It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Prairieland Sentencing, DOGE Deaths, DSA Sweep in New York

Starting point is 00:00:00 This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most sciencey episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor?

Starting point is 00:00:16 Simplest explanation is usually the right one? We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park. Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody. Turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner and slip into your most comfortable lab coat

Starting point is 00:00:30 and listen to the stuff you should know doing science playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town. It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages?

Starting point is 00:00:52 Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being. this sick. This was the last time I ever believed a word, she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. 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?

Starting point is 00:01:18 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. That's the rate we got to me going. Yep, that's a good attitude. No matter the era, Drinkchamps 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. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place.

Starting point is 00:01:54 I'm Akila Hughes, and Rebel Spirit season two is about both of those. things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit season two on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. All Zone Media. This is It Could Happen Here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what this means for you.

Starting point is 00:02:29 I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Mia Wong, and Robert Evans. Hey, hey. This episode, we are covering the week of June 17th to June 24th. Yeah, should we start off with some little things? Yeah, let's start out with some small things. Mm-hmm. So, I guess to begin with, the federal judge, Sparkle, Suken and Ernestly, who we've heard about before in the show,

Starting point is 00:02:53 has Buckner-Trump administration from, quote, haphazardly assembling a list of citizens that would be used to purge voter rolls. Great. Yeah. I'm glad they can't do that haphazardly. Yeah. Given the timing right, like before the midterms, hopefully that means that this isn't going to happen in a way that will impact the midterms. The State Department has announced it's going to begin revoking passports to people with outstanding child support of more than $2,500 United States. They can contact an embassy to get a temporary passport to come back to the US, but they'll only have the full passport restored, I guess, if they pay their outstanding child support debt.

Starting point is 00:03:30 Okay. Yeah. I'm wondering what got this to their... ears. How big a problem is this? I'm not against this. I'm just wondering why they moved to do this. I saw it on the Twitter feed of the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria, and I would be interested, and I don't know how possible this would be to go after with public records to know which particular embassies are revoking passports of which particular people. If you see what I mean. Yeah, I think in general, revoking passports is a bad thing to do. Yeah, I think this isn't the way to go after child support. You are a piece of shit if you're not playing your child support.

Starting point is 00:04:12 But I think generally the possibility of someone being left to like stateless, that's not how we get to a better world here. I'm just wondering why they're doing this. Like that's, that's by, like this has to be, they have to be targeting somebody with this. Like I don't believe this is about the problem of like there being a lot of people who are getting out of child support by fleeing the country. Like I don't believe that's the most.

Starting point is 00:04:33 motivation here. I'm kind of curious what it is. I can tell you for sure, but the fact that I saw this on the Nigeria embassy website, I mean, I can look right now and see what if other embassies posted it, I guess. Here we go, U.S. Embassy in Spain. I don't see it on their page, for example. Interesting. Okay. It'd be interesting to follow. That's some jacks to, yeah, sure.

Starting point is 00:04:56 Something I came across, like, you know, about half an hour before we recorded this. No, that's noteworthy. A judge has quashed a subpoena aimed at Governor Walts and Mayor Frey, along with other state politicians in Minneapolis, writing, quote, this course of events in and of itself establishes beyond a reasonable dispute that the subpoenas were part of a broader campaign to coerce state and local officials in Minnesota to assist the Trump administration in its enforcement of immigration laws. And of course, this campaign played out against a backdrop of the Trump administration's well-established history of using criminal investigation to retaliate against and pressure the president's political and personal adversaries.

Starting point is 00:05:36 Very clearly, it's the thing that the Trump, the minister, she has done with the DOJ, right? But it's good to see it called out, I guess. Sure. USCIS is looking to increase fees for existing permanent residents to naturalize. I become U.S. citizens, as well as removing fee waivers for lower income migrants. This will be a barrier to people, right? And that is why it's happening. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:05:57 Yep. A rep, Anna Paulina Luna, used Claude. AI to amend legislation. God. She's deleted her tweet, but I actually posted a link to her tweet on Blue Sky, and it still contains the cashed text of the tweet, if you want to go read it.

Starting point is 00:06:12 She immediately responded by throwing her staff under the bus, claiming that it was not uncommon for staff to use Claude fucking amend national legislation. My people just don't like to do their job, do you? My God. Yeah, I don't know how for hundreds of years people wrote legislation

Starting point is 00:06:28 without asking fucking Claude. She left the it had Claude responded in the text of the bill. Great. Great stuff. Claude is very popular in Washington, D.C., like, specifically, Claude. Yeah, I mean, it's widely agreed to be the best of the chatbots. The thinking person's chatbot, yeah. Yeah, the thinking man's chatbot.

Starting point is 00:06:48 There is, like, a weird bizono universe where you get, like, the Mark Fisher-Claude outputs that writes on tons of legislation that gets suddenly passed. Yeah. where the U.S. centers are very odd time because they kept using this chatbot that really liked, like, certain writing from...

Starting point is 00:07:09 Certain shit that people were reading online in 2001. Yeah, had certain biases baked in. Yeah. Yeah, I'm having this nightmare image. I'm having this nightmare image of people doing, like, prompt injection attacks specifically to, like, get clod to, like, auto spit out certain lines of regulation.

Starting point is 00:07:26 Yeah. Yeah. Or just inserting transatlash. rights into defense appropriations bill. Claude amending prescription drug laws to allow me specifically to purchase allotted over the counter. I can see a lot of good places to go here. The Evans Amendment.

Starting point is 00:07:42 The Evans Amendment. I just get to call. It can actually be delivered. You don't even have to purchase it. Yeah, they put it in a trash bag for me. Yeah. I dropped it with a drone. Talking of inserting shit into bills, let's talk about Mike Lee,

Starting point is 00:07:56 the only person worse for the planet than the sport of golf. Mike Lee mentioned two weeks in a row. Are we on three? I'm mentioning Mike Lee until he stops with this shit. Let me tell you. A bipartisan group of legislators has introduced legislation to block the backdoor sale of public lands through the reconciliation process. Hazzar. They might as well have called this to fuck you, Mike Lee.

Starting point is 00:08:16 Stop doing this bill. Like it is exclusively one person who is doing this and it is Mike Lee. The bill equivalent of spritzing a single guy on the nose with a bottle of one. Water. Stop it. Get out of here. Yeah, he's been slapped down. It's interesting to see.

Starting point is 00:08:34 Like, you know, see less bipartisan shit than you used to, but no one likes Mike Lee in this shit, apart from people in Utah who inexplicably elected him. There's nothing people in Utah hate more than the beautiful land in which they inhabit. Yeah, not being able to mine and graze it as much as they like. The Atlantic is reporting that Pete Hexas has pressured General Donahue into stepping down. It seems Donahue will leave his job next week. Yeah, I guess, I mean, Robert, I'm sure you're familiar as well. Donahue is a massive figure.

Starting point is 00:09:07 He's very famously, like, the last U.S. military official to leave Afghanistan during the withdrawal. Yeah. He's a pretty major guy and was widely considered to be kind of one of the folks you'd think would be sort of bulletproof, outside of the fact that he was involved in the withdrawal from Afghanistan famously. Like, and I think most people assumed that because it was in a very, like, stereotypically heroic way. And because this guy had such a reputation within like special operations that he would be protected. But this is kind of further example of the brain drain that's been hitting all of the guys who know how to do stuff in the Department of Defense.

Starting point is 00:09:44 Yeah. It is quite remarkable when you look at a list of the people who have been purged, like, you know, quote unquote retired, right? In terms of U.S. military leadership capacity, it has been significantly diminished by Pete Hankseth. I just want to put a note in here for later on. Hopefully, hopefully this never becomes relevant, but I really, really do not like that in a two-year span there has been a significant purge of both the senior leadership of the American and Chinese militaries.

Starting point is 00:10:10 Really do not like that. Just putting this note in the record that, like, yeah, very similar. You mean all the guys who, like, know each other? Yeah. You can say, no, I don't think that means that. I know this guy. He wouldn't do that for this reason. Like, everyone like that on both sides is gone,

Starting point is 00:10:27 and that maybe is how traditionally disasters happen. Yeah. Yeah. So I don't like this. Just putting a note in. It's actually like say what you want about. I mean, say many different things about like the fucking militaries of both China and the United States. But it's really good actually when you have like a professional officer cadre that's insulated from politics.

Starting point is 00:10:46 And also like kind of socially know the guys in the other countries at the higher levels because they've like spoken. Like that's actually really useful in de-escalation of conflict. Exactly. Yeah, it gives an informal de-escalation mechanism. And when that disappears, it can lead the problems. Yeah, when you're promoting, like, people of the heck theft fucking tendency especially, right? A surprising number of disasters have been averted, and not just because military officials, but because, like, people in two countries who were, like, high up in the government,

Starting point is 00:11:17 like, just kind of had hung out with each other at events. And one was able to, like, call the other and be like, hey, Joe, like, you guys aren't doing this, are you? because my people are fucking flipping out. Those relationships are really load-bearing in the us-all-not-dying-atomic fire thing. So, you know. There seems to be some kind of counterfactual.

Starting point is 00:11:38 There's just a lie going around X.com that Donahue, Donahue's last soldier to leave Afghanistan, as Robert said, and they were being shot at and there were, like, junior enlisted folks. Why? Being shot at that wasn't happening. The last 13 U.S. troops who died in Afghanistan, Afghanistan were not shot by the Taliban. They were killed in an Islamic State suicide bombing. Again, because the Taliban was cooperating with our withdrawal. They were not like, the Taliban

Starting point is 00:12:04 was not fighting, shooting at the U.S. as we were leaving, because they wanted us to do what we were doing. Yeah, yeah, they got their desired outcome without having to do that. If you're the Taliban and the war is almost over and you know, if you know what, you know one thing about the U.S. as the Taliban, which is like, if we just suddenly kill a bunch of their guys, maybe they don't leave. Yeah, I know. They will return and do a fucking murdering people spree. Like, I don't know, once again, right? Like, things that have happened in the last five years seem to not exist in the mind of people who use X.com to get their news. It never existed for them. I guess finally, some good news from Magway PDF who destroyed a top of door, MI17 helicopter

Starting point is 00:12:44 using FPV drones yesterday. Oh, wow. Yeah, not the first time it's happened in Myanmar. I constantly see when a drone is used in Ukraine in a sort of relatively novel way, people saying this is the first time it has happened, and almost always it has already happened in Myanmar. Not always, like there were some autonomous drones that kill people in Ukraine a couple of years ago that I'm not aware of existing in Myanmar, but like orientalism definitely plays a role in people's ignorance when it comes to like military firsts happening in the spring revolution. But yeah, in this instance, they seemed to hit it with multiple FPV drones taking out. It's, it's landing gear than it's engines.

Starting point is 00:13:23 I do have one short story here that I've tried to avoid covering because I really don't think it's that important. Yeah. But much like the algae just keeps creeping back into the headlines. So last month, President Trump got super obsessed with the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, spent $14 million in a no-contract bid to get rid of the algae. Trump used his own pool guys, and they drained the reflection pool. They painted the bottom, quote-unquote, of

Starting point is 00:13:50 American flag blue, and then filled that thing up again. Brilliant marketing decision by whoever named that paint, by the way. Yeah. Yet somehow the algae returned. And in an even worse state, turning the entirety of the blue reflecting water green. So in response, they started dumping gallons of hydrogen peroxide into the pool to kill the algae. Now, hydrogen peroxide, also a paint thinner. and strips of the American flag blue paint

Starting point is 00:14:23 started peeling off the bottom of the pool making the situation worse. Now, here's where things get really interesting. This is the only reason why we're covering this. Because last weekend, Trump began making the completely unsubstantiated claims that the algae-filled blue paint fiasco was the result of, quote-unquote,

Starting point is 00:14:41 radical left lunatics who vandalized the pool. The National Guard and the Park Police have since then been arresting people for standing near the reflecting pool. On Tuesday night, President Trump truthed, quote, six people have been arrested, and seven people have been cited

Starting point is 00:15:01 for the damage they did to our country's now beautiful reflecting pool. The 350-foot gash made by a very sharp knife or razors is actually numerous slashes over a very long 350-foot length. It was purposefully and criminally done and someone had to work very hard, probably in the

Starting point is 00:15:24 dark of the night, to create such a situation. Unquote, no evidence this has happened, obviously. People have been watching the pool nonstop. No one's been seen a national god waiting in there with a knife, cutting the floor. Now, Garrison, Garrison, you're not understanding what the president's saying. One man didn't wait in there with a knife, a team of hundreds each made a single slash. That's the kind of discipline Andeefe is capable of. You don't understand these people. Of course in the dark of the night.

Starting point is 00:15:54 They wear black. There's outlets like the Washington Post just reported on Trump's claims without noting that this is just a lie. Just complete nonsense, yeah. But as the president has said, six people have been arrested,

Starting point is 00:16:08 one of whom first sticking his hand in the pool and touching one of the floating pieces of blue paint. Yeah. Trump has said they will need to join the pool again to make further repairs ahead of the 4th July 250th celebration. If you read the actual report that was made by, I think it was the Parts Department or whatever,

Starting point is 00:16:27 like analyzing what had happened in the reflecting pool, they did notice some like things that were described as cuts, but concluded they had nothing to do with the paint itself. Like, if you actually read the report, like what he's talking about is not like what his own people said. He just saw cuts in the report and ignored that it was like, But these were somewhere else and not relevant to the paint peeling and just went with it. Like that's the root of all this.

Starting point is 00:16:53 The thing with the story is like, yeah, on the one hand, it is very funny that the pool green. But also the fact that Trump can just lie about this stuff and then also a bunch of people get arrested is really bad. It is in fact really bad that you can be arrested for putting your hands at a pool. Yeah. That's very bad. I just, just on a fundamental level, not a sign of a society that is functioning or healthy or at all. Not doing well. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:25 Yeah. No, great. No, not a good look for us on the USA's 250th birthday. Yeah. It was a deeply authoritarian society. Speaking of, let's discuss probably the worst piece of news this week. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:17:42 which is the sentencing in the Prairieland case where the Trump administration brought terrorism charges against what they allege as an Antifa cell who attended a protest outside of an ICE detention facility last 4th of July. Benjamin Song was sentenced to 100 years in prison. Song was convicted of attempted murder for shooting toward a police officer

Starting point is 00:18:08 who was pointing a handgun at fleeing protesters. Marcella, Rada was sentenced to 70 years in prison. Zachary Evitz, Autumn Hill, Savannah Batton, Elizabeth Soto, and Megan Morris were sentenced to 50 years in prison after being convicted of providing quote-unquote material support to terrorists. Some of these people weren't even involved in planning the protest, but just knew others who were. One of the people in this case wasn't even at the protest, Daniel Sanchez Desistrata, who was sentenced to 30 years. in prison, did not attend the protest but was convicted of concealing documents for moving

Starting point is 00:18:47 a box of personal items in anarchistines from one house to another. That got him sentenced to 30 years in prison. One of the judges, Judge O'Connor, who was not the judge for the trial, said that the maximum sentences are to quote, send a message to anyone who shares similar ideologies. Yeah. These are brutal sentences. Right. Like, yeah. These are sort of things. that you see in the potential liability, but in my experience, I haven't seen many people get, like, maximum sentences. Like, I'm familiar with guys who are convicted of providing material support to the Islamic State, for instance, who did not get sentences anywhere near this duration. No, this is, like, absolutely insane. This is, like, unprecedented. Very clearly, politically motivated,

Starting point is 00:19:35 as the judge openly said during sentencing. Yeah, deliberately admitted it was. Yeah. Yeah. Like the Adam Lofin guy who planned to attack power grids a few years ago was just sentenced to 20. This is absurd. Like, it was a song sentence of 100 years is pretty insane itself for even for being convicted of attempted murder. But all of these material support charges and concealing documents at 30 to 70 years is like here. It's outrageous. Yeah. It's a very clear attempt to have a chilling event. Yeah. Right. Like that's the goal here. That's the goal with the with the prosecutions in Minneapolis. as well, like, you know, it's all the same, part of the same strategy. Yeah. No, using conspiracy charges to rope in people to this larger case, arguing that this conspiracy is evidenced through reading zines, through wearing certain clothes at a protest, now being put out of quote unquote Antifa.

Starting point is 00:20:30 And then they don't need to actually argue that every single person did a specific violent crime, but justice association with each other can lead to a conviction. And we are seeing this, you know, copied in Minnesota, where just like one or two people are charged with doing violence, like, you know, kicking a vehicle. But what links to 15 defendants together in Minnesota are these conspiracy charges. Yeah. Yeah. The thing that it reminds me the most of is just, is Haymarket, where, you know, in a very similar way, you have an attempt to not even necessarily go after the people who did the thing. you have an attempt to put the ideology on trial. I mean, the judge explicitly says this, right?

Starting point is 00:21:13 This is not a trial that is happening because something happened. This is specifically... An attempt to send a message, yeah. Yeah. Yeah, to send a message into, like, stop resistance to everything the Trump administration has been doing,

Starting point is 00:21:23 and particularly to try to, like, bring down the level of resistance to ICE and border patrols, like, raids and actions. Going forward, the defendants will absolutely need support for what it's going to be. be a lengthy appeals process. Yeah. The worst case scenario is going to require building a mass movement to push for pardoning anti-ice protesters, including the Prairie Land defendants in a

Starting point is 00:21:49 post-Trump government. A complicating factor in this case is that some of these defendants are also facing state charges, which a federal pardon would not cover in Texas. Yeah. But rallying behind these people is of the like utmost urgency. same as all the anti-ice protesters around the country who are facing repression. I do want to note that our previous coverage of Prairieland like my previous coverage

Starting point is 00:22:16 focused on how the government used these specific charges, how they use specific testimony and flimsy evidence to successfully argue a conviction. Well, also mentioning that some of the mistakes that the public defenders made

Starting point is 00:22:30 during that case, missing deadlines to file motions, not calling witnesses, right? There is unique aspects of this case and I think knowing what those are is important. When I was putting together that episode, a lot of the coverage I saw, talked about how, you know, fucked up this situation is. And it really is, right? But I think it's also important to actually know how the state is able to do this, like how they're able to argue this in very specific ways to understand some of the unique aspects of this case and to know

Starting point is 00:22:56 what the state and jurors consider relevant evidence, saying certain things in group chats. But also just being at a protest with someone else wearing possibly matching clothes. clothing, right? Understanding those specifics, I think is also important. But going forward, supporting these defendants, regardless of the conviction is of the utmost urgency. We will link to the support committee for the Prairie Line defendants and the donation link to help with legal costs and other expenses resulting from the state repression. Yeah, I'm sure these people will have a lengthy and challenging appeal process ahead of them. They will need significant legal support if they're going to get out of prison.

Starting point is 00:23:37 And, you know, like, if we look at, like, a previous movement in the U.S., like Biden pardoned Leonard Peltier, after decades, right, of him being in prison, like most of the rest of his life was spent in jail. And we can contrast out to how Trump pardoned the J-6 is very rapidly. No, 100%. Yeah. Specifically in a post-J6 pardon world and considering the popular resistance to ICE, I think it's imperative that we go forward with the specific intention of even if the appeals fail,

Starting point is 00:24:11 an anti-ice movement needs to include these people in their advocacy and getting them pardons in the future. Yeah. And I think it is also just worth saying that, you know, I think there's an extent to which this repression would have happened regardless, but part of the reason why this is happening, part of the reason why the judge is saying the stuff, part of the reason why they find the need to try to do a chilling effect and to, you know, use fear and terror to stop anything else, you know, to stop any of the resistance, is that the resistance is working, right? That doesn't mean that people aren't getting hurt in unbelievably sort of hideous ways. It doesn't mean the deportations are continuing, but they have not been

Starting point is 00:24:49 able to do the things that they wanted to do. No, this is defensive lashing out. Yeah. Yeah, you know, there is an extent to which they're doing this because they're losing and they know it, and something has to happen in order to change the balance of how this whole sort of conflict between ICE and people's communities has been unfolding. And this is one of the things they're trying to do to do that. Yeah, and more broadly, they're just trying to chill anything that could become part of successful resistance.

Starting point is 00:25:17 Like, they understand that anything that's public to the administration that looks bad can make them look bad. Like, that's why they're lashing out at the fucking reflecting pool tool. Like, the goal is to just, like, to instill, sort of instinctive fear of doing anything that could make the administration look bad. They're trying to, like, force their own sort of, like, less majestic situation out through just, like, arresting people whenever they embarrass the regime. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:25:42 And specifically trying to criminalize common protest tactics and picking specific cases, like, you know, Prairieland and, like, the 15 defendants in Minneapolis. And rather than actually focusing the majority of the case on alleged crimes, instead focusing on Antifa as this scary specter, right? It's anarchism, violent militancy, where just discussions or aesthetics of militancy is really what is, really what the case is, like, resting on and convincing a jury that these people are a scary group of outside agitators,

Starting point is 00:26:14 but by solidifying a conviction that actually criminalizes what our legal protest tactics. Like, this is the scariest part of the case in Minneapolis in the Twin Cities, is that most of that document is, is covering legal, like Ice Watch, rapid response networks, right? Legal actions. But they're trying to criminalize people's coordination to do that legal action by focusing on a group that the government thinks is specifically, you know, militant

Starting point is 00:26:42 or has certain political beliefs. Yeah, I would say that the Minneapolis indictment is not the Puri Land indictment. Like, that it's a very different thing. Totally. And, yeah, we made an episode and that people go back and listen to it. But, like, I think people, I understand. the fear that people are feeling, but like, I want you to know that like this isn't every case going forward, right? This is a case that they have had success and they extracted like a

Starting point is 00:27:10 really horrific burden. Most of the cases they bought in Minnesota have been thrown out. The details and evidence of these cases are very, very different. I'm only invoking the comparison because the strategy from the DOJ is similar, even if the specific details, and evidence in these cases do why they differ. And regardless of those differences, I think both the defendants in both cases should receive the same amount of support. Yeah. Like I mentioned, links for the support committee.

Starting point is 00:27:39 And the donation link will be at the very top of the description below. Let's go on a break and return for more news. An IRR radio experience, weekend gold tickets to Ilsoni. One, two, three, everybody just screwed. Montreal with Dandala, Chris Lakin friends, Woolley, Deadmouse, above and beyond, sub-focus, and more. With flights from Porter Airlines, three nights at Residents in Downtown Montreal,

Starting point is 00:28:15 and $1,000 cash. Enter for your chance to win at iHeartRadio.ca. Ilsonique in Montreal, every day you enter is another chance to win. But did black music, food, and culture teach us about who we were becoming? 2016 was sort of that last era of monoculture where we still consumed things in community. From Beyonce and Rihanna.

Starting point is 00:28:45 Everybody wanted to be Beyonce. I don't think we'll ever see another Rihanna. To soul food, memory, identity, and the stories we carry through black culture. What does it mean to be black? And eat in America. So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land,

Starting point is 00:29:00 who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it do. Therapy for Black Girls is bringing together the conversation shaping Black Life right now. You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever. Therapy for Black Girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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?

Starting point is 00:29:30 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. Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddie.

Starting point is 00:29:47 I directed when the Nas' early videos. Which one? One love. Wow. I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nause was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem.

Starting point is 00:30:02 His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drinkchamps 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. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta,

Starting point is 00:30:25 you already know there's a lot to break down. Gorsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They hold him K-Machel back. from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's going to be interesting. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments

Starting point is 00:30:45 from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise, the drama, the alliances, and the team everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this.

Starting point is 00:31:03 At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We are back and we're talking about Iran. We saw like a lot of back and forth over the weekend about the MOU, about Trump threatening the Iranian delegation, about them not signing it. The MOU of Versailles didn't work out. The MOU of it. So we have an MOU in place, right? At the time of writing, this rests on a very fragile piece in Lebanon.

Starting point is 00:31:48 And I want to read something from Bengavia about Lebanon. He's a national security minister in Israel. Yeah, last time we spoke about him, he was physically assaulting people from the flotilla, I think. I'm just going to read this out. For every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. All of Lebanon must burn. With all due respect to the Americans, Israel must make it clear to the entire world that the blood of our sons and the security of our citizens are not forfeit.

Starting point is 00:32:15 All of Lebanon must burn. Our supreme duty is to protect the citizens of Israel and the soldiers the IDF, and this commitment takes precedence over every other consideration. I told the Prime Minister, even in a private meeting, it's for every tear of an Israeli mother, a thousand Lebanese mothers must weep. Enough with a ping-pong. In the Middle East, you don't win with measured responses and restraint. you need to go berserk to obliterate to crush the terror.

Starting point is 00:32:38 That's just a genocide post. Insanely genocidal. Yeah, super genocidal. Like, he might as well just say, like, what I want is a genocide. The genocide is what I want. Like, in other historically documented genocides, it is relatively rare to have the person just being like, we're doing a genocide over here.

Starting point is 00:32:56 This is a genocide. Seems like a good time for it. Yeah. Like, it is historically somewhat remarkable to just. just being like, yes, we want to wipe them all out, actually. If anyone wonders if this is genocide or not, absolutely. Like, you will not find a clearer statement of genocidal intent than this. And so the Iran peace deal being contingent on Israel, at least finding peace in Lebanon.

Starting point is 00:33:21 Right now they're occupying southern Lebanon. It doesn't look like they're leaving. It's contingent on this government, which includes someone who is openly genocidal. They're finding a peace deal with Lebanon, which, I mean, what kind of? a piece, what kind of compromise can you come to with that person? Like, Israel continues to be the force that continues to destabilize the region and cause more death and suffering. Let's move back to America. The Senate did pass a war powers resolution this week, came through from the House. A resolution here, it expresses the will of Congress. It's slightly different for a piece of legislation.

Starting point is 00:33:57 It is a setback for Trump, right? Like, it's not nothing, especially because some Republicans supported it, Rand Paul, Lisa Mikowski, Susan Collins, and Bill Cassidy, across John Fetterman crossed the other way because he is a Maga Republican. He just has a blue badge next to him. So in 2019, probably the most analogous kind of recent example, Trump vetoed resolution concerning U.S. support for the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen, right? He will likely ignore this. History understanders will know that we didn't stop supporting the Saudis, right? and he is very unlikely to change his policy about this, but he is clearly very upset about it.

Starting point is 00:34:38 And this is important because Trump has a record as we go into the midterms of attempting to destroy the careers of any Republican who he considers to have spoken out against him, right? So in a general sense, with a war, Congress would have to approve it within 60 days, sometimes for national security reasons, it could be extended by the executive branch to 90 days. What the White House is arguing here is that the April ceasefire means that that clock has stopped

Starting point is 00:35:04 and that the war powers resolution therefore pertains to a war that no longer exists. And if they start again, it will be a completely different, separate and unrelated thing and that clock would start again from zero. Yeah. Jesus Christ. That's kind of magical thinking, but that's what they're going with, right? Just before we recorded, it was reported that Trump had a lunch, like a closed-door lunch with GOP centers, which resulted in him getting into a screaming match,

Starting point is 00:35:29 with some of those senators, including Cassidy. Clearly, the peace deal, the 14 points that we spoke about last time, have been extremely unpopular with the Republicans, right? Because Trump eventually caved on, like Iran's coming out of this, perhaps strategically in a better position than it went into this. Now, obviously, the US has done massive damage to Iranian infrastructure to kill people, right? But in terms of actually their military capacity, it seems,

Starting point is 00:35:59 to be a much less degraded than we initially thought. It looks like this continues to be one of the areas where Trump is bleeding GOP support, and so it is interesting to keep track of this. Let's move on to talk about immigration now. So the D.C. District Court had a ruling this week. In order the government to facilitate the return of a man, Mr. Martinez-Andino, that they had deported to Honduras.

Starting point is 00:36:26 the quote from the opinion, I'm going to quote kind of extensively here, I have removed, like when you get these opinions, right, they will have in-text citations for other court cases, and I've removed those for reading clarity. Quote, after being arrested and detained in Montana by immigration authorities, a move between at least six detention centers in different states across the country, he seemingly disappeared. He was not permitted to contact his attorneys for more than 10 days, and neither immigration and customs enforcement nor customs and border protection would tell his attorney. where he was or in which agency's custody despite repeated requests. Not until his attorneys filed this lawsuit, initially seeking only a temporary restraining order, directing defendants to tell them where and in whose custody plaintiff was located. Did the government disclose that he had been removed to Honduras the same day, purportedly because he had voluntarily agreed to that departure? So this guy was kept without contact to his lawyer who was trying to contact him and who he

Starting point is 00:37:26 he was asking to talk to for 10 days, he disputes in this case that he voluntarily agreed to depart because he was deprived of access to his legal team because he wasn't able to understand the documents he was asked to sign. I can say from numerous interviews I've conducted with people who have been in detention that there is a great deal of pressure to sign those documents, and they're there all the time, right? Like in the middle of the night when you can't sleep and it's freezing fucking cold, that document is right there in the wall for you to sign. The court ordered the government to, quote, ensure that his case is handled as it would have been had he not been improperly sent to Honduras. And they cited Abrago Garcia versus Noam, right?

Starting point is 00:38:06 So they're using that as like a precedent here. That doesn't mean that he gets to come home and he's not going to be pursued by immigration, right? That means that they have to process him and not hide him away from his lawyer for 10 days. because effectively what they did was hid this man from his lawyers for more than a week and then forced him to sign a document he couldn't meaningfully consent to. Some background here, he entered as a 14-year-old without family members. I don't like the term unaccompanied minor because I've spent time with migrants traveling to the US and there are often children who are traveling without their family,

Starting point is 00:38:40 but they're still accompanied by somebody or somebody who's just decided to take care of them. But that would be the legal term here, right? He was granted SIJ, special immigrant juvenile status. and then when he got back to Honduras, he contacted his lawyer, filed an affidavit stating that the paperwork he signed when he was detained was not explained to him. And he was, quote, told the only option he had detention was to sign for the paperwork.

Starting point is 00:39:05 He, quote, asked to speak with his attorneys for days between, nine days between March 31st and April 9th, and his, quote, requests were ignored or denied. And he, quote, told immigration officials that he was afraid to return to Honduras and wanted an interview or a hearing. with the judge. These requests were also, quote, ignored or denied. He also says he felt terribly mistreated due to poor food and no access to showers. He also gave a different timeline of deportation

Starting point is 00:39:33 than that which the government presented in his case, suggesting that he may not have entered the country at the time the government said he was out of their custody, which is important, right, because the government's saying, we don't have him anymore. His timeline when they landed, how long they sat on the tarmac when they transited. The border there is different for the one that the government provided. It's good to see this case, right, but he will still face an uphill battle. I also want to talk very briefly about Blanche v. Lao. This is a ruling that returning green card holders are now considered or can be considered

Starting point is 00:40:07 applicants for admission, which means they can be placed on immigration parole when entering the country. The case here pertains to Mr. Lau, who returned in 2012 and was placed on parole while facing charges related to trademark counterfeiting. I do want to go back and reference that date again. 2012. This is something that happened when Barack Obama was president. Barack Obama loved to deport people. Anybody who's telling you that that isn't the case is lying to you. Mr. Lau later pled guilty and therefore was swiftly praised in removal proceedings because the government argued he was inadmissible. So when you are paroled, you're not technically

Starting point is 00:40:46 admitted. You are paroled pending admission. Therefore, if you're found to be inadmissible, it is quicker to begin that removal. So this is where the Supreme Court had to decide, right? Generally, green card holders are considered to have already been admitted when they are returning, right? This ruling there will have serious consequences for LPRs, legal permanent residence, green card holders, right? This pertains to crimes involving moral turpitude. I spoke about, and these are great deal, and I don't think we already have the space or time to go into them here, but we're just going to say that it is a broad and nebulous category, because quote from the Supreme Court opinion here,

Starting point is 00:41:27 nothing in the INA required the border officer to have a clear and convincing evidence that Lau had committed a crime involving moral turpitude before deeming him an applicant for admission. So Mr. Lau had not been convicted of that crime, right? He had been charged with that crime. Mr. Lau is still contesting whether this particular crime does involve moral turpitude, it seems. But nonetheless, this is a significant thing that green card holders, legal permanent residents need to be aware of. That's it for James reads a bunch of court documents this week. I'll link to all the court docs in the thing if you guys want to get deep in there.

Starting point is 00:42:01 So another extremely bleak news are moving to the climate front where we are seeing a whole bunch of heat waves across the world. I want to start in India and Pakistan. So India has been dealing with very, very serious heat wave for a lot of parts of May and June. Temperatures just in parts of New Delhi have hit 123 degrees Fahrenheit, which is a nightmare. Yeah, that's really bad. Yeah. Yeah, in New Delhi, it's consistently been over 100 degrees. We're also talking about over 100 degrees in one of the most humid and worst AQI places on Earth.

Starting point is 00:42:35 That's just hell. Yeah. That's hell. Yeah. Yeah, and as we're going to get to in a second in places where people don't have access the air conditioning and especially the, you know, the more rural and the more like the further out you get, you're dealing with people where you don't have good access to electricity. And electricity grids tend to fail on the heat, especially when it is this hot and also this

Starting point is 00:43:00 humid. Just that we know of the direct reporting from the Indian Health Ministry is reporting 100 dead from the heat. It's probably much larger than that. one of the very consistent things when you're reporting on this and the VPC for example we'll talk to researchers

Starting point is 00:43:17 is that yeah the deaths are probably way higher but there's real problems with how heat-related deaths are categorized because the thing that kills you is the heat but you're dying from like another sort of health factor you had going on so we're probably not going to know

Starting point is 00:43:33 what the magnitude of this was for a pretty long time things have been bad enough that almost half of the states in India have either, and it depends a lot on the region, but a lot of these places have just straight up shut down their schools or have revised the schedules for their schools and effectively just started the summer break early because it is too hot to send kids to classrooms. Sometimes there's been sort of like Zoom school, a lot of sort of stuff people probably are familiar from from like the lockdowns. But yeah, yeah, the BBC did a report from

Starting point is 00:44:08 Bando, which is a district in Uttu Pradesh, where there was a full week in May where it was between 116 and 118 degrees, which is just a nightmare. And the other extremely dangerous part, and this is also true with the other places we want to be talking about, but it's particularly has been true in a lot of places in India, is that it's not really cooling at night. And that, as we've discussed on this show before in a whole bunch of different segments, but it's worth repeating every single time it is hot. that's one of the ways that things get very, very dangerous

Starting point is 00:44:40 because when there aren't periods, you can cool off at night that is part of the way that heat stroke and deaths from heat injury are exacerbated and intensified. Now, there's also a heat wave going on across Europe. Yeah. A lot of heat waves to go around here. Fortunately.

Starting point is 00:44:58 Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. So both the UK and France are seeing their hottest weather on record. France saw their hottest day on record and their hottest night on record, which is extremely bad. 40 people have died in France, I think it's at the beginning of June, just from drownings, from people trying to escape the heat.

Starting point is 00:45:19 Oh, my God. Yeah, that's really weak. Yeah. That's brutal. Yeah. And there's also been record temperatures of places in Spain. You're seeing temperatures that should not be happening, not just at sea level, but up in the mountains you're seeing temperatures that are astounding and temperatures that, you know,

Starting point is 00:45:41 the architecture of these places and they're electrical grids and just like, do you have air conditioning, right? Like a lot of the places with these two ways of striking are not places that they've necessarily hit before. And they're not designed to handle this kind of heat. Yeah, I mean, people aren't familiar. Most of our houses in Europe are built differently from houses in the US. They're not particularly designed. Like, especially as you get into Spain, like, something that would sign with shade in mind, but not with, like, a temperature, conservation, insulation. And so it's specifically air conditioning, right?

Starting point is 00:46:14 Air conditioning is much, much less common than it is in the United States. Yep. Yeah. It's also worth noting that, like, one of the things that's intensifying this in a lot of places in India, but this is true, the more into the developing world you are, like, the more fucked you are in a lot of ways about this. But, like, you're also dealing with a lot of places where just the trees have been cut down for industrial and sort of mining purposes.

Starting point is 00:46:37 And that also was increasing temperatures. And I want to close by just saying that, right, we're seeing the hottest temperatures on record. And this is what's happening under 1.4 degrees of global warming. Right. Like, the versions of this where we're supposed to be stabilizing are, you know, the sort of, what's supposed to be the sort of habitable zone, right?

Starting point is 00:47:02 The case scenarios where we like, quote-unquote, deal with climate change are like two degrees of warming, 2.5 degrees of warming. It's already this bad. It is just going to get worse. And this is one of the just persistent kind of quiet crises that is happening in the backdrop of everything else, which is that, yeah, the way that we're powering all of our industries is causing the world to burn. Yeah. complicated further by like austerity measures and make it harder for people to fund cooling their homes in Europe, right? And the things you might need to buy or do to keep your house cool.

Starting point is 00:47:41 Margaret and I made an episode a while ago about heat waves so if you're looking for some resources, you might be able to find some there. Yeah. Let's go and break and then we will return for a few more news stories. Hopefully not all of them depressing. Don't worry, I've got a happy one.

Starting point is 00:47:55 Yay. Experience. You end up how with weekend gold tickets to Lassau Montreal. Thomas Rett Mumford and Sons Here's my pride And here's my shame

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Starting point is 00:49:02 And eat in America. So we were this group of people who knew how to work the land, who knew how to live with the land. We make it do what it did. Do. Therapy for Black Girls is bringing together the conversation shaping Black Life right now. You will never make me feel bad for being a black girl, for being a Black American girl, ever.

Starting point is 00:49:19 Therapy for Black Girls is bringing it all to the mic. Listen to Therapy for Black Girls on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. 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'm still. I got so much more to do. Like Prince, he dropped like 30 albums.

Starting point is 00:49:43 We dropped like five right now. Like, that's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. You also hear stories from industry legends and hip-hop pioneers like Fab Five Freddie. I directed when Nas's early videos. Which one? One love. Wow.

Starting point is 00:49:59 I literally filmed in his apartment in Queensbridge. His moms were still up in that apartment. Nas was just beginning to take off. His pops used to live near me in Harlem. His dad introduced him to a whole lot of, you know, conscious stuff, and he made a young prodigy. No matter the era, Drinkchamps 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. If you're watching the latest season of the Real Housewives of Atlanta, you already know there's a lot to break down.

Starting point is 00:50:34 Gorsha accusing Kelly of sleeping with a merry man. They hold and Kay Michelle back from fighting Drew. Pinky has financial issues. I like the bougie style of Housewives show. I think it looks like it's going to be interesting. On the podcast, Reality with the King, I, Carlos King, recap the biggest moments from your favorite reality shows, including the Real Housewives franchise,

Starting point is 00:50:56 the drama, the alliances, and the T, everybody's talking about. As an executive producer in reality television, I'm not just watching it. I understand the game. As somebody who creates shows, I'll even say this. At the end of the day, when people are at home, they want entertainment. To hear this and more, listen to Reality with the King on the IHard Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. We're back.

Starting point is 00:51:30 And as promised, I have some less depressing stuff to talk to you all about. Oh, sorry, no, I messed up. We're going to talk about the deaths of millions. So if you can recall, back to the first months of the Trump administration, in like February 3rd, 2025, the This is a little bit after Musk started his, you know, the early stages of his work with Doge. He tweeted, quote, we spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood shipper. I think we all remember that, that great moment. And this has been widely criticized.

Starting point is 00:51:59 And there are numerous articles, studies, and reports that have come out and made the case that the cuts to USAID that Doge made have resulted in a tremendous amount of human death and suffering. Musk has consistently denied this. Earlier this week, he quote, tweeted a fan who had written. if cutting USAID killed a child, a single child, it would be covered by the media like the biggest story in history. Musk added exactly in his quote tweet. Now, there actually have been several stories that specify individual children that have died

Starting point is 00:52:29 because of cuts to USAID, and we'll be talking about some of them. Oh, yeah. But I want to quote from a recent article by Matt Novak in Gizmodo. The trillionaire oligarchy that USAID is the one that's killed people, retweeting a conspiracy theory from Rand Paul

Starting point is 00:52:42 that Anthony Fauci was to blame for the COVID-19 pandemic because federal funds were being used to conduct gain of function research. USAID money killed millions, Musk wrote Tuesday. Admittedly, U.S. intelligence agencies now endorsed the idea that COVID-19 escaped from a lab, but that only happened after President Trump took office for a second time. Before Trump took control, Intel agencies were largely skeptical of the idea. So you're already seeing, like, the dimensions of sort of the spin here to the all of the many deaths as a result of, and this will come down to not just, you know, the USAID cuts, but any time this is pointed out, is the counterfactual will be, well, but, you know, actually these groups were killing way more people because of, and then insert this insane conspiracy theory, right? We've reached the point where they're now load-bearing, both for, like, the personal, like, mental health of

Starting point is 00:53:29 the richest man in the world and for the federal government itself. Like, the conspiracy theories aren't just a thing that are being signposted to get votes. They're a load-bearing part of the ideology, because otherwise, everything's a failure, right? Good stuff. Glad we're here. So Novak's article noted, and as I opened the episode by mentioning, a ton of people have done the important work of documenting just how many human beings have been killed as a result of the cuts that Elon Musk was integral in pushing. We'll talk more about that later, but I want to give one example from a Washington Post article published in September of 2025 that does specify a single child that was killed as a result of these cuts.

Starting point is 00:54:08 Quote, fever ravaged the body of five-year-old Susa Kenyabi as she sweated and shivered on a thin mattress in a two-room clinic in the Democratic Republic of Congo. The pigtailed girl who had liked pretty dresses was battling malaria and desperately needed medication that could save her life. That medication, already purchased by a U.S. taxpayer-funded program, was tantalizingly close, a little more than seven miles away, but it hadn't reached the clinic where Susa was being treated because President Donald Trump's suspension of foreign aid had thrown supply chains into chaos. The injections Susan needed had traveled thousands of miles to the Central African nation, U.S. aid, and other records show, only to be stranded in a regional

Starting point is 00:54:43 distribution warehouse in the same city where she was gasping for air. Less than a week after her symptoms began, Susa was dead. Congolese government data shows that in Susa's province, deaths caused by malaria nearly tripled in the first half of this year. So keep that in mind during this next, but that's just one of many stories. We may, I think I will cover this at some point on BTB in more detail. But a couple of days ago, you know, the same week that we're recording this episode, Ro Khanna, a Democrat from California, went on the IHIP News podcast, which I am not familiar with, but is apparently a sister podcast to what the Hill calls the Notable I've Had It podcast. I don't know who any of these people are, but whatever.

Starting point is 00:55:25 Kana was asked like, what will your party do if the Democrats win the midterms? Here's what the Hill says happen next. I do believe that once we take power, there has to be accountability. There needs to be accountability for Elon Musk, kind of told Welch. You know, they're celebrating that he created for the 400 millionaires, but they don't talk about the four and a half million children around the world who he possibly sentenced to death by dismantling the U.S. Agency for International Development, U.S.Aid, Kana added, he needs to answer for that, he needs to be suspended, he needs to face investigation, he needs to answer for what he did with

Starting point is 00:55:54 the Department of Government Efficiency. Kana's comments were quickly exerted from the podcast itself and shared all around the internet until they reached Musk and he made a comment of his own on the website that he owns. The standard applied by Doge was very simple and easy, provide contact information for the recipients of AIDS that we can confirm it's not fraudulent, the tech trillionaire said in one of the posts. The reality is that money was being sent to corrupt politicians under the guise of aid. Liars and stock inside traders like Roe the robber should be in prison. Musk went on to claim that it's time to sue this liar. It would be great if he sued them. That would be a fantastic outcome. Great. I'd be fine with that. It looks like the direction Roe wants

Starting point is 00:56:32 to go is much dumber because everything and every one of U.S. politics is annoying. Kana responded to this by challenging. Elon Musk to a televised debate. And I'm going to fuck off. I'm not going to say what I think. I'm frustrated. Anyway, instead of going into that, I want to talk about where the number rose-sided came from, because that is worth discussing.

Starting point is 00:56:51 It was claimed four and a half million children who might die as a result of USAID cuts. On January 1st of 2025, the UCA Fielding School of Public Health carried out research that found that over the prior 20 years, USAID funding, it helped save 91 million lives. obviously that same study also concluded that the massive cuts to USAID under Trump would imperil that work. And they calculated that the cuts would cause 14 million additional deaths around the world by 2030, including the deaths of more than 4.5 million children under 5. So if you look back to Rose phrasing, I think he actually did a reasonably good job of like citing this information. Because what Rose said was they don't talk about the 4.5 million children around the world who he possibly sends to death by dismantling USAID. right? That's a reasonably accurate way to sum that up. So I'll give Roe some points there,

Starting point is 00:57:39 although I'll take a couple of points away because this phrasing does somewhat omit that these are predicted future deaths. He's not like not saying that, but he could have been a little clearer here. Yeah. And I might also say, because I think you could argue that he undercounted the severity of what that study says, because the study just notes that four and a half million children under five could die as a result of these cuts, which suggests way more than four and a half million total children deaths, right? There are a lot of children who are over five. Yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 00:58:08 Most of the children are over five. Most children are probably over five years old. Yeah. I do want to quote from UCLA studies again here, just to clarify where their data came from. Quote, the London-based journal The Lancet analyzed data from 133 countries. The work combined two approaches, a retrospective evaluation covering the years 2001 to 2021 and forecasting models projecting impacts through 2030, based on reductions to the budget of USAID.

Starting point is 00:58:31 U.S. citizens contribute about 17 cents per day to U.S.A. about $64 per year. I think most people would support continued U.S.A. funding if they knew just how effective, such a small contribution can be to saving millions of lives, said Dr. James Machinko. And I agree with that. I think those are the kind of numbers that we should be putting out, which is like, this is how little money it costs per U.S. tax payer to save this huge number of lives around the world. It's worth digging into some of the more specific reporting we've seen on the consequences of these U.S.A.

Starting point is 00:59:01 cuts because the reporting that Roe was citing is just predicting future possible deaths. Yeah. But there's documentation, as I cited earlier, about the people that Elon Musk and Doge have already helped to kill or right or who have the cuts that they have championed have led to these people's deaths would be the most accurate way of saying that. And celebrated. Yeah, and celebrated it. Right.

Starting point is 00:59:25 They have. So, again, I'll probably do a whole BTP on all this stuff later. but I want to discuss one more story, which was published earlier this year in the New York Times. The title of that article was, in Afghanistan, a trail of hunger and death behind U.S.A. cuts. Trump last year very suddenly cut U.S. aid to Afghanistan. Even after our 2021 pullout from the country, we had continued to send a significant amount about a billion dollars worth of aid a year, which was more than a third of all of the aid flowing into Afghanistan. So given the status of that country, you can see how load-bearing that is to their, like, you know, infrastructure of health.

Starting point is 00:59:58 Yeah. Cutting that has caused the worst child starvation crisis in 25 years in Afghanistan, and this catastrophe has been exacerbated by the closing of 450 health centers as a result of these cuts. Here's a selection from that Times article. The isolated province of Daikundi has lost many of its health clinics to the U.S. aid cuts. The clinic in Nalaj, surrounded by parched fields of almond and mulberry trees, was a lifeline for 850 families. The villagers say its closure has hurt children the most.

Starting point is 01:00:24 Sakia, three months old, has been vomiting since birth and her condition is deteriorating. said her mother, Sharifa Kowari. For weeks, she hoped her husband would bring back enough money from the coal mine where he worked to finance a taxi ride to the nearest clinic. But he said his pay was barely enough to put food on the table. The loss of the clinic erased years of monitoring that had saved children's lives. When I was giving birth, we were losing babies, said Nick Bacht, Miss Kowari's mother-in-law. One would hope that younger mothers these days wouldn't face that.

Starting point is 01:00:50 And another tragedy contained in that article. In 2024, the United States funded over half of Afghanistan's nutrition and agricultural programs, Food insecurity has skyrocketed since last year's cuts. More than 17 million Afghans, 40% of the population, now face acute levels of hunger, two million more than last year. Seven provinces face critical food insecurity, the final stage before famine, according to the integrated food security phase classification, a group of international organizations that the United Nations and aid agencies rely on to monitor global hunger.

Starting point is 01:01:20 None were at this level a year ago. Malnutrition is also hitting cities, affecting the most vulnerable. The very young, sick, and elderly, first as it does elsewhere. Muhammad Ali, nine months old, was one of a dozen toddlers way late or dozing in a Kabul nutrition ward on a recent morning. He was too weak to ingest milks at his mother. Her husband's meager income as a housekeeper means they often eat only once a day. And there's millions of stories like this already. And just a hit, I mean, the number of deaths already as a result of these cuts is hideous and undeniable.

Starting point is 01:01:47 And one of the counters you'll see when this get brought up to Musk and his fawning fans is that like, oh, the money was just going to corrupt dictators and local rulers. and like, no, the damage that we're already seeing shows that it wasn't. There was aid in place that was catching some people, and it's not catching them now, and the human consequences of this have been atrocious, and that's just inarguable. Anyway, that's all I got for today. I remember that time receiving calls and messages from people, like in the Burmese diaspora on the Thai-Burmese border about one of the only clinics where people could deliver their babies closing down and people literally going to the clinic finding it locked, like inaccessible to them

Starting point is 01:02:28 and delivering their babies on the street outside. And this is within maybe days, hours after the USA, after, after Elon Musk tweeted about how he didn't go to a party because he was too busy axing this shit. Like, yeah, I've seen USAID all over the world. And again, undoubtedly, not every penny that goes into that goes directly to like buying food because that's not how that shit works, right? People have to administer this. People have to get things done. Sometimes the way you get things done is through things that we would consider corruption. I don't particularly care as long as it results in the person who needs food getting food or who needs medicine getting medicine. And like there are, of course, other ways to achieve that end. And I think we

Starting point is 01:03:12 should pursue them. But like, this is one of the worst things that the Trump administration has done, one of the cruelest and most evil things that the United States has done. And of a very long time. And like, the USAID often crowded out other agencies, right? So that, like, local networks, local NGOs, other NGOs couldn't exist in that space. And then bait and switching like this is particularly evil. For our last main story, something that is arguably, arguably less depressing. On Tuesday night, we saw the first real test of Zora Mamdani and New York City DSA's political power. All three of the Mamdani endorsed candidates won the Congressional Democratic primary, and nine out of ten insurgent candidates on the DSA slate won their races for Congress,

Starting point is 01:04:04 state assembly, and state senate. These insurgent candidates are non-income, people challenging seats. Now, as for the Mamdani slate, former city comptroller Bradlander beat incumbent Congressman Dan Goldman, with 65.8% of the vote in District 10, which is Park Slope to Lower Manhattan. Dan Goldman is an establishment Democrat who's supported by A-PAC. He got famous for Trump's first impeachment hearings. Oh, how well that went. Bradlander opposes A-PAC, has long-called Israel's actions in Gaza genocide, but also describes himself as a quote-unquote liberal Zionist,

Starting point is 01:04:43 the one that would vote against offensive weapons sales to Israel. when campaigning with Mamdani and Palestinian activists Mosin Madhu, who's been targeted by the Trump administration, Bradlander said, quote, as a proud Jewish New Yorker, I will join you in that fight to end occupation and apartheid and genocide, unquote. Landers' victory here is a pretty significant upset. He was projected to win. He was doing good in the polls, but unseeding Goldman is not a small feat. The second congressional race I want to talk about is in Bushwick, Greenpoint, and Williamsburg. And this was technically an empty seat, but the outgoing congresswoman threw her backing behind Progressive Antonio Renoso, the Brooklyn Bureau president.

Starting point is 01:05:28 Momdani and the DSA backed Claire Valdez, a state assembly member and a union organizer. There was a huge organizing push for Claire in the weeks leading up to the election. There's a massive ground game from DSA. 300,000 doors knocked. Meanwhile, a dark money super PAC dropped up to a million dollars in the last week of the election to blast pro-Rinoso ads.

Starting point is 01:05:53 And Rinozo had backing of a bunch of unions and the working families party, more kind of like typical progressive democratic establishment organizations in New York. This is the quote-unquote like Kami Corridor. This is like kind of one of the further left districts in the country. And Rinozo is a progressive figure, but Claire was absolutely running to his left and had support from the UAW, as well as the DSA. And come election day, Claire won with 56.1% of the vote, while Rhinoso earned 35.8%. But the biggest upset of the night was in the 13th district, Upper Manhattan and parts of the West Bronx. Community organizer Daryaliza Avila Chavez,

Starting point is 01:06:42 beat the chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus Adriano Espayotte. Espyat, Espyat has been a powerhouse in New York City politics for 30 years. He's deeply tied to the New York City Democratic political establishment, and this was the closest race. Avila Javier won with 49.4% of the vote to Espayat's 45.9%. Avila Chavier has been very active in pro-Palestinian organizing in New York City, including the Columbia encampments. Pro-espionate ad's against her highlighted a tweet. She wrote a few years ago reading quote-unquote fuck Kamala Harris. A-PAC pumped $650,000 into a pro-espayat super PAC, which spent almost $3 million to help re-elect him. And in total, Espayat received over

Starting point is 01:07:31 7 million from the real estate, Wall Street, pro-Israel lobby, and from GOP donors, as well as a collection of super PACs. In the lead up to this primary, things were getting pretty ugly. In response to a campaign speech where Mamdani quoted GZek's translation of Gramsci, quote, the old world is dying and the new world struggles to be born, now is the time of monsters. Before discussing how A-PAC and Super PACs are using dark money

Starting point is 01:07:58 to hide the identity of donors, while blanketing the airways in bad faith attacks. In response to this speech, New Jersey Democratic House rep, Josh Gautheimer, responded, Monsters? Dark money? A hidden hand

Starting point is 01:08:14 turning us against each other? swap A-PAC for Jews, and it's the oldest anti-Semitic conspiracy theory in the books, unquote. It shall make up a bunch of shit, and it means a different thing. Yeah, if you swap this word for this word, it means different. Yeah, if you said something completely different, it would have a different meaning. But Mamdani has faced multiple questions about this in the past few days, and I think he has answered them fairly well. But, yeah, people are trying to insinuate that dark money is like an anti-Semitism.

Starting point is 01:08:46 Semitic term when it just refers to like an actual process of hiding the identity of donors to a super pack. Yeah. And a term people have been using for 20 years. It's a real term. It's a real term. There's a book called Dark money. It's a term people have been using for forever.

Starting point is 01:09:02 It's completely absurd. But things got way worse than this. While campaigning, Daria Liza was harassed by people yelling, quote unquote, Jew Hater. Jew hater. Jew hailed. and someone following her around screaming, she's Haitian.

Starting point is 01:09:23 Jesus. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Racial animus continued to be weaponized in the District 13 election. A senior advisor to Representative Espayat, who is then on leave, went on a Spanish-language podcast to say that Mamdani wanted to change the racial demographics of Washington Heights, Northern Manhattan, by making it, quote, no longer a bastion of the diminution.

Starting point is 01:09:48 community, unquote, but instead a quote-unquote bastion of the Haitian Muslim community allied to him. Oh, boy. Anti-Hasian bigotry specifically among Americans is a real and vicious thing, where we've made a whole podcast about this a couple of weeks ago. But I did wonder when someone was shouting she's Haitian if that was what was happening there. Yes, and that was definitely weaponized by campaign advisors and volunteers going into this race. Daria Liza herself is a child of Dominican immigrants. She's Afro-Latina. But this advisor's invocation of this great replacement theory-style attack

Starting point is 01:10:28 is an extremely disgusting play. Yeah, this exists in the discourse in the Dominican Republic, to be clear. Like, it's not, they didn't whip that one out thin air. Politicians from the Dominican Republic echoed this rhetoric on X-the-Everything app in specific reference to this district 13 election. Come election day, espayat's canvassers screamed at Darylisa voters and volunteers, quote, Dominicans only go to Cuba if you want communism. Shut up, get educated.

Starting point is 01:10:59 We don't want Islam here either. We're Christians here, unquote. Jesus Christ. Yeah. Very ugly weaponization of racial nationalism. Yeah, yeah. Now, this did not work. Terahilisa won in what is a massive upset and her Palestinian act.

Starting point is 01:11:16 was a big part of her campaign and proof that anti-Israel politics do have a strong place in the Democratic Party moving forward. And to do that, you have to unseat these A-PAC-backed candidates. This was a really big night for New York City DSA. And this election has cemented that New York City DSA is possibly the strongest political machine in the city, at least in terms of elections, right? And if you want to look at political power more broadly, it's like the New York City DSA, and like the NYPD right now. They're like strong dueling factions, and part of Zorn Mamdani's mayorship

Starting point is 01:11:51 is a manifestation of those contradictions. But also, based on this sweep of DSA candidates going against establishment Democrat incumbents, people are also reconsidering Zoron and the DSA's decision to curb councilman Cheosay's primary challenge against Hakeem Jeffries. Yeah. Who knows how that would have gone?

Starting point is 01:12:11 Possibly she could have tapped into this incredible momentum and beaten house minority leader Hakeem Jeffries. That could have certainly been possible. DSA was also pretty thinly stretched this election. They had a lot of stuff going on, and it's possible that a primary of this scale would have prohibited their ability to win some of these other elections. We don't know. I don't think it's super useful to retroactively speculate so much, but this sweep is useful

Starting point is 01:12:38 information going forward that supports the idea that there is a real hunger to unseat these establishment democratic figures. And that has been proven Tuesday night in New York City. It's the, it's the polar opposite of what we've seen in California, right, which is like the Democratic Party doubling down without as many successful left primary challenges. Yeah. And, I mean, New York City, DSA is like a uniquely, highly organized, like faction in the city. Like, the fact that it was able to out-organize the Working Families Party is significant. Yeah, yeah. And to, to a pretty extensive degree in Bushwick, the Commie Corridor,

Starting point is 01:13:18 Greenpoint, Williamsburg. There's still space for those attempts to run on the Working Families Party and run a spoiler, but we'll see how it goes. Yeah, and I mean, if, specifically if Dary Liza gets into Congress, which it is almost certain that she will

Starting point is 01:13:35 based on how this night went, she could very likely be the farthest left Congress member in the history of the country, or at least in the past, like, 50 years, significantly to the left of AOC. And the campaign itself was significantly to the left of AOC's campaign. Yeah.

Starting point is 01:13:50 Anyway, that is what happened in New York, Tuesday night. Cool. I guess last, we should talk about a couple of mass shootings that have, unfortunately, occurred in the last week. Two mass shootings that I wanted to talk about. One happened just the day before we are recording this. So on June 23rd of 26th, in Montreal.

Starting point is 01:14:14 25-year-old Seth Hatfield of Lethbridge, Virginia, allegedly started shooting from a hotel window in the Codenay borough of Montreal. Footage posted to social media shows the shooter, firing at police on street level, before being shot and killed himself. Two other people were killed during this incident, a police officer, and a civilian.

Starting point is 01:14:37 There's a manifesto. It's about 104 pages that is out. I have not gotten to read the whole thing yet, but early reporting on it suggests it's a lot of in-cell type rhetoric, a lot of discussion about like how it's unfair that women are, you know, hypergamous and going for all of this like tiny number of attractive guys. And so this huge, it's very normal like in-cell stuff. He like lists out the different like classes of targets that he thinks are okay. One thing that does kind of make this interesting is he's grafting this like weird kind of like reactive. like reactionary anti-capitalism to the inseldon, which has been done before. This is not like the first time I've seen this.

Starting point is 01:15:18 We also mixing in... The West is preventing me from getting my girlfriend. Right. Yeah. Mixing in some anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism and also mixing in like at least some like kind of left-wing and right-wing signifying, really. Like there's some calls to, you know, ending capitalism that can seem kind of socialist, but then a lot of really reactionary.

Starting point is 01:15:40 anti-immigrant stuff in there, too. He's also really angry at pickup artists. The shooting took place outside of the head office of ALO, which is the parent company of Pornhub. And he was also really angry about Pornhub. A big chunk of the manifest was apparently him justifying, like, attacking executives of specific companies, including like the people who put out pornography. This is not like super weird stuff, unfortunately. But yeah, it is very sad. It's not the first time this has happened in Canada. There have been, In 2018, there was a van attack in Toronto that killed 10 that was kind of an in-cell-linked attack. There was a 2020 machetechity attack.

Starting point is 01:16:18 And then, of course, there was the Cole Polytechnic attack, which was a couple of decades ago at this point, which is considered to be, in some case. Some people would argue, like, the first of the in-cell kind of like, public, like mass attacks. Yeah. And then also this week, there was a mass shooting in Chico, California. We don't know a whole lot about this one yet, but I did want to know that it's happened. law enforcement officials have said that the shooter was wearing clothing like that of the Columbine killer

Starting point is 01:16:44 Eric Harris and seems to have been like a Columbiner, someone who was interested in mass shootings as a fan and was carrying out this almost as an act of fandom. Again, this is the kind of thing we've seen well over a hundred times in the past. So it's very sad.

Starting point is 01:17:01 We'll probably talk a little more about Chico in the future. There's just not a ton of information out, but I didn't want people to not be aware of it. Those country sucks. Yeah, well, the news. Yeah, it's not a great time in America. Well, to quote Zoron's quote of Gijek mistranslating Gramsci,

Starting point is 01:17:22 the world is dying and the new one struggles to be born. Now is the time of monsters. No, no, no, no, I disagree. I think now was the time of the monstars, the antagonists from the classic film Space Jam. This is their year. Go Nix. Yep.

Starting point is 01:17:38 Put a trans girl in your couch. We reported the news. We reported the news. It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, poolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

Starting point is 01:18:07 You can now find sources for It Could Happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Hey, this is Chuck from Stuff You Should Know, and we're submitting our most science episodes for your peer review with our new stuff you should know doing science playlist. Out now. You want to know about Occam's Razor?

Starting point is 01:18:29 Simplest explanation is usually the right one? We got you covered. Wondered what chaos theory is ever since the first time you saw Jurassic Park. Well, come on down. So distill a nice pot of tea, everybody, turn down the gas on your Bunsen burner, and slip into your most comfortable lab coat and listen to the stuff you should know doing science playlist on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Betrayal Weekly is back with brand new stories from threatening text messages disturbing a small Midwestern town.

Starting point is 01:19:00 It was from an unknown number. Who else is getting these messages? Why did it start with us? To long cons and stolen identities. Who lies about being this sick? This was the last time I ever believed a word she said. Listen to Betrayal Weekly on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. June is Black Music Month, and on the Drink Chams podcast, we're speaking with the hottest names in the culture, like Sway Lee.

Starting point is 01:19:30 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. That's the rate we got to be going. Yep, that's a good attitude. No matter the era, Drink Chams brings you the biggest names and the most unfiltered conversations.

Starting point is 01:19:49 Listen to Drink Chams from the Black Effect Podcast Network on the podcast network on the the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. Here's something that should not be as complicated as it is, getting a racist statue removed. And here's something that should be a whole lot easier than it is, getting a new one put up in its place. I'm Akela Hughes, and Rebel Spirit Season 2 is about both of those things. As I was watching these statues come down, I was thinking about what it meant that I grew up in a majority black city, in which there were more homages to enslavers than there were to enslave people. Listen to Rebel Spirit Season 2 on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Starting point is 01:20:26 This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.

It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Prairieland Sentencing, DOGE Deaths, DSA Sweep in New York

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