Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 10/13/25: China US Trade War, Troops At Food Banks, MTG Flips On Trump Deportation, ICE Nabs Journalist

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss China threatening to nuke the US economy, troops line up at food banks, MTG turns on Trump deportation, ICE nabs journalist. To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.comMerch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls, came forward with a story. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight.

And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Shetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. I had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying.

I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me. I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Saga and Crystal here. Independent Media just played a truly massive role in this election, and we are so excited about what that means for the future of this show. This is the only place where you can find honest perspectives from the left and the right that simply does not exist anywhere else.

So if that is something that's important to you, please go to breakingpoints.com, become a member today, and you'll get access to our full shows, unedited, ad-free, and all put together for you every morning in your inbox. We need your help to build the future of independent news media, and we hope to see you at breaking points.com. Good morning, everybody. Happy Monday. Welcome to Breaking Points, a little lady's shows for you. Yeah, surprise. It was just a thing. We were ambushed by doing the lady's show, and we're happy to do it. Yes, indeed. We're always ready to step up with the lady's show. And there is a lot of news to get to this morning.

We got a China trade war. We got the government still shut down. We got ICE gone wild in Chicago and elsewhere. We've got Trump in Israel, and we're going to bring you some sassies just speaking, like right now as we're recording this. So we're going to process that. Bring you all of the news with regard to there's a whole bunch of stuff going on there. We're going to try to get to this story about whether or not there's going to be a Qatari airbase on U.S. soil, something Laura Lumer was very unhappy about, so that's an interesting one.

It is just an interesting story in general. What is actually happening? Pete Hegeseth himself had an issue of clarification, so we're going to break down actually the real story when we get to that block. Yeah, Hexseth said very clearly, they're going to have an airbase. And then they're like, fake news, they're not going to have an air base. The media is lying to you. Like, we're just literally trying to listen to what the Secretary of War is telling us here. Yes, but thank you for using his preferred, I was going to say pronoun, but preferred He identifies as the Secretary of Ward. Yeah, that's true.

That's true. And then we have to get in this block about Peter Thiel and his views on the Antichrist. I mean, this is an incredibly powerful, influential man because of his wealth, because of his involvement with variety of companies, because of his connection to the Trump administration. So when he's saying wild things, you kind of have to listen. And Washington Post got their hands on the audio of these four lectures, private lectures that he gave on the subject. on the subject of the Antichrist. We also pulled some clips of things that he's said publicly before, so we're going to dig into that a little bit.

Yeah, looking forward to it, Crystal, but let's start with China. Yeah, indeed. So a whole lot of things happened with regard to this on Friday, and the markets really tanked in reaction. So China announced export restrictions, so blocking us aggressively from these rare earth minerals, which are really critical, which could have a major impact. Trump then responded.

saying he was going to increase tariffs on China to 100% and impose additional restrictions on them as well. As I said, the market's tanks. There was a big reaction. Now we've got Trump kind of walking it back. So that's where we are this morning. Let's take a listen to J.D. Vance yesterday sounding off on this. I'll be honest with you, Maria.

It's going to be a delicate dance. And a lot of it is going to depend on how the Chinese respond. If they respond in a highly aggressive manner, I guarantee you that President of the United States has far more cards. than the People's Republic of China. If, however, they're willing to be reasonable, then Donald Trump is always willing to be a reasonable negotiator. We're going to find out a lot in the weeks to come

about whether China wants to start a trade war with us or whether they actually want to be reasonable. I hope they choose the path of reason. The President of the United States is going to defend America regardless. So let me go ahead and put the Trump Truth up on the screen where he initially announced his retaliatory actions. And to be clear, the Chinese are saying they were acting in retaliation to us changing some of the rules on our chips export restrictions. So they felt that we had violated a sort of verbal agreement that we had with them to just hold everything in place while a larger deal was being worked out.

That's why they upped their export controls on us. This is Trump announcing retaliation in response to that retaliation. So he says, it's just been learned China's taken an extraordinarily aggressive position. on trade in sending an extremely hostile letter to the world, stating they were going to effective November 1st impose large-scale export controls on virtually every product they make, and some not even made by them. This affects all countries, without exception, was obviously a plan devised by them years ago, absolutely unheard of an international trade, moral disgrace in dealing with other nations.

Based on the fact China has taken this unprecedented position, speaking only for the USA, not other nations who were similarly threatened, starting November 1st or sooner, depending the U.S. of A will impose a tariff of 100% on China over and above any tariff. They are currently paying also on November 1st. We will impose export controls on any and all critical software. Possible to believe China would have taken such an action, but they have and the rest is history. Thank you for your attention to this matter. And put A3 up on the screen that shows the extent of the stock market crash that we saw on Friday.

Now, as of this morning, right now, it is 809 a.m. so markets are not open, but futures, Emily, are up because Trump put out another truth saying that, you know, it would all work out and it'd be okay. Yeah, the CNBC headline right now. Dove futures jumped 300 points after Trump says China situation, quote, will all be fine. Everything's okay. He's got it completely under control. Crystal, there's no need to worry about it.

He did say in Air Force one en route to Israel and Egypt that November 1st to him is, you know, a long time away. Other people say it's really close, but for him, he says it's a long time away, projecting some confidence that he has trying to coming to the table on all of this. It's true. I mean, part of the true social, or actually, I'm sorry, this is part of what J.D. Vance says. It is true that it's not like we have zero leverage in the situation.

So there's, I mean, there are all kinds of things that can happen between now and then, but I don't know that I'm just, listen, I don't sell stocks, but Trump's saying, quote, everything will be fine. It's not exactly the confidence boosts. Yeah. Well, I think it's, I mean, the whole thing, kind of fits a pattern of what he's done in the past. In particular, some sort of something happening on Friday, some tariffs announced, markets reacting. But they're closed over the weekend. Over the weekend, they're closed. And then, lo and behold, before Monday comes around,

he makes some other comment that makes people, make people go, okay, I'm sure everything will be fine then. And, you know, the backdrop of this, of course, as we've been covering here, is that we likely have this gigantic AI bubble. The all but like 0.1% of, of our GDP growth has come from investment in AI and AI data centers. 80% of the growth in the stock market comes from these AI-related companies. So we're really betting the farm on this thing. And yet, you know, you've got all kinds of other economic indicators that for average people are going very poorly.

The stock market just continues to go up and up and up because of that bet on AI. And if we could put A7 up on the screen here in terms of how to think about this war between the U.S. and China with regard to trade. This is Arnaud Bertrand, who wrote about, okay, why is it that China is taking these actions now? We've long known about this, what he describes is the rare earth card, which they have very strategically, you know, been able to secure the ability, not just the access to the rare earth minerals, but the ability to refine them. They're really critical at all these technologies of the future.

So why haven't they really played this card before? And he says that one of the answers is actually helium. He looked into the fact that, you know, helium isn't, he says, just a party balloon gas, has plenty of industrial applications for things like quantum computing, rocket technology, MRI machines, coolant for chip, lithography, equipment, et cetera. And so they realized that they had a problem in terms of their own helium access. And so over years, they've made sure that they were able to diversify their access to helium, which is critical in a variety of things. And now they're at a point where 95% of the

helium that they use comes from sources other than the U.S. So now they're in a position where they can play this, what he describes as the rare earth card. He says, that's what most people don't realize. Power is not about intentions or rhetoric. It's about what you can actually do. Many wonder why countries almost never retaliate when the U.S. imposes sanctions or export controls. The answer is simple. They can't. They lack the alternatives, the technology, supply chains, China is the first country that systematically worked to eliminate every single pressure point with humongous efforts. It's not just helium. It's chips, energy, telecom, pharmaceuticals, et cetera. That's why the rare earth card can finally be played now, not because

China suddenly became aggressive, but because they have developed the capabilities to say no. And, Emily, I think this is such an incredible contrast between the Chinese system and the American system. So even putting, you know, Trump aside, first of all, in the American system, we tend to like to outsource to the markets. You know, if the markets don't think that if they can obtain helium or rare earths in a cheaper way that doesn't secure the supply line here from China. Yeah. From China specifically, then that's what will happen. And there's been very little over the past 30, 40 years, thoughtful industrial policy about, okay, these are things that are critical to our national security. These are the technologies that are going to be critical to the future. What can we do to

create a system where we are investing in those and make sure that we are leading in those? And then you couple that with under the Trump administration, they have some impulses in that direction. But they're also a bunch of fools and idiots who don't think three steps ahead. So they don't even think half a step ahead. I mean, the rare earth mineral thing is such an obvious problem for us. And yet Trump just barrels ahead full speed, putting random. tariffs on this country and that country and on China and these very aggressive postures that make us incredibly vulnerable in a way that was very, very predictable and very obvious. Chinese politics don't center around the immediate news cycle.

I mean, their politics is engineered over 100, 200-year cycles. And Donald Trump very much negotiates as though everything is this back and forth in a micro sense. I mean, like, he's more macro than other presidents, but he's micro in his negotiation. and that it's about the personal moment. The last time he spoke to Xi or the last communication that happened between the United States and China and what gets lost in all of that

and this is actually the point I was trying to make earlier about the stocks. It's that do I think that Trump might do a taco in this situation? Yeah, of course I think Trump might do a taco in this situation. What does that do to us, though in the long term? Does that solve any long-term problem

or is it a stopgap for Donald Trump to have this macro sense look like he's making progress on the industrial policy? But actually what he did was solve a micro-problem that you could argue he created by getting into this situation without a massive sort of long-term industrial policy in place. So, yeah, I mean, it's bleak. I think it's probably waking up. I mean, it's partially to your point, it's like we have the kind of worst of both-world situation right now where we don't have a super smart targeted government industrial policy on rare earth. But we do have our, like, predatory capitalists who will try.

to quickly make a buck off of this when they realized that Trump wants to see them doing it and that they probably have a lot of financial disincentives to decouple from China. But there are actually people in Trump's own administration that don't want a financial decoupling with China. Like this is the war inside the Trump administration right now too. So basically nobody has any idea in the big picture sense, like what a clear organized policy is going to look like. We don't have anything on the table right now.

Yeah, that's right. And I think, you know, zooming on a bit, it shows kind of like the promise and the parallel of a more planned economy. Yeah. Because the Chinese are executing this extremely well. You know, the amount, when you look at the number of people have been lifted out of poverty over the past number of decades, overwhelmingly, that is because of growth in China. Like the number of their rapid economic growth and the number of their own people that

they've been able to lift out of poverty is truly like one of the great economic miracles of in history. And not in any small part by persuading us to trade with them more and more. That was a big part of it. They looked at, first of all, they rejected the path that we, you know, pushed on, like, the former Soviet Union of, like, this neoliberal shock doctrine, saw that that did not go well and explicitly rejected that path and understood the global international system well enough to basically sort of use it and for their own ends, right, to exploit the loopholes in it,

to use it for their own ends and have had this incredibly intelligent, strategic policy, plans, and not to say that everything is rosy and it's all perfect and they don't have their own economic challenges to deal with that is certainly the case. But we can see, you know, the way that their solar energy and renewable energy is coming online, we can see the way that their EV industry has developed and is way more advanced at this point than ours is. We can see the way that they are, you know, at least even with us in terms of AI development, you know, all of these areas that we used to feel like, oh, well, they can just copy our tech after we put out there. So we're always at the bleeding edge. That is no longer the case. Right. In terms of

China. So they've been able to accomplish something that is extraordinary because it's been driven by the top and it also has been extremely intelligent. And then with the Trump administration, you do have this impulse towards more of, you know, top-down government control. But it's done in this totally haphazard way with no forethought and no long-term planning. I mean, part of that is just the nature of the American system where you get in office for four years and then you're tossed down again. But it also is because, you know, they have gone about this in such a, you know, slap shot manner. Just thinking back to that original tariff announcement with all the, you know, countries listed and some of it didn't make sense and incorrect and tariffing islands that only

have penguins on it or whatever, like the polar opposite of the intelligent, strategic, thought out direction that you would want to go. And meanwhile, they're actively kneecapping the industries of the future. I mean, They don't have, you know, typically Republicans have said they have an all of the above energy strategy. They are actively hostile towards renewable energy while China is, you know, racing ahead in that field. So I think it's an incredible contrast between the, you know, the approaches of the two countries and the perils not only of neoliberalism, but it's stupidly done planning from the top. Yeah, I mean, some of the people who push the renewables have made it hard to mine rare earths in places like Alaska. Like, there's some of that going on at the same time.

it's the strongest critique of industrial policy is that it becomes crony capitalism and that crony capitalism not only is immoral but it's also inefficient. And when Trump was pitching this industrial policy, you know, planning Liberation Day, nobody knew exactly what it would look like. The warning from the like boomer cons and neolibs

was industrial policy is chronic, like industrial policy just becomes inefficient. It's crony capitalist, it's inefficient. And then all of the industrial policy, people like Sagar and you're like, well, there's a way that this can be done. Right. That actually makes a lot of sense. And then Trump just, like, has completely explicitly shown it's basically crony capital. Like, he has a system of crony capitalism that we haven't seen fully in fruition because he's still going back and forth on a lot of the stuff, like the China stuff right now.

Like, it's happening right now. And liberation day was April. So we don't know exactly what the legacy of the Trump tariff. is going to look like because we have no idea day to day where he lands with individual countries, including massive ones like China. Is he going to capitulate in ways that make no sense to the United States? Is he going to crack down on a way that's hawkish and puts us in? We genuinely do not know because so much of it depends on who he talks to last.

Yeah. What kind of deal they're making? I mean, it's actually like the AI announcement early in his presidency where he had Sam Altman behind, like inconceivable a year ago during his. campaign, or let's say a year and a half ago during the campaign, that he would be giving so much away to people who were brutally opposed to him in many ways for years. And there he was. So it's all haphazard. It's all completely haphazard. To your crony capitalism point, it very much appears that there were somebody who made

millions and millions of dollars insider trading on crypto in particular. People are tracking these wallets that, you know, were trading just before this 100% tariff announcement was made. par for the course for this administration. Not shocking. It's barely even worth a mention because that's just how, that's just the crony capitalist nature of this administration. He is validating some of the criticisms of libertarians that is truly unforgivable. So we can never forgive for that, Emily. But it's not as though, I mean, like everyone knows that can happen and that can go wrong, right? Like everyone knows that. But Trump is, especially more in his first term,

but in his second term, he's just been surrounded by the business community. and he enjoys so much having industry kiss the ring. And they weren't doing it at all in his first term. So he wasn't even in a position to make deals with these guys. And it's a way for him, he loves power. And that's a way for, there's nothing he loves more than, you know, people showing up, Tim Cook showing up at the White House with a gold bar for him and, you know, or Mark Zuckerberg being like, oh, sir, did I'd say the right dollar amount that you wanted me to say

in terms of our investment in the U.S. and being able to have that direct line and really consolidate this, you know, system of oligarchs who surround him. Meanwhile, you know, excuse me, very relevant to this. You can put A8 up on the screen. This is what I was referring to before. I mean, so much of our economy is literally just AI. Without data centers, GDP growth was 0.1% in the first half of 2025. Good Lord. Financial Times had a great headline that was something like the U.S. is now just one big bet on AI. And that is increasingly the case. This will become relevant again in our final block on Peter Thiel and the Antichrist, because his whole theory is that anyone

who opposes this is actually like either the Antichrist or like in league with the Antichrist. But he's also like conceding, it's a bet, you know, it's a gamble. Yeah, he says it's dangerous, but it's more dangerous to not do it. That's his position. So, so that's where we are. And we can take a look at 810. Just US dollar, you know, it continues to decline precipitously this year. All sorts of, you know, troubling economic indicators.

The U.S. dollar piece, and also Saga and I covered last week, the extraordinary rise of gold is a incredibly significant development because effectively what the world is saying is U.S. dollar, U.S. Treasuries, you guys are no longer the safe haven. We are going to gold. We're going to hard metals. We're going to find somewhere else that is, you know, a place to hedge our bets against this massive, likely AI bubble that we can see inflating. So that is why that is very significant. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yep. And, I mean, this is, I'm on CNBC again right here. Retaliation or escalation, this is the headline. Trust between the U.S. and China is fading fast, analysts say.

The root cause of attention is due to a lack of mutual trust. This is what we were getting at before, Kirstle, it was like utterly unpredictable because, and like I made the argument early after Liberation Day that the unpredictability was leveraged to an extent. And I think that would have been true. But now the unpredictability has people betting very clear. Clearly, in the long term, a lot of these bets are being placed with countries outside of the United States, with supply chains outside of the United States, not all of them, but a lot of them are enough that it should actually be genuinely concerning for us because this lack of, quote, mutual trust, well, it's not just between the United States and China. It's between our other trading partners in the United States. Yeah, that's right.

And they have to trust the relationship between the United States and China. They have to trust what the policy looks like is clear in one direction or the other. And really just like, even at this point, how many. months since April is people don't know and people have to make money they have to make business decisions and here we are yeah um we're gonna keep our eye on all of this which is my gold by the way going up and up yeah and we're going to continue to keep our eye on all of this including the AI piece of this because I really feel it is an undercover like bubbling populist issue both from the standpoint of you know where these data centers are being located and some of the battles with locals who don't want them there or after they're there are very upset about the fallout from that. And then the spiking electricity prices, which is just, you know, that is

like, surest way to get some sort of a populist backlash as if you make it more and more expensive for people just to be able to, like, have the basics of living their lives. Maybe it's possible that six months for now Trump has worked out some type of, like, massive deal with China and things are clearer and make more sense. But right now, It doesn't look like that's where this is going. I get it. I get why Trump allies, Trump supporters would say just like trust the process. But for people outside of Trump circles, somebody trusts the process right now,

especially not we're going to show the clip of Marjorie Taylor Green on Tim Dillon as people's livelihoods are being like directly and obviously affected in material ways. Yeah, she's a bit of a canary in the coal mine, I'd say. Yeah, the extent to which people are willing to quote, trust the process at this point is obviously. I mean, even people who were like Trump curious independence, they're going to have a serious problem unless there's, again, to your point, Crystal, a clear, concrete industrial policy, deal with China, deal with other major, major trading partners that is coherent and makes sense. That's going to be really difficult for them to sell heading into the midterms unless that changes. All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know.

A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happen to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season at free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Power struggles,

shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream.

It was a battlefield. Book, book, book, make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed. Till this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty.

Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless, ambitious. Listen to Model Wars on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed wrong. robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said this isn't a joke.

And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Speaking of dysfunctional government, the government is still shut down.

And there's a big looming question about the troops getting paid. Trump is saying that he is secured funding for them sort of outside of congressional channels in order to make sure that they get this next paycheck. In the meanwhile, you know, there's a lot of concern and a lot of struggle already. You can take a look at the number of service members lined up in this local food bank. Let's look at that. There is quite a bit of military members and their families in line because of this government shutdown. We're in day nine of it.

And they're here for a food pantry. There's all sorts of food that is available. And I spoke with some military member spouses. And I spoke with some department heads here at the ASYM. MCA on why this is so important. What's the difference in the amount of people that you've seen from today to previously? So when we first started coming, there definitely wasn't this amount of people. It was a lot, but it wasn't this amount to where it wrapped around the building. But lately it has been a lot like we were here last week and we were in line for like two hours. In a normal week, we usually run out of

food about 1 o'clock in the afternoon. Last week we ran out of food about 10.30. Reminder there too that the number of service members who live paycheck to paycheck. And when they saw, like, oh, shoot, we may not get paid because Congress made no provision for that. Such a good point. You know, are like, we better take advantage of whatever resources we possibly can. Let me go ahead and put Trump's truth up on the screen talking about how he's going to pay the troops. He says Chuck Schumer recently said every day gets better during their radical left shutdown. I disagree. If nothing is done because of leader, he puts that in quotes, fair enough. Chuck Schumer and the Democrats, our brave troops will miss the paychecks they're rightfully due on October.

15th. That is why I'm using my authority as Commander-in-Chief to direct our Secretary of War, Pete Heggseth, to use all available funds to get our troops paid on October 15th. We have identified funds to do this. Secretary Hegstaff will use them to pay our troops. I'll not allow the Democrats to hold our military and the entire security of our nation hostage with their dangerous government shutdown. Radical left Democrats should open the government. Then we can work together to address health care. Many of the things they want to destroy. Thank you for your attention to this matter. So he's saying they've, you know, found some funds that they can move around to be able to get this next paycheck out to the troops. And, but, you know, I mean, that's certainly

a band-aid at this point and no telling whether or not that would continue to work at the next paycheck if this thing continues indefinitely. And meanwhile, many federal government, every other federal government worker is not getting paid. And Russ Vote put out, floated the idea that maybe they wouldn't even get that back pay. This is obviously, you know, you're playing with people's lives, first of all. And second of all, federal government is the largest employer in the country. So this also has major potential economic ramifications. Yeah. And I mean, Democrats right now, what is their incentive to come to the table and Republicans' incentive to come to the table, like both of them feel as though the stronger

incentive is to stay away from actually negotiating and open the government. And I think the political incentive for Democrats are strong. I'm not convinced that they're actually. You probably agree with this, my suspicion, that they're, I'm not convinced they're making the most of the politics. And I'm saying that, like, downstream or secondary to the substance, which is obviously there are people who are not getting paid. And Rush vote is using this. I mean, I think, according to a court filing on Friday, there have already been 4,000 layoffs of federal workers. So from the perspective of, like, average Normie Democrat, it's starting to look dire for how Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries, I mean, if, if I, if I average normie Democrat, I would have zero confidence in either Chuck Schumer or Hakeem Jeffries at this point at all, both on the politics and on the substance. Republicans probably understand that they're going to take the blame in the media for what happens. And to some extent, they want the blame. Like Russ Vote wants to say, yeah, we are the ones who got rid of the 4,000 federal government employees. So, I mean, I don't think they're super concerned about that, but it seems as though Democrats have absolutely no plan to get out of the.

the shutdown either, because they're the ones withholding the votes. I mean, they're the ones who, if they vote, if they decide to vote on the CR, whether it's the clean CR, or whether they come to the table on health care, fine, but there seems to be nothing in the works for that either. Yeah. I think the Democrats feel pretty strong in their position right now, because, first of all, all the polling that's come out, and I mean, it's logical. Republicans control government, and so they're shouldering most of the blame for the shutdown. Totally. And then they, you know, they certainly feel pressured from their base, like, y'all got to stand up. You've got to do something.

They look so dumb when they're trying to stand up. Like, I agree. Yeah, they're not great at it. They're definitely not great at it. And then you have, you know, the substance of what they're fighting on, these health care cuts and, you know, the subsidies that are going to go away. And this is something else Marjorie Taylor Green has been talking about. They feel they're on very strong footing there, especially maybe in particular because the vast majority of the recipients of those Obamacare subsidies are in red states. red states that didn't expand, do the Medicaid expansion. Now, so now you have, you know,

disproportionate number of the Trump coalition who are dependent on these health care subsidies for whom health care is just going to, I mean, the amount of premiums is going to go up. It's going to be insane. And you had Trump even say something about, you know, we got to deal with this health care thing, which I think they also took as a little bit of a crack in the edifice. You've got Marjorie Taylor Green out there as a major crack in the edifice. So I think they feel like they're on very strong ground here, to your point about, like, I don't see any sign. I was expecting, and I actually think from the beginning there was reporting about how Chuck Schumer was looking for some kind of an out. And then the majority, not just the Democratic base, but the actual Democrats in Congress were like, what the fuck, dude?

Like, no, you cannot, we are not down. We have to actually fight this. And especially with, you know, they're not, the Democrats in D.C. aren't connecting this fight to like what's happening in Chicago, what's happening in Portland. But the base very much feels activated. Of course. By seeing those images as well, and it's like, you can't fund this government. Like, they're threatening the Insurrection Act. You cannot fund these people.

So, yeah, I don't see any sign that they're going to back down. And then the part with the layoffs is kind of, I mean, it's terrible. It's also kind of politically interesting. We put B3 up on the screen, Russ vote making this announcement. The rifts have begun. And for those who aren't in the no, rifts are reductions in force, which is D.C. speak for firing people. That's what's going on. And we had, as Emily mentioned, put B5.

Actually, up on the screen first, you had some 4,000 workers who were announced as part of these rifts. You can see the most coming actually from Treasury and then from HHS. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a moment. Commerce, education, that's another significant one, energy and housing and urban development and homeland security. That's where these layoffs are coming from. Now, they could be challenged in courts because there are limits to layoffs that you can do during government shutdowns. you're actually supposed to be more constrained during government shutdowns about the people that you can lay off. So court challenges could be coming to that.

But we can put B4 up on the screen. One of the places I mentioned HHS was really hit hard. More than 1,000 CDC staff originally received layoff notices during the government shutdown. And, you know, some of these are really the type of people that I would think that you would want around. They said, including in units that respond to infectious disease outbreaks, analyze science and health data to policy, monitoring. the safety of employees. Among those who initially received those layoff notices was leaders of the CDC's response to the growing number of measles cases in the U.S. and abroad, including one official has more than 28 years experience overseeing a dozen federal agencies that have responded

to outbreaks of Ebola, Marburg virus, and Mpox in Africa over the years. Well, lo and behold, after this mass layoff, the Trump administration realized, like, you know, some of these people, maybe this is going to be a problem for us if we keep them laid off. So we can put the next element back on the screen. Some of them were brought back on Saturday. Trump administration raced to rescind layoffs of hundreds of scientists at the CDC, who were mistakenly fired on Friday night and what appeared to be a substantial procedural lapse. Among those rapidly wrongly dismissed were the top two leaders of that federal measles response team,

those working to contain Ebola in Congo, members of the epidemic. intelligence service and the team that assembles the CDC's wanted scientific journal. The reason I think this is interesting, Emily, is obviously I want these people to be doing their jobs containing measles and Ebola and whatnot. But also, the political assumption from the Republicans is that these layoffs are just meant to hurt Democrats. Yeah. Democrats like the CDC, Democrats like the Department of Education. So if we make these cuts, that just hurts them. It's like, well, yeah, they don't want government workers to be laid off, but this is still your government. Like, this is your administration.

that you're gutting and defenestrating and make it impossible to, you know, respond to crises like the measles crisis or, you know, potential hurricane response and things like that. So it's not, it doesn't all cut in the direction of Democrats being upset about this. This also creates additional political problems for the Trump administration. We could see that from the fallout from Doge. Like, there's a reason that Doge kind of ran aground because the cuts felt cruel. It was clear to people that you were hurting services that they were. lied on. And so it came with the political price for Republicans as well. Yeah, it'll definitely have a

political price. I mean, it's unclear to me whether these will survive in court. I think the law is actually like pretty, I could genuinely see it being interpreted one or the other. I don't have like the full precedent in front of me. Yeah, I'm not an expert on it either. But yeah, I don't want I dug into it. It's like you understand why if you're Russ vote and you have a sort of long time ideological commitment to shrinking the size of the federal government. You look at that and you can say, actually, this is a law that could be used in one way or the other. That's where your point about the political consequences, it's where you're seeing Trump move

really quickly on getting the troops paid, for example. Like, that's happening right away immediately. But the reason that Elon's no longer part of Doge is that people felt that his approach to it was totally haphazard, which obviously it was and ineffective. And everyone sort of secretly wanted Russ Vote to be the one who was doing some version of Doge. And here, because of the shutdown and because of the law, that demands the government actually reduce the spending. If there's a shutdown, then it's sort of like, hey, here's the opportunity for Russ Vote to do some type of Doge 2.0. So, I mean, his argument is that you can reduce these, like that it won't defenestrate the administration because these are reductive positions.

and all of that. But right now, I think it's actually unclear as to whether this is a negotiating tactic to squeeze Democrats to come to the table or if it's, they actually think this will survive in court. I don't know, because when I look at the law, I think this actually could survive in court. But, I mean, the Supreme Court has given them

everything they've wanted, by and large, up to this point anyway, mostly through... Nobody's really ever done this. Mostly through the shadow talk, but, you know, in terms of, like, the Department of Education, which we could put B7 up on the screen. They, you know, they, as part of these rifts, they got rid of the entire special education department,

which really, I mean, that really bothers me. And I don't know, I was just thinking back Emily of like the Sarah Palin era Republicans where they made, you know, children with disabilities like a real priority. And, you know, as a pushback to what they would see as like the eugenics policies of pro-choice people and then, you know, the argument that a lot of,

of babies with disabilities are aborted. And so there was this emphasis on so we have to take care of these, you know, these children whose lives are just as valuable and just as important as anyone else. So I don't know, this does really, really bother me. But the thing that I would say about the overall cuts and whether they'll be able to get away with it, I mean, I think they probably will because they had already got to the Department of Education and said that they're basically, like, winding it down. Well, you, like, it's very obvious legally in the past, that would not be allowed.

This is an agency. It was created by an act of Congress. It can't be destroyed without another act of Congress. But the Supreme Court has not ruled on the merits on these things, but it basically said, well, for now you can do it. And that just may, that basically means you can do it. And so I would expect it to be something similar here. You know, they've done something similar with regard to what's called rescission. So basically the administration not wanting to spend funds that were congressionally appropriated. And so, the Supreme Court hasn't ruled on the merits of that. That's a big one. But they're just letting the administration go forward with it, using the shadow docket to not really make a decision, but let them have a free hand to do whatever it is they want, which also sort of screws up the ability to make any sort of deal with Democrats. Because based on the current legal landscape, Trump could come, oh, sure, I'll give you your health care subsidies.

And then they, you know, fund the government and go back to work. And then it's like, no, we're actually not going to. to do that. And there's nothing to stop him from that because of the Supreme Court basically abdicating their duty to rule on these cases. So it does also make it, you know, complicated in terms of striking a deal. One other thing I'll say about I think the way Democrats are looking at this is yes, Doge has sort of run aground. Yes, there had been less energy around gutting the federal workforce over the past couple of weeks. But it's not like that any of that had stopped. We just had the 100,000 workers who took the fork of the road deal, you know, officially resign. What was that a week ago? So I think

Democrats, I don't think this threat is as effective because they feel like, well, y'all were doing this anyway. Like, there was nothing stopping you from doing this anyway. This was all what was going on anyway. So, okay, you cut 4,000 more people. That's terrible. That looks really bad for you. But we don't particularly feel more pressure around that. Yeah. And I mean, as long as, to your point about Democrats feeling confident in their leverage or the reason that they're holding out on the shutdown because it's these health care subsidies that, as Marjorie Taylor Green has been saying, and we actually have this video, right, Crystal, that we'll play it. We'll play the Marjorie Taylor Green video in I think the next block.

We have her on immigration. We didn't pull her health care part, but yeah. So she was on Tim Dillon over the weekend, basically, and fleshed out more of this point that she's been making on CNN and other places about why the Trump administration is sort of, you missing the big picture of the day-to-day average American chooses her own kids as an example who are going to see their premiums double because of the Biden 2021 subsidies being lapsing at the end of the year expiring at the end of the year that like the for the average person it kind of sounded like she had been listening to our shows to be honest crystal because

the point that she makes is she should get on our show she should invitations open that's right it's in the inbox but and the DM box actually but um all that is to say this argument about short-term with the promise of a long-term fix, like some long-term, like, Republicans eventually will have the structural free market fix to health care, just, you know, trust the Republican Party, let those subsidies lapse, pay double in your monthly premiums, everything's going, like, that is an insane argument to make. Yeah. On the other hand, for Republicans to come to the table with Democrats on health care subsidies

for non-citizens is also, like, Republicans are not going to do that. They've zero incentive to do that. So until Democrats drop that, nobody has incentive to come to. to the table right now. So everything is pointing to a continuing shutdown going further and further. And some of it, like, for example, the special education cuts, they are trying to transition the Department of Education basically. It was already, the bulk of what it was doing was administering grants and like overseeing civil rights. Civil rights stuff is going to DOJ. Overseeing of the grants, including these special education grants, goes to the Treasury Department. So again, in theory,

but that hasn't happened yet. And I was going to say, yeah, I was going to say like with the same thing with what we were talking about the tariff policy earlier in the show, which is that, like, in theory, there is a way to do this. That is coherent and makes sense. And would be a bitter pill for the neoliberal to swallow. And in the same way with, like, the theory of Doge could be a bitter pill for, like, the, I don't know, the federal unions to swallow and the, quote, swamp to swallow and all of that. But then you have to actually see it working in a way that makes sense.

Well, and actually, Treasury was the department that got cut the most. they're administering the grants now and now they have a few people to administer the grants. You're people to be able to do that. Yes. Let me just play this last piece from Speaker Mike Johnson

because this will actually set us up well for some of the stuff that's going on in Chicago talking about the Democrats and describing, so there's this upcoming, there's a No Kings protest 2.0 coming up that they're trying to classify

as some sort of like domestic terror event. Now, we covered the No Kings protest here last time, very large, very widespread, entirely peaceful. There were zero acts of even like property damage, at least that I'm aware of. And it was mostly actually kind of like, it was sort of like boomer Democrats more. It was less, you know, most of the youthful energy on the left is around, has been around Palestine. This was more of, I guess, the kind of like traditional like backbone of the Democratic Party type of people.

Not Antifa, I guess is what I'm trying to say. It was sort of women's marchy. Yeah, yeah, that's a good way of describing. In any case, here's Speaker Mike Johnson describing this total, like, live resistance protest as being a hate America rally. We're so angry about it. I mean, I, you know, I'm a very patient guy, but I have had it with these people. They're playing games with real people's lives. The theory we have right now, they have a hate America rally that's scheduled for October 18th on the National Mall.

It's all the pro-Hamas wing and the, you know, the Antifa people. they're all coming out. Some of the House Democrats are selling t-shirts for the event. And it's being told to us that they won't be able to reopen the government until after that rally because they can't face their rabid base. Hate America rally. That's how he's classifying it. I mean, from a political standpoint, it makes complete sense that this is how Republicans are spinning it. It's funny for me because Mike Johnson is, like, he was kind of Freedom Caucus adjacent. And Republicans, like, this is all tongue and cheek because they were the,

ones who were intentionally shutting down the government and defending it for years by withholding their votes. And that's technically the argument for blaming Republicans for government shutdowns over the last 10 plus years has been that they were the ones withholding their votes, which is a fair criteria if you apply it across the board. Now, the media has not applied it across the board in the case with Democrats. It's not to say that anybody, like there are different arguments for shutting down the government. I have said over and over again that the incentive for Democrats to shut down the government here. We were just talking about this. Crystal is absolutely obvious.

It's inarguable. It would have been stupid for them to come to the table and make a deal right away from a political standpoint. That would have been stupid. I thought the same thing about Republicans during the Tea Party years. It's just funny then to see Republicans have the moral high ground, like play act as though they have the moral high ground.

It'd be like, listen, very important things are just people need the federal government to work. It's very reckless and irresponsible to close down the federal government. They're not the best messengers for that while they're like, and we're cutting pediatric. cancer research, by the way. I mean, it's just like, they, it's so stupid.

Like, it's also, it's just shutdowns are the dumbest thing in government. It makes us look so stupid. I mean, it's also, like, I don't know, from the Republicans' perspective, I'm also sort of like, why don't you just give them the health care subsidies? Like, this is a political, major political problem for Republicans. The Trump's pollster, Fabrizio, said, you have a looming major issue with this. Yep. And so, you know, they, I think, again, Marjorie Chela Green, I'm sure it's not the only one

who recognizes, we ran, I think Trump really genuinely won primarily on cost of living, right? That was the, you know, there were others just too. We're about to talk about immigration, whatever. There were other things. But it was like, things are too expensive. My life has gotten worse because I cannot afford the groceries, the way that I used to, I can't afford the rent. I can never buy a house. Like, the cost of living crisis really animated his election. And you are going in the polar opposite direction of that. Like, People's premiums are millions of people's premiums are about to spike. A lot, millions of people will not be able to afford health care if these subsidies, you know, are taken away.

And you already had the cuts from the big, beautiful bill that's going to kick millions of people, have the effect of kicking millions of people off of Medicaid. So what are you doing here? And by the way, you know, obviously the tariffs that we talked about before, like also cut in the opposite direction of making life more affordable for your average person. So it is a major political liability here that, in a sense, Democrats are like trying to save them from themselves on, but they're so adamant about not giving even the appearance of a win to Democrats that they're unwilling to, you know, their line is basically like, oh, sure, we'll deal with that. But first, you have to fund the government. And I think for most people to the extent that they're tuned into this, like the ins and outs of this at all, or like, well, that doesn't mean, why not just deal with it now, right? Why do we have to wait and take your word for it, which Democrats are definitely not going to take their word, that they're then going to negotiate and fix this problem down the road? Well, Republicans, one thing that they have to be really careful about, because if this is the political conclusion of the shutdown, is like, again, I think Republicans would be insane to give Dems what they want right now on this question of subsidies, any subsidies going to non-citizens just because the non-citizen population has particularly exploded in the last few years.

And the Republican basically be furious about that. So the political incentives are not aligned for them to come to the table on that. What Democrats can do after it feels like this thing is running its course is come to the table and say, we would, we want Republicans. We want to agree with Republicans that we need these health care subsidies almost just going to U.S. citizens. Like, of course, like that is a responsible thing to do. And then it will just be about the subsidies. As soon as Dems given on that, it's just going to be Republicans looking like they're saying,

no to those subsidies. And so when that moment comes, it's serious, like, that could be genuinely, I think shutdowns don't matter in the midterms, yes? Yeah. But as soon as people's premium spike next year, DEMS will have a huge talking point over and over again that this is what it was about. Yeah. On the point that you were making about Trump winning on cost of living, another thing the right forgets is that a lot of the cultural stuff was combined with the cost of living stuff because it made Dems look frivolous to be talking about identity politics. That's a good point. When people were struggling. That's a great point. And so it gets to that again, we're like, yes, a lot of the country, some of these things are like 80, 20 issues on culture stuff. But if you look like

you're obsessed with culture stuff and not obsessed with cost of living stuff, which is what the does look like under Biden, that does become a problem. If you look like you're obsessed with these like ideological, generational ideological goals of like defenestrating the administrative state that don't register with normy voters outside of your hardcore base, that is a problem. And And so it's, I mean, they should be aware that Dems probably will come to the table on that question of health care for people who are here and, like, the specifics we don't have to get into. But I think Dems will come to the table on that.

And then the onus will be on Republicans to just hold out on the subsidies. Yeah. Good luck on that one. Yeah. Yeah. Well, we'll say, I don't know. It's unclear to me how this one is going to play out and who's going to break because I think the incentives for both parties are to be.

basically continue in the same direction they're going. 100%. Maybe they can, maybe they'll do like skinny bills or something. I have no idea. But good luck to everyone. Our government can't function. And that's the fun thing about these shutdowns. It's just always such a reminder of the way that we fund our government structurally is ridiculous. Mike Johnson was on that side. He was like, we're not doing CRs anymore. Great. That sounds good. Like I was like, oh, great. Thank you, Mike. Here we are. Yeah. Yeah. And the other thing we love about covering shutdowns is how much like capital beltway, like insider language we're forced to talking about rifts and CRs and skinny bills.

It's like, yeah. Oh, wait, I should mention, Chuck Schumer had another just completely idiotic tweet where he said like riff, Russell, vote. It's like, this is done leadership right now. It is so pathetic. They have such a gift in front of them. I mean, poor Bernie. Like, the man cannot rest.

They're like, you can do this. Like, you're good at messaging on this. Like, just go do your thing. Yeah. Yeah, these, he and AOC are really carrying the load for decent messaging here. They're incapable. Hakeem Schumer, Hakeemperse and Shook Schumer are incapable of carrying the torch. Incapable.

All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people, and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve, this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, And I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find.

I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn or any of that other stuff that y'all said. They literally made me say that I took a match and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals. There's no integrity. There's no loyalty. That's all gone. In the 1980s, modeling wasn't just a dream. It was a battlefield. Book, book, book, book, make deals. Let's get models in. Let's get them out. And the models themselves? They carried scars that never fully healed. Until this day, honestly, if I see a measuring tape, I freak out. The Model Wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty.

Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatis, this is the untold story of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight, I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old.

And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down, and I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, Okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother try to solve my problems through hypnotism. We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super charming all the time.

Being more able to look people in the eye. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to heavyweight on the iHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, let's get to MTV, who we've teased like a million times here now. And I pulled this one I thought was particularly interesting because she said a lot at this point about,

you know, she's obviously talked about the Epstein files. She's talked about the horror in Gaza and describing it as a genocide. She's talked about health care in the context of the shutdown and insurance premiums going up and that market being broken. But this was the first time that I'd seen her

create any daylight between herself and the Trump administration with regard to their immigration policy. and I found that to be really noteworthy. Let's go ahead and take a listen to a little bit of Marjorie Taylor Green with Tim Dillon. As a conservative and as a business owner in the construction industry and as a realist, I can say we have to do something about labor and that needs to be a smarter plan than just rounding up every single person and deporting them just like that.

And I'm going to get pushed back on that, but I'm just living in reality from here on out. Yeah. And if I'm, if anybody's mad at me for saying the truth, then I'm sorry. I'm curious, Emily, what you made of her comments because I know we, we both watch the whole thing. And she said, look, we have to live in reality. The truth of the matter is that over decades, our workforce has been built around this like, these are my words, not hers, but this like exploitable, undocumented population. And you can't just flip a switch and expect this all to like work out. And she also expressed, like Tim Dillon was talking about, you know, this is, horrible to see. I said, like, high school graduations, pulling people out, and she's like,

yeah, that is hard to watch. So he was expressing Moral Horan. She sort of took it to, you know, my experience in the construction industry is like, this is just not really realistic what we're doing here, which I thought was kind of interesting. Yeah, and people are sharing that clip without having, I think, watched the full version of it. Their conversation was real, like, I would recommend the full episode of Tim Dillon's show to people who are curious because it's a very interesting conversation. It gets to a lot of the theme that we've been hitting on over and over in the show, which is that even if some of MAGA's kind of, quote, drain the swamp policies are ideologically defensible or coherent from a populist perspective, the execution of them is, it's process

versus direction. And when the process is annoying Marjorie Taylor Green to the point where she's questioning whether the direction is worth it, whether it's no squish, certainly on immigration. at all. And so this clip is getting taken as Marjorie Taylor Green saying, listen, labor costs are getting too high. And that's actually not what she was saying. She was saying the problem is that right now there has been no off ramp. She uses the phrase off ramp very specifically. Another reason I think she listens to our show because we use that phrase all of the time that like if you don't have an off ramp here, then the policy end goal. I mean, when you think about millions of new people entering the labor force in three years, I think the neolubs are insane to just so that had zero influence on wages, especially at like the bottom, particularly, maybe exclusively at the bottom wage tier. Like, I think that's just obvious that it probably did. Although, in fairness, actually, during the Biden administration, the lowest wage tier was the group of people who were seeing their wages increase the most towards the end

of the Biden administration that were outpacing inflation. That has now reversed in the Trump administration. And I would argue probably a lot of that was from Biden subsidies. I'm sure that is definitely part of it. But it cuts against the argument that having, you know, a larger number of undocumented immigrants was like a massive problem. Now, I do think it's an issue when you have people who are being paid under the table because, yeah, they will be, they'll be cheap, they'll be exploitable. You won't have to adhere to labor laws. That's why I think people need to be brought on in the shadows.

That's, you know, my solution to that problem. But I think, you know, your point is a salient one. She's just basically saying like, hey, we have to have a process that makes sense that's coherent. She's not saying, yes, please bring in millions of more workers that can undercut American wages. She's just saying, if you're going to do the thing, do it in a way that makes sense. Which, again, we've talked about that today with tariffs. We've talked about that today with China policy. Like, it's obviously the – and we've talked about that with Doge.

It's the recurring theme is that, like, even if you are an ideological conservative, the process, the haphazard process over the first 10 months of the second Trump administration is even wearing on. Marjorie Taylor Green, who is not, she says this very clear. She's like she has not wavered one bit on these policy ends. It's the means that she's questioning in this kind of grand cost benefit analysis of whether the cost of this haphazard process is worth the benefit of the end that she hasn't wavered from ideologically. But the other thing Crystal I think people should be aware of is just like thinking about people suddenly saying, oh, Marjorie Taylor Green has changed.

Again, if you think that you should go back to her original run for the house in Georgia and look at how similar exactly what she's saying is over and over again. Healthcare is a part of her origin story, as it is for many people who got activated during the Obama years and the Tea Party years, she talked to Megan Kelly a couple of months ago about how she saw her father's company that she stepped into like being crippled after Obamacare's small business provisions

became really difficult for a lot of small businesses. So it's not like, none of this is like new for Marjorie Taylor Green. It's just more and more politicians. Thomas Massey is another good example of this. they're realizing where the incentives are and the incentives are she said over and over again on Tim Dillon to be honest

and you can take that for what it's worth you can say she's not being honest she's being calculated she's being cynical I think if you watch all of her interviews recently she's literally just speaking her mind and not letting any of those talking points get in anymore there's some Democrats who are good at doing this too

but that's what she's like you can say that it's honest or whatever but like it's maybe you believe it's cynical And even if it was cynical, it would still make sense to at least act like you're being honest and spontaneous in these conversations because the incentives are aligning against party talking points. And some people are going to get really good at delivering party talking points in a way that makes them not sound like talking points. I think J.D. Vance is somebody who does that right now on podcast, like when he was on Theo Vaughn. But they're losing control. And they'll find new ways to get control and to get people like Marjorie Taylor Green in line. But that's what's happening right now.

It's actually a huge shift in the way politicians are talking to constituents and voters. There's been a lane opened up on the right that didn't really exist in the first Trump term. Everybody, most of right-wing media was just like, go Trump. Trump's great. It's more cohesive towing of the line. Now you've got, you got Candace, you know, who, I mean, Candice is the perfect example. Because in Trump 1.0, she was on the team. Like she was fully, she was in the White House, she was doing the thing, she was, you know, hosting events for them.

And she was fully on the talking points. And so you've got, you know, you've got Candace, Nick Fuentes, obviously huge voice on the right. Tucker being another one who, you know, I mean, Tucker's kind of interesting because he very rarely actually turns around directly criticizes Trump. But he's been critical of some of the Trump administration actions. And so there's been a space that has been created, which had already existed on the left because of like the Bernie media. the way that ecosystem is very critical of the Democratic Party from the left, now you have an equivalent thing on the right where there's an ability to be critical of the Trump administration from the right or from, you know, coming at it from a more, I guess, right populist perspective,

Steve Bannon, even, you know, you could put in that category at the end of the day, he's always going to back up Donald Trump. But, you know, getting to those decisions, he's going to put pressure in a variety of different ways. So I think that that space opening up is a natural fit for Marjor Taylor Green, who I do think, you know, the fact that she wasn't a career politician and was just like a MAGA Facebook mom sharing weird conspiracies, like she's kind of legit in that way in a way that a lot of other MAGA politicians aren't and are just like playing, you know, like Ronda Santos was always like playing a role to try to do the thing. I think she genuinely comes out of that space and is a little more in touch with where

like actual MAGA and her constituents are than some other politicians. And she was making that case on Tim Dillon. And, like, if it sounds like we're glazing Marjorie Taylor Green right now, it's actually just like she's a very interesting case study. That's the way to put it right now. She's a really, I was reading Neil Postman amusing, amusing ourselves to death over the weekend. And he was sort of lamenting the rise of Ronald Reagan in the age of TV. And looking back, he was like, well, William Howard Taft could never have been elected in the age of TV

because he was so, like, obscenely obese. Although probably by our standards today, he was not that obscenely obese. But anyway, we'll leave that aside. And what he was saying is basically that because of the way the mediums shape our politics, he's building off McClellan, he's saying that these changes not just where we say things, but what we're actually saying. It's not just how we're saying things. It changes the essence of what we actually say.

And so with TV, it did give something to the actors who were able to do these very inspirational, almost script-worthy cinematic deliveries. And now, in the age of smartphone cameras, which is the most intimate thing in the world, because everybody has one and everyone can look like a politician. You don't need cinematography anymore to look like the average politician's video

because they're filming them on smartphone cameras. And that has created an incentive for people who are smart enough to actually try to capitalize on it, or cynical enough to actually try to capitalize it on, or sincere enough to actually try to capitalize on it, whether you're Zoroam Dani, Or, you know, maybe you think Marjorie Tiller-Greens instance here, fine.

But, like, they understand that right now what people want to see is not talking points. It's not scripts. It's none of the production. It's not the cinematography. And that's not just changing. Like, you can be, you know, an establishment hack and film a smartphone video. It doesn't hit the same way because you're not changing the substance of what you say. And the substance of what you say has to feel a lot more raw, unpolished, real, and on script.

And it's not always going to be, but it has to feel that way. Yeah. I think the cynical take would be that she's positioning herself for a presidential run in 2028 in a post-Trump world. And I think that's certainly possible. It is worth saying, though, that her position on Israel in particular, which is an area where I would say she has definitely changed. You know, she was voting lockstep on all the Israel and condemn anti-Semitism and censure, Rishu'll be able to. She would doing all that stuff up until very recently. And look, a lot of people have changed their position on Israel over the past.

Again, that would be reflective of some of the Republican MAGA base that she would be in touch with. But in any case, the point I want to make, in terms of her immediate political prospects, she creates a risk and a danger for herself with those positions because, you know, she runs in a very red district. She only has to worry about challenges from her right. And, you know, very possible that APAC funds some candidate against her to the tune of millions of dollars. And she has to contend with a genuine threat there. She's pissed off the Trump administration. They're not happy with her because of her being honest about what her views are at this point and being critical in a certain way.

She's arguably the best small donor, small dollar fundraiser in all of Congress, which would make an APAC bit against her fascinating. Interesting. Because she has powers like AOC and Bernie when it comes to, and Trump, when it comes to small dollar fundraising. And that means she has a lot of average people who send her a dollar from around the country. So that would make it pretty, pretty amusing to watch APEC try to take her. down and maybe they could do it um but yeah in a primary i don't know maybe they maybe randy fine moves to the district oh god that would be an earthquake him moving into the district crystal what crystal it's too much time with lyle you're spending too much time with lyle

do not docks do not docks okay if you don't get that reference go watch last friday All I know is what I've been told, and that's a half-truth is a whole lie. For almost a decade, the murder of an 18-year-old girl from a small town in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved, until a local homemaker, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story. I'm telling you, we know Quincy killed her. We know. A story that law enforcement used to convict six people and that got the citizen investigator on national TV. Through sheer persistence and nerve,

this Kentucky housewife helped give justice to Jessica Curran. My name is Maggie Freeling. I'm a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, producer, and I wouldn't be here if the truth were that easy to find. I did not know her and I did not kill her, or rape or burn, or any of that other stuff. that you all said it. They literally made me say that I took a match

and struck and threw it on her. They made me say that I poured gas on her. From Lava for Good, this is Graves County, a show about just how far our legal system will go in order to find someone to blame. America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people

in small towns. Listen to Graves County in the Bone Valley feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season ad-free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Power struggles, shady money, drugs, violence, and broken promises. It's a freaking war zone. These people are animals.

There's no integrity. there's no loyalty that's all gone in the 1980s modeling wasn't just a dream it was a battlefield book book book nice deals let's get models in let's get them out and the models themselves they carried scars that never fully healed till this day honestly if i see a measuring tape i freak out the model wars podcast peels back the glossy cover and reveals a high-stakes game where survival meant more than beauty. Hosted by me, Vanessa Grigoriatus, this is the untold story

of an industry built on ruthless ambition. Listen to Model Wars on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight,

I help a centenarian mend a broken heart. And a hundred and one year old woman fall in love again. And I help a man atone for an armed robbery he committed at 14 years old. And so I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. And he got down. And I remember feeling kind of a surge of like, okay, this is power. Plus, my old friend Gregor and his brother tried to solve my problems through hypnotism.

We could give you a whole brand new thing where you're like super, super, Charming all the time. Being more able to look people in the eyes. Not always hide behind a microphone. Listen to Heavyweight on the I-Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. One of the things that, of course, is interesting about Marjor Taylor Green here and the political moment we're in is that it was up until now, Democrats who really were kind of on the back foot on immigration. and now Republicans are having to answer for a lot. So I'm going to show you a few different videos.

I want to give you a picture of what's happening on the ground in Chicago and some of the absolute insanity that is unfolding here. The first one is a local news report about ICE picking up this autistic 15-year-old who reportedly has the capabilities of roughly like a four-year-old, who was there with this family working at their stand and then went to go to the bathroom, and they kidnapped him and did not let the family know. family couldn't find him for days. Let's go ahead and take a listen to this report. The boy was here at this intersection in Spring Branch with his mom and sister selling fruit when he disappeared.

And here's the information we just learned in the last 30 minutes. Take a look at this. So the boy has autism and is sometimes nonverbal. And he disappeared last Saturday. He's 15 years old. But his social worker says he has the mindset of a four to five year old. So they were very worried about his safety. The mom said around 3 p.m. on October 4, She was with a customer selling fruit when her son asked him or asked her to use the restroom and when she turned around, he was gone. Now, they filed a missing person report with Houston Police. And earlier today, Fiel Houston held a press conference with the family begging for the public's help to find him. Now, today, police notified the family that the boy was found safe.

Fiel Houston said a law enforcement agency found him. And he's been at the office of refugee resettlement children's detention centers. since Monday. The family is undocumented and they're trying to get him released from ICE custody. And I'm told that the mom just had a FaceTime conversation with her son in the last 30 minutes and is thankful he is alive and hopes we reunited with him soon. So obviously, I mean, I don't know how you defend that, completely indefensible, picking up this child who has a significant disability, not not notifying the family still being held in custody, just absolute insanity. And, um, There's more where that came from.

We can put this next one up on the screen. So there have been a number of instances of these car accidents. You can see here, ice is in this white, white silver vehicle, rams into that car, begins to pull off. Bystanders who are recording say hit and run, hit and run. And then they jump out. I'm saying ice, by the way, loosely here. I don't even actually know what there's a variety of federal agencies on the ground.

So I'm just using ice as a blanket term. Then they come to this car that they rammed in part. Pull this lady out by her legs. She was apparently just trying to get to work. This is a U.S. citizen, guys. By the way, U.S. citizen, who happened to be wrong place, wrong time, gets hit by these federal goons, and then gets pulled out and arrested. Her sister said that she had been fresh out of surgery just cleared for work a month ago. They held her in detention for hours.

The sister says they brutally dragged her out of car. At gunpoint, we had to run all around the area just to find her. her. So, um, you know, just total like total insanity here, um, incredibly dangerous crashing into this car. And then they were just going to do the hit and run when we got call down on that. They're like, all right, well, let me go back and pretend like I have a reason to arrest this lady is a U.S. citizen ultimately, Emily. This is a really, really, really bad situation. And that sounds like a kind of obvious way to put it. But I, I just want to make the point that it's, it's not just a bad situation because of ice. I'm going to get back to that. I think it is a bad situation

because of ICE, to be very clear. Yeah. But also because imagine these, you're given these different tasks, jobs, whatever, by Christy Knoe, higher-ups at DHS. And there was just a shooting in Dallas, people trying to, someone apparently trying to take out ICE who took out two migrants. There have been efforts to like go after the ice guys. And so, I'm saying all of that to emphasize that they are trigger-happy. And I don't just mean that literally. I mean that when they're driving in cars and they see somebody who they think is maybe obstructing them or whatever, they are now like on razor's edge.

And that's a super, super dangerous situation, especially, oh, go ahead. Well, I would, and many of them like pretty untrained. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, they dramatically reduce the amount of training these guys have to get. Yeah. They've been operating with total impunity. So, I mean, it reminds me a little of like, you know, not to equate the situation, but reminds me of IDF who have been, you know, recording their war crimes and acting with total impunity. And it just fuels the sense of like, you know, here I am, big, bad, tough guy, all kidded out with my gun and with the federal government saying, go ahead.

You know, and I mean, we saw, like, I think a really important development was there was a video that came out of one, I think it was ICE, throwing this lady, grabbing her hair and throwing this lady. on the ground at a courthouse in New York, he was initially put on leave. And then within a week, they're like, no, you're fine. You can go back. I mean, that sends a message to everyone of like, no, you can do whatever you want. And you can get away with it. So the type of people who would be attracted to the job at this point, too, like, think of the type of people who would watch this sort of thing or know that you're like zip tying children and, you know, picking up grandmas and arresting autistic 15-year-olds. And you're like, yes, that's the job for me. You know, that's the type of person that is being attracted to this line of work at this point?

It's a really, like, it's just very, very dangerous, and I think it's not, I think everyone senses right now that it's all getting worse by the day. It's not in any way getting better by the day. And I wasn't saying what I was saying to suggest that people shouldn't protest ICE or shouldn't do activism, like, whatever. I'm not saying that at all. I'm just, I was just explaining that, like, when we see some of these confrontations, it's partially, it's, it's, that to Crystal's point, these guys have been operating with the complete and total backing, like no matter what happens. And they also feel like they're in danger and under threat for whatever, like sometimes that's for good reason. Sometimes it's maybe for a BS reason. But this is like a

recipe for disaster. Yeah. And the leadership from ICE, and this is to get back to the part of this that actually is seriously problematic, it's that by the New York Times account, looking at least 15 U.S. citizens that have been detained or arrested so far. I think that number is probably higher. That was ones that they were able to verify as of last week. I think that number's probably higher. I assume it's gotten even higher in the last week because of Chicago. In particular, if people are paying attention to what's happening in the UK right now, Kirstarmer has this digital ID push partially because his justification is partially because people want to crack down on illegal immigration. Well, what does that create a situation where if you are a

conservative, especially if you're like a civil libertarian, this is an opportunity for mass surveillance and for more power to the federal government, for more of a police state, for more surveillance. They have these huge contracts with Palantir right now, obviously, which is sifting through mountains of data. And if you don't think that U.S. citizens are being caught up in that dragnet, I mean, I don't know what to say. On the other hand, this gets back to the process versus direction thing.

directionally, the last year of the Biden administration, they said there were, what, 80,000 arrests of non-citizens on criminal charges that weren't immigration related. So assaults, those types of things, murders in some cases. And that does exist. Like, that's just during the Biden administration, 80,000 people in one year. They do have a job to, like, there is actually a legitimate law enforcement aspect. Absolutely. When you have this explosion, even if you didn't have the explosion, but with the explosion in the last several years. Does anybody think that that's actually more effective right now? Well, and that's a very key point because the polar opposite is actually happening, right? Instead of resources going to, okay, let's let's go after the gang leaders, right? Let's go

after the drug traffickers. The resources have been shifted to let's go raid the Home Depot. Let's go raid the 7-Eleven. Let's go, you know, into, let's go surge into Chicago just because we don't like J.B. Pritzker and Brandon Johnson and try to create some sort of a confrontation. Let's raid an entire apartment building with Black Hawk helicopters, detaining, mostly American citizens to get, you know, they claimed that there were some 37 people arrested. By the way, we haven't gotten any details. I mean, that's another key point that I want you guys to take in. You cannot believe a word these people say. You have to verify literally everything they say. Because there was, you know, we've had instance after instance, guy, an immigrant shot and killed.

that they lied about the circumstances of. An American citizen shot five times. They've already been caught in lies with regard to how that all went down. There was another video that I didn't include in our lineup here, but of a 15-year-old who was being arrested and they claimed, no, no, no, this was from months ago and she was part of robberies. No, actually people went and like, there she is in ICE custody and were able to ascertain that the details matched what activists were saying

and not remotely what DHS was saying. So that's the other thing is they will just lie, like brazenly, blatantly lie, even with the Venezuela like drugboats. Zero proof that any of them had drugs. One of them now has come out, wasn't even from Venezuela. It was a Colombian national.

So, you know, that's the other thing you're contending with here is just the way that they will invent their own reality to justify the things that are totally unjustifiable. And here we have another instance of that, perfect setup, for this next piece. So this is a reporter for a local reporter who she's a camera woman camera woman okay and who was arrested here in a very aggressive manner and what dhs had originally said was that she had been throwing objects at ice and that she was arrested effectively for assaulting these law enforcement officers well lo and behold she was released with no charges so you tell me

whether that really happened or not so they arrest the reporter and then they swipe another car on the way out and just take off. And I, let's put C5 up on the screen just to confirm what I was saying before, released no charges after they, you know, said that, oh, she'd been assaulting law enforcement officers. And this comes, Emily, after there'd been a court decision saying, hey, you have to, like, people have the right to protest and journalists need to be protected. There was also a ruling about, they've been just pepper spraying basically anyone and everything, including the, um, that. pastor that we showed last week. And there was another ruling say, hey, you can't just indiscriminately

use these riot control methods. People have to be allowed to exercise their First Amendment rights. None of those ruling seems to be slowing them down at this point. So, and in this case, it's a, I think, a helpful example because there's a flurry of these videos coming out every day on social media. And they're not, I mean, they're obviously being used as political footballs. But in this case, there was a video that came out that did make it look. like something had been thrown in the direction of the ice vehicle. It's very strange because it's like how was someone just standing, was she just standing on the street?

Like, it does look like something is thrown at the ice vehicle. That said, they did not, they obviously didn't have enough evidence to make that stick. Otherwise, you know that they would have captured and made it stick. Yes. So the same thing has happened a couple of times. So, for example, there was this video going viral of an ICE agent saying, to a U.S. citizen, turn around or you're getting the dog. Turn around or you're getting the dog.

If you are a conservative, that should send chills down your spine. This U.S. citizen presented their driver's license. According to the attorney, presented their driver's license to ICE. Yep. And still ended up being detained, which is the easiest thing in the world to verify if someone is a U.S. citizen in a case like that. On the other hand, I have seen videos go viral where you don't see the part where someone is trying to actually obstruct or whatever.

So these things are going everywhere. But at the same time, I would just say for people on the right who are looking at some of this stuff, watch the full video, read the full news coverage of some of these cases because you will find some really ugly stuff under the surface. And you can't, like, the same way you were skeptical of the government when it was Joe Biden. A thousand percent.

Be skeptical. Please. Do not take these people's... And I feel the same, like, I think this administration is extreme in the way that they will just brazenly lie about something we can all watch with our own eyes. But your job as an informed citizen and certainly our job as journalists is to be skeptical of government claims and to not just accept them at face value, which is also a lesson that most of the news media needs to take as well. In any case, I've got one more here for you, which is another U.S. citizen, okay? I had right about this guy's case and he, you know, went on with Tim Miller over the bulwark podcast to talk about his experience. So this is a U.S. veteran, okay, American citizen who was on his way to work at a farm.

He works security at this farm. And there were apparently like protests in the area and there were some ice action in the area. And so he pulls up and he's trying to talk to ice agent and say, hey, I'm just trying to get to work here. And I'll let him describe what then ensues. Let's take a listen. They put me on suicide watch and they put me in this cell. I'm naked in like a hospital dress and just a concrete bed with like a mattress, like a thin mattress and they leave the light on 24-7. There's a glass door.

An officer is just always standing, like sitting out there. The psychiatric nurse comes and checks on me once a day. And so from Friday morning to Sunday afternoon when I'm released, I'm literally. I'm literally in that cell, naked, just in that room. What the fuck? How is this real? Like, this is a nightmare. I mean, like, I was just the entire time I was in there.

I was just hoping, like, like, I would just want to see my kids again. Like, literally that's the only thing that matters. Like, I literally just want to see my kids. Does your family know where you were? Like, all they knew was that I was arrested by ice. and that was it. They didn't know where they took me. They didn't know where I was.

So he's there trying to get to work. Okay. He's trying to talk to the ICE or whoever else is on the scene. Like, hey, that's my place. I'm not trying to approach it. I'm just trying to get to work. They surround his car aggressively, like agents on all side. And then they're giving him all these contradictory directions.

Get out of the car. Go forward. Back up. And so he's trying to comply. They spray tear gas. tear gas is filling up his car, he's having trouble seeing, he's having trouble navigating away. They go away for a while, and then as he's trying to exit, they come back and surround his car again and break his window open and, you know, aggressively arrest him. And then this, again, American citizen held four days. No phone call to his family, no phone call to a lawyer, no nothing.

You hear the degrading treatment he was subjected to to put on suicide watch, forced in this, you know, cell with a girl. glass door, naked, for days. And he was like, I, my idea is literally in the car that you drag me from. Like, I can show you and doesn't matter. Like, this is, so if you think this just stays with immigrants or people that you think this would be acceptable to be done to, which, you know, like, that's a whole other conversation. It doesn't. We already have so many instances of the way that they will just snatch up any American

citizen who they don't like or gets in their way. or looks a little too brown or is it the wrong job site or whatever it's yeah i mean this guy is a veteran this guy like put on the uniform yeah serve the country country yeah and it's another case where citizenship should have been easy to verify i get that this was a big raid um they're you know this raid actually did and it's it's sort of like the south side apartment building that we were talking about early crystal there if you if you read um people who live there for a long time they pretty much like there's some good reporting that it had an obvious gang problem that it was like a place where legitimately it probably is room for ice activity and it sounds like uh there's the same

place it was the same case in in this situation although not for a criminal perspective but from a like a just a non-citizen undocumented labor yeah or maybe they had asylum i don't know but whatever it was it sounds like there were people who were non-citizens that were working there that the ice was whatever, you cannot do that in a way that over and over again repeatedly is detaining U.S. citizens now. Like, that is what we have seen in multiple occasions. So if you're going to do it, if we were talking about those 80,000 arrests, criminal arrests during the Biden administration of last year of the Biden administration, and it was similar

numbers every year over the last few years. So if you have that many criminals in the country, legitimate criminals in the country, you are hurting efforts to actually do that by making the entire process less legitimate, whether it just looks less legitimate, whether you end up legally, like, putting those efforts in jeopardy, whatever it is, it's wrong to do this to U.S. citizens without verifying what they're telling you, which is that they're U.S. citizens. There's no reason that he should have been kept as long as he was. There's no reason that another person, when he handed the officer's ID, should have ended up

in detention. Like, these are just, it's stupid, and it is going to undermine any, like, credibility or any public support there is for actually going after criminals because people are going to say, well, we don't trust that you're actually going after criminals. Look at all of these U.S. citizens. I mean, drug trafficking convictions under this administration way down, human trafficking convictions under this administration way down. Because as a percentage. No, in total numbers. Because not only do you have Stephen Miller can put this next piece up on the screen, who is confirmed running the show here and also directing a lot of our foreign policy, according to this CNN report, which I don't think would be surprised to anyone, but they lay out that within the administration, they call him the prime

minister, which, you know, in most systems with a prime minister and a president, like if you think about Israel, for example, Benjamin Netanyahu's the prime minister, he is the driving force. But in any case, you know, what Stephen Miller has prioritized, not just with ICE, but with DHS overall with CBP, with the, with FBI, is to push them all into these shows of force at, you know, farm raids and Home Depot raids and whatever. So if you're pulling FBI after off of legitimate casework to send them in to like, you know, get kidded up and raid a farm or whatever. Oh, right, right.

Of course you're going to have less actual law enforcement going after the bad guys. And that's, in fact, what we have seen. So even though the language they use is about criminals and going after the worst of the worst and all of this, the reality is the polar opposite of that because of where they've put their resources are about going after, you know, the fruit stand vendor, the autistic child of the fruit stand vendor, rolling up on schools at pickup time and those sorts of things, that's where they've pushed their resources rather than the more tedious and difficult casework that is required to actually go after the, you know, the violent criminal. and the bad guys you would want them to. It's such a mess. I mean, that sounds obvious. It is obvious. It's just a mess.

And maybe it actually does. I shouldn't say that because maybe it doesn't sound obvious because I think that's part of what bothers me about a lot of this. A, the immorality. Then B, I feel like they're taking advantage of, to some extent, conservatives who just believe, like, Marjorie Talley Green said this in a way, too. She was like, he is, there are people who waited in line for these rallies in the cold. And, you know, like they're the ones that are now being given the backseat to, you know, people in Trump's orbit who maybe hated him before or like spent money in the case of like Mark Zuckerberg to defeat him.

And there are a lot of those average people who put their trust in this administration not to create more of a surveillance state and to create more lawless federal enforcement and not to do. detain U.S. It's like, they put their trust in the administration. And I get like, this is why I don't put any trust in any politician. And that's probably why I'm in media and journalism. It's probably the same with you, Chris. So like, I don't trust people in positions of power. But people did trust them. And it just feels like, I know a lot of people support tough immigration enforcement. And I understand where that comes from, of course. But when you dig into a lot of these stories, it's farcical what ends up happening with, again, veterans, people who served the country who are U.S. citizens. Yeah, it just obviously sucks. So they're taking advantage of, you know,

well-intentioned people who trust them. Yeah. And I think Zoran said this, and I think this was well-sad, is like, this is what's being given to people in lieu of dealing with the cost of living crisis in lieu of like delivering for them economically. It's like, we'll give you an ASMR video of people being deported will give you, you know, a show of force in a blue city that you, you know, may think is like scarier where you don't like the political leadership. That's basically what people are being fed in lieu of actually bringing down prices and addressing their economic needs. One last note, I just wanted to mention about that Stephen Miller piece from CNN, which is interesting for this block, but also just an interesting thing for us to know

going forward and to take note of is that basically Stephen Miller is more, and Miller and Miller and Rubio are more important for Department of Defense policy than Heggseth. And so here's the line. They say Pentagon officials now routinely present Stephen Miller and Marco Rubio with operational options and relevant data. They then decide what to do with it and work directly with Chairman and Joint Chiefs of staff, Dan Kane, to execute their military plans, said the source who characterized the two men as far more involved than Pete Hexeth in deciding how the military is used. The murder of an 18-year-old girl in Graves County, Kentucky, went unsolved for years, until a local housewife, a journalist, and a handful of girls came forward with a story.

America, y'all better work the hell up. Bad things happens to good people in small towns. Listen to Graves County on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to binge the entire season, ad free, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Jonathan Goldstein, and on the new season of heavyweight. So I pointed the gun at him and said, this isn't a joke. A man who robbed a bank when he was 14 years old. And a centenarian rediscovers a love lost 80 years ago.

How can a 101-year-old woman fall in love again? Listen to heavyweight on the I-heart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. had the incredible opportunity to sit down with the one, the only, Cardi B. My marriage, I felt the love dying. I was crying every day. I felt in the deepest depression that I had ever had. This shit was not given to me.

I worked my ass off for me. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Thank you.