It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Asylum Seekers Forced to Meet with Iranian Officials, Ken Paxton, Activist Charged for GrapheneOS Phone Wipe

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

We discuss the second White House Correspondents' Dinner, school shooter response drones, a massive data center in Louisiana, ICE coordinating with Iranian officials to deport asylum seekers, why James Talarico might beat Ken Paxton, abuse allegations against GOP House rep. Max Miller, and a Stop Cop City activist charged for allegedly wiping his phone at the airport.  Sources: https://www.givesendgo.com/letsamgo  https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2026/07/fourth-circuit-says-border-agents-can-search-your-phone-hand-no-suspicion-required  https://www.uscis.gov/newsroom/news-releases/us-citizenship-and-immigration-services-rescinds-2022-public-charge-regulation  https://www.federalregister.gov/public-inspection/2025-20278/public-charge-ground-of-inadmissibility  https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/FR-1999-05-26/pdf/99-13202.pdf  https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.294220/gov.uscourts.dcd.294220.9.3_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.dcd.294220/gov.uscourts.dcd.294220.9.4.pdf   https://www.reuters.com/world/china/iran-get-chinese-shoulder-launched-missile-systems-weeks-sources-say-2026-07-29/   https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2082260118930956482 https://www.texastribune.org/2026/07/28/texas-senate-poll-james-talarico-ken-paxton-july-2026/https://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/ken-paxton-has-survived-years-of-scandals-can-james-talarico-change-thathttps://www.pbs.org/newshour/amp/politics/ken-paxton-has-survived-years-of-scandals-can-james-talarico-change-thathttps://www.texastribune.org/2026/05/19/ken-paxton-waco-plea-deal-child-sex-abuse-texas-attorney-general/https://www.kwbu.org/news/2026-05-15/lawmakers-call-for-legal-reforms-response-to-adam-hoffman-case?_amp=truehttps://www.kwtx.com/2025/06/11/wife-waco-attorney-adam-hoffman-disputes-allegations-sexual-abuse-made-by-local-boy/https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/27/technology/meta-data-center-louisiana.htmlhttps://www.theguardian.com/education/2026/jul/28/school-shootings-pepper-spray-drones https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/8800https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/119/hr8800/text#H6C56E3050B5F4792AEBB0DF665B1D5D9https://breakthroughnews.org/2026/07/22/breakthrough-news-is-under-attack/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34Bg1RJk3_8 https://www.state.gov/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/Cuba-Report.pdf https://peoplesforum.org/blog_post/trump-allies-in-congress-subpoena-the-peoples-forum-help-us-fight-back/ https://www.nytimes.com/2026/07/23/business/media/new-york-times-subpoenas-withdraw.html https://www.chandralaw.com/files/assets/2026-05-27def.morenosmotforexpeditedreliefunderupepa.pdf https://www.chandralaw.com/files/assets/2026-06-04def.morenossecondsupplementtohermot.forexpeditedrelief.pdfhttps://www.cnn.com/2026/06/10/politics/video/max-miller-abuse-allegations-emily-moreno-digvid-invs https://ohiocapitaljournal.com/2026/07/14/ohio-congressman-max-miller-is-being-sued-amid-domestic-violence-allegations/ https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2026/07/assault-misogyny-verbal-threats-records-detail-new-allegations-against-rep-max-miller-bernie-moreno/ https://x.com/GrapheneOS/status/2082212225364746306 https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/71998357/1/united-states-v-tunick/ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.gand.351976/gov.uscourts.gand.351976.21.0.pdfhttps://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jul/23/cop-city-protester-phoneSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. The Dream of the 90s is alive in podcast form. We're launching Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast where we revisit every episode of Portlandia together, breaking down sketches, going deep on our iconic characters,

and pulling back the curtain on how it all got made. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler, the mayor, himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song.

I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. A.A.O. Rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Chelsea Handler from Dear Chelsea. Every week, the news gets worse. The world gets crazier. And Yamanika is here to tell whoever's responsible, your the problem. Do you know I just found out who Sidney Sweeney was? If he got a bunch of women,

then I should have a bunch of men. Do better or do less so I don't have to do so much. I'm Yamanika and I'm out. Listen to You're the problem with Yamanika on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. I'm Nick Tuturo. You probably know me from NYPD Blue, the longest yard, or Spike Lease Black Klansman. And on my new podcast, delivering happiness with Nick Totoro, I deliver pizza to a new guest. I've shared a slice with everyone from Seth Rollins. What are you doing my belt? To Bill Burr.

I don't think I've ever met somebody so exactly out of their mind as I am. And now, we even have more great guests coming up, including the great John Tuturo. It's called Happiness, Delivering Happiness. And many, many more. Open your free High Heart Radio app. Search Delivering

Happiness with Nick Tutro. And listen now. When Teenager Joy Morgan discovered the religious group, Israel United in Christ, she believed she'd found the truth. Many believe she found a cult. Then she disappeared. The new podcast, The Missing Sister, explores her story, the family she left, and the religious group she found. You know when you get that feeling, I'm like, I don't want to be here.

I want to get out. I want to go to her now. All episodes available now to Bench. Listen to The Missing Sister on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also Media. Bradley Whitford hot. This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis.

Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Sophie's also here. Sophie is also here. Allegedly. We were talking West Wing before this. And Sophie has been excommunicated. Sophie said something that Robert will not let us repeat. Yeah.

We legally can't repeat it. You'd all go to prison and we would be right to send you there. West Wing has in the team. TV show. This episode, we're covering the week of July 22nd to July 29th. James, some small things to start. Yeah, let's do it. So today on the day that we are recording, which is 29th of July, the United States and Saudi forces conducting strikes inside Iraq at what they are calling Iran-backed terrorists. It comes after a Iraqi national security advisor earlier this week suggested that Ukraine was responsible for strikes inside Iraq, which is the thing

that isn't true. Iran again attempted to target US bases in Jordan today, but at the time of recording the US military is reporting that missiles were all intercepted. Iranian strikes on Kurdistan have continued, and Reuters is reporting that Iran is soon to receive Chinese shoulder-fired man pads, it's man-portable air defense system. Women can use them too, probably not in Iran. But this is part of what Reuters is saying is a recently signed deal between the two states, China, of course, denying it. But that would be very interesting, right, considering that it was a shoulder-launched mad pads that shot down the jet that triggered the massive CSAR mission a few months ago. Yeah, it's always funny when something comes around like this in the history of like

military colonialist adventures overseas. You know, it wasn't so long ago that we were sending man pads into Afghanistan and the Soviets were going, oh no, all of our helicopters. Yeah, yeah. And yeah, it's just beautiful how cyclical nature is. Yeah, here we are. Finally, I want to talk about the TPS temporary protected status for Haitian people. So a few weeks ago on our Supreme Court special, we spoke about the court case that effectively ended this protected status, right? And it is set to expire this week. We know that this will impact as many as 350,000 people. are going with a number from Haitian Bridge Alliance there. A lot of these people are going back is not an option.

It's not in any way going to be safe for them or they just don't simply have a place to go back to there. Many of these people will have US citizen children who therefore will not lose TPS, right? But it's unclear. What exactly? I mean, I think the administration probably doesn't give a shit what happens to their children.

I'm going to keep reporting on this. There are already rumors of ICE raids targeting Haitian people. I'm going to try and get some folks on from HBA or one of the other advocacy organizations. But I'm going to wait a little bit just to see how things play out in the next couple of days, but I'm afraid whatever happens won't be great. The House approved the $1.15 trillion, $27 National Defense Authorization Act, and a 216 to 212 vote largely on party lines, though six Democrats voted in support.

The version of the bill that passed includes Section 219, which expands cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli militaries, specifically the co-development of military technology, and joint training and information sharing to deploy jointly developed technology. The budget contains $750 million for these U.S. Israel joint programs. The bills currently stalled in the Senate. Core documents revealed that last October, the Trump administration canceled nearly $8 billion of clean energy grants by explicitly targeting states whose electoral college votes went to Kamala Harris in 2024 or who have two senators who caucus with the Democrats.

That is Georgia. And lawyers for the Department of Energy just explicitly laid this out in court docs saying that's how these grants were selected was on these political lines. Yeah, incredible. Last Friday saw the White House press correspondence dinner take two. President Trump delivered a rambling monologue with what were supposed to be jokes. to very tepid reactions from a largely friendly audience. Once again, Trump joked about running for president in 28.

Wolf Blitzer presented an award to the Wall Street Journal and their reporters for their reporting on the Trump-signed Epstein birthday card, sparking a $10 billion defamation suit from the president. As Wolf Blitzer presented the award, Trump laughed from his seat on stage before shaking hands with all the women. winners. The dinner, which ostensibly is to celebrate the free press in the First Amendment, took place the same week that the Trump administration subpoenaed New York Times journalists, their spouses, and one of their moms following Times reporting on the security capabilities

of the Qatari-gifted Air Force One. The DOJ withdrew those subpoenas last Thursday after pressure from a federal judge. But that was not the only instance of press freedom coming under attack from the government just this last week. On July 22nd, the non-profit newsroom Breakthrough News reported that they received a congressional subpoena from the Republican-controlled House Ways and Means Committee, demanding, quote, internal communications,

financial records, and more. A letter to the outlet from the House Committee said they were, quote, unquote, disturbed by the outlet's connection to, quote, Chinese Communist Party linked organizations, on quote, and that the committee was investigating connections between quote-unquote tax-exempt groups and foreign nations. This was, of course, following the State Department's left-wing terrorism summit that we covered last

week, and parallel to Mark Rubio's crusade against Cuba and what he sees as Cuba-aligned left-wing organizations. The People's Forum, a PSL-linked left-wing anti-imperialist protest organization and community space in New York City, which was named in Rubio's Cuba Report, was also The subpoenaed by the House Committee, the People's Forum, was one of the organizers of the humanitarian aid trip to Cuba earlier this year. I've got a fun thing to talk about. All right, let's do it. What's fun?

There's an article in The Guardian that just came out July 28th that is about this new company based out of Austin called Campus Guardian Angel, which is taking lessons from the Ukrainian war and applying them to U.S. public schools. specifically in Ukraine they've seen a lot of luck in stopping breaches of areas of like the front of trenches and stuff using waves of small drones Oh I've seen this video I know what you're talking about

I haven't hit me with it Come on I want to see this These are waves of drones that can launch mace and pepper balls And have like They've got glass breakers so they can fly through windows They want to fucking send a drone swarm To stop a school shooter

That's what they wanted to. Yeah. The thing is with a drone swarm, it can't be a coward, which has historically been an issue for the cops, right? It is true. This could work better. The problem is that in terms of actually stopping school shooters, this actually might be a lot more effective than calling the cops. I'm not going to say, I don't think it's possible that this could work. Yeah. But everything about the press around this tells me this company is also building itself as a way that, like, school administrators can use drones to fuck up kids who mispay? Sure. No, I can see that being a... That's kind of what I'm expecting, right? Yeah, yeah, you're going to get maced by a drone.

I want to read a quote from the article here. They could be flown from thousands of miles away and support two-way communication through an embedded speakerphone, allowing the company's response team to engage verbally with a threat or communicate to teachers and school staff, campus guardian angels website stated. This allows our team in our op center to communicate to law enforcement officers verbally with messages such as follow me and I'll take you to the suspect

or open the door and we'll go in and clear the room and I'll tell you what you see. And it's the whole thing about, going after the suspect that I'm like, I can see this also just these drones being swarmed after some kids smoking pot or somebody who's like a suspicious looking backpack to some shitty AI, like visual identification system that, because you can't have a guy on the cameras at all times.

I don't know. I don't think this is going to wind up saving as many lives as it is causing drone-related assaults in public schools. But I guess we'll see. Fascinating. The video's great. Yeah, I want to see the video. Can I?

You should look up the video. Campus Guardian Angel. Let's get a live reaction. Yeah, Campus Guardian Angel, there you go. When I hear that phrase, the first thing that comes to my mind is pedophile. Yeah. That's what I'm thinking when I hear some. Okay, watch video.

The first active shooter suppression service. I'm sure that's true. All right, here we go. Got a couple of cops. Yeah. It's still blurry. I still can't quite. It's still, wow.

It's having a long thing. Okay, here we are. Here we are. Yeah, this does make me think about what if the latency. he's bad between the camera and the drone operator flying an armed drone through a public school. Okay, we're here. We're watching a bunch of news clips. A bald man is giving a talk. That's the Navy SEAL who runs the company. Okay, I see. Okay, wow, the drones are moving down the corridor. Fuck me! Here they come.

They sit in some little boxes. There's a cop. A cop has a gun. Oh, there's someone in a balaclava. He's surrendering to the drones. He's down. They took that right from front footage of like Russian soldiers surrendering to drones so they don't just murder. These guys, okay, this guy's playing a shooter. He has a BB gun. A couple of drones have got him cornered. He's not shooting at them though. Cowards. Cowards. Okay, here's someone from Seminole County Public Schools. So the drones live in a little box and it opens. And I like that they've done blue lighting. It's like a white box with blue lighting. Like it's very gamer coding. It's a little drone carrier. Yeah, a little drone box. Here he comes. He's breached. through the window. Whoa, they're fucking up a dummy. That's the clip, yeah. Look at it go. They've missed. They've missed a few times, I notice.

If you look closely, yeah, way off. He's fucking way off. All right. I don't trust these drones about this. They're like, what if there was a child nearby? No, literally, that was my first thought. It was like, this just makes it easier for cops to shoot people accidentally. Or an AI drone to shoot someone by accident. They're going after the same dude again. He's running away. Oh, he's cornered. He's gone to grab. he's surrendering. Wait, it's probably guys that couldn't pass the cop exam

that are the ones flying the drones. In this POV, it looks like someone's manually firing because the drone has like a crosshairs in its video. Now we're seeing the drone's POV. They're coming out their little box. That's the Navy SEAL, in through the window, and he's surrendering as this shooter again, he's surrendering. They haven't really engaged with the hypothetical

of what if the shooter doesn't surrender to the groan. Oh, there's flying laps around him. Whoa, they took out the whole dummy. The whole dummy fell over. Okay. Yeah, that's the clip. Wild stuff. Well, they can strobe them as well, I guess.

Wow, there's a lot of cops in tactical gear. None of them have gone in. They've sent the drone in instead. Yeah, that seems realistic. Okay. Yeah, the guys, like, baffled by the number of targets and just lies down, surrenders. This is great. I can't see this being used to harass teenagers for doing things that every teenager does.

So I wanted to talk a little bit about an article that, just came out very recently on the New York Times about a meta data center in Louisiana. Now, obviously, I've talked about data centers a few times. In the fairly recent past, I did a dedicated article on the fight against or the different kind of grassroots activism campaigns against new data center construction. One of the ones that is not really in any danger of being canceled through local protest is a massive Facebook data center in Richland Parish that was originally planned to be like a $10 billion data center and has now ballooned to like a $50 billion dollar

project. Facebook was not originally planning to construct in Louisiana. They were taking bids back during the Biden administration. I don't think the state was really on the map, but officials particularly in the very poor county of Richland Parish had a problem, which is that they at least 1,400, 440 acres to Toyota to build a factory. But Toyota had decided not to around 2006, I think in part because the factory was proven to be uninsurable because it's a floodplain. So basically they were like, we're not going to spend billions of dollars in a factory we literally can't insure in a place that's famous for having infrastructure destroyed by hurricanes. So Richland Paris had a problem. The area was already economically depressed.

And Intergy, which is a Louisiana state power company, also had an issue, which is that they were not making enough money. So their CEO, Philip May, decided he wanted to put Louisiana through as a dark horse contender for this massive fucking meta data center. And they wound up winning. And they basically wound up winning through promising to be corrupt on behalf of META, right? There was a bill being pushed at the start of 2024. Because like the thing, they offered META a bunch of incentives. And the only thing they couldn't offer them was like a tax break on the different kind of materials you buy when you're building a data center.

And everywhere else that META was considering had already offered those. So in April of 2024, Richard Nelson, the state revenue secretary, was kind of helping to shepherd through a bill that was a tax rebate for fiber optic equipment. and they just wound up changing it two months to a massive tax rebate for data center equipment. Amazing. Super fucking corrupt. But also, here's the thing, nobody in Richland Parish really cares because these people are incredibly fucking poor and Facebook is bribing basically the entire county.

There's some sort of local law they have that if there's like an overfunding in county tax revenue, then like teachers get a bunch of money. And so because of how much money Facebook is pumped in, a bunch of teachers in the parish got like a $50,000 bonus. And that's like the lowest level of what is effectively like legal bribery going on at every level of life in the parish. So there's no chance, really, that anyone is going to protest or stop the construction of this. People are enthusiastic because META has turned a firehose of money on one of the poorest counties in the United States. The problem is that, as I've said, the project is really obviously fucking doomed.

Again, it's uninsurable because it's in a fucking floodplain. And the actual, like, text of the arrangement that META inked basically gives them, the ability to bounce and leave the project within like four or five years, leaving Intergy and a bunch of other Louisiana interests on the hook for this entire massive project if, say, a hurricane comes through and renders the entire site and operable. So it seems like that's kind of thing that's going to cause a massive problem and, like, destroy the local economy at some point. But there's so much money being slalomed out to people right now that I don't think anything's going to stop that. So I guess we hope that the obvious thing doesn't happen. But,

I kind of think it's going to. Anyway, Louisiana. Nice. Let's talk about the public charge rule. So the Trump administration has announced that it will do away on September the 18th with the DHS rule on public charge determination. That rule came into effect in 2022, so under the Biden administration. They're not making a new rule at this time.

They're taking away the old rule. So what we will have to go off now is the text in the immigration nationality. Act and presumably they will issue some guidance soon, right? Whatever guidance the issue is likely to be more restrictive than what we had in 2022 rule, right? They did publish a public notice about this last year, so we knew that this was coming, that they had planned to rescind this rule. And we should talk about what public charges. We can go back to the 1999 guidance, and that's what was clarified in 2022, for a definition. That guidance says that someone who is likely to be, quote, primarily dependent on the

government for subsistence as demonstrated by either the receipt of public cash assistance for income maintenance or institutionalisation for long-term care at government expense can be inadmissible to the United States or ineligible for permanent residency. This doesn't apply to some permanent residency applications like SIJ, special immigrant juvenile, green card applications, TOU visas, asylees or refugees, some other categories, including those in the Violence Against Women Act. Public charge has generally been understood to mean cash benefits, right? So SSSI or TANF would be the ones that, like, would be generally understood to be

that if somebody received those DHS, I guess it would be USCIS, could find that they would be inadmissible. Somebody who is found inadmissible for this reason previously could post a bond and still be admitted, right? Just the bond is basically saying, I'm not going to be like a burden. on the United States state, right? Yeah. We're not exactly clear

what they're going to do next, but we can look at the DHS presser for some clues, which says, quote, aligning immigration with law and congressional intent that aliens of the United States to be self-reliant and not dependent on taxpayer-funded

government benefits. This could be really bad, right? There are a lot of different benefits people take advantage of to include free school meals, to include things like SNAP, to include WIC, right, to include rent-controlled housing even, right? Like, they could draw this.

I think what they are probably going to move towards is a sort of looking at the whole case thing as opposed to a looking for specific things in the past. Another thing that we should understand is that this is forward-facing, right? It's not just have they use this, it's are they likely to? an extremely broad interpretation of this could be very bad for people

definitely looking to adjust their status right so this is something we will keep an eye on it's not ending yet i just want to reinforce that it's on september the 18th for people who are in these proceedings this is something you should discuss with your immigration lawyer if that is pertains to you i will include links to all the government press releases and the uh federal register pieces about this if you want to read it yourself should take a break yeah i think so Canadian women are looking for more. More into themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them.

And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. Entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians, and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us. Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHart Radio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. What's up, fam?

I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and I Heart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days. So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo roer

to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your end. entire timeline. In the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports.

Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat. Sabalinka. Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports.

Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart Radio app. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather you know them. Tony and Candice, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia,

AEO rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning, breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it.

And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chryssel, the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. Well, I thought you were all going to write a song.

I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It started more than seven years ago when Cindy and Kenny were two 40-somethings who had just gotten engaged. Days later, they walked into a scorched earth war they knew. never saw coming.

Turn around and place your hands by your back. The cops given to my house and threw me in jail. And to Cindy's surprise, her fiance, Kenny, was charged with abusing one of her children. I never once doubted Kenny, and I always doubted the accusation. On season three, a burden of guilt, you'll hear a story about the length someone will go to in order to get what they want. This case has got to be one of the most despicable. Listen to season three, a burden of the...

guilt on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we're back. I want to talk about Texas. And normally that's not a hopeful thing when I say I'm going to talk about Texas. In fact, about 80% of the time when I come on to talk about Texas, it's because either someone in Texas committed some sort of horrible violent crime or everyone's getting excited about an election and I need to tell them not to because it's Texas. This time I'm here to tell you.

you, there's an election in Texas you might want to get excited about. The election between Ken Paxton and Tala Rico, fuck, what's his first name? I want to say Tommy, but, or James Talley, sorry. The election between Kin Paxon and James Talley. I know, I can't think about that fucking grifter. I can't stop. Every time I hear his name. But no, James Tala Rico is not a grifter. James Talleyco might be a U.S. Senator in the very near future because Kin Paxon is not doing too well. And if you aren't tax in the name Kim Paxton and may not immediately conjure dread and disgust, but it should.

I would be hard pressed to name a more scandal-ridden, corrupt, and evil elected leader in the United States. And that includes Donald Trump. Before we get into Paxton's latest race for a U.S. Senate seat, I want to tell you a little bit more about Ken. Friend of the pod, Ken Paxton, K-Pax, as we call him. I don't think anyone actually saw the movie K-Pax, so that's not really a joke that's going to land, but...

Did not know that it was a movie. It was a movie, James. Okay. In 2008, when Paxton was a new Texas house member for McKinney, where my mom used to teach, the AP reported that he and another state representative had been accused by ethics watchdog Fred Lewis of greasing the skids to settle a contract with Watchguard, a company that made in-car video systems that record video directly to DVD for like the cops and stuff. Paxton and Byron Cook, two state representatives, were both found to have disclosed ownership in Watchguard,

but in Paxton's case, he didn't disclose his ownership until well after his 2008 personal financial statement was filed. Shortly after the deal was made, Watchguard net earnings increased year over year by 250 percent, and Paxton and Cook sold their shares of the company for an undisclosed amount, but a lot of money. Paxton denies any knowledge of the company's state contracts and claims he did nothing shady. However, per the barbed wire, quote, Paxton claimed he had no knowledge of the company's state contracts at the time, which he would have been required to disclose with the Texas Ethics Commission under state law. However, Associated Press reporter that Watchguard's website boasted that the company

was held by an influential shareholder group that includes three-sexuals. state representatives. Perfect. You hate it when you're dry snitched on by the company that bribed you. Now, according to the Wall Street Journal, after coming under scrutiny, Paxton shifted his investments, including those in Watch Guard into a blind trust. A blind trust is an account managed by a third-party trustee without the beneficiary's knowledge to prevent a conflict of interest. However, the journal uncovered text between Paxton and the trustee, who is a friend of his concerning stock trades in 2020, a violation of the blind nature of the

agreement. Paxner received $2.2 million from his investment. So that's more like a see-through trust. Yeah. Yeah. It's more of a see-through trust. Not so blind. It's more just you're committing a series of crimes. So he's going to get charged with securities fraud for this. And that case is going to wind on for a while. But not long, you know, kind of actually in the middle of this whole process of corruption, in 2013, when he's a state senator, he's entering the courthouse, like state courthouse. Yeah. And a lawyer who'd just been ahead. of him in line at like the metal detector leaves behind a thousand dollar montblank pin in the metal detector tray and kin Paxton steals it and he's on video stealing it like the dallas morning news gets access to the video and publishes it it's really funny what a series of events yeah in like 2014 kin runs for and wins attorney general of the state of texas and his opponent in the campaign justin nelson runs video ads using the footage.

It is really funny to have Top Koff be like the most corrupt criminal in Texas politics. Yeah. I'd like really dedicated to it, you know. Just the big griff. Lasiest criminal too. Just seeing an opportunity and taking it without a second thought is really beautiful. Yeah. Now, despite this, Paxton was still narrowly elected, thanks in part to spending twice as

much as his opponent on the campaign. Yeah. In 2022, Paxton faced a primary challenge from George Peeble. Bush, one of the C-list Bush's and nephew of the most recent former President Bush. This would prove to be one of Paxton's easier victories, even though he had been charged with and was still under investigation for securities fraud, as well as at this point, a separate federal investigation for alleged corruption in favor of an Austin real estate developer. I'm going to quote now from an AP article by Thomas Beaumont.

Quote, Paxton responded by portraying himself as a Trump-era Republican and Bush is the heir to a privileged political legacy. Yeah. Pro-Paxon organization spent more than $20 million, about twice as much as Bush and his allies. The race went into a runoff in which Pax had defeated Bush by 34 percentage points. So just a pancing on behalf of George P. Bush. One of the worst ass-kickings in Texas state political history. It's beautiful stuff.

Yeah, I mean, this is a very, very clear sort of like neocon versus the new, like, mega-Republican party matchup in which the neocons have just no ground to stand on. Well, and it's also just like purely. on like the shallowest basis of like what sounds good to a dummy. George W. Bush. W. is a nickname. That's trustworthy. George P. Bush. B. Bush?

Nobody wants to pee bush anywhere. It's just a bad idea. I do think 20 years of war in the Middle East have maybe like drop the value of George X. Bush stock. Of there being of George Bush anywhere in the name of the president. 30 if we're doing George Bushes, I guess. Guys, we're talking about Texas. I mean, even there.

Yeah, even in Texas. A whole lot of people from Texas died in, was really we didn't need to have, actually. I mean, even when Texans were voting for him, people had a tendency to say the man was all hat, no cattle. So I'm not super surprised about this. But anyway, Paxton beats Bush handily in the primary, and then he runs against Democrat Rochelle Garza in the general. And Garza entered the campaign with a 300-page opposition research bio on Paxton, but also

faced a really difficult quandary, which is like, what can you say about kin that voters haven't already heard and evidently decided they don't care about, right? Yeah, yeah. This is like the same thing with Trump, right? It's his like... Yeah, how do you attack this guy? He has all of this stuff that's fucked up that we all know about. Yeah.

That like, is it worth just retreading all this same stuff? No. And it just wasn't, right? She loses two, not by as badly as George B. Bush, obviously. And Paxton continues to cling to office and scandal. Now, in the years after his victory, his wife divorced him, citing the Bible. He was impeached by the state house, but then acquitted by the Senate. His fraud case ended in 2024 with a judgment that he paid $300,000 in restitution,

but through it all, he maintained enough Republican support to squeak by. I mean, because he's been very powerful as the Attorney General of that state and has done a lot to help the Republicans in that state. And like a lot of really ugly stuff has been done at the behest of and the help of Paxton. Yeah, he's wielded his power. And I'm leaving a lot of that out. I don't mean this as a comprehensive look at his past. We're kind of doing a greatest hits.

I'm going to have to do a BTB on the fucker at some point. K-Pax deserves it. So in that AP article, Thomas Beaumont interviewed two Paxton supporters, David and Nancy Lap, who are retired conservatives from Woolworth, Texas, or Wolfram, Texas. And quote from that article, they described him as a conservative warrior who has been a victim of persecution. He's had a share of scandals, and almost all of them have. So it's not necessarily disqualifying anymore, said David Lapp, 76. He's a flawed person, no doubt about it.

But he fights for traditional American values. Oh, man. He added that, nowadays, as long as you're not in jail, they'll elect you. Which is very true. Yeah, yeah, that's not a wrong statement. But also, you'll, you'll elect him, David. Yeah, yes. They, they.

You're making a choice. Now, there is much more to the tale of Ken Baxter's scum and villainy, and this isn't an episode of B-TB. so I'm going to save us some time and just discussed arguably his worst and most famous call as attorney general. Kin was elected after promising to be tough on crime and attacking his predecessors and opponents for being weak on crime. And then in 2025, a Waco attorney named Adam Hoffman went on trial for sexually abusing his son's best friend during multiple sleepovers from the age of six or seven up to age 10. The victim initially told a forensic interviewer he believed Hoffman had ejaculated over 1,300 times in his presence. Hoffman denied the allegation, although they did like a seamen, they looked for semen and didn't find any, so like, I don't know, but also he could have clean stuff, who knows.

Hoffman denied the allegations and called the boy a liar. The jury wound up deadlocked so the judge ordered them to keep deliberating, and long story assured it becomes a mistrial. Because the victim did not want to testify a second time, Paxton's prosecutor struck a plea deal with Hoffman. So, Hoffman, please, guilty, but the plea deal includes no jail time or registry for as a second. offender for Hoffman. So that's pretty fucked up. And obviously, it's Paxton's people doing this, but Paxton's the attorney general. Yeah. So this really grosses a lot of people out. And the case becomes a major avenue attack when he undergoes a primary challenge by John Cornyn earlier this year in the Senate race, right? Yeah, he challenges Cornyn, the incumbent for Senate.

The attention around this caused critics of Paxton to look into other cases, per the Texas Tribune. Quote, for instance, attack ads from Cornyn's allies highlight the case of a man originally charged with child sex trafficking, who received a deal for a probation sentence. And Judge Roy Sparkman brought up another case in open court last month, noting Paxton had also taken over a murder for hire case that he oversaw, which resulted in a misdemeanor plea and a four-day jail sentence. And of course, Paxton still beat Cornyn. So you could be forgiven for being like, what could take fucking this guy out, right?

At this point, what could matter? And I'll be honest, I was really hesitant to have any hope about this race until extremely recently, but within the last few days, a bunch of new polling has come out that makes this look not just competitive, but winnable. The most striking example of evidence in favor of that would be a recent Texas public opinion research poll that showed TALArico leading Paxton 45% to 40, after multiple other polls had consistently shown a nail-biter of a race. Now, TPOR is officially a non-partisan research group, but it is run by a Democratic strategist, so there's reason to suspect some favoritism here.

The Texas Tribune, and a separate article had this to say about the survey. Quote, the group surveyed 1,48 likely voters between July 15th and July 17th and has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.4 percentage points. Of those poll respondents, 53% voted for Donald Trump and 42% voted for Kamala Harris in 2024, making the sample only slightly bluer than the 2024 electorate, which favored Trump by a 14-point margin in Texas. Trump carried Texas by 5.6 percentage points in 2020, two years after the last midterm held there during his presidency. And a recent New York Times Siena poll from June found an overall tie in the race 47 to 47% with Talleyco winning about 5% of Republicans.

The most significant data from this recent batch of polling that has been hopeful, though, is that Tala RICO seems to be doing really well among non-college educated voters, which is traditionally like the strongest group for Paxton. That's the group that has carried him

over the line consistently. And from that same article, quote, perhaps the biggest outlier was Tala RICO's lead among non-college educated voters who favored the Democrat by nine percentage points, 45% to 36%. He led by one percentage point among those with at least a bachelor's degree. I don't want to suggest that the other races in Texas are going to go this well, right?

Ted Cruz is currently about 18 points ahead of his opponent, Colin Alred, right now, among non-college educated Texans in 2024. Man. Yeah, like, so I don't have a lot of faith that this is going to extend past Tala Rico versus Paxton. But there is evidence that, like, Paxton's longevity with the specific group that's carried him past the line is at its end.

Like, maybe there's just too much scandal for him to stand up next to someone who seems as like relatively squeaky and nice as Tala Rico. Now, there's other things to credit Tala RICO's successful. One of them is that he's doing a lot better than Paxton in terms of, like, money right now. As of the most recent disclosures, Tala Rico's campaign is about $21 million on hand.

Paxton has less than eight. Huh. And if you remember every other election I've got or every other campaign of Paxton I've run through here, he usually had like a two to one advantage in funding over his opponents. So the fact that that's kind of falling apart for him, too, suggests this might be a really winnable race.

Now, there are some reasons to doubt that, too. Most polls I've seen show a number of undecided Republicans large enough to close the gap or a tie between the two candidates led by Paxton. And if that group all breaks for kin and historically they're likely to, things could be really close or wind up in favor of Paxton, right? One of the polls found about 14% of voters of all political stripes are unsure of their

picks. And among undecided voters, it looks like Paxton has the most room to grow. About 19% of that blocks that they lean towards a Republican compared to 10% to lean towards Tala Rico. But most of them were just totally on the fence, or at least that's what they said. So a lot is going to depend on how those people break. I'm not saying this is definitely going to go Tala Rico's way. But if you're talking about like, what is a race where maybe the Democratic Party might want to actually invest money in, I'd say here, this thing seems winnable, and I don't say that about Texas races often. It is a very particular matchup. Paxton has a lot of unique vulnerabilities.

Tyler Coastal is doing very well in polls for Latino voters, up like 45 points ahead of Paxton, and that will be very crucial, especially considering ice. Like, that's going to be a big factor in this race. Yeah. There was an ice killing in Texas just a few weeks ago. Certainly a lot of funding could come to Paxton, towards the end of the race. Sure.

The campaign finest ratio could change dramatically over time, but I do wonder if the sort of strategy from the GOP right now, which is to like paint, paint Tala Rico very early on, is this like, you know, woke gender ideology maniac will kind of run a little bit hollow now that Trump is in charge and Republicans control all branches of government. And the sort of like economic issues that can not be blames. on like woke liberals sending, you know, money to sex changes in prison.

It's going to be an interesting race, very close. Yeah. Another close race next Tuesday, the Michigan Senate primary with I See Israel in My Dreams Haley Stevens versus Dr. Abdul al-Said. They had their last, last debate on Monday. El-Cid continually hit Stevens for her corporate funding, $60 million, outside spending $46 million of APAC funding. And the moderator was really going after Stevens for this too, asking if all this

APAC funding will result in Stevens, quote unquote, doing their bidding referring to APAC and like the pro-Israel lobby. That's kind of interesting. And she also lied about receiving funding from the local utility company during the debate. So early voting for that's already started. The primaries next Tuesday. We'll cover that on next executive. order. Francesca Hong in the Wisconsin

gubernatorial race also had a debate on Tuesday. Had not seen that yet, but she is really pulling ahead in polls right now. But that primary is still a few weeks away. But to stay on the topic of evil Republicans, on July 21st, Speaker Mike Johnson dismissed domestic violence allegations against Republican representatives Max Miller and Corey Mills,

saying, quote, well, the key word there is allegation, and then said that the House Ethics Committee would shake things out. Of those two reps, Max Miller of Ohio is facing re-election in the midst of escalating legal issues, including restraining orders, a defamation case, and a custody battle. Max Miller's ex-wife, Emily Morano, of the America First Policy Institute and daughter of Ohio Senator Bernie Morano, has accused Max Miller of abusing her and their daughter. While investigating suspected child abuse, Marano told Bay Village police that Miller yelled and held a gun to her head after she turned on the lights to change their baby's diaper.

Jesus. According to a police report, Marano told police, but another domestic violence incident from earlier this year where during a custody exchange, Miller, quote, grabbed and threw her against the wall, which resulted in an obvious grab mark on her upper arm and bruising to her stomach and side, where she hit the wall, unquote. This alleged incident also was in front of their daughter, and the police report later states that Marano's daughter told her, quote, Daddy Kill You. Marano and Miller were married in 2022, and Marano filed for divorce in August of 2024.

After telling Miller that she wants a divorce in June of 24, Marano alleged that he threw hot steaming water at her. In a recorded phone call, Miller admits to what he refers to as the water incident after his wife said on the call that he abused her and, quote, poured a steaming hot water on her neck. On the call, Miller said that the quote-unquote water incident wasn't done with, quote-unquote, intent to hurt his wife.

Marano told police she moved out of the house because she was, quote, unquote, scared of him. All of these allegations came to light earlier this year after Morano discovered her two-year-old daughter's collarbone was broken after the child came back from Miller's house this past February. This prompted a cascade of investigations and back-and-forth court filings, which eventually made their way into news reporting. A Bay Village police report investigating suspected child abuse

stated that a child protection specialist found that the two-year-old's broken collarbone was accompanied by a bruise that, quote, appears to be in a handprint and appears to have been inflicted. According to another police report obtained by Mother Jones, Marano recounted her daughter saying, quote, Daddy's house is scary. Miller, of course, denies all claims of abuse or domestic violence and has theorized that the broken collarbone

was possibly caused by a seatbelt. Why is a kid wearing a seatbelt? Shouldn't they be in a car seat when they're two? Yes, this was part of the, investigation because Miller said this. And he had to show police that he had properly installed a car seat. After news outlets reported on disposal and child abuse allegations, Miller filed a defamation suit against his ex-wife.

And this is not the first time. Miller has used a defamation suit to shut down allegations of abuse. In 2021, Stephanie Grisham, a former White House press secretary in Trump's first term, wrote in the Washington Post that her unnamed boyfriend from 2019 to 2020, quote unquote, got physical with her, that their relationship, quote, unquote, turned abusive, and that her ex-boyfriend had, quote, anger issues and a violent streak.

These claims were later included in a book. But earlier that year, Politico reported that Max Miller, quote, pushed Grisham against a wall and slapped her in the face at his Washington apartment after she accused him of cheating on her, unquote. Max Miller sued Grisham. for, quote, libelous and defamatory false statements made about him. But he dismissed the case in 2023 after agreeing to his settlement. Though, Grisham is now suing Miller for breaking the settlement's MDA

by publicly claiming that Grisham fabricated abuse allegations against him while defending himself against new allegations of abuse by his ex-wife. Max Miller's abuse allegations have been a sort of open secret in Washington for a while when George Santos was dealing with his whole thing a few years ago, on the House floor, he referred to Max Miller as a woman beater. Huh.

And talked about how he didn't want the Republican Party to just turn into repeating media attacks against each other as he was being kicked out of Congress. Wild. He is running for re-election in Ohio. Yeah. And Miller has maintained support

from Republicans in Congress. and it's been backed by the president for years. Let's go on a break and then discuss some more news. You've heard the chaos. Now you can see it. Do we want to jump right in? Watch all your favorite podcasts from start to finish right inside the free I-Hart Radio app. Make some noise.

Woo-ee! Catch every laugh and eye roll on shows like Bestie Listen, Hey Jonas and Las Culturistas. Now with full video. I'll just leave that there. It's the same hosts and the same chemistry with all the hilarious moments you've been missing right on your screen. Open the free IHard Radio app.

Search video podcasts and tap watch. What's up, fam? I'm sports journalist Ari Chambers. Hey, what's up, y'all? It's your girl, Sam J. And we're the host of everyone watches women's sports, a new podcast from Together and IHart Women's Sports. Because let's be real. Women's sports is giving us way too much to talk about these days.

So Kelsey Finler, she became the first female solo roer to go from California to Hawaii. My first thought is, like, what's up with the snacks? Like, what are we eating? The highlights, the rivalries, the breakout stars, the moments that take over your entire timeline. And the conversations that start during the game and somehow keep going all week. Every week, we're breaking down the biggest stories across women's sports. Naomi Osaka showing out, she beat Sabalinka.

Shout out to you, Naomi. You get the palm, Naomi. You get the palm for that. Because we're not just interested in what happened. We're interested in why everyone's talking about it. Because everyone watches women's sports. Listen to everyone watches women's sports on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast.

Hey, Portlandia fans. Carrie Brownstein and Fred Armisen here. You know us, or rather, you know them. Tony and Candace, Nina and Lance, Spike, and yes, the chicken. We've played a lot of iconic characters over the years, but today we're showing up as ourselves to tell you about Podlandia, AEO, rewatch, our brand new podcast. Each week, we'll revisit an episode of Portlandia from the very beginning.

Breaking down the sketches, exploring the backstories of our most iconic characters, revisiting the Portland locations you know and love, and opening up about our creative process. How did any of this get made? Why do we think that was a good idea? We're ready to talk about it. And we'll also be joined by the people who helped bring it all to life. Guest stars, collaborators, and friends, including director Jonathan Chrysler,

the mayor himself, Kyle McLaughlin, legendary musician Amy Mann, and many more. Kyle is going for it here. You fully improvised, not just words, but a song, a melody. I thought he was going to write. I thought you were all going to write a song. I remember you thinking that. Listen to Podlandia. Ayo, rewatch on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Nancy Glass, host of the Burden of Guilt Season 3 podcast. This is a story about a horrendous situation that destroyed two families. It started more than seven years ago when Cindy and Kim, Kenny were two 40-somethings who had just gotten engaged. Days later, they walked into a scorched earth war they never saw coming. Turn around and place your hands by your back. The cops given to my house and threw me in jail. And to Cindy's surprise, her fiance, Kenny, was charged with abusing one of her children. I never once doubted Kenny, and I always doubted the accusation. On season three of burden of guilt, you'll hear a story about the lengths someone will go

to in order to get what they want. This case has got to be one of the most despicable. Listen to season three of burden of guilt on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All right, we are

back. And I want to update people on the Iranian-American Legal Defense Fund versus Rubio case. We spoke about a few weeks ago. So I have reached out to public citizen about this, and they haven't got back to me. I'd love to do an interview with them. I have worked with them before and some access to med stuff. So hopefully someone from public citizen will listen and reply.

But we have learned a lot from the new filings in this case. One of the things we learned was the people were required by ICE to meet Iranian government officials, the very people they had fled to the USA to be safe and protected from. It seems that the person who met them was introduced as a consul. But Iran obviously doesn't have a consulate in the United States, right? They have the Iranian interest section, which is in the Pakistani embassy. This person had information about their cases. In other cases, they were told they had to take calls from the Iranian interest section and they wouldn't be allowed to return to their housing pod until they spoke to them on the phone.

In one of these calls, the Iranian officials said they had a transcript of the person's credible fear interview. That is wild, right? So the credible fear interview is when people explain why they fear going to. back to where they have fled, i.e. what it is that they think the Iranian state in this case is going to do to them. So what the credible fear interview will have detailed for these people would have been their participation in China Amini protests. I saw that in several of the testimonies. I've also spoken to dozens of Iranian migrants who participate in those protests.

Were arrested, released, and realized that they were going to be arrested again and fled or fled before they were arrested. Or their participation in the Christian faith. You see that in a lot of the testimonies in this case. If the Iranian government have them rank down, they were Christians, they were distributing Bibles, they were evangelizing. It is absolutely not safe for these people to go back. Some of these meetings that appear to have occurred right here in San Diego, the Otai-Mesa detention center facility. People were bought to the Iranian government official, and the official then sat down with them and tried to persuade them to return to Iran. The official had a list of names of people who they were going to meet and they read it out. So even some people who weren't there,

their names were read out. So it looks like the officials either selected these people or were told by ICE who these people were. One of the people names the individual was Mr. Mehrabadi, and he threatened that they would be sent to quote Africa. So this is the United States doing either its chain refoulement or it's sending people to third country's deportation, right? We also see a lot about the current state of the asylum system in these declarations. One person attests that she has been and will be tortured in Iran. The judge responds to her that everyone gets tortured in Iran. In their interview with the quote unquote consul, one person said they were told by the consul,

even in the US, if you are political, the same things can happen to you. She's very clearly a threat, right? The regime agent also knew when her husband was being. deported and to where. So he had that information before he met that this woman. In another case, someone testified then, ICE agent said, I will force you, this is my job. And this was with reference to signing self-deportation papers. They cuffed the woman and then, quote, he literally forced my fingerprint by forcing my finger to a stamp and then on a paper, no matter how much I tried to take back my finger, which is pretty wild. It's not the first time I should add that we've heard

allegations that are doing exactly this. So many of the people in this document are women who have stories exactly like the Iranian women I met in the Darien Gap. Many of them also say they took that route. They went from Iran to either Venezuela or Brazil and then traveled north from there. They also give details of their detention conditions, which are predictably appalling, right, with one writing, quote, water here smells very bad and we are always itchy. We all have red dots on our skin that have also gone away on my body after I started antibiotics. And then skipping a bit, the dental care here is unbelievably dangerous. Any happening with teeth and they only extract. The doctors here have already extracted three of my teeth and have told me they will extract

another three more when my antibiotics were over. I have always taken care of my teeth. They also talk about the, I was just quote from one of their, one of their statements here, this disclosure, and then I'm adding this of asylum information to the Iranian government, returning to the quote here, has materially increased the likelihood that I will be detained, interrogated or tortured or killed if I ever returned to Iran. Another said, when I saw him, talking about the Iranian consul, I was disgusted with the US government by forcing us to be with agents to the regime, which I told my pod manager. Many of these people have been in detention for more than a year, right? It seems like most of these people entered in

2025. A member of staff at the Iranian interest section also called the Iranian American Legal Defence Fund and informed them that United States State Department had approached the interest section to ask for help getting rid of Iranian detainees. That's a quote that lasts getting rid of. The Iranian officials said they met monthly with ICE to select individuals for deportation and the ICE provided their asylum applications to the Iranians at these meetings. They said they met with someone of Indian descent with a Georgetown degree, who is described as the general director of the Middle East section. The meetings stopped when the war with Iran began,

but apparently they still deliver documents, or at least they were delivering document in March. This call from the Iranian interest section to the IALDF is wild. It involves this Iranian official recounting, for instance, that on the first deportation flight in September of last year, two people cut their wrists with razors, presumably attempting to end their lives rather than go back to Iran. It also details how in many cases the United States can't get the people's travel documents together because they fly via a third country to Iran.

There's no direct flights between the US and Iran, and so these flights end up not being as full as the United States no doubt hopes. he also says that the clothing and state of the detainees was so poor that the Iranian government official purchased some clothing from Costco with his own money. He also said that at no point did the United States ask Iran to guarantee their well-being in Iran. The official kind of posits himself as like intervening on behalf of the Iranian people to make sure they're treated correctly, right? which is how generally one would expect the consular administration of a state to intervene on behalf of the citizens. This, though, is different because these people are fleeing the very government that he represents, right?

I will keep covering this. I will also link to the court listener page where you can read these testimonies. They're all handwritten. They can be a little harder to read sometimes, but there's some really shocking and upsetting stuff in there. Forgive me if you've talked about this already. Maybe this would help for some listeners too. Like, how does this relate to the asylum laws that the United States has? Like, have they been denied asylum in so-called immigration courts?

And this is the process for removal. And how is that actually, like, decided? Because, like, these people seem to have, like, in the testimony you're reading, very credible fears to the point where they're attempting, like, harming themselves to avoid going back to this state. Yeah. So it seems like most of these people entered after Trump came in with his day one, effectively, like Southern Border Crossing Asylum ban.

Right. And so they are having to fight their cases from detention, which is what they are doing. In some cases, they are already appealing because the government has found that they don't have credible fear or that they're otherwise not eligible for asylum. The reason the IALDF knows about these people is that that is what it is doing as a non-profit group is helping them fight their cases. Sure. It shows a pretty fucking bleak situation. Like people do still get asylum. I hear about it occasionally. You know, I hear from, friends in the community who do court accompaniments, they occasionally have a success still. But with the way that the Trump administration is purging the ranks of immigration, quote-unquote, judges, that's getting less and less likely. So, like, these people are in that system.

Many of them are either in ever-spirling delays, right, because we have fewer and few of these judges because they're getting purged. More judges are coming on board now. Or they are already appealing or going through the CAT process convention, against torture process, right? These are the sort of asylum claims that are like in the bullseye of what an asylum claim is, right?

All of these people in there, I didn't want to read them out because I don't think there's any reason to traumatize people. Nearly all of them detail torture. Most of the women detail sexual abuse. They talk about the horrific things they went through on the way here to,

like, this is like friend and center of what you would think a textbook asylum case would be normally. And there are exemptions for some Christian, religious minorities from Iran who largely Christian people were in some of these visa bans. But these people didn't come that way, right? They didn't come by applying for a visa. They came across the southern border. It's very possible that one of the people in this case is

somebody I met in the Darien Gap, that the timing would line up. It's been really fucking upsetting for me reading these things. Thank you for that context. Earlier in this episode, we talked about attacks on the First Amendment as a part of the Trump admins crackdown on the left. But before we close, I want to go over a a novel case of state repression against an Atlanta-based activist. This is a first-of-its-kind case, focusing on an extreme privacy feature of Graphene OS, an open-source operating system for Android phones.

This feature is known as a duress password, a special code that, when inputted into a phone's locked password screen, triggers a wipe of certain data on the phone. Last November, a federal grand jury indicted an Atlanta activist for allegedly wiping the data on his phone after being detained at the airport upon re-entering the country in January of 2025. U.S. attorneys say this was in violation of Title 18,

USC Section 2232A, that is, the destruction or removal of property to prevent seizure. The short, single paragraph indictment reads that the defendant, quote, did knowingly destroy, damage, waste, dispose of, and otherwise take any action to delete the digital contents of a Google Pixel cellular phone

for the purpose of preventing and impairing the government's lawful authority to take said property into its custody and control before and during the search for and seizure of property by Customs and Border Patrol Tactical Terrorism Response Team Supervisory Officer J.C. That's the name of the officer. Last week, this case had its first hearing, which was focused on a motion filed by the defense to suppress evidence and statements for violations of the Fourth, Fifth, and Sixth Amendments.

According to the motion, the FBI-Atlanta Joint Terrorism Task Force coordinated with CPB to question and search U.S. citizen Samuel Tunic as he was returning to the United States from the Dominican Republic because of his associations with the Defend the Atlanta Forest Movement, or Stop Cop City, which we have covered on this show. Basically, after arriving at the airport, CPB put Tunic in secondary inspection, where their tactical terrorism response team, quote, proceeded to question Mr. Tunic, search Mr. Tunic's body, and all his belongings, and insisted that he provide the password for his phone. Despite Mr. Tunic's request to speak with his lawyer and not engaged any further questioning,

the officers insisted they could question Mr. Tunic and search his phone to determine whether he had child porn. Evidently, this was a pretext for a fishing expedition into Mr. Tunic's connections with the defend the Atlanta forest movement. Unquote. A journalist Timothy Pratt reported in the Guardian

that during last week's hearing, it was revealed that, unbeknownst to Samuel Tunic, federal authorities had put him on a terrorism watch list, and that a Homeland Security agent circulated an email three hours before Tunic arrived back in Atlanta

containing his name and photo and indicated he was being investigated for quote unquote suspected terrorism activities. I think it is important to mention that Samuel Tunic to this point has not been charged with terrorism and does not face any charges

directly related to protest activity for defend the Atlanta forest or stop cop city. According to the defense's motion, Tunic early and repeatedly during questioning said that he would not speak without his lawyer but the officers ignored these requests and never Mirandized, Tunek.

The motion states that the officers told him, quote, because you're refusing to talk, which is you're right, we have the authority to go through your phone to see what we're looking for. After officers demanded his phone password a second time, the Tudok asked again why he wasn't allowed to call his lawyer, and the officers responded, quote, when it comes to immigration and customs, right, it's a whole different ballgame,

and we have search authority, we don't need a warrant, unquote. I'm not a lawyer. This is not legal advice. If this is something you are concerned about, then you should seek out legal counsel. I'm just going to give you my best understanding of it. This is a civil situation. Well, it's also a criminal situation for him now. But like when you're entering the border, these are civil proceedings.

And so that's why you're generally not Mirandized. Depending on where you enter the United States and what search. you are in. They can inspect your telephone. My general understanding goes with it is should you refuse to unlock that telephone, you can expect to leave without your telephone. The general way that they do this is for them to put the phone on airplane mode and then search it because they are searching the device that is entering United States, not the remote cloud stuff that is not on the device, right? Because they are inspecting a thing. that is crossing the border, right? And that is within their purview in most circuits in the United

States right now as federal immigration officers. And then the other thing I would add, at some point, I think we're going to see a Supreme Court case about it and this might be the one, right? That's very possible, yeah. Orbeit there'll be other elements to this case, right? Like, as you said, like, who destroyed the data that was on the phone is something that's very much not legally clear to me, right? Did graphene destroy the data, did the BP agents when they entered that passcode destroy the data, right? Or did the person destroy the data? Yeah, this case is a whole bunch of legal gray areas. This is the first time we've seen a case about a duress password. The exact way this interrogation went and introduces a lot

of questions on when exactly this regular border patrol questioning turned into an actual interrogation based on allegations of a crime with this mention of child sexual abuse material. And all those things could possibly trigger different legal statutes in various court cases. Now, the motion says that officers explained to Tunick that he would have to give over access to his phone, quote, whether it was done with his cooperation or not. Eventually, Mr. Tunick provided a password to his cell phone and e-reader. According to the government, when the CPB officers entered the password on his cell phone, quote, the screen went blank, flashed several times, and the phone appeared to restart, unquote.

After this, another officer entered the room to conduct a pat-down, which the attorney did not consent to, but they did anyway. Then a DHS agent arrived with three other individuals to conduct another interview, which Tunek did not consent to and pointed to his attorney's card. To quote from the motion again, quote, the agent explained that he was seizing Mr. Tynick's electronic devices and that they would be returned to Mr. Tonek after 30 days. Notably, the DHS agent explained that Mr. Tunic was, quote, not under arrest, but once these gentlemen are done with you, pursuant to your entry into the country, you're free to leave, unquote. So this motion to suppress evidence argued that the border questioning became, quote unquote, custodial in nature when Mr. Tunick was not able to leave, was never informed of his rights, and was denied access to his lawyer. and so any, quote, evidence obtained from his phone or lack thereof should be suppressed as fruits of unlawfully obtained evidence. The specific statute that he's being charged with, 18 U.S.C. 2232, refers to, quote, the government's lawful authority to take such property. So this motion is arguing that the exact way this property was taken was not lawful.

Yeah. To quote from the motion again, which I think we'll expound on this. quote, CBB officers introduced themselves to Mr. Tunic and explained that they were looking for people who are pedophiles. Officers justified their questioning and demands to search Mr. Tunic's phone by stating that they had to confirm whether he possessed child porn. The government's reports do not indicate any suspicion whatsoever that Mr. Tunic was in possession of child porn, but rather that their purpose in detaining Mr. Tunic and seizing his belongings was to investigate his ties with the defend the Atlanta Forest movement. Toenick's unmarandized statement, the alleged wiping or encryption of the contents of his phone by providing agents for the specific password is testimonial in nature. Mr. Tunic had not been charged with committing a crime in connection with the defendant, the Atlanta Force movement,

but law enforcement seemingly took advantage of the relaxed constitutional protections at the border to try to dig up evidence, unquote. And the motion states that circuit courts have contradictory rulings. if this sort of search is permitted. If you can search someone's phone at the border, not to actually intercept digital contraband, but to fish for evidence in an unrelated criminal investigation. Now, something that may come up if this goes to trial is technically using graphene's stress password,

it does not delete all of the data on the phone, but rather the phone loses the ability to access its encrypted data. Graphene OS wrote on X the Everything app, quote, Our duress pin slash password leaves all the encrypted data on the device intact. It only wipes keys in the hardware key stores, the secure element, and encryption metadata. It's an ear instant, and then it powers off the device to wipe RAM, unquote. So basically, it wipes what the phone needs to decrypt its contents and read the data. Though Graphene followed up on Twitter, quote,

we doubt that's legally different from wiping data, unquote. So this technicality may or may not actually matter to the court, but this might not be a sort of get out of jail loophole that I see some people online presenting it as. Graphene OS further explained that the duress password wipe should be legal, not because of this quote-unquote tech loophole, but because the defendant, quote, wasn't being investigated for any actual crime,

wasn't under arrest, wasn't read his rights before being. interrogated, was it under oath, etc. Adding that it's, quote, near impossible that they get anything of value if the phone was in before first unlock with a strong passphrase plus second factor fingerprint unlock setup, unquote. Whether or not this dress password was used, it is very unlikely that federal authorities would have been able to break into a phone running the graphene operating system. Yeah.

That means that the device has been fully turned off and has not been unlocked since being turned back on. Similarly, it is very hard to break into an iPhone running iOS's lockdown mode with a complex alpha numeric password before first unlock. The combination of all those things can make it really hard to break in. We saw that right, Reese, with a reporter from a Gat-who, one of the broadsheets whose phone was using lockdown mode that they've said they couldn't open, right? Yeah. I guess I will just say that if people want to know more about border searches and telephones, I would suggest going to Electronic Frontier Foundations page, eFF.org. They have a great deal of information, and you can find a lot there.

It's currently the Southern District of New York, which is the one that requires a warrant, but there are various other degrees that we don't have the time nor is just the place for us to go over. So, yeah, EFF, always a good source for this year. Yeah, but like James said, this is a case that could become Supreme Court precedent over time. This is invoking a bunch of legal gray areas. The motion here to suppress evidence probably will be decided on until at least October. So this is going to go on for quite a while. This is another new frontier in digital privacy and how that relates to the law,

which the Supreme Court has taken up a lot of cases on recently. So this could become a very influential case going to. forward. So I wanted to go over some of these details now, and we will certainly be covering this in the future as this case progresses. Yeah. The outlook hasn't been great so far, I would say, with this. The US versus Belmonti Cardoso was the most recent case. That was, I think, this week or last week. Again, not the place to go into this, but I will include a link in the source notes if you want to read about some of the case law. I think that does it for us today.

Sick. Add it could happen here. Oh, good. Yeah. If you would like to email us, it's cool zone tips at proton.me. I'll include the legal fundraiser for Sam Tupnik's case below. We reported the news. The news reported.

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