So if all of a sudden they lose access to every grant dollar, they lose access to

Starting point is 01:21:54 their Fed 330, they were scheduled to draw down on a grant that was going to cover a whole bunch of upcoming expenses, but they haven't done it yet, and then they can't. Like, in very real ways, that may mean that the doors are closed and the place goes under and that no one can get care there. And there is this real challenge of, you know, how do we decide? what is the best thing to do. But for me, and what started working with,

Starting point is 01:22:17 in our agency, at least, to organize around this, is that, like, this is an anti-fascist practices. It is the right medical thing to do.

Starting point is 01:22:24 It is the right ethical thing to do. But it is also our chance to take an anti-fascist stance against this government, because if we don't stand now for the very first group they're coming for, then the next group,

Starting point is 01:22:34 which is, without question, trans adults and undocumented people, then those groups will fall just as quickly. And then at some point, We're doing the poem. The first they came for the socialist thing. And I just refused to be a part of that.

Starting point is 01:22:48 Yeah. Let's talk about what that means then. Like you said, it's difficult to get any response from administration, right, in terms of what you can do, in terms of what you can't do. How are staff and providers organizing to make sure that they're able to keep providing for their patients? So just to provide also like a little bit of a peek into kind of a broader landscape. of this. Our clinic is not alone in their confusion on how they've been handling this. Not only FQCs, but also hospital-affiliated clinics, academic medical clinics, have basically

Starting point is 01:23:26 clinic by clinic decided on their own plan on how to manage this, which is also incredibly confusing for providers and for patients. But something that was really heartening was that NYU Lingone, this was in the news recently, they canceled appointments for two kids. literally just two kids, which is more than enough. And it sparked this enormous outcry and protests. And so I think there's also, on my end, a lot of solidarity building with other providers who are doing this work. And a lot of inspiration, there are clinics out there, some who are FQHCs like us, who have stood firm. And they've said, our doors are going to stay open. We're going to keep providing this care. And so I think there are models out there.

Starting point is 01:24:14 And I think that there are networks of health care providers who are committed to continue to advocate and just continue to do this, right? Because a lot of what we're facing right now is intimidation. It's not actual legal threats as of yet. Yeah, I think the organizing side has been challenging, but also hugely rewarding, right? It became really obvious really early on that both from the federal government, government's perspective, as well as from our organization's perspective, that the uncertainty was where they wanted us all to live and die. That was the place that served them and their goals the most. And so how does uncertainty sort of foster? Well, people don't talk to one another, right?

Starting point is 01:24:55 Like, this is true kind of an organizational sense. It's across the board, right? If you're in a union, you don't talk about your salary, it doesn't benefit you. It benefits the boss. And so if we're not talking to one another about where our lines are, who we're going to treat, whether we're going to keep doing it or listen to them what we're being told or not being told that we're consulting lawyers, all these other kind of things, then we're all just alone in the dark kind of, you know, trying not to scream and cry about the horrors that are happening around us. So we pulled together folks with conversation here, conversation there, folks who before anything was going on internally, you know, made really bold statements about what they would and would not do around this kind of

Starting point is 01:25:32 stuff. And now all of a sudden there's an internal network that's looking at, well, okay, so individually, we can keep doing this care because it's the right thing to do. But as a group, if they start coming after us, we have a lot more power. There's a lot more that we can do. And I suspect, and Haley's getting at this point, that, like, there are probably a network of us across the entire country in these kind of settings that are not talking amongst ourselves at our workplace, but are really not talking about it amongst ourselves on a national level. And I think we have some power that could be used there to really make a difference in all of this. And I am optimistic that if we talk about this, we get this out there, we make sure everyone's

Starting point is 01:26:12 communicating openly about it, that there's a real possibility that we can work together to prevent this from being the first of many dominoes to fall. And one thing that's interesting, I think, is that with trans health care, trans health care is inherently radical. Like, trans health care is not something that came from the kind of medical hierarchy. this is by and large a field that was communal. Trans people were doing their own trans health care before it became kind of institutionalized into a lot of these spaces.

Starting point is 01:26:45 So I think we also have a lot of providers who are willing to fuck shit up, right? Like the community and the providers are intertwined. And I do think there is a real kind of radical bent to this type of work, which is why I think a lot of us have been so easily able to collectivize and strategize and kind of come together. It's a pretty small world as well. We sat down on a call and talked about, you know, what are we going to do? And I may mention that like, oh, through my other organizing work, I've got a DIY connection for Estradial. So that's a huge thing that will help us if we can't prescribe this anymore.

Starting point is 01:27:24 If Medicaid stops covering it, yada, yada, yada. I was like, but I don't have a, you know, a DIY solution for T, if any, anyone knows of anybody, that'd be great. And immediately someone's like, oh, yeah, absolutely. I do. It's tested. It's a 99.9% pure. We're ready to go.

Starting point is 01:27:37 So now, like, I wouldn't have done that. There was no way for us to know that that was the kind of radical work that people were doing, if not for coming together on this kind of stuff. Yeah. I think maybe we should explain, like, the inherent risks, like, legally. And then the distinction between those two hormones legally, right? Like, if people are unaware. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:27:56 So, you know, as a medical provider, again, I have to be a little bit. bit careful here, but basically because testosterone has been used by mostly the cis male community as an anabolic steroid and used, you know, and some that would call like anabolic steroid misuse or steroid use disorder, it is a controlled substance. Estradial is not. They're both bioidentical hormones. Every human on this planet, their body makes estrogen and testosterone, ENT, estradile and testosterone. However, in the United States, testosterone is considered a controlled substance, which makes it a little more tricky for folks to access without a prescription and also can put them at legal risk if they do so. Right. Like there's a built-in legal consequence

Starting point is 01:28:46 for people who are trying to manufacture there or who are trying to obtain it like outside of the sort of prescription system. Not that there aren't other probably legal threats coming down the pipeline, I guess. Also, testosterone is, yes, it is a controlled substance. It does, it does flow in the bodybuilding community. Yeah, yeah, it's not well controlled. Yeah, that is also like worth stating because, yes, if you go to your average gym, oh yeah, you can walk across the border to Tijuana and see, like, you know how gas stations have the prices, like unleaded, premium. Yeah, you can get testosterone prices, like displayed in the same fashion. I mean, I'm sure you're, you're, you're, you're huge fans of Joe Rogan.

Starting point is 01:29:28 So many of my other patients who are not trans have been influenced to purchase testosterone because of our good friend, Joe Rogan. Yeah, yeah, fascinating stuff. Yeah. Which is also gender affirming care for whatever that's worth. Yeah, gender affirming care too. Yes, they do. It's a lot easier for them right now.

Starting point is 01:30:01 So let's talk about what this organizing, looks like on the ground, right? Like, A, if someone's working, maybe they're not in a FQHC, right? Maybe they're working in an academic health center. Maybe they're working, you know, in one of the many other places where you can access gender affirming care in this country

Starting point is 01:30:20 and they are feeling like alone or they're scared and they're not receiving any affirmation or help from their management. And they don't know who they can talk to among their colleagues. Like, how are people connecting? Like, what are people, talking about and like how can people who are, because, you know, the healthcare system is fast in this country because it duplicates itself because it's the nature of American privatized

Starting point is 01:30:47 healthcare. Like how can people who want to continue providing care for patients do that? How do they organize their colleagues? How do they contact people who are already organizing? Like, let's talk through that nuts and bolts of it. I mean, I think there's a lot of national orgs out there that are really doing the work. So if you're a medical provider, I would highly recommend to join glamma, which is the gay and lesbian medical association, because they have some lawsuits. And as a member of glamma, that could possibly give you some additional protection, following other orgs like Lambda Legal, Sage, which is an organization for an elder, gay, lesbian, and queer trans folks. Trans people have existed and have built organizations.

Starting point is 01:31:33 A lot of those organizations are. fighting this on a national level. And some of those are more geared toward kind of healthcare professionals like glamma. I would say there's two conversations that we all need to be having. Like, those external organizations are huge and necessary for direction. Within your own space, you have to talk to your colleagues in a way that's honest and talk to them about risk-taking, talk to them about where you will and will not budge on some of these kind of things, talk to them about the value of the work that you all do, because there's more of you doing it.

Starting point is 01:32:07 Talk to your trans colleagues. They exist. They're out there. They have very strong opinions on this, I am sure. And then talk to a lawyer, talk to an employment lawyer, because your corporate attorneys

Starting point is 01:32:18 have very different goals than you do. Their goal is simply to protect the company and its bottom line. And both they and the federal government and the sort of DOJ are spewing absolutely, bullshit. So don't let them flood the zone with nonsense. Get a lawyer who can tell you what's nonsense and stand firmly in that because it is. And then when you start thinking about as an organization, as a group, as a set of employees, communicating with leadership about these kind of things,

Starting point is 01:32:53 know that the law is actually not on their side, it's on yours. And let them know that they are exposing themselves to vulnerability for malpractice and for civil rights violations and any number of other things that they probably don't want to be on the hook for. This is the leverage that we've got right now. It seems to have slowed things down a little bit internally for us that they've had to confront a very well-pointed out legal opinion that said that, like, they were exposing their providers to civil lawsuits if they didn't do this and that the FDCA, the Federal Tort Claims Act, didn't protect people under these guides. That has been really beneficial to us. The other thing I would say is like there's a real union sort of feel to a lot of this. And as we started coming

Starting point is 01:33:36 together, a bunch of us realized, well, we all kind of had union conversations somewhere along the way. But corporate unions and like SEIU represents a lot of like individual sort of arms of companies like the ones that we work at. They aren't interested in the politics of the work you do. They're interested in your benefits. They're interested in you as a worker. But they're not interested in like your relationship to the work. And so we are approaching this not necessarily as a union, but from the perspective that if we need to strike on behalf of patients and their access to care, like that's a tool in our toolbox. And we don't have to do anything more than declare it a strike to be protected under the NLRB and so of these various different things. And we can do it for political

Starting point is 01:34:19 reasons instead of for pay reasons, which means we can do it as a diverse group instead of as all the nurses, all the advanced practice providers, all of the psychologists and therapists and LCSWs, where they break us apart by discipline instead of by, you know, what sort of managerial status you are. Yeah, yeah, I think that's a very good point. I read a book recently about how the longshoremen in San Francisco stopped weapons going to, as far to Chile or El Salvador by striking and refusing to load weapons onto ships. And like, that's a union energy we could use right now. Yeah. Yeah, I think people be well advised to like, I will say that they'd be well advised to check with federal and local law because like some state legal landscapes can be very different, right? I want to end

Starting point is 01:35:05 with like people are probably afraid of accessing care, right? Like people are probably afraid of going to see their providers. Like understandably, like you said before, like especially kids or people under 18 are like right in the center of the president of the United States called out a friend of mine personally by name recently. She's a trans athlete. And like, they're really coming after people. I understand that people are afraid. Like, what should they know if they're concerned about their, their hormone supply or they're on puberty blockers right now? Like, if people are listening, what would you? Maybe they don't know where their provider stands, you know? Yeah. I mean, I tell my patients this, but I'm in awe of them. They're incredible.

Starting point is 01:35:49 and a lot of them are nerdy theater kids who love cats and they want to just exist. And some of them are also incredible outspoken activists. They are just amazing. And I will fight with everything that I've got for them. And I really hope they know that. I think one of the mantras I've been given to fellow colleagues as well as to our leadership to like get their heads on straight is that like fascism is messy right like it's it's a scary messy there are a lot of throwing stuff at the law and seeing what sticks but the things that in theory are

Starting point is 01:36:29 still in place like when and if they fall we have different problems than the ones we're facing now right so we still have in this country protections for your health care information so if what you worry about in going to the doctor is that someone will find out that you're trans and put you on a list like I can't tell you that's never going to happen, but I can tell you that if it happens through your healthcare clinic, like we have significantly changed the threat model that we're all living in because HIPAA doesn't matter anymore and doesn't exist. Your providers are spending enormous amounts of time thinking carefully about how they document, where they document, how much of a deal they want to make it, whether or not they can change the thing they're prescribing for you and what diagnosis is for.

Starting point is 01:37:10 we are finding ways to sort of throw as much cover and shade and, you know, camouflage over this as we can. But you shouldn't not come get care. Your life matters. You being in the body that you were meant to have matters. Come talk to us. Come ask for help. We're here to do it. And we're not going to stop until they make us. And right now, they can't make us. And so we're going to keep doing it. And I think the mantra of trans people have always existed. Trans people exist. And personally, I'm going to do my best to make sure that for every single one of my patients that they continue to get what they need, however that looks like. That it is good to hear.

Starting point is 01:37:50 I know a lot of trans people have essentially trauma with aspects of the medical community establishment, whatever. Yeah. And like, you know, not all practitioners, maybe as much in our camp as maybe you are, and I would encourage people if they are, if they are still looking for care through like these sorts of channels. You should try to find out where other trans people in your city are already going. There's certainly, like, clinics will have stuff on their website that indicate that they

Starting point is 01:38:20 either specialize in this or they offer this, as opposed to, you know, maybe just a general practitioner who may not be, you know, the greatest in this vein. And like, this still happens. I've talked to a lot of friends recently who've spoken about having increasingly uncomfortable experiences with nurses or doctors where they're trying out like different clinics or different or different providers, university providers. So it is definitely worth doing some research beforehand. So, you know, the place you're going is going to be like with you, which is just an unfortunate reality of being trans. But that has that has been the case for for a long time. And it only continues

Starting point is 01:38:58 to be a factor when considering care. Absolutely. It's really important to ask your friends that that's really solid advice. part because whether I like it or not, a lot of organizations are taking the stuff that says, hey, we treat trans people down off their website, off their marketing materials. We are not trying to draw that attention. It doesn't mean we don't do it. It doesn't mean we're not skilled and trained and educated and smart and passionate about it. It just means we don't really want to totally fly a trans flag on the roof right now because it's just going to cause everybody harm. So talk to your friends, talk to people in your community. They know us. We know them. I have a lot of activism

Starting point is 01:39:36 experience outside of my work, and it's amazing how many of those people end up being the same people that are in this conversation because of the way that this all works. Yeah. Yeah, I was just going to say, I think, unfortunately, it is the norm. And evidence shows that, like large evidence of studies show that trans people are treated pretty horribly by the healthcare system. And most of my patients have experienced that in some way or another. But like I was talking about before, a lot of trans health kind of comes from a DIY community, and there's a lot of really good community information about, you know, kind of who to trust and who you can go to in terms of finding an allied provider. Yeah, yeah, and that's really good. I think that was really great, guys. Thank you so much

Starting point is 01:40:22 for your time and for your words for people. Is there anything else you want to share, or perhaps if people want to support your efforts somehow or support people's access to care, there's an organization you could direct them to, or maybe like a way people can. coming shout to you or I know a lot of people like there are people in my family who are healthcare providers who have substantially changed their outlook on the world and politics by how terribly their trans patients have been treated. So like if you know like some of us have been organizing for a minute. Some of us have been organizing for like literally a minute and like how do those people access these networks? Like how can people who are not in healthcare support you and what you're

Starting point is 01:41:01 doing and reach out? The gender liberation movement is incredible. they're doing a lot of work kind of public facing to really get the point across on why this is so essential and also why everybody should have the right to their own bodily and gender autonomy.

Starting point is 01:41:20 I think I mentioned earlier, but Lama, if you're on the healthcare side, and, you know, there are also kind of, if you're in an academic setting, looking to W. Pass, the World Professional Association for transgender health,

Starting point is 01:41:35 kind of going to the experts in this field and really following and mirroring what they're doing. I think if you're looking as a cis person who gets your care somewhere that might get federal funding, but this is a thing that you care about, would encourage you to sort of make people get on record about this kind of stuff, right? It's been the most distasteful piece of all of this is the kind of like weasel hiding in all of this. So force them on the record. ask them. If they don't tell you, send them an email. If they don't, you know, respond to the email, send a follow-up email. Like, make people get on the record about this so that we know where their values are. And if their values don't align with yours, take your business elsewhere. Because at the end of the day, healthcare is a business because the United States sucks. And so we have to use those dollars in the ways that we can, and it matters in a lot of ways. I don't know that anyone will care to. And I certainly don't want to present us as the people with all the answers here, because we just like are figuring this as we go to. but you can email us at Community Health Resistance at Proton.m.m.

Starting point is 01:42:38 And maybe let's have a conversation. Maybe there's like a ton of people in the FQ world who want to do like an Amazon or a Starbucks like DIY union project where we're all working on this together for the politics rather than the pay as the primary sort of reason for it. Let's let's be a red union and get something going. I don't know that we can. I don't know that it's the right call,

Starting point is 01:42:58 but I imagine there's more of us out there feeling this way than not. Yeah. And like, whatever it is, we're stronger together than we are apart. So, like, talking is how we fix this. Thank you so much, guys. I really appreciate you being so open about this. And, yeah, I hope that you succeed and are able to keep taking care of people. Thank you.

Starting point is 01:43:16 We hope so too. I'm Michael Phillips. I wrote a history of racism in Dallas called White Metropolis and have co-authored an upcoming book on the history of eugenics in Texas called The Purifying Knife. And I'm Stephen Monticelli. an investigative reporter and columnist who covers extremism and far-right movements for a variety of publications, including the Texas Observer and the Barbed Wire.

Starting point is 01:44:00 School board meetings used to be boring. Board members typically spend hours discussing financial reports, land purchases, plumbing contracts, and other tedious topics. But beginning in 2020, Christopher Rufo, a former documentary filmmaker and fellow at the Right Wing Heritage Foundation, the group responsible for Project 2025 launched a campaign to convince Americans that public schools have become communist indoctrination centers. Rufo falsely claimed that public school teachers were brainwashing school children

Starting point is 01:44:35 with something called critical race theory, or CRT for short. Adherence of critical race theory argue that racism has become so intrinsically entwined in American politics law and culture that anti-discrimination laws typically fail. While CRT is studied in some graduate schools and law programs, it hasn't been taught at the grade school level where the outrage has been directed.

Starting point is 01:45:00 That's certainly not the case in Texas, which influences curriculums across the nation due to its large population and purchasing power of textbooks. But precision wasn't the point of Rufo's campaign. Rather, it was to refashion CRT into a sort of political, political cudgel, something that Rufo admitted to in a series of tweets in 2021. The goal is to have the public read something crazy in the newspaper and immediately think critical race theory, Rufo wrote.

Starting point is 01:45:31 We have decodified the term and will recodify it to annex the entire range of cultural constructions that are unpopular with Americans, end quote. On Fox News, Newsmax, and other right-wing media outlets, Rufo convinced parents that, that instead of teaching kids reading, writing, and arithmetic, public school teachers were using CRT to brainwash white children into hating themselves and goading black children into hating white people. Radical teachers and professors, Rufo warned, had launched a sinister campaign to destroy the American way of life. In a foundational paper called whiteness as property, the critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has

Starting point is 01:46:13 proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth from the and redistributing it along racial lines. Rufo's timing could not have been more perfect. The artificial CRT panic broke out during the COVID pandemic. Parents already felt frustration and fury about the hardships of campus closings, remote learning, and mass mandates. Now convinced that their children were being taught

Starting point is 01:46:39 to scapego white people for all the country's problems, parents across the country exploded in rage at local school boards. Reuters reported on one meeting that turned violent Loudoun County, Virginia. Who pays your salary? What had been planned as a typical school board meeting in Virginia's wealthy Loudoun County this week devolved into pandemonium. With hundreds of parents flooding an auditorium to accuse the school system of teaching their kids that racism in America is structural and systemic.

Starting point is 01:47:16 Something the school board denies is part of the curriculum. Things got so heated that the board members eventually walked out, leaving the police to deal with the unruly crowd. Two people left in handcuffs. This is an unlawful arrest. I have a First Amendment place. Loudoun County School Board has been roiled for months by accusations that it has embraced critical race theory, a school of thought that maintains that racism is ingrained in U.S.

Starting point is 01:47:44 law and institutions, and that legacies of slavery and segregation have created. created an uneven playing field for black Americans. The idea that CRT, as it's known, is infiltrating public schools, has become a rallying cry for conservatives who, like many in Loudoun, say it is being used to indoctrinate children that America is a racist country. Critical race theory is anti-white, and it's not American. Those with an ear for historical rhymes may find this outcry familiar. resistance to racial integration and the civil rights era movements drew similar accusations

Starting point is 01:48:22 of being hostile to whites and being a product of anti-American communism. And those with experienced teaching students might chuckle at the accusations of ideologically motivated brainwashing and indoctrination. The common joke posted by teachers online is that, quote, if we could indoctrinate students, students would always read the syllabus. But that didn't stop panic over CRT expanding to include. anti-LGBQ sentiment as well, with queer students and teachers who supported them being placed squarely in the crosshairs of a well-funded national hate machine dedicated to ginning up fear among

Starting point is 01:48:59 local parents. Here's a clip from one speech I personally witnessed at the school board meeting of my hometown school district, Great Bine Colleyville, from August 2022. And break simple truths, there's only two genders. And boys should go to boys' rooms. Girls should go to girls' rest rooms. And guess what? Teacher shouldn't be forced to use your freaking made-up fantasy pronouns. Fight like hell. Hold the line against the LGBT mafia and their dang pito fans. Keep winning.

Starting point is 01:49:32 You know what? Keep the wing. They can keep the monkey pox. How's that working? In fact, keep winning so much, we'll keep coming. You know what? We're going to keep coming so hard. The only thing these woke cards got to figure out is whether it's on their face back.

Starting point is 01:49:47 One of the eyes. Woo! It's all. Thank you. As absurd as all this may seem, there was something to this national phenomenon that was rooted in reality. As of 2020, the United States

Starting point is 01:50:00 had become more culturally diverse, racially integrated, and accepting of LGBT people than ever before. And our education systems have increasingly reflected that reality. There's also a deep irony to this reaction. Prior to the advances of the civil rights era

Starting point is 01:50:17 and beyond, schools in the United States have often been the centers of ideologically motivated education, but not the fantasy Bolshevik propaganda that outrages the right. In fact, it's usually been the opposite. For most of its history, American public schools have effectively advanced white supremacy, female subordination, and submission to capitalism. In this episode, we're going to look at what has actually been taught in American schools over the years with a particular focus in Texas, and how what you learn about American history depends on where you live and how Christian supremacists are successfully inserting their theology into school curriculums in much of the country, with Texas playing a leading role.

Starting point is 01:51:00 Textbooks before the 1950s and 1960s civil rights era were explicitly and astonishingly white supremacist. School books in the South, for instance, portrayed Confederates as gallant gentlemen fighting for a noble lost cause. This influenced popular culture as we see in films like Gone with the Wind. Meanwhile, school kids were taught that abolitionists who wanted to end slavery before the Civil War were terrorists who needlessly plunged the country into civil war. And this too steeped into the public imagination of movies like Santa Fe Trail, starring Van Heflin. The time is coming when the rest of us are going to wipe you and your kind off the face of the earth.

Starting point is 01:51:42 According to the myths, promoted first in schools, then echoed in mass entertainment. Slavery would have gone away eventually if only white slave-owning Southerners have been left alone to figure it out themselves. Screen playwriters have often echoed what they heard in the classroom as we see in this scene from the 1940 film Santa Fe Trail. Here, Raymond Massey plays John Brown, a white abolitionist who tried to start a slave rebellion, Harper's Ferry, Virginia in 1859. Massy portrays him as a thoroughly crazed maniac, while Aero Flynn depicts future Confederate General J.E.B. Stewart as sweetly rational. Half of the people in America believe in your theory. A lot of them even condone your methods. That'll guarantee you a public trial. I'm not on trial, but the nation itself.

Starting point is 01:52:36 Are you too stupid and blinded by a uniform to see what I see? A dark and evil curse laying all over this land. Kindle sin against God. It can only be wiped out in blood. But why in blood? The people of Virginia have considered a resolution to abolish slavery for a long time. They sense that it's a moral wrong. And the rest of the South will follow Virginia's example.

Starting point is 01:53:01 All I ask is time. From the 1880s until the 1960s, school books depicted the country's only brief experiment with multiracial democracy at the time, the reconstruction period from 1865 to 1860s. as a time of rampant corruption. These books often describe emancipated African-Americans as ignorant, lazy, and expecting government handouts, while their white allies were portrayed as crooks. American schoolchildren, furthermore, learned from their teachers that so-called radical

Starting point is 01:53:34 democracy was not a good idea, and sometimes dictatorship was the better option. The 1924 textbook, Our World Today and Yesterday, a history of modern society. civilization, published two years after Mussolini's fascist government took over Italy, and nothing but praised for that nation's new dictator. The authors told the impressionable high school students the following about the world's first fascist leader. Mussolini has chosen a ministry made up of capable men and has straightened up the badly demoralized finances of the country. He and his followers are accused of suppressing liberty and downing the communists by violence. Nevertheless, he has done much to do away with strikes and to reestablish conditions as they were before the economic demoralization of World War I set in.

Starting point is 01:54:27 Again, school books reinforced an American culture in the 1920s that responded to the horrors of World War I, labor unrest, and the impact of immigration by becoming not only more intolerant but also more anti-democratic. All the while, Mussolini's propaganda machine churned. out images of a thriving country and a virile leader. Yilducce stripped down for the camera, work side by side with the peasants, and wrestled wild animals. Never mind that this one had no teeth. Nonetheless, it was working.

Starting point is 01:55:00 Mussolini attracted fans worldwide, including Thomas Edison, Sigmund Freud, and Mohandis Gandhi. Here he speaks to his many supporters among Italian Americans. I tell it, the Italians of America, who are working to make America greet. Another textbook published in 1935, The Record of America, told students that the so-called founding fathers like Alexander Hamilton were not big believers in democracy. An attitude the authors seemed to endorse. As the Record of America put it, the founders had little faith in the ability of people as a whole to maintain self-control.

Starting point is 01:55:41 and wisdom in government. They had no confidence in the man without property. A man who had failed to accumulate property would be regarded as shiftless, lazy, or incompetent, and not deserving a voice in the government of others. The Constitution was written to retain power in the hands of those who release radical and to set obstacles in the way of radical mob action.

Starting point is 01:56:09 After the 1950s and 1960s civil rights movements, history textbooks for the first time covered the horrors of slavery, the heroism of African-American abolitionists like Surgeoner Truth and Frederick Douglass, and the evils of the Ku Klux Klan with clarity. But the backlash was swift, particularly after the election of the first African-American president, Barack Obama, and the rise of the hyper-conservative Tea Party in response. In 2010, Tea Party supporters took control of the Texas State School Board, which has control over Texas schoolbook curriculants. They felt that this reckoning with America's racist past undermined patriotism and demanded a rewrite of school lesson plans. In 2015, Ronnie Dean Barron got a text from her son Kobe, who was glancing at a ninth grade geography textbook published by McGraw Hill, assigned him by his high school in Paralin, Texas. near Houston. He sent her a video highlighting a map and a shocking caption. Soon Burin posted her son's video online. That video, as KPRC reported, spread outrage across the nation. A video post on Ronnie DeBuren's Facebook page. So I'm going to show you the book and then there's just an interesting section.

Starting point is 01:57:37 Went viral. Her video has been viewed more than 1.8 million times and has 48,000 shares to get to the topic of conversation, you literally have to turn through the pages of her son's geography textbook. Immigration in the United States can be divided in four district periods. Kobe, who's in the ninth grade at Perlin High School, was studying immigration when he read this in his textbook, a comment that referenced African slaves as workers. As if we worked our way up in America, as if we came here by choice for a better life. The offensive caption read in full, quote, the Atlantic slave trade between the 1500s and the 1800s brought millions of workers from Africa

Starting point is 01:58:19 to the southern United States to work on agricultural plantations. The publisher of the book, simply titled World Geography, later apologized for the euphemism, noting that it did not adequately convey that Africans were both forced into migration and to labor against their will as slaves. The company said it would revise the digital version of the text, and future print versions, but it was unclear at the time when the new edition would be in students' hands.

Starting point is 01:58:48 The caption wasn't an accident. McGraw-Hill had given the stay of Texas what it wanted. Rather than anything like critical race theory, the State Board of Education in 2010 adopted changes in Texas curriculum standards for public schools, known as Texas Essential Knowledge and Skills,

Starting point is 01:59:05 that imposed a whitewash of American slavery, raised doubts about human-caused climate change, and imposed other right-wing content. To be sold in Texas, school textbooks had to meet the board's standards. Texas State Board of Education members are elected from districts that tilt the body towards rural parts of the state

Starting point is 01:59:26 and serve four-year terms, while the governor appoints the chair of the board. Since the beginning of the 21st century, the board has been dominated by Christian Wright activists as a 2013 PBS report notes. Don McElroy has three jobs, and he loves them all. Good morning, Dr. McClory's office.

Starting point is 01:59:45 Job number one, dentist. Job number two, Sunday school teacher. And job number three, member of the Texas State Board of Education, a seat he's held for the last 12 years. But it's that third job which has put this dentist and Sunday school teacher from Brian, Texas, into a national debate over what kids are taught in school. Critics have accused McLeroy of injecting his religious, conservative beliefs into the curriculum. About every 10 years, the board revises the textbook standards for different subjects.

Starting point is 02:00:20 Any books bought by the state must conform to these guidelines. The last big battle was over the science standards. This year, he's tackling social studies. The demands Texas makes of textbook publishers matter, as PBS reported a decade ago. to publishing insiders, textbooks are often tailored to fit Texas's standards because Texas is the largest buyer of textbooks. That means the choices made here could determine books that other states will buy. And that's led to a school fight that has the entire country looking on. This is how Kobe Byrinn ended up with the World Geography textbook that used the word

Starting point is 02:01:02 workers to describe chattel slaves. Kathy Miller of the anti-censorship group, Texas Freedom network said, quote, it's no accident that this happened in Texas. We have a textbook adoption process that's so politicized and so flawed that's become almost a punchline for comedians. Those serious about education aren't laughing, however. In 2018, the state board removed Hillary Clinton, the first woman to be presidential nominee of a major political party from the list of major historical figures Texas students must learn about. A decision later reversed after embarrassing news coverage. In 2010, the board mandated that textbooks depict the civil war as primarily a struggle over states' rights and not slavery, a choice that was later modified in 2018 to return

Starting point is 02:01:52 slavery as the primary cause, but still maintain that, quote, states' rights and sexualism were key contributing factors. Approved books still tell states, students that segregated black schools in the Jim Crow era, quote, had similar buildings, buses, and teachers as white schools, maintaining a hint of these separate but equal logics that upheld segregation. One textbook included a cartoon in which a space alien lands on Earth and asks if he's eligible for affirmative action programs. Texas Standards also misled students into thinking there was controversy about whether

Starting point is 02:02:27 human activity has led to climate change and to, quote, consider all sides of scientific evidence regarding evolution, even though the scientific consensus in favor of fossil fuels, tricking climate change, and also the scientific consensus regarding evolution, is nearly unanimous. Students can get dramatically different versions of American history based on which state they attend schools. A New York Times comparison of textbooks used in California, Texas, showed that both versions of the same history textbook include an annotated bill of rights.

Starting point is 02:03:02 In reference to the Second Amendment, however, the California textbook notes that several federal court rulings have allowed regulation of gun sales and ownership. The Texas version in the same book replaces this commentary with a, quote, blank white space, as the New York Times reported. Texas and California textbooks both introduced students to African-American authors during the Harlem Renaissance, but only Texas students are told that, quote,

Starting point is 02:03:30 some dismissed the quality of the literature produced by the Harlem Renaissance. As the New York Times reported, the California version of the history textbook addressed the issue of white flight, the phenomena whereby parents moved from cities when schools became integrated and moved to overwhelmingly Anglo suburbs. The California textbook said this. Some people wished to escape the crime and the congestion at the state. city. Movement of some white people from cities to suburbs was driven by a desire to get away from

Starting point is 02:04:04 more culturally diverse neighborhoods. Others believed the suburbs offered better and more affordable living. The Texas version of the same textbook deleted the sentence referring to racism as a motive for white flight, but left the reference to a fear of crime, reframing what students learned about why suburbs grew so rapidly after World War II. The Texas State Board also specifically asked one textbook publisher to emphasize how many clergy signed the Declaration of Independence and to underscore the supposed importance of religion to the founders. These particular demands were the result of intense lobbying by a Texas Christian nationalist, David Barton. Barton, a 70-year-old lifelong resident of Alito, Texas, which is a small town just southwest of Fort Worth, has become a major influence. on the Republican Party and its attitudes towards education,

Starting point is 02:05:00 not just in the Lone Star State, but across the nation. While reporting on the Conservative Political Action Conference for Rolling Stone, I recall being given a copy of one of Barton's books. He calls himself a historian, although his only credential is a bachelor's degree in religious education from Oral Roberts University in Tulsa, Oklahoma. A one-time science and math teacher at a Christian academy in his hometown, Barton plunged into politics in 1988 as a Republican activist with a penchant for homophobia.

Starting point is 02:05:32 He declared that homosexuality is as evil as any deed Adolf Hitler committed and said that the lack of cure for AIDS was God's punishment for a wicked community. Quote, your sexual choice is not a God given right, he said on one occasion. In 1988, Barton founded Wall Builders, a nonprofit the organization says dedicated to, quote, educating the name. nation concerning the godly founding of the nation. Barton believes that Americans have been deceived about the true meaning of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, which declares, quote, Congress shall make no law respecting the establishment of a religion. The founders, Barton claims, only meant that Congress should pick a particular Protestant denomination as the national faith. Barton also argues that Thomas Jefferson meant that

Starting point is 02:06:23 the wall of separation between church and state should operate only in one direction, that the government should not interfere with the religion, but that Christians should dominate the government, as Barton said in an interview. So we've got to get away from being scared to say we're a Christian nation. What we've got to do is define it the right way, define it the historical way. We can't let the left steal 300 years of heritage. We can't let them wipe out 300 core cases, wipe out what dozens of presidents and governors have said simply because they don't like the term.

Starting point is 02:06:55 We are a Christian nation. We have been a Christian nation, and that doesn't mean anything they think it does. We're not theocratic. We're not coercive. We believe in free choice. We don't believe in any of the others. And that's what we've got to get back to doing. We don't need to be ashamed at all that we're Christians and that we believe we have a Christian nation. The story is much more complicated than Barton says, and he gets the most important details wrong. most of the generation that led the revolution and wrote the Constitution agreed with Thomas Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, that when church and state mix, both are harmed. Jefferson successfully established separation of church and state in his home state of Virginia in 1786, when it adopted the statute of religious freedom he authored. The First Amendment adopted in 1789 also banned Congress from, quote, establishing a religion, and most states embraced to varying degrees. the doctrine of church-state separation. There were some states that objected to this notion. The state governments of Connecticut and Massachusetts, for instance,

Starting point is 02:07:58 initially interpreted the First Amendment as meaning only Congress could not establish religion, but states could. Citizens of those two states paid taxes that supported the Congregationalist Church, respectively until 1818 and 1833. For decades, some states had so-called, quote, Jew laws that prohibited non-Christian from holding office or had similar bans on Catholics. Such laws were the exception, however, and fell by the wayside by the end of the 19th century. The 14th Amendment adopted in 1868 placed the same limits on state power that are placed on the federal government regarding the establishment of religion, a limitation upheld in the 1947 Supreme Court case Everson v. Board of Education.

Starting point is 02:08:43 Martin has campaigned to overwrite that history with his own alternative narrative. Towards that end, he's collected approximately 100,000 primary documents written before 1812. Based on that selection of material, he argues that American leaders like Washington, Jefferson, Adams, and their peers wanted only Christians to lead the nation, and that American law should be based on the Bible. Barton believes that not just the Bible, but also the original United States Constitution, which includes provisions protecting slavery, such as the Three-Fiths compromise, were directly inspired by God. He asserts again with no evidence, and without defining terms, that 52 of the 55 signers of the Declaration of Independence were, in his words, quote, orthodox or evangelical Christians. In reality, the early leaders of America didn't speak with one mind regarding religion.

Starting point is 02:09:42 Many were deists who saw God not as a deity invested in the daily lives of humans, but as a dispassionate clockmaker who put the gears of the universe together, wound it up, and let it run on its own. Their God didn't intervene in history or perform miracle healings at spiritual revivals. When Ben Franklin proposed opening the first session, the 1787 Constitutional Convention with a prayer. The proposal was voted down, with only four approving Franklin's motion at a gathering that as many as 55 attended on any given day.

Starting point is 02:10:18 In their letters, many of the founding fathers scoffed at the accuracy of the Bible and the reliability of its myriad translations. As John Adams said of the Bible, In an age, when fraud, forgery, and perjury were considered as lawful, means of propagating truth by philosophers, legislators, and theologians. What may not be suspected? Benjamin Franklin told his friend Ezra Stiles that Jesus was a wise philosopher, but that he had personal doubts that Christ was the son of God.

Starting point is 02:10:53 Franklin questioned whether the depiction of Christ's life or even his teachings as described in the Gospels could be trusted. As to Jesus of Nazareth, I think the system of morals and his religion, as he left them to us the best the world ever saw or is likely to see but I apprehend it has received various corrupting changes

Starting point is 02:11:15 and I have doubt with most of the present dissenters in England as to his divinity though it is a question I do not dogmatize upon having never studied it and Thomas Jefferson who Barton insists

Starting point is 02:11:32 believe that the American government should be based on Christian values was even more blunt about a central Christian belief regarding Jesus and his virgin birth. Jefferson wrote, Jesus was a man of illegitimate birth, of a benevolent heart and an enthusiastic mind, who set out without pretensions of divinity, ended in believing them, and was punished capitally for sedition by being gibbidded according to the Roman law. Barton's books and speeches are filled with misquotes and statements attributed to historical figures that no credible scholars have been able to find. He cherry-picks evidence to bolster his claims about the founder's religious beliefs.

Starting point is 02:12:16 Barton, for instance, made up a story that Jefferson started the practice of holding church services in the U.S. Capitol. More reputable scholars argue that while there's evidence that Jefferson attended one service held at the Capitol building, there's no evidence that he approved them officially. What's more, Jefferson was far from an Orthodox Christian or the sort of Christian that dominates conservatism today. He edited and published the Life and Morals of Jesus of Nazareth, commonly referred to as the Jeffersonian Bible, which is a condensed version of Jesus' teachings from the Bible

Starting point is 02:12:49 that excludes all miracles by Jesus and most mentions of the supernatural, the resurrection, the raising of the dead, and so on. These sort of facts are the subject of Barton's 22 New York Times bestseller, ironically titled The Jefferson Lies, exposing the myths you always believed about Thomas Jefferson. For instance, Barton depicted Jefferson as defining the United States as a Christian nation. Here's the real Jefferson in his 1785 book notes on the state of Virginia. The legitimate powers of government extend to such acts only as are injurious to others. but it does mean no injury for my neighbor to say that there are 20 gods or no God.

Starting point is 02:13:36 It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg. Barton's book on Jefferson went too far for even some of Barton's fellow Christian conservatives. The History News Network website derided the book as, quote, the least credible history book in print. Ten Christian conservative scholars so harshly criticized Barton's book that his publisher withdrew it from circulation because it had, quote, lost confidence in the book's details. Yet in spite of the questions regarding its truthfulness, another evangelical publishing company eventually released a new version.

Starting point is 02:14:17 In spite of his flexible relationship with the truth, Barton is a major player in Republican Party politics. On a podcast, Barton claimed that Republican U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson consulted with him about staffing at the Capitol. Johnson made his speech at a wallbuilder's event, telling the audience that theocratic evangelist had, quote, a profound influence on me, my work, my life, and everything I do. Because of Barton's influence,

Starting point is 02:14:44 the state of Texas recently okayed public schools teaching Bible stories to kindergarten children. Former Arkansas governor and Republican presidential candidate and Trump's choice to be ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, owns the company that designed those lesson plans. Huckabee has long produced so-called history videos for school children, that promote Christian nationalism and the idea that United States has a unique relationship with God, such as a series aimed at older children called One Nation Under God,

Starting point is 02:15:13 which portrays a revolutionary war soldier and George Washington suggesting God was on their side. We will bring the plagues upon our British oppressors, just as Moses did in ancient Egypt. And we will win the same freedom. We fight for the idea that we can make something great here. God's spirit compels us forward. And the time to fight is upon us. This video series may not be shown to kindergartners in Texas, but the lessons in the Huckabee design curriculum clearly favor a Christian worldview

Starting point is 02:15:48 at the expense of other religions. The scripture-filled lessons are not required by state law, but the state will reward school districts with extra tax dollars per student for teaching Huckabee's product. This is an attractive offer to the many school districts in Texas that are currently filing deficit budgets and struggling to raise revenue. Meanwhile, Barton's political and cultural influence has grown exponentially over the last decade. One of his political action committees played a major role in getting Ted Cruz elected to the

Starting point is 02:16:19 United States Senate. He is close allies with Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick, who wields power typically held by governors in other states. Patrick said this at a 2022 conservative Political Action Convention in Dallas about who he thinks wrote the U.S. Constitution. We were a nation founded upon not the words of our founders, but the words of God because he wrote the Constitution. He empowered them. We were a Christian state, and we've been blessed because of that for so many years. In 2010, the Texas State School Board for the first time required that textbook publishers portray a particular biblical figure as an honorary founding father. This supposed founder was famously portrayed in the 1956 box office smash by Charlton Heston,

Starting point is 02:17:10 who later served as a five-term president of the National Rifle Association. Woe unto thee, O Israel, you have sinned a great sin in the sight of God. You are not worthy to receive these ten commandments. In Texas, regardless of a lack of evidence, textbook publishers are required to tell students that Moses, the prophet depicted in Judeo-Christian scripture as well as the Quran, as leading the Hebrews out of slavery, was a major influence on the authors of the Constitution. Furthermore, under Barton's influence, the state of Louisiana enacted a law in June 2024, which requires every public school classroom in the state to prominently display a version of the Ten Commandments,

Starting point is 02:17:58 from the Book of Exodus derived from Protestant translations of the Bible. This past November, a federal court issued an injunction barring enforcement of the law. With Barton's encouragement, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick fought to get a similar bill passed in Texas that would have required every classroom to feature a display of the Ten Commandments, at least 16 inches wide and 20 inches tall, and as the law put it, quote, in a size and typeface that is legible to a person with average vision, from anywhere in the classroom. The bill passed the state Senate with unanimous Republican support,

Starting point is 02:18:33 but died when it didn't come before the Texas House in time for a legislative deadline. As KVUE in Austin reported, Patrick has vowed to continue his crusade in the coming months. Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick resurrecting a bill to force public schools to display the 10 commandments in every classroom. That bill was originally proposed during last year's legislative session, but missed a key deadline and died in the house. Louisiana just passed a similar law this week. The lieutenant governor posting on X saying, quote, Texas would have and should have been the first state in the nation to put the Ten Commandments back in our schools, end quote. The Lieutenant Governor says he will pass the bill during the next legislative session.

Starting point is 02:19:19 Under the Ten Commandments bill, moral codes from other major world religions such as Hinduism and Buddhism would not be. posted in classrooms, presenting a clear case of a state government violating the First Amendment. Princeton historian Kevin Cruz explained by such laws, like those signed by Louisiana governor Jeff Landry, ignore the United States Constitution. There are three references to religion of the Constitution, and all three are ones that keep religion at arm's length away from the state. There is no religious test required for office forms, a remarkable revolutionary act at the time. The First Amendment says there will no national religion established by the national government.

Starting point is 02:20:00 It says that we will not interfere with your private right to worship or not worship as you see fit, right? That is what the Constitution says. And so Landry says he wanted to put this up because Moses was the first lawgiver. He's not. The Code of Hamarabi predates Moses by four centuries or something. But also, if you want to look at the real law of the land, put the Constitution up on those walls. Let students read what the real law of this country has to say. about the proper role of religion in politics.

Starting point is 02:20:28 The history of posting Ten Commandments signs or plaques or building such monuments in public spaces over the last 70 years has an origin that might shock many right-wing cultural warriors who associate Hollywood with godless liberalism. As Cruz points out in this book, One Nation Under God, how corporate America invented Christian America. The three-hour, 40-minute epic movie The Ten Commandments, was a monster hit,

Starting point is 02:20:55 and wowed audiences with its 25,000 member cast and advanced special effects when it was released in 1956. The movie grossed more than $85 million. The film's politically conservative subtext was unmistakable. The director, Cecil B. DeMille, hated the New Deal and testified to the House Un-American Activities Committee that communists exercised maligned influence over unions, including those in Hollywood that drove up the cost of filmmaking. The film can be read as a metaphor about the Cold War, with the oppressive Egyptians representing the Soviet Union and the freedom-loving Hebrews standing in for the United States. At the beginning of the movie, DeMille appears and calls the movie, quote, the story of the birth

Starting point is 02:21:41 of freedom, the story of Moses. The movie also captures the racism and, ironically, the anti-Semitism of a country that had not yet emerged from McCarthyism. The historian Alan Nadell tells a revealing story. of two cast members in The Ten Commandments. According to the story, during the film's production, Charlton Heston's wife became pregnant. DeMille then told Heston that if his wife gave birth to a boy, the child would be cast as the baby Moses. When Heston's wife gave birth to a son,

Starting point is 02:22:11 DeMille sent her a telegram, saying, congratulations. He's got the part. Meanwhile, an adult actor, Woody Strode, appeared in the film in two markedly different roles. A former NFL star who broke the 13-year informal NFL ban on African-American players when he signed with the Los Angeles Rams in 1946, Strode played both an Ethiopian king and the enslaved attendant of Moses' adopted Egyptian mother.

Starting point is 02:22:38 DeMille thought that the audiences could tell whether a swaddled white baby was a boy or a girl, but apparently assumed they wouldn't notice a black actor playing both a king and a slave because of the racist belief that all black people look alike. Meanwhile, a movie set in ancient Egypt, in the Sinai Peninsula featured an almost entirely light-skinned cast. Even though DeMille's mother was Jewish, the only Jewish actor to play a major role was Edward G. Robinson, who earlier, became famous playing gangsters. And he won DeMille's favor, perhaps because he was a friendly witness before the House on American Activities Committee during the communist witch hunts. Thus, the one prominent Jewish face in the Ten Commandments was

Starting point is 02:23:22 cast as a bad guy, a Hebrew named Nathan who continually tries to undermine Moses and convince the escaped slaves to return to their Egyptian masters. We're gathered against you, Moses. You take too much upon yourself. We will not live by your commandments. We're free. There is no freedom without the law. Whose law, Moses? Yours? Did you carve those tablets to become a prince over us? As Cruz documents, when the Ten Commandments film was initially released, DeMille came up with an ingenious marketing strategy.

Starting point is 02:23:59 He teamed up with a conservative anti-communist organization, the Fraternal Order of the Eagles, to establish Ten Commandment Monuments across the country. Around the time that Southern states erected new Confederate monuments to protest desegregation, Ten Commandment Monuments appeared at the county courthouse in Evansville, Indiana, the Milwaukee City Hall. and near the U.S. Canadian border in North Dakota. Nearly 150 such monuments were erected across the country. Momentum stalled during the civil rights era to the extent that an Alabama state justice Roy Moore suffered ridicule when he placed without authorization a self-funded 5,280-pound monument in the rotunda of a judicial building housing state's Supreme Court in 2001. The monument was ordered removed two years later.

Starting point is 02:24:48 But once fringe figures like Moore, have moved closer to the American political mainstream because of the influence of people like Barton, Lieutenant Governor Patrick, and their allies. The contemporary obsession with festooning public spaces with religious artifacts has as much to do with malevolent nostalgia as with religious zeal. Men like anti-CRT crusader Christopher Rufo,

Starting point is 02:25:13 along with Barton and Patrick, want to return to the world that made the Ten Commandments film, a world in which white people are centered, the accomplishments of dark-skinned people are erased or expropriated, and where America stands as an untainted beacon of freedom in spite of its history of enslavement, imperialism, and genocide. And now, once again, advocates of historical amnesia have a friend in the White House.

Starting point is 02:25:39 The time has come to reclaim our once-great educational institutions from the radical left, and we will do that. Our secret weapon will be the, college accreditation system. It's called accreditation for a reason. The accreditors are supposed to ensure that schools are not ripping off students and taxpayers, but they have failed totally. When I return to the White House, I will fire the radical left accreditors that have allowed our colleges to become dominated by Marxist, maniacs, and lunatics. On January 29th of this year, Trump issued an executive order mandating the withdrawal of federal dollars from any public school that allegedly imprints, quote, anti-American, subversive, harmful, and false ideologies on our nation's children. This can include teaching them about transgender identity, providing services to trans students, or educating students about America's long, bloody promotion of white supremacy, homophobia, or transphobia. The order also requires public schools to provide

Starting point is 02:26:45 quote-unquote patriotic education. Those like Trump, Barton, and others who have clamored the loudest about schools as centers of indoctrination, are now imposing their own form of propaganda, returning history classes from kindergarten to graduate schools to the days of the 1920s and the 1930s, when textbook writers praised fascist dictators for keeping unions in their place, and those willing to die to end slavery were painted as the bad guys. In the civil rights era, black and brown parents boycotted public schools that discriminated to undermine their funding, created their own freedom schools that provided lessons in black and brown history, and marched against the old Jim Crow laws. Parents who want their children receive an honest accounting of the nation's past will do well to learn from these predecessors and to disrupt the meetings of right-wing school boards as loudly and enthusiastically as the parents who were conned to effronizing.

Starting point is 02:27:42 about the phantom dangers of CRT. This is Michael Phillips. And this is Stephen Monticelli. Thanks to Betsy Freeoff for reading passages from textbooks and to Dan Glass for reading quotes from the Founding Fathers. Of course, thanks to you for listening. Hey, everybody. Welcome to It Could Happen here. This is Robert Evans and I have an episode for you. It's also an article I wrote for our substack Shatterzone. So I'm just going to get into that. Since February 5, 2025, a document has been circulating among Democratic Party staffers and liberal think-tank experts, warning about Curtis Jarvin and the Silicon Valley led coup to end U.S. democracy. The document is titled The Imminent Neo-Reactionary Threat to the American Republic. It opens with a statement that the brief was, quote, iteratively and collectively compiled by a broad, bipartisan, and decentralized network of experts who wish to remain anonymous due to concern,

Starting point is 02:29:01 about being targeted. The full document is here. The table of contents is split into three main areas. One, the new shape of threats to the American Republic. Two, understanding recent events in the context of threats to the American Republic. And three, a list of appendices. The title of the actual file when I received it was evidence brief for journalists. And the introduction describes its aim as, quote, explaining the nature of the current political crisis to journalists who are attempting to inform the public. However, I spoke with two sources who are members of these groups and received the document. They told me that to their knowledge, the document was not mostly spread to journalists,

Starting point is 02:29:40 but instead among networks of think tank employees and DNC staffers, people you might refer to broadly as policy walks. One source I interviewed explained, It is a thing for think tanks to frame overviews for laypeople as briefs for journalists or Congress, see the IPCC reports. Part of me thinks the framing for journalists is just, just a shortcut for this is somewhat specialized knowledge broken down. The paper opens by acknowledging the scope of the executive power grab being perpetuated under President Trump and the destabilization

Starting point is 02:30:13 wrought by Elon Musk and his Doge team. It then notes, the threat is an order of magnitude beyond just a presidential power grab. It states that Musk is tied to a, quote, broader group of Silicon Valley tech elites, including Peter Thiel and Mark Andresen. Curtis Yarvin is labeled as a thought leader in this group, quote, called the neo-reactionaries. And I'll stop here to note that this summary is accurate enough for mass consumption, but I have some issues with it. Musk probably would not label himself a neo-reactionary, and he doesn't have much of a history with Yarvin.

Starting point is 02:30:48 Peter Thiel does, but it's more a relationship of patronage than mutual influence. It would be more accurate to say that Teal and Andresen find Yarvin useful, because of his success in spreading to a lot of young techie kids, the idea that tech CEOs should run the world. Musk, I feel, has largely jumped on this bandwagon with the neo-reactionaries because those tech kids are useful foot soldiers. Yarvan's ideas about retiring all government employees and destroying the independent media and academia are convenient for Musk's own ambitions. This context may be unnecessary for explaining the overall danger of the neo-reactionaries and musk to regular people. But I also think it's a mistake to credit Jarvin with more power than he holds.

Starting point is 02:31:36 The document refers to him as the leader of the neoreactionary movement. And I think that gets across kind of the wrong idea about how all of this works. That said, the document does do a pretty good job of summing up the threat that we face. quote, the neo-reactionaries have openly stated their aims to destroy the nation-state and the constitutional order and replace them with a newly privately owned corporate state to be run by a CEO dictator. Citizens become subjects owned by the state, state slaves in Yarvins' terms, because everything rots when it has no owner, human beings included. That last quote is also one of Jarvins. From here, the document argues that Musk and his team are attempting to bring about this

Starting point is 02:32:20 dystopia by taking over the, quote, nervous system of the state. Another Yarven quote, these would be the data and communication systems that Doge is trying to centralize in its unaccountable hands. Next, the authors of this document make a call to action. Quote, the most dramatic reversals of democratic breakdown, 1977 India, 22, Brazil, 23, Poland, have been accomplished by radically large-tent cross-ideological coalitions, with little in common except a desire for the continuation of a constitutional order. Evidence suggests that the present threat to American democracy is dire enough that such a broad-tint

Starting point is 02:32:59 approach focused on Musk and his associates may be required. And I think this is the most interesting and hopeful part of the whole document for me. For one thing, I believe it does accurately state what's needed in the present moment, a popular front against autocracy and dictatorship. I would add to their list of relevant examples of possible. popular fronts, the original, which is France from 1934 to 1938. So it's heartening to see evidence that this understanding has started to grow within D&C policy circles and the people around them.

Starting point is 02:33:32 The source who sent me this document in the first place described themselves as a member of, quote, a few unofficial networks of climate activists who are high ranking in the government and policy think tank circles. They noted that these are normally, quote, very milk-toast lib spaces, but quote, they're being radicalized rapidly. Both sources I interviewed for this requested anonymity. The second person I talked to with gave an explicit reason. They stated, quote, I've suspected for a while a lot more things in DNC stuff was compromised

Starting point is 02:34:03 than people were comfortable with. In other words, they believe the Republican Party has spies within the DNC, and people they know have made statements to that effect. They were worried that these, quote, GOP moles might reveal their identity. but more so they were worried that these moles might have planted the document itself and put false information inside it, with the goal of provoking a reaction from Democrats that would be useful politically to Republicans. I do think this caveat is worthwhile. It's certainly not impossible, and I think the frank admission that the DNC likely has Republican spies inside it

Starting point is 02:34:38 is also really worth stating. But I should note that when it comes to the actual accuracy of this document, I don't really see much to take issue with. I've spent more time than most people studying Curtis Jarvin and the neo-reactionaries. I would not describe myself as a top expert in the matter, but I do have a good base of knowledge here, and nothing that I've read in this document struck me as obviously false or incorrect, nor did the overall tone seem hysteric or unreasonable. So I asked my sources if over the last month they'd seen more people talking about Yarven and their daily lives within sort of the circles that they work in and around, because, again, they communicate with a lot of D&C staffers and politicians. They said, respectively, no, and, quote, that's kind of one of

Starting point is 02:35:24 the odd things to be frank. This guy, Yarvan, is being brought to big events in D.C. He's been referenced by Bannon and Vance. I have heard his talking points come from Republican mouths, but he's largely not tracked. That concern comports with some of fears that I had late last year about Yarvan and the neo-reactionaries. Namely, I had believed for some time that Yarvin and the people kind of aligned with him, largely a lot of these Silicon Valley folks with money, had become much more influential among Trump and his tight inner circle than was widely understood at the time. Ultimately, I wrote in research two episodes of Behind the Bastards because I thought it was valuable to bring more attention to the subject. I really had kind of a gut feeling that this

Starting point is 02:36:09 was going to become much more relevant very soon, which is why I picked it as the topic for the episode we did with Ed Helms, who's by a pretty good margin, the biggest celebrity we've had on the show so far. And I hope that that would help kind of get we were talking about out to a wider audience. And it did. The episodes did very well. I think between YouTube and our downloads in the podcast, we're probably at something like a million listens for them at this point. But our listener base is a mix of leftists and progressive liberals, right? Their interests are not representative of the Democratic Party at large. It is noteworthy and perhaps even important that influential individuals in the policy space with connections to Democratic politicians

Starting point is 02:36:50 and the DNC as an organization have started a grassroots effort to spread the word about Yarvan as a threat, and that's what this document represents. It's even more noteworthy that this document is unsparing about the danger and the fact that a clock is currently ticking over all of our heads. Here's another quote. If non-governmental actors, by which we mean unelected, unratified, unvetted, untrained, unconstrained, and or unaccountable actors gain access to key digital infrastructure, they could seize control of critical functions of government in ways that will be difficult or impossible to reverse.

Starting point is 02:37:25 And speaking of things that can't be reversed, my love for our sponsors. We're back. So to continue from this document, there's a section next titled National Security, and the focus shifts from Yarvin and his neo-reactionaries to Musk, who it claims, quote, poses a uniquely significant security risk. This, in its argument, is because Musk and Doge espouse, quote, anti-constitutional ideologies and, quote, are under the influence of America's principal foreign adversaries, China and Russia. It goes on at some length about Musk's foreign business interests and how they might compromise him. Now, I don't disagree that Musk is compromised, but I

Starting point is 02:38:17 see his actions is very much consistent with those of a man seizing power for himself. I do understand why people speaking to an audience that is largely, you know, when it's bipartisan, it's folks who are kind of more on the centrist side of things in the policy space and otherwise, largely a lot of like Democratic Party employees and politicians. I understand what you focus on the China and Russia of it all with them. But when it comes to both accurately stating the threat and getting a lot of people to care. I really don't think that's the right strategy to take. I think it's an issue to focus popular messaging around how this all empowers, quote, America's principle foreign adversaries, because most Americans don't really think that way or particularly care about that. And beyond that,

Starting point is 02:39:06 the larger issue is that the primary adversary Musk has empowered is not, in fact, the Russian or Chinese governments. It's himself. And he, personally, as an individual, is currently a greater threat to every citizen of the United States than any foreign government. I think that's undeniable, and I think, again, it's an error not to frame it that way. The next section of the paper lays out the definition of a coup. Quote, in essence, a coup is a number one rapid seizure of state power by unelected actors who acquire that power by two, seizing critical government infrastructure, and three, weaponizing it to neutralize legitimate government actors' efforts to stop them.

Starting point is 02:39:48 The unelected actors then use this power to four remake the rules of the political game in a way that cannot easily be checked or undone through democratic processes. And it argues convincingly that all four of these steps are underway now. One thing I found compelling is the way at which this document recognizes the threat that cryptocurrency represents right now and how it can and will be used by the new regime to cement their power in ways that sidesteps. the present legal system. Quote, without canceling elections, for example,

Starting point is 02:40:17 cryptocurrency can be used to create informal, but powerful new levers of political influence. Politicians can sell personal coins to unknown buyers who vote on public policy on the basis of their shareholder power, shielded from public view. I think that's a real thing to be concerned with, and I also think it's very clearly part of the goal of this project. Now, next we have a summary of the neoreactionary agenda,

Starting point is 02:40:42 which lists some additional names among the Silicon Valley elite currently championing an overthrow of democracy. These include David Sacks, Blaji Shrinivassan, and J.D. Vance. Also, name-dropped, is a political theorist named Nick Land, who is in fact referenced twice in this paper. He is quoted directly, as having said in his paper, The Dark Enlightenment, quote, for the hardcore neo-reactionaries,

Starting point is 02:41:06 democracy is not merely doomed, it is doom itself. Fleeing it approaches an ultimate imperative. Land has had a huge impact on a lot of these guys, although he's not really a Jarvin-like figure, as in he's not this kind of guy who sees himself as or I think really wants to be a shadowy puppet master orchestrating the overthrow of democracy from behind the scenes. He's really someone stating what he believes to be kind of inevitable concepts and realities about our present historical moment that happen to comport with a lot of the things that these guys believe.

Starting point is 02:41:39 Now, the author's next lay out Yarvin's concept of the butterfly revolution, which is based on an essay he wrote in 2022, in which he laid out how a full reboot of the U.S. government could be accomplished. Quote, Yarvin's seven-part butterfly revolution has been roughly summarized as follows. Number one, have Trump run for president on the platform of getting rid of an efficient system. Number two, once he wins, purge the bureaucracy, rage, retire all government employees. Number three, ignore the courts through declaring states of emergency. Number four, co-opt Congress. Number five, centralize the police, federalize the National Guard, create a national police force that absorbs local ones. Number six, shut down the elites, the media and the universities who make up the cathedral. Number seven, get people on the streets whenever

Starting point is 02:42:26 there is any obstruction by a government agency. And obviously, all of that, we've seen Trump and his people make moves towards in the last couple of weeks, right? And that's, in fact, what the next chunk of the document is. Subsequent pages summarize the first days of the Trump administration and Doge activity, and they show how it comports with the butterfly revolution blueprint. Now, we've all lived that in real time, so I'm not going to summarize their arguments here. So the document ends with a section on actions and rhetoric to watch. Those are listed as, quote, government contracts, which fund many of Musk's companies at present. And the next is Greenland and Mars, quote,

Starting point is 02:43:07 A core tenet of neoreactionary ideology is the replacement of nation-states with network states. But states require territory. Technocracy Inc., a predecessor to the neoreactionary movement, whose one-time director was Elon Musk's grandfather, proposed a North American technate, where the entire continent of North America would be united under one technocratic super state. There is currently a Peter Thiel-backed network state project called Praxis in Greenland. Musk's public statements about colonizing Mars can also be

Starting point is 02:43:37 be read as part of a territorial project. Lastly, it lists crypto, which the authors primarily seem to fear as a method of deniably bribing Trump. Now, I think most of this is pretty credible, although I feel differently about Musk's talk about colonizing Mars. I think that's been more about PR than anything. I do think there's a good chance he's just delusional enough to think that that's something feasible on any kind of close-in time frame that we start building persistent colonies on Mars. I think the science suggests that if that ever happens, it won't be anytime soon. And I think he knows that.

Starting point is 02:44:12 I think he largely understands hype well and how to use it. And Mars has been an easy way for him to do that over the years. Overall, I'd say the document is fairly thorough in its layout of the neo-reactionary ecosystem and the actual plan currently being acted to end U.S. democracy. It includes a section that lists several of the earliest known Doge employees, and it quotes extensively from Yarvan and somewhat less extensively from land. The paper's ultimate conclusion is that Musk is using this moment to turn himself into the kind of unitary all-powerful executive that Yarvan longs for. This is an executive who rules alongside a largely ceremonial president, as well as courts and a legislative system that are equally ceremonial. After laying out the bulk of the actual threat, the article promises that, quote, Section 3 articulates what Congress and other actors can do in order to stop this threat.

Starting point is 02:45:09 However, the document in its present form does not include any Section 3 or any comprehensive list of solutions Congress and other actors might carry out in order to stop the present assault on democracy. And perhaps there's a later version of the document that I don't have access to that includes that. perhaps this is just a statement that wasn't edited out. I have to say, as heartening as I find the way in which this document talks about the threat that we're facing and the fact that I think it's overall good that people in positions of influence around the DNC are talking about this stuff, it's also kind of perfect that at the end, they're like, hey, you know, don't worry, we've included some tips on how to defeat these guys. And then they just don't, you know, If the situation weren't so dire, it would be a lot funnier.

Starting point is 02:46:00 But unfortunately, it is pretty dire. Now, if you want to take a look at the full document itself, it's quite a bit longer than what I've read to you now, but it is really worth reading, especially if you have been hearing about this Curtis Jarvin guy or the NeoReactionaries, and you kind of want to know how this all fits together with what Musk is doing in more detail. If you go to my substack at Shatterzone, the most recent article is the text of this, and I include a couple of different points, links to the full document, which I have uploaded to scribed, and you can read the whole thing if you want. It has not been altered since I have

Starting point is 02:46:36 received it. And again, yeah, I think it's worth getting out there and spreading to more people. So that's the episode. We will be back tomorrow with something else. Until then, folks, I don't know. Keep an eye on this shit. Bye. This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House. Yes. The crumbling world and what it means for me and you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans.

Starting point is 02:47:31 Yes. This week we're covering the week of February 19 to February 26. And boy, if you thought we had ED before, do we have ED now? We still haven't got that home sponsorship. but we'll be crying. We're going to keep working at it. I'm also looking to get us a penis pump sponsorship. Speaking of penis pumps, let's talk about the Germans.

Starting point is 02:47:53 So, Germany had its election very recently after their most recent coalition collapsed. The way their government works is that periodically, governments can't continue being governments. And so they have to have a very sudden election. I'm not going to explain it much more than that. but the actual results of the election were pretty interesting, right? The primary winner was off day, AFD, alternative for Germany, would be kind of the closest English translation of the name of the party. This is a far right party.

Starting point is 02:48:29 It is primarily popular in East Germany now, but it has surged massively after years and years of being decidedly on the political fringe. One of the reasons it has always been on the political fringe is that. that German parties, both centrist, conservatives, and the left, have had a tacit agreement since the end of World War II called the Kordan Sanitaire. It's not just Germany. This is the thing that used to be present in all of Europe. And basically, the gist of the Kordon Sanitaire is you don't form a coalition, because these are parliamentary democracies, right? So usually no one party has 50% or more of the vote. So a party with 20 and a party with 15.

Starting point is 02:49:13 and a party with eight, and they form a coalition government. And the norm for up until now, and thankfully is still the norm, but we'll talk about that, is that you don't coalition with AFD, which is a part of why that and kind of lingering stigma about the Nazis kept them from being a major force in German politics until, you know, over the last eight or so years, they have grown substantially to the point where in this recent election, they doubled their support from around 10% to a little over 20%. Yeah. This makes them, they're not the largest single block in the German, in the Reichstag.

Starting point is 02:49:54 They're number two, though, right? They are number two, I believe. Which sucks. Yeah, it's not great. Yeah, the CDU is still significantly larger. Yeah. Although not like overwhelmingly larger, to be clear. So basically right now, the CDU, which is the centrist party, and it's kind of like center right, a little center right, has 208 seats in the Reichstag, AFD has 152, the social Democrats have 120, the Greens have 85, and the left party has 64.

Starting point is 02:50:29 So, AFD is a minority in the government compared to all of the people who didn't vote for AFD, but the rate at which they're increasing is a serious price. especially since most Germans list immigration as their primary voting concern right now. This most recent election had unusually high voter turnout. 2021 election, 76% of the country or so voted, more than 82% of the country voted in this most recent election. So the fact that, like, you have record high turnout and AFD doubling its support is deeply chilling. Now, it's not 100% bad news because one of the other stories here is the new left party.

Starting point is 02:51:14 Well, not super new, but the left party, which is kind of came out of East Germany's Communist Party, massively increased their support too. And they actually, for the first time, like very significantly increased their share of the vote, which had been under this kind of 5% threshold before and is now at about 8.8%. So they went up by an amount actually is not like as much as AFD went up, but like in terms of a percentage of their prior vote, it's a similar increase. So there's another party that had significant gains in this.

Starting point is 02:51:51 And it's kind of a newer party called the BSW, which is you could say they do a little bit of like a red brown alliance kind of thing where there's some like left wing messaging in what they're saying, but they're also like super anti-immigrant. And they're not, you know, it's not kind of like to the extent that the AFD is. But when they came on to the scene, they were expected by some people to pull votes away from the AFD this election. And that's really not what happened.

Starting point is 02:52:23 And in fact, a lot of the votes they pulled were from social Democrats and the left parties. So that was one of the, you know, it's because the way the parliament system works, which is more rational than our system, this didn't like hand the whole election to off day. Again, this is the benefit of a system like the Germans had, which is pretty explicitly set up to make it a lot harder for a right-wing dictator to get in again. But it is interesting to me that that kind of messaging, I mean, it's further kind of evidence of what's been happening everywhere, which is when your party positions itself to try to win over far-right votes, by kind of mixing in, well, okay, what if we did some sort of, you know, liberal lefty policies,

Starting point is 02:53:09 but we also got really racist? Yeah. You don't take votes from the far right, but you do wind up pulling the worst people from the left. Yeah. And yeah, I guess that's kind of like the broad strokes. Now, like, this is bad, although it's also not comprehensively a nightmare. One of the things that's kind of hot, I don't know, positive may not be the right, but interesting to me is if you look at the 2021 election maps of the strongest party by constituency

Starting point is 02:53:41 in the 2021 election, and I found a good article German election results explaining graphics on dw.com. If you just Google that, you'll find it. In 2021, off day, obviously, like, the whole northeast was, you know, their territory, but they also had strong inroads into the northwest parts of the country, right? You know, primarily, like, rural areas and the like, but, like, there was a, there was a lot of red on that map in the northwest portion of Germany. In the new election, that's all black, which is the CDU, right? Which means, while off day's representation of the Reichstag and, like, number of voters increased substantially, their geographical reach has been kind of cauterized, would be a fair way of saying it, which is interesting to me. Hard to say too much, like, does that mean,

Starting point is 02:54:34 you know, I think some of what has happened here, because it's important both to note that this is bad. It's bad that the Nazis doubled their share of the vote. But also, it was expected to be a little worse than it was. You know, there's some evidence that after J.D. Vance made his speech introducing AFD, their polling started to, like, freeze a little bit. And it may be the fact because a lot of older voters came in and they they seem to have primarily gone with the CDU with this sort of center right party. So it's it one of story here is you could maybe look at it as a lot of older, more conservative Germans who are also old enough to really not like the idea of the AFD came out and voted for, you know, the center right party in order to kind of cut off their

Starting point is 02:55:25 power. The other thing though that's kind of a lot less. optimistic is that AFD is most popular among people under 30 who widely don't view it as an extremist party, which is deeply, deeply concerning. And AFD won the majority of like working class, unemployed, and male votes. Yes, yes. Pretty substantially. Yes. Yes. They did extremely well with young men and unemployed young men in particular. And that's, that's all deeply concerning. So, you know, there's a few things going on here, all of which are very interesting to me, but the power off day continues to have with younger, really young Germans is frightening. That said, there's also some evidence here that the situation in the United States has galvanized

Starting point is 02:56:15 a chunk of the German voting populace to attempt to stop off day. And kind of one of the positive things that came out is prior to this election, there was a lot of talk. about whether or not the CDU would choose to coalition with the AFD and thus end the cordon sanitaire. And to make a long story short, they're not going to do that. They're looking to coalition with the social Democrats, which is a good thing. You know, it doesn't mean no one will do that in the future. And unfortunately, a majority of German voters suspect AFD will be in a coalition by 2030. But it hasn't happened yet.

Starting point is 02:56:53 And that's as good as things get right now, and that's what I got to say about Germany. Yeah, I mean, and people frame these results as like slightly better than expected. Slightly. Previous polling showed AFD being slightly better in results, and that dipped for Vance and Musk started really trying to push AFD both in person and digitally. So you saw a slight dip there. Yes. And this is the other thing that's kind of worth noting.

Starting point is 02:57:22 that kind of like red-brown party in addition to being kind of pro-social programs, anti-immigration. They're also very anti-United States. Okay. So that may explain some of that too. Yeah. It does seem like things are changing a lot. And one of the things that we've seen, like, as we've spoken before, like, not just in Germany being Canada, was that, like, people hate Musk and Trump so much in the rest of the world that, like, their endorsement could be.

Starting point is 02:57:52 something of a kiss of death electorally? Yeah. Yeah, like the conservative party in Canada has been growing pretty exponentially in terms of like popular support the past few years as the liberals have tanked. And now those trends actually started to reverse. The Canadian like liberal polling is up 10 points. The conservative polling is down. Conservatives might not even be able to control parliament in the next election as they were like expected to. And it'll be interesting to see like if this, if this anti like far right United States trend continues to more control. beyond like Germany and Canada. But I'm still, I'm still eagerly, eagerly waiting for the next Canadian election. And this is part of the story that is really interesting right now, where we've

Starting point is 02:58:32 talked a lot about the transnational fascist coalition, you know, the fact that Trump and his people have had the quasi-dictator of Hungary, you know, over at Mara Lago and have repeatedly cited him as an inspiration for how to take and centralized power, you know, how close Bolsoniaro was in the last Trump administration like, you know, obviously the Republican Party's increasing closeness and embrace of Putin's Russia. But what also is happening right now is people, like countries that had been heading in a very, in a more authoritarian right-wing direction, turning around in part due to the war in Ukraine and turning away from kind of the international right-wing movement, as Poland being the best

Starting point is 02:59:20 example, right? Where Polish politics have changed substantially in the last several years. And a big part of that is the war in Ukraine. And there are a lot of Poles who I think otherwise would have been more on board for a lot of the socially conservative shit who are like, well, but all these fuckers are pro Russia and we're Poland. Like, no. All right. Let's go on a break and return to talk more about the crumbling world. And you said. Yeah. All right, we are back. I'm going to throw to James to do a segment on USAID. Yeah, we are back. And before I talk about USAID, I do want to talk about something else that has been advertised, along with whatever products and services support this show. That is the gold card. So the gold card,

Starting point is 03:00:23 if you're not familiar, is something that Trump floated this week, to replace the EB-5 investor. Trump suggested that the gold card, it would require a $5 million investment. Investment, I think it's just a charge, right? You're just giving the money to the United States government, and in return, you will receive a green card plus privileges, and it will be not a green, but a gold card. So that's great. That is, the EB-5 visa, if you're not familiar, required you since 2020. 22, it's been $1,050,000 investment and the creation of 10 jobs.

Starting point is 03:01:00 So it had some kind of like, it trickle down economics is not a real thing. It's a lie that they tell you. But it had some idea that these rich people would create jobs in the US, people who are less wealthy. The gold card seems to not have that. You just have to be rich, right? So that's a interesting change to the immigration system. The other thing I want to talk about today is the United States. agency for international development, better known as USAID.

Starting point is 03:01:27 It's been a target of like the anti-work right for some time, because they fundamentally don't understand what Joseph Nye would have called soft power, right, their power to persuade, the power to influence outcomes around the world with things other than tanks and bombs. Oh, and again, if your power is soft right now, you might consider trying hymns or one of our other sponsors. Hymns is not a sponsor. Sorry, James. We needed to do that.

Starting point is 03:01:55 I have been diverted, but returning to my topic. The agency has been massively impacted by Doge and Trump administration cuts, right? The Trump administration suspended all foreign aid in January via executive order on the 20th of January in order to assess if it was, quote, serving U.S. interests. The State Department then issued guidance that seemed to go beyond the executive order and cut nearly basically all USAID expensive. On the 13th of this month, that's February, if you're listening later, a judge issued a temporary restraining order.

Starting point is 03:02:29 This TRO didn't really stop them from doing what they were doing because it told them to continue with existing contracts and what the State Department claims that it's doing is implementing clauses that are already in the contracts. So the contracts will have some kind of kill clause, right? And they claim that they're implementing that. so they think they've found a fun work around. Rather than talking extensively about court battles,

Starting point is 03:02:53 I want to talk about what this means. These are cuts made by the richest man in the world that have had a direct, tangible and devastating impact on the poorest people on the planet. In Sudan, 80% of emergency kitchens have been close. That means that close to 2 million people will go without food. Local groups who organise the kitchens are running out of money. the way this works is that even when Rubio issued a communication talking about continuing food aid,

Starting point is 03:03:24 it's unclear exactly what that means because in this case and in other cases, USAID is sending them money in order to provision themselves locally, as opposed to sending them food as an in-kind donation, right? Whatever he communicated, these people are not getting food. And as a result, the people who run these mutual aid kitchens, it's a mutual aid coalition of Sudan are facing the horrible decision of having to turn people away or deciding who to feed, which is pretty bad.

Starting point is 03:03:54 On the border between Thailand and Myanmar, a place where Robert and I have been to report, I've heard that people are having babies right now outside a lot clinics, and life support machines have been removed, so people who were relying on those life support machines, obviously. And at least one person has died. Yeah, and I'm sure many, many more people than that have died. Yeah, I mean, that's just what's report.

Starting point is 03:04:14 like it's a lot of most of what happens there does not get out. Yeah, I will try in not too long to be there and report on that. But it's pretty devastating right now. Robert and I have met the people who run some of these clinics and they are some of the most incredible people doing amazing work. And yeah, they relied on USCID funding as lots of other places do. And that's not happening now. The State Department has exempted, quote, life-saving humanitarian assistance programs from the cuts, but no one really knows what that means, right? The order reads, quote, life-saving humanitarian assistance applies to core life-saving medicine, medical services, food, shelter, and subsistence assistance, as well as supplies

Starting point is 03:04:58 and reasonable administrative costs as necessary to deliver such assistance. As I mentioned before, the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition was receiving financial assistance to help it provision itself, which is much better than the US going through all the infrastructure spending of being able to deliver that aid itself or through USAID contractors. Other contractors, implementing partners of USAID, are still owed money for work

Starting point is 03:05:24 that they completed before January, before the stop work order stopped payment to them. For work to begin again on any of these contracts, they need the contract officer to sign off on it, and it's sort of unclear exactly how many of these contract officers are still employed at US. AID because of the federal employment cuts. So essentially, USAID has stopped all over the world.

Starting point is 03:05:47 In addition to this, in this country, $490 million worth of US-grown food, which is in the USAID pipeline to go to people who are very desperately needed food, is currently at risk of spoilage, according to USAID. So it's not just that people are starving, it's that we are allowing food to go bad here while people starve in other places, which is pretty bleak. I will just really briefly here plug the Mutual Aid Sudan Coalition if you'd like to help. You can direct to them directly, and it's mutual aid Sudan.org if you'd like to do that. It'll be in a show note to if you're driving or whatever. And there is like ongoing legal fights over this issue on Tuesday, February 25th.

Starting point is 03:06:33 another judge ordered the Trump administration to resume hundreds of million dollars of funding towards USAID. And there's no indication Trump's going to follow that order. They're already planning to appeal again. They have already appealed before. And we've seen them continually deny court orders from judges, fine loopholes, fine workarounds. And Musk and Trump continue to just openly float, like defying the order of the court. court, Representative Andy Ogles introduced. Articles of impeachment against a specific, quote-unquote, activist to judge.

Starting point is 03:07:12 This will go nowhere. They don't have nearly enough numbers to make anything like this happen. Yeah. It's a frontal assault on the separation of powers is what he's proposed, right? And like, they don't have their numbers yet. Yes. Well, and then they have openly floated just like defying orders because they are, they're interpreting the actions of these judges as like themselves unlawful. but Musk has himself called to impeach judges who violate the law, and I believe his most recent pinned ex post reads, quote, if any judge anywhere can block every presidential action everywhere,

Starting point is 03:07:50 we do not have a democracy, we have a tyranny of the judiciary. So what a great legal mind. Shit we were saying back in 2023. So this will, this will, this will, I mean, I'm really, really waiting for a final showdown between Trump, Elon, and, you know, maybe the Supreme Court and, you know, seeing, seeing if they will actively defy a ruling from the Supreme Court if they indeed rule against Trump and Musk. But until then, I feel like we're just kind of all chugging along as, as the Trump administration, you know, very, very unconstitutionally defies the authority of the court. Yeah. In some related news, last week, President Trump signed an executive order stating that the president

Starting point is 03:08:33 can change laws. Cool. Erroneously citing Article 2, which only calls for the president to, quote, faithfully execute the law. I'm going to quote from the order, the president and the attorney general, subject to the president's supervision and control, will interpret the law for the executive branch, instead of having separate agencies adopt conflicting interpretations. The next section is titled, Raining in Independent Agencies. It reads, the Federal Trade Commission, the Federal Communications Commission, and Securities and Exchange Commission, have exercised enormous power over the American people without presidential oversight. These agencies issue rules and regulations without the review of the democratically elected

Starting point is 03:09:16 president. They also spend American tax dollars to set priorities without consulting the president. Voters and the president can now hold all federal agencies, not just cabinet departments, responsible for their decisions as the Constitution demands. unquote. This is absurd. This is like extremely dangerous. One of the most like blatant like attempts at power

Starting point is 03:09:38 that we've seen since Dick Nixon like this is going to get litigated but this is crazy. The fact that that we have a president saying that he has the ability to interpret the law, something that specifically he cannot do. That's why it's why we have three branches of government.

Starting point is 03:09:54 Just like openly openly claiming that power is like very worrying. Again like I feel like every episode on executive disorder, I say that, you know, I'm very worried and very concerned, but that does continue to be the case. Yeah, it is very concerning. I don't know what to say, because it's mad, like we're watching a coup happen on the timeline while everyone just continues to go shopping and stuff. Like, it's, uh, it's pretty weird. Speaking of shopping, I just got a fantastic Swedish M90 field jacket. It looks great. It fits tight. I'm very happy.

Starting point is 03:10:29 Incredible. Garrison's becoming a milsurp. We will go on break once again to come back to talk about the Navy and the FBI. All right, we are back. Let's now talk about the Navy, arguably one of the gayer branches of the military, besides the drone operators. Oh, you're really missing out on the Marines, Garrison. As multiple Marine veterans have told me, the U.S. Marine Corps is the GERNs. gayest place I've ever been. The Marines are like part of the Navy, right?

Starting point is 03:11:14 Come on. They are. They are. And they hate it when you say that. Hell well. Whee. Go cry about it to Daddy Trump. I don't care. It's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun. So, meanwhile, there's shakeups in the Navy and the Marines as relating to Trump's

Starting point is 03:11:32 anti-trans executive orders. And we have obtained an Al-Nave memo directed to all Navy units and Marine Corps from February 23, fifth that outlines the Department of Navy's guidance on how to implement the anti-trans executive orders. Now, this includes ending programs and policies related to, quote-unquote, gender ideology all across the Navy, as well as only using assigned sex at birth on official documentation. I will quote from the statement, quote,

Starting point is 03:12:01 D-O-N entities will review policies for, quote-un-un-intimate single-sex spaces and take appropriate action to ensure such spaces are designated by sex and not gender identity on installations, facilities, ships, and any other infrastructure under the jurisdiction of the Department of Navy. Unquote. So this will force women into bathrooms and barracks with men. It's in line with the stuff that Trump's been talking about and the stuff that he's been signing. But we are slowly getting more and more of these implementation guides getting sent around to various departments. James? Yeah. And like, just to a clarifying. verify that to people. Most of these spaces are pretty full, right? These are pretty crowded places. So this will mean women sharing rooms with young Marines, right? This will mean them sharing non-stalled bathrooms with young sailors and Marines, right? This will force them into very confined spaces together on board ships. Like, this isn't like some kind of sort of minor inconvenience or whatever. Like this, this will put these people at a demonstrable risk.

Starting point is 03:13:07 for assault, for bullying, which is a serious thing and an issue. And lots of militaries, including the US one. But like, and many of these people, I should add, like have had, they're like post-surgery, right? And not that it matters hugely, but they're people who might pass as women or men, and they're now forced to live according to their gender assigned at birth.

Starting point is 03:13:32 Pretty fucked up. It's not great. I'm going to wait before I do reporting, on the implementation guides for visas. I know there's been a lot of articles in The Guardian and a few trans journalists have conflicting interpretations of a few Department of State cables regarding the issuing of visas to people who are trans.

Starting point is 03:13:56 Specifically, I think the main cable that we've seen allows the continued issuance of visas, but that would only match what the case officer or whoever is like handling the actual visa information, whatever they determined to be the assigned gender at birth to be. That's how it would get issued. But I'm going to wait to report on kind of the rest of the nitty-gritty details because there is conflicting information from like these policy wonks, lawyers,

Starting point is 03:14:27 and journalists themselves who are trying to figure out kind of what the full implications of those cables are. But we are aware of them. We've been talking about them in our chat. Yes, they are bad, but I don't necessarily want to like overblow the scope of some of these things just to like induce panic when really this is all kind of very in line with with Trump's earlier orders to only have male and female documentation that matches assigned gender at birth. Yeah. I will say also like if you are soldier, sailor, airman, airperson, marine, whatever, and like these executive orders are affecting you, you can email us. cool zone tips at proton.me. I know trans folks tend to serve at a higher rate than cisgender folks.

Starting point is 03:15:14 So there's a good number of people who will be affected by this and like for whatever it's worth. If you want to talk to us, you can reach out to us. I'm also going to note, we obtain information on the Department of Defense removing travel coverage for abortion. On January 18th, the Department of Defense travel management office removed a section from their joint travel regulations that outlined travel allowances for quote, non-covered reproductive health care, like, quote, meaning like abortion and assisted reproductive technology like IVF. Now, this change was directly in compliance with Trump's executive order to enforce the Hyde Amendment, which Mia has talked about lots before on the show. And then on February 4th, they actually reestablished coverage for assisted reproductive technology, so probably just IVF, but abortion was not reestablished. So that means that travel cover for abortion-related

Starting point is 03:16:07 medical care, reputed to health care is no longer there. Correct, correct. For our last main story, I'd like to talk a little bit about updates to the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Trump Goon, rap producer and children's book author Cash Patel has been confirmed as FBI director.

Starting point is 03:16:28 And Patel is joined by far right podcaster and conspiracy theorist Dan Poncino, who has been appointed deputy director. Oh, God. And look, I got to say it. I'm just glad there's an adult in the room now, you know? This is.

Starting point is 03:16:44 Thank God. Again, like, I don't want to just be talking about how, how, you know, kooky everything is in this new administration, but this is wild. Yes, this is bonus. No, no, no. Garrison, I disagree. And that's because I have professional solidarity. Anything that's good for podcasters in general, you know, is, is good for the country.

Starting point is 03:17:04 So not great. Not great. Last week, Patel told senior officials he wants to relocate upwards of 1,500 employees from D.C. to field offices around the country. And in a statement on last Friday, which is February 21st, Patel said, quote, anyone that wishes to do harm to our way of life and our citizens here and abroad will face the full wrath of the DOJ and the FBI. if you seek to hide in any corner of this country or planet, we will put on the world's largest manhunt, and we will find you, and we will decide your end state." Unquote.

Starting point is 03:17:45 Agents and government employees have warned that under Patel, the Bureau will be on course to refocus efforts away from far-right street fighters and accelerationsists and towards the nebulous BLM Antifa. In related news, on Tuesday, a far-right extremist named Joe Kent was confirmed as director of the National Counterterrorism Center. Kent is a former Special Forces and CIA operative. He's described himself as an American first populist and has strong ties to

Starting point is 03:18:15 the proud boys and patriot prayer. Kent has praised Joey Gibson for standing up to Antifa, and Kent himself employed a proud boy to consult on a failed congressional campaign in 2022. Kent has historically advocated that the FBI refocused their efforts to target Antifa. And this is like all admits a report from The Guardian suggesting that the Nazi accelerationist group, the base has had a decent resurgence inactivity and recruitment efforts inside the United States. That's good. So not cool stuff happening. Read the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I guess I'll close, unless we have any other thoughts on Kent or Patel or our podcaster, deputy director.

Starting point is 03:19:01 What are you supposed to say? All right. I mean, I do think it's funny that because of the number of podcasters that have been hired, there have been statements by people in the administration that, like, there aren't going to be any more conservative podcasters because we're giving them all government jobs. Well, that's more hymns advertising dollars for us. That's right.

Starting point is 03:19:24 That's right. I feel like this is going to be huge for us. I would like to close on three more funny news moments from the past week. Elon Musk danced round with a chainsaw at CPAC, while multiple of his ex-wives and baby mamas pleaded for him on Twitter to respond to emergencies regarding his children, including that weird far-right journalist in Babylon B contributor, who's had an increasing spat with Musk,

Starting point is 03:19:53 and I now, I believe, has filed for complete custody. of their child. Yeah, well, I mean, good luck, I guess. I guess good luck. I can't think of a worse situation to be in, then Elon Musk being one of your legal parents. So, like, for the sake of that child, I hope that she succeeds. Tesla stock is down nearly 30% this month.

Starting point is 03:20:16 There's been a real pressure on him because people in Europe are refusing to buy Tesla's in a boycott, you know, upset at him for doing the whole Nazi salute and being a Nazi thing. And finally, in some very sad news, a crypto trader killed himself live on a Twitter space in order to start a meme coin. Sorry, on an X space in order to start a meme coin. How do we feel about this, folks? I know it's a dark time for our community. They did start the meme coin. Multiple meme coins actually were started.

Starting point is 03:20:49 Well, well done for the people cashing in on the guy shooting himself in the head and then leading out for 30 minutes on stream. You are vampires. I don't know. Not the cool kind. No, yeah. Not the cool kind. The evil kind.

Starting point is 03:21:06 Vultures. Vultures can be cool as well, I guess. It depends. Yeah. Well, I think that's it for us. We reported the news again. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe.

Starting point is 03:21:26 It could happen here is a production of Cool Zubes. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, Coolzone Media.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. A decade ago, I was on the trail of one of the country's most elusive serial killers, but it wasn't until 2023 when he was finally caught. The answers were there, hidden in plain sight. So why did it take so long to catch him? I'm Josh Zeman, and this is Monster, hunting the Long Island serial killer,

Starting point is 03:22:06 the investigation into the most notorious killer in New York, since the son of Sam, available now. Listen for free on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast, guaranteed human.

Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 171

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