It Could Happen Here - Executive Disorder: White House Weekly #13

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

The gang get together to discuss RFK’s plans for people with autism, immigration detention of citizens, the legal battle over rendition, crackdowns on students, and tariffs. Sources: https://www.scotusblog.com/2025/04/justices-temporarily-bar-government-from-removing-venezuelan-men-under-alien-enemies-act/ https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.98.1_1.pdf https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815/gov.uscourts.mdd.578815.100.0_2.pdf https://www.dcnewsnow.com/news/local-news/maryland/prince-georges-county/hyattsville-police-department-details-2019-encounter-with-kilmar-abrego-garcia/  https://www.nytimes.com/2025/04/22/us/venezuela-immigrant-disappear-deport-ice.html https://www.thehandbasket.co/p/us-rwanda-relocates-iraqi-refugee-omar-ameen https://news.azpm.org/s/100806-us-citizen-detained-for-10-days-by-immigration-officials-may-not-have-known-what-he-was-signing/ https://x.com/DHSgov/status/1914393644766843386 https://bsky.app/profile/juddlegum.bsky.social/post/3lni7mlxow22c https://www.axios.com/2025/04/23/musk-bessent-trump-white-house-irs  https://news.azpm.org/p/news-articles/2025/4/18/224512-us-citizen-in-arizona-detained-by-immigration-officials-for-10-days/ https://floridaphoenix.com/2025/04/21/feds-blame-u-s-citizen-for-his-arrest-under-suspended-immigration-law/  https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2025/04/21/doge-musk-trump-federal-employees-emails/  https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-politics/elon-musk-donald-trump-doge-b2736753.html https://insideevs.com/news/753730/tesla-insurance-vandalism-elon-musk/ https://abcnews.go.com/Business/tesla-earnings-show-anti-musk-backlash-damaged-bottom/story?id=121008566&cid=social_twitter_abcn  https://www.cnbc.com/2025/04/22/busiest-us-ports-see-big-drop-in-chinese-freight-vessel-traffic.html https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/apr/21/peter-navarro-the-economist-who-has-outsmarted-elon-musk-and-has-the-ear-of-donald-trump https://archive.ph/v8Vp1 https://www.axios.com/2025/04/23/trump-economy-tariffs-china-powellSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind, and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable.

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Grotesque Horrific stories on what scares them the most You're feeling this too listen on the I heart 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 Mia Wong, James Stout, and Robert Evans. This episode, we're covering the week of April 17 to April 23. JD Vance has killed the Pope.

A second Pete Hegseth unauthorized signal chat has hit the Department of Defense. The White House announces that the Education Department will start collecting on defaulted student loans. Beanie clad Tim Pool joins the White House press pool, and hippie Facebook moms rejoice with artificial food dyes being banned across America. How are we doing everybody?

Much worse after hearing that. Fine, I guess. I outlived the Pope. I outlived the Pope. You have to live several more decades to like outlive the Pope officially. I think he was 88, so. I did it! I still did it! Thank goodness he did not die on Hitler's birthday, because that would have been a whole other can of words.

One day off. I'm thinking back to my catechism classes and trying to remember, like, Pope dead on Easter, good sign or bad. That's definitely a sign. It it's some kind of sign. What do we, how do we take that? Shout out to the Pistons for holding off winning a playoff game just long enough for the Pope to die such that Francis Rees entire term in office

never saw a Pistons playoff win. Congratulations to the Pistons, congratulations to the city of Detroit, congratulations for withholding that from the Pope. We'd love to see it. Did Pope Francis have a strong opinion on the Pistons that he expressed at some point? Because I may have missed that. No, he knew they were in a Macklemore song,

so therefore he hated them. He was a huge Macklefan. Yeah, a lot of people don't know this, but the entire time the Pope is lying in state, they'll just going to be looping thrift shop. So yeah. Pfft. as Pope Francis wanted. Yeah, that was his dying wish.

Do you know who else probably used to listen to Macklemore? Not anymore because he got too woke, but Pete Hegseth seems like a, seems like a 2012 Macklemore guy. Yeah, might have been, might have been. He was sharing plans for Ymini airstrikes with his his wife, his brother and a personal lawyer in another Signal chat. I do the same thing. Yeah, well. Yeah, you've yet to act on your plans, it's a difference. They are not interested.

Looping at the lawyer is the real like God-tier move there. That is so funny. I mean, it says so much both about like what's going on in Pete Hedgeseth's brain, but of the quality of lawyer, because any lawyer worth assault would be like please just movie I'm not in this chat. Yeah, you know you need to get me out of this chat. What is wrong with you? Are you are you texting me missile package information?

That's the thing though. We've gotten great evidence like this guy, from Giuliani, from all of the lawyers, these like random cartoon dipshits the right keeps finding that like, they will just hand you a law degree. Like if you hand the state enough money, they will just hand you a law degree and you can just like bullshit your way through the bar and you'll be fine. Like they give that shit out to anyone. You can tell a really good lawyer in a room where legal things are being discussed, and I've had this happen several times because they just leave they bounce they get the fuck out of the room And that's a smart lawyer I don't know if you saw but the state of California was using AI to set its bar exam questions

You don't even have to be someone I would be able to tell you don't text your wife, lawyer, and son classified information about missile strikes. But whatever. Now hopefully if they start using AI more to get through school, they won't have as many student loans to be collected on. Yeah, there you go. A practice that has been paused since March of 2020, set to be resumed on May 5th. And then, man, the Tim Pool thing was really wild. Press Secretary Carolyn Levitt gave a glowing introduction to Tim Pool's addition to the press room. And Tim's first question to the administration was asking why news media just lies so much about Trump. Fantastic journalism

here from comrade Tim. Really probing question. Let's pivot towards RFK and the concerning registry that has been discussed, which is a word you never like to hear whenever someone brings up the concept of a registry. It's usually bad. Always bad. So I'm going to talk in general about what RFK, the things that he has said, not just about autistic Americans, but about people who are receiving psychiatric medication,

people who are addicted to opiates, people who are utilizing like stimulants, by which I mean ADHD medicine, which if you have ADHD, that's not exactly the way it functions, but that's the way he frames it. Because these are all tied together, right? I have some frustrations with kind of how it's been taken on social media that I think are not causing people to worry when they don't need to worry, but look at maybe sort of the wrong area to be, to see the immediate threat coming from. So first I'm going to start with like what has been said.

And before we get to the registry, we have to go back to what he was talking about on the campaign trail, because prior, and this is prior to him endorsing Donald Trump when RFK Jr. was like an individual, like running for president on his own, um, under his independent campaign, he started talking about wellness farms, right? Uh, and these were specifically in the language that he used, places that people who were addicted to psychiatric medication, antidepressants,

he named specifically antidepressants and stimulants, as well as people with opiate addictions, right? And he has since talked about other drug addictions as well, could go to spend three or four years working on a farm. He always frames it as also like learning skills. So it's this mix of, I want people to be able to work in this lovely bucolic agrarian setting where they'll gain working skills. And then there's also peppered in these very frightening phrases like they need to be reparented.

Right? It's like they need to be reparented. Now, in addition to this, this is all focused on Americans who are taking medications that he thinks are over prescribed or purely unnecessary. That's always the way psychiatric medication, he almost has a Scientologist attitude towards it that this is all essentially unnecessary. And obviously, all of this stuff comes out of there are elements of this that were true at one point. For example, back in the 90s, like Ritalin was wildly overprescribed to kids. But the way in which he's translated this now is that basically everyone on a stimulant,

everyone on an antidepressant is on it unnecessarily. And in a podcast in 2024, he went further by kind of tying a lot of this to race specifically, stating quote, every black kid is now just standard put on Adderall, on SSRIs, Benzos, which are known to induce violence and those kids are going to have a chance to go somewhere and get reparented. So that's all deeply concerning. It's like kidnapping children forciably like, well, medicating. I will say that's not how he has framed it.

So one of the one of the things is people I've heard it phrases like RFK has admitted he wants to imprison millions of Americans in camps. And like, that's not what he said. The direct quotes about this are not framed as a mandatory thing. It's framed as a replacement for other treatments that people can choose to go into and choose to leave.

That's what he said, right? Now, perfectly reasonable when a guy in an administration like this is talking about putting up camps to be like, well, I don't know if I believe him, but it's not accurate that he said he wants to arrest millions of people and force them onto camps. He just has not said that, right?

And I think it behooves us to be honest about what he said. I think it also behooves us to talk about like where this idea comes from, right? And what he's looking back to. And again, a lot of the issue here is not necessarily what RFK might do, but the fact that he might not be there forever. And if he starts establishing this, this kind of kind of program that starts in an attempt to be something that is more, you can choose to be on these camps or not. There's certainly willingness within the Republican Party to force people into different kinds of quote unquote treatment like this. And one thing I think of particularly is the way in which the right has like to shift blame for gun violence and mass shootings off of the availability of firearms and onto people who are on psychiatric medication, right? And this is an area in which I could see someone

taking over from RFK or pushing past the things he specifically has stated he wants to do, because I think he does come out of a more quack medicine goal here, putting people forcibly in camps and colonies like this. I mean, like the idea of like re-parenting, I guess is more- Is deeply problematic.

Yeah, incredibly scary phrase. But it is worth noting as there's a very good Teen Vogue article on the matter called RFK wants to send people to wellness farms. The US already tried that. That talks about the actual like background that he is hearkening back to. Cause he is not, his vision of wellness farms is not the Nazi concentration camp, which doesn't mean that

it's not possible that things could wind up in a much darker direction. But this gives you an idea of the history that he is specifically calling back to. Quote, beginning in the 1890s and continuing through the first decades of the 20th century, epileptic and feeble-minded colonies sprung up around the US. The initial purpose of these colonies was to remove patients from overcrowded, badly run asylums and poor houses in favor of farm life where they would have access to the outdoors. Under the colony model, patients generally lived in cottages, designed to be more home-like than institutional.

Patients were also given jobs, and many were expected to work on colony farms where they grew their own food. Dr. William Spratling, the medical superintendent of the Craig Colony for Epileptics in New York, declared that the farm model meant nature, the great restorer, will have an opportunity to do her best. It didn't work. Supporters of the colony model argued that, with time, clean air, sunshine, and a restricted diet, physical labor could heal patients.

But that didn't happen. Data from the Craig Colony, one of America's first epileptic colonies, illustrates this point. During the 1940s, thanks to funding and staff limitations because of World War II, conditions in North American institutions were particularly grim. The Institutions 1943 to 1944 annual report to the State Commissioner of Mental Hygiene shows that less than 1% of patients were discharged as cured that year. During that same period, over 200 patients attempted to leave the colony without permission and

5% of the total patient population died. Jesus. And so that's, I mean, that's that's reason enough to be deeply worried, right? The fact that without saying like RFK wants to do what the Nazis did, RFK wants to do what the America already did and it killed a huge number of the people who were interned in those camps. And I guess the thing I keep bringing up is that when I think about what the threat model is, more than fucking Auschwitz for people who are on SSRIs, it's a Judge Rotenberg center on every corner.

It's camps like these where costs are going to be cut and there's not going to be good access for any kind of independent monitors to make sure health and safety are being followed. It's not that people are going to be shoveled into ovens. It's that as a result of this system being incompetently applied to the most vulnerable, and I'm not even talking about my worry at the moment being that everyone on an SSR will be forced in, it's going to be poor kids. And RFK has already talked about that, right? That's why he's focusing on black kids, right?

That's who they're going for. We've had some people post up in the subreddit being like, I know I'm going to go to a camp because I have autism, or I know I'm going to go to a camp because I have ADHD. And I'm telling you, I'm not saying, don't be scared of fascism. I'm saying this is where to fight right now. It's not RFK wants to send every adult on an SSRI into a death camp. It's that they're going to try and be putting these kids instead of the different juvenile programs that exist instead of any kind of functional medical program. They're going to force them into facilities like this

and it's going to become easier for facilities like the Judge Rotenberg Center, which horribly abuses and tortures autistic kids, to spread and to get state and federal funding. And that's the threat, right? It's an extension of what we're doing and what we've done. It's not a carbon copy of what the Nazis are doing. Or did. Speaking of the Nazis. Hey kids, it's me, Kevin Smith.

And it's me, Harley Quinn Smith. That's my daughter, man, who my wife has always said is just a beardless, d***less version of me. And that's the name of our podcast, Beless, D***less Me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language. It's for adults only.

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Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. From the building of the core that included Klay Thompson and Draymond Green to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know that we were here to try to help them take the next step, not

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Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's the fun part about being an artist, that you need to have the patience for finding your head. I'm La Gata, the culture's favorite reggaeton historian and musicologist. On an episode of my show, the Reggaeton con La Gata podcast, I sit down with Goldie, a Boricua reggaetonera who's demanding her place in the male dominated music industry. That's the game like who stays and believes, you know, listen to reggaeton on America's number one podcast network.

Follow reggaeton and start listening on the free radio app today. We asked parents who adopted teens to share their journey. We just kind of knew from the beginning that we were family. They showcased a sense of love that I never had before. I mean, he's not only my parent, like he's like my best friend. At the end of the day, it's all been worth it. I wouldn't change a thing about our lives. Learn about adopting a teen from Foster Care.

Visit adoptUSkids.org to learn more. Brought to you by AdoptUSKids, the US Department of Health and Human Services, and the Ad Council. And we're back. So a couple of things happen in quick succession that is responsible in part for like why people are so freaked out and rightfully so. One of them is that RFK gave a speech on the back of new data that showed yet another rise in the rate of autism diagnosis. And as I said on a previous episode, it's because we're looking for it more.

But he made a statement about people with profound autism, not being able to pay taxes or write poems, you know, or that sort of thing. And while he was, he was specifically talking about people with quote unquote profound autism, it's reasonable for people to assume like, yeah, but that's just kind of what he sees as basically everyone, right? And I don't think that that's an unfair assumption. And then coming right up on the heels of that, there was an announcement from the NIH, the

National Institutes of Health, about RFK Jr.'s new effort to quote unquote study autism. And basically what they're going to be doing is collecting comprehensive patient data with broad coverage of the U.S. population and kind of organizing it within the NIH. This is the first time this has been done, but they are going to be grabbing basically everything they can get their hands on. And we're talking about a mix of medication records from pharmacies, lab testing records, genomic data from people who like go to the department of, basically data taken by the VA, data taken by the Indian Health Service,

as well as data from private insurers. And they're also going to be buying data from smartwatch, from stuff like Fitbits, right? Who does sell their data to anybody with like $20 hanging out the back of their pocket. And as a heads up, if you are looking for a fitness tracker, you should look more into this. There are a few that have reasonably good data protection histories. Garmin is one of them.

This does not mean it's perfect. All of them will hand over your data if given a court order to do so. None of them are going to break the law to hold onto your data. But Garmin doesn't just sell willy-nilly to anybody who wants to advertise based on it. That said, most of them do. The last thing I'd write was something like 12 out of 15 different free fitness tracking apps they checked sold data pretty widely. Yeah, about 80%.

Yeah, it's the vast majority. The NIH is basically looking at taking the data that exists. They're not talking about really gathering new data, but they are talking about collecting everything that exists and putting it under one roof for the first time. This is for a couple of purposes. They want to be able to track the spread of different illnesses and different health problems within the population, these are their claims, but also they want to create a disease registry

specifically to track Americans with autism, right? And this is because Kennedy describes autism as a preventable disease, which is not accurate. And the fact that this database and these other databases are being made should be very worrisome, right? It's both important to talk And the fact that this database and these other databases are being made should be very worrisome, right? It's both important to talk about the fact that he is specifically signaling out autism while also stating like that's not the only thing they're looking into, right? They want data on people who are on SSRIs, who are on ADHD medication. They probably want data on drug use, right?

There are a lot of things they are looking to be gathering. And none of it is shit that they should have access for. Yeah. You can certainly see them expanding this out to like hormone replacement therapy, transgender health care. Yes. Yes. Yeah. And also like the apps attract like menstrual cycles, right? Yes. Like for people accessing reproductive health care.

And again, the immediate plan, I'm sorry, I simply don't think that RF't think that RFK Jr's master plan is the mass arrest of everybody with autism in the United States and forcing them into a camp. I don't think that's what he wants in part because his, number one, his base of support is a lot of the parents of these kids. And I'm not saying those parents don't want to do things to the art, already doing things to kids, to their kids that are harmful, saying those parents don't want to do things to the, aren't already doing things to their kids that are harmful, but those parents want control over what they see as their kids' healthcare. They want the freedom to experiment with medications

on their kids to quote unquote, fix them. And this data is going to be used both to provide, basically to be massaged, to provide evidence that different treatments that don't do shit do in fact work. And I think I have suspicions of financial interests there. I keep getting questioned like, well, what do you think is gonna happen when the autism cures don't work?

Well, then they're gonna put people in camps. No, the autism cures already don't work. This is an industry. They make money off of this. They make money off of drugging and medically torturing these children. And as far that is the threat is that it is going to get easier to do at a larger scale. off of this. They make money off of drugging and medically torturing these children. And that is the threat, is that it is going to get easier to do at a larger scale, and it

is going to be harder to fight even illegal to provide good information on what does and does not work. And that is what's happening right now, as opposed to something we might be worried about years down the line. And yes, there's, we should fight anytime the government is trying to put populations of people into a motherfucking database like this. We should fight all of this tooth and nail. I just think this is what I see as the danger, you know? Yeah, the risk is this decentralized stuff. It's, it's, it's centralized acceleration for things that have already been happening less so than just like large scale direct state intervention.

Yeah. I think a lot about like in the context of this, of like quote unquote wilderness therapy programs, right? Which, yes, Robert's covered these, but which have been abusing children for years. And that is what I see when we talk about these, these farms. Again, my worry is not RFK wants to forcibly put everybody into fucking Auschwitz part two, it's RFK wants a hundred times as many teen treatment facilities where kids who disobey or get in trouble with the law get caught at fucking protests, can be forced to labor

and an amount of them will die and all of them will suffer permanent mental and physical damage as a result of being put in these places. Yeah, like behavioral improvement centers that are... You could even be part of, you know, like community service. Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. It's extensions of what we do.

It's extremely American, you know? I just... That's where my head is. Yeah, it's not great. So talking of where... I guess where my head is, is immigration, right? That's what I tend to update us on. So I guess I've seen it characterized as like legal ping pong between the courts and the DOJ. It would be like if one side was playing ping pong with a regular tennis racket and everyone

was just pretending that they weren't, right? Like the DOJ is just continuing to kind of flout these court orders. If we start from the top and go down, the Supreme Court temporarily banned the government from renditioning Venezuelan men in the district of North Texas to El Salvador. I think people maybe sometimes just got a little misinterpreted on social media. You have to look at who the class was, and the class was a group of Venezuelan men who were in immigration detention in North Texas who were going to be sent to El Salvador, and that was who got the relief. The case at the time was pending before the US Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, and the Supreme Court said that once that court acted, the government could appeal to the Supreme

Court. However, they added the government should not, and I'm quoting here, remove any member of the putative class of detainees from the United States until further order of this court, i.e. the Supreme Court. To update on the case which we covered a lot here, the Abrego Garcia case, Judge Gini's ordered expedited discovery. Discovery is when both parties in a lawsuit amass information, right? They're able to find that information. And in this case, the government more or less ignored this and it did so by sticking to

its line that they can't bring him home to the United States, saying that the requests were, and I'm quoting again here, based on the false premise that the United States can or has been ordered to facilitate Abrego Garcia's release from custody in El Salvador. They're claiming they were ordered to return him and somehow in their minds returning him does not include ensuring his release. Like they're saying that they're only obliged to transport him should he be released anyway. Gini's in a court order called this quote a willful and bad faith refusal to comply with the discovery obligations. Genis also called the government's assertions

of executive privilege quote, equally specious. The city of Hyattsville in this case also clarified through a press release that quote, at no time did any member of HPD identify or file any reports classifying Abrego Garcia as a member of any gang. Despite this, the executive branch is still going with that he's a violent gang member. They also doxed his wife this week by releasing a protective order that she had once filed and withdrawn. When that was released it contained her address, so she's now hiding in a safe house. They photoshopped a MS-13 tattoo onto his knuckles above a weed leaf tattoo, a smiley face, a cross and a skull.

Yeah. Yeah, that's what they're going with I guess. Specious is a good word. Yeah, just hideous nonsense. Yeah, no, absolutely obscenely ridiculous. And then the other angle is just saying that you don't have a right to do process, right? Like openly, just like Miller has been saying this, JD Vance has been saying this on x.com. That like, these people don't have a right to do process for them. They've come up with various arguments for that

It also seems like two people sent to El Salvador no longer appear on any official list of detainees Yeah, which is concerning one of them of Ricardo Prado Vasquez. He's Not among the two hundred thirty eight people. We know were on the manifest for those sent to El Salvador, he doesn't appear to be in Venezuela, which is where his passport is from. And the fact that the government claims that they sent him, the government has said they sent him on the March 15th flights, but he's not listed there, he's not visible in photos, has led to concerns that we might have sent more people to El Salvador than we currently know about. He entered the country with a CBP-1 appointment, right?

Which of all the ways to enter is the one that the US government was trying to force people to use at that time, right? He very like legally entered the country. Yes, yeah, to be clear, he entered at a port of entry with an appointment to claim asylum. He, it appears, made a mistake when delivering food and ended up driving into Canada and was arrested when he attempted to return to the United States.

He doesn't show up on the ICE detainee locator. And essentially no one knows where he is, right? This concern has been compounded by the fact that it also emerged this week that the US has sent at least one detainee Omar Abdul Sattar Amin to Rwanda. And the combination of these two things raises a concern that they are sending third country nationals to detention in other countries that we are not yet aware of, right? Of course, the Rwanda plan was something that the UK government hatched a long time ago. And the Kagame government in Rwanda seems to see this offer, right, as a way of gaining legitimacy with governments in the've reviewed memos between the US government and the embassy in Rwanda. And I'm quoting from one of them here, The US provided a one-time payment of $100,000 to support social services, residency documents and work permits. Rwanda has also, according to the Handbasket, agreed to accept 10 more

third country nationals. So the US is paying Rwanda a little bit more than it's paying El Salvador, right? It was paying El Salvador 20,000 per person per year, but it's a one-time payment. Nonetheless, I struggle to believe that you could concoct a away in which it would cost Rwanda 100 grand to produce a residency document and a work permit for an Iraqi national. But yeah, this has obviously led to the concern that people are being sent to other places that we don't yet know about. Talking of people being sent to other places, a US citizen, Jose Hermosillo, was detained by ICE after approaching a border patrol agent to ask for directions. He was detained for 10 days. DHS is claiming that he was arrested

near the Nogales border and that he approached a border patrol agent and upon doing so identified himself as a non-citizen who was not in the country legally. Which is what they claim. Yes. So, Hermosillo disputes this along with his lawyers. He says that he approached the agent looking for directions having had a seizure and been in hospital and when he got out of hospital was trying to work out where to go. He is from New Mexico, but he was visiting his girlfriend's family in Tucson. He told the agent he was from New Mexico and the agent accused him of lying.

In his account, DHS has produced a transcript with, I'm not going to call it a signature because it just has the word Jose written underneath it, right? Mr. Hermosio, according to his girlfriend, has some learning difficulties. And by her account, he wouldn't have been able to read the English language transcript that he's alleged to have signed. So like, whether or not he signed this is rather immaterial, right? He clearly, judging by her account, was not aware that he was in it. Judging by this, like, this is not even a signature with a last name. It's laughable to suggest that he consentingly signed this. But nonetheless, he was detained for 10 days until his family produced his documents in

court. Yeah, he was arrested, quote unquote, without proper immigration documents, which you don't carry around when you're a US citizen. Yeah, you're not obliged to. Papers, please. You don't need that. His family brought his social security card and birth certificate to court. Eventually, the case against him was dismissed after being held by ICE for 10 days. This reminds me of a similar case from this past week where a US citizen was detained on Wednesday the 16th. This is a 20 year old born in Georgia, Juan Carlos Lopez Gomez. He

was pulled over while driving to work near the Florida border. He doesn't speak much English or Spanish, he speaks an indigenous mind language, but he gave his real ID card and social security card over to a state trooper. He was detained and charged with illegally entering the state as a quote unquote unauthorized alien. Similarly, the trooper claims that Lopez Gomez said that he was in the country illegally. This is like some kind of communication error or these law enforcement officers are just like lying or trying to construct like language traps to make someone agree to a statement that admits that they're in the country illegally, which allows them to be detained. He was put into a 24-hour ice hold. The next day, a federal

judge verified his birth certificate, which was brought by his mother, but claimed to lack the authority to release him, though he was released later Thursday night. He was arrested under a new Florida law signed by DeSantis last month, which a judge blocked earlier this month on April 4th. This basically allows the state troopers to act as their state's own like border patrol and it penalizes immigrants who quote unquote knowingly enter or attempt to enter the state after entering the United States by eluding or avoiding examination or inspection by immigration officers unquote. Yeah.

And like, and like the common thing here, right, is that they're just, we've seen this, I mean, there are a bunch of other cases that are like this too Or it's just like they see someone who's not white and they're just like yeah fuck it We can grab this person and then just lie about what they said. It's like it's not even very basic racial profiling Yeah, but it's like I think is it's like it's not even it's not even like racial profiling anymore Like it's it's like they're just attempting to blackbag Like random non white people that they're just running across yes, And so of course they're like grabbing US citizens, right? Because they're just like grabbing random people, but it's like they're just fucking

doing this to everyone. This has happened in other states as well. There's been incidents like this, like the past few months, which have increased in frequency since Trump has taken office. Yeah. Let's go on a break and return to Talk Tariff. Beardless, ****less me. I'm the old one. I'm the young one. And every week we try to make each other laugh really hard. Sounds innocent, doesn't it? A lot of cussing, a lot of bad language.

It's for adults only. Or listen to it with your kid. It could be a family show. We're not quite sure. We're still figuring it out. It's a work in progress. Listen to Beardless, ****less me on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever. You get your podcast.

I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again, our NBA champions from the building of the core that included Klay Thompson and Draymond Green to one of the boldest coaching decisions in the history of the sport. I just felt like the biggest thing was to earn the trust of the players and let the players know that we were here to try to help them take the next step, not tear anything down.

Today, the Warriors dynasty remains alive, in large part because of a scrawny 6'2 hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount Russmore for guys that have changed it. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. This is Dubb Dynasty. The Dubb's dynasty is still very much alive. Listen to Dubb Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your

podcast. Here's the deal. We gotta set ourselves up. See, retirement is the long game. We gotta make moves and make them early. Set up goals. Don't worry about a setback. Just save up and stack up to reach them. Let's put ourselves in the right position.

Pre-game to greater them. Let's put ourselves in the right position. Pre-game to greater things. Start building your retirement plan at thisispretirement.org, brought to you by AARP and the Ad Council. That's the fun part about being an artist, that you need to have the patience for finding your head. I'm La Gata, the culture's favorite reggaeton historian and musicologist.

On an episode of my show, the Reggaeton con La Gata podcast, I sit down with Goldie, a Boricua reggaetonera who's demanding her place in the male-dominated music industry. That's the game, like who stays and who leaves, you know? Listen to Reggaeton con La Gata on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Follow Reggaeton con La Gata and start listening on the free iHeart radio app today. Okay, we are back. How tell us about tariffs this week? So we got a look inside the White House this week at how the tariff, the turf tariff suspension happened now remember, so there was there was the deliberation day tariffs a few weeks ago and then they got suspended for 90 days. So we're

all still on the 90 day countdown clock on those being unsuspended, but we got a view of how that happened from the wall street journal. The wall street journal reports that secretary treasurer, Scott Bessett and and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick basically waited until Trump advisor Peter Navarro was out of the room and Then it was in a meeting and then they cornered Trump and were like you got to roll these tariffs You got you got to do this pause on the tariffs. Honestly iconic, you know, I I hate to say it but iconic This was also the first Trump administration ran and everyone appears to have forgotten that this is how all of this shit works. Well, because there was a lot of those stories for the first couple of weeks about how smooth and well run it was and everything. It's a lull.

Yeah, and like, this made people assume that there was like a plan behind this and like, no, no, I am fucking vindicated. They really are just this fucking stupid. No, there is not a grand strategy behind their sort of like tariff rollout right? There is a senile old man and his stupid warring advisors and they're both fighting each other for basically for like they're trying like they're trying to wait until the other person is out of the room so they can grab control the fucking puppet reigns. But this does actually lay bare something that's sort of important about this which is that like there is a huge fight inside of the

Trump administration between kind of Lutnick who's like the representative of a bunch of different sort of sectors of American capital, right? Like he's representative of like your fucking like Walgreens dipshits, right? And like he's also representative of the finance people. And those people are losing their fucking minds over the tariffs because it's again going to destroy the economy But Navarro is you know, let's just like a hardline sort of like anti-China ideologue and and Navarro is the person who's been driving the most intense versions of these tariffs and it's a real issue for everyone else in the administration who doesn't want this to happen because Navarro is like the one guy in the administration that Trump actually likes

administration who doesn't want this to happen because Navarro is like the one guy in the administration that Trump actually likes and so they can't directly move against him because they'll lose like Elon Musk tried this and like it got nowhere and so you know what we've been seeing is is just like again the the tariff policy here is just being set by who's the last person in the room with him yeah so so we're probably still like about 60 days ish out from these tariffs going back into effect. I mean this basically means like they'll be hitting in the summer which is also just like absolutely the worst conceivable time for these tariffs to take effect in terms of like if you were just like

deliberately trying to cause a massive popular mobilization against you this is what you would do. They're not that They're just dumb. But like, you know, so okay, let's move on to the sort of big news of this week is the press has been carrying stories about Trump backing off of the 145% China tariffs and the fact that there's going to be negotiations and it's all going to get wound down. down and like I'm pretty sure this is Just kind of pure Lutnick shit to try to calm the markets down The issue with this story is that there are no negotiations, right? Everyone keeps talking about how the US is gonna do negotiated settlement with China. There have not been any negotiations There are not negotiations

there has not even been a process to start negotiations because You know the last stories we had about this was that like, neither side wants to be the person to like start going to the table. Because like asking the other side for negotiations makes them look weak. Like Trump has been asking China to ask him to start negotiations, the Chinese are refusing. And the second issue here, and this is the more substantive problem with with a sort of negotiated back out is that the Trump Navarro position hinges on the line that the trade deficit inherently like with China is proof of Chinese market manipulation and the thing is there's no actual way to

systematically address that right like there's there's that there's nothing that like either China or the US could do that would that would reverse the trade deficit So there's no sort of like, you know, like yeah like like the obvious way out here would be for like Trump to take some kind of weird symbolic victory and like China to be like we're doing a functional crackdown or some shit. But the thing is like Ideologically for someone like Navarro and Navarro is the important figure here. Like Navarro just wants China destroyed, right? There's there's no actual negotiating process that he can do That will actually sort of like make this like negotiation shit happen and have it actually

Like eliminate the tariffs. The only thing that can happen basically is a political battle inside the Trump administration where Navarro gets pushed out somehow But again, Navarro is like Trump's guy administration where Navarro gets pushed out somehow. But again, Navarro is like Trump's guy. So I just don't buy all of this, all the fucking stories that are coming out and this happens constantly. Every single time there's one of these things is all these stories being like, well, they're gonna get rolled back. It doesn't actually mean this and that just happens, right? We have 145% tariffs on China. Now the last thing I want to talk about is what the actual effects of this has been and the effect is that has been there's been a massive slowdown and a massive like shutdown in in exports from China to the US like an internet internet there's container ship traffic right we're

talking about I'm just gonna call from CNBC here so they're talking about optimizer which is like a tracking system for ships and they said quote year-on-year the data shows a 44% drop in vessels scheduled to arrive the week of May 4th to May 10th. Now that's not necessarily a 40% drop in traffic because there'll be more shit when like other boats get full. But you know, to put this into perspective, right? During the worst for trade, the worst parts of the COVID lockdowns, the year on year drop was only 20%. So and 20% is the number that's been that's been being spread around the media for like what? Roughly the drop looks like for some companies is larger than others

and again the tariff we still haven't even seen the actual shocks of the tariffs yet and we're already seeing a decline in exports from China that is like, around the level of the lockdowns. And if any, I think like people remember like the kind of unhinged shit that that caused, right? And that's something that, you know, is only going to intensify. And the other part of this, right, is that the strategies right now for how this is being dealt with is moving through Vietnam, moving through Cambodia.

But if you remember the rates from the original sort of like turf tariffs from Liberation Day, right? Like the tariff on Vietnam was like 100% or some shit. It was like 80%. I don't remember, I don't know exactly what popped my head, but like there's no actual viable strategy of just of ways you can route these goods through. And it's been especially hitting the sort of drop shipping companies, right? Like people like Temu and anything that relies on air freight, just getting fucked. And so this is all just, you know, just sort of rolling in the background is just this logistics crisis. And it's also an echoing crisis.

And the thing I actually want to close this section on is that like, so the big issue with these sort of empty boats, right? And these cancellations of boat orders is that in order for it to be profitable, because all of these shipping companies run on such low margins, right? They only barely survived the pandemic by taking out a series of just like unhinged sort of like weird collateral-based loans.

And in order for these companies to be profitable, they have to continuously keep on completely filling up ships, right? If a ship is not full, it is not profitable for them to run it. So, you know, and if that's not happening, the entire system literally grinds to a halt until there's enough orders to move things through.

So even the shit that there is demand for, right, can't be shipped because these shipping companies cannot afford to unless the entire thing is full. So the supply chain disruptions that we are going to see from this as this sort of escalates and as this continues and especially in a few months if the liberation day tariffs go back into effect are catastrophic and we really like it's just one of these situations you can hear the thunder you can see the lightning but you the storm hasn't hit yet and it is going to and when it does I don't know I was trying to do a

poetic thing about how we're all going to get fucking drenched but we're fucked It's going to be unbelievably bad and the only process right now inside of the administration It doesn't involve like some kind of mobilization is Like again is is let Nick winning this fucking intra intra administration political battle with Navarro so Well pre-order your Nintendo Switch 2 right now! Yes. In other news, the Minnesota Attorney General is suing the Trump admin over the executive order about trans women participating in school sports, saying he will, quote, not participate in shameful bullying, and also says that this order violates the Minnesota Human Rights Act.

So we'll see some more court cases over this in the weeks to come. I'd like to talk a little bit about the student crackdowns for Palestine protests, kind of in a different way. Like we've discussed like ICE going after and detaining and deporting and taking away visas and green cards. So unrelated to that side of it, on the morning of Wednesday, April 23rd, the FBI served multiple search warrants in Southeast Michigan, presumably related to Palestine protests and encampments from the past year.

There's also some reporting of law enforcement activity in other states like Pennsylvania, but I'm still waiting to confirm that. The press secretary for the Michigan Attorney General confirms investigators executed search warrants for three homes. He said that people were briefly detained during the execution of these warrants, but they were all eventually released. And he noted, quote, there is no immigration enforcement angle to the execution of these search warrants,

unquote. So these people aren't being investigated like by ICE to get deported necessarily. This is seemingly for other protest activity. A pro-Palestine student group says that these raids happened at around 8 a.m. Quote, early this morning, police and FBI agents raided four residences of University of Michigan pro-Palestine protesters, refusing to show warrants, they seized all electronics, and a number of personal belongings." But let's close this episode by returning to my most Stephen Colbert, Skibbitty Biden segment, Stinky Musk, which is still the worst name I've come up with. Last Tuesday, Elon Musk said that

quote, working for the government to get the financial house in order is mostly done unquote. Musk is moving closer to stepping back from Doge this May, around the time that his special government employee designation is set to expire. Reporting from Washington Post claims that Musk is growing tired of the vicious and unethical attacks from the left, and that is kind of dragging on him. With other reports suggesting that Musk is annoying other cabinet members and administration officials more than Trump himself, in fact, just this Wednesday, a few hours before recording, Musk and Bessett were having a pretty intense shouting match in the White House. Going forward, Musk says that he

plans to work for the government about one to two days a week for the remainder of the Trump presidency, so that he can quote, make sure that the waste and fraud that we've stopped does not come roaring back unquote. He keeps referring to his work at Doge as like being already completed, essentially, like like we already found all of the fraud and now we just have to make sure more fraud doesn't happen. We've previously reported on the alleged fraud that he claims to have found and the false numbers up on the Doge site, but it seems like this work really is winding down. The Musk-Doge reply to this email with five things you've done this week or else be fired directive has essentially sputtered out. Senior officials do not comply with the core aspects of the directive. It was never really enforced and the Trump Office

of Personnel Management later said that this was voluntary and that OPM officials may have never actually ever read those response emails at all. Though a small number of agencies are still requiring compliance with this mandate. And in some fun news, Tesla's stock just continues to decline, dropping to half its peak from last December, and anti-Tesla vandalism is potentially spiking the cost of Tesla insurance. Tesla had a just disastrous earnings call this Tuesday, April 22, showing that Tesla profits have fell 71% over the first three months of the year. The total revenue has decreased 9% compared to 2024, with car sales revenue dropping 20% compared to a year earlier.

The Tesla CFO stated that, quote, the negative impact of vandalism and unwarranted hostility towards our brand and our people had an impact in certain markets." In a company statement before this earnings call, Tesla claimed that quote-unquote, a changing political sentiment could impact demand for their product. Musk announced that he would be shifting his attention back to Tesla, and that his Doge time allocation will quote-unquote drop significantly. Musk talked tariffs on this earnings call, and tried to carefully not bash Trump while stating concerns over the high tariffs, saying quote,

I've been on the record many times as saying I believe lower tariffs are generally a good idea, but this decision is fundamentally up to the elected representative of the people being the President of the United States. So, you know, I'll continue to advocate for lower tariffs, but that's all I can do." Any thoughts on Musk and Tesla here before we close? Yeah, one thing I want to remind everyone that is genuinely good news is that the thing about Tesla sales dropping is that it actually fucks them in two different ways, right? Because again, most of their money

is from these carbon credits that they're selling. But the thing is, in order to be able to get the carbon credits, they do need to be able to sell cars. Totally. And so each subsequent cycle of people not buying cars is also destroying their carbon credit subsidies, which is this sort of of like spiraling like cash crisis thing. So, you know, look, zero Tesla sales is possible. We can keep driving. A better world is possible. We can destroy these bastards.

We could ruin this one guy specifically's life, and it's not even that difficult. So... Yeah! Well, we reported the news. We reported the news. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonedmedia.com, or check us out on the

iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can now find sources for It Could Happen Here listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening. My name is Brendan Patrick Hughes, host of Divine Intervention. This is a story about radical nuns in combat boots and wild-haired priests trading blows with J. Edgar Hoover in a hell-bent effort to sabotage a war. J. Edgar Hoover was furious. He was out of his mind,

and he wanted to bring the Catholic left to its knees. Listen to Divine Intervention on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Sam Mullins, and I've got a new podcast coming out called Go Boy, the gritty true story of how one man fought his way out of some of the darkest places imaginable. Roger Caron was 16 when first convicted. Has spent 24 of those years in jail.

But when Roger Caron picked up a pen and paper, he went from an ex-con to a literary darling. From Campside Media and iHeart podcasts, listen to Go Boy on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Israel Gutierrez, and I'm hosting a new podcast, Dub Dynasty, the story of how the Golden State Warriors have dominated the NBA for over a decade. The Golden State Warriors once again are NBA champions. Today, the Warriors Dynasty remains alive in large part because of a scrawny six-foot two hooper who everyone seems to love. For what Steph has done for the game, he's certainly on that Mount West war. Come revisit this magical Warriors ride. Listen to Dub Dynasty on the iHeartRadio app,

Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. You're feeling this too is a horror anthology podcast. It brings different creators to tell 10 vile, No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, grotesque, horrific stories on what scares them the most. You're feeling this too? Listen on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.