It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: War on Iran, Kristi Noem, Sea Mines in the Strait of Hormuz, Proton Mail

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

The gang discuss the totally real “Shield of the Americas,” an attempted bombing in NYC, fluctuating oil prices, Israeli attacks on southern Lebanon, and Trump marking Cuba as the next target of US intervention. Sources: https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-isis-supporters-charged-attempting-detonate-explosive-devices-during-protests-outside  https://www.npr.org/2026/03/05/nx-s1-5737562/justice-department-missing-epstein-files-trump https://www.politico.com/news/2026/03/09/trump-is-delaying-texas-senate-endorsement-to-pressure-gop-senators-on-save-america-act-00819991?utm_medium=twitter&utm_source=dlvr.it https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/president-trump-secures-historic-commitment-to-keep-electricity-costs-down-amid-data-center-boom/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/fact-sheets/2026/03/fact-sheet-president-donald-j-trump-advances-energy-affordability-with-the-ratepayer-protection-pledge/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/ratepayer-protection-pledge-proclamation/ https://newsroom.ap.org/editorial-photos-videos/detail?itemid=91c3f239c18349fdb409f901c50b7e71&mediatype=video https://www.reuters.com/world/americas/trump-cuba-may-or-may-not-be-friendly-takeover-2026-03-09/ https://www.theatlantic.com/national-security/2026/03/cuba-trump-iran-venezuela/686203/  https://www.cnn.com/2026/03/06/politics/trump-cuba-marco-rubio-fall https://archive.ph/n8IuV#selection-615.200-615.231 https://bsky.app/profile/proton.me/post/3mgfkfdazls2c Shield of the Americas - Doral 2026  https://x.com/Sec_Noem/status/2029647010002055467  https://www.usaspeShield of the Americas - Doral 2026nding.gov/award/CONT_AWD_70CMSW25P00000055_7012_-NONE-_-NONE-  https://fbodaily.com/archive/2025/08-August/21-Aug-2025/FBO-07556474.htm  https://www.poynter.org/fact-checking/2026/markwayne-mullin-smell-of-war/  ​​https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/many-150-us-troops-wounded-so-far-iran-war-sources-say-2026-03-10/  https://x.com/Southcom/status/2030056869624955036?s=20  https://x.com/SecWar/status/2029675198115401932?s=20  https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesperson/2025/09/terrorist-designations-of-los-choneros-and-los-lobos  https://x.com/Southcom/status/2029011785567572285?s=20  https://www.state.gov/foreign-terrorist-organizations/  https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2026/03/commitment-to-countering-cartel-criminal-activity/  https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2026/03/06/russia-iran-intelligence-us-targets/  https://hengaw.net/en/reports-and-statistics-1/2026/03/article-6  https://x.com/BaxtiyarGoran/status/2031747170588577931?s=20  https://www.patreon.com/posts/trump-model-for-152819826?utm_medium=clipboard_copy&utm_source=copyLink&utm_campaign=postshare_creator&utm_content=join_link See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life. And I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy? In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What?

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Evidence has been made to fit. The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapsed. What if the truth was disguised by a story we chose to believe? Oh my God, I think she might be innocent. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Let me, on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is It Could Happen here, Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis. Today I'm joined by James Stout, Robert Evans, with a segment later on by Mia Wong. This episode, we are covering the week of March 4th to March 11th. Some small news items.

here at the top. Ahead of National Espresso Martini Day this Sunday, Buffalo Wild Wings is releasing a wing-flavored espresso proteiny cocktail made with muscle milk protein powder infused with the Buffalo dry rub, which also coats the rim of the glass. I got to say, when we stationed a reporter permanently at Buffalo Wild Wings headquarters,

a lot of people said, why not somewhere in one of the many war zones in the world? You know, why not in Washington, D.C., in the press corps? And I shouted that person down until they cried. And today, today, I've been proven right. We will be doing a detailed report on the espresso protein next week, anxiously awaiting the release of it this weekend.

Yeah, I'm not touching that shit. Yes, I'm excited that they have finally decided to put muscle milk powder in an espresso martini. It's one of the foulest. Every word in this sentence gets worse. The dry rub, I think, is much more dangerous, frankly. It's the dryer-up muscle milk combo. You're going to be sneezing as you drink it. Imagine if someone had just come out with spicy packs of muscle milk.

Like, pre-mixed muscle milk that was on spicy. I'd be shocked you that didn't already exist, to be honest. I mean, it'll kill you. It'll kill your toilet. What is beautiful to me, though, and what I should note, this goes back to our sponsors, Buffalo Wild Wings, caring very deeply about human beings. muscle milk is in the bottom third of protein powders when it comes to lead exposure. Now that's still more lead than you're supposed to have.

But they are in the bottom third. It's one of the better ones. It's one of the better ones. A few other small news items. Erica Kirk has been appointed to the Air Force Academy Board of Visitors. Obviously, Erica, Air Force, makes sense. Charlie Kirk also served on this board. and Ben Shapiro's eyebrows are not actually that big.

Those videos are manipulated media. I saw those and I knew they were fake and chose not to prove to myself that they were fake because I needed something that day. But I guess I'm okay today. I haven't seen these. Oh, wow. I'm just seeing these for the first time.

Wow. It's like a caterpillar has crawled up there. The beauty of how the meme worked is that I saw it for the first time right after waking up, and I was like, well, that's got to be fake. And then I saw five more pictures of different pictures with the eyebrows. And so I got this beautiful moment. And it wasn't more than about a minute, but this moment of magic, like when you're a child on Christmas morning, like this might be real. Maybe this is real. It's one of the more useful uses for

AI generated or AI altered videos. It's turned me around. You can apply like the, you know, these very subtle changes to a lot of different videos, quickly. So it's not just one, you know, Photoshopped or like, you know, visual effects video. Yeah. But there's like five, you know, handheld cell phone videos that look pretty genuine. And if you just make enough of them, you're like, oh, this, this seems, this seems real. Yeah. And I mean, Garrison, you're bringing up the part of this

that actually is evidence of a danger. But let's all just enjoy this for just a second more. Okay, we're done. Hundreds of people have returned to a phreen after having been removed nine years ago in some cases by Turkey's proxy forces. and their SNA. Many of them will have returned to find their orchards and their homes destroyed, but at least now they can begin to rebuild. For an idea of how important Afrin was, like, one of the most common nom de Gears that I came across when talking to YPG and YPJ fighters was Havalafrin. Like, it's a name that you pick

because you're not going to use your real name as a revolutionary fighter. And a lot of people, some of them came from Afrin, some of them was just a symbol of, you know, what the Kurds had lost to Turkish military aggression. But this is a very big deal for them. Yeah, it's like, I know I've been critical of STG, but like I'm glad to see this happening. Yeah. Also in Syria, Sipan Hemo has been appointed as a deputy minister of defense for eastern Syria, which would be, I guess, the way they're dividing up now will be the area which include

Syria and Kurdistan. And we just learned today, very sadly, that Salah Muslim, who's one of the co-chairs of the PYD, the Democratic Union Party, has passed away, which is, yeah, pretty sad. Rest in peace. Last week, the Department of Justice finally released some of the missing files related to four interviews from 2019 with the protected source who claimed that Epstein introduced her to Trump in the 80s when she was between the ages of 13 and 15 and that Trump sexually abused her. the newly released documents are FBI memos, summarizing three interviews and a crisis intake form. Yeah. This victim received a financial settlement from the FCN estate in 2021,

and NPR found that there are still 37 missing pages related to these interviews. Yeah. It's also worth noting that the FBI is currently looking into Zorro Ranch. What was once Zorro Ranch in New Mexico? this was Jeffrey Epstein's New Mexico property, and it's where he talked a lot about when he would talk about his plans to like breed a bunch of children and stuff

with his DNA or whatever. He, like Zoro Ranch was the epicenter of this. And it's become clear in the documents release that in terms of the amount of trafficking and the amount of abuse of trafficked children that was done there, at least equal to his island. Now, this ranch goes under a new name

and it's owned by a new person. And we'll talk about who exactly that is in a second. But there were several attempts by local law enforcement to investigate the ranch, particularly to dig for human remains. But those were kind of stymied by ongoing FBI investigations that seem very shady in retrospect, given how long they waited to look for bodies on the ranch. But they're doing that now. I don't know if they're going to find anything.

A lot of the talk about bodies is in like individual anonymous reports. That said, I'm glad they're looking. They should be looking at this ranch. And now I can give the promised punchline, which is that the current guy who owns Jeffrey Epstein's ranch is Don Huffines, who's running for state coptroller in Texas. And who used to run one of the big dealerships in my childhood, Huffines has it. In this case, Huffines might have evidence that Jeffrey Epstein murdered people. Great. Sorry.

That is bleak. Let's start with Christy Knoem. As we reported last week, it looks like Christy Nob's time at the Department of Homeland Security is about to come to an end. It did seem that at the time that Trump announces, via truth, Noam was unaware of her removal. There's footage of her speaking at an event. They're serious. People become aware that she's lost her job. But shortly after which he posted on X.com, the everything website,

thank you at POTUS for appointing me as a special envoy for Shield of the Americas. When you see the Shield of the Americas, this is not Christian. When you see the Shield of the America's website, you will fucking be laughing then. At Sec Rubio and at Sec War are incredible leaders, and I look forward to working with them closely to dismantle cartels, have poured drugs into our nation and killed our children and grandchildren. There's a lot more in this tweet. Yeah, I appreciate how Trump congratulated Noam on being an excellent secretary of, in quotation

marks, homeland. Yes, yes. Yeah, yeah. Good stuff. Yeah, it was great. There has been some speculation about Nome being fired because of vehicles that she purchased for DHS. I've linked to a bunch of those contracts.

I found the contracts. that money is relatively trivial when you look at the massive budget that they have. And I'm really not sure that this was a reason and I've seen no evidence to suggest that it was. What I have seen is that Nome is going to be replaced by Mark Wayne Mullen. Mullen is a bombastic MAGA supporter. He's probably best known with trying to start a fight in Congress with Sean O'Brien. And generally being an extremely loyal supporter of Trump, in all cases, apart from January 6th, where for a while he supported prosecutions.

Now he's much more like equivocating on that. He also at one point attempted to set up his own evacuation of US citizens from Afghanistan during the Biden administration. He is an enrolled citizen in the Cherokee Nation, which, as I commented before, has been a source of far too many democratic critiques, which are really kind of disgusting and bigoted. Yeah, God. There are so many things to be upset.

Mark Wayne Mullen about and being Cherokee is not one of them and like policing how you think indigenous people should look or suggesting that like he doesn't fit your trope of indigenous people is in itself bigoted and offensive. Yeah. As a general rule, if you're like finding reasons or reading someone else who's finding reasons to say this person who has lived their entire life as a member of this tribe isn't really that, you're basing it on some form of racist US government logic from one decade or another because it's changed over time, as opposed to how the tribe actually considers membership, right? Which is, I guess, what should matter most?

I don't, I shouldn't have an opinion on it either way, but. Yeah, it's not what you claim. It's who claims you. It's right, right, exactly. It's like the way family, I don't know, I shouldn't say anymore because it's not my fucking place. Yeah, I wish other people would adopt the same science. Mullen is a really big border hawk.

He's been incredibly combative in Congress. I don't think that this will make DHS any less aggressive or violent. Clearly, Gnomes tenure had become unpopular, right, in the same way that Bovino had become unpopular. But I don't think this signals a dramatic change in DHS leadership or, you know, towards respecting people's basic dignity and rights. Now, I want to talk a little bit about the Shield of the Americas. The program was announced last weekend at Trump's Gulf Resort in Southern Florida. It currently has a web page with a really incredible placeholder graphic. Maybe I should just share this. If you go to Shield of the Americas.com site. I was, yeah, I was wondering if that was a real website. I think it is.

Like, do we know that that's actually what they? So I'm a little unsure because I could have found like a government contract for like the website hosting, right? but I don't think I've ever found a government contract to a website hosting. So it's a placeholder, and then it has videos. If you click access content, it appears to be essentially like a dropbox for videos of the Shield of the America's event.

Yeah. It seems to be real. It does seem to, based on the inclusion of these videos, but the main page with the little shit. That's definitely their logo. Yeah. It looks like it's from 2005, in the most enduring way possible.

Yeah, no, someone booted up Microsoft Paint and went to town on this. Someone had graphic design as a passion, yeah. It looks kind of G.I. Joe-esque. It looks kind of like American Ninja Warrior-ass. Yeah. Like, it's a very specific era of design choices here. The Shield graphic.

Yeah, it's fascinating. Much to discuss. Anyway, moving past the graphic. Currently, the Shield of the Americas, agreement was signed by representatives from Argentina, Bolivia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guyana, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States. Evidently, for those keeping track of countries in the Americas, it leaves Mexico, Brazil, Colombia, and Venezuela, along with other Caribbean island nations. There was also a representative from Chile's

president-elect who obviously couldn't sign because they don't have the authority to do so yet. what it seems to be is an extension of what we've seen already, right, of the quote-unquote Don Roe doctrine. Can we just call it the Trump doctrine? Why do we got to do this? Why do we got to do this? I think the Don Roe doctrine actually is the correct way to refer to it as. I just, it.

Trump himself has used it and it annoys me. Yeah, unfortunately. It annoys me. You and me both, buddy. I know it's what he calls it, but it annoys me. It's extremely unfortunate. I mean, but it also links it to an actual lineage of U.S. foreign policy behavior. Yes.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah. The Trump corollary to the Monroe Doctrine would perhaps have been a more conventional way. That would be the dignified way to refer to it. That would be the way like a historian would hope to refer to it. Yeah. Unfortunately, dignity is not a thing that is abounding at this time.

No, it's not. It's not. First is tragedy. Second is farce. Yeah. And then it's really big farce. I guess the best way to explain. should of America is to explain the conference that was hosted the day before at Trump's

golf resort, which was the Department of Defense, sometimes referred to as a Department of War. But not when they're talking about military action in Iran, in which it's the Department of Defense again? Yeah, yeah, yeah, well, because that's not a war. The DoD hosted the America's counter-cartel conference, the correct abbreviation, according to the Secretary of Defense, is AC3, just so you know. And I think it's best to explain this with the strikes that were carried out just a few days before this, right? On the third of March, in the 6th of March, Southcom.

So that would be the U.S. Regional Command, which encompasses South America and Central America, announced it here, quote, launched operations against, quote, designated terrorist organizations in Ecuador. We saw videos of like these very small, very isolated jungle outposts being struck. and then we saw videos of helicopters deploying troops who did not appear to be United States troops. It is unclear exactly like what the munitions or what the thing doing the strike at the start of those videos were. But it seems that the US is working,

at the very least, with Ecuadorian troops, potentially the US is just there to quote unquote, train, advise and assist, right? But it signals a much more like violent approach to this anti-cartel mission. Yeah. In this case, the two groups, Los Groneros and Los Lobos, they were both listed as foreign terrorist organizations

and especially designated global terrorists in September of last year. I haven't seen that link made anywhere else explicitly in reference to this strike, but the fact that they used, they didn't use FTO in the statement, right? they used DTO designated terrorist organizations. There are a few different ways an organization can be designated as a terrorist, but given that there are two that are listed as FTOs and that those two are the most acquies in the region, I think we can assume that that's who it was against. They also added the Clan del Golfo, right?

The Gulf Cartel would be how people refer to it in English in December of 25 to the FTO list. I didn't pick this up at the time, and again, I haven't seen a great deal of reporting on it. The reason this concerns me is that it pertains to the trig bar, terrorism-related inadmissibility guidelines. The trig bar can bar people for being admissible to the United States, and it could be a serious barrier to migrants. Organizations can be considered terrorists for the purpose of the trig bar if they are not FTOs, but the addition of the the Gulf cartel to the FTO list will make it very hard for people seeking asylum in the United States who have crossed a Darien because it is not possible for them to do that, at least if they

are coming from south to north, which was a duration of travel until 2025, without transiting Gulf Cartel territory and it would not be possible for that to happen without interacting with them in some way. And so this is potentially very concerning. I want to do more reporting on the trig bar. I am pursuing that with some public records request, which will just take some time. Trump has very clearly made the link between this coalition and the much larger international coalition against the Islamic State.

I've said this before, but he clearly sees Operation Inherent Resolve as a very successful model for foreign policy. Yeah. I especially think the model of the, it was called Talent Anvil, but the strike cell that they had in Syria is one that he thinks is a very successful model. I've written about this. I'll link to a piece I wrote about this in my newsletter. But Robert, do you want to go ahead there? Yeah.

I mean, I should start with a little update on our ongoing story, which is that America is out of bullets or running out of bullets. Not literal bullets. There's plenty of those. Yeah, and also those in America. But the actual munitions that we use to intercept both drones and ballistic missiles. Now, a couple of things have happened since the start of our war with Iran. We've moved a significant chunk, if not the absolute majority. It's a little unclear.

Of the anti-missile and anti-dron weaponry, the major stuff that we had protecting other parts of the world that the United States has bases in, like South Korea, over to the Middle East and over to intercept Iranian missiles, primarily headed either toward U.S. forces or most often to Israel. But even with all of the shit that we've redeployed from other areas, there's only so many of the munitions that we use because they're very expensive and particularly the drones that Iran is using, like the Shahid drones, are very cheap. So starting at kind of the start of hostilities,

we were looking about 6.7% Iranian drones got through the intercept right got through and this is just in the uae but you can assume that it's fairly accurate to other theaters yeah right because we have a lot of missile defense and a lot of drone defense in the uae so at the start of hostilities about 6.7 percent of iranian shahid drones were getting through the uae's uh defenses stop it huh there is a thing robert that younger people do what they will yes the six seven yes i know it's funny iran did that just for the uh the zoomers um or the gen alphas, whatever. Anyway, that's February, like, 28th by March 10th, more than 25% of Iranian drones are getting through UAE's interception defenses. Oh, wow. There hasn't been a massive change in the

rate of ballistic missile interceptions yet, which suggests that at least we're not running on empty. But that's not good. Yeah. Right? That's a massive change. Like, that's a massive issue. So we'll continue. I'll be doing a whole episode on how the U.S. is running out of bullets, bullets being a stand-in term for more advanced munitions. But I've got something else to talk about right now that's also involved in the Iranian theater, particularly I'm going to talk about mines in the Strait of Hormuz. Let's do some ads for products that you may not be able to buy if naval traffic is interdicted through the Strait of Hormuz. So buy them now. So get him now, folks. Canadian women are looking for more. More into themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world around them.

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So there's a evidence that's come out kind of in the last couple of days. I saw it broken on the new republic, but I believe CBS News was the origin point that Iran started laying mines in the straight before Donald Trump publicly declared he was going, he wanted to take it over. Yeah. So basically after we killed a huge chunk of the Iranian government, Trump started public amusing. Maybe we'll just take over the street of Hormuz and Iran started mining the shit out of it. Yeah. Now, this is a problem for a lot of reasons. For one thing, the straight is probably the most, I mean, it's, it's, it's, it.

It's arguably the most important energy transit point on planet Earth, right? Like, it's about a fifth of all crude oil shipments go through the straight. That's not the only thing that goes through there, but it is an incredible amount of the world's crude oil supply travels through this straight. And Tehran's always kind of had the option of closing it by just dumping a bunch of mines in there. Mines are incredibly cheap. You can drop mines from very small boats. The U.S. Navy is very good at blowing up big boats. But if you have a shitload of small boats that have a shitload of mines,

it's basically impossible to stop an adversary like Iran from laying a fuckload of mines. And that will make it basically untenable financially for anyone to run oil through the strait. If you'd ever know if one of your boats is going to get hit by a fucking sea mine, it makes it hard to get insured to run a boat through the Strait of Hormuz. most of these mines are not capable of, I mean, these mines in general are not capable of destroying the kind of bulk haulers that move crude through. They're not going to blow the boat out of the water immediately, but they're going to damage it and they have a very good chance because these boats are filled with crude fucking oil of lighting them on fire. And that causes a serious problem for the crew of any boat. I wouldn't you to, I shouldn't have to explain why that creates a serious problem with the crew of any boat.

That's filled with crude oil, right? It's pretty obvious. once it became clear that Iran started laying, had started laying mines in the strait. U.S. forces claimed to have sunk 16 mine layers. That was from U.S. sentcom. Although it's kind of unclear because at least half of those seemed to have been inactive at the time. So these may have just been bigger mine layers that we hit at the start of our attacks on their Navy. And then when we realized there's going to be a news cycle about mines in the strait, let's claim, you know, whatever. After it came out that Iran had, in fact, been laying mines, President Trump,

Trump truth, we want them removed immediately if for any reason mines were placed and they are not removed forthwith. I've never heard him use forthwith before. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. The military consequences to Iran will be at a level never before seen. If on the other hand, they remove what may have been placed, it will be a giant step in the right direction. That sounds kind of desperate. And it sounds kind of desperate because the United States is in a uniquely dog-shit position to deal with sea mines, right, specifically now. Yeah. We made a really funny decision. And by we, I mean, the Trump administration made a really funny decision. Basically immediately before we declared war on Iran, a country we've known has always threatened to mine the Strait of Hormuz every time we fucked with them. And that funny decision was in January, the Navy decommissioned four Avengers class mine countermeasureships, which were the last mine countermeasureships we had in the Persian Gulf. Now, we have other boats that we're pretty sure can do the job, but we've never tried.

And the funny thing about the boats that we're currently going to be using to take out mines is that they're pre-existing boats that were not built to take out mines. We basically have, like, I think they're called like operations packages that you add to the boat, to add capability. One of the capabilities they have these little, like, basically drone torpedo things that can go out and seek out mines. They've got an enhanced like radar package, I guess, or whatever. They're better at looking for mines because the boats that they added these packages to were not initially meant for demining. They're littoral combat ships, LCSs, widely considered to be the worst boats in the entire U.S. Navy. In fact, in the Navy, the acronym LCS stands for little crappy ships because they're bad. They've been very bad.

Basically, every time we have like tested how will these things function in like a real. fight, the answer has been like terribly. They're not good ships. They kind of suck ass. Now, we'll see if the mind countermeasures that they put on these boats, like make them superior to the old Avenger class. However, there's a lot of issues with the mind countermeasure packages that they've been making for these. And I want to read a quote from an article published by famous leftist and thus untrustworthy news source, the U.S. Naval Institute. Quote, Initially set for an initial operational capability in 2015, the MCM package went through a development process punctuated by stops and program failures.

For example, the first craft that could tow the AQS-20 sonar to hunt the bulk of mines suffered reliability problems and was scrapped. The service also canceled a plan for the MH60s to tow the AQS-20. After years of program changes, the packages coalesced around a few core main systems. So the development of these MCM mission packages has been troubled for a very long time, which is what delayed the retirement of the Avenger class mine hunters previously. And the Navy's now saying they totally work now. And we're all going to find out in real time if they do. Sick. And the last funny thing I have to say is the four decommissioned Avenger anti-mining ships,

two of them at least have hilarious names. Two of them make sense. One of them was the USS Century, perfectly reasonable name for a demining ship. The other was the USS Dextrous, kind of a weird name, but whatever. And then you have the USS Devastator and the USS Glad, What is a mineship devastate? It's for DMA. It's to stop things from getting devastated. Anyway, that's my report. Good to know.

And let's pick up with Iran. I want to start by talking about the speculation regarding partner forces. I think some of it has been just like a little bit misinformed. Start with people have been talking about the Balochistan Liberation Army. They were only added to the United States FTO list last summer. Which leads me to believe that the Trump administration is not positively disposed towards him, right? Like if they've just put them on the FTO list in August of last year. One of the odds anyone in that administration knows where Balochistan is.

Yeah. It happened shortly after they killed some Pakistani military personnel, so I'm guessing they just got asked to do it or it was part of a negotiation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It also seems very unlikely that Trump is now willing to back a Kurdish land incursion. but invasion wouldn't be the right word. If people going into Kurdistan, it's not an invasion. I have a short video here. We're about kind of an autonomous region as they did in Syria and Iraq.

We're not looking at the Kurds going in. We're very friendly with the Kurds, as you know, but we don't want to make the war any more complex than it already is. Can we roll that out? Yeah, I have rolled it out. I don't want the Kurds going in. I don't want to see the Kurds get hurt, get killed. we've had a good relation.

They're willing to go in, but we really, I've told them I don't want them to go in. I just think the map of Iran. I just think the war is complicated enough without having. Yeah, sure. You wouldn't want the war to get complicated. Yeah. Also, the audio quality on Fox News, they're absolutely atrocious. Yeah.

It's hard on us playing sometimes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're in a difficult situation. Yeah. weeks. Here's part of a statement that I received from the P.A.K. That's a Kurdistan Freedom Party that refers to the U.S.'s vacillation on supporting them. Quote, the United States is working in the best possible way to dismantle the Iranian regime and eliminate terrorism in the region. For over three decades, we have been fighting to expel the IRGC from Kurdistan and liberate our land. Therefore,

we cannot and must not base our policies on the shifts in U.S. rhetoric. America has its own plans regarding the overthrow and subsequent administration of Iran, and we have our plan for the liberation administration of Rodgillat. Roderat referring to eastern Kurdistan there. Yeah. Meanwhile, of course, for the last week, we've seen consistent bombing of Iran, including the targeting of oil and water infrastructure. Hengor is reporting horrible overcrowding and food shortages, as well as increased

militarization of the Ghazal-Hazar prison, which holds more than 16,000 people. As I highlighted last week, Iran was in a water crisis before this new campaign began. Hitting water infrastructure will only increase the odds of massive human suffering and death. This is especially true as it seems that Trump is somewhat growing tired of the war with Iran. He said in a press conference this week it would be, quote, inappropriate to target the newly chosen supreme leader of Iran. In the same press conference, Trump also repeated his claim that Iran was, quote, going to take over the Middle East and would have had, quote, a nuclear weapon within a matter of weeks if it were not for last year's Operation Midnight Hammer. He also talked about an Iranian

nuclear site, quote, protected by granite. Both Fordo and Natanz were struck last year and have underground elements. Fordo is about 80 meters below ground. And that was a site that like required a U.S. strike. Israel did not have the means to knock that one out. But to the best of my knowledge, Fordo is now out of commission following the strikes in Operation Midnight Hammer, which happened in 2025. So perhaps he's referring to another subterranean site or perhaps he's confusing this with earlier information. Evidently, you can't just destroy uranium, right? Like if there is enriched nuclear material, then that is still there. Well, yeah, we talked about this the last time, Like the thing that's time-consuming is enriching the uranium, and there's no evidence that any of this has reduced the amount that Iran has access to.

Yes, exactly. And according to Senator Chris Murphy, it doesn't seem like that is particularly the target of this campaign. He said most of the targets are conventional weapons facilities like drones and missile facilities, the Iranian Navy, as Robert mentioned, Air Force. It does not seem like they're particularly interested in regime change. and as Robert mentioned, the IRGC is still able to use many of its small civilian vessels, fast attack vessels and drones. I spoke to quite a few people who are in this sort of shipping security world. And one of their concerns is like when they say fast attack vessels, they're talking about very small boats with mounted machine guns, right? Operating in large groups and swarming tankers or other ships going through the straight-of-hormuz, which would be quite challenging to,

defend ships from, especially of their, like large civilian ships, right? I know some people have been speculating about the CM302 missiles that Iran ordered from China. Those are like, quote, unquote, carrier killer missiles. I don't believe they have those yet, though. If they do, we'll probably find out soon enough. Yeah, boy, that would be a big day. Ha ha. Oh, boy.

Yeah, yeah, that would, uh, things would get quite bad if that happened. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I honestly, like, that might be, for this administration, a tactical nuclear scenario. Yeah. It would be an unprecedented loss. They'd have to do something insane to save face. Yeah. I assume U.S. carriers have means of defense as opposed to.

They're very hard to kill. Yes. Yeah. That's a particular, like, matchup that no one has seen yet because no one has been wild enough to try it. Yeah. They say they're, these are carrier killers. They're theoretically carrier killers. A lot of the defensive systems on carriers as regards missiles like that are theoretical, too, because it hasn't happened.

Yeah, it's not many people have aircraft carriers and the people who do you don't want to piss off. Yeah. Finally, I guess, I want to talk about the Senator Blumenthal who raised the alarm in a congressional briefing this week. Here's a clip. I emerged from this briefing as dissatisfied and angry, frankly, as I have from any past briefing in my 15 years in the Senate. I am left with more questions than answers, especially about the cost of the war.

My questions have been unanswered, and I will demand answers because the American people deserve to know. And I guess I am most concerned about the threat to American lives of potentially deploying our sons and daughters on the ground in Iran. We seem to be on a path toward deploying American troops on the ground in Iran to accomplish any of the potential objectives here. and there is also as disturbingly as anything else the specter of active Russian aid to Iran putting in danger American lives. The last part references reporting that came first from the Washington Post. Russia is providing targeting info to Iran, chiefly using its advanced satellite imaging capacity, to quote from the piece, quote, since the war began on Saturday, Russia has passed Iran the locations of U.S. military assets,

including warships and aircraft. This might explain how Iran has been able to hit some softer targets, like the temporary structure in Kuwait, where at least six people were killed. We've now learned that many more people were seriously injured, as well as hitting some over-the-horizon radar systems that we spoke about last week. Finally, the U.S. is carrying out operations against Hachdal Shabhi popular mobilization forces in Iraq. This is getting a lot less reporting, but it seems like if there are boots on the ground anywhere right now, this would be where they would be, right?

They're using things like Apaches and A10s. They're not using standoff munitions delivered from a great distance. And so anything that is likely to result in either needing people to spot targets or needing people to rescue a pilot of a plane or, a helicopter gets shot down, would more likely at this point be there in Iraq. That's about all I have. We'll go on one more ad break and return with a special segment from Amelia Wong. Canadian women are looking for more.

More to themselves, their businesses, their elected leaders, and the world are at them. And that's why we're thrilled to introduce the Honest Talk podcast. I'm Jennifer Stewart. And I'm Catherine Clark. And in this podcast, we interview Canada's most inspiring women. entrepreneurs, artists, athletes, politicians and newsmakers, all at different stages of their journey. So if you're looking to connect, then we hope you'll join us.

Listen to the Honest Talk podcast on IHartRadio or wherever you listen to your podcasts. Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hilary Duff, singer, actress and multi-platinum artist. Hillary opens up about complicated family dynamics, motherhood, and releasing our first record in over 10 years. Talk about what it's taken to grow up in the entertainment industry and stay grounded through every chapter. It's a raw and honest conversation about identity, evolution, and building a life that truly matters. You desire in family like this picture and that's not reality a lot of the time. It's for people.

My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life. And I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. In 2023, a story gripped the UK, evoking horror and disbelief. The nurse who should have been in charge of caring for tiny babies is now the most prolific child killer in modern British history. Everyone thought they knew how it ended. A verdict, a villain, a nurse named Lucy Leppie. Lucy Letby has been found guilty. But what if we didn't get the whole story?

The moment you look at the whole picture, the case collapses. I'm Amanda Knox, and in the new podcast, Doubt the case of Lucy Lettby, we follow the evidence and hear from the people that lived in, to ask what really happened when the world decided who Lucy Lettby was. No voicing of any skepticism or doubt. It'll cause so much harm at every single level of the British establishment of this is wrong. Listen to Doubt, the case of Lucy Lettbyn.

Let Be on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart Podcast Awards are happening live at South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. Iheart Radio.

Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app. Do we need to intro the music? If you want to play the music, you can't. On to the economy, we have been seeing over the past week what I would effectively describe as a will-they, won't-day with, are the stock markets going to collapse? where markets have imploded and then immediately rebounded, basically in line with Trump saying that the war is going to be over very soon.

This was the sort of state of things on Monday. You know, there had been massive collapses in the Asian market from rising oil prices. And then Trump said that, quote, the war is very complete pretty much in a phone interview with a journalist from NBC. And this caused the resurrection of the markets. Now, this is completely disconnected from the actual reality of the war and functioned entirely to, again, just calm these markets. On Tuesday, so that was Monday, on Tuesday, Trump said in speech, quote, we've already won

in many ways, but we haven't won enough. We go forward more determined than ever to achieve ultimate victory that will end this long-running danger once and for all, which, okay, that's gibberish. Now, Trump has specifically begun to address the fact that, again, you can, you can't move oil tankers through the trade of Farmuz because Iran is going to just carry off strikes on them. He said, quote, we're also focused on keeping energy and oil flows to the world, and I will not allow a terrorist regime to hold the world hostage and attempt to stop the globe's oil supply. And if Iran does anything to do that, they'll get hit at a much, much

harder level. I will take out those targets that were easy and that I mentioned before. We'll take them out so quickly. They'll never be able to recover. cover ever if they want to play that game, they better not play that game. In the long run, oil supplies will be dramatically more secure without the threat of Iranian ships, drones, missiles, nuclear, menace, or anything. So what he's saying here is that if Iran keeps the straight closed, he's going to destroy them, but A, he's already in a war with them. And B, this just means that as long as Iran keeps a straight closed, then the war

keeps going, which keeps the straight-clothes longer, which keeps the war going. So this is great. Trump was also directly asked by a reporter about whether the war is going to keep going. Quote, thank you, thank you, Mr. President. You said the war is, quote, very complete, but your defense secretary says this is just the beginning. So which is it? And how long should Americans be prepared for this war to last for? And he immediately starts going into metaphysics? says, quote, well, I think you could say both, the beginning. It's the beginning of building a new country. And then he eventually says, so, you know, you could look at that statement.

We could call it a tremendous success. Right now as we leave here, I could call it. Or we could go further and we're going further. But the big risks on that war have been over for three days. We wiped them out in the first two days. So that's just nothing other than probably the war is going to keep going. Now, Trump has been claiming there were being Navy escorts through the Strait of Formos. this is an absolute unhinged lie that Trump came up with Chukalm oil prices,

and on Wednesday we had reporting from Reuters that obviously know the Navy has been turning down request for escort. I'm going to read a quote from that Reuters piece. The U.S. Navy has refused near daily requests from the shipping industry for military escorts through the Strait of Ramos since the start of the war on Iran, saying the risk of attacks is too high for now, according to sources familiar with the matter. Which, yeah, no shit, of course, is an answer. happening. There's no way for it to happen. Have you seen an oil tanker? The largest of these

things is two-fifths of a kilometer long. Right. And some of them are, you know, half that size. So they are like one-fifth of a kilometer long. But you can't escort that through a strait that is, and I kind of emphasize this enough, 23 miles wide at its narrowest point. Now, Iran has also started mining the straits to some extent. On Wednesday, Trump claimed the Navy had destroyed Iran's winding ships in the strait was safe to cross. Iran immediately proved this to be a lie by hitting a whole bunch of oil tankers in various places around the Gulf. And this is, you know, one of one of the substantive issues with trying to get one fifth of like the world's oil supply through this Gulf on top of and also, and again, like this is being reported a little bit less,

but we talked about this in my episode earlier in the week. It's not just oil. It's things like critical chemical components for fertilizer that comes through here. It's natural gas. It's Also, helium, which is a very, very critical element for a whole bunch of heavy industry that is actually very scarce and a huge amount of the world's helium supply has to travel through the Gulf. And there are so many kinds of munitions besides mines that Iran can use to hit boats, from rockets to missiles to drones, just shooting at them with guns on boats, the thing they've apparently done now. Now, Trump also said that he was waiving oil-related sanctions on certain countries to reduce prices. it's not clear what this means. It's probably Russia. Reuters has claimed that it's about the U.S. temporary allowing India to purchase Russian oil.

That's been stranded at sea. It's very unclear what's going on there. On Thursday, we got a bunch of claims from the administration that escorting tankers to the straight was their plan the whole time, which, no, it wasn't. This is just going to continue to be an absolute nightmare because if Trump can't figure out a way to get oil through there, he's either going to have to end the war or the world economy is going to just implode. Yeah, we'll be tracking that situation. There's also another crisis that has begun to brew, which is the crisis in the so-called private credit market, which is, this is stuff that used to be

called shadow banking. I'm going to go into more detail on this later as it becomes more and more sort of relevant, but private credit slash shadow banking is a series of things that are like a bank, but they're not regulated. So, we're talking about trillions of dollars of assets. There has been a huge run, basically, on the shadow banks to the point where several very large banks have paused the ability to take money out of them. Now, it's difficult to report on this because we don't actually know anything about how many people are pulling their money out or what the effect on this is, because there

are no reporting requirements because these are shadow banks. And the whole point about them is that they're not subject to the regular regulations that regular banking will be subject to. So that's another looming economic crisis that we're all sort of just going to have to deal with on top of Trump attempting to sort of destroy the economy with this war in Iran. And finally, I want to close by talking about a very good peace and crime think called History is repeating itself, a Lebanese perspective on the war in Palestine, Lebanon Iran, that is an interview with friend of the show Ilya Ayyub, talking about a part of this war that

hasn't basically ignored in the media, which is, to quote Elia, Israel has ordered the forced evacuation, effectively the ethnic cleansing of the entirety of southern Lebanon, the He and parts of Becca. This has been a horrifying campaign that has involved Israel bombing major Lebanese cities, including repeated bombings of Beirut, as well as a systematic destruction of Lebanese villages by the Israeli army in the areas they've occupied in the south. The Israeli invasion has killed 600 people in Lebanon so far. That number will be higher by the time we're listening to this. This campaign does not seem to have an end point and is continuing as the American and Israeli war in Iran also continues to grind on. Yeah, put a trans goal on your couch.

Thank you, Mia. I have a few more news stories before we close. this episode. Trump has delayed his endorsement in the Republican, Texas primary to build pressure on the Senate to pass the SAVE Act, the Voting Restriction Act. To gain favor with the President, Ken Paxton has announced he'd back out of the race if the Senate passes the SAVE Act, which Trump later called his number one priority. Paxton knows that the passing of the act is very unlikely, but by signaling support for the president's number one priority, he's hoping to gain favor and maybe even steal the endorsement away from Cornyn or convince Trump not to give an endorsement, which would help him in the runoff election.

Okay. Politico has reported that Trump was, quote, irritated when news articles from Axios and the Atlantic published Wednesday, declaring that Trump was, quote, unquote, expected to endorse Cornyn, according to a Republican operative. Trump and others in his orbit hate when stories get out ahead of official announcements, unquote. I sympathize with the president here. I am also often irritated by news articles from Axios and the Atlantic.

Yeah. Aren't we all? That's the thing that brings us together as a country. Right. It will be interesting to see what Trump does here. I mean, Trump has previously called Corny like a rhino. And Paxton is way more popular with the megabase, despite having more electoral liabilities for the general election.

Yeah. On March 5th, 7th. of the biggest tech companies signed President Trump's rate payer protection pledge, empowering the private sector to build their own power infrastructure, like power plants, microgrids, and substations, while also agreeing to, quote, bring or buy new generation resources and cover the cost of all power delivery infrastructure upgrades required for their data centers, ensuring such expenses are not passed to American households, on quote, and that is per the White House.

So this expounds on the rate player protection pledge that Trump announced during his state of the union address. We have a little bit more details now. The pledge has been signed by Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, OpenAI, Oracle, and XAI. These companies will quote unquote voluntarily negotiate new separate rate structures with utilities and state governments wherever they build new data centers. And will, quote, commit to pay these rates for the state. power and related infrastructure brought online to service their data centers, whether they use the electricity or not, unquote. To prevent blackouts and power shortages, the pledge also promises that AI companies and hyperscalers will also, quote, coordinate with grid operators to make backup

generation resources available at times of emergency, contributing to a more reliable grid, unquote. This pledge is not legally binding, but like I said, it will empower the private sector to develop power plant infrastructure. Great, scary. Last Saturday, March 7th, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside of the New York City mayor's residence, Gracie Mansion, dubbed Stop the Islamic Takeover of New York City, Stop New York City Public Muslim Prayer, unquote. Incredibly frustrating guy. Yeah. I know that's his goal, but like, very frustrating. Well, he's high off the fact that he was able to ignite a news cycle by lying about shit. Yeah, after getting chased out of Minneapolis by people with water pistols and rescued by a trans lady.

Now, during this protest on Saturday, two teenagers who traveled from Pennsylvania, Amir Balat and Ibrahim Kiyumi, allegedly attempted to detonate two improvised explicit devices amongst the protesters, and after being apprehended, both suspects stated allegiance with ISIS, according to U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, J. Clayton. The homemade explosive devices were mason jar-sized and packed with metal shrapnel and contained the high-explosive TAP. Oh, wow. One IED was ignited and thrown towards a group of protesters, another was dropped in front of several NYPD officers, but neither device successfully detonated. It is hard to make bombs. That is why very few domestic terrorists in the U.S. go the bomb route.

Yeah. Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche claimed that the bombers, quote, allegedly sought to inflict mass casualties in service to ISIS with the hope of exceeding the carnage of the Boston Marathon bombing, unquote. Belot was asked if he wanted to accomplish something akin to the Boston bombing during interrogation, to which he allegedly replied, no, even bigger. It was only three deaths, unquote. During interrogation, Kiyumi stated that he had watched ISIS propaganda videos on his phone. The criminal complaint says that on route to the NYPD precinct, Balot told officers, quote, this isn't a religion that just stands when people talk about the blessed name of the prophet, we take action. If I didn't do it, someone else will come and do it, unquote. And he later pledged allegiance to the Islamic State in writing, along with the phrase, die in your rage.

Mm-hmm. The only thing weird about it is that there's not a whole lot of that going on right now, but this is very similar to the people who are carrying out sympathetic ISIS attacks, you know, during the height of military action in Mosul. Same, same death. Yeah. Yes, Deb. The timing is odd, unusual, yeah, given we're past past the territorial caliphate, et cetera. They have been propagandizing a bit more in the last five, six months. Yeah. No, and it makes sense that they choose this as a target. Yeah. But thankfully, again, most people who try to make bombs fail, and that was the case this time, too. Yeah. For our last main story, since the war on Iran began, the Trump administration has increasingly been talking about Cuba as being the next target of U.S. intervention. In the immediate aftermath of military strikes in Iran, the Atlantic reported that Trump is eyeing Cuba as the next target, was an administration official saying, the president is feeling like, I'm on a role, like this is working, unquote. In a scene and interview about U.S. military success in Iran last Friday,

Trump started talking about Cuba, saying, quote, Cuba is going to fall pretty soon. By the way, unrelated, but Cuba is going to fall too. They want to make a deal so badly. They want to make a deal. And so I'm going to put Marco over there and we'll see how that works out, unquote. That same day in Florida, Trump was asked about this, deal and what do it mean for the U.S. And it may be a friendly takeover.

It may not be a friendly takeover. It wouldn't matter because they're really in, they're down to, as they say, fumes. They have no energy. They have no money. They're in deep trouble on a humanitarian basis. And we don't want to see that. May or may not be a quote unquote friendly takeover. Uh-huh.

Yeah, I mean, I don't think that's really an option. Yeah, it sounds like he's threatening Batista too, basically. Even going back further than that, but yeah. Does he consider Venezuela to have been a friendly takeover? Because he's very friendly with Delci now, right? Like, you can see her tweeting all the time about their great partnership. I think he would consider that an unfriendly takeover, which has now become friendly. But I think he's like referring to the amount of like actual like, you know, kinetic

force as a part of a takeover versus just a diplomatic deal done by Rubio. But in his scene and interview from Friday, Trump did specify that the administration is quote-unquote really focused on Iran right now and that they have, quote, plenty of time, but Cuba's ready. After 50 years, I've been watching it for 50 years and it's fallen right into my lap because of me, unquote. The day before this, Trump mentioned how Rubio wants to finish up operations in Iran before trying anything in Cuba. Quote, we could do them all at the same time, but bad things happen. If you watch countries over the years, if you do them all too fast, bad things happen, unquote.

Do them. Do them. Yeah. I see. Fascinating. That's the reference to these regime change, decapitation. Doing the country. Yeah.

Right. Got it. Good to know. At a presentation for the Shield of the Americas on Saturday, Trump said, quote, as we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we're also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba. Cuba's at the end of the line,

they have a bad regime, unquote. It is wild to see him just like, I don't want to be like, you know, like Babe Ruth used to point to where he's going to hit the baseball. That's probably not the best analogy there. But you know, it is bonkers just to see. They're very confident right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They haven't gotten a serious pushback, you know. We're starting to see gas prices rise. The cost of living is going to rise, but we haven't suffered any sort of major military loss. Yeah, and eight Americans have died in the operations against Iran, right? Yeah, and I doubt Trump has noticed. I mean, for him, that's not serious. It's not a, no. But he seems to have literally shrugged it off almost in press conferences. We did learn today that a great deal more people suffered more serious injuries when we thought in that particular drone strike in Kuwait. But there won't be electoral consequences, right?

I think that's one of the reasons why they like these Asteroic heavy, very light ground footprint models. Yeah. Because it's not Americans who die. No, it's Iranians who are primarily dying, yeah. Yeah. Shall we close with this brief discussion on proton mail? Yeah, it's important.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. So last week, 404 Media reported that the end-to-end encrypted email service proton mail, quote, helped FBI, unmask anonymous stop cop city protester, unquote. That is their headline. So what happened here is that in January of 2024, the FBI sent to Swiss authorities a mutual legal assistance treaty request for information tied to the Defend the Atlanta Forest at Protonmail.com account.

The FBI believed that whoever had access to this email would likely have administrative access to the now defunct scenes from the Atlanta Forest blog, which posted sabotage, report backs, calls to action, and some instructional information on possible criminal acts people could commit. After Swiss authorities verified the FBI's request, Proton Mail was legally required to submit payment data, which identified a name tied to the account through a credit card. Swiss authorities then forwarded that information to the FBI via the mutual legal assistance treaty. This individual has not been charged with the crime, and no email

contents were provided to either the Swiss authorities or the FBI. This is Edward Schoen, the head of communications for Proton. Quote, Proton only provides the limited information that we have when issued with a legally binding order from Swiss authorities, which could only happen after all Swiss legal checks are passed. This is an important distinction because Proton operates exclusively under Swiss law. Proton accepts payments via cryptocurrency, cash, and also credit card. If you use a credit card,

we do have access to the payment identifier, which can be used to identify the credit card holder from the card issuer. We check all legal orders received from Swiss authorities, and we understood that a law enforcement officer was shot and explosive devices were involved, and we verified that Swiss legal requirements were met, unquote. That's their main statement regarding the handover of this credit card information.

This has always been my understanding of how Proton mail works. They are a business. They are not an activist organization. They are a business and Swiss privacy laws are stronger. And they would have not been able to hand over financial information identifying the person if this account paid in cash mailed to Proton or via cryptocurrency, which would have been way more difficult to identify. Depending on the crypto, but yeah. I've operated many, many proton mail accounts through the years.

I've never tied any of them to financial information. You do not need to pay for most of the services that they provide. Like, I even have Proton VPN without paying for, like, the expanded VPN option. Yeah, they've always been very clear that they're a Swiss-based company and they comply with Swiss privacy law. Yeah, this has happened before. They have responded to FBI requests before. I don't know how many FBI requests they have responded to. I know they've responded to requests from other countries in Europe.

There's one around 2020. I know they've responded to French authorities about environmental protesters. The fact that Swiss authorities did send this information to FBI is newsworthy. This is notable. But this doesn't mean that Proton is getting increasingly compliant. Like this is from early 2024 following the standard procedure via the mutual legal assistance treaty. And importantly, the actual end-to-end email content, were not given because Proton themselves don't even have access to those.

Yeah, and for clarity, Proton has given info to the FBI before I found a case back in 2022 where the FBI was able to get data on a U.S. Proton mail user who was being investigated for harassment. They responded in 2021 to 6,995 legal orders and complied with about 6,000 of them. In 2021, it was about 5,000. In 2020, about 3,000. I think this generally reflects the rate which proton has grown rather than them becoming more likely to respond to these requests. And by responding to the request, that doesn't really give us a good insight into what they're actually responding with. Right.

Yeah, yeah. That's the other thing, right? Like, this person's email inbox was not opened to the FBI. That is a different thing. Very important. It was the name linked to their credit card. Yeah. I think, like you said, this is reportable, but it was a little oversold.

headline. I know everyone does that these days, but yeah. It's good for people to understand how Proton actually works as like a privacy email. Yes. Yes. And they are not, they are not an activist group. And that is an important distinction. They are a Swiss business that will follow the law. And if you understand how to use Proton as a service to maximize your privacy, then it can be a very useful service. But it will not protect you in every way if you're handing them over payment information or information tied to your name that is not encrypted, that can open the possibility of an account being identifiable. Yeah.

So I know a lot of people had contacted me about a proton mail address. Hopefully now you have the information that you need to decide if that is something you want to use or not. Speaking of Proton Mail. Yeah, speaking of Proton, we still have a Proton mail address. Now you know a little bit more about how you can use it if you want to. CoolZone tips at Proton.me. if you would like to send us a pitch for you or your boss to be on Behind the Bastards,

if you would like us to plug your book. If you want us to talk about your fucking timeshare, you can send all of that to Whozone Media at iHeartMedia.com, especially if it's the last one, I will block you. Oh, no, I'm looking for a time share. That seems like a good investment. Sick. But that is the email for non-tips,

for things that are not related to news tips. You can use the Coolzone Media at iHeartMedia.com email address. Talking of tips, I have a tip, Garrison, for marketing people. If you email anyone 10 times a day, you're going to piss them off. They're not going to want to fucking hear from you. Stop it. Some of you aren't well. You're not emailing them.

You've got an AI doing it. It's got to be AI. Yeah, that's not a person. If it's a marketing person, there are other people who email 10 times a day. Yeah, I mean, this was a marketing person who was emailing some of our work addresses, try and get us to plug their podcasts, which aren't our podcast, it's to stop it, grow up, have some self-respect. Yeah.

What's really fun is if you go on Reddit, you can find a subreddit for those kind of marketers where they'll complain about journalists not responding, and it's beautiful. Yeah, you can't see because the podcast, I'm raising both my middle fingers at this time. Anyway, this has been us whining. about marketing people. I hope you all have a lovely week. I will be as I hug as many of those proteines as I can.

Garrison. If you want to start really bulking up, you need at least 100 grams of protein a day. And there's 10 in each of those. That's only 10 espresso protein. You can pour them in a camel back and go about your day. Just make sure you dip the end of the camel back in the buffalo dry rub.

I have a little shaker. Have a little, a little, a little. We reported the news. Oh, God, didn't we? We reported the news. It could happen here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Coolzone 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. Next Monday, our 2026 IHeart podcast awards are happening live at South by Southwest. It's the biggest night in podcasting. We'll honor the very best in podcasting from the past year and celebrate the most innovative talent and creators in the industry. And the winner is...

Creativity, knowledge, and passion will all be on full display. Thank you so much. IHeart Radio. Thank you to all the other nominees. You guys are awesome. Watch live next Monday at 8 p.m. Eastern, 5 p.m. Pacific free at Veeps.com or the Veeps app. Hey, I'm Jay Chetty, host of the On Purpose podcast. My latest episode is with Hillary Duff, singer, actress, and multi-platinum artist.

You desire in family like this picture, and that's not reality. My sister and I don't speak. It's definitely a very painful part of my life. And I hope it's not forever, but it's for right now. Listen to On Purpose with Jay Chetty on the Iheart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You know Roll Doll. He thought up Willie Wonka and the BFG. But did you know he was a spy?

In the new podcast, The Secret World of Roll Doll, I'll tell you that story, and much, much more. What? You probably won't believe it either. Was this before he wrote his stories? It must have been. Okay, I don't think that's true. I'm telling you, the guy was a spy. Listen to the secret world of Roll Doll on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

I'm Clayton Eckerd. In 2022, I was the lead of ABC's The Bachelor. But here's the thing. Bachelor fans hated him. If I could press a button and rewind it all I would. That's when his life took a disturbing turn. A one-night stand would end in a courtroom. The media is here. This case has gone viral. The dating contract. Agree to date me, but I'm also suing you. This is unlike anything I've ever seen before.

I'm Stephanie Young. Listen to Love Trapped on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. This is an IHeart podcast. Guaranteed human.