Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 184

Episode Date: May 31, 2025

All of this week's episodes of It Could Happen Here put together in one large file.  16 Dead & a Cover-up: An NHS Trans Horror Story Rendition By Private Jet What's Happening in Immigration Court Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #18 You can now listen to all Cool Zone Media shows, 100% ad-free through the Cooler Zone Media subscription, available exclusively on Apple Podcasts. So, open your Apple Podcasts app, search for “Cooler Zone Media” and subscribe today! http://apple.co/coolerzone  Sources/Links: 16 Dead & a Cover-up: An NHS Trans Horror Story https://thefreeradical.org/ Rendition By Private Jet https://hardghistory.ghost.io/a-private-jet-to-hell/ What's Happening in Immigration Court Donate to Primrose's legal fees: venmo.com/u/kirsten-zittla https://www.gofundme.com/f/immigration-lawyer-for-primrose Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #18 https://www.aljazeera.com/news/liveblog/2025/5/22/live-israel-kills-87-in-gaza-shots-fired-near-diplomats-in-west-bank  https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/the-israel-embassy-shooter-manifesto  https://www.kenklippenstein.com/p/read-elias-rodriguezs-leaked-chats?r=1aiy5i&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=false  https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ajc-access-young-diplomats-reception-tickets-1312062246499 https://www.ajc.org/events/washington  https://www.nytimes.com/live/2025/05/22/us/israel-embassy-shooting-dc https://www.ynetnews.com/article/hjyxay1zxg https://x.com/saulstaniforth/status/1925468225665446272 https://x.com/netanyahu/status/1925650699414646909 https://www.ziprecruiter.com/c/Spectrum-Security-Services/Job/Detention-Officer/-in-Los-Angeles,CA?jid=2a4b6034cef9977e https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/25954386-24a1153/ https://myanmar-now.org/en/news/myanmar-nationals-deported-by-us-being-held-in-notorious-junta-detention-centre/?tztc=1 https://www.patreon.com/posts/129696965See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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,

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 new here for you. but you can make your own decisions. Hey, this is Mia from the future.

This is recorded in the now-Halsian days of January 2025. Lots of things have changed. Basically everything everywhere has gotten worse. This is the story about the oppression of trans people in the United Kingdom. It is very bleak in many ways. The United Kingdom has gotten worse since then. The UK Supreme Court has ruled that the definition of sex and the Equality Act of 2010 is, quote, binary and is decided by, quote, biological sex.

So whatever the sex that some fucking doctor assigns you at birth is your sex, specifically under the Equality Act, a bunch of people in the UK have decided that this means that, like, the courts have ruled that, like, sex in general means, quote unquote, biological sex. That's actually not what they ruled, but they're doing it anyways. So there's been a whole bunch of things where, for example, the Labor Party has started purging trans women from any, like, one of the, like, one of the, their bodies that's supposed to be a woman's body. So the oppression of trans people continues to escalate. Yeah, our only path out is just open and active resistance against them. In a more positive note, Mira, our guest for this episode,

has since this episode has struck out on her own, and is now the mind and genius behind the outlet free radicals. If we will link to here and you should go support her work because it's great. Now, to our episode. it could happen here a podcast that is largely about the U.S. that might exaggerate the extent to which is about the U.S. But it is most episodes are about the U.S., but sometimes it's about other places.

And one of the frequent places that it's about is the United Kingdom. And specifically, we're here to talk about the United Kingdom because the U.K. is both an image of the present and the future of the oppression of trans people. and there have been a bunch of just absolutely horrible things happening there that have gotten very little press attention. And one of those things is what appears to be a like, I guess I would call it like a two-stage cover-up of a bunch of suicide of trans kids on waiting lists for health care. And with me to talk about this fucking terrible shit is Mira Lazzine, who's a freelance trans journalist. Mira, welcome to the show. Great to be here.

Thank you for having me. Yeah, so, I mean, God, this is one of those. I always am excited to talk to people, but I swear to God, like, one out of every four times this happens. It's like, I have to pollate you. I want to say I'm excited to talk to you about this because, like, Jesus Christ, this is the most depressing shit I've seen in ages. Yeah, it's not a fun story. It's an important one. Probably one of the most important I've ever ordered on, but not remotely fun.

Yeah, so let's go back to. the halcyon days of mid-20204. I don't know. Things were really bad then too. They're worse now, but they were also bad then. Yeah, so can you talk a bit about how this story started

and about what was going on with the National Health Service in the NHS, which is the British. Basically, the British healthcare system has run out of National Health Service. Can you talk about the whistleblowers there and what was going on with them? So, yeah, I first became aware

of those going on independently. I was working with Alejandro Carabio, the clinical instructor of Cyber Law Clinic at Harvard. She's a friend of mine, and we work together on some decks. She and I and some other people were talking about the horrific wait lists going on with the NHS. It's terrible there. not even just for trans stuff.

There's probably millions of reports of people having to wait in months to get essential health care. Some people have died just from like their conditions being on the wait list. We had both stumbled upon some old news reports from like years prior about trans kids who had unfortunately committed suicide as a result of not getting the essential health putting in need on the wait list. these stories were not talked about their media at all.

They got like one art mentioning what happened to them and then that was it. So we started to investigate it. She was compiling a spreadsheet of everything she could find every news report of kids who experienced this.

I was pitching and helping contribute to that spreadsheet some. And then right around the same time the director, Ben, of the Good Law Project, a civil rights organization that does a lot of legal stuff in the United Kingdom. His name is Julianne Morgham. I apologize if I mispronanced that.

He came out with a Twitter thread revealing, and this was very suddenly. He hadn't contacted anyone about this. He just kind of posted it right when he got enough of a story and everything. He revealed that he was talking to a couple whistleblowers within the NHS about what was going down. And not only did he talk to some whistleblowers, but he also gained some independent evidence

from himself. This whole investigation from meeting minutes from officials in the NHS. And so what he found kind of began at the first whistleblower. This one was someone

who did not reveal much about who they were publicly, presumably to protect their job. But Mangan said that with his whistleblowers, he independently confirmed that they did work for the NHS. He saw their IDs. Morghum's not the public eye to lie. He's a trusted figure in the UK political scene. First one said that there was only one reported suicide prior to 2020.

Significance of 2020 in relation to trans health care at Nightingdom was that the infamous Kale's belt. versus Tadostok. Not going to go into detail of this case because it kind of alluded and messy and hellish, but the gist of it is that it led to tightened restrictions on gender reform and care for minors, particularly in the new realm of puberty lovers. This ruling ended up kind of restricting how it might act as puberty longer some. It was a leader overturned, but it already led to lasting damage. Even after it was overturned, a lot of doctors were hesitant to even prescribed

cubity blockers because they were worried about political consequences. So a lot of minors weren't getting the care they need. Yeah, and we should also mention here too, because I think this has been lost in a lot of the reporting on this because, like, I mean, I guess this is a story where a lot of the reporting was done by trans people just because, like, nobody gives a shit. But, like, the thing about pubity blockers is that pubity blockers with the health care of trans youth were always a sort of compromise measure. That was, you know, sort of put in place as a compromise of like, instead of letting

kids actually transition and like, you know, go on hormones, which is, you know, the thing that kids need, right? If your goal is to, like, improve the health outcomes of trans kids, like, the thing you actually want for them, like, maximally is for them to have the ability to get gender affirming hormones. But, you know, the sort of compromise thing that was happening was like, well, you could have puberty blockers, but, you know, you can start hormones later. And that is not a good compromise to begin with, but losing it is even worse, because, you know, you can't because the alternative to that is like you are now spending even more time with a bunch of fucking hormones in your system that you don't want.

That's the animal explanation is more of more of the hormones that you fucking want. And, you know, you're getting, you're being forced to go through puberty, which fucking sucks shit if we're going through, I don't know, I don't know if the wrong puberty is like the correct language or whatever, but like it fucking sucks. It's awful. And, but now, you know, and this is something that's happening in the US too, is also happening in the UK is that the compromise solutions are being knocked out

and we're seeing the sort of knock on effects of these kids losing even the sort of compromise stuff they were supposed to be getting. Yeah, and they use complete bogus justifications for this. They're like, we don't see any benefits at puberty bloggers and it's like, the point is not that they are

benefiting these kids directly. No kid is like, oh boy, I get to be five years behind on puberty from my peers. I get to look like a 10 year old, while all my peers have full on been everything. Oh, boy. Like, no.

The point is that these kids are being deprived of the care. They absolutely need to stay alive. And it's being targeted just for the sole purpose of gaining cheap political from what are the hells in office. Yeah. But more back to the whistleblowers. So prior to 2020, when the Bellevite Tavistock ruling came into effect, only one transmiter

died from suicide. I don't quite remember time frame they used estimated, but it was broader than the one they used after. I believe it was like seven years, I think. And the years after, which was measured up to the very beginning of 2024, like January, 2024.

So not even four years, more like three years and two months. They recorded 16 deaths. Yeah. 16 transgender minors committed suicide, and they were all able to be linked to restrictions on 250-quarters and NHS wait lists. This whistleblower says this data came directly from a doctor who analyzed this stuff professionally as part of his job in the NHS.

The doctor also wanted to be anonymous, understandably. He named himself the, quote, named doctor for safeguarding children, he tried to warn people in the NHS about this. He was like, hey, there's something wrong. This isn't right. We are fucking up. Yeah. And

he talked to so many different people, including Dr. Hillary Cass, who I'll talk a bit about later. Yeah. This is a literary device called foreshadowing, etc. Extra, etc. Giant

clip flashing thing here. Giant ominous. music surrounding her name. He just warned of the people, basically. And they all ignored him. They all just, according to him. And this is all alleged, I have to say, you know,

this has not been verified in the court of law or anything. This is according to the whistleblowers among him, but we have no reason to believe they lied or fabricated this. Information about this was not even revealed publicly. There's no public outcry. there was no action taken by the NHS or any of these clinics. So that is the first whistleblower and the whistleblower's connection to that doctor. The second one basically can and gave independent verification of this.

They were like, yeah, I've seen the data for myself too. I can confirm this is legitimate. Now, it wasn't just these three staff members who were trying to raise alarm bells. According to the second whistleblower, staff in the NHS were like, hey, well, This is not cool. We need to do something until they got an open letter, sent it to their higher-ups, and reportedly the director of the Tabistock Clinic, which was at the time the only gender-affirming care clinic for minors in the entire United Kingdom. Since there's more open up, but it's a really complicated thing that's a headache to deal with.

But head honchos at Tabastock completely retaliated. They threatened them a disciplinary interaction. they suppressed material. They're basically we're like, you go public about this. If you continue talking about this, you're going to face consequences.

The thing I instantly came to mind here, and I think it's just specifically because of number 16, but like the first time I read this, the first thing that came to my mind was, you know, there's the sort of famous Chicago story of the police killing of the Clint McDonald

where the slogan afterwards was 16 shots in a cover up. And this is fucking 16 dead in a cover up. And the about a fucking rage that I have for all of this, all of this fucking shit that these people covered this up, that they knew this was happening. And not only knew this was happening, and not only didn't do anything about it,

but like actively contributed to fucking making it worse by threatening anyone who tried to talk about it is just so unbelievably disgusting. Yeah, I was the first one who broke this story. I basically reported on it like almost immediately after Maldrum Republic about this because I knew not many people were going to report on this right away, and it was going to kind of be a headache. I didn't know how Lippew would, but I was the first one to report on it. I did it for journalist Aaron Reed, Subsection,

the morning back in June of last year, and I had to stop writing it multiple times. Like, I spent the entire day on it because it was stomach-wrenching, reading some of these stories and doing everything. the only reason I even got through it was because I dissociated the entire time and just kind of compartmentalized the anger a bunch of it's like Jesus Christ, this is horrifying. But Morgan was not talking out of his ass with this too. He brought receipts right in the initial thread.

He showed leaked to meeting minutes and like, you can see watermarks from the NHS on these meeting minutes. Like it is, unless someone wants to suggest that he did a giant conspiracy and, fabricated a bunch of very accurate meeting minutes that reflects publicly available meeting minutes elsewhere. It's pretty reputable. These minutes show that NHS officials were aware

of every single one of these debts, every single one of them. People were in these meetings calling for an independent investigation into each of these debts, into gender affirming care for minors, into the restrictions. They wanted to investigate

everything and had detailed data, they had information on the cut type of care they received, which was basically negligence. And instead of reporting on this publicly, instead of doing an investigation, they covered this up, they didn't do anything. And they just pretended like everything was fine. Like there was no debts as a result of this. They were acting nothing wrong was going on. And these meeting minutes are still public too. Mangan is not believed in it's still on his Twitter account.

Good Law Project is not fully a thing anymore. They're kind of dissolving their stuff right now, but Mugam is still keeping all his information up. It's all detailed. It's publicly there. People can see for themselves these minutes, and it's horrifying. Seeing the physical proof, it's... Yeah. It's horrifying.

Yeah. And we need to go to ads, and when we come back, we'll get to the second fucking cover-up because there was a second one. They did it again. This time with the British Broadcasting what the fuck does the C stand for? Corporation, that one. British Broadcasting Corporation,

leading the charge. And we are back. So let's talk about the fucking second cover-up because normally, normally you only get one cover-up when your fucking healthcare policies kill a bunch of people. But no, two.

I got multiple cover-ups. Before we get to the second cover-up, we need to talk about what the cash report is. because that's also part of this that we kind of bounced around a little bit, but then didn't... Well, yeah. So, the cast report is probably one of the worst things to come out of the anti-trans crowd

in the past decade. Yeah. The gist of it is it's essentially a supposedly independent report commissioned by the government to investigate the efficacy of curate blockers and gender-affirming care from minors. Authored by Dr. Hillary Cass, who they claim is an expert in the subject.

I'll get to that the second. The gist of what it was claiming is that, nope, cubity blockers do anything that actually hurt the kids. They don't improve mental health. They don't protect anything. Suicide stay the same. It's all bad. Get rid of them.

And actually restrict gender affirming care too. And also, maybe we should detransition these kids, too. It's a very long document. It's actually a set of documents, but the primary one isn't incredibly long. I remember when it first, it came out last year. It's been in the works for the better part of the last decade, most of the 2010s. It's been in the works. I don't remember the exact year that it was initially commissioned, but it's been something

the United Kingdom government has been waiting on for a while to take action for gender-referming care. Now, to understand the cast report, you got to understand a little bit about Hillary Cass. Hillary Cass is not an expert in gender-referming care for seniors. She has never treated a transgender patient and her professional practice whatsoever. Which, thank God, because holy shit. Oh, she is such a transphobe. Oh my God. Yes. But yeah. Also, utterly unqualified. Completely unqualified. While she was writing it, instead of talk with single trans person as part of the consultant

because she didn't do it by herself it's way too long for anyone to do buyers but by themselves she got a bunch of unknown advisors to help her with this one of which is a Finnish psychiatrist who has been campaign against transgender rights

for the past 20 years but she did not have any trans people on the consulting board not a single one well of course why would you talk to a trans person about trans health care. Like, that's... Yeah, why would you?

Trans people don't know anything. They need to be regulated and told exactly what's best for them by people who have never even talked to them before. She actually, while she was writing it, she talked to Florida health care officials during the Ron DeSantis

administration for information on what to do. Like, and these officials, by the way, they weren't just like, leftovers from the prior governor. They were appointed by Ron DeSantis and have literally been Jews bidding

in restricting health care. Appointed by the guy who in the last campaign cycle had a fucking ad with a saunan rat in it. So like, you know, the level of Nazi we're dealing with here. And not only that she worked with them, but there's even more. She worked with numerous people

who were tied to anti-transate groups, most notable of which is the, quote, Society for Evidence-Based Gender Medicine. Oh, God. They are probably one of the leading anti-trans groups right now. They are a Southern Poverty Law Center desiccate group. They're not very fun people. They all have a financial interest in opposing transgender rights. Many of the people with them have been quite well-repaid to oppose transgender rights in courts.

there's a whole rabbit hole to get into there. The point being, she's worked with hate groups, she's worked with the Sanchez appointees, she talked to no trans people, and she often lied a lot. When the cast group first came out, I was one of the people who was working around the clock to try to be like, hey,

let's not just assume that this is immediately accurate because we should wait for independent scholars to evaluate this. There's a lot of shady stuff going on here. and wouldn't you know it, a lot of things were wrong. For starters, tests misrepresented a lot of what she did for the review. It was supposed to be a systematic review into all the literature on pubic blockers. The problem is she left out a bunch of studies, especially more recent ones with federalologies. She and her method degrade them basically changed it up last minute and didn't seek your review for it.

From her institutions reviewed the board, she didn't seek any. any ethical verification on anything. Yeah, which is amazing. It's like, do you know how fuck your report has to be, your anti-trans report has to be to not be able to survive a British peer review board? Like,

Jesus Christ! Yeah, like, it's it gets even worse because as time went on, a lot of journalists, myself included, found a bunch of little factual in our seat there. She was misrepresenting this study. She was misrepresenting

that study. Lots of little information. She at one point cited a YouTube channel that is dedicated to opposing trans right. She sent me the YouTube channel in her fucking citations. It was a tangential citation,

but the point being, the fact that she even discovered that shows her allegiances. She was in the cast review. She was trying to cast doubt on the leading medical association for trans people, the world professional Association for Transgender Health.

She was like, oh, no, you're actually not good. They're politically biased. I'm not, though. Don't worry. I don't investigate me. Yeah. And in a time since, there's been a shit ton of medical experts coming forward, opposing the Casperfew being like, no, the methodology is garbage.

Not just journalists saying it. There have quite moved to have been hundreds of MetaBirds who have come forward to publicly oppose the Cass refute. These are people across a variety of fields. psychiatrists, pediatricians, endocrinologists, basically everyone you can imagine

who would be relevant to the study of transgender health and minors, they have come forward against it, including most of the leading researchers in the field, including people who have actually worked

with trans people in a professional capacity. Yeah, wow. And this review, it's the reason the United Kingdom went on last year, to ban puberty blockers in all four countries within it.

They started in England, then they spread it out to Scotland, Wales, with their beauty blocker ban, and most recently right before New Year's Day, banned it in Northern Ireland. And because of this, so many clinics are now just not treating trans people, including transgender adults.

There are now transgender adults not getting the care they need. Yeah. Because of something that doesn't even. discuss trans adults in a meaningful capacity. Yeah, and that's part of the thing with the cash review, right? Is it like, you know, it literally, like, it could have just been like 700 pages of fuck you over and over again and it would have had the same effects because the point of the cast review wasn't actually to like establish anything medically.

It was to just have a document that you could point at and then justify any policy whatsoever. Like, it's kind of like, it's kind of like the way the gambits and the bell curve works where like none of the actual policy recommendations follow from any of the arguments that they're making but it exists so that you can make those policy arguments and then point to like oh it's because of IQ and this is the same like bullshit IQ like fake IQ science right like there's literally IQ science

used to justify the puberty blocker ban of course there is. They are claiming that puberty blockers reduce IQ using a study from like 2001 on one of this and a separate study on sheep. Oh my god. A separate study on fucking sheep. How are you measuring the IQ of sheep? Like, what? Yeah, okay.

We wheeled in the sheep to do the fucking RB standard amplitude test. Like, ah, it scored real bad. We gave it few ready bloggers and it scored even worse. It's garbage science. Yeah, but one of the important things, like, inclusion's here is that like, so one of the

one of the sort of things that's happening now is that fucking feral attack dog, I don't know You fucking sue me you motherfucker We won the revolution Each shit West Streeting Who's now running British healthcare

Issued a fucking thing To ban puberty blockers For trans youth You know and he cites the cash report Do you know what's not in the cash report A recommendation to ban puberty blockers You know he's fucking This is doing you anyways

Because that's the actual sort of purpose Of the report Is to serve as sort of like Just a kind of like Talism and you can hold up And say ha see this is just a testified. Yeah. And can you talk about the whistleblowers and the cash report too? Because this is the thing that has seen very, very little coverage that is extremely important. Yeah. So the whistleblowers, they literally reached out to the cast while she was writing the review. She had to be like, hey, restricting puberty blockers isn't good. And like you said, Cass did not recommend to ban puberty blockers. She called for more research into it and like some restrictions, but not an outright ban. That was not anywhere within it.

Even with her extremism, she's like, maybe we shouldn't restrict everything completely, you know, maybe we should just detransition some of the kids. But she did not advocate for a full-on ban, and she has even gone public into the media to clarify that she does not

believe in a full-on ban. And yet she ignored the whistleblowers. She ignored them when they came to her being like, hey, there's evidence that restricting puberty blockers is causing these deaths to wreck them. And she didn't do anything.

We don't know the specifics of that conversation. That's not public information. But you read the cast review. You're not coming away with it thinking, oh boy, she's really concerned about kids who are killing themselves. Yeah. You're coming away with it thinking she doesn't believe a shit.

And she has her own agenda. Yeah. And so, okay, we're going to take another ad break. And then we're going to get to the promise second cover-up. And we're back for cover-up number two. So, okay, we have now introduced briefly the fucking spawn of Satan himself, West Streeting.

Can you talk a little bit more about him and the cover-up that he commissioned of this? So yeah. When I jerked this story, it was getting no coverage. No other news outlet wanted to touch it. There were actually some journalists I talked to, I'm not going to name any names, but

journalists I talked to. who were trying to get their editors to publish a story on these claims and they were like, I don't think so. I think we're going to do that. It's too speculative and things like that. People were actively shutting it down, especially in the British media. Yeah. And for about a month, the NHS was ignoring this and not giving public comment. Enter West Training. So you said he's

the head of British healthcare. Officially, he's like fucking the head of the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, some shit like that, but he's a sellout. He's a labor guy, you know, the party that's supposed to be, at least kind of left wing in some way. And

he threw trans people under the bus the first chance he got right after Terf started pressing him for it. West Streeting, in all his awful, awful glory, looked at Mogam's thread and thought,

What if I denied this? So he commissioned Professor Lewis Alibi, or Alibi, he is a leading suicide researcher. He, at the University of Manchester, except even though he's been in the field of suicide research for decades, in the past year or so, he's been cozying up to a lot of anti-trans people. Yes. There's a shit ton of tweets of him, basically talking to Terps, repeating the, oh, we can't have men and women's sports. nonsense. You can witness him going down the pipeline. Yeah, he's just a, he's a, he's a turf. Yeah, like, that's the, yeah, he's not the turf. He's a turf who, I do not professionally really work with transheus commit suicide.

He does not discuss LGBTQ issues in his research as his primary focus. He does it for the general population. Yeah. I have reviewed every single study of his, so it's probably like one or two that talk about LGBTQ suicide rates, but by no means, it's, you know, it's, but by no means, Is he like the guy you go to to learn about why suicide attempts and suicide breaks are a thing in the LGBT population? West's treating was like, hey, Lewis, do you want to write a quote-unquote debunking of Malgum's dread? So enter the, I have it up right now.

They quote, review of suicide and gender dysphoria at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Foundation Trust, Independent Report. This guy, he basically claimed that, nope, there's no data that's worth this, actually mongom's wrong, just the data pans it out. The data doesn't lie. It's also funny because this argument is that trans people were already killing themselves. Yeah. Which is like, really fucking bleak when you think about it.

Now, there's a million drinks people can have with this. For start, the data set is obviously too small. to analyze fucking statistically. Makes no sense to try to do a fucking indebt statistical analysis on what Morg was claiming with 16 kids. That's not... But you're not going to get shit out of that. That's not really the big issue with it.

The big issue that Mugam himself actually pointed out in the same day that this came out, Morgan pointed out that this analysis was just wrong from the start. For starters, This guy analyzed, quote, current and former patients of their identity service. Malcolm's claims were about that.

Malgan's claims were about those who were on the waiting list. Which is just nuts. Like, I need to stop here for a second. It's like the difference between, again, on the waiting list and have finished care. Like, what? Yeah. What are we doing here? Like, oh, God.

How did this get past any media outlet? I mean, transphobia, but like, really? Yeah. Now, there's other problems with it. For one, it's kind of suspicious. So, Appleby, Appleby, however he pronounced his last name, he's going to call him Applebee because fuck him. Yeah, Applebee's, fuck it.

He used data directly provided by NHS England. Now, astute viewers will notice something. Malcolm never claimed to access data directly given to him from NHS England. He was given data from whistleblowers. Malcolm actually in this direct, because he wrote a whole slide debunking this debunking. And Morgan was like, he revealed that he actually, a month before this was published, he reached out to NHS Anglin to be like, hey, can I have your data on this subject? I've gotten a lot of information I want to try to corroborate it.

They denied him the data. They just denied him it. Yeah, if I remember incorrectly, part of it was they claimed the data didn't exist. Yeah, they claimed it didn't exist that they just didn't have it at all. And suddenly they pulled out of in-air for good old Appleby's. There's some other insur inconsistencies. As we know, Morgham had receipts. He provided information on minutes directly from NHS meetings discussing these suicidates.

Besides, the minutes don't match up to the data Appleby's has. Applebee's is underestimating everything. And very recently, this has not gotten any media coverage at all. Those who have been following UK politics for a while, especially trans politics, who remember the unfortunate case of Alice Lipp. Yeah. She was a young trans woman who committed suicide as a little of NHS waitlists years ago. Her mother, Sarah Lippman.

has been a staunch ally of trans people since. She's been one of the fewest people in the UK to be like, hey, no, I'm putting my all behind trans people. She's wonderful. She came out publicly, revealing that Alice Lipman was not included in Applebee's data set, even though she should have been. She was within the years.

So what this says is that Applebee's had bad, bad data that didn't include every kid yeah well here's the thing we don't know about that right it's it's possible he had bad data it's possible he's also just been falsifying his data because like again he won't show it to us

so we have no fucking idea what like what he was what he was actually provided with and what he was like you know what or what what what things he did to the data sets that he was given beforehand to produce what he's analyzing in his report true

and there was a of course a bunch of smaller issues you could point out with Applebee's reveal. But the crux of it, it's bogus. Data is a matchup, as you said, he could be falsifying it. He could have just been given bad data. We don't know. He's not sharing anything.

The NHS isn't sharing anything. Yeah. But all we know is that there's major inconsistencies and they're not doing shit with it. And this is where we enter everyone's favorite mainstream media, the lovely British media

specifically outlets like the BBC right literally within the first 24 hours of this review coming out they reported on it at this point my coverage has been there

for a month it logum's claims have been out there for a month they weren't touched and yet the moment someone came out with the NHS trying to be like

actually it's false they were rushing to report on it something they claimed was not newsworthy previously yeah and mind you,

Mugam's rebuttal to this review was posted publicly at this time, at the time that this media coverage was going up. At the BBC article, breaking the story up, the only discussion they give

to basically any issues with this is just a couple brief sentences talking about Magum's issues with it. At the beginning, they just claim that Muggan had profound difficulties. And at the very end of the article,

buried at the bottom, they gave Mugam like three sentences, and they left out a lot of information. Like, the minutes Mugam showed that he got from whistleblowers, the exact claims he got from whistleblowers. They just didn't report on it. They gave such intense coverage to Alpleby's claims in the review,

and then they just flat out ignored everything. Magum was saying, everything everyone else was saying. Now, again, I add, sure, we don't know for sure whether who's telling the truth. But the NHS has an incentive to lie here. Mogam doesn't. Mogam is getting his career torched, basically, because of going forward about all this.

And you can tell which side the BBC is on. You know, they give the gaming way at the end, where they give the last word of this article to Ken Barker, who is the chief executive, the LGBT alliance, which is an anti-trans hate group. And, you know, and they give her the last sentence saying that, oh, trans people are spreading misinformation to serve a dangerous and homophobic ideology. And I, like, quite specifically, like, Kate Barker, if you ever fucking listen to this fuck you, eat shit. Like, this is direct

evidence of the BBC's fucking political line here. Because again, they're giving the closing statement to a group that is literally just an anti-trans hate group. Because the BBC is the institutional fucking media arm of the British government and the British government is institutionally transphobic. Yeah.

And I'm not going to say that what the information right now we have a definitive. That's not the problem. The problem is it's been being investigated. Any non-biased fucking NHS, any non-biased British media

would look at Magan's claims and think, oh wow, we should look into this. We should independently verify. Yeah. We should try to corroborate everything, saying or at least see if he's accurate.

Which again, and I want to put this out, this is the job of a journalist. The job of a journalist is not to fucking literally reprint a press report from fucking commissioned by the fucking government. Your job is to go find the fucking whistleblowers and talk to people. Did the British, did the fucking BBC do this? No, of course they didn't, because they're

fucking PR hacks. Yep. They're PR hacks for a transgenocide. And quite frankly, I will say this on the fucking record because I'm not a journalist. Fuck these people. Like, this is what the BBC wants. Like, fucking dead trans kids in a cover-up is what they institutionally what this fucking organization wants. Because they fucking hate trans people and they are completely okay with all of this shit happening as long, as long as they fucking get to do another story about how fucking J.K. Rowling is a brave truth teller or whatever. Like, this is what these people want.

I agree. And I also agree as your statement, the British media can't go fuck themselves and I hope they've robbed them hell. Yeah. I don't know how you can, as a journalist, someone trained to prioritize the truth and nothing but the truth. Look at all this and think, hmm, this isn't suspicious going on here. There's nothing that warrants further investigation. Even if Malcolm's claims are false, right? Even if everything Malcolm says, he made it up.

He's an influential guy. He has been covered by the media for his lawsuits with the Good Law Project countless times before. He's made national headlines there. And they don't investigate this at all. Like, they're rushing to report on everything fucking JK Rowling says everything, some random fucking turf is saying, Myangelo, whoever turf you want to run. Oh yeah, I'm realizing there are people listening to this. I don't, maybe you're still listening to the episode. You don't know about the JK Rolling turf stuff. But like, to get an understanding of like how vehement of like an anti-trans hate figure she is, like anti-trans groups literally wear her face as a mask. Like I'm not just. joking. She she fucking retweeted them, an anti-trans group

literally wearing, like, printed out copies of her face as a mask. Like, that is, that, that is the status that she has in, in, in, in the anti-trans world, right? Like, and then the BBC fucking loves her. So,

everything she does. And she's not even an expert in anything. She's a fucking author of children's books. Like, yeah. You know, it's like, well, we'll talk to the authors of children's books. But we talk to trans people. no. I mean, that's what everything about this is like

the BBC never talked to a trans person. They did talk to an anti-transgate group though. So you know what fucking side of this is considered valid by the British political media establishment. Oh, and also at the bottom, and like I know that they're doing

this because this is just like standard policy for like if you're doing a thing story about suicide. But the very end of the article is a link to a bunch of suicide of crisis hotlines. So one one last fuck you to every trans person reading this. Yeah.

But the one two punch of we quoted an anti-trans hate figure, here is a suicide hotline, is like real, who. Yeah, it's a fucking insult. It just gets me how they didn't report on these claims at all when they were initially made. Like,

it didn't even have to be a big story. Like, most fucking outlets I've written for would have just reported as like, oh, this guy said this. We're waiting more information. okay, whatever. It wouldn't be a good reporting, but it'd be the bare minimum. We didn't even do that. They rushed to just repeat whatever the fuck. A commissioned review from the government said, that's more reputable, I guess, than, you know, leading advocates who actually cited their sources instead of just during shit at the law.

Yep. And I think that's as that's as good of a place as Endy to stop unless you have anything else you want to make sure people know about about this. No, I think that's it. Yeah, thank you so much for coming on the show, and where can people find you in your work? Yeah, thank you for having me. I can primarily be found on Blue Sky that is the main place I post now. Yeah, I'm at Miraljean. at Blue Sky.com. Social. Beyond that, you'll probably see one of my articles published around because I am constantly working my ass off.

Yeah, so this is a bit of it here. Yeah, I don't know. I mean, there's still time for this not to happen here. So, yeah, go, go, go organize and go make West Streeting in the BBC have a bad day. Hell yeah. Hi, everyone, and welcome to It Could Happen here. It's me, James, today, here to bring you more terrible news about migration and deportation. And I'm joined to share that terrible news by Gillian Brockell, a journalist who has been tracking deportation flights to,

Djibouti. Hi, Gillian. Hi, how are you, James? I'm good. Well, amidst the crumbling of everything, that's wonderful. Yeah. I mean, this is terrible news, but I'm also very excited to be in the Cool Zone universe. I love all of the shows. Yeah, welcome. Welcome to the

Cool Zone Universe. It's a Sophie Lichtenen comic universe. Oh my God. Such a fan girl. Okay. The United States government attempted to deport 12 men, not of are Libyan to Libya on the 7th of May, right? It got so far as to take them to the airport, right?

Mm-hmm. In San Antonio. In San Antonio, Texas. And then, thanks to a injunction, a court injunction, those people were not taken to Libya. Those people were instead returned to a detention center where, as listeners of the show, will now be aware, they were informed that they were being deported, renditioned, have you want to say it, to South Sudan. Uh-huh.

This news broke a couple of days ago now, I think Tuesday. Tuesday afternoon, yeah. Yeah. And that was when you were able to begin using your, like, Ocent Aviation knowledge, looking for like this, this flight, right, that was taking over to South Sudan. Because at the time, the United States government was claiming the flight was classified or like a state secret. Uh-huh. And even in court, the judge wasn't aware of the flight was in the air on the ground.

Could it turn around? The judge in the entity wasn't going to ask it to turn around. So I wonder if you could walk listeners through the timeline of this deportation and then how you were able to find out of millions of, maybe not millions of thousands of planes in the sky, the one that was taking these people to, as it turned out, to Djibouti. Sure, yes. So I've been a journalist for 15 years. but before that I was a flight attendant. And, you know, I'm an av geek, an aviation enthusiast,

the shorthand, you know, the hashtag for that is avgeek. And so, you know, I'm always looking at flight radar 24. It's an app where you can track different aircraft. And so when I heard that the flight might still be in the air, I just thought, oh, I wonder if I can find it. So I I win, first I went onto flight radar 24. And first I looked at all of the departures out of San Antonio for like the previous 24 hours. Since the previous flight that was supposed to go to Libya, that was stopped. That departed from San Antonio. And so I was looking there and, you know, didn't see anything, just commercial flights, very obviously military flights. And I know they've used military aircraft sometimes, but I said, I'm not going to try and touch that.

right now. I want to see if it's one of these charter companies, you know, Global X, Avello, that have been doing these deportation flights. Can you explain those to people? Because I don't think everyone's aware of those. So these are, you know, commercial carriers, but they're contracting with DHS to deport people on their aircraft. So, you know, the A320 that you take across the country is sometimes used to deport people to other companies. countries. And the main companies that are doing that right now are Avello, Global X. I think Omni does some of them sometimes. And I should say there are a lot of people, especially on Blue Sky, a lot of Avgeeks, who are tracking and cataloging all of these flights. I wasn't even aware of

that community until I started looking for. So I didn't see anything, you know, in San Antonio, and then I realized, oh, these people had been transferred to Port Isabel in the last few weeks, so they would have departed out of Harlingen Airport, which is nearby. It's, you know, a deep, deep South Texas. And so I looked at departures out of Harlingen. It's a small airport. They have like 10 departures a day, and it's generally puddle jumpers from one small Texas town to another small Texas town, you know. Yeah. And there was one global X flight to Miami the day before. The timeline wasn't exactly right, but I know that DHS, you know, has been slow to notify attorneys. Yeah. So I thought, well, maybe this is the flight and they just didn't tell the attorneys till the next day.

So then I spent way too much time looking at all of the departures out of Miami to see if there were any Global X flights. I saw a few things, but, you know, nothing heading across the Atlantic. And so at that point, Flight Radar 24 will show you publicly available information on flights. It won't show you all flights. But there is another, you know, for like deep, deep av geeks, there's another website called ADSB Exchange. And this is a pool of all feeder data all over the world of all aircraft in the air that aviation enthusiasts maintain themselves. And they will have military flights that aren't going to be on flight radar 24. They also have a lot more information about planes that have a lad designation, which stands for limited aviation data displayed.

I don't know how much you want me to explain about that. Yeah, explain. Explain. I think it's interesting. people. Sure. So, a lad designation is used most often for like private jet owners, like celebrities and, you know, the ultra rich. And basically it means that they have an extra layer of privacy for their movements in their private jets. So if you try and find a specific private jet on flight radar 24, it won't come up. You know, so like the tail of this plane, that did the Djibouti flight is N5AA 888A. If you search for that in Flight Radar 24, you won't see it. Nothing will come up.

However, if you know what you're looking for, if you know, like, oh, I think the flight is heading to Djibouti right now, you can see on Flight Radar 24 that there's a Gulfstream 5 headed to Djibouti right now, but the registration information is obscured. Okay. You know, it's not like that on the 80s. ADSB. You can... You can see it? Yeah, your filters have a lot more power, basically.

Okay. You know, your search terms. They're going to go around different designations. Okay. And so some people hate that. You know, Taylor Swift had beef with some guy a couple years ago. Right. Because she has a lad designation on her private jet.

He was using ADSB exchange to post her flights, you know, ostensibly to shame her for her carbon footprint. But then she, like, threatened to sue him. and she was like, I have stalkers. Like, I don't want them to know when I'm landing in Nashville. You know? Yeah. Not going to get into that.

But, you know, that's basically the Ladd designation. And ADSB doesn't care. And so I went on ADSB and I said, well, since I've already seen all the publicly available flights, let me just look at Lad flights. Okay. And so I set that filter and that took it down to a couple hundred planes in the air. and I honestly just got lucky. I just started clicking on planes because I don't know how to search

for all departures out of one airport on ADSB Exchange. I'm sure av geeks who are better at it do. I just started clicking on planes and I clicked, I think like the third plane that I clicked on, had taken off out of Harlingen a couple hours earlier

and was over the middle of the Atlantic. Yeah. Which is not a usual departure for Harlingen. Right. Yeah. Yeah, it's quite unusual. And so, you know, I posted on Blue Sky to the other Avgeeks who were looking for it, I think this might be it.

You know, it's a private jet with a lad designation that took off from this very obscure airport and is traveling internationally. Nothing else really fit the profile. Right. So we all started looking at it. Yeah. Another reporter named Jacqueline Sweet. You know, I looked up the registration.

It's registered to a man named Igor Smyranov, which there are a lot of Igor Smyranovs. Yeah. Yeah, it's a pretty common name. He's not the chess guy. He's not the Moldovan guy. He appears to have once owned an airline in Uzbekistan and has been in the U.S. for some time. So he has, you know, this private jet. And then Jacqueline Sweet looked up that, yes, he has DHS contracts.

Okay. Then the other thing was, I just Googled the tail number, M58880. One of the first things that came up was that this was the private jet that carried Britney Griner home from Russia when she had been released in a prisoner swap. Yeah. And so that, you know, was the thing where I was like, okay, this plane's been used for like, weird government business before. Yeah.

Like I think this might be it. Yeah, so that's when I posted. Once I realized the Britney Griner thing, then I posted it. And other people, other Avgeeks were saying, yeah, I think that might be it. And then, you know, Jacqueline got more info on the contracts. And so this is for about two hours, we watched it. And JJ and D.C. said, I think it's about to land in Shannon. and, you know, soon enough, it descended and landed at Shannon.

Yep. So Shannon Airport in Ireland is a frequent refueling stop for the U.S. military. And, you know, that's something that a lot of Irish people really fucking hate. Yeah. Not a U.S. base, to be clear, if people are unaware. Yeah, it's not a U.S. base. These are, this is U.S. military that are just, they're just refueling. But they're refueling to, you know, do a lot of things that the Irish are not okay with. Yeah.

And so there's an organization there called Shannon Watch, who, you know, they're watching all these U.S. activities and, you know, pressuring the government to stop this. So, you know, I tried to email them before the plane even landed. And I don't know if it was user error on my end or, you know, if, I don't know why it didn't work, but they didn't get the message. I only found that out like half an hour ago. Yeah. But so I messaged them and then I like messaged a couple friends in Ireland like, hey, wake up, wake up. You know, call somebody, you know, but there's 2.30 in the morning. I'm glad my friends were asleep. And yeah, so I don't know how much I wanted to get into my personal hedging or my journey. But, you know, I used to be like a neutral objective journalist

at The Washington Post for 10 years. And I left a year and a half ago. And I've been enjoying being an opinionated journalist. I've been writing a book. But, you know, there's a difference between being an opinionated journalist and actually interfering in a story. Yeah. And so I kind of hedge for a minute of like, should I, should I do anything else? Should I actively participate in trying to stop this flight? You know, am I not going to get a columnist job someday if I do that? Yeah. You know, I'm ashamed to say that, but I have to tell the truth. That's what I thought. And then I just decided, you know, screw it. I have to do the right thing. Nice. So I called the Shannon Airport police. I called the Shannon Garda. They called the police the garden in Ireland. Yeah. And I talked to,

you know, whatever man answered for like a minute. And then he was like, let me, let me, you know, knock you up the chain. And I was forwarded to someone else to a woman who, you know, she sounded smart, urgent, interested. It sounded like she was taking notes. It sounded like she was taking this seriously. And I was saying, there is a plane with this tail number that landed 15 minutes ago that may have people on board who have been illegally removed from the United States, who have not consented to go to their destination, who are being sent. to South Sudan when they are not from South Sudan. You know, and I made clear that, like, I don't know that this is the right plane, but I'm pretty sure that it is. This plane has been used before

for U.S. government business. And I said, I know that our judge's orders don't matter in your sovereign country, but a judge has said this is not allowed. And it might be happening. And I don't know what your human trafficking laws are like, but you should know that if there are human trafficking or kidnapping laws in Ireland that might apply to this, like maybe check the plane. Yeah. And, you know, I didn't record the call and I didn't take notes, but I do recall her saying that she was trying to send someone to check the plane and she was, you know, taking detailed notes. What are their nationalities? How many are there? Yeah.

You know. And yeah, so, you know, the call lasted 13 minutes, and then I waited, you know, was talking with the other av geeks on Blue Sky who were at this point, you know, this is around 10 p.m. It's getting a little late. And then, yeah, I don't know what happened, but the plane taxied to a parking stamp near the terminal for a while and I thought oh, it's been

turned off. It's parked for the night. I don't think they're going to let him leave. And then

the plane took off. It was two hours after it landed. Yeah. Yeah. And it went to Djibouti where it remains at a time of recording.

Yeah. It's been raised since you first kind of identified this plane. It's been raised I talked to Darla, so like an Irish member of parliament raised it today. I saw there was an exchange about it.

I spoke to Paul Murphy, who's the TD for Dublin Southwest. Paul gave me a statement. I'm just going to read here. The very least the Irish government must do is to inform the US authorities that no more deportation flights are permitted to use our airspace and our airports. We must not facilitate this inhumane and illegal deportation policy. It does seem like even if nothing was done in this instance, hopefully this isn't something that will be able to happen again.

I know, as you said, people have been upset about that use of Shannon. I think they used NOC Airport as well, like for a long time because the US used them a lot in its war on terror. An island has been a neutral country for a long time, and there's a feeling that it compromises out among some people. But this raise is a really interesting question for those of us who are following the deportations, right, which is, like, we've been thinking that it was happening

on military or commercial flights, like you said. But there's this possibility that these smaller planes are being used for deportation. And, like, that's very concerning. It means we could have missed things. Absolutely. It also shows the timeline here is extraordinarily rapid, right? Like, from the people being informed at 6pm, I believe it's 6pm Pacific,

I've been spending a lot of time on Pacer this week. Yeah. Good old Pacer. Yep. A lot of the money generated by the adverts in this show on Pacer. So at 635 Central Time, NM, who is one of the Burmese people in this class action lawsuit, right? So the lawsuit, a number of people trying to get a tentative restraining order against being sent to South Sudan now, previously Libya. At 635 Central Time, that person's lawyer was told that they had an order of removal at 9-8.

AM Pacific, the lawyer had scheduled a video conference, but at 827 Pacific, they were told that that person had already been removed. Yeah. So pretty fast and like perhaps that's why they're using these, like, small, can you give an idea of like, I guess a lot of people won't have flown on a small aircraft, but these are quite like, this isn't a usual thing, right, to be. No, this is a luxury jet. Yeah.

that, you know, is moonlighting as a prisoner vessel for kidnappers. And I just, I'm so struck by the dichotomy of the luxury of this vessel, transporting them to hell, to a country where they do not speak the language, they have no family or friends, to, you know, a prison where people are being tortured. that is about to descend into civil war, may already be in civil war. I mean, the dichotomy of that is so striking to me. Yeah. And so perverse.

Yeah, perverse is a right word. It is. Like, it's perversely ludicrous. I don't know. Like, it's so striking to me as well that somebody who has the financial means to own a private luxury jet to fight themselves around the world is also profiting of the rendition of people who are trying now to plead. convention against torture, right?

Later, they will be tortured if they are flown via luxury private jet to South Sudan. And South Sudanese government seems to have stated that it would just return them to their countries from which they have withholding of removal in the first place, which is why the U.S. can't send them to their countries. Right. That's why the U.S. hasn't done it. Right. It's like, you know, it's a diplomatic pickle, but like the solution is in, we'll just, you know, dump them somewhere else. Right.

Yeah, and then have someone else do I'd only work, like send them back. Right. You found these contracts. Do you know how much DHS is spending, like, per flight on these things? I have no idea. I mean, that is something that other reporters, I think, are, you know, going to be better sources of that information. I've really just begun tracking these flights.

Right. You know, I like to track flights all the time just because I have ADHD, you know. It's a wonderful activity. if you're neurodivergent to spend some time on ADSP exchange. But like I said, I was just like, I wonder if I can find this plane. Yeah. And I did.

Yeah. And that has opened up a whole world to me of, you know, really dedicated people. Tom Cartwright is one and then JJ and D.C. is another. He wants to remain anonymous. Got it. Who have been tracking these planes for some time. and I'm really inspired by them and, you know, want to join them and help them.

We see a number of issues, like, the questions that we can answer with these things, right? The United States supporting people to Venezuela, well, there are lots of agencies in Venezuela, which are under sanctions, right? So, like, how is it doing that? Who is it paying to do that? Like, where is our taxpayer money going? How much is it costing to achieve this rendition of a dozen people? Right.

Right. who at the current time, VAR recording, which is Thursday afternoon Pacific time, the 22nd of May. There you go. I just checked the PACER again,

which is what I do all day now. And Judge Murphy's most recent order had clarified that these people would have 10 days to present their reasonable fear, right? So to present their reasonable fear and Convention against Torture Proceedings that they would be.

It could face torture, right, if they were sent to these places. If the Department of Homeland Security determined that they didn't have credible fear, then they would have 15 days to, again, petition for reopening of their migration case. So that's 25 days for those who are counting, that these people will presumably now have to be accommodated in Djibouti. Right. The DHS is claiming that they can do all these interviews. And that one necessitate translators. Like one of them speaks Karen, not a language that we have.

I mean, there are lots of current-speaking people in the United States, but it's not language that many immigration lawyers speak, so I'm guessing there will have to be a translator provided. And so all that is now happening in Djibouti, and we wouldn't have known that if we hadn't been able to track these flights, right? And so it's a very interesting way of approaching this. And I think, like, increasingly, the government recently lost a number of FOIA requests, I guess, like public records do not move at the same speed as the news cycle does.

Like I file a lot of public records requests. Most of them I don't get anything back. The ones that I do... Oh, they can take like eight years sometimes. Yeah, literally. Yeah. I mean, I have public records requests that I made under the previous Trump administration that I believe are still ongoing.

Yeah, it's infuriatingly slow. You have a right to inspect these records, but you don't have a right to inspect them in any particular time. period. And so doing this kind of open source tracking offers us a window into this deportation machine that the government is building, right? Exactly. In cooperation with the super rich, like using your taxpayer resources. I wonder if people are interested in doing this, like how would you suggest they kind of get going? They're good explainers out there. I mean, the first thing I would do is that I would follow Tom Cartwright and JJ and DC on Blue

sky, then, you know, get the flight radar 24 app. You can see a lot of the charter planes on that app. ADSB exchange is pretty buggy and hard to use if you don't have any aviation experience at all, but, you know, you can learn. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, like I said, if you're neurodivergent, this is a terrific activity to just kind of like massage your brain and hyperfocus. And, you know, putting it to good purpose to maybe witness or maybe even stop some of these activities from happening, you know, would be great. Yeah, no, I think that's, like, there are countries which have strong legislation that could possibly prevent these, you know, these either planes transiting their airspace or if they're refueling

there, as you said in Ireland, like perhaps prevent these people being renditioned to somewhere where they might face torture. I think it's a really valuable thing to try. Like, we should try whatever we can right now. Yeah, and I mean, now that Ireland knows this is happening, you know, I don't know what happened with the Garda on Tuesday night, early Wednesday morning. I don't know if they were able to board the plane,

if they tried to stop it and couldn't. I have no idea. Yeah. Now that they know this is happening, maybe they can look a little bit deeper into their laws and regulations and find a justification so that if this happens again, they can be prepared to respond. You know, I know that the Irish are exemplars in human rights.

And so, you know, if anybody is going to do something, it might be them. Yeah, yeah. I know RTE and now camped out at the airport wing for the plane to come back, which... Yeah, I know. I wish they had checked with the ab geeks first because the plane's not on the way. Yeah, no. It's not in here. It hasn't left to be.

Look at the court proceedings. It's going to be three weeks. But yeah, it's great. You've made this an issue there, which I think. Yeah. It helps. Like all this stuff makes a difference. I mean, I just, I want the Irish people to realize because none of their lawmakers

have said it yet that Irish authorities knew when the plane was on the ground at Shannon that there were people who were possible. being illegally detained on this specific airplane. I just want them to know that. Yeah, yeah. You know, and I hear that their public information laws are also not great, but the police there recorded the call, so there's a recording somewhere if they can find it.

Right. I guess I can't find anyone who can answer the satisfactory question of, like, whose jurisdiction the plane is under. Yeah, I mean, and it really depends, too, like, was the plane parked in the international transit area? Was it in a place where, you know, the guarder didn't even have authority? I have no idea.

Right. You know. Yeah, these are all questions we can now ask because we know that it was there. And I think that's very valuable. Gillian, where can people follow your work? You publish this on your ghost newsletter first, right?

Yeah, I'm writing a book, so I post extremely sporadically. But I do have a ghost newsletter. It's hard G-history because it's hard G-Gillian. HardGhistory.ghost.io. And then I'm on Blue Sky at G. Brock Hill. Nice. Do you want to plug your book where you have the opportunity? I mean, there's not like a, you know, pre-order link.

I'm very much still writing it. But, you know, my agent will be mad at me for saying this. The working title is, people didn't know what was wrong back then. The lie at the heart of American history. I will look forward to reading that. Thank you. Thanks for having me, James. I really appreciate it. Thanks for joining us. Hi, everyone, and welcome to the show. It's me, James, today, and I'm joined once again by Kirsten Zitlau.

We've heard from her before. She's an immigration lawyer who takes asylum cases. And we're going to talk about the asylum system or, I guess, what's left of it today. Kirsten is representing somebody I met in the Darien Gap, Primrose, who you've heard from before. So we're going to talk about that case. and then we're going to talk a little bit about ICE detentions inside immigration court. Welcome to the show, Kirsten. Thank you, James. It's good to be here.

Yeah, thanks for coming. I know you're extremely busy. Can you explain to us, like, the asylum system is essentially coming to an end, right? We are not getting new asylum cases. Like, what is the situation for people in the asylum system right now? Yes, that's a correct statement, James. So there are no new. asylum cases. In other words, people who cross at the southern border are now detained only to be

removed immediately, basically, or as soon as possible. Under what's called 212F authority, it's under the Immigration and Nationality Act, Trump has used this authority, which basically broadly says that if the president finds a certain class of immigrants or the entry of immigrants would be detrimental to the interests of the United States, they made by proclamation, you know, suspend all entry of said immigrants. So that was the purpose and the effect of the executive order discussing the invasion at the border and all the other executive orders discussing invasions and criminal aspects, such as cartels and Tren de Aragua, which we all know now, is, you know, is the justification for alleged justification for just shutting it down at the border. So whereas people used to get

credible fear interviews or were paroled into the United States to be allowed to fight an asylum case, none of that is happening anymore. And people are, if anything, only screened for what's called Convention Against Torture Screenings to just determine, like, hey, are they going to be tortured by their government or with the acquiescence of their government if they're returned to their home country, but even then they are not allowed to remain in the United States or fight any relief in the United States. That just means that they will be deported to a third country. So that was the situation, like when we saw the Iranians sitting in the hotel room in Panama. That's what happened there, most likely. So that's the situation at the southern border.

Whoever is still in the United States, you know, who came in before inauguration day is still allowed to fight their case as of now. But there are no new asylum cases, essentially. Right. So for those people fighting their case, the asylum system was already an uphill battle, right? And it became harder after Biden's asylum ban. It was already harder after Title 42. Like, people who listened to the show would have known about the people who crossed in 2023. And of course, they would have followed those people who I met in the Darien Gap, some of whom, very few of whom crossed before January. I literally wore. I believe that I'm aware of. Can you explain what the asylum system is like for those people now? Yeah, so I think the biggest two factors affecting asylum cases these days is what you just referred to, which is the asylum ban called the circumvention against lawful pathways that barred people essentially from asylum if they did not use CBP1, the application to apply for an appointment, which of course only allowed, I think, 1,500 a day or something absurd, forcing most people to

cross unlawfully. So that's still very much in place. The litigation has been stalled forever. There's no hope of, you know, I don't think there's no movement on that. I haven't seen or heard anything. Yeah. Most likely intentionally, because when Trump did a similar ban, it was overturned immediately. So this is like a new strategy that we're seeing where things are just lagging in court. Right. You know, for example, just a quick side detour, the birthright citizenship issue got up to the Supreme Court real quick, whereas the asylum issue, meaning the border shut down to asylum is to languishing somewhere before, I think even just a federal district judge. It's not even in any appeal to court yet. So this is all, I think, strategic. So that circumventioning as lawful pathways

ban is still very much an impediment. You know, we all, of course, argue that every migrant in Mexico was in danger and thus qualifies for the exception to the CLP, that their life was in danger, and that they couldn't afford to wait the many, many months for the CBP-1 appointment. But judges, It's been met with mixed reviews. They generally like to see somebody basically near death for the exception to apply. And of course, the immigration bar argues

that all migrants are basically under threat of death. I mean, any cartel or even immigration official contact in Mexico could have been a death sentence very easily, as we all know. Yeah. So that's a big thing affecting the latest thing that's also being implemented as a result of this cartel

terrorist organization designation is, you know, where it's not just the cartels, it's MS-13 and 10 de Aragua, is that there's a what's called a trig bar that's applied then also to asylum, and the bar is basically about material support of any of these groups, but it's construed to an absurd degree where even if you made a bowl of food for some Maras under duress, or you made payment because your kid was about to be killed. Right. That's considered material support and you're barred from asylum.

Jeez, I wondered if they would do that, yeah. So we're seeing that too. Other than that, I mean, I have been fortunate to win asylum for folks under Trump 2.0. I mean, I don't know how long that'll still last, but judges are still, you know, granting cases. So I'm glad to see that. Yeah. So that's generally what it's looked like these past four months for assailies. Okay.

Yeah, I think it's really important that we do. There are still possible, like, victories to be had. within the court system. And asylum is one of the places where, like, there's no more getting on the train, I guess. Like, the people who are on the train now, we can, and people should if they have the financial means, and we'll talk about how they can do that later. People should support those people because there's no one else who can go through that system. And, like, there are people who have gone through horrific things to get here and horrific things in the places that they came from. And even if it's not everyone, we would like to keep safe, we should do everything we can

to keep those people safe. 100%. You know, just to say, I mean, and funding somebody's legal fees, I mean, an attorney makes all the difference in navigating these types of issues that I just talked about and other issues in presenting your case. I mean, asylum cases are still incredibly difficult to win. And so representation of counsel is often key. Yeah, I think that the rates of success for people who don't have counsel are dramatically

lower. I haven't looked on track recently, but you can normally find that on the, I think track is no longer at the University of Syracuse, but it's a place where you can find information statistics. Let's talk about one of those cases if that's okay. And obviously, you know, we won't intervene in anyone's privacy any more than we have to. But like, I want to talk about Primrose. Primrose is Zimbabwean woman who I met in Bahoji Quito when I was in the Darien Gap reporting on my series. People heard from her in the series. Even me, I was crying myself. I was like, I want to just put myself in the water,

then I can just go. Both the genuine stuff. Really, really tough. The mountain, the stones, the river. It's not easy at all. It's not very, I don't even recommend it someone to say, use daddy and gave, no. And even myself, I did know about it.

Yeah. I was regretting myself. I was crying. I was like, God, I don't know my family. And my family, they don't know. I am right now, but I make it. Yeah, now you're here. So I'm just, thank God.

I make it. You're safe, yeah. She is now in the asylum process, right? Can you explain a little bit about, like, where she is in the process? And I will eventually do a scripted series on this. But like, I guess can we get an update on her situation and how it's progressing? Absolutely. So I came into the case about, I want to say a month or two ago,

she had somebody supporting her a friend living in Texas, and that situation, a living situation has changed, I believe, which is also not the worst thing. She will be moving with a friend to Southern California or moving in with a friend, rather. But just the situation is very different in Texas and Louisiana and Mississippi and those types of states, markedly so, and her case is a good example of that.

And there's a reason that people like Mahmoud Khalil and many others are sent to detention centers in that area because it's in the fifth circuit, first of all, which is widely renowned to be not a favorable circuit, a court of appeals to immigrants. Yeah. But more so than that, even the judges themselves are very different from what we would encounter in California, for example. So my first encounter with the judge was, you know, and this is all virtual, I submitted a motion to appear for her. she had a master calendar hearing in in June. I submitted a motion to appear for that telephonically, explaining I was representing her at lower no cost, you know, whatever funds could be raised,

and could I please appear for a status-type conference telephonically. And that motion was met with a really strange response. I don't, to this day, I don't really know exactly it was sort of approved, but then moot because eventually a final court hearing was set. So that's where we're at right now. She has a final court next year. in about a year and a couple months. But in ruling on my WebEx motion,

I was emailed the order of the judge along with a notice that permers should self-deport. So judges are sending out these notices with routine other orders in cases where the immigrant has counsel is fighting their case. Yeah. It's obvious they're fighting their case.

Jesus. And yeah, so it's one of the things where you just feel very strongly this administration's influence. Are they obliged to do that, or is that a choice that the judge is making? Not at all. And in fact, it's completely inappropriate. So all of us are... The immigration bar is taking a different approach to it.

You know, some are filing motions to recuse, telling the judges, hey, you need to recuse yourself. You're a non-neutral judge to send this out in the middle. The case is absurd. It's a due process violation. They're entitled to a neutral judge. Yeah. I think my approach would be more one of playing dumb, because often this has how happened, the system, if you will, of ECAS, the electronic system that we use for court

immigration filing systems that Elon Musk briefly had access to or whatever was going on there. But anyways, I digress. You know, we'll send out automatic notices with the emails, with the judge's order. So my approach, I think, will be to give the judges the benefit of the doubt and ask them if this was an electronic notice. And if they say no, then I've gotten it on the record. And if they deny the case, I have that in there for the appeal. But yeah, it's happening all over the country with all sorts of different judges, and it's definitely something that we're grappling with right now, and it's just, it's very ballsy for a judge to say, hey, leave the country, and oh, by the way, I'm a neutral arbiter. Yeah, I mean, what's the point of having the judge or having the whole

process, right, if then they're going to declare this clear bias? Yeah, it's absurd. I mean, it's, you know, I mean, it's such a violation of due process rights, and I know everybody in this country now knows the importance of due process, whereas before only attorneys, through that term around. But no, I mean, this stuff really matters, you know? Yeah. And then also, another thing that happened in Primrose's case is that when you have a work permit clock, right, which is another absurd thing for Asylees, that once they file their asylum application, they have to wait 150 days before they can apply for a work permit. And of course, they're expected to be independently wealthy during those five months or, you know, or starve. I don't know what

they're expected to do. Yeah, rely on the generosity of others. Exactly. So if you do something, thing like try to change venue or a motion to continue. If you do something in your case that the judge perceives as not moving the case along and rather like kind of trying to stall it or possibly pausing it or slow it down, the judge will stop the work permit clock the days. And it's a whole thing. So Primrose's was stopped because the judge wanted her to get an attorney. So usually when the case is set for a final hearing, that code, adjournment code, they call it. I know from we have the access to the codes and what stops the clock and what doesn't. And it always restarts the clock because you moved your case along because you're setting it for trial.

It's, you know, obviously moving your case along. Hers was not restarted for whatever reason. And my only remedy would be to write some court administrator who may or may not ever respond. I can't even go to the judge about this. You know, it's, it's absurd. So that's just the situation that one asylum seeker is dealing with in Texas. So you can only imagine. and what goes on in detentions that, you know, detained cases in those states. Yeah, or people who don't have counsel. Like, getting that self-deportation notice if you don't have counsel, like, you could assume that you are just obliged to leave.

Like, yeah, that your process is over. 100%. 100%. And there's no legal basis for the judge to be issuing that. In fact, it's completely unlawful to be issuing something like that at the beginning of the case. At the end of the case, and at the beginning, the judge just have to give certain advisals, but telling somebody to self-deport is never an advisal that should be given under the law ever.

Right, yeah, like it kind of nullifies the whole system. And plus, I should mention real quick that it's disingenuous and harmful and that with these, you know, this administration on purpose isn't telling people with the $1,000, take the $1,000 in self-deport and, you know, we'll pay for your flight and all this stuff. But they're not telling people is that when you leave, you're then subject to a deportation order, and that comes with a 10-year bar. This is not mentioned, and that's a big deal. Yes, yeah.

I mean, it seems even like, I think the executive order said permanently leave the United States, right? Well, it did, and then, but then they switched tactics a little bit with the app to self-deport, saying, like, you know, leave now, leave now so you have a chance to come back later or something like that. Right. But, you know, without mentioning that, hey, you're barred from the United States for 10 years. And if you ever return unlawfully, then you're subject. or a whole series of, you know, I mean, it's just there's all these warnings that need to come with the deportation order that are strategically left out of all the administration's latest messaging on this topic. Yeah, that's pretty bad. Let's take a break for advertisements here, and then we'll come back.

All right, we are back. And we've spoken about these, like, self-deportation orders, right? For other people who have entered more recently, right, entered within the last two years, this has been happening. we're recording on the 22nd for the last two days now. It seems like ICE is dismissing the cases against them and then detaining them directly in court, if I'm correctly informed. Yes, so this has been happening periodically

throughout the past four months, but in the past few days, like this week, it's been dramatically ramped up. Like right now, as we're recording this, ICE is arresting people in the downtown San Diego court and also courts throughout the country. It's been reported everywhere happening widely this week. And this is another thing the administration said they were going to do and is doing. I mean, you know, they're doing what they said they were going to do. Yeah. And it's to use what's called 235 authority more broadly. So INA section 235 applies to people who entered within less than two years, like you said. And they can be then subject to what's called expedited removal. That means that they have to take a credible fear interview and be detained.

and that they only get to fight a case if they pass their credible fear interview, and then they do not qualify for an immigration judge bond, so they only get out if ICE lets them out, which of course ICE is letting nobody out. So the administration wants to have people detained under this authority,

this 235 authority as much as possible to have them have to fight their case detained and either lose the will to do so and or not be able to afford an attorney because detained cases move along a lot quicker and are very costly as well for that reason. So what they're doing is anybody who was here two years or less but was paroled in. So they're in the regular Immigration Court proceedings. They got out. They're under 240 proceedings that's called. So DHS attorneys in court are terminating those proceedings. They are asking the judge to terminate the 240 proceedings. So then that case is closed. And then they immediately restart a case under Section 235. And at the second they do that, the person is subject to mandatory detention. And ICE is right there. and the courthouse to arrest them and detain them. Jesus.

Yeah. I thought ICE couldn't arrest people in California. Is that California state courts, not federal courts, which were in California? I believe so. And colleagues and I have been talking about this, I haven't researched it thoroughly, but I think also the nature of these proceedings, like the 235 proceedings, like you are mandatory detention. Like you were taken into custody.

It's as if you just crossed the border and, you know, are taken into custody. It's treated like that type of situation. Like no warrant is necessary, I don't believe, you know. Oh, okay. Right. Yeah. So they have very broad authority to detain people like anywhere. That makes sense. Exactly. So the real issue here is the ethical, I mean, a lot of us are grappling with this and, of course,

fiercely opposing these motions in that the justification that the DHS attorneys are attempting to use is that circumstances have materially changed since the issuance of their initial case that they're in now. which of course is not the case. Right. Like, whose circumstances? Exactly. Exactly.

Like, the rise of fascism doesn't constitute a change circumstance. Yeah. So it's just there's no basis for this motion. And secondly, the only basis, like, there's zero justification for this other than filling detention centers, lining core civic and geo-groups pockets. Yeah.

And intentionally prejudicing an immigrant to have to fight their case detained. I mean, Right. And there's no, there's no good or legitimate justification for this, period, the end, you know. Yeah. And fighting it detained will be a lot harder. They will be obviously in like terrible situation. They are, as we have covered before, often moved to a different state from their council.

It will make it a lot harder for them. If they choose to go that route, I'm guessing that ICE is hoping that people won't fight and will just, or DHS is hoping that people will just choose not to fight. A hundred percent. That's the whole point is. is this whole administration's, the messaging and their actions are all about forcing people, breaking people's spirits and forcing them into a situation where they feel their only option is to self-deport.

Yeah, it is heartbreaking. It's very sick, yeah, it's very disturbing. It's very, very different from Trump 1.0. Yeah, I think that's worth sort of focusing in on that this is a completely distinct and much more radical disassembling of the asylum system as we know it. Absolutely. I mean, I think we can all agree or disagree as far as how we feel about the past four months and what has happened.

But I think everybody can agree the pace at which it has happened is extremely concerning. Right. We are four months into four years. And we have seen like a constitutional crisis, like a full-blown defiance of the courts. The day we're recording, the Trump administration is attempting to deport people to South Sudan, many of whom, 11 of 12 of whom are not South Sudanese, right? I guess from what I understand, their attempt to giving those people a credible fear screening was that they didn't hear them shouting from the cells they were detained in that they were afraid of being tortured.

Yeah, they're supposed to give them opportunity to be heard, essentially, and give notice of this third country that they're going to be deported to, that nobody and no judge has ever considered whether they have a fear or if they would be in danger or deported to this country. Right. So again, this is a due process situation where, hey, before you can be sent to some random country, especially South Sudan, maybe you should be given an opportunity to present why you have a fear or that something bad might happen to you over there to a judge.

And so this was recently ordered, I believe the case is called DBD versus DHS, was what stop the Libya situation from happening where, yeah, a judge said this is exactly what needs to occur. These people need to be given real notice, not this whatever has been, you know, and an opportunity to be heard. And then, yeah, they immediately thereafter attempted to, as you said, or I think, I don't know if they actually accomplished it with South Sudan. Yeah, my understanding is they are in a country which is neither the United States nor South Sudan on an aircraft at this time. and DHS is arguing that they can do their credible fear screenings there on the aircraft. I don't know how they plan to give those people privacy, translation, access to counsel.

I just looked on court listener right before we recorded, and Judge Murphy has clarified Massachusetts District Court Judge, that 10 days would be the amount of time that they would need to assert the credible fear. And then if DHS determined that they didn't have credible fear, they would then have 15 days to the gas for the reopening of their case. TBD, is the United States going to somehow accommodate them in where they are? People are speculating they're in Djibouti, which is the largest US military base in the continent of Africa and close to South Sudan. And so if that's the case, yeah,

I don't know how they will get due process. We will find out if they will get due process, I guess. Yeah, they probably won't, but we'll be told that they did. Or we'll be told that they were criminals in the first place, which is the other theme of this administration, right, with the Alien Enemies Act, which has basically been put on pause by a number of Satan judges who have said, there's no invasion, there's no war, this is absurd, this just flat out doesn't apply. And I have to say that the immigration bar is very, I think, not just the immigration bar, I think all of us are very frustrated that the Supreme Court has not yet come out with a definitive

substantive ruling on this because for the people who don't know the Alien Enemies Act allows the administration to circumvent the INA, which is the whole immigration court system and immediately deport supposed criminals who were invading the country.

I mean, we all know this with the Venezuelans who were accused of being Trenton de Araagua just for having tattoos. Yeah. And so that is, to me, and I think all of us, the biggest threat to just be able to put somebody on a plane to another country and in a prison in another country, as we've seen with Seacot in El Salvador. I mean, we need our Supreme Court to speak on this and we need it quickly. Yeah, like, if we no longer have habeas, it's a frontal assault on the Bill of Rights,

like most of them. And there's so many assaults on the Bill of Rights. And we need our Supreme Court to really to step up. And I think I'm not the only one who's extremely frustrated by that because we're in crisis and as we've seen it's fallen on courts and lawyers and judges to try to defend the semblance of democracy in this country but the highest court in the land needs to help out soon yeah yeah and like this is where like the rubber meets the road right for like maintaining people's basic rights dignity and and yeah the right not to be sent to a labor camp in el salvador or you know south sudanahna country which is rapidly descending into conflict again.

I thought the government was barrel bombing this week. Well, and just real quick, another note on the Supreme Court is that they're also concerning. I mean, as we know, there's a lot of Trump appointees there. Sure, yeah. And so, I mean, it's not even that that's the answer. It's just we're, you know, but we need answers more quickly than what they're giving us. And it's just given the rate that this administration is working at, I don't know that they will, if they ever get the case or the asylum ban at the border,

would even overturn that because historically they've sort of supported his 212F powers. So I'm not saying that's the answer to everything, but it's definitely frustrating to not have basic things already decided, like the use of the alien enemies act. Yeah, like, just not to know where we're at. Like, when, you know, people are trying in good faith to move forward with the legal processes, that they have spent their entire life savings on to get here. do the right quote-unquote the right way.

You're still fighting a number of asylum cases, as we said before the call. Like, you probably won't be forever, right? Like, at some point, there's just not going to be any more asylum cases. I know that you're accepting donations, I think, through Venmo on behalf of Primrose, that we'll be sure to link to that VEMO account in the description of this show so people can donate if they'd like to. Now it's the time to do it, right? It's not like this is going to be an ongoing thing.

Like if people don't help now, then there won't be migrants to support or assailies to support later. So like how can people materially support maybe in other ways, right? If they're on hard times and they don't have the financial resources, what else can people do to, just to make this a little bit less cruel to some people who are among the most unfortunate people on the planet often? I think even mental and emotional support for the immigrants in your life, I think, is something that is underestimated because speaking as a very privileged white woman attorney, U.S. citizen, this has taken a tremendous toll on me. And the mental toll that is taken on the actual undocumented community and assailies, this messaging is so harmful and so disgusting that I think I would just, caution people to not underestimate the power of human kindness to those already in your life and just empowering them, distributing know your rights cards and information, that still matters. But also I think the people who are, as we've been discussing, going to be at the most

disadvantaged in terms of being able to keep up morale are these people who are going to be mandatorily detained. So in terms of what we were talking about, I believe before we started recording, reaching out to any organizations. I know in San Diego there's detention resistance, or even reaching out to the detention center that's near you to be able to determine how you can send a letter, how you can put money on somebody's books so that they can have phone calls with their family or phone calls with you even. I think these types of things are key in light of the administration's clear messaging that immigrants are very much unwanted and criminals.

So I think that's where I would come at this from if you cannot donate. Again, like we were talking, if you have a few dollars to spare, I mean, if everybody has a few dollars to spare, there is a finite number, like we were saying, of asylum cases left, like from roses. So if people can spare a few dollars here or there, whenever they can, it does make the difference. Yeah, no, it does. And it shows that, like, even if the government doesn't want you here, a lot of people want you to be protected, we want you to be safe. Like, yeah, the mental damage it does. I think it's hard to overstate. Like, I was talking, I remember, to a young woman in Bahochikito, and, like, she was the only surviving member of her family.

The government had killed everyone. And so she came to the U.S., right, to be safe. And, like, now the government is coming after her, in addition to the trauma she already has from watching her entire family die. Like now the most powerful government in the world is coming after you. I can't imagine how that feels. That's a very good point. I mean, yeah, people are coming already traumatized only to be further traumatized by this administration in the system.

And yes, I mean, emotional and mental and any kind of support is not to be underestimated in the slightest during these times. Yeah, like have people over for dinner if you can. Or yeah, like call the detention center and put money on someone's commissary. Like just showing people that, they're welcome is important. Like, I know a lot of, the migrants, like, if I look at my phone right now and the time we've been recording one of the migrants I meant that Darien Gat will probably have texted

me. They're in Mexico, right? And they just want the world to know about the situation. They know they can't come to the US anymore. But sometimes people will say, I guess the Americans don't want us anymore. And like, that breaks my heart. Because I think most people, if they knew these people's circumstances, right, like hundreds of people have reached out to me since the Darien Gap stuff to ask how they can help.

And like, most people do want those people to be their neighbors. And it breaks my heart that they think that we don't want them, that we would rather leave them to die wherever they're at. Like, it's genuinely really horrible for me to think of that. So, yeah, I would really encourage anyone listening, if you can, to do what you can. Absolutely. And just remembering that, again, these asylum cases are finite.

So if you know any asylum seeker or can support any asylum seeker right now, they made it in. Let's give them their best shot. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Like, we can still help those people. And while we can, we should. Absolutely. Yeah. Well, thank you so much for joining us. We do appreciate it. I know that your time is very valuable and you're really busy right now. So we really appreciate your time. You're always welcome back. And if there's anything else you'd like to say before we finish up. Yeah. Thank you, James. I think the only thing I just want to emphasize is that, you know, from the standpoint of immigration attorneys, like I feel that we're obviously a subject of an executive order and, you know, big law firms are being extorted by the administration to represent causes that the administration believes in and not for a bono

immigration work and so forth and so on. So it's not like too many of us have been personally attacked, although, you know, judges have been arrested, even judges for just hiring an immigrant to do work around the house. So it is a scary time to be practicing immigration law, but unfortunately, I do see there being a time when it won't have. happen. I mean, I see the writing on the wall where I will not be able to continue mentally and or economically because a side effect of all this and a very intentional side effect is to make it so that we can't do much for people anymore and or they can afford us or there's not people here to do anything for because their spirit was broken or their

finances or all of the above and they had to leave. So it is a very intense time. But I came from different areas of law. I've only been in immigration seven years. and it's the first time I've thought of, okay, where am I going to go to next? Yeah. In these seven years. And it's a very real thing. So, like I said, it feels very different than Trump 1.0. No, yeah.

This is considerably more severe. So, in other words, take care of yourself if you are an ally. Yeah. Because, you know, the attack is on immigrants and anybody who advocates, supports, and so forth. And it's a very targeted, direct attack. And it's very easy to get. down and consume by it. And so definitely do what you need to do to take care of yourself. And if that means stepping back, then, you know, I mean, I want to keep my foot in the door as much as possible these

next four years on something immigration and asylum related. But there's also economic and other realities that are happening. Yeah. Intentionally so. Yeah, definitely. And I think it is important for people to do whatever they need to do to self-preserve and take care of themselves as well. I think that's a good place to end. Thank you so much for your time. And again, like if you're listening, please check the description of the show, and we will have a link to Primrose's GoFundMe if you'd like to help. Thank you so much, James. Thank you. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder.

Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world of what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today, I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Hello. What's up, everybody? Who's got E.D.? Us. Us.

You. We're giving you ED. This episode, we're covering the week of May 21 to May 28. It was a really busy news week for the latter half of that week, so we're going to be mostly catching up with that. Jesus, yeah. And let's start with the biggest news from late last week domestically. The shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, D.C.

The shooting took place around 9 p.m. on Wednesday, May 20. outside of an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum. Prior to the shooting, the suspect was seen pacing outside of the building. According to witnesses and surveillance video, a 31-year-old man named Elias Rodriguez approached a group of four people leaving the event. As he walked past them, he turned to face their backs and shot two people and continued to fire as they fell to the ground. One of the victims, a 26-year-old woman, tried to crawl away after being shot.

Rodriguez followed her and fired again. Jesus. While he was reloading, she sat up, and then Rodriguez shot her several more times before throwing his gun into a bush. He ran into the museum after the shooting. Security led him in thinking that he was a victim. Witnesses say he appeared traumatized and in shock.

People from the museum event brought him water, and when they asked him if he was okay or if he was injured, Rodriguez requested the police. When cops arrived, he allegedly admitted to the shooting, and according to witnesses, quote, grabbed a red Kefaya out of his pocket and started Free Palestine chants. Quote, there is only one solution, antifada revolution, unquote. While being arrested and taken out of the building, he chanted free, free Palestine. Israel's ambassador to the U.S. claimed that the two victims were deliberately targeted as Israeli embassy employees.

and that Rodriguez mingled with attendees at the reception earlier that evening before raising suspicion and being asked to leave. Although the organization who put on this event, the American Jewish Committee, disputes this account. They say that Rodriguez tried to register for their event, but was denied entry following a background check. Rodriguez is a lifelong Chicago resident. He got an English degree at the University of Chicago, legally bought a gun in Illinois, and flew with it. to D.C. the night before the shooting. This event was an American Jewish committee access D.C. Young Diplomats reception.

The description for the event reads, This special event brings together Jewish young professionals, age 22 to 45, and the D.C. diplomatic community for an evening dedicated to fostering unity and celebrating Jewish heritage. Join us for heavy appetizers, cocktails, conversations, and a special guest speaker. We are excited to introduce this year's theme,

turning pain into purpose. hear from members of the multi-faith alliance and Israel, as they delve into humanitarian diplomacy, and how a coalition of organizations from the region and for the region are working together in response to humanitarian crises through the Middle East and North Africa regions. The two victims were a young couple, Sarah Milgram and Iran Lysinski, 26 and 30, who met through their work at the embassy. Lysinski identified as a Christian, though he was born in Israel and moved to, to Germany as a kid, then returned to Israel and served in the IDF. There is an alternative claim

that he was born in Nuremberg and then moved to Israel as a teenager, but most reporting says that he was born in Israel. In the aftermath of the shooting, politicians widely condemned this as anti-Semitic violence. The acting U.S. attorney said that they are investigating the case as a hate crime and an act of terrorism. Dan Bongino, deputy FBI director, said the shooting was a, quote, act of targeted violence. The Israeli foreign minister in Netanyahu have laid blame at college protesters and foreign government officials, including the leaders of France, Britain, and Canada, accusing them of blood libel for talking about Israel's, quote, supposed genocide and crimes

against humanity, unquote, and calling such rhetoric critical of Israel, quote, unquote, incitement. Netanyahu said, quote, free Palestine is just today's version of Heil Hitler. Jesus Christ. They don't want a Palestinian state. They want to destroy the Jewish state. They want to annihilate all Jewish people who have been in the land of Israel for 3,500 years, unquote.

This is obviously, I think, in a lot of ways, the kind of thing Netanyahu has been waiting for and probably the kind of thing that a number of folks that Trump has put in federal law enforcement have been waiting for because it provides them with some opportunities to continue their push to criminalize student orders. organizing and organizing against Israeli war crimes, right? Like the argument they want to be able to make is that just saying free Palestine is an act of

terrorism. And there was an act of terrorism here, right? Like shooting two embassy employees for the crimes of their government. Like that is a clear act of terrorism, right? You can like feel however you want to about it. But like that's the definition of what was done. But the things he was chanting were not part of the act of terrorism. the fact that he shot people to death was the act of terrorism.

Yeah, it's just a murdering people that's terrorism. Yeah, and that is already illegal, by the way, and quite heavily. I'll be interested. We don't seem to know much about where he got the firearm yet that I've come across. He legally purchased it in Illinois. Yeah, he bought it in Illinois, which has, like, fairly strict gun laws. Yeah, some of the strictest in the U.S. So it's one of those things where there's already quite a bit of regulation around

everything that he did here. But fundamentally, if you're able to buy guns, which you are, because if there's an amendment, there will be people who carry out attacks like this. And I don't really know there certainly didn't seem to be outside of this guy's personal chats with his friends, a lot of evidence that would have set him on anybody's radar. He had been at like a PSL Party for Socialism and Liberation March in 2017 or something. But like this wasn't a guy who had a a history of violence or anything like that. And quite frankly, that's just a reality of the country that we live in, is that when people like this decide to carry out shootings for whatever reason, the odds of catching them are extraordinarily low. It's very hard to flag for a guy

specifically like this because there's a lot of them out there. Yeah. And most of them don't do shootings. Yeah. This act has been widely condemned, like pro-Palestine. Commentators have said that this style of like adventurous terrorism does nothing to help the Palestinian people and in fact only hurts them and plays into what like the Israel lobby and Netanyahu have been like wanting to happen for a while. Yeah. I think Kat Abugazela, a Paris Dilling American woman who's running for office in Illinois. Worked it for media matters for years. Yeah. It does a lot of videos. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I saw that she'd shared something about how like, yeah, this. was something that evidently should be condemned, right, that is wrong and is not advancing

the cause of Palestinian freedom. Like, I think adventurous terrorism is a good way to describe it, yeah. And was just getting panned by people on the internet, which, like, I don't know, people engaging with this, like, from a place it doesn't come from, like, it's bad when random folks get shot and killed. No, people have used the horrific genocide as a way to, like, channel their general societal frustration and find a way to like just act incredibly hostile, like to actual Palestinians. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Who don't share the exact same like anti-imperialist TM views that they might have. Right. It's just permission to abuse people online. Yeah, deeply like verbally violent and like, I don't know, like psycho shit. And this guy engaged in that kind of stuff as well as as we'll see. Well, let's talk about that. Let's get a little bit into his background. So, he has a manifesto that he posted on his Twitter account. And it's, it's cogent, like, in terms of it's not the ramblings of, like, a madman or something. There's nothing, like, at all... He has an English degree, right? He knows how to write.

Yeah, yeah. He has worked as a writer for, like, almost a decade. Okay. Yeah. I mean that in terms of, like, it's very clear what he's trying to say. There's not any evidence here of, like, a disconnect or whatever. He's not doing this because he's blaming Israel for making the weather bad or whatever, right? Right. Yeah. Yeah. The manifesto is titled, Escalate for Gaza, bring the war home. And he attempts to explain the rationale behind his actions. He starts by discussing the unknown total scale of dead Palestinians,

writing that, quote, atrocities committed by Israelis against Palestine, defy description and defy quantification, unquote. He writes about how, despite protests and shifts in public opinion, the U.S. government has continually refused to reign in Israel and instead moved to criminalize dissent. he talks about armed action, quote, An armed action is not necessarily a military action.

It usually is not. Usually, it is theater and spectacle, a quality it shares in many unarmed actions, unquote. Yeah, and I do find, you know, one of the first things that happened when this attack was carried out was people started theorizing that this had been some Nazi who was using this to, using the pro-Palisand cause to like camouflage as Nazism.

and I don't think that the preponderance of evidence suggests that there are two weird things. One of them is that this guy's previous Twitter name was Habo 88 and he was not born in 88. Obviously, whenever you see in 88. It's a cursed millennial. And the other is the bring the war home reference in his manifesto, which is basically a reference to something that I believe was Louis Beam, who is a neo-Nazi organizer, set about trying to get Vietnam veterans to his manifesto, which is basically a reference to something that I believe was Louis Beam, who was a neo-Nazi organizer said about trying to get Vietnam veterans to, essentially bring the war home to the United States in order to spark a race war. And those two little things are weird. However, the rest of this guy's fairly well-documented history and background does not suggest

anything like that. So I don't think that that's the credible thing to blame this on, quite frankly. Yeah, I'll go over some of that background in brief. Yeah. He also talked about targeting government representatives, quote, the impunity that representatives of our government feel at abetting this slaughter should be revealed as an illusion. He then tells a story of a man who tried to throw Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara off a boat into the sea. He finishes with his thoughts

on the quote-unquote morality of armed demonstration, where he discusses this tendency to dehumanize the perpetrators of atrocities as a method for us to cope with the monstrous evil that ordinary humans are capable of. Quote, this action would have been a morally justified taken 11 years ago during protective edge. Around the time I personally became acutely aware of our brutal conduct in Palestine. But I think to most Americans, such an action would have been illegible. It would seem insane. I'm glad that today, at least, there are many Americans for which the action will be highly legible, and in some funny way, the only sane thing to do, unquote. It did find it interesting that on December 5th, 2024, Rodriguez posted on

his Twitter account that, quote, 80% of the country applauds the targeted annihilation of a health care insurance executive, unquote. As for his political background, Rodriguez identifies as a Maoist third worldist. Yeah. And believes that the global South alone has, quote unquote, revolutionary potential. A friend of Rodriguez described his politics to journalist Ken Kleppenstein like this, quote, he was a big proponent of the amount. emerging resistance axis of Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, Assad, Syria.

God. How'd that go? He seemed pretty vocally in favor of Hamas for years, way before 2023. He'd always hated Israel and would call it, quote, the little Satan, unquote. For fuck's sake. The Assad test arranged supreme as the, it's a fucking A, B test for someone having shitty politics. Yeah, with the hundreds of thousands of civilians killed by Assad. Yeah, yeah, Assad who gassed his own people, who murdered little children.

Including thousands and thousands of Palestinians, by the way. Yeah, yeah. But again, you shouldn't expect coherence or particularly well-informed opinions out of folks like this. Yeah, his online presence mirrors what I would call like the typical, like, anti-imperialist TM poster where he's, there's most of his frustration at the Democrats, sometimes at Republicans, but mostly, yeah, posts. about being pro-Russia, Iran, Hezbollah, pro-Assad, and particularly the past few years, hosting a lot of Palestine. Right.

With explicit defense and, like, veneration of Hamas. The same friend that talked to Klippenstein also said, quote, it's driving me crazy that people are calling it a false flag. This development is shocking, but not completely out of character. Yeah. He always had strong political convictions. From the sound of the manifesto, he's the same as he was. quote. Yeah. And I mean, that seems true. Again, we still don't have a perfect knowledge of all of this

guy's, you know, online life. No, this is just a week away. But based on what Ken's posted, based on this interview, that makes complete sense. Yeah. Right? I, like, I don't have any trouble believing that for a number of reasons. No, absolutely. This is, this is not a false flag attack. That's, that's conspiratorial nonsense. Yeah, I think that this guy did a thing that he sincerely believed in, and it seems like everything he'd been expressing in the year or two leading up doing this, you know, was consistent with what he did. Rodriguez was affiliated with the Chicago PSL, the Party for Socialist Men Liberation, back in 2017, and spoke to the media on their behalf.

Though he would later regret his association with the group, telling friends, quote, PSL sucks shit. I wish I had just done a misadventure with the Freedom Road Socialist Organization, rather than the PSL-L-O-L-L-U-L-W. Rodriguez remained somewhat politically active in Chicago. In 2023, he posted video from a local pro-Palestine March on his Twitter account. Klippenstein spoke with at least five friends of his who all claimed that they never heard Rodriguez express anti-Semitic sentiments.

Now, one of Rodriguez friends gave Klippenstein access to a years-old private WhatsApp group chat that Rodriguez frequently posted in, including up to a day before the show. shooting. Lippenstein says, quote, the messages don't reveal any hatred of Jews per se, but they do portray an often bitter man who hated all sorts of other things, especially Israel and its war in Gaza, unquote. And from what we can see of the chats that Ken has posted, this matches pretty well. A chat member wrote, quote, I'm almost surprised you're not anti-Semitic, Golias. It usually goes hand in hand with the whole Stalin did nothing wrong mantra. Yeah, and his response to the this was like, Stalin ended, you know, among other things, Stalin ended the greatest anti-Semitic state

in history, which I've seen as evidence that he wasn't pro-Stalin. He just supported Stalin, you know, defeating the Nazis. But he says like, among other things. So he's clearly got a number of reasons he likes Stalin. Yeah. From the exchanges with his friends, this guy's clearly like a, like a tanky anti-imperialist type. Yes, yes. Yeah. A million such examples. The only time he talked about race explicitly was to lambast white people. Quote, L.O.L. You probably would have to actually genocide white people to make this a normal country. Like even a very targeted and selective rehabilitation program would probably have to lead to the lifetime imprisonments of tens of millions of white people, unquote.

There's the Stalin did nothing wrong. Yeah, there's that gay. Brain type that we were looking for. Well, and again, it's one of those things. We're talking about this because there's a bunch to guys who express similar views, this is the only one who's done a shooting. When we talk about this making sense, we're not talking about this, like, as evidence that, like,

oh, someone who's a fucking tankie type is likely to commit a mass shooting. Right, that they go hand in hand. No, this is the first time a tankie's done anything.

This is the first one of these I've heard of in quite a long time. Yeah. It's just this guy, there's a bunch of people who express similar things to this guy, right? Yeah, yeah. On October 7th,

he celebrated the Hamas attack, quote, Just saw an incredibly gory video of the aftermath of Israeli troops trying to get dressed for the ambush absolutely massacred by Hamas fighters. I.M.A.O. Love checking back in with the news every few hours like, hmm, I wonder if Israel still exists. You don't often get to credibly wonder if Israel is over yet, today or not, unquote. Yeah. And again, like that just kind of shows the general lack of knowledge. A level of political delusion. Yeah. Yeah, like a lot of kind of telegram propaganda consumption type worldview here.

Yes, and can convince you that what's happening is different from the reality. Yeah. In this chat, he lamented to friends and expressed sorrow at the deaths of Hamas and the Hezbollah leaders. And sometimes his ire was directed at other members of this leaked chat. At one point, going on an unhinged, ablest rant attacking one of his friends for being privileged after they discussed the challenges of having a brother with schizophrenia. quote, why not just have him committed? You can't possibly be gaining anything from a relationship with a person like that.

Just put him in a padded room and forget about him. Jesus Christ. If there was a person you loved, he's gone now. Let it go. Can you just chain him in the basement and slide meals under the door? I'm just tired of hearing about this guy. He's useless. We get it.

Stop complaining and just dispose of him. Yeah. Jesus Christ. I mean, this goes with the like people who, I don't know, aren't useful to me or of no value, right? that people don't have inherent value and, you know, if they don't agree with or are useful to him, then fuck them, they can die.

Like, I guess there's some kind of coherence there. Robert, do you want to mention the... Something awful? Yes, I do, Garrison. So, the other thing that came out in Ken's article is that this dude was a poster. Well, his friend described him as a dedicated poster, which is the worst thing you can be described as being.

and noted that he had been, there had been some, when it came out that like his former Twitter username had been like Habo 88, that was very clearly a reference to a game called Habo Hotel. That if you're Gin Z, there's very good odds you don't remember.

But it was a big thing for people who were on 4chan and who were on something awful. And something awful was the website that gave birth to 4chan. It's where I was raised on the internet. And many, many years ago, around the turn of the millennium,

I think. I don't remember the exact year, but we started gathering on this game for children. It was like an MMO for little kids and like pretending to be members of a cult in order to like confuse small children and then 4chan did their own version of that that was a bit more racist,

which is often the case. Yeah, many such cases. Yeah, many such cases. Anyway, when this came out, there was a debate. Was this guy a channer or was this guy a goon, you know, a member of the Something Awful forums? and a lot of people thought, I called Goon, a lot of people thought Shanner because of his age,

he was a little bit young to have been a part of the Something Awful Habab Hotel things. I think it's actually likely he did both. But his friends described him as somebody who was really into something awful, right? As somebody who had been influenced by that, and particularly a subset of the Something Awful forums called Fiat, which stands for Fuck You and Die, which kind of pioneered a lot of the most toxic aspects of online discourse. Apparently, Jesus. Now, folks have found at least one of his accounts.

That doesn't have a lot of posts, although that doesn't mean much because, number one, he could have deleted a lot of stuff, which many people did when they got older. Number two, he could have had another recount, which is also the case. The one account that people know was his was banned for shooting and killing two embassy employees. There's reasons given in the ever-lengthening something awful ban. list when somebody gets banned. Obviously, again, I don't think there's like a causative thing. Him being on something awful didn't cause him to shoot two people, but him being on something awful was a natural part of the progression that led to him being the kind of like toxic online

asshole that he was. And sort of evidence of that is that one of the last things he had done online before the shooting was he had gotten briefly onto Blue Sky and then, gotten in trouble for repeatedly harassing Will Stancel, who's another annoying asshole on the internet, who was also a something awful goon, who was raised in this same chunk of the internet, and who became a similar kind of asshole just with wildly different politics.

And these two hated each other, and Elias threatened to murder him over the internet. Because he's like, again, these guys... He's that type of guy. He's that type of guy, which doesn't mean, again, which doesn't mean this is why he did a shooting or had anything to do with that, because there's a lot of this type of guy

and almost none of them commit acts of terrorism. It just, like, his background makes complete sense for the kind of guy that we can see that he was online. The last thing I'll say about this is that, you know, beyond this, like, senseless loss of life, which is, like, an issue in and of itself, obviously, this also contributes to further loss of life in the way this plays into, like, media capture, right?

Now we have a whole week where the news cycle is dominated by two people getting murdered in the streets of D.C. And this does not help the Palestinian people currently being killed by Israel. The exact same day that this happened, Wednesday the 21st, 93 people were killed in Israeli attacks

across the Gaza Strip. And that type of stuff does not really get reported anymore because that's how media capture works. Americans are really good at getting desensitized to this in a large-scale media environment. But stuff like this only serves as a distraction and fuels Israel's own motivation for their continued actions.

Talking of media capture, Garrison, we have been captured by the advertisers in this show. It's true. There you go. And we are back. Another big news item from last week was the passing of the big, beautiful budget bill in the House. We'll talk more about this bill as it turns through the Senate. But first, our co-host, Mia Wong, has a special report on how the bill targets trans health care. So we're going to talk a little bit about the budget bill that's currently working through a bunch of processes in the Senate that's been passed by the House.

I am Mia Wong. And with me to talk about how this budget specifically is unbelievably bad for trans people is Maddie Kastigan from Maddie Kast and Muriel Levine from the Free Radical. Glad to have both of you two here. You've both been doing a bunch of journalism about this stuff specifically and what people can do about it. First, can you explain what is going on in this budget with the ban on trans health care using Medicaid? Yeah, absolutely. So the budget bill, also known as House Resolution 1, is this year's reconciliation bill, which is Congress basically deciding next year's budget and how they're going to allocate all their funds.

This time around, Republicans decided it would be a great idea to push through. So what it was at first was a... intense limitation on what Medicaid cover, essentially just humongous Medicaid cuts. And this is what I began investigating first. Me and Maddie were talking about it a bunch. She's the one who took me off to it. They started off by implementing huge cuts to Medicaid that would result in millions of people losing access to their health care, not even just trans people. Shortly after they announced these cuts, for instance, adapt a group of disabled activists. They are famous for being the ones who climbed up the steps of the, I believe it was the Capitol building in the 90s to raise awareness and help get the American Disabilities Act passed.

They staged a protest on the United States Capitol during a hearing for this bill where Republicans were just talking about it and praising themselves. Multiple activists got arrested. They're all fine now, apparently. Apparently they weren't treated too bad either, which is good to hear. But what ultimately happened is more and more came out and it came revealed that not only would disabled people be affected, but basically every marginalized group. Who people, of course, being what we were focusing on given the beat. But this will impact essentially everyone, especially if you're in low income, especially if

you are a person of color. you are more likely to be impacted just by virtue of this bill and how sweeping it is. And Republicans implemented a ban for gender affirming care for minors on it. It was a very milk-atose ban that at the time was projected

to get over torn to court right away if we were to pass. They didn't stop there, though. They quickly evolved it and they tried to implement it into a sweeping ban on gender affirming care for all ages on Medicaid and for any health insurance received through Affordable Care Act

marketplaces. And ultimately, this led to a lot of panic and a lot of people assuming that their care is going to be taken away immediately. That wasn't what's going to happen. On the minimum effective date that's currently in the bill is 2027. I'm telling people to prepare if it passes for 2026 because there's a decent chance for publicans

trying to expedite it. Because it passed through the House. It passed through committees in the House. It was sent to the Senate. And I think that's what we'll give to Maddie to talk about kind of what next steps for that are. Yeah. So like Marl was saying, there's a lot of really, this bill is tremendous. They could talk for hours about it.

But focusing on the trans parts, there's a ban on Medicaid funding. And there's also a ban on including transcares and essential health benefit and ACA plans. And the thing about both of these provisions is that normally with reconciliation bills, they're supposed to be focused on budget items, not policy items. So, for example, you couldn't say, hey, weed is legal everywhere now or something like that, or raise the minimum wage, which Democrats tried to do in 2021, and they failed because there are rules regarding how this process works. And so what we argued in our article was that there's a possibility that, you know, if activists and advocates, reached out to their senators and advocated to point out that this part of the bill is completely against those provisions, against those procedural rules for the Senate parliamentarian could rule against it and basically strike that portion of the bill without ever even

becoming law. And, you know, that would save people a lot of stress and anxiety and you don't have to worry about the court battles and what happens with Scrimetti versus U.S., which is a Supreme Court case that's going to be ruled on on gender affirming care soon. So what we've been telling people, and you know, including listeners for your show, is that people really need to reach out to their senators every single day, email call and ask them to vote no on this bill on HR1, and specifically mentioned the trans health care aspects. And if you're, if you want, there's templates online on our website,

or you can just, you know, ask them, hey, we don't think this bill is good. We don't, we want you to challenge specifically the parts that are attacking trans people. And I can confirm with you, I can't share too much information, but I can confirm with you that we are making real legitimate progress on killing this provision. And the more people we have calling in every single day, the better our odds are. But there's still more ways to fight back. And I want Myra to pick up on how people can fight back on the ground. Yeah.

So in addition to reaching out to your senators, of course, to do that. There's an email template. Maddie wrote up a great one. It tells you everything you need to do. We can even leave a phone call to script. It takes like five minutes. but more long term is, this is not going to be the only attack

on gender reforming care. It's not going to stop here. This is just the latest attempt that they're trying to do. Ultimately, we cannot rely on the government to give us essential health care. We cannot rely on the government to protect us and give us what we need because fundamentally,

the government and the laws that it aims to uphold are about protecting the rich, protecting the powerful, protecting the wealthy. The law is functionally something that gives police power to act as essentially an occupying army on the state and to persecute anyone who deviates from what those who are disproportionately rich and powerful decree. And we need to start focusing on building long-term solutions.

Everything we can do with legislative activism is important, but ultimately it will not save us because there will be more attacks down the line and they'll keep coming. And they only need to win once. We need to win that every time. But there are long-term solutions. My beat at this point is essentially just telling everyone to get plugged into your local mutual aid network, get plugged into people doing work on the ground in your state, in your area, who are focusing on a plethora of different issues.

A bit of a self-plug here, but I wrote an article, for instance, last month where I interviewed a seasoned activist in the Twin Cities, who told me just a lot. about the history of radical practice in the cities, especially in light of the George Floyd riots, and especially in right of corporate pride, rainbow capitalism, whole nine yards. I recommend reading it. It's on the free radical.org. Check it out. But beyond, of course, my own writing in my own interviews, there are so many people doing work

that doesn't get covered because it either isn't palatable to mainstream news audiences or it isn't seeking coverage for a variety of reasons. In every single major city, this I can guarantee there are people doing the work. Most of the time, it's not going to be publicly visible, but they are there. I would recommend that everyone who is not currently plugged in get started with something that is much more entry-level

and something that is much more like meant to be kind of for everyone who may not be willing to do more in-depth and more crazy text. stuff. Food not bombs is the great thing I recommend for everyone to check out. Not every city has one, most do. Every state has one. Beyond that, there are plenty of local mutual aid groups in every single locality. And if there's not one directly by you, there's probably one in your nearest major city. I would specifically recommend, I'm a bit biased here, but I would recommend focusing on ones that are decentralized and non-hier hierarchical, ones that don't revolve around centralizing power

and placing that power in the hands of people who are they good at smooth-talking or who have a lot of money. Ultimately, the way forward for people of all different marginalized groups, not even just trans people, you know, on documented immigrants, blocking conditions, people of color, low-income people, and so forth. The way forward is by recognizing that our issues affect all of us. Attacks on trans health care are not limited there. inevitably, let's say they ban trans health care overnight. They're going to come for intersex people next. They're going to come for gay people next.

They're going to come for everyone. So I would just say, get involved in your local groups and reach out. There are resources out there. If you need some, check out the free radical. org. I recommend a ton of them. Thank you.

And, yeah, our website for Madi, MattiCast is M-A-D-Y-Cast.com, and you can find our templates for contacting your senators there. Thank you so much for helping yourself and helping your community. Yeah, thank you so much for that. I want to close on,

I want to read the route of read a line for a fucking Namix manifesto from Andorch. Remember that the frontier of the rebellion is everywhere and even the smallest insurrection pushes our line forward. And one of the arguments that Nymic makes here that I think is just true is that in order to maintain their holds,

these people have to win a hundred battles across 100 fronts. But this means that there are so many different things that you can do to resist them and to make sure that this fucking budget they're trying to pass to make sure that everyone in this country suffers

and specifically that trans people cannot use the health insurances that we need. Use Medicaid, use the Affordable Care Act to pay for stuff. This stuff can be resisted in so many different ways. You can, as we've talked about,

you can call your senators, you can yell at them, you can make their lives miserable until they agree to not do this. And then also, you can join your local mid-jewa groups. You can join local activist groups. You can start, you know,

getting serious organize in other ways. You can, again, we've talked a lot about unions and the role of unions and trying to struggle on this show. We've talked, oh, God, we've talked about so many things. I'm going to do a one second plug for the episode I wrote last year called You Already Know How to Organize, because you do already know how to organize. And, yeah, none of the things that are happening here are inevitable. They can be stopped, and there are so many different ways for you to start stopping them. Yeah, so we're back and we're talking about Gavin Newsom and particularly the intersection of the governor of California and Donald Trump, which is a lot more shameful than you'd expect.

So if you remember a little earlier this year, there was a big brouhaha publicly because a California transgender high school athlete won at the woman's eight feet triple jump. This is an 11th grade transgender athlete from Yerupa Valley High School near Riverside, California. And she won the Division III girls' long jump and triple jump and placed seventh in the high jump at her Southern Section Championship. A few weeks later, there's going to be, I don't think it's happened yet, a championship meet that she qualified for as a result of this. And when this happened, it was immediately leapt on by the Trump administration and by right-wing media as evidence of this thing that they've been trying to push for forever, which is that trans athletes are a threat to

women's sports, right? Now, this is something that number of, one, there's just not a lot of. And this is also something that like, I think something like two-thirds of Americans when polled say that they don't feel like trans athletes should be competing with, you know, quote-unquote, naturally born women in women's sports, right? Like, this is a thing that the right has built a lot of support for because they have made this a political issue for so long. And they've been largely successful in that. The state of California and California lawmakers have been pushing back against this. There have been state bills in order to allow these girls to continue to compete. But Gavin Newsom has not expressed the same degree of support. And this kind of largely

came out earlier this month when he had a meeting with conservative personality Charlie Kirk on his new podcast. As Newsom said, Kirk pushed so hard on the topic that Newsom said he felt like he had to address it. Here's how Newsom characterized it. And then he asked, me, tell me, that's not fair. And I looked at him. I said, you're right. That's not. And so it wasn't some grand design. And I know, I know that hurt a lot of people, but respectively, I just disagree with those on the other side of this. Now, this brought a backlash against Newsom. He was attacked for flip-flopping because, again, like the California Democratic Party's position on this has been to defend trans athletes. But Newsom kind of flipped as soon as he was in a room with

Charlie Kirk. Now, Newsom will argue that he also tried to stick up for trans athletes to Charlie Kirk. To be clear about that, this is exactly what he said to Charlie. Completely fair on the issue of fairness. I completely agree. So that's easy to call out the unfairness of that. There's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely to commit suicide, have anxiety and depression. And the way the people talk down to vulnerable communities is an issue that I have a hard time with as well. So both things I can hold in my hand. How can we address this issue with the kind of decency that I think you know is inherent in you, but not always expressed in the issue? And first of all, there's no decency inherent, Charlie Kirk. And second, there's also a humility and grace that these poor people are more likely

to commit suicide. What does that mean? What does that mean, Gavin? That's not a sentence. Also, like, just, like, I made my living exercising for most of my 20s, right? Like, you're a professional athlete. Done sports. Yeah. Like, and then I've done all kinds of, I've a, I've a where I still got paid to race my bike, right? Like, sports are unfair. It fucking sucks. I coached people who worked way harder than me. They trained super hard.

They slept well. They ate better. Unfortunately, for whatever reason, they were not able to get to the same level. That sucks. But, like, sport is inherently unfair. The idea that, like, the only difference it is, like, this, like, your X, X, X, or X, X, Y chromosonality is nonsense. Like, especially in high school sports,

kids will develop at different times. That is unfair. Some kids will excel, and then other kids will get better. The function of high school sports is not to find who can go, like, higher, faster, stronger. It's to teach people to play nicely with one another and to communicate inclusion. And excluding trans kids is completely contrary to that.

Yeah. And that's like, yeah, I think that's a great point, James, is that, like, number one, this is all being entirely made about, like, who places how, which is always going to be based largely on things that, like, people can't control because, like, people's bodies are different, you know? Yeah, and they develop differently. Like, there are people who had beat up by races when I was a kid who have won stages at the Tour de France.

Yeah. Like, if our bodies develop differently, that's completely normal. Yeah, and it's, again, the thing that should matter here is not treating a community of people hatefully, which is the entirety of the reality of the reason. and the right has made this an issue. It has nothing to do with fairness. It has nothing to do with sports. It's entirely about hurting a group of people. Yeah, if these people gave a single shit about women's sports, they'd have been there when women weren't getting paid the same. They'd have been there when they didn't get the same TV coverage. It had been there when they didn't get the same price

money. And they were mostly making fun of women's sports at that point in time. Yeah. Now, I do think one thing that's funny here is that when Newsom was a, when people asked rightly, like, when California legislators were pushing to like protect trans athletes, why didn't you bring up that you felt this way? And his answer was, I didn't have a podcast. I wasn't having that conversation. I was out there on the campaign trail in the big blue bubble on the big blue bus and the big blue crowds having big blue conversations. And then he went on to say that basically the backlash to him agreeing with Charlie Kirk on this has convinced him. I always thought the right overstated how judgmental my party was and I'll be candid with you. I have a deeper understanding now of that critique than

I ever, ever, ever understood. It's like, now that people are angry at me, I believe there's a problem with my party being judgmental. Yeah, now that I've faced a consequence for my shit, I hate trans people even more. Yeah. It must be so hard to be Gavin Newsom. It's got to be tough. And betray your constituents to get the approval of a millennial right wing podcaster who goes around who still hates you. Touring college campuses to debate 17-year-olds. That must be so hard for you, Gavin. It's got to be tough. Got to be tough, Gavin. He did say in his podcast, His kid likes Charlie Kurt. Not surprising.

Maybe this is all just a ploy to be a cool dad. Yeah, I'm not surprised he sucks at being a dad. Yeah, Gavin Newsom exudes wants to be a cool dad. It's embarrassing. It reminds me that Jake Tapper just said his kid's not really into politics. He's just into World War II and gaming. Great. Part of World War II, Tapper.

Curious. Curious. Many such cases. Doesn't his kid want to be a cop? Is that Jake Tapper? Yeah, that makes sense. That sounds like Jake fucking Tappers kid. Yeah.

So look, earlier this week on Tuesday, President Trump shared a truth social post. A truth. Threatening to, yes, he re-truthed a post, threatening to withhold federal funding from California over the participation of this high school trans athlete in the upcoming California Interscholastic Federation State Track and Field Championships, right?

And he said that under the leadership of radical left Democrat Gavin New Scum, California continues to illegally allow men to play in women's sports. The governor himself said it is unfair, Trump wrote. First off, the fact that Gavin agreed with Charliana's podcast did nothing to change the rhetoric around him. He's still radical left Democrat Gavin Newscom because you can't make these people unhappy because it's not about fairness. It's about hurting people, right? You can fight this. The governor of Maine has been.

I wanted to talk about Maine, yes. Yeah. So Trump made this same threat to the state of Maine. when the governor of Maine refused to stop allowing trans people to compete in women's sports. And the administration attempted to freeze funds intended for a Maine child nutrition program. No more food for your kids because woke. No more food for poor kids because woke. And in response, the governor of Maine was like, all right, let's fucking go to the mat.

And they filed a lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Agriculture. And the Trump administration settled. Like, they backed down. They agreed to stop freezing the funds if Maine dropped the lawsuit, right? Like, as soon as Maine sued, Trump backed down, right? And rather than attempting to do that, even though there's ample evidence that the administration backs down. And to be fair, nothing against Maine, California's got a lot more weight to throw around. Yeah.

It's the fifth largest economy on the planet. They have some fucking hat behind them. And like, Newsom clearly has no moral principle other than advancing his own career and personal power and wealth, right? No. But, like, even if that is the case, it's so easy to be like, yeah, I'll fight him on this. I'll fight for the trans kids and get some, like, resistor points. But he's just too much of a fucking coward. The first rule of fighting these people is don't give them anything.

Don't treat them like people. They're monsters. They're scum. You fight them every step of the way, right? It doesn't matter what you feel about the issue. You never give pieces of shit like this a win, right? That's just not the way you fight them. This is the problem with people like Gavin

whose entire politics is just chasing the zeitgeist. So then when you interpret the zeitgeist as like swinging against your previously held progressive, DEI, woke, LGBTQ plus values, then you just go along with that swing and you actually don't even care about getting this points anymore because you think the culture is going in a different direction. And all you care about us being in the different direction.

and all you care about us being in the cultural zeitgeist, you don't actually stand for anything. Like, you're just nothing. Yeah, and everyone can see that. As opposed to understanding what Governor Frey of Maine understands, which is that, no, you stand there. You accept that the zeitgeist is a scream door, and it's going to bounce off of you

and back in another direction. If you stand for something, right? Gavin decided not to stand for something. And immediately after Trump made that tweet threatening to withhold funds from the state of California, Yeah. And, you know, the Department of Education has opened Title IV investigations into leagues that have allowed trans athletes, including CIF, which is California's high school government, a sports governing body. Right after Trump made this most recent truth, the CIF released a statement saying that it had made the decision to pilot an entry process for the championship that's coming up that will alter the way they hand out awards. It will expand qualification opportunities for biological female student athletes is the exact way that they have phrased this. And basically, what they're

going to be doing is giving an award for biological men, biological women, and then trans competitors, right? So there will be like three long jump awards. It's like a segregated scoring field. Yeah. It's, it's, it's, I guess you could say it's not as awful as trying to ban people, but also it's kind of like you're not even taking any kind of stance here. It's nothing. It's just, it's nothing. It's nothing. Now, Newsom's spokesperson, Izzy Garden, said CIF's proposed pilot is a reasonable, respectful way to navigate a complex issue without compromising competitive fairness.

The governor is encouraged by this thoughtful approach. And I should note here, this has done nothing to actually calm the right or get conservatives to back down, right? No, because they don't want trans kids competing at all. They don't want trans kids in public life. They don't want trans kids existing. Yes. And so, like, conservative Californians are still angry. You can't take them for their word for it. They don't care about fairness in sports. This is all about just eradicating transgenderism from public life.

Like, as Michael Knowles said at CPAC, like two years ago, like, that's what they actually care about. Yeah. And there's, you know, there's been a bunch of statements. Some Democrats and the legislative LGBTQ caucus have been like, well, Gavin's, you know, otherwise been a good ally, you know, for LGBTQ people. And I don't agree with, this is something that an assembly member, Chris Ward said. Basically, I don't agree with this particular move, but he's been a good ally for a long time. Has he, though? Has he though? Yeah. I mean, when it's convenient to him, I guess. I prefer caucus member Alex Lee said that Newsom was, quote, just commenting on how he personally feels.

He mentioned it on his dumb podcast. He never intended it to be a policy direction announcement. Hell, yeah. It is a dumb podcast. Yeah, yeah. I mean, you should be concerned that he has a dumb podcast where he demurizes trans people. Like, yeah. He signs vetoes all the time.

Again, I found a KCR article on this that quotes Republican Assemblywoman Kate Sanchez, who wrote a bill that would have banned trans athletes from competing in girls' high school sports earlier this year. And this is what she said about CIF's rule chains, pilot policy. It's incredibly weak. We're angry. We're pissed at this. How every day that goes by, no one is protecting our girls. This is inexcusable.

We need to have something done. Governor Newsome needs to pick aside, do something, do the right thing. So again, this gets you nothing with them, right? It benefits you not at all. There's another quote I want to read here from state senator Scott Weiner, who is the leader of the Senate budget committee, and again, a member of the LGBTQ Rights Caucus. Trump is now targeting California, just like he targeted Maine, threatening to withhold federal funds of California doesn't follow his illegal edicts targeting transgender people. California law protects trans people. That won't change.

Maine one in court, so will California. There's only one answer to a bully. No. And as main governor Janet Mills said, see you in court. Sorry, I got, I don't know why I said Governor Frey earlier. But anyway, the point here is that you have Californian legislators saying the right thing. And then you have fucking Newsom being like, no, no, no, actually, we're totally going to cave. And in a way that won't even make the Republicans happy, it's just frustrating to me that you do have Democrats trying to do the right thing here in California politics.

And Newsom absolutely having CIF do a run around on them. out of pure cowardice. Anyway, that's what I got. Get him out of there. Get him out of there. Fuck Gavin Newsom. We tried to, there was a recall,

but it was not for the right reasons. Yeah, the last time we recalled a California governor, it was a real mixed bag. Yeah. Speaking of a mixed bag. That's right.

And we're back. Okay, we're back. We're back. James, don't want to finish us up here? I do, Garrison. I would like that very much. I want to talk about a couple of things. I'm going to try and keep this fast.

I know it's already been a long episode. Let's start with ICE agents have been arresting people in immigration court around the country and placing them in expedited removal proceedings. If you want to know more about exactly what the expedited removal proceedings are and how they work, you can go back to our episode, which will evade the day before you hear this. And that would explain, and I talked to an immigration attorney there and explain a little bit more about how that works. This includes people whose cases were not dismissed. So previously it was reported that ICE was dismissing cases.

of people who had arrived less than two years ago and placing them under 240 expedited removal proceedings, apparently they are also detaining other people. I am not sure how that works. I have not seen any any justifications for this to give me an explanation for it. I'm not sure how much that matters anymore. These people are going to have to fight their removal from detention, which is obviously going to be a pretty unpleasant experience, right? Detention in these in these core civic or geo-group facilities is pretty bad. I'm aware of cases where ICE misidentified the person being detained, cuffed the wrong person. And I'm aware that there are Spectrum Services who are an ICE detention officer provider offices, at least outside some of these facilities, I believe also inside.

Spectrum services I've noticed have been posting a lot of job adverts recently. This is something I sometimes keep an eye on, right? Like right before the end of Title 42, I saw they were advertising for ICE contractors to, like, transport detainees, right? So this is sometimes a sign that bad things are afoot in the immigration world. I'm guessing in this case, it's either this or a plan to further expand detention capacity which is also something the Trump administration has been talking about, right? So they also, you know, have these various subjective orders authorizing more budget and the

budget bill or for anything more budget for detaining migrants. Secondly, the South Sudan case, right, we's covered this last week, DVD at Al versus Nome. We also covered it earlier in this week. If you go back to our episode, which aired on Wednesday, you can hear more about the sort of blow-by-blow timeline of that case. In the South Sudan case, the Trump administration seems to have gone directly to the Supreme Court to try and get an emergency stay on the injunction which afforded due to.

process rights to the migrants who are currently detained in Djibouti. The administration asked for a stay of the court's injunction. The court's injunction had given them 10 days to assert their reasonable fear of torture and then a further 15 days to ask to reopen their case if the Department of Homeland Security determined that fear not to be credible. Justice Supreme Court, Justice Jackson, has given the plaintiffs a week to respond to the United States. The DOJ's court, for a stay, right? So in practice, these people will still have that 10 days from the injunction to make their claim that they have a fear of torture, right? And South Sudan has said that if these people aren't South Sudanese, it will just return them to their country of citizenship.

So if the United States can't return them there because they have a fear of torture, it just seems like the whole South Sudan thing is just an end run around the Convention against torture, right? Their obligation not to return people to places where they will be tortured. Talking of returning people to places where they will be tortured, unfortunately, the Trump administration has deported 20 people to Myanmar. This is according to reporting in Myanmar now. I've also written about it on my page, Patreon page. I've linked both of those at the show notes, but it should be noted that Myanmar now broke the story and it's getting very little coverage in the United States. I can speculate as to why, but you probably don't need to hear

me to sort of join the dots there. This is atrocious. Robert and I have both spoken to people with extensive experience of detention in Myanmar. And like when we talk about the worst detention conditions in the world, we get to a point where it doesn't really make any sense for us to say like A is worse than B. Right, right. That this is worse than Sednaia or whatever, but it's on like the level, which was Assad's torture prison in Syria.

Yeah, Assad's butchery for human beings. Yeah. Like we're talking about that level. Yeah, like, I mean, things that I have heard, people have been electrocuted to death, people are waterboarded, people have acid poured in their mouths, bodies are found without organs, people are beaten to such an extent that their entire bodies are covered with bruises and contusions. Many times people will only know that their family member is detained when they disappear and then a few days later they get a call telling them to pick up the body. Conditions in Burmese hunter detention facilities. are atrocious. These people are currently being held at the Ong-TARPI interrogation centre. It appears at seven of the earliest,

so this has been happening since March. It appears that some of these people have been released. The rest are being held by SAC, that's the Burmese Hunter, military intelligence units, who will almost certainly torture them. Myanmar does have a temporary protected status, but I think I've seen a couple of posts about this,

so I just want to clarify, The TPS doesn't apply to people who entered after the TPS was granted or to people who have committed to certain crimes. We know that at least one of the men they returned had been convicted of a crime. Not all of these crimes are like particularly heinous felonies, right? You can do a certain number of misdemeanors and also be deported under a TPS. But I'm trying to find out who these people are. I know that you can't download our podcast in Myanmar, which is a huge dub for us. But, you know, I know a lot of Burmese, people do listen.

So, you know, if you have any particular insight into this, you could reach out to us. We'll drop the email address in a little bit here. It does seem very unlikely that these people will give in a chance to make a claim of fear of torture, right? Because it would be a very easy claim to make, given every major human rights organization on the planet has documented torture of detainees in Myanmar. I was just reading a report this morning about harassment of trans women in prisons in Myanmar. Myanmar. But the same thing goes for cis folks, for straight folks for everyone, right? No one, no one comes out of there the same they went in. Yeah. I can't believe that these people were given a chance to claim a credible fear because it would have been such an easy claim to make.

Yep. And they wouldn't have been returned there. So yeah, I wish this story was getting more reporting. I wish more people in the media in this country cared about Myanmar. But that's a drama I have been beating for four years now. And I think shit's going to change anytime soon. So I guess all there is to say is that I really appreciate those of you who do, expect of those of you who listen to the show and take an interest in all things, Myanmar. But yeah, if these people have been returned to a country that the US press was more familiar with, there'd be a lot more noise about this, but this is absolutely unconscionable.

Yeah. Yet these people will be tortured. It would not shock me if some of these people died. Yeah. Now, this is, I mean, there have been cases so far of, I think, at least seven of the people that have been sent over previously in the last, like, year or so by the US have been released from this prison. So it's not necessarily a death sentence, but for a good number of them, it will be. Right. Yeah. Especially since there are also Rohingya people

who will be deported in the near future and presumably directly back to the same place. Yeah. I mean, it's documented that people deported from Thailand are immediately conscripted and sent into the military, right? So if they get out of the prison, there's a good chance of that, especially if they're men, they will be, women do get conscripted to in Myanmar, but there's a good chance

if that will happen too. They've been conscripting a lot of Rohingya people. So yeah, the outcomes of this will be very poor. And, yeah,

the only way torture stops in Burma is when the revolution succeed and liberates to prisons. Like, there is no reasoning with the Burmese hunter.

Yep. That's a bad all I got. It's pretty fucked. Speaking of fucked, let's listen to the tariff song. There's no tariffs this week. No, fuck it.

Well, let's just listen to it and then have the end of the episode. Just gets a nice song. Let's just listen to it now. We don't have time to listen to it. This is the end of the episode. Wow, Garrison took it away from you. Complained to them online. That constant agist attacks on the clash have not stopped.

Sorry, fellas. All that money for nothing. We reported the news. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now. the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com,

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