It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: California Elections, SCOTUS Approves GOP Map, Greg Bovino Update

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

The gang discuss Spencer Pratt’s LA mayoral campaign, a Supreme Court ruling on redistricting in Alabama, and changes to OMB funding. Sources: https://x.com/atrupar/status/2061537793843532054?s=20  https://x.com/Tomhennessey69/status/2061343239794299374 . https://remigrationsummit.com/  https://www.politico.eu/article/afd-vox-mingle-with-ex-us-border-patrol-chief-white-nationalist-leader-at-remigration-summit/  https://www.breizh-info.com/2026/05/28/260619/gregory-bovino-lhomme-qui-a-pilote-les-operations-trump-contre-limmigration-illegale-parle-a-leurope-interview/  https://x.com/Osinttechnical/status/2061550046571528666?s=20  https://x.com/CENTCOM/status/2061419519705223257?s=20  https://www.axios.com/2026/06/01/trump-netanyahu-israel-lebanon-call  https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/iran-may-used-chinese-missile-shoot-us-fighter-jet-sources-say-rcna347555  https://www.patreon.com/posts/dont-confuse-and-159583359  https://bsky.app/profile/atrupar.com/post/3mndeoj7qnk24  https://public-inspection.federalregister.gov/2026-11094.pdf https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/06/promoting-advanced-artificial-intelligence-innovation-and-security/  https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/5905542-donald-trump-bill-pulte-odni-democratic-reaction/ https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/25pdf/25a1314_7m58.pdf https://www.scotusblog.com/2026/06/supreme-court-permits-alabama-to-use-congressional-map-struck-by-lower-court-as-racially-discrim/ https://www.npr.org/2026/06/03/nx-s1-5844678/trump-science-funding-omb-budget-office-rule-change https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aej3572 https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.adz9553 https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/this-new-omb-rule-is-bigger-than https://elizabethginexi.substack.com/p/summary-of-key-changes-in-ombs-proposed https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2026/05/29/2026-10817/regulation-for-federal-financial-assistance https://www.science.org/content/article/researchers-slam-hhs-report-gender-affirming-care-youth https://www.insidehighered.com/news/government/science-research-policy/2026/05/29/omb-proposes-rules-establishing-politicalSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Happy Pride from the Outspoken Podcast Network. All month long and all year round, we're celebrating being loud, proud, and always original. It's me, Brandon Kyle Goodman, host of the podcast, Tell Me Something Messy. Check out my show for unfiltered takes on dating, relationships, and adulting. Listen to High Key for the best pop culture takes, and there are no girls on the internet for all your tech news. For your favorite celebrity key keys, check out out. with T.S. Madison. Learn to love yourself unapologetically with BFF, Black Fat Fem,

and start your day with intention with waking up with Ryan coming in July. Celebrate Pride with the Outspoken Network. Open your free IHeart Radio app. Search Pride and listen now. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee. Do you realize how legendary you are? I appreciate that. I'd be seeing it, but I'm like, man, I still got, like, so much more to do. like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums. We dropped like five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going.

Yeah, that's a good attitude. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations. Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Why are we all so obsessed with romance? On the Radio 831 podcast, join us, Sanjana Basker and Tyler McCall,

as we unpack all the trending tropes. fuzzy adaptations, book talk drama, and celebrity love stories with hot takes and sharp guests. Each episode digs into what these stories reveal about desire, fantasy, identity, and how we love now. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Also Media. Welcome back to executive dysfunction could happen here. No. No? Is that all right, Garrison?

I thought we were, I thought it was pretty close. There's another, like, show or column called Executive Dysfunction now. Oh, is there? Yep. Sons of bitches, they stole it from us? That covers, like, legal issues relating to the Trump administration. So. Okay, well, that brings us neatly into our first story.

Who did it? This is it could happen here, executive disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening, the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today, joined by James Stout, Robert Evans, Mia Wong, and Sophie Lichterman. We're covering the, week of May 27th to June 3rd. Let's talk about intellectual property lawsuits. Let's.

Right off the bat. Anyone who is in any capacity using ED or unnotice, it is going to be us against the Viagra people. I'm talking today about Patagonia, the brand, suing Patagonia, the drag queen. God damn it. This is, God, damn. Yeah, I've successfully walked you into my little world. This is a situation very reminiscent.

of people remember the North Faces lawsuit against the South butt. Yes. I would argue it's actually kind of different. But, okay, I get what you're saying. The South But lawsuit was funny. People aren't familiar. It's really funny. They were bound to arbitration.

They arbitrated. They settled. And then the guy turned around and launched the butt face. Like a few weeks later. And they sued him again. That was a beautiful case of somebody trying to troll a company and also like trolling the concept of like intellectual property laws. Yeah.

in like a really creative way, which is different from what's happening. Yes. What is happening here is that when Wiley, whose drag persona is Pattygonia, right, does a lot of fundraising for outdoors causes, environmental causes, public lands, that kind of thing, has attempted to trademark their use of Patagonia for clothing. Patagonia is suing Wiley to protect its trademark on its logo because some of the logos that Patagonia has used are very obviously, like, they're mirrored Patagonia logos. Yeah.

She's trying to get a trademark for her Patagonia logo, which is just Patagonia instead of Patagonia in the company logo for Patagonia. Yeah. I'm not sure she tried to trademark like the, it's the Sarah Fitzroy, right? Like it's a mountain escape. Or she just tried to trademark Patagonia. It looked like it, well, I'll double check that right now. Yeah, because I think what she has offered as a settlement right now is to stop using the logo,

but continue using that name. Yeah, the second is whether Patagonia should be entitled to trademark registration. And at least they have a picture in the trademark application of her Patagonia logo. Yeah, yeah, and they've claimed it's confusingly similar. Yeah. And you made a good point when we were talking about this earlier, James, that I hadn't thought of because you are a better mind than I am in this way, which is that it is because my initial thinking on this was like when I saw that she was trying to trademark just like her version

of the Patagonia logo, I was like, well, you just took their logo and put your name on. Like, that is fucked up. But you pointed out, well, Patagonia's logo includes this, like, actual mountain range that she includes. And Patagonia doesn't really have the right to trademark the silhouette of a mountain range. It is a little more nuanced than I thought initially. Yeah. Yeah. There are a couple of things that stake here to people perhaps don't understand.

One, like... I'm in a moral level, not a legal one, folks. But, yeah, yeah. Morally, I think we should be asking the question, is it okay for a company that grosses 1.4 billion a year to own the rights to a skyline? I think we should be asking that. I think also people maybe should look a little bit deeper into, I've written about this a bunch of outlets, but Patagonia has millions of dollars of military contracts

that they don't like to talk about and they did through a different company called Lost Arrow. And people just need to stop seeing a giant company like this is woke. That's like the companies ain't going to save us. Sustainable shorts aren't going to save us. Buying a fancy fleece is not the way that you're going to make the better world that you want to live in. That's my take.

Yeah. I feel like Patty was kind of poking the bear here. Yeah, 100%. Like in a massive way, really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. No, clearly she knew what she was going for here. Yeah. And Patagoni clearly doesn't want to be fighting this lawsuit. Where are you seeing this stuff? Is this like a blue sky news story? Where are you seeing this? No, this is like a big, this is like I came into it. I saw it first on Reddit, but it's also just been pushed into my news feed. Like I've never heard of any of this before. It's a big story right now. unfortunately. I followed her, just like generally been aware of her for probably six or seven years.

Six, seven. The New York Times has a feature that's just on this right now. It's a sizable tale. Interesting. I did note that most of her merch is sold out. So the, the stress and effect, it's in full force here. Yeah. Yeah. If you wanted to find a way to sell as many patagonia stickers that look like the Patagonia logo as possible, you would sue her. This is the way to do it. Yeah. They're suing her for $1 plus, leave. fees, people don't seem to have grasped, but that doesn't mean that all of it is at stake is a bug here. The fees will be very substantial. Yes. Yeah.

Although the fees will be substantial. That said, this is clearly a fight Patty wanted to have. Yeah. So, like, I am not in a situation where, like, I feel particularly angry or disturbed about this lawsuit. Like, this is something that any company would have done some version of this in response. Yeah. It's not good that Patagonia is doing this. it's just what any corporation would do that has a fiduciary duty to its shareholders.

And that shouldn't change your opinion of Patagonia from what it was previously, but your opinion of Patagonia should never have been that it's like an altruistic entity, right? Yeah, 2% of its shares are held by its purpose trust, which are all the voting shares, and 98% of its shares are held by the Holdfast Collective, which is a 501C4. So, like, I think people see that. It's like, you know, they'd like to say that Earth is their only share. holder, but like the purpose trust is, as you say, Robert, duty bound to make a profit to give to the C4.

This is not the same thing as like activism. It's different. It's a company. It's a company that has to make profit, like you said, Robert. And I think people need to grasp that. Yes. And if they, I mean, literally if they were not, if they were to not fight what she's doing here, like this could cause serious issues for them.

Yeah. Yeah. I think someone tried to put their logo on a gun. I've heard about, I couldn't find reporting on this, but a couple of people have mentioned. it to me. And obviously they'd sued about that. And they couldn't, you know, so if they didn't, if they hadn't done this one, they couldn't do that. Right. And it's, again, this should not, I'm not, you shouldn't be like, well, Patagonia's in the right. But also you shouldn't be like, wow, I've completely changed my

opinion about this company, you know. Yeah. Yeah. It's just they're doing what they do. Yeah. I think the underlying structural thing here, and something we've talked about on this show at some length is just the underlying violence of the intellectual property system, like irrespective of this case. This. This is a kind of silly case of it, but, you know, like, there are a lot of people in the world who are dead right now because a bunch of corporations get to hold, like, patents on vaccines, for example. Yeah.

Or insulin. This has always been an extremely violent regime that is enforced by quite, like, one of the most powerful international bodies that has ever existed. And, yeah, if you want to hear more about this, a friend of the show, Vicky Osterwild, released a book called the Extended Universe about how Disney pioneered a whole bunch of this that, yeah, you should read about

because the entire system is just pure violence and always has been. Yeah, we have some episodes from years ago that I made about drug IP and evergreening as well. Yep. That's a very good point,

Meera. Moving on, we learned this week that the F-15E pilot, who was shot down over around in April, had been shot down the week before over Q8. What? That's the same person.

Horrible, horrible week. You think you've had a bad week at work. This person is joining just the list of all timers. Like that guy who got nuked at both Hiroshima and Nagasaki, there's that guy who got sunk on four consecutive ships. Is there such thing as a reverse ace? Like, if this guy gets shot down three more times, is he like an anti-aase?

If he gets shut down three more times, he ain't going to be able to reach the controls of the plane. Like, he's already compressed his spine so much. Yeah, I'm surprised. I didn't think they would let them, I didn't think period after getting shot down and ejecting, you would be allowed to fly a plane at all, like, that quickly. No, I was not aware that there was a protocol. And my understanding is you're not normally supposed to.

Like, I don't think this is how normally things would be done, which kind of suggests that there was, like, they didn't have enough pilots. Yeah, right. It's kind of remarkable that they were able to get him another F-15 quickly, I guess. But, yeah, yeah, he probably not flying anymore. planes for a while. I would imagine not. Yeah, I mean, who knows? Maybe the F-15s are free, I found, etc. Yeah, it sounds like he's just feeding F-15s to the desert. He must, yeah, the desert God's demand an F-15 sacrifice every six days. Marco Rubio in the house has claimed that

Afrikaners, we spoke quite this far as, right, the raising the cap to admit Afrikaners as refugees. Afrikaans should be admitted, and others not. because they, quote, have a high likelihood of assimilation. We have gauged that there is real interest from a unique subset who would be interested to coming in the United States and who we assess have a high likelihood of rapid assimilation and success in our society, and hence this program was created. Now, that's not a program that's going to exist in perpetuity.

It's a program that's designed to the fact that we are seeing the demand. We are seeing applications from South Africa of people willing to enter the United States, and we think this is a group of potential refugees. Afghan allies are refugees, they have been vetted, 1,100 versus this new 17,000. But it's more than just vetting. We're also trying to determine, against, is the immigration policy of the United States, like everything we do, has to be geared by the national interest. And it is in our national interest if we are allowing people in our country be people that

can quickly assimilate into society and be successful. Why can't they assimilate into society? A background check is not the same. I've been to their centers in my district, and Queens, they have assimilated and contribute and pay taxes. Yeah, but we've already assumed a lot of Afghan refugees. As you said, you have them in your district. We've already assumed a large number in the past. The point is that the general policy has been to limit the entry of refugees from all over

the world and then to create the special track because of a unique circumstance in the short term of a high demand from a number of immigrants that we have determined if they passed a vetting and the checking, we very quickly assimilating and contribute to our society. I think it's really interesting. It's one of the more clear elucidations of the way they see immigration that we've had. Like he said, it's not about vetting. It's not about background checks. It's specifically about people who can quote-unquote assimilate.

I wonder what the economic strata of the Afrikaners getting refugee status are. I mean, in terms of the way the Rubio is looking at it, their economic strata is white, which... Yeah. Well, I wonder what their actual economic strata. is, that is an interesting aspect. Like South Africa is a place where that maps on very, very cleanly in a lot of ways. Right, like that's what I'm saying, right?

Like, it's like, yeah, like, definitely a lot. Yeah, and I think it's just having the means to apply for this. Yeah, I mean, that's... Clearly, like, Ruby is saying, like, he's doing this because there is a demand. Let me tell you there is a demand all over the world. Like, I have seen demand to live in the United States in every continent on the planet, apart from the ones that are covered in ice.

this is as clear as you're going to get to them saying these folks are white, they're coming to America and we're going to lock out the folks who are not. I thought it was very interesting to see him go right up to that line. Next, I have Medicaid work requirements, work, study of volunteering requirements of 80 hours a month will be imposed by the 1st of January for the 40 states who expanded the program under the Affordable Care Act. This is, according to a notice published today, in the Federal Regist. today being Wednesday, this will impact millions of Americans. And the speed at which this is being

done will also be very hard for state bureaucracies to keep up with. Right. We have less than six months for a massive change. And the requirement for states to monitor this, it's going to be very difficult for them to retain the stability and pivot to this. And that's going to impact people. whether or not they are working which sucks this is something that like particularly impacts trans people because they're a shit ton of trans people

on Medicaid and a lot of those people are also disabled and that's just been an absolute nightmare for them if you are in a position where you can hire someone for I think the work

what's the word is like 30 hours a week I think is the requirement 80 hours a month It's a requirement that's 20-ish a week. Yeah. Like if you're in a position to just hire someone for that, you should do it because that's the difference between these people, like, having food and not having food. Yeah, this is a potential.

This will kill people. Yeah. Like, just the fuck-ups in the bureaucracy, even if people are able to find a work, a volunteer or study or whatever. Yeah. The delays that that will cause will kill people. This is also a thing, by the way, that some unions have historically done. IWW has done this, which is like getting people positions to be able to do volunteering.

Yeah. And if that's a thing you can do, you should do this because this is a unfathomable humanitarian crisis. Yeah. For a bunch of the most vulnerable people in the US. And yeah, it's real bad. Yeah, it's not good at all. I think that is a good point in me that, like, if you're in a place to help people coordinate their volunteering and document that, like, that was a good, that's a good thing to start thinking about. You got any small things?

A few more small things. Trump signed an executive order to expand AI cybersecurity capabilities and protections. And last Friday, Tulsi Gabbard resigned as Director of National Intelligence. Citing her husband's recent cancer diagnosis, Trump has selected Bill Pulte, head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as acting director of national intelligence. Pulte is a Trump loyalist with no intelligence background. even Republican senators don't seem too keen on this choice. Senate Majority Leader John Thune

told reporters, quote, well, we don't need a weaponized DNI. We need professionals there. If he's somebody, they wanted that position permanently, he's got, as you know, a lengthy road ahead of him. Let's catch up with the war in Iran. Iran this week hit a commercial vessel with an anti-ship cruise missile in the Persian Gulf, as well as firing at US facilities and hitting the International Airport in Kuwait, or they've killed at least. One person there, this comes as talks are continuing to fail to reach a resolution, at least in part, because Israel refuses to stop attacking Lebanon and committing war crimes. Axios is reporting that Trump said in a call to Netanyahu, quote, you're fucking crazy, you'd be in prison if it weren't for me, I'm saving your ass, everybody

hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this. Sure. In recent days, the IDF has explicitly threatened Beirut and further expanded its ground campaign. Again, right, like this war is now becoming very much a regional thing, has been a regional thing since it started, but like the peace deal is also a regional thing and the fact that Israel refuses to do anything other than exactly what it wants, which seems to be killing more and more people in its neighboring. countries means that it's going to be very hard for this water counter an end, which is going to have long-term economic consequences for the whole world. NBC has also reported, talking of the whole world, that it was a Chinese man-pack that shot down the F-15E, that's for the second time

in April, that such equipment, along with long-range radar, was possibly supplied to Iran in the early days of the conflict by China. Obviously, this makes any kind of detent with the US and China. more difficult, right? And it's not clear if the particular actual, a man-pads, man-portable air defense system, if people aren't familiar, if the particular service to MSR used how to arrive recently or had been in stockpiles for some time.

But it appears that China at least right before or early on in the conflict was perhaps supplying some air defences to Iran. Maybe this can explain just a little bit about how the bombing campaign has been relatively unsuccessful in its objectives in many ways. Let's go on a break and then we could talk about the California elections and the Supreme Court. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IAR Radio Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers,

plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you. Anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHart Pride Canada. Stream us on your phone. Or listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. Hey, it's us, the Jonas Brothers, and guess what?

We have some big news. What's the news, name? Huge news. We created our own podcast called, Hey, Jonas. We invented a podcast? Well, we didn't invent it. We just contributed to a... We're the first people to do podcasts.

Pretty, yeah, pretty wide range of podcasts. We're starting a trend. But this one's extra special. So how did we... How do we actually come up with a name Hey Jonas, guys? I honestly don't remember. I think it was on a call about what we should call it. Oh, we were thinking I'm originally calling it one of the early names of our band before Jonas Brothers.

This is how you guys remember it going down? Yes. I have a very different memory of this. We were talking about a thing, a bit for the podcast, where people could call in and say, hey, Jonas. And then I wrote down on my little notepad, Hey Jonas, and offered it up as a potential title. For the podcast. But thanks for remembering that, guys. Listen to Hey Jonas on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast.

Just listen. We don't care where you hear it. Why is everyone obsessed with romance right now? Like everyone. Your coworker who, quote unquote, doesn't read, is reading romance. Your mom, book talk, the entire internet. I'm Sanjana Basker. I'm Tyler McCall.

And this is Radio 831. a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse. And what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn, and obsess. We're going to Wuthering Heights, which, for the record, is not a romance novel. And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance, age gaps, certain Russian hockey players. And sentient objects, in love, which is a thing. That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode.

Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is Saigon, the story of my family and of the country that shaped us. The United States will not stand by and allow any power, however great, take over another country. From IHeart Podcasts, Saigon. Please allow me to introduce Joseph Sherman. You don't think I'm serious about a free Vietnam. I should stop talking so much. I like hearing you talk.

One city, a divided country, and the war that tore America apart. This is for Vietnam. I've taken a hit from Japanese ground fire. Do you rate me? They're pouring petrol all over him. He's holding matches. I'm on a landmine. For free time.

Let's get out. Freedom from Vietnam. Run! about this. There's a fire coming to this country and it's going to burn out everything. Listen to Saigon on the IHeart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Okay. Elections in California.

Why is California like that? What is going on over there? That's because I left. It's my fault. Yeah, we're all grieving, Sophie. That was the last thing holding it together there. I'm sorry. Let's start with the.

L.A. mayoral race. I want to talk about it. It's my duty to talk about this. I would like to talk a bit about Spencer Pratt. Who may, may be advancing. Who may be advancing. That's what I'm saying. At time of recording, which is Wednesday, June 3rd at around 3.30 p.m. Pacific

Time. Pratt is currently in second place with 30% of the votes. Bass is at 35% and has already been guaranteed to move forward. And Nithia Rahman is in third with 22%. And like I said, there's 60% of the votes counted. So why the fuck is Spencer Pratt a former reality TV cast member? I'm not even going to give him star running for mayor. Pratt grew up in the Pacific Palisades neighborhood and lived there until the fires happened. And he and his parents' houses were unfortunately burned down.

And he started making videos on TikTok, was getting a lot of attention for it. and decided that it was his destiny to, it was his, according to his website, his mission to run for mayor. Her his own campaign website. Pratt is a media entrepreneur, questionable, outspoken advocate, depends on who you're talking about, and an emerging political leader. He does have a political science degree from USC. I will say that.

But he does claim to be Karen Bass's worst nightmare. Now, if you're not a millennial who had television in the late 2000s, you're probably unaware of how unhinged Spencer Pratt is. Here are some highlights. Listeners, we apologize for what Sophie is about to make you experience. This is a lot of audio, Sophie. We need all of it. Oh, God. Oh, no.

Just do it, Garrison. Are you a copyright strip? We just do it. Just do it. For me, that was the best. Like, I was proud of myself for not doing what I wanted to do to you. because what I wanted to do and say to you, dear, who!

I didn't, because I was praying, praying like I do every day to not say the things that I want to say to you, to your mom. No, I know, I'm not. Take breath. Do you see how I'm not saying them? Yeah.

I'm very proud of myself. It's like your head's about to explode. So I'm sorry if I disrespect to you, but I'm very emotional these days. Very, very. So I say things that I feel. I was the one that wanted to kill anybody that would ever talk,

like that about my sister, and I still would. But that goes from my mom too. And as a family, that's how we all should be. Well, I didn't say anything negative about your mom. Your mom is just the vagina that made Heidi come on to earth. Your mom is not Jesus or God or the Creator. So why can't I say that? So why can't I say that?

Why can't I say that? No, it's not. It's my opinion. It's my opinion. It's my opinion. It's from the 10th of man. Preacher. This isn't Bible study.

This is earth. No one's preaching. No one's preaching. No one's preaching here. This is like. You're not her sister. You're not her friend. You're a liar.

Walk away from these lies because she's going to sit here and keep lying to you. You're the biggest poser in this town. You know what you're going to burn for. Stop it. I know. Spencer, that's so out of line. She's a-go back to your real estate job, you fucking liar. Yeah, that was Spencer talking to his sister-in-law about his mother-in-law.

Oh, wow. But all this is fake. This is all acting. Like this, I don't. This doesn't move me at all. Half of this is acting. Half of this is not acting. Yes.

Yes. That is how... Here he is talking to his own sister. Okay. Oh, no. We've already cataloged this shit. I'm going to leave, but I didn't get to say hi. Are you guys?

Good. How are you? Excellent. How are you? When, win, win, when, what are you? What are you crying about, Stephanie? What the what are you crying about? That's why you're not in my life, you crazy bitch,

because you come do barbecues and just start crying. I was just enjoying myself with my wife, and I get crying sisters in front of me. She just wanted to say hi. But that gets us crying away. What the fuck do I need to do to you? Trauma, huh? He just didn't ignore me.

What just happened? We're having a little conversation, and then all of a sudden, I got people storming out of here. I can't even talk right now. You know what's your brother, but she's off his rocker. I don't know what's wrong with it.

Here I'm talking about my little sister who's not relevant to my life. Oh, God. Oh, no. Okay. I like to fade out. And just to say, just to say, she has told people not to vote for her brother in modern times. Just to say. That's shocking. Shacking stuff. He seems like he's an even tempered guy. Yeah, one last clip, just because I'll, I never want to talk about him again.

So I'm getting it all out. I am the managing executive producer of the. podcast. Let me have this. Thank you. You're on this club. Dude, brother, I hate that bitch. Excuse my French. Hey, you're crazy. You're fucking being a weirdo, bro. You just yelled at me. Very gnarly. I so loud as somebody's yelled in my face for three years. I'm over here. I don't want to hear anything else. You're up in my face, huh? Walked away from me before we have a problem.

Walked them away. God. Dangerous I am. Like, I just really I had to like hold myself smashing his head off, you know? Like, this is like... All right. So this is, so this is like if like clavicular run,

like ran for office in like 10 years. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. 20 years. Yeah. And, you know, it's a reality TV show. You're right. There's parts of it that are scripted. There's parts of it that are enhanced.

There's parts of it. But you can't, you can't fake that fucking vein popping out of his head. A lot of it's scripted, but you don't get, cast, so to speak, to be that kind of character if you're not already a giant asshole, right? I mean, yeah, it's in some ways less explicitly scripted than like WWE, but you you fall into certain roles because that's what you are getting paid to. Like that is your job is contingent on

performing this kind of real, not real thing. And I honestly, you know, like the sort of like IRL streamer thing is a very similar version of that for the contemporary age. And I think so it really, There was one specific line there that really reminded me of like one of one of clavoculars like on camera meltdowns. I'm like, oh, this is really just if what if you had a guy like that just run for office? Yeah. For like the mayor of whatever city in like 20 years. Yeah. Well, I want to talk a little bit about his campaign style.

He shared this video on X the Everything app. And it got millions and millions of views with people saying it's the best campaign video of all time. And so we're going to play it for you now. Oh, no. Is this more of him than I've ever seen? This is the Batman one. Mm-hmm. I haven't seen this.

To be clear, he did not make this video. He did not make this. He shared it and he's big on the AI sharing video trend. Yes. His website is filled with it. Yeah. There have been a lot of AI videos in the L.A. race this time. There's been a lot of these L.A. election like Batman videos.

Yes. Yes. Let's, I guess, let's watch this one. Sure. until we get bored with it yeah wait hang on just break that down

yeah I think this makes sense to watch a little bit then pause and talk yeah yeah yeah we have to explain first we start with the entire Hollywood sign of flame

and the next thing you see is these these goons dressed in all black tactical gear with white text that says DSA which is one of the best things

I've ever seen That was my favorite part about this video. Yes, the paramilitary DSA forces in Los Angeles. And then it goes into the sort of Dark Night Rises like courtroom. Karen Bass in the middle. Except Karen Bass has Joker makeup on. And Kamala Harris is, I think, drinking alcohol on one side and that's new so. She's like straight from the bottle too.

I'll say too. I think there's a little bit of district fucking hunger games. Hunger Games. Yeah, yeah. The Hunger Games capital in that design too. Anyway. Yeah. And Gavin Newsom is in like, you know, like, yeah.

Aristocratic garb. Yeah. Okay. That's Gavin. Okay. Please. I'm begging you. There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools.

My children aren't safe. Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get you a free pussy. All right. Wow. Wow. I know. Oh. Holy shit.

Holy shit. I'm fascinated by what we've got here. Amazing. James, have you not seen this before? Absolutely not. No, I haven't seen this either. I shared this video in our work chat like a month and a half. Yeah, yeah. Oh, wait, no, shit, I have seen it.

Oh, God. I didn't watch it. I've got to control my exposure to this shit. It's made me very angry. So we now have a marionette of like a Latina. Lithia ramen. Okay, God. Yeah, that makes sense.

But there's like DSA people, DSA thugs. and tactile gear like pushing people around. Yeah, they throw the woman on the ground who's complaining about, yeah, the homeless drug addicts. Yeah. I think we're good. It's, it's all that kind of stuff. Like it's, yeah. Whatever.

There's like a fake Batman scene. They ask for Spencer. Spencer in a fake Batman costume. Blah, blah, blah. Yeah. I mean, Spencer Pratt is Batman. That's what that's Spencer Pratt's Batman. Yes.

You know, that's the kind of stuff they're sharing. And, you know, one of the biggest things he's run on is that his house was burned down and he was didn't have a place to live. and he claimed that he was living in a trailer on the property where his house used to be. And then it turned out that he was actually not staying in that trailer, but he was staying at the Hotel Bel Air, which is one of the nicest hotels in Los Angeles. Oh, yeah, I bet. And in response to that, he made this video.

I'll begin the prince of a town called Bel Air. Wow. Oh, God. I don't want to. Get me. No. No. No.

You get the picture, though. Millions of views. Millions of views. And this like weird, rogue, no qualification, political candidate thing is working. People are like, we need a change. And I'm part of the BBC in terms of fundraising during the race. Pratt has blown away the other two. He raised $2.7 million between April 19th and May 16th.

That's nearly 10 times what Bass, a long-time politician, raised in the same period, and approximately seven times what Nithio Rahman raised. I mean, no one likes Bass, right? It's the other thing, right? The Democrats have, like, doubled down on doing exactly the same shit they've been doing for decades across California. Yeah, it's this, like, factless moderate liberalism. Yeah, like castor-all-libs will be how I describe the Democrats. Yeah, and just to say, like, Nithia Rahm did enter the race late, and she is far left from Karen Bass.

So we're seeing that. But the thing that's really interesting to me about this is there's 9.69 million people in L.A. County. And, you know, I'm comparing it to what I think will probably be about what it'll be for 2026. But in 2022, you know, Karen Bass got 278,000 votes. Rick Caruso only got 232,000 votes. and Kevin de Leon only got 50,000 votes. Out of 9.69 million people, that's the amount of people

that actually voted in the primary in 2022. And it's looking to be very similar for 2026. Yeah, maybe even a little bit lower. I agree. I think it might be a little bit lower. Not only has 150,000 votes, but he's in second place right now. But he's in second place.

Again, this is interesting because you're seeing higher than, and a lot of places, higher than average turnout. And I think part of why is just because Most people voting know that like with both the California mayor and gubernatorial elections, the likeliest outcome is like someone who isn't the worst possible choice, but isn't going to like make things better.

Like LA is not going to have a good mayor. Most people are fairly confident of that. And so there's just not a lot of there's not, I don't think people are very motivated because they feel like what the fuck is the point of caring about this, you know? And I don't, I'm not saying that's the right way to look at it. I'm just saying that that's what I think is part of what's going on here. Yeah. Like I know like just from the discourse around San Diego, like people, they're tired of being

shamed into vote for like some mediocre ass candidate who will just give all their money to the cops. Like the last five mayors have done. Yeah. We're going to keep seeing these kind of candidates. It's going to become a regular thing. We even have, you know, Jersey Shore Star. Mike, the situation, Sarantino, saying he's thinking about running for New Jersey

governor. I hate this trend. This trend sucks. And in the words of Lauren Conrad, he's a sucky person. He's a sucky person. I hate Spencer. I've never going to like Spencer. Please don't make him your mayor, Los Angeles.

Do better. He's awful. He's horrific. He hates unhoused people. Terrible person. No. Bad. Shame.

I'm done. I hope to never have to talk about this person ever again. Yeah. In case people don't know, the two top winners of the L.A. mayoral primary advance to a runoff. So Bass is going to be there. She is in the lead.

And right now it is between Pratt and Raman and Pratt's lead in second place has been sliding as more and more votes come in. But as of Wednesday afternoon, he's still in second. As for governor, Steve Hilton, Republican, is in

the number one spot with 1.3, almost 1.4 million votes as of Wednesday afternoon. Sarah's in number two with 25% of the vote. Tom Steyer is in number three with almost 20% of the vote. And this is about 55% of the vote in. Cicero is a former Biden cabinet member, Health and Human Services Secretary. Yeah.

So more of kind of moderate, liberal, Steyer, the more progressive candidate. But it seems because he is a billionaire that did in some ways affect enthusiasm to vote for him on the Democratic side. There's another Republican candidate who's in fourth place with over half a million votes. But again, the amount of votes that are actually happening compared to the amount of people is insane. It's so low. Yeah, it's really bad. There's a massive field of candidates, but no one really captured the imagination of people here. No one with enthusiastic for this.

No. I guess I can cover a couple of small San Diego things quickly. San Diego Measure A. Mr. A, was a tax on second homes defined as unoccupied for the majority of the year. Peterer. Yeah, it looks like it's going down. It's sweeping the nation. Oh, it's not super.

Sorry. It's not super. Yeah. Unfortunately not. Like, it's, uh, I mean, there is nothing that unites San Diego's more than hating tourists. But I think you have this interesting alliance of like boomer, homeowners thinking this will mess with their property prices and generally not wanting to pay taxes.

Yeah. And people who understand. that any money we give to our city is just going to go directly to the cops. Where do you get that idea from that that is a sentiment among the people who voted for this? Like, is this like demonstrated anywhere? Yeah, like if you go, if you look on social media, right, like, let's say, San Diego, next door, Reddit, etc. And then from meetings, like, we've had discussions within unions and part of, like,

so if you look at what our city is doing right now, it's slashing the arts budget, it's slashing the parks budget. Yeah. It's slashing everything. apart from the police budget, which is continuing to increase, right? Most notably in San Diego, they have started to try and charge for parking at the park and at the beach and on major thoroughfares, which, like, charging San Diego's to go to the beach is the most radicalizing thing that any politician could ever do. It's incredibly stupid as a revenue-generating measure.

Like, people have vandalized parking machines in very bushy neighborhoods, because this is just, like so offensive to people. And I think there's like a just a growing disgust with our mayor. And then like the idea that giving them any more money would result in better outcomes for people just isn't going to fly anymore, if that makes sense. Like they've done all these revenue generating measures. It's like a loss in faith that any revenue will actually just go towards improving. They're like standard of living.

Our city spent, I think, $100 million on a building filled with asbestos, which is worth less money than the land would be if the building wasn't on it. And from years and years, tried to kind of play political football with the fact that they bought a cancer tower. Like, yeah, there's a reason that San Diego is sometimes referred to as Enron by the sea. And I think folks are, folks are kind of having enough of it. They're reissuing under the perfect sun for folks who want to read more about San Diego politics. This sort of like alliance between like small capital, you know, people who don't want to pay for a tax on the second home, that alliance with people who've like lost faith in city services, right?

Who are going to oppose funding because they don't think it's actually like worthwhile. That's an interesting coalition of the modern moment. Right. Yeah, yeah. And it's definitely like a creation of, like specifically in California, right? This idea that we don't get to choose, basically we're going to get a Democrat and that Democrat will just do whatever they want. It's made that position very appealing to people, I guess.

Moving on from California, I do want to mention just briefly that Sam Forstack. one, the Democrat primary from Montana's House District. This is really interesting. He's a progressive union organizer. He used to be a smoke jumper, forest service firefighter. He is one of those folks who was like, I guess his entry into national politics came from Doge. Doge was cutting all these guys like GS2 people, right? People at the Forest Service, people at these big public lands management agencies who are making, barely making a living.

Yeah. And who have struggled for a long time. time in places like Bozeman, right, where the second homeowners have driven out the price significantly. That sort of pathway to progressive politics is one that's very interesting to me and one I want to do a lot more reporting on. But I thought it was a positive sign to see him winning that primary. Speaking of elections, before we go on break, I do want to talk about the Supreme Court following up on a story from last week. Last week, our final segment on the show was on the five-year battle in Alabama over two different house maps or

technically three, but the Republican ones were very similar. It was about these Republican-drawn maps that have only one black majority district and a court-ordered map that has two. Following the Supreme Court's weakening of Section 2, the Voting Rights Act earlier this year, late last month, a federal district court ruled that the GOP-drawn map in Alabama intentionally discriminated based on race and diluted the voting power of black Alabamas. So they placed an injunction on that map and ordered the state to use the court-approved map that was already in use in previous elections for the upcoming primaries. This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, who on Tuesday night overruled a district court issuing a four-page unsigned shadow docket ruling, allowing Alabama to use the GOP map that

eliminates a black majority or a black opportunity district. Supreme Court said that the state is likely to succeed on the merits of its claims. Quote, at this preliminary stage, the state has shown that it is entitled to interim relief from the district court's injunction, unquote. So this is the first time the Supreme Court has evaluated another court's interpretation of their Louisiana ruling, and in this case, the Supreme Court is saying the district court got it wrong. In the updated rules for Section 2 as a part of the Louisiana ruling, in order to succeed in arguing a Section 2 violation, plaintiffs have to submit an alternative map that must, quote, meet all the state's legitimate districting objectives just as well as the

state's own map, including, quote unquote, the state's specified political goals and any other goal not prohibited by the Constitution. So the alternative map that plaintiffs need to submit when challenging a map based on Section 2 has to have the same like partisan goals represented is what these updates. rules in the Louisiana ruling stead, and the Supreme Court said that this was not followed by the district court's ruling. Section 2 challenges must also, quote, provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation and, quote, show that voters engage in racial block voting that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation, unquote. So basically, the Supreme Court claimed that the

district court ordered map fails to do all this by not maintaining the state's, quote, constitutionally permissible community of interest on the Gulf Coast, by cutting into a section of the Gulf Coast in the Black Opportunity District, also failing to avoid contests between incumbents. The Supreme Court said that the district court's ruling, quote, departed from the updated standards set in the Louisiana ruling, quote, as to intentional vote dilution, the district court did not heed the presumption of legislative of good faith because it interpreted the state's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial order as proof of discriminatory animus, unquote.

Scotus is basically saying that just because it was definitively demonstrated to Alabama Republicans that their map had a discriminatory effect and then they passed it anyway, that itself does not qualify as intent. So showing quote unquote intent is, effectively impossible, like, at this point, because, I mean, maps can be sliced up like crazy, and they can just do that based on party. And this is what the Supreme Court is saying. Quote, the district court also failed to follow our instructions that the mere fact that voters of different races vote for different parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns, unquote. This was specifically the thing I was most curious about,

is if this idea that the district court wrote, if this idea that showing someone that their map is doing discrimination, if you show someone that and then they pass it anyway, does that prove that that that person then had intent because they knew it was discriminatory? And the Supreme Court is saying, no, that does not, that does not actually show intent. That is the main way that the Supreme Court has overruled the district court ruling.

If they also argue that the district court meddled in the state election too close to the primary, even though it's actually the Supreme Court ruling that is greenlighting this redistricting midway through the primary process. But that's kind of added on at the very end of the four page on signed shadow docket ruling. The macro level implication of this is that voting rights act is unenforceable. Like the parts of the Voting Rights Act that are supposed to protect from literally this specific thing, this specific thing of intentionally diluting black people's votes so that they can't elect candidates. Was the Jim Crow practice that this part of the Voting Rights Act was specifically designed to do,

and you can't do that anymore. It is just the Supreme Court has decided that this part of the Voting Rights Act doesn't exist. Yeah. And they've decided this because they want to, like, they want to do racist gerrymandering, so Republicans can win elections. And that's, I don't know, I mean, like, arguably the death of multiracial, like any semblance of multiracial democracy in the U.S., which is, Not great.

Yeah. I don't know. It's really, really bad. Yeah. I mean, it's what they've been working for for decades, right? It's what Yarvin's always talking about, right? It's repealing the 20th century, you know? Like, that has been the goal for a very long time,

and they see this as one of the most important steps towards doing that. Yeah, this is pretty devastating. I think there is a way to do, I think, some more in-depth analysis, like, on this topic. That might have to be in the future. Yeah, I mean, I did a full episode on this like a couple weeks ago. I mean, specifically the way that the interpretation in the shadow docket ruling, how it clarifies certain things, like, you know, just because statistically different races may vote for different parties, that does not actually prove racially polarized voting pattern. Like, there's certain things here that we can do a lot more analysis of. And, in terms of proving intent, a lot of states don't even need to do like mustache twirling.

I'm going to look at race maps and draw it based on race maps. They can just draw based on party affiliation. And that is going to get the party, the actual effect, right? Because these maps are passed by the party that's in control of the state legislature. And they want to maintain power with their party. So that's going to be the most effective way to do that. And if they just do that, then there leaves very little ground for these maps to be challenged on any sorts of racial grounds, even if there is racial discrimination as an effect.

right? And this was the biggest change of the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana. It was Alito, right, who technically wrote that one? Yeah, yeah. But being like, like, we are in a different place. We are in a different social place now than when the voter rights act was passed. And so therefore, we are going to update these rules accordingly. Even though literally, you know, three years ago, the Supreme Court was ruling in the opposite way in Alabama in a very similar situation. The change in those few years is very stark. And this is all goes downstream from the ruling in 2019 that specifically allows partisan gerrymandering because there's no law in the United States disallowing that. So like the Supreme Court is like, we cannot make a new law by saying this isn't allowed because there's just no law in the books. So if the legislation wants to pass laws against that, then they can. But we cannot disallow partisan gerrymandering in the courts effectively because there's no law preventing it. Yeah. And it's worth keeping in mind that the specific standard in the vote, voting rights act literally says effects, which was specifically an effects-based test and not

an interpretation or not a like proving intent test. And the Supreme Court was just like, no, fuck you. So that that's sort of just where we are now legally is that they're just making up what they think the test should be and making everyone else follow that. Yeah. I mean, three, three justices did dissent in this recent ruling, sort of more Kagan and Jackson. They wrote, quote, Before the court are two paths. Down one lies an orderly election held under a tried and tested congressional map that protects Black Alabama's right to vote, and with which all voters, election officials and candidates alike are familiar. Down the other lies a chaotic election held under a

never-before-use congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black Alabamaans, that Alabama adopted in unabashed defiance of a prior court order directly affirmed by this court, and that will require officials to change the voter registrations of hundreds of thousands of voters in just days at best. A task Alabama previously represented would take months. The majority chooses the second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule of law. I respectfully dissent. We'll go on a break now and conclude with one more section of this. Pride is like love.

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Your co-worker who, quote-unquote, doesn't read, is reading romance. Your mom, book talk, the entire internet. I'm Sanjana Basker. I'm Tyler McCall. And this is Radio 831, a romance podcast. The books, the tropes, the adaptations, the drama, the discourse. And what all of it says about how we actually love, yearn, and obsess. We're going to Weathering Heights, which, for the record, is not a romance novel.

And yet it has haunted the romance genre for 200 years. We're getting into dark romance, age gaps, certain Russian hockey players. And sentient objects, in love, which is a thing. That's the kind of conversation we're having every episode. Listen to the Radio 831 podcast on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And we are fast. So, all right, we need to talk about a fairly obscure bureaucratic rule change that is being rushed out by the Office of Management and Budget OMB, which is where it's the management bureaucracy office that's currently headed by one of the guys who wrote Project 2025. this change that they are proposing right now is effectively the formalization of all of the sort of doge cuts and then sort of post-dodge

departmental cuts of grants from the U.S. government. The way this is largely being covered right now, and I understand why we're going to run through that one first, is that this is effectively the death of American science. Because one of one of the things that this does, it's like a 400-page document. One of the early sessions of it is that instead of the current system where grants for scientific projects go before a peer review committee of scientists that are usually independent, and then those scientists give their recommendations to the department on whether or not this is a good use of funds, and then the department executes those recommendations, right? So grants, grants are determined by scientific, by a scientific peer review. process. This kills that and says that instead of the way that it has worked, which is that agencies

adopt the recommendations of it, this has not been how it works formally. Like it hasn't been a legal stipulation that this is how it works, but this is just literally how all science has worked since World War II, basically with the exception of the McCarthy era, is that these independent committees do the review of the grant and the federal agencies submit the grants. Instead of that, The heads of federal agencies will appoint one person who will individually look through every single grant and approve or deny them. So this is the formalization of the Doge process. This is the administration basically centralizing control of the entire scientific grant process. And this actually turns out, it turns out, is for all grants, which we'll get to in a second.

But what this means is that instead of, again, like scientific peer review being the thing that decides what science gets funding, it's now political appointees. And specifically, Trump administration political appointees, there are a whole, in this ruling, there are a whole bunch of absolutely, or not this rule,

the prose change. There is just a bunch of just absolutely unhinged screeds about the U.S. anti-AIDS programs turning into woke left mobs in Africa that support

like gender politics and stuff. I've found very, coherent explaining that. I swear to God, I am more coherent than actually reading out the quote. It's just, it's completely unhinged, like, weird right-wing conspiracy stuff for like half of it and half of it is like extremely technical budget change stuff. I know that in the Doge stuff, this has been talking about like, you know, sexual health clinics in like a country in Africa that's supported by the US government, right? Yeah. Yeah, they're pulling all these examples and then just

like screaming stuff about how they're like abortion centers and, you know, like, do doing like genital mutilation or whatever. There's been some good reporting on this by Elizabeth Genexe who used to do like program reviews for the NIH before a lot of things, including this administration, took over. This is effectively the centralization of all of the grants given out by the U.S. government, right? If we remember, if we think back to like the early days of Doge, right, where you'd find these giant list of grants that they'd gone through and just cut. And they had absolutely no legal authority to do that. They just did it. Yeah. This is the formalization of that process, right?

This is, this is setting up to bureaucratic apparatus to allow just one random groper they've, like, hired and stashed off at a room and like BNIH or something to just go through and cut whatever grants they want. They also have the power to terminate grants that have already been given out at will. There's other even weirder thing. where they're also very paranoid about scientific collaboration with other countries, which is just the basis of how all science is done. There's

restricted countries effectively where you can't collaborate with scientists from those countries, which even by U.S. standards is like not how things work that's like messed up by the standards of like American

foreign policy. And then also, if you are doing any collaboration, with any scientist from another country and there's money involved in it, that grant has to be individually approved by this person that they've set up. So this makes scientific collaboration effectively impossible, right? Because most of those things aren't going to happen because this is going to, you know, reproduce the sort of Doge bottle decks that we saw where suddenly all these grants are disappearing.

Even ones that would eventually get approved, the people who were supposed to be getting them are completely screwed because they're reliance on that grant coming in in order to do their research. and the pivot in control of how these grants are being given out from people who are at the very least scientists to, you know, just the people who are currently running the NIH who are like RFK Jr., right? It's those kind of people who are going to be running these kinds of grants and they are going to be able to do damage to this

that is quite frankly incalculable. this is the destruction of the entire system of American science. Like, almost like, vast, vast percentages of all the science in the U.S. is done off of government grants. Either it's done by, like, the NIH or, like, by government institutions, or not entirely all, but a huge portion of science that's done at research universities, which is, again, how, like, most science happens, is also supported by these grants.

And if we're in this situation now, we're all in this situation now, where all of these grants are, again, going through one person who is, like, solely motivated by political factors as to whether or not they're going to approve this, which is with the system media attempting to set up. This is the death of American science. And it's worse than that, too, because, and this is the thing where I'm going to do a full episode about this next week because there are a lot more implications, but the section of rules that's being changed here by the Office of Management and Budget, this is not the section for the grant allocation for science, right? this is the section for all grants given out by the U.S. by the U.S. government. So, for example, Medicaid? Oh, wow. Yeah. So all of that is now subject to this stuff, right?

Like disaster aid. Yeah. You know, like any money the government is giving out, right, that this is going through the grant system is now going through this process. Yeah. There's, I think, public comment on this ends July 7th. So I guess if you want to scream at them, that's technically possible. It's really not clear if Democratic politicians are going to actually try to substantively do something to stop this, which there's no direct legal mechanism for them to stop this. They could do another government shutdown or something.

Right. But yeah, this is just sort of the state of things, which is that a lot of this stuff has already been happening. It's worth saying, right, like a lot of these funding for everything from like Vexamination. seen programs to like the very small amount of research that was going in the trans healthcare or like queer healthcare in general. Like those grants are just gone and, you know, we've already seen a whole bunch of chaos from the interruption of the grant system on the sort of university level for scientists. But this is all just going to get significantly worse as this real change rolls out.

Yeah. Yeah, so on that happy note. Last week, the former chief patrol agent for the El Centro, sector and also commander of Border Patrol's operation at large Gregory Bovino took to X, the Everything app to announce that he was on his way to Delaney Hall. Wasn't exactly clear why, because Pavino is no longer a serving law enforcement officer. In fact, he was en route to a remigration summit in Portugal. At the conference, Bovino joined politicians from Fox and AFDE.

They spoke sort of behind closed doors. journalists who wanted to cover the event had to stay in a car park outside where they were harassed by a drone. He's not listed on the website, but it's like a sort of mystery speaker, and I'm guessing that that was him, right? Remigration, if people aren't familiar, we're going to do a whole episode on this next week, but the website for the conference sets it out as a set of fiscal, cultural, economic, social, political, and logistical policies whose objective is to prevent population replacement through the reversal of migratory flows. it is very explicitly about undocumented, documented, and naturalized people. It's not about following the law. It is explicitly racial. It's about racistity, religion and the idea of national purity

and cleansing the nation of people who it considers not to be pure. If you think this is something that this may be happened before in European history, you would not be alone. Greg Bovino took the chance to compare himself to Rommel in one interview. Great. Also compared himself to T.E. Lawrence and Patton, which is a fairly remarkable set of... Rommel and Patton.

Yes. Yeah, right. Without skipping a beep. Maybe he's one of those guys who's like a clean, fair marked guy. He also sort of... It was interesting, like I said, I'm going to break this down more next week.

I think what was more interesting than like Greg Pavino talks to Nazis about Nazi shit, which like, come on. What does one expect? Is the way he talked about stuff in terms of like the wrong. he sees Border Patrol having.

He referred to them, he said, they are often referred to as a federal law enforcement Marine Corps. The Border Patrol can operate anywhere in the United States and associated territories and simultaneously fulfill all enforcement missions. It goes on, he goes on to talk about them. He says that they are the only

organization capable of planning and executing this type of operation. He's not wrong. They are the only agency that could do something like a mass deportation campaign like we're seeing. But like this, this Marine Corps of the internal Marine Corps is interesting, right? That is how they have been used, especially by the Trump administration, right? Think of Portland in 2020, right? Like,

these are the government's goons. Yeah. Like, when they need a hit squad to fuck people up, this is who they go to. Yeah. And that identity is something that Bovino at Al have clearly embraced, right? But Bovino was in Bortak, not extremely recently, but he has some points in his career been in Bortac. He also kind of tried to set distance between B.P. and ICE, which is interesting. He called them, he said, the New York fiasco last night in New Jersey illustrates what happens when untrained investigators are sent to handle a situation that is the responsibility of uniform specialists. He's suggesting that the ICE employees lacked the necessary training to do what I guess they would call crowd control. Which is really funny because that's also the

Democrats line. I don't know. Yeah, yeah. It's like, oh no, these people aren't trained well enough. Yeah, well, his line is therefore, like, turn it over to the people who are well-trained enough so we can fuck them up, which I guess is also kind of what the Democrats are right. It's not a million miles apart. Bovino has also been doing some right-wing podcast. He went on a Border Hawk podcast where he appeared, seemingly from his office. Behind him, he had a shadow box. Does anyone want to hazard a guess what was in the shadow box? A military memorabilia of a certain kind, yeah.

Is it German? No, no. Nazi crosses. No, no, it is contemporary. Oh, good. It pertains to his career. That's good. Is it one of his challenge coins that he got from fucking Chicago or wherever?

They're probably smart enough not to put their challenge coins on public display anywhere. Yeah. No, it's a bunch of less lethal grenades. Ah, okay, of course. Oh, great. Like the thing with which I guess he wishes to be associated. I have a lot of those at my house, too. The used ones.

It's just like taking pride in being the guy who stamped down. harder on the First Amendment than anyone has in recent history. Cool. He's also been very critical of current DHS leadership, right? After Bovino and Nome took to the national media to lie about Alex Prattie and the hours after Alex Prattie guide, they both became too toxic even for this administration. And he clearly has some hard feelings about this. He mentioned the 20 million figure. My figure is 100 million. His is 20 million. Now, let's take a look at that number, Dan. So we You've got by Tom Holman's estimate, 20 million illegal aliens. If that's the case, then he's already arrested one-tenth of all illegal aliens present in the

United States. Do you see that with your eyes on the streets? Do I see that with my eyes on the streets? If it's really going to that good, a tenth of all illegal aliens, and they're all legal aliens, they're not immigrants or anything else, illegal aliens, a tenth, if there were a tenth already deported, the rest would be buttoned up, tighter than you can imagine. Those lines southbound for self-deportation would be out the door. That's not happening.

This is really interesting. Yeah. We'll go into this in our specific episode. The way he arrives at that number is through the number of traffic delays in Charlotte, North Carolina during the Border Patrol operation there. What? This is the evidence he cites. Yeah.

Okay. It's fascinating. Like, like, he talks about how he thinks a number of, number is higher because of his time at border patrol rate. He may think there is like a hundred million illegal immigrants. He believes this in his, yeah, like deep down in it, yeah, like he, interesting. This is 100% what he believes. And he wants to deport that many people.

Yeah. I don't know if it's that he believes there's that many people who are illegal in the way. Yeah, but he doesn't differentiate or he's just considering everyone who is not, you know, white here. Yeah. Well, I mean, he, he did differentiate in this video, which is. is interesting. He did. No, no, no. That's not what that meant, but yet. Yeah. He was making the case that anyone border patrol goes after as an illegal alien, I think. I mean, but that's not what he said.

Well, I mean, what he said was the term that you should use for these people is illegal aliens, not migrants or something. Like, he does not like that a lot of folks think it's wrong to refer to a human being as illegal. That's specifically what he's saying. Like, he's not making a deeper point than that. But I do think his belief is that that 100 million number includes a lot of people who were, for example, naturalized or who were made citizens through like Jusoli, which we've seen like he thinks should go away and so does the administration. Yeah. Oh, indeed, like people on the thesis, right? Yes. Well, but I mean, more like, like, if you want to get to a hundred million, you're, you're deporting people who are just non-white. Like, you can't, there aren't a hundred million

like natural, like. But it's, it sounds like you just believe. there is like way more undocumented immigrants in the United States than what there actually is. Like that is in this short clip, but that is what he's like referring to. In part because he believes a lot of people who everyone else would consider legally immigrating have not. Like that is part of why he's saying that. Now there's also a belief that like the number, that the government's lying to you about how many of them there are. There's vastly more. But part of it is he does not believe a lot of the ways that people become citizens who are not white are legitimate.

Like that is an aspect of what he's saying. Yeah, he spoke about this at length in his interview, right? He was saying how many people he'd seen. He talks about whole villages in Mexico coming across the border. It's fairly familiar rhetoric, right? I'm just scrolling down here if I can find his 100 million claim. A hundred million. Pew Research's figure hasn't changed since the 1970s, he said.

He says 30 years ago, illegal immigrants were absent from large portions of American territory. I don't know where he's getting that information. He said he began seriously examining these numbers in 2008. He then says that around 2006, he found some information from Bear Stearns. That's a bank. They're like an investment bank, I think. He claims that drove his number.

He saw an uninterrupted flow of illegal immigrants across the border without any internal application capable of producing mass expulsions from 2006 to 2026. Our borders were nothing but speedbunks. Illegals and smugglers knew that once they were. the border, they were virtually safe from any consequences. Of course, that does include Trump's first term. But then he goes on to cite these bizarre statistics, like I'll just, I'll give you the Charlotte traffic example. One of the indicators that we're looking at is commuting times. For these times to be considered quote unquote good, between 15% and 20% of commuters must be taken off the road.

In Charlotte, there are 153,000 computers per day approximately. As soon as we launched Operation Charlotte's Web, travel times did not move into the good category. They moved into the excellent category. Estimates indicated that 30% or more of commuters were no longer traveling. This means that at least 30% of them were most like illegal immigrants. That is a logical... Yeah. Across the Grand Canyon of Logic. Jesus Christ.

Yeah, I read that that's how he's calculating. Which, you know, it cuts out a lot of obvious reasons people might not drive during this who are legal, like the fact that ICE has undeniably deported citizens and taken people under custody for long periods of time who were citizens, you know? Yeah, that they've pulled random brown people out of cars. That they've shot and killed people?

Yes, yeah. This happened also in late November of 2025, a time where people travel, a time where people get sick. Yeah. Commutes generally go down in late November. Commuters fluctuate, yeah. Yeah, so it's just gibberish.

It's an insane way to draw the conclusion he's drawn. Yeah, yeah, it's bonkers. It's also this thing where it's like, in order to, like, think this is what's going on, Like one of the premises of this is like, oh, it's like the illegal aliens that are like making every single problem bad. Like you see this with the people like the people who support of this online who are like, oh, the housing crisis would end if we just deported everyone. And it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, they're coming at it from the motivated reasoning of I want to do an ethnic cleansing. And then they're sort of post hoc creating justifications for it. This is what fascism does, right? It blames all the, all the problems of the chosen group on the scape group. It blames these economic problems. Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Like, they've seen in quite non of fascism, and its very core is this, this idea of a frozen group and a scapegoat group and the scapegoat group are responsible for the decline

of the chosen group. And if they can be removed, the chosen group will return to its former glory. Like, that is, yeah, fascism in five minutes. Like, and that's what we're seeing, right? Unsurprisingly, given that he's at a conference with straight up Nazis. But I think this 100 million number is interesting. And like, what's interesting is him talking. a way that he didn't talk to the press when he was in charge of Border Patrol,

but he probably did believe. Bovino is popular among Border Patrol agents, right? There are a number of them who feel that he was the leader that they needed. He showed up in the field, right? He had the support of agents because he was there with them. And like, him believing this tells us a lot about the agency. And I think that's something I want to dive deeper into next week. Okay.

And email us with your news tips, coolzone tips at proton.me. Yeah, put a transgirl on your couch. Well, friends, that's going to be it from all of us at it could happen here. ED this week, we'll be back with more episodes on the normal schedule that we put out episodes. And you should keep listening to them because we love you. And we reported the news. We reported the news. We reported the news.

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