Breaking Points with Krystal and Saagar - 5/7/25: Canadian PM Dunks On Trump, India Strikes Pakistan, Trump Ends Houthi Bombing & MORE!

Episode Date: May 7, 2025

Krystal and Emily discuss Canada's new PM dunking on Trump, Kristi Noem lies on citizen deportations, India strikes Pakistan, Israel shook after Trump ends Houthi bombing, audio shows moment Newark ATC lost radar, Krystal challenges Hegseth buddy on Pentagon chaos.   Waqas Ahmed: https://substack.com/@worqas Mark Lucas: https://www.veteranaction.org/about   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.

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early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. Over the years of making my true crime podcast, Hell and Gone, I've learned no town is too small for murder. I'm Katherine Townsend. I've heard from hundreds of people across the country with an unsolved murder in their community. I was calling about the murder of my husband. The murderer is still out there. Each week, I investigate a new case. If there is a case we should hear about,

call 678-744-6145. Listen to Hell and Gone Murder Line 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. Good morning. Welcome to Breaking Points. Crystal, how are you? I'm doing good. How about you, Em? I'm doing great. We had a really busy news day yesterday, and we're facing down, just staring down the barrel of another extremely busy news day today. The Fed at 2 p.m., White House briefing at 1 p.m., J.D. Vance on stage in Europe this afternoon.

It's just wild, ongoing wars, ceasefire negotiations. So, I don't know, Crystal. This is too much. Yeah. Well, I was kind of off the grid yesterday. I couldn't be online. I couldn't just doom scroll all day as I normally do. And it really like when I was able to log back on, I was like, the world is completely different now. I have no idea. I checked in the rundown. You filled out the rundown. I was like, I don't know anything about any of these things. I guess India and Pakistan are at war. OK, cool. Great.

Yeah, I didn't miss much. Just, you know, two nuclear powers trading blows. That's awesome. So anyway, tons to get into. We got the Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney. Very interesting moments with Trump in the White House. And, you know, it's always fascinating to see which leaders know how to play Trump. And he appears to be one of those leaders who knows how to play Trump, at least at this point.

Kristi Noem was on the Hill testifying, getting grilled by Democrats. The aforementioned India-Pakistan, you know, war, I guess you say, at this point unfolding, certainly escalation, deeply troubling. We have some big developments in terms of the Middle East. Our own Ryan Grimm helping to push Trump to make a genuinely sensible decision and saying, hey, you know what? If the Houthis agree not to bomb us, maybe we should stop bombing them and teasing some kind of a big announcement. We're also covering the continued FAA fallout. And it's truly terrifying situations unfolding at some of the nation's top airports. What Sean Duffy is saying about that, some battle, some like intra-Fox and intra-Trump administration battle unfolding there, Emily? Yeah, absolutely.

Sean Duffy's kind of pointing the finger at Pete Hegseth. So we'll see. I mean, we've got some pretty wild clips of him talking about Pete Hegseth on Laura Ingram's show. So you have two former Fox News hosts in the administration talking to a current Fox News host. We'll get into all of it, but needless to say, that is absolutely wild. We also have an interesting guest, Mark Lucas. He is the founder of a group called Veteran Action, but he's also a friend of Pete Hegseth, a longtime friend

of Pete Hegseth, who goes back to Hegseth days at Concerned Veterans, which is a group that came under, his leadership of that group rather, came under intense scrutiny during his confirmation hearing. Mark was a very prominent backer of Hegseth throughout that controversy. So he is going to talk to us a little bit about the updates in Hegseth world. The Pentagon obviously has gone through a lot of turmoil recently, so we'll get Mark's take on that and also Mark's take on the administration's broader efforts to, quote, reform the veterans' affairs. So, Crystal, we have a lot to talk about with Mark, too. Yeah, absolutely. I'm looking forward to that conversation as well to get his insights on

what he thinks is going on with Pete Hegseth and his management of the Pentagon and his experience with him, etc. Yeah, wild stuff. There's just so many different subplots happening. So we can ask Mark about many of them. Let's start with Canada, though, because Mark Carney, newly elected prime minister, as Donald Trump actually kind of took credit for in a joking way yesterday at the White House. He does kind of get credit for it, to be honest. He said that. He was like, I guess he probably wouldn't have been elected without me. So we have a mashup here of some of Carney's comments in the Oval Office that they had. One of those very familiar bilateral meetings in front of reporters in the Oval Office, in front of the fireplace, Donald Trump kept marveling at his own 24-karat gold. Someone I know joked that it was like

just a total refurbishing by Saddam Hussein. He's just gradually, with every little bit of gold, transforming it into Saddam's palace. 100% the aesthetic. Absolutely is 100% the aesthetic. He'd probably own that too, to be honest. If he were here and he's always invited, he would, of course, be like, yes, it is the Saddam aesthetic. That guy knew a thing or two about interior decor. But let's play Mark Carney in the Oval Office yesterday. One of those, as you're watching or listening, pay close attention to what Mark Carney says about Canada never being for sale. That's been the newsiest clip that's been pulled from his comments. So let's go ahead and roll A1.

As you know, from real estate, there are some places that are never for sale. That's true. We're sitting in one right now, Buckingham Palace that you visited as well. That's true. And having met with the owners of Canada over the course of the campaign last several months, it's not for sale, won't be for sale ever. But the opportunity is in the partnership and what we can build together. We have done that in the past.

And part of that, as the President just said, is with respect to our own security. And my government is committed for a step change in our investment in Canadian security and our partnership. And I'll say this as well, that the President has revitalized international security, revitalized NATO. That's true. And us playing our full weight in NATO, and that will be part of it. Please. What's the top concession you want out of Canada? The top concession you want out of Canada? Concession? Yes.

Friendship. But that's not a concession. No. We're going to be friends with Canada. Regardless of anything, we're going to be friends with Canada. Canada is a very special place to me. I know so many people that live in Canada. My parents had relatives that lived in Canada, my mother in particular.

And no, I love Canada. I have a lot of respect for the Canadians. Wayne Gretzky, I mean, the great one. He went on to seemingly reference Alex Ovechkin, who it seems like he thought was Canadian just after that. But Crystal, I want to get your thoughts here because Trump does, or I should say Mark Carney, does seem to have learned from Justin Trudeau's mistakes, whether they were unforced errors or not. Justin Trudeau did not have that kind of ability to talk to Donald Trump in a way that, I don't know, did he learn from Claudia Scheinbaum, Crystal? Is that because you

see at the end of the clip about 51st state he's saying donald trump has revitalized nato which by the way is a huge issue with canada and trump is just lapping it up he's loving it oh yeah oh yeah i mean i don't know who he learned from but he played this very well and trump was clearly his comment very carefully planned comment about like as you know from, sir, not everything is for sale. He was charmed by that, even as Carney is delivering the message that he wants to deliver and wants to deliver for the Canadian domestic audience of appearing tough with Trump saying, listen, we are never going to be the 51st state. We are not for sale. That's the end of the story.

So he manages to pull that off. You know, the reporting is that he is a, you know, aggressive planner. He and, you know, he prepares studiously for these types of situations. And so they had a game plan going in. He said very little in this press conference, kind of let Trump do his thing and take his questions on whatever and get in a few jabs here or there. And then with this one line kind of delivered the message that he really wanted to deliver. And of course, he led his comments with a lot of praise and flattery of Trump, which, you know, being the egomaniac and slash toddler that he is, is necessary in all of these situations. So I think the other thing that is interesting to me is that Trump, because he does think that he was responsible for Carney's victory in Canada,

and I think he's like obviously correct about that, even though you would think that it should be seen as a rebuke of Trump because it was an anti-Trump agenda, obviously. It was like a backlash against Trump that propels Carney into office. But Trump just sees it as like, hey, buddy, you owe me. Like, we're on the same team because I helped you get in there. Like, that seems to be how he's kind of looking at it. He doesn't care that his ideological ally was defeated. What he likes is just that he was the center of attention in Canada, just as he's the center of attention here and was kind of the center of attention in Australia in their elections as well. So I don't know. There's a lot going on

there. But, you know, in terms of the trade war, not much came of this meeting. There were no deals announced. There were no concessions announced. You know, it was just sort of engagement and keeping the conversation, the lines of communication open. So no real progress was made. But for Carney, I think he has to see it as a win because he was able to get across what he wanted to without having some sort of like Zelensky style blow up in the oval. Yeah. And I think when you package it that way, I think it's like when you're trying to feed a dog medication, you have to put it in some type of delicious food. It's sort of like that. Because, you know, Carney has his own domestic politics, obviously.

That's what pushed Trudeau after he had that humiliating setup at Mar-a-Lago when he came to kiss the ring. And then Donald Trump just made him look really foolish. Trudeau then had to look like he was being really tough on Donald Trump just made him look really foolish. Trudeau then had to look like he was being really tough on Donald Trump. At least he felt that way because of the sort of political sentiments in his own country. And Carney is dealing with those, just like Claudia Scheinbaum is dealing with those. Those questions of sovereignty for people, for their own voters, are really, really important. And so he needs to put his foot down on that. But he did it in the most civil way possible. And you can tell, to the point you just made. And I think this is a really important insight about Donald Trump. He will like you're coming to him with some type of respect.

And so you can deal with Donald Trump if you know how to deal with Donald Trump, even if you have tough considerations at hand. Let's go ahead and roll some of their other parts of their conversation about trade in particular. This is the A2. We can go ahead and roll it here. We don't do much business with Canada from our standpoint. They do a lot of business with us. We're at like 4%. And usually those things don't last very long.

You know, we have great things, great product. The kind of product we sell, nobody else can sell. We will sign some deals. But much bigger than that is we're going to put down the price that people are going to have to pay to shop in the United States. Think of us as a super luxury store, a store that has the goods. You're going to come and you're going to pay a price and we're going to give you a very good price.

We're going to make very good deals. And in some cases, we'll adjust. And they'll either say, great, and they'll start shopping or they'll say, not good. We're not going to do it. I said, that's OK. You don't have to shop. So I said, that's OK. You don't have to shop. So I saw a CNBC reporter highlighting that last bit and finding it, quote, highly

confusing because it sounded as though Donald Trump was saying that none of these deals necessarily have to be inked and signed. They just sort of have to be agreements about the exchanges of what's acceptable. And that's definitely confusing to the extent that what markets are looking for, what investors are looking for right now is certainty. Another highlight of their conversation, by the way, is Trump said USMCA is not dead, talked about when he was asked by reporters who were palting him with questions, pointed particularly to energy and automobiles as the areas that they would be talking about later in the day. But Crystal, what did you make of his last point about people shopping? And like, just give me your reaction to that. I don't know. I

mean, he said this before, which interview was it where he was talking about, like, we're like a department store and I set the prices and it's like, literally, what are you talking? I don't know. I really cannot get inside his head on any of this, but you know, it's, it is not remarked upon enough. The fact that the trade relationship that governs like the deal that governs our trade relationship with Canada and Mexico is USMCA, which Donald Trump himself negotiated in his first term. So if it was so bad and terrible, why did you agree to it then is one major question. You know, also, I think Canadians probably feel a little relieved that when he was asked, OK, well, what concessions do you want from Canada? He's like, just friendship.

I just want friendship. OK, well, you got it, sir. Here we are. We can be friends. So I don't know what any of it really means or amounts to. Ultimately, the other big news that came out sometime yesterday evening is that there are going to be high level trade talks between the U.S. and China, not with Trump and Xi, but with the respective trade. The trade reps from both countries will be meeting and speaking about moving forward. I don't think that they're anywhere near a deal. The phrasing I saw from, I don't know if it was the Wall Street Journal or CNBC, somebody reporting on this was like, it's a major step towards potential concessions in favor of a possible negotiation or something like that. But according to the Chinese, they're saying that the U.S. has been persistently reaching out, saying they want to give some concessions. They want to back away from this. They want to de-escalate. That's been the message coming from Scott Besson as well in particular. And so I think

they're basically opening the door to see what those concessions might be while making plain that they still are not going to accept being bullying. They're not going to accept, you know, giving unilateral concessions on their side. But the fact that the door is even open to conversations, you know, certainly Wall Street thought that was very good news. Yeah. Megan Casella of CNBC is who I was referencing earlier. And she said that comment by Trump was highly confusing. But the latest insight we have as to how the president is thinking about the path forward on tariffs by naming a price for countries to pay to shop in the U.S., it appears he wants some tariff to remain in place, possibly with everyone. So

probably that 10 percent global tariff. And I agree with that. I think he probably isn't budging from the 10%. But she also adds, it downplays what to expect in terms of deals. So is this kind of a soft landing on deals? What Trump is describing, she goes on to say, won't bring the certainty markets, investors, businesses have been looking for. It's hard to make a long-term investment based on an unsigned agreement that's subject to change again. But we will hear more about this from Scott Bessant in the days to come. As you mentioned, Crystal, that news about deal negotiations with China broke just yesterday. And both sides, fairly amusingly, are framing it as a total coincidence.

You know, Bessant said we were going to be in Switzerland to talk with the Swiss. But, you know, our Chinese counterparts are there. So we are going to go ahead and have a conversation with them as well. So much more to come on that before we move on to a clip of Besson, actually, who was in front of Congress. I just want to note, this is the next element we can put up on the screen. Trump ahead of, like, as Carney is in a car to the White House, posts on Truth Social that he looks forward to meeting with him. I very much want to work with him, but cannot understand one simple truth. Why is America subsidizing Canada by $200 billion a year, in addition to giving them free military protection and many other things? We don't need their cars. We don't need their energy. We don't need their

lumber. We don't need anything they have other than their friendship, which hopefully we will always maintain. They, on the other hand, need everything from us. The prime minister will be arriving shortly, and that will be most likely my only question of consequence. That is like the amount of like, there are hundreds of questions under the umbrella of that one question of consequence. Yeah, well, and here's the thing. Like Canadians, everyone is very well aware.

We are the gorilla in the room. We have a lot more power in this trade relationship. If it's us versus Canada, you know, and that's it. And you don't have some sort of, you know, global alignment against us. Us versus Canada one on one is not a fair fight. But you also he really downplays some of the things that we do get from Canada that happen to be quite important to our economy. Number one, fertilizer in significant, you know, significant quantity of our fertilizer comes from Canada.

Kind of important if you want to be able to, like, grow food for your population or farmers. Very important. We also construction materials at a time when we have a cost of living crisis. Housing being one of those issues. Construction costs have gone up significantly, major inflation there during the post-COVID inflationary period. So that's very significant. And then obviously for the auto industry, those parts move back and forth across the border. And that has been one of the industries that has been a beneficiary of a number of exemptions from

the Trump tariff policy. So about somewhere around 14 percent of all of our imports come from Canada, a not insignificant amount. And like I said, coming from some key areas where, in fact, we do need those things, at least in the short term until we can, you know, if we want to spin up our own domestic potash or, you know, if we want to spin up our own domestic potash or, you know, increase. I know one thing Trump has talked about is like increasing the amount that we're logging so that we can replace some of the lumber that we get from Canada. But these are items that are significant

to our economy that we are at this point quite reliant on Canada for. Yeah. To your point, the transition process, if it is in motion at all, obviously takes time and prices will definitely, I mean, they're really banking on, quote, short-term pain going away at some point. And that is very much it to be seen. Hell of a bet. Scott Besant was talking about some of this in front of Congress. It got absolutely grilled here by Mark Pocan of Wisconsin.

So we can go ahead and roll A4. Who pays tariffs, Mr. Secretary? No, no, no. Answer the questions I asked, please. I only have five minutes. Who pays tariffs? Sorry? Well, who pays tariffs?

Sorry, Mr. Secretary, please. Excuse me. The question is very simply, who pays tariffs, Mr. Chairman? I'd like him to answer that question. He wants to answer other questions. Well, Congressman, if the exporters dislike tariffs so much, why wouldn't they? I think what you're trying to get me to say is— Did you remember the question?

I'm not sure you did. Who pays tariffs? It's a very complicated question. Reclaiming my time. People pay tariffs, right? Reclaiming my time, Mr. Secretary. Reclaiming my time, Mr. Secretary. Reclaiming my time.

You clearly aren't going to answer. I'm not going to waste my time having you go, uh, uh, uh, uh. So Pocan obviously represents, is a Democrat who represents Wisconsin. And the Canadian trade relationship I imagine was top of mind for Mark Pocan yesterday. And I was surprised, Crystal, to see Bessent struggle so much with that one. He's generally kind of smooth, probably speaks to the difficulty of giving a palatable answer to that particular question in the middle of a trade revolution, essentially. Yeah, well, because Trump has insisted all kinds of preposterous things about how, you know,

China's going to pay the tariff or the exporters are going to pay the tariff. In reality, the importer pays the tariff and much of that will be passed on to consumers. But he can't give that answer. And he's smart enough to know that's the truth. And maybe has some shred of integrity to not want to just brazenly lie the way that most Trump administration officials do, perhaps. But, you know, the funny thing about him is I believe that he's an intelligent person,

but I actually don't find him that smooth or that effective of a communicator. It's just he doesn't say things that are so, like, outlandishly idiotic and ridiculous as Howard Lutnick. And he's not as much of an ideological psycho as Peter Navarro. So I think he's received better, but I don't find him to be an effective communicator. And you can see that right there as he really struggles with what should be a basic question. But I also want to give credit to Pocan. It was also a smart question to ask because he knew that Besant would know what the actual

answer is and would also know the answer Trump wants him to give and will be caught in this kind of, you know, in this bind that you clearly see as he stumbles and fumbles around and tries to not answer the question at all. Yeah, he walked him into a trap. It was definitely very, very clever. And your other point there about how Besson's audience is kind of an audience of one. In many cases, people in his role, their audience would be Wall Street, it would be the public. But Donald Trump is, I was going to say freelancing,

but I guess not technically freelancing if you're the president, but he's making a whole lot of these decisions on his own. So it makes sense that Besson would be hypercautious in that scenario. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually

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right of individuals. Do you believe that the Constitution grants everyone in our country the right to due process, including non-citizens? The administration has the authority to... Ma'am, I'm looking for a yes or no question. Yes or no. Do you believe the... Yes, ma'am. We have not conducted any kind of empowerment. Mr. Chairman. I'm as you are. Okay. Secretary Noem, I'm just looking for a yes or no here. Do you believe the Constitution guarantees due process to everyone in America? Due process is exactly what this Congress plays out. Yes or no. Okay, ma'am, I'll take that as a no. Excuse me.

Ma'am, I'm trying to ascertain your understanding of the law as it applies to your department. And you as its leader should be able to give us a yes or no answer because judge after judge has ruled that the law is not being followed. Do you believe that the U.S. government has the authority to deport American citizens? No, and we are not deporting U.S. citizens. I'm so happy to hear that you do not believe that the law gives you that authority because the federal government has no authority under U.S. laws to deport any American citizen. And as I know, everyone viewing this hearing today knows that several American citizens have been deported to date. Secretary Noem, that was not a question. Secretary Noem. So Noem just said that was not true. Did you catch that at the end, Crystal?

Yes. Yeah. And that's just a lie. Here's my theory. I don't know if she's in the loop on that. And that may sound ridiculous, but I think Kristi Noem at Homeland Security is very, and ridiculous, by the way, it definitely is if that's the case. But I don't think it's implausible because I believe her role is seen as one where she's like a public ambassador for the Homeland Security brand, which is why all the online security brand, which is why all of those. Which is why she plays dress up with all her like, you know, her ice flak jacket and whatever.

Yeah. And spends a lot of. Accidentally pointing guns at people's heads while she's doing her photo ops. Yeah. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Yeah. She and spends so much time in front of media. So I genuinely do wonder to what extent she is aware of what's happened. If you have advisors that are insulating you, by the way, that is not an excuse either. That's

the furthest thing from an excuse. That's actually criticism if you're not aware of those types of things. But if you have advisors that are insulating you from a lot of negative media pushback, those things actually can happen, unbelievable as it may sound. Well, I think the next soundbite we have would suggest that she does know at least some of these details. It's just that she thinks because the U.S. citizens were children who they deported with their undocumented immigrant mothers, that that doesn't count. And I mean, it is the Trump administration's unconstitutional legal position that birthright citizenship has been ended. So, you know, it could also be that in their minds, even though, again, this is like brazenly unconstitutional, that if you had a child while you were here, that that doesn't really count the same as a US citizen.

But on the due process point, the one other point I'll make about the Lauren Underwood clip that was noteworthy to me before we move on to the next piece is Lauren Underwood is like this is moderate. She's like a moderate. She's not progressive. She's a sort of like moderate,

represents a suburban part of, I think outside of Chicago. I think I'm remembering that correctly. In any case, Democrats clearly feel a lot more confident on the issue of immigration, especially now that they can point to these due process issues, the abuses against American citizens. And they seem to have been somewhat persuaded by the

significant polling drop that Trump has suffered on these specific cases of Kilmara, Braga, Garcia, and what he's doing with El Salvador. And more broadly, the way that his approval rating on immigration has really sunk and he's now underwater. They seem to be much more comfortable and much more emboldened. And I think that's also, you know, the Lauren Underwood exchange to me was emblematic of that as well. Yes, the Underwood exchange was being passed around a lot by the left. Let's now roll this next clip, which has been passed around a lot by the right. We can take a look at it here. Three children so far, likely more children. One of those children with cancer who was deported without the medication necessary to address that child's

cancer. Again, a U.S. citizen. The lawyers have said that they were not given, that family was not given an opportunity to make plans for the kids. When these, the specific cases that you're referencing with these children, it was the parents' choice to take their children. And did ICE follow through on the policy? Which it is the policy of the Trump administration to keep families together. Ma'am, ma'am, ma'am, reclaiming my time. Okay, so Crystal, I think your theory has prevailed here that she's aware of these cases of U.S. citizen deportations, which, as far as I can tell, actually have involved children. That was the case of a 10-year-old girl with cancer who was getting treatment in the United States.

Her family is non-citizen. They were coming back to get cancer treatments and were actually ultimately ended up being deported, as you heard Representative Escobar say there. A lot of these other children were really young. We're talking like toddlers. So the idea of them not being deported, the way some of the early media reports covered this, I think was genuinely misleading. So I get why the right is passing this clip around. But at the same time, there is this gray area where, as you say, they sort of have declared the end of birthright citizenship. Now, Kristi Noem is saying it's their policy to keep families together. It's one of those very weird circumstances for the administration to have to deal with and then go out and defend publicly because they're not wrong. That would be like the crueler thing. If the parents want their children to come with them and the children

are U.S. citizens, the much crueler thing would be to leave them in a detention center in the United States rather than being with their mothers. On the other hand, you then end up technically deporting U.S. citizens, but obviously at the at the request of their own families. Well, at least in one of these instances, mom was being deported, dad was staying here, dad, and they were engaged in a, you know, dad was trying to keep custody of the child in the United States. And a judge said that the family was not given any sort of, you know, ability to contest this deportation of the child. So it really did go against the wishes, at least of one of the parents. And I mean, it's consistent with the way that they've executed the entire immigration policy, which is they just do what they want and they don't care about due

process, even when you're talking about children who are U.S. citizens. And of course, the instance that she brings up there of a child who has cancer, who's receiving treatment here is just outrageous to not make provision for that child's care and make sure that they're going to be okay as this process unfolds, et cetera. So I don't know. I don't really get why the right thought that this made Kristi Noem look good when you actually know the details of these situations, because obviously it is complex when you have a mom who is undocumented, a child who is a U.S. citizen. In many instances, mom probably would want to take the child, but not in all instances. And that's really what, you know, we've seen play out with some of these cases. One other thing I wanted to point out that just is breaking as well

is Marco Rubio had made this comment about how they want to expand their deportation into prison policy beyond just El Salvador. And we now have some reporting that they are going to start deporting immigrants likely this week to Libya's prison system. Another one that is notorious for sexual abuse and torture and horrific conditions. Some have described it as, quote unquote, a hellhole. So that appears to be, and of course, Libya itself is a war-torn country, you know, in large part thanks to our own foreign policy there, you know, partially ruled by, effectively, a warlord. It's in any case, that appears to be the next place that they want to be able to ship immigrants, immigrants to another prison system that is rife with horror and human rights abuses.

Yeah. And I wanted to put, definitely we'll be following that story if it develops or if it was something that was like randomly tossed out there. Sounds like it was a fairly serious proposal. So we'll obviously bring everyone updates on that. I wanted to get this next element B3 on the screen. Yoan Grillo has a great sub stack. He reports from Mexico City. And I wanted to point out he has some updates from what Claudia Scheinbaum discussed at her Monday morning news conference. I know Crystal, you and Glenn covered this on Monday. Scheinbaum gave her own description of the conversation she had with Donald Trump about troops. This is from Yoan. I'm quoting him. Trump said, we want to help Mexico. And this is from Scheinbaum now. Trump said, we want to help Mexico. And to help Mexico, we want to send troops if you need them. And I said, no, President Trump, not this.

We want to collaborate in many ways in line with our sovereignty and in the territory that each of us governs. And the reason that's worth mentioning here, and Yoan, as somebody who follows this really closely, mentions that Scheinbaum has rapidly changed the tone on migration, like crackdowns since Lopez Obrador left office. The reason that this is worth highlighting is because Trump desperately needs Scheinbaum's cooperation, obviously, to continue with a lot of these crackdown-type policies, which is why we saw the administration roll out this $1,000 self-deportation policy, because they know that these deportations are way more difficult. They've realized that these deportations are not quite as, are not happening at a pace that are going to allow them to do the, quote, mass deportations that they promised on the

campaign trail. So everyone probably is aware that DHS announced this week you can, via CBP Home. If you are a non-citizen, you can deport yourself and get a $1,000 voucher, which actually is cheaper than the legal process playing out per capita in the United States. But I wanted to bring up this post from Ruben Gallego. This is before. He responded to that and said, why don't we make them pay a $5,000 fine, go through a background check, and give them a work visa for a few years, renewable with good behavior. Noteworthy, Crystal, because I think, you know, Dems have definitely staked out a hard opposition to these Trump policies. But I sort of feel like there's been, there haven't been a ton of

alternatives proposed. It's sort of like you're either Lake and Riley or open borders. You're either on the Lake and Riley Act, I should say, you know, signing it with like, like a lot of kind of centrist Dems did with Republicans, or you're just like all in favor of opening up the borders, which, you know, more power to maybe you and Ryan. But I don't think you're as far as Ryan on that. I'm getting there. I'm getting more radicalized every day. But this is an interesting alternative. Trump is the one who articulately points out these borders are just arbitrary lines drawn on a map. Like, what are we doing here? You know, random line

drawn on the map. Why do we care? No, I mean, listen, Gallego, who did vote for the Lake and Riley Act, by the way, Democrats tried to, in the last administration, stake out this hawkish border position through their, like, bipartisan immigration bill. But I think you're right that at this point, none of them are open borders. That's just,

there's none of them that are open borders actually. But I think that the, anybody who is, you know, even slightly progressive, they're happy to attack the Trump administration, but I don't know that they've landed yet on where they want to specifically be. And I think that'll be fleshed out a lot probably in the next presidential election is when we'll see more specifics about what that plan actually looks like. I mean, to speak to the Trump self-deportation piece, their major program is effectively sadism and cruelty on display, symbolic displays of mass of cruelty, like sending to El Salvador, sending to Libya, et cetera, deporting the child with cancer, plus self-deportation.

That's their true policy, their actual policy. And so, you know, that's where the $1,000 to self-deport comes in. By the way, I want to note, they try to make it seem like this is a great deal for immigrants and oh, then you'll have a better shot to come back in. In many instances, that is not the case. And in many instances, you know, you will lose out on if you have, for example, like an actually legitimate asylum claim that has a shot or some other potential to for relief, you would lose out on that by availing yourself of this program. I don't think Ruben Gallego's like, I guess I like Ruben Gallego's idea better than that. But it's still not a great idea. Because I mean, first of all, when you're just okay, well, who can pay $5,000, then you get

to jump the line. Not crazy about that from a class perspective. Not crazy about the you get a work visa based on quote unquote, good behavior. what does that do? That hands tons of power to, you know, it's like the H-1B program. It hands tons of power to capitalists and the boss class and does fuel a sort of like exploited underclass. So I'm not crazy about his solution either that is being offered as an alternative here, I think also has some major issues. Yeah. I mean, part of this is that there's really no good solution to what happened over the course of the last several years. And obviously we all disagree on what the scope of the quote unquote solution should be. But, you know, when you have so much immigration in such a short time span, obviously there's a need for like some type of government grappling with that or some type of like significant government policy to address what happened. And by the way, that's for American citizens, but also for the migrants who end up living these such precarious existences, like when we were talking earlier about the little girls who were deported,

U.S. citizens who were deported. I mean, it's just it's not fun for them. It's not fun for the parents. It's just a it's a mess because of all of these big legal questions. And Gallego's $5,000, one of the reasons that concerns me, to be honest, is that a lot of these migrants are already in debt to smugglers. And the smugglers are working for the cartels. And so that's basically would be like a massive cartel subsidy or be a massive like wealth transfer to the cartels that we're currently trying to help Mexico undercut. And Mexico is

currently trying to undercut, at least if you believe top figures in the government, that they're trying to go after these cartels and break apart the cartels because they've wreaked havoc on the lives of ordinary Mexicans. So I don't, I think there are a lot of problems with the solution. I do, though, think it's, I wonder, actually, the fact that he voted for the Lake and Riley Act and got probably a lot of flack from the left. I mean, I imagine in Arizona it wasn't that bad, although there's a pretty robust migrant advocacy movement in Arizona. But I wonder if that

actually pushed him to come up with like some type of answer, a policy answer to this. I think that's possible because I think he wants to, I think he is considering running for president in 2028. And I think the Lake and Riley Act is going to be pretty damn well near disqualifying for him in that race, given the way that the Democratic base has once again shifted on immigration and is appalled. And it's not just about the substance of that bill. It's also about your first instinct when Trump 2.0 came in was to capitulate. And that is for the Democratic base right now, that is the ultimate sin. And that you did it on an issue that has become very central and very animating for the Democratic base, I think is a huge problem for him. And I think he's savvy enough to realize that.

Really interesting. Well, Crystal, let's move on to developments between India and Pakistan, frightening developments between India and Pakistan. Camp Shane, one of America's longest running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie.

In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today.

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. 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 One, Taser Incorporated. I get right back there and it's bad. It's really, really, really bad. Listen to new episodes of Absolute Season One, 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. We've been closely tracking escalating tensions between the two nuclear powers of Pakistan and India in the wake of a horrific terrorist attack that occurred in India. You can put these images up on the screen here. India has now struck Pakistan in quite a significant way. You can see the explosions here. In addition, though, it does appear that India

lost several fighter jets. So they have taken some damage here as well, though the details around that remain murky. Joining us now to discuss and break down all of the events that led up to this and the significance of what is unfolding right now is Waqas Ahmed. He is a journalist for Dropsite News. Really glad to have you, Waqas. Thank you for having me. Yes, of course. So just bring people up to speed about what we know about this particular attack from India. And then give us a little bit of the background of how we got to this point. Yes. Last night in Pakistan and India time, India struck nine different places, specific places in Pakistan.

Some were in the disputed territory of Kashmir. Some were in Pakistan proper, like Pakistan's mainland. According to the Pakistani sources, 20 people have died. Pakistani sources say all of them were civilians. Indians say that they were terrorists. There have been some photos that have been released by the Pakistani government showing a child and a woman who is injured. And there are further claims that other families may have been killed in this attack. So that's the Pakistani claim. Indian claim on the other side is that targeted terrorist hideouts and training facilities. India did that because of an attack that happened a few weeks ago in the Indian healthcare territory of Kashmir in the town called Pelgam. 26 people, 26 tourists were killed in that attack and India blamed that entirely on Pakistan immediately.

Now Pakistan has been asking for investigations for these attacks. India has not offered any evidence so far but India did take that opportunity as a pretext to launch an attack on Pakistan and now we have seen what has happened. During this attack there are reports that four jets have been, now we cannot say if they were shot down or they were crashed, but there are debris of four jets in four different cities inside India. Most likely because it's been multiple hours since these debris have been recovered, it is most likely that these are Indian jets. Well, yeah, let's put up C3. This is a New York Times tear sheet on the situation. And Wakasa, I just want to ask what you might expect to see in the next couple of days. Can we expect escalation? What do you think we should be watching out for just 24, 48 hours out from now?

This was a very interesting night in Pakistan and India because these attacks happened. And as soon as the news of these attacks started coming in, videos of these crash jets started coming in. So there's a very mixed feeling in Pakistan. Pakistanis think that while India has attacked Pakistan, there has been some retaliation. But we don't know to what extent this feeling is prevalent in Pakistani military leadership. There are some indications that Pakistan could say that India tried to attack us, we retaliated and we defended Pakistan and it is over now. Now, this provides Pakistan with an exit ramp over here. India has already said that they do not plan further escalation. While they already

have escalated this, there's this gap where Pakistan has not targeted any Indian territory so far. So there are two big opinions in Pakistan. One is that Pakistan must retaliate and must attack Indian mainland also. And there's one opinion saying that Pakistan has already defended, Pakistan has shot down at least four jets. Some say two, New York Times is saying two. But Pakistan has shot down a few jets and that provides Pakistan with enough retaliation for now. If these voices prevail in Pakistan, and I'm sure they're behind the scenes, the U.S. administration, multiple diplomats are trying, pushing Pakistan to take this exit ramp and say that this night the scores were evened and there there's no need for further escalation if this happened then it's fine but Pakistani government

is controlled by the Pakistani military Pakistani military has been running the country for the past many years especially since they removed the prime minister Imran Khan and now because of that it's it sits on a very flimsy moral ground legal ground and it is run by the army chief of Pakistan General Asim Munir now he might see this as an opportunity to make his hold on power even more firm by appealing to these kinds of sentiments in Pakistan, like pro-war sentiments. And he might think of attacking India if such a thing happens that there might be further escalation. But this is all related to Pakistan's internal politics. Let's go ahead and take a listen to President Trump's reaction to those strikes by India. Take a listen.

Any questions for Steve? President Trump, any reaction to the attacks between India and Pakistan? No, it's a shame. We just heard about it just as we were walking in the doors of the Oval. Just heard about it. I guess people knew something was going to happen

based on a little bit of the past. They've been fighting for a long time. You know, they've been fighting for many, many decades and centuries, actually, if you really think about it. No, I just hope it ends very quickly. So someone seems to have helped him with his historical knowledge here. Previously, he'd said that India and Pakistan had been fighting for 1,500 years. Now he's rolled that back to many decades. But in any case, Wakasa, what's your reaction to what the president had to say there and what sort of pressure the U.S. would be able to exert on the situation? So the Trump administration has been very measured

in this during this whole conflict between Pakistan, the most recent conflict between Pakistan and India. They have actually pushed India for some restraint. Vice President J.D. Vance a few days ago said that we are in talks with India to make sure that no further escalation happened. And that was a few days ago. And India has escalated to a certain point. But if you see, Indian escalation is also very measured. They did not violate Pakistani airspace. Their jets did not come into Pakistan. They targeted their targets from inside Indian territory. So there was a line that they did not cross because they didn't want a specific level of escalation. This, like I said earlier, does provide Pakistan with an off ramp. And it seems like the Trump admin has been talking to the Indian side

and has not been giving Indian side what they wanted. But because what Indian side really wanted was Israel-like treatment. They wanted America to give a car tip lash to indians to do whatever they want in pakistan they also wanted the trump admin to name pakistan as being behind this terror attack which they have not done interesting uh none of these things went india's way and now uh the pressure is on both countries to show restraint and not escalate this further. And we see this the way Trump basically has given a non-answer. He has said nothing. Last time he said at 15, they've been fighting for 1500 years, no action required.

Right now, he said they've been fighting for decades, like no action required on his part. The admin will do nothing. So they'll be on behind the scenes talking to both countries trying to de-escalate things. And how significant is it that at least one of the strikes was in Punjab province, as you were describing, sort of like the main heartland of Pakistan? Well, it is significant. It's significant if you look at it. It depends on how much significance the Pakistani military gives to it. Pakistani military can go both ways from here. It can say that even though Pakistan's mainland was attacked, even though Punjab was attacked, we have retaliated by shooting down those jets.

And this is what Pakistani defense forces are for. And that's it. But if the military high command decides that this is a line that India has crossed and we will look very bad in the eyes of Pakistani public, in the eyes of the larger Pakistani military, we will look very bad if we don't respond to that. If the Pakistani military takes that, goes towards that analysis, then there will be further escalation. And if there is further escalation, then there is a slippery slope that we are going towards nuclear war because both countries have it. And it is really easy to think now that nuclear war is like a remote or complete impossibility, but it is not to be exactly on that point, Wakas. Like, what, we tend to not think really hard about, maybe it's wishful thinking, but about nuclear possibility and how these situations can careen out of control really quickly. Because, you know,

we feel like we have 100 years of evidence that nuclear weapons lead to, you know, mutually assured destruction, which creates some type of mutual detente. But why in this case do you think people should be worried about how completely tenuous and fragile the situation is? So there's like three steps to nuclear war over here. If India, if Pakistan right now decides that it needs to retaliate inside India, it needs to destroy some target inside Indian borders. Pakistan fires missiles. Pakistan destroys those targets. India takes that as an escalation and India will then have to respond. If India responds by moving their forces towards borders and India is a military giant. Its forces are massive. If it moves into Pakistan,

Pakistan will have a very hard time resisting that. And if such a thing happens, Pakistan has something called tactical nukes. And Pakistani nuclear and war doctrine says that when India is closing into major cities, Pakistan can use really small nukes on these military formations that are coming towards Pakistan. So if Pakistan uses a tactical nuke, like say if these nukes are provided on the battlefield, and if a situation comes, which is very probable, if a large-scale war happens between Pakistan and India, it is very probable that Indian forces can move towards Pakistani cities very fast because Pakistan is like a very thin country if you look at it on the map. As Indian forces move, Pakistani forces have said that they will launch a tactical

nuke. Pakistani forces think that launching a tactical nuke will not cause a strategic reaction. But what do you think? Do you think that if Pakistan launches a tiny nuke on Indian soldiers, on Indian forces coming towards Pakistan, do you think India will not take that as a pretext to launch a strategic nuke towards a Pakistani city? And if that happens, will Pakistan not retaliate? So that circles really, really fast, if not stopped. Yeah, that is deeply troubling. I think the way you put it is really important. You've got an off ramp, potentially with the downing or the crashing of these Indian jets, but you also have an on ramp if the Pakistani military decides that they want to escalate. So, Waqas, thank you so

much for taking the time to help us understand what's going on. Thank you so much for having me. Our pleasure. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed

children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system

to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. I'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 got 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. 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. So at that same meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney that we talked about earlier,

Trump also revealed some significant, teased one big announcement and made another quite significant announcement. Let's first take a listen to the tease here. We'll have maybe before we're going to, as you know, the Middle East and Saudi Arabia, we're going to UAE and Qatar. And that'll be, I guess, Monday night. Some of you are coming with us. I think before then we're going to have a very, very big announcement to make,

like as big as it gets, and I won't tell you on what, and it's very positive. I'd also tell you if it was negative or positive. I can't keep that up. It is really, really positive, and that announcement will be made either Thursday or Friday or Monday before we leave. But it'll be one of the most important announcements that have been made in many years about a certain subject. Very important subject. So you'll all be here. So, Emily, what's the smart money out with this big announcement Trump is teasing here is?

I love that he's it's positive. Like you'd be like, guys, what's the smart money out with this big announcement Trump is teasing here is? I love that he's—it's positive. Like, you'd be like, guys, big announcement coming. It's going to be really bad. That's right. I didn't even think about that. That's a good point. I'm guessing it's something to do with Israel and Gaza? I don't know.

Do you have a similar take? I guess so. I mean, we'll just wait. Like, Trump is a showman. He oversaw things. Sometimes he'll say something just wait. Like Trump is a showman. He oversells things. Sometimes he'll say something that's going to happen and it never happens. So we'll see what unfolds. But could be with regard to Israel, Gaza and the Saudi Arabia deal that they've been trying to figure out. I know that's been really important to Trump. I don't think that they would be there yet on an Iranian deal because those negotiations are

continuing or ongoing. But I guess it's possible something there as well. So I guess we'll just all have to wait and see. At the same time, he announced that they have come to a deal with the Houthis. And at the time, this had not been confirmed or reported. It now has been more reported out. And by the way, major props to our own Ryan Grim and Dropsite News because they were apparently influential in helping to secure this quote unquote deal between the Houthis and the U.S. Go ahead and take a listen to Trump and then I'll give you some more details on the other side. We had some very good news last night. The Houthis have announced that they are not, or they've announced to us at least, that they don't want to fight anymore.

They just don't want to fight. And we will honor that. And we will stop the bombings. And they have capitulated. But more importantly, we will take their word. They say they will not be blowing up ships anymore, and that's what the purpose of what we were doing. So that's just news. We just found out about that. So I think that's very, very positive. They were knocking out a lot of ships going, as you know, sailing beautifully down the various seas. It wasn't just the canal. It was a lot of other places. And I will accept their word. And we are going to stop the bombing of the Houthis effective immediately.

This is sailing down various seas. Yeah, I know. I know. But I mean, the thing here that's like annoying is the Houthis were actually not attacking American ships, you know, post ceasefire. Like they ceased all activity during the ceasefire. And then when the ceasefire is over, they resumed attacks on Israeli assets, but not on U.S. assets until we started bombing them. So this deal was previously in place and has been on offer effectively the entire time, something that Ryan has been, you know, reporting and pointing to. But specifically, Dropsite had an interview with a Houthi official and where he laid out, hey, if you guys, like, if you stop bombing us, we are happy to stop bombing U.S. ships and focus more specifically on Israel,

I think is the other side of that. And Dropsite was really criticized, often has been criticized for talking to officials from whether it's the Houthis or Jeremy Scahill just had another interview with a Hamas official. And yet that interview ends up being influential in leading the U.S. to a better policy to, you know, to a better policy vis-a-vis Yemen and the Houthis. So kudos to Ryan and Dropsite.

And it's good to see, you know, some sense coming back to this because not only was the policy foolish and expensive, it was putting U.S. lives at risk. You had that situation with like the fighter jet falling off of the aircraft carrier because they had to make some sudden maneuver to avoid Houthi attacks. And then also it was absolutely horrific inside of Yemen because we've just been brazenly bombing civilian assets and killing civilians. I mean, Trump bragged about bombing this group of, you know, tribal, like this tribal gathering that he was claiming was a meeting of Houthi militants or whatever, just total lies. We bombed

a migration center that was holding a bunch of, where a bunch of African migrants were as well and killed them. So it's good to see that they decided to take the Houthis up on their offer here of, hey, you stop bombing us, we'll stop bombing you. And meanwhile, we have some video of bombings in Lebanon just over the last 24 hours that we can go ahead and roll. You can see this coming up on your screen. This is going to be D3. This is footage from yesterday, Crystal. If you're listening to this, what you're seeing is an airplane just completely on fire. This is the Sinai Airport, which was targeted by airstrikes

from Israel just yesterday. As the person who posted this points out, the civilian terminal was blown apart and you see planes burning on the tarmac. Yeah, just horrific damage to Yemen, one of the poorest countries in the region, and has been, you know, rocked by a civil war, you know, one side of which was funded by the U.S., horrific issues with famine, and now this being caught in the middle of this conflict. And the Houthis have asserted they have been one of the few groups that has really said, listen, we are going to take action in response to Israel's genocide in Gaza. And it was quite clear that no amount of bombs was going to dissuade them from continuing

in that direction. And, you know, they were just able to, they were just able to strike, you know, Ben Gurion Airport and saying, hey, we're going to institute an air blockade. Now they don't have that kind of capability, but that was a huge demonstration of strength, et cetera. So quite significant there. Yeah, absolutely. We have video here of a Yemeni man sort of delivering a message to the U.S. and Israel. We can roll D4. Yeah, so he's saying America and Israel, today they are attacking a civilian facility. Why are you trying to scare us with America? You won't weaken us. Or what are you trying to scare us, America? Or you will not shake us in the slightest. You are covering our feet with plastic, America. Plastic, he's yelling. What are the Americans doing by targeting vital institutions, the infrastructure, the civilians? So it's a desperate situation to be sure. Israel is saying

that they completely disabled that airport in Yemen yesterday as well. And another thing to note, this is quite interesting, D5, this is a Reuters report that came out yesterday as well. The next round of Iran-U.S. nuclear talks are likely to be in Oman over the weekend. And an AP story notes that the foreign minister of Oman, who has been mediating between the U.S. and the Houthis, is also mediating between America and Iran over the nuclear question. So, maybe, Crystal, just to tie a bow on this block, that goes back to the big announcement that Trump has been teasing. What did he say? It was as big as can possibly be, big as can be, something like that. Who knows? But quite a significant, I think,

connection that the same mediator is going between the U.S. and the Houthis and also the United States and Iran. The reports are that Israel was also like caught off guard by this quote-unquote deal with the Houthis and the U.S. and you know it's always a good sign when we're doing things that are upsetting to or surprising or unnerving the Israelis so we'll take that for what it's worth good to see the Iranian negotiations continue and you know hopefully hopefully something comes out of that I mean this is it's, kind of ironic because probably what will be achieved is effectively a return to the deal that was negotiated under Obama. I'm sure it'll have some face-saving flourishes. So Trump can say this is greater and better and bigger, whatever, than what Obama was able to achieve.

But the bottom line is the contours are probably be quite similar to the Iranian nuclear deal that was struck under Obama that Trump himself got out of and excoriated as being so incredibly terrible. But, you know, if he's able to renegotiate something akin to that and the Iranians agree to it, it would certainly be vastly better outcome than us marching into war with Iran, a possibility that certainly remains on the table. And we've seen a lot of belligerent talk from, you know, Pete Hexeth and others with regard to that. Yeah, I mean, and this is an administration that is staffed, and we'll talk to Mark Lucas about this, I imagine, later in the show. It's staffed by people who are, you know, sort of surprisingly, well, it's not surprising if you follow this stuff, but let's say increasingly anti-interventionist from the perspective of like the standards of your typical Republican administration,

but also sort of normie Republicans. Mike Huckabee, by the way, remains the ambassador to Israel. So it's just, you know, it's easy to be cynical about what's possible in both of these, whether it's Iran or the Houthis, ultimately, when you have such vociferous opposition to actually the Trump Witkoff, what they seem to want out of this. I mean, it's hard to know with Trump, but certainly with—it's also kind of hard to know with Witcoff because he goes back and forth on things after he gets pressure from one side and pressure from another side. But we'll see how this goes over the weekend. We'll see what Donald Trump's big announcement is. He's obviously traveling.

So there will be much more to come on this front. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight-loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right.

It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait. Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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. 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. Add free at Lava for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Well, we have new audio between the tower controller and a pilot flying in to Newark. You may remember the incident that this comes from. Let's listen to this audio. This is from CNN yesterday. You'll get a good sense of the chaos that is enveloping Newark Airport, major airport,

one of the biggest airports in the country, as you take a listen here. Five FAA employees have now taken special government leave to recover from the stress of it. Here's some of that audio where the tower tells one plane that radar is down. No, you do not have a Bravo clearance. We lost our radar and it's not working correctly. Radar service terminated. Squawk VFR, green screen approved. If you want a Bravo clearance, you can just call the towers when you get closer. Okay, I'll wait for that frequency from you, okay? Okay, no, this Squawk VFR, look up the tower frequencies. We don't have a radar, so I don't know where you are. Okay, so air traffic control, and the next element speaks to this, the Wall Street Journal, a big Wall Street Journal story trying to probe

what's been going wrong, particularly at Newark and Reagan National Airport here in Washington, D.C. And this is, Chris, I don't know about you, but listening to that audio, I mean, it's completely horrifying to hear that. I mean, like this was from April 28th. Again, it's this happening in the afternoon. They realized, and I'm reading from the journal here, the chatter from pilots they were communicating with went silent. Radar screens filled with dots showing aircraft positions went dark. Backup systems failed. Planes bound for the area went into holding patterns. About 90 seconds later, the traffic control system started blinking back to life,

but problems lingered with the radar. Just, this is another quote. Another controller offered a warning to a private plane. I want to at least get you towards something and clear of all the other aircraft in case we lose the frequency again. It is the year 2025. And this is what's happening in our skies affecting, you know, many, many Americans every single day. What was your reaction to that CNN audio crystal? I mean, horror, abject horror. Because if you are flying one of these commercial jets, I mean, your, abject horror. Because if you are flying one of these commercial jets, I mean, your visibility is quite limited. You are completely dependent on, you know,

air traffic control, making sure that planes are avoiding one another. As we saw, I mean, the horrific deadly crash at Reagan National, you know, they weren't able to see or maneuver this helicopter that was, you know, out of its flight path, et cetera. So it's terrifying that this is even a possibility. It's not just Newark that is having issues. I mean, this is a particularly dire circumstance, but Newark, even beyond this, is wildly understaffed in terms of air traffic controllers. That was potentially also a factor in terms of, you know, that deadly crash at Reagan National as well.

And so you have a massive understaffing issue at a time when this government has been very interested in making cuts across the board. And so, you know, it creates an incredibly and increasingly dire circumstance. Now, this didn't come about just in the Trump administration, as Sean Duffy is very happy to point out that this is certainly a long time coming. But it is certainly a case in point of why certain instances, we actually need to be building up government capacity and it is truly a life or death issue. The other thing that I'll say about this is,

you know, there's been, there's an overall sense in the country that things are just, things are falling apart. The country's in decline. You know, things don't work the way that they're supposed to. Things we used to be able to take for granted, we can no longer take for granted. And I think that this is probably the most extraordinary example of that, where 10 years ago, I would have flown in and out of Newark without a care or thought in my mind. And now

there is no way I would avoid Newark like the plague. There's no way I would buy a plane ticket out of Newark Airport at this point. I mean, I have literally always felt that way. But yes. Out of safety or just like the unpleasantness of the experience? The unpleasantness of the experience. Yes, that's right. Correct. I guess I have flown in and out of Newark, but I do try to avoid it.

Like you said, like the plague. But this comes obviously on the heels of that other very frightening situation at Reagan National last week, since which the army has paused helicopter flights near the airport, which you would think had actually already happened. They had tried to institute changes after that horrific, insane tragedy that unfolded in January when 67 people died in the Potomac River. The Washington Post reports the Army is now pausing helicopter flights near Washington Airport after two commercial planes had to abort landings last week because of an Army Black Hawk helicopter that was flying to the Pentagon. So what's at the center of all of this really is air traffic control. Let's listen to this. So Pete Muntin at CNN, he's their aviation correspondent.

He has actually fantastic reporting on all of this. Let's take a listen to him talking about Newark yesterday, where delays continued. Flights bound to Newark again were delayed until midnight because of staffing shortages, which is another major problem for airlines in general. So let's listen to Pete here. Well, this is pretty damning here. The flights bound to Newark today delayed until midnight tonight, once again due to these air traffic control staffing shortages. Now the ninth straight day of these delays. You said several airplanes were involved here, more like 15 or 20, according to Flightradar24.

In total, more than 800 flights canceled, 160 just yesterday. It's about a quarter of all flight cancellations nationwide. Okay, so the situation for Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is just a complete disaster. And he's very frustrated with Pete Hegseth. We're going to get into that more particularly and how it speaks about Hegseth's future when we have Mark Lucas on the show in the next block. But just to focus on Duffy for now, this is a clip from yesterday. It was posted to his transportation account. And before you listen to it, let's just read the caption.

He says, Biden and Buttigieg celebrated their infrastructure bill, $1.2 trillion, the largest infrastructure package known to man. They claimed it was going to change America. They spent less than 1% of the money on fixing our air traffic control system. They ignored warnings. Instead, they spent their time injecting social justice and climate equity crap into everything. So let's go ahead and roll this clip of Duffy speaking to reporters outside the White House yesterday. This is not a new problem. We've known this problem has existed. There's been multiple GAO reports over the last four years

saying you have real problems with air traffic control and you should do something with it before it actually fails. So think about this. The last administration spent $1.2 trillion, the largest infrastructure package ever known to man. They spent, Joe Biden signed right here at this White House. And how much was spent to rebuild air traffic control? $5 billion. And of the $5 billion that was spent or was given, only $1 billion was actually spent. So they have made no investments in the system that we now see having issues in Newark. On top of that, they were focused on things like racist roads. They literally spent time concerned about the word cockpit and changing cockpit to flight deck. It's not funny, that's actually what they spent time on.

Or airmen to aeronaut. And so now this administration has come in and it was shortly after the DC air crash that I started to look at the air traffic control system. And very quickly, I saw one piece of the pie where there was issues and then scratched further and there's another piece of the pie. And as we looked at it, we see that the whole system needs to be redone. We need to build a brand new air traffic control system. Crystal, I'm sympathetic to some of that because I do think it's abundantly obvious that there were resources being distracted to lower priority items. And there have been pretty bipartisan criticisms of that in the past. Not super high profile, but if you're reading trade publications and all that sort of thing and digging into it. It's not insane to point out that some of the practices were questionable. It does also seem, though,

like that can't last forever as you have these spiraling disasters. Like, as a public relations strategy, I feel like the public's patience with, like scapegoating DEI is gonna wear thin very quickly I think it's already worn thin yeah I mean you got you know when the initial horrific crash happened everyone's like okay we're very early in and you know they did their whole oh it's DEI blah blah blah um and I think people were like okay we'll give you some time to work this out at this point it's May like you've been on the job for a hot minute now. You're blaming of wokeness and oh my God, they wanted to change the name of the cockpit or whatever. I don't think that this lands outside of the base. The end of the day,

you got to deliver results. And here's the other thing, Emily, is Doge, I think, did have a direct negative impact on the FAA, not only because they sent those freaking fork in the road emails even to air traffic controllers and other people that were involved and important at the FAA. So that's number one. Number two, they sent in the SpaceX engineers to mess around. And some of the reporting from the inside is that they would come with like, oh, guess what, guys? Like, we need to have redundancies. And this is where they're like, we already know that. You just like been wasting time to tell us conclusions

of things that we already know and could be working on fixing instead. So the polar opposite of this idea that this would be quote unquote more efficient, they just were sort of reinventing the wheel and creating new reports on things that they already knew needed to be fixed. Not to mention, Sean Duffy is like, oh, they only allocated $5 billion to fixing this. I'm like,

that seems like a kind of significant sum of money to me personally. And of course, you can't snap your fingers and fix everything overnight. But in terms of the public perception, this administration has really wrapped their arms around the federal government in trying to remake it. And, you know, they're aggressive. Let's take the chainsaw approach. And one of the things that you and I and Sagar and others were warning about from the beginning and Ryan as well is that that means when things go wrong, people are going to point the finger. And sometimes it will be aptly pointed of this directly resulted from Doge failures. And sometimes it will be maybe an indirect or

completely unrelated. But you own this thing now. You have completely wrapped your arms around every failure that happens. That was one of the big risks. And I think that there is direct criticism to be had of the way that they have, you know, run the FAA and the just slash and burn approach to government, which anyone will tell you, there are certainly areas where you can cut the fat, but right now, air traffic control is not one of them. You need to be aggressively staffing up,

aggressively building capacity. And if you are not doing that, then you're failing. Well, there's a question also of whether Doge policies just made a lot of really experienced people in the FAA retire. And in that world generally, if a lot of experienced people just sort of went for the exits, then you end up with a few months, if not longer, of a transition period, which we keep talking about, keep coming up, of just chaos. And if it's not augmented with something, some sort of like serious effort to deal with the immediate consequences of that, then you end up with thousands of people being immiserated at Newark and around the country. So we should also mention

SpaceX just yesterday got FAA permission to get an increase in Starship launches from Boca Chica, Texas. Five-fold increase in those launches just yesterday from the FAA. How nice for them. How fortunate. They've got some connections. They were able to work there. That's lovely for them. I think they know someone. I'm flying tomorrow and Friday. So thoughts and prayers appreciated, everyone. Let's go ahead.

Good luck and Godspeed. Fear not. We have more Sean Duffy coming up in the next block. He's been all over the media the last couple of days, I guess, understandably so, given there's a lot to answer for. So let's get to talking about the Pentagon with Mark Lucas, and he'll be coming right up. Camp Shane, one of America's longest-running weight loss camps for kids, promised extraordinary

results. Campers who began the summer in heavy bodies were often unrecognizable when they left. In a society obsessed with being thin, it seemed like a miracle solution. But behind Camp Shane's facade of happy, transformed children was a dark underworld of sinister secrets. Kids were being pushed to their physical and emotional limits as the family that owned Shane turned a blind eye. Nothing about that camp was right. It was really actually like a horror movie. In this eight-episode series, we're unpacking and investigating

stories of mistreatment and reexamining the culture of fatphobia that enabled a flawed system to continue for so long. You can listen to all episodes of Camp Shame one week early and totally ad-free on iHeart True Crime Plus. So don't wait.

Head to Apple Podcasts and subscribe today. 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.

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.

We are joined now by Mark Lucas, who is a founder of the new group called Veteran Action. Mark, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for having me on. Of course. We're going to talk about the VA. We're going to start here with some clips, actually, of Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy, who has pointed the finger at someone Mark has known for a really long time. That would be Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. Mark, we should also say, knows Dan Caldwell and some of the others who have been caught up in unfortunate internal drama at the Pentagon. Let's go ahead and roll F1 here. This is Sean Duffy talking about what happened recently at Reagan National Airport.

So they have to have a mile and a half, they have a mile and a half nautical separation, nautical miles, 500 feet separation as well. They breached that airspace, the helicopter did, and so two airplanes had to go around. The question becomes, who are the VIPs? Who are the, is it a two-star, three-star general? There's a lot of traffic going into the Pentagon. The top brass at the White House, they take a Suburban or a Tesla or they take their own car. Who do these generals think they are that they have to take helicopters to go to meetings or go to airport? I don't know who it was. We should find out. And well, the DOD has-

Who do we ask? I mean, you're the transportation secretary. How do you not know? The FAA doesn't know. We asked the DOD. The DOD has promised radical transparency. They should tell us who is qualified to take a helicopter out of the Pentagon.

I don't know, but they have to tell us. Well, could you just call up HEGSA? Well, I should actually. Let's call him right now. You call Pete. Okay, I got it. Dial in. I got the phone. She actually has a phone right by her desk. Yeah, I do. I'm ready for that. But those are the answers that we need. Again, when we have these near misses, you got to stop the traffic. And this is the president, the vice president, Pete Hegseth, they all should fly on helicopters. But a two-star? I mean, come

on. Okay, so a little cabinet-on-cabinet violence there. Let's roll this next clip of Sean Duffy going on Fox News just 12 hours after that appearance on Laura Ingraham's show. This is F2. Were you able to find out who was on that flight and why, given what happened with the 67 people whose lives were lost in a similar situation, why would that even be happening?

So there are way too many VIPs, is what they call them, at the Pentagon. I mean, I look around the White House. There's a lot of really important people here. They take a Suburban. Why is the Pentagon that much more sophisticated where they have to take helos, helicopters, in a really busy airspace? So I'm hoping that we're going to get the answers. So you still don't know who was on that flight?

Because our Pentagon folks say that it was a training mission, not a VIP. What do you say? But here's the thing. Training missions oftentimes, if you ever go to a football game and you have a flyover with F-16s, guess what that's called? A training mission. So are we moving VIPs and calling it training missions? And how many training missions are you doing in the middle of the day?

If you had to train, train at a time where we don't have a busy airspace at D.C. I thought that lesson was learned, you know, back on the 29th of January. And you don't have any answer from the Pentagon from last night to today on that? I don't. I don't. I think. But who qualifies for a VIP? Is it a two-star general, a three-star general? I want to commend Secretary Hegseth. He closed down those Hilo missions for two weeks. We're going to look at it together and figure out what is the pathway forward. And Mark, just lastly, I want to put this next element on the screen. This is a Reuters report that Hegseth halted military aid shipments to Ukraine,

though Trump never ordered him to do so. So this is talking about just shortly after Hegseth ultimately took office, so months ago at this point. But I wanted to ask you, Mark, you may have some insight onto those training missions or two-star generals abusing privileges, whatever it is. But just, you know, Dan Salnick, you know, Dan Caldwell, you know, Pete Hegseth, you've known all of them for years. What has it been like for you to watch as someone who's an advocate for veterans and for a strong military, just to watch all of this drama and chaos play

out over the course of the last month? It's gotten pretty ugly. It reminds me of Pete Hegseth's confirmation battle where we saw an orchestrated and a sophisticated campaign to attack Pete Hegseth because he really presents a threat to the status quo. And to go to the Sean Duffy clips on the airspace, I think it's going to be easy to de-conflict that airspace. I agree with Secretary Duffy and Secretary Hegseth. There are way too many people that think they're VIPs at the Pentagon. They don't need to be taking Blackhawks everywhere. They don't need to be taking private planes everywhere. They don't even need their private chefs that they have in their residences. And I support Secretary Hegseth and what he's doing to reduce the number of

general officers and admirals that we have in the military. So there's a lot of drama. There's a lot of people trying to distract Secretary Hegseth and our military from the mission. And that mission is the warfighter. That's restoring lethality back to our Pentagon, getting back to the basics. I remember guys like Pete and I, when we were military commanders, we did not have the opportunity to focus on frivolous matters. I trained my men to focus on the big four, shoot, move, communicate, stop bleeding. We need to refocus our Pentagon on the fundamentals. I do believe that we'll get refocused here shortly.

Am I just, oh, go ahead, Crystal. Well, I was just going to say, if this is an orchestrated campaign against Pete Hegseth, who's orchestrating it? Is this Sean Duffy? Because this is coming from within the Trump administration. And then you have all of this staff turnover, you know, that is legitimate to comment upon that looks like a total and complete shit show, not to mention reports coming out about an utterly toxic and chaotic atmosphere. So, you know, isn't there legitimacy to the criticism here, especially when, look, I'm on the left. I don't share your ideology or Emily's necessarily, but I'll take the wins where I can get them. Dan Caldwell seemed like someone who was generally ideologically skeptical of unnecessary endless wars in the Middle East. He is now out of there. So isn't that something that should concern all of us who want to avoid unnecessary wars? Well, we all knew that with Pete Hegseth as Secretary of Defense, there was going to be turbulence, along with all of Trump's cabinet picks, because President Trump is a disruptor. He was not going to put your status quo type of people in there. This just seems like complete

spin. Like we just played you a clip of Sean Duffy, another Trump administration official, criticizing Pete Hegseth. So I get he's your friend, but you can't acknowledge that there's anything that's gone sideways here or not been ideal from the beginning? I don't think that Secretary Duffy and Secretary Hegseth are sideways on this. It sounded like in that last clip that they were both trying to resolve this matter. And, you know, I de-conflicted airspace in Afghanistan, why I called airstrikes. I fly in the DCA quite frequently. It is a very congested airspace that we need to de-conflict. And I think the biggest problem are all these general officers who think that they're a VIP that have to get on aircraft. So I think we'll get this resolved. And I'm just looking at this, like this media hit,

we're focused on aircraft. We're not talking about lethality. We're not talking about the recruiting surges. We're not talking about the things that are really important. And people in the Beltway, they want to present these distractions. So we can't focus on rooting out the woke DEI policies over the last four years. People in the Beltway like Sean Duffy. Well, Mark, let me ask about, so actually on that point, there was the COVID-19 reinstatements actually affected you, and that happened recently. And so there have been significant reforms at the Pentagon so far, and also at the VA, which is the area that you focus on significantly. And

to a lot of people, probably some of these have felt maybe sudden and dramatic. But I want to ask you just for your take on how all of this has transpired. To Crystal's point, it does seem like some of it has been rolled out in a chaotic way, although I guess the counterargument to this, and maybe it's a point that you'll make, is that it's hard to make big reforms without causing chaos. But how do you do that without at the same time protecting veterans? And this goes back years and years for you. We've worked in the space for a long time and maybe never expected to have such an opportunity with somebody like Pete Hexeth running the Pentagon, actually, to put some of these things in motion. So do you have any concerns about how all of this has been rolled out? What do you make of it? There's always going to be challenges when

you want to reform two of the largest bureaucracies in the world, and that's the Pentagon and the VA. And I'm starting to see a replay of 2017 with our VA reforms. I was able to brief President Trump in the White House on his 10-point plan to help veterans. And two of those key points that I agreed with him on were VA choice, providing veterans choice in their health care, and also accountability, us being able to fire those bad VA employees who put veterans' lives at risk. And we were trying to get that bill, one of those bills passed in the first hundred days, but congressional Republicans were dragging their feet. Fast forward to today in Trump's second term, we have the Veteran Access Act, which is very critical and congressional Republicans aren't

moving fast enough. This bill is stuck in committee and we have veterans who can't receive access to care. There's just a story last month in the state of Texas that a Navy veteran was trying to be seen at the Audie Murphy VA hospital. They didn't want to talk to him. They just wanted to give him pills. And he shot himself in the head in front of that hospital. His father, a doctor, solely blames the VA for not listening to his son. These things are happening every day. And we have these arbitrary wait times where if you have to drive over 30 minutes to a VA hospital or you have to wait at least 20 days, you can't get community care. Well, veterans who have a mental health crisis, they don't have days. They may have hours or they may have minutes.

So we're going to reform the VA. We're starting to see some good signs. Secretary Collins wants to reduce the staff by 80,000. We want to streamline and really refocus and prioritize our VA. The budget's doubled over the last 10 years. We've added 100,000 new employees in the last 10 years at the VA. The veteran population, in fact, is going down and our care is going down. So money and buildings and staffing are not the problem at the VA. It's an ideological problem. So let's put F4 up on the screen. ProPublica recently got their hands on

some internal emails from the VA revealing deep concerns about the way that doge cuts have already impacted veteran care. Specifically, there was a focus on life-saving cancer trials and veterans losing access to some of the treatments they previously had access to. In addition, as you mentioned, the administration has said that it plans to eliminate at least 70,000 positions through layoffs and voluntary buyouts. And I hear your comment that, OK, just throwing money at the problem doesn't necessarily solve it. But what we've seen with Doge thus far is that they are not actually going after the lowest performing federal government employees. In fact, their cuts at the Social Security Administration, to take one example, have really hamstrung their ability to provide services to our population. So aren't you concerned that veterans are going to lose access and that the quality of care is going to be further degraded by taking a Doge-style chainsaw to this workforce?

I'm concerned that veterans don't have true choice in their health care and that we have Democrats who were overlooking the last four years of the VA, have been overlooking all these problems that we've had there for decades. All they want to do is spend more money, add more staff, and say, hey, we're fixing the problem. That has not worked. We cannot double down on just adding more money and more people. We have to give choice. And what this will do is veterans, we put on the uniform, we're willing to die for this country. All we want is healthcare choice. So if I can't get seen at a VA hospital, if I'm not happy with my care, I should be able to go across the street

to the University of Iowa healthcare system. But if I'm happy with my VA, I should be able to stay there. We just want to present a choice. But what we see is that Democrats and bureaucrats in the VA, they prioritize their bureaucracy and protecting their union jobs over providing care. I believe competition, number one, will focus on the veteran getting the best care, but it also will improve the VA. The VA should be highly focused on post-traumatic stress, TBI, burn pit exposure,

those core health concerns that veterans face that are unique to our community. But instead, politicians, they want to just send more money. They want to put a nice fancy name on a bill to say, hey, we served our veterans. And I'll tell this to Republicans and Democrats alike. You need to deliver. You want veterans in your campaign ads. You want veterans to show up and vote for you.

You need to go to Washington and you need to deliver. You have not delivered for decades and veterans are not happy with the care that we're receiving at the VA. Mark, I remember during Hexos confirmation, you and I talked and one of my questions for you at the time is it kind of combines the two things we've talked about so far, which is these are really fragile systems already. And even if we, and you and I probably agree on this, believe that, you know, they need to be streamlined and some cuts are entirely reasonable, if not necessary. Is there a risk that in this Pentagon, if it is, you know, being thwarted by people who don't want

to see reforms, don't want to see Pete Hegseth, who don't want to see people like Dan Caldwell, you know, walk in the halls of the Pentagon. Is there a risk if you combine the sort of internal drama with the need for reform? A lot of things end up falling through the cracks because the system is in chaos. People are trying to thwart the secretary if that's what's happening. And these major reforms are not, if they're like open heart surgeries, they're high risk and high reward, but the risk is really high. And if you don't have a steady hand, metaphorically, that can be a sort of dangerous situation. I always forecasted that the biggest war that we're going to see in our military was going to

be inside the walls of the Pentagon. I knew that Pete Hegseth and Donald Trump were going to introduce so much disruption to the Ukraine war, to what we're seeing with the Houthis, to securing the border, to uprooting DEI and woke policies, this Marxism that has really infiltrated the building. I knew that they were not going to go down without a fight. So I expected this. And I believe that we're on the right path. I do believe that under President Trump and Pete Hegseth and guys like me who fought in these forever wars, that we do not want to be entangled in foreign engagements

like our founding fathers warned us about. And we want to get back to the fundamentals. We're going to break a lot of China. And we have to because we've had fundamentals. We're going to break a lot of China and we have to because we've had decades of these entrenched special interests, these military industrial companies that were more focused on their bottom line than actually winning our wars, serving the American people. We're going to get back to those fundamentals. And I can't overstate also the Southern border. I never looked at the border as a political issue.

I never looked at it as a immigration issue. Our borders are a part of our national security strategy. If you talk to any private who served in Iraq or Afghanistan, they will tell you the number one priority in theater is establishing 360 degree security. Well, we have had no operational control of our southern border. So you're looking at all these domestic priorities. You're looking at the budget. You're looking at our foreign policy. There is a lot of work to do. We knew it was going to be turbulent, but it'll be worth it. Mark Lucas, founder of Veteran Action. Thank you so much for joining us and being willing to talk through some of these issues. We appreciate it.

Thank you for having me on. Crystal, we have some good news after all of this bad news. It'll be a girl show again tomorrow. I can just hear the audience crying out with joy at that announcement. I love, I still always think about the guy you met who was like, I even like the ladies show. Even the girls. Let's go. So this one's for him, obviously. But it was such a packed show and we're expecting a very

packed show tomorrow, as we mentioned at the top of the show. So much going on today. So we will be here with updates on all of it. As a reminder, BreakingPoints.com is where you can go to get a premium subscription. We're doing those Friday shows now. And the second half of those are for subscribers only. And as we continue to say, Crystal, we really keep the good stuff for the second half. So you've got to subscribe to watch it. Yeah, I mean, that's kind of the whole idea is to make you be like, oh, I've got to see that, whatever they're going to say about Tucker.

Brian Grimm's thoughts on Meghan Markle? Yeah, we've got to sign up for that, right? Smash that subscribe button. But yeah, to your point, you were listening before, we got like the Fed meeting today. We got a presser. What else?

We got all kinds of- J.D. Vance. J.D. Vance, right, in Europe, where, you know, he loves the Europeans. They love him right back. So I'm sure that's just going to be, just going to be a love fest all the way around. But we'll have it,

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