It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: Virginia Redistricting, Renaming the Iran War, TPUSA Event Cancelled by ANTIFA

Episode Date: May 15, 2026

The gang discuss how many Americans think Trump’s assassination was staged, alleged threats over an anti-trans event at the University of Washington, how the Virginia Supreme Court struck down the new district map, Trump’s criticism of the Kurds, and if we are still at war with Iran?  Sources: https://www.who.int/emergencies/disease-outbreak-news/item/2026-DON600  https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvgzv77ldpdo https://www.calbee.co.jp/en/news/pdf/174-29160.pdf https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/051126zr_apl1.pdf https://x.com/joekent16jan19/status/2052477681036583183?s=20 https://x.com/pastormarkburns/status/2052227145921892710?s=20 ttps://www.newsguardrealitycheck.com/p/30-percent-of-americans-think-at-least-one-trump-assassination-attempt-was-staged https://x.com/i/status/2053865929633661046  https://x.com/diyarkurda/status/2054268681362804860?s=20  https://www.jpost.com/international/article-895828  https://x.com/mb_ghalibaf  https://x.com/Reuters/status/2053897929174188187?s=20  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/pakistan-iran-military-aircraft-on-its-airfields-us-mediator-role/  https://www.c6f.navy.mil/Press-Room/News/Article/4482914/a-us-navy-ballistic-missile-submarine-arrived-in-gibraltar-may-10-2026/ https://www.them.us/story/uw-students-protest-turning-point-usa-after-trans-student-homicide https://x.com/MrAndyNgo/status/2054289485303525720 https://x.com/ChloeCole/status/2054365092054286605?s=20 https://www.vacourts.gov/static/opinions/opnscvwp/1260127.pdf  https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/25/25A1240/408563/20260511151941216_25A%20Application%20for%20Stay.pdf  https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/11/politics/virginia-redistricting-us-supreme-court  https://newrepublic.com/article/210250/trump-virginia-dems-redistricting-warSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder. Our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, their crumbling world, and what this means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout and Robert Evans. Yep. This episode, we're covering the week of May 6th through May 13th. Yep. James, some small news items to open us up. My little grab bag of news stories, yeah.

The United Kingdom Parachute Drop Supplies and Medical personnel into Tristan de Kuna last weekend to respond to the hunter virus outbreak. A man had got off the cruise ship where the outbreak began in April and returned to Tristan Takuna where he resides. I think the cruise ship stopped Tristan de Kuna. This weekend, British paratroopers from the Pathfinder platoon tandem jumped a doctor and a nurse onto the island along with supplies including oxygen, which was critically low on the island. The patient had reported symptoms two weeks after disembarking the cruise ship and they'd spent that time on the island and therefore there's a fairly high chance that they've interacted with other people,

right? The island has no airstrip. There was such a low supply of oxygen that there obviously wasn't time for a boat to get to Tristan to Cooner. So the UK conducted this like fairly, I mean, extremely unusual. This is the first time the UK has ever done it. The island has a population around 220 people and only two medical professionals who are obviously exhausted after delivering care to this person who's on oxygen for several weeks. Yeah. So they jumped a couple more in there. Yeah, a fairly audacious response to the hunter virus. Secondly, and I think we can also agree of equal importance, Japanese snack food giant Calbi is switching to black and white packaging for its snacks. No! No!

Garison is loading a gun right now. This is a significant portion of my daily diet. Garrison won't be able to make it through this one. Garrison is going on hunger strike. They are wiring a crude detonator together, it looks like. I'm going to join Iran to put an end to this madness. That is this because ingredients used for the ink on its normal. Colorful packages are hard to come by, thanks to the...

a war with Iran and the tax on world trade. Yeah, so if you got one of those little stickers that says, I did that, and you've got a packet of black and white crisps, now you can combine the two. Put on your black and white lame-ass chips. Yeah, the one thing that gave us joy is gone. The Nigerian military has once again carried out an airstrike on a market, killing at least 100 civilians, according to Amnesty International.

The airstrike on the Tumpur market is the second. in a month to hit a market. The Nigerian military claims the area was to hide out for bandits, but it has yet to acknowledge a civilian death toll. Government in this area is more or less like only present through its ability to project force like this. And I've seen interviews with locals suggesting the town was under the control of non-state groups. Previously, people remember the Nigerian government has suggested that anyone doing business with the people that's targeting is also a legitimate target, which is how it has justified dropping bombs on crowded markets like this.

CNN is claiming that the CIA facilitated a car bomb in Sinaloa. The article seems to have sources in or very familiar with the operations of Ground Branch. It also alleges that the US government employees who were killed in the car crash. Last month were members of Ground Branch. More than the fact of this story, it doesn't shock me that the CIA is killing people in weird ways in different countries. No. That is one of the.

things that they do. That's like the CIA's job. Yeah. The fact that CNN has a source that is leaking ground branch operations, that is not usual. For someone in the CIA to be to be talking to someone at CNN, well, these operations are ongoing, right? And like, yeah, operations in Mexico are exceptionally high risk for these kinds of folks. Like in 2012, some Mexican federal cops open fire on U.S. government employees, presumably not acting on behalf of the federal government, right? Obviously, it puts this mission at risk, which isn't, like, this is already a high-risk thing, but the fact that somebody has felt the need to leak this to CNN is pretty remarkable. Speaking of potential CIA leaks, former director of the National Counterterrorism Center,

Joe Kent, claimed on X the Everything app that before the president launched the war on Iran, quote, the U.S. intel community, including CIA, was an agreement that Iran wasn't developing a nuclear weapon and that Iran would target U.S. bases in the region and shut down the Strait of Hormuz if they were attacked by Israel and the U.S. Unquote. The Supreme Court extended access to remote prescription and mail delivery of the abortion pill Mitha Pristone until Thursday, May 14th, which is the day this episode releases, the night this episode releases. Around Thursday, they're expected to make a shadow docket ruling on whether Louisiana's ban on male order abortion pills can go into effect as the case continues through a lower court. A golden statue of President Trump was unveiled at a Trump resort in Miami last week. The statue was blessed by evangelical pastor Mike Burns, who said, quote, let me be clear, this is not a golden calf, unquote. God, it's so hard.

You went through everything you just, like the little parade of horrors like you do every week. And then you just drop that, that there's a priest blessing a golden statue. Pastor. Pastor. Sorry, you're right. Pastor. And I know that, like, that he had dressed in the moment, like, the whole golden cat thing of it all. It's just funnier that, like, he knew I got to say something.

Like, I got to make a comment on that. That's what got me that he felt that he needed to address the golden calf in the room. Really genuinely funny. This is not a golden calf shirt. Has a lot of people asking questions already answered by the shirt. Oh, fuck. Yeah, it's great. But yeah, grim stuff.

Yep. So a national survey of 1,000 Americans by NewsGuard and YouGov suggests that about half of people in the United States, a survey think each of the attempts on Donald Trump's life. were staged or they're not sure if it was real. For the White House correspondent's dinner attempt and the Butler, Pennsylvania attempts, 24% of those surveyed thought the attempts were staged. 32% were not sure in the White House correspondent's dinner attempt and 29% for the Butler Pennsylvania event. It's more than half if you add them up.

I'm not convinced it was real. Super funny. I'll quote from the report here of the 12% of Americans who said all three attempts were staged 55% were Democrats, 38% were independents, and 7% were Republicans, according to the report. Really interested in that 7%. Yeah. What are they getting out of that?

I don't... Yeah. In what way do they think it was staged? It's just like, hell yeah. We're owning the libs. We're staging. Look at us go. I think it may just be like, well, I voted for Trump because I wanted my taxes to be

lower, but I know he faked that. Yeah. This is obviously worrying and this trend is something we've been talking about for years at this point. This is why I've been kind of such a hard ass about the liberal conspiracyism that is growing. I don't even find it worrying anymore, Garrison. I find it liberating that we're finally here. And I just be like, ha, ha, ha, look at that. We're finally free from the shackles of truth.

Everyone's down on the muck together. Nobody's standing pretty anymore. everybody's just wallowing like a filthy pig and shit. That is pretty much the status of the U.S. news market right now. Yeah, I'm fine with it. God, it's fucking bleak. It's so bleak. I just, I don't want to address the factual elements of each thing because there's no point.

No, right? No, we should all know that's useless by now, right? Yeah. Just. Have we not gotten to a place free of that yet? Yeah, I know. I really didn't know what to say about that. I mean, there are, like, real issues here.

A conspiratorial base can be more easily recruited into reactionary thought. This is the idea of the cultic milieu. And, like, we can see a version of this happening with certain portions of the left might engage with people like Tucker Carlson or Marjor Taylor Marine right now. But for me, kind of the biggest issue with this is that it's a refusal to understand or accept the particular moment that you find you. yourself with them, like a resistance to the self-realization that you are living through history and that people are active agents in history. It's a historical rejection of the fact that some

people may look at some of the actions that someone like Trump is doing, whether regarding ICE or the war with Iran, and then choose to act in response, or in the case of the Butler shooting, the result of social disintegration or under-regulation manifesting as someone's violent nihilistic expression, similar to the mindset of like a school shooter. My last issue relates kind of to the second issue, like the ahistorical element, how these false flag shooting conspiracy theories also prescribe Trump too much power by not just turning him into this like invincible god, but then also assuming that like the U.S. deep state is capable and competent enough

to stage major world events like this, like brainwash and groomed, into doing these shootings. And like this also obviously removes the agency and the clearly defined history. Oh, the people that do these own shootings, right? It rejects this. Like I said, this relates to the second thing. It rejects or refuses to understand the moment that you're living in and that people actually are active agents of history.

And like the people that do these shootings have their own family and their own friends. They have their own history that we can show and prove. And assuming that all this is like fake that like the government has like manufactured this or somehow like turned someone who was a. normie kind of liberal suddenly into doing a shooting or has like fake this backstory, right? It gives the government so much power, right? It assumes that the government

has power like a magical wizard that totally controls reality. Yeah. Anyway, for our first main story today, let's talk about Turning Point USA. But first,

on Sunday night in Seattle, a 19-year-old transgender girl was murdered. She was a student at University of Washington and was found with stab wounds in the laundry room of an off-campus apartment that she lived in. No suspect has yet been identified. While horrific in and of itself, Turning Point USA was scheduled to hold an anti-trans debate event just days later at the very campus this trans student attended. This event was going to be hosted by a far-right anti-trans lobbyist and influencer named Chloe Cole, a teen transitioner who subsequently detransitioned a few years later following an acid trip and then

conversion to Christianity. Many such cases. Yeah, that's fascinating. Yeah, most normal Christian detransitioner. Yeah. She made an appearance at Trump's last State of the Union address when the President talked about restricting gender-affirming care to minors. After the murder in Seattle, Cole and TPP USA continued plugging their anti-trans event online, prompting students to plan a protest to, quote-unquote, shut the event down, calling to bring, quote, flags, drums, or anything to make noise, unquote. Then on Tuesday, the National Turning Point USA Organization decided to cancel the event, according to University of Washington spokesperson

Victor Balta. Later that night, Tuesday night, Chloe Cole announced the event was postponed because, quote, Antifa has assembled a local militia in their own words, unquote. Oh, that's alarming.

A militia. Now, I was not able to find an instance of Antifa claiming to have a statement, assembled a quote-unquote militia. Really, no photos of the militia? No documentation of the militia? Nor was this language, this claim of a militia in their own words, nor was this language included in right-wing reporting of the planned protest.

I cannot find a source for this. I really looked. Like I went through Fox articles, post-millennial articles. There was nothing about Antifa using the word militia. No one. No counter, no protester that I could find was using the word militia. Now, Chloe Cole also claimed that they were, quote, explicit threats on my life, and that the protest caused a, quote, level of attention, our security team, and the local PD are frankly unprepared for, unquote. She shared an article from the Canadian far right outlet the post-millennial, documenting threats against the TPUSA event.

Threats like one Twitter user in Canada saying that people should shut down the event. event like Milo Unoplas's Berkeley campus event in 2017, writing, quote, make them hurt for scheduling this. One other Twitter post with two likes, read, quote, luckily the bricks in Red Square are easy to grab this time of year. Okay. That's the evidence that Andy Noe used to claim that, quote, far left extremists are urging their comrades to carry out deadly violence, unquote. Posts. Just those two posts. That was the post that Chloe Cole was sharing via this post-Millennial article that that was the evidence

for these deadly threats. Now, I do think it's worth reiterating that to these people, they also believe that just calling someone a fascist constitutes a threat of violence, right? This is something they've been repeating a lot since the death of Charlie Kirk. Yeah. That just calling someone a fascist constitutes a deadly threat. Right. In Chloe Cole's video, announcing that the TPA USA event was, in her words, postponed,

she said that after Charlie's assassination, quote, speaking on a university campus in 2026 can come with deadly consequences. But towards the end of the video, she stressed that, quote, this is not a win for Antifa because truth will always win. I am not afraid of Antifa. Two Twitter posts. that a, quote, rag-tag group of wannabe revolutionaries on cross-sex hormones won't scare her. The enemy is both strong and weak.

Yeah, good for her. Yeah, okay. That's how these people work. Now, while I was watching Chloe Cole's video, something sprang to mind. Last week, the White House released a new counterterrorism strategy that named three major threat groups the country is currently facing. narco-terrorists and transnational gangs, legacy Islamist terrorists, and violent left-wing extremists, including anarchists and anti-fascists. The document says that counterterrorism activities will, quote, prioritize the rapid identification and neutralization of violent, secular political groups

whose ideology is anti-American, radically pro-transgender, and anarchist, unquote. I did a full episode about this with Robert earlier this week, if you want to check that out. Yep. But the left-wing, transgender, anarchist, Antifa stuff makes up just a handful of sentences in a 16-page document, which is mostly focused on Islamic terrorism, cartels, and complaining about the Biden administration. For a TLDR, there's nothing new in this counterterrorism document pertaining to the left that wasn't already in National Security Presidential Memorandum Number 7.

It does not grant any new powers, nor designate trans people as terrorists. Like NSMP7, it essentially states that being quote-unquote extremely pro-transgender can be a motivating factor in carrying out terroristic violence or threats. Since last October, joint terrorism task forces across the country have been directed to investigate and TIFA-aligned groups and individuals, quote, engaged in acts of political violence and intimidation. This new document is just describing things that are already happening, while building Trump's justification for military strikes

on suspected drugboats in the Western Hemisphere, regime change in Venezuela, and the ongoing war in the Middle East. But in the wake of this new strategy being released, I wonder if TPA USA's canceling of the event and Chloe Cole's language in the announcement might also be designed to coax Trump's feds into going after radical transgender antifa terrorists, whether that may be individuals

who possibly sent threats online that I just couldn't see, or just made semi-questionable posts on Twitter.com, or who simply spread the protest flyer online or the protest organizers themselves. Yeah. I think that is something to keep in mind. This new counterterrorism strategy,

it mostly serves as a chilling effect for speech and for organizing. Like I said, it doesn't actually grant new powers, but it can scare people into thinking that the Trump administration is designating a whole class of people as terrorists and stuff like this, you know, protests, right? That is one thing that they can investigate. Threats online, that is something that they can investigate, right? That is what they are actually looking into.

They're not just investigating random trans people as terrorists. They will be looking into threats or questionable posts made on social media, right? Those are the things they actually can look into. And I think some of Chloe Cole's language about the, quote, unquote, deadly threats she received, stuff like that could be used by the Trump administration as a pretext to investigate people. Yeah. Whether or not those threats even were real, right? I did not see anything that I think constitutes a deadly threat based. on the post-millennial's reporting,

but her saying that might be enough for a local FBI field office to want to investigate, you know, student activists at this university. Right, right. Yeah, I think that makes sense. So that's what I wanted to talk about here. This is by far the thing I'm seeing

people freak out about the most right now is like overall the idea that, like, they've just declared it, you know, a terrorism, a violent terrorism, to be trans or to be anarchist or to be, you know, any of the things like anti-capitalist mentioned in that in that document. Yeah.

And what I'm actually seeing on the ground so far is very much the same kind of prosecutions that they've been doing and the same kinds of like messaging that they've been making. And I think that like you're right on the money. This is something to pay attention to. Like does this get a response? Is there an actual like investigation? Do we wind up to see someone get indicted for a Twitter post or, you know, if someone made a threat that we're not privy to.

Do they get invited for that? Or do we see something that does look more like a witch hunt, where they're going after like a protest organizer? That'll tell us a lot about kind of what's coming in the immediate future. But right now, I don't see anything different than what they've been doing, which is kind of like incompetently and haphazardly flailing at everything sort of vaguely lefty. Yeah. And, you know, I think including this in a document like the counterterrorism strategy,

also serves as a chilling effect, right? This is to scare people. They're trying to spook you into not doing anything, right? That is a part of their strategy. Yep. But, you know, they have investigated people for making death threats for years, right? The Biden administration and their FBI. Yeah, it's illegal to make death threats, by the way, if their actual death threats, that is illegal.

Yeah. The FBI under Biden, investigated stop cop city. The charges against the protesters at Prairieland started, that that investigation started before NSMP7 was even released, right? This is not new, but it is something to keep an eye on to see if their scope is actually changing. Right. You know what else is changing in scope? Our sponsors.

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Run! Saigon, starring Kelly Marie Tran and Rob Benedict. And we are back. And we are back to talking about this. And we are back to talking about the war in Iran. So I want to start off with President Trump's extremely vocal criticism of Kurdish groups. One can assume in Iran that it doesn't necessarily seem that his criticism is limited to Kurdish groups in Iran. Let's play the clip. The level of ferocity for protests, you know, the people are watching it.

They want to go out on the streets. They have no weapons. They have no guns. We thought the Kurds were going to give us weapons, but the Kurds disappointed. us. The Kurds take, take, take. They have a great reputation in Congress. Congress says, oh, they fight so hard. They fight hard when they get paid. So I'm very disappointed in the Kurds, but they were given. I said it wasn't going to work, by the way. I just have to say it. I disagreed with what they did. They gave it. I said, they'll never get there. And I was right.

I like to be right. In this case, too bad. But we sent some guns with ammunition. And they were supposed to be delivered, but they kept it. I said, they're going to keep it. But what do I know? I've only been doing this a short period of time. What do I know? Yeah, fascinating. Here's Diyadh, Corder, asking him about this.

Mr. President, thank you so much, Mr. President. Yesterday, you said you gave the Kurds arms, but they took it for themselves. A U.S. military officials says that the Kurds have not received any arms, and the Kurdish political parties are denying receiving any arms. The officials are wrong. The officials are wrong. Yes. Yeah.

Well, there's, the Kurds could be so many things. Like, they just said that officials, I'm assuming the KDP and the Puk is who they're referring to. But that's just like the two big parties in Iraq, which isn't even all of the Kurdish parties in Iraq. Like, not to mention all of the different armed groups. But I have no idea who he sent guns to. And I don't know that he does. Yeah. Or if he did.

He seems pretty confident that he did. Yeah, yeah. This is like the opposite of Iran-Contra, with the president saying, like, I definitely sent them guns. I am running guns. I was running guns. And everyone else is like,

we have no fucking glue. What are he talking about? So I'm guessing this refers to his previous theory that they had supplied guns to Iranian Kurdish groups in January. It's time when there were large-scale protests in Iran, that those Iranian Kurdish groups were expected to deliver to presumably Persian protesters, presumably in large cities such as Tehran. The Jerusalem Post has reported that Trump himself personally vetoed this exact plan in January

after receiving pressure from Turkey to do so. There were some armed back to January, but small arms, as we've said before, would not really have tipped the balance here. Iran's army police besiege, the IGC, as we've seen since February can survive assault from the US and Israel. It's not going to be toppled by a bunch of people with AKs. They would have bombed whole cities so they had to. We covered this at the time in our episode about it with Gordaim,

but most of the Kurdish groups I've spoken to don't have responses at this time, but the P.A.K, that's the Kurdistan Freedom Party, sent me this comment regarding the protests in January. Quote, from the end of December 2025 through approximately January 20, 26, the Iranian regime committed an unprecedented massacre across Ilam, Kamanshan and Loristan. They mobilized Hashdal Shabee militias into Persian cities and deployed a massive military presence into our territories.

In order to defend our citizens, we targeted the outposts and military bases where these forces were stationed. We confirmed that, yes, we carried out these operations. So what they're confirming there is that they carried our operations, not where the weapons came from, right? But we saw those operations in January.

Polat Yan, Polat Yan, famous, I guess, for being a founding member of the Yepege or Fruindecard, an SDF commander. He's also an author and a politician did make a statement which I thought was interesting. I'm going to read it at least a good amount of it because I think it's worth it. Quote, the Kurds are not mercenaries. Kurdish blood is not cheap and the lives of Kurdish youth are not for sale. The Kurds are fighting for their freedom, dignity and political rights, not to serve the temporary agendas of regional or international powers without any clear outcome for the Kurdish people themselves. At the same time, the

Kurds have repeatedly shown their willingness to cooperate in fighting terrorism, extremism and instability in the Middle East. Kurdish forces played a central role in the defeat of ISIS and contributed greatly to regional security. But cooperation must be based on mutual respect, clarity and long-term political understanding. I do not know the accuracy of the recent claims regarding weapons are literally sent to protesters inside Iran. If such operations truly existed, then the American side should clearly explain which group, force, or individuals receive those weapons. A nation of tens of millions of people should not be collectively accused through vague and unverified statement. Yeah, that's pretty good.

Sounds incredibly reasonable. Yeah, yeah. Sounds like a really reasonable thing. Yeah, it does seem that Trump has some personal animus against the Kurds. I wonder if what he's referring to is that, like, a year or so ago, the last time they sent over more weapons, if he sent some message more recently being like, hey, could you send some of those guns that we already gave you over to rebels in Iran and they were like no no no what do you what do you mean and he's pissed I wonder if that's what he's pissed about yeah it's so hard for me to say it's alfita is he

talking about the SDF is he talking about groups in southern Kurdistan that they armed yeah he asked him to like pass him along I have never seen large numbers of American supplied weapons among the Roger Lati groups. No. Although they do, some of their AKs come from the US. If you look at like what's sent over

like a bunch of, and like body armor, a lot of like what the SDF, like the armor they have came from Americans. Yeah. And with like a higher speed SDF guys, you'll see like M4s, but even like Night Vision,

like YAT, the anti-terror forces and the SDF you'll see. But like on, on the Iranian side, I have not seen that. And it's, he's repeated this several times. I've read quite a long

period of time. It seems to be something he genuinely believes, but I have seen no evidence aside from his claims to support it. It doesn't matter, but it does matter in the sense that Trump clearly is personally mad at Kurdish groups and does not seem to be interested in supporting their aspirations for autonomy, which is disappointing, but I guess, I don't know why, maybe because he feels that he alone should take credit for the defeat of the Islamic State. Like, I can't quite work out what's caused this other than maybe he perceives them to have slighted him by not giving weapons that we don't know anything about. Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the broader situation in Iran. I don't want to make this, like, true social review.

I know I've read Trump's truths in the past. I have reached a point where I can't do that anymore. That's fair. Yeah, like, I can't, people are dying, right? They bombed a girl's school. Like, this is serious and horrible. And it's really hard to bring the gravity that needs to be bought to this and also read out the absolutely bonkers stuff that gets posted.

Trump just arrived a missile strike on Iran as a love tab. Yeah. This past week. So I'm just not going to do that this week. I am going to say that both sides have repeatedly and openly violated the ceasefire. which Trump describes two reporters and Dr. Oz as being on, quote, massive life support. Meanwhile, Iran's parliamentary speaker, Mohamed Ghalibah, has said, quote, Iran forces are ready to deliver a well-deserved response to any aggression,

mistaken strategy, and mistaken decisions will always lead to mistaken results. The whole world has already figured this out. We have prepared for all options. They will be surprised. This comes as Trump calls Iran's peace demands, quote, a piece of garbage and quote a stupid proposal. Iranian demands allegedly included an end to Israeli aggression in Lebanon and sovereignty over to straightforward moves. Trump has also alleged that they walked back an agreement to surrender to rich Iranian. We've also found that Iran has

retained a large number of their missiles and their launch capacity this week. It's also been reported by Jim Leporteur, who is one of the few people still doing this for reporting at CBS, that Pakistan has provided safe haven for Iranian aircraft, shielding them from U.S. strikes. Allegedly some civilian aircraft were also sheltered in Afghanistan, but then had to be moved when Pakistan began bombing Afghanistan in March. Iran has friends everywhere, I guess. The United States sent a ballistic missile submarine to Gibraltar this week. The Ohio-class submarines provide the survivable element of the nuclear triad, or the most survival element of the nuclear triad. You can't strike a nuclear submarine before it gets a chance to strike.

It's basically impossible. Yeah, that's the reason that they exist. Yeah. Guarantees that you will get to do your thing. Yeah, for mutually assured destruction reasons. It's not super normal to announce their presence in places, I don't think. Nope. But the Navy did this week. Yeah.

I mean, it can be. It depends on like the situation. And yeah, depending on what's going on. This is a little weird, yes. Yeah, yeah. The Pentagon seems to be planning to. rename the war in Iran Operation Sledgehammer. This seems to be an attempt at an end run around the 1973 War Powers Revolution. They claimed already, right, we spoke about this last week,

the claiming Epic Fury is over now and that this is a new and distinct operation. In a congressional hearing, Hegst denied that they needed an authorized use of military force. Let's play the clip. It doesn't appear that hostilities have ended. And so the question to you is whether or not the administration has considered or had intended to seek an authorization of use of military force from the Congress. Senator, our view is that should the president make the decision to recommence that we would have all the authorities necessary to do so? do you think that it would be helpful to the president if it was made clear that in fact the Congress did provide an AUMF? I think the president, our view is that he has all the authorities he needs under Article 2 to execute.

Thank, Mr. Chairman. That's more or less HECF saying he didn't need Congress, which is great. Yeah. Heg says face pointed questioning from the House and Senate appropriations. He repeatedly batted away questions about munitions depletion and suggested that it wasn't appropriate to answer them in public on the record like this. Oh, I'm sure. He also did not directly confront the cost of the war, which is now approaching 30 billion,

instead saying, quote, what is the cost of Iran obtaining a nuclear weapon? And the fact that this president has been willing to make a historic and courageous choice to confront that. It comes with cost and we recognize that. kind of an exercise in evasion on a excess part there, apart from his pretty emphatic statement that he didn't think that they needed any permission from Congress to continue with this war. So we will be back next week to keep you updated on what might be Operation Sledgehammer.

Great. Yeah. Great stuff. Very exciting. So on May 12th, 26th, the former mayor of Arcadia, California, Eileen Wang pled guilty to acting as an unregistered agent of a foreign government and is being sentenced in the near future for being an unregistered agent of a foreign government. People have taken this news normally.

The foreign government is China. I did a quick little bit of Googling before coming around here and found some fun headlines. One of them in the Lion, California mayor, pleads guilty to serving communist. China. And that article was written by John Ransom, who's a senior contributor at The Lion, and also has written for the Epic Times, which itself is like the agent of a foreign power, effectively. The WCBM had a headline, This Democrat Mayor just came clean about working for communist China. She didn't come clean. She pled guilty for that, you know. And then from the House Committee on China's website?

Moulinard warns of CCP influence after California mayor charged in foreign influence plot. These charges highlight the very real threat of the Chinese Communist Party's attempts to influence are free and open society. While it denies freedom and liberty for the Chinese people, the CCP is actively working to subvert our institutions and divide us against one another.

In this case, an elected mayor acted at the direction of CCP handlers, coordinated with Chinese intelligence-linked individuals, and used a local news platform to spread CCP propaganda, And so let's talk about that. How much of this is true, right? Yeah. I mean, technically, yeah, like, that's kind of what happened, except for the part where they were, like,

coordinating to drive Americans apart from each other and create unrest and whatnot. That's not what the purpose of this thing that Eileen got wrapped up in was. She and her former fiancé, a fellow named son, who got sentenced before she did, Mike's son, are accused of basically having run, like, content farms at the behest of Chinese government officials. Okay. Like, they were putting out articles on, like, the alleged genocide in Zeng, denying, like, the Chinese government had done anything wrong there.

There was any genocide at all in the region. And so it's kind of like propaganda stuff like that. They were serving as, like, a fire hose of propaganda, per the Justice Department. In June of 2021, a PRC official contacted Wang and other individuals via the WeChat and crypted messaging application with pre-written news articles, including a PRC official written essay in the Los Angeles Times that stated, China's stance on the Xinjiang issue. There is no genocide in Xinjiang. There is no such thing as forced labor in any production activity, including cotton production. Spreading such rumors due to fame China, destroy Zeng's safety and stability, weaken local economy, and suppress China's development.

Minutes later, Wang posted the article on her own website and responded to the PRC official with a link to the article on her website. The others in the group did the same. The PRC official responded so fast. Thank you, everyone. And this is bad. Genocide denials bad. Spreading slop content on behalf of a foreign government is like bad.

It is important to note that this is not like spying or sabotage in any meaningful way. She's not acting to like try to damage the United States. She's acting as like an unregistered PR agent for the. Chinese government, or at least that's what she had done up to this point in her life. And like, everything that she was doing was legal if she had disclosed who she was working for, which I think is also an important thing to note because shit like this happens all the time in the media. Like, we all see, there's tons of content that is the result one way or the other of some

government's influence operation. And for the majority of the time when it happens, nobody gets tripped up, you know, either because they have friends in power or because they don't quite cross a line. And Eileen and her friends were not very savvy about what they were doing. But they were also not operating on a very large level. Like, this is not a big operation. One of the notes in this charging document is that Eileen sent this Chinese government official a screenshot, showing that the article had been viewed 15,128 times through her site, which is like not,

we're not talking like big deal, influence ops here. We're not talking like sweeping powers over like public opinion. Now, perhaps that's what they hoped Eileen would kind of rise to over time. She didn't seem to be like a kind of rising star in local government in Southern California. She got endorsed by some prominent Democratic Party officials. And she was still in touch with her Chinese government handlers at this time. This whole period in which she's like being charged for working as an agent of the Chinese government is like 2020. through at least 2022.

So yeah, this is like, you know, a bad thing, and it's good that this got found out and that she's not continuing to be the mayor of Arcadia. But also, this is not like the scary thing that the right-wing press is making it out to. She was not here to, like, subvert the U.S. so that it could be invaded or destroyed. She was there to try to stop people on the Internet

from being mean to the Chinese government. Like, that was the primary use that they had with her. it's just not that like actually scary a story or anything it's just a kind of thing that happens this lady happened to become mayor of a small town basically which is wild it's crazy that that happened

but shit like this is going on all the time yeah I think I don't yeah people have lost their minds about this one in a way that like it's a perfect California city like it's a southern California town and she's a Chinese government

female spy like Of course. Of course. There was a lot of stuff back when Eric Swalwell was still a relevant human being. There was some attacks on him for associating with a quote-unquote Chinese female spy like 10 years ago. That was like one of the lines of attack against him. Sure. Because like someone he had like relations with in like 2014, what was alleged or found to be working as a spy for the Chinese government. It's interesting that they're doing this type of stuff.

At the exact same time that Trump just got, is like arriving in China right now. Yeah, yeah. It's really great timing. Curious timing there, but. I'm guessing she took the plea, this has been a period of some time, right? Like her fiancee. Yeah, yeah, because first her former fiancee got busted. And then she was like, I didn't do anything wrong. And then it became clear that she very much had.

Right. So this was like a thing that, yeah, that has been going on for a little while. It just sort of, once she pled guilty, then you could. do the article like California mayor pleads guilty to working for the Chinese government. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Just funny timing. Yeah. Speaking of timing, here are some ads. Great. Yay. Canadian women are looking for more. More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are out of them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada

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According to Virginia's constitution, the legislature has to vote twice to pass any proposed constitutional amendment before it gets put on the ballot for Virginia voters. But these two General Assembly votes must be separated by a state general election. The first General Assembly vote for this redistricting amendment passed in October 2025 before the November general election, and the second vote to approve the referendum happened next January, so a few months ago. The Republican challengers to the new voting map argued that because early voting had already begun, the General Assembly's first vote in October did not actually occur before a general. general election. And that was the grounds the state Supreme Court used to block the voter

approved amendment. The four-judge majority ruled the intervening election requirement was violated because the general election, quote, began on September 19th, 2025 and just ended on election day, November 4th. Yeah, I feel like you're kind of outside the spirit of what they were going for with that one. No, this on the face sounds quite absurd. It's one of those things that's technically correct, but at the same time... Well, and there's some complicating factors because of Trump's own attempts to restrict early voting or deem early voting, like, not constitutionally like appropriate, or like it

defies the federal government's definition of the word election. And so now you have some groups in Virginia who are trying to pass this amendment, Democrat groups, who are using kind of similar rhetoric as Trump. We'll get to that in a sec. So Justice D. Arthur Helsey wrote to the majority opinion, saying, quote, this violation irreparably undermines the integrity of the resulting referendum vote and renders it null and void. Early Virginia voters unknowingly forfeited their constitutionally protected opportunity to vote for or against delegates who favor or disfavor amending the Constitution by not anticipating a legislative vote on a constitutional amendment four days before the last day of voting, unquote.

So the court said that the reason why they have this two vote requirement across two different general assemblies is to give voters enough time to not just support or not support a constitutional amendment on the ballot, but then also vote for state lawmakers who will either approve or not approve the constitutional amendment in the legislature itself. So that's what they're saying. It's like this process of having these two votes is to ensure that voters have a say both in who they put into office as well as on the ballot. And they're saying that this process was violated because early voting had already commenced by the time that the legislature actually voted on this proposed amendment. Chief Justice Cleo Powell wrote in the dissent that the majority, quote,

broadened the meaning of the word election as used in the Virginia Constitution to include, the early voting period. This is in direct conflict with how both Virginia and federal law define an election. By extending elections in the Commonwealth of Virginia beyond a single day, the majority's formulation would directly conflict with the federal mandate that elections for federal officials be held on a single day, unquote. So under the Supreme Court of Virginia's new ruling, the district map drawn in 2021 must be used for the upcoming election this November.

the midterms. The new map would have won Democrats' four more House seats. But considering this ruling by the state Supreme Court, Dems are now eight seats down in the National Redistricting Battle, which the latest gutting of the Voting Rights Act will only make worse. Yeah. Over this past weekend, Virginia Democrats, Hakeem Jeffries, and Governor Abigail Schenberg held discussions on what to do about this ruling. The New York Times reported that Virginia Democrats expressed determination to win two or three of the Republican held seats, even with the current map, but also discussed a few long-shot options to change the ruling or push forward the map anyway.

One of the more extreme measures debated was the possibility of replacing the entire Virginia Supreme Court by lowering the mandatory retirement age from 75 to 54. and then having a new court rehear the case. Sounds great. Let's do it. In between now and November. So it seems the Democrats decided against this path, ultimately, in part

because the State Department of Elections deadline for congressional maps is May 12th, which is a day before we're recording. They kind of ran out of time on this. It's also unclear if they really would have had the bravery to pull such an

extreme maneuver, right? Something that may be the correct thing to do, and maybe something they should just do anyway, if they have the power to fully replace their Supreme Court, why not? Because the Democrats are currently in a majority of control of the state legislature right now, why not do this anyway, to a certain extent? Also, Abigail Spanberger can only serve one term. So, you know, you're not going to lose much political capital by pulling a kind of insane move like this. But it's not going to happen at least right now. Yeah. Nope. Virginia's state Senate majority leader Scott Soraville told the new republic, quote,

as a practical matter, the move would not be capable of being implemented given the time frame. Now, despite that May 12th deadline, on Monday, Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones and Democratic state lawmakers filed an emergency appeal asking the U.S. Supreme Court to put the state Supreme Court order on hold for the upcoming midterm election, arguing that the state court based their ruling on misreading the federal definition of election, and by adopting its own definition, the state Supreme Court infringed on the state legislature's power to regulate federal elections. Quote, by forcing the Commonwealth to conduct its congressional elections using districts different from those adopted by the General Assembly pursuant to a constitutional amendment,

the people just ratified, the Supreme Court of Virginia. has deprived voters, candidates, and the Commonwealth of their right to the lawfully enacted congressional districts, unquote. This case will be initially decided by Chief Justice John Roberts, who handles the emergency appeals from states covered by the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals. But the U.S. Supreme Court may argue that they don't have the authority to intervene because the Virginia Supreme Court ruling cites state law, not federal law. And the New Republic, also reported that state Senate majority leader Scott Soraville confirmed that even if the Supreme Court gives them a good ruling, that ruling could be unlikely to impact this upcoming election

cycle due to this May 12th deadline. I guess it's just worth saying that the nature of this midterm will be very important for the way you get to vote in America going forward. Yeah, I mean, they're pulling out all the stops. Like they're throwing any kind of plausible deniability in the trash because this is the get-it-or-lose-it moment for the right. You know, like that's very much how they're looking at this. Yeah. This is to lock it in forever. We'll see.

Yeah. A few years ago, Ohio pushed through unconstitutional maps, the maps that were deemed unconstitutional by state courts. One federal court did authorize them to use these maps in like an interim period. are still using them. And in a piece by the nation, they mentioned this option, but said that they would need to have the backing of the state board of electors. And Virginia might not have that. There's lots of people on the Democratic side that are much more rule-followy than a lot of the Republicans, as we have seen here. Now, Virginia may be able to still pass this redistricting

map in the future by spreading out the process over a bigger period of time, not create this confusion about the early voting period, but the map would not be able to go into effect before the midterms, but it still may be able to go into effect in the future. I do think it's also worth noting that the same day that Virginia filed this appeal with the Supreme Court, the U.S. Supreme Court also paved the way for Alabama to eliminate one of two majority black districts before the midterm elections by overturning a lower court order that blocked the use of a Republican-backed map from

2003. So the Supreme Court is currently weighing in on not exactly. the same, but similar, similar things in other states. That was because it was basically pointing to its Louisiana ruling and saying, like, we've ruled on this. Yes. This was following the Louisiana ruling, yeah. Yeah.

Okay. That makes sense. You know, great for the old democratic process, voting rights act. Ooh. So there's an increasing movement in the United States, both at the state and the federal level to repeal gas taxes. So in the United States, there's federal gas taxes that everybody pays. The current federal gas tax rate is about 18.3 cents per gallon for gasoline and gasahol, which is the actual official name of fuel mixed with unleaded gas. That's like unleaded and ethanol

together is actually just called gasol. Okay. Never knew that. What a, yes. What a lovely word. Yeah, they couldn't think of anything better. And then 24.3 cents per gallon for diesel fuel, right? And then some states have their own, like Oregon has its own, like gas taxes. California certainly does. At both levels, like the federal gas tax is there, in short, because it helps to pay for the roads, right? Like, that's why we need a federal gas tax is because it funds what's called the Highway Trust Fund or the HTF, which is a big part of like what keeps our interstate infrastructure functional. And then state level gas taxes are often also like supporting like state local roads, right? And so Trump has talked about temporarily

repealing the gas tax for like a couple of months. There have been democratic proposals that are very similar. Graham Platner, uh, who's about to be a congressman from Maine. It's a Democratic nominee for yeah, he's currently the nominee, um, but is almost certainly going to win. Yeah, for the presumptive nominee, I think has expressed support for ending the gas tax outright and his basic plan with something like you have wealthy corporations pay the money that the gas tax is currently going to and you put that burden onto corporations instead of people. And it's not uncommon, by the way, for the gas tax to be temporarily repealed during the early months of the most recent, like, escalation of the Russian invasion into Ukraine and the Biden administration back in 2022.

Biden temporarily paused the federal gas tax, right? So this is a thing that happens. It's just always a bad idea. Because the reason why you see people on the left and right make suggestions like this repeal state or federal gas taxes is because it's really easy. It's an easy way to say like, I'm looking out for you. I'm trying to take care of regular people. Gas is too darn expensive already. We've got to do everything we can to make your life easier. The problem is the Highway Trust Fund, which is absolutely critical for our roads being functional, is already always running at a deficit. In 2024, it was a deficit of about $13 billion.

The main reason for this is that, like, transportation infrastructure is aging every single year and falling behind. And at the same time, that gas tax is not like pegged to inflation or anything. So it has not been keeping pace with the actual needs of the trust fund. So anyway, we're already in a really bad situation with the HTF. Every time we pause these taxes, it gets much worse. And I'm worried right now that as reasonable as, they sound to say something like, well, we should just have the rich pay for that. You're never going to have any kind of like move that does both of those things at once.

They're going to start by repealing the gas tax. And then they'll never get around to replacing it with anything. And then the roads will just be bad forever. I think this is a bad idea. And I think you should be a little wary of politicians doing this because it's an easy way to get a win. But that said, damn near everybody is. so how wary can you actually be? It's just a really irresponsible, bad idea

that has a lot of bipartisan support. Yeah, really ever since the no tax on tips thing, there's been this wave of, you know, people have called this like sloppulous policies or like things that are that are, that are, you know, populist in framing, but have certain, like, economic problems or get dispersed in weird ways.

You know, Mia's talked about some specifics around the no tax on tips policy. Yeah. But there's been like a wave of these, you know, small targeted tax cuts on on on on various little things to kind of lift lift lift the financial burden that americans are facing you know the the better ones you know ones like like like platinum strategy which has a part of his plan increasing taxes on on billionaires and oil corporations yeah but these sorts of taxes are just like little band-aid solutions and that are

almost like consolation prices for not be able to just raise the corporate tax rate or income tax brackets, right? And it's, it's like we're adopting these consolation taxes for this presumed impossibility of just actually raising taxes to the level of, you know, if you look at the United States in like the 1950s, super, super high, super high level of taxes that actually funded social services. And one, one thing that can be frustrating about these, these sorts of more like sloppulous tax angles is it, you know, it undermines the vital role of taxes to actually fund social services. Yep. Now, should more of those taxes be funded by corporations and billionaires?

Yeah. Absolutely. But I think that should be the focus, rather than these little itty-bitty kind of, you know, cutting away at the corners of like small, small targeted taxes that are, that are, again, like used as like, you know, consolation prizes rather than actually addressing, you know, the pretty significant, you know, tax reforms that need to happen in this country. And it's just dangerous in part because it acts as if what the. gas tax is there to fund is optional is not like necessary. Like, well, we, we don't really need this. So we'll pause this whenever like things get bad because we don't need them. But we do. Like our society is reliant upon the maintenance of that fund. And we shouldn't act like it's, yeah, this all is very frustrating to me. Yeah. You can see why the gas tax in particular is appealing right now. Right now. Yeah. People are struggling. Like it is literally $7 a gallon in parts of California. Oh, it's fucking nuts. Yeah. Like people who, like a lot of people who struggle

to make it are really struggling to make it now. Yeah. Our society is set up means it's very hard for people to exist without a car. So you're like, yes. The populist appeal is obvious. And as is always the case with this sort of thing, the fact that it has an appeal is based on ignorance because when roads are poorly maintained, it costs regular people huge amounts of money and the damage it does to their car, far more than the gas tax costs them. This has been established. This is not like I think we have to wonder about. There have been studies into this.

Like you pay more money when the roads are bad because your car gets fucked up. Yeah. And it's reasonable for people to say, well, our country has enough money. Can't we unfuck the roads and not charge me a lot of money? Unfortunately, we just spent 30 billion fucking invading Iran. So no, we can't. Yeah, you have to not do some of the other things that we're doing. Yeah, that is not up for grabs in the current place.

political atmosphere, right? And even your, you're like mainstream Democrats aren't going to ride for that. No, I mean, it requires pressure against mainstream Democrats and obviously the Republican establishment as well, right? Like part of, part of Plattenor's plan is a 50% per barrel windfall tax on like big oil profits, which would be significant. But there will be a lot of pushback against this, including among the democratic establishment. And that might require getting rid of a whole bunch of these Democratic establishment figures who are currently occupying seats of power. Yeah.

Yeah. Well, everyone, think about that. On that hopeful note, you figure out. You figure out how to do it. Note. Where can people send us news-related tips, James? They can do that by emailing CoolZone tips at proton.me. If you want to keep it a little bit more encrypted, you can do it from a proton email address.

So that doesn't bother you, just go ahead and send it. If you have a marketing email, you can not send it. Try not to be so rude to the marketing people. No, I think part of those anarchists, left-being extremist threats might be against the marketing corporations if James keeps, keeps threatening them at the end of this episode. I don't want to podcast anywhere to prison. I'm not advocating violence, I'm just going to block your email.

I will make sure that we never hear from you again. It won't just be me blocking it. It'll be all of us. here with Cool Zone Media. We reported the news. You 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, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources where it could happen here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. Another podcast from some SNL, late-night comedy guide,

Not quite. Unhumor me with Robert Smygel and friends. Me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week, my guest, S&L's Mikey Day and head writer Streeter Seidel help an a cappella band with their between songs banter. Where does your group perform? We do some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter. Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and Friends on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. Your 20s can be so exciting, but they're not. can also be really overwhelming, confusing, and honestly, just kind of lonely. May is Mental Health Awareness Month, and the psychology of your 20s is breaking down the science behind the biggest roadblocks we face. I was six years into my career, the 80-hour weeks, and just the first one in, the last one out, and I ended up burning out. There was a large chunk of my 20s that I, like, was just so wanting to, like, be out of

that phase out of my skin, and I just, like, really regret not living in the present more. You don't need to have everything figured out right now. You just need to understand yourself a little bit better. Listen to the psychology of your 20s on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The story I've told myself can then shape my behavior, and that can lead me to sabotage the possibility of connection. This Mental Health Awareness Month,

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