Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 3/27/25: ICE Arrests Pro-Palestine Students, Gaza Protests Erupt, Debate On NPR And PBS Defunding

Episode Date: March 27, 2025

Ryan and Saagar discuss the ICE arrests pro-Palestine student in broad daylight, protests erupt in Gaza, debate on defunding NPR and PBS.   To become a Breaking Points Premium Member and watch/listen to the show AD FREE, uncut and 1 hour early visit: www.breakingpoints.com   Merch Store: https://shop.breakingpoints.com/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an iHeart Podcast. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. Listen to Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is Season 2 of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of starts that a little bit, man.

We met them at their homes. We met them at the recording studios. Stories matter and it brings a face to it. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

I'm Michael Kasson, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode, I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there. And if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey guys, Sagar 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 breakingpoints.com. A Tufts University PhD student

was picked up off the streets of Somerville, Massachusetts. We have a harrowing video of what basically looks like a kidnapping. Three masked men are picking up this student and putting her in an unmarked vehicle. The guy who's filming it seems disturbed by what he's seeing and keeps saying, can I see your faces? How do I know that you are police officers? Am I witnessing

a kidnapping here? Because it very much does appear that he is witnessing kidnapping. Frankly, he is. I guess you could call it an arrest, but there have been no charges filed. And that's what we typically understand call it an arrest, but there have been no charges filed.

And that's what we typically understand to be an arrest. Now, apparently last night, let's put up D3B. This is Magnad Bose, a Columbia Journalism Review journalist who also writes for Dropsite News. This is a student in Alabama, Alireza DeRudi, who is a PhD student at Alabama, picked up off the street. And as you can see there, if you try to figure out where he's being held now. It is currently undisclosed. No word of any charges. We don't even know what he said. Did he use the word genocide in a tweet? We don't know exactly what he said to get him thrown out. This is coming after you put up D3, Yoon Seo-chum, who is a Korean-American student at Columbia University, an undergrad, who has a permanent legal resident,

who has been in the country since she was seven years old, was not a leader of the protests, was not arrested, I don't think, as far as I understand, during the protests, went to them a couple times, I guess tweeted some things. And she has had her, according to her attorneys, she has had her permanent legal residence status revoked, and they have been hunting her. They have been using significant federal assets to try to find her. She suspected that this may be happening and apparently has been moving around, and they have been unable to pick her up at this point.

None of these people have been charged with a crime. All of them, their only quote-unquote crime appears to be criticism of Israel's attack on Gaza and the U.S. support for that assault, which, by the way, since March 2nd, Israel has not allowed any food, water, or medicine to get into Gaza. And it is creating famine-like conditions and has slaughtered more than 300 children over the last several days. Protesting that is enough to get them thrown into the back of these cars or have to go on the land. As you can see, the first person, Ms. Ozturk,

is apparently a Turkish citizen. So apparently her crime is that she is, quote, one of several students who, one of several authors of an opinion essay published last March in Tufts University student newspaper. The essay criticized university leaders for their response to demands and Tufts, quote, acknowledged the Palestinian genocide and divested itself with companies to Israel. Mr. Durati, who you mentioned, Ali Raza Durati, there's not even actually any record of anything that the guy has done. And like you said, the other one just attended a protest. This was, again, I need to talk philosophically here.

Do you see the number of agents who were involved in arresting this lady? We don't have better things to do here? I mean, look, I know you disagree, Ryan, but I want to see those people applied to people who are in the country illegally. Because that's what, quote, mass deportation was supposed to be about. Last time I checked, not facilitating the arrest of some PhD student. Look, fine. I mean, this is where you and I have a disagreement probably. I do think people who are here in the

country on student visas and all that, you should be a little careful. I'm not saying you don't have rights and all that, but listen. Just philosophically, when I go to authoritarian countries or other countries, I don't mouth off about whatever. When I'm in China, in Tiananmen Square, you know what

I don't talk about? I don't talk about the Tiananmen Square mass care. But think about that. But think about that. Are we an authoritarian country? Well, I don't think that we're, quote, an authoritarian country, but I think common sense would dictate that whenever you're in another country or a guest in that person's country, you should generally try not to rock the boat. I did a home exchange in France in 2023. We had a French family stay in our house, and we stayed in their house for several weeks. It was awesome. France isn't a authoritarian country. At the time, I actually did several shows from there where I was critical of the French government for their handling of the situation in Angers.

Should they have come in and rounded me up? Well, they could have. No, that's the point. But we have a visa process that we have established for students and for tourists. And if you go through that process, we grant you a student visa. And as long as you follow the laws of our country and you're following the remit of the visa that we have given you, we have invited you into our country and you are spending money in our country. And if you don't violate that, for us to arrest you because Israel or some pro-Israel organization has put you on a list of people that they think are mean to Israel, it breaks the contract that we made with these people.

I totally agree with you. There's no reason for us to be doing this. It's stupid. I'm more philosophically, people are like, oh, they have a right to be here. I'm like, well, not really. But we gave them a right to be there by creating a visa process that they went through. And also, people may not understand this. One of the main things that keeps our trade deficit lower than it would be otherwise is that millions of people come from overseas

to the United States to study here and to do tourism here. If you look at the trade deficit that we have with Canada, it's cut like in half by Canadian tourists and students who come here and spend, and also many of them pay like full freight to go to our state and private universities. And so they're subsidizing the American students. Like American University, it's like $85,000 a year or something for the full freight. Americans don't pay that. You know who pays it is like the rich Egyptians, the rich Emiratis. I don't disagree with the word you're saying, but that also raises a lot of questions. Then why is the student debt crisis so high and why exactly is it tuition? Because it's still really expensive. Right, exactly. Now, you know,

we can debate this foreign student thing all day long. I think what we can both agree on is the appropriation of immense federal resources to hunting some South Korean lady who – South Korean lady who's been here since she was seven years old and attended the Columbia University protests. It's just like not very high on I think most people's list of what they thought of for mass deportation. And then when you go and you look at mass deportation figures of the actual criminal illegal aliens who are being deported, the numbers are exactly the same as they were under the Biden administration and or roughly the same. Now, you know, but I also don't think she, I don't think she should have to watch her mouth. She's a legal permanent

resident. And the difference between us in China and us in Russia is that you don't have to watch your mouth here. You say whatever you want. As a citizen, yes. That's where I just disagree. Now, I'm not saying that, again, we're talking about should and can. Okay, but what if you're a citizen, but you previously were a naturalized citizen? So now you're a citizen. You've had a lot of Republicans or Trump administration officials say, well, okay, yes, they're a permanent resident.

But if we would have known that once they became a permanent resident that they would go and protest Israel, we would not have given them their permanent residency. Therefore, we're taking their green card, and then we're taking the visa they had before that, and we're going to jail them, and we're going to send them to El Salvador, or we're going to send them back to wherever they're from. Why would that not also apply to citizens? We gave you your citizenship, but we wouldn't have given it to you if we would have known that you were going to be critical of Israel.

The case law is very different on citizenship. Stripping a United States citizen of citizenship, as I understand it, is just like— It's a little harder. No, not a little harder. It's significantly harder. I don't actually think you can strip a United States citizen of citizenship. No, you can if you can prove they lied. It's like in your passport if you open it up. Let's say if you lied- It says if you serve in a foreign military,

except for the IDF. If you, you know- But let's say if you lied to get your citizenship. That's right. If you lied to- And what they would say is, you told us you support and defend the United States, and here you are criticizing Israel. So how dare you? You lied. I think the difference in particular on these student visas and these permanent residents is, for me, the appropriation, like I said, of federal resources purely based on speech grounds with no criminal behavior is one that I think most people will say, yeah, that's pretty messed up, right? And because if you look in the past for any of these like deporting based on support for foreign, it was like pretty extreme stuff.

You know, if we're going to the World War II era, you literally had to be an actual like pro-Nazi, like on the radio, giving a speech, be like, we need to support Hitler for the Roosevelt administration or other to prosecute you for treason. Actually, even on speech grounds, radio giving a speech being like, we need to support Hitler for the Roosevelt administration or other to prosecute you for treason. Actually, even on speech grounds, I was looking back, I was recently reading a book about this. Even then, a lot of those cases had immense difficulty getting over a First Amendment back. That's with the citizens that we're talking about here. That was even at a time of Korematsu when you had Japanese Americans literally enslaved in a camp illegally by their government. But in this particular case, the point is, is that they are using extraordinary measures

of the United States, you know, what treaty, exactly, what is the State Department, the Secretary of State can designate any individual here and pulling their visa and then using ICE and like, I mean, do you know how much money it costs to like arrest someone and fly them to Louisiana? I don't know what, tens of thousands of dollars just to support these type of operations. I think that's the big problem that we see right here. And most people can agree that it's obviously a stunt. And the worst is that it's on behalf of a foreign government. And these lists of all of these people, as you and I know, are coming from these pro-Israel groups who have sat there and scrubbed social media.

It's sickening for me to even watch, because there's these accounts on Twitter, stop anti-Semitism or whatever, and I'll watch them just blow up some girl who wrote on Strava that she was really upset about Zion. And she, no, no, word, she was like, saw some the Zionists. And she, no, no, word. She was like, saw some annoying Zionists. It's like, okay, whatever.

People can post whatever they want on their social media. And they're like blowing up this lady's life. Or, you know, a flight attendant who has like a Palestine flag on their lapel. You know, by the way, I've been on flights before where I've seen the Israeli flag there. Whatever. Maybe she's Israeli. Okay. Yeah, I don't care what flag you have. Give me a drink. You know, it's like, what are we doing here? Let me get the whole can. Yeah, that's right. Give me the can. I need the Diet Coke can. All right. And pour it properly over. I'm joking. I don't ever

say this stuff. But my point is just like, who cares with the lapel? And they blow these people's up. They like ruin their lives and inviting this like witch hunt my point is just like, who cares with the lapel? They blow these people's up. They ruin their lives in inviting this witch hunt. And those are the people who the government is taking these lists of people from who didn't commit any crime. All they did was speak out against a foreign government. So, I don't know. I just think it's crazy.

And I would say to the people who are like, well, they should be good guests and screw them. To be clear, I'm not saying screw them. I'm actually on their side. I don't think that they should. Well, I screw them. No, to be clear, I'm not saying screw them. I'm actually on their side. I don't think that they should. Well, I mean, there are people watching this who are more into screw them.

At a philosophical level, what I get annoyed by is this transnational American identity as if citizenship itself doesn't mean anything. Just simply being present in the country does not mean you are a citizen who's entitled to all of the protections that we have and that the government cannot deport you for a reason. And it is just empirically true. If you want to argue America the exceptional country and all of that, I think that's fine. But it is empirically true

that in almost every country in the world, that going there and in participating in a protest, specifically like in a foreign policy against the sitting government, they're not going to let you stay. Even in Europe and many of these other places. They're not also, you know, kind and fuzzy, you know, to foreign students. Particularly if it's an anti-Israel protest. Yeah, try going to Germany, okay? Liberal democracy, Germany, or, God, I can name any other country, like I said, even non-authoritarian ones, ostensible democracies, where if you do this type of stuff, like you are going to get deported. You can argue that you shouldn't. And, you know, I would say you certainly can. And shutting off, like, you're going to hurt tourism and you're going to hurt

the number of foreign students who come to the United States. And I think people are going to be like, well, you know, screw it. Who cares? I think we should have much less foreign students. I think it's completely perverted our financial system in these universities because what happens is they increase the costs for everybody. Now, they subsidize marginally the American students who are still loaded up with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt. But you also make it basically a visa farm for the richest people all over the world to be able to come here. Would they fake their SAT scores? But they're reducing costs. No, but they're not.

That's the thing. If that were true, Ryan, then you would not see the inflation and overall educational costs. I mean, the more foreign students, the higher that the price actually goes. And then worse is the government comes in and backstops these student loans for fake lower, oh, we gave you $10,000 in student aid. It's like, okay, but the thing is still $60,000. So they're going and they're getting some FAFSA loan. The government's doing that. It basically becomes a foreign visa farm. The PhD programs and all that, there's no particular evidence that it's all that great for the United States or that all of this money is flowing into the hands of the average American

citizen. I don't see any evidence that, you know, all of this educational spending has done any or increase in education costs and subsequent dollars come in has been distributed at all to the overall population. It's mostly just a money laundering organization for the University of Michigan or the university, whatever, you know, all these other places, which use this dollars to just continue to prop up and justify even more overall expense. And I'm totally against the current way that it's funded. The explosion of the cost of university is, I think, a separate issue from foreign students coming and spending money in universities.

There's a correlation there, but I don't think foreign students are causing the increase. No, I'm not blaming them per se. I'm saying it's all part of the incentives. As in, the incentive for a university when they charge $60,000 or $70,000. What is it now? Harvard. I don't even know. $80,000 something? $85,000, let's say. Sarah Lawrence is always famous because they're in the middle of Rhode Island and charging like $90,000 a year. It's like, okay, well, who's paying that? Well, foreign students, but also even for the student who's, let's say, paying $45,000 per year,

which is still an insane amount of money. That person is taking a government-backed loan, right, that literally can't be discharged. And you watch as those two things have basically made it so that these universities can offload all the risk of participating in their financial product. If you just look at like a balance sheet, they offload the risk to the government and to the individual, and they take those profits home. Again, we don't see much evidence that they're distributing that funding. If it were true that all this increased tuition was so great for workers, then professors would be getting paid more. Actually, their salary is going down for the overall PhD rates, right? For the adjuncts. And the way that they run it, it's actually more

restrictive than ever. Really, what they're doing is they're enriching themselves and a bunch of fund managers on Wall Street by these endowments. So anyway, that's my – No, I agree with that point. I think that cutting off the foreign students – well, I guess we'll get to find out what it does. Well, so yeah, I mean that is the question I guess in terms of – Because if you're a foreign student now, like the willingness of, I would assume that you're looking around at other countries. You think so? I would be curious to see.

Or maybe you just don't criticize Israel, which is also like that, like America has become less America. That's fair. I think that's probably the best point. I mean, I don't think that we're going to really see. If anything, I'm not sure if you saw this, law school applications went double this year, which is usually a bad sign. That means that there's a recession coming because people can't get a job. So that means that they're going to law school.

Usually a bad financial decision. Especially with the advent of AI. Not that you need to take advice from me, but just saying. Loading yourself up with $200,000 in debt in the hopes that it might pay off in the future, usually a bad idea. But a lot of people seem to think that it's good. We saw the same thing in 2009 for law school applications. that might pay off in the future. Usually a bad idea, but a lot of people seem to think that it's good. We saw the same thing in 09 for law school applications.

But the problem, I think, is what you just said, is that the government is enforcing policy to chill speech on an issue of a foreign government. You know, that is genuinely crazy. It's crazy. It's crazy. I mean, every other time in the past, we talked to Jefferson Morley. At least our government

should be psy-opping our population to support a war that we are in. You know, it's like, is that too much to ask? Co-intel pro for, you know, for Vietnam? Don't support it, but I get it, right? You know, I'm a Nixon administration. This is too much. Why are we doing this? Repress us on your own behalf. Repress us for your own benefit, not for the benefit of some people in Tel Aviv, you know, who aren't even, I guess some of them are U.S. citizens. We forget, though, like, yes, Israel is powerful, et cetera. They are our client, and they benefit us. Like, there is a reason that we're not just doing it for them.

Like, we're doing it for us. It is, like, they are a fundamental part of our foreign policy in the mid East. So in that sense, we are suppressing criticism of ourselves. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time. Have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes, but there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them. From Lava for

Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multi-billion dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st

and episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glod. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Yes, sir. We are back. In a big way.

In a very big way. Real people, real perspectives. This is kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We got Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug thing is. Benny the Butcher.

Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette. MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it

real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts.

Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast hell and gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Catherine Townsend. I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day.

The murderer is still out there. Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter. She was still somebody's sister.

There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Several days of protests have broken out in Gaza. Israel is already working to exploit them. You can roll this statement put out by Defense Minister Israel Katz. He's speaking in Hebrew, but he says the IDF will soon operate with full force in additional

areas of Gaza, and you will be asked to evacuate from combat zones for your own safety. The plans are already prepared and approved. Hamas is putting your lives at risk, causing you to lose your homes and more and more territory that will be integrated into Israel's defense formation. The first sinuar destroyed Gaza and the second sinuar is ready to burn half of Gaza with his own hands just to try and maintain his corrupt rule alongside his fellow Hamas murderers and rapists. They sit safely with their families in tunnels and luxury hotels with billions in foreign bank accounts while using you as hostages. Learn from the residents of Beit Lahiya. Just as they did demand the removal of Hamas from Gaza and the

immediate release of all Israeli hostages, this is the only way to stop the war. This came several days after Israel Katz had put out a separate statement, residents of Gaza, this is your final warning. Evacuation of the population from combat zones will soon resume. If all Israeli hostages are not released and Hamas is not kicked out of Gaza, Israel will act with force you have not known before. Take the advice of the U.S. president. Return the hostages and kick out Hamas, and new options will open up for you,

including relocation to other parts of the world for those who choose. The alternative is destruction and devastation. After these remarks, starting this week, you started to see organic protests, in other words, not organized by Fatah or the Palestinian Authority, which are kind of rivals of Hamas. Into the second day, the size and kind of the ferocity of the protests expanded significantly. We'll see how that develops on today, which would be the third day. What has been remarkable about these protests is that they have included significant anti-Hamas sentiment being expressed. And so let's talk about the politics here and the material conditions in which these are unfolding. So to be clear, Hamas took power in 2005 in this election

and then afterwards, Fatah tried to take power and Hamas pulled a counter coup and there haven't been elections since. They have been in power now for almost 20 years. And obviously, among Palestinians in Gaza, there is a range of opinions. They are by no means monolithic, but there are many, many people in Gaza who have serious objections to Hamas as a governing authority. They have largely kind of primarily been an armed resistance organization and a national liberation movement. That is their identity.

That's what they see themselves as. Governing has never been the thing that kind of animated them. And at the same time, they've been operating under a 20-year siege. They've been a repressive government as well. And so from talking to people in Gaza yesterday, they were adding like, yes, people are frustrated with Hamas. People are, and people want an end to this war. They want a lifting of the siege. People are literally starving. And they think that if they go out and express opposition to Hamas, that that can lead to an end to this war. One of the dumbest arguments I always hear is they voted for Hamas, so they support it.

Right, to help. Okay, well, the median age in Gaza is 18 years old. Right. Right, so that means that the median of Gazan was not alive whenever there was an election. And by the way, even if there was an election, like let's say 10 years ago or whatever, as I know this is trite almost at this point, but that's the logic Osama bin Laden used to attack the United States on 9-11. Is they support their Zionist government under George W. Bush so they deserve it, right? That's why we should attack and kill the average American because they are complicit in the crimes of their own government. It's like, okay, well, by that standard, you know, then there is no such thing as a civilian. Now,

that's basically the argument that has been put in place. What's also ironic about those elections is that they were pushed by us. We're the people who basically forced them. The Israelis didn't even want to have an election because they knew what was going to happen. The reason that we pushed it was because of Bush's brain-dead freedom agenda. And it's so funny, even in retrospect, they have the election. The election doesn't go the way they want. And they're like, okay, now we've got to sanction and blockade this entire thing because they elected the wrong people. So what happened to the whole freedom agenda thing? Right. Freedom as long as you pick our guys. Freedom as long as you pick our guys, kind of like Iraq, Afghanistan. Interesting, isn't it? You remember Hillary Clinton's famous quote after that

election? It's so good. You guys can Google up and find the exact quote. But she was like, how on earth did the Bush administration hold an election where they couldn't determine the outcome of it? She's like, what kind of incompetence is that? Which just says absolutely everything about everything. One of my favorite things in reading history is at the Potsdam Conference when Churchill lost the election. Stalin was like, I don't understand. What is going on here?

He's like, why didn't you just rig it? He was mystified that you didn't rig the election. He's like, what do you mean that you're just leaving? He's like, you can't leave. And he was so annoyed. He's like, now I have to deal with new people. Yeah, he's like, who's this new guy? Atlee?

He's like, who the fuck are you? He's like, I don't want to deal with you. And so we put up D8 on the screen. Israel's dropping flyers over Gaza, urging Palestinians to go out and protest against Hamas. This has kicked off, obviously, what you would expect, which is then a rallying around of Hamas. Because on the one hand, people are deeply frustrated with the situation, and they're deeply frustrated with a lot of elements of the way Hamas is operationally handling the situation.

People are suffering. On the other hand, they don't want to be seen as aligning themselves with Israel. So as a result of this, as a result of Israel trying to exploit the protests, you've had a result of this, as a result of Israel trying to exploit the protests, you've had a lot of clans and kind of senior elder officials like up and down Gaza put out statements saying that the people have a right to protest, people have a right to protest Hamas, but we stand steadfast and firm with the national liberation and with the resistance against Israel.

Trying to make that clear. fast and firm with the national liberation and with the resistance against Israel, trying to make that clear. At the same time, you're going to have political jockeying for what may be a post-Hamas environment after Gaza. Israel tried very hard and they put their plans publicly out there that they wanted to empower clans against Hamas to distribute aid. They armed some of these clans. They would bomb Hamas. They would bomb police that were connected with Hamas to try to empower these basically gangs because then it's a classic divide and rule situation. And so some of those gangs have obvious political motivations to try to fuel these. And so what is relying on genuine,

organic sentiment very quickly is getting pulled in many different directions. That's what I really wanted to get at. I was like, what do we really make of these protests? Because everyone's like, oh, it's against Hamas. I was like, well, maybe. It seems a little convenient. It should definitely be acknowledged that there is significant anti-Hamas sentiment being expressed at these protests. What do your dropside colleagues say about the participants and others? Yeah, that there are significant anti-Hamas elements

to these protests, of course. But there is also anti-siege, anti-occupation. Like, end this war. Like, we want to live. One of the main lines, main battle cries of these protests is we want to live. And there is some frustration that the ceasefire didn't last.

And it's frustration at everybody involved. They just want the, but they also know who is blockading Gaza right now. And they know, they can, in many cases, you can see the trucks on the other side. Abu Bakr Abed, one of our correspondents there, put on Twitter the other day or yesterday that children that he's seen are drawing food in the sand. The depth of the hunger is at just intolerable levels. And so part of this, I think, is just a flipping the table.

Like something's got to give here. And it's being received in a very complicated way in Israel. Because on the one hand, the Israeli public likes to say that, look, even the Palestinians are protesting against Hamas. We told you Hamas is terrible. But that also then undercuts their argument that everybody is Hamas and why are you killing them all? They're begging you to not kill them. They're saying they want to live. And there is a very clear path that Hamas has outlined that they will leave the government.

Make a deal, let a new government come in with some amount of sovereignty and open up the passes so that the trucks can get back in. And they'll disarm and move on. And so for a lot of the Israeli right, one of their biggest fears has always been being told yes. Peace and coexistence is possible. We want peace. Because Israel does not want, the Israeli right does not want, and the Israeli right is now almost all of Israel, they don't want peace and coexistence with Palestinians in Gaza. They want the Palestinians in Gaza to no longer be there. They're setting up an entire ministry to move them to Egypt and Jordan. They want to ethnically cleanse the entire area. So peace and coexistence is a threat to that vision.

So that's why it's being received in this kind of complicated fashion. And you're seeing a lot of Israeli commentators say, we don't care if they're protesting, kill them anyway. I know a lot of cops and they get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. Across the country, cops called this taser the revolution. But not everyone was convinced it was that simple. Cops believed everything that taser told them.

From Lava for Good and the team that brought you Bone Valley comes a story about what happened when a multibillion-dollar company dedicated itself to one visionary mission. This is Absolute Season 1. Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Binge episodes 1, 2, and 3 on May 21st and

episodes 4, 5, and 6 on June 4th. Ad-free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Ricky Williams, NFL player, Heisman Trophy winner. It's just a compassionate choice to allow players all reasonable means to care for themselves. Music stars Marcus King, John Osborne from Brothers Osborne. We have this misunderstanding of what this quote-unquote drug ban is. Benny the Butcher. Brent Smith from Shinedown. We got B-Real from Cypress Hill. NHL enforcer Riley Cote. Marine Corvette.

MMA fighter Liz Karamush. What we're doing now isn't working and we need to change things. Stories matter and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear episodes one week early and ad-free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Over the past six years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned one thing. No town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend.

I've received hundreds of messages from people across the country begging for help with unsolved murders. I was calling about the murder of my husband at the cold case. They've never found her. And it haunts me to this day. The murderer is still out there.

Every week on Hell and Gone Murder Line, I dig into a new case, bringing the skills I've learned as a journalist and private investigator to ask the questions no one else is asking. Police really didn't care to even try. She was still somebody's mother. She was still somebody's daughter.

She was still somebody's sister. There's so many questions that we've never gotten any kind of answers for. If you have a case you'd like me to look into, call the Hell and Gone Murder Line at 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, let's get over to NPR and to PBS. Last piece here, but Ryan and I, we were like, we need to debate something more. Foreign students is too much. That's not spicy enough. So what about NPR and PBS? So there have been these congressional hearings for purposes we still have yet to be explained. But anyway, they are there. And Republicans and Democrats sparring over whether the hearings are a joke for defunding

NPR. NPR not doing itself any favors with their CEO hasn't particularly come across well with some of her own past tweets. So we compiled some clips from what went down yesterday to give you the best and the brightest. Let's take a listen. Former senior business editor for NPR. How long do you work at NPR? I believe he was there just over 25 years. 25 years? Award-winning journalist? Did he win any awards? I, our time to thought about.

Peabody Award, that's pretty important, isn't it? That is, absolutely. So pretty distinguished journalist, right? Certainly. And he wrote a long story about what you do at NPR. Is NPR biased? Congressman, I have never seen any instance of. Never? Of political bias determining editorial decisions, no.

Well, Mr. Berliner, in his story last year, wrote, in the D.C. area, editorial positions at NPR, he said he found 87 registered Democrats, zero Republicans. Is that accurate? We do not track the numbers or the voter registration, but I find that- Was award-winning journalist who worked 25 years at NPR, Mr. Berliner, was he lying when he wrote that? I am not presuming such. I just don't have, we don't track that information about our journalists. 87 to zero, and you're not biased. Do you believe that America believes in black plunder and white democracy? I don't believe that, sir. You tweeted that in reference to a book you were reading at the time,

apparently, The Case for Reparations. I don't think I've ever read that book, sir. You tweeted about it. You said you took a day off to fully read The Case for for reparations. You put that on Twitter in January of 2020. First of all, I do want to say that NPR acknowledges that we were mistaken in failing to cover the Hunter Biden laptop story more aggressively and sooner. Our current editorial leadership in Wuhan, we recognize that we were reporting at the time, but we acknowledge that the new CIA evidence is worthy of coverage and have covered it. So, yeah, didn't go so well for for Catherine there.

I mean, she's been a real target for quite some time now. I don't know in terms of in terms of whether this is a good idea or not. Before we get to the debate, though, let's also take a listen to the Democrats. E3, please. Let's take a listen. Free speech is not about whatever it is that y'all want somebody to say. And the idea that you want to shut down everybody that is not Fox News is bullshit. We need to stop playing because that's what y'all are doing in here. You don't want to hear the opinions of anybody else. And the Constitution says Congress

shall make no law respecting or establishing of religion or prohibiting the free exercise thereof or abridging the free exercise. The gentlewoman's time has expired. The gentlewoman's time has expired. Here's what I think we should be having a hearing about. After Trump and Musk took over the government, reporters noticed the State Department was trying to funnel 400 million taxpayer dollars to Tesla. The State Department said it's an old contract, no news here, but because of a brave whistleblower and an NPR reporter, they exposed the corruption and the lies. Madam Chairwoman, if we want to look into waste, fraud, and abuse, why not look into that? Elon Musk,

who's running cabinet meetings, who's running the White House, was trying to funnel money to himself. So let's stop investigating Cookie Monster and start investigating how the Trump administration lied about this and was trying to funnel money to their biggest political supporter. Now, I will admit, though, the extreme liberal agenda that you're all pushing, I think, doesn't stop there. This, of course, is Bert and Ernie. Now, these two guys actually live together. They're friends. They're supportive of each other. Now, that might be triggering to our chairwoman and someone in this committee, and perhaps that's also why we're here today. Ms. Kerger, an important question. Are Bert and Ernie part of an extreme

homosexual agenda? No. Thank you, Ms. Kerger, and thank you for being a good sport. Now, I'm obviously using some humor here, but the fact that we're sitting here today talking about defunding public television is actually not funny. At a time where we can't agree on basic facts, and while the free press is under attack, we need public media like PBS and NPR more than ever. So I had no idea Bert and Ernie were possibly gay. Well, that's a whole thing. There was a panic on the right for a while. I had no clue.

What is up with these guys? Is this a longstanding thing? Is this a more recent development? What's up with that? I only remember it from the kind of gay panic 2000s era. Oh, really? But I wasn't cognizant. So these are like the people who wouldn't let their kids read Harry Potter.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, all right. Yeah, but maybe back in the 60s, 70s, there was some... Okay, so Ryan, let's talk about it. What is your case for NPR and for PBS? And why don't we split them apart? Because NPR is a news organization. So NPR News specifically, but also NPR has a lot of different programming, public interest

programming. I listened to tons of NPR when I was growing up. They had great book shows, et cetera. But I don't think you can deny that it's effectively taken a pretty liberal turn in the last decade or so. So why shouldn't public dollars be funding something like that? So I would preface this by saying that my concern for this country is like rapidly evaporating as we become more like China and Russia. But you like China. We're giving up. Right, exactly. But you like it.

So let's just be China then. Okay. At China, you're going to get publicly funded media. Yeah. And you're going to get much better public benefits. You also have then no freedom of thought and association or whatever.

I mean, that's an exaggeration. I shouldn't say that about my good chairman, Xi. But you don't have the same level of freedom that you have here. As we're eroding our freedom here,

then it's like, well, then what are we? What do we even have to offer? But it's kind of like the food stamp thing that we talked about yesterday. So if it's a taxpayer dollar, don't you have a taxpayer interest? Yes.

And the democratically elected government should have some say over the way that it's going to operate. I agree. And I'm fine with that. I think there should be a correction in the kind of political bias of NPR. And I think they're doing it. I think they've been chastened by the election. How did it get so out of control? Because even during the Trump administration, that was the insanity.

I think the way it got out of control is the realignment of our politics. Throughout the 20th century, you had the kind of suburban class that is going to dominate. Well, A, newsrooms were more working class throughout the 20th century. This was in the early 20th century, yeah. As they became more professional class in the 80s and 90s, the professional class had a lot of Reagan supporters in it and a lot of Republicans and suburbs were leaned Republican. And so, and you also had this more of an American identity where journalism was less not seen as partisan. It was seen as, it was like, because you had NPR, NBC, you know, PBS, CBS, ABC, like that was basically it.

And they saw themselves as kind of above politics. As you move into the realignment period of the 2000s and 2010s, everybody with a college education becomes kind of a liberal. Yeah. And whether they're registered as a Democrat or not. And a specific type of liberal, right? Yes. And, you know, they're pro-choice and they're secular. And a lot of them are kind of pro-free trade.

Like that kind of a liberal. And everybody in journalism starts to have a college degree. So the combination of those two things just meant that everybody just worked at NPR, even though they still had, and I know these people, like they still have, they still consider themselves journalists first. But they were just kind of personally liberals. Then Trump gets elected and they see him as this kind of assault on their sensibilities and on the American Constitution. Glenn Greenwald and I have talked about this. We, from the 2000s up through 2016,

we had always been saying, journalists need to stop pretending that they're objective and allow the public to know what their opinion is. I totally agree. I totally agree. And then after 2016, we're like, oh, maybe not like that. Like that, wow, okay, maybe we were a little off on that.

Well, no, I don't think you were. You went a little, like they went so anti-Trump. Yeah. It's like. No, but that was good. That was revealing. That actually made it, it's like, no, your impartiality is actually bullshit. I'll tell you where my jump point came for NPR News in particular. Put this one up there on the screen. I'll never forget this from the day that the Hunter Biden story came out. Why

haven't you seen any stories from NPR about a New York Post Hunter Biden? Quote, we don't want to waste our time on stories that are not really stories. We don't want to waste the listeners and readers time on stories that are just pure distractions. Now, listen, am I telling you that NPR or that Hunter Biden story was the biggest story in the world? No. Do I think it should have merited coverage in the same way that any story should have merited coverage in that 2020 election? Yes. And in particular, they didn't just not cover the Hunter Biden story. They also didn't even cover the censorship of that story by Twitter and others that were involved at the time. So to me, that was when it became an overtly political taxpayer-funded organization.

And I said, I just don't think that can stand. You're not – you shouldn't be doing that. I will stand for – and this is where I disagree with the libertarians and others. Actually, public programming, which is educational, is great. I cannot tell you how much NPR I listened to when I was growing up. Book store – book know, book. They had all these book shows. You know, the money one, I'm forgetting exactly what the name is.

I mean, in the mid-2000s and all that, a lot of people, you know, turned NPR on. It may have been whatever was even available. And it had just general public interest programming of, like, highlighting stories. And, you know, just thinking back to kind of the explosion, the pre-podcast era, that was very, very useful for a lot of people. And I wouldn't even really call it political, especially in its, you know, non-news programming. But that's where you said the educational problem starts to come in because now even that cultural programming around books, we're like reviewing Ibrahim X. Kendi, right, as part of our

show thing. You're like, okay, well, you know, it doesn't take a genius to see which way all this is start trending. Now, am I saying you can't review that? No. But are you also going to have a critical author on? I don't think so. That becomes the issue. And you start to really see that organization from 2014 onwards become just like overtly liberal. I think PBS is the same story where it's sad because it's not just about Sesame Street and others. I mean, PBS helped a lot of kids to learn about science and how to read. If you think about your and my childhood probably in our public schools, what did we watch? We watched a lot of PBS programming about how to read and cartoons. I genuinely think that stuff is really very impactful, especially in a country where you can't leave it to these privatized education companies. They certainly don't have

our damn interests at heart. So I guess it's more about coming back to principles. But a lot of the libertarians and the conservatives, they don't even believe it's possible. And so they just want to blow the entire thing up. So that's really where I differ with them. Right. So it sounds like we agree on the sense that in principle, public media is a good thing. And then the public coming together and deciding that they're going to use public resources to fund media and education is a good thing because the market doesn't do everything. And when it comes to NPR, for instance, apparently about 3% of their funding is tax dollars. That's the national NPR. That's the one they hate, the one that all these liberals on North Capitol Street.

When it comes to NPR stations around the country, it's at least 10% of the funding is tax dollars. And without that funding, the NPR station that exists wherever you live, if you're outside of D.C. or New York or Los Angeles, would probably go under. And those NPR stations, they're important to national NPR because it's cool how NPR, when there's a story in Alaska, they've got somebody in Alaska. When there's a story in Montana, they didn't fly somebody to Montana. They've got somebody that lives right there, knows the local scene, reports every day for the local NPR, but then when there's a national story, they report for national NPR. And I think that these rural areas in particular

are significantly worse off without those publicly funded NPR stations. And they just, just from a commercial capitalist perspective, there's not going to be the audience there for them to survive. So the public should step in and provide a thing that the market can't, that we consider to be valuable. And if we feel like it's going off the rails politically, ideologically,

I think it's fine for the public to step in and be like, look, come on. Get it together. Good. That's what we're doing here. Then we totally agree. Alright, guys. Except the Republicans don't agree. They're going to try to cut all funding. We'll see. I doubt it will. I mean, like you said, though, what is it? 3% of their funding? And it's not like

they also solicit. The only thing that's annoying me about NPR is how much they shake you down for money every time you listen. If Republicans do cut the funding, it will not be national NPR that will go under. It will be me about NPRs, how much they shake you down for money every time you listen. If Republicans do cut the funding, it will not be national NPR that will go under. It will be the local NPRs. That's true. That's fair.

PBS, the only real thing for PBS is I love their historical programming. For anybody out there, I mean, I think it's on Amazon. It's only like $3.99 a month, and you can get access to the whole PBS category. I love those American Experience ones about the American presidents. Obviously, the Ken Burns documentaries are just incredible. That's a genuine public service, in my opinion, because that stuff is used in schools

to like, I mean, it's definitely gonna be better than any history teacher that you're ever gonna see to actually see this highly produced, all these interviews. That's still a war documentary. Actually, it's funny.

Shane Gillis was joking about it. But I feel like he's speaking directly to someone like me when he's joking about Shelby Foote. Have you ever read his books? After I watched that, I actually tried to read Shelby Foote's books. They are impossible to read for me. They are written in that – the way he talks is the way that he writes. It's lyrical. So he'll be like, Mr. Lincoln, you know, coming up on a broad hill. Jefferson Davis, known for the scar on his face.

I'm like, dude, I can't read this. He didn't write with troops such as these, did he? The Stonewall Jackson biography? No, I don't think he did. He wrote a trilogy, which was – I forget exactly what they were called. Yeah, the Civil War, a narrative. To be fair, he even would tell you that he was not trying to write.

That he's making this up? He was writing it in like a historical. And like he was writing it specifically in the way that I found annoying. I just personally cannot stomach that whenever I'm reading. So there you go, book discussion from Sagar and Ryan. Ryan, it's been fun, man. Thank you for stepping in this week. We appreciate you. Back to regular programming next week,

and we will see you all later. I know a lot of cops. They get asked all the time, have you ever had to shoot your gun? Sometimes the answer is yes. But there's a company dedicated to a future where the answer will always be no. This is Absolute Season 1, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad.

I'm Clayton English. I'm Greg Glott. And this is season two of the War on Drugs podcast. Last year, a lot of the problems of the drug war. This year, a lot of the biggest names in music and sports. This kind of star-studded a little bit, man. We met them at their homes. We met them at their recording studios.

Stories matter, and it brings a face to them. It makes it real. It really does. It makes it real. Listen to new episodes of the War on Drugs podcast season two on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Michael Kassin, founder and CEO of 3C Ventures and your guide on good company, the podcast where I sit down with the boldest innovators shaping what's next. In this episode,

I'm joined by Anjali Sood, CEO of Tubi. We dive into the competitive world of streaming. What others dismiss as niche, we embrace as core. There are so many stories out there, and if you can find a way to curate and help the right person discover the right content, the term that we always hear from our audience is that they feel seen. Listen to Good Company on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

This is an iHeart Podcast.